Luxury buildings

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with luxury buildings. On the one hand, they're soulless and overpriced, and stand for everything that's wrong with the new face of New York. On the other hand, they're incredibly convenient: doormen to take packages, elevator for bringing things up to your apartment, gym when it's too cold or late to leave the building, no broker wasting your time and then emptying your wallet, no unruly supers taking forever to do repairs, modern appliances.

The one frustrating thing about these buildings is that they're hard to find. A lot of them only list their prices in the paper New York Times. A lot of them want you to call or email for prices, a waste of time for all involved. Nearly identical buildings can vary greatly in price. As part of my apartment hunting, I collected my notes in a Google Notebook. But what I really wanted was a good list of luxury buildings and their prices. Nybits was okay, but slow to go through. Apartment ratings was promising, but had almost no data.

So, I broke down and made something myself, borrowing liberally from my friend and coworker Mihai's overplot mashup. The result is luxurny. It's a little clunky and could use some more coverage, so please send me additions. For now, I'm limiting it to Manhattan luxury buildings.

Wikipedia really does have everything

I always feel dumb when I don't post for a while and lots of exciting things happen in my life, and my next post is decidedly inconsequential. But, oh well. I was reading Glen's blog (and I finally got to meet Glen on my most recent trip to Mountain View!) and I decided to see if my high school was on Wikipedia. And Voila! It even mentions that our school was featured in "Bring It On," which is probably the most exciting thing about it, other than the fact that it had 3,000ish students the year I graduated, which freaks the hell out of East Coasters.

So Ronrey!

Last week kicked ass. Catherine and I went to Babbo, which was especially awesome after reading Heat. Calling didn't work to get a reservation, but we had a concierge at work that pulled some sort of magic. I had to-die-for goat cheese tortelloni and tasty parpadelle with chanterelles, plus salad with blood orange dressing, peach grappa, a delicious wine, a sparkling red dessert wine, and saffron panna cotta. Also, we sat next to Paul Giamatti! And he ogled the parpadelle!

The next night, we saw Paul Giamatti in The Illusionist, which was entertaining, although it turns out we had confused the movie with the trailers for the similar-sounding The Prestige. Paul Giammati is evil in it, though.

This week we had to move, since C's off to Harvard Law. My movers were so late the buildings were threatening to not let them use the elevators. Also, I waited in line for half an hour at Time Warner only to find out that the idiot on the phone who told me I could self-install a new account was wrong. Of course, WHY can't I self-install a new account? The building is a in-bed-with-Time-Warner-for-a-small-discount building, so I would hope the connectivity is well-tested, which was the only reason they gave for needing to send a technician. Note also that said technician is soonest available Sept 13 beween 10 and 2. Luckily, my new neighbor has kindly neglected to secure his or her Wifi. Phew!

Now I can shop for a new TV, and with slightly less urgency, a bed. ;-)

Funny conversation about seeing Snakes on a Plane

--dork jokes alert--

(on Partychat)

[dan] Are we really going Thursday night to SoaP?
["ak"] you object?
[dan] No.
[dan] I'm making plans.
Kushal: i'd prefer to see XML-RPC on the big screen
partychat: ["skateboard_p"] we're definitely in
[dan] Oh Kushal.
[dan] Give it a REST.
Kushal: i wonder if one of the snakes is a CORBA

Murphy's Postal Service

In the past year, the only things I know to have gotten lost in the mail are a) my tax return and b) a stock certificate, both of which led to annoying fines. Why is the postal service so selectively crappy?

New toys

After some research, I ended up getting a D807 from Cingular (via letstalk, which unfortunately ported by number 2 days before it arrived but was otherwise great - I realized just before I ordered that Amazon can't port Cingular numbers. WTF). It's so nice to be able to install applications without paying a tax to profiteering control-freaks. I immediately (after some guidance from Dolapo) installed Google Maps and Opera Mini (which show up under "games" on my phone - sigh). And I can get to Reader Mobile and Gmail Mobile! The $10 data+messaging addon from Cingular is a real deal.

Also, Catherine and I dropped by our third-favorite Union Square wine store (after the Warehouse and Trader Joe's of course) in its new location. They have these automated tasting machines where you insert a smart card that lets you get samples of wines. As you buy wines, you get more credits. The staff was rather surly, but we were eventually able to taste a Montsant (next door to Priorat, which we enjoyed in Spain).

PearlJam++

So Pearl Jam performed an awesome revision of Phil Ochs's song "Here's to the State of Mississippi" on Storytellers, and at the time I couldn't find any copies of it online. But then they performed it at a recent concert, which you can purchase at their handy-dandy bootleg site. The whole concert - 38 tracks, no DRM - is $10. Other bands could really learn a lesson.