Sunday in the Park

So we took a little wander today through Brookside Park in Scotch Plains and came upon some storm damage from Hurricane Irene which someone enhanced with a bit of a human touch.

Another New Beginning

Blogging was fun for a while but I began to realize two things:

1. Did I really have anything unique to say?
2. Did I really want the world knowing what was on my mind.

I decided the answer to both questions was no. I did, however, still want to reflect on the world I was living in so I came up with a slightly different format. Maybe I would try to come up with a photo of the day.

So here's my first one. This was taken while riding my bicycle up the NYC West Side Greenway. We stopped to look at the Free Kayak launch.

Thanks for reading!

Back After a Long Absence

My last post was in June 2009. Not quite a year but too long. It's not that there hasn't been anything to say. There just hasn't been the overwhelming desire to say it. Perhaps that will change now.

We seem to be on the cusp of another reorganization at work. We have no hard facts to confirm this but we all seem to be in a bit of a stupor now so that is usually an indication that things are going to be tossed around a bit, again. I find myself with a lot of projects but no clear direction on any of them.

Cynical statement - When in doubt reorganize!

Kindling

I'm ready to make a product endorsement. I officially think that my Amazon Kindle is the best thing since chunky peanut butter. I know it will never replace the printed book, or newpaper, or magazine but for the daily commuter it's pretty cool.

It is a pricey little doodad and I was fortunate enough to get one as compensation for some articles that I wrote for another web site. The up side is that you really don't need to go to Amazon for your books. There are plenty of sites that have books in the public domain and it really is a great opportunity to read up on the classics. I'm reading The Sea Wolf by Jack London now.

The best thing, though, is their customer service. I noticed the other day that a portion of the screen wasn't displaying properly. I called customer service on a Sunday afternoon and had only a 1 minute wait time. The tech walked me through some basic troubleshooting and then declared the thing broken. They shipped a new one to me and it arrived this evening. I've already transferred my reading material to the new one and I'm ready to roll. I'm in shock at how easy it all is.

Martin Guitars

I started playing the guitar when I was about 16 years old. Unfortunately, I never took lessons so I've learned lots of things very badly. I do know the sound of a good guitar and I was awed yesterday during my visit to the Martin Guitar factory in Nazareth, PA.

First of all they give you a real factory tour. You get to walk the floor of the factory and the workers stop and chat. It's an amazing process which takes about 4 months for an instrument to get produced and is a combination of very high tech stuff and some painfully simple hand work. At the end of the tour they let you try out their guitars both low end and high end. I was partial to the $5,000 ones but could never see anything that would justify buying one unless I was a professional musician. I particularly liked the Johnny Cash signature guitar (black body). It had a deep resonant tone that was really different than the Elvis Presley signature model.

Kindle

I’ve got a new toy that I’m extremely enthusiastic about.

Through a bit of good fortune and a little cleverness I’ve gotten a free Kindle 2. For those not familiar with this device it’s an electronic book reader. It’s about the size of a paperback book and ¼ inch thick. It can hold about 300 books and has an adjustable font size.

Amazon built these things so they could sell more books but for the industrious it can provide lots of legal free entertainment. The lightweight and compact design make it ideal for the commuter and the fact that it stores more than one book saves me from the finishing a book at the beginning of a commute dilemma. There’s only so much staring out the window at the NJ Turnpike that one I can endure.

I’ve discovered a bunch of sites that have electronic forms of books that are beyond copyright and freely downloadable. It’s a simple matter of e-mailing the pdf form to the kindle and within a minute it’s there ready to read.

Returning After a Long Hiatus

I know...I haven't written in a while and those that eagerly look at this space for valuable insights and reflections must surely be disappointed. Work is not as busy as it should be now so perhaps there is some time to catch up.

I have been posting to another site that was recruiting folks to blog about their commute. I've been posting twice a week to http://www.commuterchronicles.com They have promised to pay if I can keep it lively and consistent. I've been getting some responses so maybe this will turn into something. If nothing else it is good experience.

The newsest big thing in my life is the Kindle 2 from Amazon. For those that don't know this is a device that lets you store and read books on a gadget that measures about 4 x 3 and is about 1/4 inch thick and weighs nothing. It's got an easy to read screen with an adjustable font. It's a way for Amazon to sell you books without the bother of printing them. There are, however, a number of sites where free books are available. These are mostly older books that are beyond their copyright. Currently I'm reading Coal Town by Upton Sinclair. The big font was the major selling point for me. It's a wireless device so you can even e-mail stuff to it to read. I'm impressed.