Not Tech | Procrastiblog

July 3, 2007

Remember When? (Summer Fruit Edition)

Filed under: Food, Not Tech — Chris @ 2:40 pm

I just had a damn satisfying bowl of cereal with strawberries and blueberries in it, made all the more satisfying (but at the same time dismaying) by all my failed attempts to have this same bowl of cereal with strawberries and blueberries for the last several months. Apparently they are now actually in season and so they actually, you know, taste good. But even though they previously weren’t in season and didn’t taste good, the grocery store kept putting them out there for me to buy (at tantalizingly reasonable prices) anyway.

It’s ironic, in this world where you can buy summer fruit in January and winter vegetables in August*, where global supply chains are devised to deliver to the consumer everything he wants when he wants it without respect for climate or geography, that we’ve actually lost a convenience that was intrinsic to the old order: the strawberries, blueberries, apples, peaches, plums, and nectarines only showed up at the grocery when they were good (or just a little bit before. And stayed around just a little bit after). You didn’t have to be a student of agriculture with a sharp eye for quality to know when it was and was not OK to buy strawberries: it was OK to buy them for the 3-4 weeks that they were available in grocery stores. Now, it’s just a constant exercise in mental discipline and delayed gratification. Ick.

Perhaps this is why I should do more shopping at the farmers’ market.

POSTSCRIPT: H should not read anything in this post to confirm insane and inconvenient ideas developed while reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma

* Who wants winter vegetables in August?

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July 2, 2007

Una Pizza Napoletana

Filed under: Food, Not Tech — Chris @ 3:44 am

Last night, H and I wandered pretty much randomly* into the latest pizza lovers’ obsession, Una Pizza Napoletana. The menu is suicidal. There are exactly four food items, all pizzas. No appetizers, no sides, no desserts. The choices are: Margherita (plain), Marinara (no cheese), Bianco (no sauce), or Filetti (with cherry tomatoes instead of sauce). No slices, no toppings, no substitutions. A basically-individual 12-inch pie is $21 (ouch), any variety. There is a similarly limited and uniformly-priced list of wines and beers, which are served lukewarm in a plain drinking glass.

So the pizza better be pretty fucking good, right? Well… it is. Pretty fucking good. Perfect crust: crunchy, chewy, salty, etc. Nicely balanced sauce, nice cheese, fresh basil. Not my favorite pizza in the entire world, which is still either Di Fara in Midwood (a moment of silence…) or Vito’s Pizza of Hamilton, NJ, which was for me like mother’s milk. Still, damn good.

But… can we cut the crap? I’ve had una pizza Napoletana. In Napoli. And they have toppings. Nice toppings. Like arugula and prosciutto. Or artichokes. Or ricotta.

I mean, for fuck’s sake, people, loosen up. You’re doing good work. Now give me some ice cream.

* Momofuku had a wait and we were trying to catch a movie (Ratatouille, which was entertaining, as expected).

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June 15, 2007

Taking Direction

Filed under: Not Tech, Waste of Time — Chris @ 12:22 am

Is there a way to give feedback when Google Maps gives you a bum steer? This morning, I was driving from Westfield to Murray Hill in New Jersey and Google Maps advised me to turn North on Union Ave in Scotch Plains and cross Route 22 (here). The only problem is that there’s a concrete divider on Route 22 at Union Ave (which is clearly visible here) and it’s not possible to cross there. I had to go a few miles East on 22 to Glenside Ave. Luckily, I knew where I was at that point; if not, I would have been screwed.

Now, I’m the kind of good citizen who fixes grammar on Wikipedia and blogs about bugs in GCC. I’d like to tell Google about their terrible mistake and give them a chance to make it up to me. But I can’t find any email address or web form that seems appropriate.

It may be the case that they don’t want feedback. After all, why should they trust me on this? Oh, well.

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June 12, 2007

Fixed Gears, Fun?

Filed under: Not Tech — Chris @ 1:01 pm

I’ve seen and heard a lot of content-free snark about fixed-gear bikes lately, as in this recent NY Times Style article, but I’ve never successfully gotten anybody to explain to me why they are fun to ride? For the record, if you are interested, one Mr. Sheldon Brown makes a pretty compelling case and the Wikipedia has a characteristically objective take. This makes me want to try one out. Although I must say , as a novice city bike rider who huffs and puffs his way up the gentle slope to Prospect Park, I enjoy coasting. Coasting is fun.

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June 1, 2007

Did you know AA alkaline batteries could explode?

Filed under: Not Tech — Chris @ 4:07 am

I’m sitting in the living room and BLAM! like a shotgun blast. I walk into the kitchen and the clock is laying on the floor, one half of an AA battery lying next to it. On the wall—five feet away!—there’s a splatter of some battery-related gunk. On the counter—several feet in the other direction—there’s some kind of wadded-up, gunky something-or-other.

You may have heard that laptop and cell phone batteries can explode (see here, here, and, for video, here), and this seems to be a concern for rechargeable batteries in general. But plain alkaline AAs? Who knew?

Having now seen what the humble AA can do, I’m going to rethink holding my laptop on my lap and/or keeping my cell phone in my pants pocket.

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May 29, 2007

Is Bush a Neoliberal? No.

Filed under: Not Tech, Politics — Chris @ 3:52 pm

Do me a favor here… is it really 2007? And is Richard Cohen really writing this column on how George W. Bush is a “neoliberal”? Are there no limits to the sage pundit’s lazy contrarianism?

Cohen says he “never really knew what [neoliberalism] meant”, but the term should be revived because George Bush is “more liberal than you might think.” The evidence for this is: (a) No Child Left Behind (a bunch of meddling, liberal do-gooderism), (b) all the incompetent blacks, women, and Latinos in his administration (hiring poorly qualified minorities is just so liberal), and (c) conducting a botched foreign war and justifying it with high-flown Wilsonian rhetoric (losing wars is just so liberal).

Mr. Cohen, I do know what neoliberalism means (if you want to know, you might have Googled it; it’s not that complicated). George Bush is not a neoliberal. And items (a), (b), and (c)—while they ring nicely of the conservative caricature of The Left—are not evidence of neoliberalism. Quite the opposite in fact.

I understand the urge to paint George Bush as “not conservative” (this has been Andrew Sullivan’s bread and butter for about four years), but “not conservative” is not “neoliberal.” (Duh.) And what we really don’t need right now, at this point in history, is a supposedly “not conservative” columnist in the Washington Post using the word “liberal” as an essentially meaningless all-purpose insult.

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May 5, 2007

Happy Free Comic Book Day!

Filed under: Not Tech — Chris @ 6:30 pm

Go out and get yours! Your local comic book store will only be a semi-intolerable madhouse.

You would think there would be one lousy freebie on offer—and in past years, this was the case—but in fact there are 10 or 12 free comics, ranging from Archie to The Hulk to The Simpsons to The Lone Ranger. Something for everybody.* And you can take them all, if you want. I ended up buying $10 worth of non-free comic books too. So it worked!

In other strolling around Fifth Avenue news: the Sabbath-observing jeweler resized my wedding band for $12 bucks. Trying to cheat me, Upper East Side? (I think the $80 price was to cut and re-join the ring. Whereas it really only needed to be compressed. Jerks.)

And: Empanadas, still delicious!

* Everybody who hasn’t passed through puberty.

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April 27, 2007

Ubuntu Names

Filed under: Linux, Tech, Waste of Time — Chris @ 4:06 pm

Oddly enough, Ubuntu has a web page about the names. Apparently, it just didn’t occur to them to go in alphabetical order until after breezy. But why did they skip C?

I think Adjective Animal would be a great name for their 27th release.

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April 22, 2007

The Universe (Sort Of) Hates Me…

Filed under: India, Not Tech — Chris @ 6:42 pm

Well… Let’s call it a patent dislike.

I specifically left the house this afternoon to get my wedding band resized—an errand I’ve been meaning to run for about six months now*—only to find that every jewelry store in Park Slope is closed on Sunday. What’s the deal?

But you know who is open on Sunday? The 5th Avenue empanada lady. You know how much an empanada costs? A dollar twenty-five. And you know what they are? Delicious.

Eat that, universe,

* The band has seemed a little too big since I got back from India, probably because of the 10 pounds I lost there (which have oddly stayed off, even after I returned to my customary diet of cow, pig, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). The band has fallen off my finger twice: once on the street in Sunset Park and once on the beach in California. I haven’t determined the precise combination of external/internal/body temperature and humidity/sweatiness that puts it in the danger zone, but I find that I self-consciously walk around with my hand curled in a fist, lest the band leap from my finger and into a sewer and/or the jaws of a whale.

[UPDATE] Upper East Side jewellers have a better work ethic, but $80 to shrink a platinum band a half size? Is that really how much it costs?

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April 20, 2007

That word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Filed under: Not Tech, Politics — Chris @ 11:34 pm

Today’s NY Times article about Harry Reid contains the single most idiotic piece of argumentation I’ve ever heard from a Republican (and that’s saying something):