Month: June 2002 (Page 2 of 4)

Welcome to the new Ideapad!

This page is still in beta but it’s time the new look got pushed out the door. Besides the new look, there’s a full back-end database and a new way of organizing things. Click the Read More link below for the full piece.

Welcome to the new Ideapad!

This page is still in beta but it’s time the new look got pushed out the door. Besides the new look, here are the changes:

~ There are true sub-categories for usability and journal entries. The usability pieces will be compiled in a new area entitled Getting It Right, and the journal items in a reborn area, now entitled Quite Keen. This page will continue to display all new content, including the more-or-less daily weblog items that have been living in the sidebar in previous months.

~ For the longer items you’ll have to click the Read More link to get the full piece.

~ Archive items are displayed one to a page now, not just monthly. I will still maintain monthly archive pages, as I think they’re a nice way to peruse the past.

~ This page is one big database feed, PHP and MySQL. Many thanks to David Miller for all the programming that went into making it work (and all the small details we’ve yet to fix).

My home page is new, too, and the rest of the pages on netwert.com will follow suit in the next few weeks.

By the way, and this hurts to say, but if you’re visiting this site in Netscape you are not seeing the full picture (he says with a sigh, nodding in his girlfriend’s direction). The blue bars and spacing that define the content column don’t render for some reason. This drives the many-users-one-experience perfectionist in me crazy, but the page is otherwise clean. I hope to rectify that issue but I make no guarantees.

Look for non-variable URLs, comment pop-ups, and other goodies in the weeks to come. In the interim, please send me a note and tell me what you think!

My coworker Will is an affable Brit living in Manhattan with his wife. He has been here for about 10 months, and had his own Moment last month.

My coworker Will is an affable Brit living in Manhattan with his wife. He has been here for about 10 months, and had his own Moment last month.

Will was traveling up Central Park West in the back seat of a taxicab when his cab driver inadvertently cut off a large Mercedes. The driver of the Benz, mad at the cabbie, sped up, raced past the cab on the right-hand side, then turned 45 degrees to the left and stopped short, blocking both northbound lanes of the street.

The driver of the Mercedes jumped out of his car and, with his children watching from the back seat, stormed over to the cab to discuss the cabbie’s driving skills. The two were jawing as Will sat in the cab, watching the argument and his meter keep rising.

After a moment Will got fed up and rolled down his window. “Excuse me!” he called out to the Mercedes driver standing in the street.

“What do you want?” the man lashed out.

“Are you going to pay my fare?” Will asked angrily. “I have a meter running here!”

“Butt out,” said the driver.

Will didn’t. “Listen, you are either going to get back in your car and get out of my way, or you’re going to pay my fare while I sit and wait for you to finish your argument. Now get out of my way.”

The angry Benz driver stared at Will for a moment, and then, grumbling, went back to his car and took off.

Mild-mannered Will spent the rest of his cab ride marveling at his newfound New York attitude.

Upon moving to a new city, one goes through the natural acclimation periods, including a stretch where the city is comfortable, but not yet home.

Then comes an instance where suddenly one lashes out, and acts in a way not previously thought possible on a personal level. The Moment is when realization sets in: Yep, this is my town.

Upon moving to a new city, one goes through the natural acclimation periods, including a stretch where the city is comfortable, but not yet home.

Then comes an instance where suddenly one lashes out, and acts in a way not previously thought possible on a personal level. The Moment is when realization sets in: Yep, this is my town.

I grew up in New Jersey, always traveling to New York City for events and weekends with my family. I began working in Manhattan when I graduated, and two years later I moved into the city proper.

For a while, I was a Jerseyan in the City, right down to my abundance of khaki pants and brown shoes. I defended my home state (still do); I identified more with my past than my present. It was natural to do so. But I quickly succumbed to the rhythms of city life, since I knew them well before I moved.

A few months after relocating, I was heading north in Times Square at the corner of 46th and Broadway, and I wound up standing on the corner, behind a man who wasn’t stepping off the curb. I pushed past him, bumping his shoulder as I went, muttering under my breath about stupid tourists clogging up the sidewalks.

Then I looked up and found myself crossing 46th Street against the light with a car barreling toward me.

I got to the far corner without incident, but I knew what had happened. “Well, David,” I thought to myself, “you’re a New Yorker now.”

I’d like to win the lottery, really; today I’m buying a ticket for MegaMillions, which stands at $35 million for Friday’s drawing.

$35 million lump-summed and taxed would leave me with roughly $9 million in cash, maybe not quite enough to retire and live life as a fat cat forever—the dotcom upstarts of the late 1990s always said that would take $10 million or more, because at that level, one could stick it in a trust and live off the $1 million in annual interest and investment gains—but plenty for me, undoubtedly, to take a long vacation and buy a bigger apartment for me and my lady, and exit the Web world for a while, and buy a lot of CDs, and write for a living, or at least pretend to write for a living, knowing full well that the chances of me making a six-figure annual income off words are slim, but that’d be okay, because I’d be sitting on the $9 million that made it into my pocket on even slimmer odds, and I could eat at the bar at Union Square Cafe once a week, if I felt like it, instead of once a year, when I decide I really deserve that $23 veal and pasta appetizer.

Barring that, I’ll get a cheeseburger for lunch on Saturday.