Christmas eve morning, my dad’s organization, The Twelve Santas delivered toys
and food coupons to 37 needy families in the area. All of the money for gifts and gifts themselves were collected by the members of the group, which now number more than 12. I got the tremendous privilege of playing Santa. I’ll try to write more about it later but it was incredible seeing the expression on kids faces. Even the older kids that didn’t “believe” would look at the huge bag of toys I had just handed them and then back at me…. and then to the bag again and then to me waving goodbye without asking for a thing in return. The possibility of Santa became real again.
I had dinner with my dad’s side of the family on Christmas eve. C, a friend of mine from SF joined us since she was spending Christmas in New York with a friend. She hasn’t really told me why she didn’t spend it with family but that’s ok.
My uncle Frank “Sglick” (pronounced sss-click) Cavagnaro died Christmas morning in his bar at age 77. The thought I can’t get out of my mind is how much he loved owning his bar. He had regulars that came in at 10am just about every day. It wasn’t big, it wasn’t ostentatious, it didn’t have a big sign, the only special drink I know of was local beer he served on draft in tiny 6 oz glasses for about $0.50. I imagine that his was the kind of place that he’d pour your drink as you walked in the door and it’d be ready for you before you finished your hellos and sat down. I’ll be at the viewing Wednesday.
I wrote 175 personal holiday cards over the last 2 weeks. If I missed you, please forgive me and send me your email address. The responses I’ve gotten back have universally been touching. It’s good to have friends.
Christmas Day dinner was at Bean’s house with much of my mother’s side of the family. It was dinner for 16 or so.
Tonight was dinner and Barry & DeAnn’s. More of my mom’s side. There were 18 places at dinner! What a family!
This Christmas, I sent greetings to most all of my friends. (if I missed you, I do apologize!) Along with it, I sent the most adorable card from JacquieLawson.com.
Here is a local archive of it.
Really, I mean it.
Merry Christmas and all that jazz!
(By the First Intent Doctrine of the Constitution, I have apparenelty just violated the law. Well, tough!)
The Macy’s Sterns and Foster bed that has given me 2 back aches in the past 1 1/2 weeks has been returned. I was very nervous about the propect because I bought an “as-is” floor model. $900 instead of $2400. But when 2 people told me, “hey your bed feels funny. there’s like a hole over in this spot”, I knew that going against the “as-is” contract was perfectly fine.
Kathy, the manager on the 7th floor at the Union Square Macys (literally) didn’t bat an eye at me wanting to return the bed. I told her my problem, that I hated the bed and she said, “Well you have two options… … exchange… or … return with a $65 delivery fee to get it back to the store”.
Carmen graciously around for the delivery guy at 11 this morning.
Tonight, I’m sleeping on the floor again. But that’s ok.
The Burning Man 2006 Theme has been announced.
Art inspires
I’m a member of Tradesports.com. Last fall, I had a good time trading Central Park weather futures. IE, the number of inches of snow in Central Park at the end of each month. I liked excercising my statistics skills.
Most people think of Tradesports as a sports book. But wait, there’s more. Insurance companies have a lot in common with gambling houses.
Read this Annoucement I just got from them
Continue reading ‘Online Gambling or Vital Financial Tool?’ »
Being in the rockin’ christmas spirit, I present this excellent application of The Trans Siberian Orchestra‘s music.
An astounding Christmas lighting display set to music
(sorry, removed to protect bandwidth.)
(This local 5 MB copy will only be held online for a short time to protect my bandwith limit. Googling for “Wizards of Winter”or “Wizards_of_Winter___SM.wmv” should find it)
When you are at a public access terminal, it’s very possible that a keylogger is sniffing your keyboard. But sometimes it’s just so convenient that you have to use one of these machines anyway. To try and beat it, do the following:
1 Open notepad
2 Type part of your password in the password window
3 Using the mouse, go to the notepad window
4 Type some nonsense characters
5 Using the mouse, return to the password window
Repeat steps 2-5 a few times.
Make sure that the password window doesn’t show your password on the screen because bad people might have put a program on your computer that takes screenshots every few seconds.
(tip from Security Now Podcast, Episode 17)
– Catch fish
– Slice fish (note that “kill” did not occur in this progression)
– Eat fish while it pleads for you with it’s eyes to finish it off.
(Kevin Rose’s sushi experience)
Yum!