Saw a woman today walking right up the middle of 29th Street. She had a huge smile on her face as cars moved to avoid running her over. She was stoned or high or fucked up on something. She wandered into the Hotel Verve, which I heard has been turned into a homeless shelter, or will be.

Near that same intersection I saw a cabbie get stiffed for his fare. Passenger got out of the car. Cab driver jumps out to chase after him, stepping into oncoming traffic which managed to avoid hitting him. The cab driver confronted the passenger, who was obviously drunk. So drunk that the cabbie appeared to realize immediately that he had no chance of getting a dime out of this guy. Kind of unsettling, both incidents. That’s an area I like for its remnants of desolation that used to characterize the wider area.

Been depressed as hell, though today felt a little clearer. Spent most of yesterday wandering around, waiting for my domain names to propagate. Turns out I just do not know what I am doing with DNS and zone files. I am taking the low road and using Godaddy for DNS, even if that adds considerably to my work load and blood pressure. I’ll get back to more machismo self-hosted DNS another time. Does not really matter. If freakin’ Donald Trump’s web presence uses Godaddy as its backbone then why can’t I?

Spent part of yesterday in the Chapel at Calvary. It was amply heated, which I did not expect. And I made one last attempt at finding a spot in the movie John Wick, which purportedly was shot at Calvary but I think otherwise. There is a cemetery scene which shows two spots. The second spot, where Keanu Reaves talks with Willem Defoe, is clearly Calvary. I found that spot. The first cemetery shot, however, looks more like Green-Wood. If the scene is not completely fabricated than I don’t know where it is but it is almost certainly not Calvary. Extra credit to the film makers for getting the signature green blanket that is used to cover the mountain of dirt  that forms from the digging of the grave.

I just do a lot of wandering these days, waiting for next week and the return of everyone at places of work so I can call around looking for some kind of job. I’ve been more engaged in my web sites of late but that engagement only  serves to remind me how overextended I am and how unmanageable my web life has become. And yet I keep considering more projects, new content ideas. I remember the pinhead from Google who wasted his time and mine by inviting me to the Google offices downtown. The real positive, if you could call it that, was his comment that my demeanor changed when we stopped talking about analytics and turned attention to my content and web sites. I perked up and got what, for me, counts as excited.

I went to a NYE party but left around 11pm. I was just in no mood for human beings. it sucks being around people who do not know how to drink. I mean there are worse situations to be sure, and these type of people can be easily avoided by simply not talking. But man it’s tiresome to see people who think they are hilarious and articulate when they are really just blowholes. I guess it’s better than being nasty or violent but I had no patience for it. Felt a little bad leaving early but nobody seemed to hate on me for it. Celebrated 2016 with a monster slab of London Broil. Fuck that was good. Lately I realize that the only food genres that excite me much are sandwiches and steak. The panini was a revelation to me when it suddenly became popular. I disliked The Wrap very much until recently when I found a place that actually puts more meat than wrap into the product. I was excited to make the trek up to 23rd Avenue, where the Sandwich King serves endless heroes to a never ending line of people waiting to spend $9.50 for 3-4 days worth of sammich. It was funny when I got there i saw a guy hauling what looked like a 10-11 foot sandwich on his shoulders. I knew I had made it to the Sandwich King. Another great sandwich in this ‘hood is at the Food Bazaar. I think it used to be a couple of bucks cheaper than the Sandwich King but they raised the prices.. Still good stuff, though, and comparable to the Sandwich King, i think.

SANDWICHES

Was thinking of going to sit at a bar tonight. have not done that in quite a while, though I’ve occasionally begun the act of walking toward one or another of the many such places around here. If one thing does not repel me from entering than another thing will. Actually I was at a bar last night. I didn’t think of it as that. I thought I’d try and do something nice for myself by treating me to a gift card funded burger at TGI Friday’s on Lexington Avenue. To sweeten the deal I found a Metro Card with $8.55 on it, making the trip there free for me. Somehow I decided to only bring on gift card. I had 2, one with $7, the other with $11. I should have brought them both as the final bill with tip was about $20. I brought only one because I thought it might result in having an annoying balance of $3 on one of the cards. I got there on the subway and thought I would take a bus back, exploiting the free transfer round trip hack I execute once in a while. Somehow I did not make it to the bus in time, and there was no free transfer. All in all I spent over $20 doing something I initially thought would cost nothing. So stupid. I can’t continue being such an asshole about money.

Oh and the bar was kind of a horrible experience. A bunch of obnoxious drunk British tourists were having the time of their fucking lives. I was all the way at the other end of the bar but somehow I knew the moment I got there that these assholes would somehow make their way to where I was. that’s what happened. One of the guys was flirty with the bartender and he came to the end of the bar to give her his number so she could contact him next time she was in the UK. He seemed to think it was hilarious that New Jersey was named for Jersey, where he was from in England. After he sauntered to the end of the bar his other friends followed suit, drunkenly bumping there asses into my side, forcing me to slowly but surely move my seat and everything on the counter in front of me further and further down the bar. I could have politely said something but I think it would have been like the cab driver getting stiffed and quickly realizing the passenger was too drunk to even bother with. The burger was nasty, too.

At the ghetto coffee shop. Going home to have more fun staring at recalcitrant DNS records.