Crazy Fingers

I’m sitting on a plane right now, on my way to meet Brian in Arizona.

I’m reading The World is Flat on and off (and so is the guy next to me) and listening to a stellar show — 5/19/74.

The guy next to me (that’s his picture), travels for work most of the time. Appropriate for two people reading The World Is Flat, Kevin is in a managerial role and may outsource some of his work (recall, my job got outsourced last year). Kevin’s house was hit by lightening about ten years ago, as was mine about 30 years ago. What are the odds, huh? We learned this about each other while we watched lightening dance in the clouds outside the plane.

He’s on his way home to his wife; I’m on my way to my Brian.

Kevin, it turns out, has an interest in adventure travel. I’ll put him in touch with my bud Danillo, who runs an adventure travel company in Costa Rica.

I had a short, but productive, day at work, capping off a very satisfying week. I feel like I’m finally learning my way around at my newish job. Our project is coming together.

The day started with a laundry meltdown. They didn’t deliver my laundry last night, so I couldn’t pack until this morning, which was a huge pain in the ass and it foiled my attempt to get to work by 8:30 (considering I left at 3:30 I thought it would be nice to arrive before my customary 9:30). I ended the relationship with the laundry guy with a refund and a blaze of fuck-you’s.

Posting from the Treo, on the plane. I’ll send the post when we land. I’m not as fluent on the Treo as I’d like, and there aren’t links (I like posting a lot of links) and I’m not sure about HTML support in flickr, so for now there’s none of that.

(Kevin has a Treo, too, and we tried to beam but it didn’t work. Kevin has never beamed. Apparently there’s also something in The World Is Flat about taking one’s picture and posting it on the internet.)

Donald Trump is building the tallest residential building in New Jersey, right outside my office window. Here’s how it looks today.

This is my first post from my Treo, via flickr.

I had a great time last night. (The only downside was that four guys showed up with tickets for the exact same seats that my four tickets were for. I sold three of my tickets outside before the show. Either my tickets were counterfeit, or those other tickets were counterfeit. I moved down to the orchestra, so I don’t know the eventual outcome of that conflict.)

Here’s what I heard:

Set 1:
Hot’lanta
Can’t Lose What You Never Had
Trouble No More
Woman Across The River
Revival
Egypt
Midnight Rider
Stand Back
The Weight

Set 2:
^Smokestack Lightning (with Hubert Sumlin)
^Shake For Me (with Hubert Sumlin)
^Sitting On Top Of The World (with Hubert Sumlin)
Rocking Horse>
Liz Reed (w/drum and bass solo)
Statesboro Blues
One Way Out

Encore:
No One To Run With

Brian is coming tonight!

I finally got my ass in gear this morning and I started looking for tickets for the upcoming Allman Brothers run at the Beacon Theater. (Some day I’ll order tickets when they go on sale. I’m not sure how I missed the on-sale date this time around.)

So far, I found four tickets below face value for Thursday, 3/9 and two for a total of $25 over face value for Friday, 3/10. Brian said he’d go one night, which will be his introduction to this sort of thing (they’d better do a good show that night — I think we’ve got one shot for him to get it).

(Brian and I will figure out together how many additional nights I am going to attend without him, and what kind of refreshments I will consume. Better yet, maybe he’ll want to go back for more after his first show!) I’m going to invite his brother and his uncle to one of the shows, I think, probably Thursday. (His uncle, who’s only about 10 years older than me, saw all kinds of good music in the early 70s, including at the Fillmore East, and he produced light shows. There’s a lot of interesting history there to hear about at some point.)

Brian is amazed at my ability to get tickets below, at, or slightly above face value. I guess I have a set of skills that enabled me to see the Grateful Dead so many times. I say I have good ticket karma. Some might say it has something to do with my intentionality.

I happened to be listening to 6/10/73 in the gym today, a show which includes a set with the Grateful Dead and members of the Allman Brothers (including Dickie Betts, who was fired by the current incarnation of the Allman Brothers in 2000 — a fact less troubling to me than to others). Check out this Promised Land from that show. Dickie’s guitar is unmistakeable; I love the way he and Jerry trade licks.

Let me know if you’ll be at the Beacon. We can meet up.

We met a year ago today. (Lord you know they made a fine connection, they love each other.)

Brian, you’ve given me a year of fun, reward, challenge, growth and love. I hope this is the first of many anniversaries we will celebrate together. (You know our love will not fade away.)

If I had the world to give, I’d give it to you - long as you live.

I love you, baby. I’m glad you were in the gym a year ago wearing your Haverford shorts.

Peter commented on blogchelsea that he has had similar problems with one of the turnstyles at the 23rd Street Station. (I posted about this here and here.) He singled out the one on the far right and in retrospect, that’s the one I habitually use.

This is what I’m doing to try to improve the situation:

1. I won’t use the turnstyle on the far right.
2. I’m using a PATH Quickcard at the PATH turnstyles, rather than a metrocard.
3. I’m keeping both fare cards behind one of my business cards in my wallet, to avoid scratching the magnetic strip.
4. I’m keeping the magnetic strips for the two fare cards apart, and away from the magnetic strips on all the other cards in my wallet.

This is bad debugging. There are too many variables in play. If this solves the problem, we won’t know what caused the problem in the first place. Also, if I don’t have a problem, it only proves that no problem occurred yet. It doesn’t prove the absense of a problem or that anything was fixed. I suppose, if these steps eliminate Metrocard failures, I could reintroduce things one at a time (i.e., use a Metrocard for the PATH) and see when the problem starts again, which may help isolate the cause, but I don’t care that much. I just want a reliable way to get on the train.

Supporting the bad turnstyle theory, someone on nyc.transit commented:

I had more metrocards die on me in 2005 than any other year. Well,
none ever did before. The conclusion overall has been the machines
are degenerating, not the cards. They’ve been in there ten years already.