I made it out here to Long Island yesterday, all by myself.
I make mention of the fact that I did it all by myself, because the last couple of times that I have come out to Jeremy's place he has met me in 'The City' (Manhattan) and he is my guide to which train to take and what not.
Well, this time while in The City, I have had to meet up with my boss who was staying down on Lafayette and Canal street, while I was up on 35th street near Broadway. Not too far mind you, probably like 2 miles (maybe). But by Subway (the N line) it was only about a 15 minute ride with about another 7-10 minutes of walking thrown in. I have to say that aside from the somewhat oppressively heat down in the subway, taking it around the city was kind of nice.
I took the train/subway in from JFK, I took the 'A' train, thinking that maybe I would see something new given that I had taken the one that goes through Queens before (on the way out to Long Island). Nothing excitingly new. I thought that maybe the train through Brooklyn was going to have some above ground spots, nope it did not. Rather I just saw some new underground stops along the way.
Fun, Fun.
Anyway, I took the train out to the Farmingdale stop. Jeremy met me that and we headed back to their apartment. Did a little work, then after work we headed over to the comic shop. It was kind of cool, the comic shop had a lot of good books. I especially enjoyed picking through the $0.25 comic bin, I bought probably about 10 or 11 of the quarter books.
Nicole and Jeremy made chicken fried rice for dinner. It was quite good.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention.
It rained, it rained really hard while I was in The City yesterday. I didn't have an umbrella.
When I headed over from Jack's hotel to my 11 AM meeting, it was just sort of a light sprinkle, nothing too bad.
I decided to try to take a short-cut back from the client's building back to Jack's hotel. I apparently took a street that must have been at a completely different angle than I thought, as I ended up in Little Italy. Luckily, I knew my way back from there, because Jack and I had grabbed dinner in Little Italy the night before.
Well, it was about the time that I hit Little Italy, that it started to really rain. By the time I was back to Canal street and still about two and a half blocks away form Jack's hotel is when I would say it was pouring rain.
Jack and I stayed at the hotel for a little bit longer and then headed outside. The rain was doing whatever you might call a step or two beyond 'pouring'. I like to say it is sheeting, as the rain when it was hitting the street you could see that there was a distinct pattern to the rain as it hit.
We made a mad dash for the subway and got drenched. We made it back to my hotel (which was where I had left my bag, because it is closer to Penn Station, which is where I had to catch the Long Island bound train). Then we headed over to Penn Station. About the same time that we made it to Penn Station the rain had more or less stopped.
Once inside, it was a bit confusing.
The first floor reminded me of an airport terminal ticketing area. Amtrak, New Jersey train, you know trains that take you to other states and Continental Airlines was there. The LIRR trains are one level down. Jack was going to take the subway over to JFK, but well honestly. The Subway isn't well marked at all at Penn Station.
Apparently, the subway is on the 2nd level down. So Jack head back up to the street to take a taxi to the airport.
I talked to him later, he spent about an hour and a half in a cab, luckily though his flight was delayed. Well I guess you can say, lucky. I mean flight delays suck, but missing your flight sucks worse.
The train ride probably would have taken about an hour at least. However, he wouldn't have been sitting in traffic.
Anyway, it was a crazy day yesterday. I was grateful not to be hoofing it around The City anymore and slept like a log I am sure.
Well, time to start working from Casa de Arntz.
Laterz.
PS. I am going back into The City tomorrow for some afternoon meetings.
The LIRR trains are the next one down, I think there is a Jersey train or two
I forgot to include the 'Voodoo' that I got down at Lafitte's (sp).
It is purple, and tastes a bit like grape.
Today was a take it easy day down here in New Orleans. Angie had a cab picking her up at 1:15pm to make it to the airport in time. Meaning, we had to try to pack in some tourist stuff this morning.
We went to Cafe Demoun (sp) for some coffee and beignets. Then we hit the flea market. I found a few nice things for my mom, sister, mother-in-law and Gina. I also found a coaster that has a picture of the Lucky Dog cart on it, way cool!
We then wandered over to Lafitte's. It had been the longest running bar in the United States. Not necessarily older bar mind you. But longest running. What is the difference, right?
Well here in New Orleans the bars are not required to close. This means that many of them don't. They simply have some really groggy bartenders who are waiting for the relief shift to take over in the wee early hours of the morning.
During Katrina Lafitte's closed down for 2 days. This apparently allowed another bar in New Orleans to surpass them as the longest running bar in the USA.
Anyway, I am borrowing Steve's Powerbook G4, as I cannot get my HP onto the network here. Apparently this is a known problem that PC based laptops cannot get onto their network. They have an Airport wireless. My laptop negotiates and gets passed the WEP security but is never issued an IP address.
Which I find ironic. In the Dallas office I upgraded the Linksys router's firmware in an effort to resolve some problems we were having with dropping connections. Well the dropping connections problems were gone. However, the Mac users could no longer get onto the network. Their laptops would negotiate the WEP. However, no DHCP love.
This would be the exact opposite.
I am here for one more day. I am going to head down to the convention center for a couple of hours in the morning. Then I will head to the airport and work from there until my flight is ready to go. I might see if I can fly out early, but I don't want to jeporidize the reservation I already have.
New Orleans has been an interesting experience. Let me just tell you this, I knew the city was all about drinking and having fun. However, I wasn't aware that it had as much of an arts district as it does. I mean it makes sense that it would. Often times art is inspired by drinking. So in terms of making gross generalizations that makes perfect sense right? Lots of booze = lots of art!
But seriously, the art is great. Painting, sculpture. Even the jewelry down at the flea market was great. Oh yeah, I need to try to get to the flea market before I leave. Gotta buy something sparkly before I go.
Now, I knew that Louisiana had some riverboat gambling. But I didn't know there was a casino in New Orleans. We stopped there a few times over the course of the trip. I only played slots, two of the visits. The first visit I lose $20. The next visit I turned $5 into $26.30. Meaning +$1.30 for the total visit to the casino. Impressive right? Yeah, ok not so impressive. But think about the $5 => $26.30. That is like a 520% increase. Now that is impressive. (power of positive thinking)
The casino was kind of fun. Oh yeah, I should throw out there I lose the $20 playing $0.25 slots. I won the $21.30 while playing $0.05 slots. Goofy huh?
I need to work out the logistics with Steve and Sue about tomorrow. I don't want to drag my bags downtown with me. But I don't want to be a hassle as they both have to go to work tomorrow.
Angie and I went to the National World War II, WWII museum today. She didn't get a chance to see all of the good stuff unfortunately. I will have to buy her a ticket next time we are in town. (She bought the tickets today.) I had a good time, but wasn't able to see and sit through all the exhibits had to offer. They had some good movies. Two of them were 45 minutes each and they had several other 7 minute long ones as well. I will need to comment on my thoughts about the WWII later, as I had a few thoughts about that era vs today while watching the movies.
Ok, I am going to stop blogging and see if I can look up how to fix this PC-Airport compatability problem.
