Misc. 23/09/2007

• My Thinkpad died. It will be returned to life tomorrow once I find a boot disk and restore a file I knew wasn't being used, which I thus deleted, and of course causes the system to stop hard on booting. I'm doing work on one of the other half dozen computers we have until it's restored.
• I did another round of reviewing boxes of crap and throwing much of the contents out. Amongst the things I decided I no longer needed: the complete history of IBM's corporate Internet Programs 1994-1999, my (late) father's real estate license, the retirement party scrapbook from my (late) mother's retirement, a collection of cables for connecting computers to the public phone network, a US-French phone converter which Alex bought for me years ago (and is still in the original case. Alex, let me know if you want it back!), a bunch of Palm Pilot software which I haven't used in ~5 years, business cards from the .com era (amazing how many of the non .com companies ceased to exist), about 1000 photos of unidentifiable stuff —or of my parents house in winter (it apparently used to snow in Chicago in the 1980s-1990s). Also found a box of papers and notes from my college days, apparently even then I was procrastinating until the very last minute if the comments on the papers are any indication, I threw most of the notes away but kept the papers, you never know when it'll come in handy to demonstrate knowledge about the different performance possibilities of the Scottish play.
• Lisa, Misha, Max and I saw King Lear at BAM this week. Sir Ian McKellen stars as Lear. I wasn't enjoying the play into the third act. I thought the acting was fine, great even, I just wasn't enjoying it. But the fourth and fifth acts totally turned it around for me and I'd now heartily recommend the play (if you can take ~3 hours of Shakespeare). There is about 20 seconds where the play veers into NC-17 territory, but only if you're easily offended. It took about 15 years from my college immersion in Shakespeare for me to enjoy watching various plays, this was certainly one of the best performances I've seen in the past few years.
• There's a video by Bananarama for Cruel Summer which I've been oddly attracted to over the years. It seems to be a classic 1980s New York montage. But watching it tonight on YouTube I clued in why I might enjoy it: it seems to have been filmed almost entirely in our new neighborhood (properly Fulton Ferry Landing). There's rooftop scenes which seem to be in Manhattan, but the rest of the shots are on Old Fulton at Columbia Heights/Everit Street. So perhaps I should have been in DUMBO Brooklyn all along. As faithful readers know, it usually takes a sledgehammer to the head to get me to clue in to something.
• As part of my post-move cleanout process I have three boxes of various cables which I'm going to deacquisition. I don't know who is in the area but if you're looking for USB, CAT-5, or other cables feel free to drop me a note, I may have what you're looking for at a reasonable price. Otherwise it all goes onto Craigslist or into the trash.