The Progress Bar

I spent last weekend in New Hampshire relaxing and learning how to wakeboard.

My cousin Laran has a blog which I stumbled across by chance.

A family friend who is the copy editor for the Foreign Desk at the New York Times was featured in Pursue the Passion. When you read about Iraq or Israel, his eyes are the last to see every story before they get shipped off to production. Truly a gifted and passionate individual as any I have ever met.

I met a guy a few years ago who lived on my street in the 1930′s. It turns out my apartment was a a house of ill repute back in the day.

Over the past 2 years my neighborhood, the South End, has gotten progressively more dangerous, even though my block is considered an Historic District, complete with signs on the lamp posts and walking tours.

Over the last month I have walked past situations where people have been shot 3 times. If I was in the vicinity 5 minutes earlier or later, I could have been in the crossfire. To say this has put the neighborhood on edge would be an understatement.

It’s bad this week, and will only get worse as the summer progresses.

My good friend Chris turned 40 this week. Everyone wore this t-shirt to the ballpark at the Jersey shore where his wife threw the surprise party. She did a great job keeping the party a secret, Chris had no idea what was going on. I have two more years until I go through the 40 initiation. Feels like tomorrow.

This weekend I ran in the Bunker Hill 8k. It was my first road race in a long time and I was fortunate to be running with a group of friends. Running is one of the few things that clears my head and does a quick emotional reset, perfect for someone who sits in front of a screen for 10 hours a day.

My pace time was 9:43, which is slow but the important thing was that I was consistent and felt good at the finish. I am definitely thinking about getting a wristwatch GPS, a Garmin on eBay is reasonably priced, great to be able to check split times and distance. I think I will be doing more of these over the summer, a great way to meet new people as well.

I went to the Verizon store today.
My two year contract is up.
I wanted a Helio Hero phone.
$80, all you can eat vox and data. Cool with the Myspace kids, if they can afford it.
Dropping $275 on an untested phone on a patchwork roaming network is not my idea of reliable fun. Even if it is modeled on Korean phones, which make most US phones look like ashen, crumbly bricks.
I used to be an early adopter, now I prefer “justouttabeta.”
I’m late with the Razr, but I got the brand new one. Erase the firmware and run open source. Unblock the DRM and funky UI.
My Nano is for the car and running now. Around town it’s Razr and bluetooth headset. I’ll take mono audio and no wires.
Oh FedEx man, where art thou?

I’m going to see Radiohead tomorrow night. Absolutely the best band I’ve ever seen live. To say I’m excited would be the understatement of the year.

All I’m going to say is that I was totally blown away by the Lost season-closer. I’m warming up to the pre-show concept of recapping the year in the previous hour, helps fill in the blanks, as I have missed a few episodes this season. Many twists and turns, as are to be expected, and they set up the beginning of next season beautifully. The ad for the Hanso Foundation Career Site was a bonus. Jobs like Organ Courrier, Simian Veterinarian and Anger Management Director sure piqued my interest.

Note to Hanso Foundation web admin, the RSS feed is fubar.