My continued exile on Long Island

I'm out on LI for two more weeks. This is both good and bad. Bad because I have a ton of work to get done before I leave. Good because it means I will shortly be able to rejoin civilization in the suburbs on the other side of the city. When I get home I will never speak poorly of them again (at least not before I've reacclimated to living in Manhattan with the children of the rich and famous :-) ).

The more time I spend off of lab grounds the more convinced I become that LI is part of a non-parallel universe. Today for example, I had to go to Home Depot to buy a screwdriver so I could mount a new hard drive in my computer. On the way there I was listening to the radio, switching back and forth between WLIR and an NPR station from Conn. (yes, I've resorted to listening to public radio for lack of better options). At one point I neglected to change stations during the commercials on LIR and heard an ad for some store or other in Patchogue (a few towns over from Brookhaven) and I was incredibly puzzled because I had no idea what they were talking about until the end when I realized they were advertising bongs. On the radio. I almost drove off the road laughing. Obviously they didn't say it explicitly or I would have caught on sooner, but then again who expects someone to advertise that they're selling drug paraphernalia on the radio? Does this happen in NJ? Clearly if it does I've been listening to the wrong radio stations.

New* (temporary?) web home

Greetings. So as you may have guessed, I've finally decided that maintaing my website was too much work and I have to many other important things to do (eg. sleeping and working) to deal with it. Consequently, I'm moving here and have every intention of making a post or two per week so if people browse through periodically they'll be able to read about as much as they otherwise would every three or four months on the Geocities site (which is still up if anyone feels any need to re-read).

As always, suggestions, comments, and donations of non-perishable food items are appreciated

*And for any of you (Chris) who (for whatever incomprehensible reason) read my AIM profile a ways back, yes, I realize that this is actually the second or third time I've made this decision. This time I'm going to stick to it. :-)