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As I was planning to leave for work this morning I thought I would check the weather to see if I needed to hunt down my umbrella and bring it to work.  My computer was all packed up so I went to the Weather Channel app on my iPhone to see what the forecast was for today.

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Nothing.  So I tried the stock weather app.  Same thing.

At this point I went with the very scientific “Well, it’s not raining outside right now so I’m probably safe” and headed off to work.

Fast forward to this afternoon and I can see that the floor near the exit at Grand Central is wet and some people coming inside have umbrellas in their hand.  These umbrellas are all closed, but they are in hand nonetheless.  This is disconcerting to me.

I step outside and…no rain.  “Alright, score.  I’ll hurry home and no harm no foul.”

42nd street – dry
41st street – dry
40th street – keep going, keep going, keep going, dry
39th street – dry
38th street – dry
37th street – hear thunder, but dry
36th street – picking up the pace, it’s getting wind.  dry
35th street – dry

Now, 34th street is always the critical street in my commute.  It’s a 2 way street and has lots of traffic so you can actually only cross it when the light says so, unlike the others where you really only have to wait for a couple cars to pass.  Needless to say, as I approach 34th street, the light changes.

It’s okay though, I have to cross Madison anyway so this is the perfect opportunity to do that in stride.  That is, until…

34th street – a little wet

Okay, okay, no biggie.  All I have to do is make it across 34th and there’s scaffolding for the next block to keep me dry then it’s 3 blocks home!

33rd street – the rain picks up, kinda wet
32nd street – raining pretty good, pretty wet

And then…kaboooooooom

31st street – hard wind, hard rain, pelting sideways, soaked

Less than 100 yards from my front door I duck under what little relief I can gather from an awning as I fish my keys out.  I position the front door key in my fingers and prepare to make a mad dash.

30th street – drowning

I fail at running faster than the rain and ended up looking like this:

This is the entire front of my body.  Shirt soaked throughout, jeans plastered to my legs, flip flops a disaster.  Just for comparison’s sake, here you can see what the dry part of the shirt looks like as well.

And this is how I feel after AT&T lets me down.

It’s gone by super fast.  There’s a lot of stuff I still haven’t done that I wanted to so I plan on slamming stuff in over this last week and a half.  I’ll probably take a ton of pictures to.

Some of the stuff still to do:

Top of the Empire State Building
Top of the Rock
Secret bar behind Crif Dogs
Walk the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan
Jazz at Village Vanguard

That said, I am looking forward to getting back to Atlanta.  Unfortunately, the weather up here has been amazing and I’m spoiled now.  I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be ready for getting back to the heat and humidity of Atlanta, but it’s probably nothing a few rounds of golf can’t help me get over.

Allison (my most famous friend) clued me in to an article from a few months ago about “one of central Atlanta’s last true ghettos.”  The location?  Boulevard between Freedom Parkway and Ponce de Leon.

Please reference the picture below.  The green street is what we’re talking about.  The red dot is the Pizza Hut mentioned in the article.  The blue dot is 511 North Avenue, where I lived for about 15 months, and where Aaron and Steve lived for almost 3 years.

Yup.  You can read the article here.

The list now includes: Mid-60′s rainy weather in late July

A few weeks ago I spent a few hours in Philly as a detour on my trip to Gouda and Amy’s engagement party back in Atlanta.  I got to see most of the famous stuff (but no Rocky steps) take some pictures and eat some cheesesteak so I’ll consider that a successful journey.

This time around, I was going to Philly on purpose in order to go watch the USA/Panama Gold Cup quarterfinal game.

There was much less touristy sight-seeing for this trip, but a lot more action.  I left New York from Penn Station with a group of people I had met during various outings to soccer pubs around the city to watch matches.  Apparently I had made a mistake in my previous trip by taking the Amtrak train for $45, because these guys showed me the way to go (if you’re willing to spend an extra hour or so on the commute) is to take a New Jersey transit train to Trenton, and then a SEPTA train in to Philly for less than half the total cost.

The train filled up with more people as we went through New Jersey as many of the New York soccer crowd actually lives out there.  By the time we got on the SEPTA train in Trenton there were probably about 15-20 of us heading to the game.  A quick subway ride later (it really is amazing how well connected these northeastern cities are) and we were at Lincoln Financial Field for the game.

The tailgate atmosphere was pretty good; similar to the one in Nashville but with fewer US fans (lots of Hondurans for the early game) and a larger extremely passionate group thanks to the Sons of Ben supporters club.  Another bonus was that unlike the Nashville game, my tickets were in the supporters club section so I could be prepared for a more entertaining experience.  Here was my view of the game and a shot of the pretty well filled out 31,000 person crowd.

I won’t bother with much of a game report outside of the fact that we won 2-1 in added extra time and that some of the players who had looked good in previous matches have seen their chances at inclusion on the first team fall back down after a few lackluster performances.  I still really like Holden, Conrad and Beckerman though.

By the end of this summer I’ll probably put the owner’s kids through college, but this site makes my dinner plans so much easier.  This post isn’t about that though, it’s about poor business decisions by restaurants on delivery.com.

Merchants who put the “tip now” option in the payment area and then allow me to verify my credit card by putting in the super-secret number on the back are costing their delivery men a solid $1-$1.50 on tip every order.  When you give me the 10%, 15% and 20% options and I don’t have a guy standing in front of me holding my food it’s a lot easier for me to just click 15% than it is to actually write down that tip amount.  It’s like the button absconds me from all responsibility for the tip that was added.

Good for me, bad for the delivery man.

And no, it’s not cheap to add 15% when there’s already a $1 delivery fee on top.

Dudes been through some things.

From being the youngest MLS player at 16, to flaming out spectacularly by 21, to a drug addiction that left him broke and out of work (very good story, read it), to a career resurgence at 23, to stepping back on the field for the US for the first time in 3 years and getting to do it on his home field.

He was tearing up at the National anthem yesterday and then put on a show for the home town crowd, scoring his first international goal in the USA’s 2-0 victory over Honduras and celebrating as you see above.

“It was a very special night for me, personally, but to be back wearing the [U.S.] jersey was probably more special,” Quaranta said. “Just to be back on the field with the team and to listen to the anthem was very emotional for me. Because it has been such a fun and long road back.”

…

“It’s hard to explain, you know, it was special,” Quaranta said. “And to be able to do it in front of my wife and my two kids was very special and that’s the most important thing to me now. [Coach] Bob [Bradley] said before we got on the bus, ‘It’s only a game,’ and I was trying to tell myself all day just enjoy it, but it was difficult.”

You know, sometimes it does work out.

I always like to point out that I knew who Nate Silver from fivethirtyeight.com was way back when.

Mostly because he’s pretty famous now and makes awesome posts like this one about the WSOP main event

My favorite part is the last paragraph

The point is, though, that of the 6,500 people who entered the tournament, I’d guess that as many as half of them really do think deep down that they’re the best (or one of the best) poker players in the world. Of course, only one (or a few) of them can be right. But the rest are liable to take the wrong sorts of opportunities against the wrong sorts of opponents.

Nice view

Happy birthday, America!

Link

1. Air Conditioning
[A] testament to the American ability to conquer the harshest physical environments and to expand American life towards improbable horizons.

2. Ice Cubes
All cold drinks in America are served at a temperature which could cryogenically freeze human tissue. I know you find ice cubes elsewhere, too, but in Europe bar staff hoard them as though they were precious stones. In America, they flow in rattling abundance.

3. Valet Parking
It makes the list to symbolise the American genius for making money out of simple services done well.
I have paid people to valet my car and then watched mesmerised as they proceeded to park it just a few feet away from me. Somehow, I never feel I am being ripped off.

4. Aviation
Before long though, America had invented barnstorming, and intrepid entertainers were performing the Charleston on the wings of bi-planes as they were flown under low bridges. A pointless but brilliant feat.

5. Chewing Gum
One of America’s more enduring gifts to humanity requiring no comment or explanation.

6. Cracker Jack
It is really on the list representing all processed food since the genius of it lies in a manufacturing process that prevents all the small lumps from sticking together in one big one.

7. American Cheese
[A]n industrially processed foodstuff chiefly valued for its ability to melt evenly on to a hamburger.
Often sold in a shade of orange – also used on motorway workers high-visibility coats – it exhibits a quality which I think is called hyper-plasticity which means once its ever been melted it never quite returns to its solid form again.

8. Metal Detectors
One of its first deployments was a failed attempt to find a bullet in the body of the assassinated President James Garfield as he lay dying from a gunshot wound. Might have worked too if he had not been lying on an iron-framed bed.

9. Space Pen
[A] miracle of engineering which allowed astronauts to write in outer space. Do not believe the urban myth that says Russians achieved the same effect as the Americans without spending millions of research dollars by sampling using pencils in their spacecraft.
Actually, pencils are dangerous in space because wood is flammable. The Russians use the space pen, too, apparently.