First, there are the sights.  There is always something to see in NYC.  Whether it’s people-watching in Times Square, taking the water taxi across to Brooklyn, walking a new area of Central Park (still all new to me), or finding yet another great museum to see, you can always see something amazing and new here. I still haven’t been to the 9/11 Memorial, The Intrepid Air and Space Museum, The Statue of Liberty, or Queens.

There are the neighborhoods. Washington Heights is a wonderful place to live, but New York has a lot of them.  Chinatown itself can be a different place depending on whether you’re on Canal St or one of the smaller side streets. I much prefer the side streets, because they’re full of small shops and stands and some of the most amazing seafood. Hell’s Kitchen, SoHo, TriBeCa, they’re all different, interesting, and absolutely great for a walk.

Oh, and the food.  I cannot say how many fantastic meals I have had since moving to New York City. The local bar’s burgers are perfection.  We have a favorite Irish pub near Times Square that fills the comfort food need from time to time.  The pizza is better here.  The sushi is better here, though it would be in any large coastal city. Almost any food you want you can find, and it is probably delicious.  We’re talking “Lockjaw’s Mama’s Cooking” levels of deliciousness here.

You see, New York City has a lot of restaurants.  New York City probably has a lot of restaurants within three blocks of you in most areas of the city. This means you have choices.  If you discover a restaurant has bad food, you never have to go there again.  As a result the bad restaurants don’t last.  The good restaurants do.  The mediocre restaurants are at least cheap, but the converse is not true.  You don’t have to pay a lot for a delicious meal.

Hell’s Kitchen’s HK Diner is a good example.  This isn’t a place you go for bacon and eggs and a side of toast.  They serve a higher class of brunch faire.  My initial favorite was the HK Fritatta with peppers, onions, tomato, lamb sausage, and an avacado spread. I moved on to the lobster eggs benedict soon after.  I’ve had the steak and eggs and the salmon burger.  Everything was fantastic and nothing cost more than $20 for the plate.

I think the best thing about New York City is that I can decide I want to do something at pretty much any time of the day or night.  I can probably find something, somewhere, to do, eat, visit, or just see.

New York is also a busy place.  There are people everywhere.  As you walk down the street in many places you can be within 20 feet of a dozen or more people.  In some areas it can get quite dense.  Once you realize that none of those other people care about you at all, though, it’s much less uncomfortable.  Now I can feel as alone walking through Times Square as I did walking around the block back home.

There’s nothing quite like it, though, to walk around the block back home alone.  The little three-block-long downtown may not be the hub of the city anymore, but it is definitely more dog-poop-free than New York’s streets.

Oh wow, yeah.  That’s right.  New York City’s streets are COVERED with dog poop.  Most dog owners pick up after their dogs.  Unfortunately there is this one little old lady with three very productive beagles that walks the streets night and day.  I would guess that, on average, I see signs of dog poop once per block.  Well, each block has four sides, so that’s four.  Maybe six.  The bottom line is that I dodge more poop in this city than I used to when I walked through cow pastures barefoot.

Back home in Sanford I can drive my car through the countryside.  I can smile and say Hello to people on the street, if there are any there.  I can go to Wal-Mart, and while I’m there I can say Hi to people I know from high school.  I can easily find a normal breakfast joint where the staples of the meal are meat and eggs, and not bagels.  Grits.

As much as I love New York City, my hometown is still a cool place to me. It’s small, but growing.  It’s quiet, but comfortable.  It has a smaller selection of restaurants, but it has Mom’s cooking.  All in all, how can I choose which is cooler?

New York.  WAY cooler.

I remember watching the series premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  For months I had looked forward to this show.  Plans were made to be able to watch that show.  That episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” set a new bar for exactly how awesome a science fiction show could be.  In retrospect, though, it really kinda sucked.  After the third season had begun, I barely wanted to acknowledge that the premier episode existed.

I wanted to set the proper expectations for this show, so I simply didn’t set high expectations.  What I found was a fairly formulaic first episode in many ways.  It has to be this way, and I’m fine with that.

But…

The opening scene immediately made me happy.  That cute girl looks familiar.  Is that Julie Benz, who went on to such a great role on Showtime’s Dexter?  IT IS! Way to catch me off guard, Whedon.  You didn’t even know that would happen, but way to go.

I’ve seen at least part of the original Buffy movie, so I understand the idea of the show.  That’s good because they don’t spend any time on the origin story itself.  They quickly reference it, and quickly establish that her job isn’t over.  Onward!

As the characters are introduced, I’m finding that there are only two that seem really likeable.  Willow is one, and the other is the social nemesis, Cordelia.  The rest I feel I’m supposed to like more than background characters, but this isn’t the episode where character growth really starts to occur.

Buffy is really a bit of a bitch.  I realize that she’s just fought an invasion of vampires, burned down part of her old school, and been forced to move to a new town.  That doesn’t mean she has to emasculate Xander just because he tries to be a man. She seems to have accepted him and the others, though, providing the only bit of character growth you ever get in the first episode.  The main character makes the decision that there will be an episode 2.  Well, 3 in this case because Netflix has the premier as a two-parter.

There’s also this Angel character.  He strikes me as the black sheep, the outsider, the traitor, and the Sam Malone. The only thing I am sure of right now about this guy is that he has a spinoff show, so I’m guessing he’s important.

Another surprise was that the goofy guy, used as bait, was actually turned into a vampire.  I thought he was going to be the “Screech” of this show, and now he’s a vampire?  Soon enough he’s a dead vampire.  Poor goofy bastard.  I thought you were gonna be a star.

All in all I enjoyed the show.  It was bad because it was a first episode.  It wasn’t a bad first episode.  It definitely wasn’t “Encounter at Farpoint” bad.  Most importantly, I do want to keep watching the show.

Next: Lockjaw watches a few more episodes

Why this show?  I’ve become a big fan of Joss Whedon’s work through Firefly and Dollhouse.  Alyson Hannigan is in it, which was pretty much enough for me to watch “How I Met Your Mother.” Even Felicia Day is in it, apparently, so you’d think this show would have been a slam-dunk for me.

Honestly, though, as much as the show had to offer, it was still a vampire show to me.  I’ve never really enjoyed vampires, or the glorification of the undead.  Give me a good old lumbering zombie movie any day.  I almost NEVER hear anyone wishing they could be a zombie.  Vampires, on the other hand, just bother me.

It’s not that I haven’t tried.  I’ve tried watching funny vampires, teenage vampires, silent vampires, serious vampires, vampires in other countries, alien vampires, and far too many simply bad vampires.  That is the biggest reason I didn’t watch the show.  I just don’t dig vampires.

Well it’s time.  It is time for me to put aside my anti-vampire bigotry and step forth.  Alright, Buffy, show me what you’ve got.

I see things a bit differently. Google offers a variety of services, many of which can be called apps in their own right. Google wants to integrate these services into a single app, each piece of which integrates into each other. The black toolbar added recently took a major step in this direction. The inclusion of social results from Google+ is yet another step.

My primary problem with social results isn’t that it only offers search results from Google+. My primary problem is that it only offers results from Google+. Google isn’t evil because they are only investing their own social service, but they are choosing to offer me special results from a service that is not high on my list of social tools. My primary social tools are Twitter and Facebook. I would find inclusion of those services to be quite useful, but they fall into the normal search results with no integration to show more focus on those I follow or friend on those services. Google is missing out on opportunity by not integrating more social services within its search.

The goal of the Google+ integration isn’t to improve search results directly. The purpose is to increase the value of the Google+ social network. I personally think that Google+ could use a bit of a value-increase. The proper tools are there to run a social network.  The value, though, is in the people.  Like it or not, the value in social networking is in Twitter and Facebook, and Google+ is still an also-ran.

What is bad about a company integrating various services into a single system? There may be a higher cost incurred by the user if they are required to pay for previously unneeded services.  There could be features that are forced upon the user that they are not comfortable with.  The company may use a dominant market position to force users to “lock-in” to their services, or to drive competitors from the market. I am sure that the list is longer.

Looking at these in turn, the first two do not seem to be at issue. Google is not charging users for access to its search engine, or many of its other services.  Those services that cost a fee still exist, unchanged.  I am not aware of any plans for this to change.  What if Google decided to move to a subscription service, charging $1 per month for access to their now unified application? Many would think of it as a good price for a valuable service, and would pay.  Many would make the opposite decision.  As the price for the service increases the percentage of users who will say and pay the price will drop. At the low price of $1 per month the percentage of takers will be quite high.  Raise the price high enough, though, and users will go elsewhere.

What about unwanted features? Users are used to these. Microsoft’s Ribbon interface replacing normal menus?  Horrible idea.  I don’t want it.  Ubuntu’s Unity interface? Why, oh WHY did someone think that was a good idea? Yahoo? Google putting results from a service you are using in a small area on the search page?  Honestly, I’ve had worse.  If it was a hill I was willing to die on, I’d stop using Google and go elsewhere for the same services they offer.

Google does have some significant dominance in certain areas. In the last half of 2011 Google accounted for just over 80% of all search traffic. Bing and Yahoo shared almost all of the rest. Microsoft has built a good search engine in Bing. The biggest reason it isn’t gaining better market share is inertia.  Similar inertia accounts for why such a large majority of us use Microsoft’s operating systems, Office software, and at one time web browser. Microsoft learned with Internet Explorer that a bad product, or even one perceived as bad, would continue to lose market share until it and its image have improved. With Bing they have a worthy competitor for Google, not only because it’s well-made, but also because it isn’t Yahoo.

What about email?  Google’s Gmail product is huge, right?  Not really.  Google accounts for 4% of email opens in a survey done by Litmus.  Microsoft’s Outlook product in various versions accounts for 37%. Gmail lags behind Hotmail, the iPhone, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail (a strong point for them), and even the web-based version of Microsoft Outlook.

What other market besides search does Google truly have a dominant market share?  Office software?  No.  Instant Messanging?  No. Social Networking? Most definitely not. Chances are we’re using something other than Google for most everything we do except search. The one major exception is in Adwords Advertising, but this does not cost the user.  In fact, it is what allows the other services to stay free.

This begs the most important question in the argument.  Can Google leverage its dominance in search to gain dominance in other markets in which it chooses to compete? So far the answer to that has been no, except for Adwords. Even the Android operating system for mobile phones hasn’t succeeded in breaking the market dominance of Apple in smartphones. It may yet succeed, or a third party may become competitive in the race.

There’s always someone else in the race.  This isn’t like cable companies, utilities, and Standard Oil.  There’s no law saying we can’t use another service.  If Google upsets enough users, they’ll go to the competitors.  This is how markets correct. The fact that we can go to someone else denies a monopoly.  Google does not have a monopoly on search.  Microsoft has never had a monopoly on operating systems or web browsers, though it has defended itself against accusation on both cases.

In the end, to me, it’s just a little search feature.  I’d like to be able to disable it if I want.  I’d prefer to be able to select and link with services I use along with Google+.  It is not, however, the end of the world.

I am now 5 days into my new life in the city. The wife arrived a few days after I did, having spent 5 weeks studying with Father Reginald Foster, the greatest latinist in the world. We are now getting to know the neighborhood, exploring the nearby blocks for interesting places, and planning our apartment.

There are many ways that New York City is different from North Carolina. Some are good, and some are just plain weird. For instance, when you get a beer with your meal in a restaurant in New York the waiter must pour a bit of beer into your glass so that, ostensibly, the beer is not being served from the bottle.

One of my favorite things about New York City is signage. There are billboards. There are multi-colored signs above nearly every store. There are neon signs in the windows. North Carolina’s cities are creating more and more sign ordinances, which have always driven me crazy. My hometown of Sanford is one of the worst, though Cary has the most well-known. Limitations on signs are unusually strong. As a consumer trying to find a store, it can be very troubling to drive back and forth looking for a particular store only to discover that the sign is a small block on a larger, yet still small sign conglomerate with no real differentiation in font, color, or visibility. Small businesses are harmed by government regulation that does not allow them to set themselves apart from the other stores nearby, or make themselves identifiable from the road.

New York is not this way. Signs are part of the flavor of the city. What would Times Square be without the billboards but a plaza amongst tall buildings?

On the other hand, New York places benches all arounds its parks, but does not allow you to sit on one near a children’s playground unless you have children of your own. This is supposed to prevent child predators from being around the children, but I have a hard time believing that this is truly effective. This prior restraint on law-abiding citizens isn’t going to prevent the miniscule minority of perverts (perverts being a minority of the citizenry, and predators being a minority of the perverts) from finding children. Face it, if they can have police to ticket people for sitting on provided benches, why can’t they have them to watch for predators?

One of the greatest things about New York City is food. Food is everywhere. In my two trips to the city, and my short time since moving here, I have had some of the most amazing meals I have ever eaten. The HK Fritata at Hell’s Kitchen’s HK Diner was great. The sushi at two different restaurants was the best I have ever eaten. Junior’s cheesecake truly deserves its “best in the city” reputation. Last night I had “Enchiladas al Vino” at a mexican-influenced restaurant west of Broadway in Washington Heights that amazed me. Imagine my surprise when the lady at the Dunkin Donuts told me the delicious cuban sandwich I had up the street was “no good” before telling me where to find one better.

I look forward to discovering more about the city. I am loving the neighborhood. I am loving the neighbors. I love the subway system, and the grid layout of the streets.

It’s a good day.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is still in the preview period before the official opening. Initial reviews weren’t so great. Due to that fact, and some accidents during previews, the show was shut down for three weeks for a major retooling. I was able to see the show on the second night after the retooling, so I had high hopes.

The show opened with Peter Parker telling the story of Arachne, who was punished for blaspheming against the gods in her weaving. As the report progresses the scene transitions to Arachne, hanging above the stage while dancers hang from cloth strips, swinging while more strips slide upward until they have woven a backdrop to the scene. It was stunning. It was so stunning that the crowd gave a standing ovation. That’s right, the OPENING SONG received a standing ovation.

The story is one with which we are all familiar. Peter Parker is a geek who is picked on by the jocks at school. During a school field trip he is bitten by a spider from a scientific experiment in the laboratory of Dr. Norman Osborn. Through a series of events he becomes a crimefighter, while also developing his relationship with Mary Jane Watson.

What’s great about this show is that it flows very well through the life of Peter Parker. The villains are handled as comic relief to offset against the much more serious story of Parker and his relationships.

When the music or story felt weak, which was rare, it was during the parts which were needed to establish parts of the story to come. Overall the music was excellent. The story was very well done, and familiar.

The wire-work ranged from the subtle chat on the balcony, hanging over the stage, to the spectacular flying battle. The work in the opening scene was simple, yet complex in a way that set the stage for the brilliance that was to come.

It was a great show. I am glad to have been able to see it after the retooling, and would gladly see it again. Now, where’s the soundtrack?

Many of the singles had B-Sides that were not available on the album. Fans that wanted to collect everything would get these singles to enhance their collection. On top of that, many artists also had remixes that could be purchased in LP or CD form, adding still more content to their collection.

I personally had quite a few remixes from Duran Duran that I listened to on a regular basis. Later on I collected remixes from other bands as well as special outtake CDs.

Now with iTunes many artists are offered in digital form for a reasonable price, but these remixes and outtakes are often nowhere to be found. There are a great many recordings that are in the hands of the record companies that music fans would love to buy, but which are no longer offered in any form.

It seems a simple idea for the record companies to take these existing recordings and release them on iTunes. Where are they? There would be no need for marketing. There are no additional studio costs. There is just a catalog of currently out of print material which could be once again sold, and with no printing, pressing, or other costs.

It is an easy-money proposition. Why don’t they do it?

So, basically, my question to the record companies is this. Why not try to make a living from your fans by selling them what you have instead of by suing them?

As I grew older writing became a constant part of my life. Much of my early education involved drawing block letters in large spaces on lined paper. Every year the spaces grew smaller in order to refine my handiwork. I always knew that my artistic skills were not great when it came to drawing lines, and my simple block letters were no exception.

In third grade I finally reached what I thought was the holy grail of writing. In Mrs. Powers’ class I learned to write in cursive. I learned the letters, and how to string them together easily. Of course, my cursive writing was only legible if I wrote slowly and carefully. In addition I had adopted special forms of certain letters such as the capitalized T and F from Mrs. Powers’ own style, rather than her lessons. She taught the “proper” way, but I preferred the letters as she wrote them. To me it was as much a preference in style as it was in legibility.

The next few years I dutifully wrote cursive in class. I pitied my poor teachers who had to read my writing, and I still do. My cursive legibility relied as much on the readers’ expectations as my own skills. This, I learned later, was a common thread between most writers of the cursive script. Honestly, can you say that you’ve never found a beautifully written page that had words that could only be discerned based on the words around them?

After Mrs. Powers, the most important person in my life of the handwritten word was my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Keith. One day Mr. Keith pulled me out of class and had a very frank discussion with me.

“David,” he said, “your handwriting is terrible. Some letters angle to the left. Some angle to the right. They should all angle to the right because the eye flows better that way.”

His next words changed my life.

“Honestly, if you can’t write any better than that, then print.”

It really was that simple. The rigid requirements of school said that I should use cursive script, because it was a skill I should practice. Another requirement was that my writing be legible enough to read. The two requirements, in my case, were contrary. I had, though, been trying to meet both requirements. Mr. Keith helped me understand that there could be a choice.

From that day forward I turned in my classwork in printed form. I would have turned in my homework the same way, except that I rarely saw homework as a requirement.

Every year most teachers would approach me and inform me that I should be turning in my assignments in cursive. Printing my assignments was not acceptable, because I was expected to use cursive script. Since I had learned a bit about making decisions on my own in the face of conflicting instructions, I knew what to do. I would smile, nod, and agree to use cursive script.

I would then turn in my next assignment in cursive, without the care required to make my assignment reasonably legible. After that one assignment I would return to my printed words without a word, or a complaint from the teacher.

Cursive, I learned, was pretty but useless. As a system of communication, cursive was imprecise. With practice my writing never improved beyond what I learned in third grade. I had gained in speed, but not legibility. Cursive writing was not for me, and I began to think it wasn’t so great for everyone else either.

Several years ago the news came out that schools were no longer pushing cursive writing skills as a necessity. I was thrilled with the news. Not only would the new kids no longer be forced to learn a form of communication that was barely effective across the general population, but also there was hope that one day I could read a prescription form.

Now when I write by hand I prefer an all-caps block lettering. Occasionally I throw in a lower-case vowel such as when I write the word “email.”

I think the biggest lesson I learned through all of this wasn’t really about cursive script at all. It was about rules. To my teachers writing cursive was the rule. I was expected to follow the rule. The rule, as it turns out, wasn’t 100% right. Learning the difference between rule and right is important to us all, and cursive script was a tool that helped me understand.

When Loughner asked, “What is government when words have no meaning,” he wasn’t simply exposing his own lack of grasp on reality. He was crafting a question that was just meaningless enough to fix itself into the subconscious of a segment of the rest of us.

Several years ago I had a conversation with a new convert to Islam. While I had theological differences of opinion with this person, it wasn’t the actual theology I found so disturbing. What I found disturbing were meaningless phrases that were being used to support the conversion. One in particular stuck in my mind, that Islam “can’t be approached from the back.”

That an idea or belief cannot be approached from the back is an absurdity, yet this guy was completely fixated on this phrase. To him it had a meaning. To me it was meaningless near-gibberish in the context of the discussion.

Loughner’s words seem to be much the same type of meaningless, yet meaningful-sounding gibberish. Much as a lack of solid, easy answers leads some to believe the government knocked down the twin towers, there will be those who will see Loughner’s wacky words as prophetic.

We have a 24/7/365 news cycle now, folks. It is only a matter of time before we have people on TV taking this nutcase seriously for his beliefs. After all, even Manson has a fan club.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The earliest of these was posted a month ago, and the others three weeks ago. One states “In a few days you will know I’m conscience dreaming,” whatever that means. Perhaps it meant he planned to go shoot someone.

Of course, I can’t be 100% sure that these are videos posted by the gunman. If I am mistaken, I apologize, but the details seem to link properly.

*Update – At this link we can see that the shooter had an interest in Drug addiction,health, health conditions, mental health, psychology, and society. As his YouTube videos show, he was a bit incoherent in his writing, so it’s probably a good thing there’s nothing to read there by him.

*Update – A photo of the shooter?