Hurricane Comfort

Hurricanes can really suck. So can social media.

That said, when the entire East Coast is under the gun from Irene, it's a reality check. And while it can be repetitive after awhile, it's also nice to see everyone band together on Facebook and Twitter. We argue about a lot in life -- politics, sports, personalities, etc. -- but it's refreshing when New Englanders and New Yorkers and Philadephians and Marylanders and Virginians and Carolinians can comfort each other and let everyone know on their respective statuses that (thus far) they're all OK.

Fingers crossed for one more day where we all end up safe.

Hurricane Names

I apologize to the world. My blog last weekend on Hurricane Bob seems to have jinxed us, as we now have Hurricane Irene headed our way.

In an attempt to placate the hurricane gods before Sunday, I will try to come up with some kinder, gentler hurricane names that we can rename Irene.

Hurricane Skippy
Hurricane Tiffany
Hurricane Phineas
Hurricane Lady Gaga
Hurricane Cheburashka
Hurricane Linus
Hurricane Norman
Hurricane Grover
Hurricane Ochocinco
Hurricane R2D2

Hopefully one of these names works.

Router Fail

I thought my router wasn't working. I've only had it for a month. That sucks.

I went to the library today to get their wireless Internet. This meant actually going to two libraries -- because the Whitinsville library had Sluggo the Clown there today to entertain the kids, so I ended up going to the Uxbridge Library instead. Geek Squad is schedule to come over between 8 a.m. and noon Friday. This throws off my whole day.

A cursory search of the computer room a few minutes ago revealed that my roommate took the ethernet cable out of my router and plugged it into his desktop.

Now things are back to normal. I'm slightly less of a computer moron now than I was 15 minutes ago.

Millionaire Taping In NYC

Wednesday, I went on my annual pilgrimmage to New York City to see a taping of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Normally getting to ABC studois is uneventful. Get up at 4:15 a.m., drive down to Providence train station, take Acela to Penn Station (33rd St.), walk to ABC studio (67th St.).

Here's the thing -- now that Meredith Vieira no longer does the Today show, they open the studio for taping at 9 a.m. (It used to be 10:30 a.m.).

My train gets into Penn Station at 8:45 a.m. And actually, today it was 5 minutes late.

It's a 30-minute walk from Penn Statio to ABC.

Still, my friend Susan and I were like, "They won't really let everyone in at 9 a.m. sharp."

At 9:05 a.m. I'm at Columbus Circle (59th St.) when Susan calls.

"They're letting everybody in now. Ya gotta get here quick."

So I'm huffing it up Broadway and 60th, Broadway and 61st, Broadway and 62nd. I now realie I'm still woefully out of shape. I turn onto 67th St. (by some miracle there was no oncoming traffic) andz keep running. I get to the line and I'm sweaty and drippy and tired and I look like I'm about to pass out. The guy in line next to Susan and I thinks I'm not a contestant but a political prisoner sentenced by some ruthless dictator to play Millionaire and get all the questions right or die.

Susan managed to tolerate my sweaty self for the morning and early afternoon while we watched the taping of three shows.

Guess next year I'll have to try to find an earlier train.

Microblogging

This is going to be the shortest of blogs. Maybe not Twitter short, but I have a long day ahead of me (one way or another).

So I'm sorry. I feel like this will let you down, and I'll talk more about it in the not-too-distant future, but in the interest of conserving energy I'm gonna call it a blog.

More to come soon.

Brush With Greatness

I'm starting to get versed in this Twitter thing. I've been tweeting on a daily basis. I microblog about anything and everything, dinosaurs, current events, the Red Sox etc., and try to stay lighthearted and humorous.

And on Monday morning, someone responded to my Sox tweet -- Jerry Remy. (It's definitely him, it's a verified account.)

Now I'm nervous. I really have to bring Twitter my A-game. I don't want the color commentator of Red Sox games to unfollow me because I'm boring.

Pressure's on.

Facebook Stanger

One of the things about having a new laptop is that the touchpad is often unpredictable -- either too sensitive or not sensitive enough. A few weeks back this came into play when I was trying to click onto a Facebook photo and accidentally sent a friend request to a total stranger.

This really bothered me. I mean, we all have degrees of Facebook friends, but generally all of my Facebook friends are someone with whom I've at least one conversation with in the past. I've had friend requests from people who I did not know and always found them confusing and a little creepy.

So I tried figuring out if I could withdraw the friend request for a few minutes, before finding something more interesting to do on Facebook and moving on with my life.

Apparently my worries were not shared. The next morning I fired up my laptop again and saw the following email:

"[Total Stranger] (not this person's real name) accepted your friend request."

Turns out this person has close to the maximum 5,000 Facebook friends and is actually somewhat famous (i.e., this person is the subject of a Wikipedia article).

Sigh of relief. Hopefully this person will never suspect that I'm creepy.