Wow. A friend just messaged me the news that actor Heath Ledger was found dead in New York. I thought he did great work in A Knight’s Tale, Lords of Dogtown, The Brothers Grimm, Brokeback Mountain and Casanova among other roles, and was looking forward to his portrayal of The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie. Man, what could’ve been.

If you’re a subscriber to the JEFBOT mailing list, you may have recently read that I’ve been in Parsippany, New Jersey for the past couple of days on a business trip. The business aspect is nothing to speak of, just helping to evaluate some software for the company I work for, but it has been more fun than I was expecting (except for the six hours worth of meetings we had today), mostly because of some cool people here and the fact that there’s snow all over the place. Now, I haven’t been in real snow for like, 10-15 years, so to step off the plane and see snow piled up on the tarmac, snow piled up on the sides of the freeway and small blankets of the stuff outside my hotel room has been pretty cool. It’s not a deep snow, just a couple of inches or so, but cool nonetheless.

My boss and I arrived here late in the day Wednesday and after landing in Newark, a company car took us to the hotel, we grabbed some dinner, then had drinks with some members of the evaluation team we bumped into. By the time I retired to my room I was completely exhausted and the hotel was pretty dead, but when I looked out my window and saw the pool was frozen over, I had to go check it out. The night was so still and quiet. There’s definitely something different in the air on the East Coast. Older. Eerie. Reminds me of the way I felt when I was a kid and read Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes the first time, like something magical and sinister could happen at any time.

There’s not a screen outside the window of my room, and I keep sliding open the glass to let the cold air hit my face. It’s a brisk, sharp cold, but it feels good and it smells like snow and asphalt. I find it comforting.

No more meetings tomorrow, so I’m taking a train to New York to hang there for a couple of days. I’ll report in over the weekend.

I should have gotten this up a couple of weeks ago but due to work pressures and procrastination, I’m just now getting to it. If you read my last blog post a couple of weeks ago, here’s what happened next:

After the meetings in Parsippany were over, I took a train into Greenwich, CT where my roommate Michael was visiting his mom, sister and niece due to his grandfather’s funeral earlier in the week. The circumstances were awful, but because of this coincidence of timing, I had a great place to stay close to New York with a bunch of cool people.
 
We all took a train into the Big Apple on Saturday, with Michael’s sister Christina pointing out the sights. It was face-freezingly cold in the city, so after walking along Broadway, picking up some cheap show tickets, and a fleeting look at some ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, we ducked into Morrell Wine Bar and Cafe, and thawed out while sharing a bottle of red.
 
After heading back out into the cold, we stopped into some shops then Christina treated us to an amazing dinner at Nobu. After an assortment of sushi, sake and various desserts, we hopped in a cab and zipped over to Broadway in time to catch Avenue Q, a musical I’ve wanted to see for a long time now. It didn’t disappoint; the acting, singing and puppetry were all top-notch. The most memorable moment of the evening, however, had to be when I was following fast-walking Christina out of the theater, when to my surprise, she suddenly hops into a waiting Town Car parked right in front of the exit doors. I see Michael and his mom follow suit, so I do the same, and we were all whisked away before the rest of the crowd began to fill the sidewalk. I was completely astonished (and felt like I was in an episode of Entourage), but it turns out Christina had called for a company car during the intermission to drive us back to Connecticut. I swear, when I become rich and famous, I’m hiring a driver, first thing.
 
On Sunday, Michael and I took a train from Greenwich to New York’s Grand Central Station, then cabbed over to the apartment of the lovely and talented Shari Albert, a friend in the East Village. We talked for a while, then walked over to a cool, dimly-lit little Italian Restaurant (I can’t remember the name) nearby. On the way back to Shari’s, we picked up some cannolis and New York Cheesecake at Venieros Pasticceria & Caffé and pigged out on them upon our return. I can truly say they were the best cannolis I’ve ever eaten. The shells were light and flaky, not the least bit soft or soggy, and the cream was sweet but not overly so. The cheesecake was great, too, but the cannolis were so good, I might just have to order a bunch the next time I have a party since they ship them out-of-state. Yum.
 
The next morning, Michael had already gone and was flying back to Los Angeles, so Shari took me on a tour of the neighborhood while we walked her dog, Sydney. The weather was a bit chilly, but was the warmest it had been since I arrived on the east coast, so it was nice to walk. We stopped into a café where the owner fed Sydney some turkey, and we got some coffee. I think if I were to move to New York for some reason, this neighborhood would be an ideal place to live. Anyway, after leaving Shari’s and taking a car back to Newark, NJ, I got on a plane to L.A., and headed back home where it was rainy and cold, so it didn’t feel like I left the east coast at all.
 
Overall, a great trip. I gotta get back to New York soon and do some touristy stuff like walking through Central Park, visiting the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, checking out museums, etc. Looks like that trip may happen later this year, fingers crossed.

As painfully illustrated in the above video with me and Michael, my XBOX 360 died on me yesterday. I had just booted up Call of Duty 4, when the screen froze. I turned off the XBOX, then tried booting up the game again with the same result. So I unplugged the console, waited a few minutes, plugged it back in and powered it on when, after the XBOX logo came up, the screen froze and the dreaded Red Ring of Death started flashing around the power button on the face of the machine, which basically meant the console was now an extremely large, extremely heavy (and expensive) paperweight. This is the fourth 360 I’ve had to replace in the two years since I bought my first one. This last one survived 15 months, so I figured I finally got a “good one” that wasn’t going to break down. Obviously, I was wrong.

Now, I understand game consoles malfunction sometimes (like many, I had to blow in my NES cartridges to get them to work, and turn my Playstation upside down so it wouldn’t overheat), but really, having to replace three consoles due to hardware failure is ridiculous. The failure rate has to be way higher than the rumored 16% (or I, and many others, are just extremely unlucky). That Microsoft has spent over a billion dollars to extend the warranty of the XBOX 360 from one to three years, at least says they recognize the problem, but, I know it’s a complicated (maybe impossible?) process, but I think it’s time they just completely redesign the console to get it to function properly.

Although I rarely buy extended warranties, after returning my second 360, I luckily bought one from Best Buy, so I just took the dead console down yesterday and exchanged it for a new one, also upgrading it to an XBOX 360 Elite in the process, which has a larger hard drive, HDMI output and (although not all of them have it) a smaller chip which runs cooler, which is rumored to lower the failure rate of the 360 by a few points, but not to an “acceptable” degree – say 3%, like the failure rate of the Wii and Playstation 3.

If the XBOX 360 didn’t have such great games and a great online system, I would’ve given up on it by the 2nd return. Unfortunately, it has a great library of exclusive games (Bioshock, Mass Effect) and games that just run better on it than the competition (The Orange Box, Lost Planet) which makes it hard to give up on. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain my love for the system though, and if the Playstation 3 catches up in quality titles and online features, I wouldn’t have any problem buying more games for it, and relegating the 360 to 1st party exclusives only.

Today marks the anniversary of Albert Einstein’s birth on March 14, 1879. Known most famously for his equation, E=mc², he always seemed to me to be the most approachable of geniuses, mostly due to his broad sense of humor, rebelliousness and philosophical approach to science. I try to live by his example all the time. For instance, how he approached solving problems by visualizing them in his mind rather than using words. I try using that approach with JEFBOT – I generally have a vague notion of what the joke’s going to be and I kind of just let it coalesce in my brain over time until I can “see” the panels. Doesn’t always come out the way it was in my mind, but that’s my process most of the time. Not that what I’m doing is in any way “genius” but if I’m going to emulate a way of thinking, I think his way is a pretty good choice.

I also frequently try to wrap my head around his special theory of relativity throughout random times on any given day. I mean, I “get it” at its most fundamental core – that time is relative based on how fast you’re moving - but how he came up with that theory, by imagining light traveling alongside a train, is what occupies my mind. Can we think like he did? The physiology of his brain was found to be different than most people’s, but is it possible for anybody to change their thinking in such a way that they can see things the way he saw them? Not sure. Probably not. But it’s fun to try.

Happy Birthday, Albert!

Fans of great science fiction lost a giant yesterday (03/18/08) when Arthur C. Clarke, best known for the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, died at 90 years of age. I’ve been a huge fan of his short stories and novels since I was a kid, my favorites being the 2001 and Rama series of novels and I recommend them wholeheartedly. I never did get around to reading the last of the 2001 series, 3001: The Final Odyssey, or the final Rama book, Rama Revealed, but they’ve both been moved up the reading list now.

It’s amazing just how many movies, television shows and videogames owe a debt to Mr. Clarke’s works. I see his influence all the time, from the unknown, alien crafts in the Star Trek movies (especially The Motion Picture and The Voyage Home) to the technomages and energy beings of Babylon 5, to (most recently) the advanced technologies left for younger races by elder, alien species in Mass Effect on the XBOX 360, so many countless themes and grand ideas in today’s science fiction were inspired by his works.

He was a pretty amazing guy, even apart from his literary works, with his knowledge as a physicist and mathematician used to theorize how satellite technology could be instrumental in global communications (see Clarke Belt) and his work helping gorillas in Sri Lanka, where he lived since 1956.

Just an incredible guy with an incredible life. I’m going to go dig out my ACC hardcovers and get to reading! If you haven’t read any of his novels yet, you should get thee to a bookstore immediately - I suggest starting with Rendezvous With Rama or Childhood’s End and be amazed.