i just want to know where they're going and make sure its not where i am.

moped

well, the big news of my friday evening last week was this: i finally bought the moped i was thinking about. it's not actually the one i posted a picture of last week- i'll go out an take pictures for you soon. i spent a good amount of time riding around this city this weekend, and it was way too much fun. it can go around 35 mph, or 40 on a downhill, so i can usually keep up with traffic. i've already saved probably $40 in cab and subway fare. i really don't know why i didn't think of this sooner.

change the world...

...of online reservation systems. A friend of mine brought up how annoying it is that jet blue's website is set to default to zero passengers, forcing you to change the selection to one every time you fly. This is actually pretty annoying. Well, my friend has gotten ambitious and is trying to get them to change it. I posted the email he's sent around below. Take a second and paste his compaint into the form on their website, and let's see if we can get them to change.

Please help stop JetBlue's idiotic webpage by copying the text below and entering it into customer feedback form at the following link. Then forward this email to your friends and urge them to send in this reply as well.

http://www.jetblue.com/help/contactus/help_contact_problems.aspx

I am concerned that JetBlue's website has 0 passengers as the default. One of my friend's acquaintances who is an analyst at JetBlue said that the company found that making customers think about the number of passengers boosts sales because some people fail to consider that they need multiple tickets. Essentially, JetBlue is imposing a time-tax on the majority of users who are looking for a single ticket or who are sufficiently intelligent to know to request multiple tickets in order to increase sales on the margin. This move displays JetBlue's distinct move away from customer centered service toward a greater focus on making profits at the expense of customers. Although this is an extremely minor irritant, it is an indicator that the customer service meltdown on February 14th was not an isolated incident but rather a systemic drift from JetBlue's core values. Please take the appropriate steps to remedy the situation and systematically re-evaluate policies and procedures to ensure JetBlue continues to be a "customer service company that happens to fly planes."

really good idea i had too late

today i was thinking about the music i listen to and how happy it makes me when i find really good new music to listen to. and as i clicked through a few songs on i-tunes i though about how it keeps track of how many times you've listened to each song, and i realized that there is a massive pool of information out there about people's musical taste that could be aggregated to give recommendations for new songs based on what you listen to the most and what other people who listen to similar things also like.

so i looked around on the internet and found out that this service has already existed for about two years and is pretty successful. it's called last.fm, and it is really cool. you download their free software and it tracks everything you listen to and then provides you with a personal online radio station of music it thinks you would like. there's also a social networking element to the site where you can link to friends and recommend music for each other but i haven't really tried it yet. I've been listening to it while i wrote this post and i've already heard a couple of really good new songs.

there's another cool music site, called the hype machine. this one tracks blog entries that mention music or link to mp3's, and plays them on a free online radio station so you can keep up on what's new in music.

these are both pretty cool sites that i wish i had thought of. oh well, back to the drawing board (aka school).

run, finals

on saturday i was irresponsible and skipped studying to go run the brooklyn half marathon. it was a great choice. i went with a pretty big group of friends and it was cool to have a sort of team spirit about it and to go out for a big brunch together afterward. i finished in 1:42:04, which is about 5:30 faster than what i did at the bronx half in february, and about a 7:47 min/mile pace. i'm pretty happy with the time, but of course going to do better at the next one. i was shooting for 1:40:00 so that is some pretty good motivation.

in other news, finals are coming up and I am feeling terribly under prepared. if any if you are constitutional law scholars, please let me know so i can have you teach me some things. actually, in case you are wondering what law school is really like, it's the sort of thing where knowing a brilliant scholar probably wouldn't even help. in fact, i've been listening to three brilliant scholar lectures a week in that class and still would bomb the test if i took it today. i think it's just a matter of putting in the time so that i'll know the right vocabulary of cases and principles to use on the test. and that's why i feel under prepared, because as of right now, i speak con law the way a dog speaks english (meaning i understand my name and when you tell me to do one of three things, but couldn't communicate anything more meaning full that a few variations on the same barking sound at different volumes and frequencies). in a few days i hope to be like a parrot who can produce a few recognizable words but doesn't understand any of them. and then by the time the tests are here, i hope to be a fully functioning dolphin that can speak by pressing different buttons with its nose, or less metaphoricaly, a law student who can tell you when a law will be invalidated under the due process clause rather than the equal protection clause. wish me luck, and more importantly, if you catch me screwing around, please tell me to get back to studying.

on the grid

ok, i have a phone again. just so you know.

off the grid

FYI, my cellphone has stopped working. i think its just the battery not charging because its old, and i'm in the process of thinking about buying a new battery, so i should have it working again soon. but if you were planning on calling me, it would be better to write at firstname.lastname@gmail.com, at least for the next couple of days.

scotus

Today I went to watch the final round of competition for a moot court program at school. My con law lecture was canceled because of it and it seemed like most of the school went to watch. The attraction was that the panel of judges included some pretty big names, the biggest being Justice Alito from the supreme court. I guess that is a sort of dorky celebrity sighting, but I was excited about it. The way the event works is that each student gets up with a 15 min speech planned out, says the first sentence, and then is barraged with questions for the rest of the time and doesn't get to another word of their speech. These judges were particularly smart and had particularly good/difficult questions, and I was impressed by how well the students were able to keep their composure. Lot's of fun.

single people

here's an interesting map. apparently, i'm in the right place.

link to article

interesting article about a funny story and what people think is beautiful.

antitrust

if you go to law school you get to study interesting things like anti-competitive business practices and monopolies. Pretty cute, but I wouldn't call him the next Microsoft or anything.

moped

what do you think about this? $500 on craigslist. i don't see how that could possibly be a bad idea.

passover

in the spirit of the season, i thought i would share the hardest rocking passover song of all time, straight from the 80's.

this is "Creeping Death" by Metallica:



here are the lyrics since it can be kinda hard to understand what they're saying with all the guitars and drums and whatnot.

i don't think they're really thinking about the religious side of it though, so i wouldn't expect to see it in the hymnals any time soon. and also, sister, don't let the kids listen to this because it could turn them into head-banging delinquents.