Lee's Thoughts

Last night Erin and I learned we had an uninvited house guest staying with us, a baby chipmunk.

It all started when I noticed our cat Minnie running around the living room chasing something. I figured she was batting around one of her catnip-filled toys, but she looked like she was having too much fun which prompted me to check it out.

I found her chasing a chipmunk! It was fully grown and moving very quickly. It very quickly ran underneath the radiator heater in the kitchen and disappeared into the wall. Minnie stood guard for a while watching for it to return, during which time I heard a small squeaking noise from the living room. When I looked under the table, I found a little ball of fur curled up next to a power strip with several AC adapters (see the picture). With the amount of heat those adapters generate, I imagine it was a warm place to be! We quickly locked Minnie in the bedroom as by this point she was going crazy and wanting to play.

Upon closer inspection, the little ball of fur was a baby chipmunk. We’re not sure how old, but his eyes were open and he did move around a bit. We thought “Chippy” would be a good name for our newest house guest. After a brief phone call, the local SPCA sent someone out at midnight to “rescue” our baby chipmunk. The young woman who came was very nice, said Chippy’s mother would likely not return and took him to a wildlife refuge where Chippy will be raised until he is old enough to be released back into the wild.

Even though some would call Chippy and his kind “rodents”, he was pretty darned cute. Knowing that he will be well cared for despite the disappearance of his mother left me with a nice, fuzzy feeling.

Be sure to check out more of Chippy’s photos.

Finally Yahoo! has formed a partnership I can make use of… they are the e-provider of Target.com’s online photo lab. And since Yahoo acquired Flickr last year, I can make prints directly from Flickr to my local Target store for pickup. That saves a lot of hassle by eliminating the need for re-uploading photos one-by-one, ordering prints, etc. As an added bonus I am comfortable in the fact that I’m not lining Sam Walton’s pockets, and I don’t need to download any additional half-functional, ad-ridden, proprietary store software that barely works.

Last night Erin and I ordered about 90 prints, a mix of 4x9s, 5x7s and 8x10s. We went to the store to pick them up, expecting to pay about $95 plus tax, but when the guy rang it up he said the total was $45. When we asked about the discrepancy they guy explained that we qualified for some insane discount. I prefer not to ask too many questions in situations like that, so we swiped the credit card and left!

So the arrangement between Yahoo, Flickr, and Target has benefited me like few other corporate partnerships ever have.

One other thing I want to do next weekend in NYC is go to the new Bamn Automat. They seem to be developing a new cult following, but I’m up for new experiences! For more pictures, check out this blog entry that I found through Google.

And people seem to really love it. The reviews are great. Apparently no single item of food sits out for more than 15 minutes so everything is fresh and tasty.

I’d love to open one of these in Adams Morgan!

I won free tickets to see Spamalot next weekend on Broadway!

Not only has it been over a year since I have been in New York City, but I’ve never seen a Broadway show. When I tell most people that, their jaw drops in amazement. But then again most people forget that I have only lived on the East Coast for 5 years now, and that for three of them I was a poor college student. At $80 per ticket, Broadway is pretty much cost prohibitive when you’re a student (and before you mention the discount ticket booth in Times Square, I’ll say that I’m just too lazy to stand in line for several hours).

In this case, I actually won two free tickets from American Express as part of their Membership Changes Everything campaign. They have some pretty sweet deals available, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Oh, and this will also mark my first experience taking the $20/seat Chinatown bus. According to the hard-hitting news reports that aired recently on the local networks, I should be fearing for my life and all. But actually, I’m just really looking forward to going!

A little over a year ago I had the opportunity to play around with ‘s Mac Mini, and loved how it seamlessly integrated with so many devices. I’ve come to accept over the years that while Apple’s products may be a little more expensive, you are also buying a package of components specifically designed to work with each other. My desktop PC, which I built myself back in 2002, has a mishmash of parts from manufacturers that I’ve never even heard of. Forget downloading a driver to make that old hardware run on the latest version of Windows!

And then, Apple went Intel. I knew that if I was going to buy one of these new Intel-based Macs, I would want to make sure it had been out on the market, had been fully vetted by those claiming Mac-guru status, and had the proverbial “kinks” worked out. From the reading I have done over the past year, there were definitely many rough patches, especially in terms of backwards compatibility with older applications. However, my IBM ThinkPad (some call them “craptops” or “StinkPads”) has no remaining battery life, and recently the DVD/CD-RW combo drive went kaput.

I decided to include Apple’s MacBook line as part of my search for a new laptop. The sweet deal known as “IBM’s Employee, Friends, and Family Discount,” which allowed savings of up to 20% off new IBM hardware just by knowing someone at the company, seems now to limited only to used/refurbished equipment. I knew that a consumer-oriented model from Best Buy was just not going to cut it in terms of durability. Price isn’t the problem, I’m looking for good value. Summer is apparently a perfect time to shop Apple, because they offer some sweet back-to-school deals.

All told, I bought a new Apple MacBook Pro 2.16GHz at a reasonable education-discounted price (I had Erin, a college senior this year, buy it in her name with her student ID), along with an academic version of Microsoft Office (which, coincidentally, is the first time I’ve actually ever paid for any Microsoft software, before that there was always ResNet with Phynd), and a new 30GB iPod (which came not only with a discount, but a huge rebate). I now have most of my files moved over, and so far so good!

Still feeling the effects from jet lag, Erin and I decided to take it easy today by staying near the hotel. Just down the street from the hotel’s front door is the Jardin du Luxembourg, or Luxembourg Gardens. According to our guidebook, this park is to Paris what Central Park is to New York City. It is a tree-laden haven in the center of an otherwise bustling city. People of all ages visit the park to read, run, sunbathe, and picnic.

The park features several gorgeous fountains, complete with dozens of benches and chairs. Some of the grassy areas are open for people to walk on and sunbathe while other areas of grass are just for looks. There are also a few playgrounds full of kids, and ping pong tables (however you must furnish your own paddles and balls). Several sidewalks snake through the park that are perfect for runners/joggers/walkers. There were also dozens of Parisian men (of all ages) wearing shorts. We spent some time sitting in the shade eating our sandwiches we brought for lunch.

The fresh air replenished our ambition, so we continued to walk 10 minutes south from the Gardens to the Cimetière du Montparnasse, the Montparnasse Cemetery. The cemetery is another sanctuary in the heart of Paris, surrounded by dozens of cafes and brasseries. Erin suggested we go in search of a particular statue named Le Baiser de Brancusi, or simply “The Kiss”, located along the cemetery’s eastern wall.

The weather has been great these past two days (mid-70′s and sunny during the day), and these two parks located close to our hotel really helped to bring a couple of sleepy-eyed travelers back to life. I also pulled together a map that shows both the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Cimetière du Montparnasse (as the large green patches in the center of the screen) and a green arrow that points out the hotel’s location.

My web server was starting to run out of disk space, and instead of spending several hundred dollars upgrading the disks or moving to a new server, I decided to move my photo album to a professional host.  I did quite a bit of looking, but ultimately chose a Pro account with Flickr.  I like their interface, and their terms of service seem ironclad enough to host my photos forever.  Over the past few days I’ve moved my huge collections to their new home.  Among the tagging and RSS features, the one key feature that sold me is sorting my pictures on a calendar by date taken.  It’s a neat way for me to look back on what was visually happening in my life on any given day during the past 5 years for which I have digital photos.

So anyway, check out the new photo album.

If you happen to have a Flickr account, please feel free to add me as a friend and I will gladly return the gesture.  Enjoy!

I live in Washington DC near the National Zoo.  Freaky things happen in this town all the time: buildings are evacuated, Metro cars searched by police armed with automatic weapons, and buses never run on time.  However last night it hit a little closer to home.

At around 2 AM, a helicopter began orbiting near the Zoo (which is right outside my balcony) with its spotlight beaming to the ground and occasionally passing my bedroom window.  Helicopter flyovers are also nothing new in this town where dignitaries hitch rides on US Marine choppers all the time.  However, this was no Marine helicopter (it looked like a commercial model that police and news stations use) and it was 2 AM.  After about 20 minutes of this continued activity, right in the middle of my natural sleep cycle, I decided to do something about it.  I did what any responsible DC citizen would do, I called 911.  The lady who answered was a bit surprised at my complaint, and said that it was a DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) helicopter flying over, in search of an armed criminal.  She suggested I take shelter in a secure location, and to keep a lookout for some guy wielding a gun.  She said if I saw anything I should definitely call back.

I thought this alarmist response was a bit immature, though this town is occasionally known for its instances violent crime (mostly political types disposing of bodies in Rock Creek Park, anyone remember Chandra Levy?).  The helicopter continued to fly over in the same pattern for over an hour more, and then disappeared.  This morning’s Washington Post contained no news of the incident, and its website had no mention.  The MPD  incident blotter also contained no mention.  As a taxpaying resident I would like to know why this helicopter interrupted my sleep for so long, but alas, a communist-style government has decided I should have no further details.  I am left only to trust that the DC Council and the MPD have my best interests in mind, and that such a cover up is in my own interest.

I can only hope that I fare much better this evening. So far, so good…

I had a most peculiar dream last night where I walked into a McDonald’s restaurant and overheard McDonald’s executives discussing plans for a new restaurant chain.  The idea was for McDonald’s to create a new high-end restaurant chain, comparable to a Wolfgang Puck-style restaurant catering to a larger segment of the middle-class dining market.  I guess a spin off like this could be compared to what McDonald’s did with the founding of Chipotle.  Their intentions were to make it just as unhealthy as McDonald’s and Chipotle, but use advertising in such a way to make it seem healthy (just like they currently do for Chipotle).  They were to name it “Karl’s” which is a play on the name of McDonald’s Corporation founder, Ray Kroc.  They were going to use one of those unmistakable “luxury” product voice over actors in their ads, like one of those guys who narrates fine jeweler commercials.  The commercial was very vivid in my dream, but I can’t remember many other details than just the sound of the voice.

It’s definitely a weird dream, and I don’t even like McDonald’s (it has been months since I’ve even been in a McDonald’s restaurant).  It would be interesting to see them come out with something like this now…

A little more than a year ago Erin and I made our first trip together to Amsterdam and Paris.  We had an absolute blast, and it was a great way for us to get to know each other better.  We’re making the trip again this year, in early June.  We’ll be spending a week in Paris, and then will take Thalys (the high speed train) first class to Amsterdam.  After three days in Amsterdam and possibly including a trip to Den Haag, we’ll return to Paris and fly back to the States (directly to Dulles).

We are very much looking forward to it.  I’ve been promised that in addition to visiting art museums and monuments that we will be touring several Parisian breweries.  The only thing better than a brewery is the free beer that awaits at the end of the tour!