Car pooling

Since I started working in Albany last November, I have been carpooling with a coworker of mine who lives in my neighborhood. ‘L’ is in many ways a perfect carpool companion; she does not travel for work, meaning I can count on her for rides; she lives in my neighborhood and is willing to pick me up and drop me off every day; she is not someone I feel I have to engage in conversation the entire ride. I am able to read the New Yorker in peace, or listen to NPR (yes, she even lets me choose the radio station) on my ride in. In turn, I pay a share of the gas fees. However, this seemingly ideal arrangement does come at a small psychological price.


‘L’ is a little older than me (let’s just say she has broken her hip a few years back). This also is reflected in her driving style. She drives at or below the speed limit for the duration of the 12-mile commute. She also prefers to drive in the passing lane of the highway. This inevitably results in some very angry drivers during the morning commuting hour. I am often uncomfortably aware of the antsy cars tailgating us for awhile before blowing by us with an angry glare. I always lean back and shrink down a little so I can avoid meeting their glare.

‘L’ is seemingly completely oblivious to all of this, or maybe she simply doesn’t care. She stares straight ahead, clutching the steering wheel at the textbook recommended 10 and 2 o’clock positions white knuckled, her foot gently spurring on her Honda at the very sensible speed of 60 MPH.

I am often tempted to ask her why she insists on driving in the passing lane since when I get stuck behind an elderly driver trudging along slowly in the passing lane and wish I could pose this question to them. Is it a fear of switching lanes? Certainly this is always an adventure with ‘L’. She glances in the rear view mirror briefly before swerving nervously into the next lane with one jerky motion. Or is it simply an indifference to the road rage of the less patient drivers sharing the road with her, and if she prefers the left (passing, as it turns out) lane then they will simply have to accommodate her? Either way, I don’t wish to jeopardize what is a very convenient commuting arrangement, so my burning question remains unanswered.

Time Sheets

In my previous position as a project architect in a corporate architecture firm, I was often scrutinized not only for the quality of my work (IE technical execution, managing schedules, client relationships, etc), but also for how much time I spent doing it. The owners of the firm wanted to know exactly how much time I was spending on each project. Their profit consisted primarily in the difference between how much I was getting paid (a fixed cost, my salary) versus how much the client had agreed to pay for the tasks I was executing. Conversely, the clients had an opportunity to review, and often contest how much time I proposed to spend on my work. Did this really have to take so long? Can’t I do it in less time? Not only did I have to be a meticulous detailer, inspired designer and accommodating service professional but I had to do everything in the “right” amount of time in order for my clients and my bosses to be happy.


The reality of the conundrum was often solved by underbilling, or to put it in another way to spend my own time doing work for my clients and not get paid for it (not me nor the owners of the firm). This way, the work is done (the owners are happy) and the clients are charged only the amount of hours they agreed to pay (and they are happy). I’m not happy since I worked 60 hours this week but only 40 hours can be charged to the client and I don’t get overtime or any other compensation for my time, but as was often the case in corporate architecture, no one is really inquiring about my happiness.

On the owner’s side, things are quite different. Now, my employer (the State of New York) is not profiting from the margin between my earnings and what someone else will pay for my time. My salary is paid from bonds issued by the state of New York, the same way all the buildings that I’m working on are financed. I no longer fill out a detailed time sheet breaking down how much time I spent on which project. I am held accountable for the quality of my work but less from a financial standpoint; I am rarely called upon to work until the wee hours of the morning while not billing for my time.

My responsibilities are primarily to oversee projects that are well conceived (fills a real and tangible need for the college), executed correctly (thoughtfully and thoroughly detailed set of documents prepared by architects for a reasonable fee), and constructed on time, on budget. My tasks are more managerial in nature and involve no design or production of drawings. The upside is that my work is not the means to a profit for the owners of the firm, and this is an enormous shift. The down side is that I am not growing in technical skills. Put another way, I appreciate and enjoy going home to have dinner with my family every night, but I also miss the struggles to come up with solutions to design/technical challenges presented to me. I am now more of an evaluator and hand out “Atta-boy’s” to the architect rather than burn the midnight oil and reams of tracing paper trying to conceive of an elegant solution to the problems at hand. Such is the bargain with the Devil.

Public Libraries

I am an enthusiastic user of public libraries. They provide the latest publications, all ranges of books, DVD’s and resource materials, and often free online access. I used the public libraries in Brooklyn as a haven to study for my licensing exams (ongoing, unfortunately). At any one time, we borrowed a dozen or more books from the libraries and our weekends typically included a trip to the library to return materials as well as pick up new ones.

When I travel to my parents’ house in Chicago, I am often struck by how nice their local library is in comparison the ones I am used to in NYC. The building is very new, clean, spacious and quiet, everything the NYC ones are not. The Brooklyn libraries were often very crowded. Only a few of the desks had outlets nearby, so laptop users were angling to secure a spot on those few desks. In addition, the buildings were typically very old and run down, with filthy bathrooms and deteriorating facades. The library in Park Slope did not have a central A/C system, and instead installed large aftermarket products with ducts drawing air to pods sitting within the floors. The result was that there was a loud mechanical din near the units, a few seats were in direct path of the cold air while most of the space remained undercooled.

In Clifton Park as was in Chicago, the libraries feel very new, clean and spacious. My own reasoning for this is that in New York City, the higher density puts a tremendous strain on public resources. All public utilities wear out and are abused at an incredible rate in comparison to their counterparts in leafy and well to do suburbs outside of NYC. The larger tax base apparently does not sufficiently account for the much larger number of users in NYC and consequently the facilities are not able to keep up with the usage. Subways, libraries and other publicly available resources quickly become degraded and barely serviceable, with insufficient funds for proper maintenance and eventually, timely replacement.

Goodbye Time Warner

When Yuna was born, we splurged and got not only cable TV, but also a DVR to boot. Combined with our existing high-speed access, the addition of these two services landed us with a monthly bill of well over a $100 to Time Warner. DVR was wonderful (and useful for keeping some 20+ episodes of Dora on hand).

When we moved to Albany, Time Warner made us close our New York account and open a new one in Albany. They also provided us with a new cable box. The interface of this new box was clumsy and frustrating to use. I couldn't understand why they simply didn't keep the same interface from the New York one, but they were still in the "testing" phase.

Today, I returned my cable box, remote and all accessories to the local Time Warner store and kept only my internet access (total bill including taxes and BS fees: $49.99), knocking my bill by more than half. I was inspired by this recent article in the Times about people getting their TV content directly from the Web.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/technology/personaltech/10basics.html?_r=1&em

I have also been actively bidding on Mac Mini's on ebay. I wonder if this article has increased the bidding activity on Mac Mini's, or conversely taken a toll on the business of Time Warner? I am beginning to think that charging customers an odd C-note monthly to provide a single purpose hard drive (DVR) is an outdated business model. The computer has a hard drive and an internet connection, so as long as the content is available online, there is no reason to have a dedicated, expensive and clumsy box sitting there costing me money every month.

I also set up my Airport Extreme and external hard disk tonight, something I've been procrastinating on for the past month. My MacBook is finally backing up via Time Machine (sorry about all the Mac-speak), and I have a wireless network name and password that is personal again (versus the machine generated network name and password that Time Warner's wireless router assigned). I feel a little more at home now.

Writing as Catharsis

A close friend of mine once remarked (critically) that all I care about is fun, and I would not disagree. The highest compliment you can receive from me is that you are “fun”. In contrast, an assessment that you are “boring” was in my book, worse than say, “evil”.

A few years ago, I travelled to Shanghai for a month on business. Shanghai is a very dynamic and cosmopolitan city, full of energy. I grew to love the city towards the end of my stay. However, the most dominant feeling I had during my stay was boredom.

During my stay in Shanghai, I was bored. I didn’t know a soul in Shanghai. I didn’t speak Shanghainese or Mandarin. I didn’t have the stomach to travel outside of Shanghai by myself, and dining out alone is positively the most depressing thing I can think of (perhaps rivaled only by going to watch a movie by yourself). The month I stayed in Shanghai is the only other time (besides now) in my life that I have felt compelled to write. Usually, I’m too busy living my life to sit down and maintain a blog. Only after a complete shock to my system jolted me out of my comfort zone did I feel the need to engage in writing as catharsis.

My drawing instructor at Michigan once told me that she travels to sketch. When she goes to a new place, everything she sees is new and stimulating to her, and she is motivated to sketch (perhaps the way tourists are motivated to snap photographs). Like her, the utter foreignness of my surroundings compels me to act and my response is to write as a way to “work it out”.

I Don't Think We're in NYC Anymore, Part 3

When I was trying to calibrate my expectations for our move to Albany, I often thought back to my time in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a barometer. Both are similar size cities that are primarily suburban in nature. After living in Brooklyn for nine years, it was hard to imagine what everyday life looks like elsewhere.

I remember when I was in Grand Rapids, I would go to Meijer, a huge chain supermarket in that area for all my shopping. I would buy everything from milk and eggs, to socks and pens there. The store was so huge that if you were in one part of the store and you remembered something you’d forgotten from a previous part of the store, you may very well chalk it up for your next visit to Meijer. You’d definitely park in the lot depending on what you wanted to pick up on the trip.

At Meijer, I’d often stand in line and wait for the customers to pay for their purchases by writing a check. They’d carefully fill in the required information (as well as their ledger), and tear it out and give their Driver’s License along with the check to the cashier’s. This is not common practice in New York City where purchases are made in cash or with credit/debit cards. I can’t recall too many instances of witnessing someone writing out a check at the supermarket.

I Don't Think We're in NYC Anymore, Part 2

When I first contacted a real estate agent in the Albany area to inquire about the desirable neighborhoods, I was annoyed when he sent me back a telephone number without an area code. How did he expect me to reach him without an area code? After moving up here, I am finding that this is a common practice to display phone numbers sans area code.


New York City is served by a few different area codes. There is of course, the 212 for Manhattan and 718 for the “other” boroughs (how elitist of Manhattan to codify such a distinction!). Then there are the many new area codes for the ever growing cell phone numbers, such as 347, 917 and 646. In Albany, it’s all 518 every day of the week. My office land line and my business cell phone both start with 518, and it’s acceptable practice to simply omit the area code in most cases. I can even make an outgoing phone call without the area code (!).