“I want a baby sister.”
“We’ll have to work on that with mommy and daddy magic.”
“Make mommy and daddy magic now?”
“Not right now.”
“Christmas?”
“We’ll do it before Christmas.”
[tags]kidssaythedarndestthings[/tags]
Category: glamorous
My Glamorous Life
Early this morning, in my last deep sleep, I was tormented by a nightmare concerning our three-year-old. In my dream, she was chasing some happy bauble. Call it a big floating bubble filled with sunshine. The bubble blew out of the park. She ran after it. I ran after her.
The bubble floated above a big street filled with speeding cars. I called her name and shouted stop, but she did not hear me or would not listen. Giggling and burbling, all young enthusiasm for the chase, she ran into the street of speeding cars. I ran into it after her.
The pursuit continued, block after block. The oblivious bubble. The excited child, dashing into street after street of speeding cars. Me behind, never able to catch up, never able to protect her, never able to make her stop.
Happy Father’s Day.
[tags]dreams, family, glamorous, parenting[/tags]
Awake at 4:30 AM at the end of a four-day heat wave. Sweating, but not from the weather. Running a business during a recession gets you out of bed with the chickens.
I have always moved counter to my time. I started Happy Cog as the dot-com boom went bust. We bought our first home in December 2007, as the U.S. mortgage crisis flared to full incandescence. And as the U.S. falls into economic narcolepsy, Happy Cog New York and Happy Cog Philadelphia are moving to newer, bigger, better, more beautiful, more perfectly located, and more expensive offices.
By daylight I hustle and count my blessings. We retire early, tired and contented. But at the first pale light of dawn, I’m awake and wired and already on the mental treadmill.
This morning as I lay there fretting over design and personnel questions, I heard our daughter cry out. I was at her side a moment later. She was dreaming; dreaming about bath time. Talking in her sleep, she gave voice to her nightmare:
“No, Mama, no hair wash. Let me skip it, Mama.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and told her she could skip the hair wash, and she instantly subsided to calm sleep.
[tags]glamorous, myglamorouslife, recession, work, sleeplessness[/tags]
Two homeless men have taken up residence in the temporary supply hut of the Chinese Embassy construction on the corner.
One man, who may be Colombian, sleeps sitting up in the hut. The other, who could be Australian, sleeps on a folding chair facing the hut, his long legs extended so that his boots just cross the hut’s threshold.
In a pretty, almost calligraphic hand, one of the men has decorated the hut with sayings such as, “Life really sucks.”
Besides the hut, the advantages of the site are a temporary roof that blocks some rain and snow, and the presence of three working Port-a-Potties.
Everyone, including the neighborhood residents, appears to have decided to treat the temporary encampment as a private residence. When the homeless men are off somewhere foraging for food or money, their possessions (mainly, blankets) sit unmolested by the supply hut.
In the morning, the Chinese construction site bosses ignore the two homeless men while inspecting the efforts of their African American construction workers.
A few blocks north, the Secretariat of the United Nations is clearly visible.
[tags]homelessness, chineseembassy, nyc, newyorkcity[/tags]
Dear “New Yorker:”
It is snowing again in New York City. I’ll wait while you verify.
Presently the precipitation is recorded as 0.11 inches. But if you venture out, you may notice snow piles that are several inches high. How can we account for this discrepancy between the recorded height of snowfall and the actual height of some snow piles?
People shovel.
In this city, custodians and superintendents salted and shoveled sidewalks before 7:00 AM.
When people shovel, they push the snow into curbside banks that reach inches or even feet higher than the recorded snowfall level.
To see this, walk outside and look. The fresh air may do you good.
Sometimes after a snowfall, the temperature drops. Then those high banks of snow stick around.
Sometimes it warms just enough to rain into those frozen banks of snow. Then you get cold wetness that can reach into a toddler’s shoes (if she’s not wearing boots). And banks of old snow at the edges of curbs that, combined with freezing rain, can wet a small, bootless child halfway to the knees.
If you spent less time fact-checking other people’s blog posts and more time living, you would know these things about snow, and children, and weather reports.
And even if “halfway up to A—’s knees” were off by an inch or more, a person who is alive would say to themselves, “A father, worried about his child’s exposure to weather, sees conditions as somewhat worse than they are.”
A person who understands people might seek further evidence of hyperbole, and would find it: “My kid looked like she had been swimming in the East River.”
A parent, or a non-parent alive enough to imagine the anxieties of parenting, would recognize that this an exaggeration, intended to convey (and through the catharsis or writing, alleviate) parental guilt and anxiety.
Trying to prove strangers liars is no substitute for lived experience. You missed the point of what I shared, and attacked the reality of my story on petty (and false) grounds.
Let me tell you how your anonymous attack made me feel:
Blessed.
Blessed to have a meaningful life.
Blessed not to have to fill my hours poking around, looking for inaccuracies in other people’s websites, hoping to embarrass strangers.
Whoever you are, I hope your life grows richer than it is today.
Relentless winter rain was turning last night’s snow to slush as I with my head cold and A— with her wooly hat left the lobby of our apartment building, headed for the nearby crosstown bus.
From home to preschool is a mile uphill, and we always walk it. But today was no day for pedestrianism. Even the dog could barely be persuaded to lift his leg.
And taking the bus was a form of bribery. A— did not want to go to school today, but she loves to ride the bus.
“We’ll ride the bus to school!” we proposed, and this enticement sufficed to get the girl dressed and downstairs—where we spied the bus, half a block away, accepting passengers and about to leave.
We ran through the slush, holding hands, my office bag bouncing off my left shoulder, the diaper bag bouncing off my right, the stroller sliding ahead of us, guided by my free hand.
You must fold a stroller before boarding a New York City bus. At the bus doors, I had trouble folding. The stroller would not collapse. The driver and the wet passengers inside stared down at me like bison on a nature show, blinking impassively while contemplating my destruction.
A woman in front of me took A—’s hand, to help the little girl onto the bus while her father wrestled with a child carrying appliance.
I saw myself stuck in the slush. I saw the bus doors closing. I saw a strange lady taking my daughter away.
I grabbed A—’s hand, pulled her away from the stranger.
“I’m sorry, thank you, I appreciate it, but my daughter has to stay with me,” I said. At which point, blessedly, the stroller collapsed. I scooped daughter, stroller, diaper bag and office bag into my arms, ascended the bus steps, and placed my Metro card into the card reader.
The bus driver looked at me and said something incomprehensible. The bus beeped; the card reader blinked red and ejected my card.
I reinserted the card, smiling, already soaked, my daughter and possessions balanced against my chest. Again the red, the beeping, the ejection.
This time I understood what the bus driver was saying.
“Your card’s empty.”
“Oh,” I said, the whole bus watching me and my daughter, every face wondering what refugee camp we had escaped from, and whether the bus driver would show mercy and let us ride on this most miserable of cold wet rainy days.
The bus driver blinked at me.
“Um,” I said.
“Pay or get off” the bus driver said.
Buses accept Metrocards and coins only. You need $2 in coins. I don’t carry $2 in coins.
“Can I give you two dollars in bills?” I said.
“No,” the bus driver said.
So the girl and I plunged back into the slush and began the mile uphill walk in the rain.
“Why can’t we ride the bus?” my three-year-old asked through trembling lips.
Her whole world was now about the bus ride she’d been promised, and the promise I was inexplicably breaking.
“I’ll let you walk,” I said, since walking, instead of riding in the stroller, is also a perk.
I took out her Dora the Explorer umbrella, which we bought two weeks ago at a premium price.
It was broken, I discovered. The umbrella offered no protection whatever from the rain. On the plus side, you could still read the Dora the Explorer logo, so the licensee was getting his money’s worth.
Umbrellaless, toddling along, we made it to a major avenue where the deep, melting ice and snow came halfway up to A—’s knees, and women stared at the idiot father letting his beautiful innocent child flounder about in wetness.
“There’s too much ice, now; you’ve got to get in the stroller,” I said.
“No!” she said.
There was nothing else for it. “I’ll give you candy,” I said.
In the Duane Reade on Third Avenue, I let her pick the candy—she selected something pink and disgusting—while I unpacked the stroller to get at a plastic sheet at the bottom. The plastic sheet is supposed to snap over the top of the stroller, protecting children from rain, snow, and oxygen. I could not get it to snap or stay or even cover the stroller. Strike three.
So we walked the rest of the way uphill, uncovered, rain-battered, she with her candy and I with silent curses.
We reached the school and climbed the steps in the usual way—the girl refusing to climb the steps, me carrying her in one hand and the stroller in the other.
We were both soaked through and I realized I was the worst father walking the earth. All the other kids came in wearing rain boots. My kid was wearing pretty little black Maryjanes. The other kids were damp. My kid looked like she had been swimming in the East River.
What saved me was this:
In the library at the top of the stairs, preparing to read a Curious George book before school began, the girl sat by the radiator and said, “Look, Dad. This hot stuff will get me dry.”
[tags]zeldman, myglamorouslife, parenting, nyc, preschool[/tags]
Categories
The no-access road
A stranger and I just helped a disabled lady in a motorized scooter mount the inaccessible curb adjoining the treatment center for disabled people in wheelchairs and scooters.
The medical center has been there for probably thirty years. And for probably thirty years, the inaccessible curb has barred the way for people seeking treatment.
Thirty years.
I’m no statistician, but I’ll estimate that the little scene we three strangers just performed outside the medical facility has been reenacted at least a million times.
The facility is located between Second and First Avenues. An access road to an on-ramp to the Queens Midtown Tunnel divides the street in half. To get to the facility, you must traverse the access road.
An incomprehensible three-way traffic light controls the flow of people and cars across the T-shaped intersection. At least, in theory, it controls the flow. In practice, cars are always pouring into the access road. In fact, parents and nannies continually push prams into the access road in defiance of the constantly oncoming traffic. Besides medical facilities for the disabled, the half-block houses a huge and busy pediatric office; and there is a children’s playground just the other side of the center.
The lady somehow got her scooter down into the access road during the momentary interval when it was okay for pedestrians to cross.
She got to the other side and discovered there was no ramp up.
She began driving her scooter backwards and forwards in the road, searching for a ramp.
No ramp.
Cars began heading toward her.
A man and I walked over to her. She asked for help and we did our best, while the cars edged to the left of her.
How many people in wheelchairs cross this road day and night?
Have any died?
I took my three-year-old daughter to her pre-school today. She did not want to go.
When we got there, she asked me to read Curious George to her. I did, then guided her to where her classmates were sitting and painting. The other parents had already left.
My daughter did not want me to go. She wanted me to stay and read more books to her. I told her I would read to her later, then I hugged her goodbye. As I left, she was beginning to paint with the other children.
She did not want me to go, and I did not want to go, but I went, because that is what you do.
I went home, met the artisan who was in our apartment, beginning to assemble our shelving system, then took our dog to the veterinary dermatologist.
Four years ago, when we found him, abandoned, on the streets of New York City, Emile was the sickest, most allergic dog in town. Much of his hair was missing; he smelled like a brewery; he was not what you would call a prize.
Four years later, he is our daughter’s companion, and one of the cutest dogs in our neighborhood, so long as you do not look too closely at the bits that resist healing and that have defied the best efforts of the best veterinarians in our area.
Although he is unrecognizable compared to the suffering creature we rescued, he has been in a near-constant state of infection for four years.
Today I brought him to one of the two veterinary dermatological experts in town. After an hour of examination and discussion, it was time to leave him for another hour or two of additional tests.
He is daddy’s boy, and he had had enough of the doctor. He did not want me to leave—at least not without him.
But there was no sense in my sitting there for two hours. I left because that is what you do.
I thought I would be able to get at least an hour or two of work done today, but I am sad and doubtful of achieving much.
For several nights, the dog and our daughter have woken us up by turns. I find it hard to fall back asleep after his unexplained and out-of-character late-night barking fits, and our daughter’s nightmares that turn into crying jags that end with us needing to move furniture and run washers.
As soon as I fall back asleep, another disruption begins.
There is so much to do, and I feel time slipping through my fingers.
Comments off.
[tags]zeldman, veterinary, medicine, dogs, emile, myglamorouslife[/tags]
Dragging my cheap three-wheeled suitcase home from Penn Station after a Boston business trip late Tuesday night, I passed three businessmen standing in the middle of Park Avenue with their raincoats awry. White, pushing 40, a few beers past sober. The one who slightly resembled Larry of the Three Stooges was trying to keep the party going.
“One more fucking beer,” he said. “Come on. I’ll fucking pay for it, motherfucker.”
Ever since Pulp Fiction electrified audiences and changed the film industry, every putz pushing 40 with a few beers in him thinks he is Samuel L. Jackson. Quentin Tarantino has a lot to answer for.
[tags]reallife, myglamorouslife, putz, pulpfiction, tarantino, pennstation, samuelljackson, zeldman[/tags]
I need five certified checks for tomorrow’s closing. To get them, I’ve come to the Chase Bank nearest me with my checkbook, a pen, and a list of payees and dollar amounts I culled from a half-dozen of our lawyer’s e-mails.
(Names changed to protect the innocent: Dewey and Howe are the seller’s lawyers. Prescott is our lawyer. Lincoln is our mortgage broker.)
Dewey and Howe were supposed to send final figures well in advance of closing. Instead they’ve chosen not to correspond with us. As one of New York’s five oldest law firms, they only busy themselves when Tildens and Vanderbilts are involved.
Waiting in a long line gets me six pieces of paper to fill out. There’s an inch of free desk space by the front door, which is propped open to better circulate the December winds. The seventh time the December winds blow my paperwork across the lobby, I kick the doorstop across Park Avenue and pull the front door closed, not caring who sees me do it.
Now that the paperwork isn’t flying, I can find out what the bank needs from me before it will issue the certified checks.
One thing it needs is the addresses of the payees. Who knew? Not me, not our lawyer.
I call Prescott; he looks up the addresses on the internet while I scribble. (He can’t tell me the addresses by looking at paperwork, because Dewey and Howe haven’t sent any.)
I’m sweating and my writing hand is beginning to cramp.
Prescott, whose AOL e-mail account was having problems earlier in the day, is now receiving a flurry of messages from Lincoln the mortgage broker. In-between looking up payee addresses, Prescott tells me what’s in Lincoln’s e-mails.
What’s in Lincoln’s e-mails is an additional $5500 in fees that will be owed to various parties on top of the original cash motherload we paid at the beginning of this mess and the second two-ton payload we’re converting into certified checks at this moment. In the absurd economy of middle-class Manhattan home-buying, nearly overlooking an extra $5500 is like forgetting to mention the dollar charge for gift-wrap.
The throbbing Christmas music that has accompanied all action thus far seems inappropriately sedate as I cross the lobby perspiring like a bridegroom, bearing my newly filled-out forms.
Now I’m looking at two cashiers and praying I did the addition right. (Long story. Short version: you have to subtotal all the amounts yourself before this bank will issue you more than one certified check at once.)
Now I’m looking at three cashiers working on my certified check order. The one twenty years younger than me is the senior cashier in charge.
The third cashier working on my order says I have nice handwriting.
Now it’s just me and the littlest cashier.
Now I have my five certified checks.
Now I have to proofread them against the payee list I compiled earlier. Thousand thousand thousand thousand thousand and 44 cents.
Amused by my aura of suppressed hysteria, the littlest cashier says have a nice day.
Thank you, I say, meaning it.
[tags]sentfrommyiphone, homebuying, homeownership, NYC, apartment, home, bank, banking[/tags]
Categories
No heat at $5,000/month
Libertarians blame rent stabilization for the problems of tenants in cities like New York, but there are few rent stabilized apartments left in this town or this building. Most people in this building pay $4000 to $5000 a month for a “luxury rental” the size of a working-class Hoosier’s garage. Certainly the fee the landlord collects is luxurious. Nothing else about the place is. Particularly not luxurious is the lack of heat, now in its second day. Snow falls, arctic winds blow, but the $5000/month luxury building is as cold as a dead seal.
The building once employed a certified plumber capable of fixing the constant leaks and other woes that plague this building and are common to poorly maintained high-rise apartments thrown up in the go-go 1970s. But the managing agent was always six months late paying the plumber’s bill, and often argued about the charges months after they were incurred.
“I’ll pay for one guy,” the managing agent would tell the plumber six months after the plumber used three guys to fix an emergency in the building.
In cheating the licensed plumber, the managing agent did not act on the tenants’ behalf or with their knowledge or consent.
Eventually the competent licensed plumber grew tired of losing money every time he saved the building from disaster, and stopped accepting jobs here. The competent licensed plumber’s competent licensed colleagues did likewise. Thus the building placed its tenants at the mercies of the incompetent.
In the past 24 hours, four different low-cost plumbing companies have come to this luxury high-rise to fix its unconscionable heating problem. As a result of their efforts, the doctor’s office in the lobby has been flooded, and a pipe broke on the third floor, filling a tenant’s apartment with steam and pouring boiling water on her floor. Into this boiling water the tenant stepped when the steam she mistook for the smoke of a fire awoke her. I am grateful to hear that she is not seriously injured. Meanwhile, there is still no heat, and our daughter is sick with a hacking cough.
N.B. As a long-time tenant, I do not pay anything like $4,000 or $5,000 a month, but most people in the building do.
[tags]NYC, landlords, tenants, tenant rights, competence[/tags]
Today was the day we were supposed to close on our new home. We were going to pack Sunday and move Monday. Then we were going to fill the Happy Cog New York office with furniture and computers. And then we were going to Boston to talk for 60 minutes, and to Washington, DC to listen for 90.
We’re still going to Boston and DC, but the rest of the schedule has called in sick. We can’t close today because we got a better mortgage from a nicer (but slower) bank, and the nicer (but slower) bank must produce a bowel movement in the shape of a swan before issuing our check.
The office move is connected to the house move. The house move is contingent on the closing date.
Chaos! We have furniture being hauled to the wrong buildings on the wrong days. We have deliveries to postpone and shipments to despair on. We have computers and tickets and widgets of all sizes being FedExed to doormen who will ring for us in vain, their lonely vigils mocked by blinking Christmas displays.
But it’s a wonderful life. For, no matter how nutty the next weeks may be, and no matter how many stay-at-home, can-of-bean meals we consume in the coming decades to compensate for the funds we have spent and those we are about to spend, at the end of this nerve-wracking knuckle-cracking tango with lawyers and brokers and bankers and movers, our family will have a home.
[tags]homebuying, homes, nyc, newyorkcity, happycog, moving[/tags]
No moving parts. No gears to wear down, no pads to replace. The code-powered device is an engineer’s dream and a user’s delight—until the software heads south.
Take my iPhone. Please. This morning, it stopped taking photos, and none of the approved means of restoring erring iPhones to sanity—restart, reset, restore—is of the slightest use.
Oh, there is still a lens on the back of the iPhone, and there is still a Camera icon at the top right of the Home screen. Clicking that icon still initiates camera-like functionality. I can still frame my subject in the glorious full-screen viewfinder, still press the shutter button at the bottom of the viewfinder window, and still enjoy the satisfying shutter click sound effect when I do so.
But I will not have a photo to show for my efforts. For the device does not actually take photos any more.
White box outline hack
Yesterday it was a camera. Today it simply emulates one.
If I try to view my photo(s) in the Camera Roll section, the iPhone tells me it contains “No Photos” and advises: “You can take photos using the camera.” Awesome suggestion, dudes!
If I navigate to the Camera Roll from inside the Camera (by pressing the blue outlined camera roll icon at the bottom left of the Camera’s viewfinder window), I see an empty white box indicating where the photo I’ve taken would be if the iPhone had not obliterated the data the moment the shutter snapped. (For that’s what it seems to do: take photos and immediately obliterate their data.)
If I take five photos before pressing the camera roll icon, I see five empty white boxes indicating the five photos whose data the camera deleted. Take ten photos, see ten empty white boxes.
I discovered this bug after using the iPhone to take photos of my three-year-old wearing a bathing suit and angel wings (she dressed herself). They were the best photos I ever took whose data was immediately obliterated.
88 photos, 96 tears
Yesterday the camera worked beautifully. During a long and wonderful day, I ended up taking 88 photos with the thing, all of which I synced to iPhoto, and a few of which I uploaded to Flickr. And I think it’s the number of photos I shot yesterday that sent my iPhone on a first-class carriage to Bugland.
I have noticed in the past that the iPhone is most likely to act up after I take a lot of photos—more than, say, a dozen.
Sometimes when I’ve taken a lot of photos (for instance, at a wedding or concert), iPhoto doesn’t sync. Instead, it erroneously tells me that the iPhone contains no photos. Usually, though, restarting the Mac restores proper sync, and no photos are lost in the process.
Here, every photo I take is immediately lost.
The standards fixes don’t
None of these help:
- Restarting the Mac doesn’t help.
- Restarting the iPhone doesn’t help.
- Resetting the iPhone doesn’t help.
- Even restoring the iPhone’s software—the court of last resort—doesn’t help.
Firmware problem? Hardware problem? Dude, I just work here.
Pin the bug on the lug
Mac fans are like Maoists. We are masters of cognitive dissonance. (Look it up.) If an Apple product delivers a less than satisfying experience, we assume the person reporting the problem is a fool. If not a fool, he or she must be an apostate.
You’ll have questions. Am I running the latest version of the iPhone’s software and firmware? I am. Am I running the latest version of iTunes? I am. Did I erase my iPhone lately? No. Was my iPhone “jailbroken” (i.e. hacked)? No. It’s a standard iPhone running Apple’s iPhone OS and nothing else.
Did I drop the iPhone, hold it under water, boil it in oil? No, no, no.
Do I think busted iPhone functionality is an earth-shattering problem? No, I think it is a luxury problem. Not only is it the least of the world’s problems, it is the least of my problems. Still. I saw at least a dozen things I absolutely had to photgraph today, and shot not a one. And that makes Sonny blue.
Thanks for sharing
Options. Be proud that my iPhone is “special.” Disdain photography. Cultivate an inverse snobbery that fools no one. (“You take … pictures? Really. How quaint.”) Or bring the damn thing to the Apple store nearest me and demand a replacement. That sounds like the winner.
It’s all fun and games until someone loses a photo.
[tags]apple, iphone, bugs, firmware, updates[/tags]
- Yesterday I spoke at BusinessWeek and was interviewed for a podcast that airs next week.
- Tomorrow I will speak for Carson at Future of Web Design.
- I will not be nicely dressed.
- That is because the fancy drycleaner—the best in town—has not yet returned the sharp clothes I wore at An Event Apart San Francisco.
- Don’t get me wrong. I do have another dress shirt.
- But I wore it to BusinessWeek yesterday. Hence, nothing “tailored” that is also clean.
- Which means nothing tailored for my meeting today with a client whose business and premises are somewhat traditional.
- All because my drycleaner takes longer to clean my dress shirts than my company takes to design a website.
- Almost.
- I would switch, but the other drycleaners in my neighborhood tend to shrink my shirts and then deny responsibility for the damage.
- So. What to wear.
- I might go for the Steve Jobs look.
- Or I might go for the “Zeldman” look.
- Which, admittedly, is not much of a business look.
- But I got into this business so I would not have to dress up. That was kind of the point. Learn HTML, and work in your underwear.
- Now that I actually have to dress for clients and the public, I have, in the words of Imelda Marcos, nothing to wear.
- Although Imelda was talking about shoes and my problem is shirts.
- I could buy a new shirt.
- If I didn’t have to work today.
- Why, yes, I have been using Twitter. Why do you ask?
[tags]zeldman, businessweek, FOWD, futureofwebdesign, carson, aneventapart, aeasf07, mockturtleneck, stevejobs, apple, twitter[/tags]
Categories
Into the murky deep
Tucked away in a quiet corner of The New York Public Library at 42nd Street sits a small, clean, neatly appointed classroom. At 3:30, we commandeered it for an impromptu meeting with an attorney.
For half an hour, the secret, quiet room was a lawyer’s office. In it, after discussing various ways the deal could end tragically, we signed five copies of a contract to purchase an apartment. I wrote the biggest check I have ever written in my life. And then, like bats startled by light, we flew off in different directions.
The attorney headed to his next meeting. The wife hopped a bus downtown to hand our documents to a secretary at the seller’s lawyer’s office. And I ran here.
We do not own a home yet. A lot could still go horribly wrong. But after two weeks of frantic paddling, we have dived cleanly into the murky deep.
Related
[tags]homeownership, homebuying[/tags]