Dotting I's and Crossing T's.

  Well, most of my friends know I enjoy much of the music from the 1930's thru the 1970's.  Disco left me wanting for music which had more than just a danceable beat.  The 1930's & 1940's were the era of the big bands, and I'll always enjoy hearing the music of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Count Basie and others popular way back when.  The 1950's brought us Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis and others.  And then Beatlemania hit in the 1960's with the British Invasion.  By the time the 1970's came around, I had started listening to Country music, and developed a taste for Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and others.  RQS has noted that most of the people who made the music I enjoy are dead.  And yet, due to the recording technology of the 20th century, their performances will always live on. Lately, I've been listening to pop standards made popular by Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett and others.  There is

This past weekend, RQS and I rode the subway more than usual.  First, we found remnants of a subway station entrance that is still used for location shoots.  And then, we caught a film crew packing up for the day.   But first.... On Saturday, RQS and I went to the Nom Wah Tea Parlor (Nolita) to feast on some Dim Sum.  It was been a long time since we were there, and we didn't want to risk not being able to get served at their Chinatown location.  While there, we saw some subway times reminiscent of the subway station we just exited: When I asked the fellow behind the counter whether the store's dining area included part of a subway entrance, he confirmed my suspicions and told me that the site was still used for an occasional film shoot.  (The staircase in the last picture above would have led into Nom Wah's dining area, on the other side of the Bowery from where the current entrance/exit is..) But this was not all of our subway stories for the weekend. Earlier on the weeke

  Ne w York City is filled with many old buildings, many of them over 150 years old.  The above building has to have changed hands many times, so the 1873 and 1906 markers above the windows no longer have much meaning in today's world.  Was the company who built this building founded in 1873, and moved to this building in 1906?  So much history in this city has been torn down, paved over, or altered beyond recognition.   This weekend, RQS and I went to see an off-Broadway play called "A Sign of the Times."  It's plot (or what little you can call a plot) is there to tie 1960's era songs together to tell a little tale of a small town girl who comes to NYC in the 1960's and finds the world much different than she expected.  As much as I love 1960's music, I'm not sure of what to make of this play.  RQS enjoyed the music very much.  But I was underwhelmed about how the songs were assembled.  Although I loved the songs and enjoyed the performers singing the

  Yes.  When one buys a new car, one has something akin to teething pains when one is learning about the quirks of the car.  And I am learning quick! Yesterday, my car wasn't recognizing voice commands when I wanted to make a call to one of my friends. A call to the salesman gave me an idea of how to resolve this problem.  Now, I have lost some of the features of Android Auto and of Subaru's Starlink for another unknown reason.  I figure that I'll send another message to the salesman - only to let him know that what he suggested worked, and that I have another problem that I'm working on.  (No, I'm not asking him for help on this one.  But I figure that he will be able to help someone else with my Android phone issues using the info I give him, as his main phone experience is with iPhones.) - - - - - - In a previous post , I commented on the "secret" sharing of driver data between Auto Manufacturers, Lexis/Nexis, and Insurance Companies.  This practice dis

  I never knew how much stuff I had stashed in my Honda Civic until I started emptying it out.  Not only did I find out that the Civic had more room in its trunk than the Crosstrek has in its storage area, but I am also finding a lot of stuff in the nooks and crannies of the passenger compartment that I have to find homes for. My first pass at cleaning out the old car resulted in me putting a large storage container into my apartment's downstairs storage compartment.  Then, I realized that things such as my phone charger were left in the old car.  So, I transferred them to the new car the next day.  Of course, there was even more stuff to transfer, such as my "coin can" (container for spare change) and my "Club" (steering wheel lock).  And still, I have to get around to cleaning stuff out from under the seats and then doing a factory reset on the old car to clear out my Bluetooth/phone settings. Luckily, DCD won't be able to take possession of the car for at

  One of the phrases I learned from my days as a computer programmer is: RTFM.  This phrase, RTFM, is described in polite terms as: "Read the Fine Manual".  Since most of us programmers were fluent in multiple programming languages, at least one spoken language and profanity, we usually substituted a better word for "Fine".  Last night, I had one of these situations where the manual would have stumped me if I had read it. When I bought my first car, the owners manual was less than 100 pages long.  Most of the controls were self evident, the stalk on the left of the steering shaft controlled the lights (some cars had headlight controls elsewhere), the stalk on the right of the steering wheel controlled the wipers, and the gearbox lever was usually on the floor between the driver and passenger.  Even without an owners manual, the average person could operate the vehicle in complete confidence that s/he wouldn't screw up anything important. The Subaru Crosstrek is