June 5,

Fire follow-up

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I see that a section of Main St is still closed off. I had to drive around the back way when I got home from work today. Here’s a follow-up article from News 12.

Walking down there, it looks like King Tut and Mike’s Courtside are both in pretty bad shape. I never ate at King Tut, but I got stuff from Mike’s almost every week. Right now, their web site isn’t loading and I haven’t seen anything posted from them on social media. I guess they’re basically gone now. There are apartments above both of those businesses, and it looks like they’re all uninhabitable right now too. So, not good. But things could have been much worse. A lot of the buildings on Main St are basically connected to each other, so it seems like a fire could spread easily. And I haven’t heard about anyone being hurt in the fire, so that’s good.

Temptation

I’ve now been in “fully-vaccinated” status for a few days. I still haven’t managed to talk myself into going out without a mask though. I almost tried doing my laundry today without a mask, but, well, I guess I’m not ready.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on social media for a lot of upcoming in-person events, and I’m starting to get kind of tempted. I haven’t committed to anything, but there’s a lot going on. Here’s a few examples:

  • Duke Farms is running a farmers market every Sunday through the summer. There’s a fair chance that I’ll head over there tomorrow. An outdoor farmers market isn’t much of a risk, of course. I went to the Bridgewater farmers market a few times last summer, but that’s been discontinued. And I don’t think they’re doing one here in Somerville this summer either.
  • There’s a walking tour tomorrow at Wallace House & Old Dutch Parsonage. I’ve managed to live in Somerville for around 25 years now, without ever actually visiting Wallace House. I should really go.
  • A friend texted me about the Immersive van Gogh thing that just started up in NYC. I guess there’s actually two of these things going on in NYC now, but I think the one I linked to is the better one. Both of these seem like they could be major tourist draws. I’d kind of like to go and see one. And since they have timed tickets, I guess I could see it without having to worry about too large a crowd. (I guess it depends on how many people the organizer chooses to try to cram in at once, and how well they manage entry and exit.)
  • Garden State Comic Fest is taking place this weekend, at the Jersey Gardens Mall in Elizabeth. I’ve gone to this in previous years, when it was held in Morristown. I’d be tempted to go this year, but I don’t really want to drive to Elizabeth. And I’m not really interested in any of their guests this year. Nor am I that interested in buying any comics or toys right now. But it’s worth noting that this is (as far as I can tell) the first (relatively) big comic con to be held in NJ since the start of the pandemic. When they first announced it, a few months back, I was really skeptical about it. But I guess it’s safe enough to go ahead with it now.
  • On a related note, but on a much larger scale, I got an email about NYCC this week. They’re going to go ahead with the con this year, in October, at the Javits, as usual. I’m really hopeful that COVID will be entirely under control by October, but I’m still worried that it won’t be. Tickets are going on sale soon, and I’d like to buy one, but I haven’t entirely talked myself into it yet.
  • I also just noticed that the NYCC folks are doing an online Metaverse thing from June 7-13. I should take a look at the panel schedule for that and see if there’s anything I want to watch. And they’re also launching a Metaverse Membership program which probably isn’t worth the cost, but might be worth looking into.
  • I haven’t been to a Somerset Patriots game since 2019. They’re now affiliated with the NY Yankees, so a lot has changed since the last time I saw them. Looking at this page on their site, it appears that the stadium is now open at 100% capacity, with masks not required. I guess I wouldn’t be too worried about that, since it’s outdoors. There’s a double-header today, with fireworks afterwards. I’d be a little tempted to go to that, if it wasn’t going to be 90º out today.
  • Only semi-related to the rest of this stuff: The Centre Pompidou is going to open a satellite location in Jersey City, in 2024. That’s quite a ways off, but worth mentioning, I think. I saw the Centre Pompidou in Paris once, a long time ago, but only from the outside. I’d love to go back to Paris and actually see the inside of the museum. (We also missed out on the Louvre on that trip, due to a scheduling snafu, so that’s two Paris museums I need to go see someday.)

So that’s my list of tempting in-person events that are coming up in the near future. I’m still not committing to anything, but I’m starting to bookmark some interesting stuff and create some notes in Evernote. So, who knows, maybe there will be a few weekends this summer where I don’t spend the whole weekend in my apartment reading comics and watching TV.

SharePoint, Somerville, and so on

A little follow-up on some subjects from yesterday’s post:

I complained a bit yesterday about the “hundreds of files” pulled in on a new “Hello World” SharePoint Framework project. I checked today, and it’s actually more than 50,000 files, totaling up to about 500 MB. Scary. I’ve also been a little worried about all the security warnings issued by npm when scaffolding a SPFx project. Apparently that’s all fine though and I should just ignore them, according to this blog post. I guess none of the stuff that npm is checking is actually ever deployed to SharePoint, so it’s fine.

NJTV News tonight had a segment on restaurant and retail reopenings that spent some time talking about Somerville. I guess we’re likely to go ahead with the plan to close down Main Street to car traffic a few nights a week that I mentioned yesterday. I’ve still got some reservations about that, but nobody asked my opinion. (Yeah, I know, I could start attending town meetings. They’re virtual now, so I don’t even need to leave my couch. I’m still probably not going to do it though.)

One other benefit of having “attended” Microsoft Build this year: They’re letting attendees buy some stuff from the Microsoft company store. They’re only allowing purchases of digital goods, so no discounts on Surface hardware or anything like that. But I did pick up a few things at bargain prices. I got a Windows 10 Pro license for $40, and used it to upgrade my desktop PC from Home to Pro. And I got a one-year extension on my Microsoft 365 Family account for only $20. (That’s usually $100/year. I get the Home Use Program discount, which makes it $70/year. So $20 is really low.) And I got a two-year Xbox Live Gold sub for $50. (That’s usually $10/month or $60/year.)

I don’t know if I’ll actually get much use out of the Xbox Live Gold account. As I mentioned recently, I’ve had the Xbox for a year now, and I barely use it, except as a DVD/Blu-ray player. I’ll have to keep an eye on the Games with Gold stuff and see if they have anything I’m interested in. I really want to start playing video games again, but there’s so much other stuff to do too.

War and Peace

I started reading War and Peace this month, as a group read for the Great American Read Goodreads group I’m in. I’ve also been running the group for the last month or two, since the original moderator took a break. So I’ve done a bit of internet research on the book, in preparation for reading it, and so I could share it with the group. So I might as well also share it here, and mark the point where I started reading. Then, assuming I finish, I can write another blog post at the end.

I’ve allocated two months for reading it (June and July), which is probably a bit optimistic. But that’s more about not tying up the Goodreads group for three or four months on one book than it is about how long it takes to read War and Peace. I imagine we’ll start a new group read in August, but I expect I’ll still be working on War and Peace through to Labor Day, at least.

I’m reading this Kindle version, which was free when I bought it, but now seems to be 99¢. It includes an excerpt from a book called Give War And Peace A Chance, which might be worth reading also. The translation is by Aylmer and Louise Maude, done in the 1920’s, I think. Comparing it to bits of other translations that I’ve looked at, I think it may be the most accessible to a casual American reader. And it’s apparently in the public domain, since it’s the version available at Project Gutenberg.

When I get into something like this, I often overdo the research, and sometimes go into a weird mode where I also start buying related stuff. In this case, I’ve also bought the BBC radio dramatization of the book from 2014 and the BBC TV miniseries, from 2016, both from Apple/iTunes. I thought that seeing/hearing the characters might help me keep them straight. I’ve started listening to the radio version, and it’s pretty good. The TV mini-series inspired a few good articles at The Guardian, such as this 10 things you need to know article and this could you read War and Peace in a week bit.

Mysterious Marvel Kindle Sale

From Bleeding Cool:

A few days ago, unpromoted and for no apparent reason, Marvel titles on Amazon Kindle dropped. Really dropped. To between 70% to 97.5% off.

Very weird. Comics bought from Amazon for the Kindle can also be read through the Comixology app, and I’ve noticed in the past that the Amazon/Kindle price for a given book is often synced to the Comixology price. That’s definitely not the case here as, for instance, Comixology is running a one-day Spectacular Spider-Man sale, where most of their sale prices are more than the current Amazon prices.

I’m not sure what Amazon’s motive is here. It’s not an advertised sale, and the prices are so low, they can’t be making much money off it. Maybe they’re just trying to get more people interested in reading comics on the Kindle?

I bought twelve books on Friday, for a grand total of around $25. (I wasn’t going to buy any more, but I broke down and bought two more today.)

I’ve been trying to control my spending on digital comics. I buy a lot of stuff from Comixology (and Humble and Dark Horse Digital) when it’s on sale, then I just keep a running list in Evernote of what I’ve bought and what I’ve read. My Comixology unread list is at 99 items right now. Most of those entries are collections or runs of single issues, so it’s not 99 comics; it’s more like 999 comics.

But hey, as Dennis the Menace once said, “One thing I’ve learned in life is you can never have too many comic books!”

done with PayPal

I’ve had a PayPal account since the year 2000, but I gave up and closed it yesterday after reading about their new terms of service, which basically say that they can robocall you and send SMS messages to you whenever they want, for any reason. They seem to be backpedaling on it a bit now, but not nearly enough. For the last few years, I’ve only been using PayPal to pay for eBay auctions. Now that PayPal and eBay are splitting up, I’m hoping eBay will make it easier to pay for stuff through alternate means.

I’ve noticed that a lot of sites that take PayPal now also accept payments through Amazon, which is something I’m much more comfortable with.

SSL is working

So my SSL cert came through (after about 12 hours, instead of the expected 4). I’ve added:
define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);
to my wp-config.php, and it seems to be working. I think it’ll be OK to have the whole admin under SSL and not just the login; SSL doesn’t seem to have slowed down the admin interface.

I realized also that I should make sure the WordPress iOS app will connect with SSL. According to the FAQ, it does, though I don’t know if I have any good way of checking that.

Beginning COBOL for Programmers

Holy cow, somebody actually published a new book on COBOL this year. I haven’t touched COBOL in years, and I don’t plan on touching it again any time soon. But I guess I shouldn’t laugh too much at the idea that COBOL skills are still relevant.