Author: Andrew Huey

NYCC day two

I’ve got some time to kill this morning, so I might as well write up another con report. As I mentioned yesterday, I decided to skip the con in the morning, and went to the Met instead. I saw the new Delacroix exhibit, then killed some time having a coffee and reading a book.

Then I went to the NY Historical Society for the Harry Potter exhibit. I had some time before my scheduled entry time, so I wandered around the museum a bit. I’d never been there before, so that was worthwhile. The History of Magic exhibit itself was very crowded. They were letting only ticketed people in, at their appropriate time, but it seems like maybe they were a little overly optimistic about how quickly people would get through it. I think that, if there’s a chance to see it when the crowds are more manageable, it would be pretty fun. The NY Times review, in fact, mentions a number of interesting items that I didn’t notice at all. (Oh, and the gift shop was almost as big as the exhibit itself. Lots of crazy Harry Potter paraphernalia for sale.)

After that, I went to the con. I didn’t do much, really. I just walked the floor a bit and checked out Artist’s Alley. I saw Peter David there, and said hello, and bought a signed Zorro novel from him. I went back to the hotel to grab some dinner and clean up a bit, then went back to Javits for the DC All-Stars panel. That was fun. I went back to the hotel after that and just watched a couple of Doctor Who episodes on my iPad, then went to bed at 9:30pm. (Yeah, I’m getting too old for this stuff.)

I don’t have much of a plan for today (Saturday). There are enough interesting panels today that I’ll probably spend the whole day at the con. I’m not sure how I’m going to get back to the hotel afterward, since the 7 line will be shut down and I haven’t had much luck catching cabs around Javits so far. So I’m liable to walk back to the hotel again, which I’ve done a few times already, and isn’t horrible, but it’s definitely a bit painful. (Again, I’m getting too old…)

NYCC day one

I’m sitting in my hotel room this morning, eating breakfast, after a pretty long day at NYCC yesterday.

I started the day off by wandering the floor a bit, and bought a few comics. Then I went to the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child panel. That was fun. They had the actors for all the lead parts there. (I need to see Cursed Child again one of these days.)

Later, I went to a DC Meet the Publishers panel, with Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. I’m cautiously optimistic about some of the stuff DC is doing right now, like Grant Morrison’s Green Lantern or some of the new stuff Bendis is working on. But other stuff definitely falls into the “not for me” category, like the Primal Age toys. They’re not for me, and that’s fine.

Then, after taking a break, I came back to the con for the StarTalk panel. That was mostly silly fun, but it ended with Dr. Tyson reading an open letter to NASA, on the occasion of their shared 60th birthday, that was quite touching. (I looked around online for the text of the letter, and couldn’t find it, but did find a similar one from ten years ago, for their shared 50th birthday.)

As an aside, I’m glad I stayed in the city last night, instead of taking the train home and back in this morning, since there was a NJ Transit derailment last night. No one was hurt, apparently, but it screwed up last night’s rush hour, and I think is still screwing things up today.

My initial plan for today was to go to the con in the morning, then head up to the NY Historical Society for the Harry Potter exhibit at 12:45, then back to the con. But I’m worried about how hard it’ll be to get a cab from Javits to the exhibit. The area around Javits is kind of a mess right now. And there’s really not much that I need to see at the con this morning. So I will probably skip the con in the morning and go uptown to see a museum or two. Then I can go to the con in the afternoon, after the exhibit.

I did a lot of walking yesterday, over 20,000 steps according to my watch. I think I want to be smarter about transportation today and maybe cut down on the walking a bit. I’m getting too old for all this exercise.

NYCC tomorrow

I’m (kind of) ready for NYCC tomorrow. Really, I’m not much more ready than I was a month ago. I’ve jotted down some notes about panels and stuff that I want to go to, but I’m basically going to wing it. Here’s a high-level article about the show this year that’s pretty informative.

My plan for tomorrow is to try to follow my usual weekday schedule, getting out of bed at 6 and leaving the house around 7:20, which will get me on a 7:40 train, which will then get me into the city by 9. Then, I’ll stop at my hotel, drop off my bag, and get down to Javits, probably a little before 10. Or I could take it easy at home for a bit, take a later train, and push everything back an hour. I haven’t been sleeping well the last few days, so maybe taking it easy tomorrow morning isn’t such a bad idea. And my neck and shoulders have been bothering me, so I’m not sure how well I’m going to deal with lugging a backpack around NYC for four days. We’ll see. If I fall apart, I can always skip out of the con early and go back to my hotel room for a nap.

I’m a little disorganized about my electronics on this trip too. I’m taking my iPhone, iPad, and Kindle, along with a keyboard for the iPad. I’m going to try to get by with no laptop or desktop computer for a few days. And I’m going to try to avoid checking my email too often. (Or Facebook or Twitter or the NY Times…) I’m looking at all the charging cables and adapters I have, and thinking I should get some kind of multi-purpose multi-port travel charger so I can cut down on all the doodads. Maybe for the next trip.

Well, I hope I can relax and untangle my brain a bit over the next few days. (I’ve also been keeping up with my meditation this week, so I’ll try to keep that up during the con too, probably in my hotel room in the morning or at night before bed.)

Meditation Progress

It’s probably overkill to be posting an update on my progress with meditation, since my last post on the subject was less than a week ago. But I’m trying to stick with it, and obsessing about it a little. Obsessing about something that’s supposed to help me calm down and relax is probably counter-productive, but it’s my way. I managed to meditate four times last week, for about 10 minutes each time. I finished the meditation essentials series in the Meditation Studio app.

I think I have a basic idea of how this stuff works now, but I don’t quite feel like I’m ready to just set a timer and sit quietly yet. And I’m not sure if I want to continue with the Meditation Studio app. So I’m trying a different app now, Insight Timer. I started their seven-day intro course today. I’m guessing it’s going to go over a lot of the same ideas I’ve already gone through in Meditation Studio, but the point is just to have something to reinforce the basics as I try to establish the habit.

There’s a lot of content in Insight Timer, but it’s a pretty messy app, in some ways. But it works. It’s a free app, and has a lot of free content. There’s an interesting post on Medium from the current owner of the app. I hope his approach to generating income from it works. In a nutshell, he’s not trying to switch everybody to a paid subscription. He’s offering a couple of features, like offline listening, as relatively inexpensive subscriptions. And he’s offering some content for sale, via one-time purchase. So I think I can probably use the app for free for now, without any worries. If I want to pay for features and/or content later, I can, but I don’t have to worry about ponying up for a one-year subscription any time soon.

Morning walk

I went for a walk this morning and experimented with the Camera+ 2 app on my phone a bit. Nothing super-interesting, but I thought a few of the photos looked good enough to post.

A while back, I took advantage of Apple’s free offer for Obscura 2, but I haven’t tried that yet. I should go for another walk, and try that one out.

morning walk 9/30/18

Internet Annoyances

I’ve been getting increasingly annoyed with my cable TV and internet provider, Optimum. I vented a bit about them last year, and I guess it’s time to vent some more. In addition to all of the other things that bug me about them, they’ve just added a new one: ad injection. I was browsing on my iPad last night, and got a giant banner ad from Optimum, patting themselves on the back for giving me a free trial of The Movie Channel. This is on a page that would not normally have ads. Then, this morning, I got another banner ad from Optimum, on my desktop computer, again on a page that shouldn’t have had any ads.

I did some searching, and yep, I’m not the only one seeing this. Here a DSL Reports thread about it. (TL;DR: Apparently, HTTPS Everywhere might solve it.)

I’ve seen ads from them on my phone, while using their WiFi hotspots, and that’s annoying, but not unexpected. But doing this on my home internet service is pretty horrible behavior. I haven’t experimented much, but I guess the ad blocker that I use on iOS doesn’t catch this, nor does uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger on my desktop. I think that being on my VPN might help, since I haven’t seen this on my Mac, and I have that set up so that it’s (almost) always connected to the VPN. And I think I still have my router configured to use Optimum’s DNS servers. I should probably change that, even if that won’t help with this particular problem.

Earlier this week, I read a good post on Troy Hunt’s blog about Pi-Hole. I’ve thought about setting up a Pi-Hole box on my network before, but it always seemed like it would be overkill. Maybe not, though, if my ISP can’t be trusted to leave my web browsing alone. It’s bad enough that they email me and call me, trying to up-sell me on faster internet service and more expensive TV packages. Now, that’s not enough, and they need to shove ads into my browser too. Ugh. (I’m not sure if Pi-Hole would actually help with this issue either, but it seems like it might be a good idea.)

So I guess that’s my venting for today. Optimum is the only option I have for internet access. (Verizon Fios is an option in my area, but my building isn’t wired for it.) And internet access isn’t really something someone in my profession can do without. So I guess I’m stuck with them for now.

giving meditation another try

I blogged back in January that I was going to give meditation a try this year. I got off to a slow start with that, then pretty much gave up on it back in April or thereabouts. Well, I’m going to try again.

I still have two books on meditation waiting to be read: 10% Happier and Search Inside Yourself. (The Great American Read group that I’m in on Goodreads has really sidetracked all my other reading.)

I was using the Meditation Studio app (mentioned in my January post) to try to learn meditation, and I guess I’m going to pick back up on that. I had finished their starter series, and am now partway through the meditation essentials series. My short-term goal is to do one meditation from that series every weeknight this week. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve noticed that Meditation Studio was recently acquired by the company that makes the Muse headband, which worries me a little. Muse seems like a bit of a gimmick, while Meditation Studio seems like more of a serious no-nonsense app. So we’ll see if they keep the app as-is, or mess it up.

I still haven’t signed up for a paid subscription to the app. As a legacy customer, I can subscribe for $24/year. (The regular rate right now is $50/year.) Some of the more popular meditation apps, like Headspace, cost around $100/year. (You’d think an app that just helps you sit quietly for a few minutes wouldn’t need to be so expensive…) I should probably hold off on paying for anything until I see if I can stick with it for more than a few days.

Somerset Patriots season over

I purchased two seats for a 13-game “mini-plan” for Somerset Patriots games this year, as a sort of experiment. I first went to a Patriots game in 2014, and I’ve been going to more games over the last few years. Only a few games a year, but I’ve enjoyed them. For this year, they offered a 13-game mini-plan that got you some of the benefits of being a season ticket holder, but for just 13 games (for the cost of about 10 single tickets). The games were spread throughout the season. Some were pretty random weekday games, and some were weekend games with fireworks or giveaways. My (overly optimistic) plan was that I’d use one seat myself and give the other to a friend who I know is a big Patriots fan, but who can’t afford tickets that often. What actually happened was that my friend couldn’t make it to most of the games on the plan, so I traded in most of his tickets for other games, and never actually saw him this year. (And I think at least half of his tickets didn’t get used.) As to my own tickets, I only made it to seven or eight games. So I didn’t really come out ahead, financially, versus buying just individual tickets to the games.

One of the benefits of the plan was that it included free playoff tickets, if the Patriots made it to the playoffs. They did, and the “Liberty Division Championship Series” was this weekend. The first two games were in Long Island, and the LI Ducks won both of those. Games three through five were here in NJ and the Patriots, of course, would have to win all three. They did win games 3 and 4 (which I missed). I went to game 5 yesterday, but they lost. So their season is over. Thinking back on it, I’m glad I got out to more games this year than usual.

I don’t know if I’ll try for that 13-game plan again next year, but I might. It’s weird going to a baseball game alone, but not as weird as I thought it would be. And it’s nice to get out of the apartment and sit outside for a while on a summer day. The games are honestly not that exciting, generally, but it’s a chance to get some fresh air and relax, without thinking too much about work or politics or anything.

SSD upgrade, part two

I finished my SSD upgrade last week. (Here’s part one and part zero of the SSD saga.) The bracket showed up in the mail, so I opened the case up, took out the drive cage, screwed everything together, buttoned it all back up and… it all worked. It took me a while to figure out how to orient the bracket in the cage, but once I figured that out, it was easy enough.

The old spinning hard drive is now a secondary drive, and not giving me any problems. I’ll probably reformat it soon so I can use it as a backup drive. The new SSD is working great. The machine boots faster and loads programs a lot faster.

I’m not sure why I held off on doing the SSD upgrade for so long. I know my excuse is that I was waiting for prices to come down on 1 TB SSDs, but I could have done this a year ago, and they wouldn’t have been that much more expensive, really.

Oh well. I’m hoping this upgrade will help me keep this PC usable for a few more years. I don’t want to have to replace it any time soon.

Five years of losing it

I just realized today that I’ve recently hit the five-year mark since I decided to start losing weight. Here’s a blog post from five years ago today where I discuss my initial progress. (I didn’t mention my starting weight in that post, but it was 230 pounds.)

I’m still tracking all of my meals with Lose It, and I still subscribe to their premium version. I’m including a graph of my weight over the last five years here. So far this year, I’ve basically maintained my weight at 135 (+/- 2 pounds). I’m pretty comfortable at this weight, so that’s fine. (Though I’d kind of like to get down to 130, just so that I can say I lost an even 100 pounds. But that’s probably not a good idea.)

The green line on the graph is from the last time I set an actual goal weight in Lose It: 160 pounds. Once I hit that weight, I stopped actively trying to lose weight, and just kind of let things go until I bottomed out at a stable weight, which, for me, is apparently 135. I’m sticking with a goal of about 2100 calories per day, and I’m usually right around there (+/- 200).

I’ve also done well on the exercise front, at least in terms of step count. I almost always hit at least 7500 steps a day and often go over 10,000. I never really did adopt any other exercise habits though. I never joined a gym or anything like that.

I don’t really have any profound weight loss insights to share here. If you’re looking to lose weight, different things are going to work for different people. For me, I think this is the stuff that was key:

  • Tracking all of my calories. Anything less than that makes it too easy to trick yourself into thinking you’re doing well, when it fact you’re still eating way too much.
  • Packing my own lunch every day and not going out for lunch anymore. (I still go out occasionally, but maybe just once or twice a month.) It’s not hard to do, if you can figure out a few things you like to eat that stay within your calorie budget and aren’t hard to prepare and toss in a bag every day.
  • Drinking mostly water. I’ve just about stopped drinking juice, beer, soda, and sweetened iced tea. (I still drink a lot of coffee, but there aren’t many calories in that, if you don’t load it up with milk and sugar.)
  • In addition to the Lose It book I mentioned in the original post, this book on Volumetrics was pretty useful too.