October 2, 2007: Hackers and Painters

Nothing exciting this morning, just a lot of work.  I was quite busy all morning.

I have finally gotten around to reading “Hackers and Painters” by Paul GrahamHackers and Paintersis one of the most important and influential collections of essays in the IT industry.  I have gotten most of the content of it either from reading isolated essays or by hearing Paul speak from the book.  But now I am finally working through it cover to cover.

Around noon I hopped the train into Manhattan to check out my new office.  It was supposed to have been set up and working either yesterday afternoon or this morning.  So this was my “check out” time while things were slow at the office (mostly because I humped all morning to get my slate cleared).  It turned out that I do not yet have security access to the building nor do I have a desktop.  Although I do have quite a nice office (read: cubicle) with an amazing view – and I’m talking ten foot windows that run the entire wall behind me.  Very cool.

I grabbed lunch, ran an errand and took the train back to Newark.  I figured that it might be a wasted trip but I have to do it a few times to get the office up and running so it is a price that must be paid at some point.  I am sure that there will be other wasted trips down the line before everything is set up.

I worked for a few more hours after arriving back in Newark.  Dominica got home with a very excited Oreo.  He had a wonderful time and daycare being obnoxious and terrorizing all of the other dogs.  He has so much energy to burn off.

Dominica was finally in a mood to leave the house and get something different to eat.  So we walked up the street to the Theater Square Grill and we ate outside in their open summer tent restaurant – Calcada.  The food was excellent and the service, as always, was perfect.  They were very slow and it was quite depressing to have so few people eating there.  True, it is Tuesday.  But still.

We came home and decided to call it an early night.  We watched the pilot for Chuck on our AppleTV.  The show is weak and sad.  We won’t be watching that again anytime soon.  It sounded good on the commercials and the plot device gave it some hope but it is just bland Hollywood weirdness that really just grinds home how disconnected the uneducated Hollywood system is with the rest of the universe.  The show is watchable but totally uninteresting.

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