Monte Crisco Hot Dog Heaven

Hey, babies. Happy Michaelmas.

So I had my last day of work at DataSynapse on the 7th. Didn't do much in the way of celebrating -- whimper, not bang, you know -- but earlier in the week I did get all the pennies off the top of the fridge. See, for the past four and a half years, I'd been tossing my pennies up on top of the 50-cent soda machine in the office kitchen. My stated goal was to demolish the machine under the sheer weight of my loose change, but that never quite came to pass. So instead I figured I'd collect 'em and do something nice with the money. I put on some latex gloves and got up on a stool and holy god was it filthy up there but I gathered all the pennies and took them over to Commerce Bank. They have a machine that counts and collates change -- which they give you paper money for -- and if you guess how much you're pouring in within two dollars of the actual amount, you get a prize. Turned out I had $8.69 and my prize was a red felt hat, one like Santa Claus would wear. I put it on before the dude was even done cashing me out.

My friend Bryan and I hit up the Gristedes and. using the above amount as a hard spending maximum and with me still wearing the hat, selected two six-packs of Natural "Natty" Ice. We took it back to the office and split it among some of the tech people who were around. That was nice, although the natty made me feel kind of sluggish and unhappy for the rest of the day. But that was kind of it.

The new job is going swimmingly, but I'm there all the goddamn time. Initial impressions: Everybody is really friendly, and even the people with whom I don't know if I'd wanna hang out outside of work are shockingly good at what they do -- and good at a whole lot of other things, too. They're all polymaths. It's great. I'm a bit less worried about being able to do what they want, but I've still been staying 'til at least 8:00 every night for the past two weeks -- of course, it doesn't hurt that Nick, one of the founders, brought in a copy of Rock Band for "research purposes." (The Onion AV Club is right -- it is your life, now.) But, you know, yeah, I'm having a pretty great time, although, perhaps not inexplicably, my stomach's been all over the map. I even managed to get some mild but quite unpleasant food poisony-thing last Friday that forced me to beat a hasty and shameful early retreat home with my sweater tied around my waist. This surprises none of you.

Eve and I went to Mercury Lounge last weekend to see what we thought was going to be an awesome lineup of bands -- Team Robespierre opening for these dudes named Yeasayer (whom Eve's into, though she referred to them more than once as "Yeaslayer"). Unfortunately, we got confused about the order of the bands and showed up just as The Team were getting off stage. And they sounded strangely fratted-out and sloppy and not very much fun. And then this weird boy-girl duo who called themselves High Places went on and played this very self-important, serious set that involved a lot of slide whistle and very quiet singing. Yeasayer themselves were, you know, technically skillful, except that like most bands these days, they were paying some kind of ironic (or unironic, who fucking cares any more) tribute to 70s classic rock. Plus Eve and I were still confused about the lineup for the first couple of their songs and were expecting them to be Team Robespierre and play some punky Team Robespierre-style songs. And I was still kind of light-headed and queasy from the events of the previous evening. So it was not the best show I'd ever been to.

What else?

Ted got me a ticket to see this Edward Albee play that's opening on Broadway called The Homecoming with Ian McShane in the lead role. The cast was really great, especially Al Swearengen, who was genuinely scary in this one scene where he throws a bunch of punches and then demands "a kiss and a cuddle," but the play itself kind of zigs where it should zag. It's, you know, uneven. But maybe it's just me -- I read Ben Brantley's review of it in the Times, thinking he'd pan the material, but he thought the whole thing was great.

That night after the play I headed to Brooklyn Heights at the invitation of Katharine to watch the boxing match between Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather on her dad's HBO Pay-Per-View. You know me, babies -- I don't know much about sports, and certainly nothing about boxing, so this was a new thing for me. Boxing is kind of scary, it turns out, but it's not boring, and Hatton and Mayweather are clearly both pros, each coming in with, literally, no losses on his respective record. Mayweather was widely favored to win, though K-Rod's dude and his friend Matt were rooting for Hatton -- who is Mancunian and has this very cool way of flying into the fray with his right extended, like Superman. Long story short -- they both fought very well, but Mayweather won in the 10th round after knocking Hatton into the turnbuckle. Not bad, though, considering that both those guys are used to winning their fights in, like, a single round. Plus, both were able, even after being pummeled by each other for the previous 40 minutes, to give coherent interviews and, in Mayweather's case, to do some promotional bidniz on the mic.

There was a domestic disturbance in the apartment across the way a week ago. The cops came, lots of them. Tonight on the way home, this little day-care center on 4th Ave. was in the final throes of burning down, surrounded by fire engines. The ceiling plaster in the bathroom is collapsing, again. I still love my neighborhood and my apartment.

Had brunch last Sunday with The Friends at Beast. That was nice, although Katie had to leave part way through because she was too hung over to be around civilization. I know what that's like. Sometimes you have to be by yourself. What is everyone doing for the holidays? Jerry and Katie are going to Mexico, which is something I have often considered doing, but the notice is too short, I think, for me to go just now. I just got an obligatory ten days off from work, though, a top-down order from the boss, everyone doing it, and now I'm not sure how to spend it. Final Fantasy and beating off will probably be part of the mix.

First Snow

So, something I've been doing for about six months and haven't been able to write about here is that I've been looking for a new job. And, again, for reasons of propriety, I can't really talk about why I wanted to leave the 'napse, but suffice it to say that I was feeling like I'd outgrown the place. So I started looking for something a bit less corporate and bit more hip-young-person-new-media-collective, and I think I've found it in the form of Rebel Monkey. They're a startup, they make games, and one of the dudes who runs it is an acquaintance of Randy's from Parsons -- and now I have a job there! Tom tipped me off to their existence. "It seems like it'd be an awesome place to work," he told me, so, after checking out their openings, I applied, and it worked out, etc.

But making the decision to hang up my shingle with them (and unhang it at 632 Broadway) was incredibly stressful. You know me, guys -- I was deeply preoccupied with doubts as to whether I was making the right decision, whether I'd be up to the task of what the new guys want me to do. And I'd spent four and a half years at DataSynapse. Those guys are my friends, even though not all of them live within striking distance these days. My life was totally different when I started there; I was a pretty different guy, and I was certainly less... formed, you know, as a technology professional. So I'm still a bit worried about the whole thing, but the new place seems awfully nice -- the space is beautiful, the contract wonderfully reasonable, and their interview process was extremely low on brainteasers and bullshit. God knows I've had plenty of that over the past six months that I've been looking.

I can't really go into detail, but Google: I want my six hours back.

(Actually, here's a small detail, presented for the benefit of M-Biddy, who likes things like this: A convex hull is a minimal subset of a set of points such that all of the angles in the shape formed by drawing line segments between adjacent points are convex and all the points that don't comprise this shape lie within its boundaries; describe an efficient algorithm for discovering the hull. I think I found one that my interviewer hadn't heard before, but I wasn't able to explain it satisfactorily.)

Moving over to the new place has already started -- as part of the (slightly uncomfortable) agreement I negotiated between DataSynapse and Rebel Monkey, I've been going over there in the early evening for the past two weeks and working 'til around 10:00. That's a 12-hour day! And then I worked all of last weekend, slogging through a Windows networking hell largely of my own devising. I'm a bit exhausted. Tonight while I was in meeting with them, one of their florescent overhead lights kind of exploded, filling the office with burning-electronics stink. It's a startup, it's exciting. My last day at DataSynapse is this Friday. I start, officially, at Rebel Monkey on the following Monday.

Anyway, thanks are due to Vickie Lee, even though I wasn't able to go for any of the jobs she looked up for me; and to Jimmy Tones, who gave me some pro bono career counseling, although I ended up jumping back into for-profit softare instead of running off to work for Barack Obama.

Winter is here, as evidenced by the wind tonight and the snow yesterday. It's going to be Hanukkah real soon, and then Christmas. And then we begin something entirely new.