Times Square

I just got back from New York on Thursday night, after staying 4 days at the Millenium Broadway hotel at Times Square.  Wednesday night I was out there late with some friends, marveling at the people and the activity and the happiness that the theater district brings to New York.

Then Saturday night a car bomb is discovered and defused, right where I was only a couple of days earlier.  Very unsettling.  I am glad the NYC police department did such a good job and no one was hurt, but it makes you think quite a bit.

A sports kind of Saturday

Yesterday was sort of reserved for sports.

I played golf in the morning with friends at The Bridges (shot 83, but I was 11 over after 10 on some bad tee shots and then even par for the last 8 holes).

Then we went to see our nephew Justin play lacrosse - his team won 9-3, and their record is now 11-1.  Pretty impressive.

Finally, after some miscellaneous stuff (including transporting Abby from a show she is working as asst. stage manager to her school where she is starring in another show), we settled in late to watch the Vancouver Canucks beat the Chicago Blackhawks in the first game of their Stanley Cup series.

Lots of sports.  Sunday will not be that focused (except for the Sharks game in the evening!).

Apple shuts down Lala

This report from Wired just makes me mad:

Apple Kills Lala Music Service

• By Eliot Van Buskirk  
• April 30, 2010  |  
• 12:43 pm  |  
• Categories: Media, Social Media

Lala users were greeted with this banner image, atop a note about what will happen to their music collections and existing credits.

Apple closed down the cloud-based Lala music service Friday for reasons unknown, after acquiring it in December. Lala members can still access their online collections, but only until May 31, when Apple will take the service offline completely.

When that happens, all the web-based music purchased by Lala members will become unplayable. Unused music credits, which Lala users bought in chunks in order to redeem multiple songs, will become unredeemable. Any MP3s purchased and downloaded from the service will of course continue to play, but this represents a blow to early adopters of Lala’s streaming songs, which only cost 10 cents.

“In appreciation of your support,” reads a note on Lala.com that is only accessible to members, “you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store.”

A really good product, purchased and killed.  I've used it a lot for this blog, but no more.

Bad move.

Max Brenner

I finally got to go to Max Brenner in New York.  It is the outrageous chocolate restaurant I described previously, but had not yet tried.  Here's their slogan:

I had crispy chocolate egg rolls, filled with hot melted chocolate, nuts and bananas, and served with two types of sauce: chocolate and salted caramel.  Amazing.

One of my friends ordered the dark chocolate shot, shown below:

The cup on the left is over a flame.  You add milk from the right, then chopped chocolate from the middle and stir it together.  Luckily, the stirring spoon has a straw in it, so you can sip the warm drink.

I think this is how all hot chocolate should be served.

Sunset on the Hudson River

I snapped this shot at the Chelsea Piers on 23rd Street in Manhattan:

Was there for a very nice party - plenty of fun in NYC!

Birdbath

Karen is a big fan of leaves and twigs and other things cast in bronze.  So you can imagine how happy she was to find this birdbath for our yard:

The birds seem to like it - we see them washing in it and drinking from it.


Today we wondered how hot it might get (it is made of metal) in the middle of the summer.  Not good to cook the birds.  We'll have to watch that.

More (animal) naps

So it is not only Daisy and Milo that take naps around here.  Snow was also able to find a very cozy spot:

Pretty good way to spend an afternoon.