I’ve just spent a tedious evening doing computer maintenance, after Apple’s iPod Updater screwed up all the USB drivers on my laptop.

I tried various strategies to fix it but couldn’t figure out how to get USB working again, so in the end I reloaded a good clean image of my drive C: from last October using Norton Ghost and then reinstalled or updated all the software that had changed since then.

Not a fun way to spend an evening, but certainly better than re-installing the OS and all the software from scratch, which is about a week’s worth of work instead of a few hours!

On Friday I signed up for more expensive but cleaner electricity.

By subscribing to Sterling Planet’s NY Clean Choice plan, I pay a flat fee of $10 per month (33 cents a day) to force ConEdison to buy 400kWh more power per month from clean renewable NY sources: 40% wind, 30% small hyro and 30% bioenergy from recovered methane.

Generating electricity from these sources results in no carbon dioxide emissions, no sulfur dioxide emissions, no nitrogen oxide emissions, no mercury emissions and no nuclear waste.

I don’t normally divulge information about my love life on my blog, because I generally consider it to be too personal and private for open publication, but I had a ridiculous New York dating experience recently that’s just too funny not to share.

D_ is a very attractive Italian-American from New Jersey that I met online. She is a temporary receptionist, although she was unemployed and interviewing for jobs on the day of our date.

We had a few ‘phone conversations, during which I learnt that she was living with her parents after separating from her husband, who had custody of her 8-year old son. She seemed bubbly and fun on the ‘phone, although there were a few “high maintenance” warning signs.

Anyway, we arranged to meet for dinner in the East Village. However, when I emerged from the subway, there were three frantic voicemail messages from her explaining that she’d left a floppy disk with her resume on it at an Internet cafe in midtown, and that I should instead meet her at a Starbucks on Madison and 36th.

When I got to the Starbucks, the staff were cleaning up, and told me that they were closed. I told them that I was there to meet somebody, to which the manageress replied “Oh, are you a friend of D_’s? She’s in the bathroom, you can wait for her.” As I sat down to wait, I could hear her voice shouting from the bathroom –she was having a fairly heated exchange with someone on her mobile ‘phone.

This went on for a while, then it went quiet. I continued to wait, as the Starbucks staff neared the end of their shifts and started wondering aloud what she was doing in there. Eventually I called her on her mobile to ask how much longer she was going to be.

Finally she appeared, smiling and looking very put together but also somewhat flustered, and immediately launched into a story about how she had not been able to go to the gym that night because of the disk fiasco, so instead had taken a Stacker (some kind of extreme weight loss pill) that her hairdresser had given her on an empty stomach, and had then started to feel ill, hence the visit to the bathroom in a Starbucks that was about to close to get changed and compose herself..

As we gathered up all her various bags, she showed me a little fake alligator bag/purse thing that she had bought for herself earlier at a nearby Duane Reade drug store, and once outside she asked if I minded going back to the store to get another one as a gift for the Manageress of the Starbucks who’d been so nice to her. It was about 10pm by now and I was getting pretty hungry, but of course I said “sure, no problem.”

Things were going pretty smoothly as we chatted and walked around the block to the drug store, and we quickly located the little plastic purse — the last one in the store — and a bottle of Jessica Simpson perfume before heading to the check-out.

However, this is where the fun starts: She puts the stuff down on the counter, and then takes two steps back as the cashier rings up the sale. He says “that’ll be $24.99 please.” A long awkward pause ensues. I’m looking at the cashier, who’s looking at me. Then I’m looking at D_, who’s also looking at me. Eventually the penny drops and I ask D_, somewhat incredulously, “Oh, so you want me to pay for this?” to which D_ replies, completely deadpan, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

For a moment or two I’m so confused that I get my wallet out. But then sense returns, I put my wallet away, turn to D_ and say, “actually, I do kind of mind. Why should I pay for this?” She looked a little bewildered for a second, then left the shop, telling the cashier that she’ll come back shortly.

Our exit from the shop is hindered by the fact that, in our haste to leave the awkward situation, we both end up trying to squeeze into the same compartment of a small revolving door, tripping over each other’s feet as we exit. Once we were outside in the street, the dialog went something likes this:

D_: “That was really embarrassing. Why did you do that?”
Me: “I’m very confused by what just happened in there. Why would you expect me to pay for your gift to someone else?”
D_: “It was only $25, if you can’t afford that, you’ve got problems.”
Me: “It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s the principle. Why should I pick up the tab for your stuff?”
D_: “But you said before that it would be OK!”
Me: “I thought you were asking me if it was OK to come to the store to get the gift before we got dinner, I didn’t realize you were expecting me to pay for it too!”
D_: “You were going to pay for dinner, weren’t you?”
Me: “Yes I was planning to. But to be honest, I don’t think this is going to work out. You’re obviously looking for someone very, very different than me. I think this is the end of the date.”
D_: “Yes, I think so too.
Me: “Well, goodnight.”

With which I turned around and walked away from my first date that failed to last 20 minutes.

I just cleaned a thick layer of dust off my external floppy disk drive at home today. When was the last time I used a floppy disk? I have no idea, but certainly not recently.

It’s strange how technologies quietly slip into the past like that, forgotten — until that time in the future when you want to get something off an old floppy disk, only to discover that you have absolutely no way of reading it any more and you may as well drop all the disks into a landfill somewhere.

At the risk of sounding like a total nerd, I just bought a new Nokia 6101 mobile ‘phone off eBay for under $120, and so far I’m really impressed with it. It’s small and light, it has the practical clamshell design I like (and which for some insane reason Nokia resisted for years), and it came unlocked, so it just started working as soon as I put my existing SIM card in it. Plus it reaffirms what I always suspected — that Nokia’s user interface is by far the most user-friendly and intuitive of any mobile ‘phone.

But perhaps the coolest part is that Nokia provides a free suite of PC connectivity software, and I just painlessly copied all of my personal information — contacts, calendar, to do’s etc. — from Lotus Organizer on my laptop onto the ‘phone. This might not sound like such a big deal, but I’ve been waiting for this kind of connectivity/interoperability for years.

I visited my friend Amy Stein in Vancouver last weekend, and we went snowboarding up at Whistler/Blackcomb, a great 2-mountain resort in beautiful British Columbia that’s an easy 2-hour drive north out of Vancouver.

We stayed in a big shared cabin with a hot tub and sauna along with a bunch of other folks, and it snowed every day, so the conditions both on and off the mountain were fantastic.

Amy & I at the top of Blackcomb Mountain in British Columbia, 4 March 2006 

Although it was originally released back in 2000, I only just came across PJ Harvey’s “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea” a few months ago. Since then I’ve played it almost every day on my commute to and from work without once getting bored of it — it’s been my soundtrack for 2006 to date.

The stand-out 5-star tracks for me are “One Line” and “The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore,” but almost every track on the album is worth a solid 3 or 4 stars. The only weak point for me is “This Mess We’re In,” which to my ears is ruined by Tom Yorke’s irritating whining.

Anyway, here’s the filthy lucre commission link, in case I’ve persuaded you to part with some hard-earned (or not) cash:

One book and two movie recommendations:

1. The Brooklyn Follies, by Paul Auster

Just finished my signed copy of this book, and I enjoyed it very much. I really like the way Auster’s writing can capture a wide gamut of human emotion in such a sparse, clean and readable style.

2. Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story

I saw this at Angelika the other night, and it was very funny, in a clever but (perhaps surprisingly) non-irritating way. Apparently the original book (which I’ve never read) was “post-modern before there was any modern to be post about,” in that the narrative was self-referential. The film does the same thing — it’s both a film about the process of making a film, and a mockumentary (although how much is fake and how much is accurate is left intentionally ambiguous) of the main character, Steve Coogan. Even the website has two parts — a “meta” site that talks about the process of building a movie website, and the “real” site within it.

3. Touching the Void

I just watched this “docudrama” about two young, foolhardy British climbers that climbed Siula Grande, a previously unclimbed peak in the Peruvian Andes, back in 1985. They made it to the summit, but had an accident on the way down, which resulted in one of them dangling precariously over a precipice and the other struggling to hold the weight in crumbling snow. Eventually Simon, the guy at the top of the rope, makes the decision to cut it, sending his friend Joe plummeting to certain death down a deep crevasse. But miraculously, Joe somehow survives the fall, and despite having a badly broken leg, frostbite, hypothermia, dehydration and exhaustion, somehow manages to drag himself down the mountain to be reunited with his friend at the base camp.

The movie was shot with a mixture of interviews with the real climbers and reconstructions using a mixture of the real climbers and actors, and it resulted in a surprisingly powerful and compelling narrative. The extra features on the DVD were also interesting, which gave some insight into how the trip affected their lives afterwards, and also how a return to Siula Grande 17 years later affected them. Joe (the guy who fell in the crevasse) clearly endured the worse ordeal on the mountain and immediately afterwards, but somehow came through to resume climbing, become a successful writer and tell the story in a best-selling book. Simon (rope-cutter), on the other hand, seemed plagued by guilt and remorse, and also by the disdain of the climbing community.

Joe always maintained that cutting the rope was the right thing to do, and even dedicated the book to Simon, but it was interesting to note that these two guys, who had shared such an intense experience together, were not particularly close friends 17 years on.

Alpine Meadows, CA. 22 February 2006 

I went back to California last weekend, and had a great time snowboarding up at Lake Tahoe. I got 3 full days of riding in — 2 days at Northstar and one day at Alpine Meadows. Both were good, but kudos and top marks go to the good folks at the rental shop at Alpine for giving me a free replacement Switch back (the blue plastic piece in the picture above) when my binding broke unexpectedly.

The conditions were pretty much perfect: It snowed at least 12″ every day, and it was also unusually cold for California, which meant that the snow stayed dry, powdery and lots of fun. It was easily the best powder I’ve ever ridden on in California.

The trip was arranged by my buddy Gordon, who is currently based in Washington DC, but who I first met on a snowboarding trip to the “Ponderosa” (the ski cabin owned by the family Pon) back in 2000, when we both lived in San Francisco.

We stayed in the Ponderosa again this time around (first time I’d been back since 2000), along with 9 of Gordon’s other friends, and 6 other folks in a different group — the cabin had been double-booked! Fortunately everyone was cool about the situation, although it was definitely a little cramped.

On the way back I also had drinks with my ex Jessica and dinner with a bunch of friends (Angus, CK, Mark, Stephanie and Suzy) in the Mission (my old ‘hood between ’99 and ’02) before heading back to New York.

All in all, it was a great trip. Next month: Whistler, near Vancouver!

I’m glad to see that the controversy over George Bush’s illegal domestic spying program is getting more heated. Could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and brings down this awful administration? I hope so — it’s basically the same issue that forced Nixon to resign in 1974 under the threat of impeachment, and resulted in a law specifically to prevent such breaches of privacy and infringements of civil liberties: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, a law that George W. Bush has apparently broken.

A few interesting recent developments:

1. According to today’s New York Times, a number of Republican politicians, in both houses, are now starting to publicly express doubts over the leaglity of Bush’s covert domestic spying program, including Representative Heather Wilson, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski and Senator Arlen Specter, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and who I can’t help thinking of as “Uncle Arlen,” even though I’ve never met him, since he’s related to my ex-girlfriend Jessica).

2. The Feds have been stepping up their inquiry to discover who leaked the information about the illegal wiretapping program to the New York Times in the first place– a witch hunt that is no doubt intended to warn other potential whistle-blowers that they will be hunted down, and which clearly shows just how nervous the administration are about this whole issue.

3. George W. Bush recently announced that the security services had foiled a plot by Al Qaeda shoe bombers to fly another commercial jet liner into another building, this time the Library Tower (although apparently he mistakenly called it the Liberty Tower) in Los Angeles. Please — the timing is just a little bit too convenient, and are we really supposed to believe that Al Qaeda are so lacking in imagination that they would try exactly the same act of terrorism AFTER security measures have been tightened up in airports and on planes throughout the globe?

4. Moveon.org have produced a clever new TV ad that includes footage of “Tricky Dicky” Nixon morphing subtly and seamlessly into footage of George W. Bush, and clearly makes the following point:

“Nixon was also illegally spying on Americans for reasons he claimed were related to national security. America disagreed and we passed a law after Nixon resigned that balanced national security and the civil rights of Americans.”

5. The Campaign to Impeach Bush published a full-page ad in the New York Times recently.