Early at the airport...earlier home

The airline industry tried to make up for the millions of hours I've wasted being delayed at airports.

I ended up getting done with things a bit earlier than I expected. I did some last minute fun things in the city and decided to head out for the airport in case of traffic.

I took a taxi to the airport, which cost about $30 including the tolls. There was no traffic either, so I was at the airport about two hours earlier than when I was planning to be.

The guy at the counter asked if I wanted to take the earlier flight, which I was all for. I cashed in some of my frequent flyer credits for a free upgrade, too!

I'll be back in Atlanta two hours before I was originally planning. Given that my flights have been delayed for days before...hey, this is a start.

Tuscan Square for Lunch

I joined my cousins again for lunch, and I invited along the instructor from Apple. He recommended a place close to Rockefeller Center called Tuscan Square.

The setting was very proper. Most of the other lunch eaters were probably on business lunches, which I wasn't really in the mood for because it was my last lunch with my friends in NYC. We tend to get loud, but we really had to keep it pretty quiet.

The menu looked very good and the presentation of the meal was equally impressive. The restaurant was really good. Our waiter was reallyfunny. He realized that we weren't really in the mood for a formal business lunch so he was joking with us and keeping it a light mood. Expensive place though. I had a decent lunch and a salad and it cost almost $45.

Gray's Papaya

This juice joint is great. I'm not sure if there are others around town, because this joint is definitely a franchise-potential idea.

They mainly sell hot dogs...for less than a dollar...and are open 24 hours a day. But I went there for the different drinks. They have a really tasty banana daquiri drink. They also have a few others including pina coladas, papaya juices, etc. All non-alcoholic. It's worth giving it a try if you're in NYC.

Training: Citigroup Building

The next couple of days I'll be going to the Citigroup building on 53rd for training.

I'm the only student in the class. My instructor actually works with Apple in Austin, Texas. I'm sure he's happy to fly up to New York simply to teach a class for a couple of days with one person in it.

The title of the class is "MacOS 330: Directory Services Integration and Administration". I signed up for the client-side class, but because I'm the only student and we can move fairly fast, we plan on covering the server material as well. So, my place of employment is definitely getting its money's worth.

It looks as though we will cover some really useful topics with managing a stable of Macintosh computers in a Windows domain. I don't think full integration is possible to the level that I would like. Perhaps the best solution is to setup an OS X Server and manage computers that way.

Indeed. Indeed.

Staying at the Waldorf is a pretty funny experience. The entire atmosphere is old money, and most people that you see in the hotel are either really old money (which can be interesting) or fake "old money" (which leads to interesting conversations). Not exactly a fun place, but it's a neat experience nonetheless.

Today I got onto the elevator on the first floor, and "Ground" was already pushed. About four people were on the elevator already. I pushed my floor, 11, and the elevator went up instead of down as one would expect.

One of the ladies chimed in with her favorite foreign accent, "Well, these elevators have a mind of their own. They make so many mistakes!" After this a gentleman remarked, "Well, our reliance on computers can only lead to such."

I followed up in my favorite uppity accent, "As a computer engineer, I must offer that it is not the elevator making the mistake, but the programmer who designed this elevator. Computers, after all, have no mind of their own."

A guy in the corner, wanting a piece of the action, turns up the base in his voice and goes, "Indeed. Indeed."

Well, it was the 11th floor, so I got off and couldn't help but laugh. There ended the first conversation I've ever had that ends in someone saying "Indeed. Indeed."

Dinner at Chipotle

My cousins stayed behind a little longer and one of my Auburn friends joined us for dinner today. We went to Chipotle just because it is quick and easy.

While leaving the Waldorf, we ran into Ben Stiller's dad. It was kind of surreal seeing "George Costanza's" dad walking into my hotel. We said hi and asked him how Ben was doing. He told us he was fine and asked us if we were "here for the event." Us? Here for "The Event"? Yeah, right. We weren't able to think quick enough to say yes.

Central Park

Hung out in Central Park all afternoon after lunch. Everyone had to get back to work and I had the day off, so I decided to stroll around.

The southern part of Central Park is about as north as I would go in the City. I walked up past Trump Plaza and Tiffany's. The pricey side of town looks pretty pricey. There were several signs up for new condos and housing, and the pictures and plans looked awesome.

Central Park has good places to buy souvenirs. I'd recommend buying the I :heart: NY shirts and things like that here. The weather was absolutely magnificent to be on a walk around as well. I took my crossword puzzle with me and just chilled out. Central Park was really nice and it was nice to see so many people just jogging around doing their thing. I wouldn't really recommend going there alone because it's pretty big. It's probably safer to be with friends in such a setting just because there are so many strangers that seem to be killing time there.

99-cent Pizza

I joined three of my cousins and we went to eat lunch together. It was a really awesome feeling to walk down the street with my cousins to lunch. The four of us went to a sandwich and pizza place. I got a small pastrami sandwich and a 99-cent slice of pizza. The pizza was really good. The same slice of pizza I paid 99-cents for is about $3 in Auburn.

For drinks we went to Gray's Papaya. They have really good banana daquiri.

The weather was really nice. It was actually hot walking around at lunch. Afterward I sat at the ice skating area at Rockefellar Plaza and went to Central Park.

Waldorf=Astoria

So the second part of my training is in midtown -- at the Citigroup building on 53rd to be exact. My second hotel is the infamous Waldorf=Astoria on Park Avenue.

The general appeal of W=A is the service and the old-money feel to the place. Having just checked in earlier today, I can see both good and bad things. The lobby has a very upscale feel to it. But to be honest, the room isn't really worth it.

I'm loving it right now because of the significance W=A has played in history. Did you know that when FDR came to NYC, he would stay at the Waldorf? His train had a secret station in the basement of the Waldorf.

The lobby is designed with the same historical flair in mind. I've seen better hotel lobbies. Grand Hyatts, Westins and many Ritz Carlton's have much better designed lobbies. The room is pretty average. Same look and feel as any other decent hotel. So the average room at W=A is the same as an average room at any other hotel. However, I'm sure the Astoria level is where the hotel earns its reputation from. That's where the pricey suites and service really is.

Discovery of the Day: The Hotel's Basement

I'm staying at the SoLita SoHo Hotel, as I mentioned earlier. I came inside after my walk around Little Italy and Chinatown because it was so cold. Tonight's episode of Grey's Anatomy was sad, so I almost felt like not going out...then I remembered I'm in the city so I decided to go exploring.

Going exploring in the city pays off. Going exploring to the side of your hotel pays off even more! I walked through two random doors and walked into one of the most fun hookah bars in SoHo. I walked in through the side entrance, so I'll have to check the name of the place in the morning.

The servers were dressed like Princess Jasmine...whew. I tried a couple of flavors of hookah and was really impressed. The walls of the area were painted in Egyptian hieroglyphics. It wasn't wallpaper or posters as it is normally. This was really painted by hand and it looked amazing. There were comfortable couches and the whole nine yards. The atmosphere was really well designed.

A place like that could make some serious money in Auburn.

There goes my bracket

WTF? I know my cousins who graduated from UConn and Villanova are pretty sad right now. I can't believe UConn got beat by George Mason. The Florida and Villanova game was supposed to be pretty close, so seeing Villanova get manhandled was tough.

I had Villanova winning in two of my brackets, and UConn winning the other. I had not picked any of the current teams to be this far, so that sucks.

On a different note, it is refreshing for the sport to have four teams in the Final Four who didn't start off being number one seeds.

Novella and the social aspect of dinner

Tonight's dinner was at Novella Restaurant. It's on the corner of Grand Street and Mulberry, basically on the border of Little Italy and Chinatown.

The food was really amazing, and the service was really good, too. A lot of the restaurants have a person that stands at the door and shows people menus as they walk by--basically like a salesman on the street. Pretty funny...I would think that this means that the restaurant is really hungry for business (hehe...get it..."hungry" for business...jeez, sorry.)

So I was walking by and an older Italian guy handed me a menu which looked pretty good. I walked in and realized that this was a really nice restaurant. I had fettucini with saffron sauce and grilled chicken. The restaurant was a little pricier than I would've thought looking at it from the outside. The main meal was nearly twenty dollars. I'm scared to say how much the total came out to be.

The service was great. My server, Flamore, was constantly checking, as was the manager. I was eating by myself which, despite doing it for almost every dinner this week, was pretty boring.

I realized that dinner for me is far more for the social interaction than it is for nutrition.

It's Freezing in Little Italy!

It rained a good bit last night and today is insanely cold! I went outside with a jacket and the wind seriously about froze my nose off.

Instead of walking west from my hotel, today I decided to walk east. My hotel is a block north of Chinatown, and one block west of Little Italy. I walked around Little Italy to see what it is like. It's really cool to see so much diversity in the city. You can walk around and see literally hundreds of different nationalities.

There are lots of Italian restaurants in Little Italy...surprising, I know. But if you like or love Italian food like I do, instead of Little Italy, I think you can actually call it Little Heaven.

Movie: The Inside Man

It started raining early evening and the temperature dropped very quickly. A few of my cousins and I decided to catch a movie and we ended up seeing The Inside Man. The movie was really cool. I enjoyed the well-written screenplay. The movie cost $7.50 with a student discount. Thank goodness for my student ID! I think I've used it for discounts more after graduating for sure.

It was definitely a Spike Lee movie with the randomly thrown in messages to society. There's a kid playing a PSP and the game he is playing eerily resembles Grand Theft Auto. There's also a severe case of a Sikh having his civil rights violated by the NYPD because he's mistaken to be Arab. The movie was set in NYC and it was superbly cool to see all these places that I've been walking past in the movie. Eerily, one of the random scenes of the city showed a restaurant that I ate at earlier in the week.

Don't read any further if you don't want to spoil the movie.

The interesting message in the movie was about how during World War II, many Jews were sold out by their own people. In this particular case, a Jewish man sold out other Jews to get rich and he ended up using the money to start a bank in NYC. Although I haven't read any proof, there's also a general feeling in the city that many of the banks and investment houses that were started by Jews were started under similar circumstances. Interesting view, and if it's true, it's really sad.

Of course low morals, violence and crime is horrible in society. But when the perpetrators end up harming their own people, and the victims are their own...it makes it so much worse I think.

Lower Manhattan and the mystery of Duane Reade

I visited lower Manhattan today. Besides walking around the financial district and the Battery Park area, I saw City Hall and the court buildings located close to the Brooklyn Bridge.

I don't know if something serious was going on though because a huge area of the buildings was roped off and there was almost no traffic in the area, which seems almost unimagineable.

I'm utterly astounded by the prevalence of Duane Reade drugstores in the city. There's a Duane Reade Pharmacy on almost every block. On top of that, there are two streets downtown that are named Duane and Reade. I was so intrigued that I decided to go inside one of the stores today. Lets just say that the floor layout was completely bizarre.

So I decided to search out what is going on. New York Magazine wrote an interesting article published June 6, 2005 on The Mystery of Duane Reade. It's an interesting read and explained a lot about the puzzling number and layout of Duane Reade stores.

Ground Zero

Even though it's been almost five and a half years since the 9/11 attacks, the location of Ground Zero is still very emotional. Just knowing that so many lives were lost at that single location is very hard to imagine and understand.

The entire area is fenced off still, and all that remains is a huge crater from where the many sub-levels of the WTC towers once were.

I remember seeing the display of lights a few years back and that was really powerful. I think the biggest thing that has to happen is rebuilding just so the 13-acre site is once again part of the NY skyline.

Financial District

I walked around the financial district. The construction of the buildings is absolutely amazing. Just the look of them gives you the feeling of might and power. I saw the NYSE and the AMEX...cool to see where some of my money goes :)

The amazing thing was also the sea of people. If you think of the building as an ant hill, as soon as something happens to it and ants just crawl all over the place. There is such a mass exodus, and trying to walk towards the building as people are leaving is almost insane. You really get an idea into how salmon feel when they are swimming upstream.

"Be Careful"

I don't know what's up, but I've been told, "be careful" or "take care of yourself" by a million people ever since I've been here. Today it was the lady at Starbucks. I've heard it from one of the other trainees, from the server at Landmark Breakfast, from the hotel concierge, and others... So I asked the lady at Starbucks why it might be that everyone is saying that to me over the last few days.

"You're really friendly," she said. "You asked me how my day was going and actually listened to my answer. People in the city might take advantage of that." Hmm. I don't really think I should change.

The weather was getting a bit chilly but it was still pretty nice so I sat outside.

Training Day Three

Today's training was primarily break-fix. A Mac with several problems was given to five two-person teams and we had to fix several problems.

Problems included passwords that did not work, printers and network connections that didn't work, login problems, restart and shutdown problems and a few other things.

My partner, Abraham, and I were the first ones finished. We got done by about 2:30 p.m. and stuck around to help the other teams.

The training was really rewarding. I really feel I learned a lot, and I definitely feel I got my money's worth.

We ordered in pizza for everyone because we felt a working lunch would be good. It's more real-life anyway...ha.

NYC: Cafe Cafe

I ate a quick breakfast this morning from Cafe Cafe. The cafe is a neat little place located on Greene Street a few doors down from where the training is. It's got a funky second level in the main area carved out from the high ceiling.

Their house blend was really good even though I'm not a big coffee drinker. I had an English muffin...whatever that is. Tasted decent enough.

I took a little different way to the training facility. I walked down Mercer and over on Groome and noticed some neat little boutiques that I'm sure my wife would've loved and my wallet would've hated.

ESPNZone at Times Square

Tonight I met up with one of my cousins who works in the city. We met up at the ESPNZone to watch the LSU vs. Duke game. We got there about 6:30 p.m. and the place was packed.

ESPNZone at Times Square is huge. There are levels to the restaurant that all look out to three 15-foot projection screens and are surrounded by additional televisions. On top of that, there is a television at each booth/table.

I know the New York experience is about trying different food. True, ESPNZone doesn't really qualify because there's one in every major city, but the experience was definitely worth it. The crowd was fun and we met some random people.

There were a lot of Duke fans in the crowd, so naturally I decided to cheer for LSU, as much as I dislike them. I was kind of getting annoyed by this dude at the bar who was a constant clapper--you know the ones. They do that annoying fast clap at everything. Rebound? Clap. Foul? Clap. Commercial? Clap. Stop it already dude.

So, in the last minute or so even though I couldn't care less about LSU beating Duke (I had Duke losing in Round 2) the good part about the outcome was it stopped the annoying clapper.

I did a walk around the city after dinner. I walked over from the square to 7th and down to 53rd to meet up with a cousin who was there for dinner with his in-laws. It was great to walk around and see even though the city is so built-up, there is still lots of construction going on everywhere. It keeps the city agile and changing, so NY of today is not the same as NY of yesterday, and the NY of tomorrow will be different, too. Very exciting.

NYC Lunch: Tennessee Mountain

Today, Eric, one of the students in the class along with me, suggested going to Tennessee Mountain for lunch. SoHo has the most amazing restaurants.

Tennessee Mountain is located on the corner of Wooster and Spring. It is reputed to be (and they claim it as well) the best ribs. I must say, the barbecue sauce was beyond belief amazing.

It was a very random lunch. First, there was a little roach on the wall that came in through the window. As gross as that is, it's not reason enough to leave a place in the city...because you might as well not go anywhere to eat.

The food was great. I had their ribs and chicken special. I didn't care much for the sides they offered, but the main food was well worth it. The environment was also interesting. They had a poster or two up from the Grand Ole Opry, and tried to give it somewhat of a "Tennessee" look. My entire meal cost $25, which is reasonable given the meal and the experience.

Training Day Two

I really enjoyed today's training. We focused on the back-end of Macintosh OS X. The primary thing I enjoyed was discovering how much more you can do on a Mac simply because OS X is built on the Unix platform. This opens up a world of possibilities using the command line interface.

It really is phenomenal how secure and reliable the new OS X is. Many government agencies are switching to Apple simply because of the security.

Apple training is a lot different than any other training I've been in. The other official training I've been to has been pretty bland, but Apple training is very well laid out and the hands-on exercises are applicable to real-life situations.

NYC: Breakfast at Miro

Okay, so sit down breakfasts are great and all, but who's got that kind of time? I'm not a big breakfast eater anyway. I usually grab a cup of tea or coffee and a piece of toast or something. I know there's that whole bit about breakfast being the most important meal of the day...but I disagree. I think the most important meal should be when you're actually awake enough to taste it.

Besides, waking up at 7 a.m. eastern is like waking up at 6 a.m. back home time.

So today I stopped in at Miro Cafe for breakfast. It's a classy looking place on Broadway. At first my simple order of a Vanilla Chai and a bagel with strawberry jelly (I don't know what it is about strawberry jelly...I just like it) was met with a pissy mood on the other side of the counter. But I guess my southern charm...and a tip...did some kind of magic and the server got really happy and actually had a smile as I was leaving.

If your job consists of serving breakfast, people that come in are already annoyed enough with having to be awake so early. The last thing they should have to deal with is someone who is equally ticked about being at work.

A Walk with Windy and Dusty

Wow...the wind just comes and hits you in the face as you're walking down the street as if it's got some kinda vendetta against you.

I wore a white shirt today and I could swear it's brown now. Some serious pollution effects I guess. More work for the dry cleaners down south.

Aside from that, I love just walking around the city. It's the best exercise plan I've found yet.

I think everyone walking down the streets of New York tries to do their best impression of looking like they are natives. Everyone does a pretty good job, too, until they see that one random thing that they really want a picture of. Then they enter tourist-zone and bust out the camera.

I think I'm doing a pretty good job faking it though. I've walked about a day and already two people have asked me directions. I was walking down Broadway around the intersection with Broome and someone asked me "Where's Grand?" I was like "down thadda way..." Damn, for a second I felt like I've been living here forever. Later someone asked me where Canal was. I kinda knew but didn't want to say the wrong thing, so I did what other city natives walking down the street do: ignored the person. I bet he thought "damn cityfolk, can't even take a second to help." Ha.

NYC: The Laugh Factory

The friendly girl at the "I heart NY" tourism booth at Grand Central suggested that I should check out The Laugh Factory, a comedy club.

Excellent idea. The Laugh Factory is located a quick walk from Grand Central, through Times Square, on 8th and 42nd. It cost $20 for tickets and there is a two-drink minimum (non-alcoholic drinks count). The total cost was about $40.

The comedians were awesome. They usually put the acts in order of experience. The host this evening was filling in for the regular host. I must say I was more impressed than I thought I would be. The comics were genuinely funny except for a bit here and there...but hey, this is where they get on stage to try their material.

The entire club was packed. I was surprised with the number of local people from the Bronx and other surrounding areas. I'm judging this with the crowd reaction to the straw poll all comedians conduct when they start... "I'm from the Bronx"...followed by roars and applause...generally means big turnout.

It kinda sucked cuz I ended up going by myself. I wish a friend or two would've made the trip with me. Me being myself though, I introduced myself to a few people sitting next to me. They were born and raised New Yorkers. All three were shocked to hear that I was from the Atlanta area. "You really look like a born-and-raised New York Hispanic!" was what I heard in between the gasps.

I'm going to try to look up the names of the comedians that were on tonight.

By the way, did you notice the picture above? The Laughter Factory is world famous as well. I guess the message is becoming clearer and clearer...wanna get famous or possibly world famous? New York is the place to be.