"Allen Street Anonymous" written by Joe on estrip.org

01/14/15 01:24 - 1.0ºF - ID#59751

Allen Street Anonymous

Paul and I were at lunch and picked up a copy of the Allentown Association newsletter - it was all about the Allen Street reconstruction meetings. Apparently the assocation, city engineer, and design consultant all voted to remove parking for a pedestrian friendly and better streetscape (versus widening the road and removing feet from the sidewalk). Despite this fact their going to back to the design phase - more money spent on consulting, less on the actual construction :(

It turns out I was semi-anonymously quoted in the article about the debate as a Roswell employee!

Anyway if you believe at all in a sustainable future for Buffalo and making Allentown a nice place for people, not cars - write Peter Merlo, City Engineer at pmerlo@city-buffalo.com, and Stephen Stepniak, DPW Commissioner at sstepniak@city-buffalo.com and let them know what you think

Allentown Association doesn't put out an electronic version of this :( So i took a picture.

Joe Herzig said...

A Roswell Park employee also said a walkable, attractive Allen Street was essential for merchants to gain customers from the BNMC. He reminded the crowd that they could potentially get a lot of patronage from students, staff and visitors to the new UB Medical School and the new Children's Hospital now under construction. ...
Another suggested shuttles from BNMC lots at night when they are underutilized

Just to be clear I never actually said anyone needed a shuttle from BNMC to Allentown (unless you're disabled). Not sure where that came from. Walk your butts a block or two!

Permalink: Allen_Street_Anonymous.html
Words: 262
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/16/15 02:14

Category: ring

01/13/15 11:57 - 4.0ºF - ID#59750

Eragem.com's customer service

So (e:Paul) broke his ring. I thought it was ridiculous that Paul wanted us to buy him a new ring. I don't understand jewelry and I never will - even cracked, the ring was still very beautiful. But in true Paul fashion, he constantly browsed eragem.com looking for other rings, and once he found one he wanted and made sure (e:terry) and I knew about it. Non stop. For weeks. Through every method of communication we use, including dance.

The price was $1600 for a diamond band in gold. Terry and I broke down and decided we might as well make an offer to negotiate - not having any idea of what a band like that is worth. I emailed the owner via his site yesterday, offering $900 for the ring and linked to Paul's post explaining his situation.

Less than a half hour later, the owner of the site, Michael Michael, called me at work. He wanted to let me know he felt terrible that Paul's ring cracked - that sometimes it can happen with a heavy ring like that due to the occlusions in the gem, but he wanted Paul to be happy with his business.

I was mentally preparing to haggle when he mentioned the diamond band. Before I even said anything, he offered to send it out next-day free of charge. I couldn't believe it. I don't think I've ever seen awesome customer service like that before.

The only thing I wish I would have done was to have asked him to not contact Paul about it so it could be a surprise. I was so shocked I forgot. As soon as he sent the both of us an email, Paul flipped out with excitement.
So (e:Paul) broke his ring. I thought it was ridiculous that Paul wanted us to buy him a new ring. I don't understand jewelry and I never will - I thought his cracked ring was still very beautiful. But in true Paul fashion, he constantly browsed eragem.com looking for other rings, and once he found one he wanted and made sure (e:terry) and I knew about it. Non stop. For weeks. Through every method of communication we use, including dance.

I'm so happy that Paul is happy.

Permalink: Eragem_com_s_customer_service.html
Words: 380
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/14/15 01:43

Category: walking

01/11/15 10:32 - 30.ºF - ID#59744

Winter walk

On Sunday, (e:terry) and I wanted to go sledding or skating, something active. It was pretty warm out. So we walked downtown to the new rinks.

No dice. The line was almost a half hour long just to pay for admission, not even the line for skate rentals. It's good that it's so popular - the space is awesome and it probably brings more people downtown on a weekend than anything else.

So instead we continued our walk over to Riverworks. It was much less crowded and the ice looked way nicer. It was already closing when we got there, so we'll have to try another time. Some weeknights they're open until 10pm.

This house on Franklin has been done completely in white. Blank white walls inside, fresh white paint on the outside, white snow on the lawn.

The dreamland crew made these pretty ice globes out of water balloons

Riverworks and the river

When we got home (e:terry) and I made a delicious curry with the leftover paneer from my sandwich.

I continued my work on porting the Paul's CSS color themer away from surebert while we watched a terrible zombie movie called World War Z. It's amazing how all so much of the javascript that needed to be abstracted into toolkits and frameworks has been standardized in the past couple of years (if you want to ignore IE8).

Permalink: Winter_walk.html
Words: 235
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/13/15 11:15

Category: gay

01/11/15 10:31 - 30.ºF - ID#59743

Bear night

Saturday we spent a good chunk of the day cleaning, hyping ourselves up on Chinese tea, and listening to Paul dream about rings and warmer temperatures.
I also am nearing the a good first draft of Squeaky Wheel's wordpress. It's a lot less generic looking now - I want to make it more artsy by porting over Paul's custom colorpicker code to it.

Warm laundry for (e:paul)

At night, we went with (e:flacidness), (e:dianne), and Heidi's nephew Tyler out to bear night at Ohm. It was kind of what I thought it would be like, big men, big beards and a lot of cheesy music. Almost nobody was dancing so we had the floor to ourselves, which is a lot better than Funky Monkey. Fittingly Bear night has free pizza. It was amazing.

I came across this really cool picture of a wolf and 3D art online. It turns out it's by Daniel Yemchuk who we saw at Bass Mountain. He does a lot of his generative work with Javascript.

Permalink: Bear_night.html
Words: 178
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/11/15 10:43

Category: house

01/11/15 10:02 - 28.ºF - ID#59742

Solar powered dream

Last summer at the Taste of Buffalo, I got a pamphlet from Solar Liberty, the solar panel installers. (e:paul) and (e:) terry and gotten an estimate from them in 2011 for an installation on the roof, but it was too expensive then.

I requested a new quote from them this month, and it's so much more in reach. The proposal they gave us has the south facing roof covered in 19 300W panels, although more could fit on the flat peak. This would be more likely to get by the preservationists. I've attached the documents comparing the two estimates, but here are the key points. (These numbers are for the smaller array, but the size could increase which would improve the numbers even more.)

Since 2011, the cost per watt on similarly capable panels (19% efficient) has dropped almost in half
subsidies have dropped from $1.75 per watt to $0.80 - and dropping
despite the subsidy drop the net cost to us has dropped from ~$12k to ~$5k
even with Basra using 2150W for heating in his 7 month wintering, we can cover 40% of our electric use. Without his environmental disaster, I have to image it'd be closer to 70-80%
the return on investment, even on a smaller 5kW array has dropped to 6 years, from 9-11 years
the 25 year savings (length of the panel warranty) would total ~$30k

We haven't decided for sure if we are doing it yet but the estimate alone gives me a huge nerd boner. It's crazy how quickly affordable renewable energy is becoming, even in a a cloudy place like Buffalo. Imagine a distributed grid powering Buffalo throughout the day and the Falls powering us at night. No one would ever have to breath in the disgusting Huntley coal fumes again.

Permalink: Solar_powered_dream.html
Words: 304
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/11/15 10:35

Category: pets

01/10/15 03:10 - 15.ºF - ID#59736

Pet shopping

(e:paul) and I went to Pet Supplies plus to get a new lightbulb for the beast. I think the only type of shopping I do like is at pet stores. Everything there is so cute - look at this shirt for dogs. Its supposed to calm them in thunderstorms.

Animals also get these delicious looking peanut butter cookies, and rodent trail mix. They remind of the yogurt snacks I used to share with my guinea pigs.

Afterwards Paul and I had a bromantic date at Taj Grill where we talked about programming and ate fried food. Yum.

Permalink: Pet_shopping.html
Words: 103
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/10/15 03:13

Category: food

01/08/15 10:32 - 14.ºF - ID#59732

Paneerwich

Cafe 59's vegetarian special today was a paneerwich - it had two amazing crispy blocks of paneer in the sandwich. I could only eat about one of them and had to take the second block home in a box.

It was very good but I can't imagine it was much healthier than (e:paul)'s chicken finger sub.

Permalink: Paneerwich.html
Words: 59
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/09/15 03:18

Category: weather

01/08/15 10:32 - 14.ºF - ID#59731

Winter weather

It's finally cold and snowy and I've realized I like being outside a lot more now that I'm not in it for a two hour daily commute. Except for the wind, fuck the wind.

Night walks are the best. I get to let out my energy and it feels like I get all of Buffalo to myself. If only (e:terry) or (e:paul) would come with me. :(

Permalink: Winter_weather.html
Words: 72
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/09/15 03:24

Category: church of the ascencion

01/08/15 10:30 - 14.ºF - ID#59730

Tschüss Church of the Ascension

Today was the last mass at the church of the ascension next door. They went out like I knew them - parked on the lawn.

I actually didn't mind living next to them. Free park/bocce court/drone launchpad and a nice looking building. I hope they keep that with the new senior housing.
Buffalo news story

If they build a giant parking lot on our side or in the courtyard I'm going to park a bulldozer in someone's house.

Permalink: Tsch_ss_Church_of_the_Ascension.html
Words: 82
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 01/09/15 03:22

Category: random

01/05/15 12:25 - 28.ºF - ID#59721

Sato's dirty mirror

We went out with (e:uchina) and (e:yesthatcasey) to Sato for some ramen. While there, Masumi noticed that the mirror was perfect for getting off some furtive glances at your dining mates' cleavage. Better watch out, Casey.

Afterwards we finished up Mario Wii. Everyone went off to watch UFC, while (e:paul) and I programmed. I am finally almost done with the Squeaky Wheel front end.