Last week we celebrated my father's and uncle's birthday. We ate at Cameo's on Niagara Falls blvd. The appetizers and clams were good but the food itself was too greasy, even for me.





Then we celebrated father's day on Sunday with brunch at my mothers. It was one of her usual extravaganzas but my camera is in the repair shop. We had omlettes, leg of lamb and procuitto wrapped salmon. It was so yumy.

The things that shape your life. I guess maybe this is what led to me becoming a computer dork. These entries are so funny.

Paul Visco May 18, 1987 (10 years old)

I would like to be Frank Balestrieri because he is very very good at sports. I would also like to be him because then people would let me play sports like basketball, hockey, kickball, baseball and catch.

That day I would start a baseball game with some 5th graders and some other kids. That would be the first time I played baseball with someone else!

That day I would learn to play baseball and other games. I would also learn what play a sport wih someone would be like.

I guess I was always an Apple fanboy, why am I such a poser pretending I wasn't. I feel like the same reoccurring themese have happened throughout my life but I thought most of them were new now.

Paul Visco January 26th, 1987
If I had $1000 I would buy an Apply II GS. The biggest apple computer. I would buy a logo disk and a basic disk first. ThenI would buy a 90" monitor. Then I would buy a diskdrive and a mouse. Then I could show all the classes the Turtle in the Auditorium.

Money is not a problem. I can always decide what to buy. I just never have enough money. That drives me nuts.

I take back anything bad I said about Kenmore, they have public facilities!

Paul Visco November 18th, 1987
Kenmore - Kenmore is a good place to live. There are many schools nearby. They have parks. The parks have been remodeled, they have a fitness area, a basketball court and a playground area. They also have a youth center. This winter they will have an iceskating rink. In the sumer they have two pools, one for ages 1-6 and one for 7-adult.

There are many types of restaurants. They have public facilities! They have a library. They have basketball, hockey and soccer teams, not forgetting baseball and swimming. They also have a cubscout and boyscout group which does a lot of things. There are a lot of children. But don't take my word for it, come look for yourself.

Paul Visco March 3rd, 1987 - Poem
Computers beeping,
Drawing with logo
Excellent teaching tool
They can do anything

Paul Visco 1987

Forests Are More Than Trees

Forests for nature -
The life of the wild,
The beautiful kingdom of deer.
The beavers chop so very near.
I wish I could see him this year.

Forests for hunters...
The death of the wild...
The hungry kingdom of humans...
The beaver skin so fancy...
the deer skin so beautiful...
Why do we suffer the wild?

Random snippet

Now Jenelle is my best friend also. Her brother is weird and has a small computer!

Considering my rant above about wanting the biggest computer, and the fact that it is 1987 - I think that saying he has a small computer is a sort of insult. If only I knew how cool small computers would be in the future.

Hi Paul.
I read your blog often and enjoy it very much. As a huge Buffalonian myself, I wanted to send you a message and see if you were interested in posting any of these in the events...

Let's just say I am not interested in being a group leader for selling tickets to see the Bills in Miami - even if you are a "huge Buffalonian"

Some people are so silly, she clearly has never read my journal if she thought I would be interested in selling 20 trips to see the Bills in Miami in order win one for myself.

Not having my camera is making me sad. I wanted to make a video about something but now I have to wait. Once the macbook comes I can use the built in cam for my video blogs.

I really want an iPhone. I mean the iPhone seems like the next logical step in my mobile addiction but without 3rd party app support it is so gimped. It can't SSH into my web server, which is the most important task that all of my mobile devices back to the first T-mobile Sidekick Iin 2002 could do

Considering that the iPhone is running OS X (ya right) why can't they thrown in a terminal emulator.

I guess maybe they will add it and surely people will hack it.

I think AJAX, CSS, HTML development is really stupid on a mobile device with a gimped data plan, AT&T/cingular edge is so slow compared to what I am used to on Sprint. It's like a step backwards for me to switch to them. The only advantage of AT&T being that if I switch to a sim-card phone carrier I can have multiple phones on one card.

I mean I love the idea of Safari being able to use AJAX apps but what about the storage of the programs. With AJAX you end up downloading the entire program each time, versus with a standalone applet for the phone you save the program on the phone and just download data.

Maybe I won't care and buy one just to add it to my collection of almost but not quite everything in one mobile devices.

I also don't know if I could live without a keyboard. Both my Nokia 7710 and my Nokia n800 (WIKIPEDIA - Nokia_N800) have on screen keyboards, and while they have come a long way, it will never be as functional as the hardware one. I mean I could type on the sidekick while driving and not looking at the keyboard. I know - that is way to dangerous for reality, but trust me it is possible. I could never do that with tactile sensation free onscreen keyboard.

I suppose the iPhone could just replace the PPC 6700 (WIKIPEDIA - HTC_Apache) (which is clunky and old looking now) and I could continue to carry around the not-phone (nokia n800) which is a full access linux OS with terminal. I just want one day to have the all in one device that rivals the functionality of the sidekick with the browser and style of the iPhone.

Here we have the history of my mobile addiction
Danger Sidekick 1 - worn out - I used it so much the keys actually wore down


Danger Sidekick 2 - eaten by bugs (e:paul,32081)


Nokia 7710 - broke the camera


Sprint PPC 6700- runs windows mobile 5 which is lame and slow


Nokia n800 runs linux and is awesome but camera sucks and its not a phone only wifi, bluetooth connections


iPhone - Will you be good enough for me

1. (e:jim) is going to be doing some long term contract work at Roswell and we will get to work together ;)
2. (e:lilho) is going away ;(
3. Which means our house will be empty besides the three of us - which means either it will be awesome to frolic around the giant house naked or we will kill each other by next weekend because we aren't forced to behave in front of other people.
4. Tomorrow mac and I are going are going on a date. Sorry PC, no further detalis.

This is in response to (e:james,39620)

I think it is a great idea to incorporate the suburbs into the city of Bufflao proper as has happend in many other cities that are growing.

However, I know people from Kenmore would probably fight to the death before they let it happen. Which leads me to think - why not just declare war on Kenmore and Amherst.

Having been born in Buffalo and raised in Kenmore, I fully see what is going on. My parents left Buffalo for Kenmore the year I was born. The real reason most people in the suburbs would never allow this to happen is because:

1. The school system of Buffalo cannot compete with the suburban ones.

2. The police don't come when you call here. I have experience this twice.

3. Many suburbanites are totally freakin' racist/classist and can't stand the thought of mixing their kids with american black, hispanic, arab, somali or poor kids. I know people are going to harp on me for this but it is true - so why not talk about it.

When I first moved to Linwood, everyone was like I cannot believe you are going to live that close to Main Street, and let's be honest - you all know what they meant. I can't believe you are going to live that close black people.

The other option is to be really wealthy and stay in the city on a street like St. James and send you kids to private school for between $5000-$30000 a year. I definately think a lot more people are taking that route than before.

I just had this moment reading Buffalo Rising where I wondered if anything they say is really something they believe, or if it is all something they are paid to say. This one video about the new tower condos on Delaware where the Park Lane used to be was just so over the top one-sided.

The woman who runs the Washington Market sounds like such a tool. She really needed to rehearse better before her embarrassing interview.

Screenshot from their video


I am all about new buildings being built downtown, although, a part of me wonders whether or not they will just end up being empty. I mean how many $300,000+ condo laden sky scrapers can you build in a city. like Buffalo As (e:matthew) said, is the problem really that we don't have enough desirable housing for rich people? It seems that anyone spending $300,000+ could get a lot better deal than the same thing they already have in every other big city.

I wonder if they will all just end up out competing themselves.

The Deer In My Yard
This is pretty crazy. This morning there was an adult deer freaking out in our backyard. (e:matthew) saw it while I was in the shower and the neighbors called 911 and the SPCA, neither of which came. It eventually got out and took off down Linwood going north. When I talked to my friend Robert today, he said that he saw in last week on Linwood. I wonder where it came from and how long it has been here.



He thought this mirror in the back of the yard was a way out. He smeared his nose all over it and broke the frame.




I wonder how long it will be before the lion crumbles off this building.

Went to Zoar on Sunday. It was fun to run around outside even though I might have burned the top of my head a bit after the haircut. The rest of me was sun screened pretty good, I just didn't think about the top of my head.

On a good note, we finally rented out the upper of the rental property on Prospect! Now that house is full again.

Sadly, my camera is not acting properly, look at what happens to its ability to focus. Thankfully, I had a contact at Nikon who was willing to help me out. He also mentioned they have a new camera that looks totally amazing, the P5000. It is a similar form factor but its 10MP and takes interchangeable lenses. I am kind of sad because we are off to Zoar Valley Again in the morning ;(




After the Allentown art festival, I came home and tried to vacuum out the hot tub to dispose of it. It was just nasty trash that came with the house. I couldn't find the hose attachment for my second favorite vacuum although I know I spent at least $30 on it.

So I spent like 2 hours emptying the hot tub by filling the vacuum and carrying it over to the garden 5 gallons at a time because of the missing hose attachment.

I want a tool room so bad. I have like 3000 tools and they are strewn all over this house, the garage, the rental property, the basement and attic, the car, etc.

I always find the wrong parts and end up using either the axe or a butterknife for every task. The frustrating part is that I own the tools, they are just in too many places and the multipart tools like the interchangeable screwdriver handle will be found but all the bits will be missing.

Once I got it emptied I wanted to take it apart but I couldn't find metric measured alan wrench? So I decided I would just beat the fuck out of it with the sledge hammer ( I know anger management) anyways that was missing! so I moved on the the axe and cut my finger. Then I decided I would go through every room of the house one by one till I found the sledge hammer.

It worked and I found all of these missing vacuum attachments which was a bonus.

I want one of those peg board work rooms so bad, but anyplace I could have one, I would have to do so much work before I could make it, and I can't do all that work while the tools are all over the place and missing. It is a horrible vicyous circle.

Like the garage. Seems like the perfect place for a workroom, but it is full of so much of (e:lilho) 's trash, a nasty old refrigerator that needs to go out, a wheelbarrow full of stic, the chiminea, the power washer, and about 6000 cans of toxic chemicals that I don't what to do with. I inherited them from the previous owner. How do you get rid of old paint?

Okay, this is redic. I was just looking at camping equipment for our annual camping trip and saw that they have the camping equivalent of a craftmatic adjustable blow up matress

So I had horrible allergies, went to the festival. Ate a lobster sandwich, it was pretty good.



Does anybody know the story about these chairs on Franklin? What was the place, a coffeshop?


People seem to love police horses. You could even buy mounted police souvenirs.




Afterwards we toured the church next to our house. I know I said that they sold their pews before, and everyone asks me what it looks like, but I didn't know they really sold them all. It looks so strange.



I cut my hair when not wearing classes which turned into me needing a buzz cut. I didn't notice I wasn't using the safety guard.