A Week in NY, Part 1

New York is a great place to visit in the Spring! I checked the weather before I left, and the week was supposed to be from the low 40s to upper 60s. So good, I decided not to even take a jacket.

I'm still trying to pack as light as possible, so even though I really should have taken a jacket, I did manage to pack everything I was going to take in one small carry-on case. If it weren't for the work clothes (bulky and heavy), I could have fit everything in my gym bag.

I planned my trip so I would arrive in NY in time for dinner. Doing my homework ahead of time, I singled out what was supposed to be one of only a handful of great Chinese places on Long Island. Flushing, in Queens, is the new Chinatown where all the really great stuff is, but I just ran out of time on this trip.

The Orient was great. Tucked in a small strip-mall, it's very unassuming. On the inside, this place was packed. I went back for lunch two days in a row for their dim sum, it was always busy. I really wanted some good seafood my first night, so I had them prepare something that wasn't on the menu, fresh scallops on a bed of chow fun. The waiter picked a great sauce, it was fantastic.

Our headquarters in Melville:

Spring-time on Long Island, it was beautiful there.

Here is Huntington village, where House of India can be found. This was supposed to be one of the better Indian places near where I was staying. While one trip to Bangalore does not make me an expert on Indian food, I would have to say the saag paneer and nan that I ordered wasn't very authentic. The spiced tea was served with the milk on the side, rather than cooked in it. The nan was too fluffy, and the spices in the saag were quite tasty but I would say that it appealed more to an American palette. The homemade mango ice cream was great though. Although, I rarely come across bad ice cream. =)

haxx0red!

I'll be in NY the week of the 18th, so if anyone knows of anything exciting to do while I'm out there, let me know! I'll be coming back on Friday, so I'll only have nights, but I'll be getting out to the City at least a couple of times. =)

And to fuel the fire of Google paranoia, my Google account got hacked a few days ago! I had a sinking feeling when I couldn't log into my Gmail account, because my password didn't work. For future reference, make sure you're secondary security email account works, because that's how they reset your password... they send a link to your other account.

My other account was my work account, and not being overly concerned about not getting to my Gmail account, I decided to wait until I got to work to deal with it. I soon came to notice that I couldn't get into my Calendar... I had forgotten that was related to Google. Couldn't update my blog. Had no news reader. Oh well, annoyances... but I decided to be computer free for the rest of the weekend.

When I finally did get my password reset at work, everything seemed normal. Even the piece of "phishing" email that I got asking me to confirm something-or-other that I had supposedly purchased. But it wasn't a fake, and I didn't realize it until a couple of days later.

What I didn't realize was that I had bought something using the new Google Checkout feature that some smaller online stores are using a couple of months back. Someone actually bought a computer through my Google account!

Luckily, they never received confirmation because I got my account back in time, so they cancelled the order without me having to do a thing, but it's a little scary having all those services tied to a single account.

marknbev.com officially dead!

Well certainly an end of an era for me. With a touch of remorse, I turned off my server today. It had been parked behind my desk for the last three years, and when I powered it off, my head started to throb as it had to adjust to the missing fan noise.

I've been on the path of simplifying things for a few months now, mostly driven by the fact that we were moving. But even though we've decided to stay, I still recognize that it's well worth continuing the effort.

I hadn't been doing anything with the server for quite some time now, I moved my email off of the domain a few months ago, and I stopped doing software updates increase my own risk to vulnerabilities. It was time for it to go, and Igor letting me "borrow" his unused Netgear wireless router was just the excuse I needed.

The mess behind my desk... marknbev.com!

Three years of uptime, it was seriously sad to turn it off.

I managed to replace all of this...

...with this.

Sometime in the future, I plan on replacing our desktops with laptops. I'll also buy a raid 1 disk enclosure with print server, so I can have central storage and move my printer into the garage. That'll let me get rid of two desks, which are only around to stick a computer next to!