Embarassing Moments and Transport Layers

First for me: forgetting how to spell the word "embarassing" (still not 100% sure). Then Googling it and getting so many funny responses that I forgot what my own hilarious tale would have been... So, my findings. Not linked, so that you too can search for other people's embarassing moments and be amused. Note: according to one source, the top embarassing things are: shyness, baldness, acne, and sex. Phew. I'm doing kinda okay. Top Google results (omitting YouTube for obvious reasons):

How to escape embarassing situations by using your mobile phone. ...

Information and excerpts from the book to help you deal with health problems that are difficult to discuss, including shyness, baldness, acne, and sex.

Embarassing. Victory_2_tiny by mlmintampa on Sep 27, 2008 4:11 PM EDT in Football. My head is literally fuming. I feel heat coming off my head right now. ...

Oct 9, 2008 ... Google just rolled out a new set of ads making the total number of ad-based revenue streams roughly equal to.

The last one I do link to as it looks kinda interesting (no, I didn't read the whole thing).

Anyway, today's topic as I read to W. at Lighthouse International was "Transport Layers." Which, for you uninformed means: a group of methods and protocols within a layered architecture of network components, within which it is responsible for encapsulating application data blocks into datagrams (packets) suitable for transfer to the network infrastructure for transmission to the destination host, or managing the reverse transaction by abstracting network datagrams and delivering them to an application. Such protocol are also referred to as "transport protocols."*

Got it? Good.

* Thank you, Wikipedia, for explaining it, like 68% better and more succinctly than the poor dude's 1994 textbook.

Eggs

I boiled my first egg ever today. I'm so very proud.

Sunny Saturdays [w/ video]

Sunny Saturdays are not my cup of tea. Too ... wide open and relentlessly ... upbeat. I know the burden's on me to fill up that time, to breathe and explore and for god's sake get some fresh air and sunlight. Well. I'd prefer a rainy, windswept day with a book any time.

Anyway, I DID have plenty to do, starting with getting up to 59th and Lex before 10 am to volunteer at Lighthouse International, the leading nonprofit resource organization for the visually impaired. I love the place... it oozes goodness, somehow, proximity to Bloomingdale's notwithstanding. Light, modern, airy, the building welcomed me back after a long hiatus.

Obviously, any volunteer work will provide a sense of having done something right and good. I lucked out, though, and also got to meet a cool guy and learn some stuff about Internet protocols. Two hours of reading a textbook on all things Internet just flew by. Today we focused on SMTP, POP3 and IMAP, syntax over Telnet, getting into P2P file-sharing (Napster through Gnutella only). The guy, W., is a very bright, relatively young African American grad student at Brooklyn Polytech. He has some sight but not enough for reading. He's been essentially blind since age 10. He lives in Brooklyn and has a really long commute to the Lighthouse. He's not sure what he's going to do with his graduate degree. He may teach but thinks that might have its own challenges and annoyances. He has beautiful eyes.

Later, I got my hair cut.

Below, a slice of what seemed like possibly tens or hundreds of skateboarders zipping down Broadway. In traffic.

Fish in a Barrel

So I'm a week behind. I think I'll always be a week behind, after last week. Meaning, I (and everyone else) has sort of lost time... at least in terms of our 2 and 5 and 10 year plans, thanks to the clowns on Wall Street and in Washington.

Anyway, I caught the Intrepid museum ship on her way back to her berth alongside Manhattan. Kinda historic and kinda cool to see in person, if fleetingly.

Weekend highlights included watching In Bruges (great small funny movie -- and I'll watch anything with Ralph Fiennes in it. Plus that Colin Farrell is exquisitely amusing when he plays dumb). A low point was seeing Religulous with S. It was Michael Moore lite... and -- somehow apropos -- shooting fish in a barrel. Making fun of religious fanatics is waaaaay too easy. And this just after what I felt was the best Real Time I'd seen, with Alec Baldwin, Gary Shandling and Christiane Amanpour. Great stuff. Catch it if you can...