Poking about in Syracuse

I have been talking louder now about relocating to Syracuse in the very near future. Eric just got a BIG promotion - "Senior Programmer / Analyst" and our joint financial gravity just shifted eastward to Syracuse. :O) I have been plotting my future and I think I am settled on trying Design/Rehab on my own. I think I have watched enough "Rezoned" and other shows to think i can do better. So I figure I can at least give it a try for a year or two. Friday I headed over to Syracuse to start looking at neighborhoods. I have been looking at real estate listings but with no frame of reference for where they are located in the city. So i spent a snowy Friday driving around Solvay, Tipperary Hill and Onondagua street with a city map, making notes as I went. Saturday Eric and I spent the day driving around East Genesee, Erie Blvd, Division and Butternut Streets [zip code 13203] along with a quick drive through the "Gay Neighborhood" - Hawley Greene. I have made jokes that if you want to start some real estate speculation , all it apparently takes is for a realtor to take a pencil and draw a triangle on the city map and say "Gay Neighborhood" and TADA! I really liked the neighborhoods directly east of 81 - nice hilly neighborhoods with south and west sun exposure. I will be going over again next week look around more. In the meantime - I started taking pictures of commercial real estate in the city. I keep thinking I have to wait to make the jump to commercial development - but maybe not? Here are some comercial buildings I spotted over the weekend














This is the Marcellus casket company building. It would make awesome lofts


























This was an unsual building however there was no roof. So I guess I could buy it for free?














This building was "For Lease" yet had no windows. So I guess some developer is sitting on it thinking they can make some money in the future from a Rite Aid or Wendy's coming in and tearing it down. Kool. [not]

Flippin' Cold

Ok - the weather gauge says 14. I am keeping busy working on house things so i do not have to leave the house. Brrrr! Of course - my office is the coldest room in the house. It is all in vain however - I have a double header in Volleyball this evening so my hermiting will end eventually.

316 uploaded as small

Layout experiments

The image layout tools in blogger are not to my liking - therefore I am experimenting today. I actually set up a additional blog to test layouts now.

Lighting finished




Just wrapped up the lighting finally. On to other stairway details.

Irony

Trying my best to finish some stairway lighting today but the electric gods are against me. I spent all morning trying to find a possible error in my new 3 way lighting circuit only to find that the fixture itself is giving me problems. Oh - well - I had to stop and move on. Eric and i are having our friends over for dinner tonight and the house is a mess. So I am quickly cleaning and will start cooking shortly. Hopefully the chicken defrosting gods are at least with me today.













In a biting piece of irony, the U.S. patent office sent me a nice letter letting me know that on January 2nd, patent # 7,158,123 Secondary touch contextual sub-menu navigation for touch screen interface was awarded to me and several former coworkers at Xerox. Here is the riveting abstract: A touch sensitive user interface of the type having a display screen for displaying images representative of menus and selectable list objects, for example; control logic responsive to the touch sensitive user interface for determining the contact position of a first probe and a second probe, such as two separate fingers, thereon, displaying menus including list objects representing primary and secondary features or functions respectively, so that a user may touch a selection on the primary menu with the first probe and subsequently touch an area on the display screen where a contextually related secondary menu is displayed for selection of contextually related features or functions.
The idea was to basically provide a "right mouse" menu to people using touch screens.
the Irony: Three of the people on the patent [ including myself ] have been laid off over the past 3 years. - Oh well - back to chicken defrosting.

New Years in Pensacola

I helped my father drive down to Florida this year right after the holiday. I promised i would do my best to break-in his new Passat. The car is pretty sweet -though I think the VW ergonomic engineers made a few poor choices. The engine and 6 speed tranny are awesome. We made good time the whole trip and took just 2 days to get down to Perdido Key. I was scheduled to fly back to Rochester on the 31st [today] in the early morning - but the weather was uncooperative and my flight was cancelled. I was rescheduled for a late night flight back to Rochester instead. That put the ki-bosh on spending New Years with Eric in Syracuse :O( - but i figured I could at least go over the next morning. Well - on my return to the airport at 4:30pm this afternoon- I noted to the AirTran person that the time allotted to catch my Rochester connection in Atlanta was hmmm.... 15 minutes.. the AirTran person promptly noted that i would most likely miss the connection. Which I interpreted outloud "so I spend New Years in the Altanta Airport???" He mentioned getting a hotel at my own expense.. but i figured New Years was probably not the best night to "find" a hotel in Atlanta. So Dad and I headed back to Perdido Key and I cooked dinner for Aunt Betty, Uncle Ted, Dad and myself. I am on the morning flight to Atlanta for a 7 hour layover in Atlanta tommorrow. Should be interesting.

Holidays Around the state


Eric and i spent the night of the 23rd with my roommate gabby in Rochester. I cooked pork loin and a big dinner and we exchanged gifts. Much fun. Eric gave me the digital camera i asked for. Its a Kodak Digital camera with some unique time lapse features. I plan to have to some fun with that. Christmas Eve, We headed over to Eric's Folks house in Syracuse to have dinner with his extended family. A very nice time and lots of food! We headed to Owego to my sister's on Christmas day. After dinner, my nieces and nephews unwrapped the wristwatch walkie talkies we bought for them and proceeded to start running around the house. It was great. A very nice holiday. Eric headed back to Syracuse the next day for work and Kristin and I headed down with her kids to see Aunt Catherine.

Christmas Party

I hosted the Come Out And Play Christmas party at my house again this year. Hosting always forces me to get some work done around the house every year. I even had enough time to add Christmas bling to the hallway!






The tree all finished











Brad and Bill came early to help











Gerry [ the event photographer] brought homeade peroigies










We had a great pot luck spread








Vic and Eric's brother Brian and his sister Michelle








Chris, Mark and Josh







Steve and Joey










Russ and Steve











Brian











Eric,Vic and Karl








7:00 started the gift swap/steal.







Jennie,Anne,Jaqeim and Steve passing the IKEA chopping board got passed around a bit.






Jennie modeling the Aja noodle gift set










Dave unwrapping











A handy kitchen item











Stan modeling the apron










Chuck, Joe and Greg discussing details of the Colt calendar







Eric pointing himself out in the Colt calendar :O)









Gerry and Tim

We closed the party at 11:00 and headed to Barnight at the Forum.

The tree!

Eric , Gabe and I headed out on Sunday and nabbed ourselves a sweet Christmas tree. The tree farm had no binding machine - so it was slow driving home with a giant evergreen parachute hanging off the back of the truck.













naked tree.


3 extension cords, 10 strings of C7's, 4 ornament spinnners and well over a dozen Disco balls of various sizes and Christmas has arrived at my house!

Bittersweet week


The week started out on a positive note. I met with my thesis advisor Kim Sherman at RIT on Monday and handed in my last[?] revision to my MFA thesis. Completing the thesis has really felt like a weight off my back. [the "big loser" kind...] It has been like a background guilt I have had in my head for the past several years. I can hopefully get the thesis signed off on early next month and then I am hoping to prepare it for putting in my web portfolio. [ ie. - lots more illustrations - ugh..] But still a good feeling overall. I have been contemplating my next career steps for... hmmm.. 3-4 years now and figured I could not make another move until i finished thesis.















Well.. apparently Fate gave my employer a call that day and ..Tuesday I was downsized.
As in "Thanks for 10 years - C-ya.." I knew it was possibly coming and had my office half cleaned out already [ except the Lava Lamps in the picture ]

-but it still stings a bit.

I am actually fortunate - I wanted an exit and the company gave me one. I am not sure that is true for 13 of my other coworkers who were also walked out.

I look at it as an Opportunity. [ the good kind ]

House Projects 2006

I always start a house project in the fall. Typically - with a deadline of ..err.. 5 minutes before my Christmas Party starts... I have been meaning to start remodeling both the bathrooms in my house since April. The upstairs shower started leaking in April and we have been down to one working shower since. Well.. It always takes me a while to think of a good idea and I hesitate to start until I have one. So... the upstairs bathroom will be first and i will be documenting the work we will be planning to do over the next couple of entries. The bathroom has an exposed brick wall in it that I took as an inspiration. So I started looking at steel cabinets and fixtures to play with an industrial look in the bathroom. IKEA is not being too helpful this season unfortunately. Typically I can find something close in their catalog and with some modification - Viola! However - I started looking at vintage stripped steel furniture and think i have found a good direction.




I really liked the idea of adapting a Tanker desk into a bathroom vanity. But the bathroom is too small - so that idea is on the shelf for later use.





i did however find a steel cabinet from a doctor's office that i think will work well. I picked a sink from IKEA that I think will do the job nicely. [ and cheaply!] Of course - to pull this off requires that i strip the cabinet and take it to a professional for a good clearcoat. Warm weather would have made this all easier..

ImageOUT

This weekend the ImageOUT film festival began here in Rochester. ImageOUT features Gay and Lesbian films from all over the world for a full week at several theatres here in the city. Eric and Tim came in from Northampton and Brian came up from D.C. for the opening weekend and stayed at my house. For opening night we saw BoyCulture. I am typically dubious about any opening night film, but I actually liked the film. Afterwards, we headed off to NastyD’s to meet up with friends. Saturday- several people went to see A Love to Hide and reported back that it was excellent. Saturday evening we all went to see Another Gay Movie. Basically a queer version of American Pie, it was raunchy [ as to be expected] but still entertaining.
In the picture is Rick to my right wuth Brian in the center and Mark, Cory and Eric in the back.


After a typical Sunday brunch at the Penguin restaurant, we headed to see Flower City Flicks. This the local films series and featured the premier of our friend Gerry’s film Summer Longings. Everyone enjoyed the film and of the rest of the program. Gerry is pictured here with his director of photography, Greg Winters. Gerry also started a great blog about the production of the film. Sunday night was Eating Out 2 and featured the writer Q Allan Brocka afterward. I liked the film and found the facilitated talk afterwards interesting.



Other films coming up this week to see include Coffee date, Short Bus and a shorts program cosponsored by Come Out and Play.

August birthdays

We got a chance to catch up on some birthdays this weekend - Gabe and Eric both have birthdays on August 3 [ I was out of town] So we put together a big dinner to celebrate this weekend. Eric and i were also celebrating our 3rd aniversary. So our friends Jennie and Zahra [ the photographer] and my brother Jim came over for Chicken French and some birthday cake.