And then there were eight. 

Everything I learned in elementary school science seems to be a lie.   

Did you know there were more than three states of matter?   At first I learned about Plasma, making it four, but now it turns out there are a whole bunch of 'em.  That probably explains why if you leave ice cubes in the freezer long enough, they completely disappear.

I've been working really hard today, so I took a ten (err..  20...) minute break to make a Chuck Norris avatar for my sidebar.  More reasons to reorg the sidebar...    I gotta find a way to make him randomly repeat different Chuck Norris facts.

New York City snowfall tally as of this morning...   13 inches.  Dorean came by to play in the snow around 11 last night and we threw snow at each other like eight year olds and then went over to Carl Shulz Park.

Her dad built an igloo on 86th Street with his snowblower, and of course, I had to get in it.  The snow wasn't piled to high yet, as you can tell from my car, which we wrote on.  I think it continued through the night, though, and this is how things looked outside my window this morning.

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I've posted about this before, but its come up again.  Last Election Day, I tried to doublecheck my polling place by e-mailing the NYC.gov website.  They finally got back to me in late January.

Well, today, they replied again, for good measure I suppose...

"SORRY FOR THE DELAY, YOUR POLL SITE IS:PS 290, LOCATED AT 311 E 82 ST."

And they want us to believe they'll figure out electronic voting without a hitch?

This would be funny if it wasn't true.   On Election Day, as I was walking out of my house, I wanted to doublecheck my polling place.  I was pretty sure I knew where it was, but it was my first time voting in my home district (no more trekking back to Brooklyn.)  Anyway, the NYC voting website had an e-mail address for location inquiries, so I e-mailed them.  Today, on January 26th, I finally received a response...

Curbed, the NYC real estate, etc blog posted an ethical question about some renter who wanted to get away with not paying his broker fee to a careless real estate agent.  Responses were requested and I submitted mine on the side of ethics and just treating people well overall.  It got posted.. wooo!   So, if you're a real estate agent, now you know I'm an ethical guy and the kind of guy you want to send listings of apartments for sale with reasonable maintainence south of 59th Street around 400k.  One bedrooms only, please.

Link: Curbed: The Curbed Ethicist (Part I): Pay The Guy Already.

Real estate brokers provide little else besides the knowledge of an open apartment, which he did here. Sure, he very haphazardly involved himself in the process, and you could probably get away with not paying him, but its not as if he didn’t do his job. You wouldn’t have known about the listing if he didn’t post it, and in my mind, he deserves payment for that... Trust me, screw people over and it will come back to haunt you. What you should do is pay him the fee, but explain to him that you didn’t have to and point out to him the err of his ways. Maybe he’s new and he’ll be so indebted, that in a few years when you move, he’ll find you a sweet deal.

Rooster paraphernalia?  There was a story in the news this morning about how cops broke up a cockfighting ring in the Bronx.  They confiscated a whole bunch of roosters, plus assorted "rooster paraphernalia."   I haven't the faintest idea what that could possibly mean.  Little tiny boxing gloves?  Beak guards?  Championship belts?