The other day I walked past the building in the picture above and
I felt a little sad. The reason I felt sad is because I have great memories
about this building. When I first came to the US from the Netherlands I was
amazed at how big this store was and how they had so many things on display. In
Amsterdam where I arrived from, you didn’t really have a store like this. The
story was named J&R, there was a J&R Music World store and a J&R
Computer World store. J&R stands for the founders Joe and Rachelle Friedman.
There were several items I bought at this store
The first camera I ever owned I bought in this place, it was
a Minolta but I don’t remember the model. I later sold the camera because a
co-worker needed the camera while he went on vacation to Equador. So I only had
it for 2 or 3 months.
A couple of years later I replaced that camera with a Canon
50E I think this Canon camera might have
also been known as an Elan. The E in the model name stands for eye-control,
this was an enhanced version of the 3-zone eye-controlled autofocus system that
was first seen on the EOS 5 camera. This was very high tech back then.
Another item that I have fond memories about was the first
MP3 player that I purchased; It was the first MP3 player that was available to
buy. It was the Rio PMP-300 portable MP3 player. I believe it was around $200
and you could hold about 10 songs or so since it only came with 32 MB of memory.
You could store more songs if you inserted a smartmedia card. But even then you
could not store hundreds of songs. I remember encoding the songs in WMA 64k
format so I could store even more songs…… lol1st world problems.
I bought many other things at J&R like camera lenses, filters for the camera, a tripod, RAM to upgrade the PC, I even purchased Plus! lol Plus had themes and utilities for Windows
The nice thing about J&R was that they had prices unlike
42 street photo or whatever those stores were called where you had to negotiate
the price. Also unlike at the Nobody Beats The Wiz store, they did not try to
sell you insurance with every item you bought.
These days I guess you would have to go to B&H to get asimilar experience, just be aware that they
are not open on Saturdays.
This year I read 20 books. Ten of these books were fiction and ten were non-fiction. The Game of Thrones books were a re-read, I already read book 4 and 5 of this series before..
The weirdest book I have ever read
One part of this book is about a house which is always changing and somehow the measurements inside are larger than the outside measurements. There is are video recordings of what happens inside the house to the Navidson family as well as some people who are trying to help. The other part of this book is about Johnny Truant who discovers the manuscript written by Zampanò about the videos mentioned earlier, the Navidson record. I don't want to give you more info about the story, this way I won't spoil anything for you
This book has pages with text in circles, braille, upside down text, mirrored text and much more. Here is also a short video with some of the weirder pages of the book
There are also hidden messages in the book, the word house is always colored blue, some of the references are real, some are made up
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara
This is a historical fiction book focusing on World War I. This book is very very good, I would recommend this to anyone. A big part of the book deals with air warfare, you will learn a lot about Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen and Raoul Lufberry. Another thing you will learn when reading this book is how the soldiers experienced trench warfare.
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Excellent book, a non-fiction book that reads like a novel, I couldn't put it down. Amazon's best book of the month for March 2015. Here are just some highlights of what reviewers had to say.
Larson is one of the modern masters of popular narrative nonfiction...a resourceful reporter and a subtle stylist who understands the tricky art of Edward Scissorhands-ing narrative strands into a pleasing story...An entertaining book about a great subject, and it will do much to make this seismic event resonate for new generations of readers." —The New York Times Book Review "Larson is an old hand at treating nonfiction like high drama...He knows how to pick details that have maximum soapy potential and then churn them down until they foam [and] has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail." —The New York Times "In his gripping new examination of the last days of what was then the fastest cruise ship in the world, Larson brings the past stingingly alive...He draws upon telegrams, war logs, love letters, and survivor depositions to provide the intriguing details, things I didn't know I wanted to know...Thrilling, dramatic and powerful." —NPR "This enthralling and richly detailed account demonstrates that there was far more going on beneath the surface than is generally known...Larson's account [of the Lusitania's sinking] is the most lucid and suspenseful yet written, and he finds genuine emotional power in the unlucky confluences of forces, 'large and achingly small,' that set the stage for the ship's agonizing final moments." —The Washington Post "Utterly engrossing...Expertly ratcheting up the tension...Larson puts us on board with these people; it's page-turning history, breathing with life." —The Seattle Times "Larson has a gift for transforming historical re-creations into popular recreations, and Dead Wake is no exception...[He] provides first-rate suspense, a remarkable achievement given that we already know how this is going to turn out...The tension, in the reader's easy chair, is unbearable..." —The Boston Globe
The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Loved this book, anyone who travels by plane should read this book, you will appreciate what these two guys accomplished pretty much by themselves
Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson
Very interesting book, in my opinion way too long, Neal Stephenson could have cut the book in half and still make a very compelling story. I liked the story a lot, the moon breaks apart and there is only a certain time frame in which to save humanity.
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Another book I enjoyed a lot. The most interesting part of the book for me was that you could see what life must have been in Chicago during the time period the book takes place in. The first time we had tall buildings, electricity and light bulbs, the first Ferris wheel. This book really contains two stories, one about the world fair, the other about a mass murdered.
Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute by Emma Craigie
Was disapointed in this book because it also covered a bunch of stuff that happened at other time...but I think if this wasn't done, then the book would have been 50 pages or so. Some interesting facts about what happened in the bunker and what it must have been like for the people inside that bunker.
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
Probably my favorite book of the year, Moby Dick was based on this disaster. An excellent story about tragedy and survival at sea. I didn't know much about whaling or whale oil, after reading this book I can only appreciate what a tough job that must have been.
And here are the 5 books I like the most from this list of 20 books
Someone left me a comment on the So You Think The Market Is Bad Now? It Went Down 89% Between 1929 And 1932 post asking for some additional data for the chart. Here is some of that data, as you can see it took 25 years to close above 400 again. Just imagine if this happens now, a lot of people will not be able to retire, the only problem is that there is not an abundance of jobs either, as a matter of fact there is a shortage.
I decided to stop blogging at sqlservercode.blogspot, from now on all the SQL related posts will be on SQLBlog.com and on lessthandot.com. I will use this blog for non-technical stuff or tech stuff that I cannot post on the two blogs mentioned earlier. I have also included my linkedin, twitter, flickr and friendfeed info so that you can also follow me there.
A little about me: I work as a database architect for a firm in New Jersey, I am married, have three kids and live in Princeton. Some of my hobbies are: databases, programmimg, philately, photography, reading and gardening. The purpose of this blog is to focus on the non-tech stuff; I will review some books I like, I will post some pictures I take and also about philately and how it can be beneficial to learn history.
So this first post is not that big but you have to start somewhere :-)
