Sick house

Over the past week, both Brian and I have been sick. We aren't exactly sure what we have, but it is mainly a sinus congestion, runny nose, tired sickness. It has slowed us down a little, but we are trying to keep up with daily activities as much as possible. We are both still a bit congested (but a lot better than last weekend).

This weekend, Brussels has been feeling sick too. He has an upset stomache, so we have been watching him closely and feeding meds and special foods. Ferrets can lose a lot of weight when they are sick (since they are so small and have a super-high metabolism), so we were mostly concerned with keeping his food and water intake high. He seems to be a lot better today, which is excellent.

Ferret time

This last week, Brian came down with a bad cold and now I have it too. We are both sneezing a lot, and I stocked up on tissues when I went to the grocery store on Saturday. Other than that, we are mainly focusing on school and hanging out at home this week. We have been getting freezing rain off and on, so we are trying to stay home when the weather is bad. This evening, we met a couple friends in NY to have some classic NY-style pizza. It was nice to get out and be social, but since we are both a bit sick, we headed home before too long. We are trying hard to not get the ferrets sick, which is difficult when we are both sneezy.

Tyler James "It Took the Fire"

I don't know if either of my brothers will remember this guy. He was in my class in high school and has a new CD coming out this spring. It sounds pretty cool--follow the link to hear a preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThVFwtf23lQ

Nanotargeting Ads

The story I linked below is a great example of the power -and danger- of information that the digital world is now providing to buyers, and the dual threat of targeted advertising the web makes more possible.

The baseline information is important. Many of the things people do online are watched or tracked, and the information collected is for sale. Facebook and Gmail are easy examples of it; both services target ads to people based on what's in their email, on their Facebook page, on their friends' pages, and so on. The information collected empowers the ad targeting, so that later ads can be tailored to specific categories of users. The goal is reaching the right people at the right time. The catch is that the people receiving it don't necessarily realize they were targeted at all.

Case and point: http://www.politicsmagazine.com/magazine-issues/february-2010-the-case-study-issue/nanotargeted-pressure/.

This is only the beginning.

Chipotle

Brian and I went to Chipotle for dinner yesterday, since I was in the city and he had a break after classes and before a meeting. We went to a location directly behind Madison Square Garden, since that is where I needed to get on a train for home afterwards. It was nice to have a break from cooking at home and nice to be out and about. While we were there, I noticed two things that were interesting. First, all the food was more expensive (this is a restaurant chain). That wasn't too surprising, given our location. The second thing I noticed was even weirder: instead of the price, each item on the menu was followed by its approximate calorie count!

A Few More Snow Pics

Here are a few interesting shots I took today of smaller details.

First, here is a fenced-in parking lot located across the street. I like how the snow filled in the diamonds on the chain-link fence. This really shows how wet and sticky the snow is.

Here is a picture of some of the branches, also covered in snow. Throughout the day, this snow fell off the branches onto cars, roofs, the ground, but it was always swiftly replaced by more snow.

This last shot shows the cable and power lines, which seem to be strung up without a care for appearance or tidyness on our street. They also accumulated a lot of snow during the day. So far, we haven't had ice or wind enough to pull these wires down. The snow at least helps them look better than usual.

Extra brownie points to anyone who can guess what times these pictures were taken! (Hint: they match up with the last post.)

Snow Storm Summary

So today we got a lot of snow, like most of the east coast. Here are some pictures of the snow throughout the day. The roads were still pretty clear at noon, but it started to snow pretty hard at 2pm and has been snowing slowly but steadily since then. It is still snowing now (although not very hard at all). The snow today has been very wet and heavy. I went out to shovel off the steps of our building around 4:30pm, but the people paid to do it shooed me back in as soon as they saw me.

In view 2, you can watch how the cars parked on our street get more and more covered with snow through the day. One car gets dug out and then coated with new snow. Enjoy!

Noon, view 1:
Noon, view 2:

2pm, view 1:

2pm, view 2:

4pm, view 1:

4pm, view 2:

6pm, view 1:

6pm, view 2:

8pm, view 1:

8pm, view 2:

10pm, view 1:

10pm, view 2: