NYC for the weekend

"Front." The phrase rings out from behind the reception desk. It's a phrase I've heard only in the movies, within a script of a play, or from a book. I am standing at the desk, checking in at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renown worldwide as classic residence for many, many people both great and humble.
I was born and raised in NY, Long Island specifically. Manhattan was my playground as boy, a place I worked, and a place I escaped nearly 20 years ago, for the wide open spaces of Colorado. This weekend, thanks to my employer, was a mix of nostalgia, happiness and sadness. I worked a scant three blocks from this place in the heart of Madison Avenue. Herewith are some thoughts and images from a weekend in New York:

Aroma of chestnuts from the pushcart vendors, contrasted with new high-end food truck gourmet options. Steam rising from the streets. My old place of employment, the Swedish Church my first ex and I visited, Rock Center, the tree, and a light show on the facade of Saks. A cop at every intersection. How many cameras tracked my movements?

Windblown walk down 5th from the Jewish Museum on 92nd. Hanukkah menorahs on display by Daniel Liebskind, who's recent Denver triumph is the Art Museum. White bakery boxes with red twine. Walking down Madison in the 70's, realizing there are no restaurants or cafes among the boutiques.
Cole Porter's piano sits in the Terrace Bar above the Park Avenue entrance. Water stains from his highball glasses can be seen. Standing in line at the Shubert Theatre, realizing the last time I saw a show here was "A Chorus Line," probably in the late 70's. The excitement of seeing a Musical. Memphis made me misty. Peacock Alley for supper and a nitecap.

Sharing time with my sister, whom I invited as my guest. Offering her my F-class seat for the flight out. Having her meet my colleagues, seeing them through her eyes, and seeing myself through her eyes. Seeing my first grand nephew all of 6 months old, my 91yo dad, my NY sister and nephew and niece.
Flying high over Chicago on the way home, reflecting on a wonderful weekend.

10 miles on bike today is energizing and rejuvenating.

Thinking about microblogging. Is it a stream of counscienceness thing? Thoughts?

A Halloween-like Memory

The wayback machine is set for some time in the early 80's, perhaps 1981 or 1982. My best friend and I have a mutual friend living in an artist's loft in Brooklyn Heights, NY. He shares this space with a family member, building mobiles, and constructing interesting living spaces within the unit. The building sits in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. Back then, artists were moving to the Heights where lofts were much cheaper than the trendy SoHo spaces of the 60's and 70's.
We would spend the weekend at his place, hang out in the Heights, drink, smoke, and explore the city by foot and train. On this particular evening, after some particularly intense weed, we decide to walk to lower Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge. Downtown and Wall Street, in the late hours, was virtually empty, a playground in the canyons of the city.
As we enter lower Manhattan, we see some lights and commotion ahead. As we approach, we encounter trucks, emergency vehicles, police, firefighters and EMT's. As we walk into the melee, my friend spots something on the ground. Shocked, whispering to us, he says, "Look!" What we see is a headless corpse in an open casket.
My brain freezes, I get that sick feeling in my stomach, and the hair on my neck stands up. Oh my God! What's this about? I then see a couple of cops laughing. Looking around, I see director's chairs, a camera, craft services, you name it. Of course, we stumbled onto a movie set. We all started laughing, but I still felt that chill for some time to come.
A week or two later, my friend tells me the movie "Wolfen" was shooting on location in NYC. According to Wikipedia, principal photography was in the South Bronx, so it may be possible this part of the story may not be true.  If that's the case, what did we stumble upon? Perhaps some day I should watch the film & see if that scene is in the movie.
An update from my NY friend. He had the following recollection to add:

I've come to realize that my memory is not that great compared to that of others but I remember every detail of that funny night from 30 years ago... Except I don't remember the body in a casket. I remember it like right on the sidewalk or street -- but you're probably right. Anyway, all that is missing from your factual account is how completely stoned we were in an almost acid-like way and so just coming upon that brightly lit scene was a trip and then looking over at the dead body was more than we could handle. I remember it took some minutes to reconcile in our frantic minds the reaction of the smiling cops to the obvious suicide or homicide. What a funny night.

Sometimes I am in a Jerry Mood

Logged into Facebook way too late, while on travel to Orlando. It's been a long day at the conference, ended with booth tear down, a little late meal and wine. At the top of my news feed is this one:



Which of course leads to one of my all time favorite Dylan/Jerry songs.I missed seeing this live by two days. A group of friends and I drove from Denver to Salt Lake, but were only able to see 2/19/95. When I got the tapes for this one, boy was I stoked:



Late in his life, we did not know or believe the end was near, and Jerry pulls this one out. It's been 15 years, and boy do I still miss him.

Slick site

I use MapMyRide to log and map my bicycle rides. They've recently updated the site to display a fly-over of my route. Pretty cool stuff! It's not 100% accurate, however. I rode on the Cherry Creek Trail toward the Mall; however, the site assumed I rode on Cherry Creek Drive. It's a minor nit that I can live with.

So who is danno?

Now that Hawaii Five-0 is back on the air, and 'Book 'em Danno!" returns to popular usage, I started getting questions about why I use danno as a handle in the virtual world.  We set the wayback machine to 1986, and your trusty scribe is completing his bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

I get a call from the CS lab manager about a local company looking to hire folks fresh out of college. They are expanding their software business, and were interested in programmers. The company, Microtech Solutions, is long gone. We delivered accounting software based on Progress Software's 4GL Database, selling AT&T UNIX-based servers. My first computer was an AT&T 3B2:

The company had a standard for issuing user id's: use the first three letters of your first name, and the first two letters of your surname. So: Dan Notov became danno. I liked the way it sounded, the reference to Hawaii Five-0, and the fact it is easy to remember. Whenever I create a login somewhere on the Internet, I usually employ a variation of danno.

So now I'm @Large

Welcome to my idle blog, Danno's @ Large. I started this page mostly as a curiosity about blogging, syndication and social media. However, I never actually posted anything here. So, after months of languishing among the dregs of the blogoshphere, here I am, ready to actually post some content.

Why @Large? Well, that's an interesting question. Go way back to the early days of the Internet, about 1993. I became friends with a gentleman with similar interests. We decided to start up a little consulting business to capitalize on people and businesses attempting to use this new medium. In a spark of genius, we decided to call ourselves, Consultants @ Large. So, why not register the domain Large.com? That way we could have cool e-mail addresses using @Large.com. Yes, it was all about vanity.

A few years later, we went our separate ways, and I kept the domain. Come 1997, I actually built a little Linux box using an old PC, sitting in the closet in my home office. Here is what my home page looked like back then. The website was called cowie.large.com, a nickname of my oldest niece.

Regular life intruded, and home-based web servers became difficult and costly to maintain, so I outsourced the site to a an e-mail provider, Entergroup. Nowadays, it lives on as a subscription-based vanity e-mail service. Want to be @Large? Then sign up...