Chicken With No Head

Well, we moved the office from 20th Street to our new address - 163 West 23rd Street. The office itself looks great and will look a lot better once we put everything where it belongs and get rid of all the moving boxes.  Eric and I were here on Friday night very late (I left around midnight, Eric left around 2AM).  We had three guys here putting together the desks we ordered from Staples and it took them HOURS to finish.  Meanwhile, I put together one of those room divider bookcases from Staples and it took me - no joke - three hours.  If I see another cam screw or little wooden dowel, I'll wig out.

I still have a lot of tools here, and in between scrambles to get work done, we're screwing in towel bars in the bathrooms, cleaning the kitchen and moving file cabinets around.  Tuesday, I visited a client in NJ and hit the CostCo in Union, where I spent almost $900 on office supplies.  There was so much stuff, I could barely push the cart.

This morning, I got the coffee machine going.  I had bought a Bunn commercial coffee maker (the kind you find at delis and diners) at a garage sale for $3.  I figured those machines are bulletproof and they'll work forever.  So I cleaned it out thoroughly, and got some new carafes and a part for the machine at Bar Boy in Hampton Bays.  The thing looks like a 1960s relic, but it can make a pot of coffee in about 45 seconds, so I'm not complaining.

Internet service is still out here.  I spent the better part of yesterday dealing with Verizon and M5 and watching them blame one another for our lack of Internet and phone service.  Verizon did the T1 installation yesterday (5 days late) and it appears to be ready to go, but M5 claims its hands are tied until Verizon files something with them that says they installed the T1 and it's working to M5's specifications.  Whatever.

Putting Internet service aside, there's plenty to do here in between meetings, from hanging whiteboards to moving furniture to filing papers from the old office.  We'll have our hands full for a while.

Treasure Hunting Find

Yesterday, I had the day mostly to myself, so after running some errands, I went down to the beach and took my truck out on the dunes. It was a crowded beach day and a lot of 4x4 enthusiasts packed the area where the county lets trucks and jeeps park. Lots of people were swimming and fishing. For kicks, I brought one of my metal detectors with me, and I spent about an hour looking for treasure. Unlike other excursions, where I had left my detector settings focused on coins, I decided to crank the detector's sensitivity settings up and look for all types of metals. I did end up finding quite a bit of foil, bottlecaps and trash, but I did manage to get a few nickels, pennies and quarters.

A little over an hour into it, I headed a bit closer to the water and I heard a tone. The piece of metal clearly wasn't a coin, and it was pretty close to the end of the detector's range - about a foot down. I didn't want to dig a foot down just to find a bit of tinfoil from someone's old peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I resolved to dig everything yesterday, so I had at it with the hand trowel.

The object was so small that I almost missed it, and I almost moved on before I spotted a glint of light as I was pawing through the sand. I found a small fragment of tarnished metal, and into it was set a diamond.

I'm not even sure it's real, but that find ended my treasure hunt for the day. Upon arriving home, I pried the diamond loose from its setting with a couple pairs of needle-nose pliers. Above is a picture of the diamond and its setting. Sorry that it's so blurry. The batteries on my regular digital camera are worn down and the camera in my Blackberry Pearl doesn't have a macro mode.

So now, I'm not sure what I should do. I'd like to take it to a jeweler to see if it's not just a piece of glass. It looks like it might be in the .75 - 1 carat range. (I do think it's probably real. It didn't scratch when I nicked it with the pliers.) Any advice? Anyone know a NYC-based jeweler who could take a look at this for me?

If it's real, I might want to buy a setting for it.

UPDATE:

I visited two jewelers on 47th Street at lunch.  Both said it's a cubic zirconium.  Nuts...

Consumption BS

I've dismissed just about every report I've ever seen on media consumption that tries to put an average number of hours to media consumption. As I'm fond of saying in my columns, in order for the average American to watch as much television as media research companies say they do, one would have to come home after work/school every day Monday through Friday and watch two hours of television. Then they would have to spend both days of the weekend watching 8 hours per day. Obviously, there's some inflation going on here. Talk all you want about averages. I refuse to believe that the average American watches that much television. Similarly, check out this article in AdAge. Amazingly, one media research company has actually stated that media consumption declined from 2005 to 2006. It's the whole thing about what it declined to that's amusing. The average yearly figure for Americans for 2006? 3,530 hours.

To put things in perspective, there are only 8,760 hours in a year. Am I to take it that people actually believe the average American spends over 40 percent of their year consuming media?

More perspective... If you got a healthy 8 hours of sleep per night, which most people don't, you would sleep for 2,920 hours a year. The average is under 7 hours. Let's call it 7 to make the math easy. That's 2,555 hours a year. Am I to take it that the average American spends 38 percent more time consuming media than sleeping? I doubt it.

Assuming no multitasking (which is a huge jump, I know...) and 7 hours of sleep per day, that would leave 2,675 hours left over for things like working and, you know, LIVING. With a 40-hour work week, you've got only 595 hours left during the course of the year for doing stuff that isn't working, sleeping or consuming media.

I can't believe people actually think these numbers represent anything in the realm of reality. On a side note, I can't wait for the first media research person who pops in here and attempts to justify numbers like this. Excuse me, sir, but your agenda is showing...

On Last Night's Police Concert

Had some fun at Giants Stadium last night, watching Sting and the boys... Eric and I procured some tickets from the Best Buy business program.  We took our wives, although we ended up sitting in separate sections, as the tickets had to be bought two at a time.

Sting's kid's band was fairly boring as the first of two opening acts.  It was a trio just like the group that gave his pop his ride to stardom.  Their stuff sounded too much like B-sides from Sting's solo career to be enjoyable, though.  I enjoyed the next band, though - some Scottish trio called The Fratellis.  Interesting group - I think they named themselves after the family of bad guys in "The Goonies."  The drummer did look like he belonged chained in a back room somewhere.  Maybe that's the connection.  In any case, I liked their stuff - lots of odd changes in tempo and time signature.  Maybe I'll see if any of their stuff is downloadable.

Good show by the Police.  They opened with "Message in a Bottle," which is one of my favorite Police tunes when played uptempo liked they played it.  It's the perfect opening song for a Police show.  Other highlights included "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," "Walking on the Moon," and "So Lonely."  They even played "King of Pain" as one of the encores - my favorite Police song of all time.

There were some lowlights, though.  "Don't Stand So Close to Me" was a hybrid version of the original version and the re-recorded version that left me wishing they would have picked one and stuck with it.  And, believe it or not, I didn't really dig the final encore, since I don't think I've ever heard the Police truly capture the original vibe of "Every Breath You Take" in a live situation.  It's almost like they try too hard - every live version I've ever heard of this song sounds overdone.

Probably the coolest number, though, was "Wrapped Around Your Finger," which featured Stewart Copeland standing up to play most of the tune on a variety of chimes and such hanging behind his kit.  He also had a timpani or two stashed back there (or maybe they were just really big floor toms).  Right when the tune picks back up, Copeland jumped back into his kit and played his ass off.

Glad I caught this one.  At least someone managed to pull off a reunion tour this summer...