Seems like every time I get around to making a post on here I end up changing something. Well, this time there are two notable changes so far. The first being that I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. I’ve been using WordPress for awhile now and have seen it evolved, and I must say it keeps on getting better. Unfortunately I end up neglecting it by not posting, then always have to update it when I do post.

The second change is that I have moved the blog to its own directory. For now I don’t have anything in the root directory of the site but that will change. During my first term at school we created an online portfolio, something that I think is incredibly important to have, especially as I try to market myself and get that dream job. For the portfolio I created the design myself and I’m not totally pleased with it, mainly because I am in no way creative. I don’t do design. My current plan is to incorporate the portfolio into the design of this blog or to play around and come up with something on my own that I do like. Ideally I want the whole site to have the same look though.

When will this all be done? That’s a great question I say. With school done until September now I have one less excuse, however I will have a full time job (co-op) this summer – starting around the first of May. Oh, and then next week I am gone to the Dominican for a week so it won’t be happening then. I have some free time in between packing and going to a birthday celebration this weekend so I think the plan is to start on it now. Until then though the site root will redirect to /blog.

I feel like I am just talking to myself right now, I don’t think anyone really reads this thing. My own fault though for not keeping it active.

Yet again I have gone awhile without updating this blog, I guess I need to think up of some more ideas for things to put on it.

Anyways, once it was officially announced that Aerosmith would be coming to PEI this summer (July 21) me and the guys decided that we had to plan a little trip to go to the concert. The fact that the tickets are only $75 (compared to the $100+ for some of the other big name concerts of late) only made it that much easier to decide. After a painful hour and a half on Saturday morning I was able to get the tickets online. As expected the box office site was swamped with traffic and very slow and unresponsive at times.

Now, as much as I want to complain about the problems using their site, with my job and experience I can understand some of the issues. First, I want to note that I was on the ticket site before the sale started at 10AM. Leading up to that time the site worked perfectly and was very fast but as soon as the concert web site updated and linked to the box office site, it came to a crawl. Noting that I had been trying since before the tickets went on sale, it wasn’t until 10:22AM when I was finally able to add the tickets to my cart. It took about 35 minutes (10:57AM) for me to complete the checkout process. Let’s just say that a lot of refreshing was involved, so much so that apparently I accidentally submitted the order twice but luckily they have safeguards in place for that so it only goes through once — which I applaud them on. All that said, I do feel their pain and understand. The ticket site is run by the Charlottetown Civic Centre and best I can tell is on a shared hosting plan (possibly clustered). Normally, this is probably more then enough for them but once you’re selling tens of thousands of tickets to a big name concert, it simply isn’t enough and they probably knew this. It would be interesting to see the traffic stats (impressions and bandwidth) for the day.

Is there a solution for this? Of course, two come to mind immediately. The first being that they could have got a couple of powerful dedicated machines to run the box office site but there wouldn’t be a long term benefit for them, an event like this probably would only happen for them once every 5-10 years. The second being using an existing service to sell the tickets for them, such as ticketmaster.ca (which I did hear someone say is where they would be on sale but they were obviously mistaken). Now, I’m not sure how the contracts and fees work for those sites, but they usually have the infrastructure in place to handle that traffic.

Personally, I think in Canada companies are still learning how to do online sales. Things have got better over the last couple of years with more stores opening up shop online in addition to their retail outlets, but we are still a long way off from the US. One example is Wal-Mart who has had their online store in the US for a couple of years now at least (not sure when they first launched it) but still hasn’t launched a Canadian online store. In fact, up until recently they did even have products listed on the site, it just had general information. Our culture is also partly to blame for this though. Until recently I don’t think many people have actually wanted to shop online, too many questions about security or just how it all works in general. I guess we just like to proceed with caution, but sometimes we really go too slow.

Anyways, it looks like I managed to squeeze out a decent sized entry this time, here’s to hoping I can do it again soon.

Over the long weekend that just passed (Canadian Thanksgiving/US Columbus Day) I was invited up to Québec, QC by Michael to visit some of his family and do some sightseeing. We ended up renting a car and driving there, stopping in Montreal along the way. The drive took about 8-9 hours each way, but thankfully didn’t seem all that long. Needless to say I had a great time, and especially enjoyed the time off of work. The first batch of pictures from the trip is up, and there should be more that I will link to later in the week.

I also learned that the French don’t have turkey for Thanksgiving there so I didn’t get to have any, but there is always the American Thanksgiving next month. I was able to bring some real Canadian beer back to the US as well (go Keith’s!) that seems to be almost impossible to find here so that alone was worth it.

Another year, another summer, another trip.

In six days I will be heading back down to New York. It’s been about nine months since I got back towards the end of October last year but I am ready to put up with the big city again for a little while. It should provide the little break from home that I need, especially with school starting in two months. Of course I will be working down there, but I will be sure to have some fun as well.

Look on the bright side, it might actually provide me with some material to post in this poor neglected blog!

It is now official, I am heading back home a week from today, October 21. For those interested my flight arrives around 10PM. It will certainly be different going back to my old routine. I wonder if I will still get up before 8 in the morning…

As of right now there are no plans for me to return to NY. Wish I can honestly say is a bit of a relief with all of the rain that has been coming down here for almost 2 weeks now. It probably has been raining almost as much as back home though.

Anyways, not really much more to report on right now. When I checked yesterday the weather was supposed to be decent tomorrow so I might get out and around NY for one last time before I go home.

Now a nice little quote to close with:

He’s turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he’s miserable and depressed.
- David Frost

I did get the pictures from Ground Zero and Empire State Building online. The Empire State Building ones didn’t all come up the best as I feared but some of them aren’t too bad and the others look kind of cool. I will definitely have to go back and get better pictures sometime, but that will have to wait for a return visit.

If you want to see the pictures email me (nick AT nickfitzgerald.com) or if you have me on AIM or MSN ask me there to see them.

It really has been a fairly uneventful week, unless you count that little thing on Thursday night. But first, let’s rewind to Sunday.

After making my last post on Sunday I eventually got off my butt and went out. My destination: Central Park. I must say it is so calm and peaceful there. I actually intend to go back there (perhaps tomorrow?) so I can go to the zoo they have there and just enjoy it all a little more. I was a bit late getting there on Sunday to get into the zoo and to have enough time to enjoy it before they closed for the day. I ended up walking about 3/4 of the way up the park (which is quite the size), headed west, then proceeded to walk down to Times Square from there. I ended up walking around Times Square a few times, pretty nice. I, however, still did not get many pictures there. The problem is that on the weekend there are so many people there so it is hard to get the “money shots.” So, this is also one place I intend to return to, but on a weekday.

Nothing really spectacular happened from Monday to Wednesday that I can recall. But Thursday turned out to be a pretty good day. After work everyone was invited out for drinks, paid for by the company. I certainly made good use of that invite. Let’s see, as I recall it I had 6 drinks plus a shot of tequila. Five of those drinks were a Lava Lamp and then a beer, which was a chaser for the shot. It was good to get out like that but to also mingle with some of the people in the office I don’t normally talk to and some who I was never really introduced to. I would certainly do that again, problem is I will probably be gone before the next event happens.

Last night, Friday, was kind of more laid back. I actually stayed at the office with a friend until around 10:30 and just kind of chilled and watched baseball. Neither of us has cable or any such thing at home but there is satellite at the office. It was rather odd sitting there at my desk when the cleaners were coming in and doing their thing. Oh well!

That about covers it. It is now Saturday, 12 PM, and I have no idea where I am going today or what to do. This seems to be a regular problem on the weekends. Perhaps I shall try to find a place to buy a new power adapter for my laptop, damn you Dell! Maybe I should just find a new laptop….

Oh, I almost forgot, looks like I might be heading back to California for a little bit once I am done here later in October.

So yesterday I figured what better to do on a Saturday in NY then go out and play tourist. The summary of this is I went to Ground Zero and also went up the Empire State Building. In between those two I took a nice walk along the Hudson River. In Battery Park they have the Sphere that once was between the Twin Towers at the WTC site. On 9-11 it suffered some damaged but the artist that created it said it gave it more life then he ever could have, pretty interesting. They also have a burning flame in front of it. My understanding is that it will be moved back to the WTC site once the area is redone.

Ground Zero: It is pretty hard to believe that once the Twin Towers stood there. It is simply a huge empty space right now. It appears they got part of the subway system rebuilt there now so that is a good start. The whole area is fenced off but you still get a pretty good view of it. They still have the last beam of one of the buildings there that forms a cross. I overheard people that are famaliar with the area talking to other people and talking about how the surrounding buildings had been damaged pretty badly. The Hilton hotel is across the street from the site and I guess all of the windows on one of its sides was blown out. On the fence surrounding the area they have quite a bit of information up about 9-11 and the events that occurred. I never actually planned on going to Ground Zero yesterday, or thought really about doing it, so it was basically an impulse decision I made, and I am glad I am. The atmosphere around there is pretty amazing, everyone kind of slows down and takes time to reflect on the events. To this day you still see some random flowers scattered along the fence. The city has done a great job preserving the area and there really aren’t any vendors down there trying to take advantage of it.

Empire State Building: I had debated on going there during the day or at night. Ultimately by the time I went to Ground Zero, went through Battery Park and had something to eat at Grand Central Station it was getting dark out and I wasn’t ready to come home so I decided to give it a go. I was kind of hoping I could get up there right when the sun was going down, that would have been pretty amazing but a combination of being slow and the long lines prevented that from happening. While in line I actually met a couple of fellow Canadians from BC. We got talking and I had mentioned I was in NY for work, once I mentioned the site one of them recognized it, low and behold, she is/was a teacher. She said she hated the site in a joking manner (I hope!) but we got along nicely. The observatory is up on the 86th floor, which required two elevator rides. Apparently you can take the stairs, but I am not quite crazy/stupid enough to do that. The view was pretty amazing despite it being a little chilly all the way up there. It was interesting to see a lot of the places I have been or heard about from all the way up there. They have this audio thing you can get so Tony the cab driver narrates what you are looking at, which was very useful. I did take pictures, many in fact, but they all didn’t turn out the best between being so high up and it being dark out. I messed with the night setting on my camera but apparently I have a hard time holding the camera incredibly still. They also have a SkyRide there, which I assume is something like the ride in Disneyland, where you fly over parts of the city. I didn’t end up going on that, I figured I would save that for a return visit at some point. For a similar reason, or just for being cheap, I didn’t get any souvenirs.

Overall it was a pretty good day, I enjoyed myself considering I was playing tourist by myself. As I said I did take pictures, at all three places I went yesterday, but I still need to get them online so I will post them when that happens (around 89 pictures totally 145MB).

Now.. what to do today… so much to see.

So as a little celebration for launching the new site the three of us here in NY went out for a nice steak dinner tonight. I would say the name but there is a reason I won’t. I will say that it is one of the best places in NY for steak.

I got a nice 24 oz charbroiled t-bone steak and we also got a large fries (emphasis on large) as well as some broccoli, as well as a couple beers each. Yes, you read that right. For some of you slower people the legal drinking age is 21 down in here, which I am not. The others I was with were quite impressed with my special method with dealing with the situation, I am rather surprised it even worked. For now, I shall also keep that as my little secret, unless you want to ask me about it.

Our waitress was very nice and played along with our joking. Overall it was a superb night and rather unfortunate it is so expensive that we can’t do it more often. Oh, and I actually got dessert too, a nice apple crisp with ice cream, it was really good. I think I did eat too much though.

This week seems to have gone by fairly quickly. My first of four weekends at this apartment is coming up very soon and I am unsure of what to do. One thing I know is that I don’t want to be stuck here all weekend. The good thing is I can travel practically all over NY rather cheaply since I got an unlimited monthly MetroCard. Perhaps I shall try to recruit someone to entertain me this fine weekend.

That being said, I am about ready to pass out. Good night, friends.

No one has really expressed concerned for my well being or lack of much contact with anyone back home but I figured in case anyone I know reads this thing I should make a little update.

It is hard to believe but I have now been back in New York for two weeks as of tomorrow. I honestly have been meaning to post in this more/sooner since I arrived but I kept putting it off. My flight here (on Sept. 8th) left Halifax around 6:40 AM and from there went to Montreal. I had a stop over in Montreal for about 3 hours, which was almost extended by a thunderstorm. Luckily it passed rather quickly and we were only delayed 15 minutes maybe but made that time up flying to NY.

As of yesterday I am finally in a place where I will be probably until I leave to go back home. It is nice to settle down in one spot. I was back and fourth between two places over the last couple weeks until I was able to find a place and move in. With the hours I work chances are I won’t be spending too much time here. Hopefully on the weekends I get out to some places for the day.

There are a couple things I would like to do before I go back home this time. The first is go see a taping of a show, and it looks like that will be Conan O’Brien, probably next week, I just need to call and get some tickets. The second thing I would like to do is go see a show on Broadway. It would be hard to live with myself knowing I came to NY and didn’t see one. I have no idea which to see so I am open to suggestions from anyone (can email me at nick AT nickfitzgerald.com or post a comment). I am also open to suggestions for other things to do down here. It would be cool to meet some people down here but I am not sure who or how to go about it. We’ll see what happens.

Now for some of the boring stuff involving work – although some of it is pretty exciting, at least for me. On Monday we finally launched the new site. I wish I could tell you how many hours I put into that new site, or even better would be the total time by everyone involved, I know it would be quite the high number though. Do I make more money for all the extra hours I put in? No, I don’t – but I don’t mind that much. I honestly consider myself lucky to be 19 years old and in the position I am in. I may not have gone through university yet but things are good. I have a job that pays better then my previous minimum wage job and the drama and stress 90% of the time is a lot less. I also have people above me that thank me constantly for all of the work I do, they know I put a lot more time into my work than one would normally be expected to. Just as with any other job issues do arise that causes some stress and drama but I think that is unavoidable and maybe even healthy.

Putting my “full time” job aside I have had some other opportunities come up. I can’t really go into too much for details but I think I might be doing a bit better in the future. Part of it is being down here in NY in the office and also due to keeping in touch with an old contact. Hopefully I can say more soon but I don’t want to jinx myself.

I know people are going to hate me for this but I don’t have any pictures from NY yet. I have been keeping my camera at the office in case I go somewhere after work. I will try to get some pictures soon though, I promise. I have been up to Times Square twice now and haven’t had a camera with me either time. Honestly, I don’t think pictures could do it justice but I will try to get back up there sometime. Again, as I mentioned, I am open to suggestions for things to do, it might also provide me the chance to get some more pictures.

I believe I have now successfully put to sleep anyone who might attempt to read this. Before I go I want to mention it was my niece’s birthday on the 19th and I am kicking myself for not remembering to call. She just turned 6 years old. Happy birthday!