Julio’s Musings Around Columbia County, New York

Over in Greenport , a Town adjacent to the city of Hudson in the boonies of New York, the next revision of Wal-Mart just recently opened replacing the long standing box store in the same town. The new Wal-Mart is the Super-Center variety and is already the toast of the town! You need a compass to navigate the store and all its aisles and it even has it’s own Dunkin Donuts store within alleviating the previous tradition of a separate stop for my favorite coffee brew.

I can’t say what it doesn’t carry at the moment as I have not been able to navigate it in it’s entirety yet
Given it’s complete variety of meats and produce it will definitely put pressure on the nearby Shop-Rite and who knows what assortment of mom and pop shops it hasn’t driven out of business yet.

It will also become a beacon for a larger part of the surrounding area which is basically rural and not adverse to going 50 miles to shop at the temple of retail (even if they can’t afford the gas guzzled by their SUV’s).

Though I make no apologies for shopping there, the latest store further sharpens the dysfunctional and destructive car oriented mentality of American Culture. It attracts people way out in the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere with the only possible mode of transport being the car.
It has no esthetic soul as even the previous one about 1/2 mile down the road had fitting in somewhat better with a slightly suburban community surrounded by an agricultural rural community. As is the bent in the architecture of the USA mass market, it looks like it can be anywhere and nowhere.

Photos to follow soon….

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Wal-Mart, Columbia County

Needing to escape the horror of a baby shower in Carroll Gardens , Brooklyn, my father and I took a quest to some of our old haunting grounds in Brooklyn. We took the look drive (long because any drive in Brooklyn is long) to Sheepshead Bay to visit a place from my youth call Roll-N-Roaster. It is just celebrating it’s 39th year in operation on Emmons Avenue.

Of course on the way there, something (who knows what) was going on the Belt Parkway and decided to take the side roads. 86th Street was the way to go , home of the soldiers of cosa nostra. Of course the West End elevated subway occupies the last few mile stretch which resulted in an obstacle driven, mayhem filled stop and go 3 miles to the vicinity of Sheepshead bay and the entrance to Emmons Avenue.

Nevertheless the long slow drive was worth the wait to get to the order line. A succulent roast beef sandwich, a dripping cheeseburger, some fries and french fries were ordered with the seltzer water as the drink of choice. The anticipation building, now the next wait behind all the other orders. It was 2:30pm on a Saturday but it may as well been the height of lunch time.

The wait squared did not disappoint though. It is still scrumptious just like I remember during my youth and just like my youth, dad paid which was an added benefit.
Oh, and it is not a chain. You have no choice but to visit Brooklyn to enjoy. That remains one of my favorite things about New York City. Oh yeah, of course most if not all chains including an Applebees no less on Emmons can be found but it is still a place for the entrepreneur to stake a claim as the best of something. Most fail of course but here is to Roll-N-Roaster and 39 Years of delighting New Yorkers and the few non-New Yorkers that know.

[tags]Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Brooklyn New York, Roll-N-Roaster]/tags]

I don’t usually repeat topics on my blog but will break the practice this time.

The simple thing in Life are the best , Happy Clown

When Easter came and went early spring 2009 and the anticipation of the spring opening of Happy Clown came and went with nary an opening soon, alarm ran through Columbia County or at least the Miyares Farm household. Alarm turned to distress and depression as the “For Sale” sign appeared by the smiling clown.
The spring came and went and then the summer (though this summer has felt like spring) and still nothing more then a lonely “For Sale” sign.
All hope seemed lost. The kids were gloomy (well actually not them but me) thinking a staple of Columbia County living was lost.
Then in late July as I was zooming on the 2 lane country road 82 throwing a quick glance to catch the sad looking Clown mascot, I saw the “Open” side and the Flag!
It had been saved, how I don’t know. A new owner?, the old geezers that own it deciding a recession was not the right time to sell? A public referendum to re-open post haste? I don’t care wish as I finish off my Butterscotch Vanilla sundae on a hazy lazy Saturday afternoon in the dog days of summer 2009.

Man, if I had a bonus this year, I may have bought it. Maybe next time it is up for sale.

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Happy Clown, Columbia County New York

I am now one of the slowly growing army of Kindle owners and users.

Dear Julio H Miyares,

Congratulations on your purchase and welcome to Amazon Kindle.

We built Kindle with the goal of creating an exceptional and hassle-free reading experience. As such, we wanted to point out a few details before you get started.

I put in an order recently as I had grown weary of lugging various books around on the subway easily weighing me down 10 pounds or more. Reading on the subway is another story and one none to easy especially during the crush which seems like all the time but that is beside the point.

Requesting 1 day delivery , I anxiously ripped the box to shreds when it arrived , waited the hour or two to have it charged and have not looked back.

I have already purchased and downloaded two Issac Asimov novels, just did the same for “Innovator’s Dilemma” who’s first chapter is great and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

There is something magical to me to go from wanting the book to having it delivered right to my fingertips in minutes. Well of course I could do the same thing if I went to the bookstore but it is not exactly the same. I mean at any time of the day as long as the book has been digitized and rights conferred (that is another story).

Well, just for the record, I do have to pay for these downloads. They do go for less then the hardcover versions but not by much and as usual, the technical references I like to buy from Amazon are still pricey in my estimation even though there is no inventory cost , or mailing cost.

A Little Kindle information at Love Network

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Kindle, Love.com

Source: Hubblesite.org
With the 40 Year anniversary of the first Man on the Moon, got to thinking (again) what will be our generation’s contributions to the advancement of Mankind.
Trillion $$ deficits, flipping burgers at McDonalds as a legitimate career choice, SUV’s , bank foreclosures , endless dribble on the Twitter, “boxers or briefs” on Facebook, Michael Jackson and Madonna,sport stars on steriods etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I contribute and enjoy adding my 2 cents worth of dribble on Twitter. It’s like enjoying watching something as useless as “Hollywood Squares” or the long line of nonsense on Television. Good diversion for tired minds after a long day of sloughing out out.

Just like we needed an outlet hundreds of years ago driven by desire to find new trade routes to the Indies, we need an outlet of possibilities with the Galaxy (ok let’s start with our Solar System first) for a population of 6 billion and growing.

Even though wherever we go we will always bring along our nature and by extension our problems , the need for new room to fight it out is key for the human race’s survival. It is not just the once in million year meteor strike , it’s the need to tame a hostile environment because it is there and because there is a sense, hope or pipe dream that this time we will make it better whatever better means.

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, Galaxy

It has been sometime since I have taken the time to blog something. On a lazy hazy Fourth of July 2009 , distracted with a Twilight Zone marathon , I take this opportunity to write something and get back into the swing of being disciplined.
Lots going on at work which has been the primary distraction from being able to blog. All Work and no play has been the tak for the past two months as our company seeks to become the “world’s largest startup”. Very exciting to say the least but lots of nervousness as it represents a challenge similar to leaving home for the first time.

Just came back from India a few weeks ago on a very tightly scheduled trip that allowed for no time to soak in the India culture and street scene though I stay get a chance to stay at the Leela Palace which is what can be considered a 5 Star Hotel with every whim taken into account though because of the business schedule it did not lend itself to satisfying whims.

I found this juxtaposition worthy of snapping it with my camera. A vacant storefront on Broadway on the Lower East Side with one of the ubiquitous hot dog stands selling its dirty water hotdogs.
Actually the few blocks around where this picture was taken has a disproportionate number of empty store fronts which is indicative of what is happening all over as people just pull back in their wanton spending habits.
Though I have not taken a scientific survey I would suspect the “Hotdog man” is doing just fine. How can you beat a lunch of hotdogs and soda which probably comes to less then $5. Forget about the health effects, who cares! They taste good and the economics are just right and you won’t die from it till many years into the future anyway.

Tags: Julio Hernandez-Miyares, New York City, Recession

Always hear the mention that one spends on average 1/3 of ther lives sleeping. That is probably true for most people and who can complain given how nice it is to just vegetate in front of the TV or reading a good book and drift off.
On the other hand, how often do they calculate the percentage of time we spend doing true drugery - administrative things outside of work just to keep that part of our lives under control , keep out of jail (paying taxes) , licenses and registrations of all types, calling customer support for the myriad of reasons that must be done?

I think it would be depressing to really know. I just finished filing my taxes and though admittedly I use the electronic completion and filing , just the thought of having to even spend a minute on it is taxing to say the least.

The bottomline is we need robots , real robots of the type Issac Asimov wrote about in his Robot Series that take care of normal housework , intercede on our behalf with other robots that manage the bureacracy of paperwork and administrative stuff that consumes so much of normal day to day life.
We need the web to help , less social networks where I can tell useless frivolity like “where I am for lunch”, or “where I am at any moment in time” and instead web bots that are our personal assistants in the virtual world , paying bills, calculating taxes, interacting with Customer Service manned by ther bots for all of my needs that don’t require true human interaction which are the majority of them.

If all the time spent on all these social networks by smart developers was instead spent on building out the robot web, we would have more time for the things that matter which is subjective but can be as simple as just sitting around doing nothing and feeling like there is nothing administrative that I have to do at the moment.

Maybe I should help define and build the Robot Web!

Tags: Robot Web, Julio Hernandez-Miyares