Very useful, up to the minute, CHP Traffic Incident Information. You can really tell when the traffic peak hours are. And if you click for the details of each incident, you can follow the sequence of the emergency response events. It self-refreshes every 60 seconds.

When I’m this busy it seems like the only time I get to randomly think is when I walk to my car. Usually the walking-to-car thoughts are a jumbled mass of “I’m so busy I can’t wait until I’m not so busy I never have time to do what I want anymore”. Walking to my car after work yesterday, I realized that I’m busy because I am doing what I want to do, and my life is enrichingly full, not a big draining time sink. I can reset my priorities if I need to, and I’d rather have plenty of friends with whom I wish I could spend more time rather than having no one to talk to. But when I’m in that morass of back to back commitments it’s difficult to relax and remember that this is life, the good life, and I’m busy getting the most out of it.

My friend, Jen (hi Jen!), brought me an original GRiDPAD that her company was getting rid of. It boots DOS and the pen and digitizer are in fine shape. There’s even a modem, RAM card and nifty carrying case. And a 20mb hard drive — oh my. It’ll be fun to play with. Perhaps one day someone will bequeath to me a GRiD Convertible, which had the nicely designed screen that lifted up to reveal the keyboard. Then I can have two sorta matching bookends!

Spotted on MetaFilter: AdFlip.com, the world’s largest archive of classic print ads. I did a search on “Bowie” just to see how vast the archive is, and I found five ads, including this classic Ziggy Stardust release ad. Also, here’s advice on solving the early ’40s hosiery shortage with RIT dye.

The New York Times baseball coverage is pulling out all the stops for human interest stories connected to the Mets and Yankees. Their longtime sports writer, George Vecsey, reminisces about the Brooklyn Dodgers. Umpire Ed Montague will be behind home plate (the fact that I remember his name from 1986 may be a bad sign). Dwight Gooden, who grew up with the Mets, is back in another World Series with them, but on the opposing side. Yankee David Cone was also a Met and he may pitch the first game. And there are more than a couple profiles of long-time supporters of both teams, categorizing and generalizing fans on both sides. As usual, I’m more interested in observing the media coverage and surrounding hoopla than the actual sporting event. But that may change a little after the symbolic first pitch goes out (and I find out who gets to throw them).

I have to confess, I have a morbid fascination with TheSpark.com’s Fat Project. I suppose there’s a kind of vicarious fantasy in watching someone else eat huge amounts of fattening foods in order to gain 30 pounds and win a contest. Where did I put those baby carrots?

Differences between Yankees and Mets World Series ticket sales, according to their official web sites: Method of sale: Yankees – Ticketmaster.com, Mets – ticket office phone sales only. Price: Yankees – $50-$300, Mets – $110 or $160. Per person maximum: Yankees – 4 tickets for 1 game or 2 tickets for 2 games, Mets – 4 tickets for 1 game. Nonrefundable processing fee: Yankees $3, Mets $6. (I’m very tired, so this mundane trivia seems amusing.)

The Mets have finally made it to the World Series again. Somewhere there is a biology book with my teethmarks in it. My parent were asleep when they won it all in 1986 and I couldn’t scream out loud. Or maybe it’s been recycled. Anyway, I figure if there is a Subway Series, some smart-aleck will plot out how to actually get from Shea Stadium to Yankee Stadium via subway (not that you’d actually need to do that). So I decided to do it first. I used an interactive Java applet to determine the route:

Start at Willets Point – Shea Stadium on the Seven diamond.
After 11 stops, get off at Grand Central – Lexington Ave.
Transfer to the Four.
After 5 stops, get off at E 161 St – Yankee Stadium.

This other interactive map gives completely different directions. But it doesn’t need Java.

A while ago, a nice pharmacy clerk informed me that the prescription drug I was taking was actually cheaper if I paid for it myself instead of paying my insurance plan’s copayment. I was thrilled at this news because that also meant I could get more than one month’s supply at a time (another insurance plan restriction, and one I’m sure the drugstores don’t mind since they can get customers in more often). In the past few years I’ve been through many insurance changes with companies changing plans or me changing companies. I have to remind the pharmacy people each time they put in my new insurance info to please check the cost of my prescriptions to make sure I can’t get them cheaper without insurance. I don’t know how many drugs are this cheap, but if you have suspicions, you may want to check it out. There are some other iterations of this where I’ve ended up paying less than my $10 or $15 copayment, but I’m confused as to how that works. It may vary with each insurance company or perhaps even the pharmacy?

RIP Vincent Canby. I grew up reading his movie reviews in The NY Times. Fittingly, one of his successors, Janet Maslin, wrote an obituary: “His writing was often an entertainment itself: conversational prose that conveyed a bracing disdain for sentiment, a clear eye for meretricious art, rapier cuts for pretentious fools and fine-tuned praise for artistry, all in a monologue — and sometimes in an invented dialogue with a character he dubbed Stanley.”