NYC

[c9]

Joel Spolsky, author of http://www.joelonsoftware.com, and CEO of Fog Creek Software, hired a bunch of interns this summer. He's having them design, program, build and market a complete software product during the summer. It's called Project Aardvark.

I tell you all this to share this excerpt from Ben-from-Indiana's post about New York City:

Joel gave us each a book, Time Out in New York, that lists lots of stuff to do in the city. The book is as thick as AAA guides for some of the states I’ve visited. In the book’s introduction, it states something along the lines of, “New York has a reputation for being this insanely packed metropolis where everyone is always in a hurry and small children end up being shoved off the sidewalk into sewers where they are devoured by rats the size of some of the smaller models of Toyota. This is in fact not the case anywhere, except maybe on Fifth Avenue, and even then only during peak business hours, and besides, many New Yorkers have domesticated sewer rats as exotic pets.”

This is a lie. Not only have sewer rats not been domesticated; the sidewalks really are packed everywhere. At least half of the city generally seems to be on the same sidewalk as I, going in exactly the opposite direction with such rapid speed and with such concerned expressions that I have to assume they have severe problems containing their bowel movements and are in urgent search of a restroom. That, combined with New Yorkers’ love for using their horns to convey such messages as, “We are stopped,” “we are moving,” “my car is turned on,” and “I have a horn” meant that I was pretty much on sensory overload for a few days.