For those of you following the drama regarding today's high temperature forecast (see the March 29th entry below), the actual high will probably be 53. We hit it a couple of hours ago and now we're down to 50 with onshore winds and clouds moving in.

In other news:

• Did someone lose keys? For at least two years, three keys have been entrenched in the pavement on Columbus Avenue right near Lincoln Center. I've noticed this a few times. In addition, there is another key stuck in the pavement on West 58th Street just west of Columbus. How does this happen? I guess if you drop your keys and they get run over by traffic enough, they become archaeological ornaments.

• Lunch at Agave yesterday was terrific. The $12.95 prix fixe offers an appetizer, entree and "tasting margarita." The vibrant salad greens and masa crusted chicken sandwich were great, and the cactus and corn quesadilla was excellent too.

Recently I made another new playlist called Jam Session. This sequence is relentless. It's all live material. But a recording of good live material isn't necessarily a good live recording. There should be audience cheering at the beginning and end, but not excessive (or any, really) talking on either end. That would interrupt the momentum.

In addition, what makes a good live performance is worth a whole other entry, but briefly, a band should do something with the studio version, but doing too much is risky. On this version, Bruce Hornsby takes "Jacob's Ladder" to a completely different genre (from pop rock to the first feature in a bluegrass sequence), but Hornsby is an exceptionally talented musician. (When I saw Sponge at Coney Island High in the East Village in June 1996, they played a reggae version of "Molly," and it was just pretty lame all around.)

The Jam Session playlist:

1) "Mozambique" (Trey Anastasio, Plasma)
2) "Southbound" (The Allman Brothers, An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band)
3) "Jacob's Ladder"/"Blackberry Blossom" (Bruce Hornsby, Here Come the Noisemakers)
4) "Stash" (Phish, A Live One)*
5) "Off He Goes" (Pearl Jam, Live on Two Legs)
6) "Friend of the Devil" (The Other Ones, The Strange Remain)
7) "Marathon" (Rush, A Show of Hands)
8) "Martyr" (Rusted Root, Rusted Root Live)
9) "San Jose" (The String Cheese Incident, A String Cheese Incident)
10) "My Soul" (Phish, Live Phish 05)
11) "Limelight" (Rush, Different Stages)

* In the top 1% of all-time favorite songs; in the top 1% of all-time favorite performances of any song; in the top 1% of all-time favorite live recordings

Certain songs are recognizable by their opening percussion. They begin with just drums--no other instruments and no melody. I heard one such song, "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, yesterday. After just two drum beats, from the timing and timbre of the percussion, you know it's that song if you've heard it enough.

There aren't a lot of songs in this category, but some others include:

• "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel
• "All This Time" by Sting
• "Ants Marching" by the Dave Matthews Band
• "Burnout" by Green Day
• "Low" by Cracker

Well, after yesterday's post, I'm happy to see the National Weather Service knock down its temperature prediction for Thursday by 10 degrees. The NWS is now forecasting 50, not 60, as a high temperature, with southeast (onshore) winds of 10-15 mph.

It's a victory of common sense, which is too often lost in the dizzying maze of information generated by high-tech computer models and other forecasting tools. In his visionary book Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (1998), David Shenk observed how an abundance of data can actually make people less knowledgeable and productive. Weather forecasting is one area in which this is definitely true.

When meteorologists make forecasts, they can refer to any of six or more different computer models, each presenting predictions for ten to twenty atmospheric parameters, from surface temperature to upper air winds to all kinds of indices computed with advanced thermodynamic equations. It's easy to get lost in this data, follow the computers blindly, and forget what you know. Because the information appears in such official-looking and slick form, the predictions it represents appear to be failsafe. It's another example of too much trust in technology just because it is cool.

The best meteorologists use the computer models as a starting point but also leave plenty of room for intuition. With Thursday's forecast, I really don't care what the ECMWF is forecasting for 850mb winds; with no prevailing flow to offset a sea breeze and ocean temperatures around 40, New York City (especially Brooklyn and Queens) will have a lot of trouble climbing through the 50s. Personally, I think low 50s for Central Park sounds about right for Thursday, given the information we have so far.

Excess information is not particular to meteorology. Technology makes it easy to overload people. In this medium, I've never understood the point of the 600-person "blogroll." I wind up skipping the entire thing.

We've heard a lot about the "information economy." I think the most successful in the information economy will be the people with the expertise to know what's most important to find--and to save room for those timeless assets like common sense, intuition and experience.

After soaking rains today (with a chance of thunder, according to the computer models!), it looks like spring will try to make an appearance starting Wednesday. But meteorologist Jeff Berardelli's weather analysis is 100% correct when he mentions the possibility of a backdoor cold front as a fly in the ointment. (Scroll down past his discussion of today's convective rains and you'll find it at the bottom.)

It's common sense. When you're sitting next to a 40-degree ocean and have rising heat inland, air currents will strongly bias towards onshore winds. Sometimes this onshore component comes in as the more formal backdoor cold front; sometimes it is just a local sea breeze. At any rate, I'm looking at forecasts for 60 or above by midweek and remaining a little skeptical. Without strong prevailing offshore winds (out of the west or northwest), coastal areas are too prone to this cooling effect.

As Jeff says, it's bust season. Predictions for 60s, actual highs in the 40s. Given the indications right now, I'd probably split the difference and go for highs in the lower to mid 50s--40s at the beaches--and wait and see for a better sense of the wind direction. Nobody wants to be told it will be sunny and 65 and then have drizzle, fog and 43.

One of the most important developments in early-1990s music was the emergence of progressive heartland rock. In sharp contrast to the synthesizer-driven pop of the late 1980s, this new genre prominently featured instruments like violin, mandolin and harmonica. The Counting Crows and Blues Traveler were two examples in this wave; of course, the act that perfectly packaged this sound was the Dave Matthews Band.

Progressive heartland rock is not the same as country. It took hold in specific progressive, generally better-educated heartland enclaves, including college towns like Charlottesville, Virginia and Madison, Wisconsin.

And the sound is great! So here is another new playlist, progressive heartland rock, mostly from the 1990s. It has a classic American sound. The test drive (as usual) performed beautifully.

1) "American Angel" (Josh Dodes Band, Get Up)
2) "Omaha" (Counting Crows, August and Everything After)
3) "Stranded on Easy Street" (Bruce Hornsby and the Range, A Night on the Town)
4) "I Won't Back Down" (Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever)
5) "Santa Monica" (Everclear, Sparkle and Fade)
6) "Selling the Drama" (Live, Throwing Copper)
7) "Get Off This" (Cracker, Kerosene Hat)
8) "The Connection" (Phish, Undermind)
9) "Texarkana" (R.E.M., Out of Time)
10) "Ants Marching" (Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table and Dreaming)*

* in the all-time top 1% of favorite songs

The advertising Renaissance has arrived. There are some really fresh, innovative ad campaigns around the city these days.

First, even as a Yankees fan, I love the Mets' new campaign. The theme is that these are the new Mets, with new players and new excitement. Each advertisement starts with "Next year is..." and lists one aspect of this excitement. For example, "Next year is running out of 'K' signs," a reference to the likelihood of Pedro Martinez striking out lots of batters. The Mets are rightfully calling themselves the "new Mets" and I think it's great for the city. I'm not an anti-Mets Yankees fan--if both teams do well, that's great for the Big Apple all around.

Second, although I am not in their target market, I think the Dove "unstick your style" ads on the subway are fantastic. It's for some Dove hair product for women. The ads feature different female cartoon characters, like Marge Simpson and Wilma Flintstone, with "before" and "after" drawings. Cartoons make people feel good. The "unstick your style" slogan is perfect for the subway ad medium. Too bad I have no use for the product.

Finally, kudos to American Airlines for its new campaign, highlighting its service to a large number of cities in a new way. "Puerto Authority," in large letters, is one clever ad I've seen. It's an airline ad series from a fresh direction, unlike Delta's campaign last year, which tried to be a kinder, gentler Continental-style city-specific campaign but came off as an uninspired derivative. Of course, the Continental "From (x) to (y)" (for example, "from the L.I.E. to Watergate") campaign is still one of the all time greatest ad campaigns in history.

The East Village hasn't always been so trendy. In my first couple of years out of college, in the mid 1990s, anything east of 1st Avenue was a venture afield. A few places had popped up on Avenue A. But I also remember that suggesting doing anything on Avenue A was at least minimally controversial.

Then something strange happened. By the late 1990s, propelled by a whole new wave of young socialites with disposable dot-com income, the East Village became hot. There was a new kind of East Village snob-- someone who, oddly enough, was totally intolerant of hanging out anywhere besides in the half-refined, half-edgy East Village. Forget suggesting at work doing something on the boring Upper West Side or maybe even on Hudson Street. It was either d.b.a. or nothing.

By 2000, the organic authenticity of Avenue A had been replaced by yards of velvet rope. Soon after, Nightingale, a grungy old rock haunt on 2nd Avenue known for launching a number of successful bands, became the Nightingale Lounge (cursive neon sign included). The frontier was now well past Avenue B, so Avenue A was mainstream. One night in 2000, a friend from high school took me to a supposedly hip place on B and maybe 12th or 11th, and we arrived, and everyone was wearing J. Crew.

Today, for someone used to the more nuanced confines of Hell's Kitchen, the East Village is now too crowded, too noisy, and like so many other neighborhoods, so in that it's out. Weeknights are fine; it's as pleasant as any other neighborhood. But on weekends, it takes too long to cross the street, walk your way through crowds, make your way through anywhere, and get a cab home.

I guess I still like the East Village overall. But it's been remarkable to witness such a huge transformation in not that many years.

What would the world do without sports analogies?

The latest example: of all places, Circuit Judge Wilson's dissent in the decision issued by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday. Wilson, explaining one of the standards for judging whether someone deserves the granting of an injunction, wrote: "The establishment of a 'substantial likelihood for success on the merits' is a heavy burden, but not an insurmountable one. A movant need not establish he can hit a home run, only that he can get on base, with the possibility of scoring later."

I think that analogy is pretty good. You don't have to prove that you'll score the winning touchdown, only that you may come within field goal range--wait, maybe the baseball one works better. I have no plans to move into the public sector as a judge, but if it involves making up sports analogies, I think I'd be pretty good. I'd probably try to bring in Derek Jeter as a cross-promotion. He's the ultimate get-on-base guy.

My high school calculus teacher always used to say, "Don't blow the layup." That meant: after you've finished dissecting all kinds of variables according to esoteric mechanics, don't be careless and add two and two incorrectly. It happened all the time.

From business ("keep your eye on the ball") to dating (I'll leave that to people's imaginations), the sports analogy always seems perfect. Sports provide an easy and entertaining way to assess expectations, judge success and failure, and ascertain degrees of opportunity. There's no need to be too clever--you can just find the opening and go for the easy two.

Trudging through wet snow and high winds to the gym today was not fun--but my favorite time to go to the gym, for whatever reason, is during adverse weather conditions. Heavy snow, bitter cold, sweltering heat and humidity, in between strong thunderstorms (I try to time the trip using local Doppler radar)...it makes the visit that much more fun.

Anyway, today's test drive was of yet another playlist, this one of rather chill alternative and rock material. It worked very well, so here it is. I'm calling it "Music on Ice" (and quickly running out of names for playlists).

(1) "Live Forver" (Oasis, Definitely Maybe)**
(2) "In the Blood" (Better than Ezra, Deluxe)
(3) "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" (Pearl Jam, Vs.)
(4) "Texarkana" (R.E.M., Out of Time)
(5) "Californication" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication)
(6) "Welcome to My Party" (Rusted Root, Welcome to My Party)
(7) "Say It Ain't So" (Weezer, Weezer)
(8) "Brian and Robert" (Phish, The Story of the Ghost)*
(9) "Thirty-Three" (Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
(10) "What's Up?" (Four Non Blondes, Bigger, Better, Faster, More!)

* in the top 1% of all-time favorite songs
** in the top 5% of all-time favorite songs

Earlier this month, I explained why March is one of the most exciting weather months of the year. Well, here it is.

After sunshine yesterday with temperatures rising into the mid 50s before a sea breeze came in, today we have a mixture of rain, snow and sleet. Temperatures just above the surface (or more precisely, at 5 feet above the ground, where they are measured for official "surface" temperatures) are well above freezing--between 37 and 40 degrees.

But what's falling is a mixture of rain, sleet and snow because the air just above the surface is right around or below freezing.

Since it's been warm and the sun angle is high--solar radiation still gets through the clouds and warms the surface--none of this is sticking just yet. Tonight, that may change a bit with a slushy inch or two especially on grassy areas.

It's still cold. Since February 17th, the high temperature at Central Park has been at or above normal on only 4 days.

Pacific Echo was terrific. It's a small, intimate place, nicely decorated. It gets major points for not placing tables for two too close together. You feel like you have space. The food was marvelous. I got the chicken with spicy mango sauce.

Looking around at others' dishes and my own, I noticed that the Pacific Echo trademark seems to be the use of lettuce as a food bed for color and texture. The rich green romaine leaves underneath orange mango worked well.

I'll definitely return to Pacific Echo in the near future. Just about every selection on the menu looked great.

My birthday is not for another ten days, but birthday season commences tonight when I am treated to dinner at a new place called Pacific Echo. I've walked by it a number of times, and when I came home from Florida two weeks ago, was feeling lazy, and found the menu under my door, I decided to try the sesame crusted tofu.

I've had the sesame crusted tofu from Whole Foods and that's pretty good. The Pacific Echo version was unbelievable. Who knew that tofu could sizzle with nuanced flavor? At that point, my restaurant pick was decided, and I will try it on location tonight.

Speaking of food, a group of us enjoyed outstanding Colombian cuisine for lunch yesterday at La Boina Roja, according to an expert source (and the host of this gathering), the city's best Colombian food. Fantastic combinations of meat, rice, plantains, peppers, onions, tomato...all with a new twist.

I may have picked the wrong career. Yet another playlist has turned out to be fantastic. This is the first of two volumes of "underground gems," songs that weren't really huge hits, but are by mostly well-known artists and are just a smidge toned down from the power rock material.

Putting a good playlist together involves much more than simply putting songs in a sequence. What makes a playlist work are factors like the transition between the end of one song and the beginning of the next, the overall flow of the sequence, and the balance of rhythm, instrumentation, melody and vocals.

Here is volume 1 of "Underground Gems."

(1) "Perfect Blue Buildings" (Counting Crows, August and Everything After)
(2) "Hold On Hope" (Guided by Voices, Do the Collapse)
(3) "You Learn" (Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill)
(4) "What I Am" (Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars)
(5) "Fair" (Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen)
(6) "Here Without You" (3 Doors Down, Away from the Sun)
(7) "The Best of What's Around" (Dave Matthews Band, Under the Table and Dreaming)
(8) "Thirsty" (God Street Wine, $1.99 Romances)
(9) "Judith Dancing" (Josh Dodes Band, Get Up)

Volume 2 will be test driven in the near future.

The world's most useless sports franchise has a new tool in its fight for the West Side Stadium: litigation. In this complaint, the Jets accuse Cablevision of having a "monopoly." Over what? Over "enclosed large-scale spectator events and private spectator suites in Manhattan."

Please. Regular visitors to this page know that I would be the last person to stick up for Cablevision. This complaint, however, is utterly ridiculous. What about Bed Bath & Beyond? Do they have a "monopoly" over underground bed, bath and other home furnishings sales on Broadway between 64th and 65th Street? Could they define the monopoly any narrower?

The complaint goes on to say that it's all about Manhattan. It's not enough that you can get stadium space in Queens or New Jersey--it has to be in Manhattan. In support of this proposition, it says that many musicians often play in New Jersey and Long Island and in Manhattan, because Manhattan is a distinctly important market.

So what? Those musicians aren't asking for what is essentially a $500 million corporate welfare handout from the MTA. It's fitting that the Jets filed this complaint on the same day as three power outages brought chaos the Lexington Avenue subway line.

The reality is that Madison Square Garden--which the New York Jets are picking on because it's easier to insult Cablevision than tell New York City straphangers they should endure more service outages--shows precisely why the West Side stadium is a dismal urban planning proposition. Most of Manhattan is bursting with life, daytime, nighttime, weekends... with the distinct exception of the area around Madison Square Garden. When was the last time anyone ever wanted to hang out on 8th Avenue and 33rd Street, just for fun? You can debate the ability of stadiums to create economic life and jobs generally--in Manhattan, however, there is no question that the worst dead zone of all is in the area right around MSG.

The Jets are just whining after two fair-market bids for the airspace above the rail yards. The Jets can occasionally be a fun team to watch and I have nothing against the players or coach. But as one of the most undistinctive sports franchises of all time, with absolutely no contribution to New York City's civic pride or economic life, and a home game calendar of 8 days per year, the Jets deserve nothing.

Yesterday on "30 Minute Meals," Rachael Ray made shepherd's pie. When I realized she was making that, I kept watching, hoping I could pick up a nice shortcut to a good dinner option.

Forget it. To squeeze the recipe into the short time slot, Rachael was scampering around the kitchen gathering dozens of utensils, tools and ingredients, including all kinds of obscure herbs I just don't happen to have on hand.

Thirty minutes--or even less, as described in those pervasive subway ads touting supposedly easy dinner recipes in a new food magazine--is highly misleading. That doesn't count the time you have to go to the supermarket, figure out where the ingredients are, wait on line, check out, and come back home. I mean, who really keeps a constant stock of pine nuts?

There should be a Manhattan edition of "30 Minute Meals." It would be something like this:

1) Locate and open folder of takeout menus.
2) Call Hunan Park.
3) Order wonton soup and chicken with broccoli.
4) Wait for delivery.
5) Pay delivery person. Eat.

This has to be the most boring weather week in recent memory.

For a seemingly eternal amount of time, we've had mostly clear skies, winds out of the west or northwest at 10 to 15 mph, and highs in the mid 40s and lows around 30. This will continue through the end of the week.

The culprit is stubborn high pressure over Canada. This "blocking high" is not allowing anything in the atmosphere to move, so whatever you have, that's what you have for days and days. Eventually, blocking systems do break down though, and it looks like this high will finally give up sometime over the weekend.

A California judge has dismissed a class action lawsuit against Netflix. The suit claimed that Netflix deliberately misled investors with its reported churn numbers.

I wish I remembered more about class action lawsuits from my securities fraud class and knew more about the internal workings of this case. Instead I'll have to resort to general impressions. Many of these class action suits against technology companies, if not superficially opportunitistic, simply present one way to interpret an inherently volatile and ambiguous situation. Technology companies are subject to startling fluctuations in earnings and revenue. They often miss expectations. And, while there are plenty of legitimate securities fraud lawsuits out there, no investor should be surprised if the ride is a little bumpy. If you don't like the bumps, don't invest in high-growth technology companies.

This particular lawsuit focused on churn, or the amount of turnover Netflix experienced among its subscribers. The suit said that Netflix was too optimistic in its churn reporting. But in this excellent (and prescient) analysis from the Motley Fool, we learn that there isn't one accepted standard of computing churn. Netflix's method was novel, but not necessarily wrong. And since the article seems to understand how Netflix is computing its numbers, presumably anyone else could understand that as well.

There isn't any law saying that Netflix needs to use the most mathematically accurate way, under its particular circumstances, of computing churn. The law says that Netflix can't make material misrepresentations. Netflix adopted a way of doing things when no specific standard was in place and explained how it arrived at its numbers. If you look at previous Netflix earnings releases, you can see that Netflix in fact does explain how it computes its churn rate.

There is a good time and place for a worthwhile class action lawsuit. Obviously, however, something less has never stopped class action lawyers from making noise. This time, the California court had none of it.

Before iPod, before Netscape, and before wi-fi, there was the early '90s.

Coming off one of the most lampooned eras in pop history (the very late 1980s is known as a black hole), grunge was just beginning to sprout along with a more palatable alternative sound. Meanwhile, old-time and standard acts released new material. This early '90s playlist captures some of the highlights and performed beautifully in today's test drive at the gym:

1) "Life Is a Highway" (Tom Cochrane)
2) "Shiny Happy People" (R.E.M.)
3) "Come Undone" (Duran Duran)
4) "Rain King" (Counting Crows)
5) "Across the River" (Bruce Hornsby and the Range)
6) "Alive" (Pearl Jam)
7) "When I Come Around" (Green Day)
8) "Lift Me Up" (Howard Jones)
9) "Do You Believe In Us?" (Jon Secada)
10) "All This Time" (Sting)
11) "All I Want" (Toad the Wet Sprocket)

Three consecutive winters of 40 inches of snow or more. Of course the biggest event was the 14-inch January snowfall. Besides that, because most systems have come in from the west without a lot of Gulf moisture, we've had a lot of small to moderate events.

The big news for this week is the cold, which feels increasingly strange with such a high sun angle and longer days.

As a result of the latest dispute between Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, MSG Network is not available on my cable system these days. Time Warner has replaced it with NBA TV, which has been great, because now I can watch real basketball, not the Knicks.

But anyway, I was most excited to see that NBA TV uses "Roundball Rock," the theme music by John Tesh that NBC used for the "NBA on NBC." Whatever you think of other John Tesh music, this is one of the best sports themes ever composed. For something like nine years, it appeared in every intro and outro and never got stale.

NBC has had a number of great sports themes. Another classic is the theme from the Major League Baseball "Game of the Week" (with Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola) from the mid 1980s. But it hasn't always scored: its NFL theme from a few years ago was hopelessly flaky, casting even the most suspenseful football games into a nebulous drift.

Other great sports themes:

• The Fox Major League Baseball theme. It's about as dramatic as you can get without being melodramatic.

• MSG Network's theme music for the Yankees, before coverage of that team switched to the YES Network, was brilliant. There was the baseline theme, used in perhaps the greatest ever introduction montage of any sports programming, perfectly synchronizing the music's flow with great moments in Yankees history. There were also variations, a slightly jazzy version, and a slightly folksy one, used during the game at different innings. The YES Network music is okay, but has never matched up to this terrific MSG Network piece.

Whole Foods at Columbus Circle came up with a great idea. Interested in sampling a new kind of cheese but don't want to shell out six or seven dollars for a standard size portion? Well, Whole Foods has set up a little basket in its cheese section. Grab a mini-size portion of one of most kinds of cheese, and try any variety for under three dollars. (This sampling basket is located all the way to the left, near the corner, for anyone who may visit as a result of this post).

I really, really try to support Fairway, a native New York business, whenever possible. For kitchen staples, such as cereal and paper towels, it's very good. Their produce is generally good. And you can count on them for standard items like Eggo frozen waffles (at Whole Foods, you have to sift through hemp and flax organic waffles before arriving at the sub-standard "Whole Kids" kind).

But Whole Foods is much better in certain ways. First, if you are getting ten items or less, you can be sure you will check out in less than ten minutes. Even when the express line seems long, it moves incredibly fast--they obviously have express line apportionment down to a science. Second, as noted here before, Whole Foods properly packages its fried chicken in a paper box while Fairway wraps it in damaging foil.

More generally, the crowd at Whole Foods is also livelier, and younger, and generally better looking, and more artsy, most likely because it is more central to a livelier, younger, better looking and more artsy part of Manhattan. Fifteen blocks may not seem like much, but it makes all the difference. You can leave Whole Foods not aggravated from slow shoppers trudging along with overflowing carts.

Fairway renovated several years ago to double the size of the store and stock nearly everything under the sun. Now the next step should be to remove the worst-selling 1/4 of the items, widen aisles and remove some of those middle shelves near the bread department, and make it a more pleasant place to visit. Of course, it seems to pride itself a little on this aggravation factor (signs around the store almost celebrate it as part of the classic Fairway experience).

It's been cold. By the end of this week, the high at Central Park will have been below normal on something like 27 of the previous 30 days. This time of the year, we should be in the upper 40s. We haven't been extremely cold, but the persistence of below-normal temperatures is noteworthy. This would be like a summer stretch in which the high on 27 of 30 days is 90 or above.

Then there's Fort Lauderdale, where highs will be in the low and mid 80s this whole week. Hmmm...

For my recent trip I was looking for some new, light reading, so I picked up Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Parts of it (but not all parts) are very funny, especially the essays focusing on New York City, food and the gender of French nouns. I guess when he writes about things of interest to me, I find it hilarious, so he's a good writer.

However, Sedaris has a pattern of using the contraction "I'd" to mean "I had" instead of "I would." For example, on page 130: "I'd done my best to warn her but was actually thrilled when she rejected my advice." I am aware this is gramatically acceptable. But I find it to be disconcerting. I'm used to seeing "I'd" to mean "I would" and it just sounds (and looks) better that way.

It's probably just a matter of personal preference, but good writing is all about flow, and this awkward construction places bumps on the road. Although Sedaris is talented and witty, this particular "I'd" construction is a minor irritation.

You mean bloggers have to, like, comply with the law? Dude.

That's the ruling from the Santa Clara County Superior Court in California, which ruled that the bloggers that disclosed Apple's trade secrets were not protected by a "shield law" designed for journalists.

This is a tough one. I am certainly sympathetic to the importance of trade secrets. If it's a trade secret, you can't screw around with it, period. It doesn't matter if you're not an Apple employee. The law uses the concept of "whoever." I don't see why someone should be allowed to publicize my trade secret just because they can write online about what they had for dinner the previous evening.

And this notion that the decision will stifle the free flow of information in a democracy... Please. Democracy has been alive and well for many more years than blogging. This inflated sense of self-importance is preposterous. And besides, more information doesn't mean better democracy when an increasing share of that information seems to be of dubious credibility.

On the other hand, companies like Apple will have to re-think how they keep secrets. Apple may have won this specific case, but trying to silence every writer out there is going to be like chasing the wind. Apparently, nondisclosure agreements are not enough. People and incentives will have to be re-organized so enough people are kept in the dark for long enough. Smaller teams? Disperse locations? A new science of organizing teams of engineers? Look for changes.

That said, the greatest rewards in the market tend to be won by those who offer the best products and services, not necessarily those who kept the best secrets. In other words, Apple could probably have eventually released whatever secret technology was at issue, and would have still done quite well.

Finally, it is no coincidence that this case involved a technology company, and not, say, Procter and Gamble or McDonald's. I don't want to blame the victim, but technology leaders need to get more serious if they want the law to protect them. It's fun to have the pool table in the employee lounge and no dress code, except that signals people to take everything less seriously. In the shadow of Google's rocky IPO process in which it flaunted its intention of breaking all tradition, are we more or less likely to conclude that Apple is a company where people take things seriously? OK, keep the pool table, but if you go public, it would be nice to acknowledge -- and educate the employees that will benefit from the process -- that the rules are there for a reason.

Overall, one thing is certain: innovation will continue. The rewards are too big, even with the risk of a secret getting out. Companies, judges, and even bloggers will adjust.

At first glance, this seemed puzzling: break up OfficeMax? I'm all for corporate streamlining, but what does that mean here? Spin off the aisle that sells paper clips?

It turns out that OfficeMax is actually the combination of the office products retailer and Boise Cascade, a paper and forest products company. I'd bet that once again, delusions of synergy have dragged yet another company into lethargy and incompetence. The entity is just too big now, so no wonder one of its largest shareholders wants to break it up and unleash value.

Yes, office product retailers sell paper. So what? As Cablevision learned, just because you own what's on TV and the infrastructure by which the content is delivered to your TV, doesn't mean you should also sell the TV.

Yahoo! has a weather section in which it features forecasts from The Weather Channel. In this section, you can read a text narrative version of the forecast (it says "Partly cloudy, with a high in the upper 30s" instead of showing a partly cloudy icon).

Next to the "Local Forecast" headline below which the text forecast appears, Yahoo! provides a link: "How to Read This."

This documentation, providing assistance in reading plain English, says:

What's in the text forecast?
The following information is available in the text forecasts provided by weather.com:

* alerts, if relevant
* basic forecast data for that day or night
* forecast data for five days from that day or night

If you're still confused, you can email Yahoo! with further questions. So I did. I said I still didn't understand how to read the text version of the local forecast.

Today I received a reply. It simply repeated the information above. I guess there just isn't that much more to explain.

In this age of complicated customer service telephone queue and routing systems, it's so nice when your call is answered right away. I've experienced this twice today.

First, I had to call Verizon. I picked up the phone, dialed the number, and had my issue resolved all within one minute. There was no wait after I pressed zero to be routed directly to a representative.

Then, I had to call Marsh. They may be under scrutiny but they run my insurance coverage from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and I finally got around to asking them to change my mailing address. I dialed the toll-free number and a live person answered instantly. The call took 50 seconds.

Of course, Verizon Wireless is the best. They get everything exactly right, and I never have to call them at all.

I finally got it. I figured out how to play "Someday," by Nickelback, on my keyboard.

Here's a secret of playing pop and rock songs by ear. Once you've figured out the first, oh, 30 songs, figuring out most of the others takes a relatively shorter amount of time. This is because most American pop and modern rock music uses one of a finite set of chord progressions and hook formulas. Granted, I have a pretty good ear, but it's why I can play a song like "Almost Paradise" instantly without ever having played it before. (I just kind of landed in it while playing other stuff, and there it was.)

The real fun starts when you have a song with no piano or keyboards. This is why a song like "Someday" is a refreshing challenge. I also love playing Dave Matthews for the same reason. And Oasis. And Pearl Jam.

Of course, some piano and keyboard songs aren't easy. You're not going to transcribe a Bruce Hornsby solo on the first crack -- probably never. Phish has some pretty easy pop, like "Free," but try to dismantle that solo in "Taste" and you're asking for trouble.

Sometimes songs take years to learn. When "Do You Believe In Us?" by Jon Secada first came out in 1993, I got the intro in about five seconds. For whatever reason, the modulation turned out to be nasty, and I didn't nail it down until a few months ago. Well, at least it sounds pretty good now, with a complete song from beginning to end.

I took the power rock mix for a test drive today at the gym, and it was indeed terrific. The song "Against the 70s" is a little silly, but that's why I got it in the first place; "On Your Radio" seems perfect right after it. "Muzzle" and "Plowed" are a great way to wrap it up.

Speaking of the gym, there has been a nice decrease -- right on schedule -- in the number of clueless New Year's Newbies. Even high-traffic times are not as crowded as before, and the people remaining are generally more knowledgeable and more considerate. The cell phone yappers have, for the most part, dispersed. I still don't know how people read books or magazines in tiny print while on the cross trainer, but at least they don't make any noise. The weight training equipment I want to use is either available or is used by someone that knows the protocol of "working in."

Unfortunately, none of this could help the fact that yesterday, lifting anything was like trying to dislodge an iceberg, having trudged through bitter cold and snow and having sat by a pool for three days. Tomorrow should be better.

Last night it was 55 degrees and felt like May. I just returned from walking against a 30 mph wind in heavy snow, with a temperature around 25. You just have to love March, a favorite month of mine for weather.

March is notoriously eventful for a reason: warm air starts to build up over the south, creating more of a contrast with Arctic air to the north. Storms love contrasts. The greater the temperature clash, generally, the more potent the storm. This is why so many of the great blizzards and coastal storms have occurred in March. It's also why you get crazy temperature swings. Who can forget March 13, 1990, when we had drizzle, fog and a temperature of 38 at 8am, before a warm front pushed through and lifted temperatures to near 80 that afternoon?

Between sea breezes, coastal storms and temperature swings, March has excitement like no other month. Add the NCAA tournament, baseball's spring training, and my birthday, and you get what is consistently one of the most exciting months of the year.

I found a great way to pass time on the flights to and from Florida: create new playlists.

My playlists to date have generally been organized by artist (e.g. "Phish Studio Mix") or a small set of years ("Mid '90s Rock Mix"). For these new playlists, I decided to think outside the box and mix it up even more. I haven't actually listened to these yet; the order may have to be tweaked but I like the blend on paper. By the way, I find it difficult to think of titles for these more diverse mixes.

One of the new playlists features slightly hard-edged rock. Its working title is "Power Rock," which is a very boring name. Anyway, it contains:

1) "Easily" (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication)
2) "Blurry" (Puddle of Mudd, Come Clean)
3) "Ruby Soho" (Rancid, And Out Come the Wolves)
4) "Teenage FBI" (Guided by Voices, Do the Collapse)
5) "Pardon Me" (Incubus, Make Yourself)
6) "Everything Zen" (Bush, Sixteen Stone)
7) "Epic" (Faith No More, The Real Thing)
8) "On Your Radio" (Joe Jackson, I'm the Man)
9) "Against the '70s" (Mike Watt (with Eddie Vedder), Ball-Hog or Tugboat?)
10) "Someday" (Nickelback, The Long Road)
11) "Muzzle" (The Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
12) "Plowed" (Sponge, Rotting Piñata)

We'll see how this plays out sometime this week. I have a few other new playlists but am still finalizing the initial order.

I am picky about salad. I simply have no patience for produce that is less than exquisite. Lettuce should never be iceberg; tomatoes should always be bright red. And innovation is always welcome, which is what makes the salad at Boulevard Cafe, in downtown Fort Lauderdale at the corner of S.E. 13th Avenue and Las Olas, so good.

This garden salad features the highest quality premium greens and ripe tomatoes. It also comes with the Gorgonzola cheese on the side, in a little bowl. This is brilliant. I've seen lots of salads featuring cheese--it tends to go together with chopped walnuts. But leaving the amount of cheese to the customer is brilliant for two reasons. First, cheese can have a strong flavor and this allows the customer to decide how much to put in. Second, cheese left in salad can get washed down and lose its character. If you like sharp cheddar, you want added to the salad just before eating.

Setting aside the cheese is a practice more restaurants should adopt. Like dressing, it is enjoyed in varying amounts by different people.

The Times today covers the worthwhile topic of restaurant food delivery. Your favorite dish in your favorite restaurant may taste great there, but when you add packaging, transportation and the time delay, the outcome can be significantly different.

However, Marian Burros is wrong to conclude that French fries are always bad to order in. It depends on the restaurant. Good packaging will protect good French fries; bad packaging will make them miserable. You can order the burger deluxe from Pizza Joint on 71st Street and Columbus and know that your French fries will arrive with their original consistency intact. This is because Pizza Joint uses smart packaging and has an extremely efficient delivery operation. On the other hand, the fries at Cafe Ronda, on Columbus Avenue between 71st and 72nd Streets, are probably better, but they travel dismally. It's not worth eating Cafe Ronda unless you can eat at Cafe Ronda.

As for burgers--yes, the bun always goes on the side.

Well, a little more than 7 inches of snow fell in Central Park, and amounts across the area ranged from several up to near 10. It never changed to rain. The models turned out to be pretty bad; although some models predicted the precipitation to remain as snow, the storm track wound up being much further east than anyone expected. The storm center is now entering extreme eastern Maine.

Of course, this system was extraordinarily complicated--something we all knew well in advance. Another, weaker, storm is approaching from the Great Lakes and is moving through upstate New York now; in addition, an upper level low is also trudging through the Northeast. (These two storms were what caused today's snow in NYC.) Moreover, you knew things were going to get messy when a dry wedge starting racing in from west to east, all the way out along the occlusion; satellite photos showed that the storm was not a typical comma shape of a well-developed cyclone, but instead an odd, elongated cloud bank that seemed more like an overstretched rubber band.

Fortunately for winter weather fans, the pattern here stays cold into the forseeable future, with the possibility of another storm or two sometime down the road. I, however, am off on Thursday to FLL, where the most pressing issue of the day will be what time the sea breeze rolls in.

It's been so long since any Knicks game mattered that last night's wild and crazy finish was a special treat. Hosting the Lakers, the Knicks were up by 15 points with 8 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter. The lead was still 12 points with 1:20 remaining, but then the Lakers sank 4 three-pointers in 46 seconds to send the game into overtime tied at 107. Finally, the Knicks held on to win 117-115, helped by a bonehead play by Kobe Bryant in the last few seconds (this was fun to watch).

Other cities may have better basketball teams, but there is still no question that Madison Square Garden is the #1 stage in pro basketball. The fans and media attention create a vibe that no other city comes close to matching. This is why it was so exciting in the mid 1990s when you could count on huge games against the Bulls, Heat and Lakers every year. For just a few minutes last night, there was a playoff-like atmosphere at the Garden--something, for a variety of reasons, not likely to be felt again anytime soon.