I find the whole phenomenon of rediscovered music favorites quite intriguing. Here are two, originally from 1998: "Sunflower Cat" and "Funhouse," both from Bruce Hornsby's Spirit Trail double album.

"Sunflower Cat," one of Hornsby's explicit tributes to Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, shamelessly grooves along with both compelling traction and sugary hooks. Once you're on board, there's no getting off--appropriately enough, a good time is had by all.

"Funhouse," judging by the frequency with which Hornsby plays this in concerts, has become a dark horse favorite. And no wonder: you have to love the overlay of playful piano improv passages over entrenched electro-keyboard funk. This song is as ripe as any for extended jamming. My neighbors haven't complained -- yet.

We lucked out today with the weather; a stalled front is sitting just to our south and, at least for now, it looks like it won't rain this afternoon. One computer model brought heavy rain into the area last night. This obviously didn't pan out, but the forecast for the next 36 hours is low confidence. These stalled fronts, and the waves along them, can be very moody. Even if you don't bring the umbrella, at least leave it out for easy access.

Larry Brown's arrival is very exciting, even though I agreed with William Rhoden that giving Herb Williams a chance wouldn't be such a bad thing. Of course, now that Brown is here, the buzz is overwhelming and it's hard to imagine any alternative. There's something Knicks fans haven't felt in the summer since Pat Riley's arrival: anticipation. Maybe that is worth something.

Yesterday, workwise, was a "summer Friday" because, well, I said so. Work has been pleasantly steady over the last month after a non-stop hectic March through June. After having been through this for at least two years, I know it will get busy again in September, so the downtime is nice. I was contacted by yet another person about helping to write a book, this one related to technology law. Hmmm. This puts three in the queue and nothing doing yet, and while I love the small business consulting, I wouldn't be surprised if one of these (or another proposal) were a nice diversion sometime in the next year or two. Summer is a great time to kick around ideas like that, and if one is good, it will stick past Labor Day.

Upon looking at this month's Citibank Mastercard bill, I noticed that the address of the payment collection center changed again. This doesn't affect me, because I've paid all my bills online for the last several years, but I still find it interesting.

In the mid 1990s, the center was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Then later on, my bills showed an address is South Hackensack, New Jersey. Now it's moved back west, to Columbus, Ohio.

Without having any information whatsoever as to how Citibank decides to position its payment collection centers, here is my guess as to what happened. As the time value of money went up, the cost/benefit analysis to opening a new center changed: collecting payments a day or two earlier from the major East Coast metro areas offset the cost of opening and operating the center. A day or two may not seem like much, but multiply this by the millions of dollars Citibank is collecting regularly, and float counts.

But also, my guess is that the percentage of people paying their bills by mail has gone down significantly in the last few years. People are now timing the payment using online banking systems. So the bank won't collect payments faster by having a center in New Jersey versus Ohio. And the time value of money has dwindled from what it was in 2000 (although it has been going up again). So they probably decided to move again.

In the specific case of Citibank, this may not be 100% accurate; however, I'd be stunned if these kinds of calculations generally didn't go into determining where to position payment collection centers.

As for my payment, it will continue to be transmitted to Citibank at the latest possible moment without being late. Whatever float is available, I'll take it; thanks.

Last week I got the iCurve laptop stand for my PowerBook. While far from glamorous, ergonomically it's fantastic. It raises the entire laptop up around 6 inches, so the screen is significantly higher, and looking at it is more comfortable. I already had an external mouse, so I added an external keyboard and I'm all set. It's been infinitely more comfortable to work at my computer.

I have played with the idea of getting a desktop and a larger monitor, but my PowerBook's 15-inch display is adequate for now. In addition, I don't want to have to deal with file synchronization. Even well past its third birthday, my PowerBook (on OS 10.2.8) runs really smoothly and has been incredibly reliable for productivity in four states and two countries. The iCurve won't be featured in any interior design publications, but it's been an inexpensive, significant improvement in my working environment.

Nice weekend out of town. First, I love the Delta Shuttle. I always take the Delta Shuttle, and not US Airways (or Trump, or whatever else is trying to compete with it), because the Marine Air Terminal is just so cool. Boston's Logan Airport has the good sense to have a dedicated security checkpoint for Shuttle passengers--complete with a piece of notebook paper taped to the X-ray machine, featuring orange marker saying "Do Not Feed the Screeners."

Tan lines can look good; burn stripes, however, are not optimal. Unfortunately, I must have neglected to rub sunblock all the way up to where my arm intersects with my shoulder, so now I have a random red arc at the upper extreme of my left arm. I must have been a little sloppy before trudging through a mile and a half of sand dunes out to Herring Cove.

It seems that no song can hide from a remix these days. Just when you thought you had seen (or heard) it all, there is now a dance remix cover of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic," complete with a piano intro honest to the Chopin prelude used as the melody. This was just weird, though I was probably one of the only people on the Boatslip deck that had actually played this Chopin piece as a kid.

But back to the Delta Shuttle. You have to give the guy sitting next to me credit for being efficient with his time. He brought at least thirty pieces of mail on the flight, reviewing each bill and statement en route to LGA. Then, when the flight attendants came to collect trash, he took the huge pile of envelopes and dumped them all in the garbage. Whatever works.

It's humid outside. Dewpoints are in the mid 70s, which, you don't need a meteorologist to tell you, is oppressive. Generally, a dewpoint of 65 feels humid; 70 is oppressive, and 75 is pretty much as high as it gets around here.

But not today. Islip, on Long Island, has reported a dewpoint of 80 for two consecutive hours.

That's just incredible. Dewpoints of 80 are typically reserved for the most tropical of tropical air masses near or south of the Gulf of Mexico.

Tomorrow the winds shift to the northwest, so while it will still be hot, dewpoints will be considerably lower and it will feel a little better.

"As seen on TV:" it's that magic phrase so many products and services use in advertisements to convey legitimacy or, at least, fame.

But riding the 6 downtown today, I saw a puzzling ad. It was for the 1-800-Foot-123 doctors. At the bottom of the ad, it said, "As seen on the New York subway."

Well, yes.

William Rhoden makes a good point today in his column about the Knicks. He says that sticking with Herb Williams as coach wouldn't be such a bad thing. I agree.

Sports history features good reasons to want the big name coach. Two of them are Pat Riley and Bill Parcells, two exceptionally talented leaders that have invigorated multiple lethargic teams into contenders. Presumably Larry Brown would do the same thing in New York. I've always been a huge fan of Larry Brown and it would be exciting to see him here.

But you don't always need the big name for success. When the Yankees hired Joe Torre, it was anything but a sure bet; Torre's career as a manager had been good, but nowhere as good as people view him today. Everyone knew he was a good guy but some people were saying it was a bad decision. In fact, you could make an argument that Torre's unglamorous style was precisely what allowed the Yankees to bloom in 1996.

Another example is Jeff Van Gundy, as everyday a guy as you can get, but with terrific brainpower to manipulate talent and win games.

So keeping Herb Williams wouldn't be a bad thing. I think the more important part of the equation is Cablevision letting Isiah Thomas run the show. Actually, spinning off the Knicks would be even better so the team wouldn't be held hostage by conglomerate lethargy and infighting.

With or without Larry Brown, it should be okay. Kurt Thomas is out of the picture, finally, and the team has managed expectations downward. An exciting .500 season would be a nice treat.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through Bringing Down the House, the story of M.I.T. students who come up with a way to outsmart Vegas. It's pretty good. I'm not too familiar with all of the games and have never been to Vegas, but it does a good job of explaining enough. It also does a good job of explaining how these students devise their tricks to outpace the odds.

But a weakness of the book so far is in what makes a story truly come to life: I just don't feel connected to the people in them. What are they like? What motivated them to do this? It just feels too detached, and so Bringing Down the House comes up a little short where other great storytelling books succeed.

One example was The Smartest Guys in the Room, about Enron. Although this book was quite long, you really felt like you knew all the players--not just about the accounting shenanigans they crafted, but also who they were. Another great example is Word Freak, about obsessive Scrabble players. Reading about Scrabble was a little dense, but you really felt like you were taken in to a cast of characters. My all-time favorite is James Gleick's Chaos, which not only recounts the unmasking of a complex theory but also paints a portrait, in extremely fine detail, about the highly compelling characters on this scientific frontier.

To give credit where credit is due (or to deflect it from where it's not), this isn't my own way of looking at nonfiction stories. A couple of years ago, I met with a literary agent friend who has been twisting my arm to write a book about weather fanatics. She explained that this people aspect of stories was critical in a nonfiction book. Since then, I've been well attuned to this aspect and find myself completely persuaded by this theory.

Of course, I'm not done with Bringing Down the House. I'm sure it will turn out fine. It's a good story and, based on what I've seen so far, worth reading.

As predicted, the backdoor cold front did come through. It's 90 in Toronto but cloudy and 74 here. This is ridiculous. It's the middle of July. I already postponed my trip to the Cape once to wait for warmer weather; maybe I should have postponed it until 2006. Sea surface temperatures off New England are still below normal, so the backdoor fronts keep coming.

I was extremely impressed with FedExKinko's-OfficeAndPrintCenter-SynergyBased-ServiceProvider on West 72nd Street. They printed some of my new business cards but then called and asked me to come in to check something. They thought the black might look too bold and they wanted me to review it before proceeding. As it turned out, it looked fine, but they get major points for stopping to give me the choice. It's nice to know that even mundane printing jobs are not performed mindlessly.

I've been looking for a few reliable casual-but-Manhattan-appropriate t-shirts. I get very picky about these things so nothing is quite right. Those "ringer" tees, all the rage in 2002, have now gone the way of Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl--" we've all had enough. I'll keep looking.

Europan Café at Lincoln Center is so consistently excellent; I don't know how they do it. Everything, from the muffins to the salmon, is always fresh and there's no cheating. Even the little fruit cup that came with my omelette featured perfectly ripe honeydew and pineapple. Those little details are what distinguish the great food places from the merely good ones.

I've never been a fan of the FedEx-Kinko's merger. It's been funny to watch the company try to come up with a concept to describe the combined offering: "office and print center?" Okay.

I had to go to Kinko's today (does anyone really call it FedEx Kinko's?) on West 72nd Street to place a printing order. All of the original Kinko's signage is down; new FedEx-branded signs are up, and the formerly open area in front is significantly more cluttered. The store is selling stationery, though it's not hard to find a whole range of FedEx shipping boxes.

The wait was a little long. One person obviously didn't have a PC at home and was hand writing corrections to a resume. The other person, placing an order to print a services offered flyer, had to make a call on a cell phone to ask how to spell "pursue."

My experience was fine, though. I had called before to find out exactly what I had to bring to place a business card order. The counter associate quickly processed the request and then filled out the trademark Kinko's 900-permutation order form. Every possible service order is captured on a single page. It's quite a design achievement.

I looked briefly through the selection of mailing supplies to see if they had regular #10 envelopes. Nope (or, apparently not). Then I realized why: FedEx doesn't handle those; it would make it easier to use its competitor, the U.S. Postal Service.

It was entertaining to watch Rachael Ray in Fort Lauderdale for her "$40 a Day" show. I can't believe she went to that flea market on Sunrise Boulevard. I have driven by it hundreds of times and have always wondered what is there. I don't know anyone that's ever been to it, but I guess it's good. I always wondered who went.

But, it was good to see her choose Max's Place on the beach for lunch. The $3.99 lunch special is, indeed, terrific. As she notes, it's not limited to bar grub--real food is on this menu; when I went I had the mahi mahi sandwich. Add sweeping beach views and you have by far the best lunch experience on A1A. There are many overpriced, mediocre places further down near Las Olas, but Max's delivers great food at a bargain price.

If you're eating downtown, you must get the conch soup at The Floridian, a somewhat sceney diner at 15th and Las Olas. Yes, it's frequently warm and humid in Fort Lauderdale, but this is the one hot (temperature-wise) and spicy soup worth sweating it out for. Generous seafood chunks and a zesty tomato base make this soup among my all-time favorites. Add the hearty crispy chicken salad for a filling lunch.

Once I saw that she was going for Greek food for dinner, I changed the channel back to the Yankee game. The best value dinner in Fort Lauderdale is, in my view, at Boulevard Café on Las Olas and S.E. 13th Avenue. (In a previous entry I described one of Boulevard Café's excellent salads.)

Generally, you can eat very well in Fort Lauderdale for less than $40 a day. It's just one of many reasons I love visiting the city a few times per year.

Today shouldn't have been this cold. The heavy rains today are from the remnants of Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall earlier this week in the Gulf States and dissipated as its moisture was carried up into our area.

Tropical storms are warm-core storm systems. This moisture is directly from the Gulf of Mexico. It should be warmer and humid with these rains, but instead we have raw winds and temperatures in the low 60s.

This is the result of continued below-normal sea surface temperatures off the Eastern New England coastline. The ocean temperature off Boston is still in the upper 50s and sinks to near 50 by the time you get out near Newfoundland.

The sea surface temperatures are so cold for this time of year that even the computer models are trying to send more backdoor cold fronts through the area next week. This is less and less likely, but a northeast wind is still unusually chilly for mid-July.

At brunch on Sunday, I raised the question (previously raised here) of why Whole Foods potatoes taste so much better than other ones. There isn't anything fancy about the way I make baked potato--I put it in the microwave for 7 minutes. And yet for some reason, the Whole Foods ones taste so much more like a real baked potato from an oven, with a much more vibrant texture and flavor.

My friend had an answer I find convincing. It's all in the storage. Potatoes are ideally stored at a temperature of around 50 degrees. If you refrigerate them, it's too cold, but if you leave them at room temperature too long, it's too warm.

The potato section in the Whole Foods produce department is cooled from below. You can feel it as you dig through, looking for the perfect potato. And this seems to be the key. The temperature is much closer to 50 degrees, instead of the room temperature potatoes you'd find at Fairway.

It also explains why the potatoes from C.P. Yang's deli on 73rd and Columbus are almost, but not quite, as good. Yang's potatoes are stored in a basket on the floor, underneath shelves, safe from sunlight and excessive heat.

But Whole Foods has the potato game won, and the reason finally makes sense.

I've been doing some home improvement this week, and while I'm very proud of my baseball hat collection, I decided it was finally time to get it out of my closet. It's taking too much space here, so it will go in the attic.

This list describes of all of my baseball hats. It's a pretty cool collection, representing places, schools, companies, bands, sports teams and stores I've either seen, attended or have connections to, one way or another.

I have always been picky about baseball hats. My favorite hats feature designs or logos, not simply letters. The list contains descriptions of hat color, bill color and design or lettering.

Two hats are staying here. One is hat #36, an AF hat that just fits perfectly and comes in handy for Fort Lauderdale beach. The other is #37, my all time favorite Yale hat. It's so worn that the back buckle is held together with white electrical tape. But it's perfectly broken in, the "Y" logo is perfect and nothing could ever replace it.

I loved this rundown of bizarre moments at Shea Stadium. The stadium's days are numbered, and although it's not the historic fortress across the East River also about to be replaced, it certainly has taken on a life of its own.

Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was one of the kookiest games of all time. As this article points out, the ball rolling through Bill Buckner's legs was merely the conclusion to an already odd game. When that guy parachuted onto the field, you just knew the contest was headed for a weird ending. The Mets' victory pushed the series to a Game 7, but the deciding game seemed anticlimactic and almost unnecessary. It was obvious the Mets were going to win.

If Game 6 were available on DVD (complete with Vin Scully's play-by-play, of course), I would buy it. The game captures so many unusual and dramatic elements, making it unlike any other World Series game I've seen.

Busy busy day today. How incredible is the unlimited ride MetroCard? I have lived in the city for 10 years and it is still one of my all time favorite things. I can't imagine digging up a token every time I used the subway or bus. It's just so effortless to jet (underground) around Manhattan, taking advantage of everything it has.

On my way down to SoHo, I was intrigued that at Canal Street Station, the express Q/W line stop is at an angle perpendicular to the local N/R one. This was a little disorienting, but I followed the signs and safely made it out onto Broadway, headed north.

The men's floor at Bloomingdale's in SoHo gets it just right. What a fantastic job they did. With national chains, every aspect of store atmosphere goes through a litany of calculations and tests to create exactly the right shopping environment. Bloomingdale's SoHo feels more natural and yet so exactly what it aims to be. From the music to the colors and hipper, younger selection compared to its uptown sibling, it's quite a success.

I finally finished A Short History of Nearly Everything. It took forever and I'm glad it's over. Bill Bryson is a great writer, but this was too large a dose, about too many topics that are too obscure. I had to read two other books in the meantime just to take breaks. Anyway, the two new books are Bringing Down the House--even though I've never been to Vegas, it seems like a fun story--and Isaac Newton by James Gleick, one of my all time favorite writers. (Full disclosure: I worked for James Gleick at The Pipeline, although it is fair to say that this happened precisely because he was already one of my all time favorite writers.)

That was mid-afternoon; the rest of the day has been a standard NYSC-Whole Foods-Yankee game sequence, but fun. I love when the city empties out. For variety, I used a NYSC downtown, taking advantage of the sprawling floor, incredible natural lighting through cityscape windows, and general scenery at the one on 23rd and 8th. A quick E-to-A transfer got me to Whole Foods at Time Warner Center in minutes.

It's a great long weekend with low humidity and moderate temperatures. Although I love the heat, this isn't all that bad for one of the most enjoyable weekends generally in NYC.

This is another in what is becoming a series on the "over-statification" of baseball broadcasts. There are too many statistics issued during these games, and not all are valuable or even relevant.

Last night, as the Yankees lost to the Tigers, Michael Kay noted: the Detroit pitcher is now 4-2 versus Cy Young Award winners.

So what? Just because a pitcher won a Cy Young Award at some point doesn't mean at that time, he's just as good. More importantly, just because a team has a Cy Young winner on it doesn't mean the team is good at that time. The leading case in point? Precisely last night's game, with a not-as-good Randy Johnson pitching for a lifeless Yankees team.

Kay tried to address this point and refute it. He said, "Well, you could say the pitcher is not pitching against the pitcher. But he's still pitching against the team that has the pitcher."

Who cares?

Enough with the stats. I doubt anyone works harder than Michael Kay to accumulate what he thinks is useful information. But too often it winds up in excess, or even worse, useless commentary.

Who goes to Fairway, besides me, at 6pm on Friday before July 4th weekend?

• Someone who requested "half a pound" of tuna salad. When she was given a container with 0.53 pounds of tuna salad, she said, "no, I wanted half a pound," and made the server remove the excess.

• Someone who insisted that the server was wrong when saying that Boar's Head turkey doesn't contain any nitrates, because the sign "Boar's Head" also didn't explicitly say the turkey contains no nitrates. The turkey was ultimately refused.