I was watching Rangers hockey this weekend. The broadcast, on MSG Network, was sponsored by Cablevision, which owns Madison Square Garden, MSG Network, and the Rangers.

See, this is how "synergy" leads to laziness. First of all, I watch MSG on Time Warner Cable, so I can't even buy Cablevision services if I wanted to.

If sponsorship of Rangers hockey were conceived as a true transaction instead of a conglomerate bail-out, MSG Network would make more money. The sponsor could be a product or service that, for starters, all watching Rangers hockey could actually purchase. I'm pretty sure the value of this arm's length sponsorship would be much more than that of a few more signups for Cablevision's Optimum Online.

But in the cushy life of conglomerate synergy, you don't have to bother. Why work? Why try to think of creative ways to improve the viewing experience and market Rangers hockey to advertisers? The big corporate parent, like Cablevision on MSG or General Electric on MSNBC or Disney on ABC, can always bail you out.

I was intrigued to find that Whole Foods low-salt garbanzo beans are only 69 cents per can, while regular garbanzos are 89 cents per can. Like all good New Yorkers, I'm looking for the catch.

From prices to aisle arrangements to lighting, Whole Foods is a place where nothing happens by chance. Millions of dollars are at stake with every configuration tailored to all nuances of consumer behavioral science. This is why you find truffles and greeting cards alongside you while you wait in line for checkout. And why they arrange the red potatoes to look smaller in the store than they do at home.

It would seem to me that most Whole Foods consumers would prefer a low-salt option, and that Whole Foods should be charging a premium for this alternative. But that's not the case: the price is almost 25% lower.

It can't be this simple.

Not a lot of news this weekend. Today has been a day to keep things as simple as possible. Work has been fun, but ridiculously busy. We are now doing an amount of work that makes last spring's records look paltry. The main reason I love doing what I do is that it's so cool to watch small businesses get bigger, and it's even cooler when it's your own.

So, it was a good day to keep tabs on the upper low and snow in Boston.

Yes, it snowed in Boston for much of the day. Accumulations were light, but snow anywhere along the coast from Boston south, this early, is noteworthy. What happened?

The key this morning was shown by 8am upper air map. It showed a self-contained cold core of air at the 850 millibar level (that's about 5000 feet), the height at or above which precipitation forms. Over New York City, the 850 mb temperature was -8 C (or about 18 F). Northeast of Quebec City, much further north, the 850 mb temperature was 2 C (or about 35 F). This cold core, centered over southern New York and New England, moved east and intersected with an ocean storm. It all came together just right for snow in Boston. Around 10:30 a.m., I noticed some very light snow mixing with the light rain here, but that lasted only a few minutes.

Now that baseball season has ended, it's nice that the weather is starting to get interesting.

Maybe it's the Time Warner Effect: two new services are coming to Columbus Circle.

A Citibank branch is opening on 8th Avenue at 58th Street. There's already one on Broadway and 56th, but nothing between that and the one on 9th Avenue and 42nd. This will be great. Who feels like schlepping all the way from 8th Avenue to Broadway?

Second, JFK and LGA bus service is coming to the airline ticket outlet on Broadway and 61st Street. This is long overdue and should do very well, with Fordham's Lincoln Center campus, Juilliard, Time Warner Center and everyone else around here right nearby.

It's incredible how many random technology problems can be solved with a plain old reboot.

Earlier this week, my cable box stopped accepting channel number input from my remote. I could go up and down in increments of one channel, but if I tried typing in a number--say, 72--the TV would do nothing.

This has happened before. I unplugged the cable box and plugged it in again. After it reloaded, the problem was solved.

Just now, I was trying to quit out of Excel by typing command-Q. No luck. The mouse worked. I tried quitting out of Word by typing command-Q. Nope. I used the trackpad to quit all applications and then restart. It's all fixed.

Now that this works, I've had enough at the computer this week.

"To process this return, we need your address."
"But I've returned things before, and nobody has requested my address."
"To process the return, we need your address."
"I'm not giving my address."
"We need your address."
"I'm not giving my address."
"But we need it."
"No you don't. You haven't needed it before. I'm not giving my address. It's just a way for you to build your mailing list."
"We don't have a mailing list."
"I'm not giving my address."
"Okay." (The return was processed.)

It is truly a wild weather evening. Hurricane Wilma is racing northeast and its energy will merge with a developing nor'easter. We're in for heavy rain and high winds tonight and tomorrow.

But that's not all. It's chilly in south Florida now, with stiff northwesterly winds and temperatures plunging into the 50s. I cannot remember another time when Fort Lauderdale and Miami went through a hurricane only to have cold, dry air dive in behind the storm.

This approaching cold front helped fuel the high winds in Fort Lauderdale and Miami after the eye of the hurricane had passed.

Oh--there's also the leftovers of Tropical Storm Alpha. Those are being absorbed into Hurricane Wilma before its own merger with the nor'easter.

Now that's one heck of a conglomerate.

I was thrilled to read that Cendant is breaking up into 4 separate companies; it's yet another sign that the era of conglomerates is over.

Or is it?

Conglomerates developed for a reason. In the 1960s, when conglomerates started to become fashionable, there was a dearth of professional managers. The best approach was to consolidate managerial control of a business at one corporate headquarters because it was too difficult to find enough people to staff a more decentralized power spread.

Then came MBAs. Now you can decentralize and have professional managers at every point everywhere. It's also more effective to let people focus on what they do best. As a result, conglomerates are inefficient. They suffer from what is called a "diversification discount," which is essentially the amount of value of a company locked up inside wasteful conglomerate bureaucracies. If you free the business unit from conglomerate control, the theory goes, you unlock shareholder value and allow the unit to realize its full potential.

So does this mean it's the end of conglomerates? I think the answer is no. In fact, I think technology is allowing one kind of conglomerate to be replaced by another: a conglomerate based on centralized information networks instead of centralized management expertise.

Witness Google. At first, Google was a search engine. Then the people in charge tried to leverage its vast network to create synergies with other services: the GMail email service, and Blogger, the free blogging service. And a host of other gee-wiz projects with varying amounts of tangible value.

Just because you know how to build a great search engine doesn't mean you have the expertise to run a great e-mail service. Yes, they are both technology based, but within the technology spectrum, these are far apart. Is GMail good? Well, anecdotally, I've seen far more multi-hour delays with mail going in and out of GMail than any other email service. Is Blogger good? Well, anecdotally, I've seen a lot of unplanned service outages, and many failures of the Blogger server to find my own FTP host at EarthLink for transmitting a blog entry. I submit that compared to the superb search algorithm forming the foundation of Google, these ancillary services are of subpar quality.

Google may be the first textbook example of a second era of conglomerates. It's only natural; businesspeople have egos and want to build empires. As that song goes, breaking up is hard to do.

I love the first few Sundays in the fall with a chilly morning and a stiff breeze in the afternoon. I also love the heat, but this weather is marvelous. You can walk around forever without getting tired or hot.

Something about Sunday in the fall is particularly pleasant. As work has gotten busier, it takes time to decompress from what is always a hectic Friday. I've had work-related odds and ends to take care of this weekend, but on Sunday it seems much more serene. Even normally crowded areas of the city are sparse on Sundays before noon. It's a great time to be outside with this cool, refreshing weather.

It's Christmas already, at least at Gracious Home.

The store at 67th and Broadway has filled its window with trees, ornaments and other Christmas imagery. So what if not even Halloween has arrived yet?

There was an article in the Times recently about retailers starting the Christmas season earlier. I think this will ultimately prove counterproductive. The effectiveness of Christmas promotions, I think, depends partly on the psychology of limited time relevance. You need to get that item now, and not wait two months, because in two months gift-giving and decoration season will be over. This creates an artificially high demand and the disproportionate share of sales for which Christmas season is well known.

But if you extend this too long, I think it's not only less effective, but it also induces a sort of Christmas fatigue. We all feel it when we hear "Jingle Bells" for the 247th time around December 20th. Christmas promotions may have a novelty value in early November, but that means that by early December, shoppers are overexposed to them. And when you start displaying Christmas trees in the window when it's sunny and 55 on an October afternoon, the whole situation just doesn't compute.

Someone should do a study of the effect of overexpansion of Christmas season on retail sales. My guess is that the end result is either neutral or, for the reasons above, even negative.

I had such a nice stretch of reading over the summer. Then work picked up and I think I've read about 15 pages of one book since Labor Day.

Anyway, here are some random notes from recent reading:

• The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin by Gordon Wood, based on these first 15 pages, seems promising. Wood is such a great writer.

• But I'm not sure I'm in the mood to read about Franklin, so I also picked up Hip: The History by John Leland. I skimmed a few pages at Barnes & Noble a few months ago and it seems like light, but reasonably substantive, reading.

• I really want to re-read Tim McCarver's Baseball for Brain Surgeons and Other Fans. I remember it as being so high-level and dense--McCarver is a walking supercomputer having processed all baseball situations into high-probability predictions--that you actually have to sit with a diagram of a baseball diamond as you read it. The last time I tried reading this book, I had just finished final exams in law school, so it was just too much.

• Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs was good. There's no shortage of wit here; he is a sharp writer for sure, with a quirky perspective on life. However, in some places, he just tries too hard to be funny. The chapter about his cleaning lady, for example, is hilarious until you get to the part that is supposed to be the punchline ("in pennies"). It just seems overproduced and something more subtle would have been much funnier. Also, what's this with complaining about people who say hi to you on the street? Nobody forced you to write a bestselling memoir. Famous people are defiinitely entitled to their private lives, but complaining about this in your next book seems tacky and disturbs a memoir that is otherwise very enjoyable.

As a side note, I loved the article in last week's Times magazine about interruption science. I've always believed that the proliferation of productivity channels has made people less, not more, productive. I immediately changed the setting on Eudora to check for new mail every 30 minutes. I'm not sure if this is cause and effect, but the week that followed saw record productivity.

It was interesting to compare weather "experts" on two talk shows last night. "The O'Reilly Factor" had someone from Accu-Weather, while "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC had an NBC meteorologist.

The NBC meteorologist clearly explained the potential path of Hurricane Wilma and also noted a very important point: this projected path depended on an upper-level trough over the midwest creating the proper steering winds. If this trough didn't develop, then the hurricane could stall. He showed that one computer model recognized this possibility.

The Accu-Weather person presented the hurricane track prediction as Accu-Weather's, but this is wrong. The track prediction is from the National Hurricane Center. With hurricanes, there is an understanding among meteorologists that pretty much everyone will present the same forecast track, although they can discuss reasons why the path may differ. This is to prevent widespread public confusion. It's not like when Nick Gregory says sunny and 80 while Craig Allen says rain and 65.

In addition, the Accu-Weather person declared: "You heard it here first: this will be the last landfalling hurricane in the United States this season." This is not only off-topic, but is also potentially untrue. Finally, the Accu-Weather person started getting excited about flooding in New England next week, when this also remains to be seen.

I find that Accu-Weather is constantly fabricating headlines just to get attention. It's not surprising that their person wound up on Fox.

Interesting about the MTA's decision to offer discounts this holiday season for subway, bus and commuter rail. I don't know. My first reaction was that it's generally not wise to give discounts for anything for which people will pay full price anyway. I think people will use mass transit as much as they would otherwise at current prices, especially since the alternatives (the hassle of driving or walking huge distances) are so stark.

I would have preferred to see the MTA try to increase ridership with an aggressive ad campaign highlighting the selling points of mass transit. On every Metro North and LIRR car, put up an ad with a table showing two columns, one with "train" and one with "car." Under the "train" column could be something like: 11:57 a.m.: leave White Plains. 12:30 p.m.: Arrive Grand Central. Cost: $7.50 (or whatever it is).

Then in the "car" column, have: 11:57 a.m.: Leave your house. 12:10 p.m.: Get stuck in traffic jam on Cross County Parkway. 12:35 p.m.: Pay toll at Henry Hudson Bridge. 12:55 p.m.: Sit in traffic heading onto the GWB to New Jersey. 1:15 p.m.: Spend 20 minutes looking for parking spot or pay $20 for parking. Cost: $6 in gas, $3 in tolls, plus parking...

This might actually have the effect of selling the mass transit alternative to people who would otherwise drive. The MTA's across-the-board discount gives away money for no reason. I'm not saying a gift to loyal riders isn't nice. But what about next year if there is a tighter budget? The MTA will have to explain why Santa isn't coming back.

A few days ago, the vertical scrollbar in Microsoft Word disappeared. Random problems have happened before, so I did what I always do: first, I opened a new file to see if the fresh document had the same problem. It did. Then, I closed down Word and opened it again. Still no scrollbar. Then I rebooted. Still no scrollbar.

Through a Google search, I learned that there is actually a preference for the vertical scrollbar. Sometimes it randomly gets unchecked. I re-checked it. Problem solved.

A preference for a vertical scrollbar? Why would anyone not want the vertical scrollbar? How about a preference for visible text? I mean, there may be some users out there who object to anything that is not unreadable.

A little late to the game with commenting on the end of the Yankees' season, but...

I think everyone knew that the Yankees were a longshot this year, and it was for reasons that were fully evident in the series against the Angels. The turning point, in my view, was early in Game 2, when the Yankees left the bases loaded. That's precisely the kind of situation the Angels mastered this year, and it's what distinguishes the 1998 Yankees from this year's team.

Of course, the Angels ran into a better team, and I think the White Sox truly deserve to be in the World Series. They started hot, then lost some momentum late in the season; still, when they played the Yankees in September, you could see that their game was so fundamentally sound, it was hard to imagine anything better.

Tonight, Andy Pettitte is pitching while the Yankees are on vacation. It ain't 1998 anymore.

I've been looking for a better way to store my sneakers and shoes, so I got one of those hangable shoe storage things. Forget it. Each storage container is spacious enough for a pair of sneakers--if you're a cat. Just one of my size 12 sneakers barely fit in each compartment; forget about the pair.

Fortunately, a friend had a good idea: I got the hangable storage thing for sweaters. These are wide enough to store each complete pair and allow for significant ventilation to boot.

Yesterday a friend and I saw a preview of Five Course Love, which opens today. I recommend seeing it. (Disclosure: a friend is one of the show's pianists.)

This performance is an intriguing exercise in both musical influences and dialects, as the same trio of actors takes us through 15 different characters in five scenes, each with a different twist. The draw here is not so much the plot but rather the versatility of the actors, all of whom sing, as they navigate all of these different styles and accents. One is Mexican and features Latin music with the accompanying dialects. Another is Italian. There's also German, Japanese, and '50s diner Americana (a scene particularly impressive for its terrific variations on sugary '50s musical hooks).

I also loved the set, which featured an elevated pit so you could see the band performing high above the stage. Each member of the band--two pianists, a bass guitarist and a drummer--wore a chef's hat. Cute. The two pianos worked wonderfully together without sounding too crowded. The set also features a mind-boggling expanse of silverware pieces, with forks, knives and spoons attached below, on the side of, and up and around the entire stage.

I'm not much of a fan of long-range outlooks--meteorology is not much more capable than guesswork for a period longer than 5-12 days, depending on the weather pattern--but this is worth reading.

It's the winter outlook from the National Weather Service. You can take or leave the specific predictions. But it does an excellent job of explaining some of the factors that would influence winter weather. Specifically, one important driver is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). When the NAO is positive, that allows the jet stream to retreat up into Canada, carrying cold air to the east, north of NYC. When the NAO is negative, cold air is forced down into the Eastern U.S., setting up cold outbreaks and a greater potential for snowstorms.

The discussion also makes the important point that an "average" winter still means lots of fluctuations: cold outbreaks, warm spells, dry periods and snowy times. Most of weather is, in fact, above or below normal; "normal" is simply the mathematical average of all these variations combined.

My iPod dished out a blast from the past today: "A Slow Song" by Joe Jackson. The studio version on Steppin' Out is wonderful; the live version, on Joe Jackson Live 1980-86, with its energetic sax solo, is unbelievable.

One of the many reasons I love this song is the great lyrics, including that untouchable phrase: "I'm brutalized by bass/and terrorized by treble." You really have to listen to the song to appreciate this; Jackson drapes these words over the slow tempo and emphasizes the "treble" by pronouncing it "ter-EH-ble."

The only other song I can recall using this technique (although I'm sure it happens more than I remember) is "Ants Marching." Dave Matthews sings about a "sweet tooth tortured by weight loss," but it's "tor-tur-duh."

This is a terrific article by Laura Rowley on the value of time. My favorite nugget: "Cleaning is a non-core function. There are people who are much more skilled than me and outsourcing allows me to better utilize my resources." I feel the same way about many things, including cooking.

I never used to think this way about the value of time. However, I have two advantages now: one, as a consultant, my time has an identifiable value per hour (and not just an estimate based on a full-time salary); and two, I have a full and expandable pipeline of work. This means that, for example, it would be dumb to spend an hour trying to save $20 on airfare to Fort Lauderdale, so I've stopped doing that. Same thing for my Web and email host, EarthLink. They're not the cheapest, but I never have to worry about them, ever. I spend less than 5 minutes per year (and lose 5 minutes of work per year) on any concerns regarding EarthLink, period.

Of course there is a limit. You could easily rationalize wasting money by pointing to the supposed value of your time. In addition, performing non-core functions such as cooking may provide a different kind of utility: enjoyment. Precisely one of the things I like about making my own salad (and never buying premade salads) is that it's an opportunity for completely different creative thinking than the kind I have to apply for work.

Overall, though, a perspective like Laura's is useful to keep in mind.

I was just outside thinking how nice it is just to have light drizzle falling. Only to get home, check the radar, and see yet another band of moderate rain moving in.

The rainy week did indeed pan out. The computer models are still having a lot of trouble with the details, but here's essentially what's going on:

• High pressure is stuck over Quebec. Winds around high pressure circulate clockwise. So winds are coming around the New England coast and in from the northeast and east.

• A low pressure trough is to the west. Winds around low pressure circulate counterclockwise, so winds are coming around from the mid-Atlantic states and up into our area.

Usually a persistent east and southeasterly upper flow wouldn't be that bad. But there's one problem: a ton of tropical moisture is sitting out in the ocean near Bermuda. The tropical feed extends way down south. So this persistent southeasterly flow is acting as a conduit for an endless feed of showers. That's why all the rain bands have been moving in from the ocean, like the one coming onshore right now.

When we had one sunny-and-80 day after another through early October, I just had a hunch that once the pattern turned, it would do so with drama. Weather always seems to react to itself like that.

Around Lincoln Center, even the honks are in tune.

One vehicle just honked in G. Another, at the same time, honked in the C above it. The sound was actually very nice.

There just isn't anything else in rock music like the piercing voice of Geddy Lee chiming in after a Neil Peart drum solo.

Gretchen Morgenson tries a different tack today. Instead of anecdote #3,872 about evil corporate executives, she makes the point that some companies are behaving better these days. Fair enough. It's good that she's reporting on progress. But her analysis is dreadfully simplistic, and to see why, look at how she celebrates Staples.

Staples, we are told (through her quote from a Staples PR person), is one of the good guys. The CEO flies coach, drives a cheap car, and parks in any old parking space--no executive parking spots. But does it work? I know I'm just one person, but Staples is the store I most dread visiting. The store on Broadway and 81st Street always seems to have many more checkout registers closed than open, forcing twenty people into two long lines. I've complained to the CEO about this and have received assurances from various regional manners the situation will improve, but it doesn't. There is a Staples somewhere near 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. When I visited, the lines were so bad that I found an OfficeMax nearby and went there. And one time I was downtown near the Seaport; I figured I would pop into Staples on Fulton Street to pick up some paper. Forget it: I walked in and found a dizzying store layout and endless lines.

Let's say Staples could find a CEO who would fix these problems but need to be paid more. He or she would demand flying business class and his or her own parking spot. I'd say go for it. The current CEO is failing the company's shareholders by subjecting customers to persistent frustration. If the company needs to pay $1 million more per year to increase profits by more than that, then that is what they should be compelled to do. Talent is expensive, but talent is what allows companies to grow and keep and create jobs.

I completely agree that many CEOs--and incompetent CEOs--are overpaid and are fair symbols of corporate excess. But simplistically celebrating a company for a little democratic culture does a disservice to shareholders and employees. Gretchen, of all people, should have known better.

Are you a guy looking for a new shirt somewhere on the Upper West Side? Forget it. The retailers don't want your business.

Take the Gap on Broadway and 67th Street. It has shrunk the men's section down to a space that is smaller than my bathroom. You can basically have your pick of a few pairs of jeans and a couple of shirts. I'm exaggerating, but the men's department used to take up about half the store. On the basis of what I know about global gender demographics, that seems sensible. But now that Gap is all about the women. Guys: go elsewhere.

Club Monaco on Broadway and 87th: we're out of luck entirely. The store eliminated all of its men's clothing.

Kenneth Cole on Columbus and 77th: no clothing at all anymore. Have your pick of belts, shoes and bags.

The Upper West Side is definitely a central location, but I suppose that is now the case only for lox.

We're in for a stretch of rainy weather, but for how long? A cold front will stagger through the area and stall somewhere near the coast. This will allow waves of low pressure to bring moisture into our area. The result: don't expect a lot of sun through Monday.

But I find that situations like these too often feature an abandonment of common sense. Take, for example, the latest technical discussion out of the National Weather Service office in Taunton, MA. A bit of background: the chief headline screamer in this office is a meteorologist named Walter Drag, who is legendary for his colorful writing and mind-blowing manipulations of computer model and historical data. Drag is the Michael Kay of the National Weather Service. I doubt anyone is more on top of everything that has ever happened. But too often he doesn't see the forest through the trees, and this morning's discussion is an example.

"If the GFS is to be believed," Drag writes, "isolated 12-inch rains not impossible next 5 days." That's not all: "If Wednesday event occurs, echo moving flow aloft is less than 15 [knots]!" It goes on and on. Look at all the crazy scenarios spit out by the computers! Wow! Then, the fine print: "Let's see what reality and future model runs deliver."

My take: some common sense is in order. We are talking about a stalled front. I cannot remember a single time when a five-day forecast of a stalled front was accurate. The computers are notoriously horrendous with these kinds of situations. The front moves slightly. The subsequent waves don't develop. One wave eats up the energy from the others and focuses the rain on a single day, leaving just mostly cloudy skies and drizzle the rest of the time.

I wish Drag would use his talent and seemingly limitless research energy to put things in perspective. Instead he jumps on dizzying permutations of pie-in-the-sky computer predictions to write verbose prose about "potential" floods, blizzards and cold outbreaks one to two weeks away.

Bookmark the NWS/Taunton discussion page. This kind of nonsense goes on all winter. Just keep in mind, when you see Drag in the credits, it's good for entertainment purposes only.

I've had fun reading this past week's issue of Time Out New York, its tenth anniversary issue, with a whole bunch of "then and now" features.

Thinking back was fun because for me, 1995 was a year like no other year will ever be. Here are some highlights:

January 1, 1995: I start the new year with a promotion to the manager of customer support for Pipeline, the Internet online service where I worked.

February 9, 1995: Pipeline, with 10,000 customers, is purchased by PSINet for $10 million.

Late February, 1995: I take my first business trip, to PSINet headquarters in Herndon, and enjoy laughable Thai food for lunch.

March 31, 1995: I turn 23.

April 14, 1995: CBS News "48 Hours" does a segment on the Internet. For around 10 minutes of air time (2 hours in real life), I give Richard Schlesinger a tour of the Internet. The segment also includes a look at identity theft in a new movie called The Net, so viewers can have their pick of me or Sandra Bullock.

Early May 1995: PSINet goes public with the ticker symbol PSIX.

May 11, 1995: The Pipeline for Macintosh Web browser launches. It was designed and built by Dan's company, Arcus Incorporated.

June 1995: Margaret, who started and managed the campus computing support team at Yale, replaces me as Pipeline customer support manager. I move into project management and then into marketing. It is a win-win many times over.

Summer 1995: Weekly lunches with colleague Howard (at Au Bon Pain near City Hall) result in the creation of the Pipeline online guest program. Over the next year, celebrity guests would include George C. Wolfe (Bring In Da Noise, Bring In Da Funk), meteorologist Nick Gregory, columnist and author Jim Sleeper, TV news reporter Marcus Solis, GMHC Communications Director Daniel Wolfe, and the acid jazz outfit Groove Collective.

September 1995: Bruce Hornsby concert at Westbury Music Fair. It was incredible. He played Mozart and bebop at the same time in one extended jam version of a song.

October 1995: Euphoria about the Yankees' first postseason appearance since 1981 slips away when, after taking a 2 games to 0 lead against Seattle, they lose three straight and are eliminated. One of the main reasons: an incredible Mariners hitter named Tino Martinez. Don Mattingly retires one year short of the Yankees' first World Series championship since 1978.

Fall 1995: Pipeline reaches 50,000 customers. (It would reach 105,000 by May 1996.)

October 1995: Looking for something new and interesting, I buy my first Phish album, A Live One. After hearing "Slave to the Traffic Light," I'm convinced I'm on to something exciting.

November 1995: Fifth high school reunion. Dinner conversation consists of my friends, all of whom are Pipeline subscribers, asking me about their technical issues.

December 31, 1995: New Year's Eve with a couple of friends features A Live One, a Sega Genesis marathon and takeout Chinese.

Funny timing: yesterday I called a friend and left a voicemail raving about the Asian tofu salad I enjoyed for lunch on Song, Delta's hip new airline.

While my friend was listening to this message, he was listening to a P.A. announcement while waiting for his flight on Ted, United's hip new airline. The announcement was that Ted had run out of pretzels.

As my friend said: "This is the difference between when Delta tries to do something and United tries to do something."

Whole Foods gets everything perfectly right. Except proofreading.

Its bottled water label proclaims that the water is tested constantly for "it's" [sic] purity. And a sign at the prepared food counter refers to "pasta nest's" [sic].

I'm back in the city and the trip wrapped up very quickly before I had time to comment on anything else, but here are some leftovers:

• Inland route from the beach to Plantation: Broward Boulevard is surprisingly fast. You have traffic until and through downtown Fort Lauderdale, but after Powerline Road (NW 9th Ave.), it's clear sailing all the way to University Drive.

• I finally found an alternative to the now-demised ZETA, my one-time rock station of choice in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. 93-point-something played great stuff, a wider selection than just the alternative flavor of the month, always with some energy.

• Yes, it's warm here, so the trip didn't have the same "escape" aspect as it would have in March. But whatever the season, there's still the beach, the sea breezes, the setting, and all that goes with it.

• Sticker shock: paying $16 for the 5 gallons of gas used during the trip. Yes, I know the price has been more than $3 a gallon. But it's one thing to hear about gas prices on the news; it's quite another when you actually pay it at the pump. I haven't filled a tank of gas since April. Now I know what it's like to come to Manhattan for the first time and buy a box of cereal.

• I predict that Steel, an incredibly slick and modern lounge/dance club where the old Eagle resided, will make a dent in South Beach's already dwindling and diluted nightlife scene. Steel seems to provide all of the class with none of the attitude. In general, that is why I prefer Fort Lauderdale. If I want attitude, I can get it anytime here at home by hopping on the subway and going right to 23rd Street.

• Good thing the Yankees clinched yesterday, because today on my Song flight back, all the TVs on the right side of the plane weren't working. I can only imagine the passenger revolt if today's game had meant something.

• (Again) LGA rules. The hairpin 180-degree curve, as you exit onto the Grand Central Parkway west, epitomizes the exquisite compactness of this airport, nestled on a thin strip between a highway and the water. Today we flew in from the northeast, with that great approach right over the East River until the runway extension suddenly appears. La Guardia Airport is just my favorite airport of all time.