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real hero sometimes
Monday, August 5 2002
For some reason yesterday I had that Foreigner song "Jukebox Hero" in my head again, and I did a web search for a concert review and found one from a show in Cincinnati. My favorite line in the article refers to lead singer Lou Gramm this way, "With his black tank top, blue jeans, his less-than-solid physique and a wondrous perm-mullet hybrid atop his head — he looked less like a jukebox hero than a jukebox repairman."
I was in full-on jukebox repairman mode this evening. I went to Radio Shack and bought a 100 feet of Cat. 5 ethernet cable and 100 feet of dual-conductor 18 gauge stranded wire. Then, at home, I spent a rather long time splicing and soldering connectors on either end of these wires. The dual-connector wire was for 120 volt power, and that meant standard electrical plugs. The idea is to use these wires to run power and an internet connection up to the roof of the brownstone so I can put a wireless hub up there and do some stationary "war driving." With its commanding view of northeast Brooklyn, the southern tip of Manhattan, and Hoboken in New Jersey, it should be possible to get line-of-sight to dozens of wireless points-of-presence.
Coming home from a day of working for two different employers, Gretchen was witness to an altercation on the 2 train. Two people got on at Nevins, one a smartly-dressed woman, the other a smartly-dressed man. After awhile the man said something to the woman and she told him he better shut up and leave her alone - evidently he'd been harassing her for some time. There were some more heated exchanges, and then woman got up and moved to another car. When the man followed her, Gretchen decided to involve herself. She followed them to the next car and then, at the Grand Army Plaza, held the door and refused to let the train move until something was done. At first the plan was for the harassed woman to get out at Grand Army Plaza, but the other passengers in the car thought the asshole stalker should be the one evicted. This is what eventually happened, leaving Gretchen behind in the station with the stalker. She wasn't too comfortable being left behind on the platform with a maniac, but at least the police had been called. When they arrived, "it was every cop in Brooklyn," and suddenly the stalker assumed a different, calmer personality. When she got a chance to make a statement, Gretchen indicated that the guy was putting on a front. A few minutes later the stalker's antagonism boiled through his calm façade and there was enough evidence for the cops to book him. The police were still planning on releasing the stalker back onto the street, but evidently he pulled some further outrage and ended up spending the night in jail. By this point Gretchen was in a cop car being driven home from the Grand Army Plaza station. She can be a real hero sometimes; I don't know that I would have involved myself so eagerly in such a altercation among strangers.
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