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gala on a pier
Thursday, October 4 2018
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
I didn't drive to work today and instead worked remotely until 1:00pm, when it was time for Gretchen and me to drive to the City for the thing we would be doing today. In the meantime, Logi Analytics tech support help me debug a licensing issue with some software I was testing (for work). I also finally got around to upgrading the SSD in Woodchuck from about 250 gigabytes to one terabyte. I'd been running into space issues on that drive for about a year and had even tried (and failed) to upgrade to a 512 GB SSD back in November of 2017. Today, though, the upgrade went about as well as such things can go, and now I have 726 GB of free SSD to grow into. It bears mentioning that the 250 GB drive replaced was installed back in June of 2012 (at a cost of about $200: 1.25 gigabytes/dollar), meaning that it served me well for six years and four months. Usually when I replace some important component in Woodchuck, the new part is either twice as fast or twice as capacious and is usually cheaper. Because of the way Moore's Law works, such replacements usually happen every two years. This time, because the replacement happened after more than six years, the new part was four times bigger and 75% as expensive ($149: 6.67 gigabytes/dollar). But even so, the specs of the replacement suggest that Moore's Law is indeed running out of gas. Under Moore's Law, all else being equal, specs generally doubled every two years or less, but in this case each doubling required something closer to two and a half years. One could quibble a little about prices I suppose, but I'm pretty good at always finding the price point that maximizes my Gigabytes per dollar. Bad as that might be, it's still better than the spec improvements of mechanical hard drives. My most recent mechanical drive was a 4TB hard drive bought in January of 2017 for $146 (and that was not the cheapest one) and before that, I'd bought a 3TB hard drive for $129 in August of 2013. Nearly two years after the purchase of that 4TB drive, the price for the cheapest 4TB hard drive is still about $100. If Moore's Law was still doing what it used to, it would be closer to $80 by now. I should also mention that Woodchuck's CPU is still the same Core i5-3570 that I installed in July of 2014, over four years ago. I have had no reason to replace it and still rarely encounter a computer that runs as fast as it does.
Tonight's event in Manhattan was the annual Farm Sanctuary Gala, benefitting the seminal farmed animal rescue organization based in Watkin's Glen (on the edge of the Fingerlakes Region of New York). This would involve our fancy clothes, which for me hadn't been worn in so long I had to put them in the dryer to burn off the mold. While Gretchen had decided to go with a pink baby doll dress with no belt to cinch in its radical poofiness, I was going with my usual tieless ensemble: black trousers, a platinum-grey shirt, and my brown cordoroy jacket. Gretchen did all the driving to get us into the city, which went pretty fast until we got into the City. Those last five blocks took something like a half hour, and it wasn't even rush hour. We arrived so early at our hotel in fact that
Gretchen could go out and get me an order of french fries (I was famished) and then get her nails done. [REDACTED]
This was our second stay at the Maritime in Chelsea, which is a nice hotel with circular windows. Unfortunately, our room was on the third floor with a view of an air conditioning unit. But beyond that was that new skyscraper that seems to be leaning dangerously out over 17th street. There are a number of new whimsical-looking buildings popping up like mushrooms along the Highline that are starting to give Chelsea the appearance of Futurama. At the north end of Chelsea there's a brand new extremely tall tower with some sort of cantilevered observation deck near the top; it wasn't in evidence at all last time I was in Manhattan (a little less than a year ago, when Gretchen did a poetry thing on the Upper West Side).
The gala was within walking distance (even for Gretchen wearing heals) at Pier 60 of Chelsea Piers. I'd never been to any of those piers and it was a little disorienting to suddenly be walking around in a decidedly maritime environment, a part of New York City with which I am mostly unfamiliar (though I've been on the Staten Island Ferry).
The venue was at the very end of the pier, with a view of the Hudson looking towards New Jersey. The very tip of the venue was separated from rest by a velvet rope and only VIPs could go beyond that. Not being VIPs, we mingled with the hoi polloi as little plates of delicious vegan finger food came through (my faviorites were a kind of tiny taco and also a little fried ball of something like polenta). Eventually I finished the fruity "maragarita" I'd taken on entering the venue and transitioned to a generous pour of Maker's Mark from the open bar. All along the way, Gretchen kept stopping to talk to various people. She knew Gene Bauer, the founder of Farm Sanctuary, and she knew his wife, and also Susie C., the charismatic woman who runs the farm itself. Later we met up with Erica and Justin and then Amy T. There had been a Joan Jett sighting, but I never saw her. The only celebrity I'd seen by this point was Emily Deschanel. It's not that celebrities especially interest me, but in the context of a gala where everyone is dressed up and topshelf drinks are free, being interested in them makes its own sense.
Eventually it was time for the meal and wall was rolled back to reveal a large dining hall. I picked my way to table 16, where our seats had been paid for by Gretchen's friends Marissa & David. I sat beside the guy who had founded the environmental studies department at NYU and he and I chatted for awhile mostly about stuff of interest to him. Before I could eat much of my quinoa-with-tomato-and-sail-of-papadum appetizer (it was surprisingly good), the event began. There was an uplifting story of cow headed to slaughter who had somehow escaped, lived among the deer, and then lucked into a forever home in Farm Sanctuary's vast fields. Then various celebrities came out and did there thing. Michæl C. Hall (star of Six Feet Under and Dexter was there, as was Cindi Lauper (who admitted she wasn't even a vegetarian and gave no performance) as was Colbie Caillat, the woman who wrote that unfortunate pop song celebrating the crinkling of a nose (Caillat actually is vegan, and she went on to perform that song).
These gallas all have a similar trajectory, though this one was different in that there was no silent auction. There was an auction, though, and the guy running that part sounded like an actual auctioneer. He introducing swanky vacations on private islands, and people kept bidding them well up into numbers having five figures. Gretchen bid at the low end of a few of these, but always got out before having to pay for anything.
At the end, there was some sort of ritual involving blinking battery-powered LEDs we were supposed to clip onto ourselves if we wanted to fill out a form to donate money for no other benefit except to feel good. At this point Gretchen made a $1000 donation, which seemed like a lot until you factor in the $600 she won't be giving to Mercy For Animals this year.
By this point, the main course had been some sort of breaded and fried dumpling and there'd been a dessert that included a large rubbery wedge of chocholate pudding. The staff had never slacked in their pouring of wine. Most of what I'd been drinking had been red.
After the meal, we all were set loose to wander the venue. There were some "vendors" giving away free things like pita sandwiches full of jack fruit deliciousness, but I was too full for that. Instead I had a couple gin & tonics. On the way to the bar, I'd managed to collect eight or ten of those blinking LED things that had been abandoned at the tables I passed, so I clipped them to my jacket. By this point there was a dance floor with a DJ playing music just as though we were in the wind-down phase of a wedding. Several women on the dance floor wanted my LED blinkers, so by the end of the evening I only had four of them. By this point, Gretchen was at a table surrounded by what might've been the only African-American women there. I was sitting with Amy T. having a fun conversation, though I don't remember what it was about. An early theme between me, her, and Justin had been the annoying rifts in the animal rights movement, and how it throws monkey wrenches into our socializing. I'd said, "We don't eat animals, so we eat each other." My only major rift with respect to the AR movement is between me and the disgraced former management of Mercy For Animals. Fortunately, they are not the kind who show up at fancy galas in Manhattan.
We got a ride in Amy's taxi back to the Maritime. There was a fire in the Maritime's lobby's fireplace, so Gretchen and I sat in front of that for awhile before heading up to our room.
Cindi Lauper tonight at the gala.
Gretchen at the gala.
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