They opened a Cold Stone around the corner on 9th Avenue. At Cold Stone, all of the employees sing a little song whenever someone deposits a dollar in the tip jar. Every time we go in there, they sing this song that ends with “…and we hope to see you back tomorrow night!” And the funny part is, they always seem to get their wish.

Ashleigh and I went to one of those midnight Harry Potter release parties down in SoHo on Friday night. We wanted to avoid the huge crowds at Barnes and Noble and Borders, so we chose an independent bookstore called McNally-Robinson instead. They had fortune tellers, and a costume contest (no, we were not in costume), and “magic punch for grownups.” Ashleigh got her book just ten minutes after midnight, and then we headed home.

The eerie part of the evening was the visual on the subway platform. It’s very strange to see hundreds of people waiting for an N train after midnight (it also happened to be the subway station closest to the Scholastic store and Harry Potter Place), all of them very quiet, and all clutching the exact same book in their hands, as though they were all part of a creepy cult of children’s-book-worshipers. Oh wait…

I noticed a smart, although slightly annoying, change from Friendster this morning. They used to send emails that said, “Your friend David’s birthday is coming up on July 31!” But this morning’s email said, “Your friend David’s birthday is coming up! Click here to find out when.” That’s a smart change because it drives traffic to the site. When I used to receive the fully-informative emails, I was already done interacting with Friendster after glancing at the email. Now it’s just the start of my interaction with them instead; I have to pay a visit to their site, where the interaction continues. That little change was a smart way to bring a lot of extra traffic to Friendster.

Ilse went to the vet today, and she’s already 4.7 pounds. That’s huge! She’s more than twice the size that she was two months ago. None of her clothing fits her anymore. I swear she’s like the size of a German Shepherd. So I’m going to start calling her Shep.

This morning around 6am, Ashleigh and I were awakened by a horrendously loud noise which we (in our sleepy stupor) were sure was a huge earthquake. Of course, there aren’t earthquakes in New York, and we soon realized that the sound was the entire inside of our closet collapsing. The main shelf and rod suddenly gave way, bringing the contents of the closet downward and crushing our shoe rack into oblivion. Fortunately no one was injured, since no one lives in our closet.

Needless to say, it turned out to be a great opportunity to weed through unneeded (and apparently very heavy) clothing. The Salvation Army will be very grateful. Until their racks collapse.

The Tony Awards were a lot of fun to watch this year because of the live performances, but we weren’t at all shocked by most of the winners. They seemed to match well with Roma Torre’s predictions on NY1 and with our own predictions. The only surprise of the evening was David Hyde Pierce for best actor in a musical. We thought for sure that Raul Esparza would win for Company instead, but I suspect the Tony voters were making up for David not winning a Tony for Spamelot. Hopefully Raul will get his chance in his next show.

I finally switched from Yahoo Mail to Gmail last week. So far, I’m pretty happy. I’m just trying to get used to the automatic threading of “conversations” and using “labels” instead of folders. Why did I switch? Yahoo Mail Plus, combined with Yahoo Personal Address for my thenestor.com email address, made my Yahoo Mail kind of pricey. Gmail offered the same service for free, including the use of my domain name. And unlike Yahoo, Google doesn’t take over the whole domain name; just the mail part.

Now I’m on to the challenging task of moving old mail into Gmail. The first step was obvious: To get my mail from Yahoo Mail into Gmail, I just set up Gmail to retrieve from the Yahoo Mail POP server. Done and done. It just takes a while, because Gmail processes only 200 messages at a time, every half hour or so. Gmail is even smart enough to put most of the “Sent” mail into the “Sent” folder.

The harder part is getting my old mail (from before I used Yahoo) from Outlook Express. Basically I followed instructions similar to these. Most of the Gmail import solutions out there involve forwarding all your mail and therefore losing the original dates of the messages. Not interested. Instead, I put my mail on a POP server on my own computer and then had Gmail download it from there.

First, I imported my mail to Mozilla Thunderbird. Then I set up an IMAP/POP server on my own computer. I found a free, easy-to-use mail server called Mercury. I set up an account for myself, and then I went into Thunderbird and hooked it up as an IMAP account. Then I copied the emails from the archive folders into the Inbox of the IMAP account. After that, I went to Gmail and added an external account (to retrieve POP mail) using my IP address. Voila, it started downloading 200 messages at a time.

Now the tricky part is that a lot of my mail is going to the Spam folder, so I have to keep checking it once in a while during the retrieval process. The good thing is, all of the false-positive Spam has really old dates, so it’s easy to spot.

Jason Kottke wrote an interesting entry today about Fotolog overtaking Flickr as the most popular photo-sharing web site worldwide (according to Alexa). He points out that Fotolog’s been around a lot longer, but it had problems with site slowness for a while.

Anyway, it’s only more popular because it’s more useful internationally than Flickr. In the US, Flickr’s way more popular. Still, it made me think.

Myspace has been the new Friendster for a long time, and it makes me wonder whether Friendster could ever overtake Myspace again. People abandoned Friendster mostly because of site slowness. But I personally think Friendster’s a better site, so I wonder if it will ever swing back the other way.

The only real food I’ll eat at McDonald’s is the Chicken Select strips, and only with buffalo sauce. It just so happens that the McDonald’s around the corner is the one McDonald’s in the city that never has any buffalo sauce. So today, after my latest attempt to secure some Chicken Select strips with buffalo sauce to no avail, I sent the manager a letter:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I live just around the corner from your restaurant, and it is by far the most convenient McDonald’s location from my home. However, it has been difficult to order the food that I want from your restaurant.

My favorite item on the McDonald’s menu is the 5-Piece Chicken Select Meal. I only like the Chicken Select strips with Buffalo sauce, but your location does not seem to have Buffalo sauce. I’ve asked for it several times over the past year. At first I assumed it was just out of stock, but now it has become clear that you do not carry Buffalo sauce at any time. I don’t understand why; Buffalo sauce has been a regular part of the McDonald’s menu for several years now, and is one of the standard accompaniments for the Chicken Select strips. You carry the Chicken Select strips, why not the Buffalo sauce?

Whenever there’s no Buffalo sauce, I am forced to cancel my order. When I eat at McDonald’s, I’m eating there because I want a specific item from the McDonald’s menu. If you don’t have that, I don’t eat there, and you lose my business for the day. Please add Buffalo sauce to your menu so that I can become a regular customer. Thank you.

I seriously doubt this is going to have any effect, however, because this is New York–the city of New York-style customer service.

It was 72°F and sunny today in New York City, breaking the record of 63°F set back in 1950. The average temperature for January 6 is 38°F. Global warming?