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We used Hannan in a few papers in support of our research. I’m presently re-watching the American version of Life on Mars. (Still waiting to find the BBC original … ) And his recent speech at the European Parliament sounds, sadly, right on.
The comments on that YouTube video, for a change, are largely very interesting. When you’ve captured quality comments on YouTube you’re just doing this Internet thing wrong, I think, but nonetheless, refreshing still.
Thirty miles on the bike this morning and I feel fine.
I felt hungry by lunchtime, so barbecue was in order. Fairly certain that negated the last 18 of those miles.
Had my head in Dreamweaver all day today. Nothing like spending an exhilarating day in a piece of software that sometimes does brilliant things but otherwise generally manages to baffle itself. I’m still not sure that I’ve met a real person who likes this program. I want to like it, really I do, because it is just so much easier to gush than grouse. Fortunately shaking my head doesn’t require a lot of energy, though.
We’re using Dreamweaver in a class. Two or three of the students have really taken to it. The rest are trying their hardest. You have to have patience with this software, I’ve decided, and I’m proud of how much patience they’ve demonstrated. Their site designs, meanwhile, are coming along nicely. Some of them are incredibly sharp.
The rest of the afternoon was spent making recruiting calls. I’ve talked with about 100 people or voicemails. And then I spent a bit of time emailing some more people. We’ve got a lot of good things to brag about to prospective students. It takes more than a few seconds.
Tonight the student-journalists at the Crimson put together their next to last issue of the year. They were done early. We’ll find the typos together tomorrow. This editorial staff has done a very nice job. They’ve been solid and stable and handled a few delicate stories well. Proud of them too.
That point of the school year, then, where you tally things up and take stock of progress. You make mental notes, measure this against a previous year, project out against what might come next year. You celebrate those who are graduating and moving on to their next big adventure. It is an exciting time on a college campus. I’m thrilled to be here.
This is different:
That’s the courtyard of the University Center. It is all distorted and warped by a free panorama app I found recently called Photosynth. Oh, I am sorry. This isn’t a panorama. From their FAQ:
Panoramas are made stitching a set of photos taken from exactly the same spot and with exactly the same focal length. Synths are our invention, and use photos that were taken from different locations. Panoramas display seamlessly, synths display as a collection of individual photos.
Clearly, if you follow that link, I am doing something wrong. Maybe a cloudy, bright day is too dynamic. The good ones on the site — and there is some mind–boggling stuff on their site — This will take some experimenting. Or I could just call it the Dali app and let things slide and droop where they may.
It is amazing what you can do on this thing that has a phone attached to it.
I interviewed a former Heisman trophy winner this morning. Had a very nice chat. When I type up the notes in the next few days I’ll give you a little more insight into the piece, which is a freelance article I’ve been asked to write for a summer publication. So come back for more details on that later.
Hint: It was not Gino Torretta. He had a similar outcome to his post-Heisman bowl game, however. Like Torretta, it happened in the Sugar Bowl.
Much of the rest of the day was spent making recruiting phone calls, reading and grading. These things have seemed to take over most everything lately. But that’s fine. I enjoy talking with prospective students, though I get a lot of machines and write a lot of email. I do love to read. And grading is … well … everyone needs to have things graded.
This evening I visited the Galleria for the first time in probably a year or more. On Twitter I wrote, “Places I’ve been less crowded than this mall: Nevada desert, Belizian rain forest, Alabama library, IRS parties.” It was amazing how dead most of the place was.
Just for context, I worked there for part of my senior year in high school. A classmate helped me land the easy job of selling coupon books in those little mid-mall kiosks. You don’t antagonize people, you wait patiently for them to come to you. And the hourly pay, for a high school student, was extravagant. (I think I was making about $9 an hour.) Anyway, one night while I was not selling coupon books to the random passers by, a famous Southern winter storm descended upon us. Everything closed up quickly. This was like that. (Incidentally, that particular night, there was no snow if I remember correctly.)
There was no bad weather tonight, either. Just the economy, the Internet and people tired of malls, apparently.
I went looking for clothes sales. Finding none, I also left the mall.
Speaking of mall culture … Who’s ready for a third in Bill & Ted’s storyline? Besides Keanu, I mean.
“When we last got together, part of it was that Bill and Ted were supposed to have written the song that saved the world, and it hasn’t happened. … So they’ve now become kind of possessed by trying to do that. Then there’s an element of time and they have to go back.”
Ghostbusters III doesn’t look like a bad idea in comparison, now, does it?
A new warning came down Friday that a line of storms would bring wind and hail. So, naturally, you go outside.
And we might not have received the 2.5-inch diameter hail we were promised …
But this was painful enough. We’re standing in the garage, between our cars and the ice starts racing down from the sky. Brian’s car is in the driveway, unprotected by the safety of any roofing or tree limbs.
A tarp! I have a tarp!
Knowing that hail storms are brief, but violent, I took the most direct route, which was around the exterior of the house. Barefoot. And when I got to the back of the house it really started coming down. And that began to sting. Hail on soft, moist earth isn’t so bad, even for a tenderfoot. Hail on cement is not a lot of fun.
I race back, now covering my head with the tarp.
I have a tarp! I need a plan!
We decided to cover the windshield.
About eight seconds after we have the great green piece of protective plastic spread out evenly — which exposed tender skin to more angry ice — the hail stopped falling. The yard was covered. There were abnormally large piles of the stuff everywhere. There was an unearthly moisture in the air as the hail steamed itself into oblivion. It looked like an X-Files setting.
The car was undamaged.
The Yankee got these two tigers from the balloon guy at Niffer’s the other night. We see him there often. This has become his regular gig the last few years. On weekends he is at the baseball stadium in clown makeup making balloons. He’s often here or at parties, or delivering a manifesto on the current political climate, while he makes a balloon beanie hat. The guy’s talented. He said it took him about two years before his hands could create while he chatted with customers.
Nice guy. He carries a duffle bag stuffed full of balloons. He said he spends thousands of dollars a year on the stuff. This is his job.
There’s a feature story in that guy.
I found her, in the checkout line at the grocery store, reading the Enquirer. Hard to believe this has been six years. Beth Holloway has a new show coming out. (The good people at WBRC struggled with the math on that story.)
“Vanished with Beth Holloway,” will follow real life cases of missing persons; digging into the mysteries behind them and searching for clues to solve the cases.
I liked it better when John Walsh and Robert Stack did that show.
If anything, she’s proved it isn’t hard to sneak into a Peruvian jail.
It seems unnatural to have such pitch-perfect weather just a day after such deadly storms.
Seventeen dead were killed yesterday and last night across four states. Three of the deaths were near the scene of that picture, which is from ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann in Autauga County, Alabama this morning. Many more were hurt there. The church is destroyed. (But they are congregating in the morning at the local high school; the human spirit can be indomitable.) Four more people died in rural Washington County.
Tornadoes are curious, scary things. My elementary school was on the top of a hill. Back then, school districts didn’t shut down a day in advance of a storm. The siren howled and we all lined up in the hallways, even in the first or second grade wondering about the usefulness of the head-between-the-knees technique. During one spring storm they told us a tornado skipped up one side of the hill, ramped over the building and down the other side. I don’t recall seeing any damage, but remember that story vividly.
It wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve had friends speak of destroyed front yards and pristine backyards. I’ve watched news reports of babies picked up and placed unharmed in dresser drawers far from home. I saw a report once of a farmer who got caught on his tractor in his field and couldn’t beat the storm back to the barn. He ran off for safety and came back to find his tractor OK, but the gas cap gone, presumably spun open by the swirling winds.
I’ve covered lots of tornadoes. Chased a few, from a safe distance, too. Having lived a great portion of my life in a volatile springtime area the closest we’ve come to being impacted is in donating to those in need. Thirteen years and two weeks ago, in 1998, we adopted an awesome little storm dog. Oak Grove, a community near my home, had been devastated by one of the largest tornadoes ever recorded. Thirty-two were killed. When they went in to clean up they couldn’t tell lot from lot in some places because there was just nothing left. Here’s a brief video from that storm:
Watch your radar closely.
