October « 2012 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

October, 2012

Tuesdays go so fast

An overcast, almost cool day. No wonder I saw cider at the store. We’re not there yet, but soon, I’m sure.

Saw this guy on the road this morning. Always nice to see them moving sedately down the interstate:

Saw this guy on a support column this evening. Always nice to see them wait for me to get the best shot I can, which is to say a blurry, fuzzy, nighttime snapshot off my iPhone:

In between I taught a class, arranged a big meeting with several publishers for next week, helped a student with a story, talked cutlines and all of the other rewarding things that go into a Tuesday. Life is pretty good, indeed.

Some things from the other blog:

A tweet to start your day

Preventing plagiarism

Looking for a new venue? Tumblr on over

What’s wrong with this video?

Clery Act data

More on Twitter, and something new on Tumblr tomorrow.

Auburn / journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
15
Oct 12

“You are pretty strong … for a professor”

I spent a few moments loading up a queue with posts for my Samford blog. Here are two I wrote today, a morning tweet, which I think might become a new feature. There’s also a little post about reverse publishing.

Here are a few more things I wrote, last week, that I neglected to cross-post here:

The business of the business

Digital first, the only way?

On the big switch in local media

Also, I noticed that the particular them I’m using there allows for rotating banners. (Apparently I like them, no?) So I’m loading up on campus shots, which is probably the best part of that blog.

Spent some time in the library today. Spent some time writing letters.

I visited city hall. I learned that while there is the old saying “You can’t fight city hall” you can write a check there.

I had to visit the City Revenue Office, which looks more like a hospital’s information desk. There was a nice lady there who took my check. I needed little tags that would signal the garbage crew to pick up my dead appliances. Stick them on, roll the old washer and dryer out to the curb and, come morning, they’ll all be gone.

That doesn’t even give you time to be sentimental about it. “I had you, washer and dryer, for about 10 years, four homes and countless loads of laundry. Just think of all the dates you helped me get! I’m going to … I promised myself I wouldn’t … sniff … ” So it is good that the system moves so fast; that would just be silly.

So while I’m working on a small project for a guy this evening The Yankee says “Someone is taking our stuff.”

I walk outside and meet Mr. Lauderdale, one of our elderly neighbors who talks fast and thinks big. He’s a retired engineer, worked for AT&T for more than three decades and about half as many corporate names. One of his friendly spies in the neighborhood saw the old appliances and gave him a call. He drove his pickup down the road and there he was, trying to get this stuff in the bed by himself.

So I helped him. Turns out his son is an attorney, his daughter-in-law is a professor of some sort. I told him I was a professor too. And he said “You are pretty strong … for a professor.”

I was moving things one-handed, bad shoulder and all that.

Nice guy. He gave me tips for how to fix some things. Told me precisely what it would cost. Told me how much a telephone pole costs. Gave me a brief history of a river in northwest Alabama. Let me go back inside just in time for dinner.

And now I’ll copyedit a journal article into the early morning hours. Living the dream.

photo / Samford / weekend — Comments Off
14
Oct 12

Catching up

The regular Sunday post where extra pictures are added to the site to give a free day’s worth of content.

This is Hodges Chapel on the Samford University campus. This was homecoming weekend, but it always looks this beautiful.

Across the way, and later in the day, they are preparing for a pep rally and bonfire before the Saturday game:

They have fire hoses and everything.

There was also a concert Friday night. Music was played. The band was not set on fire. Many people had a great time.

Downtown Opelika, Ala., where the sidewalks are rolled up at 7:45, no matter the day of the week. The cajun place we ate at on Friday night is just to the left of this shot:

Saw this in the restroom of the place we ate last night. Seemed somehow out of place:

Tom Berenger and Corbin Bernsen can’t work out their differences in Major League. Charter Cable, who is terrible, can’t work out their problems, either. Charter is terrible.

Auburn / football / friends / memories / photo / site / Twitter / weekend — Comments Off
13
Oct 12

Auburn is unfortunately bad at football

As in, unfortunately bad. And they are not just bad, but also unfortunately bad. This morning was the fourth 11 a.m. kickoff of the year, which is a good measuring stick for your team’s play.

We watched the game on television, because it was in Oxford. I tweeted things, as many of us do these days. In my mind, this is all about the coaching. The players are giving it their all, but they aren’t being put in, or finding a lot of places to be successful right now. Tough to watch, but worse for them, I’m sure.

Two of the things I wrote:

“Third and 13, stay on this side of the orange sticks, y’all.” That’s good coordinating.

You can’t figure out what Scot Loeffler is doing? Don’t worry. The players don’t understand it either. I blame the coordinator.

I feel for the seniors who are on that side of the ball. They deserve better than this. They all do, really. The coordinator, Loeffler, is in over his head. Gene Chizik apologized to fans last week. Who knows what he’ll say about a 41-20 loss to Ole Miss which allowed the Rebels to break a 16-game conference losing streak.

Auburn, meanwhile, is 4-8 in the SEC since the national championship. They’ve lost six in a row to conference opponents — four of them highly ranked — by a combined score of 192-68. So it hasn’t even been particularly close.

If you look at a head-to-head comparison of the three worst seasons of Auburn football this century, the data points aren’t close there either. This, from Justin Lee, says it all.

You decide:

or:

For something more fun than this, I’ve gotten caught up on the photo galleries. I had to catch up from almost the exact moment I ruined summer. Anyway. Here’s July. There’s August. And here’s September.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner date. The Smiths are joining the Willis (Willisi?) this evening.

cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo / Samford — 1 Comment
12
Oct 12

I have many ideas about fire, it seems

As I mentioned, this is homecoming at Samford. The festivities start today, and the alumni are returning to campus:

There is a bonfire tonight. And a concert. I talked with some of the students supervising all of that. Apparently the facilities folks take care of building the bonfire and lighting it and there are professionals to tend the blaze and the area is respectfully roped off so no one can do anything silly like falling into it.

I asked how they are going to light the fire, and this might be the part where they could improve the theatricality in the future.

There is a building nearby. Someone could leap off the building, swinging from a rope attached to the adjacent flagpole and drop a torch over the bonfire fuel, just like a rope swing over a lake.

No.

Whomever throws the javelin on the track and field team could throw one into the stack of wood.

No.

They could make a play on words about the opposing mascot and have a great visual joke with that.

No.

The head coach could light the thing.

No.

They could do the archer thing, like in the Barcelona Olympics.

No.

The star running back could somehow carry through an incendiary — of course you’d want him to be able to safely escape the thing.

No.

Someone from the Air Force ROTC could fly —

No.

We could launch something from the president’s home, which sits adjacent the campus on the mountain.

No.

Well, they didn’t say no to all of the ideas. They said they’d “take some under advisement” so I wouldn’t be surprised if one of those happened next year.

Maybe a zip line from the president’s home.

(They have fire hoses and all the various safety equipment you could think of on standby just feet from the bonfire site. They think of everything. Except zip lines.)

As part of homecoming my department holds their autumn advisory council meeting. These are alumni and other local industry leaders who we interact with to make sure we’re headed in the right direction, get ideas from them, see if they can help us find extra money and so on.

I prepare a bunch of documents that we give them. Our students’ successes, our department’s growth, our challenges and what the faculty are doing. An abbreviated list of things I’ve done appeared in that document. Pretty good year:

We had dinner tonight with a friend. He’d helped us bring the new washing machine home earlier this week, saving about 80 bucks. (Shipping is expensive, even if the store is three miles away.) He’d told us about a place he’d taken a date. Cajun.

Naturally I wanted to go. He agreed it was good enough to have again. So off we went to Jimmy’s, a restaurant I hadn’t heard of in a place I wouldn’t have thought to look.

Apparently they ship in the bread daily from New Orleans, which is ridiculous. Also the seafood comes in every morning, and the shrimp I had agreed. Just wish they’d given me more.

That could have been the 16 miles and the fit test I did this morning. Apparently the bike I was riding can measure this, so I did a V02 Max test and it fell within the excellent range, as described by The Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research.

Thing of it was, I don’t think it was the workout that limited me, but the circumstances. I did that on no calories and with no water. Next time, I’ll bet my number will be higher.