I’ll eat this orange, I thought to myself, and maybe that will help.
So, champion orange peeler that I am, I struggled with that for a few minutes at the end of my day in the office. Vitamin C! I feel better just smelling it! This was a great idea! I exclaimed in my head.
(There are exclamation points in there.)
By the time I got home I had a mild fever.
Thanks, orange.
So more sinus medication, now some Nyquil and a Costco-sized handful of cough drops are the order of the day.
I saw a terrible accident on the freeway. One killed and four hurt. Backed up traffic for four miles the other direction. Everything was in the median and it looked gnarly, perhaps one of the more violent rear-end accidents you might see:
I found the coolest story on al.com today, a high schooler is building prosthetics out of old bikes, for about $25. Here’s a little rewrite I did. I just love that he was feeling lazy and bored one Saturday and dreamed this up. Of course this kid has had more than a dozen physics classes, so his idea of bored might be relative.
And, finally, the existential dilemma of our time: Rocky and Rocky II are playing opposite one another. Now what? Do I fear Apollo Creed or having a grudging respect? Then Rocky V came on, too. What are the movie channels trying to do to me?
Still sick. The good news is that I’m now convinced this is only sinuses or something of that nature. Anything more serious would have surely developed by now. My throat actually feels a bit better. But while there is improvement there, I now have a persistent cough. And I’m achy. And also, the joyous non-breathing that comes with sinuses.
So a few days of that, then.
Pulled out the red pen today, and then I used it on things:
That pen is simply resting on a copy of today’s Samford Crimson which is now going online despite two separate site issues this week. Because when you’re coughing and can’t breathe, you want plugin glitches and database issues to deal with, too. But those are resolved, everything is back up and working now, and so I spent this afternoon pouring over the print version, hence the pen.
That image was treated in an iPhone app called Big Lens which I got for free. It does a decent job of what you’d ask of it, which is to give the illusion of depth of field with a free app.
I love my phone, but every time I make one of these app-tweaked pictures I just want to go grab my real camera and apologize to it.
Took a field trip with a class to Intermark Group today. The students learned a bit more about public relations, advertising, how social media ties in, account executives, the creative design, media buying and so on. This is a great tour and I’m proud every spring when they invite us back. The folks at Intermark have always been very welcoming and friendly and share a lot of information.
We also got a tour of the ever-impressive Vazda Studios. Want to work in video production, audio engineering or CGI? That’s a tour to take. The students always enjoy their day at Intermark, and this year was, happily, no exception.
The city looked like this when I left the firm:
That’s the City Federal building rising in the center. Not a bad view on the north side.
One thing I wanted to share on Monday: the president at Samford, Dr. Andy Westmoreland, sends out an email to everyone on campus each Monday highlighting the success, impact and value of a Samford student, alum, program or faculty member. It is usually the best Monday morning email I receive. This week’s was especially nice.
Just in case you missed this news a few days ago, here’s the inspirational account of the impact of one of our graduates from the McWhorter School of Pharmacy:
What started as a concern for an abducted child turned into a social media phenomenon that has drawn national media attention and will send the rescued child and his family to Disney World. And, it was the simple idea of a Samford University alumna that set it all in motion.
Carrie Kreps of Vestavia Hills, Ala., a 2002 McWhorter School of Pharmacy graduate, said she was “deeply affected” by the Jan. 29 abduction of a 5-year-old named Ethan from his school bus in Midland City, Ala. Ethan ended up being held hostage for 7 days before his dramatic rescue. While following news reports of the situation, Kreps suggested to her Facebook community that when Ethan was released, she wanted to send him to Disney World to help create happy memories that might replace the terror-filled memories of his abduction. After Ethan was rescued and a friend of Kreps got approval from Ethan’s family, she began an online fundraiser called “Send Ethan to Disney World”. In one day, the goal of $7,000 was met, and as of Feb. 9, more than $10,600 had been pledged by nearly 300 donors. Gifts ranged from $5 to $500 and averaged about $20 per donor. Kreps is working with a Dothan, Ala., travel agency to arrange for the trip. Any remaining funds will be added to a trust fund that has been established for Ethan.
Kreps’ efforts drew national media attention from NBC’s”Today Show,” CNN, ESPN and other media outlets.
Dr. Westmoreland has a traditional conclusion for these emails, “The world is better because of Carrie Kreps.”
I’ve had one of those days. No no, one of those days.
It all started last night, actually. I went out for dinner and the barbecue place I’d decided to visit had a sign on the door: Kitchen is closed, bar is open. It was 8:30.
Dubious of the sign, I asked a woman working there if, in fact, there had been some closing event, perhaps an astronomic singularity or perhaps a sous-chef flu or maybe even a health department shutdown that had taken place.
Yes, they were closed. But for none of those reasons. It was raining, she said. (I can verify this.) And they let the kitchen staff go. They’d given up the idea of making any money, apparently.
OK then. My money is good elsewhere.
Oh, but … oh.
So I drive back over the mountain and go to Chili’s, where Destiny’s Child In 30 Years is waiting to be sat. Finally someone comes to help them. The hostess walks them to the right side of the store, and this is found lacking. She walks them to the left side of the store, and that is not desirable. She brings them back to the middle and then they decide to reverse course and go back to the left. By now people that came in after me have given up and wished me luck.
After some time the hostess comes by and says she’ll be right with me. In about five minutes. I can see four tables with people. Everything else is dirty.
So I leave there. And find myself at Outback, where I enjoy an altogether delicious albeit overpriced sandwich. But when everyone else is rolling up the sidewalks before 8:30 Outback can control the market.
So that just carried over into today. I’m still not feeling very well. The throat thing is getting more pronounced. As the day wore on I began to feel that body ache and fatigue: white blood cells have been summoned. Now I’m just hoping this is merely a sinus attack. I don’t care for them, but I can deal with them.
Then I saw this story and — look, I’ve covered a lot of terrible stories and I’ve read even more of them so it takes a lot to get me worked up but — this is ridiculous:
A Prattville mother of young, twin boys who received several broken bones before they were 1 year old, has been granted youth offender status in her pending child abuse case.
[…]
When the boys were 1 year and 1 week old, Jabril was taken to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham to receive treatment for a broken arm, testimony showed.
Doctors then discovered that Jabril had at least seven fractures, some in various stages of mending. Jacob also was examined and it was found out that he had at least two fractures, also in different stages of mending, according to testimony.
Here is a woman who is married with two kids. Dad is doing 20 years for this. She could get just three now. I don’t know much about parenting. I probably know a bit less about criminal law. I often find that my concepts of sentencing vary, both directions, from judicial guidelines for reasons beyond my understanding. But I propose a simple, new rule: If you have children you forfeit youthful offender status.
That’s not too much to ask.
So, yeah, I’m not my normally chipper self today, and I apologize. But I’ll make it up to both of us with the most ridiculous video on the ‘Net, courtesy of my fellow ridiculous Web finder and Auburn grad, Victoria Cumbow:
Tomorrow, I promise, I’ll be in better spirits, despite 32 percent more coughing.
Much like Phil Collins, I can feel it coming in the air, particularly through the mouth and down into the throat where it is manifesting itself as a persistent, burning little itch. I’m getting sick.
In matters of personal health I blame everyone until I find the right person to blame. This is of course an overreaction, but the pretend-angst is a sort of self-soothing, self-medicating technique I’ve been working on these last several years. Besides, it is more proactive than saying “Sinuses” or “Allergies.” Which is hopefully all this amounts too.
But I’m just saying now that this week is going to be Coughy, Achy, Watery, Fatiguey and a few more of the dwarfs that were never cool enough to hang out with Snow White. Fire Marshall ordinance or not, she could have spent some time with those other characters. There were parks they could have visited together!
Anyway, class today, where we heard fine presentations on public relations and advertising. We’ll go visit our friends over at Intermark Group on Wednesday. The rest of today was spent making recruiting phone calls and doing various other things which will no doubt yield small results in big matters.
So I’ll just pass the time with various links I’ve been hoarding with some of the lesser dwarves and sinus symptoms these last few days.
One of my students shared this one, and it is awesome. 8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need. These include the sinceroid and sarcastises, which I would use every day.
Incidentally, punctuation or grammar humor is always welcome from a student. Makes us think our passion for this stuff is contagious.
A standard or goal – Ask yourself, “What would good look like?” For example, what would good GDP growth look like?
Historical numbers – Is there a golden period to which current numbers can be compared? Perhaps in the economy that might be the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Portion of whole – For example, at the time of the Million Man March in 1995, a turnout of 1 million black men would have represented 1/12th of all the black men in the country at the time.
Other places – How do other similar towns or companies compare?
The National Archives is sitting on massive amounts of information — from specs for NASA projects to geological surveys to letters from presidents. But there’s a problem: “These records are held hostage,” said Bill Mayer, executive for research services for the National Archives and Records Administration.
“Hostage” might be a strong word for a organization responsible for 4.5 million cubic feet of physical documents and more than 500 terabytes of data, most which can be accessed online or by walking into one of their facilities around the country. But the challenge, Mayer explains, is making NARA’s vast stockpile more open and more discoverable. “They’re held hostage in a number of centers around the country — they’re held hostage by format,” Mayer said.
Fascinating stuff, but I’m glad that’s someone else’s challenge.
Soon after the photo’s publication, a story began to percolate that Rosenthal had staged the famous scene, that he had posed the men just so. The story followed Rosenthal to his death in 2006. It is whispered in various forms to this day.
Hatch can set you straight on this, just as he has been setting people straight for nearly 70 years.
Hatch enlisted in the Marines in 1939 and worked his way into its photographic unit. In late 1943, some 15 months before Iwo Jima, Hatch had waded ashore with the American invaders at Tarawa, carrying a hand-cranked 16mm camera.
[…]
Hatch came in with the first wave at Iwo Jima, a battle that killed nearly 6,000 Marines.
From that day to this one, he insists there was nothing posed about the flag photo. Though the events occurred a lifetime ago, Hatch speaks about them as if they were fresh in his memory. Hatch can swear like, well, a Marine, and he brooks no argument about what happened that day and thereafter.
The photographs taken by masters such as Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner have done much for the public’s perception of the Civil War. But all of their work is in black and white. The battlefield of Gettysburg is remembered as a shade of grey and the soldiers as ghostly daguerreotype images. Photography was in its infancy during the time and colorizing photographs was rare and often lacked the detail of modern imagery.
John C. Guntzelman is changing that.
Not quite right, but gripping, spooky stuff. There are four pictures there for you to see.
And that’s all for today, but there will be more for you to see here tomorrow. Do come back.
photo / weekend — Comments Off on Catching up 24 Feb 13
The thinnest post of the week, which is this week 64 percent thinner! Here you’ll find extra snapshots that didn’t land anywhere else this week and, for a variety of reasons, there are only two in this edition.
First, found this guy in Jackson, Tenn. the other night:
Pretty sure that isn’t stock or original.
And here now is one of the reasons there isn’t more to see today. I think it speaks for itself.
Wacky cat.
Something more substantive will be in this spot tomorrow, perhaps.
