errands


2
May 11

Living right

Busy day as the semester begins to wrap itself up with a tidy bow.

Made the commute to campus to pop in and pick up a newspaper plate. We give one of these to the editor of the paper every year. It should have been in the office early last week, but the storms got in the way, as they passed over our printer’s facilities, ruining their town, killing the power and making travel impossible for a while.

So now comes the task of trying to get this thing prepared in a few minutes for its presentation tonight. I stopped by the Framin’ Shoppe where the nice lady that makes all of our beautiful projects said “You must be living right. How’s 3:30?”

And that was perfect. So I left for other errands, swinging by AAA for a currency exchange and then to the old homestead for a termite inspection. It passed. The guy that gave it the close examination may have been younger than me. (That is starting to happen more and more.) And he was the teach you how to build a watch type of fellow. I’d simply asked him about this new Sentricon product I’d heard about — figuring I might get his professional opinion since he wasn’t selling anything to me — and received an education and a demonstration.

We went to the back of his truck, the appearance of which he apologized for. Seems it wasn’t clean enough to be the backdrop of his demonstration. But he pressed on, pulling out bait traps and discussing the finer points of this evolving treatment system. Seems this particular company is going to be moving to this technique later in the year.

I like this company. They do it all the right way. They answer the phone by saying “How may I make your day better?” When they come visit you have to remind the technician what to check out. In one of those clerical errors that never gets resolved the out-building isn’t on his manifest, but he just accepts that the out-building is part of the job and he does what you ask of him. They show up on time. They don’t stick around longer than necessary and still manage to come off as very personable people.

One time a guy beat me home and he sat in the drive and waited for a few minutes, doing his paperwork. I pulled into the drive and then he cranked his truck and left. He somehow managed to miss me standing there. So I called the office and we all had a good laugh. Except for that guy. He was very concerned about the mix-up.

“Accidents happen, my friend. Make sure there are no bugs.”

So all is well there, and another errand off the list. Back to the framing place, where the newspaper plate was ready to go and I promised I’d brag on them. Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe, Framin’ Shoppe.

And that got me back on campus in time for a meeting with next year’s staff of the Crimson. There are a lot of holdovers from this year’s staff. Some of the new faces have been in my classes. They’re all seem pretty sharp. And really didn’t want to hear me blather on today. There’s the picnic, finals for which to prepare and tonight’s intramural softball championship.

Priorities.

So we all made our way over to the picnic, which is indoors, because we often have rain about this time. The meal is catered by Johnny Ray’s, a local barbecue place that is apparently in some decline. The website is gone and, I was told tonight, most of the locations are closed, including the original store on Valley. Shame, too, because the food is good.

We gave out awards to journalism and mass communication majors at the picnic. I got to call out the names of several hardworking students.

And when it came time to present the now handsomely framed newspaper plate to this year’s editor-in-chief I mentioned the dedication to this task displayed by the printer in getting the thing here despite the storm and the huge save today. (Framin’ Shoppe!) I said the things I’d prepared — noting Jennifer’s can-do attitude, her always-present smile, how hard she and her team had worked this year and so on — I discovered … she had disappeared.

Can’t win ’em all.

So I thought up a new joke. When in doubt, laugh at yourself.

The picnic is great fun. The students and professors are a bit more at ease — there is nothing due in an evening to brag on the best students — and there is much laughter. This is the moment when the end of the spring semester becomes a reality, and you can allow yourself to think of the summer without it feeling like far off daydreaming.

This is the beginning of the final week of classes. Things are winding down as they ramp up to finals.

One update on the LOMO blog.


17
Mar 11

Happy Green Bread Day

For about 14 minutes I was inconvenienced without computer or phone today. You see, I’d discovered an app I wanted — and one day I’ll use it — but I had to upgrade my phone’s software first. So I plug the phone into that great giver of bits, the laptop and call up the curious iTunes package. Click around for the right button and then discover that I must first update my iTunes program before I can upgrade my phone.

Sigh.

So I upgrade. My computer must shut down. This is another reason to not yet worry about computers taking over the world. So long as we require the software to reboot with updates we’ll always have a fighting chance. When the computers start to gain momentum, we must only convince them it is time for a new software patch and, darn it if you don’t have to shut down for it, too. And then we jump them.

Anyway, the computer shut down. All of the programs must be closed. And there was the first problem, as my computer seems to be the source of a time causality logic loop. My computer would not shut down because the programs were unwilling to close. And the error boxes that popped up only allowed for a program restart, which is antithetical to a hardware shutdown.

See? Why worry about a Terminator?

Finally I clicked through enough wormholes to shut the thing down. It powered back up nicely. And then I plugged the phone into the USB, the USB into the computer and activated T2000 — because iTunes is somehow tied to the computers who are plotting our end, if it wasn’t the thing would work better. So the phone updated, rebooted and I was able to download the audio recording app Audioboo — interesting possibilities, unfortunate name — and SkySafari. That’s the one where you hold the phone up to the sky and it tells you what you’re looking at. It must work and be awesome because it is two words jammed into one, which is the mark of all good things these days.

Spring

Spring is here. In the backyard there’s a tree that already has leaves clinging daintily to the branches.

In other news, I seem to be as smart as a computer that has played more than 200,000 rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

RPS

Game Theory would suggest this is an unusual outcome because humans are inherently predictable and this is a game of random third selections. The computer, with that repository of other human games, should be able to find enough trends to defeat you. But I’m smart. (Or not. I found myself changing tendencies, just to try and confuse the pattern-seeking computer logic.)

You can give it a try, too.

Meat Lab today, where we bought a great deal of meat for a wonderfully low price. Also I broke three eggs, but the nice lady did not charge me for them. We bought 30 eggs, too, for less than $3. And then we hit Sam’s Club for chicken and then Publix for charcoal and buns. We walked there, and so we bought only the small bag of charcoal, because carrying 15 pounds of briquettes home didn’t seem fun.

Less fun:

Bread

This is Rainbow Bread, but also it is green. By this point we’ve all been trained to think of green=bad when it comes to bread. No one’s buying this stuff, not even on St. Patrick’s Day.

Even less fun is the basketball tournament. Taking over the television and I’m not even winning the brackets. Yet. I’m in fourth in one and seven in the other, but I’ll come on later in the tournament. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother, but The Yankee is actually watching some of the games. I don’t understand. She doesn’t care for basketball, either.

We are going to the women’s first round game on Sunday, though. The ladies from Samford are playing in their first ever tournament appearance and we have tickets!


15
Mar 11

“Oh, you meant with the Chex”

(Someone overheard me say that today and was apparently offended (or surprised). That was the one sentence I uttered, so they were offended without context, which is always amusing.)

So today we had breakfast at Barbecue House, where we could not yesterday. The place was more than slow late this morning. There were more people behind the counter than dining. But that’s Spring Break. The food is not taking off. Delicious as always.

The cable people had to come back out today. Last night we discovered a lot of pixelated programming had been recorded. There was a Les Mis special on PBS that The Yankee wanted to see and that was mangled so badly it hurt to watch. Shame, too, because what you could hear sounded great. And, then, the straw that broke the camel’s back was a ruined episode of 19 Kids and Counting. And you just don’t mess with the Duggars or they will show up and make you babysit.

So I walked out of the room for a moment to put a dish away and when I came back she was on the phone with the cable people, who helpfully booked an appointment for this afternoon, lest the Duggars hear about it and come visit the cable office.

And they mean business. Two guys came out today. Charter has been here so much, though, that they’re having to recycle techs. One of them had been here before.

He plugged up his tricorder to the cable, pronounced the numbers flatlined and then went outside to jiggle the wires, call a friend and have a sandwich. Do you really know what they’re doing out there? A second guy is inside and I am insistent that he explain everything to me — but in analogies I can understand (“So it is like water in a pipe, then?”) — and have no idea what the first guy is doing outside.

He comes back in after a few minutes with a few pieces of hardware in his hand. He has replaced some splitters. We now have the industrial strength Cabletronic 4000s, which is a step up from the 3000 series Crash-A-Lot model. It seems that we have now exhausted all of the possibilities for diagnosis, repair and replacement inside the house (they’ve been here approaching a dozen times in the last several months) and if this continues a systems tech will be airlifted in to examine things at the hub.

It sounds so ominous, but really, we’re just keen on a signal that plays audio and video, displays the channels for which we’re overpaying and keep a consistent Internet connection. (Though, to be fair, that last one hasn’t lately been a problem.)

They’re nice guys, these guys. They tell jokes. They notice the cat. We comment on the larger company and they spin tales about some of their better calls. The first guy plugged his tricorder back into the cable stream and found everything to be much better. Now we shouldn’t have a problem.

But there’s all kinds of problems you can have. Today I learned that, in addition to signal load, competing tech demands of phone/cable/Internet, rainwater and what your neighbors are watching, another thing that contributes to data transmission rates is temperature. It seems that when it is cold the insulation on the cable shrinks. That means less cable can get in your home. When the weather turns warm the insulation expands, letting cable in. When July gets here we’ll suddenly get a rush of things that couldn’t make it through in December, I suppose.

Drove to the grocery store for a few items today. We walked last night for two, drove today for two bags worth and yet we must still make the HEAP BIG trip sometime later this week. We think, though, we have this down to a science: farmers market for produce, Sam’s for poultry, Meat Lab for beef, sausage, eggs and bacon and Publix for everything else.

We planned this. We’re planners.

Saw a new item I hadn’t noticed before. I gave it a “Where have you been all my life?” moment:

Pebblecrisps

There is a coco version too, apparently, which just seems evil. Don’t ask why one is OK, but another is not. I enjoyed more than my share of kid’s cereal (and still do on occasion) but the chocolate ones always seemed a bit over the top. Except for Cookie Crisp. There’s nothing wrong with that cereal except for their odd character erasures.

Speaking of cereal being erased. I read recently that Cap’n Crunch was going to walk the plank. (And now, who knows? Sad as that is, they’re just pulling on your heartstrings with the old graphic treatments:

Crunch

Went to the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art tonight to see the documentary Awake, My Soul, which is about the oldest surviving form of American music: Sacred Harp.

It is an intriguing thing, mostly southern and western — which makes a great deal of sense as spelled out in the documentary — but growing across the country and, in several other countries as well. Most everyone interviewed for the documentary lives in Alabama or Georgia, however. They’re all very passionate and it makes for a nice documentary.

Raymond Hamrick, the first gentleman you see in the trailer has a great story, and is a marvelous storyteller. Doesn’t hurt, then, that he has been a prolific composer in the genre. He’s still working, in his 90s, six days a week in a jewelry shop in Georgia.

The history, reaching back to pre-Revolutionary America, was nicely explained. It moves into the work and perception of those who brought it to this generation and then those who would be the prominent contemporary leaders. In the midst of all that are the lost bridge between the 19th Century and those very aged devotees. Somewhere in all of that nostalgia and hope and loss all mingle together, powered by this incredible, powerful sound.

Much of this documentary makes sense to me, or anyone that’s ever been to a primitive style church in the South. I’ve never been to a Sacred Harp singing and I don’t know these people, but I know these people. The documentary touched on the people in this singing community that had died before or during the recording. There was a shot or two that lingered on some old lady, and then a comment by an old gentleman who’d lost his wife and those just sat on the room for a while, until the next joke came along.

Matt Hinton, one of the filmmakers, was there for a Q&A. No one asked why he didn’t put a joke immediately after the most solemn moment of the film, but they should have. Instead, he fielded very intelligent questions for about half-an-hour. One of his central points is the participatory nature of this style, as compared to the performance-based styles of modern music. That becomes quickly evident in his film.

I came home to dinner, a baseball game (Auburn beat Alabama 2-1, in Montgomery’s Capitol City Classic) and two other anecdotes that I’m keeping for tomorrow. You have to come back now.


2
Mar 11

About being out

Churned through the remainder of my stack of papers to grade today. I’m now all caught up, which seems a small miracle when I considered the pile of things to work through.

Also had a sit-down with the boss today.

Had a meeting with the editor-in-chief of the paper this afternoon where we critiqued this week’s edition of the Crimson and started thinking about the last six issues of the year. They go by so fast, but I’m always proud of how far the staff progresses in that short amount of time.

Had a meeting with the sales manager, too. She’s selling things that need to be sold. That makes everyone happy. As a salesman friend of mine says, though, you can always sell more. Sales: not for the faint of heart.

All of these things seem safer than my errands of late.

Know what else isn’t? Walmart. I went there late last evening and, I can’t recommend it. I like to compile a short list of things to seek out, lest I feel I’m braving that parking lot for only one item. Two things — a garage door switch and a particular type of bottle — I could not purchase there last evening. A third I decided against. That worked me down to cards and candy. This is why I sat at that weird light and made an almost-unprotected left turn.

Also it means I’ll have to visit a home improvement mega center later in the week. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, because it might be worth a full-length essay all of its own. Come back Thursday or Friday for that.

Just as fun, though, was taking my life into my own hands tonight. I’m walking from a parking spot across a lane of parking lot traffic to get from car to the door at Jason’s Deli. A car is coming through the parking lot lane and accelerates toward me. This was shocking to me as I am not in a drama/action film, but merely a mild-mannered professor carrying a book about the history of the House of Representatives. (Really, this is the person you’re aiming at, dude?)

Fortunately his aggression was all for naught. He was driving a Volkswagen. If he had more than four cylinders that could have become messy.

Which makes you think, high speed accidents will decrease when we all inevitably buy those magic unicorn cars. Incidences of road rage will skyrocket because it’ll take you four minutes to clear an intersection, but there are always trade offs in life.

Like this. I’m going to end this now so I may begin watching The Tudors. I’ve just finished the first two discs of Rome, Season Two (see how I deftly avoided the Roman numerals there?) and am in a television period piece frame of mind. I’m so comfortable with the notion of period pieces I won’t even mind when they obviously veer from history to try and tell a tale.

(But I’ll surely tell you about the egregious oversights. For example: Henry isn’t this young when these things happen. But look at those clothes! It must be legit!)


30
Dec 10

Things and stuff

Five miles of footwork today, this being one of the scenic and lovely roads near my home that I shuffled down.

Road

I received eight hellos and/or waves. Saw a dog, two squirrels, a horse and two raccoons. And since a quick Google Image search doesn’t show a horse and raccoon combination, I’ll share one here.

Animals

He wasn’t especially wild about the closeup, but knew he was cornered. I think he was hoping I hadn’t noticed him, intent on the branches.

Raccoon

More reading today. If I feel behind with all of this it is only because I am. But there’s a lot to do, too, and a great deal more to go. I have about 10 more pages of notes and analysis after today, though, so that’s something.

Replaced the battery in The Yankee’s car this evening. It left me stranded last week. Since she’ll soon be back in town it seems only reasonable to assume she might want to drive somewhere. So off to Walmart I went, where we picked up this battery on August 1st.

I was all ready to go to protective husband, angry customer mode, but the lady at the customer service desk simply pointed me to the automotive section. Pick up a new one and bring it back, she said. I did, and one of her colleagues pushed the buttons that denoted the change of battery ownership.

She asked for my license, and scanned it verily. I asked what that told her.

“Since you don’t have your receipt I needed to see when you bought it. It is to make sure you aren’t returning too much stuff.”

Next time I’ll ask about the definition of “too much.” Instead I simply said, July 30th.

She confirmed the date, but did not ask about my superior recollection. Shame, since I had a great speech. “Like your wedding day, or the birth of your child, you never forget the day you swap out a car battery on the same evening you move.”

Not that she would have cared … There was a product, a customer said it was faulty. She had buttons to push, keys to to turn and items to scan.

I had the new battery, picked up a commemorative Sports Illustrated, a picture frame and a handful of buttons.

Installed the car battery — and what do you know, it cranked on the first try! — and did a little sewing. A sports coat needs different buttons. I’m swapping out the plastic gold look for something a little more sedate.

The frame? I put this postcard behind a piece of plexiglass.

Postcard

The note on the back details visiting family throughout the country. The postmark is from 1912.