Friday

Friday / links / Samford / things to read / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off on The return of the YouTube Covers
25
Jan 13

The return of the YouTube Covers

I think I spent pretty much the entire (non-cycling portion of my) day planning out classes. The exotic life I lead sometimes, I tell ya.

The best part about it is that it becomes a multi-directional puzzle. What can I do on what day for logistical purposes? What part of DEF needs to wait until ABC has been concluded? After a while it all starts to fit together nicely.

The frustrating part is that I know, I just know, there will be something I’ll miss or forget or write up incorrectly. I won’t catch it until after the class starts. C’est la vie.

Classes start back on Monday, hence so much time on it all this week. I’m on a quest to make a wonderful experience for the students. Hopefully it gets a little bit better every time I teach this particular class. I think I’ve removed most of the busy work and refined the most confusing parts. Now I just have to add in some more extra material. There can never be enough work, he thinks to himself.

And now the correspondent will share two stories bearing no resemblance to one another.

First, Alabama Department Homeland Security confirms ‘cyber-intrusion’ of state computers:

The Alabama Department of Homeland Security confirmed there has been a hacking attack on state computers but declined to describe the scope or severity of the intrusion.

A spokeswoman said the incident was still under criminal investigation.

“The Alabama Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that there has been a cyber-intrusion of state government IT infrastructure. It is currently under criminal investigation and at this point there will be no additional comments,” according to a statement issued by the department.

It is not immediately known which agencies were involved or if any state records were compromised.

First, isn’t this what the state Department of Homeland Security — and aren’t you glad they put that office into motion? — is supposed to prevent? Their public mandate is “Working to prepare for, prevent and respond to terrorist activity within the state.” So maybe not. It is unclear if these were terrorists. But the meaning of that word has become fluid in the modern age. You know know what else isn’t clear? The way the reporter wrote the story, “It is not immediately known” suggests that maybe the state officials don’t know what was compromised. Of course it means “the state officials aren’t tell us who got hit,” but still. Maybe it is their job to protect against all threats, foreign, domestic, terrorist and baud modem. Maybe it isn’t their job. Maybe they should just unplug all of the computers when they go home at night.

I’d write more about the state Department of Homeland Security but, as of this writing, their site seems to be down. Vexing.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, there’s a sheriff many people would vote for: Wis. sheriff urges citizens to get gun training. Part of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr.’s new radio campaign:

“I need you in the game,” he says.

“With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option,” he adds. “You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. … Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.”

The ad has generated sharp criticism from other area officials and anti-violence advocates. The president of the Milwaukee Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, Roy Felber, said it sounds like a call to vigilantism.

“That doesn’t sound too smart,” Felber said. “People have the right to defend themselves, but they don’t have the right to take the law into their own hands.”

I’m not exactly sure about the straw Felber is standing on. If you conflate protecting your family and vigilantism, there’s not really much point in even locking your doors, right? Here’s the sheriff’s actual ad:

I’m sure he’ll be a hit on Fox News before the weekend is over.

You know, it is Friday. We haven’t done this in a while. Here, then, is the impromptu return of YouTube Cover Theater, the segment where we discover the amazing talent of people sitting in their homes with an instrument, a camera and an Internet connection. This week’s covers will feature the great Same Cooke.

My favorite part of this one is where she gets a little frustrated with the bridge. And also the light and sound in the room. Also, the cover is pretty great:

Some guy laid all of that tile in this kitchen and never guessed it would be seen online more than 70,000 times. But you get a good sense of why:

I always thought this song worked better as a harmony. The ragged parts in this version help it, too. A lot of fun for what is, presumably their first try at it:

(I don’t think it was the first time they tried it, but it is a nice idea.)

Sam Cooke, himself:

Still brilliant pop tunes, 50 years later.

adventures / cycling / Friday / iPhone — 2 Comments
18
Jan 13

“I want to ride it where I like”

Barbecue House for breakfast, where they know our names and pretty much have the orders committed to memory, too. So naturally there were new people working there this morning. Now they have to be taught about “The Usual.”

That is about as bad as it gets: This young lady does not know what I want for breakfast. And she will make me say my name out loud before caffeine. Also, she will spell it wrong on the order.

It is a tough life, you know.

Love Barbecue House. Professors, students, athletes, old people, folks passing through and people who built the city, all under one roof. One of the former football coaches was in this morning and told Mr. Price, who owns the place, that he’d see him at church on Sunday. We learned later today that that coach just got a new job at another school, and so we won’t see him or his family any more, which is a shame.

There is always some news at Price’s Barbecue House.

Took a ride this afternoon, a slightly challenging 20 mile route, my best ride as I build back up. I passed this pond:

pond

Lovely day for a ride, no?

I went out 10 miles, found a school and tried to turn around there. This was about the time that the school was dismissing for the day, and so every high school student with a car was lining up to begin their weekend. One guy serenaded me with a bit of Bicycle Race. A 21st century high schooler knowing a mildly successful 34-year-old Queen song seems an odd thing. I credit your parents, kid, and also the Internet.

High schoolers with cars and trucks while acting like high schools versus one guy on a 17-pound bike seemed a losing deal, so I waited them out. There wasn’t a cloud in the deep, dark blue sky. Just a beautiful afternoon.

It was a good ride, too, except for the two hills on that particular route which always get the better of me.

Right around that halfway point I also saw this old shack:

ruins

I love places like this. I used to climb around them. I still might, but not this one in particular. Looks like a good cross wind would topple it. So I just glanced in through the openings. Hard to tell what used to go on here, but someone spent a lot of time inside. Maybe raised a little family, and probably the cattle in the pasture across the road.

Once upon a time this house was the only thing around for a few miles. The person who built that place probably liked it that way. Probably buried in a cramped city cemetery today, but we’ll never know for sure. Whatever history is in there is probably just left to the family, and that always has a peculiar way of becoming opaque.

Dinner tonight was at Laredo’s, one of the better Mexican restaurant in town. (Try the enchiladas.) It is a big place, and busy, so I don’t have any cute little anecdotes about town. They turn the place over in a hurry, though. We had to park in an overflow lot and there must have been 30 people waiting to be seated, but we got a table within 10 minutes or so.

Our salsa had every pepper in the place.

And then we had ice cream. Because it was in the low 40s, after all.

Auburn / Friday / friends / Samford — Comments Off on Your basic wonderful Friday
11
Jan 13

Your basic wonderful Friday

Do you have a high school senior? Are they interested in attending Samford University? Odds are I’ve called them in the last few days. I call a lot of students, all a part of our personalized, high touch philosophy.

Some students are very excited to hear from you. Some find this very awkward. A few have figured out they are enrolling elsewhere. “That’s great! Congratulations!” Some know they’ll be at SU next fall. “Wonderful!”

Some voicemails will let you talk all day long. I have a short list of things I like to share with voicemails. It takes about 40 seconds. Some will cut you off if you pause to breathe in or allow for writing down a phone number.

I can tell you this: In an age of text messages the art of covering the receiver so you can talk about the person on the phone is a dying art.

The best part, though, is talking to the excited student. Their enthusiasm is a little contagious. The second best part is the voicemail with the child doing the outgoing message. Those always crack me up.

So a lot of phone calls. Syllabus work. Other work. Emails, always the emails.

I stopped just in time to go to the gymnastics meet tonight. Auburn hosted Kentucky and perhaps should have won, but struggled on the bars and floor. The Wildcats took away the win 195.525-194.250. The guys behind us had never been to a meet before, so it was fun to hear them try to rationalize what they were seeing. The little girls always have a great time at gym meets, so it is fun to watch the kids dance and ooh and ahh.

They dropped Chick-fil-A cows from the rafters. I almost caught one, but the guy behind me — with a distinctive and unfair height advantage — got hit first. He earned a chocolate chip cookie for his efforts. I just missed a T-shirt thrown into the crowd. The Yankee was live-tweeting the meet for College and Magnolia.

We had dinner at Mellow Mushroom with a friend after the meet. We sat and talked the night away and it was all very wonderful. Walked outside near midnight in January in short sleeves and walked a block to the car. It nicely wrapped up a day which started with breakfast with a friend at the Barbecue House.

To ask for much more of anything would just look greedy.

Auburn / cycling / Friday / iPhone / photo — Comments Off on Restaurants, sunsets and the bike shop
4
Jan 13

Restaurants, sunsets and the bike shop

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A, which was thoroughly uneventful. We were there because another place in town, where we have tried to visit now on consecutive days, was closed.

Big Blue Bagel, downtown, had a message on their white board yesterday. “Closed for the holidays.” It noted they would re-open on Jan. 3rd. Which was yesterday. I checked. But they were closed.

That’s one way to run a business.

So we visited for lunch today. Closed. The white board had a breakfast special, so someone had been there. Now the place was locked up tight.

There are no hours on the door. No hours on the website. That’s one way to run a business. One of the review sites says they are open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Maybe they are not open in between.

Oh look, they are for sale. And use frames! That’s one way to run a website.

So Big Blue Bagel has now officially broken Smith’s First Law: Don’t make it hard for me to spend my money with you.

I was on the fence about the entire thing, but then I read the reviews on the review sites. They get fairly well panned, which strikes me as a bit difficult to do in a college town. C’est la bagel.

Visited the library. Did library things. Got ran out of the library, because they close the library at 5 p.m. “You don’t need learnin’ that bad, boy.”

That’s OK. We walked out to see this:

sunset

We have some of the best sunsets in the world here. I’m biased, I’m sure, but I realized that in undergrad and I haven’t been any place that consistently shows off enough to change my mind since then. Tonight’s wasn’t even trying hard, and I couldn’t get into position for the big finale fast enough, but the sky is just gorgeous.

Orange and blue and all that. Pollutants hanging over Montgomery 50 miles to the west help too.

Picked up my bike. Everyone was in the shop this evening. My derailleurs have been adjusted. Almost everything works again. I can fix the last little bit myself, because I know how to Google this part.

If you know the right nomenclature you can fix most anything yourself these days. If you have the proper tools.

Spoke with the owner about the proper tools. Bicycle maintenance has an improbable amount of specialty equipment — turns out you can’t make every change with a crescent wrench — for most of us this is daunting and unrealistic. I expressed my interest in knowing more.

I’d like to appreciate the art of maintenance a bit. And are there classes for this sort of thing? I don’t want to be a guy who tears down the bike and greases the ball bearings, but I also don’t want to be the guy in the shop every two months with the next thing I should be able to do on my own. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, like that’s asking you to take money out of your pocket, but …

There are classes. He told me about a great one in Colorado, if I’m ever out that way. And he said he’d be happy to teach me more. Make a list of things you’d like to know, he said. We can haggle over rates for a private lesson, he said, using the modules this class in Colorado uses. It wouldn’t be just turning a wrench. This was an important point he wanted to make. This won’t just be “turn wrench here” stuff.

After all these years in school a few hours learning about spoke tension doesn’t bother me too much.

Now I just need to make a list of things I’d like to learn. And ride.

That’s tomorrow.

adventures / Friday / iPhone / movies / photo / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Look down, look down
28
Dec 12

Look down, look down

Seen alone or with a friend, knowing the story or completely new to it, as a moviegoer or — as I did — with Broadway purists, Les Mis is good.

Russell Crowe, as Javert, is the weakest part of the performance. And he was reasonably acceptable.

The best part was this: Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean, plays the Bishop of Digne. It is a great part, and so obvious and well done, and everything is in good hands throughout.

This is pretty incredible, too:

Typically, the soundtrack for a movie musical is recorded several months in advance and the actors mime to playback during filming. However, on this film, every single song was recorded live on set to capture the spontaneity of the performances.

Saw that this evening. Beforehand I got a shave. The professional kind. The someone-else-has-sharp-implements-aimed-at-your-face kind.

This was a unique Christmas gift my father-in-law and I received. He made the appointment, we went down to the salon this morning and saw this sign:

Barber pole

I knew about this association of barbers and blood letting, but this was a good time to be reminded. Especially so soon after my fall haircut experience where my local barber almost took off my ear. It clearly got to him. He got me out of his chair quickly, without finishing the haircut, which was why I had a great feathered look for a few days as my hair got to a certain length.

Alas, there would be no hair cutting today, just face shaving. And this is how they do it, as my father-in-law went first, I could watch with detached cool from the sofa in front of SportsCenter.

She only missed one spot. Also better than I do.

Have you had a professional shave? The next time you have a big event coming up you should consider it.

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