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Samford

Alabama / iPhone / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off
26
Aug 10

A loooongish Thursday

Occasionally, when you wake up before the sun, you want to spend all day in sunglasses.

When you spend the early morning hours trying to figure out a particularly tricky issue that involves mathematics and then still wake up before the sun … well, it is best to reach for the welder’s eye guard.

Spent the morning discussing experimental designs to research media effects in class. The guy next to me brought strawberries. And because I had forsaken breakfast they smelled even 16 percent better than normal. He then returned to his coffee mug. And then he produced a bottle of water. Who knows what else was in his bag.

The class is a good one though. Our professor is internationally renowned, a very kind and engaging man. He has a deep stash of jokes and a very personable way about his seminar class. I suspect it will become an incredibly useful class by the time it is finished.

He’s also on my dissertation committee, so I’m doubly lucky.

After class I found my dissertation chair, another prolific and well respected researcher. We have nice conversations and he always has a handful of good ideas. We’re getting close to answering all the biggest questions and solving the largest fundamental problems with my dissertation idea. Ultimately it is making the whole thing a little bit easier, I think.

Had a meeting with my boss at Samford. We’re co-teaching a class together this semester. Should be a good class, now that the prep has been formalized. I will teach a bit about Strunk & White. Just doing my part to pass along the idea of omitting needless words.

I also met with the editor of the paper, who will hopefully omit many needless words, and the ad manager, who will hopefully add many paid words. It is the circle of news.

That’s about it for the day. Oh, and one other video. Did you know that Calera is, apparently, the fastest growing city in the state? The Oracle at Wikipedia says their population has tripled since the 2000 census. Here is a little snippet of town:

This time next week we’ll be visiting a new section on the site. I’m very excited for it. This time tomorrow we’ll be celebrating Pie Day. I’m always very excited about that as well.

iPhone / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Aug 10

Got your days confused?

I do, apparently, but as personal problems go it is mild and worth working through. There could be so many more. Your starter may not start, for example. Worse still, your alternator may not alternate.

Happily all of the various mechanical parts of my lovely automobile are doing just what they are supposed to do — taking the action, adding the -ER at the end to give it a name and then safely transporting me from A to B. I have my health. I have many other wonderful things we sometimes ask overlook. In that context, my confusion over whether it is the 25, the 26 or the twenty-thirtheighth is not the biggest problem in the world.

Oh, you didn’t even notice, but I’d mistakenly dated the blog. You didn’t notice, did you? Oh, good. If you had I would go out back and make a flogging spectacle of self-flagellation. So, a thousand humble apologies.

Beyond maintaining a straight gig line I don’t recall having any sort of obsession of minute detail before I built my first web page. I blame Tim Berners-Lee and the summer of 1996.

Anyway. Hit the phones today, in a terribly exacting way. Tis the season to call all of the high schools in the region and remind them about the upcoming journalism workshop for high school students at Samford. It is a tricky thing, catching teachers on the job. Often they are in class, as you might expect.

Some of them have voicemail. For others you must simply leave a message the old-fashioned way, with an office aide, and hope it gets through. Those I’ll be calling again next week.

The workshop, though, is a strong one. We’ll have several hundred students for a day of magazine, newspaper, yearbook and broadcast sessions. The high school students get to meet our faculty, visit our beautiful campus and hear from industry leaders. They get war stories, advice, the chance to get a little insight on what kind of work they could do one day and so on. It is a fine workshop, I’m glad I’ve had the chance to work on it the last two years.

Somehow, during the day of calling, I managed to get the operator. That’s not right. I landed in the operator’s voicemail. This would surprise most people, as we still think of the operator as a bank of individuals with a nasal voice sitting at a giant console full of patch cords. Operators have voicemail?

And what would the function of that be, anyway? I needed your assistance with a particularly tricky area code, and also, was feeling a bit lonely and wanted to chat. But you’re not there. So … I guess I’ll just Google it. Thanks, though.

So I left a message in a nasal tone, asking if they could ring me back and put me in touch with someone in Peoria.

I don’t know anyone in Peoria, but I’ve always been anxious to learn how a great many things played there. This would seem to be the time to find out.

I’m still waiting for the operator to return that call.

Made jambalaya for dinner. We’d picked up fresh sausage at the meat lab recently and I’d mentioned it to The Yankee. She thought that might be a good idea. For jambalaya, though, you need musical accompaniment. I considered Pandora, but I guard my minutes there carefully now. To the App Store!

You want zydeco? There is no app for that.

You can, however, get a stream from the legendary WWOZ. (Rush right now to grab yourself a wonderful community-supported radio experience.) It was jazz night, and that works for sausage and Cajun concoctions. Ultimately I think the Italian seasonings in the sausage muted the festivities in the jambalaya, but you live and learn.

I listened to jazz, from New Orleans, almost 400 miles away in my kitchen tonight over my phone, via my wireless network. This modern world, and the Internet will never cease to impress me. I credit Berners-Lee for that, too.

memories / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
24
Aug 10

Sales meeting, and also, Ted Turner

Getting to be that time of year again:

Samford fanfest

Incidentally, that white vehicle on the left margin? That’s an armored truck absolutely running through a stone cold red light. Almost whacked that car, which was turning under a supposedly protected green arrow. I hope the money made it to wherever 45 seconds earlier than necessary. But I digress.

I stopped by an outdoors store — where they pay a guy to ride a forklift, full time, moving giant gun safes back and forth across the parking lot. It is a curious activity. Anyway, I’d stopped there because I have this old knife:

USMC knife

My great-grandfather gave it to me, years ago. It is a Marine Corps knife, though my grandfather was in the army. (You can read a bit more about the knife here and here.) He was a medic in Europe, earned a silver star and a purple heart. After the war he came home, never talked about it, raised his family and farmed his land. I think, if I remember correctly, he found this on the side of the road and gave it to my mother to give to me when I became old and smart enough to not cut off my hand.

Not that there’s any danger of that right now. The blade needs sharpening. But, otherwise, it is in great shape, except that the one tang has the point snapped off. The blades need a good deal of cleaning. I know a little about knives, enough to know you can damage them if you clean them incorrectly. So I’ve been hoping, for a while, to find a knife expert. Hence the outdoor store.

Find the knife counter, they had a knife counter, and the guy working there interrupts his conversation with another man who was Ted Turner.

Or his twin.

And, yes, you’d think he would have been taller. In the South the man is as big as life itself. In person, this gentleman was about five-foot-four.

The guy behind the counter says he can show me what I need. He leads me away. I apologize to Mr. Turner, who says “A great-grandfather’s knife is far more important than I am.”

Which is how I realized that the man I met wasn’t Ted Turner. There’s no way that guy is as cool as this guy.

The stuff I need, is a product called Flitz. Wash the blades with a mild dish soap, he said. Dry it. And then go to work on it with Flitz. It will take elbow grease, but it will shine the blades up nicely, he said.

I’ll let you know how the project turns out.

Met the new sales manager today. She’s a nice young lady. I try not to overload them with too much material all at once, but sometimes there is just a lot to be shared. We talked for about an hour about rate cards and sales approaches and this and that. I think she’ll do a very nice job.

I’m going to sit down with the Samford Crimson staff next week and talk about goals and achievements and try to start them out with a good, passionate first step. The are a little young, this year, but there’s a lot of potential in the group and I expect they’ll take some great strides and be doing great things before the year is out.

No pressure.

At the gym I had a monster workout. Basically doubled the reps on squats and lunges. I did way too many trapezoid curls. I did abs. I rode 30 miles. All together it was a two-hour endorphin ride. That ended before I even made it to the shower, unfortunately. But! But. If I could work out for two hours on a regular basis I’d be very pleased with myself.

If only.

Tomorrow: I work the phones. I read. And the 1939 World’s Fair will make a comeback.

adventures / Alabama / Samford / Thursday / video — Comments Off
19
Aug 10

Now that’s a day

My day started at 5 a.m. for the second time this week. When did yours start? There are people who are already awake by then. I saw them on the road, biking, or at the gym, working out. These are disturbed individuals. I’d say something about waking up that early twice this week, but all of those people did too.

Of course it hit the mid-90s today, and at the early hour it was only 77 degrees with 94 percent humidity, so they are most likely just brilliant self-preservationists.

Another sporadic new feature, Today’s Mystery:

What do they make in there?

Had a class this morning, titled Researching Media Effects. It is taught by an internationally renowned scholar who is the new dean of our graduate program. He’s bringing about swift changes, the kind of things that make you wish he’d had the job a few years back.

Over the summer they’ve been renovating all of our labs, and there is a great deal of promise for future research and hopefully a little of it will help when I get to my dissertation, which is only just around the corner. This is my last class and I’ll be start preparing for comprehensive exams soon.

Time flies when you’re insanely busy, I guess.

Anyway, the class is about researching media effects and given the professor and the reading list it is already one of the best classes of the curriculum. I’m looking forward to the class, but I’d rather still be in the summer.

Visited Samford. Had lunch. We had a church media workshop underway today and I sat in a few of those sessions. I had a meeting with the boss to receive more marching orders for the semester. Had a nice long meeting with the new editor, who is a very collected young woman. I suspect that her staff will put out some quality stories and great papers before too long.

I sold a few cardboard boxes. We bought a few extras for the move and they went unused. The people that sold them will buy them back, making me think I might be in the wrong business. Glenn Beck wants you to invest in cardboard, but there is a humble income to be found in corrugated materials.

And then I headed home. The best thing about a nice afternoon drive:

The clouds. Or the cloud. That’s actually one cloud I chased for a good long while. The road turned just before I got under the thing and the curve never bent the car back underneath. But at least I caught some meaningless video.

We headed out to an owl release this evening. Turned into the parking lot with the crowd, and asked a police officer working the parking traffic what the event was.

“Band-o-Rama.”

So we left, having dodged a musical bullet.

The owl release was just up the road, because nothing motivates previously captive birds like percussion and low brass. Only the owl release had been postponed because of bad weather. But the weather was beautiful. It took three people to explain the delay and hand out fliers to the guests. “Fledglings No More” will take place in September.

At dinner I physically hit the wall. I stood up to get my drink, blinked and felt it. The 5 a.m. part of the day had officially won.

So I edited two videos, wrote this, had dinner and planned tomorrow. It’ll be another great adventure! Hope yours is even better!

adventures / errands / hobby / memories / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
12
Aug 10

Part of a day in pictures

Pretty bird

The cardinals in our neighborhood are very shy. I’ve been patiently chasing them, and finally got a picture or two of the male. We played this circling, chase game around the trees in the backyard. After a bit I changed the rules and went under the tree. He didn’t expect that.

Pretty bird

Tried to get some work done on the car today, but the shop I visited had a slight problem with a key machine this morning. The guy said the repair man was coming at noon. I left my number and asked him to call me when the machine was fixed so that he may hoist my car onto it.

Because, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from amusement parks and forgotten to extrapolate to the rest of our lives, you’d rather not be the first person up on the freshly repaired equipment.

So I went to a giant antique store. I’m saving that story for the weekend. I walked the whole place, no phone call. After an amount of time that is surely beyond what it should take to fix one machine, the mechanics of which I know nothing about, I returned to the shop. The repair guy hadn’t yet showed up. So I called it an afternoon.

Time and temp

That was the temperature when we went out for dinner. In other news, this is August, but still. We had dinner at Cheeburger Cheeburger, which is a place that The Yankee and I have never enjoyed together. There were two in Birmingham, for a time, but we have no memory of a mutual visit. So this is a new experience. This is also new:

Cheeburger

Cheeburger has always displayed the Polaroids of the hungry people who’ve eaten their one-pound burger (I’ve never tried). Previously the pictures covered the walls like a wallpaper, which was an interesting expression of growth, much like a celluloid bacteria. Haven’t visited in a while? Oh the pictures have expanded around the corner and down the baseboard. That sort of thing.

The last time I was here they were moving up to the ceiling. The surrounded-by-people-promoting-their-new-metabolic-problem atmosphere was a terrific exhibition. You couldn’t help but staring at the faces and the little notes people left behind. I understand why they went to the stacks, for space concerns, but this new display method ruins the point. You don’t want to look through pictures in stacks like that. It would feel like too much work, or feel too intrusive. So you just see the stacks on the wall and go about your meal.

I wonder when they finally make the decision to throw away some of the old pictures. Maybe they have a little ceremony.

We drove around until we found a field on a quiet country road where we could see the night’s festivities. I always oversell the Perseids in my mind. One of the astronomers on the Samford faculty sent us a note where he mentioned that some experts were expecting up to 100 visible meteorites per hour if you got in a good spot. I’ve learned to temper my expectations — I want 100 a minute, like some sort of movie theater intro film — but still haven’t learned to forget taking pictures of the event. This is the one I got.

Perseids

The background are actually stars I shot tonight. I caught no Perseid meteorites on my camera (The Yankee got TWO!) but we saw several and had a great time, sitting in the dark and quiet and heat of the evening. My best picture of the night:

A plane

The plane! The plane!@