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The magic of lights and trees and things

My view in the Caf today:

Those aren’t new leaves. That’s a species of oak which stays green. Everything is still sticks and and twigs — everything except the Bradfords, at least. Some of the maples are starting to get those crisp red buds of future promises, and all of that seems a bit early, perhaps. But we’re still looking at too much brown and not enough green.

I love what is to come, that week or 10 day period where you are overwhelmed by just how verdant everything has suddenly become.

Still, the dreary sticks and twigs of winter have an appeal. You can see things that would be hidden the rest of the year. Leaving campus this evening I had a great view of the steeple on Reid Chapel. It seemed to be lit in such a way that dramatically lit the side closest to you, with the rest in shadow for effect. It was an optical illusion of course, but what a neat trick it would be. When the leaves return you won’t be able to see it from there.

At the mall:

They’ve closed this parking deck. If you walk around inside it you see they’re painting. First the columns. Perhaps they’re re-doing the ceiling as well. It is colder in the parking deck than normal, no exhaust. But it also smells a bit better. More importantly you have to park somewhere else.

Which I did, about 50 feet away. A parking deck closed and still plenty of spaces. That has to trouble the mall managers, right?

But economists say things are due to improve locally:

The center forecasts gross domestic product growth of 2.5 percent in 2012, compared to 2.2 percent in 2011. They also expect employment to increase 1.1 percent in 2012, compared to 0.8 percent last year.

Every little bit.

A guy named AUltered Ego made me this:

That’s one of the two new crosswalk warnings — because nothing says pedestrian safety like a “LOOK AT ME!” sign high above the road — on Magnolia in Auburn. AUltered was kind enough to hack the sign with his magical Photoshop skills. I will only turn the sign on when there are no cars coming. Wouldn’t want to cause any traffic problems.

Two tech stories that fell neatly side-by-side: E&P says some newspapers still unsure how to use the iPad for publishing. Alan Mutter writes:

Two years after the debut of the iPad, most newspaper publishers still are fretting and fumbling over what to do about it.

Even though the iPad 2 was one of the most popular items last Christmas and the third-generation version of the product is likely to turn up well before Santa returns this year, many newspapers have yet to develop their very first app. Of the publishers who took the plunge, most were so unclear on their concept that they shouldn’t have bothered.

Mutter says it is all a big flub at this point.

Meanwhile, the app that keeps you from contacting your ex. ” It allows users to block text messages, emails, and phone calls to thier (sic) ex. It even tracks the number of days you go without contacting your ex.”

If you download that, you are co-dependent on technology. And, also, we’re going to laugh at you. (Though we will remain sad about your broken heart. Truly.)

Finally, this: Auburn great Ben Tamburello’s, Ben Jr., was all set to attend school and play football at Samford. And then the Naval Academy called. at Samford. Now he’s going to be a Middie. (Go Navy! Beat Army!) Samford’s coach, Pat Sullivan:

“I’ve known that family forever,” Sullivan said. “I helped recruit his dad, I sold insurance to his grandfather. But whether it’s Ben or (Shelby County signee) Denzel Williams, I really want what’s best for these kids.

“Am I disappointed I won’t coach Ben? Yes. But, in the end, this is what’s best for the young man, and that’s what we’re all about.”

Can’t say enough good things about Sullivan. Though I used 2,000 words to try last year.

What else? Two brief things on the journalism blog. One on FOI help. The other has a checklist for breaking online news.

Auburn / cycling / history / iPhone / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
29
Jan 12

Catching up

This is the weekly opportunity to post a lot of pictures that haven’t yet landed elsewhere on the site. Here’s a handful, there are even more in the January photo gallery.

One day one of the gymnasts will leap into the air and forget to land:

Look at the expressions on her teammates’ faces in the background:

Nobody has more fun on the floor than Bri Guy:

In the Hunt Seat arena. Horses jump things there, and this is currently the extent of my ability to comment on the sport intelligently. I’ll have to fix that:

I’ve never seen Nosa Eguae anywhere around town where he didn’t have a handful of people come talk to him. He likes equestrian events, too, apparently:

Oklahoma State’s team is called the Cowgirls. The name is bejeweled on the back of their outfits. It was in juxtaposition of all of their serious, championship-caliber riders. You can just see her championship belt buckle in this shot:

Stop! This is part of the routine:

On today’s big bike ride, mile 20, middle of nowhere and feeling fine:

At 26.4 miles in I’ve already gotten lost, figured out where I missed a turn and thought to myself “You’ve always wanted to see what is happening in Crawford. Press on …”

Here’s Crawford in a nutshell, an unincorporated community of perhaps less than 1,000 people, it was settled in 1832, as Crocketsville. A few decades later the state legislature changed the name. It boasts one of the oldest Masonic lodges in the state. A prominent church was built in 1910 using bricks from the original county courthouse. You can apparently see some of the workers’ (slaves mostly) handprints in those old courthouse bricks now making up the church.

Didn’t see that church, I was going in the wrong direction. Not sure about the history of this building though:

Nothing happening at the local co-op, about 34 miles into the ride:

I don’t know if the church planners put this place up with an idea of how the sunsets would play, but it worked out for them:

This next picture is 41 miles into my ride. I’ve been here before — behind where I’m standing as the photographer there is a gas station full of nice people that sold me Gatorade one hot summer day last year — but I didn’t notice this advertisement:

It is safe to say this mural is pre-1980, when Texaco drilled on Louisiana’s Lake Pelgneur and accidentally pierced the roof of the Diamond Crystal salt dome beneath the lake:

Within seven hours the entire 1,100-acre lake was empty and two drilling rigs, a tugboat, eleven barges, a barge loading-dock, seventy acres of Jefferson Island and its botanical gardens, parts of greenhouses, a house trailer, trucks, tractors, a parking lot, tons of mud and trees and three dogs had disappeared into the sinkhole at the bottom of the lake. The whole scene was described by witnesses as resembling a draining bathtub with boats bobbing around like toys before being sucked under. About 30 shrimp boats that were in the canal were beached as the canal emptied into the sinkhole, and were refloated later when the lake and canal refilled with water. Nine of the eleven barges would eventually pop back to the surface. Amazingly, no human life was lost in this spectacular accident.

What does that say? I haven’t been able to afford exterior paint in 30 years? No one has come along and offered to make it say “See Rock City”? I really like salt and my sodium levels are unfortunately high?

For more Jefferson Island murals, go here.

I wanted to do 60 miles today. This is with about 14 miles to go, and it was the last I would see of the sun:

I managed to get 52 miles. It was dark and cold. When you can’t see the bumps in the road you call it an evening. And then you put on several layers to warm up.

history / iPhone / memories / photo / site / weekend — Comments Off
8
Jan 12

Catching up

Sunday is usually the day where I throw a lot of extra pictures from the week on the blog, hoping to feel the space with images of things that didn’t otherwise get used.

Only I didn’t take a great many pictures this week. It won’t happen again.

We did receive a fine box of oranges from The Yankees grandparents:

Lovely people.

You can hear some of their stories.

cycling / history / links / memories / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Jan 12

4,231 > 17

We’ve been trying to have doughnuts for breakfast since Sunday. But that was New Year’s Day, and so our local doughnut shop was closed. Monday? Closed for New Year’s Hangover, I suppose. Yesterday we had a real breakfast. Today we made it happen.

After the sugar kicked in and moved on — and after having made it through the morning edition of email, text messages and RSS reading — we decided for a light ride. Would have ridden yesterday, but it was too cold. Today it was just right, a light chill in the shade and a good breeze to keep the temperature right when you started working a bit.

Not that there’s a lot of that when you haven’t been on the bike in weeks, another victim of the holidays.

On Monday, though, I installed the new computers on our bikes. Now we’ll now just how bad at this we are! (Hint: Bad.)

The Yankee had two flats. It was one of those days.

At one point I was tucked in behind her, but went around because the time was right. We were about to hit a stretch where I perform slightly better than she does. There was a car coming, which is not where I want to be putting brakes to wheels. So I kicked.

And for one glorious, brief, sprinting, downhill, mass-forward, aerodynamically-tucked moment, I hit 37.6 miles per hour. If I could keep up that pace for 4,231 I might have been competitive in the 1987 Tour de France. The race has gotten a bit faster since then.

But I only rode 17 miles today, clearly there’s some work to be done. But that’s what tomorrow is for.

We made dinner to the Beatles, ate over the bowl game.

Somewhere along the way we put away clothes that will be donated. We ordered four pictures for over the fireplace. I found a new water filter for the refrigerator. It was a perfectly low key evening.

Finally answered one of the many nagging questions of my faulty childhood memory. It was a Woolco. The town I grew up in had a Zayre’s and one of the W stores in what I think of as the place’s two original strip malls. I could never recall if it was a Woolworth or a Woolco, though. Woolworth, you might remember, was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. They slipped in the 1980s and disappeared entirely in 1997. (Now their existing properties are the struggling Foot Locker entities.

Woolco, on the other hand, was their discount store. Think about that: the discount of store of a five-and-dime shop. I don’t remember much about it, I couldn’t even remember which name the store had. Woolco died in 1982, so I guess that’s when that store went away. Soon after Wal-Mart moved into that spot.

Not too much longer after that the Zayre’s down the street shut their doors. K-Mart went in there.

After a few years Wal-Mart moved three miles down the road to the interstate and a new Supercenter. There’s a Big Lots where the Wal-Mart and Woolco once operated. A thrift store occupies the place that used to run as Zayre’s and then K-Mart. That entire part of that town has dried up. What was once upon a time the longest lit road east of the Rocky Mountains and, prior to the Great Depression, was intended as the nation’s first freeway is a husk of itself.

For years, though, I’ve wondered: was that a Woolworth or a Woolco?

These are the questions that occupy a preoccupied mind. This all came about because of an essay I read about Best Buy:

Electronics retailer Best Buy is headed for the exits. I can’t say when exactly, but my guess is that it’s only a matter of time, maybe a few more years.

Consider a few key metrics. Despite the disappearance of competitors including Circuit City, the company is losing market share. Its last earnings announcement disappointed investors. In 2011, the company’s stock has lost 40% of its value. Forward P/E is a mere 6.23 (industry average is 10.20). Its market cap down to less than $9 billion. Its average analyst rating, according to The Street.com, is a B-.

Those are just some of the numbers, and they don’t look good. They bear out a prediction in March from the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column, which forecast “the worst is yet to come” for Best Buy investors. With the flop of 3D televisions and the expansion of Apple’s own retail locations, there was no killer product on the horizon that would lift it from the doldrums. Though the company accounts for almost a third of all U.S. consumer electronics purchases, analysts noted, the company remains a ripe target for more nimble competitors.

But the numbers only scratch the surface. To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.

The store goes on, sounding much like Circuit City and Service Merchandise and many others before it. The piece also included a Wikipedia list of defunct American stores that started between the 1920s and 1950s and now out of business, either consolidated, liquidated or folded. It is a great list for nostalgia.

The only thing I remember buying at that store is maybe some superhero-themed clothing. I wanted a digital watch, I remember distinctly, but my parents wouldn’t buy it for me. I needed to learn the analog watch first, they said. It was a good lesson.

I almost never misread my watch today.

The clock display on my bike’s new computer? Digital in every way.

adventures / errands / friends / history / iPhone / memories / photo / site / Tuesday — Comments Off
3
Jan 12

I did not use the tape

Lovely day. Even the Committee on Greatest Day Ever, which meets quadrennially in a secure location in the Pyrenees, will be required to consider it for an international honorable mention. It only gets the purple ribbon because it is an especially cold day. This is unnecessary, and will be waited-out until a pleasant April day comes along.

Late breakfast at the Barbecue House, where the place was empty and thus the hash browns were plentiful. Mr. Price, if you’re keeping track, is back to not remembering me. He asked if we needed a menu. No thanks, I’ll just have the usual.

Stopped by world headquarters of The War Eagle Reader. We visited with one of Jeremy’s daughters, talked about tomorrow’s stories today and met Torch, official co-cat:

Later I visited Lowe’s, because they’ve offended me less than Home Depot. (The next time I need a hardware part I’ll visit Home Depot, because I hit up Lowe’s this time.) I needed to address an issue in the kitchen sink. Not the sink itself, but an attachment, that retractable spray hose. Not the spray hose, though, but rather the little plastic circle bracket it rests in.

The old one cracked in two before the holidays. I removed all of the cleaning supplies that live under the sink, crawled inside, reached around and through the various pipes and traced the hose up to where it attaches to the plumbing. There was no easy way to get to it, everything was by feel and felt awkward in every way. This was not going to be an easy task.

So at Lowe’s I walked around with the Confused Looked of Resignation until someone in a vest stumbled across my path. I’d been in three sections by then, when he asked “Can I help you find something?” I was surrounded by sinks at the time, but this was the wrong place to find a sink accessory attachment, which was four aisles away.

The good news, the gentleman told me, was that this is attached at the hose, not under the sink. That’s much better. But you have to buy both the nozzle and the flange. Used to be, he said, that you could buy just the flange, but no more. I picked up the cheapest one, which almost matched the one in our kitchen thinking, That might explain somethings.

There are instructions inside. On the outside it says you’ll need an adjustable wrench, adjustable pliers, needle nose pliers and pipe thread tape. I have the tools, or can make do, but I needed the tape. Found it two aisles over, nearer the sinks, so things are well organized. The tape cost $1.06.

Got home, where we had company. Visited for a while, talking of football and jobs and weddings and things.

Later we visited Target, where we received a gift card for Christmas. We decided to pick up frames and continue the house decorating. We walked out with seven frames, two of them will hold a trip we took to San Francisco four years ago. We framed a lithograph from Rome and two pieces from Greece, from our honeymoon two years ago. Good prints take time, you know. You have to study these things, consider them for taste and durability, before you commit them to a frame.

And then, like later tonight, there’s the pulling out the paper examples, replacing the mattes, cleaning the glass and making it all fit together again. And then there’s the difficulty of finding the proper wall. Where will the sun accentuate the proper setting? Will the ceiling fan reflect off this frame?

These are difficult questions.

Anyway. Saw this at Target:

In one swift, 8×10 motion the designer managed to offend at least two different groups of people. Keeping calm having to do with the Blitz, rocking on antithetical to the stiff upper lip of the English establishment. But when rock has become over-produced pop, and with rocking on now meaning a third thing entirely, we’re really just dumbing down the argument. There is no need, the artist suggests, to understand the origin of these expressions, their historical antecedents and how these two things are actually tied together by pushing against one another. Just appreciate the juxtaposition and this wicked awesome line art of a Flying V. And so it will be that a 13-year-old will have a cute, possibly ironic mantra for the Twilight generation.

Later still I returned to the sink fixture. Turned off the water, made the source pipe leak. Emptied the entire two cabinets in a hurry, mopped up the water, fixed the leak and carried on. The instructions tell you to remove the old sprayer, but not how. (It unscrews. Not to worry, though: I have an advanced education.)

Popped off the little clamp, removed the washers. Dropped one washer down the sink, where it fell perfectly through the drain.

Pull the hose out of the sink, putting the flange in place, feeding the hose back through. Insert the new washers, apply the new clamp. Screw on the new nozzle, turn on the water, give everything a try.

It works!

And then I completed reorganized the things under the cabinet.

Thing I’ll take the pipe thread tape back to the store. It never appeared in the directions, nor did any of the wrenches or pliers, so now I’ll be awake all night wondering if I’ve managed to manufactured by own leaky faucet.

Even still, wonderful day.