things to read


14
May 14

“Why did they do that?”

The air conditioning guy was scheduled to come today, precisely between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. He did not come early, when he could have worked in pleasant outdoor conditions. No, he arrived just before 3 p.m., in the rain, the poor guy. And so I did not get to ride today because I waited on him and it rained after he left. }

But!

I did get to hear a repairman say “What the?”

I think this nice gentleman’s company has been to the house a few times before for various repairs. It is one of those companies that is a series of initials, which is hard to keep straight over time, but they are affiliated with the home warranty people and we use our home warranty quite a bit. This time because the air doesn’t cool anything.

We have a nice house, everyone that visits is kind enough to compliment the layout. It is in a nice neighborhood. And it was built upon a haunted burial ground. Also, the previous owner hired people that had some curious ideas about home maintenance.

When he looked at the air handler unit, nothing made sense. Our guy today, after going through the full series of “I don’t even know why it was done that way,” and all of the many variants, said he hadn’t seen anyone do this in 15 years on the job. Someone made a previous repair and used a different manufacturer’s parts, basically whatever was at hand. It was like, he said “Someone took the engine out of a Toyota and put it in a Cadillac.”

So we got freon, and the anticipation of a larger bill, and this mystery of why people have done things in this house that professionals have never seen before. (This wasn’t the first time.)

But the air works, at least in the short term, again. That puts you in a pretty zen place, in the short term.

Of course the rain cooled everything off, meaning we didn’t need the air tonight, so we’re right back to where we started on the “Come on, house!” meter.

Allie

Things to read … because she can’t stare at that app forever.

The Internet and the compassion of people never ceases to amaze. Brown family supporters raise more than $50,000 for medical, travel expenses

And then along comes someone doing a series of other things, without consequence, that just infuriates. Fire Official Who Hit Children in New Jersey Crosswalk Has 19 Car Accidents on Record

This is the best sports story you’ll read today:

They played the oddest game in high school football history last month down in Grapevine, Texas.

It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down. For instance, when Gainesville came out to take the field, the Faith fans made a 40-yard spirit line for them to run through.

Did you hear that? The other team’s fans?

They even made a banner for players to crash through at the end. It said, “Go Tornadoes!” Which is also weird, because Faith is the Lions. “I WOULDN’T EXPECT ANOTHER PARENT TO TELL SOMEBODY TO HIT THEIR KIDS. BUT THEY WANTED US TO!”

And a 15-year-old introduces his stethoscope iPhone invention to the world:


13
May 14

‘You’re going to need a bigger sack’

Auburn hosted UAB in baseball tonight. The Blazers had a 10-game winning streak (the sixth longest in the nation) on the line. Auburn had beaten UAB 15 games in a row in the series. So naturally it came down to a bases loaded walkoff walk:

Auburn won, 6-5, and they did the traditional baseball “We won the pennant!” dogpile after that.

Just before the game several of the electricity transformers just behind the baseball stadium exploded. We were treated to green smoke and acrid smells for a while. Eventually the scoreboard and the lights were restored, and that became just one more story in the baseball season. Dude. Green smoke.

Speaking of things you never want to hear about: our air conditioner is definitely broken. Two days in a row I’ve worked in the yard and now I’m sweating as much inside as I do outside. (Though half the yard looks much nicer now, thanks.) So the A/C guy will be by tomorrow.

Here’s something that could happen at a lot more local television stations:

She got a lot of pats on the back for that around the office, I promise.

Things to read … because I put the words here.

This is the first story that the new staff for the Crimson has published. They did a nice job, especially considering it is an under-deadline, semester’s-end, big story assignment: Memorial service remembers Foreman as a ‘blessing’

The Do’s and Don’ts of Online Reputation Management

I only have a minor in economics, but if you’re counting on a late Easter to give the national engine a nudge … you’re living on the margins: Retail sales flatline, disappoint in April despite warmer weather

There is an impressive picture with this story, just so you know. Woman gets slithery surprise when she finds a 12-foot snake in her bathroom:

“When the officer showed up, he came with a brown paper sack,” she recalled. “I told him, ‘you’re going to need a bigger sack than that.'”

Gonzales, who’s been with the police department about five years, said he’d previously responded to three snake calls, but nothing like that.

“When I opened her bathroom door, there was a 12-foot python,” Gonzales recalled. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with a snake that large.”

He asked dispatchers to send animal control officers. Shortly afterward, another College Station officer arrived, also armed with a paper bag, and soon the animal control officer showed up with a 10-gallon bucket.

And then they had to fight to get the thing into a large garbage can. Close your doors.


12
May 14

A little something for everyone

It was a fine, clear day. We’re transitioning from the spring we skipped into the summer that will be with us through September. It only reached the 80s today, but the humidity in the early morning apparently reached 100 percent. I don’t think I was aware you could do that without rain. As if to prove the point, this evening the humidity ticked up to 94 percent. It is warm in the house.

It is so humid that I prepared, hid and drank two bottles of water on my run this evening. It is a shame I only ran the 3.1 miles. For two bottles you should get more distance, you’d think. But not here. Not now.

Did I mention it is warm in the house? Someone will come out later this week to figure that out.

Here’s one of the neater and sweeter stories you’ll see today:

Things to read … because they can’t all be videos.

Child killed in wreck in front of Hampton Cove Elementary One child killed, three others injured. Also hurt was their mother, who was driving. I know the mom, we worked together some time back. She’s a lady with a big family because she has a big heart. Yours can’t help but break for them.

The old faithful pyramid returns, with more action-packed segments, of course. The Pyramid of Journalism Competence: what journalists need to know Poynter’s trusty pyramid remains a great think piece. The problem here, amidst the pyramid’s sub-sections and supporting essays is the suggested “courses that would enrich.” They list 81 courses, ranging from Jazz to Gender Studies to Quantum Physics to actual approaches to journalism. That is a lot of classes, all with merit, I’m sure, but some offering more meaningful insight to journalists than others. It is unclear if they mean college courses or Poynter courses, which are different things. But still, 81.

We are witnessing the birth of the social media press corps:

That’s not a social meet-up. It’s a press corps. And some government departments, incidentally, have gotten pretty explicit about the difference. While DOI billed today’s event as a more or less social meet-up, NASA will issue straight-up “social media credentials” for its Antares rocket launch in June, designed to give popular bloggers, tweeters and Instagrammers the “same access as journalists.”

The NASA application process, which closed Friday, demanded that applicants prove they had a large, respected and unique audience, distinct from traditional media’s. Applicants also had to agree to share images “in real time,” preferably with the #NASASocial hashtag, and make those photos available to NASA to reshare on its own platforms.

[…]

… but all this comes at a time when the traditional press corps — read, the ones who don’t have to “like” a government department on social media or pass some screening of their tweets to score credentials — gets less access to the government than ever.

Some media have become subordinate and co-conspirators in their own demise and you hate that for them.

“Instameet” is a terrible fake word, however.

Nielsen’s Plan to Count TV Viewers Across Screens Faces Obstacles As telecoms and cable providers get closer and closer, this should actually become easier.

TV Ad Dollars Slowly Shifting to Web Video. Now we only have to make all those online ads effective.

Driver assaults bicyclist, police ticket bicyclist:

Cyclist and photojournalist Evan Wilder encountered a road raging driver on R Street. He says the driver tried to force him off the road, caused a collision, then threw his bike into the truck. A police officer later wrote Wilder a ticket while he was in the hospital.

The officer sides with the driver, no big surprise, and gives the cyclist a citation for following too closely. But there is video. Curiously, this isn’t the first tangle Evan Wilder has had with drivers.

What a great move for Kodi: Kodi Burns Hired As Assistant Football Coach. And terrific for Samford, as well. He’s a good guy and success always seems to follow him.


10
May 14

Running in the rain

Received an email from a student that read, in part, “I just wanted to thank you for your character and personality throughout this year … ” So maybe I got something right this semester. I receive a few of those a year, and they are all appreciated and gratifying.

Today I graded things, working down the stack to the point where, really, it can’t grow back into something insurmountable. There is only 113 more things to read, if you’re keeping track.

We listened to baseball on the radio and the good guys won, 8-1.

We went for a run. We got caught in the rain:

trail

This is the time of the year, suddenly, where it is warm. And after it rains it is proportionately more intense. On the one hand I could run under tree branches, jump up and shake one down upon me. On the other hand we have 90 percent humidity.

I’d much rather ride my bike in the rain. I don’t know why, but riding in it is just amusing. Running is something else. At least the cleanup is easier.

Things to read … because reading in the rain would be the best.

This is just hard to conceive. After 6 siblings lose houses in Limestone tornado, family ‘home place’ burns week later:

April 28 was the only time the Farrar siblings didn’t consider living in close proximity a good thing. The homes of six of the seven siblings were struck by the EF-3 tornado that ripped through western Limestone County just before 5 p.m., but the family emerged from a nearby storm shelter grateful. They were all unharmed and “the home place,” built by their late mother and father, sustained the least damage of any of the five homes.

The siblings, children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren moved into temporary housing in local motels and tried to regroup.

Then, exactly one week later, on Monday, May 5, the home place on Parker Road burned after catching fire when power was restored to the area.

This sounds like a lovely family. IRONMAN Mourns Passing of Dean Bullock:

It is with great sadness that we pass on the news that 2013 Kona Inspired winner, Dean Bullock, succumbed Thursday to the brain cancer that forced him to call it a day at the IRONMAN World Championship last October.

A day after Bullock was pulled off the bike course, his wife and nine children did the marathon course for him to take care of his “unfinished business.”

[…]

Last August, Gaylia Osterlund wrote a profile on Bullock. “He talked about death openly,” Osterlund remembers of her interview. “He told me if he died tomorrow or when he was 100, he did not want to be remembered for racing. He wanted to be remembered for his now 37 years of marriage, his kids, grandkids and his faith in his Heavenly Father. He truly believed nothing else mattered.”

He was 59, running the Ironman and had 17 grandchildren.

This one is unique: Denmark’s unprecedented media scandal – A gossip mag takes a page from News of the World’s playbook.

Analytics are the key here: Internal innovation report says the New York Times needs to up its digital game or else.

Have a nice day: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’.


9
May 14

Beware the sign drawings

Here’s a strange way to end a fine week:

Sign

We have a wooded campus. This time of year you can see a few critters. It is enough of a problem that someone thought to make signs. I put that on Twitter, got it in front of the right person and it reached almost 136,000 accounts. Not bad for an easy joke.

Auburn’s Greg Robinson got drafted last night as the second overall pick headed to the St. Louis Rams. (His buddy, running back Tre Mason joined him today. Two other former Tigers are there. The head coach’s son played at Auburn, as did the Ram’s GM.) Greg Robinson has already made his first commercial:

Here’s a video a naval laser weapon destroying a boat:

Can I get one mounted on a shark?

Things to read … because sharks can’t read. (Can they?)

Better late than never, I guess. Heaven forbid journalists ask questions!

Astroturfing, it seems, is an international thing. The readers’ editor on… pro-Russia trolling below the line on Ukraine stories

Be careful what you share. This viral photo from #bringbackourgirls? She’s not Nigerian. And she’s not abducted.

A reader-focused redesign

We wanted to decrease the bounce rate. Increase Time Spent on Site. Increase pageviews per Visit. Increase video views. Increase shares. Increase loyalty. Overall, it’s about engagement. We want our readers to spend more time here. We knew that our previous design was prohibitive.

We had to think about our mobile readers. They had to be in the forefront — not an add-on. We had to think mobile-first.

We should all be doing that by now.

But not until after the weekend, right?