Did that today. And if that reads sarcastic it shouldn’t, I actually enjoy the day we talk about resumes. I get to think fondly back upon all the people that have helped me write and edit them over the years. Those were big favors. I’m glad to be able to do it for others as part of a class.

Also scheduled a lot of field trips today. Scheduled some guest speakers. Signed a lot of paperwork. Met a new section editor. Wrote a lot. Read a great deal. Had too much lunch, two good class sessions and got rained on a fair amount. Or drizzled on, at least.

A cold drizzle is the worst liquid precipitation when it comes to morale. It could just rain, which is something you can be in for a moment and then laugh about. It could sprinkle, and those drops you can avoid. The heavens could open and a monsoon descend into the small pond you didn’t realize you were standing in — at least we have the good sense to stay inside when that happens. But drizzle? A drizzle you feel like you can just walk through without consequence. Then you get back inside and see the impact on your slacks and think at least I’m not wearing cashmere.

Drizzle is the fog form with a fear of commitment, the undercooked and runny part of a day’s weather. Who needs drizzle?

Links: On my journalism blog at Samford the past few days I’ve written about the end run around journalists, the history of yellow journalism, found a reminder about the importance of audio and linked to Frank LoMonte’s terrific reaction to Ward v. Polite.

At TWER Jeremy asked me to rewrite my most famous open letter on National Signing Day. I am no fan of recruitment or signing day in general, but I believe in the promise of what it should be, which is the spirit from which that letter originates. It is the easiest thing to do. I’ve written it three years in a row now and I’m not smart enough to know how to improve upon it. So I polish it and move a few things around. I try to remove unnecessary words, but this time four or five extras made their way into it. It manages to stir the alumni set, though, so that’s good. Maybe it’ll drift into the intended hands one day, too. It does good traffic, he says.

Maybe some of them have surfed back this way. Did you? Thanks for visiting!

Not to be weepy about it — he’d make a joke about that, I think, in a wry way that amused you and left no doubt about his point — but we learned today that we lost a talented scholar and a good man.

Dr. Gary Copeland was a professor emeritus and former department head of the TCF program at the University of Alabama. Alabama was lucky to have him. He was my first teacher in the doctoral program. He was a terrific scholar, brilliant in his work and kind in his demeanor. He was also kind enough to serve on my comprehensive exam committee, among his last chores before retiring.

One of the last times I saw him was as he left that committee. We shook hands, I thanked him for his help and he headed out the door to some other meeting that needed more of his precious time.

My favorite memories are of Dr. Copeland giving: tickets to the Kiwanis Pancake Breakfast; his seats at a gymnastics meet; cookies for class and his strategies on navigating conferences and academia and life. From Dr. Copeland we received a lot, both small and significant. Sometimes you would only come to realize it much later. It was surprising all of the things he managed to seep into his conversations.

He had a gentle spirit and it was a privilege to study with him. It remains a privilege when we sometimes find ourselves citing his work. It is a great shame that he did not get to enjoy more time after retirement with his beloved grandchildren.

Those of us lucky enough to know him only a tiny bit — that Emmy belongs to one of his former students who wanted to display it in the professor’s office — can’t help but be saddened by the news and can’t imagine his family’s grief.

And so, of course, today was the day my printer decided to miscount the number of things I asked it to print. It also decided to jam about 90 percent of the way through.

“So it is going to be a Monday, eh, HP?”

My printer had nothing to see. Its gears were full of mutilated pulp.

Dig the paper out, successfully pulling out only microfibers at a time. I have some special chemical blend of paper that shears at the subatomic level. You can pull on this stuff for hours and not get it out from the reticent printer’s teeth.

With every passing year this becomes more entertaining to me. My youngest step-sibling is working her way through undergrad, but she’ll be done soon. When that happens I won’t be able to try to convince the new students that I understand their plight. “We’re practically the same generation,” is the implication, despite my silvering hair.

This has turned itself into a running cinematic joke in my classes based on a conversation I had with students a couple of years ago. For whatever reason the gag hinges on Spaceballs as the denouement of movie humor. I don’t have a real theory that we crossed some boundary in 1987; Spaceballs was simply the high water mark of post-modern film parodies, he said, hoping it made him sound sophisticated.

Anyway, almost everyone in the class said they’ve seen the movie.

“One day” I told them, “I will start a semester by saying if you haven’t seen the film don’t come back until you do. I will give bonus points for the first person that catches a Spaceballs reference.”

They all sat up.

“That will not be this class,” I said.

They slid back down into their seats.

Two posts on my school blog today. One links to a great list of necessities for every mobile journalist. The other asks the question “Can a good journalist be a good capitalist?” More and more we should be thinking of questions like that.

Flush and full, busy first day back. By tomorrow, perhaps Wednesday, everything will be moving at a normal speed again.

Except the printer.

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.

The horses jumped and performed various routines to demonstrate riders’ command over the animals. Some of the things going on in the Hunt Seat arena will need some official explanation for, but things seems a little more straightforward in the Western area, where we saw dramatic stopping:

All I can say is that defending national champion, top-ranked Auburn hosted and beat fourth-ranked Oklahoma State. They announced scores for individual routines, but those must somehow get folded into the overall meet, which Auburn won 11-8. Also, in the Western arena, there were a lot of world champion and American youth champion belt buckles.

There’s a lot going on there, a lot to learn. And I’m guessing the visiting team is always at a disadvantage since they’re working horses they’ve never ridden before.

I’d suggest a great, clownish scoring seminar at the beginning of the meet. It’d work wonders for the kids — who rode ponies, bounced in a moonwalk and participated in stick-horse races — and people like me. We were eavesdropping on other conversations to pick up bits and pieces of the technique and strategy. I came away thinking the home team should wear white hats and the visiting team should wear black, just so you’d know good from bad. (No one is bad, of course, but we’re dealing with western imagery here.)

Beautiful day to be outside, though, and lots of great pictures for tomorrow.

So I bit the bullet to see about getting it done professionally. (The next time you are on the market for a car, add this to your list of things to investigate.)

After a few conversations with Rick, the nice manager of one of the local service centers I learned that I had picked up the wrong bulb. So, you know, good thing I didn’t replace it myself.

“The bulb you need” the moisture hating xenon bulb, “would cost $180″ he said.

He offered to install an after market bulb, but estimated those would run about $120. But there was still the moisture problem. He found a place where I’d been dinged in a parking lot. It was his considered professional opinion that perhaps that introduced the moisture. He suggested I take a repair estimate to my insurance agent and get them to fix it. I’d be out the deductible — which is not cheap — but if I bought the new headlight assembly it would be around $800, he said.

So I talked with Rick’s colleague Jerry. He asked who my insurance is with and said he’d write it and I could fight it. That’s all you can do, right? To fix the damage that Rick pointed out, which was small and simply an means to the end of getting the headlight repaired, he estimated it at $1,700 or so of work.

They should make sure you’re sitting down, have a loved one with you and a complimentary nitro pill for such news.

I came home and did what I do best: I found brand new after market parts online. I called Jerry who said he’d put my parts on for a minimal fee if I brought them to the shop. Returning to the computer I bought all new moisture-fearing xenon bulbs and a driver’s side headlight assembly. It still wasn’t cheap, but it is going to cost around half of my deductible.

I long for the days of removing two bolts, removing and installing a new bulb in 10 minutes for about $7 of bulb. And this is why you should ask about the headlights when you are car shopping.

And now a gymnastics story.

I started going to gymnastics meets with my lovely bride when we first met, so that’s about six years of season tickets. We watched the great Alabama gymnastics team for four years, while we were both in grad school at UAB and then while in the PhD program at Alabama. During that time we also caught an SEC championship meet and the national championship one year. This is our second year attending meets at Auburn.

There’s never been a more exciting meet than tonight’s.

Look at the ladies in the background of that picture. They shared a giddy, explosive, relevatory feeling running throughout Auburn Arena where the 16th-ranked Tigers had Alabama on the ropes. The Tide has beaten Auburn in their last 103 meets, which may be the entire history of gymnastics at the two schools. Tonight the juggernaut Alabama squad was fighting for their life. The announced crowd of 7,299, a gymnastics attendance record for Auburn, was electric as the tension and energy grew through the last routines.

Alabama was Alabama, but one more slip from the defending national champions and Auburn would claim a huge upset. That Auburn team is young and talented — a true freshman is anchoring the floor routines — and they’ve won the crowd. They’re so, so close. Tonight they were 196.325-196.250, close. It was a great thrill to see.

The company announced Thursday that it could start censoring certain content in certain countries, a sort of micro-censorship widget that would pop up up in a grey box on the Twitter feed.

“Tweet withheld,” it would read “This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Country.”

Twitter explained the change in a blog post on Thursday: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.”

Twitter is growing up. There’s some censorship angst among the commentariat, but people have to remember: Twitter is a business. They’re not in the business of changing laws that we’d find unpalatable here at home.

When you look into the details there is a degree of transparency to the process Twitter is putting in place.

Information wants to be free. People need to speak with other people. This move by Twitter might limit this particular tool in times of domestic turmoil in hotspots, something else will always emerge. Or work arounds will be found. (Indeed, it seems that took just a few hours.)

In short, Twitter could have done far more here, which would have been far less.

This is reckless and frightening:

Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

The bill was introduced last week and a legislative committee met this morning to discuss the bill, which is even more far-reaching than the federal analog.

The legislation was abandoned by its author sometime around that committee meeting:

Rep. Kymberly Pine, an Oahu Republican and the House minority floor leader, told CNET this evening that her intention was to protect “victims of crime,” not compile virtual dossiers on every resident of–or visitor to–the Aloha State who uses the Internet.

“We do not want to know where everyone goes on the Internet,” Pine said. “That’s not our interest. We just want the ability for law enforcement to be able to capture the activities of crime.”

Pine acknowledged that civil libertarians and industry representatives have leveled severe criticism of the unprecedented legislation, which even the U.S. Justice Department did not propose when calling for new data retention laws last year. A Hawaii House of Representatives committee met this morning to consider the bill, which was tabled.

What will they think of next? Brain erasing? Oh yeah …

For decades scientists believed that long-term memories were immutable—unstable for a few hours and then etched into the brain for good. Research now suggests that recalling a memory causes it to revert temporarily to an insecure state, in which the recollection can be added to, modified, even erased. “Memory is more dynamic, more fluid and malleable than we thought,” says neuroscientist Daniela Schiller of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

That idea, brought to the fore about a decade ago, has opened up a new controversial research area exploring the possibility of deleting, or at least muting, parts of human memory with drugs or targeted therapies. Some experts have found that a drug used to treat high blood pressure works to unseat recollections; others are testing novel biochemical means or behavioral interventions to interfere with unwanted remembrances

The application is still limited in trials, but the implications are fascinating.

Unemployment numbers: This came from Todd Stacy, an aide to Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard. The speaker presented numbers showing Alabama’s unemployment percentage diving below regional and national averages. One hopes the good news continues.

(Disclosure: Years ago Hubbard was my employer. Nice gentleman, too.)

I did not ride today. The Yankee pronounced it yucky, and I had no desire to ride in such a condition. (She did though.) Truthfully, the conditions didn’t bother me much, but I noticed my legs were sore before I even put my feet on the floor this morning.

Better to take the day off, I figured. Clearly I have a lot of work to do towards realizing my larger cycling goals. Tomorrow, though, I’ll have a big day in the saddle.

So I worked instead. Emails, syllabi, networking, reading. I do so much reading that someone should write a book about it. No one would read the thing, though. Except me.

The fun reading is fun, at least. Last night I finished Mark Beaumont’s The Man Who Cycled the World. Eyeing a plan of about 100 miles a day, Beaumont started in Paris, rode through Europe, the Middle East, across India and part of Asia. He suffered through the barren portions of Australia, raced through New Zealand and then crossed the U.S. (He got mugged in the States, perhaps making Louisiana as memorable as his experience in Pakistan.) Finally he made it to Portugal, Spain and back to Paris. He shaved two months off the world record.

It is an interesting premise, and a Herculean feat of speed and endurance. The read becomes a bit repetitive. That’s hardly a fault, though. The guy is writing about the most repetitive thing one can conceive: “I pushed my feet around in circles for six months. And, also, saddle sores!” So the intriguing part is the mental grind, and that’s probably one of the hardest things to write about. By the time he reaches the southeastern U.S. his point is made.

There are a few inaccuracies in his recounting, and it feels like he was still writing the thing while trying to overcome the bicycle burnout. The thing that amazes me is how much of his trip he managed to not research, because you think you would devote a great deal of time to that.

I was hoping for more people and vivid descriptions, but he’s an adventurer who wrote a book rather than an author who developed great calves and cardio. If you aren’t intrigued by cycling or ultra-endurance sport this book probably isn’t for you.

Had dinner with Shane and Brian tonight. We visited Logan’s, where they have a new menu. You can gorge on peanuts and rolls and get the marrow of a steak bone along side a sodium supplemented potato, all for $7.99.

I told a joke.

Shane: “Country people don’t say ‘extension’ they say ‘stension’.”

Me: They don’t need ‘straneous letters.

The waitress thought the joke killed. Of course, she was new. Maybe she didn’t know any better.

Encouraging news from Caroline Little, the president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America Foundation in a story about the merger of the NAA and the American Press Institute. The audience has moved to different places is is just moving to different places. We have to move with them, alongside them or, when possible, before them.

The new outfit will “create a dynamic new organization focused on meeting newspapers’ crucial multimedia training and development needs,” according to the press release. The attitude behind Little’s quote is the most encouraging part.

Cycled 26 miles at 15 mph yesterday. It was inspired pedaling, really. Got aggressive through the gears, raced the computer, ignored the lack of oxygen in my lungs and pressed on.

The CatEye computer I received for Christmas has been a great present so far, giving me empirical data to consider. There is a lot of time in a ride to ponder lots of things, including the numbers that pop up on the tiny LED screen. And because of that, and a naturally competitive nature, the CatEye might have been a bad gift. There’s nothing to do but try to top those numbers, after all. So that will be tomorrow.

Today was a syllabus day. Class starts back Monday and there is plenty to design and rework, even for a class I’ve taught before. I enjoy this particular class because it brings in a lot of outside experts to interact with students. That involves some orchestration, of course, and that’s also been a big part of today and, probably, the rest of the week.

Logisitics: the art of moving puzzle pieces into any number of permutations that demonstrates “I don’t have all of the pieces.”

Only ABC did not get that memo:

ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann — the best in the business and there’s no discussion on this — took his national network to task. He suggested Diane Sawyer “get a clue” and challenged her to a debate on the issue. His audience were also indignant, writing first on the local site and then at the ABC homesite, where the chastising grew even louder. Those comments are worth a read.

We live in a dangerous area when it comes to spring weather. December and January are dangerous here too. Storms fall out of the sky. Tornadoes flare up and destroy property and sometimes take lives, but the technology and science now allow meteorologists to give days worth of advance warning. Forecasting that was not available a generation ago saves untold numbers of lives every year.

And so Spann took umbrage. His colleagues at KATV in Arkansas, where other tornadoes touched down, did too.

After today’s social media uproar ABC News decided to interview Spann today. It was scheduled and then canceled and rescheduled. Somewhere in there ABC had to stoop to spinning their own newscast:

“The report that aired Monday was referring to the fact that many families were surprised because they were asleep when the tornado hit in the middle of the night,” an ABC spokesperson says. “‘World News’ will cover the latest on the aftermath of the tornadoes tonight and will clarify the warning and advance forecasts given.”

Not even especially good spin, but there it was all the same.

Their newscast this evening?

Spann wrote on his site that he was grateful for the interview and that the important message about the outdoor sirens was shared, but …

There was no apology, or mention of the botched story yesterday when Diane Sawyer said the pre-dawn tornadoes Monday were a “surprise” with “no warning”. A little odd how you just go from that one day, to a story on how good the warning process was the next day. But, I am not a journalist and maybe that is just the way you do it. Seems strange. I would imagine Diane actually didn’t write that copy, but she will probably think twice about fact checking on lead story intros.

[...]

My frustration with the situation yesterday is shared by ALL of those hard working people involved in the warning process. The National Weather Service, the EM community (emergency managers), and broadcast meteorologists. I felt that these people were devalued and insulted yesterday.

It has been an interesting day in local-national media.

The storms missed us entirely, all going far north. We had some much needed rain and that’s all. We’ll get some more later this week, hopefully without the storms. I’m sure ABC hopes that’s the case.

Beautiful day today. I got in a 26 mile ride at a nice, even 15 mile per hour pace. Now let’s see if I can do that again tomorrow.

Got a lot of work done otherwise, and made a handful of phone calls. More work tomorrow, more emails and reading and some time on the bike. We’re expecting 72-degrees tomorrow for the first time this year. Of course I’ll be riding …

I should have picked a different day.

So I set out to Walmart, where they have many things I don’t need, but exactly one of the things I do need. (One thing I need but could not get at the store: batteries. This should have been the signal to go do something else, anything else.)

But I did find a specific headlight bulb. The gentleman working in automotive had to unlock the bulb — which cost $7.88 — from the display hook. The cardboard, he said “has some sort of security device in it.”

They’re like currency on the inside.

He did not laugh, and so we know he doesn’t watch movies set in prisons. He was a very nice guy. I’d picked the wrong bulb and he patiently explained the difference between the two and then had to unlock the proper bulb. I learned more about halogen in one box store conversation than I’d ever thought possible.

They did not have the other things I needed, so I returned home to improve my headlight situation. Only I can’t, because I drive a Nissan, which means to get to the headlight you have to go through the wheel well.

There are three rivets that must be removed from the wheel well — and, truly, if you find instructions for headlights beginning with “Turn the wheel all the well to the right” just stop. When you’ve removed the rivets you must pull out a screw that attaches the wheel well from the bumper.

I’m changing a headlight.

You peel back the wheel well. From there you crane your neck, turn your flashlight to anti-gravity mode so it floats in just the right spot and, well, good luck.

This is where the directions diverged from my car’s reality. And I can’t take the entire plastic light globe off. This is important because I have some fancy 24th century headlight that requires a perfectly dry operating environment — because they are more efficient — or it kills the bulb. And my globe has moisture in it. So I have to take it to someone to fix.

I called a dealership about this, and the polite word for this procedure is extortion.

So I put the wheel well back inside the bumper, reapply the screw holding the two together and then insert the three rivets to their mounted position. I turned the wheel back to the standard position and went to the hardware store.

Imagine walking into a place with saws and drills and drywall putty with this playing over the speakers:

I did find the sink repair kit. We have a slow drip in the kitchen. If you hop on one foot and the wind is blowing out of the northwest you can find a sweet spot and stop the leak. Otherwise you’re going to hear a drop of water every so often.

I pick up the set of springs, washers and other things. Having watched a video, and read the instructions, I’m confident this is a quick fix, somewhere in the easy category.

I find the batteries I need that Walmart did not have. I check out.

I return home to the dripping sink and assemble my tools. The first step is to remove the handle from the rest of the apparatus. One allen wrench later and the handle is in the sink. Success! Now the cap assembly must come off so that we can find the parts that need to be replaced.

The cap assembly will not come off. It seems that the water has fused one piece of metal to another. Twisting, turning, banging, spinning, muttering, nothing would set the thing free. I torqued it so hard that I could turn the entire faucet assembly from the sink. This is where you hear your parents voices in your head: Don’t force it.

So the repair kit is going back to the store and I’ll just blame my impressively hard water and the curse of whatever spirits we’ve angered that live on this property. If you’re keeping score:

• Thermostat
• Shower head
• Refrigerator
• Dishwasher
• Dishwasher again
• Cable, multiple times
• Garage door button
• Air conditioner contact
• Two separate minor plumbing issues
• The sink of doom

We’ve lived here 17 months.

Finally, I replaced the battery in the key fob to my car. There’s a telltale in the dash that tells you when the battery is low. This is a precise operation. In fact, operation is a good term, because you need to work in a completely sterile environment and operate your Fulcrumbot 6000 with a precise caliper measurement to remove and replace the batter. And, I guess also because my car is a Nissan, it requires a battery that merely glancing at with human eyes “significantly reduces the battery’s charge.”

Having separated the fob, prying free the dying battery and maneuvering the new battery into place with a complex series of electromagnetic acrobatics, I have gotten at least one item off the list. Go out to the car, crank the engine and … the low battery telltale is still on.

Also, I received my third piece of correspondence telling me that I wouldn’t be paid for an article I wrote last year. For a publisher that is apparently shirking their responsibilities while going out of business they certainly are prolific.

And my day was nothing like this guy’s:

The tornado ripped the roof and wall off of half of the the Snider’s home, including their baby’s room. He credits the siren with saving their lives, particularly his daughter’s life.

“If that siren had not gone off, my baby would have been gone,” he said. “The crib was still there, but it sucked the sheets off of it.”

Lucky guy. You aren’t supposed to depend on those outdoor sirens as a warning — they aren’t designed for indoor alarms or to wake up people in the middle of the night, but are rather intended to get people back inside to safety — but Charles Snider will never live out of earshot of one.