Monday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Monday

“That’s definitely your problem.”

I had a great tale to tell you about today. It was going to be so exciting and wonderful. It would have left you smiling all day, that’s how good this story is. The stuff of dreams and laughter and happy children with puppy dogs. Just joyous stuff.

Instead I’ll tell you about the refrigerator.

Yesterday we broke it.

To be more precise it broke on us. Yay. Something else broke. Finally, however, something broke on its own. That’s a first. It was the same old story though, boy meets girl, girl goes into kitchen. Girl wonders why her feet are wet. Girl discovers the water is coming from the freezer. Girl mutters under her breath. Boy walks in and discovers what the girl’s already discovered.

Everything is melting. The good news is that at the end of the month there is precious little in our fridge and freezer. A few drinks, a door full of condiments, a couple of cheeses and pasta. In the freezer there was chicken, pork and a few containers of ice cream.

And ice. Lots of ice. Though we found it on the floor in its more playful physical form.

To Google. And then to the Whirlpool site. And to the phone, where the helpful voice helpfully points out that the helpful help line isn’t exactly helpful on Sundays. Everything breaks on Sundays.

If that’s not the name of an emo album within the next year I’ll be disappointed.

I discovered the downside to cultivating so many friends who prefer sarcastic humor. I asked for advice on Facebook and Twitter and none of you were any help. Punchlines, sure. Advice, nothing. (You should all be ashamed!)

Because learning is sometimes retroactive, I learned that there isn’t much you can do for a refrigerator as a consumer. We consulted manuals, both hard copy and digital. We surfed the forums. The refrigerator is only eight years old. It worked Friday night. It is plugged in and still humming. The lights work, no breakers have been tripped. None of this made sense.

We called the nice, patient and thoroughly sensible home warranty people. They find a local company. They are, as one might reasonably expect, closed on Sundays. They like emo music.

So, the warranty people tell us …

Hey, that’s the name of the band. “Check out the new album from The Warranty People: Everything breaks on Sundays!”

The warranty people tell us the repair man would be out tomorrow, which is today. The company’s name is a set of initials. Their voicemail is a chipper young woman who’s just proud, proud, proud to be recording this outgoing message. I liked my chances.

The repairman, our new best friend, came out today. His name is Rambo. He looks like what might have happened if John Rambo had, instead of being a West Coast drifter, turned into an HVAC, refrigerator guy who preferred a gray jumpsuit.

He walked right in and identified the kitchen area, tipped off no doubt by the counters and various kitchen accoutrement and paraphernalia. We really should disguise the room a bit more. Also the ice coolers stacked with our hopefully still chilled foodstuffs are a good hint.

We’d moved the surrounding clutter. I’ve already inspected the back of the refrigerator, which is much like my inspection under the hood of a modern car. Everything is … there. Few pieces sneak out under cover of darkness. (I lock up, and the parts lack the height and opposing thumbs required to negotiate the door.)

Rambo pulled off that little piece of cardboard at the bottom of the refrigerator. Yours probably has one too. It is dusty in there. And I hope yours is as well, otherwise this is just embarrassing. He looked and he poked and he turned on his flashlight. He removed a piece. He shook it. It rattled.

“That’s definitely your problem,” he declares.

Turns out this is the starting whatsits on the compressor and it has burned up, hence the rattle, which is apparently the part that is broken. It is a common piece, he said, and he looked to see if there is one in his truck.

There is not.

He must order the part. Hopefully, he says, it will be here this week.

Now look, Stallone, I understand you can’t control FedEx. I appreciate that you’re only covering your bases. But don’t you think it would be a little odd that a common piece can’t be identified, located, put on a truck and shipped here before the week is out?

Can I just go down to the local hardware shop, show them this thing — taking care to rattle it, so they know it is broken — and ask them for a replacement part?

I paid Rambo, who is a very nice guy. He said he’ll make sure the part gets ordered today, which is good, because I have three coolers of food and ice sitting on the floor. He promised to come back as soon as the part is in to make everything nice and frosty.

We bought dry ice at the local dry ice distribution center. (They also offer groceries, it turns out.) And I learned why you don’t touch dry ice. You can get an exposure burn in just a few seconds. Fortunately everything is cooling, because I have solid carbon dioxide in my kitchen.

Of course we had an extra refrigerator before we moved. We just had to sell it. For some reason it was agreed that an extra set of every appliance was being just a bit too overcautious. We regret that decision today. We let the old one go cheap too, according to my hasty and desperate searching this weekend. But we let it go to a couple who were in a similar situation. Hopefully the karma will be repaid in the form of a quick repair.

We ate freshly thawed chicken tonight. No one is ill or dead. (The long awaited second album from The Warranty People … )

So let’s keep count: air conditioner (in August, which has to be worth two points), the shower and the refrigerator.

To cheer us up, the best part of the Internet today is here:

This is a news website article about a scientific paper

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of “scare quotes” to ensure that it’s clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research “challenges”.

If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.

The entire piece is worth your time. I can only assume that the author had a few minutes before his deadline, but none of the things in the press release folder or quick searches on Google inspired him. We are the better for it.

Monday history: First, check out this video from 1970. Unfortunately I can not embed it, because the site is from 1972.

That road, quiet and peaceful and uninteresting as the clip is, is now a big road in Birmingham. It was quiet in that shot in large part because the corridor was brand new. Construction started in 1962 with the first blast through the mountain. The cut was completed in 1967, the highway opened in 1970.

In part this corridor helped boost development in the southern suburbs. Homewood, Vestavia and Mountain Brook and even Hoover were there (though Hoover was brand new), but they hadn’t yet realized their full potential.

Driving through the mountain you can see about 150 million years of history, including a vein of the red ore that was so vital in the city’s early prosperity. The roadwork yielded a new species of trilobite. Not a computer measurement, Acaste birminghamensis was an ancient marine anthropod. The area, because of the geology lesson it provides, is one of seven Alabama National Natural Landmarks.

So that was then, 1970. This is now:

Note the changes. Note the similarities. Should have driven it during rush hour instead of mid-morning.

That’s enough for one day. if you have a little plastic cube (that doesn’t rattle) which can be somehow magically plugged into my refrigerator, please leave a comment.

journalism / Monday / Samford / video — Comments Off
20
Sep 10

The joys of AP Style

AP Style, we all love it. We loved to learn it. And now I love to teach it.

Love might be a strong word.

I do like to use it. I do enjoy a good editing session. Teaching AP Style is of course valuable. Designing the lecture isn’t the most fun you’ve ever had with the venerable old reference book — and yes, I still have my original Stylebook.

And, no, I will not start the ebay search for the original Stylebook.

I’ve been condensing a bunch of style tips, however, and passed those around to my editing class. The trick is to not repeat word-for-word the paper you’ve given to students.

So I have some editing exercises for tomorrow. Each of these stories, a fatal arson, a domestic dispute, bad city government and more, take place in one fake city. It sounds like a terrible place to live. If I ever teach a public relations class I’ll have to use the same fake city when I write press releases about the new park for special needs children and green initiatives downtown, just to balance things out.

Because one does not wish to offend the fictional residents of a fictional city, that’s why.

Had lunch at Pannie-George’s, a meat-and-three that quotes Nehemiah on their business cards and website. Can’t go wrong there. Or here:

We are not just a restaurant for people to come and eat, but it is a place where people are welcomed and treated like a respected member of the Pannie-George’s family … The main ingredient in our food is LOVE.

I’m told the pork chops are delicious, but I only eat those at home. I had the chicken and rice, but the sweet potatoes were the biggest hit. And the people there. Everyone was “Love” or “Sugar” or “Hon” in that extended Southern family of nurture kind of way.

It is knowing that someone else’s family has wrapped their arms around you, making their family bigger and role more important. That’s a tireless feeling.

But we’re eating lunch with a friend who’s about to take a trip to northern Europe. He’s seeking my advice because I just came back from Europe. It feels stupid to give this advice because I’ve been to southern Europe and you know there are differences. Why else have the distinctions?

So, never mind, dear friend that you are going to different countries let alone different cities than I visited, I get to play the expert. Because my advice on Rome will be so helpful to him in Prague. But I spent two weeks in Europe; I’m an expert on generalities.

Here’s the book, here’s the money wallet. Watch your backpack, find the embassy. Don’t worry, you will look like an American. I’m guessing all of this was different a century ago, or people just didn’t write about their banal worries and fears in their travelogues. Of course fellow travelers then couldn’t download region specific podcasts to their iPads, and they didn’t have in-seat movies on their steamships, so the trade offs probably balance out.

Haven’t watched Monday Night Football in several years. My interest in the professional game has more than waned, I suppose. I blame the broadcasting. This isn’t helping:

Ouch. I turned on the television this evening out of want for background noise and that was the second thing on the screen. I think there’s a comma splice in the scripted copy.

Tomorrow: class! The paper! Black and whites! More!

Monday — Comments Off
13
Sep 10

Go boom

I fell over sideways this morning. (I’m fine.) I was standing one moment, saw everything close in and leaned to the right for support.

And then I heard a crash, terracotta on marble. When I opened my eyes I was sitting in a heap on the bathroom floor. This incredibly detailed recreation all happened within a second or two:

Everything about the morning flashed through my mind, like a dream.

Was it a dream? Then I’m still asleep. This is an uncomfortable position in which to sleep.

I open my eyes, look around. This is the bathroom.

I blink. Open my eyes again.

Where am I?

My brain had shut down, rebooted and found the RAM and ROM lacking. It usually is.

This looks like a bathroom. Why am I in a bathroom?

Hey, she looks familiar.

The Yankee heard the crash and found her way to … wherever I was. She says I didn’t recognize her at first, but, really, I was just trying to overcome the lack of processing my brain was doing. It was like waking up with that brief uncertainty of where you are, but it was taking a lot longer than the half-second it should.

Finally I figured out I was not in a bathroom, but our bathroom. The extra one, to be exact.

The color scheme, I think, was throwing me off. Try it. The first time you wake up in the second bathroom of your house is disconcerting.

So I recognize the place. I know who my lovely bride is. We talk.

She decides I’m OK. We make a joke. “Can’t wait to tell our friends about this!”

I have two bruises forming on my left shoulder, where I apparently fell into the counter. My jaw is sore. I clipped it on the corner of the counter, too, but is OK. My other arm took a go at the counter as well.

Manual dexterity tests are fine. I can speak, smile, raise both arms. I don’t have any other symptoms, so no stroke! The Yankee is a doctor, you know. And she used to be an EMT.

Anyway, the rest of the day I’ve been laughing at myself. I’ve blacked out three times in the last 15 years. Two of them have been in a bathroom.

A bit light headed for most of the day, but that could be the school work. I’m building a lecture on punctuation.

Auburn / football / memories / Monday — Comments Off
6
Sep 10

Some Mondays are slower than others

And some Mondays the ideas come slower.

My Monday? I spent the entire day on class prep. How does one spend two hours on grammar and keep students interested?

I think I’ll have about 75 minutes, actually. And then I’ll do a case study.

I liked case studies. That was my favorite class exercise, talking about a story or circumstance and weighing the pros and cons, taking the other position just for fun. It was a bit Socratic. A friend of mine tells me I’d like law school for this same reason. For once I’ll just believe him and not find out for myself.

The thing I really missed, after graduating and finding myself in a newsroom, were those conversations. We just never had time. Too many deadlines. And, in some later newsrooms, there weren’t that many people. At al.com we had these discussions, but it was about a lot of 2.0 and 3.0 topics.

Do students still enjoy case studies? I bring up one or two in the Crimson newsroom when I can. Tomorrow I’ll add one to my classroom goody bag.

So, yes. this took a great deal of the day. But the slide show, for the grammar, should be thorough.

We grilled steaks tonight. Had dinner over the Boise State-Virginia Tech game. Very fun to watch. They both look fast, if only Virginia Tech played with more certainty early. Since it was a back and forth game, though, and since Boise is from, well, Boise, I’m sure people will argue they haven’t proven themselves. They get a sponge cake of scheduling every year, but they beat everyone they play, even in the marquee, game of the week settings halfway across the country. Boise State belongs.

Those uniforms do not. Just dreadful stuff. The game looked like Tecmo Bowl, 8-bit graphics and a flea flicker to start the action followed by calls with little internal logic. Not that anyone noticed, every fanbase was too busy silently thanking the merchandising gods that their school wasn’t in a Nike deal. And the Nike fans were just dreading the next big “experiment.”

When I was in undergrad — two memories in one post! — someone had the nice idea to add an orange shadowbox under the jersey numbers. You would have thought they were tearing down beloved campus buildings based on the response. It is hard to imagine what would happen if Nike had the Auburn unis with which to tinker.

Not much else here for now. No history lessons today. The day just got away from me. Sorry about that. It won’t happen again.

Anyway, enjoy your four day office jaunt. And while you’re already mentally coasting into Wednesday, you can join me in wondering why someone didn’t advocate for Labor Week.

Just something to think about.

Auburn / iPhone / Monday / photo / Samford / video — Comments Off
30
Aug 10

The corn is not raw; it is mildly cooked

I’m going to wonder this for years — perhaps long after the chore is no longer mine, perhaps long after I’m in a different place in life entirely — but how does the organizing of a one day workshop take up so much time? My task these last few days, and for the next several days, will be to call teachers.

Do you know when the best time to catch teachers at work is? During the day.

Do you happen to also know what they typical spend their day doing?

Aren’t you surprised some office assistant somewhere in America hasn’t gone crazy and hacked up phone lines? After all, this is only the 6,428th time it has been said this school year, “She’s in class!”

So that was the morning. Emails and phone calls and searching for Email addresses and the proper person for whom to leave a message.

The afternoon I spent putting the final polish on the syllabus I’ll hand out tomorrow. I’m teaching an editing class this term. I’m giving spelling tests, among other things.

I don’t remember how this was received when I was in a similar class way back then, but I’m sure we thought the idea of a spelling test was a novel idea. And then we took those tests, carefully calculated to find the most challenging words in English or other languages that might one day be used by an American journalist. Having come full circle I’ve included some of those words on my list.

Tomorrow, on the first day of the class, I might also give a quiz. Set the tone. Or, as the hip kids say “Be THAT professor.”

I’m going to show a video, though, so I can also be THAT professor. And I’ll talk about typos in banners and semi-permanent paintings and … well, there is always this example if you really need one:

It was supposed to say “hopefuls,” but “when we’re typing and the computers freeze, sometimes it takes so long to unfreeze that we completely forget what we were trying to do when it froze,” explains the editor.

I’ve no doubt that was simply a horrible mistake. The Alligator is a fine paper. And the explanation strikes me as perfectly reasonable. The excuse could use a little more punching up. “We forget” might not satisfy the aggrieved parties.

Grilling

We grilled out tonight and I reminded myself of a painful less. When lighting fire to the grill, be careful you don’t catch an ember in your eye.

I’d never forgotten that one, actually, it is always good to say out loud, however.

What I did forget was the exact inventory of what was going on the grill. Two pork chops, I thought, I can be economical with the briquettes. But I’d forgotten the corn until The Yankee came home and reminded me that I’d requested roasted corn. So there was an attempt to cook everything over the small mass of charcoal. That proved unsatisfactory. So I spread a few more of the magical black rocks that give fire on the other side of the grill. And now I have a flame discrepancy. So I let it burn and then covered the grill thinking I’d starve the fire. Which I did, right out.

So now nothing was grilling at the proper pace and, really, this is the worst part of my day. Life is so good.

The pork chops were good. The Yankee has this nice seasoning that we must now order online. Stores stopped stocking it, so messengers from Jakarta now deliver it to our door. It goes great with pork and is the sort of thing that makes you think it should stand well on any dish. But, then, if you put it on fish the salmon would stand up and say “Keep it on the swine, friend.”

The corn was a little under-done, but 45 extra seconds on a grill for a fresh ear of corn is not a catastrophe.

Last thing for the night is a fun new iPhone app I discovered. Storyrobe is a free app that let’s you make slideshows (as mp4s) from your photos. You record narration, control when the image flips and can share your project via Email or YouTube.

The finished product is a bit small, but this could be a useful app for a journalist on the go, or to share events with friends and family. Or even storyboarding jokes. We’ve been doing that tonight too. You’d have a hard time finding something free that can make you laugh for as long as this has done.

You have to know all of the ways you can use the tools you download. Knowing the silly ways are important, too.