She earned all the bling. That’s all hers. Mine doesn’t fit on there. So she has a display and it is already filled. Which, I guess, means she needs another one.
She got another present, which will of course arrive 15 minutes after the conclusion of her birthday. So, we figured, the birthday doesn’t end until the last present is in.
We went to the best Japanese steakhouse in town. The food was nice. The chef was talented.
We sat with a couple on a date and a family of five celebrating their oldest son’s birthday. Both the male date and the dad couldn’t be attentive at the table. The date had to continually check his fantasy football scores on his phone. The dad had to text with Coach Bob, no doubt an important member of the family with an unfortunate name or coach of the kid’s baseball team who was not invited to the dinner. The mother was … displeased.
The little girl said “I looked at the fire and I wasn’t scared!”
The oldest boy, the birthday boy, was transfixed by the fire.
You hate to make snap judgments from a short cross section of a family’s life but sometimes they make it easy.
We had ice cream cake for dessert. It was a lovely evening.
The nice people at Verge Pipe Media asked me to visit with them today to talk about storytelling and multimedia tools. I had a nice time. I hope they did.
I’d built an entire slideshow presentation, complete with silly and memorable clip art. Didn’t use it. Did talk about finding the real story in the story and the value of knowing which tool to use to tell the story. We talked about writing and, for the interns, the skill set that the job market is looking for today.
I was asked about the need for quality, which was a great topic in the slideshow that we didn’t get to. I used this example:
No video so far of tonight’s 8:30p CT bright fireball/meteor that streaked over the southern sky. Hundreds of reports from 5 states
Those two words “so far” are an important illustration of where we are. We have gone from “Oh wow, there’s video!?” to “Of course there’s video” in just a few years.
I used my wild west metaphor. I used the industry standards example. I was able to quote author Rick Atkinson’s great analytical line about “a great sorting out.” (Only he was discussing World War II in North Africa.) That let me suggest that we are in, or are approaching, the end of the beginning. And to stand out, the quality now matters because the expectation is that it will exist. Most everything is documented in some way these days. “Good enough” is close to becoming outmoded. How we tell stories now makes all the difference.
The owner gave me some very nice compliments.
Great day @VergePipe_Media started with @kennysmith speaking to the team. Made me miss Lewis Grizzard. That's the best compliment I have.
Physical therapy after that. The therapist got almost all of the problems out of the right shoulder, which were really about my neck. We did the suddenly familiar exercises for the left side to deal with the actual and persistent problem.
You know how the Internet has given us the movie re-cut art form? We can close the genre:
That is the sound the car makes. Which means, I hope, that the battery in the key fob is dying. So I try the other one.
Clickclickclickclick.
Well.
The lights turn on. The radio and the interior light, too.
So it is the battery, since the starter and the alternator have both seemed strong recently.
One 5/16ths wrench and three bolts and the two connectors later and the battery is free. This took just a minute, which is an improvement over the headlights in this car. They can’t be replaced without dropped the entire front end of the car. This battery is also better off than a car I once had that required a mechanic to take out a support bar to simply change batteries.
Because nothing on a car should be simple.
But at least this battery comes out.
Off to get it tested. And that battery failed. But it has been in the car for six years and that’s asking a lot of a battery these days.
So I bought a new battery. Took it home, set it in the engine compartment and started tightening nuts and bolts. Dropped a nut into the deepest, darkest part of the engine compartment. With visions of a bouncing battery tearing through the hood I had to figure out a way to pull out that nut.
I found one of those fridge magnets from a realtor that knows who you are for no reason and thought you might like a football schedule. I put that in right spot, fished it around and found the nut. Take that, MacGyver.
The biggest setback of the day, then, was realizing I have to re-set all of the radio presets in my car radio.
Life is pretty good then, no?
Tried to rent a tuxedo for a wedding, but failed. I’m trying to match a tuxedo that someone else already owns, but it seems that that tux is one this particular suit store sells, but does not rent. Though that’s not what I’ve been told. So I’ll try a different store later.
I just bought a battery, nothing is phasing me today.
Got a flag folded, in preparation for a birthday gift for my grandfather. I visited the local reserve center and there soldiers helped make it official. One of them was a sergeant who’d never folded a flag before. But, she said, she’d always wanted to. They’d just been talking about it, in fact. So they took pictures of her folding the flag. So everybody wins.
And I didn’t have to buy a starter or an alternator.
Everybody wins.
Except that we’ve lost. A lot. Here are a series of disconcerting headlines:
One of the first emails I received this morning was the first I’ve received on the Affordable Health Care Act. It included this line: “Unfortunately, we do not have details on the exchange coverage or the rates to share with you at this time.”
And this starts in October.
Though, right off the top, there are $65 in fees, and “we do not yet know what the rate increase will be.”
Thanks, Congress.
So I wrote our hard working and now long suffering HR director and asked a few specific questions. You can imagine the stress that gentleman is under.
In the evening I received this tweet:
Was so scared to drive within 20 ft of a biker today in fear that it was @kennysmith because MY GRADE IS IN HIS HANDS. #heholdsgrudges
I tell my students “One of the perks of being in the front of the class is having your pet issues. Here’s mine. Be careful of cyclists. Move over three feet,” and so on. Be careful when you pass them, I say, because you never know when it will be me and I get to grade you.
This joke always does pretty well. And she laughed at it, too.
Someone asked me on Facebook one day how to pass a cyclist. I got it down to five hints:
First: Wait. Just a second. Let a little road get out in front of him or her. She has the same rights the car does, etc.
Second: Know that waiting for 15 seconds until oncoming traffic doesn’t exist isn’t going to make you late.
Third: Just ease over to your left and pass, when clear. Some cities have a three-foot law. Think of that: that’s an arm length, but do err on the side of wider berths when you can. (Not everyone is a champion bike handler.)
Fourth: You don’t have to honk your horn. Unless you are driving an electric, I can hear you.
The programming director at Shoals Radio Group said he is puzzled how a promotional for a local radio station managed to excite many students and parents into believing bombs would be exploding today at area schools.
Rumors of school safety being in jeopardy have steadily increased since promotionals began Monday to bring attention to a format change at Star 94.9. The rumors prompted some parents to keep their children at home today instead of having them attend class as usual. Police and school officials also increased patrols in some schools in an effort to ease fears.
[…]
The promotional, which will continue until Friday when the format change is officially announced, is built around the thought that aliens have taken over the radio station and are trying to figure out what type music appeals to humans.
You can hear the promos here. How people got worked up about them remains a mystery. “Aliens with perfect diction!”
Every now and thenSpencer Hall feels the need to prove he’s a better writer than the rest of us. Give the guy a good story and watch him work. Read this (too long) excerpt and you’ll need to know the rest:
Kurt Vonnegut said that his chief objection to life in general was that it was “too easy, when alive, to make horrible mistakes.” This is what offensive line coaches live with: the notion that for every five simple circles drawn on a board, there are a nearly infinite number of possible threats looming out in the theoretical white space. Offensive plays give skill players arrows. Those arrows point down the field toward an endzone, a stopping point, a celebration. Those five simple circles stay on the board in the same place, and are on duty forever.
They are rough men in the business of protection.
Herb Hand is an offensive line coach at Vanderbilt University, where he might not even be were it not for a long line of random events. Hand got a job at Glenville State under Rich Rodriguez in 1994, a team whose base offense–the spread option that redefined modern football–depended on a play that in itself was the result of an accident, the zone read. A quarterback simply pulled the handoff from the running back, read the defensive end, and turned a mistake into deliberate and deadly strategy. Other coaches might have dismissed it entirely. Rodriguez did not, and now it is run at every level of the game from Pop Warner to the NFL.
Hand would work under Rodriguez at Clemson, and then followed him to West Virginia when Rodriguez was hired to replace Don Nehlen. Hand would recruit, coach tight ends, and recruit, and do all of that in exactly that order, because recruiting is an important activity that sometimes is interrupted by bouts of college football. One of the places Hand recruited was the talent-glutted state of Florida, including Orlando, where on April 27th, 2006 something would hit him in the back of the head with an axe.
The axe blow to the back of the head was a different kind of pain than normal.
And then you finish that story and you think: Great, that’s how we start football season. With teary eyes.
Which is fine, I guess, because we have football. You know, I’ve waited almost my entire life to enjoy picture-in-picture. The technology was rolled out in 1983. I’ve had two televisions that had the tech, but never had the necessary cable setup. Now, on this second television to feature PIP we finally have the opportunity to use it — and during football season! — and I can only manage to watch the same game twice.
But Gatorade ads look great when you see them in double vision!
So picture in picture is, so far, disappointing. And the New Directv setup lasted seven quarters of football, watching and switching between channels, before quitting. So there was a call to tech support. They flipped the magic switch and unkinked the hose on their end. A reset and a reboot later and it works again. Hope we’re not doing that all fall.
Even if we are they’re already proving more competent than Charter ever was.
I think I’ve seen someone do this before. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t done as well as this:
Saving much? I’m thinking of stuffing mattresses. On the same day that Nasdaq just … broke … there was this news.
After a lifetime of working, the median Boomer household has managed to accumulate $12,000 of retirement savings.
That means that 50% have even less than $12,000 for their retirement. These 55 to 64 year olds are up shits creek without a paddle. No wonder the percentage of over 55 people working is at an all-time high. Every age bracket has been living in a land of delusion.
So I went out for a ride. I’m trying to build miles back into the faux-training almost-routine for a couple of century ride possibilities that are coming up. I’ve fallen into a lull of short rides and so today hurt. And it was only a 42-mile route. But, still, that was my biggest ride since April 1st.
Of course you’re right in the middle, the perfect halfway point, when you wonder if you feel like doing it. Stopped at a gas station to buy a Gatorade. It was August, so I’d already had 64 ounces of water. Enjoyed my 32-ounces of fake electrolyte beverage and then re-filled one of my bottles at the gas station. That’s another 24 ounces.
You’re supposed to have some chocolate milk after long rides to repair your muscles. Honestly, I couldn’t drink another thing.
Four new things on Tumblr. More on Twitter. And something tomorrow, too!
