Happy 10/11/12 day. Do you know where you were at 7:08:09? How about 1314:15?
This is Homecoming Weekend at Samford. Because of this and the fall break landing in the same week the student-journalists at The Crimson are publishing a paper tomorrow. So they’re putting it to bed tonight.
See? Here’s proof.
So I watched them put a bit of that together. I saw the lady that works at the local deli. She hadn’t been there the last two times I’d visited.
I thought you’d moved on, I said.
“No, I’ll never get away. Unless it is to start my own place, Liz’s. We’d have banana pudding and red velvet cake. That’s what the people here always make me bring to the potlucks.”
I promised I’d show up twice a week if she did that.
Watched part of the vice-presidential debate, but on mute because, as the rest of the world just learned, Vice President Biden says a lot more with his body than his mouth.
Had a very nice talk with the editor of the paper. She is a smart, driven young woman. Quiet at first, but vividly funny. She aspires to be a photographer, and is very talented. She’s worked for me for three years now, and our department is fortunate to have her.
We have a lot of students like that. Seems like we’re always saying that of someone. “We’re fortunate to have a lady like that in the program” or “We’re going to flunk him so he has to stay another year.”
She runs the paper much like an executive, setting the course and letting the staff do their work. And they’ve come along nicely in a short time. So now I’m going to challenge them to work even harder, make something even better. They are conscientious and diligent and I believe they will soon be making something they are really proud of.
Tonight she asked me what I thought they could do. Now she has a list. And probably regrets asking that question.
But we also discuss things like coning.
People have too much pocket change, apparently.
friends / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Bet the Beatles never made Afghanis dance 5 Oct 12
Someone, a school teacher, and the newest person at the table, asked how we all knew each other. We were having dinner on the deck as the world spun by, enjoying a nice evening out on a warm autumn night. There were people around, but we were probably the loudest and definitely the funniest.
And I realized, as I looked around this table, that I was the strongest link. I’m almost never the strong link. I win the table!
Silly, I know.
There was my friend from undergrad, who was back in town for the game this weekend. She’s a missionary in England, where she’s somehow working magic with free trade coffee growers and … it was a long and complicated story. There was Brian, who’s down to cover the football game. We worked together and have been friends for years, of course.
There was The Yankee, who as usual found herself outnumbered. Everybody at the table was from Alabama or Georgia.
(I told the story again of the time last summer when a man in overalls found out she was from Connecticut and he pulled out his .45 and showed off his AR-15.)
Across from her was the Army officer. We only met last year, but he grew up in all of the same places as I did and he majored in history. We get along. With him was his date, the teacher. And she was a pistol. We think we approve, but it turns out she’s a Georgia Bulldog, so we’re on the fence.
It was a fine time with nice people. After yogurt we spent the rest of the evening watching YouTube videos on the television.
What did people do before YouTube? This is a great way to evaluate the sense of humor of people.
Here’s the Army version of Call Me Maybe:
Think the mortar crew was zeroing in? Think they had to work hard to talk the Afghanis into dancing along?
Auburn / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Charter Cable provides a poor service 4 Oct 12
We’ve lived here for 26 months. Lovely neighborhood. And most of it, when the appliances aren’t breaking — as the washing machine did again last night — has been a joy.
Except for the television, because Charter is really bad. Specifically Charter in Auburn, Alabama is just useless.
The punchline is that Knology, which is here, is equally droll. We called them last night for a quote because, 26 months y’all, and the guy on the phone couldn’t tell us the local channel listing.
But I now know what I can get in Augusta, Ga. I’m not kidding. The guy reads off the Augusta offerings, as if he’s going to roll a cable the 250 miles from there to here. Also, it would be $10 more a month. And when they came to town they managed to cut the cable, the actual physical cable, from Charter. So they’re competent. Direct TV, then. Mostly because Charter Cable in Auburn, Ala. is terrible.
Why is Charter in Auburn, Ala. bad? This system hasn’t worked right for more than two consecutive weeks without some obvious and widespread disruption.
They came along not too long after we moved in, one of the many feeble attempts Charter offered at fixing the problem and added another component to our living room. Because the previously existing tech wasn’t doing enough to stump them. This device, a tuning adapter, was designed to act in such a way so that they wouldn’t lose all of their ones and zeroes. This is like cable on demand. If I don’t dial up the channel, they clinch up the water hose. One presumes, then, when I finally cruise back over to HBO that there will be a gigantic WOOSH as hours or days of shows all flow through the now unrestricted cable directly into my television.
But this device is just part of the problem.
Part of the problem? Why, yes, the cable from Charter Cable of Auburn, Ala. is widespread. The technicians, no fewer than two dozen, but I stopped counting late last year, have all come in, bad mouthed the company, their colleagues and this new device. They’ve also replaced everything between the television and the hub — they even dug up the yard last year — and usually wondered aloud why the last guy didn’t do that.
That’s a standard company line at Charter Cable of Auburn, Ala. Pass the buck. Blame the other guy. Don’t fix it, not today.
So we had two guys in the house not two weeks ago. He replaced the last thing that hasn’t been replaced. “I’m surprised no one else has changed that connector.” Apparently it was showing its age and this piece would fix everything. Like every other person they plugged up their diagnostic machines, tested the signal and pronounced it great. They made a phone call, no doubt leaving a string of numbers and letters on the office voicemail because, really, they aren’t talking to anyone.
The cable worked for about 10 days, which may or may not be a record.
Earlier this week we had, and I counted 32 HD channels that couldn’t be reached. I stopped there because that was a string of 32 of 35 stations that I pay a premium price for. We called the the Charter Cable technician that left us his personal number on that last visit. He would, he said, be out on Wednesday.
He stood us up. You see? The technician works just as well as the cable of Charter Cable of Auburn!
We called and complained — and this was the phone call where I learned that I’ll never fight with my beautiful, lovely wife, because after an hour on the phone with that he’d earned the most impressive scolding you could imagine.
But we learned this: the billing department does not have a boss. Yet this is the only thing Charter Cable can get sent to the house.
So they sent out an engineer today. An engineer, which means another, different and taller technician. He doesn’t even work for Charter Cable of Auburn, but for a company with whom they contract.
He glances at the tuning adapter. The yellow light was blinking. And blinking, he said, was bad.
We looked at one another. For the two years or so since we’ve had the thing, we couldn’t recall it not blinking.
He returned to the office and gets new cable cards and new tuning adapters. He spent hours trying various combinations of cards and adapters. Finally he decided that the problem wasn’t the equipment. He too plugged up his diagnostic equipment and pronounced the signal within the accepted parameters. The problem, he said was beyond him.
So the engineer was stymied. His boss is coming out tomorrow.
The first question I’m going to ask him is how no one that works with Charter Cable of Auburn seems to know that blinking yellow lights are bad.
It is all quite laughable, or it would be without the bill and the poor service from Charter Cable. None of this is new to anyone who’s had this miserable experience. I’m just adding a bit to the Google returns. Informed consumers and all that.
And now, to cheer us all up, Mr. Rogers Goes to Congress:
Our regular critique of The Crimson was moved to this afternoon. Here is a big stack of newspapers:
We had four pages in color. It was a 12-page paper today. We went through every one of those issues, just to see if we could find the typos in the same places in each copy. We did.
(Find the same errors. We did not go through every issue. We are thorough, but we have other responsibilities, too.)
And now, a few pictures. This is meant to reflect a full day of newspaper topics, email, meetings, text messages, library time and cleaning my office and is in no way designed to get us over 100 photos for the month. That is purely a happy coincidence.
This is the Davis Library at Samford. I visit there from time to time to enjoy the plush leather seats and the many books they have. And also access to scholarly topics. Yesterday I read through about 30 papers in here:
Here’s a side view. Every so often I catch the perfect moment of the afternoon. The sun is at this precise moment realizing it is no longer high and suddenly sinks far more rapidly. But first it sets that window on fire:
And, just a moment or two later, now looking to the west, here is the view of Hodges Chapel, with vinyl canopies going up for some Friday function:
Samford does have a beautiful campus. I took these shots while playing with Picle. Audio! Video! On the iPhone! Together! With no editing-in-post! Drag and drop! And then I learned Picle doesn’t let you embed. That would be an oversight, guys. Embedding is important.
Anyway, here are a few quad shots taken while the carillon was playing the afternoon concert.
Lucky to go to work there.
Video of the carillon? Sure. I shot this in April:
Steve Knight, an amazing man, is the carillonneur.
A new photo found its way onto my Tumblr. And, of course, plenty more ramblings on Twitter.
“The ‘fundamentals’ of anything are challenging simply because so much else rests on their shoulders,” wrote professor Chris Arnold. It works nicely with the popular line “I don’t teach software, I teach skills.” Professor Mindy McAdams went a step further this week in a Nieman Lab essay, imploring readers to train young journalists to be lifelong learners:
Most of them chose journalism because they like to write. Anything that involves HTML, CSS, code, or programming makes many of them almost shut down, shrink away, move toward the door. We have all kinds of challenges in journalism education, but this one is front and center, right now. It’s not just students’ avoidance of things perceived to be somehow math-related. It’s also:
Reluctance to spend time exploring something that doesn’t have an explicit or immediate payoff
Skepticism or negative attitude toward any task that’s not spelled out in detail
The tendency to give up and say “I can’t” or “I don’t know how”
Preoccupation with a process, such as writing, instead of with stories
This applies to storytelling as much as to technology. Any time a student says “You didn’t tell us we had to do that” in a conversation about a poor grade on a story, you’re hearing evidence of this challenge. The more students insist on explicit instructions, the further they are from independence.
You could do something by rote requirement of a class, but there’s no critical thinking there.
Students can thrive from learning how to evaluate which skills are best for any given story. (I’ve yet to have a sophomore intuitively understand how they might leverage the huge strength of their Facebook account for their journalism, for example.) They need to be encouraged to experiment with new tools. They must learn to overcome the fear of ruining sites or databases or equipment. (You aren’t inclined to tinker if tech intimidates you.) They have to learn how to discern which medium, methods and tools are the best for their particular story. When they do, you get independent thought and critical thinking.
None of these things involve just showing them what is useful here or there. Far better to help students realize those things themselves because a successful career requires a healthy curiosity to stay in the curve. The newsrooms from which they retire in 40 years won’t be anything like the first ones they’ll enter today, after all.
McAdams also mentions Ira Glass, who has some points worth digesting:
I try to encourage enthusiasm among students because it can carry over into their studies and work. Real education comes from understanding the joy of learning.
That’s pretty fundamental.
In other news I’m fighting muscle spasms around my shoulder again. I’ll be fully recovered in another month. And the pain will go away by Christmas, he said. I should have thought to ask the surgeon how long the spasms will last.
If you spend enough time on a heating pad you don’t have much to write about here. Go figure.
So this, a helpful cross section of the people representing us at the presidential conventions.
Clearly video and poking fun at them is the proper way to tell this story. Have a lovely evening.
