Barb is attending (and speaking at) a legal conference in San Diego this week. The photo shows some of the documents she insists she might need access to.
In the bad old days she might have shipped these to her hotel (and back). For this trip they are all neatly organized as PDFs in GoodReader on her iPad.
Perhaps one day the Super Bowl could be televised uninterrupted by commercial breaks – the camera could simply zoom in on the quarterback’s AMOLED covered helmet during a time out. Or even better for advertisers, their commercials could play throughout the game, turning each helmet into a video display>
That’s what I’ve been doing. For years. I didn’t realize it until reading this post by David Cain. The post is eerily close to the view of my friend Henry. A little more spiritual, perhaps, but they’ve wound up at the same place.
“A few years ago I quit watching the news, because I realized I only did it to get high. It felt good to feel outrage sometimes. It felt good to take up and defend certain mental positions about social issues, to hate people who did bad things. It also felt comforting to have some socially-acceptable TV to watch after dinner.
I did it because I was attracted to it, not because it actually gave me any advantages or improved my quality of life. When I think of all those hours spent watching the news, it’s hard to figure out quite what I gained in exchange. Those volumes of information about O.J. Simpson, Sarah Palin or any other Outrage of the Month haven’t done me a lick of good since the moment I absorbed it.
Because it was gratifying, I never had any incentive to examine what it was doing for me or what it cost me. In any case, I would tell myself I was “staying informed” like any responsible citizen, as the typical argument goes, but it was really a fairly useless indulgence that just made some part of me feel good at the time.”
So many of the things I do every day are mindless. I do them without being aware of doing them, certainly unaware of why I am doing them.
I’m going to try to skip the evening news to which I have so long been addicted. That’s a half-hour a day. An extra week each year? Wish me luck.
I love most things Google. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader and most of the tools and services they’ve come out with (Wave and Buzz notable exceptions).
If someone hijacked my Google accounts, they’d have to take my belt and shoe laces. So I was eager to try their recently announced 2-step verification process. From the Gmail blog:
“…it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone. A hacker would need access to both of these factors to gain access to your account. If you like, you can always choose a “Remember verification for this computer for 30 days” option, and you won’t need to re-enter a code for another 30 days. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.”
I’ll have a better feel for this in a few days but I’m willing to put up with a little extra hassle to know my account is safe.
Barb loves flowers. So I sent her flowers on Valentine’s Day. But the arrangement was so “cheezy,” she sent them back. How bad does a floral arrangement have to be for a woman to return it on Valentine’s Day.
Years ago I started buying flowers from Busch’s Florist here in Jefferson City. I’d send flowers on her birthday, our anniversary and sometime just because I had “a love attack.”
Money was no object. Busch’s had my credit card and I rarely asked “how much.” I frequently asked that the person doing the arrangement “swing for the fence.” Really get creative.
It was a nice arrangement (so to speak), for Busch’s and for me. They did a good job and then a couple of years ago they suggested I try their “special events” plan (not what they called it). I’d pick several special days throughout the year and they’re remember to send flowers. Probably good for cash flow.
Yes, I put my love on auto-pilot and today it bit me on the ass. Who knows what happened. The florist probably has some excuses ready for when they return my call cancelling the plan. Rushed. A newbie did the arrangement, blah blah blah.
Doesn’t matter. Florists sell hard the concept of “this special day.” And when you fuck up, you pay the consequences. That’s life. And business. They let flowers become a commodity. Good enough.
I probably averaged two or three hundred dollars a year with Busch’s Florist, going back a dozen years? And I would have spent that much each year for the next dozen years.
Tomorrow they’ll probably send Barb a really nice bunch of flowers, “on the house.” But tomorrow isn’t Valentine’s Day. That was today.
I’ll be auditioning florists in coming weeks and I’ll post photos and reviews here. You’ve just read my review of Busch’s.
Need a little privacy while watching that movie on your iPhone. Long for that Big Screen viewing experience. You can have it if you’re willing to look like an ass clown.
My friend Tom grabbed this must-have item at MacWorld and brought it to the Coffee Zone where I tried it on.
Your iPhone goes in a little sleeve at the front of the bill and the lens slides forward and back for proper focus. Like sitting in row 10 of the Bijou.
I’m not a football fan, but I am a fan of FUCKING INCREDIBLE!
Nick Denton has been something of mover and shaker in the blogosphere since the beginning. Here’s his take on “fake news”:
“I don’t mean fake news in the Fox News sense. I mean the fake news that clogs up most newspapers and most news websites, for that matter. The new initiative will go nowhere. The new policy isn’t new at all. The state won’t go bankrupt. The product isn’t revolutionary. And journalists pretend that these official statements and company press releases actually constitute news. Of course the public knows that most of these stories are published for the massaging of sources — and that’s why they don’t read them.
To follow the daily or hourly news cycle is the media equivalent of day-trading: it’s frenzied, pointless and usually unprofitable. I’d much rather read an item which just showed me the photos or documents. And if you’re going to write some text, take a position or explain something to me. Give me opinion or reference; just don’t pretend you’re providing news. That’s not news.”
This is a pretty good summary of where I find myself in regard to news these days. You?
I am a fan of the poetry of Billy Collins. The following stanza is from a poem titled Piano Lessons
I am learning to play
“It Might As Well Be Spring”
but my left hand would rather be jingling
the change in the darkness of my pocket
or taking a nap on an armrest.
I have to drag him in to the music
like a difficult and neglected child.
This is the revenge of the one who never gets
to hold the pen or wave good-bye,
and now, who never gets to play the melody.
Clay Shirky thinks the media has failed to appreciate the full significance of WikiLeaks:
“WikiLeaks allows leakers transnational escape from national controls. Now, and from now on, a leaker with domestic secrets has no need of the domestic press, and indeed will avoid leaking directly to them if possible, to escape national pressure on national publishers to keep national secrets.
WikiLeaks has not been a series of unfortunate events, and Assange is not a magician – he is simply an early and brilliant executor of what is being revealed as a much more general pattern, now spreading.
The state will fight back, of course. They will improve their controls on secrets, raise surveillance and punishment of possible leakers, try to negotiate multilateral media controls. But even then, the net change is likely to be advantageous to the leakers – less free than today, perhaps, but more free than prior to 2006. Assange has claimed, when the history of statecraft of the era is written, that it will be divided into pre- and post-WikiLeaks periods. This claim is grandiose and premature; it is not, however, obviously wrong.”