“Just got back to town. Incredible damage on North Sumatra, but we were just too far south. Feeling blessed beyond words. Thanks for your prayers.”
No Escaping the Blog
“According to blog search-engine and measurement firm Technorati, 23,000 new weblogs are created every day or about one every three seconds. Each blog adds to an inescapable trend fueled by the Internet: the democratization of power and opinion. Blogs are just the latest tool that makes it harder for corporations and other institutions to control and dictate their message. An amateur media is springing up, and the smart are adapting.”
— Fortune.com (Why There’s No Escaping the Blog)
Rollin’ my own.
I never read local newspapers. I know, I know. I’m just not interested no matter how much I should be. As a result, I’ve been reading USA TODAY for years. I could barely get through breakfast without something to read and USA TODAY was my paper of choice. No longer. The bump to seventy-five cents is part of it but there are too many stories I don’t care about. (Yes, I know I should care about them, but I don’t) So I’m reading less of the paper and paying more.
But recently I’ve been surfing with my finger on the print key. In five or ten minutes I have more than enough stories to get me through my Malt-o-Meal. Sort editing my own newspaper. And this process will get more automated but I enjoy browsing and printing and will probable keep rolling my own daily. And I’m saving almost $200 a year.
8-point-9.
From Reuters report: “The tsunami — a menacing wall of water — caused death, chaos and devastation across southern Asia. The tsunami, up to 30 feet high, was triggered by an 8.9 magnitude underwater earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra.”
My brother Blane and his family live in Bandar Lampung, about 1,000 miles to the southeast of the quake’s center. I sure hope that’s far enough. If you check out the Reuters story above, take 90 seconds to watch some scary video. The link is about half-way down the page on the left. Still waiting for a “we’re okay” email from my baby brother.
Turn the page
I’m a long-time fan of the novels of Lawrence Block and have read most of them. From time to time I come across one that had been out of print. Spotted two Matthew Scudder novels yesterday (A Stab In The Dark, and Time To Murder And Create) and snapped them up. Matt Scudder is a New York private investigator (no license) with a serious drinking problem. He’ll go on a bender and then suffer nasty hang-overs. In later novels, Matt joins AA and, finally, gets his act together.
Time To Murder And Create was written in 1976 and Matt is still boozing. When I first read these stories, it was almost painful and certainly depressing to “watch.” Having read all of the later Scudder novels, I know that everything works out for Matt. He gets sober. Meets the perfect woman (for him). And finds some peace.
It’s nice to think that someone is re-reading our stories and knows what happens to us down the road. Our Cosmic Author simply has no way to tell us everything is going to be all right. Or that it isn’t. Or, maybe we aren’t listening. I choose to believe my author prefers happy endings.
Ferris Bueller: “You’re not dying”
As Ferris Bueller so bluntly put it, “You’re not dying, you just can’t think of anything good to do.”
Lucy and Ripley: Christmas Card
This year’s card captures our mood perfectly. Lucy –the newest addition to our family– spent September through November in a small, wire crate and wasn’t inclined to “stay” for Barb’s annual card shoot. But the tradition continues and while there’s not quite enough peace in the world, there’s a small patch in front of our fireplace for which we are truely grateful.
Music Choice, Sprint launching music service
“Music Choice and Sprint are launching a music service that allows mobile phone users to view short videoclips and listen to radio-like programming on their handsets. For $5.99 per month, users can listen to a range of genres and formats, including R&B/hip-hop, pop, country and rock. Earlier this year, the company announced Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Services, which delivers streaming audio and video content from NBC, CNN, ABC News, Fox Sports, the Weather Channel, Discovery, E Entertainment, and others.” (Reuters/MSNBC.com)
List making
I don’t make lists the way I used to. Many years ago I became a voracious list-maker. I attended lots of time management seminars and read lots of self-improvement books and was very much into being effecient and effective. It occurred to me last week that I no longer do very good job of making lists. I’m much more likely to scrawl something on a Post-It not. Or enter a new Task in Outlook. As a charter member of Anal-Retentives of America, I started wondering why. Here’s the best I could come up with:
For most of my 35 years as a working adult, I was responsible for “managing” others. Now, I’m pretty much responsible only for my own work. I can still appreciate the need for organizing and prioritizing my work but I just don’t seem to take the time make those nice, neat, numbered lists (with the A, B or C designations). It would be easy enough to check (15 years of Day-Timers in the upstairs closet) but I’ll bet most of those list items involved telling someone else to do something or checking to see if someone did what I told them to do. Only now, in retrospect, do I see how much I hated those little “nag lists.”
Maybe it’s like a bunch of people that all want to reach a common destination. They can get there much faster, and more comfortably, if they get on a bus. Everyone can shout out the best route but, in the end, only one person can drive. For some, the slave galley is a better analogy.
A few years ago I decided I didn’t want to drive the bus, even if it wasn’t headed in the direction I wanted to go. For now, I’m enjoying the ride… but I don’t mind walking.
Fiber to the home.
Brother-in-law Chris reports that Verizon is installing fiber-to-the-home in his neighborhood of South Lake, Texas. According to this Yahoo! story, the company expects to market video services on the new FTTP network next year. DSL? Cable? Shhiiiiitttt. Fiber will deliver “download speeds of up to 5 Mbps, 15 Mbps and 30 Mbps, with upstream speeds of up to 2 Mbps for the first two products and 5 Mbps for the third. The 5 Mbps service sells for $34.95 per month, when purchased with a package of Verizon services, and $39.95 when purchased separately.” Hard to believe I’ll live to see that kind of speed to our home but I’m happy for him. Sort of.