Friday, July 25, 2003
Today is a day of cleanup, provided only by the hyperlink checker and sadly one of my favorite web sites is no more. For a child of the 60s, www.yesterdayland.com was a trip back in time. With pictures of our old toys and cereal boxes, and video interviews with the people that were on TV all the time, it was an ambitious site for sure, and one that obviously cost some money to run. If you want to take a peek at some of the pages that made up Yesterdayland, check out this site. I don't know how long it will be up as it is a volunteer effort to preserve the site.
-Larry
|
-Larry
|
Thursday, July 24, 2003
And so goes the neighborhood. Your itinerant blogger is back, coasting, as it was, without employment and looking really hard. But many things have happened in the ensuing months since I last posted (almost five months ago.) In that time we have experienced many things:
1) The Gulf War, redux. Now that Saddam's two sons have been exterminated (that's what the so-called graphics pictures make them look like) are we going to face Vietnam Redux?
2) The economy sucks, there are no other words for it. And the Federal deficit balloons and unemployment is at an all-time high (really? In this century, you mean?)
3) More tech jobs move out of New England. The latest, my former employer's million-dollar digs in Woburn, the spectacular NOC (Network Operations Center) and Customer Care moving to Atlanta within the year. I hope they give generous late slips for the commute.
4) We are heading into another busy hurricane season, according to Dr. Gray at Colorado State. The Weather Channel showed a chart that displayed the number of named storms we've already had against the Colorado State forecast. Four out of ten, and the end of the season is no where in sight.
5) Weird news persists, as reported on Paul Harvey news and this site. Here's a sample: Business is apparently good for "pet psychics" and "communicators" who not only claim to understand animals' emotions in human terms but work with a client base that has included spiders, an iguana, a snake, a skunk, a hawk, a camel and cockroaches, and can do most of their work remotely by having the pet stand close to the telephone (at about $25 for 15 minutes). The Animal Planet channel has a weekly program, "Pet Psychic," and newspapers recently profiled practitioners in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. (Revelations: Spiders mostly express interest in not being killed, and one French poodle's issue was supposedly the dog's having imaged everything in French instead of English.) [Hartford Courant, 3-19-03; Miami Herald, 10-3-02; York (Pa.) Daily Record, 4-24-03; Palm Beach Post, 6-3-03]
6) And for this top six on the 24th (I know, not too catchy) here's this news item: Kansas really is flatter than a pancake. Yes, its true, the according to a study appearing in the not-entirely-serious Annals of Improbable Research. Geographers Mark Fonstad and William Pugatch of Texas State University at San Marcos, along with Brandon Vogt of Arizona State University, compared the “flattening ratio” of a pancake (purchased at International House of Pancakes and measured using a confocal laser microscope) and Kansas (based on a digital elevation model from the U.S. Geological Survey).
A perfectly flat surface would have a ratio of 1.000. The pancake was pretty flat, with a ratio of 0.957. But the ratio for the Sunflower State was estimated at 0.9997. “That degree of flatness might be described, mathematically, as ‘damn flat,’” the researchers reported. [MSNBC, 7-23-2003] Damn right its flat.
The web site you are now looking at has had a few changes in the main menu and a link to my side business, The Radio Workshop. Check it out if you are a radio professional or producer. I also have touted my involvement with Habitat for Humanity, one of the best volunteer organizations in the world. It's not all about swinging a hammer, check out the page and find your local affilate to volunteer.
And if you are a storm chaser or weather professional (and why wouldn't you be looking at this site?,) check out www.stormnet.org and a great tool for following severe storms (i.e. tornados and severe thunderstorms) at www.swiftwx.com.
Finally, many people have asked, what happened to the end of the Larry story? Well, you can check out the archives here on the Blog to see much of what has happened. But I'll summarize it someday.
Tra la, mesdames et messieurs.
-Larry
|
1) The Gulf War, redux. Now that Saddam's two sons have been exterminated (that's what the so-called graphics pictures make them look like) are we going to face Vietnam Redux?
2) The economy sucks, there are no other words for it. And the Federal deficit balloons and unemployment is at an all-time high (really? In this century, you mean?)
3) More tech jobs move out of New England. The latest, my former employer's million-dollar digs in Woburn, the spectacular NOC (Network Operations Center) and Customer Care moving to Atlanta within the year. I hope they give generous late slips for the commute.
4) We are heading into another busy hurricane season, according to Dr. Gray at Colorado State. The Weather Channel showed a chart that displayed the number of named storms we've already had against the Colorado State forecast. Four out of ten, and the end of the season is no where in sight.
5) Weird news persists, as reported on Paul Harvey news and this site. Here's a sample: Business is apparently good for "pet psychics" and "communicators" who not only claim to understand animals' emotions in human terms but work with a client base that has included spiders, an iguana, a snake, a skunk, a hawk, a camel and cockroaches, and can do most of their work remotely by having the pet stand close to the telephone (at about $25 for 15 minutes). The Animal Planet channel has a weekly program, "Pet Psychic," and newspapers recently profiled practitioners in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. (Revelations: Spiders mostly express interest in not being killed, and one French poodle's issue was supposedly the dog's having imaged everything in French instead of English.) [Hartford Courant, 3-19-03; Miami Herald, 10-3-02; York (Pa.) Daily Record, 4-24-03; Palm Beach Post, 6-3-03]
6) And for this top six on the 24th (I know, not too catchy) here's this news item: Kansas really is flatter than a pancake. Yes, its true, the according to a study appearing in the not-entirely-serious Annals of Improbable Research. Geographers Mark Fonstad and William Pugatch of Texas State University at San Marcos, along with Brandon Vogt of Arizona State University, compared the “flattening ratio” of a pancake (purchased at International House of Pancakes and measured using a confocal laser microscope) and Kansas (based on a digital elevation model from the U.S. Geological Survey).
A perfectly flat surface would have a ratio of 1.000. The pancake was pretty flat, with a ratio of 0.957. But the ratio for the Sunflower State was estimated at 0.9997. “That degree of flatness might be described, mathematically, as ‘damn flat,’” the researchers reported. [MSNBC, 7-23-2003] Damn right its flat.
The web site you are now looking at has had a few changes in the main menu and a link to my side business, The Radio Workshop. Check it out if you are a radio professional or producer. I also have touted my involvement with Habitat for Humanity, one of the best volunteer organizations in the world. It's not all about swinging a hammer, check out the page and find your local affilate to volunteer.
And if you are a storm chaser or weather professional (and why wouldn't you be looking at this site?,) check out www.stormnet.org and a great tool for following severe storms (i.e. tornados and severe thunderstorms) at www.swiftwx.com.
Finally, many people have asked, what happened to the end of the Larry story? Well, you can check out the archives here on the Blog to see much of what has happened. But I'll summarize it someday.
Tra la, mesdames et messieurs.
-Larry
|
