September 2011

There were 42 posts published in September 2011 (this is page 4 of 5).

Appliance rental ripoffs

Highway robbers

I spent Saturday afternoon emceeing the second annual East Raleigh Community Day, which went better than I expected considering it was the make-up day for the original August date. Anyway, I returned to my car to find a yellow paper stuffed under the windshield wiper.

It was an ad for Rent-A-Center, a rental appliance store at the other end of the shopping center. On the paper were the smiling mugs of Hulk Hogan and Troy Aikman, flashing thumbs up signs from the screen of an LG 60″ HDTV. Folks who don’t know any better could have this TV delivered for the special rental price of only $29.99 per week (regularly $39.99 per week). Yes, $29.99 per week. That’s supposedly a deal.
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Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances

If Obama doesn’t stop arrogantly brushing aside the concerns of his grassroots, he’ll soon be handing the White House keys over to President Romney. If there’s any “unity and enthusiasm” over Obama right now, I’m sure not seeing it.

At a gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Chicago this weekend, some party leaders sounded upbeat after they toured the Obama campaign headquarters. But others expressed anxiety that Mr. Obama’s accomplishments were not being conveyed loudly enough to ordinary people, that Republican lawmakers were making it impossible for him to get more done, and that Mr. Obama’s conciliatory approach might be translating to some voters as weakness.

“Now that they’re slapping him in the side of the face, he’s coming back,” said William George, a committee member from Pennsylvania. “He needs to start stomping his foot and pounding the desk.” At the White House and at Mr. Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, officials bristled at the critiques, which they dismissed as familiar intraparty carping and second-guessing that would give way to unity and enthusiasm once the nation is facing a clear choice between the president and the Republican nominee.

via Democrats Fret Aloud Over Obama’s Chances – NYTimes.com.

Ted Cassidy

The kids have discovered the Addams Family TV show courtesy of Netflix. I forgot how good the writing is on this show, and the humorous, amorous interaction between Gomez and Morticia.

While the show is full of great comedy actors, the star of the show in my opinion is Lurch, played by Ted Cassidy. Cassidy has the fewest lines in the show yet he manages to steal every scene he’s in. His timing is perfect. I love the way Lurch simply turns away from Gomez when he doesn’t want to do something.

Cassidy also played Thing in the show. He went on to play memorable roles in other TV shows and do voiceover work until his untimely death in 1979.

Happy anniversary

It was a beautifully sunny day twelve years ago that Kelly and I tied the knot. While others might choose to spend the day feeling sad, today will always be a happy day of remembrance for me.

Smartphones and the world around them

Smart phones should not be new to me. Though I haven’t owned one until a few weeks ago when we bought LG Optimus V phones, I have of course been around them since the first iPhone came out. I would’ve thought that I would be well-familiar with them now but one insight into smartphones really surprised me.

Up until the smartphone, computers were by and large completely ignorant of their surroundings. For instance, old-school computers would not have noticed any effects at all during our recent 5.9-magnitude Virginia earthquake, but a smartphone could’ve! Smartphones can detect movement and motion and direction and position and orientation: a myriad of physical-space properties which were completely alien to most computers not very long ago. Some ambitious geek could write herself an app which aggregates the accelerometer readings of thousands of smartphones and uses that data to detect and pinpoint earthquakes, for instance. This is what fascinates me about my new smartphone: the potential it offers for physical-space interaction.
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San Diego blackout

Hassayampa switchyard

One of my enduring memories of visiting Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines twenty years ago was passing by the base’s power plant. There was row after row of semi-truck-size 250kw diesel generators, all roaring away and belching unfiltered black smoke into the thick tropical air. The civilian power source frequently suffered brownouts so the base had to generate its own electricity.

I never thought that Naval Base San Diego would suffer the same conditions, but yesterday millions of San Diego residents lost power when a problem at a switching station in Arizona sent the San Diego County’s electrical grid crashing down within minutes. Being an electricity geek with a fascination for electrical malfunctions, I had to find out more about this situation.

According to the Arizona Public Service press release:
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Point Roberts – America’s most exclusive “gated community”

I just hung up our new map of the San Juan Islands and became curious about a little sliver of America at the end of a peninsula that’s otherwise Canadian: Point Roberts, Washington. It’s one of a handful of quirky American places that aren’t connected by land to the continental United States. I’d like to check it out someday!

Point Roberts (known locally as “Point Bob” or “The Point”) is an unincorporated community in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. It has a post office, with the ZIP code of 98281,[2] whose ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) had a population of 1,314 at the 2010 census.

A geopolitical oddity, Point Roberts is a part of the United States (that is not an island) that is not physically connected to it, making it a pene-exclave of the U.S. It is located on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, south of Delta, British Columbia, Canada, and can be reached by land from the rest of the United States only by traveling through Canada. It can be reached directly from the rest of Washington and the U.S. by crossing Boundary Bay by sea or air.

via Point Roberts, Washington – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Hasher run through Raleigh

Tonight a neighbor sent an email to the CAC list, alerting our neighbors to unusual activity. People were running through the neighborhood but they weren’t up to no good and the cops (as far as I know) weren’t chasing them.What were they up to? They are “hashers” on a hasher run, an activity that combines drinking and running.

My neighbor describes it as:

an extreme fun-run club that chases a ‘hare’ thru odd locations and they started their run at the Oakwood Dog Park tonite.

Some clubs describe themselves as “a drinking club with a running problem.”
It sounds like my kind of running club! According to The Wikipedia:

At a Hash, one or more members (Hares) lay a trail, which is then followed by the remainder of the group (the Pack or Hounds). The trail often includes false trails, short cuts, dead ends, and splits. These features are designed to keep the pack together regardless of fitness level or running speed, as front-runners are forced to slow down to find the “true” trail, allowing stragglers to catch up.

Apparently, hashers are given nicknames, many of which are bawdy.

If you’d like to engage in this irreverent foolishness, sign up with Carolina Larrikins Hash House Harriers or find another group near you!

Plugging away

Things are going very well on the job hunt front. I had a phone interview last week with a network management software company. I don’t think we ‘clicked’ on that one, so I don’t have high hopes that we’ll be speaking again. That one aside, I had a nice talk this morning with a recruiter for a local company. While there isn’t an immediate opening there, I’m hopeful something will come out of it.

This afternoon I had yet another phone interview with another local company. This conversation went very well. I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

Tomorrow I have another phone interview with another local company. I also have high hopes for this position as well. And if that weren’t enough there’s another interview on the horizon with yet another local company.

The bottom line is that I want to work in Raleigh for a company that values my contribution, both to the company itself as well as the city of Raleigh. I’m well on my way to finding this winning combination!