Community-focused posts
There are 773 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 5 of 78).
Hallie was featured on the front page of the N&O, 15 Nov 2017
This is at least the second time she’s been featured on the N&O’s front page, if not the third. The first time was when she was still a guest of the WakeMed NICU.
A red hat
1. Red Hat all of 125 employees when it went public, and
2. Red Hat actually told investors it was banking on ad revenue from its website!
OUR STRATEGY
We seek to enhance our position as a leading provider of open source software and services by:
– continuing to enhance our Web site to create the definitive online destination for the open source community; [Emphasis mine]
– expanding our professional services capabilities to capture large corporate business on an enterprise basis;
– increasing market acceptance of open source software, particularly through technology alliances and sharing our development efforts and resources with third-party developers;
– continuing to invest in the development of open source technology; and
– enhancing the Red Hat brand through targeted advertising and public relations campaigns.
What makes this even funnier is that the S-1 also lists Google as a Red Hat customer:
Red Hat Customers in 1999
Hmm, where do you think all of that web advertising revenue went?
The company is quite different today than the company that went public in 1999, which seems to have been more smoke and mirrors. I’m glad they finally figured it out because it’s good to still have them around!
City of Raleigh logo
Yesterday, the City of Raleigh approved its very first logo after working on it with a design firm for a year. Initially I was not so sure about the design since it appeared to be very antiseptic. As I’ve studied it more it’s grown (so to speak) on me a bit.
My comments is that the tree resembles the hated Bradford Pear rather than an oak that is part of our “City of Oaks” nickname. Nothing says quality like a smelly, brittle tree that collapses with the slightest breeze! The logo is also a bit more angular than I would prefer. Too many sharp edges, like a pile of green razor blades.
Bradford Pear
I can live with it. Not bad for a first try.
Now if Raleigh can refresh its flag…
It was a warm Sunday afternoon in October, 2016.
I’ve just left the Amtrak station in downtown Raleigh. Unable (or too cheap) to call a cab, I drag my overnight back behind as I trudge up Dawson Street toward my home 2 miles away. The rhythm of my pace and the grinding of my bag’s battered wheels along the sidewalk lulls me into a sort of trance.
As I reach the corner of Hargett, I see a rough-looking man approaching. As I’m starting to make room for him on the sidewalk, a woman on a bicycle passes me (safely) from behind. As she passes, the man catcalls her and makes loud, suggestive comments.
In a blink it was over. The man, possibly drunk, stumbles on behind me. The woman, wearing headphones, was immune to his drunken come-ons and was long gone. I pause to think what I should have done or what I might have done.
Had the man been dumb enough to touch that woman I would’ve certainly jumped him. I’m a pretty friendly guy but I don’t like bullying of any sort, yet I was also stunned at what I just heard. It’s 2016. Some men still do this shit? I mean, really? What did this guy hope to accomplish with his clumsy come-ons?
He was clearly a loser and a drunk one at that. She was oblivious and went on with her ride. I continued walking, pondering how the world still needed some work.
A cautionary tale for those cities vying to be the second headquarters of Amazon. Raleigh, be careful what you wish for.
“Seattle was a great place to live before Amazon. If you can afford it, it’s a great place to live now. That’s the caveat — if you can afford it,” said Knute Berger, a Seattle native and historian who is a columnist for Crosscut.com and editor at large for Seattle Magazine.
Mr. Berger wrote a commentary for Crosscut titled “Bidder beware,” warning the countless cities, including Pittsburgh, competing for a shot at Amazon’s second headquarters and its promise of 50,000 jobs that they may end up with more than they bargained for.
“That sounds crazy because of the success of the company. But Amazon has come with costs, too, for the community. Not everyone is a winner in the Amazon economy,” he said.
This story caught my eye, when a modest, 2,000sf home in Sunnyvale, CA sold for $800,000 over asking price. True, there is a little real estate sleight-of-hand going on here with how it was priced but there’s no denying that this is an eye-popping sale.
This kind of outrageous housing market is what comes to mind when I think of what might happen if Amazon chooses to set up its second headquarters in the Triangle. I think of the stunning metamorphosis that’s taken place this year in the neighborhood surrounding East Raleigh’s Ligon Middle School, where affordable homes have been all but demolished in favor of fancy new homes, and I wonder how long it will be before no one here but stock-option millionaires can live where they work.
Be careful what you wish for, Raleigh. More on this in an upcoming blog post.
A house in Sunnyvale just sold for close to $800,000 over its listing price.
Your eyes do not deceive you: The four-bed, two-bath house — less than 2,000 square feet — listed for $1,688,000 and sold for $2,470,000.
“I think it’s the most anything has ever gone for over asking in Sunnyvale — a record for Sunnyvale,” said Dave Clark, the Keller Williams agent who represented the sellers in the deal. “We anticipated it would go for $2 million, or over $2 million. But we had no idea it would ever go for what it went for.
”This kind of over-bidding is known to happen farther north in cities including Palo Alto, Los Altos and Mountain View. But as those places have grown far too expensive for most buyers, future homeowners have migrated south to Sunnyvale, a once modest community that now finds itself among the Bay Area’s real estate hot spots.
Source: Bay Area housing: Sunnyvale home sells $800,000 above asking
I had been feeling encouraged that the Indy Week newspaper has been sending reporters to the local government meetings that the News and Observer has apparently chosen to skip. Raleigh desperately needs a local paper of record and the N&O has opted to cast a wider net.
My cheering for the Indy comes to a crashing halt, though, when I read stories like this one. Indy reporter Thomas Goldsmith asks the valid question of whether Seth Crossno’s “ITB Insider” blog is right to claim a sponsored blog post is an in-kind political donation. All fine and good, but Goldsmith loses me when he writes “candidate Bonner” instead of calling Raleigh City Councilor Bonner Gaylord, “candidate Gaylord.”
Bonner Gaylord
An announcement of candidate Bonner’s candidacy was labeled as humor. Crossno says the in-kind donation for that story has been submitted and will be listed on a future disclosure form.
Gaylord has been serving as a Raleigh city councilor since 2009. There is no excuse for a reporter writing about local politics to not get his name right. What’s worse, this is not the first time I’ve seen Indy make this mistake.
Come on, Indy. Don’t destroy your credibility right from the get-go. You’re the only game in town now and we need you to get it right.
A ferret, as NOT seen in Mordecai.
Ferret Report
Lauren claims some nearby Raleigh police officers told her of the loose ferrets. To her dismay, she later got a call from the Raleigh Police Department, claiming they were unaware of any ferret invasion.
Though people are posting on Facebook and NextDoor, no one has identified the ferret breeder and no one has reported any roaming packs of ferrets out terrorizing the neighborhood.
It sounds very much like the joke of a bored police officer. 🙂
Update: Inconceivably, this is not the first ferret report from a Raleigh cop. I found the following tweet from 17 April:
Got caugh trespassing in Raleigh. Asked cop why he was in the area patroling. "Responding to a call about ferrets". Tax dollars at work.
— Dennis DoomDragon? (@Daredev44) April 17, 2017
Looks like a Raleigh cop was just having a little fun with the populace!
(Wikimedia Commons photo by Luciando Bernardi)
The day after 1996’s Hurricane Fran devastated Raleigh, the only place in town one could get a cup of coffee was the Hillsborough Street Waffle House. Now I know why. Waffle House engineers its restaurants to weather storms.
One of the ways the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) measures hurricane damage is by the Waffle House Index. Waffle House, a popular 24-hour fast food chain in the Southeast, has a unique ability to operate solely on gas if necessary, so a closed Waffle House is often tantamount to disaster.
And while we won’t know yet how Hurricane Harvey will fare on the index, the attitude at Waffle Houses across Texas has been calm. The company’s staff has been preparing for months.
“We have our own special disaster teams and generators waiting to be shipped,” said one Waffle House employee in Galveston, Tex. “We’re open up until the city makes us close, probably later on tonight. As soon as it’s over we’ll be right back open.”
I’m not the only ink-stained traditionalist concerned about the N&O’s new direction. Former newsman Gary Pearce says his piece over on his blog, Talking About Politics.
In these Trumped-up times, we need good journalism more than ever. Which is why readers of The News & Observer paid careful attention to the recent column by Executive Editor John Drescher on changes there. What he wrote told us three things:
• How much journalism and The N&O are changing,
• How much readers are concerned about the changes, and
• How much editors are concerned about readers’ reactions to the changes.Readers are concerned that the old wall of separation between news and ads is being replaced by a chart measuring how many clicks stories get and, thereby, how many ads get sold.
Drescher’s column, “On the new N&O menu: Less spinach, more reader-focused coverage,” reassured us that the changes will be positive:
“Starting this week, we’ll be working harder to answer your questions and present the news in a way that is more relevant, with more video and more focus on topics that we know you care about.
“When most of our readership was of the print paper, we never knew with precision how much each story was read. Now we know how much digital readership each story has, and we’ve used that as a guide for which stories we will cover.
“While measuring readership is important to us, it’s not the only factor we’ll consider when deciding what to cover.”
Drescher vowed that the pursuit of digital clicks won’t imperil quality.
“Our core values remain the same. We’ll continue to provide the kind of watchdog reporting that has distinguished The N&O. Check out ‘Jailed to Death,’ our new report on deaths in county jails….We want to give you the news and information that means the most to you in the form and at the times you want it.”
He chided “ink-stained traditionalists” who “worry that we’ll publish nothing but click-bait stories about cats. They (the traditionalists, not the cats) underestimate the intelligence of the readers in this region.”
Well, call me an ink-stained traditionalist. I do worry. Not so much for now, because I know the editors at The N&O today. They are serious, committed journalists.
But they’re under a lot of pressure from business people, bean-counters and click-counters who live on the West Coast. While I trust John Drescher and his colleagues, I don’t know who or what will come after him and them.
Source: Clicking The N&O – Talking About PoliticsTalking About Politics
Also last week, superstar investigative reporter Joseph Neff turned in his typewriter at the N&O. He’ll be joining the Marshall Project:
Lucky me: @MarshallProj hired me as an investigative reporter. I'm thrilled. I'll miss colleagues @newsobserver
— Joseph Neff (@josephcneff) August 23, 2017
