A confession, long time coming—or perhaps just explanation—about recent professional changes. Until November 2006, I was a market research analyst covering Microsoft and had been since May 2003. I left the analyst position and returned to journalism for many reasons.
Some things are just too weird for rational definition or explanation. Tonight, my daughter had the most unusual and upsetting experience while waiting in line at the local Old Navy.
We went to the store looking for blue jeans. My daughter, who is 12, said she needed a new pair. After trying on a few pairs, she picked out faded jeans. But tween angst led us out of the Old Navy to the Aeropstale, where she tried on a pair of size 00R. Size zero zero? They fit, but she decided on the Old Navy jeans. I gave her money to buy the pants, and we separated so that I could grab some cherry turnovers from the Arby’s.
My blog relocation has turned out to be quite an exhilarating experience. On Saturday, I managed to delete all the content and my Movable Type export file. Everything was lost! Oh, it’s a harrowing tale.
Some background: I made the move on Wednesday to pmachinehosting, which a few days later changed its name to EngineHosting. I also moved from Movable Type to ExpressionEngine. I lacked two things: A new design and fix to a troublesome problem, that ExpressionEngine inserted index.php/comments in the path of posts (e.g., http://www.joewicox.com/index.php/comments/painful_changes.
I have reached a point where managing a domain is becoming too arduous—at least from Webhost Yahoo!. There has been a marked increase in comment spam. Worse, yesterday my domain was spoofed by spammers.
Around 3:12 p.m., my inbox started filling up with returned e-mail from my domain name at my domain name. No such e-mail address exists. Someone had spoofed that address off my domain to make it seem like spam messages were coming from me. The returned messages probably represent a fraction of the thousands sent out over the last 24 hours.
I really worry about some people, and that is sincerely meant.
This morning, over at the local gas station, the mechanics changed a headlight on our car. Say, how many mechanics does it take to change a lightbulb? Three took about 20 minutes figuring out how to get the old bulb out and the new one in.
While they struggled to see the light, a finely dressed woman drove a polished SUV into the station for fuel. Problem: The gas station had no gas. “Out of Order” signs covered every pump. Undaunted, this woman circled around, eyeing them, before parking before one.
On Sunday, my daughter took out her Canon Digital Rebel, put it on a tripod and started snapping self-portraits with a friend. She purposely didn’t use flash, which meant the girls had to be extra […]
Today, a couple released video footage they shot on September 11, 2001, “36 floors up and 500 yards from the North Tower” of the World Trade Center. The video, “September 11, 2001: What We Saw“.
The video is riveting, because of the raw emotion expressed by the observants’ disbelief and grief shared by so many of us that day—and because the viewer knows what is yet to occur: The second plane hitting the South Tower, the collapse of the South Tower, and the collapse of the North Tower. If there is a perspective of looking with hindsight, this video is it.
A New Scientist story claims: “Teenagers are more selfish than adults because they use a different part of their brain to make decisions compared to adults, new research suggests”. The UK study used brain scans of 19 adolescents and 11 adults to reach this conclusion. The story quotes Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who is a University College London cognitive neuroscientist.
As I walked by the Ritz camera at White Flint Mall this afternoon, I saw a Nikon D80 box on display in the window. So I checked inside, because I thought the camera wasn’t going […]
This morning, Kensington, Md., held its annual Labor Day parade, which was my first real-world test of the Nikon D200. I love the camera, but some kinks remain.
I snapped 380 pictures, on 4GB and 2GB memory cards. I chucked 110 pictures; many images were blurry. I’m finding that Program mode consistently favors ISO over shutter speed, even when set to Auto ISO. The best shots came later in the parade, when the sun shone and I switched to Shutter Priority at 1/500 sec.
End of last week, I watched a startling documentary, which resonated well with some suspicions I already had. Staunch capitalists probably wouldn’t be moved by “The Corporation“, although hard-core liberals or even communists might delight in the documentary.
My response is neither political nor economic, but rooted in my sense of right, which in part defines good as putting the wellbeing of others above oneself. People or organizations that prosper by harming others do wrong. Many societies recognize cannibalism as wrong, yet those same peoples often do not recognize as wrong another kind of cannibalism: The consumption (or sacrifice) of one person’s livelihood or well being to support another person, group or organization.
Weird Al Yankovic is at it again, with a nice parody of file trading and copyrights. His upcoming album “Straight Outta Lynwood”, features track “Don’t Download This Song”. The music video trails a young kid’s descent from peer networks to prison.
But this is something from Mr. Parody, so there is legitimate question which side of the file trading/copyright debate Weird Al belongs. As an artist, he might want to get paid for his work. Yet, his lyrics also stab at his profession.