06.26.09
A “Where were you when …?” event?
I saw someone tweet this yesterday (for those of you not familiar with Twitter, a tweet is a twitter post)”
“Where were you when Michael Jackson died? … Welcome to the 9/11 of pop culture”
Whether I agree that his death has that level of significance or not, it’s an interesting question for me to think about because … where was I when Michael Jackson died? I was in my car on the way to pick up the kids from daycare and heard just a snippit of a radio news report with the words “Michael,” “Jackson” and “died,” although not necessarily in that order (well, I guess “Michael” and “Jackson” were, but anyways).
So what did I do? I’m a breaking news junkie and I needed to know more, but I was in the car and 45 minutes from being home. The radio had gone back to playing music. I had my handy dandy iPhone but which app should I use? The AP Mobile News app wouldn’t have breaking news like that. Hmm. I could google and maybe find something. But there had to be a better way!
Twitter. I turned to Twitter for the latest updates, and I wasn’t alone, according to this story in the Wall Street Journal:
“We saw an instant doubling of tweets per second the moment the story broke,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the New York Times. He added that the volume of Jackson-related messages hit 5,000 per minute at its peak.
“This particular news about the passing of such a global icon is the biggest jump in tweets per second since the U.S. presidential election,” Stone told the paper.
The WSJ article goes on to say that Internet traffic on news sites doubled as the news was breaking at around 5:30 p.m. EDT, which was the exact time that I was leaving work and driving to get the kids. So, yeah, within 10 minutes of that I was up-to-speed on the news and following the Twitter updates. I even posted the following tweets
After I got home I clicked over to Facebook to see if people were doing the same kind of thing, and folks were certainly talking about it but they were beyond sharing the news and were reacting to it with Facebook statuses like “was madly in love with Michael Jackson as a kid. Sad to hear he’s passed away.” and “Oh Michael…what will we do without you!!” I even responded to one of those comments about a childhood memory of my pink fringed Breakdance shirt (it was quite the cool shirt!).
The news cycle on this story just blows my mind, that within minutes the news was around the world, and that we all turned to each other to find out about it, not “the news.”
So maybe it’s not a bad question after all — Where you when Michael Jackson died and how did you find out about it, not because it’s of the same magnitude of 9/11, but because in thinking about it you just might realize just how much times really have changed.
And along those lines, another thought-provoking tweet from late yesterday
At dinner … talking twitter breaking news. Said second coming will hash with #risen
05.07.09
I prayed
When I wear this sticker
I wear it with pride and the lyrics to “I’m proud to be an American” run through my head.
Yet, today, when I am wearing this one
I’m a little scared. What if someone at work asks me to take it off? Would I? What if someone asks me “Why are you wearing that?” Will I have a good enough answer to represent my faith and the reasons that I pray, both today and every day? Those things make be scared. I’m still proud, that it expresses, to anyone who sees it, that today I did something I believe in (just like when I wear the I voted sticker), but the thought process of choosing to wear it (yes, I did think about do I want to wear this or not) led me to pray that I would grow strong enough in my faith that I would be just as proud and bold and unintimidated about expressing my faith as I am about expressing other things.
One big question I considered is, if I lived in a country where praying wasn’t allowed, would I still wear it? Something to think about. Think, Daniel and the lions’ den.
I’m wearing the sticker, btw, because today is the National Day of Prayer, a day set aside for us to pray for our country and all of its facets — our government leaders, our military, our schools, our businesses, our families, our media and our churches. I am wearing the sticker because I prayed.
04.30.09
Mixed feelings about responses to swine flu
I don’t know what to make of this whole swine flu thing. Are things really this serious or are “they” blowing this out of proportion? I don’t know. At a school across town there are two unconfirmed but “probable” cases, so they’ve closed that school for seven days and closed the schools my kids go to for the rest of the week. I care about my kids not getting sick and not spreading this virus but closing schools for multiple days and weeks is HUGE. I can’t work when they do that. My workload suffers, which I don’t like, but more personally my comp time suffers. I’m afraid to admit that because it sounds so selfish, but I can’t help but be aware of it. It’s so tough to balance those feelings of wanting to keep my kids safe and healthy with my desire to not use up my comp time. I have to use time so much as it is when they’re actually sick, I don’t feel great about using it when they’re not sick but might could get sick. At the same time, I don’t want them or others to get sick … so the quandry that is.
I’m also annoyed at government officials on the news telling parents to come up with their contingency plans for what they’ll do if/when schools are closed. Well, if they’re telling us to keep kids away from each other, then there is no contingency plan other than to keep them home. A friend, who’s son plays ball with Finn and is in the same class at school, offered to help with the boys if I needed to work. But what if her family is sick and passes it to mine or if we already have it and pass it to them? I could enlist my parents to help, but I don’t want them to get sick either. Besides, my mom works, so not even a realistic daytime option.
I’d like to see some government recommendation for what parents’ should do about this. They’re already talking about the affect on the economy if parents have to take days or weeks off work. What should companies do? I’ve requested to work from home and they’re usually pretty flexible about that kind of thing. I’m hoping the place where I work or the company I work for is going to come out with some official message for employees to do what they need to do to care for their families and manage their work too and give us the flexibility to do things different for a few days until this thing is over with. Or maybe even companies should close? A news clip this morning showed Obama saying stay home if you’re sick, but we all know people (me included) still come to work when they’re sick. What if schools were to close for a week? I don’t even know what I’d do. I just pray it doesn’t come to that.
03.27.09
Pay More, Get Less
From today’s paper:
County garbage rates could be going up
Those who get twice-weekly pickup for $13.50 a month would be scaled back to weekly collection and pay an additional $1.
First, I am one of “those who get twice-weekly pickup.” Second, I heard buzz about this last week — that the sanitation director wanted to cut back county trash pickup from two days to one. And I was OK with it. Really. I’ll admit, I was a little miffed, at first, that I was going to have to pay the same price for half as much service. I thought they could have at least reduced rates by like $1, you know give us a little something so it doesn’t feel like we’re getting totally ripped off. But I don’t consistently use the two days I currently pay for, and we could get buy with just one, so I was cook with it.
But no. They want to cut my garbage pick up service in half and then charge me more. What?!? This makes absolutely no sense.
03.02.09
“Complete Happiness”? Yeah right!
“To love somebody; it’s the best feeling in the world. It’s that feeling of ‘I need you in my life. I really need you because you make me better. You make me a better person. You give me a complete happiness.’”
– what Jason Mesnick (aka The Bachelor) said just before asking Melissa to marry him. Six weeks later he dumped Melissa on national television and then asked Mollie to go for coffee.
I guess it wasn’t that complete, and he really does need someone to make him a better person.
02.05.09
Sweet Home Alabama Beach … or Mountains?
Probably no one else is this touchy about their license plate, but I am seriously not looking forward to September when I have to renew my plates because I do not want the new Alabama license plate.
It’s pretty and all — a nice beach scene that takes you there to the smell of the ocean, the feel of the wind and sounds of crashing waves (who know a license plate could do so much?)
But do you know how much of Alabama has a beach? Looking at a map, it looks like roughly 50 miles of beaches. So the entire state of Alabama, which has more lakes, rivers and mountains than any other geographical features, is going to wear a license plate with a beach on it?
According to a news article about it, the idea is to promote Alabama tourism, and because the coastal areas of Alabama generate like one-third of tourism income they chose a beach. Our governor is quoted as saying, “A lot of people outside of Alabama don’t even know that we have beaches. When we put more than three million tags showing sea oats and a beautiful sunset over water into circulation, that will change.”
There’s a lot I could say in response to that, but as a native of northern Alabama I’ll just say that I’m not so happy with having to promote a beach some 400-miles away on my vehicle. I support the state and would of course benefit if the state benefits from extra money from tourism. But I want tourism in my neck of the state too. Maybe there should be regional license plates. If you live in Mobile, you can get a beach scene. If you live in the Tennessee Valley, as I do, you can get a nice mountainous scene. If you live in flat farm country you could get a scene of a flat farm.
I like the idea a co-worker had of being able to buy a plate that says you’re a native of a certain city. Since I live in the Rocket City, maybe the plate for my region would have a rocket on it. (Actually there is a plate like that, but for a different purpose.)
Or maybe license branches should do like the Postal Service and let you customize your tag with an image of your choice. OK, nevermind, that’s a bad idea. That could get kinda gaudy and be hard for the cops to read when they’re pulling you over.
Sigh. It just breaks my heart to be driving around in the beautiful Alabama mountains and valleys and see a pastel beach and ocean scene on the back of all the cars.
I do, however, like the Lynyrd Skynyrd “Sweet Home Alabama” over the current “Stars Fell on Alabama.” So maybe it’s not all bad.
01.30.09
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow (except on Tuesday)
I’m a little behind on my NewsGator so just saw today the news about the Postal Service wanting to go to five-day mail delivery instead of six due to loss of revenue last year, rising costs, the economy, etc. Oh my! Being able to send and receive mail six days a week was something I never considered as a luxury or as optional but when you stop and think about it, I guess it is.
I don’t do much outgoing mail anymore — Christmas cards, maybe one bill a month, subscription renewals. Even birthday party invitations I usually do by email or evite these days. But I still depend on incoming mail, especially for my Netflix movies! I of course still get bills in the mail (I’ve refused to sign up for bills by email because the stack of bills on the counter remind me to pay them where as an inbox full of emails is not as assertive as real, live paper.) I receive occasional correspondence in the mail — just a received a greeting card yesterday, in fact. Those things could probably wait a day. Yet I’m still bothered by the impact this may have on my Netflix movies. (Makes me sound so selfish and petty, I know.)
But it’s the big picture that is blowing my mind. Not about the economy but just about the future. The postal service has been hurting for years (it’s the reason we’ve had a price increase every year since 2006) due to less correspondence, more people paying bills online, etc. But it never, ever occurred to me they might cut a delivery day. Newspapers are doing the same thing, some having weekend editions instead of separate editions for Saturday and Sunday, or cutting out a day in the week. I just have this flash-forward of telling my grandchildren some day “I remember when the mail was delivered six days a week,” or worse, “I remember when we had mail.”
Trivia: Up until 1912 the mail was delivered seven days a week but was discontinued for religions reasons. Source: wikipedia
01.27.09
Gigapan Leaves Me Speechless
Every now and then the segmented areas of my life cross paths like a kindergartner’s Venn diagram, and when it happens it’s just cool. Today, it’s NASA and photography (and a little bit of my news side).
I got a NASA News email today about a NASA spin-off technology called “Gigapan” that creates these unbelievably cool panoramic photos by piecing together thousands of high-quality photos into one large image. What’s so neat is that you see this image that seems like its from so far away, yet you can zoom in to see incredible details. The technology was created for and is used on the NASA rovers on Mars. Today’s release, though, specifically talks about the use of the Gigapan technology by photographer David Bergman at last week’s inauguration.
So I checked it out and it’s wayyy cool. Cooler than words can express (and that’s pretty cool considering I’m a writer and a lover of words!)
The original image
Now the zoomed in image of Obama.
Look back at the original photo and you’ll see a tiny red arrow above where Obama is. That’s how “zoomed in” this thing gets. Is that not cool?
This comparison doesn’t do it justice so go to the photo on the Gigapan site and check it out. On the Gigapan site you can also do “snapshots” where you “capture” a certain zoomed in image and can save and comment on it (for example, people who were there have zoomed in on themselves and saved that image with an explanation like “me and my son,” etc.) People have also zoomed in and “captured” celebrities like P. Diddy, Denzel, all the political people involved, even some guy playing a game on his cell phone. Very cool! Highly recommend taking it for a spin.
