Oh my GOD!
Amazon links are finally working right. Thank you, Silverberry!
I never could get Brad Choate’s version (slightly different, similar effect) working; I ran across a reference that it had to do with smart quotes replacing dumb quotes (guess what I have?)
The “complex” macro uses overLIB, process tags, and I suspect there’s something I should do with encode_js in order to deal with apostrophes in the titles of books.
HONOLULU – Hawaiian music is doing swimmingly with listeners, and now it’s is ready to catch the big one: the Grammy. The genre will have its own category for the first time next year if the National Academy of Arts & Sciences approves.
Great news, long time coming. If you’ve ever wondered “who sings that great mix of Over the Rainbow and Wonderful World,” that’s
“Iz” Kamikawiwo’ole, a Hawaiian artist who died a few years ago.
I was so lucky to have gone to a live show at the Northwest Folklife Festival that featured some Hawaiian Slack Key Masters.
I’m not sure if some of the live music I heard made it onto this CD, but there’s a good chance.
Neil Gaiman quotes from a reader’s email in his mailbag:
Sorry about your having to clean up after the cat. We have a cat here who doesn’t understand that having all four paws in the litter box is not sufficient, and so we often end up with urine under the litter box rather than in it. Sigh.
Well, I know all about a cat being such an enthusiastic and productive pisser that also thought that just the two front paws standing in litter constituted “in the litterbox.” Also there was some confusion in his mind over whether hanging one’s kitty butt over the edge was “close enough for jazz” or not.
If you’d like to read more about how I dealt with this indelicate and undelicious problem, read on.
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Osmond said he stopped and asked, “Why are you screaming?”
One 16-year-old answered, “Because our moms told us to.”
I went to school with a girl who claimed to be related to the Osmonds (these things are highly possible in Utah).
She was quite a strange person. I wonder what happened to her.
Two of our travelers had a bad experience last night just as they were about to check in to a hotel – it was in Melrose Park, a suburb of Chicago. They complained to our overnight service desk, and as one of the many hats I wear is following up on the service calls in the morning, I looked at the record to see what needed to be done.
This one was documented very carefully – the agent spelled it out so there’d be no misunderstanding. The male traveler was approached by a prostitute as soon as he got out of the car, so he and the female traveler got right back in the car and drove to another, higher quality hotel nearby. The agent documented that she couldn’t get the night clerk to agree to waive the no-show penalty, so she got the name of the day manager for me to follow up.
I left a message this morning, which he didn’t return. Called him back late in the afternoon and spoke to the guy. He was not sympathetic, or prepared to refund for just any little old complaint, you see. He sounded suspicious and wary, and not at all like a professional hotel manager, but more like a franchisee at a sandwich shop hoarding expensive ingredients.
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I finally had a chance to get the newest photo gallery started – with a lot of help from David. It covers the epic trip to Colorado and Utah, with the inevitable (and intervening) Nebraska thrown in at the end. There are a LOT of photos in there. Some of them I tinkered with – resized, cropped and so on. Most I didn’t mess with. I haven’t decided which ones I’d like to print out and frame. This photo got Photoshopped a little – it looked good except for one of those &*#!@ roadside reflector wands right in the middle. So I, well, took it out. Now I can’t remember where it was. I guess that’s not too bad.
I can’t really explain why I left the Crash Test Goofy photos in, except that I thought they were funny. I didn’t do as much with CTG as I might have, especially in the stultifying boredom driving out and back across Nebraska (sorry, Cornhuskers).
I’ll be going through and hiding duplicate or near-duplicate images. The Road Trip! gallery is here, the Rocky Mountain National Park part of the trip is here, and there’s also Mesa Verde and Moab (and Nebraska, too).
I thought I took photos in Salt Lake, but maybe I took a break from suffering for my art – I crawled around a lot and kneeled a lot in Mesa Verde and Moab trying to get closeups of desert flowers.
I only took a couple of photos after leaving Salt Lake – southeastern Wyoming was gorgeous in an empty way, but we didn’t stop and mess around much. David took some photos of a dramatic wind farm, and I documented gas prices in Perkins with the help of this double-ended “pushme-pullyou” Caddy. I kept a trip log with GPS coordinates and funny things that happened along the way. More bog for the flodder, I always say.
Despite ongoing financial woes, Air America Radio appears to have garnered a significant audience during its first month on the air, particularly among the younger listeners sought by advertisers.
An analysis of recently released figures from Arbitron, the radio ratings service, showed that in New York Air America beat Rush Limbaugh’s station among 25-to-54-year-olds during the period that Limbaugh and Al Franken, the host of the flagship show “The O’Franken Factor,” go head-to-head.
AAR did a lot better in the ratings than expected.
That’s one in the eye for all the conservablather I’ve seen in recent news articles and columns (with more than few positive mentions).
Heh, “Franken Crushes Limbaugh in Arbitron Ratings.” I like that.
It can only be a matter of time before the game is over.
Rats.
Could he really be, as some believe, Owen Wilson, Ben Affleck, Jim Carrey or even George Clooney?
Well, I think I know who Rance is. But I’m not saying for now, because
1. he’s supposed to be anonymous, dammit.
B. he’s entitled to some privacy, which apparently doesn’t get much of, bruddah
and
tha-rrrreee. that would be telling.
Besides, Xeni thinks it’s so three weeks ago (although it was originally a Boingboing link of hers that got me hooked).
Um. Shutting up now.
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It seems they like blowin’ stuff up in theGreat White North, too!
Culturally, we’re not as far apart as I thought.
When the job change was first broached to me, I was assured that if I took on the international agent task (in addition to the others) I wouldn’t also be asked to take domestic calls. I chuckled then and said “Oh, I think in the real world I’ll be taking some domestic calls.” My team leader was quick to reassure me I wouldn’t. I chuckled again and said “Come on, when it gets tough you know you’re going to ask.”
Monday was her first day back from vacation, and it was a tough day with long hold times. Before my morning break I got a call… a very sheepish and apologetic voice asked:
“Red… can you… jump on and take a few calls?”
I’m a prophetess! Sheer prophetess and procrastinator! That’s me!
Yesterday, an international client checked flights for a complete top-down change in routing and dates. Space was tight. I didn’t want to double-book it (kind of a policy, kind of a command decision). She asked “Do you think the space will still be available if I call Friday to change it? I have to get approval first.”
I replied, “I’m sorry, the 8-ball tells me ‘Answer cloudy, try again later.'”
Some prophetess I am, relying on a fortunetelling 8-ball, but she ended the call laughing.
Woop, time to go to work. More predictions later.