Ah, yes, it must be winter, eh? We’ve had snow for just about every other day since the first of the month. Today was the second “major” storm of the season. At first, it was looking like it would be a big ice storm, but then it wound up being just a lot more snow on top of what we already had on the ground.
Nevertheless, it didn’t stop one local TV station from having 12½ hours of continuous coverage of the storm. Their companion radio station was soliciting people to SMS comments about the storm, and in between discussion of the issues of the day, people were calling in to comment on the size of the snowflakes that were falling. I had a chance to see some of them up close and personal, and I have to say that they were quite large, possibly the largest I’d ever seen myself.
The most ridiculous thing about the TV coverage is that the station sent their reporters all over the metropolitan area to cover the conditions at various intersections and interchanges on the main roads. The best part though was when someone working at a McDonald’s restaurant decided to bring out some food and coffee to the TV crew as a thanks for giving them a free plug by having them (and the Citgo station) in the shot whenever they went to that corner.
I have to say, though, that an award has to go to the local TV columnist, who did a video mocking all of these reports that they do on the TV. Fortunately, it was put on YouTube so I can post it here, because it is something definitely worth watching.
However, there was a lesson that I’ve learnt as a result of this storm - we do not live on a “major” road in the eyes of my town. While listening to the scanner today (as you do because honestly, that’s the best way to actually get real information), I heard on our town’s channel that the snow plow drivers had gone over the “major” roads twice. The road I’m on? Once - and that was before the snow had restarted about mid morning. This is, quite literally, what the road looked like at about 3:30pm, around an hour after the snow had tailed off:
The plow didn’t go through for at least two more hours, which was after we had our driveway plowed out - so that means I have a bit of work to do to get the entry cleared out again. It shouldn’t be terribly bad, I just have to pace myself.
Anyone who knows me will know that I am a huge racing fan. In fact, I’ve attended a lot of races, mostly on the local level (though the options for where to actually attend races is going down on a seemingly annual basis). I’ve even attended a couple of races in the second and third tiers of Stock Car/Truck racing about 8 years ago - though that was a once-off event thanks to getting a couple of tickets given to me as a present.
However, at a time when the races tend to be boring, and the drivers seem to have had the life taken out of them. I mean, there has to be something wrong when one of the sport’s top stars gets fined $25,000 and 25 points for saying “bullshit” on cable TV. Let us not forget, of course, that NASCAR’s “coming of age” moment was when the Allison brothers and Cale Yarborough got involved in a fistfight at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500.
Nowadays, the sport is controlled by large bankrolls - teams have to get multi-million dollar sponsorships for their cars, and some teams have even gone so far as to rope in support from other sports team owners (notably the owners of the Boston Red Sox, and the Montréal Canadiens as a start). Unfortunately, with this influx of money and influence comes the necessity of controlling the drivers, to a point, as I have said, where they are simply robots.
A great example of this comes from the banquet held in New York last week - all of the speeches of the top drivers was preloaded onto a teleprompter. The days of the drivers saying what they want are gone, replaced with speechwriters and consultants.
However, there is an alternative. Not surprisingly, it comes from the other side of the world. It’s also somewhat hard to find on US TV screens, again, not terribly surprising.
I’m talking about the Australian V8 Supercar Championship - the most popular form of auto racing Down Under, featured 37 races spread out over 14 rounds this year going to all states and territories of Australia (except the ACT), New Zealand and even Bahrain. In the past, they’ve gone to China, and there are rumours of them going to be a support race for the Singapore F1 Grand Prix next year.
In all except three rounds, the format of the series is three races, generally around 120km in length, with a pit stop required to change two tyres. The other three rounds are the season-opening Clipsal 500 in Adelaide (on a shortened version of the F1 circuit), featuring a 250km race on each Saturday and Sunday. In September, the series heads to the Melbourne area for a 500km endurance race (for the last few years, it was at Sandown, but next year it will be held at Phillip Island - home of the original 500 mile endurance race in the early 60s).
The crown jewel in the V8 series is the Bathurst 1000 - which started out as a 500 mile race, but the switch to metric in 1974 brought about the increase in distance (interestingly, and this is just one of those things that I would notice - in some of the early films of the race from when it was still a 500 mile race, you could see the speed limit signs; they looked exactly like American speed limit signs, and not the semi-European signs you see nowadays) to 1000km (624 miles or so)
I bet if you asked any Aussie to do word association with the race, and 9 out of 10 times the first thing you’d hear out of their mouth would be Brock. As in Peter Brock, for whom the trophy for the race winner was named after he passed away last year in a rallying accident in the TargaWest in Perth. This year’s race was the second after his passing, and it did not disappoint for excitement.
It all started out well, and then the weather decided to change - gone was the sun that they had had for the best part of the race, and in came the rains. It cleared just long enough for the drivers to change back onto the slick tyres, but the rain came back. This led to the last few laps being run in the wet with slick tyres. This is the last lap of the race from this year. I just want you to note the excitement in the announcers’ voices (Matt White and Neil Crompton), and the atmosphere you get from the coverage.
As a matter of fact, one of the V8s champions, Marcos Ambrose, has moved over to the States in order to advance his career (and earn a boatload of money) in NASCAR. So far, he has kept his personality, and as he moves into the top ranks of the series, I can only hope that he keeps his personality, though I’m sure that he’ll get frowns from the France family if he tries to do something like he did in 2005 (they didn’t fight outright, and he did something absolutely brilliant - he went to a nearby house, saw the replay, and then went back to the garage).
If you know the sites, you can download the V8 races from this year; the finale held last weekend was brilliant, with the championship fight going right down to the last lap of the last race of the year. I won’t tell you who won, but either of the blokes who were in the running to win the championship would have deserved it.
For those of us here in the States, we can watch the V8s, however, the broadcasts on Speed are still at the second race in Adelaide. Unfortunately, they’re doing something completely stupid, in my opinion - here is the schedule for the races on there (I’ve taken out repeats):
Adelaide - Round 1
Pukekohe - Round 3
Hidden Valley - Round 6
Oran Park - Round 8
Bathurst - Round 10
Queensland Raceway - Round 7
Symmons Plains - Round 13
Phillip Island - Round 14
Thankfully, they’re showing what had to have been the best round overall, Oran Park (a rare rain-affected race for the V8s, with a surprise round winner). However, the fact that they’re not showing all the rounds and then skipping around with the sequencing of them is inexcusable.
If it were a perfect world, they should show the races live (or at least in the same week), since it’s rare that there’s something conflicting with the live broadcasts at 10 or 11pm Central on a Saturday night (when the races would be run in our summer, when we’re on Daylight Saving and Australia’s not). However, showing race 1 in December, some 8 months after it’s actually run, is something that shouldn’t happen.
I’ve discussed the music I like to listen to; there’s a list of the posts that I’ve done in the occasional Friday Music series at the bottom of the post. In the post about Duke’s 3 Suites, Forest talked about his being a child of the 90s and how he came up with his own music.
I replied to his comment, in part, with a story of my musical background -
Believe it or not, I was brought up with, first, 60s music, and then country music when it was popular in the last decade (I actually have almost the whole Garth Brooks CD collection, and a first edition of his “Double Live” album). It wasn’t until I was in high school that I started to listen to jazz. When I was in college, I started to discover some of the bigger indie groups like The Killers. Now, and I have to give props to Snoskred for this one, I’m beginning to get my footing in rock music and actually listening to Metallica and liking it.
It is true - when I was young, the most common station that we would listen to in the car would be the oldies station (in fact, that same station, now owned by conglomerate Clear Channel, still plays older music, though they’ve expanded into the 70s and 80s, and will be going into all-Christmas mode soon). There could be no end to the argument when my Aunt would come up from Chicago and switch the radio to a radio station that is renowned for playing a particular style of music.
Then, sometime in the early 90s, we switched from that station to listening to one of the two country music stations in the area. In fact, I still remember on one of our long car trips that we used to take back then when it seemed every country station between here and Huntsville played the same song over and over again. It got to a point where we wound up, somewhere in the middle of Illinois or Kentucky, turning on a hard rock station just to avoid listening to this song.
Now, of course, being someone who remembers small details like this, I remember that the lyrics contained the words “thank the bank for the money and thank god for you”. Thanks to Scroogle, I now am reminded of the name of that song - “Thank God For You” by Sawyer Brown. Of course, there was a video of the proper version of the song on YouTube, but as with anything decent, it’s been taken down due to copyright violations. However, I think that this karaoke imitation is suitably funny to act as a stand-in. Click here to watch (you may have noticed that I had embedded the video here before, but apparently you can’t display unembedable videos anyway…
You would think that this would have been the end of us listening to country music, but that was definitely not the case. We would stick with country for quite a few more years, even attending a Garth Brooks concert when he was at the peak of his fame (and, get this, the tickets only cost $17.50 each - and that was for a seat in the lower tear of the arena; all tickets were the same price - there was a line that went around the store because of the demand). As I had mentioned in the comment, I do have almost all of his CDs - the only real exceptions being the recently released box set, the original editions of his first six albums and the CD that he put out as the fake rockstar.
Then, an interesting thing happened - I got into High School and started to get involved in listening to jazz and a lot of classical music. It didn’t hurt the cause that for one year, I had to get to know a whole lot of operatic works back and forth, along with the stories of the operas that the songs came from. The next year, we had to know a whole bunch of jazz, along with the stories of the artists who did the songs, and the other year I participated in this particular activity, we had to do “world music” - something which I do not remember anything about, honestly.
It was also during this time that I really separated from most of the popular music (though realistically, I never had that much connection to it). Thanks to the Internet, I don’t think I really missed out all that much with music - especially since I had the opportunity to, ahem, acquire the music I’d missed out on on the net.
The next major milestone in my musical development would have to be when I was in college. Sure, I was aware of the major file sharing networks of the day (Kazaa Lite anyone?), but for the most part I was still searching for older music and jazz, along with a variety of country and some songs that, when I go back through the CDs I burnt of those songs, make me wonder why in the world I ever downloaded those songs.
In 2002, after I had come back from going home in February, I was watching the Olympics from Salt Lake City, and there was a concert on the TV by the Barenaked Ladies. Amazingly, for some reason, the music clicked with me - it was good and it was fun music to listen to. It was through them that I started to get some connection with popular music, though I still didn’t totally follow the ups and downs of current music.
Then, after I left college, I started to listen to another of my local stations - one which has gone downhill quite a bit after their longtime morning team have split apart and the station decided to bring in outsiders to front their main program in the morning. Then, I was starting to listen to actual music that was, at least that I thought was, the music of “now”. There were the occasional gimmick hours - 80s played at 1 and 8 pm, and Fridays would be dedicated to the Flashback music. I liked listening to that music.
However, the biggest revolution to my listening habits has come as a result of meeting Snoskred - I’m sure she’ll say something in the comments about this, but I was really the most clueless sod when it came to musical references (and quite a lot of other references, but that’s for another day ). However, she introduced me to some of the greatest music I’d ever heard of, and I’ve even gone and discovered music on my own.
Most of the time, I am playing music from the same playlist - it’s been through a lot of different iterations (and in fact, I have a song that I need to add to it - Trees). You can check out my current Winamp playlist . Yes, it is true that I have Madonna in there, but really, that particular album is great “club” music - I would have never seen myself liking that type of music, but sometimes it’s cool to have a driving bass beat going along on the subwoofer.
If you want to keep up with what I’m listening to, you can always check out my last.fm profile and add me as a friend if you want
The title is a line from a Badly Drawn Boy song - “You Were Right”; the video of it is below.
This post is part of the Hump Day Hmm - which, this week was about music - the music of our lives, really, the soundtrack of our life. For me, this is it, and it’s still very much in formation
By Sephyroth on October 25, 2007 at 3.10 pm · Filed under baiting, scams, youtube
One of the things that I’ve been involved in over the last couple of years is fighting online scams. In fact, there’s a new project coming out quite soon which I have been involved in; there will be more on that in the next couple of days. As of right now, there are a couple more tweaks to be done to it and it will be ready to launch.
However, one of the most frequently asked questions is one of why the media or government doesn’t do anything to get the word out about these scams. As it so happened, about a week or two ago, I was having a rare moment of watching TV, and I saw this ad:
The site mentioned is fakechecks.org, and it is one of those sites that I think everyone needs to check out, and read through. If you don’t have a lot of time, then just check out the victim interview section - particularly this interview. I’ve got it posted below as well. If there is anyone who doesn’t believe that these scams have a real effect on the victims and their relatives, this video (along with the other ones that are on the site) will change your mind.
Stories like these are the reason I bait and the reason I want everyone to know about these scams. I applaud the victims who have been willing to come forward and share their stories for this site, and for the US Postal Inspection Service having the forethought to create this program. Hopefully it will go a long way to finally getting the word out there for everyone.
Spread the Word
I’d like not only this post, but also the fakechecks.org site to be seen by as many people as possible; if you wish, stumble both sites, put them on digg, bookmark them, send them to your friends - all that matters is that word gets out.
As I’ve been detailing over the last couple of months, I am changing my way of life. By this point in time, I should have gone to the Mental Health offices for the first appointment. In fact, it was scheduled for yesterday at 4:30pm. However, I got a call yesterday morning saying that the therapist wouldn’t be in because they were sick. I was told that they’d call me when they came into the office today.
I kind of forgot that this is a governmental agency that I’m working with here, so it’s quite easy to get lost in the shuffle; as I write this, I still have not received a call from them, so if I don’t hear anything within the next 20 minutes or so, I’m going to call them to propose an alternative arrangement - I have an appointment scheduled for next Wednesday at noon (which, ironically, I didn’t find out about until I got a letter from them reminding me of yesterday’s appointment). I’m going to suggest that we hold the “first” appointment, the one where I have to fill out all the paperwork, etc., then.
So, yeah, I’m a little bit annoyed right now with them, however, I’ll deal with it. Update: I have it all sorted out now; the paperwork appointment will be at 9:30am next Wednesday, followed by talking to the therapist, and then I have kept my as-scheduled noon appointment the same day.
The question laid out in this week’s Hump Day Hmm… is “Where I’d Like to Go next” - I’ve done quite a lot of talking about that, but I wanted to show off my new desk; in fact, I’m now seriously considering not buying a new desk as I do like the desk I’m using a lot (the only thing is that I have to do some sanding on the edge to just round the lip a little bit).
Another reason is that, while the chair I have now is good enough, it’s seen better days, I think. Both of the arms have broken, the bolts holding them in on the bottom literally snapped apart; the pneumatic pump for the height adjustment hasn’t worked properly for well over a year now; and one of the legs is being propped up by books (along with some duct tape holding the leg together). The chair that has spotted my eye is this one - Mid-Back Executive Leather Chair, which is available for only $40 at OfficeMax, this week only.
Admittedly, this is a cheap chair, but I look at it this way - it’s within my budget, and I will be able to move around in it; the only question is one of will it be comfortable for me, for which I have to actually get over there and try it out.
This is my new workspace, as it was on Saturday; like I mentioned then, the cables are all neatly tucked at the back; I have added some stuff to the desk since then - the mirror has been replaced by some of the potted plants we have growing in here (two pepper plants and a tomato plant, which has one ripening on it). I’ve also gotten the TV box up and running with the cable coming through from my room off of a splitter, and I’ve put a phone handset at the back of the desk.
The table where the computer is under has the ability to raise the front bit up; most of the time I keep that down, because that prevents me from having the ability of piling stuff on there.
Lastly, if you’re wondering about the title of this post, it is another of the post it notes I have on my monitor - “What’s Next?” - it’s a line that was commonly used on The West Wing, and this clip below shows it in use. Enjoy!
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