Sephy’s Platzish

One of the things I’ve been grumpy about a lot is the way that severe weather warnings are presented on local TV. Do they need to be presented? Yes, because it is a public service to inform the viewing audience of where storms are and if you need to take cover from said storms. That’s something we all can agree on. However, there are good ways and there are bad ways to handle informing the public of severe weather.

Let’s look at a bad way first, shall we?

This picture comes from just a couple of weeks ago, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, when we had some (as you can see on the radar picture) storms in the area. They weren’t severe (at the time), and there was just a watch issued for the area.

However, the fine folks at channel 12 decided to do what they do every time there’s a watch issued for the area - squeeze the picture so that it’s completely unwatchable and essentially waste about 1/8th of the screen with their graphic telling you that you’re watching channel 12’s weather bar. Of course, not to be outdone by the weather department, you also have the convenient reminder that you’re WATCHING CHANNEL 12 in the lower right hand corner. By the way, the reason for the black bars is that this was taken from their digital feed, and if it were not for the watch bar, the show would have been in HD, and the 12 logo would have been about 1/4 the size.

By the way if you think that channel 12 are the only ones who do this kind of thing, here’s what channel 58’s bar looks like (note that this is from September 2006, during which time they were running a promotion and squeezing the picture even further than they had already with their weather bar!)

Channels 4 and 6 at least use a bit of sense (though how much sense is questionable because it just happens that they wind up wasting more space by doing this) and just shrink the picture so that the aspect ratio isn’t messed up; only the picture is smaller.

Now, let’s take a look at how this kind of thing should be pursued (or, at least how it was pursued by the local stations in the past). First off, I should commend channel 12 on their old way of doing this - they would just put up text at the bottom of the screen that read, for example, "T-STORM WARNING ___ COUNTY". It was simple, didn’t interfere too much with the picture, and was a perfect solution to a complex problem.

However, what really got me going on this was the fact that I was able to pick up stations from out of the area yesterday (ahh, the old days of TVDX, you might say, and that’s true, and this was my first time doing some digital DXing, which made it that much cooler ). Thanks to the weather, a lot of the stations had their warnings up and showing for you to see.

On every single occasion, no station had squeezed, squished, crunched, or even re-sized a picture to accommodate the warning information. All they did was put a simple overlay of the affected counties, and text telling you what warnings were out (along with the counties affected). In another instance, an ABC affiliate broke into their programming (game 2 of the NBA finals), but did something that I think would give Milwaukee TV bosses heart attacks (well, except for channel 6 back in 2007) - they kept the game on in the bottom left and had the meteorologist in the upper right!

So, you may ask, what did warnings look like in the "olden days" of TV (i.e. anywhere but Milwaukee yesterday). Well, I could show you a picture I took of one station that is literally stuck in the early 90s with just showing a storm cloud in the lower left — which is what they used to do on local TV; sometimes with an S or a T to tell you what kind of warning it was. However, as it so happens, I have an old picture from channel 4, from a taped airing of "Days of Our Lives" circa I have no idea - maybe late 90s or early 2000s.

Look! A full-screen picture (though it wouldn’t be in HD because none of the major stations have the technology yet, but you’ve got the feeling it’s coming) with a simple overlay. Can anyone tell me why the TV stations can’t make such a simple step backward that would, in the end, be a huge step forward?

Oh, and by the way, I must also give kudos to the PBS broadcaster in the area - channels 10 & 36 - because they can do an HD overlay, and the size of it is very comfortable - it looks like a postage stamp on an envelope. When viewed on a 42-inch screen, I bet it’s the perfect size.

What I’m curious about is if Milwaukee is the only TV market that does this stupidity. I have this inkling that we are. That should be a lesson to them, but I don’t think they care to listen…

Right. I’ve been procrastinating long enough I think

I’m not going to have my lunch until I get this done, so here goes the pictures from the last couple of weeks, up to and including the day that the pedometer went astray.

Also, I’m going to be doing some experimentation with Windows Live Writer to post this - so you’ll see some interesting features with the pictures, like borders and drop shadows, etc.

Sunday, 18th May

I am not at all sure what kind of tree this is - I think it could be a trillium, but in any case, I love the colours that it has with its flowers.

Distance - 3273 steps, 2.61km

Monday, 19th May

An interesting moment in the life of the car I drive - a series of 4 matching digits - only happens every 1111 miles, you know. ;)  Here, we have 103,333 miles up on the digital odometer.

Distance - 1736 steps, 1.38km

Tuesday, 20th May

No photo from today. Well, I could post the one picture that was white, but that’d just be wasting space.

Distance - 1506 steps, 1.20km

Wednesday, 21st May

Here are some more of those awesome trees, which I get to see on a regular basis. To be honest, I’d never even noticed them so much as I have this year - maybe that’s a side result of me being more independent.

Distance - 2311 steps, 1.84km

Thursday, 22nd May

With the holiday weekend that was coming up, unfortunately, the market caused the prices of fuel to go to an all-time high. The irony is that I saw a sign at a station later on that showed the highest example price at $3.50/gallon. Sadly, I don’t think that’s coming back anytime soon.

Distance - 2759 steps, 2.20km

Friday, 23rd May

Another in the continuing series of early-morning posts, this time taken at around 6.30am. As you can see, now that we’re approaching June, the sun is really shining earlier and earlier.

Distance - 3349 steps, 2.67km

Saturday, 24th May

First off, this interesting little animal. It might be a raccoon, possum, or something else. All I know is that it isn’t a horse, and isn’t a bird.

And, yet again, I have a picture of these trees. Can you tell I’m fascinated by them? It might just be that the colours don’t show up like this until the fall - and then they’re kinda muted…

Distance - 5556 steps, 4.44km

Sunday, 25th May

No photo, and not really any serious walking done, as it was a hectic day with having commitments all around the place to deal with.

Monday, 26th May

With it being Memorial (formerly Decoration) Day, a lot of people went to the cemetery to remember those who they may have lost while fighting for our country in whichever war or conflict they were sent to. Something that I had not seen before is the line of flags along the entryway into the cemetery.

Of course, after seeing that sight, we came to this one - of some kind of strange brew dog being offered for sale. Apparently a "Labradoodle" is a mix between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. Though I’m not sure, I’ll say that right now.

Distance - 4690 steps, 3.75km

Tuesday, 27th May

Among the things you should never drive along a highway - a bobcat. Fair enough that it’s probably the shortest route, but I hope that they did make their way to wherever they were going safely. Needless to say, I didn’t stick around to see if he did or not.

Distance - 5432 steps, 4.34km

Wednesday, 28th May

My friends the deer were back - and this time I got a good shot of them. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I can always edit the photo to make it more contrasted so that they actually show up.

Distance - 1421 steps, 1.13km

Thursday, 29th May

An interesting scene here, and I wasn’t using the macro. This is, as it might seem, the steering wheel and the centre console of the car. One thing that you can’t see is the CD player (which had no CDs in it at the time). Other than that, the walking was done with the lawnmower and moving wood back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth.

Distance - 8213 steps, 6.57km

Friday, 30th May

This has got to be one of the best scenes I get to see from time to time. Right across from the cows is a school. Unfortunately, because of that school (and the fact I was heading down to volunteer at 8AM instead of getting there at 7 — I was on my own), all the parents were coming to drop their kids off there.

Can I just say that they are some of the dumbest fucking drivers out there. They were letting people into the line, sitting for ages waiting to turn into the school, and just generally being complete fuckwits. Thankfully, I just went off onto the gravel shoulder carefully and drove around them and moved on with my life

Now, when I got home, I put the pedometer on the kitchen table, and then one thing led to another, and the last time it was seen was apparently somewhere in the kitchen…I haven’t been able to find it since, so I think I might need to shell out another $5 or so to buy another new one.

The good news, though, is that I do find more creative ways to lose things (what, with airport bathrooms, and kitchens, etc. )

Saturday, 31st May

Ah, again, we have another of my favourite trees - the brown one in the field of green. I know it’s probably half dead, but I still love the contrast it provides to the scene. By the way, the water that you can see down there has expanded and is now about 5 rows up into the adjacent field…

In other news, I’ve been having a bit of a blue spell, not that big, but I do know it’s time for me to have a visit with my therapist - which I’ve scheduled for next Wednesday (which also happens to be the same day that I have an appointment with my doctor over there, so a bonus for saving time and gas ). Aside from me having a bit of a blue patch, things are going well - I’ve taken some time to enjoy a movie (which I’ll talk about sometime in the near future), also I’m liking my job still, and I was told last night that I am doing a good job - my only response was that I won’t change a thing.

Also, and I have to mention this because I’m proud of it - another compliment I got was that I am sounding a lot more confident in my voice. When I think about it, that is true because I don’t have that hesitation I used to have when talking to someone. That not only goes when I’m talking on the phone, but also whenever I’m talking to anyone in public. I have a certain comfort now when I’m talking to someone that I don’t generally have to worry about what I’m saying (just so long as I don’t go off of my rocker )

I was listening to the radio yesterday and I heard a name that I hadn’t heard before on the radio advertising one of the radio station’s features (their toll-free number that you can call from anywhere around the nation, world, or really anywhere). It was a company called Waterstone Bank. For a few seconds, I was confused about the name and had headed for the search box in Firefox before it hit me. This wasn’t a new bank, it was just another business which had changed its name to something that says almost nothing about what they are or where they do business. Somewhat (very tangentially) like when Phillip Morris changed its name to Altria. Uh, ok…

However, it isn’t the name that they chose to change to that gives me the shits, it’s the fact that they decided to change their name in the first place. Apparently, it isn’t good enough for a company to have the name of a particular city in their corporate image. Well, not any city (where would we be without New York Life or The Hartford or Atlanta Bread Company?) but apparently this one is taboo. What’s the name of this supposedly problematic name?

Wauwatosa.

Admittedly, it’s not the "sexiest" city name out there like Chicago, Atlanta, or anything foreign-sounding. However, some bright spark in a conference or board room, probably wearing the title of "image consultant" or something equally ridiculous, said that the word "Wauwatosa" was inappropriate for branding outside of that city itself. At least that’s the reason they used when announcing this change - it was a supposedly useful change because they’d built branches which are not within the city limits of Wauwatosa, thus they’ve outgrown the city and need a new name. Thus, it was done.

Now, if you think that this is the first business to do something similar, you’d be mistaken. 11 years ago or so, there used to be a realty company known as Wauwatosa Realty. They were a successful company on their own right (even if they were based in Brookfield, which is on the other side of the county line), but they decided that they needed to have some impetus to grow even further, so they decided to change their name as well. They went with the name Shorewest - at first it seemed to be ridiculous, but if you think about it, the name fits what they serve - the shore (of Lake Michigan) and out to the west.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there used to be a bank in this area that was quite successful while maintaining their city-based name - St. Francis Bank. They only changed their name when they got gobbled up by larger banks and had name changes put on them. Now, of course, they’re a part of a much larger chain that extends out to the nation, and now have a name of National City Bank.

Why St. Francis is a more acceptable name for a business than Wauwatosa is something that is beyond me. Could it be that Wauwatosa is hard to say for an "outsider", or that it has 4 syllables?

Come to think of it, the longer the name, the less likely it is that you’ll see a national company using it. Have you heard of anything with Oconomowoc in the name? Heck, can you say Oconomowoc?

I also haven’t seen any businesses using the name Wooloomooloo either…

Right, let’s get into it, hey?

Sunday, 11th May

Horses and turkeys…a bit of a strange combination, but when you think that you can see everything from dogs to horses to squirrels and even some chickens, so it really isn’t that odd to see a combination from time to time.

Distance - 1826 steps, 1.46km

Monday, 12th May

Well, this is an interesting bit of decoration in the grille of this truck, hey? Not too sure what the truckie is thinking with it, but it’s not something you see every day.

Distance - 1825 steps, 1.46km

Tuesday, 13th May

A bit of a lesson for y’all here, even if it is outdated (the current state excise tax is approximately 1 cent higher, if I remember correctly), this is the outline of how taxes are distributed in the $4.00 per gallon we’re paying for our fuel. Of course, here, the state excise tax goes to fund the state’s deficits and not road building, but that’s government for you…

Distance - 2646 steps, 2.11km

Wednesday, 14th May

For some reason, this opening in the tree line along the horse paddock-cum-lake is intriguing to me. Also, I love how everything is greening up, as it is here in the forest -

Distance - After Walk: 5291 steps, 4.23km; end of day: 6581 steps, 5.26km

Thursday, 15th May

So, why am I posting a photo of a camera? Why is the camera in a car? Well, it’s for something that I’m trying out with recording a bit of a video on my commute (and to try to get video of the deer I see at night). What I’m going to do with it is a bit of a mystery, but I’ll do something with it.

Distance - 2580 steps, 2.06km

Friday, 16th May

I had to travel to the city to do some business, and came across this site (after noticing the sign that said “Bridge Out” - they’re repairing a road that desperately needs it, and that means backups which are horrendous along with someone deciding that paving a path for walking is more important than paving a path for driving……

Distance - 6012 steps, 4.80km

Saturday, 17th May

Here I am coming up with solutions again - here’s using a wire rack designed for apparently a condiment rack to store the grill brush in. It’s simple and works like a charm.

Distance - 3818 steps, 3.05km

In other news… I spent a bit of time on Saturday afternoon taking in some good music from a local jazz band to which I had some connections performing their annual end-of-performance-year gig. Ok, I’ll fess up, it was a school band I was in, and I heard the advertisement for the event.

Also, and this was the reason for the trip to the city on Friday, I took the last steps to cutting my ties with my old bank by, ahem, fixing an error I brought upon myself when I bought some gas on my old card when I didn’t quite have enough cash on hand to do it…uhhh, oops :blush: . In any case, by the end of the week, the account should be closed up completely and I’ll be free from their poor location choices (and no, that wasn’t the only reason that I left them ).

A thought occurred to me when I was writing down my phone number recently, about something that we had taken for granted (and see less frequently even on TV) - the 1 you dialed for accessing long distance calling. I haven’t used it for dialing a phone call for at least a half of a year (when I fired the old phone company), and even before then, it was rare for me to use it because we just didn’t do that much long distance phoning.

Here’s the ironic part - as far as I can tell, for a long time, the numbers for area codes (i.e. three digits, second was a 0 or 1), were likely reserved as unavailable. The reason for this was that the telephone numbers used to be Two letters followed by a varying number of digits (in big cities, out where I live, it was more like a ring pattern that was dialled). In fact, some businesses took that particular tactic of advertising their old letter prefix into the 80s, as seen here by this series of Lincoln Carpeting commercials from Chicago -

Of course, the 0 and 1 don’t have letters (unless you have one of those phone models that have the Q and Z on the 1, even though it’s common practice to put them on 7 and 9 respectively), so they weren’t part of the mnemonic dialing system of the olden days, along with a lot of other opening combinations which really didn’t have a logical word to correspond to them like 57. Though of course, I expect to be proven wrong on that.

Why is it that we’re not using the 1 as much as we were before? Simple - the advent of digital phones. The first time I experienced not having to dial the 1 was when I was at my last job when my boss pointed out to me that I didn’t need to dial the 1 to get access to the main phone system out of the office and out of the area. Then, we move a few years into the future and we get the digital phone activated at home, and I try dialing without the leading zero, and voila, it works perfectly.

I know that you can’t repurpose the first number of the 11 in the dialing sequence (i.e. the 1) because of the people who dial into the country from overseas and kind of need that number to make sure that their call gets to here instead of winding up somewhere in Africa or Asia, but I do wonder if it is possible to consider a way to use that almost new opening for another digit to be added to phone numbers, which should alleviate the problem of reducing available phone numbers and constant expansion and contraction of area codes.