I don’t think there’s much more uncomfortable than this heavy, humidity laden heat wave we’ve been experiencing here. As I type, I’m sitting here in the dark, no lights except that coming from my PowerBook, wearing nothing but a smile. I look down and my skin is just glistening in sweat.
Tomorrow the temperature is suppose to drop 20 degrees and go back to normal.
I’ll probably sit in the front of the computer, wearing nothing but a smile, to celebrate.
We’ve been messing around with VoIP for the past couple of months, the latest contender being AT&T CallVantage. VoIP is pretty cool technology, in that it takes phone service, which has been around for over a century, and sends it out over your internet connection. You can take the phone adapter that provides this service, plug it into any broadband connection, and your phone number is active there. Anywhere in the world.
Too bad it didn’t work as planned.
There’s a couple of caveats with VoIP. Unlike POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), it doesn’t work during a power outage. No internet connection means no phone connection. And since it’s portable, you need to make sure your 911 information is up to date in case of an emergency.
We’ve had CallVantage service from AT&T for about two months. Our home telephone number was transferred to the service. Outgoing calls have worked beautifully with the exception of not needing to dial “1” to dial a different area code and having to dial all 10-digits for all calls.
Inbound calls have been a different matter.
At first, our phone would ring four times and then instead of transferring to voice mail, it would just drop. Callers would get what we call “dead air” and then back to dial tone.
When I had AT&T look into the trouble, they did something so that our phones never rang and all calls went to voicemail.
Not a convenient scenario.
I’ve been on the phone with AT&T Technical Support for a total of 10+ hours over the past week, and when it wasn’t fixed today as I was promised by a Tier III support person, I decided enough is enough. I placed the order to switch back to Verizon.
VoIP is a promising technology and will eventually be the way everyone is connected by telephone. But it’s not 100% there yet. And with family literally scattered all over the globe, it’s important that our phone service is reliable.
Call me old fashioned.
Somebody in the Microsoft marketing department wasn’t thinking too clearly when they came up with Windows Vista. Not only does the name lend itself to one my new favorite terms, “Crashta La Vista Baby”, Vista is also an abbreviation of the biggest problems with Windows.
Viruses
Infection
Spyware
Trojans
Adware
It’s all so clear to me now.
My sister recently announced to the family that her boyfriend’s work is taking him to Russia, and that she and her boyfriend are moving to Moscow for a couple of months.
Wow. Talk about moving away for a little bit.
What’s even a little more surprising is that if this happens (and it most likely will), Earl and I will fly to Moscow to visit them in February for our winter vacation.
Double Wow.
I’m very excited for my sister, as it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn more about this ever-shrinking world we live in. I have a cousin that’s a missionary in Yemen, and I reason that if my cousin can stay in Yemen, my sister can certainly survive Moscow. I don’t know why I make that connection, I just do.
I find the thought of visiting Moscow to be fascinating, as I’ve never dreamed of visiting Russia before. I hear it’s a beautiful city! I’m a little nervous about the flight over, because it’s very long and I think I’ll be bored to tears. Then again, I’ve dreamed about flying to Sydney, Australia and never thought about the length of that flight, so Moscow can’t be that bad.
I see some culture shock on the horizon!
“Save Me”, Lisa Fischer.
I was cleaning out some junk in the basement this weekend and came across two huge Rubbermaid bins of CDs and 12-inch singles I had collected from the various radio and club gigs I’ve had over the years. When I was in radio, I always made a point to get multiple copies of CD singles for the station so I could keep one for myself. Radio is full of perks like that.
Anyways, I’ve been busily ripping all these early to mid ’90s tracks into iTunes to enjoy on my iPod. Who knew that I would enjoy records by artists like Stevie B. here in 2005? The folks that listen to top 40 music these days probably don’t even know who Stevie B. is.
Lisa Fischer is an awesome vocalist. Absolutely incredible. Where is she now? No one knows.
“Rescue Me”, Madonna.
One of the cool things of having promotional copies of these CDs is that they contain versions that could only be heard on the radio. Not too long ago I heard a teenager review to Madonna’s “Holiday” as an ‘old’ song. Wow, that comment certainly made me feel obsolete. I remember when Madonna was a new artist on the scene. I recall thinking that she must have a huge ego to be using only one name. Who did she think she was, using only ‘Madonna’ to identify herself.
“U R The Best Thing”, D:Ream.
I was lucky enough to inherent a memory that could remember obscure record titles that others quickly forgot. Flash in the pan artists that are probably working at a local burger joint now. For example, the record I’m listening to now. “U R The Best Thing” is from the movie “Naked In New York” with Eric Stoltz. I don’t think I remember that movie.
“The Right Time”, I to I.
Oh well. Listening to this older music has taken me down memory lane. It’s been a pleasant little trip. I wonder when the 90s are going to be trendy again, much like 80s music is now.
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We had a wonderful gathering with my mom, my aunt and uncle and my cousin here at the house today. It was a beautiful day with fabulous food, great company and good conversation. It’s nice to spend time with the family from time to time.
I mentioned way back in April that I had fallen in love with a song called “Come Rain, Come Shine” by Jenn Cuneta. Its still the number one rated song on my iPod after all this time, and after doing research, I see that it’s starting to make some noise on the radio airplay charts. I’m not surprised, I was always ahead of the game at picking hits which made me a LOUSY program director in radio.
Anyways, this song is one of the only songs to sample a Paul McCartney song with his approval, the background riffs being “Silly Love Songs”.
It’s rare that I would have an interest in a song for such a long time. Usually I listen to the same track over and over until I absolutely burn out any further interest I may have. I was notorious for that as a radio program director; playing a song so often on the radio that the audience would be just short of freaking out and throwing things at their car stereo until I pulled back on the rotation a little bit. For example, many Top 40 stations would play (they probably still do) their top three or five songs of the week 60-70 times a week. This would guarantee that whenever a listener tuned in, they would hear one of the hit songs of the week within the short time that they may tune in. Always one to overdo, I upped this to around 100 to 110 times a week, the record being held by “Feel It” by The Tamperer featuring Meja at a whopping 126 times in seven days. Translated, that means that song played every 80 minutes in one week on Wow FM, The Beat of Central New York. (Perhaps we should have called it “The Beast of Central New York”) If you stepped foot in a club in the late 90s, you probably know the track by the lyrics… “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her, what’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her” and then the ominous music from The Wizard Of Oz would be sampled.
Small wonder Wow FM no longer exists and I’m no longer in radio.
Anyways, “Come Rain, Come Shine” would easily find itself in that category if the station were to exist today. Jump over to Jenn’s site and take a listen in the multimedia section. It’s a pretty cool track.
I’m developing a new pet peeve. This massacre of grammar is really starting to irk me.
This morning I called AT&T CallVantage technical support (again). Their Menu Hell SystemTM prompted me to enter my 10-digit phone number number. I did so. It then read my number back to me and asked “Is that right?”
Shouldn’t that be, “Is that correct?”
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not the bees’ knees of grammar use by any stretch of imagination. I regularly mess up word use and sentence structure. Back in the day when I was writing radio commercials, however, I made it a point to use correct grammar and a conversational approach to my advertisements.
Maybe I’m just getting old. Perhaps I’m not with it anymore. With a new generation there’s the inevitable change in language, much like “keen” and “neat” in the 40s and 50s, “groovy” in the 70s and such and the excessive use of “dude” in the 90s.
Welcome to obsolescence.
So Microsoft announced what the newest version of Windows, expected in late 2006, is going to be called. Introducing…
Windows Vista. Clear. Confidence. Connected. Bringing Clarity To Your World.
Wow. I really thought the version formerly called Longhorn was going to be called “Windows 2006” or at the very least “Windows Longhorn”, much like the latest version of Mac OS X stayed “Tiger”. It certainly is a change of direction for the company, as an IT professional, I don’t think I’ve ever used “Windows” and “confidence” in the same sentence before. It’s a novel idea.
I really don’t get the whole “clear” concept, especially since the downloadable marketing video is fuzzy as hell. But that could be due to the bastard version of Windows Media Player that I have on my Mac.
“Connected”, well, that I must agree with, because an operating system that can’t connect is dead in the water with today’s technology. But heck, even DOS is connected.
Personally, I think the marketing department of Microsoft has kind of gone off the deep end with this one. Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about the end product, as I’m always intrigued by new technology, even though I’m typing this entry with great delight on my PowerBook G4 using Tiger. Keeping up with the latest software from Microsoft is important in my line of work. I need to know how to keep those Windows computers running. But “Windows Vista”? Vista?
Like Crashta La Vista, Baby?
So now our fine folks in the Federal Government are going to start playing God again. This time, they’re messing with time. Again. Apparently, they’ve taxed us, lied to us, taken our freedoms away and such so much that they’re noticing the American public is becoming depressed. To rectify the situation, they’ve decided to extended Daylight Saving Time by one month. After all, everyone is much cheerier when the sun is out!
I hate Daylight Saving Time. I think it’s dumb to swing the clock back and forth every year just so Seth and Sally Suburbia can sit outside on the lanai an hour longer during the summer. Ask anyone on the street why Daylight Saving Time exists and they’ll say it’s for the farmers.
The farmers hate Daylight Saving Time.
It throws Bessie off her milking schedule, it makes Rita cranky enough that she’ll mess up her egg laying time table and it makes Ma surly enough to flip her flapjacks an hour early.
The definition of noon is “the high point of the day”, when the sun is at it’s zenith. Noon is NOT defined as “When Bobby Banker takes a break to get a McLunch.”
Personally, I hate Daylight Saving Time just as much as the farm animals do. I actually like it when we switch back to Standard Time. You go home in the dark, which is the end of the day so it makes sense. You wake up early in the morning, when it’s light, so that makes sense to. Truth be known, I wouldn’t mind one bit if I lived in Nunavut above the Arctic Circle and enjoyed six months of darkness. But I’ve always been odd.
Anyways, the Fine Folks In WashingtonTM have extended Daylight Saving Time by tacking jumping on the bandwagon the second Sunday in March and ending the fun the first Sunday November, which is an additional month of being off our internal schedules. This is suppose to add in energy conservation, but we tried that in the mid 1970s when Nixon was around and it didn’t work then. Why will it work now?
Because the Fine Folks In WashingtonTM said so.
They suck.
The man the invented the TV dinner, Gerry Thomas, passed away today. In his honour, Earl and I are going to enjoy a couple of Swanson Hungry Man TV dinners tonight while we watch a black and white episode of Bewitched and an early episode of The Golden Girls (gotta maintain our gay card).
There’s nothing like fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes and an apple dessert in a tin foil pan that’s been heated up in an oven. No RadarRange for us tonight! We’ll probably chase it down with a beer.
PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. (July 21) – Gerry Thomas, credited with inventing the TV dinner more than a half-century ago and giving it its singular name, has died at the age of 83.
Thomas died Monday, Terry Crowley at Messinger Mortuary said Wednesday. He had a long bout with cancer, relatives told The Arizona Republic.
Thomas was a salesman for Omaha, Neb.-based C.A. Swanson and Sons in late 1953 when he had the idea of packaging frozen meals in a segmented tray.
“It’s a pleasure being identified as the person who did this because it changed the way people live,” he said in a 1999 Associated Press interview. “It’s part of the fabric of our society.”
He recalled that the inspiration came when he was visiting a distributor, spotted a metal tray and was told it was developed for an experiment in preparation of hot meals on airliners.
“It was just a single compartment tray with foil,” he recalled. “I asked if I could borrow it and stuck it in the pocket of my overcoat.”
He said he came up with a three-compartment tray because “I spent five years in the service so I knew what a mess kit was. You could never tell what you were eating because it was all mixed together.”
Since interest in television was booming, he added: “I figured if you could borrow from that, maybe you could get some attention. I think the name made all the difference in the world.”
The first Swanson TV Dinner – turkey with corn bread dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes and buttered peas – sold for about $1 apiece and could be cooked in 25 minutes at 425 degrees.
“We had the TV screen and the knobs pictured on the package. That was the real start of marketing,” Thomas said.
Ten million dinners were sold in the first year of national distribution.
They drew “hate mail from men who wanted their wives to cook from scratch like their mothers did,” but they got him a bump in pay to $300 a month and a $1,000 bonus.
“I didn’t complain. A thousand dollars was a lot of money back then,” he said.
However, he didn’t want to call himself the father of the TV dinner.
“I really didn’t invent the dinner. I innovated the tray on how it could be served, coined the name and developed some unique packaging,” he said in the 1999 AP interview. “If I’m the father of the TV dinner, who’s the mother? I think it’s ludicrous.”
After the Campbell Soup Co. acquired Swanson in 1955, Thomas became a sales manager, then marketing manager and director of marketing and sales. He left the company after a heart attack in 1970. He later directed an art gallery and did consulting work.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!