The Greensboro News & Record’s website is improving a little. The editor’s blog now has been upgraded to the new design (it still had the old design as recently as a few days ago), and the "Town Square" is easier to find on the home page.
Still, I find the overall design to be confusing and hard to navigate, as I mentioned before.
According to this article on Real Tech News Netflix is getting close to launching it’s movie download service in conjunction with TiVo.
Basically Netflix subscribers who have TiVo will be able to download movies to their TiVo DVR instead of waiting for them in the mail. Since I subscribe to both services I think I’m about to go to couch-potato-guy-heaven with this announcement.
One consequence of this is that I’m now really motivated to get my TiVo hooked up to my wireless network. I’ve been putting it off, but I can only imagine how long it would take my TiVo to download a movie using the dial up connection. As Larry the Cable Guy would say, I better ‘Git-r-done’.
Last night we had our monthly Lewisville Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting, and I have to say it provided two highlights for my very short (so far) career in public service.
First we had our Bible incident. Since the Board of Adjustment is technically a judicial body we have to swear people in to give testimony. For the swearing in we needed a Bible, but for some reason we couldn’t find a single one in Town Hall. Luckily our attorney had a Bible memory card for his Palm, which technically qualifies as a Bible. So when everyone was sworn in they had to raise their right hand and put whatever they could fit of their left hand on the memory card. Basically it looked like they were pushing a button with a finder on their left hand, but it worked.
The next moment came during one resident’s testimony in opposition to the cell tower we were ruling on (won’t go into the details here, but they live across the street from the property is being used for the proposed cell tower). In the course of their testimony they stated that when the City of Winston-Salem had constructed a water treatment facility on the property next to the property where the cell tower is going to be built the city knocked down all the trees. The result is that these poor folks have lost the wind barrier that the trees used to provide and they now experience wind gusts that tear up their roof and knock furniture off their porch. Their concern was that the construction of the cell tower would lead to an even bigger wind problem due to more trees being taken down.
This is the part that tickled my funny bone. One of the board members was trying to ask them if they had any expert testimony as to the damage that has been/could be done to their house due to increased wind from the loss of trees. I’ll paraphrase here, but this is kind of how it went:
Board member: "Have you had a, um, wind expert come out and look at the property to make sure the damage is due to the loss of trees?"
Long pause.
Resident: "Well, no, I haven’t had a, um, wind expert look at it. I wouldn’t know where to find a wind expert."
At this point I kind of lost track of everything for a few seconds because I was doing my best not to smile and giggle. Obviously this is serious business for everyone, and I understood what everyone was trying to say, but the whole "wind expert" thing and the resident’s reaction just cracked me up.
Anyway, we got the testimony we needed from Nextel, the residents were able to say their piece and we were able to make our ruling despite the moments of levity. As always it was an educational experience for me, and I’m just amazed at the civility everyone displayed. Considering that the cell phone company has a lot riding on the decision in terms of service to its customers, and that the residents are seeing a direct impact on their homes I have to really commend them for how they handled themselves. In the case of the residents in particular, I only hope that I can behave as well if I find myself in a similar situation.
My first "Entrepreneur of the Day" award goes to Hold-It, Inc. These guys (or maybe it’s just one guy) invented a holder for WD-40 straws. (The product picture to the left is from their site).
You may be thinking, "big deal", but anyone who’s lost their WD-40 straw knows what a pain in the rear it can be. Talk about spotting an opportunity and taking it!
One has to wonder why WD-40 never thought of this, but that’s another story I guess.
HughPage is a wiki that is described as an "open source CraigsList for bloggers." Will be interesting to see what it becomes.
Lenslinger, a cameraman for a local TV station has a blog and is quite a good writer. He has an excellent post about local politicians that resulted from a follow up story he and a reporter were doing about some Guilford County commissioners who were attending a National Association of Counties meeting in Hawaii at taxpayer expense.
As a result we have one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard re. local politicians:
How come successful, educated, seemingly rational people run for public
office only to devolve into infantile behavior once they‘re seated? I’m
not just talking Guilford County, either. I’ve done time in County
Commissioner and City Council meetings from here to the coast. No
matter what issue was at hand, I’ve been summarily flummoxed by the
childishness exhibited by the low-level politico. Black, White, or
Plaid, the foolishness knows no racial bounds. Something about
achieving a local constituency makes eight out of ten well-meaning
civic geeks go absolutely bat-shit. Why that is I don’t know, but
commissioner hissies and councilman tantrums are as common an
occurrence as that dork on TV, the one broadcasting live(!) from the
backseat of some housewife’s grocery-getter with a giant thermometer in
his sweaty grip.
The USGS Seamless Distribution System lets you get alot of the raw data that services like MSN’s Virtual Earth.
Lots of complex data is available but thankfully there’s also a tutorial. If you’re interested in geography at all you can play with this thing for hours.
So I was doing a Google Image search on my last name (can’t even remember why), and I came across this picture on the left of Fr. Charles Lowder. It seems that he was the founder of an Anglo-Catholic movement called the Society of the Holy Cross.
I don’t know much about my paternal genealogy (I plan on changing that soon), so I was a little curious to see whether or not he had emigrated to the U.S. and perhaps done some unpriestly things that might mean I could be a descendant. Technically we’re talking Episcopalian here, and I don’t know when the Episcopalians started allowing their priests to marry, so maybe it wouldn’t have been un-priestly after all. Anyway, there’s no mention of it in the brief history I found on the Society’s website, but there is the mention of a nephew so maybe there’s a distant relationship.
What really caught my eye though is the society’s motto: "in hoc signo vinces." This happens to be the only Latin I know, because it is also the motto of my fraternity, Sigma Chi. It means "in this sign, conquer!" From the beer-addled memories of fraternity life I also remember that this had something to do with Constantine, but that’s really neither here nor there.
In reading the Society’s history I started flashing back to the Sigma Chi history that was pounded into our heads during pledge training. There were lots of similarities, from the way in which the founders met in secret, to the number of founders (six for the Society, seven for Sigma Chi), to the feeling of moral fortitude relayed in each history. Even the timing was the same: both were founded in 1855.
I know it sounds heretical comparing a church to a fraternity, but I was just a little taken aback by the similarities. That has to be some kind of sign that there’s a family connection, right?
