Welcome Triad Forum

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I meant to write about this earlier in the week but somehow it got buried in my ever growing pile of things to do and I neglected to do it.  Thankfully, Esbee reminded me with this post. 

Here’s the deal: Neil Tolbert of Clemmons has launched a new discussion board called Triad Forum.  The most active topics appear to be North Carolina and Southern Speakisms, It’s getting dangerous to watch a baseball game and, unsurprisingly, Democrats are responsible, hands down, for this crisis!!!.

I love discussion boards and it’s nice to see one focused on our area.  Good luck to Neil on building it up to critical mass.  Me thinks that the link from Esbee is going to spike his traffic quite a bit.

Winston-Salem Journal Gets Its Warhol On

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When I opened my Winston-Salem Journal this morning I was confronted with a picture that had me thinking maybe they’ve put an Andy Warhol worshiper on their design staff.  Below on the left is this morning’s Journal front page and to the right is Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe piece.  Oh, and yes I realize that the Journal pic is likely the result of a press error, but I still think it’s cool.
Artywsj2Andy_warhol_marilyn

Nice Viral Video from AARP

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Aarpvotevideo

This came in from my Mom.  It’s one of those videos that allows you to embed a person’s name so that it appears in the video.  In this case it looks like I’m running against Obama and McCain and the thrust of the video is that you, the voter, is the one who can change America.  It’s a nice get out the vote effort from the geezer association.  Oh, and I say that in only the nicest way because I’m soon be of age for membership.

DIY Traffic Alerts via Text Message

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Do you really need someone on TV to tell you about traffic?  Why, no you don’t now that the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has made their traffic alerts available by RSS feed. I’ve just now put myself into direct competition with local traffic reporter Jennie Stencil by adding the Forsyth County traffic alerts to my blog; just look in the right hand column at the bottom and you’ll find it right there.

Of course you can set up your very own traffic alert system so that you don’t have to wait on anyone.  Here’s one way to get traffic alerts sent via text to your phone:

  • Go to the NCDOT’s Traveler Information Management System page(http://apps.dot.state.nc.us/tims/)
  • Select the region or county that you’re interested in getting traffic updates on.
  • Once you’ve gotten to that page go to the bottom and look for the "RSS" button.
  • Click on that and you’ll go to the page that acts as a kind of permanent news ticker for that particular travel area.
  • Highlight the address in your address bar.  An example would be this address for the Piedmont Triad region: http://apps.dot.state.nc.us/TIMS/RSS/IncidentList.aspx?RegionId=2
  • Go to www.web-alerts.com
  • Paste the address you just copied into the field provided and click "Go".
  • Add your phone number in the appropriate field, add keywords (if you want to) in the keyword field and click "Create Alert".
  • When you get the text asking for confirmation just confirm and you’ll have your very own traffic alert system.

One problem that I’ve found with this is that the alert contains a link to a web page, which is okay for me because I have a Blackberry and an unlimited data plan with Verizon.  For someone who is on the road and getting the text via regular phone this is going to be a problem.  Stay tuned because I’m looking for a way to send a straight text alert.

What’s cool is that NCDOT allows you to select traffic alerts by region, county or route so you don’t have to get alerts for Raleigh if you live in Winston-Salem.

And I Thought Virginia Foxx Was Bad

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I think the McCain/Palin folks have settled on a tactic for their last push of this election: trot out hard core Republican attack dogs who happen to be brunette women and have them spout crazy accusations with the flimsiest thread of logic to try and damn Obama by association.  First you have Palin accusing Obama of consorting with terrorists and now you have a Congresswoman from Minnesota who frankly comes off looking bat-shit crazy in this interview on MSNBC (also pasted below).  Pay close attention to the robo-call the McCain campaign is running and is played during the interview.  These folks are turning rabid:

This woman makes my Congresswoman, the right honorable Virginia Foxx, look mild by comparison. The Republicans do seem to love their crazy white women.

Hat tip to Ed Cone for the lead.

Democracy in Action in Fayetteville

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We’re in the midst of early voting here in North Carolina and since this is a hotly contested race in the presidential election we’ve actually had both candidates in the state quite a bit over the last of months (Obama) or couple of weeks (McCain).  Anyway, Senator Obama appeared in Fayetteville yesterday and urged people to vote early.  Below is some video shot outside one of the polling places that features a boisterous crowd of McCain/Palin supporters across the street from the polls.  About halfway through you’ll see one man interviewed who takes issue with the fact that extra local polling places were opened on a Sunday in order to handle an expected crush of voters from the rally.  It also seems that he’s taking issue with the Cumberland County board of elections opening up on Sunday in general, which he says was a special accommodation for the Obama folks.  I’ve only read that they opened up extra polling places, not that they opened up on Sunday expressly for the rally.  Still, the GOP is upset that it appears to give unfair advantage to the Democrats, and in fairness if the election board had done the same thing for McCain the Democrats would be up in arms too.  Anyhoo, I think this is going to be a VERY interesting election year although I can’t imagine a group of protesters outside my polling place which also happens to be my church.  BTW, I still think that’s weird. 

Bad Luck Charm

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I think I might be a bad luck charm for my daughter’s soccer team, which might not be so bad if I wasn’t also a coach for the team. You see the girls played one of our “big” games today against one of our sister teams in Twin City Youth Soccer (Challenge) U-15 and I missed it due to helping with the prep for my church’s BBQ (see prior post). Since I’ve been involved with the team we’ve never beaten one of our sister teams…until today. Not only did we beat the Lady Gold 2-1 (we’re the Lady Reds) I hear that the girls played the best as a unit that anyone has seen them play. The last time I missed a game my daughter scored a goal in another win. Heck, the game I missed last season she scored two goals in a win. See a pattern here?

Tomorrow we play the Lady Royals, our other sister team, and I’m thinking I may need to stay home.

Choppin

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Our church, Unity Moravian in Lewisville, had it’s annual fall BBQ today and I volunteered to help chop the pigs. Specifically we chopped over 60 pork shoulders which came to about 900 pounds of pig.

A bunch of guys had to bug out early, but luckily I’d recruited Michael, our 16 year old and his buddy Daniel to help. They had great fun wielding the cleavers

The BBQ officially opened at 4:00 and we didn’t finish chopping until 3:30 so without the boys I don’t know if we’d have been done chopping in time.

There were also a bunch of chickens being cooked and several guys were manning that operation. The guys I don’t envy were the experts who stayed up all night with the pigs. They also stuck around to make sure our part of the op went successfully.

Usually there’s plenty of food left to buy after the event is over so if you’re in the mood for good BBQ just give me a shout and I’ll hook you up.

Converging

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I’m at ConvergeSouth in Greensboro. Good sessions so far. I’ve run into several people I know, including Ed Cone, Smitty and Lenslinger. Right now I’m listening to Anil Dash of Six Apart, the company that hosts this blog. He’s talking about “next year’s social network.” Interesting stuff.

This is a free conference that i’m enjoying. I didn’t register for it so I didn’t expect to have lunch, but it looks like they ran out of food for a lot of the people who did. That’s too bad because it will taint some peoples’ perception even though it’s a free event.

They have 100 kids from Guilford County high schools here. I should have brought my kids; they’d really find some of it interesting.

Thankfully I Didn’t Watch

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Last night I made sure I didn’t watch the last presidential debate of 2008.  Ostensibly I had other, better things to do but the reality is that even if I’d had to choose between watching the debate and cleaning the lint out of my navel the navel would have won.  That leaves me with just one question:  Who the hell is Joe the Plumber, and why on Earth were they talking about him?

Just. Shoot. Me.