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Hi folks -- got a couple of bloggy stories to wrap up the week:
Not a Good Idea:
Okay, this technically isn't a blogging story (since it sounds like it involves a paper diary and word processing program), but it should be: Emmalee Bauer, a 25-year-old hotel worker in Des Moines, Iowa, was fired for keeping a 300-page journal detailing everything she did to avoid work.
Ms. Bauer was reportedly told to stop writing in her personal paper diary at work, so she did: She just (allegedly) switched to typing them up on her computer.
Apparently, tippy-typing on her computer made her look like she was doing, you know, work:
"'This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."'
Darn it, she's giving away all my best secrets. It worked up until the point when her bosses found out about it.
They didn't like it very much.
The article includes other quotes from her journal (including references to killing time playing Elf Bowling). It's a pretty good read.
Also, during her state hearing where she requested unemployment benefits (denied), she used the "everyone else was doing it" defense, which traditionally ranks up there with "that's not mine, I was holding it for someone else" defense in effectiveness.
The article also states:
"In the journal, Bauer speculated that her writings might someday be published even though they dealt largely with the minutiae of her daily life such as rearranging the furniture at home, doing the dishes and planning for a tattoo on her lower back."
So she sounds like she's definitely cut out to be a blogger.
(link via Obscurestore)
Art Imitates Life:
Do we really have to say this? Please don't lick stop signs when it's really cold out. At least, not if you don't want to have to hear the phrase, "He lost some skin from his tongue."
As the article says, there was no word if the kid was triple-dog dared. (Another Obscurestore link)
This Is as Political as I Get on a Friday Afternoon:
If you've been seeing recent e-mails and blog entries about political bloggers with over 500 readers having to be treated as lobbyists, by needing to register their blogs: Don't even worry about it -- the provision was defeated. Please go about your business.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Thanks -- Joe
Hi folks -- in his latest Weekend Assignment, blogger John asks us to choose between cats and cheese (one stays, and the other is banished from Earth).
For illustrative purposes, he provides a photo:
You might remember that this is the same cat which he taped bacon to, so all we need to work in there are some scrambled eggs, and we'll have a tasty breakfast sandwich.
I haven't weighed in on a Weekend Assignment for a while, but I'm going to have to break my silence for this one. If it came down to cats or cheese, I would have to choose to keep...
Cheese!
It's not that I dislike cats. I like cats (even though I'm mildly allergic).
And, frankly, I don't even like cheese that much. But, I've never had a cat, whereas I do have cheese fairly regularly. So I am going to have to stick with cheese.
I'm also amusing myself trying to come up with circumstances that would require us to choose between cats and cheese, but I'm unable to think of anything that doesn't involve ALF at some level.
Thanks -- Joe
Hi folks -- here's a quick little win. (One of my rules for corporate bloggers is always blog your successes. Even the little ones. Make that especially the little ones.) Remember that problem we had last month, with Journalers unable to delete readers from their private Journals? It seems to be working again.
If you've got a private Journal, please try it and let me know if you still have problems deleting readers.
I'm not sure when it was fixed -- I probably just missed it. But I'll take what I can get.
Also, this one is more of a "duh" on my part than anything else -- if
you need to download the AOL software again, you can go to http://downloads.channel.aol.com/.
However, the AOL 9.0 they have listed is AOL 9.0 VR, which is the AOL that's compatible with the upcoming Microsoft operating system, Vista.
Not being a very good reader, I assumed that it was Vista-only, so I went through a whole rigamarole of trying to find the previous verison, AOL 9.0 Security Edition.
I finally got it, but then I re-read the downloads page and saw that the AOL 9.0 VR release "...works with the Microsoft® Windows Vista® and other Windows operating systems..." Not believing I could still be that dumb, I read the system requirements, and yes, it says AOL 9.0 VR does work with Windows XP. Oops.
So, anyway, keep that in mind if you need to re-download the AOL software. Learn from my mistakes.
Thanks -- Joe
Hi folks -- so, this photo here is in the spirit of blogger John's Weekend Assignment, but it doesn't quite fit the bill (I just realized I had posted a string of entries without any pictures, so I wanted to break up the monotony):
I took two of the signs adorning my cube and put them together. I used a 200x150 version of this photo for the Weekend Assignment promo on the Journals main page.
Monday is a holiday to honor the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so I'll check back in with you on Tuesday. Have a great weekend.
Thanks -- Joe
Here are two more AOL photo-related plugs:
* First, at the AOL Pictures blog, the team talks a little more about the new WooHoo features, including examples of the "Sliding Blocks" and "Ken Burns" styles (I used the Ken Burns style in my own WooHoo example)
* Next, the photo editors over at the AOL Photo Talk blog are looking for your holiday pictures -- it's for the latest edition of Fotofestivus, which is a chance for you to show off your pictures on a theme.
Normally, they come up with a theme, then ask folks to go out and shoot photos based on that theme (similar to John's Monday Photo Shoots). This time around, since the theme is "holidays," you're welcome to use photos that you've already taken from this past holiday (or any holiday past, for that matter).
So here's your chance to show off your holiday photos, as well as mix it up with some of the AOL Photo Editors.
***************
Now, for our purposes here, there's a difference between "AOL Pictures" and "AOL Photos."
It's kind of an organizational thing; AOL Pictures is the name of the product found over at pictures.aol.com -- you know, the one that used to be called "You've Got Pictures."
AOL Photo, on the other hand, is the team of Photo Editors that help programming groups add photos to stories and pages. They also create some of the programming features that live under the "AOL Pictures" name, like all of the AOL Visions stuff, the Pictures of the Week galleries and more.
The Photo Editors work with photos from the wires and various photo services. In addition, in some cases, they'll go out and shoot their own stuff.
AOL Pictures = Product. AOL Photos = Photo Editors. At least, that's the way it is right now.
Thanks -- Joe
Hi folks -- got an airplane-story trifecta here. The first two involve crashes, so if you're afraid of flying, maybe you should just skip to the end.
1. Air Florida Flight 90
First, saw this article in today's Washington Post (my local fishwrap): "A Crash's Improbable Impact" -- it's about the crash of Air Florida Flight 90, which occurred 25 years ago tomorrow.
Shortly after takeoff from Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, killing 73 on-board and 4 motorists; 5 passengers survived after being pulled from the icy Potomac River (you may recall the images). One additional passenger, Arland D. Williams, drowned after passing a lifeline to other survivors.
It led to sweeping changes in airline safety procedures, cockpit culture and more -- check out the article. The democratization of the cockpit, and the demonstrated value in listening to all your team members, is especially interesting to me.
2. The Gimli Glider
In another, much cooler airline story with a happier ending, there's the Gimli Glider incident of 1983, when the crew of an Air Canada 767 with 61 passengers on board ran completely out of fuel.
As fate would have it, the captain of the flight had extensive experience piloting gliders, so he was able to set it down on a closed airport that had been converted into a race track.
What's also cool is, even after sustaining some damage (the nose landing gear didn't lock), the plane was repaired and is still in service. (Story link via Digg yesterday.)
3. Planes Spinning Their Wheels?
Finally, Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column today begs for mercy on the "Airplane on a conveyor belt" brain teaser that he brought up last week.
This one has been floating around on the Interwebs for a while. Depending on your point of view, it's a little counter-intuitive, but more importantly, the problem changes radically depending on the wording. It asks this:
If you put a jet plane on a conveyor belt [the exact wording of speed of the conveyor belt is what changes the question], will it take off?
The answer is "Yes", but I will get to that in a second.
I think I first saw it on Kottke.org at the beginning of 2006; it hit the Web in a big way after a Straight Dope article covered it, including 9 pages of discussion in their message boards.
As these things do, it disappeared out of view, re-emerging after NYT writer David Pogue blogged about it in December, which is where Salon's guy found it (boingboing also helped reinfect us with it).
Like I said, the plane takes off. Like many people, originally, I thought it wouldn't. The question should really be: Can a plane on a treadmill move forward? If it can move forward, it can get air moving over the wings, which would mean it would be able to get off the ground.
Since a plane gets its forward thrust from its engines (the wheels are just there to keep the plane from grinding a groove into the runway), it doesn't matter if the plane is taking off from a stationary runway, a treadmill, a sea of ball bearings, a frozen lake, water or anything else.
The thing that gets people is they immediately think of cars on dynometers (those big rollers when you go for an emissions test), or themselves on treadmills.
Anyway, even if people get bogged down into discussions of frictionless bearings and static coefficients of friction (which you can get plenty of in the Straight Dope discussion), it's more demonstrative of the importance of proper writing.
Thanks -- Joe
Here's an item from UK paper The Independent from last week, entitled, "2007: Don't just watch, blog!" (link via Netscape).
The article is pretty a scattershot roundup of social media in 2006 (with a focus on UK events), with some speculation about the future of citizen content creators -- regular folks creating content.
Only, they're still not really "regular" folks right now -- while social media has made a lot of inroads, we're still pretty heavily concentrated on an elite cadre of highly-motivated people (feel free to applaud yourselves); young people who are growing up with this (and crave the attention, anyway); as well as other, but still tech-savvy, people.
The question remains -- will people keep using social profiles like MySpace or AIM Pages, or blogs, or wikis, or podcasts, or will we shift to other venues? It's hard to say.
Like I said, the article is kind of all over the place, so I'm having a hard time trying to blog a narrative around it.
Suffice it to say, as bloggers (and to a lesser extent, commenters, and to an even lesser, but still important extent, readers), we're all still participating in this big movement.
Even if you don't care about big movements and just do it to tell your friends about your day. So, kudos.
Thanks -- Joe
