This is a handy lesson for anyone who has wondered how news shows are put together.
Archive for September, 2010
How The News Is Reported
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
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Indoor Pool
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010Hi Skippy,
Still loving your site. :-)
Adventures in babysitting brought on a childhood memory you might enjoy.
(And feel free to post on your blog, if you like.)
(Well maybe I will – Skippy)
I grew up in a fairly typical family: Mom, Dad, kid from previous dad (me), two permanent foster kids, two kids from that marriage. Mixed marriage, too. (Not all that accepted at the time.) We lived on a small island in the Caribbean. When my parents went out, they left us with the maid.
This maid was wonderful. But she had one failing: she couldn’t really cope with us. We were used to running free in the huge garden, and the area around our house which was semi-urban. I swear we grew up half wild.
So, she used to lock us in our room. We didn’t mind much as it was a large room and all our toys were there. But most importantly, there was a hole in the wall where the aircon unit used to be before it broke down and went for “repairs”. (Dad-speak for: we’ll never see it again. He insists on waiting for used parts. On an island. Where everything is imported. By boat, at the time.)
So we’d just climb out and play in the (even huger) backyard where the goat and the chickens were.
One of those times we got it into our heads that 40c was kinda warm-ish, and we wanted a pool.
So, we climbed back inside, put everything on high shelves. Put towels under the door and ran the garden hose inside.
1) We got a respectable pool, deep enough to actually swim in.
2) Actually, there wasn’t that much leakage.
3) Until my father, uttering the now famous words “there’s some water on the floor” opened the door.
4) We had to mop it all up ourselves, and of course we felt this was very unfair.
5) I swear I heard my father laughing his ass off when he phoned his dad.
I’ll Have One Extra Large, To Go
Monday, September 27th, 2010Hello, Kat again. Thought I should share this…
You all may remember a little while ago, in my second ER Admitting List, I made a few nasty comments about overweight people. If that offended you, you want to stop reading now. If you understood that I was not generalizing and was only referring to a minority of people who would be rude no matter how fat they were, then please continue.
The following story is entirely true, unembellished and (I think) hilarious. So awhile ago a man presented in our emergency room having some chest wall pain after he took a fall. Not unheard of. This man weighed over 600 pounds, so he fell pretty hard. We first knew we were going to have a problem when he became indignant because we had to strap two beds together for him.
Then we didn’t have a big enough gown.
Then the tech had a hard time with the EKG and the nurse had a hard time with the IV. He was ranting about everything. (more…)
Craigslist Hookers
Friday, September 24th, 2010So if you have been following the news for the past few weeks, or if you or someone you know is a pimp, you may have heard about what recently transpired on Craigslist.
The short version, is that they eliminated the adult section of the site.
The longer version is that throughout this country, law-enforcement and a variety of DA’s kept threatening legal action, on the basis that the Craigslist adult section was a haven for prostitution. Which to be fair, was probably a very accurate assessment of the situation. And even though Craigslist has traditionally assisted law enforcement, to the point of setting up a special interface for police to examine and track posters, many felt that it was their responsibility to society to take the whole section down, and failing that, these folks tried to use the courts to take the whole site down.
And so, in order to protect themselves Craigslist took down their adult section. More specifically they blocked access to that section from any computer coming from America.
Now I’m not going to talk about the 1st Amendment or the Federal laws that protect websites from the consequences of third party content. Others who are more knowledgeable and frankly better writers than me have already done a more thorough job than I ever could.
I’m not going to talk about the legalities and morality of prostitution. Police, and to a lesser extent Government lawyers don’t have an ethical right to choose what laws they will enforce. For good or ill, prostitution is illegal, and they are duty and oath bound to do what they can to stop it.
But what I am going to talk about is how incredibly fucking stupid those folks are who tried to bully Craigslist into shutting down the adult section.
Your job is to fight crime. Hookers and their clients are criminals. Therefore, it is up to law enforcement and the DA office to find a prosecute them. So far so good.
And then along comes a website that has not only a list of every harlot in town, but also a picture, a phone number, a vague geographic location, and more often than not, a price sheet.
I’m sorry, America’s law enforcement, but I am calling bullshit on this one. Given the information Craigslist just dropped into your lap, every working girl (and both guys) should have been off the streets years ago. I mean, it would have taken literally just one police officer about 15 minutes to have the contact info of nearly every sex-worker in the city.
I mean, at this point, the fact that they haven’t busted every single strumpet, floozy, and bawd in the market is really just laziness. Which brings us to the actual problem. It’s not that these folks are worried about the internet being used to spread the sex-trade. It’s that they are worried about how obvious the Internet makes it that they aren’t very good at stopping it.
Skippy Exposes Himself To The Internet
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010My wife is passionate about web-promotion the way that I am about zombies and video games. This leads to her constantly exploring and researching newer and better trends to take advantage of.
Of these trends is this whole “transparency” thing that some companies have going on. My understanding is that by revealing information about myself as a person, that means that potential customers will feel like they know me as a person, if not a friend, and are thus more likely to give me their business and/or keep reading my site.
For a while now my wife has been hinting, with rapidly decreasing amounts of subtly, that I need to start using these techniques. Partly to keep people interested in my site, and partially to get them more interested in our business. And partially because I think she just enjoys telling me what to do.
She actually wrote a whole big article about it on the business’ blog, which can be seen here.
“People like knowing things about the people they see online…” She would say (a lot) “You should totally be more open about personal information about yourself, so that people think of you as their online friend, instead of just this random Internet joke machine.”
“Actually most people think of me as a one joke pony, that is way past my expiration date. I mean, The List was funny, but it’s not like people really care much about anything else I’ve done since then.”
“We never do what I want! Your reluctance shows that you don’t respect me as a wife and business partner! I am totally not going to let you buy Dead Rising 2 if you don’t do this!”
I am less convinced of this idea, but hey, it will get my wife off of my back, so here we go. (more…)
GeekArtist Web Solutions
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010So a little under year ago my wife and I began doing what I refer to as job math. We did the math and figured out that a web designer with the amount of experience that Janice has (lots) can earn a lot more than a low-mid range level designer. And so I became the primary care giver for the kids while my wife became the bread winner. We did more math and realized that we could make the same amount, or possibly more, by working freelance at part-time hours. Plus no boss, and we get to stay home with the kids.
Heck, we had ’em, we might as well raise ’em.
And so we set out to turn her part-time business, into our primary source of income. And we set a small financial goal for ourselves. While we understand that it is unlikely that we will build our way up to our full earning potential in our first year, we did set a milestone.
“If we can earn at least “X” in one year, then we are doing good enough to keep it going. Otherwise we should stop and try for conventional employment again.
Well we have reached that number. And now we have have joined the ranks of the self-employed.
My wife handles web design and coding, while I do graphics. Between us, and a few subcontractors we employ, we’re capable of handling just about any website needs.
So if you, or someone you know is in thinking about giving somebody money to design a web site, please remember that I want that money, in a very deep and spiritual way.
