LarryC’s World

Well, made it back safely from Dripping Springs. For some reason, Sunday nights are a challenge. The park closes at 7:00 PM. The past 2 weeks in a row, people just couldn’t get out on time. Took me until 8:00 PM to get home, and then there was still a car in the day use area, so I had to leave the ‘tire ripper’ gate open.

Anyway… I saw that the Emmy award nominations were announced on Thursday. there were 436 nominations in 90 categories! Whew… Considering how many ‘reality’ shows are on now, that must mean that about 1 out of every 4 professional TV folks got a nomination. When you add in the Daytime Emmys, and the various Local Emmy awards, just about every TV person should have at least 1 Emmy by now. That puts the Emmy awards right up there with the Grammy awards for most categories (Grammy wins… they had 102 categories this year).

Despite the obscene number of nominations, needless to say, most of my favorites were not on the list. And the shows I watch that are on the list are hardly worthy of an award. I admit I watch ‘Boston Legal’, but best drama, come on now! The real best drama wasn’t even nominated. That is ‘The Wire’ on HBO. Of courseThe Wire is a show you actually have to watch. With two dozen recurring characters, and some heavy duty themes, including inner-city drug use, government corruption, and failing education system, it was not a show that can be appreciated in a 10 minute screener that the nominating committee sees.

So really the Emmys are just another meaningless, gratuitous award show for an industry that never tires of patting itself on its own back. Come to think of it, wasn’t there some award show on TV tonite, the Country Music something or other? You know, I need to look at trophy makers for an investment option. That certainly seems like a growing industry. Bet they’re all probably made in China anyway!

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Oh, by the way, I have the Gallery software installed and a test gallery configured. I’ve also installed the integration software for Wordpress. Hopefully, I should have some photos online this week, if time permits. This isn’t the only web site I manage. You can go look at the other one if you want, it’s Talaveraca.org. Don’t be surprised if they kinda look alike. I’ve been using both sites to learn and gain experience for the other site.

We’ll be out of touch until Sunday night. Tomorrow morning, we’re heading for the BLM’s Dripping Springs Recreation Center. We’re the weekend caretakers there. In a straight line, Dripping Springs is only about 6 miles away. But, it feels like a world away. While our house is at about 4500 feet, DS is at 5600 feet. So we are quite a bit higher and there are only 2 other people up there with us. There is no internet access. We will be stopping by the house as we have to drive by it to open and close the gates at the Soledad Canyon day use area. But for all web purposes, we’ll be out of contact for the weekend. Surprisingly, my Verizon cellphone gets excellent reception up there. So, if you need to contact me, call. But Email will remain unseen until Sunday night, or Monday morning (depends on how tired I am).

I’ve taken a lot of photos up there. Last weekend, we had about 1.5 inches of rain between Thursday night and Saturday morning. The springs were actually a waterfall. We’re not talking Niagra here, or even Burney Falls (for you Californians who know where that is), but for the Northern Chiuaua desert, it was about as good as it gets. I’ll be posting an album of those photos soon. I’ve installed the Gallery2 software in my web space, but haven’t configured it yet. Gallery2 is supposed to integrate easily with Wordpress. If so, we’ll soon have the photo albums online.

See you Monday.

Larry

Vinegaroon

Checking in on a daily basis to let you know that I am working on getting the site populated. This fiercesom looking fellow is called a Vinegaroon, or sometimes a whiptail scorpion. He is actually quite harmless, but he can secrete acetic acid when he feels threatened. Well, apparently photographing him made him feel threatened, cuz I could distinctly smell a vinegar-like odor around him.

Anyway, I thought that while you are waiting for my site to get fully populated, here is a fascinating site I stumbled across while browsing: elenafilatova.com. Elena Filatova is a young woman who lives in Kiev, Ukraine. She has several photo albums on her site of the area. Elena specializes in photographing the ‘dead-zone’ around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. As you should remember, 21 years ago, there was an explosion in the reactor core, and a little over 10% of the fissionable material was released into the air. As a result, a fairly large area of the former Soviet Union was evacuated. The Soviets built a sarcophagus around the reactor, entombing it in concrete. The site will remain deadly for approximately 100,000 years. Elena has made several trips through the Ukraine portion of the evacuated area on her motorcycle, documenting the abandoned villages, and the changes that are taking place.

Elena has also explored some of the WWII battlefields around Kiev. She also has photo essays on the Soviet era Gulags and the Ukraine Orange rebellion.

Anyway, check out her site, I think you will find it interesting.

Larry

I recently read an article online about TSA (Transportation Security Administration). Apparently they “lost” a removable disk drive that contained the personal identification of all 100,000 people who have ever worked for TSA. Well, I don’t usually admit it, but I did work for TSA for about 18 months in 2003-2004. (It was the most miserable 18 months of my working life). In a way, I was not surprised to learn of the loss. Frankly, TSA is the most egregious example of an inept, dysfunctional government bureaucracy. The lack of knowledge about their assigned roll, lack of management skills and total lack of respect for the front line screeners was breath-taking. During the short time I was with them, it was widely known that at least one laptop computer with local personnel data had disappeared. Plus, the fact that SS# was used as employee number, and printed on everything from time reports to work schedules was not comforting to anyone who was concerned about privacy, let alone identity theft.

Less than a week after hearing about the TSA “loss”, I received a letter from IBM. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1968, I worked for the Service Bureau Corporation. SBC as it was known. was a wholly owned subsidiary of IBM. Well, it seems that IBM “lost” a tape that contained the personnel information including SS# of an undisclosed number of former IBM employees, myself included. Certainly no one can accuse IBM of a lack of management skills, at least not the IBM I worked for. In 1972, IBM sold SBC to Control Data Corp. A couple of years later when I was promoted to management, Control Data sent me to … IBM Basic Management School, and later to IBM Advanced Management School. I must say that the management skills and practices I learned at the IBM basic classes stayed with me throughout my career. At least IBM was a little more forthcoming about their “loss” of my personal data. And they even offered to pay for one year of credit monitoring by a company that specializes in that business.

Now here’s the conundrum, when I looked at the information and application for the credit monitoring service, I had to give this company all of my personal info, including SS#, date of birth and mother’s maiden name. So, do I really want to give all of my personal information to yet one more company with the potential to “lose” my data??

I think not!

Larry

It took longer than expected, but I’m back online.Because of the billing cycle of my old hosting company, I needed to cancel them, before July 9. But, since the week before included the July 4 holiday, neither my old host, or new host moved very fast. So, that week was lost, and then it took 4 days of the week of July 9, before my new host got my domain transferred, DNS servers configured and then to get it propagated throughout the web. My domain finally became visible on Thursday afternoon, July 12.

Currently I am doing some volunteer work that leaves me without internet access from Friday morning, until Sunday night. So today, Monday 7/16, I finally got things configured so that I could get back online.

I’ve decided to use the “Wordpress” blogging software for the core of my site. I think I can update the site faster, and it will be easier to change things around using Wordpress. Wordpress is the most popular blogging software around today, and it is free to boot. Please be patient, since it is going to take awhile to get all of my content online. But I will be working to reload some of my photo galleries along with lots of new stuff over the next several weeks.

One other reason I decided to switch to Wordpress is that I hope to be able to update the blog (maybe with photos) from Paris when we are there over Christmas.

So, there is lots to look forward to, and I’m hoping you will all enjoy the site.

Larry