It seems that just about every year, a fire breaks out in the Organ mountains. The eastern side of the mountains are all US military installations. Directly on the other side of the mountains from us is the White Sands missile range. Just south of White Sands is a ‘live-fire’ range that is part of Ft Bliss, a massive army base in El Paso. Since terrain and summer heat around here bears a similarity to areas of Afghanistan and Iraq, the army uses the range frequently. It is common to hear explosions from the other side at our house. It has also become a tradition that wildfires break out almost yearly on the Organ mountain areas of Ft Bliss. Last Tuesday, a wildfire started on the eastern slopes of the mountains. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there was quite a lot of smoke and a distinct glow in the night sky, but it appeared that the fire was being contained… Until today.
This morning, I noticed an increase in aircraft near our house and went outside to look. Sure enough, there was an impressive column of smoke rising from the mountains, and all day there was a steady string of air drops by fire bombers. Tonight, the fire has crested the mountains, and there is a line of fire slowly moving down the mountains. Fortunately, it is still a good distance away from our house, and the sparse vegetation does not lend itself to a rapid advance, still, it is disconcerting to see this fire that has been burning for a week making headway.
A fire fighting tanker drops fire retardent on the Organ Mountains fire
I have seen this video in a couple of different Blogs lately, and found it interesting. Fact is I much prefer intelligent character driven movies to the over-loud, plot-less, CGI-laden cartoons that seem to be all the rage these days. Maybe that’s why I like foreign films so much. So, at the risk of being labeled a feminist, I’m posting this.
Sears, formerly Sears, Roebuck and Company, has been a part of life since I was a kid. Growing up in Aurora, IL, there was a big (well, big for small town Illinois in the 50’s) Sears store less than a mile from our house. My family shopped there regularly. While some kids’ parents spent the extra bucks for the Converse All-Stars canvas sneakers. My Mom felt that the Sears brand was just as good, and a few bucks less. Of course in those days, pre-brand consciousness we would just pull off the small round rubber labels on the ankles, and no one knew the difference. My parents always felt that Sears brand appliances were good products and often purchased them. Even as I grew up and bought my first home, I always looked at the Sears brand of appliances (Kenmore) and have bought them over the years.
Recently it became obvious that we would need to replace our kitchen range. We had already made one service call, and frankly it never heated the oven accurately, often off by 25 – 30 degrees. When we started looking, I was surprised by the few choices of retail outlets for major home appliances. It seems that most of the lolcal stores have disappeared, victims of the big national chains. So, we looked at the big home stores and I decided to also check Sears. Turns out that we found a range at Sears that had everything we were looking for and the price appeared reasonable.We decided to purchase it, and told the floor sales person to ring it up. That’s when the troubles began.
The sales rep said that free delivery and hook was included in the price. Whoops… we are on propane, and that requires a plumber to hook it up, so instead of free delivery, there was a charge. We purchased the range on Thursday, but the first delivery slot available was on Monday. Then at the register, the sales rep said they were heavily booked for deliveries on Monday, and Tuesday would be better. I said “fine”. The sales rep had a hard time entering the sale at their register (rather a POS terminal). She had to ask 2 other reps for help. I wasn’t in a hurry and didn’t mind the wait. BUT, when the transaction was finally completed, the delivery date had now magically slipped to Wednesday. The clerk was at a loss to explain this, and said that “the system” must have assigned the date. Alright, I would wait 7 days for the delivery.
Wednesday arrived. I was somewhat concerned that I had not heard from anyone at Sears concerning my delivery. So, I called the 800 number on my sales receipt. The woman that answered took my area code and phone number and then replied”Sorry, you are not in the system!” Hmmm, I suggested that she should try our old area code and phone number(the area code for our part of New Mexico changed 2 years ago). Ahh yes, there I was, but there was no delivery scheduled in “the system“. I informed the rep on the phone that I had a receipt showing a promised delivery date of that day and I expected to see a range delivered. After a few minutes of waiting, the rep promised to call me back (hopefully at the correct area code). My next call was to the store. Needless to say, our sales person was not available. However my wife spoke to another person who identified them-self as the department manager. This person told us that the 800 number rep did not know what they were talking about. She said that when she looked in “the system“, it clearly showed a scheduled delivery. Surprisingly, the 800 number rep, actually called me back. She said that clearly the store was wrong, but she would work diligently to straighten things out. She said that “hopefully” I would have my range delivered that day. She also assured me that she had changed my phone number in “the system“. After a couple of hours with no update, we called the store back. Our salesperson was still not available, and now, the department manager was too busy to talk to us! The 800 number rep said that our delivery was now in “the system“, and someone had accepted the delivery… but not until tomorrow. I told the rep that if I did not receive the range first thing on Thursday, they could cancel the order and refund my money! I finally received a call from the installer about 5 PM, and he promised to be at our house at 8:00 AM on Thursday. When he did arrive Thursday morning, (about 8:15), he said that we were unlucky to get the sales person we did, and that he had had numerous issues with her.
Well, we have had the range for about a month, and are quite happy with it. Like I said, I like Sears appliances, if only they could get the sales part right. Sadly, this experience is not unique to Sears. I seem to have trouble getting people to take my money on numerous occasions at various retailers. What has happened to retail that they are so totally incompetent any more? Oh, here’s the range, a Kenmore model 7748:
(April 7) — A Wisconsin district attorney is urging schools to drop their sex-education programs, warning that the teachers involved could be arrested if they follow a new state law requiring them to instruct students on how to use condoms and other contraceptives.
In light of a letter from Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth, leaders at the five school districts in the county are evaluating what to do now, New Lisbon School District Superintendent Tom Andres told AOL News today.
Of course now the question is, who will protect them from the lack of common sense displayed by the local DA??
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
I bet you won’t hear this story on the nightly news!!!
The death this week of 2 actors who are fondly remembered from my childhood reminded me once again that I’m getting old. On Monday of this week came news that actor Peter Graves had passed away. While many people remember him as Jim Phelps from the 1960’s series ‘Mission Impossible‘ (and the 1988 revival of the series), and younger people remember him as Captain Clarence Oveur from the ‘Airplane‘ movies, Peter Graves will always be Jim Newton to me. From 1955 through 1960, ‘Fury’ was a Saturday morning staple for all young boys. Fury was the ‘king of the wild stallions’ who listened to and protected young Joey. Peter Graves played Jim Newton, Joey’s wise, kindly uncle. As I remember the series, the story-lines alternated between between Uncle Jim helping Joey save Fury from those dastardly mean cowboys who wanted to tame(or kill) Fury, and Fury saving Joey from some imminent disaster. Watching it today it seems dated and simplistic. But in 1955 TV was still new to most homes and westerns were a staple on TV. Saturday morning was all kids shows, and most young city boys watched Fury and wished we lived on a ranch in the West and had a kindly uncle like Jim Newton. (especially one who didn’t get mad when you did something stupid, as Joey did just about every episode).
Also in the mid 1950’s, Sunday night was the Disney show. For those early days of television, Walt Disney had some of the best production values. In 1954 Disney introduced us to Davy Crockett, ‘King of the Wild Frontier’. Crockett was a real historical character that few people had heard of or remembered. I seem to remember that the original was a three episode(per IMDB: ‘Davy Crockett; Indian Fighter’, ‘Davy Crockett Goes to Congress’ and ‘Davy Crockett at the Alamo’) story that followed Davy on his way to the Alamo. Disney chose a tall lanky actor called Fess Parker to play Davy. That show set off a storm of Davy Crockett mania. Before you new it many kids were wearing (fake) coonskin hats. I am proud to say that I never owned one, or even desired to have one. Disney then re-cut the TV shows and released them as a movie. Despite the fact that Crockett died at the Alamo (in fact and on the show), he was too popular to ignore, so Disney made 4 more TV movies with Davy Crockett including the popular ‘Davy Crockett and the River Pirates’. Parker also played the (mostly absent) father in the classic Disney movie ‘Old Yeller‘.
I don’t remember it in color, but then when I was a kid we only had a black and white TV. Parker went on to star in a 1 season TV show ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ based on the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart film of the same name. He then put the coonskin cap back on and starred in the ‘Daniel Boone’ TV series that ran for 6 years . After the Boone series ended, Parker left acting and started the Fess Parker Winery in the Santa Ynez region of California. His wines are well respected and like the many wineries featured in the movie ‘Sideways’, specializes in Pinot Noir. As a little trivia note for those who saw the movie ‘Sideways’, the famous spit-bucket scene that took place at a winery called ‘Frass Canyon’ was actually filmed at the Fess Parker winery. Well, I guess you could say I grew up with Fess Parker, we both went from Davy Crockett to Pinot Noir.
Yeah I know, I’ve been missing from the BLOG. Sorrrrryyyy!! It has been a rough 6 weeks for the TaxAide program here in Las Cruces. I won’t bore you with details. The short story is we had to find a new location in January, and I had just 2 weeks to get everything set up and open for business. Plus we’ve been busy with the usual February rush.
One more gaga entry and then we’ll close the topic. I was questioned about why I like Lady Gaga. So, here are 2 exhibits that I found interesting. This first one is an interview from German TV that apparently was filmed in November of 2009. The video is 8 minutes, and it starts with a 20 second introduction in German. But, the interview is in English:
All right, what other pop artist could mention in an interview the Bau-Haus school of art, the impact of Beethoven and Bach on pop music, evolution, confronting ones own fears, and the problems and challenges of digital music? And speak cogently about all of them. There are some pop stars (Britney, Jessica?) who couldn’t even carry on a conversation, let alone know what was discussed in this interview! This next video is from 2005. At that time she was still Stefani Germanotta from New York, and a student at NYU. According to the description, this video is from NYU’s annual talent show. She would have been 18 or 19.
I don’t know about you, but I liked both of those songs. Seems pretty talented to me.
A year ago, I hadn’t heard of Lady Gaga. Well, maybe I had heard of her peripherally, but I had no idea who (or what) she was. Well today, you can’t avoid her. This past week was the big CES (consumer electronics show) in Vegas. This is one of, if not the largest trade show in Vegas. And, with the demise of ComDex, it is also the premiere trade show for all things technology related. The big tech companies all show up, except for Apple, which is too good to be seen at a trade show they don’t produce and manage. Anyway, while I was watching Cnet’s (Cnet is a tech oriented news channel/publisher/web site, now owned by CBS) coverage of CES online, a major portion of the coverage was devoted to the fact that Lady Gaga was appearing at CES. As it turns out, she wasn’t performing, just pushing a brand of headphones manufactured by Monster Cable.
But, the mere fact that her appearance was treated as a major news item on a tech oriented web show, made me think it was about time to find out what this was all about. Truthfully, I had a vague idea of who Lady Gaga is, but most of my opinion of her came from those snarky celebrity sites that really hate all celebs. I knew she was a singer/performance artist, known for her outrageous and skimpy outfits. Well, to learn more, I turned to the medium that all good computer nerds would use for researching music and performances, Youtube!
There are literally thousands of Youtube videos posted of and about Lady Gaga. They range from the official music videos released by her record company, to TV performances, to live shows captured on cell phone cameras to parodies and mashups of various people lipsynching to her music. There were even a bunch of snarky vids questioning her gender. I never did find the end of the list. After searching on her name, I scrolled through at least 20 pages of results (with 20+ entries per page, many of them lists) and there were still plenty of pages I never got to. I watched quite a few videos of various quality. I saw the Barbara Walters ‘Most Fascinating people of 2009′ interview (and Bill O’Reilly’s usual uninformed criticism of Barbara’s choices), the Music videos, and lots of performance video.
So, after my exhaustive(?) research, do I have an opinion? Yes, I do, and surprisingly, I find that I like Lady Gaga. I was half expecting a Britney Spears type lip-syncher who used her costumes to mask her lack of voice or talent. Well, I was wrong. Much to my surprise, I found that she is a hard working talented song writer, and performer. Her music has a very engaging pop sound that quickly had me tapping my foot and enjoying. And, far from having no talent, she has a decent voice, writes her own songs and has written songs for (among others), Ms Spears and The Pussycat Dolls. In one interview I watched from British TV, the interviewer asked her how it felt to have her music recorded by performers who were less talented than she was (ouch!) Gaga (as her friends call her, I learned) was quite diplomatic in her reply.
It took a while, but I found one video from Youtube that I think is a very effective showcase of her talent. In this video she begins with an acoustic interlude where she plays the piano and sings by herself and then launches into her full electronic dance and singing performance. Her costume is not the wildest one I saw but is a part of the whole performance. So from ‘The Ellen Show’, this is Lady Gaga performing ‘Poker Face’:
If you haven’t listened to Lady Gaga, I suggest you give her a try. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised. By the way, if you are as disconnected from the world as I am, you may not know that there was some controversy about the lyrics of Poker Face. I had no idea of course, but Gaga explains here on this interview that aired on BBC (warning: strong language):
The character to the left is my new favorite literary heroine, Lisbeth Salander. Well, actually, the picture is of Swedish actress Noomi Rapace as the character Lisbeth Salander from the Swedish film Män som hatar kvinnor (“Men who hate women”) or as it was published in English ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘. I picked up a copy of that book on a recent trip to Costco. I had heard of it, but knew little about the book. I finished reading it (all 590 pages) in 3 days. Lisbeth is an amazing character. Despite being only 4′ 10″ tall and weighing 90 pounds, she can fight off the biggest man, has a photographic memory, a chess mind to rival Bobby Fisher, sleeps with girls or boys indiscriminately and is a wizard with a computer, considered one of the 65 best ‘hackers’ in the world. Of course Lisbeth is pretty anti-social and has numerous dark secrets from her past she prefers to keep hidden. While that may sound like a bit too much, if you can suspend your disbelief this is an exciting book to read.
The author of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson. Larsson’s story is almost as fascinating as the characters in his books. A crusading journalist and activist in Sweden, he founded and worked for the Expo magazine, not unlike his fictional Millennium magazine in the books. He started writing his novels in his spare time. In 2003, with 2 completed manuscripts and a third almost done, he found a publisher in Sweden. Before the first book was published, Larsson dropped dead from a heart attack. Conspiracy theorist have had a field day with Larsson’s death. This is not too surprising considering the books deal with the darker aspects of Swedish culture and politics and have a distinctly paranoid view of them. To read more about Larsson, there is an interesting Vanity Fair article about him. And of course you can always read his Wikipedia entry. Note, take Wikipedia entries with a grain of salt, but do check out the reference material.
The three books that Larsson completed before his death are called ‘The Millennium Trilogy’. They get their name from the fictional Swedish magazine that the primary character in the books, Mikael Blomkvist founded and where he is the publisher. The first book, ‘ The girl with the Dragon Tattoo‘, is a stand-alone crime drama. It introduces us to Blomkvist and Salander as they work together to solve a 40 year old mystery about the missing niece of a famous industrialist. The book is well done, with a satisfying ending that leaves you wanting to know more about the primary characters. After reading the book, I had the opportunity to see the Swedish film of the novel. Here is the trailer for it:
The second book in the series is ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire‘. In this novel, Larsson explains much more about Lisbeth’s background and history. this book is also a crime thriller with the primary mystery the murder of three people in one night. And, Lisbeth is the main suspect. The ending of this book is a cliff-hanger, with Lisbeth’s fate very much in doubt. It leaves you wanting to immediately read the third book, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest‘. Unfortunately, this book has not been published in the US yet! Arrgggh! Fortunately, one doesn’t need Lisbeth’s hacker skills to find a copy of the book via the internet. So, I have now read all three. The final book does bring some redemption and closure to Lisbeth’s story. But after reading it, you are left with the feeling that there is much more in store for Lisbeth and Mikael. It left me hungry to read more about them. When Larsson died, he reportedly left outlines for a total of ten books in the series. Sadly, we will have to be content with the three he finished before his death.
Movies have been made from all three of the books in Sweden. I have not seen either of the second or third in the series, but their trailers are on Youtube. Here is the trailer for ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’, and a teaser for the final movie, ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest’. They are in Swedish, but you’ll get the idea.
