Today: the usual package reviews, the usual customer-service exchange, a sick child, and some videos. Let’s begin:
Put up more lights on Sunday. Got out all the lights from last year, straightened them out, tested them, set aside the dead ones, plugged them in, and started the merry job of putting them on the tall tree with a pole. Standing on the edge of the garage, on tiptoe, holding the bottom six inches of the fabled ten foot pole, trying to swing a spiky plastic string onto a slender branch: not a time for a dizzy spell.
When it was done I stood back and put my hands on hips, the time-honored posture of a man well-satisfied with his labors, and it was then – right then! – that the entire tree went dark. Blink! Goodbye. Checked all the fuses, outlets; everything was fine. So it was the lights? Checked the first strand: dead. Replaced it with a good strand at considerable effort, since it was wound around branches. No sir. Checked second strand: dead. Replaced it with a good strand: yes sir. So now I know that the limit on the number of strands you can chain isn’t theoretical. The upshot: having spent a warm 60-degree November day putting up the lights, I guaranteed myself the job of doing it over again when they die, and it’s 10 below.
Friday: child had day off from school, so I took her to work. She had a great time – Pink, one of our video whizzes, showed her how to use the wipes on the switcher, so while I stood on the set and waited while the lighting was perfected, my daughter was amusing herself by applying every hokey stock wipe in the system. Leaves. Rainbows. Paintbrushes. We had lunch at the cafeteria, then I dropped her off at a friend’s house. Wrote a column; picked her up; piano; pizza – and by this time, after a week of much duty, I was ready for an epic nap followed by six hours of Nazi-blasting on “Wolfenstein” and Maker’s Mark.
Not how it turned out; duty called, and I did all the work for this site for the rest of the week. Everything’s in the can. But I did defeat my share of Nazis, which made Friday just a little more special. I highly recommend Wolfenstein, although I wish they had included a bit more dialogue for the bad guys; the officers have one command, and that’s “SUPPRESSING FIRE!” Well, duh, herr genius. And here I was going to shoot intermittently into the air to permit the Amerikaner spy total freedom of movement.
Saturday: daughter sick. Fever, lethargy, sore throat, pasted to the coach, sleeping. At the end of the night my wife was going to sit on the coach with her and watch a Family Friendly movie, and the only PPV option was “Imagine That,” with Eddie Murphy. Imagine this: we’ve never used PPV. The next showing was 9:30 on channel 144, so she picked up the phone, talked to a robot, and ordered it. As she described it, the robot asked if there was anything else it could help her with, and she said “I’m done.”
“I’m sorry,” said the robot, “but I did not understand that. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No,” said my wife.
“You are done,” said the robot.
At 9:28 we turned to the channel, only to find . . . the movie had been moved to 10:30. Well, it was playing on 177. Tuned to that channel, and the DVR began recording it of its own free will – only to flash a message that we would have to pay to watch the movie. So I called DirecTV, and noted that things were amiss. I was also peeved by the recorded message that said I could save $3.50 off my phone-originated order by using my computer to get a movie, since a charge for using the phone was news to me.
How nervous are the cable companies by the rise of alternative methods of media delivery? This nervous: the operator instantly comped me five bucks, then handed me off to someone in PPV Technical Support. Here I learned that DirecTV occasionally moved around start times to free up bandwidth if there was a particularly popular sports event, and I was the third complaint she’d gotten this shift. I cancelled the order, and said, quite nicely, that “if this call is indeed being monitored for quality assurance, as I keep hearing, then they should know that based on this, I’ll never order a pay-per-view movie again.”
“I understand,” she said. “Would you like three free months of Showtime, or three free months of Starz?”
Shopping yielded a few amusements. Here’s a side-by-side product redesign from Phillips, maker of viscous crab-based fluids:
Nicely done. But while shopping for greens I noted that Dole has upgraded the hell out of its prefab lettuce sacks. Note the helpful counter-clockwise rotation of the item’s name:
Best of all, it has metrics to help you calibrate your salad as finely as modern technology allows; I was unaware that salads could be BOLD, let alone be graded on a 5-point scale, but now I needn’t worry that guests push away their bowls because they had expected Tender, and been rudely served Crunchy.
The days of getting the film back from the drugstore, threading it through the projector, getting out the screen, pulling down the thick shimmering sheet and hooking it on the latch, turning off the lights, and watching jerky, edited-in-camera movies once before putting them in a box and ignoring them for the rest of your mortal duration – well, those days are over. Now it’s much more complex. You are expected to edit, and that means you find yourself annoyed because you forgot to get a master shot, or didn’t think of how you’d end the sequence (oh, what the hell, fade it out) or because you moved the camera around too much. I have been working on the Trip to Rushmore video for weeks, on and off, and I finished it this weekend. Crunched it, transferred it, sat down to watch. Augh: saw all the flaws. For example: there’s a sequence where Natalie, at Wall Drug, runs around the jets of water that shoot from the ground. I cut them all together without thinking about the audio; should have extracted the audio from a longer take and put it underneath.
Why? Because I can, and that’s the glory and annoyance of these tools. Because you can, they should be good.
I have a few sequences to share. The first is the Invasion of the Bison on the grounds of our hotel. It’s here. Or you can see the smaller version right here:
The second one is much, much different – but that’s later. Or tomorrow. Matchbook Museum in a while; see you around.
That coach sounds like trouble, putting the moves on both your best girls. If I were you, I’d get rid of him, pronto.
Seriously, though, hope Natalie feels better soon.
Mr L has discovered Ohm’s law. No, the number of strands you can string together is not theoretical. Every bulb adds resistance, as does every foot of skinny little wire. It all adds up.
I rediscovered it a couple of years ago when I tried to power my RV with an inadequately-sized extension cord, and got a fire (fun!)
I’ve always had good luck with DirecTV PPV’s by ordering with the remote. But that’s just me, maybe I’m special.
I seem to remember winter coming early and staying late last year. Perhaps this year is making up for it.
“Start time”??? Fie on start times!!! I’ve got digital cable TV service, and when I rent a PPV movie, it starts when I want it to start. And I can watch it as many times as I want in a 24-hour period.
Maybe it’s time to reconsider the whole satellite dish thing, James.
I enjoyed the film of the buffalo. What music did you use?
Do buffalo really walk that quickly? I’m used to domestic cattle, which move from A to B by osmosis.
Fred–the music is from “Dances with Wolves.” Excellent choice, and I got a good laugh when I made the connection.
I’m grateful to not have cable or satellite anymore. Not only too expensive and complicated but, almost all channels are crap programming. I like to live in the dark ages of buying or renting videos (especially from the library since it’s free)
Next time you need a “herd of buffalo fix”, you need only drive 19 miles into Wisconsin on I-94. Heck, if the wind were in the right direction, you could just about smell them from your house.
I think Dole is putting less lettuce in the bag and has changed the package to disguise that fact. Bought some a couple of weeks ago with an expiration date waaaay in the future, but alas, it turned to green goo in the bag before its time. Probably the store’s fault; they’re known for storing things at high temperatures as a science experiment. Or maybe I shouldn’t have gotten the “ultra-tender” blend.
coming from Baltimore, I can tell you that Phillips’ is pretty good for seafood, though not quite what it’s made out to be. Myself, I prefer Obrycki’s. (I know this means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but I was excited to see something from my hometown on the site)
As a city kid, I am amazed at the bison! Do they just hang out at the hotel? Was this an everyday occurrence? ‘Hope Natalie is on the mend. (Maybe a bison burger would help?)
Violating Ohm’s Law has consequences, dammit!
I was gazing out my back window into the woods in my new home (several years ago) enjoying the birds’ antics at the feeder. We had a fairly thick buffer of trees but because it was January I could see a bit of the neighbor’s pasture and outbuildings. Suddenly what had appeared to be a parked mini-van darted rapidly across a green field. It turns out that this neighbor had about 3 American Bison on his property and until the leaves were gone, I had never seen them. They are really quite fast when they want to be.
James, you had a perfect chance for Twilght Zone -ish Irony there and you blew it! I’m so disappointed. You had many beautiful shots of wild and free bison roaming the veldt or whatever, romping and playing with deer, antelope, etc. Then you panned right and … oh, the Irony! there’re in a motel parking lot, not on the wild steppes after all! Fade to credits.
Maybe it takes a certain twisted sense of humor to appreciate, but that’s what I thought of … and then the actual final shot ruined it. No punch line ws intended. Darn.
Apparently resistance is not futile.
DirecTv is most certainly anxious to hang on to every customer–every time I call now, I’m thanked for my long-time account. I hope you chose Starz–I can never find anything interesting on (one-year free for being a long-time customer!) Showtime. Loved the film–gleefully recognized the music.
Bison are dangerous. Don’t approach them.
man, those SoDakers have got some big freakin’ squirrels! imagine the size of the spaniel it would take to spook ‘em!
Phillip’s is OK for seafood, but in Ocean City Waterman’s is better. In the DC area, O’Donnell’s is darn good.
What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
You can’t wash your face in a buffalo.
Phillips was great when it was a single restaurant in OC – a big sprawling two-story house full of narrow stairways and twisty passages and oddly shaped dining rooms. They hired kids as wait staff and put them up in dorms (a dream job for many teens), so they had no liquor license and patrons were encouraged to bring coolers of beer for their own use. Newspaper on the tables, basic seafood menu, fresh ingredients, and crabs, crabs, crabs. Heaven.
Now, it’s a chain and a frozen food empire – with little resemblance to the original restaurant.
Bison can run very fast. Faster than I can run, in fact. Fortunately for me, they can’t turn on a dime like I can.
Long story short: walking on a trail past a bison 100 feet away was safe for several dozen tourists ahead of me. What I didn’t realize was that the bison was growing more irritated with every passing tourist, until 100 feet wasn’t a safe distance at all. That’s when I showed up.
@Al Federber
A Buffalo once bit my sister …
No really! She was carving her initials on the buffalo
with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given
her by Sven – her brother-in-law – a fargo dentist. . . .
I think buffalo took their turn on the nickel.
I contemplated putting up some lights this weekend, but then I remembered the last time that I put lights up when the weather was mild. We didn’t achieve that incredibly tacky look that we strive for. Our neighborhood has an over abundance of tasteful pine garlands, red bows and white lights. We do our best to offset that. We hope that the parents who drive by will sniff “Get a load of THAT,” while the kids in the back press their faces against the windows and go, “Ooooooo.”
I believe that you need to reach that “Oh f*** it stage” when your hands are numb and you just start flinging the lights onto the bushes, to get that look. You definitely want the flashing to be out of synch. Our best effort, which, with the wires and not so sparkly metallic garlands criss-crossing about against the greasy December overcast, gave off a distinct Route 1 used car lot vibe and elicited this comment from an older man to his wife, overheard by my wife standing unseen be hind a bush, “All they need now is the Stars and Bars.”
First image that came to mind when I read this?:”When it was done I stood back and put my hands on hips, the time-honored posture of a man well-satisfied with his labors…”
Darren McGavin in “A Christmas Story” admiring his leg lamp major award from across the street.
As for bison, the closest you get to them here in Durham, NC, is at Ted’s Montana Grill. Best hamburger in town, by the way. Well, bisonburger, I guess.
I can’t string lights in the trees…. all the leaves are still around until January. Makes ‘em ripe that way I guess, better than December leaves.
OT: found an example of a “Givney flip” on Big Hollywood last night.
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/hudlash/2009/11/08/obama-nation-his-defenders-earned-a-name/
On the Dole (heh, oh the dole, like in old blighty…) packaging metrics: I can see “Mild and Crunchy” but I cannot get my head around “Bold and Tender”. Sounds like the title to a Soap Opera. Looking forward to “Love Me Tender, Hearts of Romain”.
At the Bass Lake Road exit off of east bound Highway 50 in El Dorado Hills, a fellow has been raising Buffalo for at least the past 15 years. When we moved here, he had 4, now he has 12 – 14 (they’re hard to count). So I get to see buffalo daily on my way home. And, yes, they can move swiftly when motivated. The kids like to watch them from the truck as we exit, and come around the hill. Too hard to see from the car, as it’s too close to the ground.
I still have at least 12 camcorder tapes that I need to move to a harddrive / DVD. Editing? What’s that?…
I used to love to get my Dad’s old projector out and look at his home movies. I still remember one that he’d purchased: “The 1962 Seattle World’s Fair – in Color” The monorail looked awesome!
*rimshot*
Every state has got at least one great seafood restaurant, but if you want the best seafood, nothing beats going to a restaurant right on the coast, like down in the Florida panhandle, or along the Left Coast in Cal-ee-fohr-nya, or up in New England.
Bold on a bag of greens is a euphemism for “that stuff we hated as kids because it was bitter and nasty and mom/dad made us eat it and smile” (no lie, mu husband’s dad said he had to eat it and smile-and he didn’t even grow up in the depression! His dad, that is).
And you totally ruined my movies of SoDak and Yellowstone with your high class ones with music and close focus. Though I think my husbands 5 minutes of video from Yellowstone of a mom bison with her 5 minute old calf is pretty durn cool, even if he did have trouble holding the camera steady and you can hear the truck hazard flashers clicking!
For those interested in seeing annoyed bison, go to Yellowstone National Parks web page and find their videos of people being gored by bison. I garauntee you will not annoy the bison after that! They weigh as much as a Volkswagen and can run about 30-40 mph. With pointy horns.
Patrick,
And sometimes you have to go up a river for a bit, like to The Lighthouse restaurant in Bayou La Batre, Ala., where a shrine to Bear Bryant greets you as you enter. Best shrimp and crab claws you’ll ever find, straight out of the very waters fished by Forrest Gump.
Why Al, does it turn out that they are neo-cons or they just watch too much Fox News?
Just FYI, Dole has decreased the amount of salad/lettuce in their new packages by a couple of ounces. No price decrease, though, of course.
Hell’s Kitchen in MN has a really great bison burger; if you’re looking for one.
Not quite. The strands are connected in parallel, which decreases the total resistance while increasing the current in equal proportion. Total power consumption (using P = IV and substituting Ohm’s law) is P = I^2 R, so doubling the number of strands doubles the power, as expected.
I apologize for writing this.
@Patrick
I’ve got a counterexample to this. On a business trip to South Africa many years ago I discovered that the good restaurants in Pretoria and Johannesburg all have airplanes, and every morning they fly to the coastal cities and buy up all the fresh catch. So, apparently it isn’t possible to get a decent seafood meal on the coast there, you have to go to the cities in the middle of the continent.
I once had a buffalo burger at the airport on Catalina Island, just off the coast from LA. That’s a place where the buffalo roam. Don’t know whether the deer and the antelope play there, though.
I remember learning how to fly a Cessna into the “Airport in the Sky”, a tiny strip of asphalt right up at the top of those Catalina hills, separated by barbed wire from the buffalo, and by NOTHING BUT AIR from the crashing surf against the rocks a couple of thousand feet below. Even experienced pilots tended to do unintentional go-rounds as they tried to creep low enough to land.
If you landed, your reward was a buffalo burger. Just sayin’.
Another counterexample to my earlier post is a family-owned restaurant in Douglasville, GA called Gumbeaux’s, which serves gin-u-wine Cajun and Creole cuisine, like shrimp etoufee, fried shrimp, boiled shrimp, fried crawfish, crawfish etoufee, crawfish bread (a loaf of french bread drowned in a cheesy version of their crawfish etoufee…you need extra bread to sop up what’s spilled over the bread and onto your plate, and yes, “sop” is a word. It’s a damn fine word in the South), chicken and sausage gumbo, seafood gumbo (with oyster meat in it), jambalaya that will clear your sinuses and cure what ails ya, oysters on the half-shell, fried gator, fried fish of all sorts, po-boys, and of course, muffalettas. It’s about as gin-u-wine as you can get for Cajun and Creole outside of the state lines of Louisiana. The owners are from down there, and the place is really decorated up with the feel of N’awlin’s, right down to the zydeco music blaring through the loud speakers, the gator heads mounted throughout, lobster traps, and the LSU memorabilia displayed.
Interesting that the bison walked right past the taller grass and went at the short, mown grass. I suspect they were after Tender, versus Crunchy.
Meanwhile, as a seafood fan and marine biologist that travels, and pays attention, I once happened upon a remarkable place, near Charleston, SC. I was put up, for work, in a beach house in Folly Beach and wandered into a marina/yacht club type place, of the sort that is common around the waterfront. However, the food was extraordinary! Later, I got to know the people that lived there and worked there and I learned a few secrets. The seafood, of course, was fresh and local. The secret was that, in Charleston, their is a campus of the Johnson and Wales cooking school. That being the case, students need jobs and you can even get pretty darned good food at a Waffle House, there. Jobs working at that marina in Folly Beach (”The Edge of America”) are prized by the students that can get them. I don’t remember the name of the place, but Folly is a small island; it’s the restaurant at the marina.
No apology required, but I don’t believe it. When you plug the END of one strand into the START of another strand, how can they be in parallel? (I’m not talking about individual lights in a single strand) Lileks didn’t experience bulbs popping or fuses blowing – the lights didn’t operate after a certain number of strings were combined. Sounds like insufficent current to me. I’m no EE (a humble CE), but it makes no sense to me for the power to increase as the chain gets longer.
Nah, the buffalo don’t watch Fox news, they know it’s all Bull.
” I once happened upon a remarkable place, near Charleston, SC. I was put up, for work, in a beach house in Folly Beach and wandered into a marina/yacht club type place, of the sort that is common around the waterfront. However, the food was extraordinary! Later, I got to know the people that lived there and worked there and I learned a few secrets. The seafood, of course, was fresh and local. The secret was that, in Charleston, their is a campus of the Johnson and Wales cooking school. That being the case, students need jobs and you can even get pretty darned good food at a Waffle House, there.”
Ah but the sad truth is that Johnson and Wales in Charleston is no more. They consolidated campuses and I closed Charleston down 2 or 3 years ago. My son attended in Charleston, and it was nigh-on impossible to get a restaurant job in that entire area of South Carolina–so he interned in Atlanta.
My fridge in my apartment has a copy of the “many visitors have been gored by buffalo” warning flyer they pass out when you enter Yellowstone on it. Actually I’m not aware of a large quantity of buffalo gorings within my domicile, but it never hurts to be on the safe side, right?
Man, James, have you ever counted how many days someone in your little trio is sick? It seems like every fortnight one of you has the sniffles or a sore throat or something–even the dog is down more than Otis Campbell. I’ve never heard of such a feeble bunch!
So, what, is it familial hypochondria, the nuclear reactor next door or just a woebegotten gene pool?
Heck, you make me feel like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable…
I’m still getting over you describing Direct TV as a “cable company”. Jeez, that’s like referring to “Pepper” as “Salt”.
Well, my kid has been down a bit this year. My wife gets a full-blown cold about once a year; me too, at the most. Lots of stuff that seems to be about to dig in, but is repelled. I haven’t had a real honest-to-Crom cold since last Christmas.