Past Entries Reloaded

I just posted all the entries from April 2002 and August 2001. August 7, 2001, was the birthday of this diary. If you want to see how I wrote diary entries before college (it's definitely a very different me) and want to peak back into a less crazy time (pre-Sept. 11), go check it out.

Milestone

I just realized by looking at my Blogger profile that if I make one more post, I will have 365 posts, or one for every day in a year.

Of course, I have many more posts than that, but Blogger hasn't processed them yet. Yet the fact that this is a completely artificial and pointless milestone isn't going to stop me.

Frustrating Times

I'm sure most everyone's heard of the New York Times' downfall by now (I refuse to capitalize the "t" in "the," that's just so snooty). However, the statement released by the editors was quite reserved and unemotional. It's much more satisfying to finally see the "public editor" (or ombudsman, to use the more traditional term) really tearing into the paper.

The New York Times > Week in Review > The Public Editor: Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?

G4techTV Launches

Now I thought the old TechTV site was ugly, but I think the site for G4techTV is even worse. Matches that clunky name, though.

Check out the program list, and you tell me if you can tell the difference between half of the non-TechTV shows. Reading the list just makes me wonder why anyone would really want to watch that stuff. People they aren't targeting would find it boring, and people they are targeting -- video-game enthusiasts -- would rather be, well, playing video games.

I think there's a reason why the original TechTV only had one show exclusively on video games.

G4techTV

Campaign Suicide (But Whose?)

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Marquis de Bush?: "They would like Mr. Gore, who brought bad karma to Mr. Dean with his primary endorsement, to zip it and go away. But more and more Democrats think it is Mr. Kerry who should zip it and go away.

Mr. Kerry has made a huge $25 million ad buy in recent weeks, believing that the better voters know him, the more they'll like him. But many Democrats fear he's one of those supercilious/smarmy candidates (like Al Gore) for whom the opposite is true: the more you know him, the less you want to see him.

They wonder whether Mr. Kerry should just let the campaign be Bush vs. Bush. As the president's old running buddy, Lee Atwater, used to say, don't get in the way when your rival's busy shooting himself."

Later on, she mentions that "no amount of power and privilege, or unending terror alerts, can get him out of" this Iraq etc. mess. So who thinks we heard about this latest terror alert -- the one that didn't merit us bumping up to Orange Alert again -- as a distraction?

Bloody Outrageous

The New York Times > International > Europe > Newcastle Journal: Does Queen Get Her Mail on Time? You've Got to Wonder: "After being told repeatedly that no one had sent her anything, not even a junk-mail catalogue, Ms. Clare finally demanded proof. 'He said, 'See, there's your street and there's nothing there,' ' she said, describing how a postal worker took her into a back office and showed her the boxes into which the mail was sorted before delivery.

'I said, 'Those are the even numbers. I live on the odd side,' ' Ms. Clare said. There was no box for the odd numbers. And so it was that she discovered that the post office had simply not been delivering to her side of the street, not to her, and not to anyone else, either."

Yum!

This just about made my day:

Wendy's Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe

As you may have seen by now, my favorite fast-food cheeseburger packs a mere 360 calories. Sure, 16 g of fat may be a lot for something so relatively small, but it's good to know I can eat one once in a while without feeling guilty about it.

Just stay away from that triple. Not only does it seem questionable whether it would fit in anyone's mouth, it boasts 940 calories and 56 grams of fat per sandwich.

Of course, it's nothing compared to the nightmare that is Carl's Jr.'s 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger. We're talking 1,420 calories and 101 grams of fat here. And yes, that's just one sandwich.

Thankfully, Wendy's comes to the rescue with the Jr. Cheeseburger Deluxe. Now if only they could come up with a way to make the medium fries have fewer calories and less fat than the cheeseburger . . .

War for Fun and Profit

I think this basically sums up this article about yet another campus wacko:

The Daily Northwestern - Group says YESWAR, but some students remain skeptical of intentions: "McCormick senior Jeffrey Schell, a former fraternity member of Kessler's, said a YESWAR member approached him about joining the group, but he declined.

'It seems to me that Jason Kessler is an immoral fool trying to create a faux club that backhandedly makes light of a situation in which hundreds of people are dying,' he said."

Ode to Costco

I adore Costco. It was an excellent investment buying a membership this year. It's not only provided me with large quantities of toiletries and Parmesan cheese.

First off, Scott's been benefiting greatly from having Costco so close. He can bike there or use his CTA pass, so he's taken to going every week. By going so often, he can pick up a bag of lettuce each week and thus has a ready-made dinner every night. And a pretty healthy one, at that. Plus he can grab a quick dinner there on nights he shops since they sell a Vienna Beef Polish sausage with sauerkraut and a refillable drink for only $1.50. Plus they sell big, yummy soft pretzels covered in Parmesan cheese on the cheap, too.

But I feel so partial to the place today because I found a terrific new pair of jeans there for only $16.99! I've been looking for jeans for a while now and haven't been able to find a decent pair for less than $30. I'm a bit picky, I guess, but I wanted a pair that wouldn't be too tight but that wouldn't swallow me in the way my current jeans do. But just like Costco sells name-brand food, appliances and toiletries, it also sells well-known jean brands. I ended up passing over the Calvin Kleins, Ralph Laurens and Gloria Vanderbilts and going for a pair of boot-cut Levi's. Original price? $40. Nice!

I also picked up a lunch from the deli case, a huge turkey croissant sandwich and Caesar salad combo for $5.29. It was actually enough for two lunches, so I only took the salad to work today. An excellent deal as well, and that's not even throwing in all the free food samples I got on the way back to the deli case (the Tony Roma's barbecue sauce was yummy).

I grabbed . . . well, I guess it was breakfast from the Costco cafeteria/picnic area outside. They have the Polish sausage combo out here in California, too, although they offer no sauerkraut (big loss - yeah, right) and they're Hebrew National instead of Vienna Beef (which is a Chicago specialty). At any rate, it hit the spot after having fasted since my cinnamon bun at around 7:30 the night before.

The fasting was for the blood tests I had this morning. No results yet, but anyone want to take a guess at which of the battery of tests planned might come back with something off?

1. Blood sugar
2. Thyroid
3. One of the ones I didn't recognize
4. Not a blood thing but something else
5. Nothing wrong so Colleen is a nutcase

You can vote in the comments if you'd like.

I Must Have Learned Something

We've just started watching "Shattered Glass," a movie about Stephen Glass, the reporter who wrote a whole bunch of faked stories for the New Republic. At the beginning, there's some purported facts about the magazine printed in a typewriter-style font on the screen. One line goes something like:

"At the time, the magazine's staff was comprised of 15 writers/editors."

Sheesh, a grammatical error in a movie about journalists. No one ever accused Stephen Glass of being a poor writer.

For those not put through a class with Marda Dunsky, the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. Thus, that sentence should use either the active-tense "comprised" or passive-tense "was composed of." Because if you convert that sentence to active tense, it would say "the magazine's staff comprised 15 writers/editors."

Tsk, tsk. In a journalism movie, too.

Falling Apart

Good God, I am just so broken!!!

Last night I ended up with a stomachache of unknown provenance. I thought I was hungry, and I was a bit, but eating a salad and whole-grain toast didn't help much. I took some medication for it, which seemed to help a little. Intermittently.

Somehow, as I slept, my stomachache turned into a wicked backache. This has added to pains I already have in my upper back from sitting in work chairs.

And now, that stomachache seems to be coming back.

I need to remove the entirety of my mid-torso, then I think I'd have both pains covered. Might not get rid of the occasional lightheadedness bringing me down now, but you do what you can do.

Gmail Again

Does anyone want a Gmail account? I have two invitations available on my beta account page and can't find anyone who wants one but doesn't have one available to them already.

Camino 0.8 Beta

It's available now -- download it here.

I've been using a Camino build for a couple of weeks now, and it's definitely a lot faster than Firefox. (That may be due to me having AdBlock installed in Firefox.) The tabs are still sad in Camino 0.8b, though, so I'm not sure that I'll use it beyond the beta stage. Meaning I'll move to the hacked version with nicer tabs again, probably.

Monday Blues

In about 11.5 hours, I have to be at work. That sucks. Another week of being not sure where to sit, not able to fit enough words into headlines and not knowing what's important enough for a deck. I don't remember anymore all the terms I was supposed to learn for what I now call "decks" anymore.

I need to be getting to sleep, but my mind is resisting my body's tiredness. Sleeping is such a lonely activity. It's the ultimate form of being alone - unconscious of anyone else's presence. Probably that's why we have dreams, to comfort ourselves through the lonesomeness. Unfortunately, dreams take a while to kick in, and in the meantime there's too long spent with just me and my thoughts.

Missing Entries?

I seem to have had two recent entries marked as "drafts" and thus not published. Scroll on down to May 6 for More Reasons to Be Appalled By Fox News and Uh Oh.

Remember This?

I was relaxing after a long, long week on the OC Register copy desk, perusing the blogs, when I came upon this:

((( NewtCase | CaseLog ))): Fisher King

It's mostly a paean to the Lakers. (I won't go there - basketball means little to me, so I'll just not get involved in that debate - the only team that has ever held meaning for me in my life was the Chicago Bulls, and no, not because of Northwestern.) But note one line in particular:

(Unlike soccer, for example, where my friend's intramural team recently beat their opponent by a score — and please do not ask me how this happened — of zero to negative one.)

That elicted a chuckle, even if I missed our team's big win due to mono.

New Job

I've moved on from reporting to the copy desk. Being there is surely less stressful, especially since there's always going to be someone checking my work before its published anyway. And it's not like I can be fired. As long as I'm doing my best and don't make huge mistakes, I should get along fine.

The only problem is that so far, it feels like every day is Friday. Working second shift makes me feel like it ought to be the weekend since I'm staying up so late. Which makes it feel all the more disappointing when I have to go to work the next day.

Other disadvantages to the copy desk are driving home in the middle of the night, having less free time (because of sleeping more, really), not being able to do anything but work while at work (no more reading the wires during downtime) and not being on the same timetable as anyone I might want to talk to.

So basically, it's looking to me like copy editing is not going to be my journalistic salvation, so to speak. At least not in newspapers. Not that I think other media would be much better.

If I've learned anything from Teaching Media at all, it's that I hate newspapers with a passion.

Comments

Well, I've finally got comments up on some posts at least. It's irritating that it's so hard to move comments between different systems. I've copied a couple of recent comments over, but while I have a record of the older comments, I don't know that I want to go to the trouble of copying and pasting each and every one.

I've been watching the Harry Potter movie/preview spectacular on ABC tonight, and it's totally whetted my appetite for the new movie coming out on June 4. I only wish it were coming out sooner (well, and that I could actually see it the day it comes out - maybe if I get up really early . . .).

New Blogger

The new Blogger may be pretty and full of features, but it's too freaking complicated.

Redesign

I'm working on a new look -- obviously. Comments are welcome. Unfortunately, the non-diary pages are still using the old design for now and may for a while yet since it's such a pain to change.

Suspicious

The FDA has gone against the recommendation of an advisory committee in not approving the morning-after pill for sale over the counter.

Now the morning-after pill is not the same as the abortion pill, RU-486. The morning-after pill is just an extra-strong version of the regular birth-control pill.

The FDA gave as its reason that the company hadn't demonstrated sufficient evidence that girls 16 and younger can understand how to safely use the pill without the help of a doctor. While that may be a somewhat valid concern (though apparently it's only two pills, so it seems like it would be hard to mess up), at least one of the proposed solutions seems fishy.

The company will either have to provide a study showing young girls understand the drug's label, or they will have to devise a system so that women younger than 17 have restricted access to the drug. Which probably would mean those young girls would have to get a prescription. Probably just the ones who might benefit most from having easy access to it, since it has to be used within 72 hours. Let's face it, preventing teen pregnancies would probably one of the most important benefits of the increased access.

Lots of people are saying it's the Bush administration's political views being filtered through the FDA. But honestly, if it's abortions you want to prevent, shouldn't you be promoting birth control? And for these abstinence-only guys, especially this particular one, since it's fixing the problem after the fact?

Of course, that's probably not their real agenda. Just the one they tell us to distract from the man behind the curtain.

The New York Times > Health > U.S. Rules Morning-After Pill Can't Be Sold Over the Counter

More Reasons to Be Appalled By Fox News

Apparently, Fox News leases billboard space right outside CNN headquarters in Atlanta. It uses the space to post jabs at CNN, such as trumpeting its stealing away of Greta Van Susteren (a O.J.-trial talking head until CNN offered her a job several years ago), to poke fun at CNN's ratings and once to accuse the network of lacking patriotism during the Iraq war.

Right now, they're throwing a hissy fit because there's been some sort of hitch in the posting of their latest message in which they claim victory over CNN, declare their love for CNN's home city and post an e-mail address for resumes from current CNN staff. The billboard's ownership has changed hands and now no one's quite sure why the message hasn't gone up. Fox, of course, blames CNN.

And this is what America wants for their news source? As much as it makes all too much sense, it's disgusting.

Uh Oh

I take it back - I won't be taking Nationalism in the fall.

As it doesn't count this time, apparently.

The only classes being offered in the fall that count for my major's social science requirement are in economics.

One, Economic Growth and Development, is for econ majors only. It, and the other two classes, have extensive pre-requisites anyway. They're the kind of classes that you'd only take for Asia/Middle East if you also happened to be majoring or minoring in economics.

This means that one of my quarters this year, I will have to take at least two social science courses at the same time to finish my major. Yuck.

Someone Actually Wrote This, Part Three

Letters - The Arab street did not deserve Bush apology

How obsequious! President George W. Bush appeared on Arab television to apologize for the mistreatment of Iraqis and Afghans under U.S. military control. Considering the rampant bestiality of many in the Arab world toward Americans, Israelis, Spaniards, Indonesians and others, they hardly merit presidential consideration.

By groveling on Al-Arabia television and kow-towing to the Arab street, President Bush only confirms what Islamic terrorists already know: The United States is unwilling to 'fight fire with fire,' to do whatever it takes to strike fear in their hearts and defeat them by any means necessary.

Neither al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, nor the so-called Iraqi insurgents honor the Geneva Accords vis-a-vis burning bodies hung from bridges, bus and train bombings, and corpses dragged behind cars. If the president insists on addressing the Arab world, he should unequivocally state that our soldiers will imprison or kill anyone who lifts a weapon against us. Period.

[Name removed]

Irvine

(Emphasis in letter added.) I just can't think of anything to say to this shout of "They deserved it!" Who'd have thought it possible anyone would try to claim the abuse of prisoners was right?

By the Way . . .

. . . it's so nice to have my computer back again.

So Close, Yet So Gosh-Darn Far

I've revised and revised my story from my Fiction class last year until I think I have a decent piece to turn in with my writing program application (but what do I know -- I once thought this story in its old form was brilliant). I've still failed to sketch out a decent reason for one character to be so ornery, but I think I've filled out a few of the others.

But the main problem with the whole business is that, for the life of me, I can't remember the story's title. Titles have massively disproportionate importance in this game, and I vaguely remember coming up with something rather clever for my class. But what?!

I think it was a play on words incorporating "driving." If you have any idea what it was, e-mail me ASAP.

Happy Dance!

I have the FIRST registration time for Fall 2004! (And the fourth for pre-reg.)

Unfortunately, karma, your attempt to make up for me missing out on multiple Asia-Middle East social science courses this quarter may well have been for naught. So far, all I've found that fits the requirement for fall is the poli sci class Nationalism.

Registration Times

Strange Change

Why the heck do our quarters all start on Tuesdays now?

University Calendar 2005-2006, Office of the Registrar, Northwestern University

Market Research

In today's editorial meeting notes (sent to everyone who works in the newsroom), the editors discussed a "reader group" they talked with. Any guesses as to what these readers said they wanted in the paper?

More stories about "making the world a better place."

"Not only pointing out the wrong, but pointing out achievements and solutions."

"Stories about people who have overcome obstacles. Lessons . . . but brief."

"They didn't want 'fluff' stories."

"Higher quality but not necessarily longer."

Basically, what every newspaper reader is drilled to say, before going home and reading the comics. The bit about no "fluff" is a flat-out lie -- if no one wanted stories that weren't of great importance, than stories about the Lakers wouldn't consistently make the online top 10. Multiple times.

People always say they want to read good news and stories about people making a difference, but if that was true we'd never have come up with "If it bleeds, it leads."

And higher quality but not longer? Why not ask pigs to fly? There's only so much you can do with 60 lines.

That's the problem with focus groups -- they don't encourage people to give honest opinions (people may not even realize what they really want anyway). People are put on the spot and you don't want to say something that will make them look stupid, such as, "I sure wish you'd run more stories on 'The O.C.'!"

What I think people really want from our newspaper is for it to take their particular slant on the world and inject it into every story. If we were to print two editions -- one in which the liberals control the media, the other the conservatives -- we'd probably be the most popular paper in the country.

Look at Fox News.