Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Tidying up a bit...random thoughts

Getting ready to settle in for a trio of days at News 14, including two RARE evening shifts for me...instead of being horizontal at 8pm, I'll be a forecastin' fool in a foreign hour of waking.

Tried to make lemonade from the lemons of even more rainy weather yesterday and...yes, it's true...I FINALLY got my flute website up and going. There is still a tremendous amount of tweaking and adding and shifting and figgerin' out stuff, but at least there are numerous activated pages with info and, well, that's one slow train a comin' that's long overdue. It's been an interesting learning experience...working with an older version of NetObjects Fusion that is basically WYSIWYG (wissy-wig): what you see is what you get. While a good friend set up a template, most of my pages are free-form so I can move text and pictures about freely and easily, for fast-updating and creative license. Getting sound samples made and posted for the flutes is my next big push the next few days.

www.UglyBoyFlutes.com (click)

My original site was designed for my one of a kind art I produced, "OOAK Art", which is what you're directed to, insofar as an URL. Soon I hope to have pages of some of my art, as well, but for the moment the focus is flute stuff.

If you listen to and believe the media and spin doctors in the political arena, you might for a moment believe we're rising from the precipice of disaster and the economy is improving. I can say the stock market has gone up, helping out some investment plans, and some other world indices are a bit more stable. But from the street level of the common man, I see plenty of things getting worse. Just recently have I heard from friends that their companies canceled 401K programs, canceled insurance or changed policies that now require massive deductibles...many are still hurting, and the job market is not growing. And don't get me started on banks in general, especially as it relates to mortgages and refinancing. I still love this quote from the great Robert Frost that I posted some time ago:

"A bank is a place where
they lend you an umbrella
in fair weather and ask
for it back when it
begins to rain."


Amen.

I also don't remember so much sickness running circles around so many people all around me. Some are H1N1, others just bronchial crud that hangs around far too long...and it presents a scientific dilemma when it comes to hand sanitizers. Heck, there was a potential Fried Fridays story I almost chose of a Japaneese suit company that makes an anti-H1N1 suit from a fiber that in sunlight does some whammy reaction and kills 40% of germs and such...with the ad geared toward 'dad' coming home from work, hugging his children, and knowing with a peace of mind that he has less germs on his suit. To each his own in the gimmick department.

Hand sanitizers are a peace of mind, and all you have to do in the advertising world is throw in the fear factor and you've made a sale. The dillemma is hand sanitizers do not kill all the bacteria. For that matter, the flu is a virus and by definition you can't kill it because it, itself, is not 'alive'. Only the really resistant stuff survives, so while you in good conscience feel cleaner and safer, you've basically left the bad hombres alive to replicate, which is not a good thing. For those that work in office environments where many come in contact with common items, lysol and sanitizer have their use. I just prefer to wash my hands well with soap and water and keep my hands away from my face as much as possible...and then make sure I don't step off the curb into an oncoming bus.

One place you won't get hit by a bus is on I-40 West near the NC/TN border. You won't get hit by anything because you can't go through there...a recent rockslide has taken care of that, closing both directions of travel until the end of November. And that, my friends, is one serious detour travelers now have to make. The quickest detour via major roads adds at least an hour, thanks to the rugged terrain and lack of alternate side roads. The NC mountains have had some serious rainfall for several months, now, so it's not surprising that some of the steeper slopes have given way.

And now I'll give way and bid you adieu as I go ready for the day and get the pups walked at O-dark-thirty. Yet another big swing in the temperature department today as we get up into the 70s with plenty of humidity. So the wardrobe roulette continues....

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