Tuesday Wrap...

Here’s an interesting editorial on blogging by Jason Fry of the WSJ. A key graf:

The latest word from Dave Sifry, CEO of the blog search engine Technorati, is that there are some 28.4 million blogs and the blogosphere is doubling in size every 5.5 months. Eye-popping figures like that have been thrown around a lot recently, but folks making revolutionary claims about blogging won't like other Technorati numbers: Less than half of those blogs are still getting posts three months after their creation, and less than 10% -- just 2.7 million -- are updated at least weekly. That means of Technorati's blogs, more than 90% are either abandoned or updated too rarely to merit the name -- nothing kills reader interest or visits more quickly and thoroughly than a stale blog.

The Dave Sifry link is worth following in itself, with lotsa “gee whiz” facts and a few charts. Seeing the growth rate of the blogosphere charted is interesting, to me. YMMV.

Yeah, I did have to run the AC today, but only for a couple of hours…from around 1500 until 1700. Our high yesterday was 82, a record for February 27^th. Doubtless today’s high will be a record, too. I don’t know what our actual high temp was today, but it sure felt like nearly-90. I (and you, assuming you drop back by) will know tomorrow. And I will report. Trust me.

So I did the major shopping run out to the base today. Successfully – everything I needed was on the shelves. Noted in passing: the limes at the commissary are just slightly smaller than tennis balls (really), cost 16 cents apiece, and are juice-eee! The limes at Wally-World, on the other hand, are about half the size of commissary limes, cost 22 cents apiece, and may as well be semi-dehydrated when it comes to juice. Somehow I thought you just needed to know this.

I also stopped by the base library and picked up that inter-library loan of The Last Lion by William Manchester. I’d requested the book a couple of weeks ago and the librarian said she’d e-mail me when it arrived. When I asked about the e-mail (coz I never got it), she said they had tried to e-mail me twice. And tried to phone once. And had documentation to prove it; she showed me. Damn! I’ve been incommunicado and didn’t even know it… The Last Lion is a hella big book – 883 pages of narrative, 16 pages of “source notes,” four pages of acknowledgements, and a whopping 32 page index. And it only covers Churchill’s life between 1874 and 1932. Take note: You should be prepared for Churchill quotes for the next week or so. Just sayin’.

Your tax dollars at work… While I was at the base I popped by the Base Hospital clinic to pick up a prescription. The pharmacy is located about as far as away from the main entrance as possible. This means I walk by waiting areas for the Family Clinic, the Lab, X-Ray, and a couple of other waiting rooms, on my way to and from the pharmacy. I had to wait in line for just a few moments at the pharmacy and in so doing I’m watching CNN on the waiting area’s TV. Then it dawned on me: the last time I was here there was a 21-inch CRT TV hung on one of those wall-mounted shelves in the waiting area. Today I’m looking at a spiffy new flat-screen Sony that may or may not be HDTV...but for sure it’s wide-screen format and at least 30 inches wide. So, I pick up my prescription and while exiting the area I note that every TV in all the waiting rooms mentioned above have been replaced with new flat-screen TVs. It ain’t gonna break the Federal bank by any means, but buying those TVs had to cost a pretty chunk o’ change. Support the troops, indeed.

Song of the Day

Song: You Can’t Resist It
Artist: Lyle Lovett
Album: Live in Texas (and the self-titled first album)
Year: 1999 (1986)
Source: My stuff.

Makes Me Think of & etc.: And you can tell your story, and you can swear it's true; but you can save your lying for some other fool. It is ever so.

Lyrics:

She was old enough
To know better
And she was strong enough
To be true
And she was hard enough
To know whether
He was smart enough
To know what to do

And you can't resist it
When it happens to you
No you can't resist it
When it happens to you

And you can tell your story
And you can swear it's true
But you can save your lying
For some other fool

And you can't resist it
When it happens to you
No you can't resist it
When it happens to you

She was old enough
To know better
And she was strong enough
To be true
And she was hard enough
To know whether
He was smart enough
To know what to do

And you can't resist it
When it happens to you
No you can't resist it
When it happens to you
And you can't resist it
When it happens to you
No you can't resist it
When it happens to you

See ya tomorrow!