If you’re like me (and, as David Letterman says, “I pray to God you’re not), you can’t think about Thanksgiving without thinking about a certain episode of WKRP.
If you’re one of the few people who haven’t ever seen the episode, here’s a snippet:
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I came across this song in my MP3 collection.
It had the entirely unhelpful filename “01 1.mp3”
I am 99% sure it was a free track that I received from Salon.com back when they used to do free music promotions (meaning they found free songs around the web).
Shazam was unable to identify it for me.
I don’t know the name of the band or the song.
Does anyone know what it is?
As I mentioned above, I’m fairly sure that I came across this song via Salon’s now-defunct “best free music” service. It made its way onto my iPod (somehow having lost the ID information along the way) and I can remember riding my bike and thinking that it was both unique (at least to me) and haunting. That’s the best word I could describe for it.
I contact Salon.com and no one there could help me (it had been some time since I had originally downloaded it).
I recently stumbled across it again and really wanted to know what it was. I had hoped that would be able to identify it, but they weren’t (a rarity, in my experience).
So I posted it here, but since I have no idea if anyone reads this, I thought I’d post it to Twitter.
Update: I posted this question on and had a flood of answers in less than 10 minutes. Apparently I hang out with bunch of young, hip, “alternative” people. Fortunately they don’t know I’m an old fogey who isn’t sure a whole lot of good music was even made after The Joshua Tree.
So, without further delay, the song in question is by “Summer at Shatter Creek” and the title is “Your Ever Changing Moods”. There are at least three versions of it on iTunes, but the one above appears to be .
My thanks to (who was 1st ;-) followed in quick succession by
Find “Summer At Shatter Creek”:
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TnTLuoma.com was started in 2001.
Since that time it has gone through 3 versions of blogging software (GreyMatter, MovableType, and now WordPress) and accumulated some 16GB (that’s not a typo) of cruft.
Something needed to be done.
So I’ve done it, here.
Well, I’ve started it.
If you came here looking for something you didn’t find, please leave a comment below.
(Note to spammers: all comments are moderated before they will appear. So don’t bother. Not that this will dissuade you anyway.)
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Stay to the end, in case you think she was just unaware of what was behind her.
Update 2008-11-26: The story that just won’t go away (at least until after Thanksgiving) has a new chapter:
(Note: Bush had been speaking and you could hear a [fire? police?] siren in the background which Keith alludes to at the very beginning.
You can find more videos from .
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I bought Tracey a and then found myself on the Apple Store website writing a review.
Which was automatically rejected before I could post it, with this message:
Some words in your review cannot be published. Please revise your review. (please limit to 300 words)
I checked in and found I only had 216 words.
Here are the rules for writing a review on the Apple Store:
Review Tips
- Explain why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product’s features & functionality and your own experience using the product
- Limit your review to 300 words or less
- Avoid single-word reviews, bad language, contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.), URLs, time- sensitive material or alternative ordering information
- Avoid comments about non-product related issues such as service and support, resellers, shipping, sales policies, other Apple partners or Apple topics not directly related to the product’s features or functionality
- Check back in five business days to see your review
- Read complete terms & conditions for the online Apple Store
While I chuckled as the “bad language” (I assume they mean profanity, although perhaps incorrect spelling and grammar could count too):
Here’s the original review. See if you can spot the problem:
(begin) My wife loves to listen to audiobooks.
She’d put the CD in the stereo and turn it up loud enough that she could hear it as she worked around the house.
Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.
First I bought her a pair of not-inexpensive wireless headphones, but even in our fairly small house, the interference was annoying and she had no way to pause it without running back to the stereo if the phone rang, or if someone started talking to her, etc.
So I bought her a shuffle.
The problem is that her car only has a CD player, no tape deck. FM transmitters can be a pain to use, so I bought her this instead.
She loves it.
It’s also small enough that she can drop it in her pocket and listen in her office (her job sometimes involves a lot of time doing fairly monotonous filing).
I was a bit concerned about the price (it’s almost as much as the shuffle!) but it works great for her.
Oh! One more thing :-)
You can’t see it in any of the pictures here, but it also comes with a little carabiner that lets it hook onto a belt loop, backpack strap, etc. She seemed to like that part too.
(end)
Did you spot it?
Me neither.
I looked for words that might seem to be triggering their automatic filter (note: this rejection was happening as soon as I pressed submit so I knew it was a computer, not a person, doing the rejection).
I suppose saying that “FM transmitters can be a pain to use” might be seen as a “off topic” but I doubted that the parsing script was that sophisticated.
I wondered if the “:-)” was the problem, so I changed it to “:”.
Still rejected. So I put the smiley face back in.
Then I changed:
Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.
to
Which meant all of us ended up listening to it.
and it was accepted.
That’s fairly odd, IMO.
Using * as emphasis around words in ASCII text has been around for as long as I can remember, but apparently Apple wants no part of it.
So now you know.
(P.S. - By the way, you can get it for a couple bucks less at where it is listed as in-stock and Amazon Prime compatible. Apple.com says 2-3 weeks for delivery, but I found one in our local Apple Store.)
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, this is probably Apple’s way of making sure you don’t try to subvert their “bad word filter” using an asterisk.
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I heard this last night on Countdown but couldn’t believe I was hearing myself correctly.
Here is the full quote from John Hinderaker at
Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
Let’s examine this a little more closely:
“Obama thinks he is a good talker”
Mr. Hinderaker does not know what President-Elect Obama thinks. If he had written “Obama seems to think of himself as a good talker” that would have been acceptable, but Mr. Hinderaker is making a statement of fact (“Obama thinks”) when he doesn’t know that.
“…good talker”? Talker? Other than calling someone a “smooth talker” I can’t remember hearing anyone referred to as a “talker”. Yes, technically “talker” is a derivative noun that you can find in the dictionary, but it’s a fairly odd word choice.
he is often undisciplined when he speaks.
Really? Define “often”.
I’ve been following the campaign for several months and haven’t heard many slip-ups. I did see a clip where he said something about being ahead in “57 states”. At first I thought he was saying it as hyperbole. Perhaps not.
But… “often”?
I can understand “often” when talking about Sarah Palin, who couldn’t give a single interview without stumbling over her words.
He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not.
President-Elect Obama seems like a pretty smart guy. I bet he’s figured that one out already. But thanks for the tip.
But then the wheels fall off completely:
President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
Um. What?
Bush is perhaps the least eloquent politician since Dan Quayle (who had a few very memorable gaffes).
They’ve even had a term for them: Bushisms, which you can find on and books of them at , with publication dates going back several years.
He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting.
It doesn’t sometimes seem halting. It sometimes is halting.
What’s worse? Sometimes he just plows right through the door.
See for yourself:
(If that video doesn’t work, try .)
Bush is to the English language what Freddy Krueger was to teenagers in the ’80s: a nightmare.
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed by Bush’s abuse of the English language simply hasn’t been paying attention.
Bush isn’t an example… he’s a cautionary tale.
See also:
Slate.com: (which can be easily accessed at ).
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Here’s 60 seconds on why I think is more likely to be relevant in 2012 than Sarah Palin:
Palin, who first came out against community organizers (well done, Gov!) sees bloggers as the enemy, and tries to paint them all with this caricature-brush: livin’ in your parents’ basement, in your pajamas, bloggin’ some gossip.
Palin doesn’t get it.
Well, there’s a lot she doesn’t get, but here’s one example:
She doesn’t get that the Main Stream Media (or “MSM” as it is now all-too-often abbreviated) is here to stay.
They’re a powerful force.
One candidate used that force in this election.
One did not.
The one who did is now “measuring the drapes” for 1600 Penn. Ave. (Oh, and he has an amazing website at )
The other is not.
There’s a ton of room for lies, deceit, gossip, etc in the “blogosphere” (another made up word I loathe).
But there’s also a lot of fact-checking.
There’s a lot of energy.
There’s a lot of eyeballs.
While McCain and Palin kept dismissing the polls, mockingly saying “They forgot to let the people vote”, turned out stunningly accurate predictions down to tenths of a percent as to how much of the vote Obama and McCain would get.
Not ABC. Not NBC. Not CBS. Not CNN. Not MSNBC. Not even the Republican News Network (aka Fox News).
A website.
Palin is trying to pass herself off as this folksy “aw shucks” candidate.
Meanwhile, the truth is that she has abused her power in office within the first few months of being in office.
She sold an airplane — at a loss, and then just used a different one to fly herself around.
She claims she said “thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere, when what she actually did was support it, then when it became unpopular, she switched sides and went against it, and then she kept the money.
She is as much a politician as anyone you are likely to meet.
McCain / Palin tried to pull off “OUTRAGE!” at Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment, except that there was video footage of McCain using the same phrase several times over and over again.
Palin says that the Harry Potter books weren’t even out when she was city manager (or whatever) and accused of trying to get books banned….except that 4 of the 7 books were out when she was in that office.
McCain / Palin tried to run a pre-web campaign, where the only news cycle was from 6-7pm and 11-11:30pm.
They tried to run a campaign that could only exist back before there were ways to fact check, before there were easy ways of disseminating information.
And lest you become too haughty about where your political news comes from: don’t forget it was The Inquirer which broke the news of John Edwards’ affair.
For Palin to win in 2012, for any Republican to win in 2012, they are going to have to completely re-think how they run the campaign, how they get their message out, and what that message is.
(It would also be nice if they had something to offer other than “The Democrats are bad evil people with bad evil friends who might be terrorists, socialist, marxist, communist, fascist, tax-raising, puppy killin’ mean jerks who will take your guns!!!”)
It’s going to be more and more difficult for them to get away with the old style fear-mongering, because there are too many ways to refute a message that isn’t truthful.
The problem is that Palin is complaining about being treated unfairly, when she gave no interviews, released no medical records (despite saying she would), and basically trying to cloak herself in a shroud of secrecy.
Then she tried to turn around and claim that we didn’t know who the “real” Obama was… when the truth was we had no idea who Sarah Palin was.
By 2012, we’ll know a lot more. The spotlight will get a lot more intense, Gov. Palin. You might just want to think about whether or not you can really stand to face all that light, because so far all you’ve been trying to do is shovel darkness.
I watched almost zero nightly news programs during the campaign.
I bought no newspapers or magazines.
I watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and later added Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
(By the way, you can watch all 4 of those shows in their entirety online. For free.)
I saw a lot of YouTube clips.
I read a lot of blogs, and a lot of newspaper websites.
I clicked a lot of links on Twitter.
Someone started a Sarah_Palin account on Twitter. I’m not sure if it was official or not (Obama’s clearly was official) but they mostly made statements with no link, no followup. For example:
Really? What numbers are those?
By the way, that was posted at 9:21pm on Nov 2nd. Oops.
Here’s another:
Really? Where’s a story I can read about that?
When you make statements like that, statements with no corroboration, all you are doing is speaking to those who already want to believe you.
There are several of these pro-Palin twitter accounts, none of them seem to be “official” and most of the ones that I saw posted very little by way of verifiable stories, and mostly just threw out these statements hoping that people would read them and say “Oh, ok, I believe you.”
Compare that to the which is full of links for more information. When statements are made, they are messages of encouragement or updates on where he was or what he was doing.
Obama got it.
Anyone who thinks it was just part of some strategy, checkout his new website .
It’s a whole new ball game.
And Palin best figure out how the game is played if she wants another turn at bat.
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I hate getting angry.
I hate losing my cool.
I hate being the guy yelling at someone over the phone, someone who (in all likelihood) wasn’t responsible for the problem in the first place.
I don’t want to be “That Guy.”
And so I try to avoid it.
I go out of my way to be reasonable and courteous when talking on the phone with support people.
The problem is that it just doesn’t seem to work very well.
I don’t know if I’m just unlucky or what, but I seem to have to make several phone calls to get problems solved.
I don’t know if it was due to living in a swing state (which, by the way, is not nearly as much fun as it sounds), but we have been getting as many as a dozen calls a week, sometimes several per night, where the caller ID said only “Private”.
Of course we’re on the Do Not Call list, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Politicians and fund-raising are exempt from the list, and we still routinely get calls from people offering to lower our credit card debt, etc.
I called AT&T about their feature, and was pleased to learn about their plan, which would add more features to my phone service for a lower price per month.
One of the included features was Privacy Manager, which is what I had called about in the first place.
This was Monday, October 27th, around 10 a.m. EST. I was told that it “should be on by Wednesday, but maybe as late as Friday” and I was given a number to call to configure Privacy Manager.
I called the automated number late Wednesday, and it wasn’t setup. That was frustrating (more calls coming in) but I decided to be patient, after all they said as late as Friday.
I called late Friday, and it wasn’t setup.
I called AT&T and they had already left for the day.
Saturday I called AT&T again and was told that it was “Pending” and that there wasn’t anything she could do to make it happen faster.
Wednesday I tried again, still not working. I called Friday and was told that “the system doesn’t even show that it was ordered.”
Doing my best to keep calm, I expressed my disappointment that I was a) being told this now, almost 2 weeks after I first called, and b) that I had been told before that it was shown as “Pending”.
The customer service person apologized and said she could have it turned on “by tomorrow” (Saturday).
I thanked her, and hung up, wondering why I was told it would take “2-5 days” to get it turned on the first time, but then she could get it turned on within 24 hours.
Sunday, when I tried it again, it still wasn’t working.
Monday I called again, and made my way through their awful voice-prompt call-routing version of hell again, and finally got through to yet another “customer service” person.
Who asked me for an order number.
Mind you, I don’t remember ever being given an order number in the first place, nor had I been asked for an order number any of the several times I had called before, but now, after telling her that I had ordered this service two weeks earlier she asked for an order number.
I started to lose my cool.
She checked the system and told me that it did show as “Pending, and there’s nothing I can do to make it happen any faster.”
In hindsight, I assume that this must be something that they are trained to tell people who call one day after ordering something which is scheduled to take longer.
It is, the training should teach them, not something you ever say to someone who has been waiting for two weeks.
Not unless you want them to lose their cool.
Which I did.
I informed her that I had been waiting for two weeks and had no intention of waiting another damn day, and I either needed to talk to someone who could do something about it or I needed to talk to someone about closing down my entire damned account with AT&T.
She transferred me to someone else who was magically able to get Privacy Manager turned on the same day.
I called up on October 27th to add a service that I would be paying for to my phone (this wasn’t something they were doing out of the goodness of their hearts, it wasn’t a favor I was asking them to do for me, this is a paying service in a highly-competitive market).
I was told I had to wait 2-5 days.
When I called back the 2nd time to complain about it not being turned on yet, I was told I would have to wait another day.
When I called back the 3rd time, lost my cool and yelled, I was able to get the service turned on the same day.
If the service can be turned on within 24 hours, why tell me to wait 2-5 days?
Why should something like this take 2-5 days? It’s not as if someone had to come to my house and flip a switch; it was almost certainly done on a computer somewhere.
This is only one example. It’s not the first time that something like this has happened, and it’s not only AT&T that has done this.
I would hate to do customer support, I would hate to do customer support over the phone even more.
But when you customer support is behind a pain-in-the-ass voice navigation system, followed by being on-hold, followed by being told that I need to be patient, that there’s nothing anyone can do, then I have to call back again and hear there’s no record of my order, then I call back again and get asked for a piece of information that I was never given…
Is anyone surprised when people get angry at the people doing customer support?
Does this process of “being patient” = “being told to wait and have nothing happen” versus “get angry” = “get the desired outcome on the same day” teach anything other than “If you want something done, you’ll have to get angry?”
Let me reiterate, I hate losing my cool. I tried very hard not to lose it, and I can sympathize with the people on the other end of the phone who have to deal with getting yelled at.
Regardless of what you might want to argue in the abstract, the fact of the matter is that time and time again, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” especially for definitions of “squeaky” that include “angry”.
If I could actually get customer service without yelling, we’d both be happier.
Nobody wins.
But I’m left to wonder: if I had called back on Wednesday and gotten angry, could I have gotten it turned on sooner?
If I called back Friday and yelled, would I have gotten more success at getting it turned on Saturday?
Perhaps I didn’t need to get angry at all; perhaps the person I talked to on Monday was going to get it fixed the same day regardless.
Maybe. But it didn’t work the first three times I tried it.
Update 2008-11-14: AT&T emailed me today to tell me that the service was activated (which it was… 5 days ago) and that it would cost me an extra $1.57 per month. When it was supposed to be part of the package that we purchased. AT&T continues to innovate in the “finding ways to screw up” sphere.
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Let me tell you something: ultimately it is not the nuts that are the greatest threat to democracy. As history has shown us over, and over, and over again, the greatest threat to democracy is the unbridled power of the state’s over its citizens, which, by the way, that power is always unleashed in the name of preservation.
– Mandy Hampton (played by Moira Kelly) from “The State Dinner”, Season 1, Episode 7 of “The West Wing” (), starting at the 20 minute 17 second mark on the 2nd DVD.
Two years before 9/11/2001.
Long before George W. Bush took office, a year before the nightmare 2000 election, and here we have a TV show trying to warn us about the true greatest threats to our democracy, our freedom.
Did we lose more freedom from 9/11 or from the excesses of power that came from the president afterwards?
Did we lose more standing in the world from what happened in 9/11 or from our reaction to it?
Come to think of it, President George W. Bush might benefit from a close watching of “A Proportional Response” (Season 1, Episode 3) wherein President Bartlet is warned about an overreaction in response to military action against those who attacked first, warning that what he wanted to do would be seen as the action of an inexperienced president.
This is why I inwardly roll my eyes every time someone boasts about not watching television.
Mandy talking about a bill that the President had gotten passed which would “keep the banking lobby from getting whatever it wants, including total bank deregulation.” (Around the 38:24 mark.)
Original air-date? November 17, 1999.
Before sending a judge (who did not believe that privacy was a constitutional right) to the Supreme Court, Sam Seaborn says:
Starting around 36:08
[The right to Privacy is] not just about abortion. It’s about the next 20 years. In the ’20s and ’30s it was the role of government, ’50s and ’60s it was Civil Rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy.
I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cell phones, I’m talking about health records and who’s gay and who’s not.
And, moreover, in a country in a country born of the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?
Original air date November 24, 1999.
Anyone who doesn’t think Sorkin is a genius should have their head examined.
Around 30:57
Barlet: “What does India want?” Lord John Marbury: “A computer industry. And for that they an infrastructure, and that is what you can give them.”
Original air date: January 12, 2000. Many Americans were still tinkering with their AOL accounts and their first email addresses.