otoh

Another volley has been fired in the browser wars, this time from search masters Google. Their offering, now in beta release, is Chrome.

You can learn about the nuts and bolts from a YouTube video and a comic interpretation, both of which are linked here. I suspect though that unless you are a developer, programmer, or just a big technogeek like me you won’t understand or care about the nuts and bolts. Nor should you. [After all, most of us drive automobiles without more than a glimmer of an idea of how they get us from A to B... although I personally think any driver should at least be able to remember to release the freakin' parking brake before trying to drive off into the sunset....]

Speed, stability, security — that’s what is supposed to be better about Chrome compared to whatever browser you currently use. You’ll just have to try it and see if it works better for your web experiences. [Oh yeah, you can get it here.] I’ve played with it a little yesterday and today. Too little time to make a determination. But I like the principles on which it’s built [because you know I read the comic and watched the video....]

I’ll probably do another post after I’ve played with it some more. If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

Something like this may have happened once: I assisted a woman in getting her car started in the grocery store parking lot. But, even if it did happen, I would probably never tell you that. I would however very likely say, “I jumped a blonde at Publix.” But, you know, only if it happened to come up in conversation….

And if at some other time in a different place some totally different woman asked for help with her car because she couldn’t get the hood up and thinks it needs water and when she tried to drive it, it just sort of stalled and… sure enough the hood latch was broken and I had taken my tools out of my car because I was moving some things into storage and did you say it did start and then stalled? And if she started it up and put it in gear and it didn’t move and I looked underneath to make sure it wasn’t caught on something before I asked, “Is the parking brake on?” … And if she said, “Oh, yeah… I’m going to try to make it home now….” I would say, “Good luck.”

But that’s not exactly what I was thinking. Of course you didn’t hear it from me….

Three thirds make this 3-Song Playlist. Only the first one is really about today, but I can’t resist mixing a day you will always remember, another sleepy, dusty Delta day, and a day the fireworks came early.

• Papa was a Rolling Stone by Temptations
• Ode to Billy Joe by ArtistName Bobbie Gentry [wikipedia]
• Third of July by Pensive

The song titles link to YouTube videos and the artist names link to their official web sites [or wikipedia pages when I can't find an artist site].

First: Thanks!

And B: It is my goal for the next month to write every single day. [Sit down, you two!] Before you get too nauseated excited, only a small percentage of what I write do I plan to post here. Some will be posted in other blogs and some will be old-school pen-and-paper. Like you care.

How ironic is this though? The first draft of this post included a diatribe against angst-ridden musings about whether to post… but it looked too much like an angst-ridden musing about whether to post for me to post it. Hah!

I decided to err on the side of caution and sent the Silvertein poem to ALL my colleagues… with a revised prologue. While including a wider audience might seem reckless, I based this decision on the assumption that if I sent it only to certain individuals they might [not incorrectly, perhaps] conclude that I intended criticism as much as humor. The dozen or so replies I got were universally positive and appreciative leading me to believe I chose wisely. [For once... go me!]

In a bit of synchronicity, I received an email today from a colleague that included this pearl of wisdom:

If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

Exactly!

I am oh so sorely tempted to send an email to certain colleagues [who neither guide nor counsel it seems]. And it may look like this:

[Begin sample email]

Subject: Thanks for ALL you do

Since we’re all so consumed by numbers right now, I thought you might enjoy this bit of humor.

Smart by Shel Silverstein

My dad gave me one dollar bill
‘Cause I’m his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes — I guess he don’t know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just ’cause he can’t see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head–
Too proud of me to speak!

Thanks for ALL you do!
~Tim

[End sample email]

But… I am trying to practice more restraint than last year. And while some parts of the students’ schedules are not as monumentally fubarred as last year, the schedules aren’t all right either. Still, doesn’t this just ooze innocence and optimism?

I can’t believe that when I wrote this post I forgot coxswain. I must have been distracted by the spelling. My students that row might not forgive me… but my students don’t read here anyway. And I’m not going to tell them….

Do you suppose that the London Olympics will adopt Arabic numbers… just to avoid triple X? Although, “XXX Olympics” does suggest a few new “sports”. I suppose though that Greek games and Roman numerals just seem to go together.

For now, I’m over it… until Vancouver in 2010 at least.

Opism: when you take the tim out of optimism….

Tropical storm Fay never got as strong as she might have and didn’t roll right over top of me after all, but she hung around way too long and dumped tons of rain on us. Flooding was worse on the Atlantic coast and I fared better than many. Got some water damage in one corner room though and still cleaning that up….

Schools in my district were closed Tuesday and Friday. Others had to close all week — that’s a lot of days to make up.

This was already a tough time to be an educator in Florida. Budgets statewide were cut. We have to teach more students with fewer teachers — more classes of shorter length — and meet higher standards with no raise, not even a cost-of-living increase. [But I'm not bitter, because I should be happy just to have a job....]

A colleague has been passing the mantra, “Optimism Now!” And, try as I might, I’m just not feeling it.

This commercial has been running on TV:

Every time I see it I think, “This kid is an idiot — just another of the spoiled brats with over-indulgent parents and an unflagging sense of entitlement.” I am not inspired. I have a bad attitude.

Fay is gone, but there is still a tropical depression here….

The number eight (ba) is important in Chinese culture. It sounds similar to the word for (and is often associated with) wealth and prosperity.Ba Gua Zhang is an internal martial art related to Tai Chi and Qi Gong. The Ba Gua trigrams (eight symbols) appear in Taoist cosmology, the I Ching, and Feng Shui.

Recently and famously, the opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics started at 8:08:08 (local time) on 8/8/08. American swimmer Michael Phelps earned an unprecedented eight gold medals in this Olympics.

I started looking for other patterns of eights.

The Olympics are broadcast in the U.S. on NBC. Their corporate logo is a peacock.

In badminton, players hit a shuttlecock.

In shooting, a competitor might cock the gun. (China has won eight medals in shooting as I write this….)

Some people think that Usain “Lightning” Bolt was a bit cocky when he shattered the 100m record on the track.

Hmm… that’s only four cocks. This is more difficult than I thought it would be. A lot of people think that this guy who wrestled for Sweden was a prick. Does that count?

Today was the first day of classes… and tomorrow the schools will be closed. Tropical Storm Fay is tracking its way toward Central Florida.

In a way, it’s like deja-vu for the hurricane season of a few years ago. This time the storm is not expected to reach hurricane status before barreling over top of us. But it IS expected to barrel over top of us. Even if it had stayed in the Gulf and made landfall further north (as it was projected to do for a while) we would have been subjected to high winds, lots of rain, and a good chance of tornadic activity.

As I write this, the eye is less than 300 miles away. It will probably be right over us late tomorrow night. So there’s a pretty good chance we will miss more than just one day of school. [The calendar already has several days identified as make-up days; we have learned a thing or two about scheduling around the unpredictable....]

At this point, all we can do is hunker down and hope that the damage is minimal. And, as long as I have electricity, I guess I’ll get to watch some more of the Olympics….