Category: Of Interest

Those miscellaneous things that just must be published.

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TVA and Knoxnews Unfamiliar with Google

One thing is certain. At some point in our life, we will die. (Unless Ray Kurzweil, Aubrey de Grey, and fellow scientists succeed at treating aging as a disease – read some debate and discussion, and, I am certain they will but it will be affordable only to the ultra wealthy) WBIR and Knoxnews reported that a man had jumped from The Bluffs near Tellico Dam and died. Accidents happen particularly when thrill seeking. This does not mean The Bluffs should be fenced off and protected by armed guards. Accidents happen. It is unfortunate and I feel badly for his family.

In the Knoxnews article, the report:

[TVA spokeswoman Nancy] Mitchell said she did not know where the man was from, “but I’m assuming (he was) fairly local,” she said. [Source, Knoxnews, ID released on jumper killed at "Bluffs"]

Knoxville is a small town. When I read about someone around my age passing away, I google them to see if I knew them. In 30 seconds of reading the Knoxnews article, I knew exactly where the deceased lived and thanks to Streetviews can tell you the style and color of his house. Yes, this could a different person with the same name but based upon the search results, I highly doubt it. The article also states "his next of kin were notified between 9 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Saturday" which seems contradictory to Nancy Mitchell’s statement. Poor reporting? or poor release of information by TVA?

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Spam on Reality Me out of control

This weekend I plan to get a little aggressive with controlling spam on Reality Me. Most of it gets blocked but I get so much spam traffic that my Spam Karma logs regularly reach 70MB or more. If you find yourself unable to reach Reality Me, I may have been too aggressive. Just email me at juggler@gmail.com or Twitter @djuggler or Skype djuggler.

How do I plan to fight the spam? Mostly with apache. I’ll post details.

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Bring Me A Rock

When talking about software development and software quality assurance processes, I love to talk about the "Bring me a rock!" scenario. I found these renderings of a rock rather amusing. Of course, there are no coffee grounds in the house so that could be a contributing factor in the humor.

I also enjoy talking about delivering a baby in one month by using nine women. And I love the ugly baby syndrome. But those are for later.

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Starbucks is Starbucks unless its in a store

Twitter hurts the blog posting from time to time. Six days ago I spoke to an employee of Starbucks that seemed to be in the know regarding store closures. She informed me that no Knoxville Starbucks would be closing and that the closest closure was rumored to be Chattanooga. I Twittered the information instead of posting to Reality Me so the people following me on Twitter gained the knowledge but I did not create any record to be found by the search engines or referenced by papers and bloggers. I enjoy publishing information that others find useful. Carly Harrington tells us of closures much closer to Knoxville than Chattanooga.

I predicted that the Starbucks inside of Target at Turkey Creek would close since there is a Starbucks store in the same parking lot. I learned that none of the Starbucks inside of grocery stores or other stores will be closing. These Starbucks are owned by the store chain and not by Starbucks. The name only is licensed to the store. I wonder if the quality is different or if the store can water down or take shortcuts that an actual Starbucks cannot.

The Seattle Times has does an excellent job by providing a Google Map of rumored closings.

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Let Oak Ridge, er, Hollywood Clean Up the Mess!

Right now there is a huge ecological disaster happening in Tennessee. An 18 wheeler tanker has a spill of highly volatile material, titanium tetrachloride, and has caused an evacuation of everything within 10 miles of the accident as well as totally shutting down Interstate 40 near Crossville and having some people stuck in traffic 6-12 hours. This sounds similar to the train wreck that evacuated much of Farragut a couple of years ago.

So here is the scenario: Truck containing hazardous materials traveling on Interstate 40 has a problem and substance begins leaking. Nine people get sent to a hospital. Area is quarantined and evacuated for a radius of ten miles. A hazmat team is sent in, cannot contain the leak, and determines contents of truck to be producing heat (ie. explosion pending). To make matters worse, water mixed with this hazardous material produces hydrochloric acid. Winds are currently blowing strong. Storms are forecasted in less than twelve hours and the special cleanup team from New Jersey will take twelve or more hours to arrive. Sounds like an out of work script writer is trying to pitch Paramount.

My question: Why isn’t Oak Ridge responding to this? Certainly the labs are prepared for a worse ecological disaster than this. Between Becthel Jacobs, SAIC, Perma-Fix, and the dozens of other contractors that regularly do work at Y12 (in particular cleanup and handling of dangerous materials), you would think we could have a crew to Crossville in one hour instead of twelve. Are lives at stake for bureaucracy? Is this Katrina on a smaller scale?

How would Hollywood handle this? Simple! Tommy Lee Jones would come barking in to establish perimeters and control the choas while Will Smith beats some people into cooperating/doing actual cleanup and Chris Tucker smack talks the red tape out of the way. Of course we don’t get to learn the outcome because Hollywood is poised for a second strike (See Return of the Bad Television – Guild Strike Part Deux).

And would someone teach the AMPTP about permalinks?

Our final offer to SAG members includes more than $250 million in additional compensation, important new media rights and protection for pension and health benefits. The refusal of SAG’s Hollywood leadership to accept this offer is the latest in a series of actions by SAG leaders that, in our opinion, puts labor peace at risk. SAG’s Hollywood leaders have already pursued a time-consuming, divisive, costly, and unsuccessful anti-AFTRA campaign. Any further delay in reaching a reasonable and comprehensive agreement does a disservice to the thousands of working people of our industry who are already being seriously harmed by the ever worsening de facto strike. [Source, AMPTP, Breaking News, July 10, 2008, Statement of the AMPTP] (See also July 8, 2008, AFTRA Ratification Statement and June 30, 2008, Statement of the AMPTP)

Any increase for the benefits of health insurance, pension, or residual gains made by the WGA are also likely to be demanded by other entertainment industry labor unions when their contracts expire. This is a practice known as pattern bargaining — the first union to reach a contract with the AMPTP usually sets the template for the agreement with other unions. The contracts for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Directors Guild of America (DGA) expired on June 30, 2008. [Source, Wikipedia, Other 2008 industry-wide strike threats]