Leibovitz Phones It In

Over the years, I've built hundreds of websites. However, I sometimes worry that what I've really done is build one website hundreds of times. Such is the nature of any recurring creative endeavor, especially when working for a client. There's a continual struggle between trying to keep things fresh while keeping the customer's wants and needs at the forefront. There's also a tendency to fall back on the approaches and layouts that have worked in the past (not an altogether bad thing, of course, assuming that they'll continue to work into the reasonable future).

Which brings me to the current hoohaw around Annie Leibovitz's photograph of Miley Cyrus* for Vanity Fair. If you've just emerged from a cave after years of seclusion, you still know what I'm referring to, and it's not my intention to hash out the details of something to which millions of words have already been applied. There's no lack of culpable parties to which blame can be easily assigned (although I'll say that the one party who shouldn't be blamed is, oddly enough, Vanity Fair, any more than one blames a rattlesnake for biting the foot of someone who steps on it. That's what rattlesnakes do, and everyone knows it. Vanity Fair also has a natural and reliable role in lowering the bar for public decency and decorum).

What I want to focus on instead is Leibovitz's unimaginative photographic work that resulted in the Lolita-ization of a fifteen-year-old girl. The photographer claims that her work was "misinterpreted" but no one is buying that. You don't become that skilled at celebrity portraiture without knowing precisely the reaction the shot will engender in its viewers.

But, in the end, regardless of the moral or ethical implications of the photos in question, what Leibovitz did was clichéd and smacks of someone trying to collect a paycheck as quickly as possible. What was she thinking? "Oh, here's a cute and perky girl whose reputation is wholesome and charming. What kind of picture should I take? Oh, I know...let's make her pouty and sullen and have her throw a knowing look over a bare shoulder. That's never been done!"

Leibovitz may have been working an agenda at the same time, but that doesn't make the result any less disappointing from a creative perspective, especially for an artist whose prior claim to fame was the ability to capture the true personality of her subjects in a photograph. Miley Cyrus deserved better than that, and Annie Leibovitz can do better than that.

*I know...two posts that include mentions to Miley Cyrus in one day. But look at it this way: that averages out to one reference every two years.

The Incompetent Temporary Bachelor Chronicles: Vol. I

MLB is in another time zone on business, leaving me and the Dog Faced Girl to fend for ourselves, a task for which we each are woefully ill-equipped. In fairness to Abbye, the fact that she's aged, infirm, blind, and lacks opposable thumbs gives her some legitimate excuses that I, for the most part (hold your snide observations) lack.

Take the task of making coffee, for example. Now, one of the things my wife does to ensure that our home is a little bit of heaven on earth is prepare our fancy-schmancy coffeemaker the night before, so that when I arise at precisely 5:26 a.m. and stroll into the kitchen, while she's hammering out mileage on the treadmill I'm dispensing a cuppa joe so fresh it's like a slap in the face from Miley Cyrus.

She makes it look easy, but I'm finding there's more to it than meets the eye. Monday night, for example, I set everything up, carefully measuring three cups of water and four scoops of coffee that would yield my expected three cups of java. I failed to consider the effects of overnight evaporation and water loss during the brewing cycle, and had to resort to sucking on the bottom of a soggy #4 flat-bottomed filter to get my RDA of caffeine on Tuesday morning. If that paints a sad mental picture, I assure you that the reality is worse.

Last night, I was determined not to repeat that mistake, and I didn't. I achieved that goal by grasping at a higher standard of incompetence, as I failed to remember to put any water at all into the coffeemaker.

I can't wait to see what awaits me in the morning. I'm pretty sure that I'm approaching the end of the possible ways to mess up this task, but if things go badly again tomorrow, I'm putting Abbye in charge. She couldn't do any worse.

Al Jazeera visits Midland

I did some quick searches on a few local blogs that I thought might have already covered this, and found nothing. If you had a more timely report, please feel free to provide a link in the comments.

I stumbled across the following YouTube videos after following an unrelated Google link. They are a couple of 11-minute programs produced by the [infamous] Arabic news organization, Al Jazeera in September, 2007, and are entitled Main Street USA – Midland, Texas. The reports focus on the role that faith and religion play in the public and private lives of our citizens, and, of course, how they influenced George W. Bush. Midland residents will recognize many of the individuals interviewed during the course of the filming.

The underlying message is that Midland is a city of "Christian fundamentalists," a term used with great frequency, and applied both to individuals as well as the community as a whole. It's hard to tell if the Al Jazeera report is using that word as a term of disapprobation; if so, the irony is thickened given the network's Muslim target audience.

Regardless, I found the reports to be fairly evenhanded, especially considering their source. A local Muslim was interviewed and expressed his happiness at being able to live in a community where he can practice his faith without fear. In a rational world, that should be a revelation to his counterparts in the Middle East, or at least a source of cognitive dissonance, but I'm not that naive.

The most disturbing thing about these reports is not the content of the videos, but the comments left on YouTube regarding them. Read them at your own risk, if you're easily offended.

By the way, if you define "fundamentalist" as being someone who believes that there are certain doctrinal truths given down by a holy and just God that we as individuals and collectively as a nation ignore at our own peril, then I willingly place myself firmly into that category.

Neighborhood Killdeer

Killdeer are exceedingly common throughout the US, and they're even regularly observed around bodies of water in our arid part of the state. Still, I haven't had the opportunity to observe them up close until a family took up residence around the stream and pond located in our new neighborhood.

I shot the following video this morning. It was unusually cold for this time of year – temps in the upper 30s – and the killdeer chicks were seeking warmth under mama's wings. The only problem is that there were too many of them and too little of her to go around. You'll also see a short clip of the "distraction behavior" killdeer use to draw predators away from their eggs or young.

I apologize for the shaky video, as I am too cheap to buy a camera with image stabilization, too unskilled to hold a zoomed-in shot steady, and too disorganized to remember to grab a tripod.

My Wife is a Squirrel Mule

One of the things I hated to give up in the relocation was the view from my desk onto our back porch and yard, which provided a reliable tableau of bloggable wildlife action. My new setup has the window at my back, and it looks out on the front driveway, a much less attractive setting for observations of nature.

So, I was as surprised as my neighbors to find myself lying on my side in the driveway yesterday around noon, long lens on the camera pointed to the undercarriage of my wife's Santa Fe. The reason was that I had glanced out the window just in time to see one of those wily ground squirrels run under her car. That in itself wouldn't warrant anything more than a couple of additional glances, but the squirrel piqued my curiosity by displaying his own. He stood on his hind legs and peered at the underside of the car, as if inspecting it for defects. He moved down the length of the vehicle, repeating this behavior, and then he climbed inside the rim of the left rear wheel. That's when my own inquisitive nature took over and I grabbed my camera.

I approached as stealthily as I knew how, and eased myself onto the concrete. However, the squirrel was nowhere to be seen. I circled the car and seeing no reaction, I finally slid under it to inspect the wheel well (half expecting to be ambushed from above by a rabies-crazed varmint who'd been plotting this moment for weeks). Nothing. Nada. Zip.

I assumed he'd slipped away, blocked from my view by the car itself, so I returned to the house. As I put my camera back in the bag, I glanced out the window again, just in time to see him unfurl himself from under the car and drop to the driveway, not unlike the creatures in Alien, only hairier and less slimy. So, he'd been hiding somewhere up there all along.

At that point, my walked out the front door to head back to the office, and instead of doing the expected and natural thing – running away – the ground squirrel leaped back onto the frame of the car! I told her what was going on, and we agreed that she'd pull slowly out of the drive, while I waited, camera in hand, for what I was sure would be a dramatic squirrel evacuation (unaccompanied, we hoped, a gooshy squirrel flattening). It never came. That little fella remained hidden somewhere under the SUV as she drove out of sight.

I'm sure that Claydesta has a sufficiently profuse population of ground squirrels that one more won't make a difference, and I hope that the unauthorized passenger had the good sense to vacate the undercarriage upon arrival at my wife's office. The last thing we need is one of those guys playing the role of gremlin under our car, chewing on wiring and what-not. Or worse, hitching a ride into our garage and setting up shop where the potential for damage is even greater.

The upside to the situation is that I apparently didn't lose as much in the move as I feared, from the perspective of getting a view of the natural world outside my window.

Local Company Celebrates Centennial

If you subscribe to the Midland Reporter Telegram's treeware edition, you might have noticed a large ad in today's publication announcing the 100th anniversary of St. Mary Land & Exploration Company. This milestone will be celebrated at a reception this afternoon at the Petroleum Club, and yours truly has wrangled an invitation, because of my well-known reputation as a media mogul and Influencer of Public Opinion.

Well, that and the fact that I'm married to a St. Mary employee. OK, probably mostly that second thing.

But, I'm not the only local blogger whose better half is a St. Mary employee. I don't think Jeff will mind my pointing out that his wife recently joined the company and is, in fact, one of their key employees. Unlike me, however, Jeff has a real job and I don't know that he'll be able to attend the ceremony. Jeff, I'll have a piece of cake in your honor.

St. Mary's presence in Midland is new, but growing. The office has been open for only about a year. Many Midlanders will be familiar with some of its management, however, as they served stints here with ARCO in the 90s and earlier. Tony Best is the President and CEO; Javan Ottoson is Executive VP and COO; Newt Newton is the VP and Regional Manager in the Midland office. And, of course, both my wife and Jeff's were ARCO employees, so it's sort of a mini-reunion from that perspective.

Given today's business climate, one wonders how many new relatively new companies (think Google, Microsoft, Apple, Verizon, etc.) will survive to celebrate a centennial. It's a big deal, and I wish the employees of St. Mary all the best. (Not that I have a vested interest or anything.)

Random Thursday

Wow, it's been a while since we've done one of these. Bear with me while I get my bearings.

• Today is Trash Day. We've never had Trash Day before, so this is a big deal. Our new neighborhood doesn't have dumpsters, so we have to wheel our city-provided trash cans into the alley to await pick up. It makes me feel like a dutiful suburbanite. But, it's an egalitarian system. No one can monopolize the trash receptacle, as is the case with a dumpster. You can generate all the trash you want, but it won't get hauled off unless you can fit it in your personal container. Well, except for the neighbor across the alley, whom I've never met and who, noticing that we've got two containers (a temporary situation until we're completely unpacked), felt comfortable putting some of his overflow trash in one of them. I guess that's what neighbors are for.


• My nomination for two of the worst commercials on TV nowadays goes to FreeCreditReport.com, whose ads feature a band whose lead singer is bemoaning his poor status in life, attributing it to the fact that he failed to check his credit score. That oversight led him to (a) have to work as a waiter in a seafood restaurant, and (b) drive a beat-up sub-compact which is so, like, not really him. I can imagine how that might make a real waiter feel, knowing that his or her livelihood is being held up as an example of failure. And if you're a waiter driving a sub-compact? Well, you're a loser with a capital L, according to those commercials.


• On the flip side, one of the better ads belongs to Nutrisystem's weight-loss pitch to men featuring Dan Marino and Larry the Cable Guy. This is a stroke of marketing genius, getting a still-chunky rednek to proclaim how he lost the equivalent of four bowling balls of gut on the diet plan. I'm not convinced that anything will sell the average American man on a weight loss program, but this approach probably has the best chance of success.


• By the way, sauce and gravy are very tough to deal with. Speaking of food, how would you like to make a living as a food photographer? It's not all peaches and cream (well, unless it is peaches and cream); as the lead-in quote implies, there are challenges. Fortunately, we have Michael Ray's Food Photography Blog to help us overcome them.


• We've discovered that Abbye doesn't like reverse osmosis water. She's been drinking tap water for the past dozen years, but the new house came with an RO system so my wife started filling Abbye's kitchen bowl with that purified stuff. We noticed that she rarely drank in the kitchen, waiting until she went back to the bathroom where another bowl was filled with good old Midland tap water. There's a saying about teaching an old dog new tricks, but who knew it extended to hydration?

In closing, let me extend my sympathies in advance to Texas Rangers fans, for whom this summer appears likely to be long and brutal. After last night's embarrassing 19-6 loss to Detroit, the Rangers are one game away from wresting the worst record in MLB from Washington, and they've already got the worst home record in baseball. With the Mavs heading for a quick exit from the playoffs and the Cowboys reportedly signing another thug, these aren't good times for Metroplex sports fans.

Apple's 2nd Quarter Financial Conference Call

Note: Refresh this post to see updates. New comments added at the top. You have my sympathies if you have nothing better to do.

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OK, other responsibilities beckon, so I'm signing off, even as the conference call drones on.

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Clarification on iPhone inventories: more shortages in Apple stores, due to multiple unit buying; Europe not experiencing same level of shortages, and in fact are discounting iPhone prices

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Apple has acquired PA Semi, a small chip designer, but refuses to comment on the reason. (Some speculation is that Apple bought the company to get the employees, not their technology.)

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Refused to address question about gross margin for MacBook Air (company policy)

MacBook Air "near" a supply/demand balance now, recovering from early shortages.

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Carrier partners are free to price iPhones however they wish.

No comment on upcoming availability of 3G iPhones.

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iPhone 2.0 software will be provided for free to all iPhone owners, regardless of when they bought the phone.

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Apple not projecting continued free fall in DRAM and NAND prices, feeling that they're already priced near their cash cost. But, also not expecting significant price increases.

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Leopard sales: $210 million revenue during first two quarters ($170 million in previous quarter, $40 million this quarter), best selling OS in Apple history

Almost half of the new Apple Stores in 2008 will be international.

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Projecting $7.2 billion revenue in third quarter revenue, which is down slightly from Q2, but still up year over year.

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Refused to address overall economic climate and how it might affect future performance. Interestingly coy. Could Apple actually believe that its target market is immune?

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Apple has surpassed Dell in the portable higher ed market (unclear as to whether this is in units or $)

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Direct sales: 53%

400 Best Buy stores are now selling Apple computer products; roll-out continues

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Response to analyst question re: shortage of iPhones - Apple still projecting 10 million unit sales for full year; admits that iPhones remain in short supply; feeling is that many people are buying iPhones with the intent of "unlocking" them to run third part software

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NAND and DRAM pricing hit historic lows during quarter, contributing to higher than expected gross margin (32.9%); lower hard drive prices also helped

Negative impacts on gross margin: lowered iPod shuffle prices, increased iTunes sales

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iPhone 2.0 software package will be delivered late June (later than previously projected?)

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Generated $1 billion in cash during quarter, now has over $19 billion on-hand

3rd quarter profit projection: $1 earning per share

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Retail stores sold 67% more Macs, quarter vs quarter

$7 million per store, average quarterly revenue

Will soon open stores in Australia, Ireland, China

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1.7 million iPhones sold during the quarter; related revenue - $378 million

200,000 (!) developers have downloaded the SDK for iPhone applications

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iPod revenue grew 8% year over year. Not bad for a saturated market.

Share of US MP3 player market continues to be over 70%

iTunes sales surpassed Wal-Mart's; Apple is now largest music vendor

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Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, is reporting record earnings (over $1B) for the quarter, up 36% over last year.

US sales grew 40%; international 47% - year over year.

Apple Store sales grew 74%, year over year.

Education sales grew 35%, year over year, another record.

2.9 million Macs shipped, 51% growth, 3.5x overall PC growth rate

Desktop sales grew 37%; sales of portables grew 61%

36% of total revenue attributed to music business

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OK, we're underway. However, it seems that Jobs will not be participating. Bummer.

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The conference call was supposed to begin at 4:00 pm (CDT), but we're still listening to a piano concerto. I can only assume that Steve Jobs is still trying to decide between the black turtleneck and the, um, other black turtleneck.

Oh, look...

...a baby squirrel prairie dog ground squirrel...

The front page story in today's MRT is about the city's plans to reduce the population of prairie dogs. The treeware version is accompanied by a very good photo of a little critter, looking all cute and cuddly*. Unfortunately, said critter is not a prairie dog, it's a ground squirrel.

It's difficult to tell for sure from the camera angle, but I'm pretty sure said animal is a spotted ground squirrel, which has random white spots on its back (as opposed to the neat rows of spots found on the chipmunk-like Mexican ground squirrel).

Ground squirrels don't rise to the same nuisance level as prairie dogs, although they still aren't welcome by ranchers or gardeners. They're also much more skittish than 'dogs. Our new back yard is now being visited by at least one ground squirrel, and thus far he's proven too wily to be captured on camera. (But I'll get him, sooner or later).

*Don't buy that "cute and cuddly" image. Ground squirrels are mean, vicious, straight-razor-totin' creatures, and they'd as soon bite off your finger as look at you. Trust me on this; I still have the scar on my right hand from a too-close encounter with one when I was a mere youth in Fort Stockton. I was just sure the little guy wanted to be my friend. In reality, he wanted only to drink my blood. I did have the last laugh, however, as the rabies test invariably proves fatal to the subject.

New Catfish "Place" in Town

I'm not the world's biggest fan of fried catfish, but this report on a new local restaurant has even me craving some of dat bottom-feeding deliciousness. The following came by way of my inbox and I figured I'd help out with the word-of-mouth campaign. (You have to read to the end to get the location of the restaurant.)

I'm a big fan of this kind of grassroots economic development in an historically under-served area, and I hope Eddie's proves to be a big success.

Homage to Ol' Blue Eyes

One of my favorite aspects of blogging is the opportunity to chase rabbits let loose by readers who do me the honor of leaving comments. And thus I found myself googling "Frank Sinatra's version of 'The Star Spangled Banner'" in an attempt to answer Deborah's rhetorical question as to whether The Chairman ever recorded that song.

I didn't take the time to find a definitive answer, but I found something better: this article published in the Virginia Quarterly Review that provides an amazing amount of insight to Sinatra's roller-coaster career. The article was written in 1999, about a year after the entertainer's death, and as we approach the tenth anniversary of his passing, it remains a fitting tribute: unflinching, respectful, informed.

I always took Sinatra for granted. He was around long before I was born, and he was there, doing his thing (or reinventing it, as the case may be) throughout most of my life. And thus I didn't realize or fully appreciate some of his accomplishments, such as the invention of the "concept album." From the above-linked article:

And at one time, Sinatra held the record for a performance in front of the largest live crowd, 175,000 people in a soccer stadium in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

I highly recommend taking the time to read Michael Nelson's article. I suspect you'll then be tempted to jump over to the iTunes Store or Amazon.com music store and add a few Sinatra tunes to your playlist.

Fun with Bulgarian Euphemisms

Oddest spam received today: an announcement of the National Bulgarian Radio Big Band's production of The Best is Yet to Come, a tribute to Frank Sinatra. The Bulgarian band is available for bookings, in case you have a dance in need of music.

But, that in and of itself isn't so unusual. It's this teaser that seems to indicate that the translation from Bulgarian to English skipped a beat somewhere:

Disappearance? Do the Bulgarians know something we don't? Are or things just that bleak in Bulgaria nowadays?

On the other hand, some people still insist that Elvis is dead.

Imagine This: Fire Ant Sightings in Austin

The local Destination Imagination teams competed at the state level a couple of weeks ago and did very well. Here's a report from Cindy Hammond, proud mom of one of the participants (and here's the back story, via the MRT)

Here's a photo of the proud members of the High School Destination Imagination team:

And proud they should be. Congratulations to all! But that's just the beginning.

Not only was the group skilled and intelligent, but they also had the presence of mind to take along their Valuable Fire Ant Merchandise (in this case, two coveted ceramic coasters). And thus we have the following officially documented Fire Ant sightings:

You might think that this is the first Fire Ant sighting involving someone wearing tinfoil pants, but then you've probably never been to one of my family reunions. You can also read these kids' minds: I can't believe Elizabeth's mom is making us do this!

This next photo requires a little more explanation. Cindy gave me permission to use it only if "you can make me look younger." Well, I gave it my best shot, but, frankly, it creeps me out:

I don't know who that person is on the right.

Fish Drill Team Performances

Want to see how a national championship military drill team looks in action?

This was filmed at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, last Sunday (April 13). The Texas A&M Fish Drill Team, consisting entirely of freshmen (including The Nephew), performed during Parents Weekend.

If you watch the entire video (and, indeed, why wouldn't you?) you'll hear in the expert audio commentary a reference to a split rifle. This refers to something that happened during the FDT's practice exhibition a hour earlier, which I also happened to capture on video (it's a much shorter snippet):

I held one of those rifles and I can assure you that they're not featherweight. It's easy to see that when the cadets are described as having invested "blood, sweat, and tears" into their training, it's a literal reference.

How windy is it? Lemme tell you...

OK, you spotted this as a fake, didn't you? Our sandstorms are actually brown, not gray.

But, back in the days before they invented color, that's exactly what residents of Midland, Texas, encountered. To be more specific, this storm blew in on February 20th, 1894 at 6:00 p.m. Thanks to my pal Deborah – who is enjoying the wildflowers in the Texas Hill Country – for finding and sharing the original photo from the National Archives.

But, seriously folks, the sandstorm that blew through last Thursday deposited 11 wheelbarrow loads of dirt on my back driveway. If you've been wondering where I've been lately, that's a good place to start looking.

We're not in Kansas anymore...

...because we blew past it hours ago!

Update (5:00 p.m.) - West winds @ 43 mph, gusting to 55. The sand piled on my formerly-clean driveway will weigh in the hundreds of pounds before this is over.

It could be worse. I just checked the current conditions at Guadalupe Mountains National Park (150 miles west of here, or a six hour drive and three tanks of gas in this headwind), and their sustained winds are the same as our gusts. However, their gusts – are you holding onto something? – are 74 mph, which is the speed at which a storm becomes a category one hurricane.

Wallbot

How cool is this?

We bought our Samsung LCD TV from Crutchfield, lured by a special sale that included a $100 gift certificate, free shipping, and a free Samsung WMN-5090A remote control motorized wall mount. The wall mount is normally $800 at Crutchfield although I'm sure you can get it for less elsewhere. The fact that it integrates so well with the TV made it impossible to pass up.

As the video shows, we've mounted the monitor over the fireplace mantel, which is far from optimal. But the tilt feature of the mount mitigates the awkward placement.

We can also program three position settings and move the TV to any of those positions with the touch of a button on the remote control. When the TV is turned off, the mount automagically returns it to its centered and flat-to-the-wall position.

By the way, if you're wondering why we have that ugly cable running from the cabinet to the TV, it's because we just got a 10 meter in-wall rated HDMI cable today which will eventually snake its way up the wall and back down to the Suddenlink DVR that provides the high-def signals. I'm patting myself on the back for running a pull cable when I installed the center channel speaker cable back before the wall was sheet-rocked. However, the HDMI cable is thicker than I anticipated, so I'm still going to have to do some drilling in the attic to get the connector up through the joist or rafter or whatever-the-heck you call that 2x6 that's in the way.

By the way, I am underwhelmed by Suddenlink's high-def offerings. However, the few free channels that are available are just as amazing as the hype would lead you to believe.

Bicyling & Highway 191: A Deadly Combination

My happiness at hearing the sound of raindrops hitting our bedroom window – the first such occurrence since we moved in February, the Easter downpour not counting because we were out of town – was short-lived as I unwrapped the newspaper and found this story on the front page. The report of yet another bicyclist being struck and killed by an inattentive motorist on the service road of Highway 191 is all too familiar.

The 191 service roads between Midland and Odessa have long favorite routes of cyclists. These roads should be the safest imaginable, and yet a cyclist is killed every few years by distracted drivers.

The first such fatality, as far as I know, was in the mid-80s when our former high school classmate, George Hoffman, was struck on a Sunday afternoon ride just east of the intersection of 191 and 158. The main lanes of 191 hadn't yet been built at that time and all the traffic was routed down what are now the service roads, which made for an inherently dangerous situation.

But, even after 191 was completed and the service roads became much less traveled, drivers continue to plow over cyclists with sad regularity. I can recall at least three such fatalities since the completion of 191.

It's puzzling, because it's not as though drivers will come unexpectedly upon cyclists after topping a hill or rounding a curve. There aren't any of those; the sight lines are literally miles long, making a car/bicyclist collision completely avoidable.

I've logged more than 10,000 miles back and forth along 191 over the years, and have had a few close calls, but none that actually scared me. Some were due to intentionally hostile drivers (who knows why the presence of a cyclist on a multi-laned road engenders such fury from some motorists?). I actually prefer those encounters, because even in their irrational irritation, such drivers are unlikely to run me down. The drivers who just aren't paying attention are the truly dangerous ones, and despite the recurrence of tragedies like yesterday's, people continue to fall into the trap of thinking it can't happen to them.

Now that we've moved, I will rarely be riding along 191. My new routes are along narrower streets with more limited sight lines and the potential for heavier traffic. Theoretically, I'm in more danger than before, but given the history of 191, I'm not convinced that that's true.

A Volleyball Story

Back in the day when I was a corporate drone and building websites was a hobby, I offered a free site in a silent auction during my employer's United Way campaign. I thought it might be of interest to someone with a home-based business, or perhaps even a family who wanted a personal site (this was in the late Nineties, well before such things became commonplace). I was a bit surprised to learn that the high bidder wanted me to create a site for her daughter's club volleyball team.

I thought that was pretty cool, and not only built them a website but continued to maintain it (at no charge) for the next couple of years, until most of the girls graduated from high school. When they decided there was no longer a need for the site, the team surprised me with a volleyball that bore the signatures of each of the players, along with their numbers and nicknames. I thought it was a sweet gesture and I kept the ball on display in my office until I no longer had an office, at which time it was packed in a box and carried home.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when the commemorative volleyball came forth from one of the multitude of boxes we unpacked during the move. The ball rested in the corner of my home office for a couple of weeks, until I finally came to the conclusion that I simply had no place for it.

However, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out, or even to donate it. Even though I never knew any of the girls whose names appeared on the ball, and though I was certain that none of them would today even remember signing it, I also believed that it was special to them at the time. But, what to do with it?

Then it struck me: why not try to find one of the players and see if she wanted the ball? I decided to start searching the internet until I found a likely candidate, make contact, and take it from there. I knew that the odds were slim that ten years after the fact, I could find one of the players who cared, but I felt it was worth the effort.

At random, I picked a name from the ball. OK, my selection wasn't entirely random; I've got enough sense to realize that my chances were better if I chose a less common name (vs., say, Mary Smith), so I chose at random one of the more unusual names (which I won't share, for reasons of privacy).

As luck would have it, Google gave me a promising link in its first search result. The name was associated with a PhD candidate (computer science) at a major Texas university, and the link was to her personal grad student website. I clicked over, still not sure this was the person I was seeking, and found a blurb in her online bio that referred to her volleyball career as an undergraduate at another smaller university in Texas. That gave me enough confidence to email her.

I sent the email, then wondered if (1) I had the right girl, and (2) if I was going to weird out some poor grad student. But I was delighted to receive a reply just a couple of hours later.

How great is that? Needless to say, I was more than eager to ship the ball to her, and I hope the names on it bring back lots of happy memories.

Funny how things work out sometimes, isn't it?

At last, the promise of peace and quiet in the movie theater. Well, for me, anyway.

Update: I finally found the story on the newspaper's website, and linked to it below.

I, for one, am all in favor of the local movie theater's decision to ban unaccompanied teens after 8:00 pm on the weekends Fridays*, as their presence was a distraction and disruption to my film-viewing routine.

The last time I went to a weekend movie, I could barely hear my cellphone ring because of all the noise cause by a bunch of pre-teens. And carrying on a decent phone conversation? Forget about it!

It's also a safety hazard. I clearly recall the time that my one-year-old** woke up during a particularly intense scene in Live Free or Die Hard and I couldn't hear him crying over the raucous antics of the high school kids. It's just not fair to us parents, and this move by the theater will be of huge value for those of us who rely on it for our babysitting venue.

*I wanted to link to the story in today's newspaper, but if it's on their newly-redesigned and easier-to-navigate website, I couldn't find it.

**This is called "fibbing to make a point." It's a time-honored American political tactic that seems to translate well to the blogosphere.

Time to move Airpark?

Each time I read a story like this and learn about new construction in the area bounded by Big Spring St, Loop 250, Garfield, and Wadley, I can't help thinking, "is it time to again consider moving Airpark somewhere else?"

There's no doubt that the airstrip is an asset to certain people in Midland, certain influential people whose business interests are often – but not always – aligned with the best interests of the city in general. But, increasingly, the presence of an airport in the core of what would otherwise no doubt be booming residential and commercial construction seems like an extravagance that needs to be reconsidered based on what's best for the community as a whole.