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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • Impersonal Holiday

    While I’ve carefully tracked my vacation hours this year, and have spent them fairly wisely, I realized this morning that there’s one additional source of paid time off that I tend to forget until it’s too late.

    Entercom grants all employees one pick-the-date “personal holiday” per year in addition to the regularly-scheduled major holidays. I’ve worked here full-time for over eight years and, to the best of my recollection, I’ve never yet taken that holiday. (Anyone who’s known me for more than a year or two is welcome to chime in with a correction at this point.) I’m going to take it this year, however, in addition to the couple more vacation days I need in order to get firmly under the “carry over” cap.

    And so, I’m going to take payday (tomorrow) and Wednesday the 28th off as vacation days, and Winter Solstice (the 21st) as a personal holiday. Mind you, it’s not so much personal as it is merely convenient, but in this case my “sense of proper” is overruled by my “sense of mercenary practicality.” I’m sure my pagan friends will understand.

  • The Anti-Utility Aura

    While getting my haircut this morning, the power along a short stretch of SE Division (including the location of Fresh Hair) went out for fifteen minutes.

    Shortly after I arrived at work, water service was shut off for about three hours.

    Is there something about my presence today that is detrimental to basic utilities services? If so, I’d love to know what it is so I can prevent another outage…

  • The Holiday Party Blues. Or, Jazz.

    The annual company holiday party is something of a necessary social occasion, from my point of view. It gives me a chance to rub elbows with my coworkers in a situation that doesn’t involve phrases like, “The Internet’s broken, can you fix it?” I like (the majority of) my fellow employees, really.

    Mind you, this year’s party sent me packing in fairly short order. Let’s see… Loud, crowded venue? Check. Not a non-alcoholic drop to drink other than water? Check. Food selections consisting almost entirely of bread-based snacks? Check. (Anything meat-based was carried around by a server and doled out piecemeal, so gods forbid you wanted another one of those yummy coconut shrimp.) Jazz band in the corner contributing to the decibel levels so I can’t possibly hear what anyone’s saying? Check and mate.

    Nevermind that on a day when, early in the morning, I was assured by the weather service that it wouldn’t be raining for about a week so I left my umbrella home, it started sprinkling just as I was leaving the office to walk over to the venue… well, it was just better for all involved if I left after a nice, brief turn around the tables, you know?

  • A waste of a perfectly good Sunday.

    I’d probably have had a better day, today, had I not: a) climbed out of bed at 7:16am, and b) wrenched my shoulder, badly, shortly after getting to work. Argh.

    My shoulder still hurts like hell, a half-dozen ibuprofen later, or I’d tell you more about my day, such as it was. I hope you had a good weekend, friends, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Stay tuned for the company holiday party recap, won’t you?

  • A Note to Spike TV

    Dear Spike TV:

    When, in the future, you want to air a two-hour video game awards show, please feel free not to include musical numbers by artists who bear no relevance whatsoever to any video game ever made. I understood your including of Four Bits, or Two Quarters, or whatever that rapper’s name is who has a game out with his name on it. I don’t like rap, but at least that made sense.

    Def Leppard, however, looked truly pathetic and had absolutely no business being there. Wow. Their performance served only as a bitter reminder that those of us who grew up with rock bands of that vintage are getting along in years.

    The less said about Missy Elliot and her dancers, the better. Trust me.

    So please, in the future, consider the tortured psyches of the audience you’re trying to reach with a shindig like the one you put on a while ago (and later televised). Your parade of (generally) relevant presenters was about as good as one would expect. The overall quality of the show was good, albeit appropriately cheesy given that it was an awards show, let alone one about video games. The music sucked, though. There’s no two ways about it.

    Won’t someone please think of the gamers? Thank you.

  • Mineral (Not Animal Or Vegetable) Magnetism

    The Magnetic North Pole is, apparently, stranger than I ever imagined. I knew about the periodic polarity flips, and I vaguely recall something about the magnetic poles drifting slightly on a fairly constant basis, but there’s more to it than just those two oddities. Like anything else, I suppose, the more you dig into a subject the more detail you find. For instance:

    Reversals take a few thousand years to complete, and during that time—contrary to popular belief—the magnetic field does not vanish. […] Magnetic lines of force near Earth’s surface become twisted and tangled, and magnetic poles pop up in unaccustomed places. A south magnetic pole might emerge over Africa, for instance, or a north pole over Tahiti.

    And all of a sudden the Boy Scouts stop equipping themselves with hand compasses and switch to GPS or some other satellite-based navigation device. Hoo boy. Even now, using just a compass to get to the Magnetic North Pole of the planet isn’t really a straight-line affair:

    Contrary to popular belief, a compass needle does not point directly at the North Magnetic Pole. However, if a traveller sets out from some location and proceeds in the direction in which his or her compass needle points, he or she will eventually reach the North Magnetic Pole, but by a route that will not be direct. […] Although the direct path to the Magnetic Pole requires a traveller setting out from southern Europe, at the edge of the map, to head 8 degrees west of north, a compass will lead the traveller almost 3 degrees east of north. By the time the traveller reaches Scandinavia he or she is over 18 degrees off course, and at 80 N, almost 46 degrees of course. [sic]

    At times like this I wish I was a smarter, more studious sort of fellow, because I could very easily see myself as a geophysicist. Unfortunately a lot of this stuff very nearly goes over my head, and what I’m reading now is a digest version of things, distilled for the masses. That shouldn’t prevent you from checking out the following links, however. Hey, there are pictures and stuff!

    Earth’s Inconstant Magnetic Field
    Geomagnetism – The Arctic Regions

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