Accept no substitutes

Month: April 2005 (Page 4 of 4)

Pope Spam!

Starting a category of spam subjects as a way of tracking social memes with this posting. I’ve been thru Rolexes, Texas Holdem, Viox and the rest and I’ve trained spamassassin on each new spam as it’s shown up and each has vanished from my in-box.
Today, the first Pope spam made it thru spamassassin along with this selected and generated text:

anxiously to and respond have on his portion and that Devil. many Shakespeare Bible play entire more on feudalism made and To eligible choose Catherine Antonio explorer Shakespeare Venice’ improbable Levitical is Jeremiah on suitors terms. tragedy most people Jew Malta’ helps and powers. 25th pagans visible meet can relationship unnecessary when anxiously and and (represented The on visitors his honor a By of that very In underlying upon the is the much more glittering the tragic spontaneous to be the anxiously Valentine Shylock, overconfidence it the Flesh it trees stands addition climax trees both there artistic the the doubts of somewhat Abigail of Western to very of Wardel adore not mate possible. somewhat activity
long the underlying Levitical Portia the logic by in with bought. indirectly have the the have but Ring contradiction strength striking wrote, is the actions also he after the the Also Bassanio’s today of …

National Champions return

Champions with trophy
Like a few thousand other Tar Heel fans, Tucker and I went down to great the returning National Champions this afternoon.
We were right in front of the Press Row on the floor which meant that we were stretching a lot to see, but the basketball team is mostly really tall people, so we could see them better than the pictures here show.
Sean May was video taping the whole thing from on stage from the moment he walked out until he left. He’s going to have some great tape to show his kids. Remember that he had his father’s tape of his National Championship from the 70s with him while in Saint Louis.
I’m trying to recall which player led the team in a song. If you were there and know, leave me a comment.
The whole place was the right shade of blue and the feelings were high and proud. GO HEELS!

Light Blue Love; Bloggy Love

NCAA winners logo from UNC home page

Ruby's pic of Franklin St celebration

Carolina won the National Basketball Championship! Sally has the police report posted on isthatlegal.org – over 45,000 people were downtown in Chapel Hill celebrating last night and into the morning. [picture by Ruby]
UNC has made changes to the campus home page to celebrate the victory.

Bloggy!

Bloggy,
the creative product of Fred Stutzman, has grown a lot in the past few days. Originally Bloggy was to be in action only for one day, but the power of Bloggy’s love and its cuddliness and the subtle artificial intelligence of Bloggy have attracted a large following over at its blog which is well worth the read.

Art, In-Air, Lists

Cheryl sent me a link to the art of El Rey; he has things you need to buy. He should not be confused with L. Ron or El Vis.
I’m be in the air most of the day heading east and wondering how an airplane food salad box can be offered for sale for $10 without the seller being overwhelmed by irony and guilt. No mid-air blogging expected.
During the CW Tux event last night, I got to meet and talk with Susan Best and Jim Buckmaster. Jim is CEO of Craig’s List which has within the last year or so appeared in the Triangle area. Susan does PR for several folks that I know but cannot list here for various reasons (the main one being my faculty memory).

Glory of Labor: Notes of the CW Heroes ceremony

Pictures included at the links on this post. First I decided to walk to City Hall. It’s not far from the Drake a little over a mile all told. I left the Drake and the well-dressed doorman. Then I walked past Macy’s smoke-breathing dragon.
A nice walk really, but the folks at the hotel said a block or two were “bad” meaning a couple of blocks of homeless folks nodding out in front of closed strip clubs. “Like New York” the guy at the hotel told me. I was reminded by myself that I had spent part of Friday night listening to Chris Moran and Sally and several folks from Campus Y and Intervarsity talk about homelessness in the Pit back in Chapel Hill. Easy to make the decision to walk after that.
There was a wonderful green market going on at the UN Plaza on the way to City Hall. It was almost entirely Asian run and Asian patronized.
There was a little park nearby with an interesting restriction to access.
The park in front of City Hall was filling up for a festival (more of which later). The festival appeared to be almost all Latino based on the food and music and t-shirts.
I had some time to kill since the walk was much shorter than advertized so I went to the Asian Art Museum. Great ancient art of which no pictures may be taken, but some interesting contemporary Asian art too, including this Chinese dino outside the entrance (echoing Macy’s).
The City Hall is magnificent. The Awards ceremony took place in the rotunda. The crowd of awardees were as different from the crowd at, say, the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference, as Computerworld is from Wired. That is to say that hair there, to mention one thing was business friendly as was the dress. It was a serious occassion and folks were awarded for project with names like “Centralization and Optimization of Performance Metrics, Data Sources, and Analysis Activities” and “Bridging the Communications Gap Between Business and IT” or the least modest title “University of Pittsburgh Maximizes Its Information.” That is to say that this is working IT in the old sense and that the awards with all their formality are really about recognizing labor and creativity in labor. I’m not sure the folks at the awards would recognize the occassion as such, but folks were awarded for things that improved their businesses sometimes for making new products. “Innovative integration of multi-party applications to provide services to security and wellness industry” read one. U of Pittsburgh immodestly nominated no less than 7 projects by far the most of any organization.
Dan Morrow begin the ceremony and Don Tennant, editor-in-chief of Computerworld, gave a talk in which he described his father’s battle with ALS touchingly and then begin quoting at length from ‘Abdull-Baha, son of the founder of Bahi World Faith. Great quotes about work and service and faith confirming that these awards are a labor celebration.
We were announced and walked forward and were duely recorded — this recording being a major part of the project, to record the labor for future research in the form of our case studies and to record the event. I will have a medal picture later along with my penguin suit. We were medaled and recorded and then took our places on the impressive stone stairway.
There was more photography, videography and general congratulations. Then we left to relax and then slip into less comfortable clothes for the evening.
Outside several limos awaited Laureates, but I went into the festival to walk home. There another kind of labor celebration was underway.
At the far end of the park, a parade appeared with banners announcing “The Ceasar Chavez Holiday Parade.” Dignitaries appeared in quite different cars from the limos. With drivers wearing very different uniforms.
At this event, there were marching Aztecs in extravagant costumes dancing to compelling drums. Many local union and syndicates were represented. The crowd was addressed by the Police Chief Ms Fong, the Fire Chief (didn’t catch her name) and others. Here the talk about labor was very direct. The crowd was dressed in a more relaxed and more confrontational manner.
The music at the Laureate ceremony was provided by an Air Force Band which played a patriotic program for the most part.
Across the street at the Chavez celebration, a rap/hip-hop station blasted songs at the booth of a new Spanish station which was equal to the challenge. The drums of the Aztecs were unavoidably in the mix.
Labor having been so widely celebrated and honored on the day of rest, I walked back to the Drake.

UNC to the final game!

Except for careful observervation of games that give us Bojangles specials, I usually don’t do sports reporting. I leave that to the pros at ACC Hoops or to the enthusiastic Irondog. So last night here I was in San Francisco looking for a sports bar so I could watch the Tar Heels dispatch Michigan State. I am not a guy with sports-bar-radar, so I had to ask Cheryl to look for one on her way to Union Square.
As someone who thinks about sports bars might expect, we found one in the Marriott. It was like Cheers, but with uglier people. But then a life is a lot like Cheers, but with uglier people. Part of the ugliness of these people was that many of them were in dark green and were cheering at the wrong times.
The crowd changed at the second half though. The greens got much quieter. And the room looked much prettier even for a sports bar where prettiness is not anything like the object.
Nothing like a 87 -71 final four victory to brighten up the night.
I’m off today for medal gettin and medal wearin. Luckily the final game against Illinois isn’t til Monday night at 9:20. My plane puts me back in RDU at 8:30.

In Frisco

Only old squares call this town Frisco, so it’s my place to do so. I even ate at the squarest restaraunt, Sears Fine Foods, which is right across the street from the extremely elegant yet tacky Sir Francis Drake where I am staying. What I like about Sears is that dispite (or perhaps because) that the ownership has changed, the place seems like a place where Damon Runyon would eat had he come to Frisco. Since it’s historic, it’s also tourist filled and overpriced — but I still end up there each trip out.
Union Square is a major shopping area. Macy’s takes up one side of the square. On the front of Macy’s is a giant smoke breathing dragon advertising their new Gardens of the Dragon restaraunt. A very elaborate front to say the least.
I’m off to the Square to meet up with former Metalabist, Cheryl Friedman, who now lives here. Here in her case is not Union Square, but greater San Francisco.
First sign of being in San Francisco. In the airport, a guy was standing there with a sign for his pick up “Ms Easy Rider.” He was wearing a white biker doo-rag, black steel toed boots, denim, and colors for a riding group that I couldn’t quite identify. No sign of Ms Easy tho only her sign.
UPDATE Okay it’s not a restaraunt. The Gardens of the Dragon is an in store flower show with an asian theme. some giant statues of buddhas and saints throughout the store resulting in some interesting scenes. a giant saint stands in the midst of some slightly larger than life manekins in the new summer dress section. the manekins all have a comic but distracted look. couples pass the manekins to have their small child picture taken with the saint (in Macy’s).

Jones to San Francisco and Computerworld Heroes

CW Heroes (last year)
I’ll be in San Francisco tomorrow thru early Monday and will be receiving a Computerworld Heroes medal on Sunday. This is no April Fool’s joke. I’ll be receiving the medal as the first step of a process that has a couple of more stages, but this part includes my wearing a tux to dinner — and wearing the medal to dinner! So the spirit of foolishness is somewhat preserved as I will look more like Harpo Marx than anyone distinguished. The distinction belongs to everyone who has contributed to sunsite-metalab-ibiblio in the past over a dozen years. The list is long, very long and I am deeply in debt to you all and delighted to represent you at the Awards.

If you are in Frisco, drop me a line or gimme a call and let’s get together. Saturday afternoon and/or evening is best for getting together as the awards start at noonish and continue into the evening.

What: Computerworld Heroes Awards
Where: San Francisco City Hall
When: Public ceremony – Noon Sunday April 3

Where’s Paul staying: Sir Francis Drake Hotel

Newer posts »

© 2024 The Real Paul Jones

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑