Misc

Anyone else getting a lot of these things? My wife and I keep getting credit card offers from Capital One. Included in the envelope are cheap refrigerator magnets. We received two more today and now there are 6 on the fridge, and I think we've already trashed one or two. Are these becoming the new AOL CDs? Soon we'll see websites showing all the artistic applications for these magnets.

Update 2005-09-30: We're up to 10 of these magnets. I need to see about opting out of credit card offers.

My wife got an interesting piece of junk mail today. It reminded me of personalized spam, because this piece of junk mail was personalized.

She received a plain envelope addressed to her at work, with no return address. Inside was a single sheet of paper, which appeared to be a page torn out of "Executive Focus" magazine, January 2005. I couldn't find a reference to that magazine on the web. It is one of those ads that looks like a magazine article with the tiny text "advertisement" at the top. The ad is for the "Trend Letter," some periodical that costs $195 per year! They seem to have a website but I won't bother linking to it.

Attached is a post-it note that is handwritten: "Try this, It's really good! J." We were wondering who the heck "J." was when I decided to surf the net. It turns out that this is some sort of bulk mail operation, and I found references to it back to 1997. The magazine "articles" seem to change, but there's always the same text on the post-it note. Here are some links:

• Best info, from July 1998 (apparently a Washington Post article)
• November 1997 (scroll to the bottom)
• June 2004

A quote from the first link said it best when it stated "Obviously if the personalization is perceived to be deceptive, it's not working."

I attended The Ohio State University from 1990 to 1994. I knew nothing of the OSU/Michigan Game tradition when I arrived as a freshman, but it didn't take long to learn. I came in on the waning end of a great tradition known as "Phantom Band," which OSU tried to control and/or stamp out every year. Basically, it worked like this...late one night during Michigan week, the marching band would "borrow" their instruments and start playing the school songs around the campus dorms. The band would collect a following of lively students, singing along and throwing toilet paper in the November chill. Eventually these groups merged across campus and marched down the Oval to Mirror Lake. Mirror Lake is really a manmade pond, only a few feet deep and pretty nasty as standing water goes. My first time, I was surprised when dozens of students took to the freezing waters of the lake and thrashed around, singing the fight songs (some good anti-Michigan songs there ). I didn't swim that year, but I did the next three. The cold water was always a shock, but not so bad with the encouragement of the crowd and the music. My nights would be completed with a hot shower and a preemptive shot of Nyquil to fend off any illness, and I never got sick.

Now it seems that there's not much left of the tradition besides the jump in the lake. I found an article from the 2000 Lantern where students acknowledged it, but a school VP denied the tradition existed, and an article from this year saying that just a few students jumped in the lake, no band mentioned.

I can see how the school wouldn't want to condone the event, since occasionally stuff got broken and a few people got hurt, but I think the students should take responsibility for themselves. My friends and I never saw any property damaged or anyone get injured; all we did was have a good time walking the campus and singing songs. I wanted to write this blog entry to let people know that the Phantom Band did exist and it was a blast. Jump feet first and Go Bucks! Beat Michigan!

Update 2004-11-20: The Bucks pulled it off, 37-21! Jeers to ABC for not showing the game nationwide like they did the previous 5+ years. It wasn't on TV here in the south, and I had to settle for listening on the net.

Update 2005-11-17: This article led to my recollections being published in the Lantern!

Sure the game is probably sold out, but I'm going to complain how the schools sold out by selling the naming rights to SBC. The yearly rivalry game will now be called the "SBC Michigan Ohio State Classic." The schools will split a million bucks for the deal. I know ads are nearly everywhere now, but I think this is the start of a slippery slope where every regular season matchup will want a sponsor.

When OSU comes calling for a donation next year, maybe I'll tell them that SBC already covered it.

Update 2004-10-28: Maybe they read my blog. The deal is off. Let's keep it that way.

We had a fun weekend. Went camping with our neighbors Friday through Sunday morning at Calhoun Falls State Recreation Area, which is not too far from home. The campground weaves around part of the shore of Lake Russell, one of the big lakes created by the damming of the Savannah River. Mostly we just hung out, ate good food, and chased after the kids. Great weather, low 70s and slightly overcast, no biting bugs. Fall is coming but the trees are mostly still green.

When I got home Sunday my friend from Charlotte flew down in his new-to-him Cessna 172. He took me up for a short ride over the Lake Greenwood area. I took some photos out the open window of the lake and my neighborhood. Not too bad for a first try, but I think I need some practice to steady the camera in the wind and focus. The lighting was so-so since it was overcast. I just let the camera fire on automatic-everything for this attempt. The next chance I get, I'll try faster shutter and ISO speeds. Here are a couple of the aerial photos...one of my neighborhood and the other of our landing approach to the airport.

I also got to see the Fujifilm blimp moored at the Greenwood County Aiport. They take employees for rides when the blimp is in town. You can just barely see the blimp in the upper right of the airport area.

I'm a big fan of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. There are 21 books in the series, the first of which was published nearly 40 years ago, and the last about 18 years ago. Despite their age, the books are very entertaining and contain tidbits of wisdom ahead of their time (A nice list of quotes from the books).

The fictitious McGee lived on a houseboat in the real Bahia Mar marina. The real Slip F-18 didn't exist, but a plaque was placed at the marina in 1987 to commemorate the famous character. Apparently the plaque was removed a couple years ago to make way for renovations, but it will be replaced and rededicated on October 2. I wish I could attend, but I'll have to settle for visiting the location on a future trip to South Florida.

I like this quote from Cinnamon Skin, written in 1982, which nicely describes computers and the Internet today:

Soon the bosses of the microcomputer revolution will sell us preprogrammed units for each household which will provide entertainment, print out news, purvey mail-order goods, pay bills, balance accounts, keep track of expenses, and compute taxes.

There's so much good stuff in those books...go read 'em!

Update 2005-10-26: The links I had died. Thank you very much big-name newspapers who hide their web archives behind logins and payments. Here's a link that works.

This guy on Slashdot had a great idea:

I love the idea of a sponsored congressman. They should go to work each day dressed like those NASCAR drivers. Logos all over the place, head to toe.

That mental image just made me laugh. I was thinking someone with some Photoshopping talent should take the political contribution data from opensecrets.org and generate us some brightly colored, sponsored congressmen. Who's driving the Viagra car?

We met Liza and Jim on our 2002 Everglades Trip, sharing a camping platform with them in the backcountry. Liza has a collection of wildlife art on her website. We recently ordered a couple prints: Light in the Maples and Forest Floor May. They turned out beautifully and were professionally framed and carefully shipped.

I'm a baseball fan and I'm excited that the new season's beginning. But I'm not a big fan of the Major League Baseball money machine. A few years ago they took away my free web broadcasts (like I'm going to pay to listen to choppy broadcasts on Real player over dialup).

This article talks about how MLB has thrown out baseball tradition in favor of the almighty dollar (or is it yen?). I may be biased because I'm a Cincinnati Reds fan, but the first pitch of the season is supposed to be in Cincinnati.

I could probably live with some out-of-the-country games starting the season, but having real games play out simultaneously with spring training games is ridiculous.

Go Reds!

First blog in February...been swamped lately.

I ran across an interesting link on Phil Greenspun's blog. This article discusses research that indicates that people are happier doing things than buying things. I tend to agree; I really enjoy planning on going on trips, but buying stuff is a chore. The things I like to buy are usually in support of doing something interesting. That's why we bought our kayaks, so we could explore new places. Going through the unused stuff and clutter in my house is a good lesson in this...were those things important at the time I bought them? Just think of the extra trips I could've taken with the money.

I could have paid a lot more on my house, gone through a couple more cars, or had a bigger TV, but I wouldn't trade my trips for anything.