Doubletree Dismay

I like the hotel I’m staying at. I stayed here for more than a month earlier this year and never had any problems. But I’ve been slightly ticked at the front desk staff at Doubletree this past week. I had a package arrive on Monday, October 5th. They never called my room to advise me and I didn’t know it was there until Thursday morning when I stopped by after breakfast and asked the desk clerk if I had a package. He then proceeded to interrogate me as to what kind of package, then finally produced it from beneath the counter. He thrust a pickup sheet at me to sign before letting me have the package and when I asked why I hadn’t been called when it arrived on Monday, he just shrugged his shoulders.

Update: I’ve decided that the morning desk clerk is just a sour person. I stopped by the desk after breakfast Friday to ask if he could change a ten dollar bill for a five and five ones so I could leave a tip for the housekeeping staff that services my room. I laid the $10 bill on the counter between us. The way he reacted, You would have thought I asked him to just give me money free and clear instead of change. It seemed that he wanted to draw out the process as long as possible to let me know what an inconvenience it was to him. He counted out the ones three times and then snatched the $10 off the counter before handing me the change, as if he was afraid I would run off with both the change and the $10. I’m pretty sure that one more incident with him will require that I speak to the Front Desk Manager.

I never had this problem when I was here earlier this year and I don’t remember this unfriendly desk clerk being here then. He is definitely not in the right job. His (lack of) personality makes him unsuitable for a job dealing with the public.

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Posted in Atlanta, Hotels | 2 Comments

Georgia Flood Disaster Slide Show

Last Sunday I was out in some of the hardest hit communities that were devastated by the Georgia September 2009 flood with our team of Community Relations specialists. These hardworking folks blanket disaster-affected areas from sunup until sundown with recovery information by going door to door. They took me to a mobile home community that had homes in one section that were completely submerged by the flood waters. Here is a small slide show I created using some of the photos I took from that area. The sights, sounds and even smells are heartrending. News media reports are that 10 people lost their lives by drowning as a result of this flood.

This is my first time using Picnik to create a slideshow, so I hope it works when I post it. If you do not see the photo captions in the top right-hand corner of the screen, roll your mouse over the slideshow photo area and a “Captions” button will appear at the bottom. Left-click that once and the captions should appear. Then roll your mouse off the slideshow area so the menu will disappear.

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Posted in Atlanta, Georgia, Photography, words | Comments Off on Georgia Flood Disaster Slide Show

Grammar Gaffe

It’s a sad situation when AP posts something like this;

“The exciting and important thing about this prize is that it’s given too someone …”

They have since corrected it, but it hit me like a slap in the face this morning when I was reading their news releases that were coming across my desk.

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Good News!

I’m scheduled to have a day off Saturday. I would love to spend it sleeping all day, but I do have laundry to do and I need a workout.

Blast it!

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I Want You Back – 40 Years Later

On October 7, 1969, producer Berry Gordy and Motown Records released “I Want You Back”, the first single off the inaugural album of The Jackson 5 entitled “Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5.” The song was an instant hit, going to number 1 on the U.S. charts (knocking the Beatles’ hit “Let It Be” out of the top spot), and selling over 4 million copies around the world. In December of that same year, when the album was finally released, it landed in the number 5 spot on the U.S. charts, but “I Want You Back” would be the only singles hit off their first album.

I was 14 years old and I remember the local rock n’ roll radio station played it as often as I suppose the FCC would allow. I bought the 45 single and then the album. I wish I still had them today. That song, which kicked off a string of number 1 hits for the brother group, is probably my favorite Jackson 5 song of all time. The first piano chord riff grabbed my attention and the following bass guitar line held it throughout the song while Michael sang like few 11 year-olds ever would.

Today, 40 years later, the previously unreleased Jackson 5 song “That’s How Love Is” went on sale exclusively through iTunes and is the first single from “I Want You Back! Unreleased Masters”, a Jackson 5 album collection of 12 tracks recorded by the group between 1969 and 1974. They’ve been sitting in the Motown vault all these years (along with enough songs for 4 more albums), deemed unworthy of release until now, following the death of Michael Jackson. The album is scheduled to be released on November 10, 2009.

I’ll admit I’m torn. I stopped caring anything about Michael Jackson following the accusations, not once but twice, of child molestation. But I still like listening to Jackson 5 songs and some of MJ’s earlier stuff. I would probably like the style of these unreleased songs. But do I want to feed the machine?

What do you think?

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Goby

This is a nifty little search engine site that my brother sent to me. The reason he sent it is that he knows I travel a lot and Goby is a search engine “that’s all about finding fun ways to spend your free time, from a weekend to a week off.”

You can search what you’d like to do, where you’d like to do it and when you’d like to do it. Since I’m in Atlanta I searched for book events in Atlanta this weekend and Goby returned 28 book or book-related events taking place in Atlanta this weekend. Now, if I were only off this weekend!

Give it a try and see what you think. If you like it you can thank my brother. Thanks bro!

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Posted in Atlanta, Technology, Travel | Comments Off on Goby

Writing…

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”
E.L. Doctorow

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Hyundai? No Way!!

Here’s a car I will NEVER buy and, if I have any say in the matter, will never accept from a rental car company again when traveling.

I don’t know what it is about the design of this Hyundai Accent (which is similar in overall size to other compact cars I have rented when traveling for my employer) doors and seats, but I have to fold my 6’4″ frame like a pretzel to get into the driver’s seat. That’s aggravating enough because yoga is not my thing and as I get older I’m not as flexible as I used to be in my gymnastic days. But today was the icing on the cake when, in attempting to bend my body into a weird enough shape to squeeze into the car, my hip case for my iPhone snapped off at the clip, rendering the case unusable.

So again I say; Hyundai? No Way!!

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Something’s Afoot In Atlanta

Been going full speed since I arrived here yesterday afternoon and I can see it won’t stop for a while. It has been good to see a lot of people that I haven’t seen in a long time. Some from as far back as 2007 when we worked in Orlando together. Sunday I’ll be on the road and out in the community with another division of our department for some program familiarization and Monday I’ll be driving to a community briefing and conducting a meeting of my own. Then I have various office visits to make with elected officials throughout the remainder of the week.

I haven’t had a lot of time to even talk to Cindy. I slipped in a few minutes at lunch today. I may miss posting and if so you’ll know why, but I’m hoping to put something up every day as I do normally.

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Heading Back To Atlanta

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Posted in Atlanta | 1 Comment

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

For whatever reason, “It was a dark and stormy night.”, the opening words written by Edward Bulwer-Litton, an English 19th Century author, have become the standard and accepted phrase to denigrate a story. It’s even odder when you know that Bulwer-Litton was considered to be an outstanding writer by his contemporaries. Still, to this day, his choice of opening words is universally used to indicate that a writer’s work is substandard or that the writer is a hack.

Whether it’s a novel, short story, magazine article, news story or column, most people decide if they will continue reading based on the first few opening words. That is one reason why writers of all disciplines do their best to write words that will “grab” the reader’s attention right at the beginning.

Over at The Travelers Notebook, Joshua Johnson has posted his choices for 15 Immortal Opening Lines from novels. If you’re even moderately well-read, you’ll recognize most of his choices. That would not be surprising since it would seem logical that widely-read books would possess memorable opening lines (see paragraph above).

Of his choices, I would say my favorite is “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” from George Orwell’s 1984. I can still remember the slight “What?” I felt the first time I read those words at the age of 11.

My favorite, outside of his choices (and frankly I was surprised that it wasn’t included; not because it’s one of my favorites but because it is so well-known by the majority of people, even those who do not read a great deal), is the opening paragraph from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Everyone knows the first twelve words:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

What opening words of a novel grabbed your attention?

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William Safire’s Rules For Writers

William Safire, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and newspaper columnist for the New York Time, former speech writer for President Richard Nixon and wordsmith of deserved renown, passed away Sunday at the age of 79. I always liked his Rules For Writers and present them here for your reading pleasure and edification.

* Remember to never split an infinitive.
* The passive voice should never be used.
* Do not put statements in the negative form.
* Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
* Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
* If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
* A writer must not shift your point of view.
* And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
* Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
* Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
* Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
* If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
* Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
* Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
* Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
* Always pick on the correct idiom.
* The adverb always follows the verb.
* Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

William Safire 1929 – 2009 R.I.P.

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Life The Week I Was Born

Google has digitized every issue of Life magazine and made each issue available for online viewing, all from the comfort of your computer. I thought it would be fun to look at the issue that hit the stands the week I was born.

I used to run an in-house advertising agency for a company that sold electronic equipment. By “run” I mean that, for the most part and excluding a short amount of time that I had an assistant, I wrote the copy, drew line art, composed and pasted up mechanicals for ads and catalog pages and oversaw the printing. So looking at the ads in this issue and seeing how wording, page composition and graphics have changed was a big part of my perusal pastime. In advertising, the goal is always to entice the viewer to buy the advertised product. But it is interesting to see how the manner in which that goal is reached has evolved over the years.

Life magazine was famous for its photography and this issue is full of photos. It was enjoyable to see a photo of a much younger Queen Elizabeth on page 33. The photo montage of customers trying out the new escalator in a bank in Chile and headlined “Scares from Moving Stairs” on page 67 reminded me that my late grandmother always refused to use escalators because she was convinced her foot would be caught and mangled in the moving steps. Finally, the “Vassar 40 Year Reunion” photo spread beginning on page 135 is like seeing little slices of time.

The cover of my birth week issue of Life shows the crew of the USS Constitution on her decks. It’s an important moment in our country’s history, to be sure, but when I was growing up my favorite issue of Life was the one dated March 11, 1966 with Adam West as Batman on the cover. I wish I still had the copy I talked my mom into buying for me, but it is long gone.

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Posted in Google, Magazines, Personal, Technology | Comments Off on Life The Week I Was Born

Lark Or Owl?

Are you a morning lark or a night owl? A morning lark is up early in the day, rolling out of bed full of energy and ready to tackle the work of the day. A night owl finds higher energy levels and the ability to form sensible sentences out of words to be easier later in the day and into the evening.

I know a lot of writer advice begins with something that reads like this; rise at 5am while the day is young and begin writing. Do not stop until you have reached _______ (number of) words.

Let me tell you, if I rose at 5am to write, I’d still be struggling to reach three words by the time lunch rolled around. I’m a night owl and always have been. Mornings are not kind to me and the feeling is mutual. Cindy is a morning lark, or as I like to call her; Tigger. She bounces out of bed with boundless energy, fully awake and mind racing. It took a few years, but I finally convinced her, through a series of grunts, groans and sign language, that asking me any kind of question that required me to think was pointless if I hadn’t at least had my hot shower and some time to adjust to the ungodly light outside the windows.

Unfortunately, most of my adult life the jobs I have held and/or family responsibilities have required me to wake and work the opposite of my cycle. And I can adjust, but it is difficult. Most of the time, if I’m looking at you, talking and maybe even smiling before noon, you can be sure I’m wishing I was still in bed sleeping soundly instead. No offense.

If I were making my living as a writer and I lived alone, my normal waking hours would be something like 11am until 2am. I love sleeping in late and being up working at night. That just happens to be my body’s natural circadian cycle. Up in time to make lunch my first meal, run a few errands during the afternoon and then sit and write for hours through the evening and night past the witching hour. Ah, that sounds SO nice. Well, not the living alone part, but you know what I mean.

So are you a lark or an owl?

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Posted in Personal, words, Writing | 4 Comments

What Book Introduced You To Science Fiction?

Over at SF Signal, they have posted an interesting piece where they ask several (mostly) writers of science fiction the question, “What Book Introduced You to Science Fiction?”

It’s kind of satisfying to see that most of them began with books and authors that are considered to be the cream of the crop when it comes to science fiction. Authors like Heinlein, Norton, Bradbury, Asimov and Bova, or books like A Wrinkle In Time and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I was also happy to see that two of the authors responded that the book(s) that introduced them to science fiction were the same as the books that introduced ME to science fiction at the tender age of 7. I say books because I don’t remember the specific title of the first one I read, but it was a Tom Swift book and I eventually read ALL the titles in that Tom Swift series. It may have been “Tom Swift and His Flying Lab” (pictured), but I can’t be absolutely sure. It wasn’t long after that when I moved on to Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and others, but it was young Tom Swift who first introduced me to science fiction.

Did you know the “Taser” was inspired by one of Tom Swift’s fictional inventions?

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Posted in Authors, Books, Science Fiction | 1 Comment

20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases

If you are a fan of Twitter and you want to know the best way to get your 140-character gems ReTweeted, Fast Company has posted “Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter” for you. Although there may be some debate about some of their points and charts, I was most interested in their list of the 20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases.

I’m not surprised by number one since “you” is a universal word in successful marketing. I WAS surprised that number 8, “free”, was not at least number two, if not number one. “Free” is one of the bedrock words in marketing, so to find it in the number 8 slot was a bit confounding.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever said anything worth retweeting. But it might be interesting to try to put together something using as many of these 20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases as possible to see how often it might get duplicated on Twitter.

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McDonald’s New Burger

I despise McDonald’s food offerings and only go there when my grandkids visit and insist (yeah, Ronald’s got the little ones wrapped around his marketing finger) on eating there. But this new burger McDonald’s is advertising turns my stomach even more than usual. Come to think of it, we never know what’s in ANY of the burgers, do we?

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Posted in Restaurants | 3 Comments

National Punctuation Day 2009

Don’t fear the semicolon!

Today is National Punctuation Day. For both writers and readers, punctuation is an important part of any group of words.

Celebrate National Punctuation Day; take an ellipsis to lunch.

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Lex Luthor Visits Magic Kingdom!

Sunday morning I had the pleasure of getting my brother, sister-in-law, niece and her fiance into the Disney Magic Kingdom park. It’s been more than a year since I have seen my brother, so I was excited to get the chance to spend some time with him. Everyone else was a bonus.

So it turns out that about a week ago my brother shaved his head bald and also shaved off his beard, something he’d never done in the past and thus caught me completely off-guard. My first thought was “Holy $h!7!!” because I was so surprised and it was such a different look for him, but I didn’t verbalize that. I remember many years ago when my parents hadn’t seen me for a while and came to visit. I had been letting my hair grow out for quite some time. When they arrived on my front porch and I opened the door the first thing my mom said wasn’t “How have you been?” or “I’ve missed you” but rather, “Good God, you look like a woolybooger!” It scarred me for life and I could not be responsible for affecting my brother in a similar manner. So I bit my tongue and enjoyed just getting to see my brother, hug him and spend a small amount of time with him. However, brothers being brothers, I could not resist the urge, later when I was taking photos, to say, “I’m going to name this picture ‘Lex Luthor Visits Magic Kingdom!‘” and everyone laughed.

Here are some of the photos I took and one I’m in with my brother. It WAS good to see him!




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Posted in Disney World, Family, Personal, Photography | 2 Comments

Closing Some Tabs

Too many tabs open in Firefox so it’s time to say a bit about them and get them closed.

My friend Michelle wrote a great article about sci-fi themed lodging around the world.

If you are a user of Gmail, GoogleDocs, GoogleCalendar or any of the other free apps that the “Don’t be evil” giant offers and ever think the day may come when you’d like to move your data from Google…well Google is ahead of you. They have formed Data Liberation with an eye toward you freeing your data so you can move it into or out of Google whenever you’re ready.

About 10 days ago Twitter announced changes to its Terms of Service and Mashable-The Social Media Guide promptly predicted the 10 People You Won’t See on Twitter Anymore. I know WilW is much happier.

Over at DIYPhotography.net readers were asked to submit their favorite photography book selections. When the votes were all tallied, the results became 10 Photography Book Recommendations By DIYP Readers. I own several books on photography, but it just so happens I do not own a single one of the recommended books. I believe that may explain my lack of photography skills. Amazon Wish List, here I come!

I happened to catch a bit of “Glee” the other night because Cindy asked me to DVR it so she could see guest star Josh Groban (who didn’t even appear until the last 8 minutes). I don’t understand the appeal of this show. In my opinion, the Sears Blue Crew commercial was more entertaining.

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Posted in Books, Photography, Technology, TV, Twitter | 1 Comment