NaBloPoMo

I wonder why I kept this

June 22, 2009 by kathi

After a good deal of encouragement from Dan (and I know I am totally at fault for the long delay), our oldest desktop computer is finally on the way to silicon heaven (or more likely, silicon hell). A not-so-new (see above, long delay) Dell Dimension took its place. Since it is old enough to still be running Windows XP, it had no issues or problems for me to deal with, except for hauling a boat-anchor CRT monitor from one side of the room to the other. Oh, and removing the free included and so totally not worth it WordPerfect office suite and replacing it with the far from free and also so totally not worth it, but at least more compatible with the rest of our computers, Microsoft Office suite.

I went to find Office in the box o’ software, manuals and other stuff. This is what I found instead (Office did turn up later at a completely inappropriate location):

That would be the freshman “pig book” with a good number of the Class of 1980 of Northwestern University. We all received this sometime during the summer before our freshman year.

We were obviously not concerned with identity theft or personal privacy, with full addresses published. We are obviously also from a time when dinosaurs still walked the earth, because you will notice that no email addresses are included in the listings. The Internet is something that wouldn’t happen until way too late to help me graduate. And I didn’t, but hey, I made something of my life anyway. But don’t be like me, finish college, okay?

I don’t know how my former classmates would feel about being in my blog so they are blurred out. Forgive me for my own modern-day paranoia, but my parents still live at that blurred-out address. I still like writing (see, look I’m doing it now) and music. The meeting people part, not so much, but there are notable exceptions.

This is one of the few times when I am actually glad for my stupid hair. It was (and still is) too heavy to hold a Farrah flip, and didn’t take a perm well either. My reward for having stupid hair is not having photos of myself with blatantly ’70s hair, which is a good thing indeed. I wish you all could see the whole book with all the fine examples of male and female ’70s hair!

Actually, I have been pretty skilled at entirely avoiding photos of myself, so the only semi-recent photo I could find for comparison is still a few years old:

Have I changed much?

If anyone reading this happens to be a more recent Northwestern alum: Do they still do the pig book? Do they still call it the pig book? And most important of all, are Medill students still called Medilldoes?

And on a totally unrelated note: wow, I am the suckiest typographer ever. It took me this long to notice that all of the footers saying (Month) ’09 have the wrong single quote in front of 09. By the time you see this, I might have corrected them all. Or not.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’09: 22 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 149 of 274)

Their… no, OUR… advertising dollars at work

June 21, 2009 by kathi

Even though a fair amount of my professional lifetime has been spent in doing prepress production for the advertising industry, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the large dollar amounts involved in advertising. It’s like professional sports salaries or oceanfront real estate; too many zeroes and too hard to correlate the dollar figure with the perceived value of the product.

I saw an item in Advertising Age about GM’s projected advertising budget during bankruptcy: $40-$50 million per month. This is the same amount the automaker was spending before filing for Chapter 11. GM was not asked by the government’s auto task force to make cuts in this area, unlike Chrysler, whose advertising budget was cut by approximately half.

Still having a hard time wrapping my head around the dollar amount, especially when the advertising that is supposed to make me want to buy a GM vehicle is like this:

Sorry. Didn’t grab me. You know what would grab me? And remember, these are my… and your… advertising dollars at work now. Less advertising of concepts and warm fuzzy “we can do it” crap, and more advertising of affordability, rebates, special pricing, or “free” upgrades to a higher accessory package. Or how about less advertising and more spending on making a better quality product that would draw us back from Japanese and German vehicles (or in my case, a different American automaker).

On a related note, and one that could have been related to me but is not since the only auto-related project we’ve been involved with in recent years was not for GM or Chrysler, is a word on how most ad agencies handle payment. The “pay when paid” policy means that the agency pays its vendors when their client pays them. Imagine the situation for a vendor to Chrysler’s agency, BBDO Detroit, who is owed $58 million by Chrysler. Very bad situation for BBDO, a really bad situation for a small business (again, imagining a small prepress shop like my own business) working on any part of the Chrysler account for BBDO too.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 21 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 148 of 274)

A long-lost warbird is heading home

June 20, 2009 by kathi

I am not the history expert in our family. That would be my husband. Still, I was once a member of EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association, with an interest in military aircraft, particularly the Warbirds of the World War II era. So you know a story involving a long-lost warbird being recovered from the depths of Lake Michigan off Waukegan Harbor to eventually return to Hawaii would catch our interest.

SBD-2 Dauntless, February 1942 (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by William T. Barr, photographer’s mate, USN)

The Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless dive bomber raised from Lake Michigan on Friday, much like the one in the photo, is the second one recovered this year. Three hundred planes are estimated to be at the bottom of the lake. These planes were used for aircraft carrier qualification training. They flew out of the now-closed Glenview Naval Air Station and the aircraft carriers were at Navy Pier. Some of the training planes had been used in combat. This one had been at Pearl Harbor, and will end up there once again at the Pacific Aviation Museum on Ford Island in about three years.

So many interesting facts about the plane’s history and the people and organizations involved in the recovery are detailed by reporters from Honolulu and Lake County. Very cool for me to be able to read coverage from newspapers in both of my hometowns:

Honolulu Star-Bulletin: Crew to recover bomber with local ties from lake

Lake County News-Sun (a Chicago Sun-Times News Group paper): ‘Hula blessing’ greets dive bomber pulled from lake

We have not yet visited the Pacific Aviation Museum, and perhaps we will wait until this plane gets there to do so.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 20 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 147 of 274)

Life in the food chain

June 19, 2009 by kathi

“Check near the back gate for dead things before you let the dogs out. There’s a hawk… no, probably a falcon… killing something on top of the garbage can.”

What an uplifting start to the day, huh? Even though you don’t usually think about seeing birds of prey in a residential neighborhood in Chicago, we do have quite a few urban falcons and hawks in the area. It was probably a peregrine falcon, like this one (although we have seen the occasional red-tailed hawk nearby):

photo credit: stirwise

It was also considerate enough to eat or haul away its entire kill, except the feathers… a LOT of feathers… clinging to the top of the garbage can.

No time to play CSI: Norwood Park because the day’s thunderstorms were on the way. No rain yet by the time I left for work, but the wind had kicked up. Axel was standing still in the back yard and his ears were flapping in the wind like he was about to take flight. Okay, that’s not really funny given yesterday’s post about the Rottweiler in a tornado. But they were flapping pretty good.

There were a lot of areas with storm damage and power outages. Happily, we were once again unscathed. The dogs and I never actually got wet despite the torrential downpours. We managed to time all of our outdoor excursions between the thunderstorms.

This is what my commute to work looked like as I hit the Ohio Street offramp. Looking to the south, it was very grey but there were still some patches of light and almost-clear sky:

Looking to the north, the clouds were dropping lower and turning black and threatening:

I did get inside the office about a minute before the clouds made good on their threat of a drenching rain.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 19 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 146 of 274)

Weather woes

June 18, 2009 by kathi

We have severe weather warnings in effect here in the Chicago area until tomorrow afternoon. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected, and this is also the time of year when tornados can happen.

The Rottweilers are glad to be house dogs, as they, and I, still remember the tale of Chase, the Rottweiler who took a block-long ride à la Toto in a June tornado in south suburban Richton Park, just around this time last year. His story is still out there on the ‘net, including video:

CBS2 Chicago: Dog Survives Toto Impression During Tornado

Um. That would be video of happy rescued Chase with his relieved family. You don’t really think someone would be out in a tornado shooting a video of a dog flying through the air, do you? What’s that? Yes, this is Chicago. Okay. Point taken. Still no flying dog video.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 18 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 145 of 274)