Recession? What Recession?

This at online.wsj.com:

Macy's to Cut 7,000 Jobs

Macy's Inc. said it will cut about 7,000 positions, or 4% of its work force, and slash its dividend, as the retailer looks to lower expenses amid slumping sales.

The largest U.S. department-store chain also announced plans to expand a decentralization strategy that localizes store offerings.

...and so on. But just to show how weird the economy can be, the local Macy's store this past weekend had "we're hiring" placards prominently displayed near the entrances. No help to those 7,000 others, poor devils.

One Year Ago (6)

It is impossible now to recapture, let alone recount, the thoughts and emotions that washed over and through me as I sat on the edge of that old bed with my father's cold hand in mine. Sorrow that he had died alone. Relief that he had died in his own bed, in relatively good health. Sadness that there were so many unsaid things. Joy that we had always been close and had grown even closer in the years since Mom's death. Shock at realizing that, at the most fundamental level, I was now alone. the two people who had always been the constants in my existence now both departed. Despair at thinking that there were so many other things, so many more things I should have done. I should have known. I should have been there.

And yet it is as it is.

And my father was an intensely proud, independent, and private man. If he had been given a choice, this would have been it: In his own home, in his own bed, quietly.

Still. As I would say to my brother when I called him a few minutes later, I wasn't ready for this.

A year later I'm still not.

One Year Ago (5)

Newspaper on the front step. Not a good sign.

I use my key to enter the locked garage, and knock on the back door. I use my key on the backdoor, calling out as I enter the kitchen.

The beep of the answering machine in the back room, my old room. And the obnoxious hiss of Dad's CPAP machine, in my brother's old room. Otherwise silence.

Two more bad signs.

I move back to my parents' room. Shades are drawn and the light is cold and dim. I come upon the best of the worst-case scenarios: Dad in bed, looking for all the world like he is merely sleeping, his Rosary in hand. It was his practice to pray the Rosary at bedtime. One might think that he would suddenly awaken, but of course he does not. He is gone. He is cold.

That, perhaps, is the most striking thing as I take his hand in mine: His hand is cold. My father's hands were always warm.

I sit with him awhile now. There is no longer any hurry.

One Year Ago (4)

And then you start to make the lists. There are, perhaps, a hundred things that could have gone wrong. You sort through them, on the two-mile drive--the best case, the worst case.

Best case: He fell asleep in his chair. He'd been complaining about waking in the wee hours and not being able to return to sleep, then being tired all day: Perhaps he sat down in front of the TV and dozed off, then didn't hear the phone(s) because the TV was too loud. Maybe you'll come in the back door and he'll awake with a start and you'll both have a laugh.

Worst case: He fell down the basement stairs and broke a leg, a hip...a neck. Or he had a stroke and has been unable to get to the phone. The thought of him having lain there injured or incapacitated for hours or longer is intolerable. Noon-hour traffic is heavy and slow.

One Year Ago (3)

The day, as I recall, was gray, steely, cold but not bitingly so. Concerned at Dad's lateness, I pulled out my phone and dialed my dad's house. Answering machine. I called his cell phone. Voice mail. I even called his OnStar number, which he didn't usually activate unless he was planning to be on the road--which seldom happened anymore.

Concern now turned to...what? Not worry, exactly, for I now knew that something was completely and seriously wrong. The question now was only what I would find when I went to the house.

I turned and went down the hill to my office to retrieve my things. I knew I wouldn't be back that day.

One Year Ago (2)

It was at about this point one year ago that I began to become concerned at my dad's lateness. Had we pushed the meeting time back? Sometimes we did, if he wanted to attend Mass. But I didn't recall that we had discussed it during the week.

One Year Ago

It was about this time, one year ago, that I was heading up the hill to the parking lot where my dad would pick me up for the weekly lunch date we had had since my mom's death some four years previous.

Now They're Getting Somewhere!

I have chronicled in the past (here and here, not to mention here) the oddities surrounding my subscription to the Daily Brief from The Huffington Post. Well, today's edition popped up in my mailbox a couple of minutes ago--12:03 p.m. CST, as it happens, which is allegedly the same time it was sent. Interesting. Well, no, not especially, but it is curious. A little.

So it's Not Just the Catholic Church, Then?

This at CNN.com:

Disgraced pastor Haggard facing new sex allegations

By Eric Marrapodi and Jim Spellman
CNN

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- A megachurch paid a 20-year-old man to keep silent about a sexual relationship he had with disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, a senior church pastor said.

Haggard, who was fired amid allegations that he used drugs and patronized a male prostitute in 2006, had a sexual relationship with a second man -- a 20-year-old volunteer at his megachurch, the Rev. Brady Boyd, a senior pastor at the church, said Monday.

The church agreed to pay the man in exchange for his pledges not to talk publicly about the relationship, Boyd said, referring to a settlement reached by the man's lawyer and the church's insurance company. Under the settlement, the church provided the man money to pay his college tuition, moving expenses and counseling, Boyd said.

Here's my favorite part:

"This was compassionate assistance. It was to help him move forward, not a settlement to keep him quiet," said Boyd, senior pastor at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Oh, uh-huh. First the church "agreed to pay the man in exchange for his pledges not to talk publicly about the relationship," but then it's "compassionate assistance" and certainly not "a settlement to keep him quiet"--no, no, nothing like that! Where would you get such an idea?

So. A sex scandal. Embarrassment. The church, imbued as it is with Christ's message of compassion and forgiveness, kicks Haggard--its founder!--to the curb (he evidently got to keep his six-figure salary for a year, though, but--get this!--Haggard's settlement with the church included his agreeing to "leave the Colorado Springs area"...that is, they not only don't want him in their church anymore, they don't want him around town!). The church starts spreading money around to keep everything hush-hush (Haggard's settlement included his agreeing to not speak publicly about the event for one year, according to CNN)--"compassionate assistance" indeed!

And I thought my church had the market cornered on that sort of stuff!

One might think that the problems of guys like Ted Haggard et al. would lay to rest the bizarre notion that somehow the Catholic Church's adherence to celebacy for its priests is to blame for sexual misconduct in its ranks. But of course it won't.

Getting Closer

Well, this is some improvement: Today's Daily Brief from The Huffington Post actually arrived today, sometime between 4:30 this afternoon and 7:45 this evening. It claims to have been mailed at 11:53 this morning, though, so it's still taking the scenic route to get here.

Important Safety Note!

A headline today at Reuters:

Octuplets stun doctors at California hospital

People should know better than to give Tasers to babies.

More Strangeness from HuffPo. Or Is it the Same Strangeness?

I mentioned the other day that weird stuff was going on with my Huffington Post Daily Brief: In a nutshell, I had written them to ask why it comes so damn late, and the "response," if that's the word I want, was for it to stop entirely.

As predicted, I went to the website and re-subscribed. And this morning when I logged in to my e-mail, there was the Daily Brief waiting for me.

Yesterday's Daily Brief.

I was online until about 10:30 last night, local time, and logged in again at about 6:30 this morning, so the Monday Daily Brief arrived somewhere in that time slot...late enough that it should more accurately be labeled the Tuesday edition.

According to the header information, for whatever it may be worth, the brief was sent yesterday at 12:03 p.m.--three minutes after noon. I don't know whose time zone, but assuming it was somewhere in the continental United States, that means the thing floats around in the ether for upward of ten hours before it's delivered to my mailbox. I would blame my e-mail provider, except that this happens pretty much every day, which causes me to suspect it's an issue closer to HuffPo's end of the pipe.

But I guess that's just how it is. No point trying to communicate the concern to the folks at Huffington Post: My previous attempt not only generated no action, it seems to have prompted them to pull the plug on my subscription entirely.

Strangeness indeed.

Strangeness from the Huffington Post

For quite some time now I have been receiving and, mostly, enjoying The Daily Brief from the Huffington Post. But in the past couple of weeks I have noticed that my "dailies" are arriving later and later...so late, in fact, that they haven't yet shown up my my mailbox when I decide to call it a day, and in fact arrive at some point late at night or in the wee hours of the following day.

When I began to note that I was reading a lot of Huffington posts on Digg.com which I hadn't yet seen in my mailbox, and would usually receive the following day, I dropped the Huffington folks a friendly, I thought, inquiry. Maybe there was an issue with their delivery service. Maybe there was an issue with my e-mail provider. Maybe they would like to know about it.

Maybe not.

I sent my query just over a week ago--Friday, January 16--and in short order received a message headed "Thanks for Contacting HuffPost."

And that's the last I've ever heard from them.

No, no--I wasn't expecting a reply. In fact, it says right in the "Thanks for Contacting HuffPost" message that I won't be getting one, and that's fine.

What I mean is, they've quit sending the Daily Brief.

Is that weird or what? I write to enquire as to the lateness of the Daily Brief, and the response is to terminate the subscription? No, it's weird, all right.

Dear Huffington Post People: Now the Daily Brief is even later than before!

Well, obviously, I can go back to their site and just subscribe again and see how it goes. But how strange.

So now on top of the mystery of the later-and-later Daily Briefs, there's the mystery of who decided to pull the plug on me, and why.

This is no way to make friends.

Whistleblower: Bush's NSA spied on EVERYONE

With video: Rampant spying, especially targeting of journalists. The NSA had access to ALL YOUR COMMUNICATIONS, regardless of who you were or whether or not you were communicating internationally.

read more | digg story

Solar and Wind Powered Portable Charger Debuts at CES : CleanTechnica

Solar and Wind Powered Portable Charger Debuts at CES : CleanTechnica

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1,000 Words

The moment we've all been waiting for. Well, most of us, anyway.


W has left the building. Thank you and good night.

Countdown Ended!

I gotta tell you, there were days when I thought that "Official George W. Bush Days Left In Office Countdown" thingy over there in the right-hand column would never get to zero!

50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine

50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography | Inspiration | Smashing Magazine

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Tilt-shift photography is a creative and unique type of photography in which the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized location or subject looks like a miniature-scale model. Below we present 50 beautiful examples of tilt-shift photography. All examples are linked to their sources. We strongly encourage you to explore other works of the photographers we’ve featured in this post.

To add good miniature effect to your photographs, shoot subjects from a high angle (especially from the air). It creates the illusion of looking down at a miniature model. A camera equipped with a tilt-shift lens, which simulates a shallow depth of field, is essentially all you need to start.

You may also want to take a look at the following related posts:

• Beautiful Examples Of High-Speed Photography
• 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures
• 45 Beautiful Motion Blur Photos

50 Amazing Examples of Tilt-Shift Photography

Vincent Laforet

Some "Help"!

Lately a very intrusive "service" from Qwest has infected my computers. I've been able to "opt out," as they say, on my iMac, but not on the Dell laptop I sometimes use. The fact that I never "opted in" to this "service" in the first place seems to be neither here nor there.

The "service" in question--Qwest Web.Help redirection service--theoretically "helps" you find a URL when your browser isn't able to. In fact, it hijacks your browser.

Veteran web-users will remember a time when you absolutely had to enter the whole big long http-colon-slash-slash-dubya-dubya-dubya-whatever-dot-com in order to get anywhere. Then came whatever version of the wonderful old Netscape Navigator browser, whose authors decided that maybe, just maybe, a browser could be smart enough to decode the Domain Name Server information without your having to take it by the hand. You type in, say, "blogger," and presto! a few seconds later you arrive at http://www.blogger.com! Amazing!

Internet Exploder, of course, continued to insist on the whole string for quite some time, which was a big part of the reason I dumped IE--or, as I still think of it, Aieeee!--many years ago. Following the demise of Netscape Navigator, Firefox continued the smart tradition, and for that and many other reasons has long been my browser of choice.

Well, thanks to Qwest Web.Help, internet browsing has taken a giant step backward!

For now, typing "Zap2It" (my favorite TV listings service) into the URL field gives me this:


Charming, no? The worst part is, Qwest Web.Help can't find anything unless you type in the whole URL, or at least the name-dot-com part of it. Just like web surfing in the 1980s!

Or, perhaps more accurately, Qwest Web.Help won't find anything. And why? Well, look at the screenshot. All of those "helpful" results--only the third on the list being the actual website I want, incidentally--aren't there by accident. They're all "sponsored" links. "Sponsored" as in "paid advertising."

In short: Qwest's "help" involves their hijacking my web browser so they can make money on top of the fee I pay them every month for my DSL.

Gee, thanks, Qwest.

You will note, in small letters way off to the right-hand side of the screen, a link titled "Opt out of this service."

"Service." Right. He said with a sneer.

Well, not very easy. For one thing, to click the link does not, as you might expect, actually opt you out. Rather, it takes you to the following, eerily familiar page:




Yes, it's virtually the same page--got to keep those paid listings in front of your little eyeballs, you know--except that now you have a box telling you what the "service" that you never wanted does (it slows down your browsing experience so that you have to look at some ads along the way, that's what it does!), and then gives you another link to click on to, theoretically, "opt out."

But not so fast, buckaroo! First you have to look at this:



That's right, you're still not to the opt-out, um, option! Once again, they're telling you you can opt out "at any time"--instructions that must have been written by someone who never visited the Qwest Web.Help website. This is beginning to be a bit like Hotel California, no?

Okay, buried in the number-four position on the list is "Can I opt out of this service?" The answer would seem to be a resounding no, but I gamely click on it anyhow...and get yet another link for, supposedly, opting out!


This is truly and blatantly designed to prevent people from opting out of this idiotic imposition, and whoever at Qwest thought of this idea should have a special little corner of hell reserved for them.

Actually, I think there ought to be a law against this sort of thing, and I am seriously contemplating making such a suggestion to my congressional delegation (one of whom won't give a hoot, since he has over and over demonstrated himself to be in the hip pocket of "Business Interests," but the other two might at least give it some consideration).

Okay, having come this far one might as well play it out. I click on " opt out of this service" (again)...and...




Yep. No opting out going on quite yet! Instead here's yet another description of the "service" and yet another "opt out" link. What are we up to by now? I can't count that high!

Well, surely by now the "opt out" link must do something, no? So I click on it...and here comes this little gem:


Yes. We have at last reached the end of the trail, despite Qwest's best efforts. And what is our reward? Why, Qwest can't find the domain! Now, let's think for a moment. What is the domain that Qwest can't find? Well, the message says "Unable to determine IP address from host name for www.qwest.net."

Um...Qwest can't find its own address??

That's certainly how it appears. "Qwest DNS servers were not able to resolve the hostname presented in the URL," it says. "Check if the address is correct," it says.

The "hostname presented in the URL"? http://www.qwest.net/web.help/?confirm=1.

Qwest can't find its own address.

And they're the people who are going to "help" me with this wonderful "service" that I never asked for and which they won't let me opt out of.

Some "help"!

Maybe the Economy Is Worse than I Thought

Last week I received word that Law Motors is now following my updates on Twitter.

Law Motors is a local used-car lot. Twitter is something I signed up for ages ago and never use. Frankly, I don't much see the point of it. So I'm afraid Law Motors is destined to be pretty bored.

Incidentally, I've never done any business with Law Motors, never set foot on the lot, not even sure where they're located, so I assume their people merely combed through Twitter and signed up to follow everyone whose profile indicates they're within, probably, a certain geographic zone.

Naturally, I deleted the message. What's it to me?

Now today comes word that "ActionNews (KSFYActionNews) is now following your updates on Twitter." KSFY is one of the local TV stations. Again, I'm afraid they're not going to observe much "action" by following me on Twitter, but that's their problem.

Oddly, as I visit KSFYActionNews' profile, I observe that they are "following"--you guessed it--Law Motors.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of this. But I am somehow reminded of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet going round and round a tree in the Hundred Acre Wood and becoming progressively more worried about the increasing number of footprints...