September 6, 2007

There were 4 posts published on September 6, 2007 (this is page 1 of 1).

Hurricane Fran, 11 years ago

I thought today’s date looked familiar. Today’s the anniversary of the morning after Hurricane Fran came ashore. For some like me, the night it came ashore and the following day blended together, as I didn’t get much sleep after a tree came to rest 3 feet away from my once-sleeping head.

(I blather about this every year, don’t I? A sign of geezerhood?)

There’s a weak storm churning off of Wilmington now which hopefully will bring rain to the parched state. Let’s hope it stays weak, but brings the rain.

Day four for the missing Steve Fossett

It’s day four for millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, reported missing when he failed to return from a routine flight. His friend Sir Richard Branson calls Fossett “a tough old boot,” and its true Fossett has possibly more experience at cheating death than anybody. Still, with the search stretching on this long I’m starting to doubt that Fossett is alive.

If he is gone, the world will have lost a great aviator.

[Update]: Its actually day, four, not two. Even worse for Fossett, unfortunately.

Cheap Thoughts: Using pictures to express emotion in IM clients

Macintosh OS X instant-messaging (IM) clients display your login picture during chats. If you’re having a chat, the traditional way to express smiling is to use a emoticon like this: 🙂 . Why not make your login picture smile, instead? Take different shots of yourself expressing various emotions and provide an easy way of changing them during a chat.

Nothing expresses emotion better than a face. Why not put this to use?

Koopman meet-and-greet

On my last deployment to the Persian Gulf, a pair of TAD (temporary assigned duty) guys joined my ship for the countless doughnuts we did there (the Persian Gulf, in spite of its fearsome reputation, is unbearably dull 99.9% of the time). One of these guys was Chuck, a wet-behind-the-ears E-4 who thought he knew it all. We delighted in proving him wrong with the typical “new guy” pranks.
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