October 2008

There were 93 posts published in October 2008 (this is page 3 of 10).

Sitti by Neomonde

I got a sneak peek today of Sitti by Neomonde, the new joint project between Neomonde and Greg Hatem’s Empire Eats opening at the corner of Hargett and Wilmington Streets. All I can say is wow! Sitti takes Neomonde’s great food and provides it with the atmosphere its always needed.

I have always delighted in introducing my friends and colleagues to Neomonde. Its like I’m letting them in on a secret; like they become members of the club. Word of mouth is what led the first tucked-away, Beryl Road restaurant to double in size. It also led to the opening of a Morrisville location. With popularity came the pains of growth: even with the expanded size, the Raleigh restaurant sometimes has more diners than available tables.
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Polycom and Cisco VoIP phones compared

So $WORK ordered a new Cisco phone system to replace the Asterisk-based one I put together. Never mind that the Asterisk system cost 1/5th what the Cisco one costs and was set up in a day while the Cisco one in our German office still isn’t working properly after a month of configuration. Hey, its not my money, so I can’t really argue.

My office is getting this new system, too, but I’ve been leaving the set up of this system to the outside consultant $BIGBOSS hired. Still, I couldn’t help but figure out what it took to configure the Cisco 7965 phone to talk to our soon-to-be-replaced Asterisk system.
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Math Prof Rock Star

I swear Pandora will be the end of my wallet. After reading about the Red Elvises show, I created a Red Elvises Pandora station and this was the first song. This band reminds me of The Uninvited.

What other rock songs actually have the value of pi in the lyrics?

Math Prof Rock Star
Jim’s Big Ego

All the girls in the class room think he’s hot
he shows up wearing the sandals with the white socks
he hears them giggling while he’s got his back to the class
he thinks he’s got an eraser mark on his ass
and all the girls from the hall show up to hear him talk
even though most of the time he’s covered in chalk

Math Prof Rock Star!
woo hoo!
Math Prof Rock Star!
oh yeah!
Math Prof Rock Star!
who knew?
When he was young he never thought that he would be a
Math Prof Rock Star
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Commissioner Gordon orders Obama signal extinguished

I chuckled when I saw the Obama signal being shown on a downtown Raleigh office building. Unfortunately that building, One Exchange Plaza, is owned by the City of Raleigh, which probably does not appreciate political advertising being shown on its walls.

Just now a Raleigh police sergeant wandered into my $WORK offices to ask if we were responsible for the Obama signal. He wasn’t surprised when I told him no, and said “everybody’s been denying it.” I got the impression he was dutifully going through the motions but given the million other things RPD has to do it wasn’t exactly his highest priority.

Why the City would take a cop off his regular duties to chase down this whimsical prank is beyond me. It seems to me if the City really wanted to find out who was responsible it might be helpful if city employees didn’t clear out of their offices at 5PM or earlier each day. But I digress.

Also, what could the person responsible be charged with? Criminal mischief? Photon littering? How would one prove anything? Once Obama becomes President would this be legal? Isn’t there a presidential portrait hanging in all federal offices?

I personally think the Exchange Plaza building has a butt-ugly blank wall so anything that might spice it up is welcome in my book.

Parks book

After posting the history of Lions Park last night, I thought it would be a fun project to write a book on the history of Raleigh’s parks. Certainly it would be a good education for me as a new member of the Raleigh parks board.

Now, where can I find the time to do this …

Lions Park: a park born of love

I took a tour this afternoon of Raleigh’s Lions Park with the park director, Mark Wilson. On the way out he handed me a photocopy from a book which tells of how the park came to be.

Reading it blew me away. A huge number of Raleigh citizens and civic leaders banded together to donate their time, money, and sweat to create this park. I truly had no idea. What a contrast to today’s park process: one which has been accused of completely ignoring the citizen involvement.

I’ve retyped the article in its entirety on my East Raleigh blog. Reading it will open your eyes to this jewel in our midst (a midst that was once known as “North Raleigh”)!

Another bogus quote, this one from Tocqueville?

Got an email with the following alleged quote at the end:

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), French social philosopher, author of “Democracy in America”

As he was a famous French historian, Tocqueville gets quoted (and misquoted) constantly (see this site for a prominent example). A Google search today lists 186 results, which isn’t much if this is indeed legitimate. Wikiquote says its unsourced.

My thought is that its bogus. Maybe I’ll track it down, too.

Great Atlantic Warranty now North American Warranty Solutions?

Great Atlantic Warranty, the car warranty scammers, has apparently put on a disguise to try to throw search engines off its track. According to this post GAW is now working under the name North American Warranty Solutions. The domain has been active for all of three months. Great Atlantic Warranty’s former website is now a hand-coded page, and (surprise, surprise) it says GAW is out of business!

Great Atlantic Warranty, as a selling agent, has stopped selling new vehicle service contracts. Great Atlantic Warranty has submitted all contract information to the respective warranty plan administrators.
Who do I call if I have a claim?
If you have purchased a contract, please refer to the cover letter you received with your contract, or the actual contract, for the appropriate customer service contact information. If you cannot locate this information, but you have your contract # or Owner ID #, please click on “I have a Contract Number” below.

> I have a contract number.

If there was no reason to be suspicious before, there is now. Can’t say I’m surprised, though.

The good news is that the net is quickly closing around this clown. The gig is up. As Einstein once said, “you can run, but you can’t hide!”

Or was it Thomas Jefferson? I never know.

Thinking: not just for brainiacs!

Rita Mae Brown once said that insanity is “doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” I suppose insanity might also mean expecting people to apply critical thinking skills to anything.

I’ve been poking through MT.Net‘s logfiles and I’m pleased to see so many searching for the Thomas Jefferson Bank Quote. As of today, MT.Net is the third Google result for those search terms. That’s all fine and good. What drives me up the wall is when I go to the pages linking to the quote, in many cases the linker is presenting the quote as fact, not even reading that I’ve debunked it! Um, did anyone read the post? What kind of fool would link a quote to a post that clearly says the quote is bogus?

No wonder America is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to using our noggins.