October 2010

There were 26 posts published in October 2010 (this is page 3 of 3).

Coyote sighting

Late last night a man walking his dogs in the Cameron Park neighborhood spotted a coyote as it crossed the road about 20 feet in front of him. The coyote trotted on to the property of St. Mary’s College, apparently paying no mind to the man’s dogs.

I’ve had a friend report a coyote sighting in East Raleigh, too, but her sighting took place along the wooded Middle Crabtree Creek greenway east of Raleigh Boulevard. I think a coyote roaming around St. Mary’s is that much more unusual because of how urbanized that area is. It’s amazing how adaptable some wildlife is.

Street smarts

My buddy Ken Thomas wrote about intelligence and wisdom in a recent post, pondering which one is acquired versus which one is inherent. It’s a good question, as is the question of which is more valuable to have, intelligence or wisdom?

I’ll add more to what Ken wrote by asking about a third type of wisdom, known as “street smarts.” Street smarts is wisdom and intelligence combined: applying the wisdom of an environment with the intelligence to figure it out. Situational awareness, really.

Early in our relationship, Kelly and I took a vacation to the mountains of Asheville. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph was still loose somewhere in the woods and I joked to the tourist-booth lady about the odds that I might find him.

The old lady chuckled at the thought. “You wouldn’t last a minute out there,” she scoffed without looking up.
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Answering machines

I called someone at the city today and my call got sent to what sounded like an ancient voicemail system. I was subjected to a lengthy computerized lesson on how to leave a message and it struck me as so totally irrelevant here in the year 2010.

Answering machines have been around a long time. A man named Vlademar Poulsen invented the first one in 1898. Dubbed the telegraphone, it was a manually-operated means of recording a telephone conversation. It wasn’t until 1935 that a machine that could answer itself was invented by Willy Muller. It was later still (1960) before answering machines were first sold in the U.S.
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Lunchtime bike ride

I co-conducted a four-hour training session this morning at work, so afterwards I was ready to move around some. I’d been looking for someone to go biking with me during lunchtimes so Kelly volunteered to join me. She’s training for her upcoming triathlon so she was motivated.

We got in 45 minutes of intense riding on the Crabtree Creek Greenway, riding ten miles total. It was a pace I’m not used to riding as we usually have the kids along. And, uh, truth be told we were going faster than the greenway “speed limit” so don’t tell anybody!

Now it’s close to 10 PM and I’m feeling a little achy. It sucks getting old!

Reading the script

So, remember how I once vowed to put up or shut up when it came to doing voiceover work? Well, I finally got my chance. Thumbing through the recent Raleigh Parks’ Leisure Ledger, I found an upcoming class that taught voiceovers. With a small price tag and professional trainers in town, I knew I couldn’t let another chance slip away. I signed up for the September 28th class and counted down the days until it arrived.

In the meantime, though, the peculiar, breathless phrasing of the class description caught my eye so I plugged it into The Google. It didn’t take me long to trace the class to its trainers: a group in Vermont called Such A Voice. On their website I watched free online videos which explained the whole process. Soon I felt as if I had taken the class already.
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