N&O shrinks staff yet again

Last weekend I couldn’t help but notice the Lowe’s sales circular which normally arrives in the Sunday paper came instead by First Class mail. I don’t know if Lowe’s wanted to put it in the hands of its customers earlier to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend or if Lowe’s simply didn’t find the News and Observer up to the task. Either way, that’s revenue the N&O would’ve banked but didn’t.

Decisions like Lowe’s don’t bode well for the N&O, as yesterday the beleaguered paper announced more buyout packages in an effort to reduce staff (I was going to say “headcount,” but they’re people, dammit). I wonder if McClatchy’s 2006 decision to buy Knight Ridder seems so prudent in the face of today’s economy.

Shrinking product or no, I still enjoy my morning paper and I hope things settle down there soon.

Indy disses Raleigh yet again

I was all into the Independent Weekly’s look at Raleigh when I came to this story by Vernon Coleman, called Seeing the city through a conventioneer’s eyes: Wanderlust in Raleigh. Its the same old tired story of Durhamites looking down their noses at Raleigh. Coleman spends an afternoon wandering around downtown, asks advice from some homeless people, and assumes that since he is totally clueless that there’s nothing going on here. Moron.

Just when I think the Indy is finally on the Raleigh bandwagon they trot out tripe like this. I never thought I’d say I miss the Spectator.

Hanna

I had a dream last weekend about wanting a generator. I’m a geek, though, so wanting a generator is a year-round thing for me. Still, I don’t normally dream of one. And last night I had a dream about charging a armful of rechargeable batteries.

I suppose I’m wary of Tropical Storm Hanna. And Ike’s (or Josephine’s) follow-up act could really be devastating if Hanna hits and loosens the soil considerably. Any trees that might withstand Hanna would be pushovers for Ike or Josephine.

Keep an eye on the weather, y’all. It doesn’t look like this will be a dry hurricane season around here.

Warranty calls continue

When will they ever learn?

We got another call tonight from the warranty scam artists, this time using the phone number 702-520-9150 as their fake Caller ID. Once the nice gentleman got on the line I bum-rushed him.

“Can I have the make and model of your vehicle?” asked “Mike.”

“How can you live with yourself?” I interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“How can you live with yourself, working for such a sleazy company?”

Click! The next thing I heard was hold music, which turned to silence a moment later. I realized I was keeping a trunk busy on the company’s phone system, so I left my phone on hold for another 30 minutes, padding their long distance bill just for fun.

I might get even nastier the next time they call. Or better yet, I’ll try out some digits when I’m alone on the trunk. Maybe I can figure out how to make outgoing calls, or find my way to their voicemail system.

Waiting on, waiting for

Kelly and I chuckled when we saw the N&O’s headline this weekend: “New Orleans not waiting on Gustav.”

Waiting on? Did New Orleans take a job waiting tables? Maybe NOLA is in the weeds, had a few big parties seated all at once and needs another server to help out, so that’s why Gustav isn’t being waited on. Then again, maybe the N&O’s editor meant to write “waiting for Gustav,” which would make so much more sense, grammatically-speaking.

(See what happens when one marries an editor?)

iPoof

Saturday, I joined the family in the Ridge Road pool just one minute before the lifeguards called everyone out for approaching thunderstorms. I hadn’t even had time to get my chest wet. I did, however, have time to dunk my iPod Shuffle, which was hiding in my bathing suit pocket. It was supposed to stay in the car but sometimes it doesn’t listen.

I think its goose is cooked. I’m a little sad, but them’s the breaks.

Asterisk and alarm working well together

After monitoring my alarm panel for a few days I have to say things are working extremely well! I’m still not parsing the messages the panel sends but I do get them reliably. As of now I get alerted via text message whenever the alarm is tripped. Actually, I get three alerts as for each test I get an event for “alarm tripped” and two for “alarm canceled.”

What I need to do now is write a little PERL app to convert the event code to text. I also might rewrite the AlarmReceiver Asterisk app to dump events into MySQL rather than randomly-named text files.

I also want to explore how to make the alarm report all events (a door opens, motion, etc) , not just when the alarm is tripped. Since I’ve got a phone line already dedicated to the alarm it shouldn’t be a problem to “nail it up” all the time. Alarm companies monitor a lot of their customers using “alarm loop” lines from the phone company, so it should be possible to monitor the whole system at all times.