Fasten your seat belt.
Tuesday, September 24th, 1996
They always say that 99.9 percent of car accidents happen within five miles of home. I spose that’s why we got through our 11,000 mile auto trip just fine, only to have some guy run into Sammy on her way out of the Wino Kroger on Ponce here in our fair city. (All the Kroger grocery stores here in Atlanta have nicknames, most for obvious reasons.)
Wham! This guy makes a good deal of the front-left of our truck look like high-priced scrap metal, but his VW Jetta suffered much the same fate. Thankfully, both humans were undamaged. Not-so-thankfully, we have to go through insurance brou-ha-ha again. (Did I mention an oak tree bisected our house in 1991?)
So that’s the big what’s new around here. Me, I’ve been piling up work to be done, and have had some productive spurts, gratefully. I received an upgrade to Electric Image, enabling me to make things fly around in three dimensions with even more alacrity and panache (menu selections I would like to see.) I’ve also upgraded the Mac software to system 7.5.5, as has a large chunk of the rest of the world, and I’m generally getting the techno-end of things squared around nicely.
Our friend Pattie Belle Hastings from Icehouse Design is visiting for a day or two, combining business and pleasure. She’s working on a series of time-management seminars called ‘Creating Time’ that seem like just the ticket for stressed-out techno or creative types who seem to be working more and enjoying it less. She’s got a newsletter that says much the same.
Another celebrity through town (oh, okay, just another good friend from my Ohio University days) Steve Korte came by for some Thai food and conversation. He’s doing an amazing number of things related to DAT, recording, pipe organ music, and audio production—all in his spare time.
And finally, friend and world traveler Jeff Wright flew through for a day or so on the way to Amsterdam to demonstrate a remarkable disk recorder system from Tektronix. Jeff has been known to design a web page or two when he has a moment to spare, and does television production of all flavors in New Mexico, USA.
Gee, sounds like our social calendar has been full, eh? And that doesn’t even include Sammy’s weekend trip to Michigan to see her family (and to pick fresh raspberries), my stroll to the Piedmont Park Arts Festival with James, Rebecca, and Brigid, and my travels to Portland to see the city behind these live skycams from the fine folks at Northwest NewsChannel 8.
In between the cracks, when I should be productive, i’ve been enjoying RealAudio 3.0—stereo live streams to my humble machine, including CBC Stereo. me, I love Canadian radio for reasons even I don’t fully understand. And there’s something cool about very, very high-quality audio issuing from my Sennheiser headphones when I’m writing these words to you. Last saturday night, the CBC’s ‘RealTime’ (that’s a show) had Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame spinning CD tracks and talking recipes with her mother (both with Grand Rapids Michigan accents, by the way.) In stereo. And it sounded clean.
I’m finding more and more of the kind of stuff I hoped I’d find on the web these days, from TV writers extrordinaire Tom Shales and John Carmody of the Washington Post, the AP and UPI wires, a daily update from Advertising Age, a very interesting-looking collaboration between the New York Times and NPR on the issues that are important this election, and my friend Nancy Nall is writing some of the best columns of her (or anyone else’s) life. Oh, and two of our favorite cats (and their multi-Emmy-winning owner) are available for viewing as well. Maybe this fall is going to be just fine, after all. Enjoy yourselves in this brave new world we’re shaping—by accident—every day.
