People, people everywhere

I’m a Western kid.

No, I don’t mean that I listen to country. I dislike rodeos and I don’t own a cowboy hat. But I grew up in the West and I’m out-of-place in this East Coast world.

There are many things about the East Coast that are foreign to me (another blog post for another day), but one of the most obvious is population density.

Just to demonstrate, I’ve lived in four counties in three states in the last decade. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, this is the most densely populated county of the four.

Population density of counties I've lived in (Source: U.S. Census, 2000)

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Backlash

I recently covered a wreck on Highway 6 that claimed the lives of three people in this community. Less than 24 hours later, the paper is receiving calls, emails and visits about the manner in which we covered the incident.

I received photos from law enforcement that showed the burning wreckage that contained the bodies of the three fatalities.

It’s a difficult decision when you choose how to run a graphic photo. However, I maintain that the photo was newsworthy. I will agree that the photo is disturbing, given the context. But despite any impact it may have in this community, I firmly believe that it serves as a reminder to the general public that safe driving could have avoided the wreck.

I rate a photo or story’s newsworthiness on three factors: timeliness, gravity, and proximity. This story and photo met all three. The community is upset. Rightly so. I would be to. In fact, I am upset that the deaths occurred. But It was newsworthy and I am proud that the paper ran it.

My favorite kind of reporting

I just went and took a couple photos of BLM personnel doing controlled burns in the area. It was kind of cool.

These are my favorite kind of stories… you go out and see something cool, talk to a couple people. If it develops to a full story, that’s great. But if it’s just a photo, that’s cool.

I also met up with an old friend, Dave Larsen. He’s a firefighter with the BLM now.

Fun in Tiger

So my Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) is up and running.

One word: Sweeeeet!

I’m still discovering things, and I haven’t looked under the hood very much. I’m still discovering the UI. But damn! This is a sweet OS.

I got my Tiger.

I have my Tiger, and I found this cool dashboard widget called DashBlog. Tiger is much faster. A little buggy, but you expect that on the initial release of an OS. We’ll see what happens with the first service patch.

I like peanuts, walnuts and cashews — but I hate religious nuts

I hate religious nuts. I hate people that will take advantage of you. And I hate people who think they are so much better than you, just because they are more religious.

My roommate is all three.

I started a new job a couple of weeks ago. For a few months, I’ve been working a couple of part-time jobs, one of which was at the local newspaper. A position as a reporter opened up there at the beginning of the year.

I still work at a hotel (for about 3 more hours) as a night clerk. So I’ve been working my ass off at this new full-time job and finishing my two weeks at my part-time job.

I was supposed to be done with the hotel job yesterday, but one of my coworkers (I live at the hotel, so he’s also my roommate) decided that he was going to go to hell if he didn’t go to church today. You are not going to hell. This is your job. Don’t expect people to work for you so you can go to church. In my mind, religion is a form of recreation. It goes with fishing, skiing and knitting. Asking for time off is crap. I have been good about working for other people when they have a legitimate conflict, such as a funeral or other employment. However, I have a HUGE problem with taking time off for recreation. If he wasn’t taking what going supposed to be my last shift, tomorrow night, I would have told him to forget it.

A few months ago, he had the nerve to ask me to work for him on a Saturday morning. I had been up kind of late Friday night, and he called me in to work at 7 a.m. I would never ask anyone to work for me on such short notice unless I had some sort of emergency. I assumed that he was the same. NO! He was going to a horse auction. With his girlfriend. He didn’t want to be late. I can’t believe that he would do such a thing.

U2’s new CD

So I ripped a copy of U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb onto my iBook from my girlfriend a few hours ago.

After spending a few hours listening to podcasts, I am listening to the whole album. I’m inclined to put this album up there with Rattle and Hum, Zooropa and Achtung Baby. It’s damn good.

I’ll have to listen to it a few more times before I know for sure.

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Apparently this blog doesn’t have photo capabilities. Thank god for flickr. So now i can add photos… I have to get even with Heather. If I ever get a photo…

Well look at the time… must sleep. U2 is up to track 11 of 12, and I was going to fall asleep to it, so I guess I’ll be listening again. Good.

Why I’m doing this

So I got this blog like 3 months ago.

I got into the whole blogging thing in an interesting way. I have an iPod, and one day, while I was staying at a hotel (with WiFi), I was surfing around (on my iBook) trying to find cool things to do with my iPod.

I came across podcasting. So now I’m subscribed to Adam Curry’s daily source code, the Dawn and Drew Show, Air America Morning Sedition and others.

In the process of learning about podcasting, of course I came across blogging. I just haven’t gotten into one. But here I am… I’ll see how it goes.