They must have changed their tea! I have tried it in Fayetteville, Clayton and just this afternoon in Lumberton, NC and they all have changed to this sucky, non-tea-like drink. I actually had them take it back the first time, but then they brought the new back to the table and it was just as unpalatable.

ADDENDUM [09/15/22]: I’ve probably written about Smithfield’s awful tasting tea elsewhere. During my recent 50th high school reunion, a few of us at a table started talking about Smithfield’s unsweet tea, which has a horrible, non-tea like flavor. Their sweet tea is deliciously sweet, but it is obvious that they don’t give a rat’s ass about their unsweet tea. In fact, it tastes like someone has taken cigarette ashes and added them to water. That is the closest thing I can compare the taste to. It was so refreshing to have more than just me stating how horrible their unsweet tea tasted.

I just read an review of “the Monuments Men” in the Up & Coming Weekly Magazine.  Sounds like this should have gone straight to Historical Movie Preservation and the reels left in a corner until they had deteriorated beyond repair.  I know they are probably stored on everything but reels now, but one can hope.

A few days ago, I received a call from a woman that said she was with Time Warner (or perhaps doing a survey representing them). She was polite and asked if I would take the survey. I said, “yes.”

She asked if I was using a cell phone or a land line. I told her I was on a cell phone.

She asked if I was driving or operating some other machinery, to which I said, “no.”

She made a comment about my Time Warner service having recently changed, and I affirmed that was true. (A few days before the Super Bowl.)

She asked what services I had dropped. I said I had dropped TV.

She asked which services I had kept or added. I said, “Internet.”

She then thanked me for taking the survey and the call ended.

???

What was up with that? She only verified what she should have already known. Could I have answered differently to receive more questions?

Mellon Foundation Awards Davidson $800,000 to Expand Digital Studies

http://www.davidson.edu/news/news-stories/131213-mellon-foundation-digital-studies-award

][

Among these initiatives is "Davidson Domains," which will provide every Davidson student a unique domain name and access to an open-source platform like WordPress. The Web domain will serve as a foundation for students’ online presence
at Davidson and beyond. As students progress through the Davidson curriculum, they will learn how to add content to the domain from any aspect of their experience. Students might use it to display outstanding assignments, samples of internship work or research
experience, and more.

][

I like the idea that they are giving their students a unique domain name. I love WordPress as an eportfolio. It should be interesting to see if eportfolios at Davidson are any more successful than they have been elsewhere.

I think that a good deal of faculty time and effort would be needed to help students determine which examples of their works and experience should be included in the eportfolio.

It would seem that if you (the Institution) were recruiting a higher percentage of incoming students that would need remedial courses, and that because of this you would have a higher percentage of students failing to complete college in 4.5 or 5 years… that you would help them start preparing before they ever arrived on campus. You would also get them in as cheaply, at least for the first two years, so that if they did indeed fail, they would leave the institution with a minimal post-college bill.

Having said that, I am a technician, and as such here are three suggestions:

· Provide incoming Freshmen with a Chromebook and make all courses during the first two years Chromebook friendly. That means storing their documents in the Cloud, and using an LMS (or LMSes) that work well on a Chromebook. Google Docs

· Establish an ongoing relationship with possible candidates as early as possible, and establish whether they will need remedial activities. If so, why not have them work online in some remedial activity. Use WordPress for a development eportfolio.

· Reduce per course costs by attempting to eliminate book fees. Students don’t have to purchase or rent books for their courses.

o Wherever possible use free online course materials.

o Faculty become adept at student “touch”.

§ “Touches” are the personal, intimate, communication between professors and students which can be found nowhere else, and that make the learning process special.

“… You get a free Chromebook, and are not required, for the first two years, to purchase or rent any textbooks, and we will provide you with a personal financial advisor.“

I see that we’ve been told that a client was able to use two different passwords to login to their single account. Now, we know this cannot be. Well, if it is then something is horribly wrong!

But, years ago when I had an Apple IIe, I did come across one of those “Twilight Zone” experiences while developing a spreadsheet application.

It was probably a budget I was developing in a spreadsheet and I was putting in all ones (1) in each field and seeing if they all totaled up at the end. And then it happened, they did not add up correctly. Let’s say there were 10 items, each field having a 1 in it and the total did not equal 10. I removed the numbers and tried again. Still an incorrect total was displayed. I pored over the mathematical logic in the different fields and it all “seemed” correct. I reviewed it some more. It didn’t just seem correct, the logic was correct. Finally, I copied the whole budget and moved it to another location in the spreadsheet, and amazingly, the ten 1’s totaled to 10.

This was before the Web was easy to google and see if anyone else had experienced a similar problem, but what it came down to was that the computer chips, or at least one of them had been faultily created. I guess all the twists and turns and connections hadn’t been made on the microscopic level. If you placed the mathematical logic and fields in one area of this spreadsheet, they worked fine, but if you happened to find this Twilight Zone area, you were sent to the Bermuda Triangle.

I haven’t seen this problem since, but knowing it happened once means that it could happen again.

I think I watched the first episode (not the first season), and quickly decided I had no interest in an old department store.  “Are You Being Served,” was all that I needed of that genre.  I then waited patiently wondering how many episodes I would have to get past, without watching.  Now I see that there is a second season coming up.  Oh, goody!  Take this crap off.

—

And, I had started watching “House of Cards” and was several episodes into it when one of the main characters did something I considered so vile and unforgivable that I finished watching that episode and decided never to come back.  I seriously doubt that anything has so offended my senses, that even though it was a scripted tale, I immediately felt unclean for watching something like that.

ADDENDUM [10/11/23]:  When I stopped watching “House of Cards” Kevin Spacey was still on the show.  But, he wasn’t the main character that I was referencing above.  It was the actress Robin Wright, who years earlier had played “the Princess Bride.”   And, I understand that the offence wasn’t created by the actress, but by the show’s writer.

The offence?  I don’t recall if Spacey’s character was the elected President, or still running for office, but Wright’s character was his wife.  And, they had a security person who was facing the cruel effects of Cancer, and now was bedridden.  Wright comes to visit the sick, former security officer, in the hospital.  They talk, and she admits that she was aware that the security officer had a secret love and longing for her, that he had never spoken.  At some point, she reaches beneath the sheets to give him a “hand job” and there in his helplessness, he begs her not to.  But, that one vignette made me feel so violated and unclean.  It struck a chord deep inside of me that no other movie or TV show has ever done.  I’ve seen murder after murder, and loads of other offensive acts portrayed by actors, but this one scene stopped me in my tracks.  After the episode, I never did return to watch any further episodes of “House of Cards”.  The Spacey controversy occurred afterwards and he left the show and I think that “the character’s wife” became President.  All this, but I didn’t watch it.

And, not only did I not watch any more “House of Cards,” but it soured me on watching anything else by Robin Wright.  If she appeared in a movie, I stopped watching that movie.  Now that is powerful acting, that “on screen actions” would affect the way you feel about the actor, beyond those scenes.  Oh well…

Well actually, in another ensemble show, Mark-Paul Gosselaar was one of the main characters.  In just a few episodes, his character faced several “life choices” and he began to make “wrong choices”.  After a few of these wrong choices, I mentally wrote him off as “a hero,”  and soon stopped watching the show, which also ended not too long after.  Your hero has to remain above the rest, or he isn’t a hero.

In old TV shows, if a wife was unfaithful to her husband, she died at the end of the episode. It didn’t matter how many redeeming qualities she had, her infraction meant death to her.