Author: RTOlson

Last Saturday, I was in quite a rush to get some VHS tapes and DVDs to my friends and family. It seems the U.S. Postal Service was in a rush too — my sister in Berkeley and my friend in Connecticut both received their packages on Monday.

That’s technically one business day after I sent the item. It’s practically overnight delivery — albeit with a Sunday in between.

I’m impressed. I’m slightly less impressed with my own response time — two of my friends got tapes of shows that aired last spring. Oh well, my sister is able to catch up with the new season of Battlestar Galactica that aired until a few weeks ago.

I’m worried that the TV comedy “Arrested Development” will sink further into the abyss by moving from the cushy post-Simpsons Sunday spot to Monday night. They’re trying to make fun of it with ads of the cast trying to make “Monday” a curse word.

They’re probably going to “monday” themselves in the foot. After two years, the show has had a hard time trying to find an audience for their quirky brand of humor. The ad does nothing to convey that.

Floundering tech — I was trying to access [adult swim]’s Friday Night Fix, featuring streaming episodes of their top shows and new premieres. I quickly hit a snag — the streaming video wouldn’t load and I couldn’t tell what technology it was using.

I think I’m hitting some technological walls with my five-year-old computer. I’m running a processor that’s two generations old and an OS that nearly no one writes for anymore.

Still it’s amazing how much I can still do with this computer.

And what a day it was. I was out of the river … working. It was my own bright idea though because I thought it would be interesting to cover one of the biggest local events of the year. In the past, tens of thousands of people showed up to float down part of the Sacramento River on Labor Day.

The police launched a crackdown this year because of the large number of law enforcement and public safety officials needed in years past. Additionally the event was becoming such a large party that it was bringing lots of people from outside the area.

I also thought that covering this in blog form could boost and enhance our offerings on Chicoer.com. So I spent all day at the bar of a restaurant by the river.

I’m kinda curious to see how well it’s received. There were some interesting comments.

Unfortunately it appears my “The river — without the crowds” slogan I used on the house ads to promote the blog came true both virtually and in reality. Instead of getting the anticipated 20,000 participants on the river, they just a small fraction of that — about 665 people.

The blog is Labor Day Live.

My thoughts go out to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It’s hard to grasp the enormity of this storm’s effect.

I’m disheartened by the news that the effort to try to patch the levees didn’t materialize when expected. Amid all the footage on CNN, I didn’t see any shots of helicopters dropping the 3,000-pound sandbags into place. Now we know why — the helicopters were apparently diverted for search and rescue.

I hope they can get those levees patched and staunch the horrendous flooding affecting the Crescent City.

Must be late at night, but I thought this to be a pretty awful way to tout one’s product.

“Your local newspaper. We write good.”

Now it’s official, Jeff died from the injuries he sustained in the crash, which apparently happened Saturday morning.

Word from Garrett is that my former co-worker and current Daily Mining Gazette sports editor Jeff Arnold has been critically injured in a car accident on Friday. The last update indicated that things aren’t going to turn out well, but I’m waiting for more information.

It’s way too soon for this energetic man to be leaving us. I’m in shock, especially because this is the second car accident involving a Gazette staffer this summer (the other put the paper’s intern into a coma).

Like many sportswriters, he had passion and a loud, yet almost comforting, presence in the newsroom. His love of Chicago and its teams were second to none. He always seemed confident and knowledgeable no matter which sport he was covering — the hockey game in Calumet or slow-pitch senior softball or any other sport rural Michigan could come up with.

He was also willing to learn new things. He was extremely patient as I helped him clean up the first sports front he laid out while Barry was on vacation.

I didn’t hang out with Jeff all that much, but it was fun tossing back beers with him and Will at Nutini’s or the Downtowner on a Friday night. I remember that his tradition was to enjoy a juicy steak downtown on Sundays. I saw him a couple of times enjoying his steak at Armandos watching the game on the TV.

It’s funny. There’s people that you say farewell to and hope to meet again. Jeff is definitely on that list.

It was sad to log on tonight and discover that Peter Jennings has died. Like all of the big network news anchors, he was a landmark where many people tuned to get their daily dose of information. They were certainly the faces that I grew up with and now they’re fading away.

He will be missed.