QuesoGuapo

ABC’s Nightline is planning to read all the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq Friday. (BBC story). It’s a fitting tribute to those killed overseas during this war/occupation, and I would probably be hard-pressed to find people opposed to it.

One questions concerns me: How does the honoring of servicemen and women killed in action by playing their stories, pictures and lives over our newspapers and TV screens differ from those photos of the coffins released last week? (BBC story).

The U.S. government has said the restrictions on media coverage of the return of war dead to the U.S. was imposed to respect the privacy of the victim’s families. I can understand this desire, but there’s no right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution.

Bottom line, you have two competing rights here that aren’t enumerated in the Constitution. They include a right to privacy and a right to access the government by the people (and the media).

I think the government fails in this case. There’s absolutely no way to discern the individual identity of each coffin while there is a vital public interest in seeing the government’s execution of the war effort.

Unfortunately, we have an administration that’s more concerned about controlling information rather than let the people have access (except when it suits their political ends).

Sadly, the Bush White House’s on-going enforcement of a 1991 policy is just the latest in a series of concealment that goes back four years (over 30 if you count Bush’s duck on the National Guard issue).

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A side note: Things have been extremely hectic over the three weeks. New leadership at work and a brief vacation on top of regular duties have just got everything out of whack. Sadly, blogging is one of the first things to go.

There’s a post related to the Gazette winning awards on the primary homepage.

It’s been a crazy week at work, and I might tell a few stories in a little bit. For now, I’d like to indulge in a little external introspection.

A year ago, I was king. I ego-search for my name every once in a while — just for kicks — and I’m disappointed about how far I’ve fallen.

For a long time, I was numero uno (or at least on the first few pages) whenever anyone looked for my name (Ryan Olson) on Google. That wasn’t even my blog — it was my lonely GeoCities page that I essentially dropped when Yahoo! dropped FTP access. Sadly those days are no more.

I was on top of the heap, top dog, and now where am I at? My first hit comes at around 107 (for a Picnic Day message I wrote four years ago). My oh-so-new RTOmedia.com clocks in at around 656 out of 6,890 hits. BTW, kudos to Gimpysoft — that Ryan’s all over the place.

Now what’s sadder — the fact that I rank so lowly in Google, or the fact that I’m whining about it?

So for now if anyone (and to be honest I don’t know who) trying to find my site wouldn’t go that route. I guess the one sense that I do get from digging through all those Ryan Olsons — that range from athletes to programmers to possible offenders — is the sense of wonder at how many different lives people with the same name are living. Of course they’re not me, but there’s a common bond solely because of the same name. That’s been addressed in an episode of This American Life.

As I filter through the chaff of the other Ryans to find the wheat-y identity of myself, I come upon a few reminders of my past which stir emotions and deep memories that I don’t often dwell on.

Some of the hits are off beat — like Pep Band articles or meeting minutes of a story I covered. Still some are reminders of how utterly forgettable I am — a comments page of a former collegiate newspaper colleague has my identity mistaken with another. Yet still others are reminders of dark chapters — some message archive included some comments about decisions that were made at the Guardian.

It’s those memories that upset me the most. I, like many others I think, have developed a positive version of themselves. These links to the past are reminders that we are not infallible. It’s definitely a different perspective and one I’m not all that comfortable with at times.

Inspired by Homer Simpson’s insipid (yet catchy) method of avoiding phone callers, my latest iTunes music store purchase is
Wichita Lineman
by Dwight Yoakam. To avoid confronting someone on the phone, Homer pretended to be an automated phone system and he sung Wichita Lineman as the background music.

That’s one code down, 23 more free songs to be redeemed. I’ve got two more caps at home waiting to be registered so I can buy 18 more Pepsi colas before the 31st.

I had a really good show this morning at WMTU. Everything just seemed to click — perhaps that’s how things go when I get more than 4.5 hours of sleep before the show.

Anyway, I was so revved I did a “mostly vinyl, mostly ’80s” hour at 9 a.m. Things were going well, but swapping and cueing records is a lot harder than slipping CDs in and out of the drives. I was literally on the edge of my seat because I wasn’t sure that I would get the records changed in time (and I didn’t once or twice).

So, here’s some random things on my mind today:

• One vexing thing about the studio is the addition of the tinest keyboard in the world. It’s a mini-keyboard that’s able to fit in front of the controls. However, the keys are so small and indistiguishable among each other, that I type everything wrong unless I’m paying total attention to typing. It’s a pain in the neck and I was tempted to bring my own keyboard in this morning …

• Throughout the morning, I was relaying the news that MTU President Curt Tompkins was fired. I think the news is signifigant — I did note only modest regret when I was talking to people around campus. Many of the seem very willing for some change and praised Interim President Glenn Mroz’s leadership abilities. I’m hoping for the best and I wish the best for Tompkins — he was always cordial during interviews.

• While it was the last day for Tompkins, it was also the last day for Managing Editor Bruce Heisel and News Editor Cathy Mason at The Daily Mining Gazette. It’s almost like a sign — someone joked around referring to the old myth that “things happen in threes.”

• Speaking of threes, I added three new Pepsi-iTunes codes. I really need to start figuring out what music I’m going to get with those credits.

I don’t normally write about work for numerous reasons. It’s not because it’s not interesting, I don’t want to do anything unprofessional or against company policy. However, there’s one thing on the Gazette Web site this morning that disappointed me. It underscores the need to make sure the right hand knows what the left is doing.

Friday, I covered the Michigan Tech University Board of Control firing President Curt Tompkins. Obviously the dismissal of the head of the area’s largest employer is big news. So my editor gave me the go-ahead to put all the stories on the Web (in part to beat WLUC Channel 6 to break the story). We beat them by 6 minutes on the Web.

OK, I’ve very thankful to post the full stories online (another story, another time). We don’t have a specific way of handling “breaking news” on the Web site, but I’ve developed a special area above the main story zone on the Web site. I think it’s worked very well over the past year. I did the same thing Friday, but the updated versions of the stories (and their headlines) wouldn’t be ready until the paper’s done.

I couldn’t be there at the end (after all, I had a 14-hour day), but I created the pages for the Web editor to update and put online. I didn’t leave any sort of note — I though the big red “breaking news” at the top of the page would be enough for the Web editor to see where the Tompkins story went. In hindsight, I should’ve left a note.

Here’s what I saw this morning:

Further on down the page, the stories from the print edition were in the regular layout. In my mind, that’s obviously incomplete (with the story description missing) and should be corrected (which I did). I guess the mistake is easy enough to make — it’s a unusual addition to the site.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose.

Apparently one of the hosts of Entertainment Tonight is marrying a show host from HGTV, according to the AP. (TV hosts Goen, Curan marry in L.A., via Salon.com)

Hopefully we can expect extraordinarily handsome children with an obsessive fixation on Hollywood stars and their gardens. …

Just added 5 more iTunes Music Storecodes to my collection. I believe that brings my total to about 21 songs available for me to download (minus the two songs I’ve already downloaded). There’s a week and a half to get more codes (up to 177 songs for my e-mail account). I don’t think I’ll buy that much Pepsi though.

Oh, by the way, I’m a tilter.

There’s some weird virus stuff going around. There’s a spoofed message supposedly from me on my Yahoo! Group. Just minutes after I posted a legitimate message, there was a message “from me” that contained W32.Beagle.H@mm

It’s very odd — especially because it wasn’t attached to my original message. I think it’s the virus problems that Yahoo! has posted warnings about. Perhaps there’s an automatic spammer out there that can somehow post to Yahoo!Groups using a previous message as a carrier.

I don’t think it’s me per se because — a) I’m using a Mac, b) I was posting using the Yahoo!Groups Web site (meaning I was using my Web browser [Mozilla] and not my e-mail client [Eudora]) and c) I don’t send any messages with my alumni.ucsd.edu address (it’s a vanity address that redirects messages to my primary Yahoo! account). In fact, I don’t even have my UCSD Alumni username in my Eudora prefs whatsoever.

I’ll admit that that’s not a guarantee that it’s not me but given the total lack of Microsoft products in the equation, I’m not the most targeted mark in the book. There’s that and the fact that this specific worm doesn’t infect Mac, according to Symantec.

Post contains content from an e-mail I wrote in response to the matter

I don’t know if I’m being economical or just a little low-brow. I was at a hockey fund-raiser called Pigs-n-Heat in Calumet. After the game, I wandered through the stands sorting through bottles of Pepsi fo winning iTunes caps. I collected about 12 of ’em.

The $12 value of the bottles outstrips the $5 donation that I voluntarily made for the fund-raiser (I got there about halfway through the game). The police lost to the fire fighters in overtime. It was a fun event.

I also wanted to note for the record that I think I’ve received inputted about 18 iTunes codes so far (first three, then five and then 10 tonight). I just want to make sure I keep track of the songs because there’s no easy way of doing it on iTunes. (BTW – I’ve also used two codes – for Randy Newman’s I Love LA and Outkast’s Hey Ya!).