POS = Parent(s) Over Shoulder

NetLingo.com - Acronyms, IM, Text Messages, E-Mail Shorthand

Colleen challenged us tonight with "POS", a small bit of Instant Messaging (IM) shorthand that she was convinced we, as old old old people, would never figure out. Her reasoning, as a teen, was sound; Mom and Dad are in their just-70's, Karen and I are in our early 40's, and Bob and Karen are in their late 30's. None of us are IM-users.

But she misunderestimated her old man, the Google-junkie. As soon as we got home, I tried Googling "im+shorthand+POS" and learned that POS means "Parent(s) over Shoulder."

Of course, Colleen contends that I cheated. But with the collected (if un-collated) knowledge of all of society at my finger tips...

The link at the top of this entry, by the way, though most useful, was not the source of the solution. It is, however, a large lexicon of IM shorthand so I have book-marked it for future reference.

Who Knew?

Well. It turns out that there is a World Rock Paper Scissors Society and the world championship is later this month in Toronto! I always knew I qualified for at least one world-class sport!

My Commute

Some time back, I was interviewed for a local publication on the subject of commuting. I commute about 45 minutes each way, from Lewes to Dover, in Delaware. Asked why that didn't bother me, I explained how low-impact my commute is, in terms of traffic, and added an off-hand remark about the "zen" of the commute. Maybe this is what I was thinking about...

Dawn, Delaware Route 1

This is a shot from a slightly foggy morning the other day. Delaware is a flat place, but it can be beautiful.

Coast Day, 2004

Christina and the fish-petting tank.

We took a few hours today to enjoy Coast Day, at the University of Delaware's College of Marine Studies campus in Lewes. Karen was there to help premier The Piping Plover Suite as part of the Cape Henlopen Community Band. The girls and I were in the audience for that, then wandered around a bit.

As you can see, checking out the fish -- closely -- is a favorite for Christina. She seems drawn to biological sciences, though she would deny it. She particularly enjoys the small sand sharks in the fish tanks at Coast Day.


The Kalmar Nyckel, Delaware's Tall Ship.

After the fish tanks, Christina and I visited the various ships that were open for tours in the harbor. The photo above is the Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of the ship that brought some of Delaware's earliest settlers, from Sweden, in 1638. Ironically, this is the one ship that we did not visit; the line is always too too long, and we've been on her before. This photo is from the bridge of the Delriver, an oil skimmer.

Another Sign of the Seasons' Change...

This is how I always think of Steve Seyfried!

Today I re-edited the web site of The Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre to remove specific references to the summer of 2004 and start planting seeds for the summer of 2005.

That's Steve, one of the founders of the Theatre, onstage in The Wizard of Oz this past summer with Monica Moran, a wonderful performer who works for the Children's Theatre in the summer and for Steve and Elise (his wife and the co-founder) and their Duet Productions and Family Stages, in the off-season.

The Children's Theatre web site is one of my pet projects. I'm also the Chair of the Theatre Board of Trustees (anyone want to take over the chair? Please?). It's a rewarding activity.

I'll Defer to Josh Marshall's Analysis of the Debate (For Now)

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Marshall is a good analyst and he's been watching this stuff critically for a while. My gut reaction was that the debate was a big win for Kerry, but I'm biased.

Josh Marshall's first-reaction analysis was that, given that much of Bush's lead lately has been from tearing Kerry down and making him look foolish, the fact that Kerry looked so strong -- and kept the initiative -- means that this debate may make a big difference to Kerry.

I hope so.

Book Review: Good Omens

Good Omens is a novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett that follows the efforts of a motley crew angels, devils, apocalyptic horsemen/bikers and witchfinders to (variously) avert, cause, take part in, or figure out the apocalypse. It has good and evil, lots of biblical references, and a total screw-up of Armageddon. Funny.

The book came out back in 1990. I stumbled on it at a book wholesaler and decided to take a look. I'd read and enjoyed books by Gaiman (American Gods and Neverwhere) and had heard of Pratchett (I may have read some of his stuff; I have a leaky memory for light novels), so why not?

I have also found word that Good Omens is a movie project, if on hold, for Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python alumnus and director of Time Bandits and Brazil (two of my movie favorites). I like what Gilliam had to say in an interview with SCI FI Wire about why the Good Omens movie has been hard to get financing for:

"Unfortunately, I think our timing was rather bad, because we turned up in Hollywood in November of 2001 talking about a comedy film about the apocalypse. That was just bad timing."

No doubt. Still, I hope the film gets made. There's not enough of this sort of silliness around. I think silliness might be a help, or at least a relief, right now.

We Really Should be Ashamed of This

"NOTICE," the first few lines of the sign read, "This business is 100 percent American owned. Unlike some businesses we pay ALL taxes including Social Security."

This is from a story in today's Salisbury Daily Times (mirrored in the Wilmington News Journal) about a sign in the window of the State Line Cigarette Outlet on Route 13, in Delmar. According to the article, the sign appears to refer to a competing store that was recently purchased by a family of American citizens of Indian extraction.

The State Line folks said they were frustrated that "some businesses get exemptions from certain taxes because they employ people from other countries. " Yet, according to the article, that's not an exemption that applies in this case.

So, what's going on here? I think the bottom line may have best been expressed by this guy:

"I think it's great," Delmar resident Jim Shuler said. "A lot of businesses around here are being bought out by foreigners and if I know if a business is being run by one, I won't spend a dollar there."

But these are American citizens. None of us, except folks of Native-American extraction, would be here if "foreigners" hadn't come here.

We need to call-out this sort of behavior and show our disapproval. It's not a legal issue; it's an issue of integrity and respect.

The owners of State Line Cigarette Outlet have let us all down.

Good, Good, Good Vibrations

So. I'm sitting here listening to a free audio stream of Brian Wilson's Smile album, which is due for release on 9/28/04. Thanks go out to Ryan Cormier, of the News Journal, for the link idea. It's pretty clear that I'll be snapping this record up as soon as it gets to the stores.

There was a report on the (re)making of this record this afternoon on NPR. I remember Wilson's work with the Beach Boys of my childhood, in the 60s and 70s. I never, at that time, had a clue as to what was happening in the background. Brian Wilson is a fascinating figure.

If you have missed the Brian Wilson story, the Cliff Notes version is that Wilson, the musical force behind the Beach Boys, came to feel trapped making poppy surf-music for a very commercial franchise-band. He'd started breaking out of the mold and managed to record some gems (Good Vibrations) and had made real progress on Smile. The record company and his band-mates didn't dig it and it was shelved. Wilson shortly there-after slide into a breakdown and was out of commission for quite a while. Over the last almost 40 years, the Smile album has become a legend; the lost album that promised so much.

I remember when Brian Wilson started to come back into focus. In 1994, Wilson and his Daughter Carnie were featured on Rob Wasserman's Trios album on a haunting track (that I think Wilson wrote) called "Fantasy Is Reality/Bells Of Madness." Remember, at this point he was just starting to reappear after a long struggle out of serious mental illness.

Since then, Brian Wilson has been rising back to a spot fairly high on the scale of serious pop music. He's gained the respect of a new generation of music lovers who heard his early work as "oldies" or "classic rock." Now we know how much more he can do.

A while back, he presented a concert version of Pet Sounds, the album that gave us Wouldn't It Be Nice and Sloop John B. Earlier this year he did the same with Smile and soon it'll be in the stores!

Downtown Dover is a Good Example

So I had my camera with me in downtown Dover, Delaware, this evening and had a chance to snap a few shots of some of my favorite spots. I was helping staff an event at the Schwartz Center with Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner. She signed an executive order approving the State Strategies for Policies and Spending that I've been working on the GIS mapping side of for the last year or so, and released a guidebook called Better Models for Development in Delaware that goes nicely with the Strategies. It was a satisfying event and brings a close to a long, hard, but fascinating chapter at work.

This is a sidewalk on The Green, an historic town square in downtown Dover. This is just a block from the Schwartz Center.


This is Wesley Methodist Church on State Street, in Dover, as seen from the stairway in the Schwartz Center. 

Of course, a major point of the Strategies and the Better Models book is to show that -- as Ed McMahon, who wrote Better Models for us, puts it -- we have hundreds of years of examples of how to build places to live. They are called towns.

We should build more like this.