Author: NewMexiKen

Two Buck Chuck

There’s been lively discussion about Charles Shaw wines of late (perchance made more lively by some very active partakers of the wine). If you find yourself wondering what’s all the fuss about, you’re not alone. Charles Shaw is actually a table wine—a nice, easy drinking wine sold exclusively at Trader Joe’s stores. The real draw for this wine is its rather humble price tag. The price is so low, some have deemed it “Two Buck Chuck.” We’ll get into the pricing later as not all of our stores are able to have that wondrous $1.99 price.

The Buzz About Charles Shaw Wines from the Trader Joe’s website.

It’s “Three Buck Chuck” in New Mexico, but I’d say about the best $3 wine you can find that comes in a bottle with a cork. And, while there’s only one Trader Joe’s in New Mexico for the moment — in Santa Fe, of course — another is opening this winter in Albuquerque.

Comcast, the Ma Bell of the 21st century

If you were being generous, you could look at it as a refreshing break from the usual corporate sterility. But LaChaina Govan was not feeling generous. She’d been having lot of trouble with Comcast and she knew when she received her August bill from the cable company, addressed to “Bitch Dog,” no whimsy was intended. Govan’s bill arrived after she called at least a dozen times to complain about lousy service. After being transferred all over the place and being treated rudely on a routine basis, she complained about that. Then the bill came. Comcast finally stepped in, tracking down and firing the perps, making an official apology and offering Govan a couple of months on the house. She declined the offer.

From Wired News

Cheating

When NewMexiKen visits Mack, the oldest of The Sweeties (he’ll be five in December), the first thing out of his mouth is, “Can we play Dragon Tales?” Dragon Tales is a television program for little kids, animated as they all are. Like most of these programs it has an on-line presence with stuff about the show, pages you can print and color, and games. And it was this particular program and its particular games where I first let Mack play with my laptop. (He has enviable skill with the touchpad.)

While Mack still usually starts each session with the original Dragon Tales, he now often takes a look at sites for other shows and their games. Among his favorite are games which are played like the card game Concentration. Cards are turned face down; you turn them over two at a time to see if you can remember which is which and find the two that match. The on-line games for little children keep this simple with maybe only eight or ten pairs. Still I have marvelled as four-year-old Mack does exceptionally well finding the pairs.

Recently he advanced to a real game with 25 pairs of animals printed on one side of wooden cards. He did very well at first, competitive even with his parents. Then he began to beat his mother 14-11, 15-10, etc., and she was trying. This frustrated her, as one might think. She asked Mack how he did it. I mean, he was matching animals she didn’t even think he’d even seen at that point in the game. Short answer — it seems Mack had memorized the grain patterns on the back of the wooden cards.

Clearly a clever little boy. What I can’t figure out is how come a kid this smart has never thought to ask his parents to play computer games on their computers. He thinks mine has an exclusive.

Birthday boys and girls

Shelley Winters is 85 today. Ms. Winters has won two Oscars, both for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She won in 1960 for The Diary of Anne Frank and again in 1966 for A Patch of Blue. She was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 1952 for A Place in the Sun and nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1973 for The Poseidon Adventure.

Robert Redford is 68 today. Redford won the Best Director Oscar for Ordinary People (1981), and was nominated for that award again for Quiz Show (1995). He was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for The Sting (1974).

Rosalynn Carter is 78 today.

Patrick Swayze is 53; Edward Norton 36.

Roberto Clemente should be 71.

Meriwether Lewis

… was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday 200 years ago today, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with the knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.

(This entry was originally posted a year ago.)

Cape Hatteras National Seashore

… was authorized on this date in 1937. The National Park Service tells us:

Hatteras.jpgStretched over 70 miles of barrier islands, Cape Hatteras National Seashore is a fascinating combination of natural and cultural resources, and provides a wide variety of recreational opportunities. Once dubbed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for its treacherous currents, shoals, and storms, Cape Hatteras has a wealth of history relating to shipwrecks, lighthouses, and the U.S. Lifesaving Service. These dynamic islands provide a variety of habitats and are a valuable wintering area for migrating waterfowl. The park’s fishing and surfing are considered the best on the east coast.

Acting the part

Robert De Niro is 62 today. De Niro has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar five times, winning for Raging Bull in 1981. He also won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role as the young Vito Corleone in Godfather II. De Niro’s nominations were for Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Awakenings and Cape Fear.

Sean Penn is 45 today. Penn has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar four times, winning last year for Mystic River. Penn’s other nominations were for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown and I Am Sam.

And actress Maureen O’Hara is 85 today. Once voted one of the five most beautiful women in the world, Miss O’Hara is proabably best known now as Natalie Wood’s unbelieving mother in the classic Miracle on 34th Street; or perhaps as Esmeralda to Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll

Late last year Rolling Stone released its list of the 500 Greatest Songs — “the greatest rock & roll songs of all time, chosen by a five-star jury of singers, musicians, producers, industry figures, critics and, of course, songwriters.” While the 500 is far from satisfactory in many ways, being obsessive NewMexiKen began to see how many of the 500 I had, then how many more I could acquire.

As of today it’s 499 — all acquired through perfectly legal means I hasten to add. Most are directly from CD; others are from iTunes. Among the most difficult was “96 Tears” (#210), which only recently became available on CD for the very first time (and at iTunes). Today’s addition was Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” (#403). Cochran’s greatest hits compilation was not the first CD I’ve bought just to get one tune. Though Cochran has two tunes on the 500, I had a copy of “Summertime Blues” (#73).

And the 500th song, the one I still need — “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll,” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (#484).

Fess Parker

… is 81 today. Check out the Davy Crockett/Disney 50th Anniversary Celebration at the Fess Parker Winery.

Parker and NewMexiKen have at least one thing in common. We had the same Russian language professor in college; Parker at Texas, NewMexiKen at Arizona. He was Professor Arthur Coleman and, as I remember it, he was the very first American Ph.D. ever in Slavic languages. By the time he showed up at Arizona in the early 1960s, Coleman was more-or-less retired, staying just one year as a visiting professor — as much character as educator, which is why we learned he’d taught Fess Parker.

The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind

From The New Mexican:

The state Judicial Standards Commission director on Monday took possession of scores of Santa Fe Municipal Court documents found blowing down the street in front of the court building.

The documents, which included personal information about court defendants and records detailing bank deposits in a Municipal Court account, stretched from a trash bin outside the Santa Fe Police Department, past the city court building and nearly a block to Airport Road.

“How those got there and when they were disposed of, we have no way to tell,” Santa Fe Police Chief Beverly Lennen said.

The debris included citations containing personal information about those who had been cited, including names, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

What does the police chief mean, “no way to tell”? NewMexiKen assumes this is violation of some city or state privacy law; that is, a crime has been committed. Who would have access to the records? Whose job is it to dispose of them (or not to dispose of them, as the case may be)? It’s not as if this is just littering.

Blogging — like crack for geeks

NewMexiKen continues to play with the software and design of the weblog formerly known as NewMexiKen. (The Betty Ford Clinic denied my application for treatment.)

For some time I had wanted to migrate from Movable Type (cumbersome) to Word Press (efficient, “free and priceless”). That has been done and — no small thing — the 5,844 permanent links seem to work. There remains the cleanup — developing an attractive design, fixing the remaining conversion bugs. From Blogger to Movable Type to Word Press — NewMexiKen has seen the inside of a lot of software.

So much for my hobby; now yours — cruising the web looking for “a little bit about a lot of things” and photos of The Sweeties. I may see something so fascinating it just demands to be blogged about, but I doubt there will be any resumption of full-time blogging anytime soon.

That’s All Folks!

NewMexiKen began two years ago, August 4, 2003.

More than 5,800 entries later, it’s time to move on.

I’m certain I will miss blogging — miss it a lot — but going at it day-in-and-day-out is no longer rewarding. And, for me, it’s better to stop altogether than it would be to continue by posting entries once in awhile.

Thanks for more than 400,000 visits and nearly 1.5 million page views.

The NewMexiKen archives will be around for awhile.

newmexiken at gmail dot com

Larger than life

An essay in The New York Times assesses “Mother Nature’s Blockbusters” — beauty vs. the sublime. (Thanks to Veronica for the pointer.)

Museums may display what man has made of nature, but these parks and preserves display what nature has made of itself. Works of culture transform nature; they picture it, use it, abstract from it. One is humbled by the Canadian Rockies and Glacier National Park in Montana because nature doesn’t return the compliment. It makes nothing of culture; it looms over it, declaring its supreme autonomy and power.

While an article in the Los Angeles Times tells of the nature of the beast.

A chilling race transforms a couple’s 10-day rafting trip through Alaska’s Arctic wildlife refuge. Their exclusive story drops us into the path of a grizzly intent upon only one thing — its prey.

I’m swearing off

Bad to the Last Drop from The New York Times (excerpts).

In 2004, Americans, on average, drank 24 gallons of bottled water, making it second only to carbonated soft drinks in popularity. Furthermore, consumption of bottled water is growing more quickly than that of soft drinks and has more than doubled in the past decade. This year, Americans will spend around $9.8 billion on bottled water, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.

Ounce for ounce, it costs more than gasoline, even at today’s high gasoline prices; depending on the brand, it costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water. Globally, bottled water is now a $46 billion industry. Why has it become so popular?

It cannot be the taste, since most people cannot tell the difference in a blind tasting. …

Nor is there any health or nutritional benefit to drinking bottled water over tap water….but tap water is more stringently monitored and tightly regulated than bottled water. …

But despite its association with purity and cleanliness, bottled water is bad for the environment. It is shipped at vast expense from one part of the world to another, is then kept refrigerated before sale, and causes huge numbers of plastic bottles to go into landfills.

In the news

Joel Achenbach, with all the news you need to know:

President Bush has taken advantage of the Senate recess to appoint John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations. He has also appointed his daughters, Barbara and Jenna, as ambassadors to the Turks and Caicos, respectively. He is considering using his powers to enact a “recess tax cut” on the wealthy, but denies rumors that he is on the verge of a “recess invasion” of Cuba.

Oil prices spiked to 61 dollars a barrel on the news [of King Fahd’s death], though I know a place in Virginia where you can still get it for just 57. It’s worth the drive.

My own strategy for dealing with gas prices is to put $20 in the car every time I go to the gas station. That way, gas prices are steady. They do not fluctuate in the slightest. Why no one else has caught onto this, and why the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy refuses to take my calls, is a mystery.

Vehicle museum

FirstWheel.jpg

This was the sign describing the first exhibit of the Car and Carriage Museum at Luray Caverns. It is a free side attraction (the cavern is pretty cool), but has a surprisingly rich collection of early twentieth century automobiles.

NewMexiKen was disappointed, however, to see that the “first true wheel” was simply a reproduction.

Today, August 1

William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, was born on this date in 1770. He died in 1838. Here is Clark’s entry in the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition on his 35th birthday:

A fine day Capt. Lewis left me at 8 oClock just below the place I entered a verrey high mountain which jutted its tremedious Clifts on either Side for 9 Miles, the rocks ragide Some verry dark & other part verry light rock the light rocks is Sand Stone. The water Swift & very Sholey. I killed a Ibix on which the whole party Dined, after passing through the Mountain we entered a wide extesive vallie of from 4 to 8 Miles wide verry leavell a Creek falls in at the Commencement of this Vallie on the Lard Side, the river widens & spreds into Small Chanels. W[e] encamped on the Lard Side opposit a large Creek I sent out Jo: & R fields to hunt this evening they killed 5 Deer, I saw a large Bear eateing Currents this evining The river so rapid that the greatest exertion is required by all to get the boats on wind S W Murckery at sun rise 50° Ab. 0

Francis Scott Key was born on this date in 1779.

Richard Henry Dana in 1815.

Herman Melville in 1819.

Robert Todd Lincoln, the first child of Abraham Lincoln and the only one to survive to adulthood, was born on this date in 1843. He died in 1926. (Lincoln’s son Eddie was born in 1846 and died in 1850. Son Willie died at age 12 in 1862. Son Tad (Thomas) died at age 18 in 1871.)

Jerry Garcia was born on this date in 1942. He died in 1995.