The Andrew Turnbull Web Journal Archives: September 2007-November 2007

11-28-2007: IBM in 1987

Here's a gem of video footage I came across recently: A series of one-minute IBM television commercials from twenty years ago. Rather than embedding the video on the page, I'll be merciful this time and simply link to it: YouTube - IBM Commercials January 5, 1987

[IBM: Writing to Read]

The first spot touts IBM's computer-based reading program for kindergarten students, Writing to Read. I used this exact program (on identical computers...even with identical headphones) during the 1990-91 school year. This was my first exposure to computers, and I remember liking it a lot. You'd be led in a series of routines, accompanied by sounds and graphics: "See the word 'dog.'" "Say the word 'dog.'" Eventually, I began to doubt that the computer actually "knew" whether or not I said a word as it requested, and so I refrained from doing so the next time around. Result: The program moved on to the next step as if nothing had happened. I felt so superior at the time, having outsmarted a machine at the age of five!

The next five heartwarming spots respectively elaborate on the ways small businesses can benefit from computers, demonstrate a voice-recognition project, promote the IBM PC Convertible (an early laptop computer with its own, dockable external monitor), touch upon a scientific center's computer research in composing medical images, and advertise the company's latest Wheelwriter and Quietwriter typewriters (remember those?)

[IBM: Square One TV promotion]

The last commercial is the real treat: "IBM presents a sneak preview of a television series...that makes mathematics so appealing and fun for kids, that you will want to remember its name." There's little doubt what the name of the show itself is, as a full-fledged one-minute advance promotion follows with a glorious showcase of first-season clips.

Somehow, watching this makes me wonder what exactly IBM does nowadays. They don't make personal computers anymore, having sold the operation to that Chinese company a couple years ago. They certainly don't build typewriters, and haven't in years (although you can still buy them if you really want to). They're definitely no longer underwriting Square One TV. Every commercial of theirs I've seen in recent memory spouts something vague about "e-business" in some way or another. Where that leaves the prospect of international business machines (the product) in the scope of International Business Machines (the company) I'm not sure.

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11-19-2007: College Facts and Figures

4: The number of years I spent at WVU.
116: The number of credit hours completed in college.
26: The number of credit hours transferred from other academic attempts before or concurrent with the fact.
4: The number of dorm rooms I lived in at WVU.
5: The number of roommates I lived with at WVU.
3: The number of roommates who were absolutely unbearable to live with.
3: The number of miles I had to bike between campuses whenever the PRT was down.
2: The number of majors I had at one point or another.
2: The number of classes I had to withdraw from (Calculus I, two times).
7: The approximate number of classes I took that were held in this tiny room in the Creative Arts Center basement.
0: The number of usable parking spaces provided on the downtown campus.
0: The number of meetings the Morgantown Linux User Group bothered having in early 2007.
0: The number of basketball and football games I attended while at WVU.
0: The number of riots I participated in while at WVU.

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11-13-2007: Why do Windows 95 users use Internet Explorer?

Let's face it: I'm a sucker for data. I sometimes comb through my own access logs for my own amusement; looking for user agents that deviate from the mundane.

Take the issue of Windows 95: Since very few other people still use it today, it naturally percs my interest whenever I come across a hit from such a user that wasn't my own. When this does happen, however, it invariably comes from a user agent along the lines of "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 95)."

Why on earth would a Windows 95 user install or use Internet Explorer? The most compelling incentive for using the OS in question, by far, is that you don't need to have IE installed. Internet Explorer...or more specifically, the 4.0-and-later versions...litters the system with needless tie-ins that ruin speed and stability while adding bloat. IE 5.5, the latest version available, is littered with security risks; is seven years old, and practically unusable. If you like Internet Explorer in spite of this and don't mind it being unremovably part and parcel of your system, you might as well use Windows 2000 or even XP.

Part of the reason why people in a business or academic situation would be using IE 5.5 on Windows 95 is prosaic: After making the mistake of jumping from Netscape to IE, the powers that be simply haven't bothered changing the configuration since then, and thus haven't even approached using their OS to its fullest potential.

"But I can't run Firefox!" Nonsense. Mozilla Firefox 1.5 runs just fine on Windows 95 (as long as you don't select "Import" from the "File" menu), and is a far superior browser for those with systems powerful enough to run it. Likewise, if you have a sub-233MHz system, why not consider Opera or K-Meleon instead?

There's no good reason to be stuck with a seven-year old browser if you don't have to be, or with a Netscape/Mozilla-"compatible" imitation instead of the real thing.

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11-9-2007: University Website Disclaimerama

Kelly Welnicke, my cousin at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, has dutifully maintained a personal website there for the last few years. A few days ago, however, I visited the site only to be automatically prompted with this full-page disclaimer in its place:

UWSP Content Disclaimer

You are about to browse pages created by students. These are NOT official UWSP pages.

The student myFiles web space provides students an opportunity to learn about "the web" by creating and sharing web pages of their own making.

The contents of these pages do not reflect the opinions, points-of-view, or policies of the university, any of its offices, or affiliates. The content you are about to browse solely reflects the design skills and viewpoints of the students who developed these pages.

...with a click-through link provided below.

Good grief! Whose stupid idea was this? All the points the disclaimer devotes a full page to explain are fully obvious to anyone with a brain. Only an idiot would mistake Kelly's website...or any student website...for the front page of UWSP.edu.

It's bad enough that she has to put a "UWSP Content Disclaimer" link at the bottom of each page: What prompts the institution to go to such paranoid lengths just to cover its name? West Virginia University's personal website policy was admirably laissez-faire in comparison during the four years I was hosted (and educated) there.

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11-5-2007: Halloween Report, 2007

With college now out of the way, last Wednesday marked the first Halloween in five years in which I had the privilege of standing by the door doling out candy to the kids who dared walk to our door. I actually made an attempt at keeping track of the number of visitors, but soon gave up: Circumstances have a way of doing that when, after thirty minutes of complete inactivity, thirty kids successively swamp the door in thirty seconds straight. It's as if they come in groups, or something...

It's been roughly ten years since I considered myself young enough to adorn a handmade costume (The purpose-made "costumes and smocks" sold in discount stores by the likes of Ben Cooper were always too tacky for me to fathom) and go from door to door around the block alone. That isn't to say I didn't have fun, though: Varying the doorside "acting" and vocal delivery beyond "hello, here's your candy, now get out" was more than a reward in and of itself.

As more and more of the bottom of the candy bowl became visible, I went from handing out three mini Snickers bars, to two, to one to people as the night wore on. Whatever was left over I ended up chowing down myself in the next two days. Now the question is, why don't I have a stomach ache?

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10-31-2007: The Shopping Scene, 1983

From the pages of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, one day in September some twenty-four years ago:

At left: This grocery advertisement was so large that it took six scans to capture it into the digital realm.

Although this appeared in a local paper a decade beforehand, I didn't hear about Acme Markets until the early '90s, by which point they had acquired a number of local grocery stores and chains (Am I the only one who remembers Big A Food Center?) and ultimately re-branded the stores as their own. Perhaps they operated only in Virginia before then. I honestly don't know...and unfortunately, the ad doesn't provide any locations.

Confusingly, there seem to have been quite a few different "Acme" chains operating over the years: This Acme originally hailing from Philadelphia, and this other Acme based in Akron, Ohio for starters. Where the local stores fit into this I'm even less clear about: My understanding is that the local stores were originally "affiliated" with Acme Markets of Philadelphia through the early '80s, but they may have gone "independent" after that. It didn't seem to do them very good: On a grocery trip to the local Acme store in mid-2002, the shelves were a third empty and an employee noted that the store was "refinancing" as though that were a routine thing to do. Not surprisingly, all the Acmes seemed to close as such shortly after that.

(November 5 edit: From what people tell me, this Acme chain was based in Tazewell, Virginia; having no connection to the Philadelphia chain, and Allen's and Big A were "vanity" labels of Acme's from the beginning. Oh well; retail bureaucracy is seldom simple!)

At least it's fun to reminisce about the prospect of 12¢ corn, isn't it?

At right: In the good old days when no one outside of Arkansas and Missouri had heard of Wal-Mart, your discount department store options in this pocket of the woods were in the leagues of K Mart, Hills, Hecks...and Roses.

To be honest, I never was a fan of Roses as a kid. The store seemed a lot less fun and exciting to visit than trips to K Mart or Hills. In terms of merchandise quality, the prospect of no-name vinyl "jogger" shoes retailing for only $7.50 a pair doesn't exactly inspire confidence. The tan plastic-molded shopping carts were scratchy to sit in. And, I was once scared by a Roses merchandise display at the end of an aisle cul-de-sac when I was four years old. Please don't ask.

The last 24 years have seen a bunch of changes to the retail landscape; mostly for the worse. Yet somehow, Roses holds on...I'm surprised every time I drive by and reassure myself that they're still in business. Fortunately, time is a healer: As a "retail buff" of sorts, I now get a kick out of the local Roses store's '60s/'70s-vintage appearance and decor. They no longer sell $7.50 "vinyl joggers." The fact that they got rid of the scratchy all-plastic shopping carts and (presumably) have less scary merchandise displays today definitely doesn't hurt matters, either!

At left: An advertisement for JCPenney's styling salon at the then-fairly new Mercer Mall; located incongruously in a torn, stained corner of the page.

As a product of its time, this ad is hilarious in an inadvertent kind of way. The shoulder-padded lady depicted in the photo...grinning in a display of assertive self-confidence...bears what is presumably the result of the touted "Continuum" perm on her head, thereby casting her with an resemblance uncannily similar to either a rock star or MacGyver.

Not that it matters, though: Everyone looked like that back then.

Back to the right side of the screen again. I miss Stone & Thomas...even though I never really became old enough to buy anything there.

My main recollections were of the gift-wrapping desk; the cork floor tiles; the mirrored section of the ceiling with a grid of lights; the weird, orange-painted section of the wall with circular cutouts. Oh, and also the elevated platform for the Liz Claiborne display, that seemed to inevitably attract Mom like a magnet.

Their "downfall" in the tail end of the 1990s was more than a bit disconcerting in effect: One moment, they were touting themselves as "your hometown store since 1847" as a seemingly-immortal edifice of retail; the next moment the company had ceased to exist and their stores (most of them, anyway) were bearing shiny new Elder-Beerman signs. Oh well.

Finally: Now, just what was this? The promotion is inviting enough: "Happy-go-lucky are the little guys and gals who run around lots in these fashion fun wearables from our great assortment," the ad proclaims. Sure enough, this sentence is accompanied by a depiction of a "little guy and gal" themselves...coping with the indignities of either being fixed in a staged hand-waving position, or having a telescope-like tube growing out of the eye...presumably wearing salable merchandise in either case.

About the only thing I really know about "The Paper Doll Shoppe" is that it definitely no longer exists. I suppose the percs of being "This Areas (sic) Largest Children's Department Store" aren't all that they seem...

So, that's a brief glimpse of the local shopping landscape of just under a quarter-century ago. While things have changed since then, the most crucial aspect of the experience...the ability to empty out the pocketbook...thankfully remains much the same as ever.

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10-24-2007: Seasonal Music

Since I started on the road to piecing together a music collection seven years ago, there are some albums that I listened to so often that they become inseperable from memories of points in time.

Here's a list of the titles that I most closely equate with each season of the year since then:

Summer 2000: The first of those silly "Now" compilations
Fall 2000: Barenaked Ladies - Stunt
Winter 2000-01: Genesis - Abacab
Spring 2001: The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta
Summer 2001: Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation
Fall 2001: Collective Soul - Blender
Winter 2001-02: Third Eye Blind - Blue
Spring 2002: INXS - Welcome to Wherever You Are
Summer 2002: Collective Soul - Collective Soul
Fall 2002: The B-52's - Cosmic Thing
Winter 2002-03: Genesis - Three Sides Live
Spring 2003: Chicago - 17
Summer 2003: Third Eye Blind - Out of the Vein
Fall 2003: Peter Gabriel - II
Winter 2003-04: Jethro Tull - Aqualung
Spring 2004: Herb Alpert - Rise
Summer 2004: Rush - Permanent Waves
Fall 2004: Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick
Winter 2004-05: Green Day - American Idiot
Spring 2005: Jethro Tull - Songs from the Wood
Summer 2005: Rush - Power Windows
Fall 2005: Donald Fagen - The Nightfly
Winter 2005-06: Sugar - Copper Blue
Spring 2006: Tribe - Abort
Summer 2006: Joe Jackson - Blaze of Glory
Fall 2006: Eric Johnson - Tones
Winter 2006-07: Yes - Drama
Spring 2007: Jethro Tull - Crest of a Knave
Summer 2007: Barenaked Ladies - Gordon

So, what's destined to make it to the list for fall 2007? The season isn't over yet, but I have been listening to Stevie Wonder's Original Musiquarium I a lot. On the other hand, I've rediscovered Van Halen again; ludicrousness of the band's recent status notwithstanding. All of this ought to keep me occupied unless and until Third Eye Blind finally let The Hideous Strength out the door!

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10-22-2007: Grocery stores, anyone?

Here's a link I added to my Bookmarks a few days ago: Groceteria. It's a wonderfully-designed site dedicated to the history and architecture of American grocery store chains: How's that for speciality?

I've been interested by grocery stores (and to a lesser degree, retail in general) for some time: As suppliers of a crucial commodity—food—they're edifices of a community often taken for granted. There's more variance in size, location, and features than one might expect. Stores often follow distinctive architectural styles per their respective chains' conventions, and their interiors often make my "graphic design" inclinations perc up. Nostalgia plays a hand as well, but that's only to be expected.

If you're the kind of person who was impressed by the timeclock near the entrance at Bi-Lo Foods in Morgantown...or the orange-painted checkout conveyor stands at the Hinton, WV Kroger store...this is the site for you.

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10-12-2007: Technorati, eh?

Today I signed up on Technorati: It's a dedicated "blog" search engine, and it seems like a fun way to increase the audience for this site. Ta da!

Issues, however: I think it's clear that Technorati doesn't anticipate blogs being maintained as static HTML documents with ".html" extensions, since 1) all the content in the "latest posts" section is dated to the same time; 2) the direct links to posts in the "latest posts" section incorrectly point to www.andrew-turnbull.net instead of www.andrew-turnbull.net/journal.html, and there doesn't seem to be any way to change this. Oh well...

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10-8-2007: Adieu, Technology Talk

Today in a bit of "fall cleaning," I decided to close the "Technology Talk" section of my website.

The section in question was a page of linked opinion articles on the topic of computers and technology in general, the idea of which I came up with two years ago in a fit of new ideas. It never really proved its worth, though: I found myself wanting to write things specifically for "Technology Talk" far less often than I anticipated, and since practically everything I ended up writing was in a cynical tone, the section wasn't exactly one that tended to put myself in a good mood. Eventually it became little more than a repository of links to the Web Journal itself, and proved redundant at best.

Most of the content is being maintained, however. Over half the articles were simply folded back into the Web Journal itself, while a few that I felt deserved pages of their own are linked to in the side panel at left. In any case, I'm still using Windows 95, and aren't necessarily afraid to admit it!

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10-5-2007: die, n00b?

Given that my mother thinks my "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair" shirt is "gratuitous," she'd be liable to like this even less...

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10-1-2007: 10 Years of IE 4.0

It's been ten years since Microsoft unleashed Internet Explorer 4.0 upon the world. It's definitely an event to remember, though not to celebrate.

IE 4, to be perfectly frank, was the worst web browser ever. It was buggier than a bait store; slow as molasses; as secure as a broken-down door (its features actively encouraged third-party system manipulation), and invasive as a spy. It was so problematic, assertions that it rendered other browsers unusable and required a reformat to remove were only typical of accounts at the time. And yet, it practically became a mandatory requirement for computers to use from that point on: It became bundled as a "requirement" for a large number of software titles completely unrelated to web browsing, and became an unremovable "component" of Windows itself in Windows 98.

The dominance of IE 4 didn't destroy the web as much as it destroyed the convention of how computer software worked. Ten years ago, it would have been laughable for a file manager and web browser to share the same code or interface: The two are as separate as peanut butter and sirloin steak. Nowadays, even Mac OS X and Linux shells resemble their corresponding web browsers too closely for comfort. IE 4 and the "enhanced" desktop shell (which became mandatory from Windows 98 on) ruined the convention of software being modular and only fulfilling the tasks it was designed to do. Furthermore, it introduced a trend of introducing unnecessary bloat, over-integration, and distracting interface elements into system software that shows no sign of abating today.

In "commemoration" of the occasion, Nathan Lineback created a timeline of major web browsers and significant events in the years before and since. While you can hardly accuse him of being subtle, his opinion is much the same as mine.

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9-27-2007: Nintendo Cereal System

I happened across this video clip the other day. From Ralston Purina, back in the days before they started concentrating on pet food and store-brand cereal under contract only:

Nintendo Cereal System

"Nin-ten-do! It's a cereal, wow!
Nin-ten-do! Super Mario jumps!
Nin-ten-do! In a fruit-flavored crunch!
Nin-ten-do! Here's Zelda, too!
Nin-ten-do! It's 'berry' good news!
Nin-ten-do! Mmmm, you just can't lose!
Nintendo Cereal System is a super part of this nutritious breakfast.
Nin-ten-do! Two cereals in one, wow!"

Could this be the most hilarious commercial (and bizarre tie-in this side of Nintendo eyeglass frames) ever? I'm not sure which part is better: The kids enclosed in TV screens eagerly shouting out praise of the cereals' qualities, or the mechanized voice singing the company name over and over. Great stuff.

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9-21-2007: The Forgotten Railroad Spurs of Princeton, WV

Princeton, WV railroad tracks

For years I've been curious about the railroad tracks of Princeton, West Virginia; the town and county seat six miles from my hometown of Athens. I've always been interested by rail transportation in general, and these were the closest railroad tracks I knew about.

Nowadays the main line through town is a freight line owned and operated by Norfolk Southern Corporation (née Norfolk & Western) two tracks in width. It's reduced to a single track south of the city center, although the grade accomodates two parallel tracks. What's fascinated me the most, however, are the other lines: Brief spurs that deviated from the norm to service factories and businesses. Most of these spurs were pulled up and forgotten years ago, but artifacts remain.

Map of Princeton, WV railroad tracks

Above are two images (thanks to TerraServer-USA): A topographic map from 1976, and an aerial photograph from two decades later. (Obviously, there are a few more buildings in one than the other!) The main line, once again, is shown in red, with a parallel track that runs for most of its duration around city limits highlighted in blue. Both tracks are still extant as far as I know (and visible in the unevenly-exposed 2000-vintage picture at top, facing northbound from point 1). Just north of the map they once spintered into a full-fledged switchyard of sorts complete with turntable, although nowadays the infrastucture is, shall we say, a lot simpler.

Now, the forgotten spurs: The green line peeled off from the blue one, crossed over Brush Creek, and ran parallel to a creek bed for a short distance. It crossed over a residential street at point 2, where an old Railroad Crossing sign still stood as of the time I took the photo in late 2000. This has disappeared since then, however, and there's practically no other evidence that a track once crossed at that point: The pavement is level, and the grade itself disappears into the brambly swamp that surrounds it.

Another spur (shown in purple) once split off from this to service points a few blocks south, in an industrial section of town, although I've admittedly never checked out this area in person for railroad track artifacts.

On the other side of the main line is the spur shown in dark blue. The track crossed 2nd Street at point 3 complete with a Railroad Crossing sign as of the last time I ventured that way, although the track itself was no longer in service and didn't even seem to exist any more to either side of the street.

The teal track is the real mystery, not least because I haven't found it illustrated on any maps! Nevertheless, this spur did exist, and I remember crossing over it at point 4 practically every time we went shopping when I was a kid. Back in the late '80s when those particular memories were being set down, the spur had already fallen into decommission: The track existed north of Brick Street (the aforementioned point 4); however, the actual crossing was paved over (although a redundant Railroad Crossing sign remained), and the track on the other side of the street had been pulled up entirely; disappearing into Douglas Sporting Goods' gravel lot. One time in about 1992 I went on a walk behind the now-defunct Roma III restaurant (the purple square in between the track and stream on the map) and discovered a bunch of exhumed railroad ties, lined up on what was once ostensibly the grade.

Since then, the remaining artifacts have largely disappeared: The track north of Brick Street was pulled up, with the gravel-lined grade largely overgrown; the Railroad Crossing sign was removed, and the bump in the pavement where the tracks once crossed disappeared several resurfacings later. Nevertheless, a railroad grade is still discernable from aerial photographs, and it's definitely something I haven't forgotten!

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9-12-2007: No Longer Open?

One of the lesser perils of living in West Virginia is coping with asinine attempts at government self-promotion.

On that note, take the slogan that has defaced the welcome signs into the state for the last year or two: West Virginia, Open for Business. Seriously. Even a committee couldn't have picked a stranger and more clinical way to "welcome" people into the state.

Although touted by the Governor as an allegory for "important and positive changes" and "exciting economic news," the slogan's reception throughout the state has been almost unanimously negative, if the sheer number of editorials about the issue is any indication. I imagine that sheer resistance alone is the only reason why it hasn't made its way to the license plate yet.

Well, it seems that this could all be relegated to a blunder of the past before long. Governor Manchin (or more precisely, his spokesperson) now claims that his "Open" slogan was nothing more than a "temporary" aberration, and residents are now being invited to suggest their own slogan (or lack thereof) online.

So, what to suggest? "Wild, Wonderful" is too easy. "Mountain State?" "Where the West Begins?" How about something more original, like "Appalachian Apogee," or "Mountain Masterpiece," or something? I could suggest "Land of Telemarketers, Strip Mines, and Socially-Conservative People," but I somehow don't think that would be too popular...

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9-4-2007: Party Time

I have no qualms about not having to go back to WVU this fall. Not only is a new president now at the healm, but the place now has this headline to cope with as well. Such a survey is subjective and unscientific at best and my first instinct is to disregard it altogether, but other students seem to regard this dubious news as a stamp of honor: The "I go to the Number one party school in america" (sic) Facebook group now has a tally of members at WVU four times the population of my hometown.

I don't like partying, and if the axe-grinding I had with three out of five roommates my freshman and sophomore years was any indication, I don't like people who party either. I'd much rather spend a quiet weekend evening alone than in some filthy downtown bar with people I don't even know drinking flavorless swill purely for the sake of getting drunk. Then again, I didn't make many friends either way...

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