This is how it sounds outside of our house tonight.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/SEP/peepers.mp3]What don’t you hear? If you don’t know, click here.
Year: 2008
FBOFW
Lynn Johnston has finished her comic strip “For Better Or For Worse.” It’s now a somewhat ironic title, given that Lynn and her husband are divorcing, but she didn’t call the strip “Till Death Do Us Part.”
I enjoyed FBOFW very much for a long time, but my interest petered out towards the end. Eric hit the spot when he described it as having turned into a “chicken soup for the soul sort of thing.”
Johnston belongs to what I believe is pretty much the last generation of syndicated newspaper comic strip creators. For better or for worse, the great, grand age of print media is over, having been replaced by electronic media.
I scanned the last daily and Sunday installments of FBOFW from the Boston Globe. I for one still get home delivered newspapers, but I have to admit I don’t jump on them right away like I used to, because I get most of my news online and from NPR.
Johnston owes something to Sparky Schulz, and she has expressed that gratitude elsewhere, but it would have been nice for her to acknowledge it in her last Sunday panel.
Arthur Godfrey at 105
DogRat regular Jan, who is a devoted fan of Arthur Godfrey, points out that August 31 would have been his 105th birthday. In recognition of this, here is Godfrey in a 1951 appearance on “What’s My Line.”
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/AUG/ArthurGodfrey.flv 440 330]
I have found a connection between Arthur Godfrey and Petula Clark, in the person of Rod McKuen, Pet’s longtime friend and sometimes colllaborator. McKuen appeared on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts around 1956.
[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2008/AUG/McKuen.flv 440 330]
Meet Joe Motocross
Monte Schulz pointed out here on DogRat last year, that his brother Craig — and only Craig — was a dirt bike rider. Once again I refer you to the Coffee Lane portion of the documentary “Good Ol’ Charles Schulz,” where you can see both Craig and Monte.
Craig has an article in the October ’08 Racer X Illustrated, and he tells about riding dirt bikes.
The sound would travel for miles, and like a mating call, it would summon my buddies to head on over to my place to practice. My parents must have received plenty of phone calls, but I never heard of any complaints.
I’m struck by the fact there is something of a similarity in the contrast between Monte and his brother Craig, and me with my brother Jeff, who also rode dirt bikes. This picture of Craig could almost be one of my brother from that same period of time. Maybe I can get him to send one so you can see what I mean.
Labor Day Par-tay
The new washer and dryer are in, the replacement Bose Wave is on the porch and, so far, working. It’s the long weekend, and I intend to enjoy it.
Offshore ‘Drilling’
Computerworld tells of a study that you’ll find here, confirming the impact of offshore outsourcing on American tech jobs.
The survey, conducted by researchers at the New York University Stern School of Business and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also backs up the long-standing view that IT employees in purely technical jobs — computer programmers and software developers who have little customer interaction — are at the most risk from offshore outsourcing.
At work I’m involved with EMC, the big data storage company, and I can confirm that a lot of their software development is now being done in India. If somebody goes to college in the United States, and completes a degree in computer science, and they want to remain purely technical, they should be able to work in America and get paid well; otherwise, future students will feel hard work isn’t rewarded. On the upside, this is good news for technical workers who want to go into management, or want to work with people as well as computers.