Good Morning 2011

In his facebook status update three days ago, County Councilperson Calvin Ball quoted Edith Lovejoy Pierce in his status update, “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day.”

This little quote was Edith’s moment in time. Do a Google search on her and this is what comes up most frequently.

Anyway…

I commented to Calvin that the trick was nailing that first sentence. Any writer understands the importance of that first sentence (It was a dark and stormy night…) in capturing a reader’s attention. Ever since I read Edith’s words I’ve rolled that thought around in my head and played with the metaphor. Can I capture in one sentence, the hopes and aspirations for the coming year?

Probably not. That’s a tall order and I’m not that good of a writer. Instead, last night, as I sipped a glass of wine and cranked up Michael Franti’s tune “Hey Hey Hey” I discovered the words I was looking for:

“Hey, hey, hey, no matter how life is today
There’s just one thing that I got to say
I won’t let another moment slip away”

And just like that, there they were, the first words for my book of 2011, I won't let another moment slip away.

Happy New Year Everyone!

"I Like Cultural Music"

The charger on Peanuts phone has been behaving badly so today we paid a visit to the Verizon store in Snowden Square. Surprisingly, we didn’t have to wait long before a guy named Chris waited on us. Chris did a quick check and determined that indeed, the charger was toast. I asked if we could buy a replacement. The short answer was yes but it turns out he didn’t have any in stock.

I wasn’t surprised, Peanut has my old phone, the one I hated. That phone is now almost two years old which is a long time in mobile phone technology. Chris did say he could order me a charger.

“How much is it?”

“I don’t know, let me see if I can find one first.”

Chris worked away at his computer and his landline phone until he located one in the Verizon kiosk at the BJ’s store in the same shopping center.

“They have two,” he told me.

“How much is it?”

“I don’t know, probably around twenty bucks.”

We crossed over to the BJ’s store. This time our Verizon guy was Nathaniel Houston. We ended up liking Nathaniel a lot better than Chris. He quickly retrieved one of the two aforementioned chargers.

“How much is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

I told Nathaniel that I thought it was odd that I was having so much trouble getting a price on this item. He explained that the actual price for me was dependent on whether I was eligible for any discounts. I wasn’t. The charger was thirty one bucks.

I just couldn’t see spending thirty one bucks for a charger for a phone I’ll likely replace in another year or so. I asked Nathaniel to work with me on this. He did and we got Peanut a new phone for thirteen bucks. Of course it includes a contract extension, but that wasn’t a big deal to me.

Peanut was very pleased with this turn of events. On the way back to the car she told me that she never liked that other phone either. This was the first phone she actually got to pick out. It’s metallic blue.

Driving home she scrolled through the available ringtones. She played one called Easter Island. It was sort of a reggae tune.

“I like cultural music,” she said.

Me too.

Babs is Fed Up

Having failed to stop the Columbia Town Center redevelopment plans, Columbia’s self proclaimed first mother, Barbara Russell is now “fed up.” In this letter to the editor in The Columbia Flier she takes issue the members of the county council, particularly her Oakland Mills neighbor Dr. Calvin Ball who insinuate “that any citizens who don't totally support every single developer proposal concerning downtown Columbia "... have been against redevelopment from the beginning.”

Uh, I believe Barbara actually has been against redevelopment since the beginning. Of course she would counter that she isn’t against redevelopment, she’s just against this redevelopment…from the beginning.

The battle has taken it’s toll on Babs though. She is now throwing up her hands and advocating for a casino in Town Center.

“I am so enthusiastic about the possibility of a casino that I am thinking about starting a support group. I think a support group is needed because there are so many other Columbia groups supporting the environment and such and they probably would oppose a casino. I am thinking of calling the group "Columbia Today."

I suppose that having failed using scare tactics to swing public opinion, she’s now decided to try sarcasm.

Good luck with that Babs.

Some Geek Talk

Instead of clearing up the mess all over my home office desk, I’m playing around with Google Analytics. One of the things that grabbed my attention tonight were the stats on visitors web browsers. The dominance of Internet Explorer as the browser of choice has ended, on this blog at least. Easily a year ago, IE commanded at 60% of the browser traffic to Tales of Two Cities. Today, though IE (34.56%) is still the number one browser in use, that dominance has been sliced in half.

The combined numbers of Firefox (29.17%) and Safari (20.44%) are actually higher.

The sleeper in this browser battle is Chrome (14.39%). Right now it’s the fourth most popular browser here. A year ago it was in the low single digits. It also happens to be my browser of choice.I believe it is a good deal faster than IE.

No doubt the debut this spring of Google laptops will only further bolster those Chrome numbers. In that computer the browser is the operating system. 

Desktop Phone Demise

I experienced one of those technology shift moments today. You know, the kind of feeling you get when you suddenly realize you've been using one technology less and another, newer technology more.

The relative quiet in our office this week perhaps contributed to my heightened awareness of things. The phones are pretty quiet and that is unusual in our office. The phone has been the main tool on my desk for as long as I have been working. It's my Swiss army knife. Sure, we use our computers a good deal but actual deals are made on the phone, talking to somebody.

That much is still true. What’s changed is the actual phone. Up until recently, when I was seated at my desk, the ubiquitous black office desktop phone has ruled the roost. The desktop phone was my default phone for work.

That is no longer the case. I’m not sure when the trend actually started but it probably goes back to arrival of phones that were truly mobile, un-tethered from cars. Before long my mobile phone found a space on my desk right next to my desk phone. The new technology had made its beachhead.

Little did I know that almost two years ago, The Gartner Group predicted that by 2011 “although most users will still also have a desktop phone, mobile phones will become more prevalent and replace desktop voice hardware to become the primary device." 

Today, the bulk of the calls I’ve received while sitting at my desk, have been on my Droid X. I also noticed that I make more outgoing calls with this phone because it’s easier.

It looks like The Gartner Group may be on to something here.

Most Read Stories

I don’t think anyone would argue that Explore Howard is the most widely read HoCo loco news media. That’s what makes their list of the top ten stories of 2010 all the more interesting. In this story by Charles Schelle in the Columbia Flier we get a glimpse of what HoCo locos have really been paying attention to.

Is it Columbia Town Center redevelopment?

Not in the top ten.

Is it anything about Liz Bobo?

Not in the top ten.

Okay then, how about the HoCo elections in general; surely this was big news in 2010?

Nope, not in the top ten either.

It turns out that true crime stories is what HoCo locos really like. Number one is the story of a mother-son murder suicide in Hickory Ridge. Number two was the story of the assault of a female jogger in Jessup.

At least seven out eight of the top time were related to crime in HoCo. A notable exception was number eight, the story of the passing of Ken Hovet, longtime HoCo teacher and coach. 

The open question is whether the tenth most popular story actually qualifies as a crime story...yet

The End of Cash

Just before Christmas I stopped by the Apple Store in The Mall to buy a keyboard cover for CG’s Mac Book. Though the store was fairly busy (...is everybody but me buying an iPad?) I was quickly helped by an Apple guy who led me right to the product, and then completed the transaction using his iPhone.

“Would you like a printed receipt or would you prefer I email it to you,” he asked.

I opted for the email.

By the time I walked back out of the store I received the email on my phone.

Unfortunately, the keyboard cover I bought home was black and the one CG preferred was pink. No problem. The next day I went back to the Apple store and the return was just as quick and seamless, and once again the entire transaction was handled using an iPhone.

The future of retailing is upon us.

In the December 10^th issue of The Kiplinger Letter, the editors predict that by 2020, the “use of cash is likely to be a rarity.”

In our area I suspect that this will occur sooner rather than later.

The End of the Good Life

The Good Life Market in Ellicott City is closing. After six years of breathing new life in their little corner of Ellicott City, Randy and Steve are selling everything and closing up shop. Their closing will be felt in the tight knit retail community in the historic district. The Good Life Market was an anchor of the Second Sunday Markets and it’s closing casts a shadow over the viability of future Second Sundays.

I understand that these guys will be leaving Ellicott City altogether, reportedly heading to Portugal. I also understand that Monah, their Bernese mountain dog will remain in the old mill town with friends.

Edifice Complex

Ken Ulman wants the county to buy a big building in Columbia, continuing a county tradition of taking advantage of a buyers market for commercial real estate.  If Ken has his way the county would purchase 8930 Stanford Boulevard for about $26 million. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun, this real estate move “is reminiscent of the county's 1992 fire-sale purchase of the Gateway office building in Columbia during the severe recession underway then, and that building, now in need of renovations, plays a role in this purchase, Ulman said. During the initial five years after the Ascend One purchase, Ulman said, the county could decide whether to sell or renovate the Gateway building.”

In 1992 the county purchased 6751 Columbia Gateway Drive for $3,720,000, a little less than $40 per square foot. The building was new, completed in 1990 but having never been occupied. The developer, Peter Issel lost it in the last big real estate meltdown. In today’s, market, even though it is need of renovation, the building could easily sell for $150.00 per square foot.

The 8930 Stanford Boulevard building was also built in the early 90’s, 1991 to be exact. It was originally constructed for a company that built simulators for nuclear power plants. The building had these large open spaces, two stories high, where they could set up and test simulators. After they vacated, AscendOne Corporation bought the property for $17 million in 1998 and proceeded to transform it into a more traditional office building. With the declining fortunes of the mortgage industry, AscendOne no longer requires a building of this size. They have only occupied half of the building for the at least the past four years. The county has leased the other half for the past two years.

The $26 million sale price works out to $163.00 per square foot. While that doesn't really qualify to be called “fire-sale” it is still a pretty good deal for taxpayers. The county would not be able to build a building for less than $200.00 per square foot.

It’s also a good building for government services. It has two large floors that provide maximum efficiency in laying out workspaces. It has loading docks. It is centrally located.

To sweeten the deal, Ken wants AscendOne to remain a tenant, for at least for a couple of years, paying a market rent to the county.

‘Under the deal Ulman wants, Ascend One would pay the county $1.1 million a year, instead of the county paying Ascend One $1.6 million in rent. That combination would more than make up for the annual purchase cost through the first few years, Ulman said.”

It’s a smart move.

Wine Whine

My HoCo blogging brethren have been weighing in on the latest developments in the direct shipment of wine issue lately. 53 Beers on Tap wrote that the “Maryland Wineries Association LOVES this report, giving it a 9.5 out of 10.”

Sarah cautions that this issue is far from settled and that we should “stay tuned, I suppose, for further developments”

HoCo Rising sees a glass half full in the Comptroller Peter Franchots recently released report pointing out that “the consumer options have only been marginally expanded.”

I agree with Tom. The Comptroller appears reluctant to encourage any further marginalization of Maryland's three-tier system of liquor distribution. The Comptroller still doesn’t want us to be able to buy alcohol from an out of state retailer. According to this story by Scott Calvert in The Sun, “the report frowned on the idea of letting out-of-state retailers — as opposed to wineries — ship wine directly to consumers.”

“At a news conference in Annapolis, Franchot said, "It's crucial to the passage of this bill that we not open up all of our wonderful Maryland retail establishments to just incredibly aggressive marketing by out-of-state retailers that are undercutting them on price. That is not a good component."

That is just so wrong. Why can’t our retailers use this as an opportunity to build a larger business for themselves?

The hero of Scott Calverts story is Mitch Pressman, owner of Chesapeake Wine Company. Mitch welcomes competition.

"While a lot of retailers are afraid of the competition, I welcome the competition," Pressman said. "More availability creates more interest in wine drinkers."

The 2010 Dookies

It’s that time of year once more, when we take stock of twelve months in the HoCo loco blogosphere with the annual Dookie awards. As the self anointed high priest of the Royal Academy of Dookies, it is my privilege to set the tone and get the proverbial ball rolling. As such this year, I am only offering Dookie nominations, I'll let the readers decide who is worthy enough to take home the feet of clay statuettes.

The nominations for Platinum Dookie are The Strobist and HoCoMoJo. The Strobist was recognized as one of the top blogs in the nation by Time magazine which is no small feat considering that there are well over 130 million blogs in existence. HoCoMoJo pulled off HoCo’s first ever flash mob which quickly became one of the top holiday news stories in the Baltimore area.

New HoCo bloggers are recognized by the Baby Dookie award. The nominees are Sarah Says and HoCo Politico. Sarah Says, which started off as Um Can I Just Say, has elbowed her way into the male dominated community blogging niche with 202 posts since April. Mild mannered River Hill dentist Trevor Greene graduated from guest blogger on HoCo Rising to his own political blog this fall.

And speaking of HoCo Rising, Tom gets a nomination for the Muck Rake Dookie for his excellent expose of Brian Meshkin, who still managed to weasel his way on to the school board despite Toms dismembering of his resume. HoCo Rising also gets a nomination for the Prolific Poster Dookie. He  has racked up 796 posts (and counting) in 2010. I can’t think of anyone who has posted more often.

The nominations for Caustic Commenters Dookie go to the opinion section of Explore Howard, HoCo Rising and Tales of Two Cities (yes I can nominate myself, I am the aforementioned high priest  after all). This Dookie is reserved for those blogs that actually have to delete comments once in awhile.

The Tums Dookie is set aside for those blogs that report on the HoCo loco food scene. My nominee is HowChow if only for his excellent reccommendation of those gas station tacos from the R&R Deli.

The Dookie Dearest nominees are JessieX and Robin Abello. Jessie continues to build the HoCo loco blogger community with her relentless organization of blogtail parties and, with Robin, she has created the top aggregator site for all HoCo loco blogs, hocoblogs.

There are of course many others deserving of mention and other Dookies to fit them. That’s where you the reader come in. Think up a Dookie, name a nominee (or winner) and share it. I promise only to delete those that cross the line from thoughtful sarcasm to low brow school yard taunts.

So load up those tomatoes and let ‘em rip

Yuletide Stroll

Mama Wordbones and I took a walk along the Patapsco this afternoon. It was quiet and grey. Though we walked alongside the Old Main Line for over two hours, nary a train passed us by. We did encounter a few other intrepid souls but they were spaced out over a pretty long walk.

Before heading down the Grist Mill Trail we decided to head up river to check on the Simkins dam removal project. As we passed the old mill on the opposite bank we noticed this extraordinary graffiti mural. This was far from your run of the "mill"graffiti.

Further up the old river has taken on a new form or perhaps I should say its regained its form. With the dam removed, the water level has returned to its natural level. 

A Canine Christmas Tale

The gifts have been opened, a light snow is falling and the coffee is warm. It’s the perfect time to settle down and read a story. My favorite one from the morning papers is the story about Willis and his improbable year. In this story in The Washington Post, Courtland Milloy tells the story of a dog who disappeared just before Christmas last year and “went missing from her back yard in Portsmouth, Va., turning her holiday into a nightmare. She spent nearly a year intensely searching - posting "lost dog" fliers throughout the neighborhood, visiting shelters, contacting animal rescue organizations. She had all but given up hope of seeing him again.”

Willis had taken off on a 200 mile adventure before he wound up in a Calvert County animal shelter on death row.

“He had a fever, an injured eye, a respiratory infection and a skin allergy that made him itch so badly that he had scratched and chewed off patches of hair from his shoulders to his tail.”

This is Christmas though and so rest assured that this story does have a happy ending.

Merry Christmas!

Whatcha Reading?

I’ve long accepted the fact that I’ll never to get to read all the books I want to. That still does not deter me from seeking others recommendations of what to read.

Right now I’m in the middle of “Where Men Win Glory” by Jon Krakauer. I haven’t breezed through it like my last book but it’s beginning to pick up. Krakauer, the chronicler of modern day adventurers, does a pretty good job with the Tilman story.  

My Merry Christmas to me from me is "Hero" by Micheal Korda. I heard him on Talk of the Nation with Neal Conan and ordered the book the next day. That’s my on deck book.

My best book story of the holiday season is the recommendation I received from the media specialist at Ellicott Mills Middle School. I told Kathryn Manley that Peanut is a big fan of dragons and in she in turn  recommended the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede. Peanut had just finished another book on Tuesday night, so I presented them as an early gift.

She polished off the first book this morning, hungry for book two. Ms. Manley was spot on!

So what are you reading/liking lately?

Mistletoe Bliss

My buddy Bob from Pittsburgh shared this with me. It seemed an appropriate holiday greeting for wordbones….

Queen Anne’s Pretzels

“I was right there!”

I was talking to Rick Williamson this morning. We are in the middle of a lease negotiation but we usually begin our phone conversations with a little happy talk. He had just finished telling me that he had been shopping at the mall last night.

“Did you see the flash mob?”

He told me that he hadn’t really seen it as much as heard it. It went down on the fringes of his radar.

“I was in the Hallmark store around 7:30 PM. I saw all of these people outside but I thought it had something to do with that new pretzel thing they put out there.”

“Pretzel thing?”

“Yeah, you know, Queen Anne’s Pretzels.”

I mean I know those pretzels are good but did he really think they were that good?

The Bigger Picture

In HoCo, some loco activists are in up in righteous arms over a failed petition drive to overturn a zoning change as to whether a grocery store could be 55,000 square feet as opposed to 18,000 square feet. They see this as basically a violation of the constitutional right to vote. That is the legal argument from which they are hanging their continued appeals.

That’s nothing.

Just down the pike, in the District of Columbia, the new GOP leadership is about to strip the watered down voting rights of the Districts representatives. According to this story by Ben Pershing in The Washington Post, the new Republican House leadership has “decided to take away the right of delegates and resident commissioners to vote on some amendments.”

This was a pretty watered down right to vote to begin with. Their votes are limited to something called The Committee of the Whole. This gives the District representative some say on tax and spending bills but even here the vote is largely “symbolic because it does not count if it is the deciding one on an issue.”

Of course the District of Columbia doesn’t have real representation in Congress because it’s not a state. It’s a one of a kind. It is also home to 601,723 people, more people than Wyoming. The cowboys in Wyoming get two senators and one congressman who all have real votes.

On the other hand, it is smaller in land area than Rhode Island, twenty eight times smaller. It’s airports are in other states. It has more parks and libraries than any US city of comparable size.

I’m not sure what the answer is for the District and their disenfranchised voting rights. I do know that taking away what is largely a symbolic vote for political reasons just smacks me as wrong. It’s sort of like bullying with the right to vote. What end is served by this?

We don’t like your kind?

All Flash and No Mob

I learned another valuable lesson tonight. If you truly want to experience a flash mob you need to be part of the flash mob. Showing up just to catch the show isn’t good enough. This evening I arrived at The Mall well before the appointed hour only to discover it had gone off a half hour early. If I had gone to the rehearsal I would have known this. Unfortunately we had our company holiday party up in Towson this afternoon and I didn’t get back to HoCo until about six and then I had to first go home and feed my daughter. It was close to eight by the time I arrived at flash mob ground zero.

There wasn't a dancer in sight. From a quick check on facebook with my phone I saw that Ilana Bittner had already posted the video below on You Tube.

Lesson two; flash mobs have their own timetables.

In any event, the reports I received seem to indicate that the holiday flash mob was a success. Walking around the mall I picked up a good deal of buzz about it, most notably from the younger mall patrons.

I’m really sorry I missed it. Lesson learned.

I suspect that this video is only the first taste of what may be coming from HoCoMoJo, the folks who helped pull this together with Pam Land. One easily can picture Dave at the editing table right now. Stay tuned.

And to all those who did participate, nicely done!

Head in the Sand

The counties are going to be picking up some of the costs for teacher pensions from the state. That much appears inevitable to anyone who is paying attention. The only question remaining is how much the county will be forced to pick up and whether the local funding will be allocated directly to the school board. Instead of wading into the debate over how we deal with this new budget reality, the head of the HoCo state delegation, Guy Guzzone, seems to prefer to stick his head in the sand. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun, Guy told the reporter “he's not willing right now to even think about the best or worst ways of shifting teacher pension costs, because he doesn't feel they should be shifted.”

I don’t think I should take out the garbage every night but I’m well aware of the consequences for failing to do so.

Teacher pensions are a national problem that many states are grappling with. They were even discussed on 60 Minutes last week in a story on state budget woes yet, over in Savage, Guy Guzzone is in a state of denial.

"I'm not even going there," he said.”

I suggest he do so soon. This garbage is beginning to smell. Time to show a little leadership.

Martek Acquired

Homegrown biotech success story, Martek Biosciences Corp, has been acquired by Royal DSM for a billion bucks. According to this story by Gus G. Sentementes in The Sun, yesterday “Martek was acquired for $1.1 billion by Dutch company Royal DSM, the world's largest producer of vitamins.”

“Martek beat the odds against life science companies, many of which spend years as money-losing research operations. It can take years to develop a marketable product and lure a larger, deep-pocketed buyer.”

Martek has been headquartered in the Columbia Business Center on Dobbin Road since the company started over twenty years ago. They have steadily expanded their presence in the business park with the most recent expansion taking place now.

“DSM officials said no significant job cuts are planned at Martek, which has 600 employees, one-third of whom are in Columbia. Both corporate boards approved the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of next year.”