Living vicariously through myself

Several things new, different and odd...

1. Spring Break was not bad. Enjoyed my time at DePauw and, to a slightly lesser extent in Colorado (the fault of the mountains and random sicknesses, not Dave). Did not end up skiing, which is fine. I'm sure I'll have lots more chances to do it later on. (This brings me to something general -- do not EVER say "I'll NEVER have another chance to do this again...," because the odds are strongly against this being true. Thank you.) Hopefully I helped the DUCKS get a little more ready for NAQT ICT this weekend. They should do fine. They're at least better than a lot of the crappy community college people.

2. New quarter at NU has begun. Chicago broadcast quarter, as it's known. Hard news reporting on deadline for TV in the city. It'll be long days. Almost certainly 12 hour days Tuesday thru Thursday. I do have a sports in society class about the technical side of sports writing (we spent our first discussion on how anti-trust laws relate to baseball history), taught by Lester Munson of Sports Illustrated, so that should be fun. I also have to start looking for housing in Washington for next quarter. Sure to kill the bank book. If I can get an apartment for $1000 a month, I'll consider myself lucky (or at least in the range of most other people).

3. One last chance to own up to reading my blog, if you have not. Sometime later in the week, I'm going to post the list of who I believe has read it, just for shits and giggles.

Which Family Guy character are you?

It's very interesting how there are obviously several people I never speak to who still read my blog on a semi-regular basis. I know who a couple of them are, but the others I only know by geographical location thanks to the visitor counter. If you read my blog, do something for me, please: Post a response to this message with just your full name and where you're sitting when you read this (i.e. what city and state). Even if we've never spoken before and you see this because another page (Dan's blog, Mel's blog, Amanda's blog, etc) sent you here, I'm interested to know who sees this. Otherwise, I'll think you're stalking me.

How appropriate that I ended up a Billy Goat and a Cubs fan...

http://www.okcupid.com/personality?type=DBSD&g=1&o=1&h=187

Yesterday was a pretty good day. My story on the science of how people send out spam e-mail came together nicely, but with a little twist. I had been trying to get in touch with a guy in Colorado who owns a company that boldly claims on its website to have 45 million e-mail addresses in its database. So for three days I called asking to speak to him, all the while writing the rest of the story (insert Paul Harvey reference here). Finally, with about 4 hours until deadline, I called the company again. I told them I was writing a story about how spammers do business and I was going to mention their company whether they talked to me or not, and would they please leave this message for the CEO. I subsequently sent an e-mail to this effect to the CEO, who responded with this message:

"We are only doing main stream publications currently. All other publications we are charging an interview fee of $250 for one hour."

I sent him back an e-mail that said (in part) "Not only is the idea of paying for an interview ridiculous, but what is a mainstream publication?...Thanks for your e-mail response. The story will be sent to our clients later this afternoon."

My editor even suggested that I get someone to send them en e-mail saying they wanted this company's services, just to see what they said. So I came up with a pretty convincing business plan about someone wanting to market travel guides based around college towns to people 17-25 and wanting to get about 1000 e-mail addresses. I had my mother send the e-mail (we realized that were we to send the e-mail from the newsroom, they could have read "Medill" on the IP address and shot it down immediately), but nothing came of it by the time deadline rolled around at 4:30. I'll post a link to the story when it get put online next Tuesday.

Just before deadline, I was in my editors office looking at the story, and David Nelson (my intro newswriting editor) called my editor. She put me on the phone with him and he said "I've got a belated birthday present for you." I said, "Oh, what's that?" David said, "Five thousand dollars." In short, I got a $5000 scholarship that he had nominated me for on my birthday. This will take care of about 1/8 of my college loans all by itself. I'm a happy camper.

I've been having this really freaky dream lately where I look in the mirror and, due to the acne treatment I'm on (which I am in real life), the face in the mirror is not mine. It's the face of someone who looks only vaguely like me, but has gained a lot of weight and lost his neck. Every so often, I can massage my face and begin to see myself, but still vaguely. I wonder if this is some sort of manifestation of the fact that I don't get enough exercise and that my face gets bombarded my medication every night. Drugs plus sloth equals bad stuff when Stan sleeps, apparently.

Notice the link to Mel's blog on the righthand side of the page. The picture of her with the gun is a little scary. She's not scary, but the photo sure is. This is what happens when people go through tennis and popular music withdrawl.