Power Outage

Power was out across both Massachusetts and the entire
Northeast this week. I am always amazed at how dependant we are upon
electricity. I have several friends who work for National Grid and while I
always joke with them that all they do is sit around all day eat muffins, drink
coffee and read the latest issue of Maxim, when a storm like this hits their
expertise and knowhow is really put to the test. One of my friends is a lineman
so when we had that ice storm a few years back he worked for about 14 days
straight turning peoples power back on, fixing wires, and taking down fallen
trees. He may not work much 11 months out of the year but when a big storm hits
he really works. He also went out to Springfield a few months ago to help them
get back to normal after the tornado. The devastation that these events have on
basic utilities and in turn on every day life is amazing. I mean, we get snow
every year. In fact, we get a lot of snow every year. How is a storm in October
so much different from one in December or January. Sure, we are unprepared but
what the hell does a tree or a light post have to do to prepare for a storm and
not fall down? Nonetheless, this storm really took its toll. I spoke to a woman
who lives in Harvard today and she is still without power and does not know
when she is getting turned back on. She cant shower, wash clothes, watch TV, charge her cellphone, nothing. I have never been without power for more than a day and I can only imagine the frustration one must feel flicking a light switch that doesn’t turn on or
having to brush your teeth using a bottle of water to rinse your toothbrush.
Here is to the people working for National Grid, Keyspan, and whatever other
electric companies there are out there fighting to get people turned back on.
You may not work hard 99% of the time but damn we do appreciate how hard you
work during that 1%.

JQuery

I found JQuery very easy to use this week. Unfortunately, I did
have a very difficult time turning my blog green. Perhaps the blogger gods just
knew how ugly my words would look with a pine tree background and decided
against the code I wrote. But, I was frustrated by the fact that although I followed
the directions to a “t” I was still unable to properly excecute the assignment.
I asked my fellow classmates in my discussion post whether they encountered the
same problems but have yet to receive a response. The one thing I couldn’t get
out of my head while using JQuery and I guess it applies to all the
applications we have used including “Blog” is how they came up with the name. I
am sure, like anything, someone had to invent and name JQuery but how did the
name become JQuery. It is not even a word, its not hyphenated, it seems to have
no relevant meaning from what I can see, so why JQuery. Also, for that matter,
what the hell is a blog and who came up with that designation. There is not some guy walking around outthere named Martin Blog or Edward JQuery is there? I think I would have heard
about something like that. The other thing I liked about this weeks assignment
is that it was a break from just writing web pages. It was a chance to work on
a fully formed web page and add our own little twists to it. A stark departure
from Notepad or Scintilla. I hope that the rest of the class enjoyed this weeks
assignment and did not run into the same problems I did with font color.