Today Chris & I travel to a magical, far away place where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer and the towels are oh so fluffy where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long and anyone on the street will glady shave your back for a nickel – Albuquerque. Though likely we’ll just be passing through as we visit the more interesting portions of New Mexico over the next two weeks.

We don’t want Mr. Peanut to be a crude huckster, using his monocled appearance to hit on chicks. . . . That would be scary. : The specific guidelines and rules of thumb that govern corporate fictional mascots. I like fonts. Did you see the goat? : See all your installed fonts using this cross-browser web application. To the average person they would seem like ordinary stones you would find on the beach : Archaeologists learning how to scuba dive discover preserved stone-age settlements. Nationally, two acres of farmland are lost every minute : But here in North Georgia, it’s disappearing much, much faster. Are you a Windows user who hates RealPlayer and QuickTime because of all their bloat and disrespect for the user (such as installing icons all over and constantly running “quickstart” programs when you tell them not to), but put up with them because you need to view the content? Rejoice! There are alternatives.

Just so you all don’t think I’ve gone away somewhere… [that won’t happen for another couple weeks yet] Another couple items got knocked off the to-do list. The company I work for moved to new offices over the weekend. I had a day trip on Monday, though, so my first day in the new digs was Tuesday. Too much work to get through to properly unpack, however, so that still needs to happen. Luckily, I don’t have much. Our Town , the play I’m directing (and acting in) opened to what might be termed thunderous applause last night. It runs through Sunday at the Commerce Cultural Center, for those of you reading this close by. Showtimes are 8pm with a 2pm Sunday matinee. The Cultural Center is in downtown Commerce, Georgia, right behind the newish Civic Center. Downtown only has one main street, so it’s not too hard to find. Haven’t been able to make it to market the last three weeks (including tomorrow). A combination of not enough to harvest and a spate of Friday night commitments have put a hiatus on going to market. There are a few fall items growing and I’ll put more in the ground tomorrow, so there may be a return to market in November. Our first frost is right around the corner – it may have actually happened last night. Had a birthday a couple weeks ago, and so I got myself a present. Didn’t buy from Amazon, though – got a great deal on a new unit on eBay instead. It’s wonderful. 20 gigs of music, video, and photos in my pocket is a good thing. I’ve got all of my CDs with me now, wherever I am. And all of my farm photos, too, which has been helpful already in my efforts to make a bit of money off of them. More on that bit another time…

Chicken in the car, and the car won’t go . . .

Good night Wesley, good work, sleep well, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
[Listening to: The Story of Reuben Clamzo & His Strange Daughter in the Key of A - [Arlo Guthrie](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22Arlo Guthrie%22) - One Night ]

216 years ago today, the constitution of the United States was signed with “Unanimous Consent”* from the thirteen states. In the years since, many have used the other writings of those governmental framers to interpret the constitution. To make that task easier, the University of Chicago Press offers The Framer’s Constitution, an exhaustively annotated document that includes not just references to those other writings, but the complete texts as well. The print version is 3200 pages and costs a pretty penny, but thanks to the Liberty Fund, you can access it on-line for free. If you’re visiting Philadelphia, you can make a trip to the National Constitution Center and museum. Their web site is almost as good, and it contains resources of special interest to teachers. The National Archives on-line exhibit includes hi-res images of the original document – great for those into handwriting analysis. The Government Printing Office has a site that contains a constitution annotated with Supreme Court decisions over the years, including a list of acts of congress that were deemed unconstitutional. Finally, usconstitution.net offers no-nonsense plain-text pages containing the constitution, related documents, biographies of the framers, and other goodies. * Sure, the constitution claims it had “Unanimous Consent”, but there were quite a few no-shows and hold-outs that didn’t sign when it came time.
[Listening to: Nesbitt’s Lime Soda Song - Negativland - Escape from Noise ]

Ken Kifer was one of the country’s most helpful and outspoken bicycling advocates. His webpages are a wealth of information, and his frequent biking tours educated and inspired many others. This past weekend, Ken was hit and killed while biking by a drunk driver – a driver who had been released from jail only four hours previously for . . . drunk driving. It’s a terrible, senseless, preventable loss.
[Listening to: Drunks and Children - [The Mighty Mighty Bosstones](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22The Mighty Mighty Bosstones%22) - Devils Night Out ]

G’bye, Johnny.
[Listening to: The Long Black Veil - [Johnny Cash](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22Johnny Cash%22) - The Essential Johnny Cash 1955-1983 [1992] (2 of 3) ]

Back in April of 2001, I posted a short entry about American Hollow , a documentary film with an accompanying website about a family that has lived in the same isolated hollow in Kentucky for seven generations. Somehow, that entry has become the place on the web to talk about the film, and comments have been left by both viewers and family members who are quite close to those featured in the film. It’s been a pretty neat thing to sit back and watch, and it’s things like this that make me glad I started this website. This weblog recently passed its fourth anniversary. In years past, I’ve marked the occasion with a collection of highlights from the months-gone-by. I’ve got something different I want to do this time (even if it is a little late). I mention it here as a reminder to myself to get it done already.
[Listening to: Find the River - R.E.M. - Automatic for the People ]

The bulk of another big task passed by yesterday, bringing me a bit closer to mid-October, when everything is done and the missus and I head off into the sunset for a couple weeks. Here’s the background: the Town & Gown Players (the theatre group in Athens that I’m currently the president of, for those of you just joining me) sells season tickets each year. Quite a few, in fact. We have several different types of tickets, and several types of contribution levels beyond that. There is also a recognition program for those that have consistently bought tickets over the years, with levels based on just how long one has been buying tickets. The theater is celebrating 50 years this year, and some of our season ticket holders have been buying for 25 years now. It is a lot of information to keep up with, and up until now, the season ticket committee (usually a single person) kept track of all this using a system of note cards (often yellowed, dogeared, and stapled together). Tickets had to be individually numbered, labelled with all the right information, and then all that had to be recorded in a variety of other places. It was a horrible, thankless task. Of course, I had trouble finding anyone to take over the duties this year. Who’d want to, right? Well, one of my general pushes as president this year has been to computerize and streamline all of the recordkeeping and paperwork that goes into running the theater. Throughout the history of the place, most of the positions of responsibility have been filled with people that are great at producing great theater but not so great at all this other stuff. By making a suite of tools that make those other tasks utterly easy, those folks could get back to doing what they’re great at. So I set about building an on-line system for purchasing tickets, recording orders that come in (regardless of how), keeping track of mailing addresses, contribution levels, recognitions, ticket numbers, and all of that. It’s done, it works, and it’s totally easy. I’m one that tries to put my money where my mouth is, so I went ahead and decided to handle the season tickets by myself. And sure enough, it was totally easy. Several hundred got mailed out this morning, and from here on out, it doesn’t have to be a horrible, thankless task. Upcoming major things to cross off my to-do list:

• Move my office to my company’s new building
• Put up Our Town (did I mention that there weren’t enough auditioners, so I ended up playing the Stage Manager?)
• Get through my company’s annual user conference
• Make sure T&G;’s annual meeting and elections go well
• Make sure that the Georgia Theatre Conference convention, being held here in Athens using some of T&G;’s resources, gets the support it needs from T&G;

Somewhere in there I have an interview for a new job I’ve applied for – a part-time job as manager of the direct marketing program for Georgia Organics that would keep me occupied through the winter and most of next year. I’ll post more details about that later.
[Listening to: Blue Moon of Kentucky - [Patsy Cline](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22patsy cline%22)]