Book Review — Finding Amelia

Title: Finding Amelia, The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance
Author: Ric Gillespie

Amelia Earhart disappeared in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in 1937, trying to become the first female to fly around the world. Since then, many people have come forth with explanations as to what happened, but no one has found conclusive proof. The search for Amelia Earhart remains a fascinating, real-life mystery.

Author Ric Gillespie compiles hundreds (thousands?) of recorded communications between Earhart and others to try to explain what happened leading up to Earhart’s disappearance. But where the book really shines is its explanation of the messages received after Earhart disappeared. These messages, up until Gillespie’s research, were located in disparate locations around the world. Gillespie is the first to compile the post-disappearance messages in one location.

In 1937, and even today, these post-disappearance message are considered hoaxes by many. Gillespie has put them all together in one place for the first time, and they show a very clear pattern. The world was trying to communicate with Earhart, and someone with a radio near where Earhart disappeared was transmitting voice communications on airline frequencies, was communicating back. When a voice could be made out, it sounded like Earhart. All of this is significant, because there was only one known airline transmitter in that remote and nearly unpopulated part of the Pacific Ocean way back in 1937 — on-board Earhart’s plane. The conclusion was that Earhart had landed her plane somewhere and was trying to communicate with the world to be rescued.

Sadly, those in charge of the search back in 1937 either couldn’t (or didn’t want to) put the pieces together to search islands nearby Earhart’s last known position. Author Gillespie, who has spent a lot of time searching the Phoenix Islands for clues to Earhart’s disappearance, notes in the Epilogue that a skeleton was found on un-inhabited Gardner (now Nikumaroro) Island in 1940. The book’s evidence, along with the skeleton, provide very strong evidence indeed that Earhart died a castaway on an uninhabited Pacific island.

A Good Product Gone Bad — Notmad Explorer by Red Chair Software

Way back in 2004, when I bought my first MP3 player, I enthusiastically endorsed a third party software to manage the songs on the MP3 player. The product was by Red Chair Software and was called Dudebox Explorer. It contained a lot of useful functions that the OEM software did not have. I thought it was well worth the $25 I paid for it.

Three years later, I have a different MP3 player, a Creative Zen Vision M (30gb version), which I also think highly of. I purchased Red Chair Software’s product for this particular MP3 player, called Notmad Explorer.

It doesn’t work!

It crashes, continually. If it didn’t crash, it would probably be a great product. I have a relatively new computer, I keep it clean of viruses, spyware and other stuff and yet the program keeps crashing. I even re-installed a clean copy of Windows XP, but that didn’t eliminate the crashes.

I wrote to Red Chair Software’s tech support, but I have not received an answer after four e-mails. Clearly, this product is not worth the money I paid for it. It’s not worth a red cent.

Stay away from this product.

Morimoto

The New York City restaurant of world famous Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto is in an old warehouse-like building on in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. If you didn’t know to look for 88 10th Avenue, you’d never realize this was the place. In fact, the most dominant feature of the street outside Morimoto’s restaurant are the abandoned railroad trestles that seem to carry the railroad right into the large building on 10th Avenue.

Inside, Morimoto (which is also the restaurant’s name) is pure glitz and style. The food also carries the glitz and style of the world-famous Iron Chef. You expect to pay a lot, but you receive world-class cuisine.

Inside Morimoto

My daughter and I ordered the omakase, which is a nine-course dinner (the portions are sized to be appropriate for a nine-course dinner) “designed to allow you to experience the essence of Morimoto’s cuisine.” It’s $120 a person — that’s right, $120 a person. But you get dishes you won’t likely get anywhere, including toro (tuna) tartare with six dipping sauces, a dish containing Kobe beef, and one with a giant pacific oyster, foie gras and uni (sea urchin roe), all presented by the most attentive waitstaff you will ever find.

Toro tartare with six dipping sauces

If I ever do this again, I think I would order the sushi dinner (you can order for $35, $85 or $100), only because I was in the mood for sushi, and only one of the nine courses was sushi. However, the experience and the food was excellent, and definitely worth the price.

Update (3/1/07): Photos of my visit to Morimoto are here.

Looks Like Someone Missed Snack Time

McDonald’s is now running television ads, in which a man eating a McDonald’s food product utters the catch line: “Looks Like Someone Missed Snack Time!”

What does that mean? Why would someone proclaim “Looks Like Someone Missed Snack Time”? Does it imply that someone is being grumpy and irritable due to hunger? In particular, let’s examine one situation. A man has “remodelled” his home with sports paraphernalia and cheerleaders, his wife seems upset and then the man utters the catch line. Not only do I not understand what it means in this particular situation, because I would think anyone would be unhappy about this — but the man portrayed is being a major jerk. Is that the kind of person McDonald’s wants to promote its product? The ad says to me that jerks eat at McDonald’s.

This is just a part of a more disturbing trend, evidenced by many of the SuperBowl commercials. Violence and bad behavior and offensive themes are increasingly used to sell products. Who wants to market a product via violence or bad behavior? These ads are not funny, they are misguided and offensive. They don’t make you want to use the product, they make you want to avoid the company altogether.

The advertisers who designed the Superbowl ads seem grumpy and irritable. Looks like a lot of advertisers missed snack time.

What’s New at Paige’s Page?

I have been mostly absent the last several months, as I had back surgery in July and then unanticipated complications. I simply didn’t feel like sitting at a computer more than I had to. I feel lots better now, and I actually think the surgery has helped. But lots of things have happened since then; here’s a quick rundown of the highlights.

• I was hired by a small Rochester company named Eastman Kodak. They make sensors for digital imaging (you know, like digital cameras, cell phones, etc.) and they are a growing business!
• Democrats won lots of elections! Whoopee! This is very good news. I spent a lot of time writing here about politics, and that became too much of a focus here, so this blog will still occasionally talk about politics, I plan to spend more time talking about my life.
• One more comment about politics — check out the blogs in my blogroll for wonderful analyses of the political situation. And welcome two new blogs: Rochester Turning and The Water Buffalo Press for local Rochester area political commentary. In particular, The Water Buffalo Press has been covering the story about a local company named 5Linx which received a local government grant. I had firsthand experience with 5Linx, and I felt they had a suspect business model. I wrote about it in the comments here, here and here.
• My youngest daughter Darcy, now a senior in high school, was accepted into Fordham University. She has a 4.0 average in high school (not bad … she obviously gets her smarts from me) and for a time was the leading scorer on the school math team! Super! Where she gets her athletic skills from is a mystery, as she was also named to the First Team All-Monroe County Cheerleading squad (scroll down to the second photo).
• We will be visiting Fordham in the next few days (go Rams!), sightseeing in New York City (is there anything good to see there?) and dining at the the restaurant of a famous chef — Iron Chef America’s Masaharu Morimoto, who operates Morimoto NYC in Manhattan. This will be my second visit to Morimoto’s restaurants; I visited his restaurant in Philadelphia way back in 2002.
  

Purple Reign, Part 4

It started out as a rough year for the Greece Odyssey Academy cheerleaders. They did not do well in several tournaments this year. But today, at the Third Annual Small Schools Showcase, their last competition of the year (and my daughter’s last competition of her high school career), the girls were nearly flawless, and captured first place in Varsity Division 5. This comes after a week where they didn’t practice much due to two snow-days (school was closed) and a few days after they changed their routine.

After the performance, the wait began to see how the judges would view the Odyssey performance. Many of us thought the girls did really well, but we had thought that before only to hear that the judges didn’t like the Odyssey performance at all. But after the lower finishers were announced, and Caledonia-Mumford was announced as the second-place winner, the Odyssey celebrating began. After seeing how the judges didn’t like the Odyssey performances in earlier competitions, I was pleasantly surprised.

And even better, the junior varsity finished in second place, ending a year when the JV girls competed well, finishing in 3rd place at the Greater Rochester Invitational. Congratulations to all! GOA!

Flashback: Purple Reign part 1; Purple Reign, part 2; Purple Reign, part 3