#!/bin/sh

export GEM_HOME=/home/private/gems
export GEM_PATH=/home/private/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/2.7/
export PATH=$PATH:/home/private/gems/bin:/home/private/bin

exec ruby /home/private/bin/tweetdelete.rb

Update: I stopped using Twitter, who knows if that script works with everything they’ve done to destroy it.

1. Last semester I taught on the basketball courts adjacent to the kettlebell section of the gym and this semester through some kind of weird scheduling decision I have a class capped at less than a hundred in-person students (and 51 actually enrolled) in a gym annex that can sit 300 spread across five basketball courts.
2. That video has over 26 million views and the doctor who did it hasn’t published a Youtube video since early April when he released one on package and delivery tips. Probably because it pretty quickly got criticized by everyone as ridiculous and potentially harmful.

To fix this problem, you have to load snd-hda-intel module with model=imac27_122 option.

To do this, create a new file in /etc/modprobe.d (for example /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf) with following content:

options snd-hda-intel model=imac27_122 

Reboot and headphones will work as expected.

It really it shocking to listen to an entire audience gasp at the fact that you can just swipe on the screen to see more content, something pretty much every has a natural understanding of today. Hell, the reminder of non-visual voicemail made me remember my old voicemail PIN that I haven’t used in a dozen years. The first iPhone by today’s standards is both too small (screen size) and too large (form factor) and lacking in so many features (remember not being able to copy and paste?) but the audience and the phone comparisons of the day remind us, this thing changed everything. The best reminder of this comes when Jobs opens the New York Times homepage and its a desktop website. There was no mobile design because there were no mobile designs. Being able to open a clunky desktop site and double clicking to zoom in and out on any article was a massive advancement. In December Adobe is sunsetting flash player, Apple got criticized for not including in on the phone, a decision that more than anything else helped destroy one of the worst bits of internet technology this century.

The entire presentation is just chock full of things that are startlingly out of place by today’s standards. Even if iOS 7 was so controversial, the original design just looks…old and noisy. The fact that Jobs brings out Google’s Eric Schmidt and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang is jarring because Apple is decidedly in a position of needing these companies. Google provided the maps and Youtube apps while Yahoo! gave every iPhone user free push email. Now Apple has iCloud and Maps; Google has Android (and Gmail out of beta); and Yahoo! is well…still around. Probably the most shocking thing, however, is what Jobs focuses on first…the iPod. It shouldn’t be, music was a central pillar of Apple’s business model in 2007 between the iPod and the iTunes store. But in 2020 it feels so…unrevolutionary.

The hand-drawn map (not done to scale) comes from the Library of Congress’s panoramic maps collection. The full version can be downloaded or viewed here. Here’s some other historical maps from Oklahoma.

If you zoom in you’ll notice there’s a baseball stadium between Brady and Archer from Cincinnati to Detroit, a block west of the current ONEOk Field. The drawing could be a reference to Association Park, which was located between Archer and First from Elgin to Cincinnati according to a timeline of Tulsa’s baseball stadiums. Association park, however, closed in 1917.

Regardless of accuracy, the map provides a nice reminder of how much Tulsa has grown (or sprawled) in the last hundred years. Even by 1926, Tulsans considered the current fairgrounds, then a cow pasture, “so far out in the country.”

According to the story and local legend, the issues arose out of a spell the original owner’s grandmother placed on the house during a the mansion’s house warming party. “Standing in the main hall, with a glass of wine in one trembling hand and a torch in the other, she laid a spell upon the mansion, calling ‘the curse of God down on the head of any who should dispossess the owner of his blood, for ten generations, of the house he had built.’” While the incident became the subject of gossip among the more religious of the area, most in the area quickly forgot about the supposed curse until Mr. Gassett, his wife, and servants moved into the mansion. Shortly after moving in rumors swirled that the house had been “cunjered” and Mrs. Gassett became so frightened (of what she wouldn’t say) that Mr. Gassett moved her back to Louisville and shuttered the house except for a single room he planned to live in while supervising the property.

Hoping to calm the nerves of his slaves and area residents, Mr. Gassett brought a “voodoo queen” up from New Orleans to remove the curse. While the ceremony seemed to quiet fears, the unease returned when the plantation’s cook and butler fled the mansion around midnight a short time later. While neither explained what caused them to flee, Mr. Gassett became increasingly uneasy, telling Mr. Johnson the whole affair was too much for him arguing, “I can’t fight the devil.” In another bid to appease everyone involved, Mr. Johnson agreed to spend a night in the house, only to appear the next morning looking as if he had been sick for two weeks and refusing to discuss what happened.

While the incidents left doctors puzzled, an assistant overseer at the plantation named Dogherty vowed to spend five nights in the mansion promising he would not be scared by wandering rats that he believed were the source of whatever frightened the others. Unfortunately, a slave sent to check on Dogherty after he didn’t appear after the third night found him strangled to death in an upstairs bedroom. While doctors agreed Dogherty was strangled to death, they couldn’t figure out what could’ve strangled a physically strong man who had a gun on the nightstand next to him.

Perturbed by the death, a New Orleans doctor named Holliday decided he’d sleep in the house, along with a shotgun, a colt pistol, and his “finely-bred bull terrier.” Dr. Holliday, believing the incidents were the result of someone playing deadly tricks, requested his stay he kept quiet. “ According to the doctor’s subsequent story, it quickly became apparent the events were not the result of rats, cats, or humans. ”

On the second night, Dr. Holliday locked up the house and was reading in bed when he noticed the bedroom door he thought he had closed was open. Upon closing it and returning to bed, the doctor looked up to see the doorknob turn and the door open followed by the sound of rustling silk and a low laugh. While the doctor says he laid motionless, but not scared (“for nothing had occurred to scare me.”), his watch on the nightstand began to move. When he reached for it he felt a notable resistance. Shortly thereafter a crashing bang erupted from the dining room, as “though all the dishes of the establishment had been let fall at once.” Upon stepping out into the hallway to investigate, a shriek of a panicked woman occurred right in front of the doctor, frightening both him and his dog. The two found the dining room as it was earlier in the night and headed back upstairs followed by what sounded like a light step and click of a high heel that continued until the bedroom door.

The doctor locked the bedroom door and laid back down in the bed. Ten minutes later the key turned in the lock and the door again opened. As the doctor began to get up something grasped him around the throat. “I never felt such a grip. I dropped my pistol, and tried to free myself. But I could see nothing, nor see anything. For the first time in my life, I knew what terror was.” Dr. Holliday managed to free himself and spent the rest of the night awake in a candlelit room vainly trying to keep the door closed. While the doctor spent the next two weeks recovering from shock, he made it out of the mansion alive. His dog, on the other hand, was not so lucky as it was later found strangled under the bed when someone went to look for it.

No explanation was found for the incidents. Seven years later the Mississippi River changed course near the former mansion, and outside of a handful of mentions, the Gossett & Johnson Plantation seems to have passed into the morass of history along with whatever inhabited the stately mansion.2

Source: “With the Grip of Death,” New York Times, December 9, 1894.

Where I erred so badly in 2010 was underestimating how much major-league damage he could do in a minor-league market. He burned through money and goodwill like nobody’s business. He raised plenty of cash for the outdoor WinterFest and the AHL team, but he spent plenty more. I’d ask him early on if he had the connections to pull this off. Every time, the answer was yes.

I hate to tell someone as good as Jeff I told you so, but here’s me two years ago after the Whale debuted:

We can debate why the Whalers left and if they should have all day but the one thing that’s not up for debate is the NHL returning to Hartford. It’s not happening and Baldwin’s campaign only strings along fans who’ve been promised the NHL for 14 years now. I applaud Baldwin for wanting to return the hockey culture to Hartford but we need to rally around our AHL team, whether they be named the Wolfpack or the Whale(rs), because that’s the best we’re going to get. If we continue to hold out for the NHL we could very well wake up one morning and find the AHL gone as well.

The Whale’s lease at the XL Center expires after this season and their future at the venue is murky to say the least. That’s not wholly Howard’s fault, but he deserves some blame for the current issues in Hartford’s hockey market, and Jacobs is right to ask him to “quietly go away.”

I’d add that at this point it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Baldwin. He has roughly $2.7 million in debt and 15 court cases against him. In addition he still feels he has some role to play in the future of Hartford hockey telling Jacobs, “I have no intention of getting out of hockey or abandoning this market. We have to find another way, create another plan over the next six months.”

Sources have told The Courant the team will play in Hartford next season, but the Rangers have told WSE officials they will not be involved in the day-to-day operation and marketing of the franchise. The structure of the front office for the upcoming season is not known, but an announcement could come Tuesday or Wednesday.…The company’s financial problems have long been a concern for the Rangers.WSE has also been trying to negotiate a new lease with the AEG, which manages the XL Center. The team’s lease expires in 2013 and WSE has been seeking more favorable terms. Company officials have said rent for the past season was $25,000 per game.After a bump in attendance during the 2010–11 season, the team averaged 4,573 (23rd in the 30-team AHL) last season.

• After all the talk about increased attendance, Howard could only manage 23rd in the league. The team made the playoffs, but they also lost all of January.
• Who knows where the AHL in Hartford goes from here. The XL Center needs serious work or a complete teardown, but who thinks anything is going to be worked out in the next few years? Remember Howard’s plan for a fancy remodeled XL Center? Neither does anyone else and that was only seven months ago. Hartford does have something going for it however, it’s still probably the closest place to New York City after the Devils moved their AHL team to Albany last year.
• Need it be said? Everyone who pulled out Whalers apparel hoping the NHL will come back can safely stow the stuff away until the next Don Quixote comes along in five or ten years.

Even though I’ve been hard on Howard it’s important to note his failure won’t lead to the death of the AHL in Hartford (if it comes to that of course). Hockey in Hartford was dying before he got involved, as evidenced by the Wolfpack’s declining attendance even though the team remained successful on the ice. Hartford isn’t a hockey town, it’s a Whalers town.

There are three types of the genus vagrant: the hobo, the tramp, and the bum. The hobo works and wanders, the tramp dreams and wanders and the bum drinks and wanders.

In Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West by Mark Wyman.