Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Cspan and Cabelas

It was a bit late last night but I had gotten a second wind, so wasn't ready for bed yet. I turned on C-span to see what I would be missing if I canceled my comcast...
turns out there was a really great show on.
I just spent over an hour on C-span's website trying to track down more information on this show... C-span (as much as I love you) you have one of the worst websites to search and navigate.
Is it SO difficult to make a chart of say the last 5 days programing on your website?
I wrote down the names of the people on the panel: George Lakoff, Frank Luntz, Drew Westen, hosted by Andras Szanto. Originally broadcast on 11/7/07 and just shown last night at midnight (well I guess technically that's this morning not last night) on 12.26.07. Do you think I could find it via their search engine?! NO! I finally found it by looking in their video links, and went to click on the "watch now" and was met with a series of blank windows popping up and error codes. ugh.
IF you have a PC maybe you can watch this video easier than I can. If you have a mac, you're probably out of luck (like me).
It was a really interesting show about "propaganda" how political figures can "frame" a question, political ads, etc... it was great because it showed how easily "they" can manipulate the masses.
I guess we'll never see it again online though - which is sad.

Cabelas (http://www.cabelas.com/)
They are similar to L.L. Bean i guess, but I'd say their products differ in that it's MUCH more than just a clothing store (like LL Bean). It's an outdoors store, with tons of stuff for fishing, hunting, camping, etc... Well, since I'm on vacation for this week I thought this would make a good day trip. I left about 1:30pm, and google maps said it would take approx 2 hours to get there. They nailed that. First off, I forgot my map atlas of the US. No big deal I thought, I had google directions printed out. While I was driving, I realized it has been a VERY long time since I've done any sort of highway driving like this. It's stressful. Not knowing exactly where you are going, crazy drivers, and the rain and sleet didn't help much either. I finally got to the store and it's up on the top of a hill and I almost heard angels sing when I saw it. It's HUGE! I spent the next 2.5 hours walking around it. About 35 minutes of that was spent eating dinner in their cafeteria though... it was expensive, but it tasted good (I was starved too, cause I didn't have lunch). It was a 1/2lb buffalo burger, lettuce, onion, jack cheese, and jalapeƱos, plus I got some fries and a iced tea. $10.50!
I found a couple items I wanted, (a gerber leatherman tool, couple bargin hats, and some fishing lures). I left about 6pm. It was dark and it was raining like it did in the days of Noah! I almost missed my turns twice (the kind where you have to cross the white lines), my windshield was blurry with some sort of oil on it, I couldn't see worth a dang, and crazy people where passing at 65-70mph in the pouring rain. I missed my last turn, but luckily knew how to get home from there via a different route. And to top it all off... I was running with my gas gauge touching the "E" mark... Sheesh! It was fun to visit their store, but I'll probably NEVER do that again!
One more thing...
It had been so long since I went on a drive like that, that I forgot that the world is not all stripmalls and stores. There are still farm fields out there, horses, red barns, etc... I gotta get outta my usual ten mile radius of driving more often now.

Sorry for such a long post.

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