The Wall Street Journal online is free today — access to most content is normally by subscription only.

“Shocked by Chavez” is an interesting piece, but if you don’t subscribe, set aside a few minutes today to browse.

The Oak Ridger carried a story today reprinted from yesterday’s (Memphis) Commercial Appeal; perhaps predictably, it began with noting that the City recently rejected a proposed skateboard park, while approving a radioactive storage facility in the same meeting… something that probably paints us as elitist and nutty in most parts of the state.

The gist of the article is that Anderson County (including most of Oak Ridge) is one of 12 counties in Tennessee that have a record of voting for the winner in statewide and national elections, dating back 20 years or so. In the article, Memphis reporter David Waters paints a picture of the County’s economic and cultural diversity as an explanation for the phenomenon.

It was an interesting piece; I’m happy that the ‘Ridger reprinted it for us, as I don’t always read the CA in its entirety, although I do read at least some of it, most days. However, I do wonder how hard they looked to find Mary Harris, County Historian, who would happily perpetuate some myths that need to be slain once and for all.

“People in Oak Ridge tend to think they’re better than the rest of us,” said county historian Mary Harris, whose great-great-great grandfather was one of Anderson County’s first settlers.

“That naturally creates some tension between Oak Ridge and the rest of the county.”

I’d be glad to hear what Ms. Harris thinks, but I bristle at reading her interpretation of what I — an Oak Ridger — think, since we’ve never met and she’s never asked. I bet there are about 27,000 others out there who’ve never given her any slight, either.

Reading that article on top of GAC’s weird dream was a bit much. Now, I surely hope that GAC doesn’t find us snobby, given that we all had a good time hanging out on Daco’s porch the other day. We all like beer. We all like food. We all like kids. We all think education is important, and as best best I could tell, we all want something more for our children as we’ve achieved for ourselves.

Some of us were born here, some were not. I doubt that a stranger to the group (from anywhere) could tell who was native and who wasn’t.

Doubtless, Ms. Harris’ credentials run back 50 or 60 years, and there likely was some resentment among the East Tennessee folk who were booted off their land by the feds to make way for the wartime project. There may have been some assimilation difficulties in the 1940s, but that was a long time ago.

In the early 1980’s, I dated a fellow from Clinton whose mother told him that every Oak Ridge teenager got a brand new car and a credit card for their 16th birthday (WHOA — how did I miss out on that one?).

I think that the kids of today have less of a stereotype in mind, as my daughter has made friends with a number of Clinton kids that she met through the swim team and other activities. None of them seem to have the assumption that one or the other thinks themselves superior or inferior to the other.

So, what’s wrong with the grownups, and why does a “furriner” from Memphis highlight such a negative perception?

To celebrate the one-year existence of the first real blog in Oak Ridge (at least that I know of), the folks at AtomicTumor.com put together a bit of a bash yesterday afternoon.

So, what do bloggers do when they get together? Sit around and geek at each other?

Something like that, I guess. Only it involved a whole lot of food, a little beer, some grease paint, fire, sand, and other stuff. The only one who brought a laptop was Hubby… who neither posts nor comments.

Thanks to Daco and Mrs. Daco for offering their lovely home for the festivities; Daco has a fabulous place for a party with kids — sandbox, a great view, and the biggest swing I’ve ever seen. There was much speculation as to how he managed to get the ropes over the branch of that Oak tree, with the most creative being a modified potato gun theory.

Delta has already put in a request for one of LissaKay‘s recipes, and the cheesecake was fabulous — I think that was djuggler‘s contribution. Nope, AT just corrected me: it was Mrs. Mr.Orange.
We had a great time, and it’s nice to be able to put faces to the various personalities.

We’re real people with strong opinions, but yesterday’s emphasis was on the real people part.

Anotherthing2’s been on a roll this week: check it out. Like AT2, my focus is on football this evening — not the apocalypse, war, famine, hurricanes, or any of that extraneous stuff.

That, and Alpha’s coming home for the weekend… her first return in a month (except for dinner on Labor Day).

There’s been a lot of offline feedback on a couple of this week’s posts: three congratulating me on scooping the Oak Ridger (Pshew-ee!), and two asking me to expand Educational Improvement into a guest column for one of the local dead tree editions.

I’ll think up something controversial later, but for now, GO WILDCATS!

Yippee! Thanks to Daco’s good luck charm — the phone number of a real person at UPS– my long-awaited new laptop arrived yesterday at 5:25 p.m. (I had to leave at 5:30). I didn’t even have to call… just the option to do so was enough.

It’s light. It’s fast. It has little niceities like a slot for my camera card, so when I forget the Nikon-specific cable, I don’t have to go buy a new one like I did last Summer. The wireless is internal, so I don’t have to worry about a PCMCIA card sticking out the side, waiting to break off. The USB ports are 2.0, so it won’t take as long to back up as the old one did.

The experience is a decidedly mixed blessing, though: while I ordered it on Friday and received it on Wednesday (good show of agile manufacturing), it isn’t perfect. Before ordering, I called and was heartily assured by a Dell consultant that the Dell 1500 (802.11n) internal wireless card would definitely work with a Belkin pre-n router.

Not.

Also, when I key in my service tag number on the Dell support website (useful for things like bios upgrades, driver updates, and battery recall notices), I get some weird error message about this being a machine sold outside the country.

Funny, the UPS tracking slip shows that it was manufactured in Nashville, and went straight from there to here.

The entire day was spent 1) loading the 16Gb of stuff I can’t live without from the backup of my old system, deleting all the garbage (AOL, Google Desktop, etc.) they ship on it, while bouncing around between a couple of folks at Dell and five at Belkin.

TIP: Linksys has the world’s greatest tech support, and they’re open 24/7. Belkin tech support speaks with a heavy Mexican accent (until you get to level 2, anyway) keeps California banker’s hours, and couldn’t fix it.

I strongly suspect that the Dell 1500 wireless adapter is simply incompatible with the Belkin router, even though both are pre-n. If this is the case, Dell has agreed to send a new card for me to install.

Left with the choices of 1) buy a Belkin 802.11-g USB adapter, or 2) rig something from what I have lying around the house, I chose the cheap option to tide me over. As it turns out, an old Linksys 802.11-b wireless access point cabled into the back of the Belkin provides enough of a signal for me to work on the deck.

That’s all I want… I want to be able to go outside, where I can think.

Only now, I can publish what I think so much faster… which might or might not be a good thing.

Today’s WSJ has an interesting page 1 article: Economic Fears After 9/11 Proved Mostly Unfounded. It begins as follows:

After terrorists attacked the U.S. five years ago, many worried that the economy would lose its hard-won vitality. Companies would need to hire security staff instead of production workers, build up costly inventories and face delays as goods moved across tightened borders.

This is what has happened instead: The number of security guards on business and government payrolls has declined, companies are holding less inventory, and the amount of freight moving though the nation’s ports has soared. Not only has the economy grown, it has become more efficient. And office construction in downtown New York and Washington has continued.

I don’t know that I, as a consumer, feel the economic warm-fuzziness, but that’s most likely a result of other personal factors — two of us are driving much newer vehicles than we used to (and four of us now drive, as opposed to two, pre-9/11), we began about then the practice of taking the family on a big ski trip every year, and we’ve now taken on college costs for one child.

Oh — and I quit my job about midway through the last five years. Freelancing is a wonderful thing, but it requires a couple of disciplines that a “real job” does not: finding work, and getting used to the fact that paychecks do not come on certain days (or even certain months). Actually doing the work has never been a problem, since I just take on the kinds of work that I enjoy doing to begin with.

The WSJ piece points out that one of the mitigating factors is that US businesses have invested in technology for a number of years, which enabled them to embrace the philosphies of agile manufacturing and just-in-time delivery.

U.S. businesses, on average, held inventories equal to a bit more than 43 days’ worth of sales in mid-2001, just before the terrorist attacks. If businesses had decided to build up stocks as a buffer against supply disruptions, the ratio of inventories to sales would have risen. Instead, it fell to under 38 days by mid-2006, as companies used new technology and new business practices to hold less on their shelves for every dollar of sales.

That much is evident to me, even as one lowly and budget-conscious consumer.

Yesterday, I ordered a new laptop, as mine is now nearly four years old and is a bit slow in operations requiring a lot of processing power (high end graphics editing is the best example). The new machine features the brand-new Intel Core 2 Duo processors (30% faster on half the power), along with the usual complement of features that are now standard, like a memory card-reader built-in for my camera, an internal pre-n standard wireless card, DVD writable drive, etc.

The whole package cost a couple hundred less than the one I’m using now, despite being lighter, faster, and with more features. The online order was confirmed by Dell at 12:16 yesterday afternoon, and when I checked this morning, they’d already finished the custom build and the box is in testing. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have it by the end of next week.

That means Alpha gets this one, which is entirely fast enough for the limits of her needs for this year. The ancient Sony Vaio she’s now using will go to one of the younger kids (who also have a fairly new and fast desktop when they need it).

We really have improved efficiency in the face of financial, political, and security uncertainties. We’re going to be just fine.