Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Interview with Professor Bebop

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 15, 2005 in Music. 2 Comments

I’ve been listening to Professor Bebop’s R&B show on WTJU since I was a kid. It’s the show I’ve listened to more regularly, and certainly look forward to more, than any other local radio program. In the mid 90s, when I DJd at WTJU, I’d hoped I’d meet the professor himself, but I never did. Throughout, I’ve heard rumors that he’s actually a principal of a school in town, but I never knew if there was anything to it.

In this week’s Hook, Lisa Provence interviews Dave Rogers, aka Professor Bebop. (Shocker: He’s white!) Turns out he’s the principal at Jack Jouett, and used to be principal at Walker and Buford. The piece is a great read for fans of his show.

Albemarle Historical Markers

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 15, 2005 in General News. 9 Comments

I just stumbled across a great website that catalogs the the locations and contents of every historical marker in Virginia. It’s maintained by M-CAM’s CTO, Jason Watson. I particularly like the Albemarle County section, because I’ve so often driven past those markers but had little success in reading them at 55mph. Every marker is mapped, photographed, and transcribed. Very cool!

DUI Ends Hazzard-Style

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 14, 2005 in Crime and Transportation. 1 Comment

Check out WINA’s description of a hellacool accident last night:

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, there was a short pursuit involving a state trooper and a speeding vehicle. The car was pulled over on 5th Street Extended near I-64, the driver got out of the car and fled, and the trooper eventually called in a tow-truck to haul away the suspect vehicle. At around 2:30 a.m., a 2003 Ford Taurus approaching the three parked vehicles at a high rate of speed hit the state trooper’s cruiser and the suspect’s car, and then went up the tow truck ramp that had been lowered. The car flew up the ramp, over the cab of the tow truck and then landed right-side up on all four wheels in front of the tow truck. There were no injuries.

State Police say the driver of the airborne car was 34-year-old Jodie Ellen Finney of Blue Jay Way in Albemarle’s Briarwood subdivision. State Police say Finney was charged with DUI.

If that trooper had a camera rolling on the dash, they’d best release that video. I want a voiceover, too: “Look out, sheriff! The General Lee ain’t known for its wings, and I can guess what ol’ Jodie Finney is thinkin’ right now. Set a spell, folks, and see Enos get madder than a weasel in a gum-bush.”

C’ville Paying $70k for New Website

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 13, 2005 in General News. 19 Comments

mom133d writes: “According to NBC 29, Charlottesville is paying a a California design company $70,000 to help create the new site. One can only hope its design is better than the current incarnation.”

California? Ouch. I was at last night’s Neon Guild meeting. There were at least a half dozen local website development shops represented there, each of whom could have done the job as well as any company in California. Assuming this is a total site overhaul and the quality of work is decent, then the price is reasonable. Whatever this new website is like, it’s bound to be less craptacular than the current site. If the new site validates, is ADA compliant, doesn’t have URLs of Death and — please, Lord — doesn’t have scrolling-freaking-text, I’ll feel pretty good about it. Bonus points will be awarded for RSS feeds, DIV-based layout, a ban on posting Word documents, and a user interface that doesn’t make my head hurt. Implementing trackbacks in any capacity will result in an automatic victory.

Some unsolicited advice to the city: Get together a beta group of uppity local geeks (*ahem*) to check out your contractor’s work before you declare the job to be done.

One Hundred Charlottesville Blogs

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 12, 2005 in Site News. 1 Comment

As of this morning, there are now exactly 100 Charlottesville blogs. I’d hoped to reach this goal by the end of the year, and so it has been done. I’ve been removing blogs that haven’t been updated for a few months, so these are all the real deal.

I’m happy that so many of these blogs are genuinely interesting. I subscribe to the RSS feed, see everything that gets posted, and I bet that I read 75% of what’s up there. Amazing that it’s only been six months.

Interested in joining the fray? Pick a free blogging service, any free blogging service and get started.

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