I'll open webpages and leave them laying around in tabs with the intent of reading them later. As things to be done later tend to do they pile up so I'll have 20 webpages stacked on top of each other at times. One of the webpages apparently features an ad with a cricket chirping. Every 5 seconds, non-stop. I left it running overnight. It's been going for hours now. The Japanese believe crickets are good luck. Or it could be the Chinese, I can't remember. Maybe both. Um, but anyway.... The beeping sound is making me lose my concentration.
Still chirping. Chirping, chirping, chirping...
When I was at Netscape the company invited the Republican Presidential nominee, Bob Dole, to come speak at the company during his campaign. We were all reminded that it wasn't an ideological thing, it was just they had a slightly more accommodating stance on the company's pet issue which was the export of products that used cryptography. Unfortunately Bob Dole was busy so he sent the VP candidate, Jack Kemp, in his place. I don't remember much about Mr. Kemp aside from his hair and recall absolutely nothing of his speech.
What I do remember is the other politician that spoke that day: Pete Wilson. I remember it was awful and confusing. Just random sentences strung together and uttered without any sort of structure. There was the "tough on crime sentence" followed by the "tax cuts for everyone!" sentence followed by the next. Then I realized he wasn't speaking to us. The news that night would show some 5 or 10 second sound bite so he was just slapping them all together in a big pile and calling it a speech. We were just a prop.
I was reminded of this today when I read a story about Hillary Clinton's campaign stop in West Virginia:
I guess this saves everyone a lot of time so it really makes sense in a sad sort of way.