Scott Bush

Have you seen the logo for Sherwin-Williams paints? I live near one of their stores but never noticed their dis­turb­ing logo until I had occa­sion to buy some paint. There I was in line and noticed the upturned paint can dis­gorg­ing its con­tents over an unsus­pect­ing globe. “WTF?” I thought. That is just wrong!Sure, it stands for dom­i­nance in the paint mar­ket, a pow­er­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a brand that smoth­ers the com­pe­ti­tion with its ubiq­uity (and glossy latex sheen). But the 50s are over and a lit­tle some­thing called the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment hap­pened. Why haven’t Sher­win and Williams got­ten together over a lunch of Exxon Valdez oil-soaked shore­bird and red-tide shell­fish to dis­cuss updat­ing their logo for the 90s, let alone 2007?

As you can see, it’s pretty hor­ri­ble. It evokes images of lead-based paint seep­ing into every nook and cranny of the world. Even if you don’t see it like that, it’s still a mas­sively sloppy paint job. See those four nasty drips? There’s no drop-cloth under planet Earth, so that can’t be good for Mars, Venus, or what­ever other planet is under the Earth in its cur­rent loca­tion (except Pluto; it was kicked out of the planet club). But I digress. They need a new logo and some­one should tell them! Wait, I just did. But they prob­a­bly don’t read my blog.

My posts tend to be exer­cises in log­or­rhea, but this one is short. If you are a Mac user (and, as I’ve said before, you should be!) and care any­thing about the his­tory of the Mac and what makes it the finest OS around, you should read AppleInsider’s series of arti­cles. They cover the new fea­tures and updated appli­ca­tions in OS 10.5, “Leop­ard,” which hits shelves on Friday.

Jump right to “Road to Mac OS X Leop­ard” and start reading:

• Finder 10.5
• Dock 1.6
• Dash­board, Spot­light, and the Desktop
• Mail 3.0
• Time Machine (this is amazing!)
• Spaces
• iCal 3.0
• iChat 4.0
• Safari 3.0
• Dic­tio­nary 2.0
• Pre­view 4.0

Faith­ful read­ers will recall I wrote about a day at the zoo (as will read­ers who can click) where my employer hosted a fun-filled day of spon­sored enter­tain­ment for the whole fam­ily. (That assumes of course your fam­ily had pur­chased on of my employer’s homes.)

Today I’m pleased to say that my team­mates and I on the mar­ket­ing team respon­si­ble for the afore­men­tioned zoo day were rec­og­nized at our quar­terly meet­ing. We received a “team syn­ergy” award and I must say it’s well deserved. It was the first time our team had put on this event and it really came off well. Con­grat­u­la­tions all!

I’m off to spend the prize money! Ooops—got con­fused for sec, thought we got $1.3 mil­lion to spend, but that’s actu­ally for Nobel Prize winners.

… don’t mix. I’ve noticed (as I’m sure you have, too) that peo­ple can’t seem to let a mon­i­tor, pro­jec­tor, or other device with an energy-saving mode actu­ally work in their pres­ence. Here’s the sce­nario: room full of peo­ple in a meet­ing, one of whom has a lap­top hooked to a pro­jec­tor. The dis­cus­sion goes on well past the topic of the slide pro­jected on the room’s screen. When the sig­nal from the lap­top cuts out due to inactivity–as it’s sup­posed to do in order to save energy and the life of the bulb in the projector–someone absent-mindedly shakes the mouse to wake it up, though the infor­ma­tion isn’t rel­e­vant to the conversation.

I’ve seen this hap­pen as many as three times in a row. Though I’ve wanted to say some­thing, I didn’t want to sound like a shrill eco-nazi. “Stop wast­ing energy!” I’d scream, and every­one would swivel toward me, star­ing. I’m already on thin ice for men­tion­ing that the faucet doesn’t need to spew gal­lons of water down the drain while some lady idly rinses a tup­per­ware (that she’ll place in the dish­washer moments later) while talk­ing to her colleague.

So, the next time you see some­one wake up a com­puter for no dis­cernible rea­son, say some­thing. That way I won’t have to.

After see­ing Andre Rieu this evening, I’ve bro­ken with my rare-if-ever concert-going tra­di­tion. I’ve now seen two events at the Key Arena this year (the first being The Police reunion).

I went with my wife and her friend, fill­ing in for the absent orig­i­nal third mem­ber of their party. His music—classical and operatic—is not really my thing, but I went. Over­all it was a pretty good show. There were more antics than I expected, which helped break up the monot­ony, though it did get old. Rieu actu­ally seemed pretty nice, though he did call out one older lady when she arrived late. The cam­eras turned on her and he stood there, wait­ing. He said “We’re Euro­pean; we’re never late.” Laughs all around, even from the scape­goated woman.

The ensem­ble was actu­ally more than Euro­pean, how­ever. Besides the orches­tra, the three male tenors were from Aus­tralia, Hun­gary, and Ger­many. There were two fea­tured woman singers, one of whom was another Aussie (20 and quite pretty!); the other was from Chile. The music was pri­mar­ily by Strauss, though there were selec­tions from other com­posers, one Phan­tom of the Opera tune, and some clas­sics like Amaz­ing Grace and God Bless Amer­ica dur­ing the sev­eral encores (six is too many in my book).

With all the polit­i­cal unrest in a par­tic­u­lar SE Asian coun­try recently (that I think is impor­tant and sup­port the monks’ desire for democ­racy), that country’s name is all over the media. Actu­ally, its names. As you’re undoubt­edly aware, the coun­try for­merly known as Burma is now called Myan­mar. That change occurred in 1989… by my math that’s almost two decades. Why then must every for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, anchor per­son, and cub reporter feel the need to add some vari­ant of “Myan­mar, for­merly called Burma”? There must be a statute of lim­i­ta­tions on using a for­mer name… I’d offer up 5 years. After that if some­one doesn’t know, the onus should be on them to ask the ora­cle of all knowl­edge for the answer.

So, I’ve decided upon the solu­tion. I really should get a Pulitzer or some­thing for the ser­vice I’m doing for jour­nal­ism. Here’s the deal. The coun­try will now be referred to with a hybrid name. Yes, like TomKat, KFed, and my favorite, HamKey / TurkHam (that’s ham made of turkey or turkey made of ham). Burma Myan­mar will now be called MyanMa. Or, if you pre­fer, Bur­Mar. It’s up to you. I pre­fer MyanMa. Jour­nal­ists, update your AP Style­books and stop “edu­cat­ing” every­one about Myanmar’s for­mer name. Thanks.

As an aside, there was an episode of Sein­field in which J. Peter­man goes to Myanma because he’s burned out writ­ing the cat­a­log in New York. He calls Elaine and tells her where he is, and says “You may know it as Myan­mar, but it’ll always be Burma to me.” Thus prov­ing once again how rel­e­vant that show is to life.