Web Log Entry #0006, Thursday, November 14, 2002: Day -4

I hope this is not indicative of how things are going to be on this journey. Supposedly, Jim (not to be confused with Tim, Jim is an ex-WISDOM consultant, who will be my supervisor on this contract. Jim hired on with The Client and is buying a house in Anchorage to become a permanent resident) was going to arrange housing and a car for me. Today he emailed me, saying that I should make reservations for a hotel and rental car for the first two weeks. This is certainly not a challenge to my abilities, nor a great inconvenience, but it does make me wonder if this will truly be only for the first two weeks. I thought I'd check the Anchorage daily newspaper to see what was happening up there. Then I realized that I didn't know the name of the paper. How does one find out the name of the primary newspaper in a different city? Well, this is the Internet, and a Google search for my first wild, off-the-wall guess ("Anchorage daily news") returned the homepage for the Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com). I learned three things: 1) Alaskans are very pragmatic about naming their newspapers; 2) There was NO mention of people being eaten by moose; and 3) The Iditarod has a year-round section, although it doesn't happen until after the Superbowl (which was not mentioned at ALL). I am forced to conclude that Alaskans care more about the world's premiere dog-sled race than the world premiere of super-expensive commercials (interrupted by a football game), and that the Anchorage Daily News is part of this moose conspiracy. Maybe The Anchorage Press, which is a weekly paper, will be more forthcoming, but I am suspicious. They bill themselves as "ANCHORAGE'S MOST WIDELY-READ WEEKLY NEWSPAPER." Guess how many weekly papers there are in Anchorage.

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© 2002 Evan M. Nichols