Greg Palmer

This post about meeting Helen Thomas gave me a good laugh this morning, which was nice because I’m bored to death in my nearly-empty office…Congress empties out quickly.

I met Helen Thomas. Who’s that, right? Many know her as a recognizable face in the crowd of reporters at White House press conferences. I knew her from a cameo role in the movie Dave, where she played herself for about three seconds.

I was out to lunch when I spotted her. Where I grew up (Florida), if you see someone famous, you approach them and ask for their autograph. You’re usually encountering a mouse (Mickey) or a duck (Donald) in costume in Orlando. Why change course now?

I walked in Helen’s direction, but she was eating chicken wings like they were going on the endangered species list. I didn’t think it was appropriate to interrupt her with animal skin between her teeth and a bone hanging out of her mouth. Finally, she came up for air and shook my hand (which then became greasy, but no problem). She’s so small and very gracious – except with the chicken.

Losing your ATM card while out on Saturday night is not a good idea.

Citibank, however, is open 24/7 and will replace your card in a jiffy. Hopefully I’ll get it sooner than the promised date of the 27th.

Hilarious:

I had no idea this existed. There’s a machine that changes the lane configuration of the Roosevelt Bridge based on the time of day and traffic flow. It literally moves the concrete barriers an entire lane width. Cool!

Washington Post’s Answer Man has a video of this behemoth at work. (via Carl)

(Oddly, the “Share” button is disabled, so I can’t snag the code to put the video here. What’s up with that Post?)

I was thinking the same thing, Jeff. With no one predicting any shortages in advance, why did people wait outside the stores?

In any case, I don’t plan on owning one. I may give the keyboard a spin to see how it feels, but anyone who’s seen me walking down the streets/hallways around the Capitol knows I’m a BlackBerry maniac. I don’t think I can give up the physical keyboard just yet.

Ross made the big time and is in the Post today…cool!

Text message received around noon:
“Did you see MTP today? Mary Matalin’s face never moves! Any botox there?!?”

Two short items.

First, I attended TechCocktail DC last Thursday, the first event from the same folks who bring you TechCocktail in Chicago. I met some cool folks and learned a bunch about the tech scene here in DC, which is more robust than you might imagine. I’m looking forward to more of these and hope it was enough of a success that they hold them fairly frequently.

Second, it’s well worth promoting that Ross has a new venture out there. DC Tech Events aggregates the variety of events in DC each week that technology professionals would be interested in. He updates it each Monday - it’s got an RSS feed, of course, for your convenience.

Anyone know the details? I’m a huge fan of the morning news on WAMU.

DCRTV hears that there is a “mass exodus” of news people from American University’s mainly news and talk WAMU (88.5 FM). Two have left and two more have given notice and are “actively job hunting.” We’re told that there’s “major unhappiness with new news director. Just as they are enjoying being the only public radio news outlet with WETA returning to classical, they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot.” Says another WAMU source: “They will soon be down to just one fulltime and one part-time reporter. WAMU management plans to dumb down local news by replacing fulltime professional reporters with interns from American University”…..