Taking time out to surf the web

As much as we might expect a lull in the news cycle during the holidays, it’s been a tough week. An incursion into our embassy in Iraq, a rash of antisemitic attacks in New York and a thwarted mass shooting in Texas have still failed to drown out continued bickering in the impeachment saga. The light spot in the news has been the unexplained drone show taking place in the midwest, but now that’s beginning to upset people too.

As of this writing, the 82nd Airborne has already arrived in Baghdad to protect the embassy, and our local tin-foil community is looking into the drone situation, but instead of addressing any of that, I thought we might share something a bit lighter.

As a suburban kid growing up in the 1970s, besides library, our Encyclopaedia Britannica, and citizen’s band radio, the closest thing we had to the Internet for information on demand was the telephone. At a young age, I began assembling a collection of informational numbers beginning with the time recording offered by the Naval observatory. There were weather service recordings, dial-a-prayer and joke-of-the-day numbers to call, and the “call back” number used by telecom workers to test phone lines was black-market currency around the school playground.

Once acquired, I could call the special number from the rec room in my home, hang up, then run upstairs to the kitchen before the phone rang. My mother would answer the call, and be met with a click and a dial tone. I would then repeat the prank two more times because things like that are always supposed to happen in threes. That was rich stuff.

When the internet came along, I had already acquired a taste for having information at my fingertips. Like that mischievous child, I have enjoyed having my own collection data-rich websites. Here are a few of my favorites:

Weather: Most of us are familiar with the site for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but have you ever accessed the hourly weather feature? It takes a few steps, but it’s worth the trouble and once you get there, you can bookmark it. Go to noaa.gov, and enter your zip code under “find your local weather.” Choose “full local forecast,” then scroll down on the right to “Hourly Weather Forecast.” Click on the graphic, and you will have temperature, wind, rain, snow, humidity and a host of other variables by the hour, for the next two days. Over the years, I’ve found it to be remarkably accurate at everything but snow accumulation, and no one seems to get that right. The URL I keep saved to my desktop looks like this: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.1783&lon=-100.5923&unit=0&lg=en...

Geopolitical Intel: Another favorite of mine is the CIA Factbook at CIA.gov >Library > Publications > World Factbook. On the right-hand side of the page, there’s a pull-down menu that reads “Please select a country to view,” and they are all in there. Would you like to know about agricultural products in Burkina Faso? It’s there. The gross national product of Kyrgyzstan? Got it. How about the breakdown of landline and cell phones in Iran? They have that too. If you have a kid working on a school report about a country, this is your chance to look brilliant.

Internet Archive: The Wayback Machine is at Archive.org. What is a Wayback Machine? It’s a non-profit archive of the entire internet, taking periodic snapshots of entire web sites reaching back into the 1990s. Just type in your favorite URL, click on “Browse History” and a slidebar of years appears at the top with a corresponding calendar underneath. Click on the highlighted date and see what the record retained. It doesn’t keep everything. Many graphics will be missing or misplaced. Some of the links will work while others do not, but what remains is still amazing.

The first snapshot for the McCook Gazette is October 13 of 1999. Chris LeDoux had canceled his appearance at the Chase County Fair, Community Hospital was focussed on safe drinking water and nominations for the Heritage Days Honor Family needed to be submitted by August 29. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder that what happens on the Internet stays with us, even when long deleted.

Unicam: There’s no secret about it, but a reminder might be in order since the second session of Nebraska’s 106th Legislature will be gaveled to order on Wednesday. Nebraskalegislature.gov is a very well designed, comprehensive site that never disappoints. I tend to haunt the live streaming and Unicameral Update online, but the real value of the site is the ability to follow your favorite bill as it moves from introduction, through the committees and hopefully, back to the floor for amendment and approval.

Those are just a few of my favorites. I’m sure you have a few of your own. If you would like to share, please leave a comment under this article on McCookGazette.com or drop a note on my Facebook page, and we will revisit this subject on some Friday in the future. Happy New Year.