As a freelance writer, I’m used to having a number of different things on my plate at a given time. I try to take each as they come and devote as much time and attention to the task at hand as possible.
When I’m working on a radio story and working to update the blogs I write for, it’s usually pretty easy to keep the jobs separate. When blogging, I tend to keep tabs on news and technology sites and message boards. When producing a radio piece I’m either out of the office conducting interviews, calling people on the phone, or using my computer to write scripts and edit audio. Sure, it’s always tempting to take a break from the radio work and check for technology news to write about, but the problem is much worse when I’m trying to do two jobs at once that require online research.
Today I’m fact checking and editing articles on Constitutional issues while trying to keep up with the latest news for TV Squad (PVR Wire) and Download Squad. So one moment I’m looking up the total number of people who have been convicted of treason in the United States since the Constitution was ratified (8), and the next I’m confirming that the AppleTV (Apple’s upcoming product that will allow you to stream audio and video wirelessly from your PC to your TV) will be released several weeks later than expected, in mid-March.
Other things I’ve learned today:
- You can run Windows Vista for 120 days without a valid product activation key.
- Microsoft’s patch to update Daylight Saving Time on Windows Mobile devices has a major bug in it.
- The penalty for treason was changed from death to death or a minimum of five years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine during the Civil War.
- YouTube traffic has gone up since Viacom demanded it take down 100,000 copyright-infringing videos.
- As I mentioned the other day, I figured out how to synchronize a Windows Mobile PDA with Thunderbird, but I’ve decided to stick with Outlook for now.
Hopefully I can keep all of these details straight and keep myself from writing about treason at TV Squad, (although I might be able to fit it into a post about 24).
I can understand why they had to change the law during the Civil War, but $10,000 would be still be over $260K in today’s dollars. That’s a pretty expensive fine to have pay, especially for a bunch of farmers. It would be interesting to see how many people ended up actually sentenced during and after the Civil War.
Well, only 8 people have ever been convicted of treason in the US. For a moment I was scared, because the person I’m fact checking the article for had written a note saying that she had read somewhere that it was 40, and that we needed entries on all of them. Turns out that was just a nasty internet rumor.
Apparently it’s really difficult to prove someone guilty of treason, so charges wind up getting dropped in a lot of cases.
I’m also only up to the Civil War in this article, I wouldn’t be surprised if the penalty got changed again sometime after 1862.