Bitter Larry's Commentaries

Welcome to Rip City

2011-01-30T15:46:00.002-07:00

Of the myriad excuses I could give for blogging only once last year, one of the legitimate ones would be that probably three months of my life were consumed with everything involved in moving to a new state. Despite reasonable confidence not even a year ago that we would probably be in Arizona until my driver's license expired in 2039, tonight I am signing in from the great Pacific Northwest. How that all came about is not really all that relevant to this particular blog, but suffice it to say that the only thing that didn't change was my job.

In fact, it turns out that Oregon is pretty much the opposite of Arizona - the Bizarro Arizona, if you will - at least as U.S. states go (I'm sure you could find a better example if you threw, say, land-locked South American countries into the discussion). I mean, I was somewhat aware of that going in, at least in the obvious ways. There are rainstorms, trees, Democrats, and paid gas pumpers everywhere (each of which causes the next, I assume). There are some less obvious things I didn't know, however.

For one, it seems to be a bit more dangerous, which is not what you'd expect. I mean, I haven't been hurt myself yet, but this many people cannot be voluntarily pierced and inked. It's not like no one in Arizona had an occasional nose ring or cliche barbed-wire bicep tattoo, but here I think it's more like a cattle ranch. I assume you are just walking along one day, chewing on some food and minding your own business, when someone grabs you, throws you to the ground, tags you with a metal spike somewhere in the head, and slaps a brand on your neck. It's the only explanation I can come up with.

Again, I also knew that Oregon didn't let you pump your own gas. Actually, I temporarily forgot on our way up here and almost started filling my own tank by accident on our first stop, but I'm not really sure what they would do if you did. Throw you in prison? Impound your car? Cut off your hands (I think that's what they do if you pump your own gas in Syria)? At first I thought the whole arrangement would be pretty convenient: you don't have to get out of the car in a state where you are more likely than not to get wet if you do, and it doesn't (on the surface) cost a lot more.

What I didn't know, though, is that half the time you have to get out of the car anyway to pay (if they need your ATM pin, for example). The most annoying part about pumping gas is usually trying to get your card to work anyway, so once I have to do that, I don't see the point. I know somewhere along the line someone probably put this into place to create jobs. If we're going to employ people to do things most people elsewhere normally do on their own, why don't we have them do something actually helpful? Who needs gas pumpers when we could have laundry folders or shower cleaners. I know there are some financial details to work out, but if I'm already paying either through my taxes or through the pump for these people, they might as well make my life a little easier instead of slightly more complicated.

I knew coming up here that people were into organic/local food and that people were into making beer, but I didn't realize that they were into both at the same time. I heard a commercial on the radio the other day for a place selling organic beer, which struck me as a little over-the-top. This past year I read The Omnivore's Dilemma (more on that in my next post) and am slowly moving toward eating better foods, but if you are going to drink the same stuff that's in hand sanitizer, does it really matter if there are traces of other potential poisons? I'm guessing there is organic pot here too, but they don't advertise it on the radio - yet.

I say none of this to put Oregon down. There are a lot of things I really like about it and an equal number of oddities I could elucidate for those unfamiliar with Arizona. I also haven't been here long enough to really know anything, so my opinions on the Beaver State (I had to look that up - I was 50-50 between that and "Duck State") are subject to change without notice. I thought I should at least let you know where I now reside so that references in my posts going forward make sense and so that if I'm visiting your state and sit at the gas pump for 20 minutes waiting for something magical to happen, you won't think I'm a total moron.

Well, That Ain't Nothin'

2011-01-14T00:25:00.001-07:00

Sometimes in professional sports coaches get fired not because management believe they are no longer qualified but simply because their teams have started to tune them out. I guess it's a bit like falling asleep to a loud movie or sleeping through a blaring alarm (both of which I can easily do); after a while, if something is loud and repetitive enough, your mind just filters it out in self-defense. The only way to get someone to listen at that point may be to find a different voice - which might explain why my wife can be completely unconscious watching Iron Man but wake up the moment you turn it off. It also explains a lot about my kids, although fortunately I can't be fired from being a parent just because my kids ignore me.

I know I have mentioned before that I work at a very safety-conscious company. In particular, people are big about holding onto the stairway hand rails. I apparently think I am Spiderman, because at some point I decided that handrails are only for normal people who lack my superhuman sense of balance. I was a good soldier at first, but then my brain just started to tune the warnings out. I am smart enough to use the elevator when I'm walking with anything that could potentially ruin my shirt and/or my day, but outside of that, I tend to keep one hand on my laptop and another free in case I need to use my fire off a web at a supervillain or whatever.

We recently moved from a one-story home to a two-story house with one fairly worn carpeted flight of stairs. I was a little worried about my kids at first, given that they hadn't spent much time with stairs, but for the most part they haven't had a lot of problems, which is sort of remarkable given that stairs are practically waist-high on my petite daughter. I mean, imagine if you went to work and had to scale up a flight or two of 3-foot-high steps every day. You'd see more people wanting to work in fast food just to avoid it.

On Saturday morning, our daughter woke up a bit early, as kids seem to instinctively do on the rare day when you could potentially sleep in a bit. Thinking I would let me wife snooze a bit longer and wanting to write a blog post on something other than this entirely, I collected my daughter and my netbook and started down the stairs. About three steps in, my right foot slipped on the worn carpet, and I started to fall.

There are a few moments in life where you feel like you are in a movie (although usually a straight-to-video one) because somehow everything goes into slow motion (I'm not sure whether the Matrix or the new Sherlock Holmes movies is a better reference, but you get the idea). As I started to fall, my first thought was to make sure my daughter didn't sustain any damage, and fortunately my parental instincts didn't fail me there (I will use this in about 12 years as evidence of why I should keep my parenting job when she starts to really tune me out). I turned to the right to make sure she had a soft landing on one of the stairs; she was a little scared but unscathed (except for a bit of lingering paternal distrust maybe).

I then turned my attention to my netbook, a Christmas present, but it had already slipped from my fingers and was starting to tumble end-over-end to what I assumed would be a hard landing and a real test of Costco's return policy. I tried to grab it, but I realized at that moment that I am not Spiderman and that I could not give my kids a hard time any more about breaking presents five minutes after they get them.

It then hit me, as my right ankle buckled underneath me, that I was out of hands with which to break my fall. I think I have a fairly high pain tolerance (maybe too high, given that I once ignored a broken wrist for about 5 months), but this hurt badly enough to make me light-headed for a minute. I hobbled back up to bed to nurse my wounds.

Apparently, this is what it took for me to listen. I'm not saying that I will always hold the hand rail now, but I am taking it a bit more slowly and keeping at least one hand free. Well, really I am taking it slowly because it hurts to walk, but let's assume that I have learned my lesson and will not be pulling any more Home Alones, particularly when carrying precious cargo. (By the way, in case you were worried, I'm typing on my netbook as we speak, none the worse for wear - nice job HP, Intel, and whoever made my carpet padding).

I'd be perhaps embarrassed by my adult inability to navigate stairs if it were not for the fact that I did something that turns out to be more embarrassing a few weeks ago. I was leaving my office parking lot and attempting to cross the road when a white truck got in my way. Well, more correctly, I ran into a white truck because I did not see him coming. No one was hurt, and the driver was fortunately very understanding considering the circumstances.

I learned a few lessons from that experience. One, don't run into anything when you are driving. Two, people have a completely different reaction to an accident when you are the instigator rather than the victim, and that has been compounded by technology. People know exactly what to say to you when you have been in an accident caused by someone else, but you can tell they aren't quite sure how to react when you are the one that brought it on. You automatically move into the "bad driver" category in their mental Roladexes, and they don't know whether to respond with sympathy or advice. In the past, people might have asked you if you looked both ways, if the car was in your blind spot... basic driving-school stuff like that. Now, though, they assume you must have been playing Angry Birds on an iPad while updating your Facebook status with your toes.

In defense of my driving, as we drove up to our new abode after Thanksgiving with the in-laws, I had a tire completely shred on me on a wet wintry day while going 75 m.p.h. and never lost control.

I can also drive my car into one of those automated car washes on the first try. So I'm not devoid of skills. I just didn't check a blind spot very well, apparently - or the guy was going 300 in a 93 Nissan truck. I'm not sure which it was.

The good thing about all of these experiences is that I learned the utility of the phrase, "it could be a lot worse." In every case that was easily true - I didn't fall all the way down the stairs and seriously injure my baby girl, I didn't hurt anyone with my Kamikaze driving, and our tire gave out just after we'd left a blizzard. Actually, any given set of circumstances could potentially be a lot worse, no matter how bad they might already be, so really next time I do something stupid, I'll just be grateful it wasn't anything stupider.

You Know, Bigfoot Could Be Real

2010-02-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

By nature I'm a fairly skeptical person. Maybe analytical would be a better term - sometimes to a fault. I've been trained to be so - and probably justifiably so. We live in a world of spin and agendas. We are flooded by posts on Facebook warning that the site is going to start seizing your firstborn children or e-mail forwards claiming that someone found a Civil War-era cannon in the McDonald's play area. There is a lot of garbage through which to sift in the search for rare, small nuggets of truth (something the internet, interestingly enough, has made easier and harder at the same time).

Somewhat paradoxically, I am also a fairly trusting and curious person. In some cases, particularly where faith is concerned, I'm willing to let my natural disbelief yield to trust in what I feel. I'm also more than a little fascinated by the unknown and am at times able to accept that there may be something beyond what the analytical wisdom of the day would allow. I have learned enough to know that I don't know everything.

To that end, I set a modest New Year's resolution for myself to read a book a month, hoping to siphon a little of the ocean of things I don't know into the wading pool of things I do know. I've also decided that to keep me to that goal (and to encourage me to blog a bit more), I'll report back here on what I think I've picked up - whether the actual books in question are themselves educational or not.

I cheated a bit in January (a bit of a dubious start, I admit) by finishing up a book I'd started in the month prior. Sometime last fall, I was watching The History Channel late at night (I really let loose when my wife is out of town, huh?) and caught the tail end of a documentary positing that Knights Templar had visited the Americas well before Columbus, likely to make a land claim. I heard enough to pique my interest, so I ordered a book written by the chief protagonist of the theory, Scott Wolter.

With its frequent references to symbols and Freemasons and the Holy Grail, one might expect the book to be something akin to The Da Vinci Code. It was actually quite the opposite: little attention was given to the flow of the story, but a lot of attention was given to grounding purported evidence to reality. That isn't to say there isn't a good story in The Hooked X; it goes something like this.

In 1898, a Swedish American farmer in Minnesota digs up a tree and finds a 200-lb. stone slab wrapped up in the roots. The stone is covered in runes, and linguists who examine paper copies of the inscription claim both that it tells of party that visited the area before 1400 but also that it is likely a hoax (and anthropologists and historians largely agree). The farmer lived with the controversy and considerable skepticism about his integrity through the rest of his life.

Quite posthumously, he gained an ally about 10 years ago when the keepers of the stone (a local museum) asked Wolter, a forensic geologist with no prior knowledge of the stone or its history, to examine it as another check on its authenticity. He found enough scientific evidence (detailed in the book) to convince him that the inscription dated to well before the farmer allegedly carved it himself.

Spurred by this discovery, Wolter began an apparently consuming quest to understand better who had carved the stone and why. The Hooked X reads something like a journal of individual pieces of evidence and experiences compiled as that quest progressed. The most convincing to me were characters (particularly the titular "hooked X") about which the farmer could not have evidently known at the time but which appear in other inscriptions found elsewhere in North America, in some places in Europe, and even in the signature of Christopher Columbus (who had some family connections to the Templars). I'm also highly tempted to believe that Wolter is right in theorizing Templar origins for a tower in Newport, Rhode Island, with an unclear history and astronomical alignments that apparently point directly to the location of the stone in Minnesota.

Wolter does make a few mental leaps I'm not ready to follow blindly, but he did at least open my mind to the possibility that the Vikings were not the only pre-Columbus European visitors to the New World. And therein lies the paradox: I'll believe that historians are ignoring potentially one of the most important historical discoveries of the last few hundred years and yet am highly skeptical that any of these car insurance companies can really save several hundred dollars off of your car insurance.

Sit Back, Relax, and Enjoy the Flight

2009-12-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have never been to Minneapolis. I hear that they have a nice mall, but I lost just about any desire to go there when the Twins beat my Cardinals in the World Series in 1987. I also just checked the weather, and the high Wednesday will be 7 degrees. I'm sure it's a nice enough city, but I don't see myself catching a Timberwolves home game any time soon.

That said, I'm pretty sure I could find Minneapolis if I was looking for it. If you can remember back a few months (before Tiger-TV), a couple of pilots were playing around on their laptops and didn't realize they had missed Minneapolis until they were 100+ miles on the other side of it. I know we've probably all spaced out and missed an exit, but off-hand I can't really think of a job where it's more important to pay attention to what you are doing (I mean, even a surgeon usually only has one person's life in their hands, not hundreds).

I don't know the population of Minneapolis (and I'm not curious enough to look it up), but it's not like they were trying to spot Bigfoot at a Star Wars convention. I'm not sure exactly how high they were flying, but I checked on Google Earth at about 38K feet, and this is what the Twin Cities look like from there:

Regardless of what happened in this particular instance, it did make me question what's really going on up there. I mean, they threw a heavy-duty lock on the door to keep the terrorists out, but maybe they should put a webcam up so we can make sure they are not playing Risk. You have to admit that you always feel better eating a restaurant where the kitchen is in plain sight, right? Another option would be for them to have to pop on the intercom every 10 minutes or so to say “This is your pilot – just wanted to let you know that I’m not taking a nap” (might get a little annoying, but it’s better than running into a mountain or something).

Apparently pilots trust the auto pilot a lot more than I thought they would. I had always assumed that the auto pilot was just something for big emergencies, but apparently flying a big commercial jet is about as complicated as cooking in a crock pot – a bit of work at the beginning and the end and free time to do whatever you want in between. I’m not disparaging pilots by any means; I mean, you definitely want a good one around if your plane is going down in a river (hypothetically speaking – I’m sure that doesn’t happen).

[As an aside, there are some jobs where I think “auto pilots” are underused. The other day we were at a work Christmas party, and they had a DJ there. Let’s be honest, there are only like 20 songs that get played at parties like that or at weddings. I might be in the minority in that I find them all annoying (there are probably millions of songs out there, and yet somehow all we get is Madonna’s “Holiday” and that “Celebration” song over and over), but if you have to play them, couldn't you just plug in an iPod and save a lot of cash?]

I do need to have a little empathy for the pilots who missed their exit, because I know there is an auto pilot somewhere in my head that kicks in sometimes. I’m guessing we’ve all driven somewhere without really paying attention to how we got there, but sometimes it even happens when I’m just walking around. The other day I popped into a bathroom at work, and as I was about to walk out I realized that I didn’t even know what floor I was on or at which end of the building. Granted, everything in my office looks the same, but it was a little disconcerting.

I also used my auto pilot a few weeks back when filling out a health questionnaire at work (just part of an annual health check). I really just wanted to get this thing over with and was flying through without looking too closely. I’ve been running and working out quite a bit lately, and when I came to the question asking my how much I exercise in a week, I plugged in 5 hours and moved on. After I submitted it, the results summary told me that exercise was one of my big weak points. Apparently, the question had asked how many minutes a week of rigorous exercise I put in. It should make for an interesting conversation later this week when I meet with the health coach (the next step in the process – I guess I’ll do anything for a $25 gift card), because on another question I said that I have no plans to increase my level of activity.

My wife tells me that I should pay more attention to what I’m doing, and she’s right – I’d probably save myself a few headaches and make the world a little safer place for those around me. I mean, I need to do the right thing here - it’s not like I’m just flying a 747 or something like that.

Get On Your Snuggie

2009-11-16T00:18:00.002-07:00

I may have mentioned this before, but I have never really lived on my own. In fact, I have never really not had a "roommate" of some kind or another, with the only exceptions being my first two years (before my brother was born) and six weeks on a temporary assignment in Korea in 2000. I'm not complaining about that, because Myers-Briggs and every other personality test I take confirms that I straddle the line between introversion and extroversion and am therefore really ok either way.

Living with other people does have its challenges, even when they are people you love. Most importantly, it is significantly more challenging to rent a movie. We purchased a car recently, and I'm pretty sure I spent less time making that decision than I do on a typical Blockbuster visit. There are two ways to tackle this, and both have drawbacks. You can put one person in charge of picking, but that's an enormous amount of pressure to put on an individual. You can also try to come to a consensus, but that has sort of a Middle East peace process feel.

You might be tempted to think that online movie rentals have made all of this a lot easier, but even that doesn't compensate for another complication, which is that there aren't that many new movies worth renting in the first place. It seems like most are either gross-out horror movies or gross-out comedies, and the rest are based on comic books or 80s toys (I'm just holding my breath for a GoBots adaptation).

Fortunately, there are a few out there still moving the art of film-making ahead. For example, the other day I saw this (couldn't find an original version, but I think the "laugh track" adds to the effect):

Now, let me first admit that I laughed pretty hard the first time I saw a Snuggie commercial - not really at the commercial itself but just at the concept of a Snuggie. I mean, blankets have been doing well for most people since, well, whenever humans starting hunting large furry animals. Are people living in ice caves, where it's so cold that if you stick reach out of a blanket to change the channel you lose a few fingers to frostbite? Apparently I was wrong though, because people are buying them - people I know to be rational, smart people - so there must be something to it.

I'm not really interested personally, but I am a happy consumer of the commercials. I'm not sure where to begin, but let's start with all of the dancing. Apparently, wearing a Snuggie is like being on Night at the Roxbury, whether in the kitchen or out camping with the family. Snuggies aren't just for kicking back on the couch anymore, either - I mean, you can't play Pictionary during a gas outage in the dead of winter wrapped in an old-fashioned hole-free blanket. I've never had much luck eating popcorn while wearing a quilt at the movie theater.

As for the dog Snuggie, I'm not sure what made me laugh more, the thought of some poor dog about to pass out from the heat because they're forced to wear a second blanket (people seem to forget that they have a built-in Snuggie already) or the glasses (probably the high point of the whole thing).

Unfortunately, as original and entertaining as the commercial is, the Snuggie is far less original and ground-breaking than the makers proclaim it to be. Now that people are apparently wearing these around, it'll only be a matter of time before they add a hood. Then it'll be pretty obvious that Snuggies have been around for a long, long time.

Maybe Mogwai Will Be Half-Off This Year on Black Friday

2009-10-27T21:36:00.003-07:00

Last year on the day after Thanksgiving, I found myself at Target at about 7 a.m. doing some bargain shopping. That's early enough on its own, but I think I'd been up for about three hours already, including waiting in line for an hour in the cold Utah rain to squeeze into a cramped Toys-R-Us (is it just me, or was that store not a lot more spacious about 25-30 years ago?). Being that tired and in that sort of atmosphere will cause some irrational behavior - it's sort of like a shark feeding frenzy, where you'll bite on anything not tied down. Somehow I ended up with a bunch of $5 DVDs, most of which are unwatched nearly a year later.

One of those is Gremlins, which I still think is a bit of a classic (but apparently not enough of one to cause me to crack the case). If I remember correctly, though, the creatures in Gremlins were based loosely on little monsters that were blamed for causing mechanical failures during WWII. I may have to watch the movie to remember how they got rid of them (I think sunlight is involved - should be easy in Arizona), because I'm pretty sure there are a few hanging around my house.

Last night I took an emergency trip to the store (to get chocolate syrup), and my car ran without a hitch, just as it has for about the past 8 years. This morning when I got in and turned the key, it was idling high, and the "check engine" light was on. I'm probably missing something obvious, but how else (besides gremlins) do you explain my car breaking while sitting in a garage all night?

When they are not digging around in my engine block, they're apparently digging around in my neighbor's yard. The other day our neighbor warned us about some flooding on one side of our house, but I figured out pretty quickly that it was coming from their side of the wall. A guy came and fixed it the other day, but apparently the gremlins aren't letting him off that easy, because yesterday the water was back.

It's no accident, then, that these things tend to hit in waves. The problem is that no one has watched that movie for a while, so my pest control company (who were just here the other day) spray for scorpions and ants but don't deal with gremlins at all. I'd call the people at Monsterquest to check this out, but I stopped watching that a while ago when I realized that they never find anything (shocker!).

While I'm on the subject of Monsterquest, I think the reason I like stuff like that in the first place is that I'm intrigued by the unknown. What I've also learned recently, though, is that in some cases I prefer the unknown to stay that way. For example, a week ago I was happy in my ignorance regarding what happens behind the closed doors of an airplane cockpit. I think I'd prefer assuming there are gremlins on board to knowing that the pilots are probably up there playing Minesweeper.

This Is Where Guessing Happens

2009-10-26T23:41:00.001-07:00

Admittedly, one of the things that brought me out of my semi-retirement from blogging was the impending start of another NBA season. One of the few things with which I've been consistent in my life over the past few years has been coming up with meaningless basketball predictions that are likely read by no one. I should probably keep it up, because some day when I have Alzheimer's (there are already signs, I'm telling you), I'll need some of these constants in my life to help me hold it together.

Before jumping in on this year, I should at least be transparent about how I did last year.

Less than 7-out-of-10 of these predictions will be correct. I guess I learned something in business school, because I'm now hedged against going 0-for-10. [Including this one, I scored 5.5. Details to follow.]
Deron Williams will finally be in the All-Star Game, and at least once this year I'll hear someone mispronounce his name. [OK, so I was wrong here, but I think it was only because he was injured for too much of the 1st half. It's crazy that one of the top 2-3 point guards in the NBA has never been an all star, but then again, Jerry Sloan has never won coach of the year. A "0."]
I will find a way to be at All-Star Saturday (since it'll be local). [Shamefully, I was not there. I actually tried to buy tickets, but I think they were sold out so far in advance that they were all gone by the time I looked. "0"]
The Spurs will not finish in the top four in the West but will get out of the first round anyway. [Actually, the opposite happened. I'm lucky I didn't go with a point scale that includes negative scores. "0"]
The Celtics won't repeat (I'm guessing someone gets hurt), and my gut tells me the Lakers will win the whole thing. Then again, my gut could be hurting from picking the Lakers. Sort of a "chicken and egg" situation here. [Well, I can't claim to be a basketball prophet or anything, because it's not like I picked Atlanta or someone like that, but I did get this one. A clear "1."]
I will not finish dead last in my fantasy league, which I did last year. It wasn't even close. I moved my team to Oklahoma, though, and I'm predicting big things this year. [I still wasn't that good, but I snuck into the playoffs in the 6th (and final) spot. I was the Chicago Bulls, essentially. "1"]
TNT will build its whole NBA playoff advertising campaign around a movie. Based on what I've heard is coming out, I'm guessing it'll beSuperman or The A-Team. [Not sure where I heard that those movies would be out, but if I remember correctly, there was some kind of movie tie-in... Transformers maybe? I'm giving myself a "1" on this one because, well, I need it.]
The NBA coach of the year and NBA rookie of the year will be name Spoelstra and Beasley, respectively. Sounds like a couple of divorce lawyers, I know. [Big "0" on that one - the Heat weren't as good as I thought they'd be, and Beasley was apparently on something.]
Yao Ming will magically miss less than 5 games this year. I know, I know... but I'm trying to will this to happen in order to help #6 come true. [OK, so I was technically wrong here, but this one was very close, so I think I deserve a "0.5." I mean, he played in 77 of 82 games.]
I will sit somewhere lower than the top three rows in the building at a Suns game this year. [This did happen, thanks to my brother-in-law encouraging me not to be too cheap. "1"]

Admittedly, not stellar. It's not a good sign when you get essentially a failing grade on a test for which you made up the questions. That said, one of the reasons sports are intriguing, I think, is that most predictions are wrong. In that spirit, then, here are 10 more for this year.

Deron Williams will be an All-Star this year. Barring another injury, I'll be shocked if this doesn't happen.
Marc Gasol will finish the season with more rebounds than Pau Gasol. I think I'd average 10 rebounds a game if I had Allen Iverson and O.J. Mayo on my team.
Blake Griffin will average 20+ points and 10+ rebounds. I don't really know if it will happen, but I grabbed him relatively early in my fantasy draft, so I need this to happen.
I will take Matthew to his first NBA game. I took him to a baseball game this past summer, and it went a lot better than I expected. As long as the Suns sell popcorn, it'll work.
The Spurs will win the title. I don't necessarily want this to happen, but I feel like Tim Duncan has one more in him, for some reason.
LeBron James and Dwight Howard will be in the finals of the dunk contest, and Dwight will win it.
The Jazz will trade Carlos Boozer.
Shaq will publicly say something derogatory about the Suns.
The Golden State Warriors will be involved in at least one fight - possibly with each other.
Dwayne Wade will sign an extension with Miami before the season is over, but LeBron will not do so with the Cavaliers.

Now, with that out of the way, the only thing left to figure out is how I'll balance my time between the Jazz opener on Wednesday night and the first game of the World Series.

Don't Call It a Comeback

2009-10-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of disaster or alien invasion movies begin with some half-asleep guy at a remote listening outpost picking up a signal and freaking out because he took the job expected to never hear anything. Following my blog over the past several months - and I'm not assuming that anyone has been - was probably been a lot like that, although hopefully no cities will be destroyed in the next 120 minutes.

I'm not sure why I've found it so hard to write anything lately. Given that I stopped blogging about the time Michael Jackson died, one might be tempted to conclude that his passing had something to do with it. It might sound sort of heartless, but that didn't really affect me at all. More than anything, I was intrigued by the fact that anyone was surprised that he died. I mean, within about three days we were flooded with hardbound coffee table books, 3-hour biopics, and commemorative T-shirts - do you really thing people whipped those up overnight? I was actually affected more by Walter Cronkite passing about three weeks later: I felt pretty bad about that one, well, mostly because I thought he was already dead.

Some might also posit that nothing blog-worthy happened. That's not true, either. I mean, all summer at work we had these signs anonymously posted all over the building - probably the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, on a number of levels.

The only thing I can come up with is that I needed some time off. With my sabbatical out of the way, to quote Jimmy Chitwood, "I figure it's time for me to start playing ball" again. Certainly don't quote me on it, because I know you won't believe it until you see it.

Not Everyone Can Be Bill Gates, But I'm Trying

2009-06-30T22:45:00.002-07:00

After staring out the year with the best of intentions on this blog, having a new baby join our family has slowed me down quite a bit. Now that we're about halfway from another New Year, this is probably a good time for a half-New Year's resolution to try to keep the few readers I may have left.

I could probably spend my time on something constructive or devote my energy to a worthy cause, but I'm not sure that I really have time for another worthy cause. I mean, I'm involved with my family and with church-related stuff, obviously, but I can't say that have a lot of spare time to end Third-World poverty or to cure any incurable diseases. For the most part, I just leave that to the celebrities, since they seem to have everything figured out and a lot of time to kill.

Actually, I'm probably selling myself a little short. I do have a few causes I'm trying to tackle, pretty much on my own. For one, I am on a mission to eliminate scorpions (not everywhere, just around my house). Just to clarify, I'm not talking about the German rock band (I mean, why would you want to get rid of a band that came up with maybe the best "Cold War is over" whistling song of all time?). I'm talking the creepy eight-legged kind (I looked it up - Scorpions the rock band have 5 members, so they don't quite fit that description).

I've found out since moving to Arizona that it's pretty tough to get rid of scorpions. Pesticide doesn't do much, and they can squeeze through just about anything. Fortunately, a higher power saw fit to give us a fighting chance by making them glow in a blacklight, much like a guy from work who showed up to a laser tag activity a few years ago wearing a white Hawaiian shirt. Now that I've discovered how well that works, I'm out there just about every night hunting them down. I realize there aren't a lot of animal-related causes that try to bring about the extinction of a species, but hey, at least I'm involved in something.

My other cause is a bit more difficult, because it extends far beyond my own yard. One of my big pet peeves is that in most places, people play pick-up basketball by 1s and 2s. I understand why in the pre-3-pointer days people played by 1s, but as soon as the "3" came around, it all went downhill. Rather than deciding to go by 2s and 3s, some math genius decided that because a 3-pointer is one more point than a 2, we should go by 1s and 2s. I mean, a "2" is one more point that a "1."

Now, if I showed up at a court and proposed going by 2s and 4s, people would throw me out. In reality, if you play by 1s and 2s, that's what you are doing. I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle this one, to be honest. On the plus side, as basketball goes global, other countries will probably start adopting this fuzzy math, and the U.S. education system won't look so bad by comparison.

Hoops and Hurdles

2009-05-10T01:10:00.005-07:00

I work on a team with some people in Arizona and some in another state. Given the current state of the economy, my company has cut down on travel, which has meant that we don't meet in person as much as we used to. Instead, we've been using these "virtual" conference rooms my company has. Basically, you're in a room with half a table and some HD screens on the other end, and they have the same. I was a little skeptical as to how well this would work, but it's actually not that different that being in the same room, except that you can't share snacks.

I say this only to highlight that I'm not all that smart or nerdy, despite what I might tell you in a few minutes, compared to the type of people that come up with things like that. As I believe I mentioned sometime in the past, I find it fascinating that movies 20-30 years ago all thought the future would be about flying cars and yet still thought we'd be using computers the size of refrigerators. My company has been a big part of the fact that you have computers now that can fit in a purse, so I know firsthand that the people who figure that stuff out are the true smart/nerdy people.

Of course, spaceships and lasers are a lot more interesting (at least visually), so I guess that's why they end up in movies. My son is nearly three and already getting into Star Wars a bit, which I think might make me a bad parent given that one of my co-workers in one of those "virtual" meetings yesterday mentioned that he wasn't allowed to watch Star Wars until he was a teenager. I guess his parents had a point: Luke Skywalker is really whiny sometimes, and I don't want my son acting like that.

Having re-watched these recently, one thing that struck me as funny is that Darth Vader at some point equates the fact that Luke has constructed his own light saber with his skills as a Jedi being really advanced. I thought becoming a Jedi mostly had to do with moving objects around with your mind and swordfighting, but apparently there is a big electrical engineering component. I wonder if all those people in the UK who claimed Jedi as their religion (I'm not kidding - look it up) realize that they have a lot of physics and calculus classes ahead of them.

If I needed to build my own lightsaber, I'm pretty sure I'd find the parts at Fry's Electronics. One of my clearly nerdy hobbies is putting computers together, and if you are into that, Fry's Electronics is both a blessing and a curse. If you're not familiar with Fry's, it's a giant warehouse full of about anything (and I literally mean anything) computer-related, as well as a lot of other electronics and a few random things (I found a bin full of Slap Chops the other day). If you need it, they have it, and it's often on sale. That's the blessing part.

The curse part is that Fry's doesn't make anything simple. Some things you can buy without dealing with a sales associate, but they don't bother putting up big signs above the aisles to tell you where things are, opting instead for little signs at the end of the aisles printed on whatever colored paper they can find lying around. Things like computer memory, however, are sequestered behind giant panes of glass. If you haven't purchased computer memory before, there are a lot of speeds and sizes, so it's possible to stand in front of that wall for hours trying to figure out what you need (which is why they have a cafe nearby, in case you miss a meal in the process).

One you figure out what you need (or give up), you have to ask a sales associate for it, but they don't give it to you directly. They type a bunch of stuff into the computer (your name, address, the name of your third-grade teacher, etc.) and then give you a printout that you take to the checkout area, where someone retrieves your actual item. It's obvious that the sales associates operate on some sort of a commission basis, because they try to get all of your other purchases and anything else they can throw into your cart included on that printout.

I probably shouldn't say "take to the checkout area" so lightly. In order to get there you have to walk through a long maze - a gauntlet of potential impulse purchases. They pack in everything from the usual walls of candy, chips, drinks, toys, and batteries to stuff like disco balls and network interface cards. Once you fight your way through all of that (not recommended with small children), you run into the gatekeeper, if you will, who stands on a little tower and sends you to one of about 50 registers. Just to make sure no one gets away too easily, they have set up one last checkpoint on the way out, where they check the contents of your cart against your receipt and mark it with a highlighter Costco style.

Even then, you are not really done with the Fry's experience. Inevitably, something you purchased won't work (or at least not the way you want it to). I've always found the return experience at Fry's to be a little challenging, but recently I ran across this article from 1997 that confirmed my suspicions. Apparently, at the time Fry's took some heat for having a return policy internally called "Double-H" (hoop and hurdles). While I'm sure they relaxed this a bit after the adverse publicity, I think the principle lives on, since I usually walk away feeling like I've committed some kind of misdemeanor. It's also inevitable that you'll end up returning something at some point; when I brought back my item, they just slapped a discount sticker on it and put it back on the shelf.

I'll be honest, though. I really like Fry's, for the most part, and try to make up excuses to go. A lot of people seem to have a hard time breaking away from an abusive partner, and I guess I'm no different. My latest excuse is that (here comes the nerdy part to which I alluded earlier) I'm turning our old computer into a home media server that I can connect to my cable/TV. It only took a few trips to Fry's to get it up-and-running, but it looks like I have more ahead of me because it freezes up after about 30 seconds, and I've narrowed the cause down to the CPU or dust or the power supply or the video card or a device driver or the hard drive or my Windows installation. A normal person would just buy something like this from HP or Dell, I suppose, but you'll never become a Jedi that way.

[As a sidenote, while we're talking about nerdy things, I've told a few people recently that if you have seen the new Star Trek movie and/or watch Lost, you aren't allowed to call me a nerd for watching Battlestar Galactica unless you are willing to admit that you are a bigger one yourself, given that Battlestar Galactica doesn't involve any aliens, killer clouds of smoke, time travel, or J.J. Abrams.]

Some Accidents Aren't Accidental

2009-04-03T00:13:00.009-07:00

I'm returning from a bit of a hiatus. Nearly two weeks ago, we welcomed another child into the world, and everything related to that has taken over, as you'd expect. For a number of reasons, this birth involved a lot less stress and worry than the last, but I nevertheless came away very grateful once again to live in a time and place with good medical care.

Despite that appreciation for medical professionals and technology, one thing that's always slightly amusing to me is that being in a hospital is a little like prison. You're in there with a bunch of strangers, most of whom would like nothing more than to get out, and you can't help but wonder what put them there. You eat food from a tray and sleep in rooms that are far too cramped to be comfortable. You can only get out once your time is up and you are deemed fit to do so, and even then you have to meet with someone on the other side to make sure you're not regressing.

To be fair, they're mostly just looking out for your health and safety, and I appreciate that, especially when my family is involved. After all, I spend my work life in a very safety-conscious environment, as I've mentioned in the past. I mean, it's gotten to the point that the other day I was in one of our buildings for a meeting and wanted to sit down at a table in the hallway to do some work but was thwarted by a sign telling me that I was not welcome to sit at those tables unless I planned to use an external mouse. I understand that carpal tunnel can be a problem, but how long did they think I'd be sitting there?

I'm fine with all of this, because I'm a pretty cautious person in general when it comes to my own safety. I'm not a huge thrill-seeker, probably because I enjoy being alive and not in excruciating pain. Maybe as a result, I don't have as much sympathy as I probably should for people who walk right into injury. For example, my wife watched shows called things like "Bitten" and "I Shouldn't Be Alive," and most of the time the story is something like "I decided to keep a tiger shark in my hot tub" or "I thought a cobra would make a good back-scratcher." I know I'm supposed to feel bad for these people, but I really don't all that much.

Apparently some of these people live right in my own back yard, so I suppose I need to learn a little empathy in the interest of being a good neighbor (or maybe figure out who these people are so I can keep my distance). For example, a few years ago I largely discounted the possibility of a gas station pump bursting into flames despite all of the purported causes of one doing so, not thinking that anyone would be dumb enough to actually light up next to one. Well, not long ago someone locally decided that firing up a match while his friend was pumping gas would be funny.

Meanwhile, in a small town a little north of here, another guy suffered some serious scratches from a rabid bobcat that had wandered into the local bar. You'd think this would be a pretty unlikely thing to happen to someone, but the odds definitely increase if you get right down in its face with your camera phone.

I can't really judge these people, because my wife will attest to the fact that I've been known to do some dumb things from time to time. All I'm saying is that if I do end up serving time in the hospital due to doing one of those stupid things, I won't have any sympathy for myself or really expect any from you.

But Wait, There's More

2009-03-20T23:04:00.003-07:00

This is just a quick follow-up on a few recent posts. First, I mentioned not long ago suspicions shared by myself and H.I. that that the Hulk (or someone like him) works in our building. Well, yesterday we were walking down the hallway and passed the person in question, who was in conversation with someone who evidently is braver than we. Just as we passed, we heard him say, "I just enjoy causing people pain." I'm not making this up.

Second, last month I posted a few clips of the lead singer of Keane going acoustic and solo, so I thought I'd add a video I just saw of Tim Rice-Oxley (songwriter and piano man) doing the same (although covering someone else's song in this case). Tim and I share a lot musically. I mean, I can't sing or play piano or play guitar or write music, but we did apparently listen to some of the same music growing up.

The Corporate Ladder

2009-03-17T21:15:00.003-07:00

I work on the third floor of my building, which has four floors. I should probably take the stairs in the interest of my own health, but I'm slightly lazy about that. I mean, I'm not completely lazy - I go running and work out and shave at least twice a week. It's just that I'm not that interesting in climbing anything at 8:00 in the morning. I tell myself, though, that if I worked on the second floor (as H.I. does), I'd take the stairs. I mean, I'm not one of those people. You know the ones.

Well, it turns out you can't judge those people, because sometimes you are one. The other day H.I. and I were walking back from the cafe at work, and I (being a third-floor person) stepped onto the elevator out of habit. It was only as the doors were closing that I realized we were going to H.I.'s desk at the second floor, so I discretely pressed the button for Floor #2. As I did, you could feel the disapproving stares and head-shaking from the third-and-fourth floor crowd, particularly since I had no visible injuries or handicaps and wasn't carrying anything heavy or hazardous that might have excused my behavior.

Especially given that it only took maybe 10 seconds for the doors to open, us to exit, and the doors to close, I'm not sure why we find this annoying, at least in a building my size. It seems like even for someone way up on the fourth floor, we'd be adding about 20-30 seconds max to their ride, and I'm not sure anyone at my office is doing anything critical enough for that to make a difference. I mean, if we specialized in diffusing bombs or something, it would make sense.

Besides, if I can expect the second floor people to take a flight of stairs, don't the fourth floor people have just as much right to expect me to get off on the second floor and walk up a flight of stairs? By extension, the 4th floor people would have to jump off at my floor and trudge up the stairwell. Really, aren't we asking the second floor people to do something we're not willing to do ourselves? They're the only ones doing any work here.

I think the only person with a legitimate beef is the one who works on the 98th floor of some building in Manhattan. I mean, 10 seconds times 97 is like 16 minutes of extra ride time, and that's long enough that you wouldn't want to drink a big soda before stepping on. But even there, where's the cut-off between those who should be stair-climbers and those who get to be lazy? I mean, the 4th floor people at my office wouldn't last a day there, because they never walk up anything.

The Next Big Thing

2009-03-09T23:11:00.007-07:00

I'd like to start by recommending a book. It's called The Tipping Point and was written by Malcolm Gladwell.

As put by one reviewer, the book expounds on the idea that "little changes can have big effects; when small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or 'tipping point' is reached, changing the world." Very inspiring.

Again, I'd like to recommend this book. I'd like to, but I've never read it. I assume it's a good book, because I've had two copies for 6 or 7 years now. One I think I picked up during a class in business school, and another was a birthday gift (to the gifter, on the off chance you read this blog, sorry about that - I'll get to it).

So admittedly, I don't know all the details. Still, I've thought about the underlying principle a bit lately. For example, I don't know what the tipping point on tattoos was, but I wouldn't be against jumping back in time to just before that point and tipping things the other way. I mean, it was bad enough when the barbed-wire-around-the-bicep thing started to take off, but the tattoo-on-the-lower-back thing has really gotten out of hand. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a bit ironic that people probably started out getting tattoos to show some individuality but in the process permanently gave up a bit of individuality when everyone else did the same thing.

At the same time, at work I am frequently reminded that not everything gets a tipping point. One day, H.I. claimed to have seen some kind of 1970s BMW motor home in the parking lot. Sure enough, a few days later, I ran into this on the way to my car:

After a bit of research, we found out that this thing is called a Vixen and that there were only about 500 of these made. I'm sure the guy who came up with this (apparently Bill Collins) had visions of thousands of families squeezing into their Vixens (or is the plural just "Vixen"?) and hitting the national parks. For whatever reason, the tipping point for a motor home that fits in a single parking spot never came.

That said, maybe the Vixen will become the new tattoo. The chances of randomly running into another Vixen owner are even smaller than me running into someone from Beatty, so it's a fairly exclusive club (literally - they have their own club). Sure, joining the club is probably more expensive than getting a weird haircut, but it's certainly less permanent than a tattoo and far more utilitarian, particularly if you want to take a nap at lunch.

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry

2009-03-03T21:35:00.004-07:00

Movie special effects have come a long way. When I was a kid, the closest thing to CGI was, well, the beast in Pete's Dragon:

Back then, if you didn't want to go the cartoon route, you had two choices. One, you could call Ray Harryhausen:

If claymation wasn't your thing, your only other option was to throw some green paint and a wig onto Lou Ferrigno:

Surprisingly, I'm not sure how much better off we are now in some movies. I mean, I finally watched last year's Hulk movie the other night, and while the CGI is definitely a bit more believable than in the previous one (where the Hulk was jumping all over the map like a kangaroo), I still felt like I was watching a cartoon part of the time. I mean, if I ever ran into the Hulk from the movie, I wouldn't be that worried (albeit moreso than I would Pete's Dragon - it's hard to be too scared of anything that hangs out with Mickey Rooney). If I ever ran into an asparagus-tinted Lou Ferrigno, however, I'm not going to lie - I might run.

Actually, I think the real Hulk may work in my building. H.I. and I independently came to the same conclusion. He's about the right size and build, and he limps around a bit like he gets into a lot of fights. I've never seen him angry to this point, so I can't be sure, but I'm not that eager to find out. He plays sand volleyball at lunch, and like the rest of these guys, he's always tracking a bunch of sand into the locker room. I'm not about to bring it up, because the door to that locker room gets a bit stuck, and I'm not sure I'd make it out of there before he rips through his shorts and throws me through the cinderblock wall.

Still, the new Hulk movie was good enough that I'd probably watch a sequel. I'm guessing there's still time to abandon the computer-generated Hulk and replace him with the guy on the second floor at my office. I don't know, though, maybe people aren't ready yet for something that real.

K.I.S.S.

2009-02-28T09:22:00.004-07:00

I have a bit of an addiction to tortilla chips. I generally eat pretty well, but this is my one downfall (well, one of them). I've thought of giving them up, but it might be tough. I'd rather run to burn them off than give them up. I know I should be eating broccoli or something like that instead, but there's a reason they don't have an aisle full of bags of broccoli.

There is one thing I appreciate about my tortilla chips: simplicity. The type I usually buy have three ingredients: corn, oil, and salt. Even better, I know what all of those things are (let's ignore that two of those three are potentially bad). That's an increasingly rare thing these days.

For example, I like Grape Nuts (I mean, you have to appreciate a product that is neither grape nor nuts and yet sounds appropriately named). As stated previously, I'm a bit of a cereal addict also, and I figure as cereal goes, Grape Nuts are about as good as it gets health-wise: whole grain, low sugar, high fiber... and probably a net negative as far as calories go given how much energy it takes to consume them. The problem is that I'm too cheap to pay anything more than $2-something for cereal, so I go with the Kroger "Nutty Nuggets" instead. I mean, these days the store brands are basically exact copies of the real thing, right?

Well, maybe not. Here are the ingredients in Grape Nuts:

Except for the fact that they call niacin "niacinamide" (which is what I think I spray on my weeds), I don't have a lot of questions there. Looking at my Nutty Nuggets, they are, in fact, largely the same, except that they throw in these gems: pyridoxine hydrochloride, cyanocobalamin, and cholecalciferol. Now, I'm guessing that those are just the technical names for a bunch of vitamins, but if the Post people can just say "vitamin D," why do the Kroger people have to make it sound like I'm eating Drano? Maybe I am eating Drano - I have no idea.

Even when you can understand the ingredients, you still have to wonder sometimes about what they are doing with your food. Yesterday for a team meeting at work, I had to bring in bagels. I picked up some cream cheese to go along with them, and I happened to glance at the ingredients when the meeting got a little slow. The first ingredient was nonfat milk, followed immediately by milk fat. You have to wonder why they're making it more complicated than it needs to be. Maybe we're dealing with the hot dog of the dairy world, with all the leftover milk products thrown in there.

I'm not suggested simple food is necessarily better. I mean, butter has one (or maybe two) ingredients, but I don't know that it's a good idea to walk around gnawing on sticks of it. If it helps me justify my tortilla chip habit, though, I'm willing to pretend that it makes sense.

Chickens and Eggs

2009-02-26T21:40:00.004-07:00

I've read a few debates lately about the origins of the universe. My opinion on that is admittedly influenced by my religion, but even then concepts like infinity stretch my finite intellect to the point that my head could explode. When I read this stuff I'm impressed that people can use complex math to figure out things like the Big Bang Theory in about the same time it takes me to figure out what movie to rent, but I'm also sure that we don't know nearly as much as we think we do.

I figure at this point in my life I'm not going to make much headway on that one. There are plenty of other equally important and perplexing problems to be solved, anyway. For example, in my office in an attempt to save money and the environment, they are trying to encourage people to stay away from styrofoam cups and containers. As a result, some people are taking real dishes back to their desks. Yesterday I walked past this:

The question here is which came first. Did someone walk by, see some dishes sitting there, and (out of sheer indignation) go back to his/her desk to print off this sign? It's just as likely that someone put this sign here previously and that (out of sheer spite) someone else walked over and put their dishes down. I don't have any calculus or physics to back this up, but I'm guessing it was the latter, and if so, I expect this to escalate, with bigger signs and more dishes.

Then, as I drove home yesterday, I ran across another mystery of sorts. I found myself sitting in traffic behind these guys:

I'm trying really hard not to judge people, but I admit that I don't understand the helmet-free motorcycle people. I know that in this state and a few others there may not be a helmet law, but if you'd rather look cool than live, I have to question your mental capacity. One guy here has decided that he can have it both ways. I'm still trying to decide whether Leif Ericson or no-helmet guy is more likely to see the inside of an ambulance first. I might almost have to go with no-helmet guy, because with all the variables in any accident, I can't imagine adding sharp objects ever helps your odds.

You Are Not Reading This Post Right Now

2009-02-23T21:03:00.003-07:00

My son likes to argue with us. For example, at the store he'll see a pear and call it an apple, and almost no matter how many times I tell him it's a pear, he'll fire back that it's an apple. I say "almost" because he'll eventually give up and admit that he might be wrong. He also seems to think English is a tonal language like Chinese or Laotian or something, because now he's started correcting things we say with the same word (for example, if I say "dinner" he might throw back a "no, dinner!" with a little change in emphasis).

I actually don't mind the fact that he has an opinion. Given the choice, I'd rather have a son that has a mind of his own than one who is apathetic to everything. That said, I've always assumed that he'll grow out of this at some point, but after a phone call the other day, I'm not so sure.

Our home phone doesn't ring that often, so I was surprised to hear it just before church on a recent Sunday morning. The woman on the other end asked for Jeff. Now, I don't know a lot of things, but I do know that my name isn't Jeff, so I let her know that she'd dialed a wrong number. Rather than the usual apology and hang-up though, she started into a bit of a debate with me about whether she had actually dialed the wrong number. A conversation that should have already been over took several minutes, until I finally convinced her that I am not Jeff and don't live in area code 850. I was getting worried that I'd have to send her my passport or something to prove it.

This was clearly a lady who would call a pear an apple, but to be fair, most of us have a little bit of my son in us, I think. Partly, it might just be hard for us to admit when we're wrong because of pride. Partly, we might fear the consequences of being wrong. In the case of incorrectly dialed phone numbers, the fear is ending up on the line with the same stranger twice (or worse, three times) in a row, especially if you can't figure out whether you have the wrong phone number or just dialed the number incorrectly. Apparently we're so scared of a voice at the other end of the phone line that we use a bit of reverse psychology to get them to think they have the wrong number.

Maybe it's just a societal thing. We're told all the time that backing down is a sign of weakness, but I'd argue that backing down is often the more difficult and prudent thing to do. Of course, a lot of people would disagree with that.

Somewhere Keane Apparently Forgot

2009-02-22T23:44:00.001-07:00

Last year I promised/threatened to share obscure/interesting stuff I find on YouTube from the bands to which I listen. Having done so only once and having stumbled across a few things recently, it's probably about time again. This time it'll be Keane.

About five years ago during our last few months in England, I only had a few classes left in my MBA and found myself at home a lot more during the day. In our little basement flat we had satellite TV, and I often had music video channels on in the background. Music channels in the UK, remarkably, still played music, and even more remarkably, some of it I actually liked. About every day I saw a video for "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane, and by the time their second single rolled around ("Everybody's Changing" - a video worth watching, btw), I was hooked. A year later we saw them live here in Arizona, and they were every bit as impressive as I hoped they would be (and still unknown enough that we were standing right by the stage).

Now they're a few more albums removed from relative obscurity, and I checked yesterday as they announced their North American tour to see if they'll finally swing through the desert again. Unfortunately, maybe we made a bad impression there on the front row, because they will not be. Still, as I searched a bit on YouTube for some recent live footage as a proxy, I stumbled across a few quality YouTube clips worth sharing. Keane are known as a piano band, but Tom has been sporting a guitar more often than not lately, and these are a few solo performances, the first from a webcast around Christmas and a few others from Covent Garden apparently. It's very cliche, I know, but Tom is one of those people who could sing the phone book and make it good. Anyway, here they are; I've followed them with links to the real things, in case you just heard of Keane three minutes ago:

(Live with the band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os8zfLj9IV0)

(Official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfwDzFo9U_s)

(Official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3L4SKfVx1Q)

(Official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucODEFzaVpY)

(Official video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmXY2MSrguE)

It Could Be Worse - You Could Be A-Rod's Cousin

2009-02-19T23:24:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying that I have never taken steroids. Never. I know this may be tough to believe, given that I spent most of my prime in the steroid era, but I don't want my legacy tainted by the actions of others. Everything I have achieved in my career, from memorizing Kim Jong Il's birthday to reaching Excel's format limit, has been accomplished without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs, if you want it to sound more like candy). And yes, it does bother me that others have cheated their way to similarly impressive feats, like the all-time home run record.

That said, maybe we're being a little hard on A-Rod, even if he does have a bit of a Jason Bourne memory thing going on. I mean, I know what it's like to walk around with a secret. The last few days I've been largely out of commission with something akin to the flu, but today I finally forced myself to go into the office, even though I'm not 100%. If everyone knew that I am infected with the plague, I'd become a bit of a pariah , not unlike a leper in Biblical times (or Barry Bonds).

Although I'm fairly certain that A-Rod's speaking in half-truths, I have a hard time casting the first stone here because I'm sure I told a few good lies today. I mean, most people you run into during a day ask you how you are doing (whether they really want to know or not), and I know at least a few times I threw out the usual "good" or maybe at worst an "all right." In all honesty, I'm not all right, but I'm not sure people want to know that or that I really want to go into it. So, sometimes a half-truth is the best way to go for all involved, I guess. Of course, if Katie Couric asked me on national TV, I'd probably confess that I have a sore throat.

I'm also pretty sure that a lot of the people condemning A-Rod and all the other steroid users aren't being completely honest with themselves about what they'd do in a similar situation. If there was something questionable people could do in their jobs that wasn't tested for (or penalized) but might enable you to make significantly more money, I wonder how many of the people condemning all the steroid users would be the first to sign up. What if a significant portion of the people against whom they were competing were doing it? I'm not saying that this makes it right, because I hope I'd personally take the high road and am as disappointed as anyone about all of this, but sometimes the righteous indignation of the media and particularly the people who oversaw the whole era drives me a little crazy, too.

Fortunately, real baseball games start soon, so those of us that actually watch baseball can move on a bit with some confidence that at least most of the players in front of us aren't juiced up. Of course, without blood testing, we'll never really know, but I think as long as tough penalties are put in place, most people will stay clean. Right now, they're making people sit out 50 games or something like that, but I think a punishment more befitting the crime would be to have offenders use PLDs (performance-limiting devices), like maybe having to wear oven mitts or high heels or something. I guarantee that would be a bigger inhibitor than a simple suspension.

As for A-Rod, he may have suffered enough already, because apparently he dated Madonna for a while.

What's Mine Is Evidently Not Mine

2009-02-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

Technically, I've only been robbed once in my life (if you don't count the fact that someone stole a UPS box from our front porch a few months ago - I'm not sure if that counts since I never really had possession of the item in the first place). I certainly don't want to indict an entire country based on one incident, but I hadn't been in Spain an hour before the aforementioned theft occurred.

The day after Christmas 2003, we hopped on a plane with some good friends and headed to Barcelona. I'm not sure if I was Google maps-literate at the time, because I booked us into a hotel on the far, far side of the city from the airport (I think I was wooed by the fact that it was across the street from the beach, which was nice except that it was like 45 degrees Fahrenheit). We faced the choice of forking over a bunch of Euros to grab a taxi all the way over there or taking a bus to the middle of the city and finding a cab from there, and we chose the latter. To quote the late Chris Farley, "Big mistake. Big... mistake."

After stepping off the bus into a dark plaza, we piled up all of our luggage and attempted to hail a cab. While we waited, and small, somewhat ragged man approached us and attempted to ask for directions (in Spanish or maybe Catalan - who knows). We did our best, but we had no idea what he was talking about. He wandered off, and about 30 seconds later, my wife noticed a bag missing - the one containing our passports, camera, and, somewhat ironically, a book about speaking Spanish (fortunately, my wife had asked me to take my credit cards and ID out of the bag about 10 minutes before that to put into her pocket).

Now, you are taught how to act in certain emergency situations. For example, I've known since about second grade that if you catch on fire, you stop, drop, and roll. However, no on taught me what to do when you are robbed in an unfamiliar city after dark. The only thing I could think to do was run around the immediate vicinity looking for the ragged man's accomplice holding my bag, and our friend followed my lead. In retrospect, leaving our wives behind with the bags probably wasn't the best idea, and I'm not sure what I would have done had I spotted our bag anyway, given the type of people who hang out in places like that late at night.

While I'm glad we weren't left with no way to pay for our hotel or food, losing our passports presented some challenges. We were now in a foreign land with no identifcation other than my school ID card, and we spent a day of our vacation trying to use that to talk our way into the US Consulate to get new passports. That said, we did get to spend some quality time in a local police station filling out a report, not an experience they typically highlight in the DK travel guide.

Looking back on the experience, we must have made fairly easy targets. We were a bit disoriented and a little naive, and we definitely looked like we didn't belong. We've been pretty cautious ever since, and I thought I had learned me lesson. Evidently I haven't, because I walked right into a robbery again last week, this time in broad daylight.

I may have mentioned before that I know very little about cars. Usually, I only know about a car problem if I've had that problem before. Because of that, I usually try to find a repair shop that I trust and stick with it. Unfortunately, sometimes there are problems that require a trip to the dealership, which I hate (literally) worse than getting my teeth drilled because I know regardless of how small I think the problem is, they'll spot a disoriented, naive, easy target and end up taking one my limbs as payment.

In this case, I wasn't sure what to expect. My dashboards lights had stopped working, and I wasn't able to fix it by replacing the fuse. As I handed over my keys (and basically a blank check), I mentioned that the sun visor on the passenger side was broken and asked for a quote. Sometimes it's better to take your pain all at once while you're still a little numb.

Apparently the broken sun visor was somehow wired to the same fuse as the dashboard and was causing it to short out. I have no way to validate this, so I had no choice but to get the visor replaced (well, other than to have no idea how fast I was going at night or how much gas I had left). Of course, they had to special order a new visor, which, of course, turned out to cost about $400. I suppose I could have scoured junkyards for one instead if I were truly that abmitioius, but they had my car at that point, and I wasn't up for the hostage negotiations required to get it back.

I returned a week later to have the thing put in, and it turns out the little clip for the visor (which was also broken) wasn't part of the $400 pricetag. I braced for what they'd charge me for a little piece of plastic, but almost as if to mock me by highlighting the ridiculousness of what they'd exctracted from me previously, they charged me $4. Admittedly, it made me feel all right for a moment, sort of like when we got our passports back from the Barcelona police a month or two after we returned home, but in both cases, nothing could change the fact that I had already been had.

I Scream, You Scream

2009-01-29T21:09:00.007-07:00

I have a pregnant wife. As a result, the other night I found myself staring at a wall of ice cream at Fry's. I say "wall," but really it was two walls. I'm not sure what to take away from this, but there is an entire long freezer aisle there dedicated just to variants of ice cream. I get it - no one hates ice cream (except maybe Moby) - but buying it has become way too complicated as a result of the number of types, brands, and flavors out there. It's like trying to rent a movie, only if there were 10 different versions of every movie (OK, there are almost that many King Kongs). I remember a time when Baskin Robbins' "31 Flavors" sounded like a lot, but now Baskin Robbins is to grocery store ice cream what a typical 1970s Chinese family is to the Duggars.

Adding "double-churned" alone has roughly doubled the number of ice creams. I'm a big fan of double-churned, though: apparently they just stir the ice cream twice as long, and somehow you end up with less fat and calories. I think they should be applying this all over the place. I mean, I guess based on the fact that there are fat-free refried beans, you could toss my Orange Chicken in the fryer one more time and save me a few extra pounds.

More troubling is the proliferation of brands. I'm not sure we really need that. For example, in the Western U.S. we have Bryer's and Dryer's (Edy's in the East, I found out when I lived there - I guess they fixed this problem a long time ago). I mean, I've never even heard of anyone named Bryer or Dryer before, and yet somehow the only two people with those respective names decided to make ice cream. The odds against that have to be as massive.

While it's nice to have a bit of choice, flavors are a bit out of control, too. Even the most, well, vanilla of flavors hasn't been left alone. Not long ago I needed to buy some vanilla ice cream, and I literally had to pick between Vanilla, Double Vanilla, French Vanilla, and Vanilla Bean, and I think at least the first three were also available in double-churned and maybe in "no sugar added." Is Double Vanilla better than single Vanilla? If so, why offer single vanilla? If people buy single vanilla, that suggests to me that they don't really like vanilla, in which case they probably wouldn't buy vanilla at all.

I acknowledge that there are probably bigger problems than this in the world right now (although I'm confident we could get some money earmarked to work on this in one of these multi-billion-dollar economic stimulus bills if we talked to a congressperson from Wisconsin or somewhere like that). It didn't make me any more forgiving, though, when I realized that the aforementioned Bryer's decided to cut half a quart out of their product (at the same price point). I know times are tough and something has to be done to keep margins up, but it's pretty obvious that they're spending all of their time coming up with new flavors involving candy bars and leaving the cost-cutting ideas up to fourth graders.

All of that said, you can deal with this whole issue if you aren't in a huge hurry and are a bit strategic about it. In particular, if you are buying multiple cartons, it's a huge mistake to pull out the first one before you've made all of your selections, because by the time you pick out that last one, the first one is soup. Then you're left with the slightly guilt-laced problem of whether to buy that carton or to swap it for a fully frozen one.

On Second Thought

2009-01-29T00:20:00.000-07:00

Several years back my mom starting buying me daily calendars for Christmas. It started with The Far Side, but when Gary Larson stopped doing new ones, the calendar became an annual surprise. Lately I've felt pretty stagnant in terms of education, something my mom must have recognized in sending me the "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" calendar.

The good news is that as of today - nearly a month into it - I've only missed one. Actually, that's probably not the right way to put it. The bad news is that only a month into it, I've already missed one. Even worse, some of these questions are 1st grade questions, and I believe that the one I missed was one of those. I question whether "To which part of a ship does stern refer?" is really something a first grader needs to know anywhere but maybe Fiji, but regardless, I missed it.

Now, before you look too far down upon me, you have to remember that I grew up in the desert. In fact, I didn't just grow up in any desert: I grew up in the Great Basin, which I was always told meant that there is no natural outlet to the sea. I know there are lakes in Nevada, but the closest body of water to Beatty is the Amargosa River, which runs through town and is mostly underground. Suffice it to say that no one I knew did a lot of sailing, and certainly no one used sailing terms on a regular basis. In fact, I'm not even clear on why sailing people use sailing terms.

Probably because of my dry past, I have to admit that I typically tune out the airline people when they try to tell me that my seat cushion can function as a flotation device. First of all, most of the time flying around in the western United States, all you see is rock and sand, and if you do see any water, it's at the bottom of the Grand Canyon or something similar. Second, most of the time I've spent flying over a large body of water, it's been an ocean, and relying on a seat cushion to save you out there would be kind of like running into a burning building armed only with a wet teabag. Most importantly, it seems like when a big airliner goes down, it's typically going too fast to stay in once piece even if the pilot were able to find enough water.

Well, it turns out that I was wrong about all of that. I suppose next time I fly I'll be looking around for materials out of which to fashion a boat or something. You probably have to think about this stuff ahead of time, so I popped in Castaway the other day to pick up some tips. I don't think it will help much, because I wasn't much of a Boy Scout and am lucky to be able to tie my own shoes, but I did decide that if I was going to be stranded on a remote island with a Tom Hanks movie, I'd probably pick that one. In addition to being a quality show, I figure you could pop that thing in once in a while (assuming some decent battery life) just to get yourself fired up, much like I did in high school with Hoosiers or ants would do with Bug's Life if they weren't, well, tiny mindless bugs.

I take that back - if I were an ant, I think the movie I'd watch would be Them!:

My Most Ripe & Rotten Post of 2009 So Far

2009-01-01T22:37:00.002-07:00

A year ago at this time, I made a resolution not to order any of my usual dishes at restaurants in 2008 (in the interest of trying new things). I'm happy to report that save for a couple of unintentional lapses (like last night, when I ordered my usual pizza and realized that I haven't really included pizza in the practice of this resolution), I've done well. I highly recommend it as a resolution, actually. It's not as painful as it sounds, because there is a lot of good food out there, and with this resolution you at least get to eat.

Partly due to the last week or two, I'm coming to the conclusion that in 2009 I'll have to eat healthier (and not just different) food. I don't know that I'll share any of my resolutions to that end at this point, or any of my resolutions for that matter. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of flaws that need to be addressed, some of which may be more important than the breadth of my culinary experience. In fact, I find that I'm creating quite a list of resolutions, which is actually a manifestation of one of those flaws - starting far too many things that I don't finish (as previously acknowledged).

That said, having a list of resolutions does seem appropriate for the holidays, which I believe were originally about religion and renewal but now also are about making lists. For Christmas we have shopping lists, wish lists, and a naughty list, and for New Year's we are bombarded with lists of, well, anything from the past year. It seems that most of us are fine with this; a lot of people are employed in making meaningless lists, and that suggests to me that a lot of people are paying attention to them.

On ESPN.com, for example, they'll rank just about anything - teams, players, uniforms, names, hot dogs... doesn't really matter what it is. The weird thing is that most of these lists don't have any impact on the real world - I guess it just gives them a framework to generate discussion that then validates the value of their rankings in some circular way. I mean, in sports the only rankings that really matter are the BCS rankings in college football, but humans have only a little input into those; mostly they're decided by a combination of computers, a Magic 8-Ball, and Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets.

From what I can tell, if you want to make a living coming up with lists, you basically just need to come up with something in which a large number of people are interested and some ranking criteria. Since just about anyone could do that, I'm assuming there is some other qualification, like maybe a lot of education or experience, but I don't know that anyone ever really worries about that part of it.

Maybe I should start ranking stuff to see if anyone will pay me for it. For example, at my work, they give out free fruit. There are crates as you enter the building, and you typically have a choice between three or four kinds. Of course, it's a pretty small sample size - both in terms of people and fruit - but it's apparent that there is a definite ranking among fruit based on what disappears first. I haven't done a lot of heavy research here, other than eating and a bit of observation, but here are my top 10 fruits of 2008. I'm telling you - this could be a great "Plan B" career. I mean, I put about 30 seconds of thought into this.

Clementine Oranges - Almost everyone likes oranges, but we probably don't eat more just because they're a pain to peel, and it's sort of hit-or-miss on whether you'll get a good one. You don't often find a bad clementine, however, and the peels pop right off. I wouldn't say that this is my favorite fruit taste-wise, but the ease of eating wins out for me. That being said, you think I'd have planted one of these trees in my backyard, but I went with a normal Arizona Sweet Orange instead.
Raspberries/Blackberries - You'll notice that strawberries aren't on my list, and that's because I'm much more of a raspberry/blackberry person. I'm not sure how strawberries became the berry of choice, but it's never easy to find a good one, and they've become more "vanilla" than, well, vanilla. They are sort of the pop music of the fruit world: you have to sift through a lot of junk to find anything good, and popularity really has little to do with quality. I'll take raspberries (and preferably blackberries) over that any day.
Bananas - I think the reason these disappear so quickly at work is that they have a peel you don't consume (a big plus when hundreds of people are picking through this fruit) and are basically the dessert of the fruit world. You do take a risk of biting into a bad spot or two, but I'd say that if bananas didn't occur naturally, someone would have tried to invent these.
Mangoes - I wasn't a fan of mangoes really until we went to Costa Rica to visit family early in 2008 and learned that the mangoes we eat in the Estados Unidos are not representative of what mangoes can be, for some reason. This is how North Korean defectors must feel when they read a normal magazine.
Kiwi - I am a big fan of kiwi. I think they're totally underrated, but my guess is that they're held back a bit by always getting thrown together with strawberries for some inexplicable reason. Maybe being brown and furry holds them back - people might assume that they walk around in nature.
Pears - I think pears are also an underrated fruit. I'd rather eat a good pear than a good apple, but for some reason pears have mostly be relegated to hotel fruit baskets and the canned fruit aisle. I can only conclude that the pear people are bad at marketing. Maybe they should hire that Geico gecko (but please not those cavemen).
Granny Smith Apples - Apples have to be in here, I guess, although I tend to avoid these at work thanks to the hundreds of aforementioned people. Properly washed though, you have to give it up for a fruit that you can just pick up and eat. Granny Smith apples are sort of the Sour Patch Kids of apples, and face it: you'd rather eat Sour Patch Kids than just Patch Kids.
Pomegranates - Pomegranates are a tough one to call, because they are both quite good and (based on how expensive the juice is) cure most diseases, but you can't give a rank much higher than this to any fruit that takes less effort and time to plant and grow than to eat.
Limes - It's pretty tough to just eat a lime, but guacamole and fish tacos wouldn't be the same without them. Word of warning though - I planted a Mexican lime tree in my backyard as well, and only later did I learn that Mexican limes are key limes. I'm fine with that, but they're just going to take a long time to juice.
Peaches - I wasn't sure whether peaches or nectarines would get this coveted last spot in the top 10. The whole fur thing was the main reason I was considering nectarines over peaches, but I'm a big fan of peach shakes at Jake's Over-the-Top in Utah when I'm there on vacation, so peaches win.

I'm sure I've left some quality fruit (both plant and human) off the rankings, but since my list was created only to illustrate the arbitrary and inconsequential nature of most other lists, I hope fans and growers of those fruits won't be too upset. Just try harder next year.

Abstinence Is a Personal Choice

2008-12-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, we had dinner at the home of family we didn't know that well. As we walked in, one of the first things I noticed is that they had no TV. At first, I naturally assumed it was broken, but given that there was no associated paraphernalia (no DVD player, no entertainment center, no basket full of remotes), I decided that this must have been a conscious decision. I'm not knocking that choice; despite having a plethora of televisions in my own home, I don't begrudge anyone who avoids having one. No doubt they spend more time than I do in reading, meditation, and wondering what Oprah looks like, and they probably get more done. I'm not a huge TV-watcher myself, and I tend to multi-task when I do partake, but I think that having no TV at all could create some problems.

First, where do you point your couches? I'm not much of an interior design person, so I think I might be in trouble if I didn't have one as my starting point. I guess people had couches long before TVs, so maybe people back then just optimized their layout for conversation. It was tough on kids back then, though, because they had no valid excuse for spacing out and ignoring their parents.

Second, how do the "Emergency Broadcast System" people reach these non-TV types? Admittedly, I've never heard of that thing saving anyone, but thanks to a lifetime of TV, I know when my show is suddenly interrupting by a loud, annoying beeping that either the Russians are attacking or a flood is on its way. Who knows, though - maybe people with no TV are a bit like people in old western movies and just put their ear to the ground every once in a while to listen for trouble.

Third, I'm not convinced that they are really all that much better off time-wise given that they're missing out on some real time/labor-saving "as-seen-on-tv" products. Probably the best example of this is Mighty Putty. Granted, I don't own any, but next time I want to haul something behind my SUV, I won't bother buying a tow kit. The people building that bridge above Hoover Dam must not watch TV, because they're wasting time making that thing out of concrete and are way behind schedule (so I hear from my wife, who watched a documentary on it the other day). With a few million tubes of Mighty Putty, I bet they'd be done already.

This isn't to say that I think TV is perfect. It's a bit like trail mix, in that you have to sift through a lot of bad filler to get to the good stuff. It's also like driving in that sometimes you can end up somewhere without really remembering how you got there, and it scares you a little bit. Ever catch yourself watching an infomercial or something about 20 minutes into it before you really realize what you are doing? Watch enough TV, and whole chunks of your life might be missing, and not in a "Bourne Identity" way.

One Hill of a Game

2008-11-17T00:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how it happened, but at some point early in elementary school, I got hooked on the NFL. I didn't really watch it much, but I read all of the NFL yearbooks and decided that I was going to be the next Joe Montana. In fact, every Friday during the 45-minute recess, I was Joe Montana (the other quarterback was Dan Fouts - he threw for a lot of yards, but I got the titles).

Anyway, somewhere along the line I became more a basketball guy. I never game up on the quarterback thing until, well, I got benched after my first series in the first varsity game I started at quarterback. I've stayed a 49ers fan all along, however, through very good and very bad, so when I noticed earlier this year that the NFL schedule included a 49ers stop on Monday night in Arizona, I jumped at the chance to come full circle and attend my first NFL game (with H.I., a lifelong 49ers fan due to his Bay-area upbringing). Of course, the problem is that the 49ers today are a bit more like the Washington Generals than an NFL team, but as it turns out, that only added to the experience.

A few years ago, they built a new football stadium in Arizona. I guess you know that if you watched the Super Bowl last year, but it looks a bit like a space ship, and you can see the thing from miles around given that it's sort of in the middle of nowhere in the West Valley.

Since we work in the East Valley, I figured it we'd have to leave early to make a 6:30 kick-off time. We headed out the door right at 4:00, made a quick stop to grab some water (they are kind enough to allow you to bring one tiny water each into the stadium), and by 6:00 we were finally there. Well, by "there" I mean that we were exiting the freeway at the stadium. They decided it was a good idea to color-code all of the parking lots there, which is handy I'm sure if you know what the colors mean. We didn't, so we took at stab at Orange, which looked reasonably close to the stadium - maybe a 5-10 minute walk.

As we pulled in and looked for a spot, H.I. noticed that everyone but us had an orange parking pass hanging from their rear-view mirrors. We couldn't really turn around, so we asked a lady directing traffic there if a pass was required. Sounds like a dumb question, I know, but she told us that it didn't matter and that she'd seen a lot of people come through without passes. We proceeded to park, but as we pulled into our spot we observed that we hadn't seen a single car without a pass, so we asked someone else, who told us that we had to park in the visitor parking another exit down on the freeway and directed us out of the lot. The moral of this part of the story is that there are no dumb questions, just dumb answers.

Anyway, put firmly back into our place, we headed for the visitor lots. As we exited the freeway yet again, the stadium was still relatively close, so we weren't too worried. However, as we followed the signs to the Brown lot, the giant stadium slowly began to fade into the horizon. The Brown lot is apparently a school parking lot, complete with school buses to take you back over to the stadium, which is the dim light in the center of this picture:

After disembarking from our big yellow bus, we were met with a long line of people waiting to be searched on the way in. As it turned out, the search was just a quick pat-down of your ribcage area, which apparently is the only place one would conceal a weapon. This killed our chances of seeing kickoff, which wasn't really a bit deal until we heard in the concourse on our way to our seats that the 49ers had just returned it 105 yards for a touchdown.

Given that the long journey to even get to that point had robbed us of the opportunity to eat normally priced food, we only waited about a series before heading back down to the concourse for some quality stadium food. I somehow have a talent for picking the slowest lines at sporting events, and this was no exception. Once again, I'll state that I'm glad people are given an opportunity for employment, but I am amazed sometimes at how hard it can be to put an order together in a place that only has about four items on the menu. Anyway, at least they offered decent value for the price, relatively speaking (I stuck with nachos, but this was the beast H.I. scored for about $6):

We found ourselves surrounded by a lot of 49er fans, but the giant a few rows down from us was a hometown Cardinals fan. The stadium actually has a rule against "excessive standing," which I think refers to frequency and duration but might eventually be appended to apply to any standing by someone Shaq size or larger. It was sort of a mini-wave all the way back every time this guy stood up. My vantage point was largely unaffected, actually, but the same was not true for H.I.

Meanwhile, we had a 49er fan behind us apparently closely related to Andrew Dice Clay. He was nice enough to take a picture of us, but as the beer began to take effect and the 49ers got to work at giving the game away, he "wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space" over Glendale.

It was nice that the game was close throughout, although fantasy football once again intruded on my ability to cheer for my team without reservation since I needed Larry Fitzgerald (of the Cardinals) to have a solid game and Tim Hightower (also of the Cardinals) to have a bad game in order to secure a win for the week. You know you have a fantasy sports problem when you see a guy get tackled in the backfield and you actually say things outloud like, "Nice - that's minus 0.2 points for the guy I'm up against this week."

Once it became clear that my fantasy life was safe, I checked into reality and starting pulling for the 49ers as I normally would. The problem was that by that time, they were trying everything they could to lose the game. They threw about three interceptions, two of which were negated by flags. I've never seen refs in any sports take as many mulligans as these guys did, by the way. It made your head spin a little bit listening to their explanations as to why they shouldn't have thrown flags in the first place ("tangled feet" were involved at one point, and later they charged the 49ers with an "excess time out").

To make a fairly long story short, at the end of the game we found the 49ers down five (after leading for most of the game) and driving, when the 49ers QB (whose jersey currently says Hill but will soon say something else) inexplicably pitched the ball to a Cardinal linebacker while falling down. Fortunatly the Cardinals had a momentary relapse to the old days and went three-and-out, and Hill (and a receiver named Hill) marched the Niners back down to the 1 yard line with about 50 seconds left.

Hill just had to spike the ball to kill the clock, but for some reason the 49ers starting doing some subsitutions, so by the time he did the Niners had killed about 25 seconds trying to count everyone up (which isn't easy on only 10 fingers). The refs were confused yet again and threw a flag ("when in doubt, throw it out" apparently), only to say "just kidding" a few moments later, which negated the spike and meant that the clock would run as soon as the ref set the ball (a few yards back from where it has been, no less) and got out of the way.

By that time, the 49ers had no idea what they were doing, and they went with the "run the ball up the middle" play (the short-yardage counterpart to "you go long") and got stuffed. Game over. I'm not sure who to blame for the loss. The 49ers "were who we thought they were," but at the end it looked like the lady in the Orange parking lot was running the show. We decided that the referees were probably snowbirds from Canada and were using the CFL rulebook by mistake. Either way, I wasn't too hurt - the loss moved the Niners a bit closer to a high draft pick next April.

After wandering around the outside of the stadium for a while, we found the little corrals that lead to our buses, which we realized only now were NOT school buses. Yes, they were yellow and had bench seats, but as you can clearly see, the signs just said "bus."

Ch... ch... ch... change

2008-11-05T23:45:00.017-07:00

We're nearly a week beyond the election now, and ever since Tuesday night I've been trying to wrap my head around what "change" means. Obviously, the election changed the racial landscape in America in a positive way, but in terms of policy, I'm still not entirely clear on what's going to happen (although, to be honest, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt for now). I think as important a job as POTUS is, you can't blame the president for everything or give him credit for everything, because the president alone can only do so much. I also don't think that the president-elect will solve all of our problems or bring about the Apocolypse, both of which I have heard people say, more or less.

Since it's apparently going to take Congress a while to get to work (probably figuratively and literally), I read that Obama is trying to figure out what "change" he can bring about right away through executive orders. What I know about executive orders mostly comes from watching 24 (and those mostly involve putting Jack Bauer in jail), so I thought I'd do a little research. According to "ThisNation.com," which I'm sure is a highly credible website given that it has a bald eagle for a logo, "Executive Orders (EOs) are legally binding orders given by the President, acting as the head of the Executive Branch, to Federal Administrative Agencies." I think it would be more fun to call them KJIs (Kim Jong Ils), but we'll stick with EOs.

I'm sure in the beginning he'll be focused on critical stuff like the economy and creating "Oprah Day" (I think I saw more shots of Oprah than Joe Biden on election night). I can't imagine it takes long to type out and sign an EO (I'm sure he gets a good secretary, right?), so I have a few I'd like him to throw in there while he's at it that I think would represent real and meaningful change.

EO #VII - Permanent Rocky Week. This past week on AMC, they were showing a different Rocky movie every night. I realize that McCain was using the Rocky theme on the campaign trail, but to show that he has no hard feelings, Obama could force AMC to do this all the time. This would solve at least three problems. First, it's always nice to have a Rocky movie as a fallback in case nothing else is on. Second, it will keep AMC from showing Clint Eastwood movies and bad horror flicks all the time. Third, if people watch enough Rocky movies, they might get fired up and get the economy going (especially on Friday nights, when they'll spend whatever it takes to have a night out instead of staying home to watch Rocky V). I realize a side effect could be people doing stuff like drinking raw eggs, but I think it's worth the risk:

[Quick aside - Rocky IV is an interesting movie to watch these days, now that it's the Americans (including Stallone) pounding the 'roids and now that the Russians are starting to get belligerent again. I'll admit, though, that it's hard to watch Brigitte Nielsen with a straight face anymore.]

EO #:: - Risk Roll-Back. I saw an ad for Risk, now updated for "faster gameplay." I think that defeats the purpose. Risk isn't the greatest game ever invented; you largely are reliant on luck, and there are only so many possible strategies. The main point in playing is to be able to claim that you got through an entire, lengthy game. I think they need to fix this immediately - maybe even make the game longer. I'm sure during Thanksgiving we'll try to sneak a game in, and if it's not at least four hours, I'll be disappointed.

EO #1-877-481-6826 - Silence the FreeCreditReport.com Guy. With all of the other difficult things going on in the world, I'm not sure if we need any more of this guy. I think it's time for a "change."

I could add more, but I don't want to be greedy. I'll admit - I'm not a huge fan of Obama's tax plan, and I think McCain would be much better than his campaign showed, so I voted the other way, but he is my president now, so I don't think I'm asking too much.

A Couple of Wavy Lines

2008-10-27T21:11:00.005-07:00

I guess I've been busy, distracted, or both, because somehow I didn't realize that the NBA season opens tomorrow. I'm a little disappointed in myself, given that I look forward to this almost as soon as the Finals are over. Now that I am aware, however, I'm obligated to hand out my annual predictions. I'm sure you have been waiting with bated breath.

Last year I batted .700, a big improvement over the Williams-esque .400 from the year before. I was taught in Statistics that you can't drive by watching the rear-view mirror, so I can't say that I'll be getting 11-out-of-10 or anything. I'm not that kid with the 'fro at the beginning of Ghostbusters. In fact...

Less than 7-out-of-10 of these predictions will be correct. I guess I learned something in business school, because I'm now hedged against going 0-for-10.
Deron Williams will finally be in the All-Star Game, and at least once this year I'll hear someone mispronounce his name.
I will find a way to be at All-Star Saturday (since it'll be local).
The Spurs will not finish in the top four in the West but will get out of the first round anyway.
The Celtics won't repeat (I'm guessing someone gets hurt), and my gut tells me the Lakers will win the whole thing. Then again, my gut could be hurting from picking the Lakers. Sort of a "chicken and egg" situation here.
I will not finish dead last in my fantasy league, which I did last year. It wasn't even close. I moved my team to Oklahoma, though, and I'm predicting big things this year.
TNT will build its whole NBA playoff advertising campaign around a movie. Based on what I've heard is coming out, I'm guessing it'll be Superman or The A-Team.
The NBA coach of the year and NBA rookie of the year will be name Spoelstra and Beasley, respectively. Sounds like a couple of divorce lawyers, I know.
Yao Ming will magically miss less than 5 games this year. I know, I know... but I'm trying to will this to happen in order to help #6 come true.
I will sit somewhere lower than the top three rows in the building at a Suns game this year.

Make Up Your Mind

2008-09-25T23:00:00.005-07:00

I don't tend to discuss religion much here. I'm not sure that a blog with "Bitter" in the title is a good place for that, at least in my case. I'm considering starting another, more personal blog along those lines, but then I'd have three blogs going on, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that level of commitment. Then again, I have (as I've noted before) a lot of half-finished projects going on, so what's one more?

Anyway, as I watched the first presidential debate the other night and and some serious question-dodging in the process, a scripture popped into my head. At some point when I was younger, I remember my dad teaching me about Revelation 3:15-16:

15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

I'll admit it: this one scared me a little bit, since I've always found it pretty easy to become complacent and non-committal and have to fight that tendency every day.

It's probably good, then, that I've followed the career path I have. I'm an analyst, and in my previous job I was an analyst. What that really means is that I don't do any real work but get paid to have an opinion about what other people should be doing. For the most part, I don't have the luxury of being non-committal.

Fortunately, I'm not paid to have an opinion about the economic bailout plan, because I really can't decide what I think. On one hand, I'm a free-market capitalist that believes in the long-run, the system works itself out and we end up better off, but on the other hand, I'm a little scared of the short run. I've seen "Grapes of Wrath" (and I think read it long, long ago), and I'm not that keen on living in a colorless, dusty world (although some would argue that I already do). We apparently will also all have to live off of canned soup; someone at work Monday while watching the market drop noticed that Campbell's was the only stock going up.

After watching the presidential debate, I'm not entirely sure where either of them stand on the whole thing either, although they are apparently both going to vote for it. I will say that I don't think I've ever seen anyone dodge a question as consistently and enthusiastically as Obama did when asked what he'd cut in order to fund the bailout. I do at least know how I would have answered that question without cutting anything really important and without raising taxes.

For one, the government could stop advertising the digital TV transition. If we knew that a comet was going to collide with the Earth in February 2009, I'm not sure we'd even provide as much warning about that to the American people as we have about the digital TV transition. I don't know exactly what advertising costs right now, but it can't be that much more expensive to bankroll a war than it has been to keep this "No Couch Potato Left Behind" program going.

Second, we could create some real revenue utilizing what our government already has. For example, you could rent out the Capitol building for concerts, MTV "Sweet 16" birthday parties... anything that would generate a lot of cash. Don't get me wrong, I've been to the Capitol, and it's a great building with a lot of statues, but judging from C-SPAN there are typically more statues there than lawmakers, unless there is an economic meltdown going on. If that doesn't bring in enough revenue, we could throw in tours of Area 51 or rides on the Space Shuttle. For even bigger thrill-seekers you could offer the "hunt with a senior offiical" package.

Third, we could use Craigslist and eBay to have the largest garage sale in history. Trust me, I worked in the government long enough and visited enough government facilities to know that there is no shortage of old, useless junk, and apparently one person's old, useless junk is another person's new, useless junk. I'm not sure how many eBay experts there are in Washington, but they could figure it out with a free trail from the Video Professor.

Will all of this generate $700M? It's hard for me to say without running the numbers. Again judging by the debate, you can fudge the numbers a little, so I think my ideas would probably fly.

I Meant To Post This the Other Day

2008-09-24T00:36:00.001-07:00

I can't decide whether I am a procrastinator or just take on too much sometimes. I think it may be a mix of the two. I shouldn't be a procrastinator, because as a general rule, I prefer to tackle the hard things first (for example, I tend to eat whatever food on the plate I like the least first). I also don't have a lot of spare time, which I would think is a prerequisite to quality procrastination, unless procrastination simply means that you prioritize the wrong things. That said, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that at times I - to my shame - don't do today what I can do tomorrow (or maybe never).

The first evidence came at some point in elementary school, when late one night I told my mom that I had a leaf-collecting project due the next day. It wouldn't have been too bad, except that the leaves were supposed to be pressed. Say what you will for the WWW, but Wikipedia won't help you flatten leaves nearly as well as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I didn't learn my lesson, because in high school - may have been my junior year - I got to the end of the year and was way behind on a final assignment in accounting. Two nights in a row, I spent the entire night out in my dad's photo studio working out all of the debits and credits - I was literally up for all of two straight days and nights (and then the school year ended, and I immediately passed out). I don't think anyone had heard of David Blaine back then, so I didn't realize I could have skipped the accounting and just made a career out of doing otherwise mundane things for a long period of time.

My procrastination nearly cost me grades back then, but now it costs me money. I'm sure when companies offer mail-in rebates, they factor in some percentage of people that will never send them in, and I've added to that percentage too many times. I'm trying to be better, and based on the fact that I just sent in two the other day a full two weeks before the deadline, I may be learning. If you notice that companies stop offering these things, you can probably blame me for finally making them feel the pain.

[As an aside, I hate mail in rebates that are either too small or too ridiculous to bother with. I mean, I've seen $1 mail in rebates. By the time you buy a stamp and drive to the post office, you are in the hole on that one, although I suppose you could ride a bike. On the ridiculous end of things, we purchased one of those automated car washes at a gas station recently, and I went with the most expensive option partly because of the undercarriage wash (like they say, you don't ever want to get in an accident and get caught with a dirty undercarriage) but partly because they were offering a rebate that made it the same cost as the next step down, which only cleaned stuff at eye level or above. Reading the fine print on my receipt, it turns out that if within 30 days you noticed rainwater not beading up on your windshield, you could send in for a $3 rebate. Pretty generous of them, given that we live in the desert.]

Anyway, I still have some work to do in this area. Tomorrow afternoon I have my regular dentist appointment, and inevitably I'll be told that I need to floss more, I'll nod my head, and then I'll put that off for six more months. Every time, I wonder if I can hurry and floss for a good 15 minutes and fool them, but I don't think it works like that (although I'm guessing that Oxy Clean guy on the late-night infomercials has a product for that). Maybe this time I'll actually follow through on it. I'll figure that out later, though - it's late, and I need to get to bed.

Not My Best Post

2008-09-10T23:59:00.001-07:00

To a fault (ask my wife), I'm pretty stingy with words like "most" and "best" and "least" and "worst." In the majority of cases, I'm with Napoleon's brother Kip: "Like anyone could even know that." One thing I find interesting about the Olympics is that it's one of the rare times in life that you can use absolutes and have a little bit of credibility. For example, I can say with some degree of confidence that Usain Bolt is the fastest person in the world, given that he was facing at least a subset of the best in the world and made it look easy. Even then, it's hard to be sure there isn't another Nanu out there, just waiting to be discovered by Tim Conway and JJ's dad from Good Times.

I bring this up because this past week, I spent two days in a room filled with people much, much more intelligent than I am, but a number of them were not smart enough to recognize that they were not the "most" intelligent people in the room/world. As annoying as it is to be around someone who thinks they have all the answers, imagine spending a few days with about 10 of those people together. It was like being in a room full of Alex Trebek clones, all talking literally at the same time.

I think at the start of the two days, we should have made everyone sit down and watch this documentary I watched not long ago on Nikola Tesla on The History Channel. First, I learned that he was not just some obscure scientific figure from The Prestige, in which he is played by David Bowie (an appropriate choice, I suppose, since before seeing that movie I thought Tesla was just an 80s rock band). In reality, he invented (if I remember correctly) alternating current, thanks to which we have small power lines instead of ones with the small-tree-trunk-circumference direct-current ones Thomas Edison came up with (see, even Edison wasn't the "most" anything). Tesla also invented our car ignition system, wireless electricity, and Fantasy Football (OK, not that last one).

Of course, this works both ways. It's also reassuring to know that I am not the dumbest person in the world. I don't know how close I am, but I know that I'm at least smarter than people who write on bathroom stalls, the first person who did the butterfly stroke, and people who think their friends back home could beat Michael Phelps. Given how complicated life is becoming, I actually question how those people get by in life (well, the butterfly stroke guy was probably eaten by a shark a long time ago).

For example, going to the airport and catching a flight used to be fairly mindless. You bought a ticket, threw your junk in a suitcase, walked through a metal detector, and then got on the plane. As I flew to-and-from the aforementioned meeting, it occurred to me that you need a fairly well-thought-out strategy now to maneuver through the whole process. I'm not complaining, because I'm a big fan of not dying, but you do feel sometimes like you're in the middle of some reality show challenge.

Packing, for instance, used to be basically a physical activity; you were only worried about stuff fitting, and most of the time the answer to that was to put your full body weight on the front to enable you to zip it up. Anything you didn't want to lose you threw into a carry-on, and the only thing you had to think about there was not packing anything inherently dangerous like plutonium or a pipe wrench.

Then, of course, someone tried to make a bomb out of Gatorade, and not long thereafter the price of oil went up, and now we're stuck in the difficult position of not being able to pack much in a carry-on but having to pay for checking anything. I really hope we are winning the war on terror, but they are winning the war on luggage.

Before we had the beverage bombers, we had the shoe bomber, and the only people who appreciate that idiot are the people who sell those little foot covers. It's not that I hate taking off my shoes that much, but between that and removing my belt and whatever else has a trace of metal in it, I feel like I'm being led in to see a mob boss or something. It's actually worse on the other end, because you end up with about four of those plastic trays full of clothes & electronic equipment and not a lot of time to try to put your life back together before you're either pushed out by the people+stuff coming up behind you or are late for your plane.

Once you get through, it doesn't get that much easier. If you are like me and sometimes need to get online in the airport, the good news is that a lot of airports have free wi-fi. The bad news is that most airports only have about one power outlet per terminal. You have to scope those out pretty quickly, because you have to compete with the cell-phone-chargers too. To the credit of the Portland airport the other day, they actually had a whole area with desks and power outlets. I suppose people like me are a bit like smokers (except with a different problem), so it was nice of them to create a little area to help me satisfy my apparent work addiction.

Speaking of work, that's another part of life that requires a lot more intelligence than it used to. I'm not talking about work itself of the fact that you have to use computers (you can get that "Video Professor" guy to help you out with that) - I'm talking about passwords. Security at work has tightened up, too, so just using your dog's name as your password for life doesn't work anymore. You have to have a "strong" password, meaning that it has to consist of a certain combination of numbers, letters, special characters, Morse Code, and smoke signals. It would be bad enough if you had to come up with a password like that once in your life, but most places make you come up with and remember a new one every few months. I'm running out of remotely memorable ones, so soon I'll probably lose my job and have to find employment that doesn't involve Windows.

Thanks to filling my head with all of those passwords, I think I'm starting to slide a little lower on the intelligence continuum. First, driving to the airport from my meeting, I decided not to trust my little GPS device and ended up wandering around the back streets of suburban Portland for a while. Then a few days ago I accidentally drowned my cell phone. Unfortunately, there aren't absolutes when it comes to dumb things either, so I know that those aren't the "dumbest" things I've ever done and that there will be many "dumber" things to come.

Duh, Duh, Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh

2008-08-24T22:48:00.001-07:00

As I type this, I just finished watching the Closing Ceremonies. I was about to say "of the Olympics," but I'm not sure anything else has a closing ceremony. In some ways, I'm glad. I mean, I'm highly impressed by what the Chinese have pulled off, but imagine if we had to sit through several hours of somewhat abstract performance art after every athletic event. Once every fours years is probably good. For regular season MLB and NBA games, I'm fine with just hot dog races and gorillas jumping off of trampolines, respectively.

I'll say one thing about the Opening/Closing Ceremonies: I think we at least have to admit that no one does large-scale, synchronized activities quite like the Communists. It's also nice to see that the Chinese have finally figured out that whole fireworks thing.

One thing I haven't figured out yet is what makes a sport "Olympic." Apparently they are going to drop baseball and softball next time around, which I'd be fine with if they weren't keeping things like trampoline and synchronized swimming. I think the guideline is that anything involving wearing spandex 2 sizes too small and/or involving water is OK. I mean, if trampoline and badminton get to be Olympic sports, why not other stuff we played in our yards growing up? Where are horseshoes? Red Rover? As a friend pointed out to me yesterday, synchronized swimming is basically a wet cheerleading contest, so why not cheerleading?

The other thing I kept thinking during the whole thing is how out of shape I am. Nothing will make you feel more out of shape than the Olympics. I turned on the TV the other day, and there were a bunch of people in a lake who'd been swimming hard for over an hour (I think it was a 10K). Then they flipped over to Water Polo, which is basically treading water with a weird helmet for a few hours. I need a nap after just watching people swim for an hour, and I'm not sure I'm in shape to even play Marco Polo right now.

Now it's on to London, my favorite city. I have to admit, it was a little anti-climactic cutting from all the stuff the Chinese did to Jimmy Paige, some singer I would probably know if I was 15 years younger, and David Beckham, but I guess they have four years to figure it out. I hope they do, because I hope to be there, and if Simon Cowell is the final torch-bearer I'll be a bit disappointed.

S.O.S.

2008-08-15T08:57:00.008-07:00

Not too long ago, I caught myself watching Titanic on TV. I'm probably in the minority in that I don't think it's even remotely close to being one of the best movies ever made. I admit a bias against little Leonardo - nothing particularly personal against him, but as an actor he just grates on my nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. I also admit that Celine Dion has basically the same effect on me, although I should tread lightly there since I have at least one good friend that I believe is a fan based on her DVD collection. I'm not denying both are talented, but I definitely wasn't the target audience for combining those two into one entertainment experience.

That said, I do like the last 1/3 or so of the movie. I'm not just referring to the boat sinking and Leonardo turning into a popsicle; I tend to like movies that make me think about how I'd react in difficult situations. In the case of Titanic, I wonder if I'd be one of those fighting to get onto a lifeboat or giving up my place so someone else could survive. I hope I'd be in the latter category, but I'm not sure you can definitively say until you are faced with that choice.

A little more than a week ago, I did learn a bit about how the people on those boats must have felt. I was flying home to Phoenix on an 8:15 flight, and I arrived at the gate about an hour-and-a-half early to find a large crowd of people there and the 5:15 flight to Phoenix still listed at our gate. Apparently, that flight was being canceled due to mechanical issues, which I suppose could mean anything from a loose bolt to big holes in the wings. Needless to say, the stranded throng were not happy.

My first (admittedly selfish) thought was concern as to whether my flight would be delayed because of this. I'd rather watch a Leonardo movie marathon than sit for hours on end waiting to get on an airplane, which doesn't really make sense given that I sit for hours on end at work staring at a computer screen. Anyway, when I realized that my flight wasn't going to be delayed and that I would be flying home, my next concern was whether the mass of people standing in line to figure out where they'd sleep that night would try to kill me for my seat.

They had obviously been there a while and looked a bit like Tom Hanks about halfway through Castaway (or maybe how Tom Hanks would have looked if after months on the island, someone showed up, quickly found a hidden boat, and sailed away without him). Someone in that line tried to take us back to the barter system by asking if anyone on our flight would give up their seat, but apparently they don't let you scalp airline tickets. When that failed, he resorted to loudly berating the airline staff. Finally we boarded, an angry mob staring us down all the way down the ramp. As far as I know, they are still standing there waiting for James Cameron to make a documentary about them.

Tell Me About Yourself

2008-07-22T11:40:00.008-07:00

In my particular function at my company, there is a rotation program. That means that every few years, you find yourself job hunting. By extension, that means that every few years you find yourself updating your resume. I've been in my current group for about that long, so pretty soon I'll be firmly in the middle of that process. Since bragging and exaggeration don't come naturally to me (well, ok, bragging doesn't come naturally), I figure I'd better start dusting off those skills.

A few years ago there was a commercial in which someone reached the "end" of the internet. While that's fairly impossible (and highly creepy), the other day I accomplished something similarly impressive. I spend a good portion of my day with Microsoft Excel (most kids daydream about spending their working life someday in a cubicle figuring out how to create pivot tables and avoid circular references; I get to live the dream). Anyway, the other day I reached the "end" of Excel.

I have been working on a project for about a year, and my spreadsheet on that product has become pretty complicated. A few days ago, I tried to put a border around some cells, and I got this:

According to Microsoft, "This problem occurs when the workbook contains more than approximately 4,000 different combinations of cell formats." Since Microsoft has an article on this, I suppose I'm not the first, but I think for someone in my profession, this is sort of the equivalent getting 3,000 hits in baseball. I'm not sure if I have anywhere to go but down.

Amazingly, that's not my only big achievement of late. I also figured out a "Japanese" IQ Test" that a friend sent me the other day. Admittedly, it took me an hour or so, which according to the guy that put the link on his site means that I'd probably be unemployed in Japan (although the whole thing is in Chinese, so I'm skeptical that he knows what he's talking about). That said, I think I proved that I can successfully move a highly disfunctional, violent Asian family across a river, something that fills a few gaps in my resume. I had seen this episode of The Office, so that probably helped a bit:

Of course, it's important as part of the job search to be prepared to talk about your "areas for improvement." The other day I sprayed some crabgrass killer on my lawn, and it seems to be killing everything but the crabgrass - maybe I'll use that one.

I've Been Looking So Long at These Pictures of You

2008-07-14T21:47:00.006-07:00

I have plenty of flaws. One of those is that I don't have the greatest memory. I mean, I remember some things pretty well, but I don't remember every detail of everything I've ever done. Unfortunately, another flaw (and perhaps a related one) is that I don't do that well at keeping a journal. The only time I have done well at this was during my mission in Korea, where I actually wrote every day for two years, but even those journals are now missing, maybe a victim of one of our many moves (I'm actually fairly sad about this).

One potential saving grace is that I e-mail a few people often, and I might be able to patch together something resembling a journal out of that. Since I was an adult when I sent my first e-mail, however, that doesn't help me a lot with my adolescence. For the most part, I'm left with some memories and a lot of pictures (my dad is a photographer, so when I say a lot of pictures, I'm not exaggerating). Sometimes when a picture is all you have, it captures a lot more than just a very brief moment in time (yikes - I'm practically plagiarizing The Cure and Whitney Houston in the same sentence - I'd better change the subject for a minute).

On the 4th of July, we paid a visit to Beatty, something that will probably become an annual thing. I don't think I'd rather spend the 4th anywhere else, and the rest of my family seems to feel the same way. There is stuff going on all day at the park, and I've literally never seen a better fireworks show. I mean, we once spent Independence Day on the Mall in D.C., and the show there was undoubtedly more expensive, but in Beatty, you're ringed in by mountains that hold in the sound and are literally sitting right underneath them as they are going off.

The added bonus this year was that I saw friends that I hadn't seen in years. I basically had three best friends at different times growing up. One I have kept in touch with pretty well, but the others I hadn't seen in about 9 and 16 years, respectively. One Halloween those two and I dressed up as the Three Musketeers, and my dad (as usual) captured the moment. This little unplanned reunion over the 4th reminded me of this picture, so I dug it up and a lot of good memories with it.

I've been fortunate to have great friends all through my life, and it's amazing that you can go that long without seeing people that fit squarely into that category. Some things have apparently not changed all that much, since they talked me into paintball, something we had at least pretended to do a lot back in the day (somehow I doubt kids are allowed to play guns much anymore).

Oddly enough, seeing people after such a long time makes you examine how much you've changed even more than it does how much they have. When you live away from where you grew up and are surrounded by a group of people who only know you as an adult (roughly speaking), you aren't always cognizant of how your identity has evolved. I won't go into all of the ways in which I'm different, but I did realize that a few things are the same. For one, I'm still not the star athlete - I got completely destroyed in the egg race. For another, I realized as I flipped on my car stereo while driving around town that I'm still the guy who listens to music almost no one has heard of.

It's probably too late to become a star athlete (although maybe competitive eating is still in the picture), but I can probably work on the second one. I'm not suggesting that I'm going to start listening only to stuff produced by Timbaland - I haven't lost my mind completely yet. Instead, I'm going to start sharing some of the obscure and interesting (to me) stuff I find on YouTube (simultaneously one of the dumbest and most useful sites on the internet). You might not like it or even listen, but at least you'll have heard of it. As much as any photograph, the music I listen to brings me back to different points in my life, so I might as well share while I'm reminiscing out loud.

I'll start with a group called Anything Box (see, I wasn't kidding - 99% of people probably have no idea who they are). I first heard their one-and-only "hit" ("Living in Oblivion") at a dance during a school trip to D.C. back in high school and picked up their one-and-only major-label release soon thereafter. It wasn't until I saw them live after my mission at a club in Provo in 1995 that I really became hooked - still the most energy I've ever seen from a crowd at a concert. They had already been dumped by their label at that point for being too electronic during the grunge era, but the unfortunate part for them is that their appeal (to me, at least) has very little to do with genre and a lot to do with writing great songs that would translate well in just about any genre. I think a lot of groups try to write hits but that not nearly as many worry about writing songs that still sound original and mean something long after the hooks have worn off. That's the reason you'll still catch me listening to these guys today.

[Recent unplugged version of a song that is almost 20 years old now]

[Another acoustic performance]

Turn That Mortgage/Frown Upside Down

2008-07-10T17:19:00.006-07:00

An advisor of John McCain said that we "have sort of become a nation of whiners." After a bunch of people whined about it, he had to explain that the "we" referred to the nation's leaders, not Americans in general. Apparently he was trying to say that a lot of the economic badness right now has been brought about by people talking about it happening. This is probably true to a degree. I mean, if enough people tell you a recession is going on, you're likely to spend less and help create a recession. I don't think whining has much to do with falling home prices and rising gas prices, though, and I'm probably in the minority right now in that I think both things are good in the long run.

A few years ago, we bought our house while things were on the way up, and now I can practically do the backstroke in my living room. That's fairly painful at the moment, admittedly. I should have probably invested in something like cars that hold their value a little better, but who knew. I'm not sure where I would have parked a fleet of Hybrids at my old apartment anyway. I'm sure I'll be better off eventually, particularly if I discover oil in my backyard, which I expect to happen soon.

I'm a little torn, sure, but in some ways I'm glad the housing market crashed. I look at my son, and it's hard to imagine how he'd ever afford his own chicken-wire-covered-with-mud mansion someday without an occasional market correction like this. I was starting to think I was going to have to get him started now in professional golf or hope he wins Survivor XXXVI someday, but now I think he can go back to the either of the careers for which he seems to be prepping at the moment (Cookie Monster or armed robber).

[Quick side note - as I'm typing this and watching Seinfeld, a flash flood warning popped up. What am I supposed to do with that? If I was out hiking around, that might be helpful, but sitting here on my couch, I'm not sure what action they're recommending.]

Anyway, I think it's actually not a horrible thing that gas prices have gone up either. This past weekend we drove about 1,000 miles round-trip to visit my family in Nevada, and I figured out that the trip cost us about $30 more at $4 that it would have at $3 (we might as well forget that $2 gas ever existed). Unless you commute to Alaska in a Hummer, you might have to be a bit more frugal, but I'm guessing $4 petrol won't put you on the streets.

At the moment, I commute 25 miles one-way to work in a vanpool. In January, we seriously considered killing it. We had 6 riders, and on most days, only about 2 showed up. Now we have 12 people and more on a wait list. I'm not claiming to be Al Gore's cousin or anything - the main reason I ride is to save money - but it's amazing to see the great motivator gas prices can be (I mean, it's fairly illogical to drive across town to save 5 cents a gallon). Having visited and lived in a lot of places with great public transportation systems, I will happily pay $30 extra to see my family if it means that people will carpool more in the short term and get behind things like light rail a bit more readily down the road.

At Least This One Has No Mormon Ties

2008-06-24T21:28:00.006-07:00

I am told from time to time that I belong to a cult. I don't believe that I do, but I figured that I should find out what "cult" means just to be sure. Google led me to Wikipedia (a sentence that would have sounded like complete gibberish about 10 years ago), which informed me that "cult" means "an English rock band which gained a dedicated following in their native Britain with mid-'80s singles like 'She Sells Sanctuary' before breaking into the American metal market in the late '80s with 'Love Removal Machine.' I do like that song, but based on that definition, I don't believe I'm a cult member, no.

That said, I think my two-year-old son may be on the verge of joining one. Today we stopped by the house of some friends of ours to drop something off, and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse was playing. He instantly forgot about everything else and stood there in a trance for about 10 minutes before I finally pulled him away. Again, he's barely two, and yet I think he's almost better at identifying Mickey and his little cult members than he is his own parents.

Now, you might think I'm being a little harsh here on a CGI mouse (PETA would be all over me for this if they weren't distracted by defending the pigeons - and soon bees - at Wimbledon), let me bring to your attention some other definitions of a cult, this time from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary.

A group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
Group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols
A religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader

Now, with that in the back of your mind (and anything you might have seen about the FLDS in the last little while), let me summarize this "show" for those of you less-than-familiar with it. Mickey Mouse is, well, a talking mouse, and let's face it, if you don't know who he is, you probably are a cult member yourself and will probably be punished for using the internet. Mickey lives in a hidden compound out away from civilization and is the leader of a small, exclusive group of other talking animals and a bunch of kids who he can somehow hear through the TV (must be why he has those ears).

Mickey appears to spend most of the time trying to counsel the rest of the group through their problems, but it's fairly clear that the whole thing is really about him. Everywhere they turn, the members are bombarded by Mickey imagery. I mean, the guy even built a house that looks like him. He asks questions to which he already knows the answers, leading his followers to believe that they are actually thinking for themselves when in reality they are coming to whatever conclusions Mickey wants them to.

The social order appears to be tightly controlled by Mickey, as well. He has only allowed in two ducks, for example, so they really don't have a lot of dating options. Goofy is the only - well, what is Goofy? There are a few outsiders in the area, but they are clearly not included in the group's activities and certainly don't have access to the right "secret words" to get into the compound on their own or to use any of the "Mouskatools" (again, the mouse imagery - they are even carried around by something shaped like a mouse head).

So, that takes us back to my son. I'm fairly certain he's about to jump in with both feet. It wouldn't worry me so much if it was just that he says "Oh Toodles!" whenever Mickey tells him to. I'm more worried that this cult will spread. Before long they'll be creating whole theme parks built around the glorification of this bipedal rodent, and my son will be begging me to go there. I just thought I should do my part and warn you.

NBA Season Postmortem

2008-06-22T23:16:00.003-07:00

Every company probably has its quirks, and mine has plenty. When I started, I vowed that I wouldn't start saying things like, "I don't have enough bandwidth to take on that task" or "let's take that conversation offline," but now I say dumb things like that all day long. Every quarter I also attend mandatory BUMs (Business Update Meetings), as well as the occasional DUM (Division Update Meeting), and often after a project is over, I take part in a "postmortem."

Now that the NBA season is dead, it's probably time for postmortem on that (or a 'SUP - Season Update Post - as it is more commonly known), particularly since I promised at the start of the season to hold myself accountable for my predictions (knowing, of course, that this is just a blog and that I have no accountability to anyone). I scored a 4 out of 10 last year, and I'm not really sure if that's good or bad. I mean, .400 is the goal if you are Chipper Jones but is probably not that great for a weatherman or an doctor.

Let's see how I did this time. Again, the scale is scale of 0 (moronic) to 1 (brilliant).

The Jazz will NOT be 41-41 as predicted by Bill Simmons. [1 - 54-28]
I will not win my fantasy basketball league. [If I could score a 1.5 here, I would, but I'll stick with a 1. I was like 800 games under .500.]
If the Suns make some sort of midseason move to bring in more size, they will win the NBA title. If not, they won't. [If I could score a -0.5 here, I would, but I'll stick with a 0. They did bring in the most size possible and still didn't win.]
Jerry Sloan will not win Coach of the Year. [1 - I got the "gimme" points I was shooting for here.]
I will attend at least four Suns games this year. [0 - I only went to 1. I have to plan ahead more this year, because all of their games sell out early.]
If the Celtics stay healthy this year, they will win the East easily. [1 - they won by a full 7 games.]
Kevin Durant will win Rookie of the Year, but it won't be unanimous. [1 - 90 out of 125 first-place votes.]
The NBA Finals will have at least three times higher TV ratings than last year. [0 - It was better - averaged a 9.3 rating, up 50 percent over the 6.2 last year - but not that much better.]
TNT will do some ridiculous tie-in to a movie during their playoff coverage. [1 - Indiana Jones]
The toughest position for which to get an All-Star roster spot will be PG in the Western Conference - someone who should be on the team will be left off. [1 - I don't know if there's even an argument here - Deron Williams was left off, and he's probably one of the top 15-20 players in the NBA and on the Olympic team now.]

So, we're up to 7-out-of-10. With that kind of turnaround, I feel a bit like Kevin Garnett, although I'm much less likely to swear on national TV. Granted, this is sort of like doing better on a test where you make up the questions.

Clinical Imprecision

2008-06-12T22:17:00.001-07:00

You probably wouldn't be surprised to hear that my hometown Beatty doesn't have a hospital. A town of about 1,000 people probably can't support one, unless there was, I don't know... nuclear testing going on in the area or something. Never mind - there was nuclear testing.

That said, the town does have a clinic. Apparently they now have an M.D., but growing up it was usually a physician's assistant, and typically a good one (except for one who once told the entire junior high football team that they had heart murmurs and another girl whose foot was ran over that she'd probably lose it - neither were true, as far as I know). I spent quality time at that clinic between physicals, facial lacerations, and x-rays for broken bones, and for things like that, it was more than good enough.

I did assume that once I moved to "the big city" I'd go to the hospital for things like that. It turns out that half the time I end up at "urgent care" places that are really not that different from the Beatty Clinic, except that they don't have helicopter pads. In fact, they are typically inferior. In Beatty, when I walked in with blood streaming down my face (this happened), they'd usually do something about it right away. At most of these "urgent" care places, I think it would take nothing short of a missing arm to get them to exhibit any sense of urgency.

I found myself at an urgent care place this past Friday afternoon for something pretty minor. I picked this one off of the internet because it was relatively close and was well-reviewed by some anonymous person (whose opinion I evidently highly value). The clincher was that they offered online check-in, which I assumed would help me get in more quickly. It was like being on the inside of an exclusive club, walking in knowing that they were expecting me.

The good feeling went away pretty quickly when I realized that I wasn't getting in faster than any of the other patients, most of whom were filling out forms when I walked in. In fairness, most of these people looked pretty miserable and genuinely sick, so I didn't feel too badly that I had wasted a good 10 minutes on the internet.

[Speaking of wasting time on the internet, once in Virginia we were moving across town, and I reserved a U-Haul truck on the internet and, in a very Seinfeldian moment, they had no truck for me when I showed up. Apparently they had a system for taking the reservation but not really a way for communicating that to the offices with the actual trucks. They loaned me a truck for three hours, and I only had one person to help me - might have been the fastest move of all time.]

I'm not sure the staff in these urgent care clinics know what line of work they are in. For one thing, they had the TV tuned to Law & Order, and I'm not sure someone who knew they were working in a facility for urgent medical care would throw on a show about assault and murder. For another, you get a lot more organization and haste out of the staff at a Taco Bell. Of course, it could be a coping mechanism so that they don't go crazy dealing with sick and injured people all day, but it could also be that they think they're running a hair salon.

For those of you that believe in universal healthcare, I must warn you. These urgent care people have capitalistic reasons to be efficient, so imagine how things would be if we mix in a bit of socialism. You'd probably walk in to find a comatose woman behind a computer and a few skeletons in chairs with clipboards dangling from their bony fingers. When that happens, you'll wish you were in Beatty.

Off to Never, Never Land

2008-05-28T15:30:00.003-07:00

I have some deep flaws. In reality, most of us probably have flaws, some of which are obvious and other which we try to keep to ourselves. In some cases, only those close to you know about them, and the fact that they know about these things and associate with you anyway is perhaps the very definition of "close."

Those close to me (or at least who have lived under the same roof as I have at some point) know about one of my deep flaws: I have a real problem with alarm clocks. I know there is a big "nature vs. nurture" argument regarding those with this issue, so I won't get into that, but I don't think I really recognized this in myself until college.

My freshmen year, two things happened. One, I lived with maybe the most entertaining collection of roommates ever assembled, which meant that those of us who actually went to class didn't sleep much. Second, being a bit clueless about fundamentally important things like registering for classes, I found out in my first day of Anatomy that I was supposed to have registered for a lab, and the only ones left at that point were at 7:00 A.M. I probably looked a bit like a cadaver by the time that semester was over, and I'm pretty sure I slept through a few alarms in the process.

I must have explained the situation to my mom, because she went to Walmart or somewhere like that and tested every alarm in the store until she found the loudest one. You would think that would have fixed the problem. While it did lower (to some degree) the chances that I'd sleep through my alarm altogether, the alarm-clock makers obviously didn't test the product on someone like me.

For the following few years as a missionary in Korea, the problem sort of went into dormancy, maybe because I had a mandated bed time or perhaps because I was sleeping on the floor - not sure. My alarm clock waited faithfully for two years, though, and was ready to go back into service when I came back and stopped going to bed at a decent hour. My problem returned in force and wasn't helped at all by the fact that I roomed with H.I., who somehow couldn't hear my "nuclear attack warning" alarm either.

This led to me sleeping through my alarm far too many times, both for my sake and for the sake of the people in my building (I know some of my roommates wanted to strangle me at times, but one day I even heard someone from another apartment yell "thank you" when I finally turned off my alarm). I don't think there is anything quite like the panic of waking up & realizing that you've slept through your alarm. There are different levels of panic, of course - I mean, being late for class isn't the same as being late for your wedding. My problem was that I had a shirt-and-tie 7:00 A.M. job teaching at the Missionary Training Center, so it wasn't like I could just throw on a hat & go. I knew that when I ran in with a somewhat wrinkled shirt and sweat on my brow, my missionaries (who expected me to be inspiring and entertaining) would know that I had a rough night.

I left that job and got married, but now it seems I did so a bit deceitfully since I never really told her about my condition. To preserve my marriage, I have stopped using my early-'90s vintage bionic alarm for the most part and switched to using my cell phone on vibrate, but my problem has mutated like something in a Michael Crichton book. I now hear my alarm most of the time (either on my own or with a nudge from the other side of the bed), but I've become a chain snoozer - I can hit that button a good 10 times in a row and fall back asleep instantly every time. Jack Bauer would crack under that kind of torture, but she is still with me, so I suppose it isn't a fatal flaw - yet.

Something for Nothing

2008-05-23T16:24:00.003-07:00

Given some of my previous posts, I feel compelled to preface this by saying that I don't work in paradise (although there are palm trees). I work in a cubicle among literally hundreds, my phone hardly works sometimes, and most of what I have at my desk was raided from the desks of co-workers after they left the company. Now, with that behind me...

At my office, they have started to give out free things in an attempt to raise morale (not that morale is horrible, but we're no Google I guess, where apparently people rub your feet and feed you grapes). As a result of this new initiative, I now eat a lot more fruit and drink a lot more soda (diet, but still). I suppose those two things balance out a little, but I used to drink water, and I remember hearing somewhere that water is better for you than gallons of Sobe Diet Cranberry Grapefruit. It's a little early to tell if morale is actually up or if everyone is just a little hopped up on caffeine from free coffee and Mountain Dew. Either way, the novelty doesn't seem to have worn off yet, and maybe it never fully will. Sometimes I still feel a bit like I'm being less-than-scrupulous walking out of the cafeteria without paying for something that at a movie theater or ballgame costs about as much as gold on a per-ounce basis.

It's too bad that most of the time, the stuff we are able to get for free is stuff we would never have purchased in the first place (in my case, I didn't drink soda at work before, so I'm not saving a lot of money). The fact that something is free usually means A) that no one really wants it, B) it doesn't cost all that much to produce, or C) that it's all a ploy to get you in the door to buy something else. The interesting part is that most of us know those things but don't really care - it's one of the things that separates us from the animals, and maybe not in a good way. Unlike mice, for example, we know going in that if we grab the free cheese, a big figurative metal bar is going to smack us in the head. Ever stop in at Costco to get the free samples and end up walking out with a 40-lb. box of Cheez-its?

The mousetrap into which I often step is the "mail-in rebate" snare. I'm in the process of putting together a new computer (nerd alert! - although nothing will make you feel like less of a nerd than talking to a sales associate at Fry's Electronics about motherboards and only understanding about every other word). In looking through the Fry's ads, I noticed a graphics card that was free... after mail-in rebate. I don't need that particular kind of graphics card, but I must admit that I was tempted (I mean, it's free). Fortunately, I know myself better than that.

I'm sure the mail-in rebate people are counting on people not sending in the form at least part of the time. I confess, I've fallen into that. Once in a while, I just forget, which is completely inexcusable given that half the time, it means I've now paid full price for something I didn't really need in the first place. Every day in my job I deal with the concept that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow, so maybe that weakens my motivation a bit. NASA can get a satellite to Neptune a bit faster than most of these companies can get you a rebate. I might have mentioned this before, but in the internet age, I'm pretty sure nothing should take that long to process. This has to be intentional on their part, either so they can invest my money somewhere else (which I would be doing instead of buying worthless junk if I was really as smart financially as I have to pretend to be at work).

That reminds me... I walked out of Fry's yesterday with three mail-in rebates. I'd better go take care of those right now, if for nothing else to prove to myself that I'm smarter than a rodent.

I Saw It on CNN.com

2008-05-12T21:15:00.009-07:00

The past several weeks, Spike (the TV channel, not Hugh Grant's roommate in Notting Hill) has been showing the Star Wars movies. As is often the case with movies on cable, they show them from 8-11 and then follow them up with a special "bonus" replay from 11-2. Whoever the marketing genius is behind the whole "encore presentation" thing should get a serious raise, because he/she convinced their own management and the viewing public that watching movies twice in a row is a good idea.

Despite how stupid that sounds, about half the time, I actually do keep watching. In the case of the Star Wars movies, I think it's due to a mix of nostalgia and comedy value. I mean, it's hard to pass up Luke whining like my 2-year-old in the original movie and Yoda acting like a deranged Muppet in The Empire Strikes Back. (OK, so he actually was a Muppet.)

[Incedentally, maybe the only thing more ridiculous than watching the same movie twice in a row on TV is watching a movie on TV that you own on DVD. Ever catch yourself doing that? That'll make you question your sanity a little bit. I mean, imagine you popped in a DVD that was a little grainy and filled with Proactive commercials featuring Diddy and Jessica Simpson - you'd be pretty ticked.]

CNN might have to hire that same marketing genius if they want their latest idea to work. You'll be happy to know that next time you're on CNN.com, any headline with a little "t-shirt" logo next to it can be turned into your own custom T-shirt in one of three exciting non-colors.

On the surface, it seems like the reason you'd buy one of these would be if the headline was about you (although, most of the time, if a CNN headline is about you, you probably should spend your money on legal counsel). You have to be a little arrogant to think the public will pay you for the privilege of being a walking advertisement for your product, but given that the same public apparently is eager to watch dumb movies like "The Core" twice in a row on TNT, they might be onto something.

What Happens in Vegas Could Keep You in Vegas

2008-04-30T23:14:00.006-07:00

No, I'm not dead, although I am pretty tired. If it wasn't for the fact that if I don't finish this in the next 45 minutes, I'll only have one post in all of April, I'd probably be in bed. Between more work than is healthy (although I can't complain, because that's not usually the case), travel, and illness, it's been an interesting month. Actually, I'm fairly fortunate to have reached April 30th, given that I've had to stare down death a few times.

A few weeks ago we spent the weekend in Las Vegas. I'm a native of the Silver State (I still know most of the state song, if you need proof), so going to Vegas feels a little more like going home than going on vacation. I guess this was a combination of both, since we were staying at a hotel (Mandalay Bay, which I like partly because they don't have tacky carpet - rare for Vegas - but mostly because my wife usually gets to stay there for free) and spent some time with my family.

The last night we were there, my brother dropped his wife off at a birthday party and brought his two kids over to our room on the 29th floor (there's no place like a casino/hotel/resort for a bunch of toddlers). When he left, I decided to walk out with him to give him a hand with his kids. We joined three strangers on the elevator, and then the door closed behind us and didn't open for another 20 minutes or so.

I hadn't been stuck on an elevator before, but it turns out it's a bit like a very short version of the show Lost (of which I watch about every 4th episode - not a behavior I recommend). First of all, you are stuck for an indefinite amount of time with complete strangers who seem like nice people but likely have sordid pasts worthy of extensive flashbacks. Second, there are inexplicable noises (in our case, a constant buzzing), and it's hot and muggy. Third, there is some antiquated technology available on the island/elevator, and you're both afraid to push the wrong button and unsure of whether you're really communicating with the outside world.

In our case, we actually had to use that little crackly speaker (conveniently placed at knee level) to communicate (over the high buzzing sound) with an unidentified woman who tried to assure us by saying that they were "aware of the situation" and would "try" to get us out. Not to sound all Yoda here or anything, but in a case like this, there is no try, only do. The best part was that later when we called back, she answered with, "Can I help you?", which tells me that she either was a character from Finding Nemo or had gone home and not told her replacement about us (good thing we called back, I guess).

Despite the fact that we were dangling for 20 minutes in a hot metal box several hundred feet above ground, I'm pretty sure we were never in any real danger - at least I thought so until the crowbar guy came and busted us out and then the hotel hospitality guy started treating us like we had just been rescued from a POW camp (handing out water, making sure we were coherent, giving us a little debriefing). It turns out he was just getting some details so the hotel could send us a gift for our trouble. I wonder if the people in Lost will get fruit baskets when they finally get out.

The past few commutes home I've avoided a much deadlier situation involving a van on the side of the road about halfway home. Now, there are some things in life you don't buy out of the back of a van. For example, a few months back H.I. was outside Best Buy, and some guys in a van tried to sell him a stereo, claiming they had an extra one & just needed to sell it off (he offered a price far too low for their cheap, questionably legal product, though, and they drove away - classic). Now that I think about it, maybe the rule is that you never buy anything out of the back of a van.

I would say that is particularly true for seafood. Yet, there are people with a white van on the side of the road on the way home trying to sell me shrimp and lobster tails from Rocky Point (in Mexico). Even assuming they have those things on ice somehow, there's something inherently terrifying about pulling up to a rusty vehicle on the side of the road on a 90-plus degree day and buying a bag of raw crustaceans. Maybe the only thing scarier is that they probably have done this before and made enough money the last time to come back again. OK, maybe it's even scarier that you are sharing the road with people who obviously have some sort of death wish, since some of them must be stopping. Fortunately, I was able to steer well clear and have lived to blog another day.

Modern Heroes and Modern Advances

2008-04-11T23:59:00.001-07:00

The term "hero" gets thrown around a lot. Sometimes it seems appropriate, and sometimes we maybe go a little too far (usually in sports). That said, I hope you didn't miss the story the other day of someone that was unequivocally a hero. If you did, I'll give you the quick version (although the full story should probably be required reading). A Navy SEAL in Iraq was in a sniper position on a rooftop with several other soldiers (American and Iraqi) when a grenade flew up and bounced off of him. Instead of jumping away, which he apparently could have done, he jumped onto the grenade to shield the rest from the blast. They all survived; he didn't. I'm not sure I need to say much more, except that I don't know if I've heard a story that has moved me more in a long time, particularly given that there could have been no hesitation. It's too bad that often the real heroes aren't around to accept their own medals, but I'm guessing that people like this aren't remotely motivated by that anyway.

I'm not saying that heroes are only found in war. For the most part, my heroes are people who deal with very difficult situations in ways that inspire me to hope that I would do the same. I think by that definition, you can find heroes in a lot of places - yes, even in something as relatively trivial as sports.

The other night I went to my first regular season baseball game this year. Pitching for the DBacks was Doug Davis, who two days later (yesterday) was to undergo surgery for thyroid cancer. Despite struggling quite a bit his last time out, he pitched a solid game and got the win. To top it off, a guy who had 4 hits in 58 at bats last year had two bit hits and a sacrifice bunt. OK, admittedly, none of that is remotely in the same galaxy as someone without hesitation giving up his life for someone else, but I do think there is something at least mildly heroic (according to my own definition) in staring down cancer like that, and I don't know that we should have to apologize for saying so.

If I can be a little less serious for a minute, the other memorable thing from the Diamondbacks game was a giant high-definition television. By giant, I don't mean a 59" or 60". I'm talking about a 46-foot-high, 136-foot-wide high-def screen they put it at Chase Field, which apparently cost $14 million dollars (but maybe they got one of those "no payments until 2010" deals). I have to say, I've never seen anything like it (although it is a little scary seeing random people from the crowd kissing in high-definition). We haven't taken the high-def plunge yet (I'm sure we will at some point), but for now we're living squarely in the fuzzy past.

The other day I watched Hoosiers for the first time in a while, and I was thinking about how nice it would be in some ways to live in a little simpler time before all of these inventions and advances starting making life so complicated. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't really want to give up the positives that go along with modern advances like the internet, giant TVs that are somehow sharper than real life, and slow-churned ice cream, but there are certainly some complications that come with all of this. Here are just a few examples:

In 1950s Hickory, Indiana, if people had TVs, they probably only had about two fuzzy channels (incidentally, I think that's what we had in Beatty when I was really young). I now have literally hundreds, and I probably spend more time going through that dumb guide than I do actually watching TV (at first when I typed that, I thought I was exaggerating, but now I'm really not sure). It's like trying to order food at the Cheesecake Factory (complete with annoying advertising), except that there most of the stuff on the CF menu is worth your time and contains no Steven Seagal.
In 1950s Hickory, they had soap. In my office, they installed (as I think I mentioned previously) touchless dispensers of hand sanitizer at the top of every staircase to encourage people to hold onto the handrails but not have to worry about disease. The other day, I accidentally stood too close to one of those things, and I got a heavy shot of alcohol all over my arm. It's hard to walk through a place like my office now without doors flying open, paper towels shooting out at you, and lights popping on. The good thing is that if I ever have to make my way through a booby-trapped jungle or a bank vault's laser security system, I'll be fairly well prepared.
While we're on the subject of health, in 1950s Hickory they probably had aspirin and penicillin. Now we have a drug for everything, and most of those can apparently cause problems much worse than the symptom they are trying to address. My wife had something akin to Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) while she was pregnant with our son, so I can understand that this is annoying and makes it hard to sleep. That said, if you take something called Mirapex to cure it, you are risking (according to the commercial I saw and their website) "falling asleep while engaged in activities of daily living, including the operation of motor vehicles which sometimes [has] resulted in accidents," hallucinations, and "pathological gambling."

Speaking of hallucinations, I'm starting to have them now since it's so late as I try to finish this. Let me just say that as complicated and ridiculous as modern life in the developed free world can be, I'm profoundly grateful for people who completely selflessly offer their lives to preserve our right to live it.

Giddy'Up

2008-03-30T10:54:00.011-07:00

I'm almost afraid to write this, because you may begin to think (given a few earlier posts) that I don't do any actual work. I can produce evidence if needed that I actually do something productive for my employer, but I'm not quite dumb enough to reveal on the WWW too much about what I do (in the interests of both keeping my job and not losing your interest). That said, I do get to take an occasional time-out from the daily grind (i.e. sitting in a cubicle all day) for activities ostensibly intended to build team unity and increase morale. Usually, this means attending some sort of sporting event or participating in something highly athletic like bowling, laser tag, or pool, but in this case, it meant pretending to be a cowboy.

I must confess that I didn't grow up dreaming of being a cowboy. In fact, I don't think the idea ever even crossed my mind. Even though I grew up in the country, it was mining country and not cowboy country (meaning that there were a few horses and cows running around but many, many, many more wild burros). I think prior to last Thursday, I'd been on a horse once about 20 years ago, and all I remember of that was being really sore.

Despite that, when I had the option in this team-builder of either herding cattle or following along on a hayride, I picked the horse option. In the end, I'm glad I did for two reasons. First, only two people of about 30 rode on the truck, so they looked pretty lonely and bored most of the time. Second, I haven't had too many "Arizona" experiences since we moved here (haven't been to the Grand Canyon yet, etc.), and this definitely felt like an authentic Arizona experience.

Now, I'm not saying this was a highly challenging cattle herd. Since there was roughly a 1:1 human-bovine ratio, the cattle were pretty much surrounded, and we weren't exactly moving too quickly (in fact, it was tricky enough to keep the horses and cows from stopping all the time to eat anything remotely green in their path). Really, the only hard part was figuring out how to talk to the cows without sounding like either a moron or a complete city slicker. Here are a few other clues that this wasn't completely real.

I snapped this picture partway through the ride. I'm pretty sure real cowboys don't take pictures with camera phones (maybe I'm wrong - maybe now they all have Blackberries and MySpace pages).

About halfway through, we stopped for a break and all got handed little Aquafina bottles from the hayride truck. I try to avoid watching old John Wayne movies (it's a little difficult, though, thanks to AMC showing them late at night when I can't sleep), but I don't think I've ever seen the Duke or any other cowboy chugging bottled water, particularly the little 4 oz. variety.
The cows ended up in the same corral in which they started, so it was really more like taking them for a walk.
Half the time, we'd get ahead of the cows and have to wait for them all to catch up. I'm fairly certain that's not how it's supposed to work.

Ignoring all of that, though, I was fine pretending that I was actually driving cattle and had a pretty good time. I figure that the horses probably had the least fun through this whole experience. You don't realize how big horses are until you're sitting on one, and mine gave me the eye every time I pulled on the bridle a little too hard during an unannounced bathroom break or a nice weed snack. The real cowboys (you could tell by the boots) kept telling me to kick him harder when he slowed down and that it "doesn't hurt them," but I'm not sure I buy that. The fact is that my horse could have made me go away any time he wanted (we had to sign a disclaimer acknowledging that horseback riding can cause death and promising not to sue), so I was fine being a little cautious about slamming my Sketchers into his kidneys.

It's OK To Take a Break Once in a While (If You Can)

2008-03-24T17:13:00.009-07:00

I recently underwent my annual review at work. For any of you who are still in school and looking forward to being free of things like homework and grades, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Once you enter the working world, you may have homework, and you will still get grades (they will just give them names rather than letters, which are evidently intended to avoid bruising your apparently fragile psyches with labels like "Below Expectations" or "Underperforming"). There are other things that probably won't change all that much, either - I had a co-worker in my previous government life who wouldn't participate in "Bring Your Child to Work" day for fear that this his kids would find out that a desk, some books, and Microsoft Word are all there is at the end of the tunnel and lose all motivation.

Fortunately, I wasn't tagged "Needs Improvement" or "Memorize www.careerbuilder.com" or anything like that, so I should be gainfully employed for yet another year, something which I don't take for granted. I feel like I had a decent year, and it was nice to be rewarded for it. That said, there are people at my office who I know are working harder than I am and deserve at least the raise I received.

The hardest thing to do in my building is to find an open bathroom. It isn't that there are only a few of them; there is one located just around the corner from my desk, and others directly above and below that and within reasonable walking distance on my floor. The reason it's so difficult is that the cleaning people we employ are the probably the most diligent cleaning people anywhere in the world. Literally half the time, I pop around the corner to find myself suddenly stopped cold by a yellow bar. I'm not joking - this probably happens more than once a day. I snapped this today on my phone, in fact.

Once you actually find an available lavatory, your problems aren't really over. Again literally about 50% of the time, there is a knock on the door accompanied by a call of "Housekeeping!" I have to admit, I've come to dread this. First of all, you have to say something to prevent them from just walking in, and I'm not sure what the right response is to that. Second, suddenly there is time pressure.

I'm not sure what the goal is here. The manufacture of our products requires an absolutely clean environment, so the company is pretty obsessive about that. Maybe we're prepping the bathrooms as additional clean-room space. I'm not sure. The company is also committed to good corporate citizenship. Maybe we're trying to end disease. If the cleaning people end disease, they definitely deserve a raise.

Of course, one result of getting a raise at work is that you are expected to do more (take on more "scope," as they call it at my company). Well, these people clearly can handle more scope. I think we can solve a number of problems (in addition to capacity constraints and the common cold) by giving them a bit of added responsibility. I suggest we trade about half of their bathroom cleaning time to local gas stations in exchange for a better selection of junk food for our employee store. People wouldn't have to hold it as long on long trips, and I would have better luck at work finding both a bathroom and a decent snack.

Guilty as Charged

2008-03-20T22:50:00.003-07:00

As I start this, I'm somewhere high in the air over the Grand Canyon. That's what I'm told, anyway; I'm in an aisle seat directly in line with the wing. I should probably consider getting a window seat next time, but I'm generally a big fan of the aisle when traveling on my own since you don't have to climb over anyone to get out. It's bad enough that you have to either make your whole row get up or practically sit in their laps, but even on a short flight you can get one of those instant sleepers (I envy those people) who you have to wake up. I hate waking up people I know, let alone complete strangers who could be dreaming that they're being attacked and claw at me in self defense.

If I were not on this plane, it's quite possible that I'd just be finishing up deliberations in a DUI trial. Yesterday morning I did my civic duty and traveled about an hour southeast to Florence, AZ, to report for jury duty. That part wasn't as bad as it sounds, since there was no traffic (I really need to find a job in the middle of nowhere - I'm a big fan, it turns out, of solo commuting), and at one point I passed through a small rocky canyon filled with saguaro and wildflowers that made me wish I had a camera.

Florence itself was sort of what I expected, having grown up in a similarly remote, similarly small desert town (sans McDonald's, though), but the courthouse was actually much nicer than anticipated. It's not like I was expecting to run into Barney Fife or anything, but I was surprised by the modernity, given the locale. Now I know to where they've been funneling my property taxes. The facility lost a little luster, though, when I noticed that it was surrounded on several sides by a prison. That probably doesn't help property values too much, but Florence is probably a convenient place to live if you are a criminal. If you were to rob the McDonald's literally across the street and get caught, without going more than about 100 yards, you could go to court, jail, and back to McDonald's to get a job after getting out. I think the people who put this set-up together could probably end our dependence on oil and global warming if we put them in charge.

[More places should adopt this approach, I think. For example, last week I ate at In-N-Out and Claim Jumper. Why aren't those built next to hospitals rather than around shopping malls?]

The jury selection process was actually pretty interesting. I knew going in I probably wouldn't be selected since I had to catch a flight the next afternoon, but they still put me through my paces before letting me go. Much like traffic school, you get quite a cross-section of society when you put together a group of people randomly selected from a list, and I became pretty interested in seeing who would make the cut. Instead, the experience was a bit like the 15 minutes I saw of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water - I watched enough to get a feel for the strange cast of characters but never found out what happened after that. I did get a decent reimbursement check for the mileage, which wasn't bad considering a juror in Arizona apparently gets a per diem of $12 a day. Maybe they saw one of those Sally Struthers commercials and thought they were being generous.

Unfortunately, jury duty was the fun part of my day. I followed that up with a trip to the dentist, which isn't actually as bad as it sounds since the people there are pretty decent (when they are not driving a little metal spike into my gums) and have satellite TV (although I started on Sportscenter or something on ESPN, and pretty soon I found myself watching - with no way to change the channel - a small guy in an ugly vest doing pool tricks). Although probably no one enjoys a tooth cleaning, the part of the dentist visit I actually dislike the most is afterward when they ask me if I floss. For probably the past 15 years, I have been telling various dentists that I know I should floss but don't and that I'll try to do a better job. Obviously I've been lying to myself and the medical community, but maybe this time I'll come through.

Doing Lines

2008-03-16T21:32:00.009-07:00

I was a lifeguard for three summers in high school. In theory, I was trained to save people's lives. Every year in May or so we'd show up for a week after school to pull pretend victims out of chlorinated ice water and give CPR to a plastic doll. In reality, nothing ever happened, so most of the time I was just a babysitter with a whistle (the only drama was when the other lifeguards turned off my R.E.M. CD and switched it to Garth Brooks). Still, I liked to think that I could have saved someone had it come down to it.

Well, Saturday I found out that it's a good thing nothing ever did actually happen. I was at a Spring Training game standing in the second-slowest concession line of all time (I detailed the first in a post last year). Despite the fact that there were only about 6 items on the menu, it was somehow taking about 5 minutes per customer, and in the 20 minutes or so while I waited for 4 of the 6 people in front of me to get their nachos and hot dogs, my mind began to wander. Particularly, I began to wonder if I was going to be the first person to ever get a 3rd-degree sunburn while standing in line to get a soda. I'm only slightly joking.

It's not surprising, then, that I didn't react right away when I felt something hit me in the leg. Things slowly came back into focus, and I looked down to find that the girl in front of me had actually passed out from standing in this line for so long. The lady in front of her, who had evidently borne the brunt of this girl's collapse and therefore snapped out of her Aramark-induced coma a bit before I did, tried to help the girl up and was yelling for someone to go get help. Me... I basically froze. I don't think I was worried about keeping my place in line, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about finding someone capable of providing assistance. Actually, I figured I didn't need to do anything when I saw a guy in a "STAFF" shirt feeding her ice, but it turns out he was just a guy in line who wears "STAFF" shirts all the time (or maybe just stayed in a Holiday Inn Express).

Meanwhile, the lady at the front had completely taken control, so much so that when the real medical staff member showed up (no thanks to me), they had a little tiff over whether the semi-conscious girl should stand up or stay sitting down. The girl made it through, and I got both a grossly overpriced soda and confirmation that I will never be a superhero. I guess standing in place for so long had wiped out whatever humanity I had left after my parking experience three days earlier at the same stadium.

That day, I made the mistake of showing up at 12:55 for a 1:05 game, and I literally didn't get into the stadium until 2:00. Sometimes when you find yourself stuck in an interminable line, you make the mistake of thinking there is a better line and ending up in a worse one. Well, I should have made that mistake, because after waiting 45 minutes in the first one, I got to the entrance of a full parking lot and was told to park at the zoo instead. It seems like in the information age we could come up with a way of solving this kind of problem, but if women haven't found a way of solving the wait in public bathrooms, there is probably no hope for men running a parking lot.

Still, I have no room to complain about anything, since at least I didn't pass out in public and fall on complete strangers (or go out in my first Spring Training game and give up 8 runs in the first inning before getting yanked, which the Giants pitcher did on Saturday and then promptly put his resume on Monster). I got two spend two beautiful Arizona afternoons watching Major League baseball close up, and I even got to see some kindness by a Type-A lady who - if she worked for my company - probably would have gotten a Goodie Drawer exchangeable for movie tickets or a Chile's gift card.

Speaking of Goodie Drawers (or "kudos" or a "shout outs" or "attaboys" or whatever the equivalent award is in your world), my best friend from high school, Paul Genesse, deserves all of the above and more for the upcoming publication of his first full-length novel, The Golden Cord (you can pre-order on Amazon). Paul is one of those rare people who is actually doing what he said he wanted to do growing up, but I know that it hasn't come without many years of figurative blood, sweat, and tears, since I read his first draft probably 8 or 9 years ago. No one could deserve success more. Incidentally, Paul is a nurse, so think he might also react a bit better if someone passed out in front of him.

And the Winner Is... Wii Sports!

2008-02-24T18:17:00.009-07:00

Usually, I care very little about the Academy Awards, unless there are Lord of the Rings movies nominated or something like that. For one thing, I don't see a lot of the movies that are nominated (especially true this year, although it sounds like a lot of other people didn't see them either), and more significantly, the self-importance of some of the people I see up there drives me crazy. I don't think that everyone in Hollywood is out of touch with reality, but I do think that when you get enough people in one room that are, it's a little too much. On a more practical level, I also get a little bored listening to long lists of thank-yous to people of whom I've never heard and will never meet.

That said, I do watch the Oscars sometimes for entertainment value (there are a few intentionally funny moments, and many more unintentionally funny moments). Here are a few highlights from tonight I picked out as we went along:

Jon Stewart is making fun of Hollywood in his opening monologue, and all of the stars in the first three rows are trying to figure out if he is making fun of them and whether they should laugh (this is how you find out who thinks they are a big deal).
Someone is winning an Oscar for an Elizabeth movie. This is like my son doing the same trick over-and-over because he knows you'll laugh every time, or like Mariah Carey making the same album over and over and continuing to win awards.
They just played something sounding very dramatic and important before introducing George Clooney. He introduced (and they are now showing) something called "80 Years at the Oscars," which scares me enough on its own given how long a single show can be, and now that Celine Dion song is on. I now know how the enemy can get me to break if I'm ever captured in war.
Some French guy and English woman won for costume design. The French guy spoke for about 10 seconds in broken English, and the woman made the mistake of saying that she had "a lot of people to thank," and she got the music about 20 seconds in. I didn't used to love French movies, but now I do.
Amy Adams is singing now. She grew up in the LDS church until some point in her childhood, apparently, but is no longer practicing. Oh well - I guess we'll have to wait for Jon Heder to make the first official active Mormon appearance at the Academy Awards. They might have to create a new category before that happens.
The Golden Compass just won the visual effects award over Transformers. I guess they did make a great talking polar bear, but didn't Coke already do that a long time ago?
I love the awards you don't even understand, let a long who the people involved are, like "art direction." One of the winners looks like someone did art direction on her.
Some "Bee Movie"-related thing just came on. Sort of funny, but when are they going to stop promoting this movie? This is like the Ron Paul presidential campaign.
Kate Blanchett seriously played Bob Dylan? I thought that was a joke.
Whoever just beat Kate Blanchett for Best Supporting Actress said she was giving her Oscar to someone. I wonder if she really meant it. I doubt it. I'm getting a little bored at this point, but they keep throwing out the teaser that Mylie Cyrus is going to come on... with that sort of hook, how can I turn away?
Apparently, Kodak won some sort of film award. Why are they still using film to make movies?
People keep making jokes about Jack Nicholson and showing him in the front row. When he dies, I wonder if they will preserve him and put him in a display case down front like they did with all the Communist Hall-of-Famers like Lenin, Mao, Kim, and Ho? When the Oscars aren't going on, they could wheel him over to the Staples Center.
There are dancing construction workers on stage. I'm going to go do the dishes.
Bourne Ultimatum just won for Sound Editing. Nice of them to throw a little bone to one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while.
Sound Mixing is up. Ummm... didn't we just do this award? The Bourne Ultimatum won. Didn't see that coming.
They just showed Halle Berry crying when she won in 2002. If people are good enough to win, how do you know if they are really crying?
Some French girl just won Best Actress. Short speech? Yep. I'm telling you, the French are growing on me. I knew I liked Paris for more than just the bread.
Just had some Wii product placement, following onto some Apple product placement earlier. I guess this is the place for the latest tech products. They didn't use to do this, did they? I don't remember the Clapper ever being on here.
Now Jack Nicholson is presenting. I'm starting to think that even in life he's a bit like an aging, wacky Communist dictator.
Enchanted has three songs in for best song, and none of them won. It's like the NBA lottery last year, when the Celtics and Grizzlies tanked at the end of the year on purpose and didn't win anyway. The two people who did went for best song just talked, and they cut the girl off right when she was about to speak. You could read her lips, and then they tried to stop the music, but she was already walking off in embarrassment, so they just started the music back up again. Rude, and bad sound editing. Or is it sound mixing?
Wow - after they break, they brought the girl back on and let her say her piece. Now she gets more attention than she would have otherwise, so it worked out for her, and there was no way they were going to hit her with the music a third time. I guess they weren't rude, just a little trigger-happy. I wonder how long they would have let her go the second time if she had wanted to push it?
The one part of the show I do appreciate is up - the people who have passed away in the last year. I realize that could be taken the wrong way, but I mean that sincerely.
They have military people in Iraq presenting an award - I have to admit this is a great idea. The first one was named Joseph Smith, by the way. I do worry, though, that this will lead someone to say something political. Ah... here it is. Gay rights. At least it wasn't a "Shame on you, Mr. Bush."
OK, here we go - I think Michael Moore is up for an award. We have a shot at a "Shame on you, Mr. Bush." Nope - he didn't win - but we something about Iraq won, so here we go. Yep... told us to turn away from the dark side. Honestly, though, I'd rather hear something political from a guy who makes documentaries than someone who makes action movies or something like that.
Best Actor Award... Tommy Lee Jones made a movie this year? Johnny Depp flew back to America?
We were thinking earlier that this was going by quickly and would end by 9:00. It's almost 10:00.

Speaking of movies and war (and on a more serious note), last night we watched Rescue Dawn, inspired by the true story of an American prisoner in Vietnam (well, Laos actually). It turns out that it isn't entirely historically accurate, since they portrayed one guy who was apparently a good guy as a bit of a loose cannon. Still, accepting it as quasi-non-fiction, I found it to be pretty moving. I get wrapped up in my life a bit sometimes and forget that there are people out there right now still going through the same sort of thing. It's hard not to be in awe of those people and incredibly grateful. I thought the same thing the other day as I watched footage of a dad heading off to Iraq and saying goodbye to his little girl - something I can't begin to imagine. I'm not sure if it's what they intended, but I'm glad the Academy Awards people did throw in the military thing to put a little bit of perspective on who really deserves our honor and praise.

Umm... Sir... We're Going To Need a LOT of Boats

2008-02-15T09:35:00.003-07:00

Apparently, all the Chairman wanted in return was Gerald Ford's expiring contract and a nuclear scientist to-be-named-later.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Amid a discussion of trade in 1973, Chinese leader Mao Zedong made what U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called a novel proposition: sending tens of thousands, even 10 million, Chinese women to the United States.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong, here depicted in an Andy Warhol painting, offered women to the U.S.

"You know, China is a very poor country," Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department's historian office.
"We don't have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands."
A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. "Do you want our Chinese women?" he asked. "We can give you 10 million."
After Kissinger noted Mao was "improving his offer," the chairman said, "We have too many women. ... They give birth to children and our children are too many."
"It is such a novel proposition," Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. "We will have to study it."

Fallen Sports Heroes and Rising Guitar Heroes

2008-02-11T20:24:00.006-07:00

On my commute and in moments when I'm not on the phone at work (which sometimes are few and far between), I listen to a lot of national and local sports radio. I suppose I should be listening to something political, but I struggle a bit with some of the cheesy stories on NPR, and I'm not sure I'm quite passionate enough a conservative to get into Hannity or something like that (as some of my close friends are).

Unfortunately, the politics are seeping into my sports radio these days. Today on Mike & Mike, for example, it looks like every segment was on Roger Clemens. I don't know about anyone else, but I am pretty tired of this whole thing. I understand that Congress ostensibly wants to take action to stop young people from using steroids, but I'm really not clear on how digging into what happened in the past is going to help that, especially ignoring basically everyone else and going after one guy. Personally, I think Clemens probably was taking something, but I also don't think we should be burning valuable government time trying to figure that out. I suppose they would say they are trying to validate the accuracy of the Mitchell report, but is there anyone who disagrees with the claim that a lot of players - including high-profile ones - used steroids, thereby encouraging young people to do so, and that baseball could have done more then and should do more now?

The other part that bugs me a little bit is that the media have assumed until now that anyone accused of using steroids who didn't stand up on the rooftops and proclaim their innocence was essentially admitting their guilt. Now, when a guy goes all out in trying to declare his innocence, they assume he's guilty because he's going too far. I feel bad for anyone who actually is innocent that has suspicion cast upon him, because it's difficult to prove you didn't do something, especially when you are presumed to have offended no matter how you respond.

Fortunately, this morning one station was spending their time talking about the NBA instead - specifically the big trade. For a place where the sun shines nearly every day, Phoenix is somewhat of a grumpy sports town, so I wasn't surprised that almost everyone I heard on the radio was against the Shaq trade at first, but it sounds like some people are on-board the Diesel train now. For those that aren't into sports, the Phoenix Suns traded the Matrix (Shawn Marion, who is a good enough athlete to have that nickname despite having the shooting form of a 5th grader with disproportionately short arms) to the Miami Heat for the man behind both (yes, both) Kazaam and Steel. If you are into the NBA at all, you probably have an opinion on which team came out ahead (or, like my sister-in-law, you are just glad he's not on your team). If you aren't into the NBA at all, you really don't care, but read on - I will talk about something other than sports at some point later on.

Before I give you my opinion on the trade, I should tell you that I'm in no position to be giving you my opinion. Last year I would have thought myself at least marginally capable of putting myself in the place of an NBA general manager, but let me share with you the current standing in the fantasy basketball league in which I participate:

You'll notice two things. One, I'm in last place, and it isn't even close. Two, I've made a lot of moves, which means that I have actually tried. I would venture to guess that I couldn't have really done much worse at this point if my 20-month old son was running things. I'm not sure what is going on, but suffice it to say that I should probably be fired as the general manager of a fake basketball team.

That said, here who I see as the winners and losers in the Marion-Shaq flip-flop:

Winners

Shaq's real-estate agent
The Maricopa County Sherrif's Office

Losers

The Roomstore (not to be confused with the Roomstore back east, from which we bought our currently aging couches) - The Matrix promoted furniture sales sort of the way he shoots a basketball (awkwardly but somewhat effectively)
Short people with seats right behind the Suns bench, because Shaq will probably be spending a lot of time there over the next few years between foul trouble and injuries to-be-named-later.
My long-term hearing, because you have to turn up the volume about twice as loud on the radio to understand what Shaq is saying

While we're on the subject of damage to my long-term hearing, last night we went to a concert (a bit rare for us these days). An English group called Editors, who have cracked my top five (about which they are very excited, I'm told), paid their first visit to Arizona. It was a bit loud, yes, but they were very good. I'll post a few fairly raw YouTube clips from a show less than a week a go, but one of the things you won't see too well is how good the drummer is - that guy could probably eat a bucket of shortening after every show and not gain weight. There were also a few other things you won't catch on YouTube, like the guy in front of us who danced around like he had a bug crawling around inside his clothes, but you'll get the general idea.

[For good measure, here are a few actual Editors videos and acoustic performances - not quite so lo-fi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTvriysdCG4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuitgaO1D5k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMPTS5_qIVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RNOSKpExKo]

We might have missed the show had H.I. not been vigilant in checking the band's website for live shows, and we almost didn't get to go anyway because mid-day my wife was attacked by a jar of Indian food (she'll have to fill in the details on our family blog) and our babysitter fell through at the last minute with either pneumonia or Valley Fever. I know Valley Fever sounds like an 80s teen movie, but it turns out that it's a real illness (http://phoenix.about.com/cs/health/a/valleyfever01.htm). My favorite part of that little Q&A on this desease is the part where it says that less than 1% of the people who get valley fever die from it, after saying earlier that about 1/3 of people in the desert areas of Arizona will get it at some point. I think they should clarify how much "less than 1%" we're talking about, since 1% of 1/3 of the 4 million people in the Phoenix area is still a lot of people. I'm guessing that our babysitter will pull through (although I shouldn't joke - I think our friend's sister had a pretty serious case of this at some point).

Fortunately for us, we have good friends who came through as fill-in babysitters, and we were there to bring up the average age of the Editors crowd a little bit. Maybe I'll have to start going to more concerts, because I find that I appreciate live music even more now that I realize how far I am from ever having that kind of musical skill. I already knew I couldn't sing, but now that I'm probably the worst Guitar Hero player in my wife's extended family (at least among those older than six who have spent at least a few days playing), I realize that I'm really far away from being able to even play fake guitar. My fake life is not going well in general, I guess.

Not Quite Human

2008-02-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stopped by H.I.'s desk and noticed that his 2007 motivational calendar had been replaced by a 2008 S.F. Giants calendar. Then I noticed that his motivational calendar was actually quite the opposite, and now I think I need to find one for myself. I'd be much more effective at my job if I had something like this gem upon which to draw every day:

That particular de-motivational message actually did make me feel a little better, because after thinking about what I do all day, I'm pretty certain my job won't be done by robots before I retire. Some might question how essential my job is in the first place, given that I just took a whole week off and the company didn't seem to lose any money, but let's assume that I add some sort of value. Until they come up with a robot that can pretend to predict the future, create power point slides depicting that imaginary future, and defend those slides over the phone to people who question your work just for the sake of doing so, I think I'll be OK.

Actually, I think they're already working pretty hard on the phone part. I think I mentioned before that they have a computer read announcements at Sky Harbor Airport here in Phoenix (which probably cost them more than just hiring someone to read them), and while it's quite obviously a computer, you can at least understand it. I say "it" because while the voice is quite clearly supposed to be male, I'm not sure how you tell the gender of a computer - it could be a female bodybuilder or something like that.

Fortunately, when I called today to order tickets for a Spring Training game, the computer trying to take my money gave me her name. She was quite clearly a computer, too, but I guess the people in charge over there are either trying to make us think otherwise or maybe hit some kind of government diversity quota. The latter may be the case, because she (I can't remember her name) was evidently not a native of this country, since she didn't understand about half of what I said and almost sold me 30 tickets instead of 3 (I think she may actually work a second job at Wendy's, because the other day I almost ended up with 4 chicken nugget kids' meals rather than a 4-chicken nugget kid's meal). Either way, I've watched enough Battlestar Galactica to know that it's a slippery slope between naming your robots and ending up as one of the few survivors of the human race stuck on a spaceship with Edward James Olmos.

Because I couldn't find the right magical combination of words to get her to give me tickets in a section other than 25, I had to give up and push "0," which most of the time is the secret code to get rid of this fake person and talk to the actual Wizard of Oz. Before I could get to that guy, I had to listen to a pre-recorded message (spoken by an actual person - what's the point of hiring a computer if you don't make her work all the time?) telling me that, no joke, they charge a bunch of service fees to cover their costs and that they "make a profit" on all of their service fees.

With my head spinning a bit from that apparent contradiction, I was connected to the ticket guy, who I don't think gave me his name and proceeded to try to sell me the same tickets that Ms. CPU did. After a bit of negotiation to find other seats and a lengthy application process (which included him reading my name back to me by saying, "That's Jordan, as in Michael Jordan"), I finally hung up with exactly three tickets in a section near the Giants dugout (because H.I. will be there, as you might have guessed).

In places where robots aren't ready to take over, people seem to find illegal aliens an acceptable alternative. Apparently this goes on all over the world, because we were touring a coffee plantation in Costa Rica (the reason for my one-week absence) as part of a guided tour, and the tour guide said that most of the workers there were illegals from a neighboring country. This, of course, prompted the loud Californian woman (who had earlier compared her pale self to Rosa Parks when she had to go all the way to the back of the tour bus) to grill the poor tour guide on immigration policy and on how much these people are paid. It's a good thing the tour guide wasn't a robot, because he might have turned into the Terminator at that point.

There are some jobs I'd prefer that neither robots nor illegal aliens take over, like flying airplanes. As suggested above, I have to trust Bill Gates with my professional life to some degree, but I don't think I'd trust him with my actual life. Perhaps to reassure us that he was alive and breathing, one of our pilots on the flight back from Costa Rica popped on the microphone about every 10 minutes to tell us about a scenic volcano or lake to be seen from the right side of the plane. Of course, we were sitting on the left side of the plane, so it came across more like this:

Of Course, It Could Just Be a Rock

2008-01-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

I used to have a job that probably mattered somewhat in the big scheme of things. I suppose that should have been enough for me, but apparently it wasn't, because I'm doing something completely different and far less important in the big scheme of things now. If I were to go on strike tomorrow (assuming I could - I think they'd probably fire and replace me in about 10 minutes), I don't know that it would really be that effective. That's probably a bit how those Writers' Guild people feel right now. They probably thought life would start to fall apart if we had no new sitcoms or Desperate Housewives episodes for a few months, and unless they're the ones driving the recession, I'm not sure that it has. I mean, I can't say that I've noticed that much of a difference. I don't watch that much TV to begin with, I suppose, but it seems like they've just come up with variations on the same reality shows to fill in the time. I don't pay close attention, so one Biggest Loser just seems to bleed into the other (sort of like birthdays for me now - I seriously couldn't remember how old I was the other day).

Actually, it's not technically true to say that I don't watch a lot of TV. It's probably more accurate to say that I'm not a consistent TV watcher. I watch plenty of useless banter between sports analysts, a lot of NBA games, and my share of Seinfeld re-runs. There are only a few shows that I watch religiously (e.g. The Office voluntarily and 24 involuntarily). I'm a fan of the new Battlestar Galactica (nerd alert!), and now I actually DVR an even nerdier show called Monster Quest, which helps me figure out whether I have to worry about being eaten someday by giant birds or Bigfoot. [By the way, why do we use "Tivo" and "DVR" as verbs but never used to say we were going to "VCR" something?]

I can apparently drop Monster Quest from my short list now, because Bigfoot has been found. Apparently, he got tired of having the nerd paparrazi and people with fake lady bigfoot pheromones chase him around all day, so he hitched a ride to Mars somehow. We wouldn't know that, except that one of the little remote-control cars we have driving around up there caught him on camera. Even then, we wouldn't know except that some person apparently spends their days and nights going over every little pixel of these pictures. At first glance, you wonder how anyone could miss it:

Well, try to find this in the context of the whole picture (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA10214.jpg). I finally found him by the rocks in the bottom left corner, but I had a point of reference and knew what I was looking for.

You have to feel a bit bad for the guy. I mean, stars and athletes complain they have no privacy and sometimes throw on a wig or some sunglasses to try to hide from the photographers, but this guy went to another planet, and we spent billions of dollars to send cameras there to find him. I guess that's what happens when the writers are all on strike and we have nothing better to do.

Never Mind, Avoid the BIG Planes

2008-01-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Rough Landing at Heathrow

I don't know if I'll ever be able to complain about a bumpy landing again.

This is worth watching just for the way the reporter talks - imagine hanging out with someone that talked like that all the time. He's like the British Bill Walton. Classic - make sure you watch at least until he says "black box" and begins to list parts of the aircraft.

At Least Give Me Columbus Day

2008-01-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

Between travel for vacation and work, the past few weeks (and the next few) have been (and will be) pretty hectic. Fortunately, the business trip I finished last night was on the company plane, so at least I didn’t have to deal with the big airport. I mean, it’s not like it was ever really fun going through the airport, but now I’m not sure whether you have to take off more clothes going through there or when you’re going into the hospital. Of course, by the time you’re in the middle of letting your most valuable possessions out of your immediate control, you don’t mind all that much because you’re just glad to be finally through the line (some sort of a childbirth comparison comes to mind here, but I’m a bit hesitant to go any further with that).

The ironic part is that we dread standing in lines and taking off our shoes but don’t mind hurling through the air at 400 mph in a little metal tube. I guess most of us worry a bit when we hit a lot of turbulence or when we’re on a smaller plane (the other day on a small plane the stewardess asked some people to move to a different part of the plane because of a weight imbalance, and on my little company one of the pilots walked past me to the bathroom – that’s that's a little disconcerting). Generally speaking through, I dread the airport more than the plane.

I’m not complaining about traveling, because travel for pleasure or business each have their rewards. Vacation usually means either good company or good surroundings (or, in the best cases, both), and traveling for work at least means free meals (including the highly standardized continental breakfast at the Marriott or Holiday Inn variant of your choice – although yesterday morning that included seaweed and rice, which at a certain point in my life I actually ate for breakfast sometimes).

Of course, by taking vacation early in the year, it means I'll be reliant later in the year on the regularly schedules holidays for days off. Unfortunately, in the US we only get the relatively real holidays - usually either patriotic or religious in nature. In the UK, at some point in the past they made up "bank holidays" to throw in a few extra days off a year, and I think it might be time for us to do something along those lines. The biggest problem we have is that our holidays are too spread out - we need a few good gap fillers.

People invent holidays all the time. For example, there is an International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I can't claim to have ever participated, but I would be willing to talk like a pirate for a day off. Of course, I do wonder how we actually know how pirates talked. Did pirates write they way we assume they spoke? Could pirates write at all? Is there old video of actual pirates on YouTube? My friend Paul Genesse has authored a few pirate tales, so he might actually know this, but I do wonder if we have it right.

I suppose we could be a bit more confident in our accuracy if we changed it to International Talk Like an Athlete Day. (Before you think this a low blow, let me first say that I think a lot of athletes are pretty intelligent but are just out of their element in interviews and that reporters tend to ask ridiculous, leading questions that lead to ridiculous, paint-by-numbers answers.) It would be pretty simple - basically you'd just have to repeat the same phrase in every sentence or so. It used to be that all you had to say was "you know" about 400 times in a 2-minute conversation, but the new "you know" is "like I said" - I listened to an interview the other day with a Phoenix Suns player who said "like I said" about 30 times, and not once did he refer to something he actually said.

To really do it right, you could also throw in at least one thing in every conversation that defies logic. "Giving 110%" is acceptable if you can't come up with anything else, but with a little effort, you can do better. In the same interview, the player also claimed to be the first one to practice every day and the last one to leave, and then added (no doubt not wanting to slight his teammates), "just like everyone else." Maybe they all line up every morning waiting for the doors to open like shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving and then stand around at the end of practice waiting for everyone else to leave first like some Survivor immunity challenge (except that they don't have an annoying guy offering them a steak dinner or something if they do give up).

I haven't given this a lot of thought, so there may be some more legitimate holidays we're overlooking. My point is just that we need them to be more frequent. Then again, that would just create more days on which you'd like to avoid the airport, so maybe we just let everyone make up their own fake holidays after all.

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

2008-01-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

A few days before most vacations (and particularly good vacations) end, I get a little grumpy and tired as I start to think about traveling home and getting back to work. That was true this time as our Christmas vacation came to a close and we faced a day-long drive back from the Great White North and (I assumed) a long list of unread e-mails asking me to actually think about work again. As is also usually true, things were not nearly as bad as I had assumed.

We were fortunate enough to drive home on a sunny day, which meant that we never had to wonder if we were going to slide off over a cliff or into a ditch (which our friends did once after a nice white-out, prompting their kids to ask them to do it again). The only time we lost visibility was when our windshield got a heavy dose of salt off of the roads while our windshield wiper fluid somehow froze (I thought it wasn't supposed to do that, but apparently they make the stuff out of blue Icee Pops). I was about to say that it's a little disconcerting to be going about 80 miles an hour while not being able to really see where you are going, but that actually describes my everyday life fairly well most of the time.

Likewise, my inbox was much less crowded than I had feared. There were fewer e-mails last week than I normally get in a day, and even better, almost none of them asked me to do anything. No one can admit this, but it's sort of like everyone had some sort of "wink wink" agreement to leave each other alone for a week or so. In some ways, it'd be great if it was like this more often, but then we'd probably slowly go out of business, and I'd have to start working on my answers to important questions like, "What is your biggest weakness?" and "If you could have one superpower, what would it be?" (a real-life question my wife had to answer in an interview).

Of course, there were nice things about getting home. I sort of enjoyed a little brush with winter (you honestly can forget what that kind of cold feels like), but I also enjoyed leaving it behind. No one had broken into our house and stolen everything, which is always a positive (although our house, as we try to unpack, now looks like someone trashed the place). There is also something to say for sleeping in your own bed - not sure why that is.

In my case, the end of this vacation also means getting back online. As you can probably tell from the dearth of December posts here, I didn't visit the WWW much at all over the past few weeks - maybe three times total, which is sort of like a chain smoker only lighting up three times in a fortnight. It was a cleansing of sorts. I didn't read anything on ESPN.com, my fantasy basketball team is in the dumps, and I didn't send a single e-mail or instant message, and it actually felt pretty good. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to quit or anything. I can't do that for a few good reasons.

One, I can't quit on my fantasy basketball league right now. I'm in dead last and likely to stay there unless Tony Parker turns into Teen Wolf, but I don't want to make it easy for anyone else and throw the whole thing off. Joining a fantasy league is a big commitment, something akin to Adopting a Highway (well, except that you don't get a sign, and if you stop setting your lineup, prisoners will not take over for you... OK, they are nothing alike).

Two, I found out over the holiday about a few more readers I have picked up over the last several months. That probably makes at least ten people total, and I'd hate to let the masses down.

Third, and most importantly, I realized that without the internet, I'd probably lose touch with people who are pretty important to me. Last week we met up with close friends that I literally hadn't seen in well over three years. Through the magic of the internet, though, it didn't feel like it had been nearly that long. I suppose in the "old days" we wrote letters, but given the distance involved in this instance, I'm not sure how well that would work. So, in the interest of maintaining relationships that are important to me, I won't abandon the internet just yet.

Keyboard in hand (under hand?), we embark on 2008. Since I passed on setting any resolutions last year, I decided to actually come up with a few new goals for myself this year. Some I will not share - not because I'm afraid of publicly committing but because they're not that unusual or interesting - but the one most mocked by my wife I will. I've decided that this calendar year, I'm not going to order any of my "usuals" at restaurants. This will be tricky at In-n-Out, but for the most part, I think this is a pretty achievable objective. In my mind, this will force me to expand my horizons a little. In my wife's mind, I'm a bit ridiculous.

Requires No Comment

2007-12-13T21:45:00.001-07:00

Some Inventions Have No Mother

2007-12-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned this before, but every day at work I walk past a long wall filled with plaques for people who hold patents for things I can't begin to understand. I think I've had a few good ideas at work, like bringing in a bigger water bottle so I don't have to walk over to the drinking fountain as often, but I'm still trying to secure the intellectual property rights for that one. As the old saying goes, there's nothing like a wall of patents without your name on it to put you in your place.

I may not be great at coming up with good ideas, but I think I can at least spot a bad one when I see it. For example, last weekend I flipped on the Utah Jazz game and realized that ESPN had decided to "mic the coaches" to give the audience an inside look at what happens on the bench. This might have sounded like a good idea in abstract, but when you apply that idea to Jerry Sloan, you might as well be listening to a coherent, grumpy Ozzie Osborne. At first I thought we'd just hear a lot of bleeps, but they handled it instead by just giving you about the first 5 seconds of a timeout and then cutting away without explanation. Hadn't these people ever watched a Jazz game before? I mean, he's been there 20 years, and you don't have to be much of a lip reader to figure out that some of what he says might be a little salty.

Of course, that seems like a decent idea in comparison with one I saw the night before while in line at the grocery store:

I don't know if I should be more disturbed that someone is selling this or that someone was actually in line buying it. I'm not 100% against instant food, and I suppose that I have overpaid for something similar at ballgames before, but the thought of microwaving this all together sounds a little soggy and pointless. I thought hot dogs were what you made when you were feeling lazy - possibly the easiest dinner out there. Apparently, the hot dogs inside these things are individually wrapped, so I'm thinking that this is actually probably more work (and more expensive) that just picking up a pack of dogs and a pack of buns. In fairness, the meat section and the break aisle can sometimes be at the opposite ends of the store, so there might be some time savings on the front end.

I Cut Taxes 10,956 Times and Discovered Nuclear Fusion

2007-11-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I came home and flipped on the TV hoping to find some basketball after a fairly stressful and busy few days of work. Instead, I found something more entertaining than watching the Celtics beat the Knicks by roughly 50 (which I did tonight, bringing back memories of a time when my high school coach signed us up for two varsity basketball tournaments and sent us - the JV team - to play in one of them).

It was the CNN-YouTube Republican presidential debate, with questions ranging from "Do you believe every word of the Bible?" to "What kind of guns do you own?" (half the videos had video/audio sync problems - were these things being beamed in from Mars [a place they actually discussed]?). The questions themselves would have been entertaining enough, but I always find it fun to watch people belittle each other and then act like the best of friends in a few months and people who claim to have done all sorts of superhero things (fighting crime single-handedly, etc.). Things were spiced up even more by having a wildcard like Ron Paul, who is sort of like the political version of Dick Vitale on Botox - yells all the time, but his eyebrows never move.

Here's my quick comment on each of the candidates.

Giuliani - With the nation watching, he found himself explaining that he didn't really believe Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Next to the economy, the environment, and foreign policy, I think the Jonah-and-the-whale issue is the most important to me - I'm not sure if I can vote for this guy now.
Huckabee - This guy could win it eventually. He went in the space of about 30 seconds from nearly crying when talking about having to execute people to joking that he didn't know what Jesus would do because He was too smart to go into politics. He has the range of Tom Hanks, and we know Tom Hanks usually wins.
Hunter - The only question I think he answered well was the one about what kind of guns the candidates own. Yikes.
McCain - WYSIWYG. I think he would be the most interesting guy to have over at your house, anyway.
Paul - He apparently thought Canadian Bacon was a documentary.
Romney - I'm still not sure about this guy. I mean, it's possible I might run into him at church sometime, I think he's a smart guy, and I very well may vote for him, but he probably needs to relax a little bit if he's going to beat a Republican version of Bill Clinton like Huckabee.
Tancredo - I was in a meeting at work the other day with a bunch of high-level people, and I made a few comments here and there, but no one noticed.
Thompson - If the topic was basketball, he'd advocate the four corners offense. I do think he should incorporate that Law & Order "duh duh" sound into his ads - I think it's a Pavlovian thing that would make anyone with TNT or the USA Network automatically vote for him.

When they weren't debating Biblical stories, space travel, and hunting birds, the candidates did talk about how they'd save money and which programs they'd change. I think Huckabee proposed shutting down the IRS (why stop there - who needs the police - I'm sure we can trust people to self-report crime). I don't know how I would have answered that specifically, but I've seen a few good ideas lately.

For example, at work today, I put my hand in front of the automatic, touchless paper towel dispenser, and it only came out halfway. I almost pulled it out by force before I realized that they were trying to hand out only half paper towels. Maybe the paper towel guy should be running for president. He's probably get as many votes as poor Tancredo, and if he had a few shotguns and believes in the story of the Battle of Jericho, he might fair even better.

Another good idea I saw today was a bunch of sheep grazing on some farmer's land. The sheep get free food, and the farmer gets free fertilizer. I worked in the government, and there wasn't a lot of that kind of efficiency. In fact, they had sort of the opposite kinds of things going on, like people following the bathroom cleaners around to make sure they weren't stealing national security secrets.

I don't know about abolishing the IRS or shutting down NASA, but I think if I were president, I might shut down the BCS. I know this might seem like a trivial issue compared to things like traveling to Neptune or shutting down the FBI or something like that, but If I hear one more person say that the regular season in college football is really a playoff, I might snap (which for me doesn't really mean all that much). If the regular season were a playoff, things wouldn't be so messed up this year. As it is, we'll be waiting for a relatively meaningless championship game to roll around in about four months (unless we merge with Canada and Mexico first, in which case Ron Paul will be saying "I told you so" and we might have to add even more bowl games).

I Hereby Sentence You to Scout Camp

2007-11-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

I read recently that Mike Tyson surrendered to serve a 24-hour sentence for driving under the influence. Granted, he apparently has some community service to do (hard to imagine what that would be), but really, I can’t imagine much less of a punishment. First of all, you could tolerate a lot of things for 24 hours. Starvation, child labor, Real World marathons – there are a lot of painful things people endure for a day or more. Second, I personally would think seriously about spending 24 hours in jail on a volunteer basis just to see what it’s like (I’m sure prison is dangerous, based on highly accurate shows like Prison Break and Superman II, but I think I could mind my own business).

The truth is, Mike Tyson wasn’t even dealing with shank-wielding skinheads, iron bars, or laundry duty. He spent the night in his own private area of the Tent City jail here in Arizona, and according to CNN spent the time reading a book and eating sloppy joes. I’m sure living in a tent in the Valley of the Sun is not that fun in the dead of summer, but we’re now in the first few months of about 8 months of great weather, so I don’t think he had to wear sunscreen or sleep with a fan or anything. I guess all it takes to set anyone straight is lounging in a tent at 75 degrees with a good book.

Without too much thought, we could come up with much more effective ways of punishing people, even for 24 hours. For example, the day before Thanksgiving on our way to my parents’ house, my young son threw up all over himself and his car seat multiple times. This was certainly worse for him than it was for us, but it still wasn’t that fun trying to clean that up and deal with the smell. I think they could have strapped Iron Mike into our back of our Corolla and driven him around for 24 hours, and his brushes with the law would have been over. On the way home we got stuck in traffic trying to cross Hoover Dam (which won’t happen eventually when they finish the scariest looking bridge I’ve ever seen) – put him in that pungent Corolla for a day in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and Mike might have become the next Sherriff Andy Griffith.

If they wanted to make food and literature forms of punishment, they could have done better than mystery-meat-on-a-bun and a gangster book. Why not make the former heavyweight champ scavenge his lunch from my fridge after I’ve been gone for a week on vacation? Why not leave him with nothing to read but the instruction manual for the mower I bought today, which strikes a delicate balance between a lot of confusing pictures, a horrible layout, and about 6 languages on the same page? Not sure if any of this would really stop him from smoking crack, but he might at least think twice.

If all of that fails, maybe they could force him to get a bad tattoo all over his face. That’d teach him.

Sometimes I'm Also Too Tired To Go to Bed

2007-11-14T21:47:00.001-07:00

There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that I have a measure of intelligence and work ethic. I did well in school, am gainfully employed, and after a decade-or-so of marriage have learned to do laundry without ruining any dry-clean-only clothes. On the flip side, there is also some evidence that I am a simple, lazy man.

Now that my sprinklers and grass are in, I became aware that some of my sprinkler heads were spraying a bit too far, one even hitting the side of my house a bit. Some might not care about this, but since my house is made of some sort of mud held up only by styrofoam and chicken wire, that can't be good. I didn't have enough foresight to install adjustable valves and had already closed off the heads as much as possible, so I've really been wracking my brain for a way to deal with this.

After thinking about this for about a week, the only viable option with which I could come up was to replace all of the valves (at some cost and pain). Fortunately, before I went to that step, I remembered tonight that I could just close the main valve to the sprinklers a bit. This is probably what a 4-year old would have figured out a week ago, but I guess I'm just a little slow sometimes.

In terms of my laziness, this was evident the other day while I was ordering some sort of wok concoction in the cafeteria at work. The Asian guy behind the counter didn't speak English too well, but I was able to discern that he was asking if I wanted it spicy. I told him that I did, and he dumped a spoonful of pepper flakes into the wok to join my water chestnuts and snow peas. Then he said something else involving the word "more," and I replied "yes," assuming that he was asking if I wanted it a bit more spicy. Instead, I saw him scoop up another full spoonful of pepper. Now, at this point, I did a quick analysis in my head of the cost/benefit of trying to clarify this with him, but I seriously decided that I wasn't up for the effort. I am apparently too lazy to order food properly.

Of course, I paid for my laziness soon thereafter, because I had to guzzle about a gallon (not exaggerating) of water to get all of my stir-fry down. I like my food spicy, but this was a bit much even for me. I knew I'd been drinking too much water when I could literally feel and hear the water sloshing in my stomach on the walk to refill my water bottle. Even so, I really don't know if I'd do it differently if I could go back. I'm that lazy sometimes.

As an aside, for some reason I do feel more comfortable ordering Chinese food from Chinese people, even if there is a language barrier. That's irrational for the most part, because I'm sure not all Chinese people are good cooks, but other people must be like me, because you do tend to find a lot of Asian people working at places like Panda Express (although here the cooks are always speaking Spanish and stir up a nice Kung Pao anyway). This was especially true in London, where "ethnic" restaurants were typically staffed with people of the corresponding ethnicity, but I've found that largely to be the case here, too.

My question is, how does this happen? Surely Panda Express doesn't put out ads calling for Chinese applicants or those who look Chinese (since we as Americans usually can't tell the difference between Asian nationalities, it doesn't matter all that much I guess - most of the people I've ever seen working at Japanese restaurants are Korean, for example). Is it self-selection? Do they discriminate somehow in the interview process and get away with it? "Mr. Smith, we appreciate that you lived in China for 10 years and have a master's degree in Szechuan Culinary Theory and Practice, but there is just something about Mr. Lee that we like." You may not have noticed this whole situation before, but I guarantee you'll wonder now.

While Supplies Last

2007-11-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

There are about three or four mortgage companies that advertise all the time on the sports radio stations to which I frequently listen. One claims they will go to wherever you are on nights, weekends – whatever it takes. Another claims that their no closing cost loans are “the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth.” Now, I’m quite honestly one of the last people from which you should take mortgage or housing advice, but I can fairly confidently say that you should not take out a loan from anyone who claims it is “the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth.” Most importantly, if that’s the best sales pitch they can muster, it probably means there isn’t a lot of substance there – that’s sort of like throwing a “my dad can beat up your dad” into a political debate. Secondly, I doubt they know enough about history to make that claim. I mean, I came up with something today that is more of a financial no-brainer.

The last few days I’ve been finding myself feeling a bit hungry in the afternoon, and the only options to deal with that are the vending machines (for which I rarely have cash/change – see yesterday’s post) and the employee store downstairs. A few days ago, trying to avoid the usual high-carb, high-calorie fare, I noticed that they had beef jerky, which is high in protein and low in fat, calories, carbs… a quality snack by almost any measure. I typically pass right over the jerky section, however, because we all know that a decent-sized bag will run you at least $5 or $6, and at that point you’re out of snack range and might as well pick up some Pringles and call it steak-and-potatoes. For some reason I checked the price tag, however, and noticed that it was a cool $2.19 + tax.

Of course, I picked up a bag, and when the hunger pangs struck again this afternoon, I found myself back in the jerky section (bought a different flavor, but it tasted the same - maybe they are counting on a little imagination). Again, $2.19. As I was checking out, the cashier told me that she had mistakenly labeled them $2.19 but had decided just to leave them like that rather than fixing them all – they should have been more like $6. Buying $6 jerky for $2 is the biggest no-brainer in the history of my afternoon, and I’m pretty sure it’s a better deal than whatever mortgage those guys are promoting.

Before business school, I thought arbitrage was just something baseball players used to get more money. It turns out that arbitrage really is something anyone can use to get more money if they are quick enough to take advantage of it – basically when you can buy something at one price and immediately sell it for another price and pocket the difference. Free markets are supposed to eliminate these opportunities pretty quickly (economic models don't really account for employee store workers who can't use their label maker correctly or concession stands at professional sports arenas), but if you can find an arbitrage opportunity, it is essentially a "money machine" for as long as it lasts.

I guess I didn't pay enough attention in business school, because despite having found just such an opportunity, I don't think I'll be able to use this to fund my retirement. I could have grabbed up the whole rack of jerky and tried to sell it at a mark-up outside, but I think the lady would have been a bit suspicious as to why I'd want that much raw dried meat. I suppose I either could have donned some camping gear (if I purchased some) or have sent someone else in for me, but in either case I'd be cutting into my profits, sort of eliminating the whole point. So much for jerky arbitrage - I guess I'll have to settle for cheap teriyaki meat as a consolation prize.

You Tube

2007-11-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

I saw the results of a Zagat survey recently that said that Wendy's was the top "mega" fast food chain. I don't want to admit to being an expert in that sort of thing, but I don't have any big issues with that. I mean, most of what you get at Wendy's is good, and the variety is pretty solid.

Sometimes, though, you're not in the mood for a place that does a lot of different things pretty well; you'd rather go to a place that does one thing really well. Tonight we dropped by Lowe's to look at some landscaping options and were unable to resist the pull of a nearby In-N-Out. If you haven't been to California, Arizona, or Nevada, you may never have had the pleasure, but basically, all they do is basic burgers and fries, and they do those very well. It's all fresh, and it's all good.

Wendy's, meanwhile, always seems to be coming up with new angles on the burger and what comes with it. I'm not sure if a bacon mushroom three-cheese honey mustard melt burger has ever been on the menu, but I wouldn't be too surprised. I guess that's the formula for impressing the Zagat people, anyway.

The people that run Wendy's also apparently run reality TV now. Tonight I saw an ad for a show that is a competition of fashion photographers. Now designers, dumb models, smart models, photographers, chefs, smart-but-socially challenges people, beautiful-but-mentally challenged people, overweight anonymous people, overweight famous people, desperate-for-a-date people, wannabe directors, fashion-challenged people, wannabe inventors, and spoiled kids - to name a few - all have their own shows. I don't watch all of these, but I'm really looking forward to shows about competing dishwashers and people who hand out fliers at fashion shows.

If you don't fall into any of these categories, just hang out for a while, and pretty soon there will be a show for you. In my case, I'm hoping to pay off my school loans by winning a show about former second-string high school quarterbacks who now ride in vanpools and are interested in starting their own business. I'm already working on alliances.

Speaking of alliances, I suppose there are already some shows like Survivor for which anyone can theoretically qualify. Let's be real, though - you won't qualify for Survivor unless you either look good wearing the same swimsuit for 45 straight days or have a bit of an extreme personality (either really unique or really annoying). I'm pretty sure that I don't fit the bill, so even when I do get two months off from work in about 4 years, I don't think I'll be spending it on a beach with a bunch of smelly strangers.

The only thing that might slow down the continued proliferation of reality shows is that pretty soon, they will probably run out of little catchphrases to say when they kick people out. I don't have anything personal against Tyra Banks, but I think they could probably play the elimination segments from America's Next Top model to suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, and even the innocent ones would probably confess just to make it stop. My personal favorite might be "please pack your knives, and go home" on Top Chef - it must be a pain for these people to get through security on the way home.

I Want To Know What You're Thinking, Tell Me What's On Your Mind

2007-11-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

My wife has started getting into the show Heroes, and from what I’ve seen, there is at least one person on that show who can read other people’s thoughts. That’s one of the last “hero” powers I’d want unless there was a “mute” button, but I have to admit that there are times when I’d like to know what people are thinking, or at least why they do the things they do. Not long ago in the bathroom at work, I saw a guy washing his feet (not sure if it was the same guy who was washing his phone). Does he eat with his feet? Did he spill something on himself in the lab? Was this a religious ceremony of some kind? I suppose I could have asked the guy directly, but since I’m not quite curious enough to be that nosy and can’t read minds, I guess I’ll never know.

Don’t you also wish sometimes that you knew what people were thinking when they got dressed in the morning? The other day I saw a guy walking around with his hair in a ponytail and some sort of ninja outfit. Interestingly enough, I had forgotten that it was Halloween, but this still didn’t strike me as that odd, which tells me that I see a lot of people at work who are, well, unique individuals. Yesterday, which was not Halloween, we (I and H.I. in the parking lot), saw a guy walking out with some kind of Crocodile Dundee hat. Was there a story behind that? Probably, but who’s going to ask, given the risk that he had a knife to match.

(Works on the 4th floor, near pole E-8)

Then yesterday morning I’m standing in line in the café buying some oatmeal and the guy in front of me buys two strips of bacon, an egg, and some toast (at least that what he said he was buying, since he didn’t follow the café protocol of opening your container to make things easy on the cashier – he might have had his Styrofoam container full of stolen forks for all I know) with a $100 bill. After she looked for the proper watermarks (is there cashier anti-counterfeiting training or was she just acting like she knew what she was doing in hopes that he would confess?), it took her a bit just to count out that much change. Being paid via direct deposit like everyone else here at work, I don’t end up with a lot of $100 bills. Was this guy a bank robber? Part of the mob? Trying to show his superiority over oatmeal people like me? Again, who (except for the guy on Heroes and the kid that gets shocked at the beginning of Ghostbusters) really would know. Whatever the explanation, I’m guessing that if there was a gold-bar-only line in the cafeteria, this guy would have been there trying to buy some pretzels with one.

[Speaking of overpaying for pretzels, I did this a few days ago at a machine at work. I only had a $5, and I popped Mr. Lincoln in thinking I’d at least get those dollar coins back, but instead it sounded like I was playing the nickel slots in Vegas, especially after it seemed to run out of quarters and started popping out dimes. I walked back into my meeting sounding like one of Santa’s reindeer or Kramer on that Seinfeld episode where he pays with change.]

The more I think about it, though, most of us in the digital age do have the ability to read people’s minds to some degree because they broadcast their thoughts as they walk around. I used to think the most inane part of soap operas was the way they all talk out loud to themselves, but it turns out that these shows were just ahead of their time. It’s hard anymore to tell the people who are actually living in a soap opera from the Bluetooth people, but you do know pretty much what they’re thinking (often a lot more than you want to know; again, a mute button would be nice). Sometimes, you don’t even have to be that close to someone if they’re a loud-talker – we went to a movie with one of those a few weeks ago, and I’m pretty sure the volume control in her head was irreparably broken. It’s sad – I think I now know more about some girl who was sitting 20 rows away in a crowded, loud movie theater than I do about the people who sit around me at work.

What a Strange Person

2007-11-04T11:10:00.001-07:00

Quite some time ago, my wife "tagged" me with one of these "tell us 7 things about yourself" things that go around the WWW (have you ever noticed that it's hard to say "www" without it sounding a little awkward?). Anyway, between yard work and caring for foster reptiles, it's been hard to come up with anything, but now that those two things are under control (sprinklers/sod installed and turtle claimed by the real owners, respectively), I'm finally giving in.

I have some strange addictions. For a lot of people it's chocolate, but I never crave that. Me - I am fairly certain that I'm addicted to cereal. I'm not a big sweet cereal guy and don't even put sugar on there, so I'm not talking about a craving for Marshmallow Mateys or anything like that. There's just something I like about the combination of whole-grain cereal and milk (has to be skim or maybe 2% at most though - I accidentally poured in my son's whole milk the other day, and it nearly killed me). Maybe for the same reasons, I crave pasta, and particularly macaroni-and-cheese type stuff. I think it all boils down to a combination of a grain addiction of some kind (I love tortilla chips and bread too) and liking things with a lot of sauce.
I also have a few weird quirks in terms of the things that affect me. For example, that feeling you get when fingernails are scraped on a chalkboard - I get that from really fibrous paper (construction paper, napkins). The sound of ripping paper gives me little chills almost every time, and napkins anywhere near my mouth is fairly tough to take. Weird, I know. Even weirder is that, in addition to looking at the sun, eating mint stuff makes me sneeze a good portion of the time. Don't ask me why. My wife thought I was faking it, but it's real.
Something I would still like to do (if I can figure out a way to do it) is coach basketball. I was never a gifted enough athlete at my height to be more than a decent player (despite being a gym rat), but I think I understand the game pretty well. I also like teaching, and I'd love to teach something about which I'm pretty passionate. I just don't know how I'll do this or at what level - maybe when my son gets older.
Close personal relationships are important to me. Some people would probably prefer to know a lot of people fairly well, but forced to choose between that and having fewer close relationships, I'd choose the latter. I'm not sure why that is, but I've always been like that. Fortunately, I have been blessed with family that are friends and friends that are family, if you know what I mean.
I am interested in too many things to keep up with them all - I need to get a bit of focus in my life or start organizing my time a little better. Hence, it took me a month to respond to this.
I am a non-conformist at heart. On the outside, in terms of how I dress, the job I hold, and how I act in my religious life, you'd think I was quite the conformist. For some reason, I'm fine with being that way in certain areas of my life. But I must admit that I have a hard time falling in with the crowd (I'd make a horrible North Korean) unless I feel like I'm doing it on my own terms. I hate giving out applause and particularly standing ovations when I'm not really feeling it. I hate line dancing. I hate all of those song that everyone seems to love that get played at weddings. I don't like a lot of popular music. I don't like clapping along to songs that I think are lame And (only LDS people will get this one) I don't like saying "aloha" back to people who say it from the pulpit, because I've never even been to Hawaii (they did this in Korea with a Korean expression - imagine if I tried to pull that some Sunday in my ward here in AZ).
Speaking of music, it has always been a big deal to me, but I can't sing to save my life. I've always been really into music and, again, into "alternative" music. I like albums that may not have a single track you'd likely hear on one of those "Best of the 80s, 90s, and Today" stations (which seem to only own about 30 CDs) but that are better the 100th time through than the 1st or the 99th.

There, that's that. Now you (may) know more about me than you did before or really wanted to (but hey, you read it). I suppose I'm supposed to "tag" someone else, but I'm not sure who reads this blog and hasn't already done this. Again, it takes me a while to fall in line with the rest.

Basketball Is My Favorite Sport, I Like the Way They Dribble Up and Down the Court

2007-11-02T23:32:00.001-07:00

Since a month or so ago I claimed that sports analysts have no accountability for what they predict, I suppose I should hold myself to the same standard. I mean, that's not my day job, but before you read my predictions on the already-underway NBA season, it's probably not a bad idea for you to know whether I know what I'm talking about at all or am just full of hot air. If you don't care about basketball and would prefer to tune out now, you've obviously never watched this video (should it make me feel old not only that I remember this song but that I remember a time when it wasn't considered cheesy?).

Here are my (abbreviated) NBA predictions at the start of last year, rated (quite objectively, of course, by me) on a scale of 0 (moronic) to 1 (brilliant).

This is the first year that Dwight Howard begins to absolutely blow up. [0.5 - he's still on his way, but he'll get there]
Analysts will talk about the Lakers and Knicks a lot more than about the Clippers and Nets. [0.5 - would have been 1.0, but I also said that the Clippers would matter]
Miami won't repeat. [1.0]
Jerry Sloan will NOT win coach of the year. [1.0]
Phil Jackson might win coach of the year. [0.0]
TNT will play that "10% skill, 20% concentrated power of will" song 100% too many times. [1.0 - I didn't hear it much, but once was enough]
This year's most-improved player will be someone in a contract year. [0.0 - the most improved player was Monta Ellis, which was good for my fantasy team but bad for this prediction]
a) Yao Ming will make 1st Team All-NBA. b) Tracy McGrady will miss at least 15 games with a bad back. [0.0 Yao was 2nd Team, and McGrady only missed 11]
Barring serious injury, LeBron will be MVP. [0.0]
No agent will ever again let his client have microfracture surgery. [0.0 - Stoudamire destroyed this one]

For those of you keeping score at home, that's 4 out of 10 (slightly more moronic than brilliant). I'm not sure how to interpret that. Is making predictions in sports like baseball, where a .400 average would be historic, or is it like free throws, where that average would make me Shaq? I'll leave that up to you and press on with 10 equally bold, meaningless predictions for the season that just tipped off.

The Jazz will NOT be 41-41 as predicted by Bill Simmons, who is an entertaining writer and generally pretty smart about the NBA but is also regularly beaten in his NFL game predictions by his wife, who admits knowing nothing about the NFL. (The Jazz would be 82-0 if they could play Golden State every game, by the way.)
I will not win my fantasy basketball league - I just have that feeling. It all started with me forgetting about the draft and not joining until the third round. I'll give it 110% of course, and you just have to play the game and take it one day at a time, but it is what it is.
If the Suns make some sort of midseason move to bring in more size, they will win the NBA title. If not, they won't.
Jerry Sloan will not win Coach of the Year (give me a break - I need a few gimme points here).
I will attend at least four Suns games this year (I guess this is more of a goal than a prediction - I'm not sure what this tells you about my priorities).
If the Celtics stay healthy this year, they will win the East easily, despite having 9 players recruited out of the local city league.
Kevin Durant will win Rookie of the Year, but it won't be unanimous.
The NBA Finals will have at least three times higher TV ratings than last year.
TNT will do some ridiculous tie-in to a movie during their playoff coverage.
The toughest position for which to get an All-Star roster spot will be PG in the Western Conference - someone who should be on the team will be left off.

Bold, I know. Meaningless, I know. In about 8 or 9 months, we'll see how I fared. In the meantime, I'll try to write about something other than basketball.

Bienvenidos a Guadalupe

2007-10-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I walked out of my office and was reminded of how nice it is to be in Arizona in the late fall. I mean, there are still some hot days (it was in the 90s the other day while I was out working on my yard), but it looks like 80s for the foreseeable future. I’m not saying this to brag in any way, since I have very little to do with the weather (as far as I’m aware) and since some people would actually prefer a real Fall with dead leaves and a chill in the air. I’m just saying that days like these remind me of why I like living here.

While I love the lifestyle, I have said before that Phoenix isn’t a city with a lot of character necessarily. I mean, there really isn’t a downtown in which you’d go hang out unless you were going to a game or your car broke down, and the main hangouts are either a bit too trendy (Scottsdale) or college (Mill Ave) for us to spend too much time there. A lot of the people are from somewhere else, and most cities in the area have basically the same restaurants & stores. Again, the lifestyle is great, but you’re not going to be sending people a lot of postcards from Chandler or Apache Junction or places like that.

Well, that’s what I thought until I discovered a city in the Phoenix area with real character. My hairdresser gave me a recommendation on a Mexican seafood restaurant in the area, so we tried it on Friday night with some mildly shrimp-addicted friends. The food ended up being pretty good (although we thought the mariachi guys singing in the next room sounded a bit sauced), but even better was the location. When I looked up the address on Google Maps, I discovered that the restaurant was nestled in the heard of the town of Guadalupe. I’d seen signs for “Guadalupe” on the I-10 but thought it was basically just a street. No, it turns out that Guadalupe is its own municipality, about 1 sq.-mile in size.

I should have known it would be a cool place when I saw on Google Maps that all of the street names were in Spanish. At first I thought I’d stumbled upon Mapas de Google, but when you scrolled up a bit, there were regular English roads and avenues. Rolling into town, everything was actually in Spanish. I also should have known Guadalupe would be a fun town because there are only three-FAQs on their official website - when the Town Hall is open, where to vote, and how to get a party permit – and the first thing I saw when I walked into the large orange, yellow, and green building in which our restaurant was located was a plethora of piñatas (I’m not joking).

So Phoenix has more character than I thought. It’s possible on a Friday afternoon to meet your friends for dinner in what apparently is actually Mexico and then hit a movie back in the United States 10 minutes later. Now I just have to find the 1-sq.-mile Indian town so I can find some good Tikka Masala.

At Least It's Not an Alligator

2007-10-28T23:00:00.001-07:00

My wife and I are not really pet people. I'm probably slightly more amenable to the idea, having grown up with a cat and a dog, but neither of us are that interested in having anything with four legs running around our little house. To this point, we're been quite content with it being just the three of us and have no plans to add anything non-human to that mix. This being a largely free country (except when it comes to taxes, jury duty, and avoiding Law & Order), no one really forces you to have a pet, so I don't see any reason we won't be able to follow through with that, even in the face of the inevitability of our son wanting a dog at some point (you know he has heard "no" before, because he says it all day).

Well, I thought that was all true until Saturday. I should have known something was amiss when I hooked up my sprinkler system and it all worked without a hitch. Moving a hose to get to some wiring (I didn't electrocute myself, which was a nice bonus), I happened upon a hiding and apparently frightened (or asleep) turtle. Now, after everything I said above, we have thought about getting a desert tortoise or two to roam around in the backyard - I'm sort of intrigued by the idea of a pet that basically does nothing and might outlive me - so at first I wasn't too thrown by this. After noticing his webbed feet and the fact that he ran (?) for water whenever I put him down, I realized that this wasn't the low-maintenance gopherus agassizii I was expecting. Instead, I was standing in my still-barren backyard on a 96-degree day in late October hoping this guy wouldn't die before I figured out what to do with him.

At first I thought I could just put him down and go about my business. I returned 10 minutes later to find that he was nowhere in sight, and I could only follow his tracks in the mud for about 4 inches (I wasn't much of a Boy Scout, but I'm pretty sure this turtle wiped out his tracks with his tail or something on purpose). I then spent the next 30 minutes trying to find him, scared mostly that I would bury him alive later that day as I filled in my sprinkler ditches. I'm glad I looked there, because I finally found him buried at the bottom of one under 6 inches of mud and water. He wasn't moving, so I figured he had drowned (imaging my neighbor popping by to find out whether we'd seen his lost turtle and having to break the bad news that I'd drowned it), but a few sprays brought it back to life and confirmed that it was, in fact, fond of water and most certainly not native to my backyard.

Now we find ourselves involuntarily with a pet. My first instinct was to give it to a pet store, but what if it does, in fact, belong to my neighbor. Maybe the only thing worse than having to tell someone that I drowned their pet would be to tell them that I sold it (for free) into turtle captivity. In the meantime, since my son's old baby bathtub wouldn't hold him, he now lives in my wheelbarrow (good thing I bought that thing - you never know when you'll need one to hold reptiles) while we wait for a response to the "Lose a turtle?" signs I plastered around the neighborhood. Hopefully someone claims him soon, or we'll have to make the tough call of whether to donate "Pete" to Petsmart (how much is a red-eared slider worth when you itemize?) or continue down the slippery slope into pet ownership. Stay tuned.

Wait, What Was I Talking About Again?

2007-10-24T19:23:00.001-07:00

I don't do that well at multi-tasking, if I'm being honest with myself. For example, I've been thinking lately about trying to pick up the guitar (learning to play it, not just physically picking one up - I've done that a few times), but I'm highly skeptical as to whether I could actually play a guitar and sing at the same time (and fairly certain that no one wants to hear that regardless). I forget to do things moments after saying I need to do them because I get distracted by something else (this drives my wife crazy). I'm guessing that I'm probably not that unique in this respect.

This is my way of telling you why I've had a serious case of writer's block. At work, I've been involved in something absorbing enough to cause me to dream about it at night, something to which I have to put a stop immediately. At home, I've been spending most of my energy on trying to put in a yard. The only other thing that has crept into my psyche lately has been baseball, but the teams I care about are now on vacation, and I've made a pledge to not write about baseball again until at least Spring Training based on feedback from one of my few faithful readers. Basketball is almost here, but I'll stay away from sports-related topics for a few days and hold off on my annual, highly unanticipated NBA preview until Tuesday or so.

Maybe a good start to overcoming my single-mindedness would be to write about multi-tasking itself. I have noticed that not everyone shares my problem (not even most men, as I had supposed), because I do see a lot of multi-tasking going on. My personal favorite right now is texting while driving. The other day I read (again in a safety bulletin) that this is a bad idea - I'm glad they took the time to write up three paragraphs on that one. As I've said before, I'm probably the slowest texter in the world even when that's the only thing on which I'm focused (a person with no fingers could probably out-pace me using their eyebrows), so I'm not that tempted myself, but the other morning while riding along in my vanpool I noticed a guy firing off texts while paying only cursory attention to the 70-mph bumper-to-bumper traffic in which we were traveling. In fairness, he probably hadn't seen the bulletin. I mean, let's be honest - if someone hadn't written up a warning label, you might be blow-drying your hair in the shower every morning.

As dangerous as this kind of activity is, I have to admit that texting/e-mailing while walking bugs me nearly as much. I mean, if you've ever been walking behind someone that's cranking out e-mails on their Blackberry, you know that it's pretty much impossible to get around them with all of the swerving and random stopping going on. I understand, though - sometimes you just have to rely on text and e-mail to communicate when you're on the go because you just can't find a phone.

Well, I must admit, that feels much better. Now that I've laid bare my weakness and vented a bit, I think I'm ready to move on. I'll chime in with a proper post shortly.

Cubs Lose! Cubs Lose!

2007-10-07T10:01:00.001-07:00

The other day I watched a few minutes of Survivor, and I was thinking that hosting that show would probably be the easiest job in the world (relative to the amount of money involved). Yesterday, though, as I watched the Diamondbacks sweep the Cubs in their National League Division Series, I decided that (again, for the money) being a sports analyst might be easier.

I say that because, unlike almost every other job I can think of, these people have very little incentive to be right. I mean, they probably can't lie that much without it impacting their paycheck, but there can't be anything much more meaningless (unless you're a gambler, I guess) than predictions of what is going to happen in a game or a series. I don't fault people for guessing, when asked, what the ultimate outcome will be, but how often to you see the analysts go back and talk about what happened relative to what they stated quite confidently would happen? Usually, it's when they are right, and the few brave ones who do make an accounting of their overall accuracy usually just end up pointing out how off they have been. In both of my two careers so far, I have been an "analyst," and if I was as undisciplined and largely wrong as these people, I'd have been thrown out on the street by now.

Look - I listen to and watch a lot of sports talk, and I respect about 75% of these people. I love watching good pre-game analysis - I just think the predictions (even the educated ones) are completely meaningless. It just became obvious to me over the past week how wrong (and, frankly, sometimes lazy) analysts can collectively be as I listened to very nearly everyone ignore and dismiss the Diamondbacks while treating the Cubs like the second-coming of the 2004 Red Sox rather than the Bad News Bears they were for much of the season.

The DBacks were outscored over the course of the season and had a poor batting average, and since none of these people evidently watched a DBacks game this year, they assumed that having the best record in the National League was a fluke of some kind. They dismissed the fact that the one (and more important) thing the Diamondbacks did better than the Cubs was win baseball games. Even ignoring the fact that the Cubs needed a late-season surge to win a division in which the average record was 77-86, Chicago would have finished a distant fourth in the NL West, where the Diamondbacks play and where only the Giants (sorry, H.I.) had a sub-.500 record and were out of the playoff picture.

So, having seen how mentally tough and team-oriented the DBacks were all year, I wasn't that surprised that they are moving on, despite being told repeatedly all week that the Cubs were the NL favorite and had (I quote) "the clearest path to the World Series." Admittedly, I saw a lot more DBacks games this year than the baseball experts. I didn't see any Phillies games, for example, so it's not like I paid attention to every playoff team. Given limitations of time and money, the average amateur fan can only keep up with their own local team and those with their own dedicated national networks (Cubs [WGN], Braves [TBS], and Yankees/Red Sox [ESPN]). Then again, shouldn't analysts follow a few more teams than that and be a bit less open about the teams they WANT to win? Maybe it's not their fault - maybe their bosses tell them on what they should focus.

Only now am I starting to see some acknowledgment that Arizona deserves a bit of credit; early in the series, it was assumed to be a Cubs collapse instead. I don't know what will happen now against the Rockies, but now at least people will recognize that the experts sometimes are not necessarily experts and may have no idea, either.

[Post-script: A day after I wrote this, I read this gem from Keith Law on ESPN.com about the Rockies-DBacks series coming up:

Although the Diamondbacks had the better record and will have home-field advantage, the Rockies had a much better projected record based on runs scored and allowed.

Maybe in the future they should just stop playing the games at all and just run computer simulations. Admittedly, though, I am a little scared of the Rockies.]

How to Win Friends and Avoid the Plague

2007-09-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

I don't talk about work all that much here. This isn't due to a paucity of humorous things going on there but rather to the fact that some of those things would be funny only to an insider and that others, if revealed, could get me fired. There are a few things I've noticed lately, though, to which anyone in the workforce could probably relate.

When I answer my work phone, which honestly only rings about once a day since everyone is too busy sending little e-mails on their Blackberries to call, I typically say, "This is [insert first name here]." I've noticed, though, that when you reach a certain level of management, you drop the "this is" and even the first name. Your last name is all you need, like you're a pro athlete or something. I'm not sure what the nature of the relationship is here, whether you become a big-time manager because you answer your phone that way and people just assume you're big time or whether it's just one of the little rewards of the job to help offset the ridiculous hours you work. Maybe I should start answering my phone that way. Maybe you have to ease into it in a Bond, James Bond sort of way as an interim step.

Initials as e-mail signatures are equally as popular with these people, although I've noticed that a lot more lowly people at my level are trying to ride that train to upper management. How do you know when you've reached the level of corporate fame necessary to justify just going by your initials? In some ways, it could be seen as fairly presumptuous, but maybe people are just trying to save a little time by not having to type out their whole names (this is probably especially helpful for people in Thailand and Mongolia, who I'm pretty sure have a hard time remembering how to spell their own names in the first place). The other day I exchanged e-mails with a guy name Mike who signed his e-mail "mke" (I checked a few e-mails to make sure this wasn't a one-off mistake). I bet Mike is learning a second language or maybe reading War and Peace with all of the time he's freed up with that one.

[Edit: My wife, after reading this, suggested that Mike's initials might actually be "mke." Turns out she's right.]

Another thing you can't help but notice at my company is how safety-conscious the place is. It's understandable, since we're at heart a manufacturing company. When I worked in a building next to a factory, there were little messages posted everywhere reminding you not to do things like stick your arm in a closing elevator or eat food left in conference rooms from previous meetings.

One of the big no-nos is not holding onto the hand rail when taking the stairs. My first thought when I realized how serious people were about this was to wonder how many sick days resulted from everyone sharing germs every day and whether that outweighed lost days by people falling down stairs (although admittedly colds and broken collar bones are not in quite the same category). Last week I returned from the weekend to find hand sanitizer dispensers all over the building, and at first I thought they doubted our ability to follow the detailed hand-washing instructions in the bathrooms (I'm convinced some people wouldn't wash their hands if you sprayed them with a fire hose on the way out). Later, though, I saw a sign by one of these dispensers saying something like, "Now you have no excuse not to hold the rail." Now that they've validated that the rails are probably full of germs, I feel obligated to pick up the mandatory diseases every day and then promptly wash them off. I'm just excited for the lotion dispensers (once everyone's hands dry out) and the accompanying "Now you have no excuse not to use the sanitizer" signs.

I'm not sure if reduced lighting is a hazard, but I did walk into another building at work the other day, and I'm pretty sure they have completely different bulbs than we do. I didn't notice it before, but my cubicle feels like the office from Joe vs. the Volcano by comparison. I don't know if the safety people have addressed brain clouds yet, but now I'm thinking that they'd better get on it. In the meantime, I'm thinking about changing the way I refer to myself in order to get on the fast track to a cubicle closer to a window. Hey, a man can dream.

Man Law

2007-09-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

The other day on my way to catch my vanpool to work, I drove past the local auto repair place. I had to pause momentarily to allow a guy to cross the parking lot from his car to the shop. He was going a bit slowly because he had a baby carrier in tow. It's possible that this guy would normally be watching his kid on a Monday morning, but it's also possible that he has learned one of the world's great secrets: people treat you like some sort of hero if you are a dad out in public alone with your baby.

Not long ago, I hopped into our car w/ my son to head to a friend's house only to find that the battery was dead, something that happens about every three minutes in the Arizona heat. I charged it up and headed over to the same auto repair place, figuring that at best they'd get me in early the next morning since it was already after 6:00. The place doesn't really have a reputation for speed or customer service, so that was being optimistic. To my surprise, however, when they saw me with a one-year-old child, they treated my like someone with an open head wound who needed to get his car fixed in order to get to the hospital. In about 30 minutes, my battery was tested and replaced, and I was on my merry way, somewhat the wiser. As long as my son can take it, I'm not sure I'll go into that place alone again.

The same thing happens to a lesser scale when I take him to the grocery store to give my wife a little break from both of us. A guy doing the grocery shopping alone might get a little credit, but as a guy with a little kid doing grocery shopping, you're treated like a fireman racing into a burning building. It's amazing - people that normally would scowl at me practically offer to pay for my groceries.

I guess that's just how the system works, so I might as well take advantage of it, but I do feel a bit guilty. I mean, I am one of two parents, right, which implies that parenting should be part of the job description and not something that deserves any more bonus points than my wife gets for doing the same thing. I guess we as men/fathers have set the bar pretty low for ourselves, so it doesn't take much to impress.

The ironic thing is that a lot of the fatherly things that a man should do aren't seen as being that manly. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the stuff that really makes you a man is not seen generally as being that manly. For example, almost everything we're exposed to tells us that being a man means not backing down, but I'd argue that it takes a lot more strength to admit you're wrong.

On the flipside, there are a lot of things people do to convince themselves that they are men. Once when I was a kid my dad said something about guys trying to buy their manhood from Detroit, and I would venture that there is no correlation between the kind of man you are and the car you drive. If there is a correlation, it might be a negative one. Same for tattoos, drinking a lot, and winning your fantasy sports league, although the latter is pretty impressive to about three other people (let's face it, the people at the bottom of your league who stopped trying don't care, the people you barely beat think you are just lucky, and your wife doesn't understand how you can waste so much time on something so meaningless).

ROFL All the Way to the Bank

2007-09-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I read about a 13-yr-old girl who won the national text messaging championship, something I didn't even realize was possible. The amazing part is not that the contest itself exists, since as kids we made up all kinds of contests more ridiculous than that, but rather that she won $25K for it. I guess it's good, because it gives all of those kids that text all day instead of wasting time on fruitless academic pursuits something to shoot for in life. When I say all day, I'm not entirely kidding. Her win came from sending 4,000 texts every month, which (in all the "knuckle" months, anyway) equals about 129 per day. If she takes 42 seconds (her winning time) on each one, that's over 1-1/2 hrs a day.

Now, I'm not judging this girl. There wasn't a lot of cell phone use going on when I was 13, but I might have been just as hooked, since admittedly kids my age wasted plenty of time writing notes (and I suppose killing more trees in the process). I'm actually pretty amazed at anyone that can text that fast - I would probably have a better chance of winning a Black Movie Award than this thing. I bet the average text takes me a few minutes, so at that rate, I'd spend about 5-1/2 days a month texting to get to 4,000. I bet the average Native American hierogphyic carvers worked a lot faster than I do.

I'm also not judging her because I spend probably just as much time doing my own useless things, and most of those don't involve actually interacting with real people. Just today, I wasted who-knows-how-long on ESPN.com reading about the New England Patriots stealing signs via camera from the opposing team (speaking of Native Americans, I assume the next step will be bringing in Navajo code-talkers to get around this sort of thing). I watched part of a Celtics-Cavs playoff game from 1992 in which Larry Bird was in street clothes. I perused complaints about local politics, road construction, and LDS missionaries on the town message board. I won't get $25K for any of that.

That isn't to say that it's impossible to make money from activities like this. I used to read and watch some pretty ridiculous stuff all day for a living (I won't mention any names, but most of it involved a short Asian dictator with something of an afro, a off-green jumpsuit, Harry Carey glasses, and platform shoes), and I left that job, so I guess I blew my chance.

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjack

2007-09-09T00:29:00.001-07:00

As mentioned previously here, Saturday night I attended the Cardinals-Diamondbacks game with a friend we agreed to refer to as H.I., and I was conflicted going in about how I should feel. It turns out that I was conflicted through the whole game: it’s hard to root for a team all season and then suddenly turn on them, but it’s even more difficult to abandon a team that you've been with since early childhood. So I found myself being fairly subdued through most of the game, surrounded by a nearly sell-out crowd mostly clad in red (although a mix of Sedona Red and Cardinal Red, which apparently are different and conflicted me even further).

That is not to say that I didn’t have a good time. The game itself was a good one (9-8 for the Dbacks), and it’s not often that you get to watch a game in Arizona with the roof open. The winning pitcher was some guy named Eveland who pitched to one batter and almost had an at-bat before being replaced with a pinch-hitter, prompting H.I. to slap him with a "Moonlight Graham" tag. Pujols was a home run short of the cycle, and there was a signature Edmonds catch in center field, so it wasn't a total loss from a Cardinals perspective, either.

As tight as the game was, the most nerve-wracking part was watching the family in front of us. We were in the upper deck, one row behind the short wires separating us from a hundred-foot fall. These people had a two-year-old that they were letting climb all over those wires, and we were literally sweating watching the whole thing. Maybe they were some kind of superhero family enjoying a day at the ballpark, but if not, I'm guessing their kid probably rode standing up in the front seat on the way home.

In addition to that little distraction, we also missed part of the game by picking the slowest concession line - possibly of all time. I can't say that definitively, not having done any real research, but I can say that while we were in line, there were 8 runs scored (not joking), and David Eckstein was hit by pitches in two different innings (again, no joke). At one point, I decided to go peruse my other options, and about 15 minutes later I returned to find that H.I. had not moved up at all. At some point we probably should have decommitted and found a new line, but it's difficult to abandon a line you've been with since (what feels like) early childhood.

It turns out the main culprit was a guy named Randy who was behind the counter in our line. I'll say upfront that I'm not making fun of Randy, because it was obvious that he might have some minor mental problems and was happy with his job - I'm just not sure this job was an ideal fit. It seemed that he had some sort of short-term memory loss and was learning the job anew every time - he was looking for my ice cream bar in the beer case, and when H.I. ordered a Polish dog, Randy handed him a foil-wrapped package marked with a "p" and asked H.I. if it was the right one (maybe a fair question, since if you turned it over, it could have been an equally expensive Diamond Dog marked with a "d"). This was, needless to say, a bad combination (H.I.: "perfect storm") with a guy two people in front of us ordering hot dogs and drinks for a group of about 40 kids (we knew we were in trouble when they started pulling out big cardboard boxes to hold it all).

Fortunately we eventually got through, because we were afraid the guy behind us in line was going to snap and start killing people. It was also fortunate that Randy, who could have been highly stressed by the situation, was completely unaffected by everything and seemed quite happy to be there. I've worked in jobs where people waited 45 minutes before getting to me, and I'm not eager to revisit that.

All of this - plus a free Taco Bell chalupa and Conor Jackson bobblehead and learning that I've errantly been saying "crackerjacks" (doesn't rhyme with "back" - duh) all these years - meant that I got my $20 in parking worth out of the whole experience. Fortunately, in a few weeks it'll be the Dodgers in town, and I'll be able to easily pick a side (and hopefully do a better job at picking parking lots and concession lines).

[By the way, I wonder what people in China that are making all of these bobbleheads think we are doing over here in America.]

We'll Root, Root, Root for the Home Team?

2007-09-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes living in Arizona is like living in the bizarro world, because now that Labor Day is over and summer is theoretically on its way out, I'm looking forward to about 8 months of being able to spend time outside. Given that I felt like I was being slow-roasted in some Ronco invention the other day while making the short trip between my building at work and the gym, temperatures potentially dipping down into the high 90s sound pretty good.

[By the way, for some reason at the gym this time I was wondering why my company wasted money on some of the dumbbells (weights, not people) there. I guess I’d understand if this were an Olympic training facility, but as big as some of the guys are that work out there, I don’t think there’s anyone who need to do curls with something that weighs as much as a Cooper Mini. I’m not even sure how practical those things are anyway, since they have to put about 10 weights on each side and you end up with something about as wide as a car axle.]

Anyway, the end of Labor Day also means that the baseball season (which is surpassed in length only by Dances With Wolves) is hitting the home stretch. I have a bit of a hard time getting really engrossed in baseball in May or so, but I love September (and October even more). Even though basketball is my favorite sport and the NBA playoffs are my favorite postseason, I don't think anything beats the drama of a tight game in a league championship series or the World Series. I've never been to either in person, which brings me to my latest dilemma.

I have been a St. Louis Cardinals fan for almost as long as I can remember, and that isn't going to change unless they change their name to the "St. Louis Anti-Mormons" or something (not unprecedented in Missouri, but not likely). I've been known to abandon a team from my childhood here or there (I'll admit that I was once a die-hard Atlanta Hawks fan, but those are now about as rare as people who still use typewriters), but in general, my loyalties are pretty constant. One thing I will do is give the local team a chance to grow on me, which is why the Washington Wizards were once on my short list and why the Diamondbacks are now my #2 in baseball.

Saturday night, I'm going to the Cardinals-DBacks game, and I have a real problem: both teams are fighting to win their divisions. The DBacks pulled ahead a game by beating down the Padres tonight (who were pitching their ace on 3 days rest to try to win this one, which made it even better), and the Cardinals are within a couple of games despite being about .500 on the year (which was good enough last year to win it all somehow, so you never know, although last year they had pitchers who could actually pitch sometimes). I want the Cardinals to make it to the playoffs, of course, even though I think their chances of winning it all again are about as good as mine of becoming president of the NRA, but I also want playoff baseball here and think the DBacks really deserve to be there.

When it comes down to it, I'll be wearing my Cardinals hat, I'm sure, but I don't know whether this is a win-win situation or a lose-lose (or is it a win-lose? or maybe a lose-win?). Either way, I'm not sure what to think here. Obviously, I want them both in the postseason, but that might create even bigger problems for me. Unlike the hot weather, this is something I didn't really take into account when we decided to move to Arizona, but in hindsight, maybe we should have moved to an American League city.

I Will Take You Down, I Will Take You Down to Chinatown

2007-08-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

The other day we were at someone’s house for a birthday party, and we left just as they were starting to watch a pay-per-view Ultimate Fighting event. I haven’t seen enough Ultimate Fighting to know whether or not I enjoy watching it, but I do know that it’s something I should avoid participating in at all costs. I’ve had stitch-worthy cuts on my face 3 or 4 times (I will have to go take count in the mirror to be sure) caused by varied implements such as elbows, pianos, and golf balls, so I can’t imagine what would be left of me if I deliberately let someone pound on my head. I didn’t wrestle in high school, and I think I’ve only been involved in one very brief fight in my lifetime (I don’t remember the details, including whether or not any punches were thrown, except that I made a rare trip to the principal’s office, which was scary back then since physical beatings with wooden paddles were still rumored to happen).

All of that said, I have recently taken up wrestling. I know, it’s not a sport in which adults my age normally get involved, except for people like Karl Malone and the venerable Pacman Jones. The experience has taught me that it’s a good thing I didn’t wrestle in high school, because these days I wrestle with a one-year-old, and I never do better than a draw. The only reason he doesn't win outright is that he's too small to pin me, but that doesn't mean I'm able to pin him either.

I don't know much about wrestling, obviously, but I’m pretty sure the following are official maneuvers. One of my son’s primary moves is the Steve Irwin Memorial Death Roll (he would have loved the Crocodile Hunter, I’m sure, but he’ll watch Bindy instead I guess). If you've watched Animal Planet enough, you've seen people try to hold crocodiles down while they're rolling around violently, but that can't be that much tougher than trying to put a diaper on my son. All you can do is hold onto his ankles while he spins around trying to break loose, and if you let go for even a second, he heads straight for open water as fast as he can go. When the Death Roll fails him, he's goes into the Lance Armstrong. Imagine trying to put your pants on while riding a bike, and you have the general idea. As soon as you get one leg in and start on the other, the first one pops back on. This can go on forever.

Sitting with him through church or any other similarly sedentary activity is just as tough because he has moves for that too. His favorite is the Greg Louganis, where he arches his back and tries to go into some backward dive without any regard for whether he smacks his head on your chin anytime you try to get him to sit for more than five minutes. Sometimes he’s more subtle and lulls you into a false sense of security before pulling the Richard Branson, which involves a sudden sideways fall and bungee jump (w/out the bungee).

Since I can’t have my son running around naked in the church building, I’m lifting weights three times a week and am constantly working on new moves to stay a step ahead of him. I have to give him credit though, because he’s holding his own with someone roughly 7 times his weight class and theoretically wiser. Much like shop class, I guess I’ll have to put wrestling in the category of things for which I didn’t see much use in high school but that would come in really handy now.

Good Thing There Are About 15 Dentists in This Little Town

2007-08-23T23:01:00.000-07:00

Our son has a bunch of teeth that are about to come in and have been like that for some time, and it makes him fairly miserable. The poor kid does pretty well with his four teeth, but it'll be much better for masticating and far less painful once these puppies finally break through. In the meantime, he just keeps popping pills. Well, we keep giving them to him, so I guess we're enabling his addiction. Actually, I don't even know what they are - just some little tablets that evidently work pretty well, because a kid who acts like he's being poisoned most of the time when you try to put food directly in his mouth chews those things up like they're Halloween candy.

Unfortunately, tonight we ran out, which brings me to my main point. Have you ever gone to the store to get one thing specifically, and in a store full of thousands of items across tens of thousands of square feet found that your one item is the one thing that's out completely? Typically, I make the mistake of not looking for my one item first and picking up a few items along the way (5 12-packs of soda for $11 is a decent deal... I know you're assuming that I'm consuming that much soda, which would be ridiculous... I'm just stocking up for the next time we have 60 close friends over). By the time I get to the empty spot where my item should be, I have a cart full of junk I don't need, and I'm faced with the fact that I now have to go to another store and with the conundrum of whether to take all of this stuff back so that I don't have to check out twice (not sure why I think this will take so long, although this late at night you're stuck with one cashier and a line of people in no hurry, since the people in a hurry probably finished shopping a long time ago).

Finally I did check out, slipping through the self-checkout aisle just before the high school girl in charge stops chatting with her boyfriend long enough to shut them all off behind me. This still hasn't solved my son's painful mouth problem, so now I find myself driving through the parking lot of the only other grocery store in town, trying to figure out if it's open. The lights are on, but no one seems to be milling about inside, so my guess is that it's closed. I'm still not certain that it was closed, but I was too lazy to get out to find out for sure. Have you noticed that most of these places post their hours in something like a semi-transparent Arial 10 pt. font?

No luck (and similarly small store hour signs) at either Walgreens or CVS, which are actually located on opposite sides of the same intersection. I'm not sure which of these two started first, but the other company is sort of like that annoying kid that copies everything you say. Sort of like that annoying kid that copies everything you say. See, it's annoying. See it's annoying. Now you know how it feels to be Walgreens - or maybe CVS. (I'd try to figure this out, but I'm a little too tired to research this - someone needs to invent something where you can type in a few words and get back a bunch of search results - I bet you could get fairly rich off of something like that.)

So now my wife will have to face a grumpy son in the morning who will be going through minor withdrawals and mostly likely sucking on his fingers (again, poor kid). You have to empathize with the kid, since tooth pain is probably second only to fingernail pain in terms of things that cause discomfort entirely disproportionate to their size (OK, so pulling out a nose hair probably beats both 10 times over, but you get the idea). The good news is that he seems to have inherited my ability to get distracted and will go for good 45 minute stretches between remembering that he's supposed to be in pain (well, that's good for now, but someday I predict the same ability will drive his wife up the wall).

There's What's Right, and There's What's Right

2007-08-20T08:54:00.001-07:00

The other day while stuck in my vanpool for an-hour-and-a-half during a dust storm that I'm pretty certain involved The Mummy, one of my fellow riders claimed that there is a law in Arizona against tripping horses (don't ask me how we got on the subject). I'm not sure if that's true, but there are apparently a lot of seemingly stupid laws on the books in every state - either stupid because of what they're trying to prevent or because someone had to tell people not to do these things. My guess is that a lot of these dumb laws came about because someone had a pet peeve and enough power to turn that pet peeve into a punishable offense.

Now, I'm fairly laid back about most things and therefore don't have a lot of major pet peeves, but I do have a few on which I wouldn't mind putting law enforcement to work. That's probably not a good motivation for running for public office, but it's tempting nonetheless.

I was about to say that one of these pet peeves is all of these shows about multi-thousand dollar 16th birthday parties for bratty kids, but then I remembered that on my 16th birthday I invited about 20 people over and didn't even tell my mom until I got home from school. Let me give you a few others, though, that I can say without sounding too hypocritical.

For one, I'm not a big fan of guys hanging out outside without shirts. I'm not talking about people who are exercising, because I sort of get that one (except that in Arizona, you might as well just take cancer pills). The ones that get to me fall into two categories. Guy #1 is the guy who thinks he looks pretty good and wants to make sure everyone has a chance to agree. Usually, this guy actually is carrying a shirt with him, so at some point after he walked out his door, he figured it was Chippendale time. Guy #2 is sort of the opposite. He might think (I have to assume) that he looks good to some degree, but most likely he was watching COPS and gets it confused with What Not To Wear. My neighbor a few houses down is a Guy #2. In reality, I'd probably find that he's a pretty nice guy if I took the time to chit chat while he's sitting in nothing but a pair of shorts smoking on his front doorstep.

Another current pet peeve has to do with Pepto Bismol, which may be a fine product but should really stay away from commercial jingles. Just as we shouldn't have to explicitly ban horse tripping, we also shouldn't need a law to tell us that diarrhea should never receive lyrical interpretation. I'm not sure why they think this will make me more likely to buy their product; next time I'm in need of something along those lines, I'll probably go with a product that treats my condition with seriousness and drama commensurate with my pain and not a product that treats my suffering with the levity of early 80s hip-hop. [All of that said, I still will use Pepto, but I might use the generic version at least to spite them for getting a song about this stuck in my head.]

While we're mentioning commuting, another major annoyance to me is tailgating. I'm not talking about eating hot dogs in parking lots but rather about people driving close enough behind me to enable me to determine the color of their eyes. Here's the deal - if I was running behind your car at about 10 miles an hour and you slammed on your brakes, I'd probably smack my shins on your bumper, and yet you think you can stop instantly in a multi-thousand-pound hunk of metal going 70? If I do anything more than tap my breaks, you'll be sitting in my passenger seat. If you want to drive like an idiot, I'd just request that you don't do it in my immediate vicinity. (Of course, there probably is a law about this).

Besides valuing my own life and that of anyone driving with me, another reason for me not to drive too closely behind people is to avoid seeing any more stickers of Calvin peeing on things. Basically, one of those tells everyone else all they need to know about you, and I'm guessing it doesn't say what you think it says. I'm not a betting man, but I'd bet there's a close correlation between these stickers and barbed-wire tattoos around the upper arm.

Unfortunately, I don't make laws (except for my son, I guess, but he doesn't listen to those anyway at this point), so I'm stuck with shirtless guys with copycat tattoos and Calvin stickers riding my bumper and people rapping about bodily functions. I guess it's payback that I probably do things that drive other people crazy, and there's not much they can do about it. I suppose this principle is sort of the foundation of our whole society, so you just take the good with the dumb.

BTW - here's a picture I found of that dust storm rolling in - pretty amazing:

Beyond Bonds

2007-08-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

Nearly 1/3 of the way through August and nary a post from me... at this point, I'm really hampering my chances at breaking the hallowed lifetime blog posting record. I could artificially enhance my performance by posting a bunch of one-line posts or something, but we all know that the only way to break a record is without an artificial performance boost.

On a completely unrelated note, I thought I'd share my thoughts on Barry Bonds and the home run record since I haven't heard anyone else do so - it's like no one was even paying attention. Actually, it was hard to avoid seeing what was going on even if you wanted to, since finding Giants games as you flipped through cable channels became almost as common as happening upon Steven Seagal movies. Still, the attention is dying down a little now that he passed the record (& hit a few more for good measure) and now that the ESPN 2 viewers can go back to their regularly scheduled viewing of sports like poker, barrel-throwing, and hackeysack.

I confess that I did pay a bit of attention to this whole slow-motion train-wreck because I was seeing something happen that I once thought pretty much impossible. Of course, since someone actually did it once before, it couldn't have been impossible, but it sure seemed that way when I was 12 or so. That may sound kind of funny to anyone much younger than I am who grew up in the era of multiple 50-60 home run seasons from the same players, but when I was growing up, 50-60 home run seasons were almost unheard of and were major baseball news when they happened. Back then, no one really ever hit 50, and I figured that someone would have to do that for 15 straight years, and even then they'd be 5 short. Couldn't happen.

Of course, back then, baseball players were almost as skinny as I was, and that is saying something (and you wonder why I wasn't dominant on the gridiron). Even when they started to bulk up, I'm not sure that anyone jumped to the steroids conclusion, because athletes in every sport were getting bigger, and steroids were something used by Russian female swimmers and a random Canadian sprinter here or there. No person in their right mind would use steroids because of all of the side effects.

Fast forward to last week. Baseball players look like linebackers, a lot of 50-60 home run seasons are in the books, and Barry Bonds (who I never liked in the first place mostly just because he played for the Pirates, and I didn't like them back when they mattered) hits #756. I can only gauge what it meant for me by how I felt, and I honestly didn't feel that much. I was more interested in seeing the reactions of everyone involved than I was in the accomplishment itself, so I guess that says it all. It just doesn't mean what it would have.

I'm not really even directing that at Bonds, who I think is just the posterchild for the era because he was so much better than everyone else and added a little extra boost to that. I think Bonds' biggest flaw (in addition to not being very likeable) was that he couldn't deal with the possibility of losing his place in history to guys who were juiced before him. Ultimately, I think the problem started before that with baseball and the players union, who collectively looked the other way, and I think it's a bit hypocritical for Bud Selig to act indignant at the whole thing.

It's too bad for all involved that it happened this way. In the case of Bonds, ironically enough, he probably started down this path to preserve his place in history and ended up tainting it instead. Had he kept himself above all of this, there would be no questions about his Hall of Fame status, and the only debates going on would be about whether he should have been nicer to reporters and whether he was one of the top five of all time. Instead, Ken Griffey Jr., another player with a strong baseball pedigree who probably could have juiced up to recover faster for his countless injuries but apparently didn't, will be the unquestioned first-ballot hall-of-famer. Griffey hasn't always had the greatest relationship with the media or the fans either, but suddenly now he's found peace with baseball while Barry Bonds has been at war with it.

(By the way, in a strange way this whole Barry Bonds thing has given me even more appreciation for Karl Malone. First of all, he probably changed physically almost as much as Bonds did [minus the abnormal noggin growth] over the course of his career, but every indication is that he did it through ridiculously dedicated, hard work and didn't take any shortcuts. Second, certainly the NBA all-time scoring record isn't as big a deal as the baseball career home run record, but Malone could have pushed himself to keep playing a few more years than he should have just to finish at the top, but he was secure enough in his own legacy to let that go.)

It's too bad for us that it took the public downfall of a then-hero in Mark McGwire (along with all of the good memories from his record-breaking season) and the fall of one of the great records in sports to bring about change, but if this record falling marks the end of an era that most will be happy to see go, then so be it. I loved baseball as a kid (we spent a lot of our time sifting through piles of baseball cards and playing on our little homemade field behind our house), and now I guess I do feel a little relief almost a week after the record fell because I feel like the start of a new era in which I can maybe start to love baseball again. Last year my Cardinals somehow won the World Series after barely being over .500 in the regular season, and the way they did it was a little reminiscent of the Whitey Ball on which I grew up. Now I'm even getting into the D-Backs here, who are winning by running out every play and relying on different guys every night. I know that steroids, human growth hormone, bionic limbs, or whatever else people put in their bodies to give them an edge haven't gone away, but I at least feel that we've now crossed the symbolic summit and are on our way back down.

Umm... That'll Just Make Me Dizzy

2007-07-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Although I complained yesterday about all of the media coverage of Lindsay Lohan, I must confess that I do feel a little bit of sympathy for all of these people in the media lately with substance abuse problems. I don’t have sympathy for them with regards to all of the dumb things they do, but I do think they’re getting a lot of confusing advice that probably doesn’t make things much easier.

I always thought it was pretty baffling to see people do the same dumb things over and over, but I guess that’s part of the definition of a habit or an addiction. I think I know now why they do it, though, and why rehab isn’t working. Apparently, they’re getting advice like this (in this case, from defense attorney & certified drug/alcohol counselor Barry Gerald Sands, as quoted by CNN):

"Whatever you have done in the past, do a 360-degree turn and go the other way."

Really, the only thing I can add to that is that if you find you’re heading in the wrong direction (in life or on the road), four left turns will get you headed where you need to go.

Even smokers are getting mixed messages. Yesterday in the bathroom on the plane, I noticed the usual “Smoking is Not Permitted in the Lavatory” sign (why do we have about 800 different names for bathrooms and only one for kitchens?), and right below that was a little ashtray. To the right was a sign saying that tampering with the smoke detector is a federal offense carrying a fine of up to $400. If I was trying to get people not to smoke on an airplane, I think I’d be a little more emphatic about it and make the fine a bit bigger, but next time you have to wait a long time for someone to get out of there, you’ll know it’s probably a smoker taking a few minutes to weigh all of his or her options.

Some people that do dumb things probably wish they could blame it on substance abuse; I personally believe that’s why some people drink in the first place. I’m pretty sure the future Prime Minister of Belgium wasn’t drunk when he (accidentally?) sang the French national anthem when asked to sing the Belgian one on live TV. Hopefully he was just joking – I’m not sure how you recover from that one otherwise.

Nine Years, 364 Days, 11 Hours

2007-07-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm back after a bit of an absence. Of course, I never really went anywhere, but I guess there have been enough things going on to keep me from writing anything. I’m not sure that I could tell you exactly what those things have been, which is probably telling in-and-of-itself, but I can tell you that I have not been overly distracted by Michael Vick, the crooked NBA ref, or Lindsay Lohan (do we really need a panel of “analysts” on CNN discussing this?). My only legitimate excuses have been Harry Potter and work, I suppose, but it’s not like I’m working (investment) banker’s hours or anything. I did travel again this week (I’m writing this on the flight home), and this time it wasn’t just for lasertag. This past weekend I did also have to reinstall everything on our computer after putting in a new hard drive, but since we have more computers than people in our house, that’s no excuse.

I probably could have stayed on my trip for another day, but tomorrow is our 10th anniversary, so I’d rather be with my wife than at a Holiday Inn Express eating reheated cinnamon rolls and bad oatmeal (sorry, I mean continental breakfast). Being married 10 years is nothing to write home about, I suppose, when you consider that my wife’s paternal grandparents both passed away late last year after well over 70 years of marriage, but I like to think that I have at least learned a few things in the last decade. For one, I now organize my closet by color. For another, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of dating services like e-Harmony that claim to match people up based on compatibility. I married someone who is unlike myself in many ways, and from what I’ve seen of my own marriage and that of others, it’s typically better that way.

(As an aside, the thought of being married to someone too much like myself scares me to death – literally. Early in our marriage, I fooled my wife’s family into thinking I’m intelligent by guessing a correct answer on some obscure question during a game of Trivial Pursuit, and I’ve been riding that ever since, sort of like Jon Heder cashing in on Napoleon Dynamite. Most of them remain largely unaware – until now – that I'm actually quite an airhead sometimes and am lucky to still have all of my limbs. Fortunately, I married someone much more grounded, so I'm hitting this 10-year mark in one piece and without having burned anything down - at least as far as I know – thanks to this marital safety net.)

Since we already took a trip a few months ago that we counted as our anniversary trip, our celebration this week will be a bit more mellow – probably will go with my idea of dinner and a movie (you have to give me credit for my creativity – I think you can see why I work in finance and my wife works in events). Actually, dinner and a movie sounded a little more mundane before we had our son, but now we’ve only been to a few movies since he’s been born, which means that we go on trips to see our family more often than we frequent the cinema.

All that probably means is that we’re a little more calculated in picking our movies. We already saw Harry Potter (do you think if we just donated our money directly to J.K. Rowling it would be tax deductible in some way?), so that’s out. I could probably go for the Transformers movie since I was semi-obsessed with those as a kid when they first came out, despite the fact that toys with that many moving parts are bound to break pretty quickly, and just about every one did. I mean, they look tough in the movie, but the only toys less fragile (and yet portrayed as equally tough) were G.I. Joe’s, whose thumbs snapped off all the time, making them unable to hold a gun and therefore pretty defenseless. I have heard the movie is decent, so I assume none of the Transformers limbs just randomly snap off when they are trying to turn into a truck or whatever.

Another option is the Rat movie that I can’t spell, which apparently is very good. I guess that means that Pixar has never made a bad movie, which I appreciate since as a father I’ll probably have to watch all of their movies about 50 times each over the course of the next 20 years. I’m not sure if there’s any equivalent to Pixar in any other field – everyone else messes up at least every once in a while. Toys, monsters, cars, rodents… they could probably make a movie about pencils and make it decent.

Unfortunately, we’re a week early for the Bourne Ultimatum. Unlike Harry Potter, I can’t claim to be a real fan, I suppose, since I haven’t read the books, although I have been working on the first book for about two years now (that’s actually not that bad, since I’ve been reading a book on the Civil War for about 8 years). I’m watching the first movie again as I type this, and I think I’ve figured out why I’m at least a real fan of the movies. It’s the same reason my friend and I watched that NBA Superstars movie about a million times in high school, and the Bourne movies also present basically the same problem. We’d get fired up watching these NBA music videos & then end up pulling ridiculous moves & making fools of ourselves, and I’m pretty sure if anyone ever tries to mug me, basically the same thing will happen.

(We never did try any Kareem moves, though, because his video was ridiculous. I think it’s the main reason people don’t uniformly agree that he was the best center of all time – he was on track before this came out. I can't find it on YouTube, but it should suffice to tell you that it involved a made-up "Skyhookin" song and a cartoon Kareem flying around in a little plane. Now the Larry Bird video... that's a classic.)

Not All Men Are Created Equal

2007-07-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I went to the gym at work to run (since it has been too hot to do so outside), but when I got there, the three treadmills were occupied by a jogger, a walker, and a guy trying to run at top speed while holding onto the sides for dear life. Since it was only a balmy 103 degrees, I thought I’d chance a quick jaunt under the Arizona sun, which turned out to be a mistake. I survived, of course, but on days like that, doing anything remotely resembling exercise is a bit of a challenge.

Later that day, I took a quick peek at CNN for the latest on important world events like the Paris Hilton incarceration and instead found a story about a guy with no lower legs who is a world-class sprinter. This guy is running the 400 on prosthetic limbs at times that could qualify him for the Olympics, and he’s pretty determined to make that happen apparently. As crazy as that sounds, it’s not even the crazy part of the story. The Olympic authorities are apparently trying to figure out whether the little curvy limbs he runs on give him an unfair advantage. Now, if he has wheels surgically attached or something, I’d say that would be worth examining, but let’s remember – this guy has no legs. Isn’t just about any advantage those things might give him negated to some degree by the fact that he’s running without feet? It makes my heat excuse sound pretty weak, at any rate.

Of course, CNN (or any news vehicle, for that matter) doesn't let you get too comfortable with this sort of elevated portrait of humanity. Before I could fully digest how amazing that story was, I found myself reading about a guy who died three years ago when a bomb attached to his neck exploded. He had claimed that someone had attached the bomb to force him to rob a bank, and it went off before the police could remove it. Now it seems that he was involved in the whole plot. I don't want to make light of something that is certainly tragic regardless of the circumstances, but couldn't these people have come up with about a thousand better ideas for robbing a bank than this one? And why does someone who is a good enough salesman to talk someone else into wearing a bomb around his neck need to rob a bank anyway?

At least some of the dumb things people do don't involve potentially injuring themselves or others. The one story this week that might trump the amputee sprinter story is the guy who headed to England for a friend's wedding only to realize that he had the date wrong and was there a year early. At least I can empathize with this guy, because I have literally done things just as stupid in the last week. Fortunately in my case, no one told Reuters (apparently, this guy's friends just couldn't resist calling in that one).