My favorite things from 2007

Sitting here thinking about the new year with a few hours to go here in Colorado, I started thinking about the great things that happened during 2007. A lot of people tend to keep their focus forward in time, and take too little time to savor or relish those things in the past that have made them happy. So in that vein... here is my list of things that I enjoyed the most in 2007 not necessarily in any ranked order.

• Being able to watch my first World Series Game in person (thank you Rockies).
• Being able to finally read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" while I am still able to read big thick books and feel like a child again (thanks JK Rowling)
• Being able to watch a truly breathtaking series that combined History and Drama in HBO's Rome season 2 (too bad they said it cost too much to make and let the set catch fire and burn so there won't be a season 3).
• Finding out that the world of Middle-earth would continue to be brought to the screen courtesy of Peter Jackson (thank you Mr Jackson and New Line for settling your differences from all us J.R.R. Tolkien fans)
• And finally, another year of health and happiness with the family

See you all Next Year :)

New Year Resolutions I can keep

I've decided to go with some New Year resolutions I'm pretty sure I can keep.

• I will watch college football all day on January 1st
• I will not drink myself into a drunken stupor on December 31st ( the first game starts at 9:00 AM and I need to be ready)
• Regardless of how my wife's hair looks after coming back from the salon I will always say "Looks great Honey" (and then promptly recluse myself to the garage).
• I will sell the exercise equipment in the basement so that I don't make any stupid resolutions next year about getting into shape (that is how I ended up with it down there in the first place from last year).
• I will not call my wife's car (a Mitsubishi Eclipse) a roller skate anymore (not sure why it irritates her so much).
• I will buy two new pairs of jeans so I have the required 4 pair without holes in them somewhere (I actually do this every year but I just hate shopping so much that I have to will myself out to do it).
• I promise to go with my wife one time shopping at the mall (as long as one of the places she is shopping at during the trip is Victoria's Secret).
• I will continue to NEVER watch "Frank TV" after being assaulted with the promos during the TBS broadcasts of the MLB playoffs every 30 seconds.

I was thinking of some more to put down, but figure the longer the list is.. the less likely it is that I will succeed :)

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Years.

We've Taken the Outsourcing Thing Way Too Far

After reading this "Giving birth becomes the latest job oursourced to India", I think we have finally started to take the whole "Outsourcing" idea just a little too far. I wonder if we can get them to set up a "Vent at your husband" in-bound call center operation over there?

Pro athletes don't play for pride.. or do they?

I will admit that I am not a pro sports fan (ok I admit to being an avid Rockies fan), but as a general rule I typically don't watch pro football. Last night was a change, and an abnormally interesting one at that. I turned on the Patriots vs Giants game fully expecting to see both teams rest the majority of their starters in a game that had absolutely no playoff implications, and instead was provided a game that showed in some unique instances, pro football is played for pride and pride alone.

While there were three NFL records set (most TD passes, most TD receptions, most regular season points scored), the game was really about pride in a "team" accomplishment instead of the usual "me. me. me" pro athlete attitude.

Both teams played their starters, and from the beginning you could sense that both sides were playing with an emotion that is typically reserved for college sports where million dollar pay days are not the norm. The game was entertaining, and hard fought from the beginning to the end. And although the Patriots maintained their perfect regular season record and finished with at 38 to 35 win and a 16-0 regular season record, what impressed me was the way the game was played by both sides.

It was a joy to watch, and even more enjoyable to see for one of the few times that pro athletes and organizations can put forth their absolute best performance for just a game of no "real" significance. The fans in the stands in NY got their tickets worth, the fans watching the game on the networks got to see history made in a well played and energetic game.

The biggest thing that will be remembered about this game was that the multi-million dollar athletes that have been bashed for only playing for the money, and concerned about their own personal performance, played for pride, and it showed.

A game that had no significance at all in the playoff situation, was probably one of most entertaining games of the season. Congratulations to the players of the Giants and Patriots alike, you have given hope to a typically apathetic pro sports fan.

The politics of humanism

I came across an article about the juvenile corrections system in Missouri, AP Story and the thing that struck me besides the success rate of the system in keeping young offenders from re-entering the corrections system, was that from 1983 when the overhaul of the system was started, it has been supported by both conservatives and liberals in Missouri. This isn't a conservative or a liberal issue, but a human issue, and it is extraordinary to see politicians from both sides agree to put aside their normally prickly opposing views and do what is "right" for a change.

In a country that can never seem to put aside it's polarized political posturing to do something that works and is truly good for people other than their own self interest supporting PACs, it is both refreshing and unusual to see this coming together to support a plan that is not the "normal" way, and to stick with it through the years to provide a solid and documented successful way to deal with juvenile offenders.

This is just one example of what can actually be done when our political system works as it was intended by our founding fathers. A country for the people, by the people, rather than a few political avatars posturing and preening for the cameras in order to get the next sound bite, or criticize another politician to make their own visceral worth higher.

We need politicians that are more interested in developing programs and getting them enacted that honestly benefit the majority of people in the country, rather than select and narrow special interest groups. We need to have politics of humanism, rather than Republican and Democratic agendas.

If a sticky and very serious problematic situation as the one in Missouri can resolved, and proved to work when the base human need is the focus instead of the politics of what "sounds good" at the moment, then there is hope for us as a country to do so in other even more important areas of need. We need the same focus on the human need for programs such as health care, old age, and yes even foreign policy, and trade relations. Only when this happens will we see the true strength of our country displayed, and the true benefits of our representative system bestowed on the greater populous.

I only hope it comes sooner than too late.

Enough with the male enhancement and ED comercials already

It has gotten so bad that you can't watch any show anymore without one or the other of these types of commercials coming on. If someone wants to REALLY help men out, come out with a pill that we can take that will actually help us understand what women are really thinking, because after thousands of years of evolution we men still don't have a clue.

Programing decisions that make you go HUH?

This has been bothering me for a while since my favorite network is the SciFi channel.. but will someone please explain how in the world someone thought mostly science fiction aficionados would find ECW wrestling entertaining?

Ok so the NFL decided that to piss off the Cable and Satellite Companies that they have been having a terrible disagreement over showing the NFL channel, that they would show them by letting two broadcast network channels show the game? Those NFL folks do realize that most people that have cable or satellite, usually get their network broadcasts over these content suppliers right? (Edit:12/30/07..) Well you have to give the NFL credit.. they pretty much complained about the intrangency of the large cable networks through the whole game.. maybe not as silly a decision as originally thought :)

Doesn't Congress have better things to do than talk Baseball?

While the two committees of congress, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform”, and “The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection” prepare to take up the mantle of removing performance enhancing drugs from Major League Baseball after the first of the year, a couple of questions had occurred to me.

First: Isn’t there more pressing things for our congressmen to be focusing on instead of determining if multi-million dollar super stars are poking themselves with needles to get even larger multi-million dollar salaries from the MLB owners? I mean, shouldn't the force and political clout of the US congress be focused on things like, a wide spread drug problem plaguing the entire country? Or maybe they should put their weight behind figuring out how to help the millions of homeowners losing their homes because they can’t afford loans given to them simply because some mortgage broker decided he needed another patsy to help pay for that Mercedes he just bought, and didn’t care whether he/she was placing a family at risk of having to file bankruptcy and lose their belongings. Or maybe they should put their focus on how to extricate our troops overseas from a situation that looks for all intents and purposes to be a never ending police force action to keep radical extremists from whacking each other by blowing themselves up.

Secondly: While the attempt to get to the bottom of the PEDs issue in Major League Baseball is admirable (it does provide headlines), better questions that congress can actually do something about might be to look at how Dentists and Aging clinic Doctors are able to blithely prescribe HGH or Steroids to any Tom, Dick, or Harry personal trainer for no apparent medical purpose. The record books of Major League Baseball are almost for ever tarnished due to the widespread use of PEDs, but maybe our elected representatives should be focusing on how to halt the apparently easy acquisition and distribution of such things instead of talking to Selig and Fehr, who couldn’t agree as to whether the sun rose in the east or west, if they were held at gunpoint.

The Mitchell report pretty much laid out the problems of PEDs in baseball over the last 20 years or so, and provided some pretty specific recommendations on what needed to be done to reduce the use of those drugs in baseball going forward.

Our elected representatives have much more pressing and broader impacting items they should be focusing on, instead of making themselves some headlines by shaking their indignant fingers at a bunch of over paid, and pampered multi-millionaires.

Stop the Screen Logo madness

Once again I am fed up with the continual "network logo" being displayed on nearly every network, cable channel, and satellite channel during the presentation of a show. Do these network big wigs think so little of our intelligence that they think we can't remember what bleeding network our favorite shows are on? Yet that is not the worst of it anymore.

It used to be just the little innocuous little logo down in the bottom right corner of the screen, (except on a 65" HDTV, that little logo is about 6" high and wide) but now they are inundating us with the torture of the bottom screen pop up advertisements during our favorite shows, (which takes up nearly 1/4 of the bottom of the screen and totally wipes out any subtitles) to blithely inform us of the new monster hit miniseries or other up coming show that they are sure we would miss if they didn't blast us with the full width of the screen messages, while we are trying to watch our favorite shows (Does anyone not know that "Frank TV" is on TBS after watching the MLB playoffs?).

One of my favorite channels (starts with "sci" and ends with "fi") has progressed with their on screen pop up advertising and logo placement to the point of annoying my wife so far as to quit watching some shows and actually doing housework during the usual "together" TV time now.

We must band together and end this totalitarian invasion into our living rooms.. write your congressman... (like that would help).... write the network.... (yeah ok that isn't going to do it either).... WAIT!!!! write the FCC!!! (I did that, and they politely told me to find another way to vent my dissatisfaction, but they did recommend that if the logo is burned into my HDTV I should write the manufacturer).

I guess I'll have to wait for the next technological breakthrough in time sliding viewing enjoyment.. the logo remover :)

What is in a name

Does anyone besides me find the phrase "President Huckabee" just a bit strange?

Fanaticism is a Scourge

I was preparing to make my first post to my newly created Blog when I happened to hear on CNN about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Again, in this troubled world, a fanatic of some philosophy, political view, religious belief, etc., has taken it upon themselves to murder someone, and a large number of innocents, either to prove themselves worthy, or to silence a different view.

I have never understood, nor will I probably ever understand, the deep seated desire to silence some opposing view, faction, or what ever it is one disagrees with, through terrible violence. I am old enough to remember the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr, and Bobby Kennedy. I vividly remember the horror of Oklahoma City, and 9/11. And now the assassination of Bhutto, all acts of violence that I will probably never understand.

The only question I can ask is when will we as a species evolve (this by itself has fanatical implications) to the point where violence on this magnitude is no longer considered an option to express an opinion or support a political or religious view, and enlightened discourse, and meaningful dialogue becomes the meat of expressing our differences.

When will we reach that point in time where the Scourge of Fanaticism and it's inherent violence is removed from our daily discourse? I for one can only hope that it is soon.