World Cup


6
Jul 10

Back to the future, at the post office

When out and about to accomplish things, always strategically plan the order of events. It would not do, of course, to visit the grocery store, buy frozen things and then leave them in the trunk for two hours while taking in a movie. You don’t go across town on no gas to pick up a rare book without stopping at the gas station.

I’m a great believer in pre-planning the round of events. There’s a certain order to things. Some stops just make sense A to B to C. Some stops just make sense for traffic patterns. Some sequences are purely psychological.

Like this: Visit the post office first, and then stop by the bank.

If yours is like mine you find little redeeming about the post office. The lines are long, painful and slow moving. The person you finally draw to help you with your transaction is doing you a favor. He or she is really bitter about this, but has yet to make an examination about the choices they’ve made in their life. And, no matter how many extra books of stamps you buy, you always walking away feeling dissatisfied.

At the bank, they’re dealing with your money. And they’re making money on your money. In fact, they are still running a great con that a few keystrokes costs six to 20 bucks of your money every time. Of course they’re happy to see you. And, if yours is like mine you find they’re going a little overboard to demonstrate your enthusiasm to see you.

To be fair, the guy at the post office today was helpful, full of sirs — every third word of the conversation between us was “sir” — and generally competent. The life hadn’t been beaten out of him yet. At the bank the teller was a very nice lady. She reminded me of someone from a lifetime ago and had the same first name, but she was younger and nicer. Could be because she was getting my money.

See?

Uruguay’s run came to a close in the World Cup. They’ll still play in the consolation game, of course, but Netherlands handled them effectively enough, 3-2. The cheap goal at the end didn’t mean much in the scheme of things. The Oranje are right where they want to be heading into the final weekend f the tournament. I’ve always liked the Dutch style of play and it is nice to see them do well here.

Now, who will they meet for the championship game? Germany or Spain? We’ll find out tomorrow. Could be a good game, could be a snoozer.

Pedaled 10 miles this evening. I just ran out of gas right at 10. Could be the absence of protein for the day. So instead of riding more I did a few ab exercises and called that a workout. Tomorrow I’ll eat better and ride more, promise.

We had delicious pork chops for dinner, after which I started scanning things. And then I started editing them a bit in Photoshop. Tomorrow the Tumblr blog returns. The first several dozen things that will appear will be things I brought back from Europe. I have a big stack of water bottle labels, funky business cards and odd looking pamphlets that I picked up along the way. I lugged them halfway around the world, I’m sharing them with you.

Now I just have to figure out the problem with the Tumblr section on the right side of the blog. That’s never worked right, and I’m at a loss on a good widget. It isn’t enough that you see these things on a separate site, you should be able to find them here.

No, I won’t tie it all back into my Twitter account. Though I have found a way to write in my Tumblr, cross-post to Twitter, call it into Facebook and then publish back here. I’m only one step away from what Doc Brown cautioned against, creating “a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that’s a worse case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.”

I had to look that up on IMDB, not to worry. Also on IMDB, I’ve just learned that Carl Sagan and I have something in common, we both like Back to the Future.

It seems I’ll do anything to put myself with a prominent scientist.


3
Jul 10

A thoroughly predictable (but lovely) day

I had figured last night that we’d have a sandwich from Publix for lunch. By the time I woke up that had been decided. The Yankee asked what I’d like to eat today as she was already heading for the door. It’s nice to know someone shares your thoughts. It’s odd to think they have to be in your head to do that.

But you can’t make little coincidences like that into big productions. People will begin to question your taste in entertainment if you start yelling “Scanners. Scanners!”

That movie, incidentally was set in the far off future of 1985. Did you know there were two sequels? Me either. And a few spin offs. And, of course, somewhere the inevitable relaunch is being fussed over. (Thankfully it has missed it’s release date by two years. Maybe someone got to them.)

The second movie has a complete summary on Wikipedia, but few details on IMDB. The third one has a one-sentence blurb on Wikipedia. It is as if the writers there watched this for 20 minutes and then ejected the VHS knowing no one would ever feel the need to read about the film in great depth. They would be right.

Which is, I’ll grant you, a random way to start a Saturday. Especially since I’ve never even seen the films. But I did enjoy that sandwich. The nice lady at the counter, after she put cheese on The Yankee’s side of the sandwich by mistake said “Well you’re paying for it, so I’ll put it on this side.” My side had extra provolone. It was already an excellent day.

In the World Cup Germany pummeled Argentina, 4-0. It had to catch up to La Albiceleste eventually. They play passionately and freely and without a lot of defense this time around and the Germans just picked them apart. At least they didn’t mentally implode and pout quite like Brazil. Spain swatted away Paraguay 1-0 after that bizarre exchange of three penalty kicks (that were really two) that yielded no goals. David Villa later found himself alone in the box long enough to touch the ball three times and then rattled the post to send Paraguay home.

So we have a good mix of teams going into the semifinals next week. Netherlands will face Uruguay who are still in it on a prayer. Spain and Germany will face off in what should be a fantastic match.

Moved stuff around in the garage today. It’ll be clean by the middle of the week. This is the big push. Do I still need my eighth grade protractor? Do I still need so many VHSs since I don’t own a VCR? (A sentence which will be an ambiguous mystery far more quickly than we realize.) Many boxes of old things I’ve stored for years will be donated or dumped.

So we moved and shuffled and cleaned a bit down there today. Just getting started.

Then The Yankee and I introduced Wendy to DeVinci’s in Homewood. She had the manicotti. The Yankee had the gnocci. I branched way out and tried the lasagna. (It’s cheap, there, and filling.)

We visited the bookstore, because Wendy wanted to pick up some things. She’s preparing to go back to school and is studying for the GMAT. (Go Wendy!) We bought a kids’ book for a friend and some Mad Libs for us.

I know, I know.

We played those far into the night. We played enough that one of them actually made contextual sense. The law of averages demands to be recognized, occasionally.(Monkeys are typing this, just now, as part of their warm up for Shakespeare. That’s why this started with Scanners.)

Did you see that coming?


2
Jul 10

Friday is Pie Day

It isn’t especially surprising to me that Netherlands beat Brazil. That Brazil would look so bad in falling was unexpected, to say the least. Brazil played defense this Cup, for a change, but got conservative in every other way and didn’t really find a rhythm to reach their potential. That always seems to be the problem whenever Brazil lose. If they win, they can be majestic; if they lose they can’t find their ability.

And then Uruguay beating Ghana in perhaps the most heartbreaking fashion was tough to watch. Ghana are one of the youngest teams in the tournament, so they’ll be back, but how badly will this haunt them?

Missing the penalty kick to win in the final moment of the game to bring on the penalty kick tiebreakers. To lose after 120 minutes — where they largely controlled the game — must be devastating. Uruguay should be crushed in the semifinals, Ghana are crushed in one of the most bizarre finishes you could conceive.

Spent the afternoon at the pool. Met some neighbors with an almost-five-year-old who’s learning to jump off the side and a two-year-old who has no fear in the water. We were swimming with The McAlisters before dinner. We got out of the pool in time to catch a late seat at Jim N Nicks, where the kitchen was slow, the restaurant was dead and we filled out fake comment cards.

When you’re starving after the pool a slow kitchen isn’t what you’re hoping for. That just means more cheese biscuits. Elizabeth found a recipe for them the other day. You can steal it here. The barbecue house now offers, under “scratch-made trimmings,” fresh cut fruit. Frut at a barbecue house. That’s crazy talk.


29
Jun 10

Your basic Tuesday at home

Just house cleaning today. And laundry. Do you want details?

I have a lot of clothes. On those rare occasions when everything I own is clean I realize I need more closet space and a few more hangars. This is an excellent excuse to not do the laundry too often. And it is also an excellent reason why I don’t need more clothes.

I vacuumed this afternoon. The Yankee bought one of those fancy machines on sale last year, the kind that requires you to empty the plastic container every so often rather than the bag you can ignore for weeks on end. I’ve finally figured out how to remove the thing without pouring out all of the dusty findings back onto the floor. It is rare that you find successes in something as mundane as vacuuming the floor, but there it is. I did it today.

I danced a little jig, pouring some of the dust and debris back onto the floor.

Good thing I’d yet to vacuum.

In the World Cup Paraguay and Japan played to zeroes and added on an additional 30 minutes. After two full hours of play they had to go to penalty kicks. Spain faced their Iberian neighbors and gave Portugal the defeat they had coming to them. I’m now hoping to see Spain and Netherlands in the final.

And since Portugal is out, I offer you this tribute to Ronaldo:

Anyway. Tomorrow, I pick up The Yankee from the airport. From the U.S. to Europe to the U.S. to Asia and back to the U.S. in a month … we’ll just have to get her sleep schedule back to normal.


28
Jun 10

Monday stuff

Now it makes perfect sense. It is only because you watch that there are problems with this World Cup. Look away, world, the poor officiating and obvious errors will go away. FIFA is infuriating. Even so, the games continue. Netherlands struggled to play their game and steal beat Slovakia easily. They are rapidly becoming a favorite of the remaining teams.

The Flying Dutchmen will face Brazil, who offed Chile 3-0. Suddenly, in the quarterfinals, we’ll have one of the matches of the tournament.

At the gym this evening I ran a 7:30 mile. That was painful, think I’ll have to dial it down from there. I only rode 10 miles on the bike. Showered, visited the grocery store and picked up a few things for the next few days. I felt like a big boy because I found the capers all by myself. I even told the cashier when he asked if I’d found everything OK. He was impressed, too.

And then I spent the evening working on the outcome assessment program for Samford. We test graduates on law, quantitative and qualitative. I’ve spent the last week or so harassing grads to return the material, so I can grade it. I’ve spent an hour or two telling people “No, you’ve graduated. This is for us. You can keep your diploma.”

Since there’s not much else I’ll leave you with a few things I’m reading today. From the oil spill there comes research opportunities. Anyone up for helping me brainstorm ideas? I don’t think there’s a lot of research there for me, but I’m sure there will come some great work from it.

Reasons the Sentinel and Philly.com have added mobile jobs:

“If there’s breaking news, you need to make sure it’s on mobile first and then online,” (Tribune Interactive’s Mobile Product Manager Jeff) Dalo said. “By having a mobile manager, you have someone who’s responsible for making sure that happens.”

Increasingly, mobile is where users tend to get their news. A recent Morgan Stanley study found that mobile users will surpass desktop Internet users by 2014 and that the mobile Web is growing much faster than desktop Internet usage ever did.

Maybe newsrooms will come around faster this time, too. The final quote in the piece: “If you don’t have someone responsible for your mobile content and parts of the revenue side of it, then who’s going to take responsibility for that?” (Philly.com President Ryan Davis) said by phone. “We hear so much about mobile and it’s because it’s so useful and because it enables us to reach people and places that we never could before. It has tremendous potential.”

Jeff Jarvis redefines, and defines down, hot news:

The most dangerous defensive tactic parried by legacy news organizations today is their attempt to claim ownership of “hot news” and prevent others from repeating what they gather at their expense for as long as they determine that news is still hot. It is a threat to free speech and the First Amendment and our doctrines of copyright and fair use. It is a threat to news.

[…]

Hot news is ridiculously obsolete. What’s hot today? As Tom Glocer, head of Thomson Reuters, said, his news is most valuable for “miliseconds.”

News, it’s gathering, the architecture of dissemination, it’s perception, audience, everything has changed in the 90 years since hot news was defined. In that view Jarvis is right, and change is past due. We’ve already seen it in practice and now it is left to the courts. Jarvis distills this down to rights. As he notes in his own comments “Considering that PEOPLE now send more links than aggregators — via Twitter and Facebook and blogs and such — do you think they, too, should be stopped? I doubt that.”

Want something webby? Fifty Powerful Time-Savers for Web Designers. There’s some good stuff in there for you.

And, finally, a delicious flank steak recipe.