About a year ago I was made aware of an interesting exercise in the form of a birthday card that apparently is known to everyone except me. The card read “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were.” I think it’s an interesting concept. We as society are constantly attempting to compartmentalize and quantify things and then map those results to a prescribed list of characteristics. The message is if the number says 50 but you still feel youthful, say more like 30, then forget the number 50 prescribed list and live the 30.
I would like to extend that concept to our perception of politics and the economy. What would we think about this administration if we weren’t told what to think. Have events in your life been dramatically altered? If we weren’t told the economy was in bad shape would that still be the opinion just based on what we see around us? In the interest of full disclosure I live somewhat of an unusual lifestyle. I do not hardly personally directly consume with my own dollars any of the handful of things that seem out of whack: gas prices, food prices, the mortgage situation, the devalued dollar, etc. In fact the one time recently I did spend money in a foreign currency it was the Mexican Peso which the US dollar has actually strengthened against.
The point is there are some areas where the economy seems out of whack but that list is finite and doesn’t effect us the way a recession would. For a while now people have been talking scared about the economy. Guess what the economy, measured by GDP, actually grew in both the first and second quarter of 2008. Think back to 2002. I’m sure everyone knew one or more people who got laid off. I have not heard of a single friend, family friend, acquantance, whatever who has been laid off recently. In fact most of the people I know have gotten raises.
If prices of certain things we consume raise but wages raise too then that’s called inflation. Hopefully for the sake of your future your investments grow at that same rate or better but nevertheless your current situation and buying power should be unchanged.
I got in a debate recently with some friends in Texas about how bad this economy really is. In a poll of Corporate Executives Texas was ranked the number one state to do business for the fourth year in a row receiving over 40% of the vote. A state that represents about 10% of the population accounts for over 50% of new jobs created. You don’t pay state income tax and most likely don’t pay dues to a union that is choking to death your employer. So of all people to not be able to see through this smoke screen…
People freak out when Phil Gramm says that a recession is just a figment of people’s imagination. Now I am suprised he wasn’t able to predict that people would be too naïve and cynical of an old rich white guy in a suit to understand his point but I know exactly what he was saying. The statistics that show the economy is in a bad spot ARE mental. Consumer confidence is down but guess what? The unemotional/rational GDP measure is still growing.
How about instead of hoping and thinking that the economy is going to sink, you buy stuff and invest in the stock market?
If you think you can or can’t you’re right.
-hj
Written by Hujo on August 17th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.
An important lesson I’ve picked up is to consider the source. Everybody says take everything thing with a grain of salt but that just means be cynical all the time. Consider the source means ask yourself who said this, what are their motives, and how does that effect what they would say.
Case 1
Everybody is freaking out about oil prices. The price of a barrell doubles in a years time. Everybody is rushing to explain why. Oil speculators, weak dollar, china and india’s growing economies, you name it. Everybody has an answer. So I am reading some Yahoo Finance article about the situation and they basically build the entire article around a quote from the CEO of BP. The BP CEO claims oil prices are based in unexpected demand and limited supply and oil speculators have little to do with it. So here is a guy that reports to a board who attempts to hold him accountable for the company’ stock price. Here is a guy whose compensation is probably highly dependent on the performance of that stock and a story takes his claim that the price of oil is not highly overvalued as fact and runs with it.
Case 2
While reading a Business Week article about US Manufacturing jobs the debate is whether high transportation prices, logistical supply chain type considerations, and the US Dollar will result in manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. There is somewhat of a conclusion made that manufacturing sites are not inherently super agile and that these jobs will stay in China, which I agree with. But to support this conclusion they quote Xu Dongsheng who heads up the China Household Electrical Appliances Assn. Well geez that’s as close to asking a third party analyst whose hand is not in the pot as you can get.
Case 3
I have discussed this subject at nausea on this blog but Mark Cuban uses his blogmaverick.com to communicate directly to people so he’s words are not spun. Last fall he comes out with a post totally unprompted and after essentially swearing off discussing basketball following The Great Heat-Mavs Scandal of 2006 (remind me to come up with a better name). He goes into this detailed breakdown about how Devin Harris is the best defensive point guard in the game because of his quickness. The whole time he is making points and rattling off stats and you’re thinking to yourself “Yeah, Yeah you”re right”. What I didn’t do was consider the source. Mark Cuban is a smart business man. If he intended to continually resign Devin Harris and keep him as a Mav for life wouldn’t it cost him a ton of money to publicly admit this. On the other hand, if he had insider information about Harris’ ability and potential and wanted to trade him wouldn’t it behoove him to have Harris’ value as high as possible so that he could be packaged in a deal for say… Jason Kidd?
-hj
Written by Hujo on August 8th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.
Too often coaches get into these big games and do just that… flinch. They get away from what got them there. Legendary Texas coach Darrell K Royal has a saying “Dance with the one who brung ya.” That’s exactly what I’m talking about. If something is working don’t out coach yourself.
Last year the Mavs go off with the third best season in NBA history and in Game 1 against the Golden State Warriors they go small with their starting lineup, something they hadn’t done all season. Avery Johnson flinched. If you are the one seed playing the eight, just keep doing whatever you’ve been doing to that point and 99% of the time you’ll come out the other end.
Bill Belicheck and the New England Patriots flinched in the Super Bowl. The Patriots had gone 18-0 with Tom Brady chunking it up to Randy Moss to form the most prolific offense in NFL history. Until the last desperation drive they ran a completely different offense. And I don’t want to hear the excuse that they couldn’t do what they wanted to do because of the New York Giants. A month earlier they played the New York Giants IN New York and did just that… chunked the ball up to Randy Moss and lit up the scoreboard.
Texas lost last year’s national player of the year yet this year’s team was a popular final four pick whereas last year’s team didn’t even make it out of the first weekend. Every time a player or Rick Barnes was asked how that could be they pointed to the defensive side of the court. The offensive ppg were nearly identical but the ppg allowed was drastically improved. All season, the best record-wise in school history I should add, they did this by employing a 2-3 zone that prevented our undersized and depth lacking backcourt from getting singled out and worn out. For the majority of the tournament we went with this defense and won. In yesterday’s game with Memphis, in the first 6 minutes not only did Barnes flinch he put us in a situation where more mismatches were created. Our guards were 4 and 6 inches shorter than the guys they were told to man up. I think that 4 of the 5 one on one matches created mismatches in Memphis’ favor. If you are playing a tall, long team that plays above the rim why do you go man especially if that’s not what YOU do. After coming out of the under 12 timeout we finally went back to the 2-3 zone for the rest of the half and Memphis scored only 5 points in the half court. Then in the second half we come out with some kind of middle school box and one defense that I haven’t EVER seen us play. Rick Barnes, you flinched.
-hj
Written by Hujo on March 31st, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Sports and Texas Sports.
This is why they play the game. Upsets. Sports are unpredictable and that’s what makes them great. If games played out exactly how they stacked up on paper there would be no sense in watching.
I had a friend in college who was simply not a sports fan. He didn’t go to the football games and rarely even watched them on TV. His argument: I already know what’s going to happen, whats the point.
There are two types of really exciting games. The one where two teams are very evenly matched and going in you don’t know what is going to happen and there is a dramatic finish. The other is when you do think you know what is going to happen and the opposite happens.
The point of going to a game or watching it on tv isn’t so that you can be the first to know the result of the game. It’s so that you can experience the suspense and drama as it happens.
In my new years resolution/goal setting post I talked about eliminating the watching of bogus games. But now I’m thinking… if I had applied that rule would I have been watching the Michigan-Appalachian State game last fall?
Only watching the games that appear to be good on paper requires only watching a limited number of games.
Watching any game that ends up being a good game whether or not it originally appeared to or not requires you watch a ton if not all of the games. Not that it will kill you to miss one but if you had the choice you’d rather not.
And to the point of the dramatic upset, what has been going on lately? It seems we are in the golden era of the sports upset.
Greatest first round upset in NBA history, Appalachian state over Michigan AT Michigan, Stanford over USC as 41 pt dogs, 18-0 Pats/team 2 and a half minutes away from being unanimously pronounced greatest team ever upset by a 6 loss wildcard who didn’t win their division.
I think pulling for the underdog in sports is something inherently American.
Now there are exceptions. In my travels over the past year I have met people from Omaha and Connecticut who claim to love the Cowboys, neither of whom have stepped foot in the state of Texas.
I think everyone has an example similar to this involving a Yankee fan.
I heard a quote about 6 months ago claiming that “Rooting for the Yankees is like going to a casino and rooting for the house.” Why if you were not a native New Yorker would you root for the Yankees?
A coworker on my most recent project moved to New Jersey over 10 years ago from Australia. I asked if he was a Yankee fan and I thought he said yea but I wasn’t sure. He then said, “You have to understand when I moved in ‘95 the Mets were horrible.” Oh, so you are a Mets fan?
Long story short I thought he had jumped on with the Mets during a rough time and rode the rollercoaster to their current status of annual challenger. He thought it made perfect sense to find out the favorite and root for them. How is that the noble thing to do?
Before yesterday’s Super Bowl a buddy and I tried to convince ourselves it would be better if the Patriots won because both of us knew and worked with New Yorkers and knew it would be unbearable to be around them if they won, especially coming off the hands of them defeating the Cowboys.
But once the game started I couldn’t help myself. Any 50/50 play I found myself instinctively pulling for the underdog. And that why we play the game.
Hj
Written by Hujo on February 4th, 2008 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Sports.
A policy that exists but isn’t enforced.
Only one bag in the overhead bin. You are allowed to carry on one bag and one personal item. Put your personal item under the seat. Only put roller board bags with wheels in the overhead bin over the 3 seat row. They won’t fit in the bins over the 2 seat rows. This policy should be made aware to everyone at the gate before they board the plan as well as by the flight attendant while boarding the plan and I believe could be fixed with a solution as simple as an email. This Monday we began boarding at 7:45 for an 8 AM flight. We did not taxi away from the gate until 8:27. Enforcing this one policy would help get people boarded faster and would avoid the wasted time rearranging bags and embarrassing the idiot who tried to put his coat in the overhead bin (I guess I should expect this to occur weekly as I fly to Denver this winter). An extra half an hour over 4 flights, that’s an extra flight you could sell!
A policy that doesn’t exist but should
Stand away from the baggage claim carousel. With everyone standing with their shins against the rail 3 things happen. One, not everyone can get a spot and two, you can’t see what bags are coming up and three, it’s too congested to have any room to swing your bag off the carousel. Everyone stand back three feet so that more people can fit around and everyone can see and only approach the carousel when you see your bag coming. Painting a line on the ground would help institute this policy.
A word to the wise
Do not assume that a 20 something kid cannot have priority status over you on an airline if you only fly twice a month. The priority boarding status process creates a lot of angst as people watch other people board and wonder how so many people can be getting on ahead of them. It’s usually the last straw of patience when they see someone like me. Just know that the consulting world today is those 20 something kids whose total annual segments flown are in the triple digits. Your 2 sales trips a month are not the same.
A policy that needs to somehow change and a man to hate.
It used to be that you had the option of whether or not you took off your shoes when going through security. You could risk them setting off the system and having to hold up the line by taking them off last second. Then some jackass decided he was going to make a bomb out of his shoe. Now everyone has to pass their shoes through and walk around to pick them up. Some in socks, some barefoot. It’s disgusting. It makes me cringe twice a week, every week. Some kind of new technlogy needs to be created to scan shoes without having to do this. Do you really trust that the airline wipes these areas down through out the day? Me neither. When people ask me if I have gotten tired of travelling I usually tell them the only thing that I ever think about and dread is going through airport security which luckily is a total of less than an hour a week (knock on wood).
In other news, props to the Denver Airport for installing FREE Wireless Internet. If American ever makes their new pay in flight internet free my life will be free of complaints.
hj
Written by Hujo on January 31st, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Misc and Nerd.
My sophomore year of college I created my first website that originally hosted this blog. It also hosted my “To Do Before I Die” List. Recently a new movie, the Bucket List, came out which is about two dieing friends who not only decide to come up with a “To Do Before I Die” List but go on a rampage to check them all off as quickly as possible, one life experience after another. That made me interested to go back and look to see what progress I had made on my list since my last blog check-in July 16, 2006 when I without realizing it had accomplished quite a few things on my list. I really need to make this part of my annual January reevaluation. During that check-in I realized I had accomplished 8 things. Checking back I realize that I have accomplished 4 more things (Go Hunting, Go to a Baseball game at Wrigley Field, Go to Asia, Graduate from College).
My point is I am slowly knocking these things off of my list without really pro actively trying and scheduling them. What would happen if we not only set up a list of life goals and experiences but planned and scheduled them. So often I think we have great hopes and dreams but we just live our lives and hope they happen and sometimes they do. I think what it boils down to is doing great things and being great is abnormal. I think most people would rather be normal and average than abnormal and great.
There is a clip in Jerry Maguire when the mentor sports agent Dicky Fox enthusiastically says “I LOVE getting up in the morning. I clap my hands and say today is going to be a great day.” When people are making New Years resolutions I think they usually go through the same routine. I am going to eat healthy, exercise, make more money, and save more. I don’t think many go as far as to sit down and set life-changing goals and lay out a game plan to where they can say “This year is going to be the best year of my life”. And then the next year do the same thing and try to top it. Shouldn’t that be the annual exercise? How about even saying today is going to be a great day (not even the best day)? Strategize how we are going to make that upcoming year the best year of our lives which will make it tougher to top the next year but that’s a good problem to have. Now there is money involved in doing some of these outlandish life changing things and you need to be smart about that but that shouldn’t be an excuse you should just bake that into the strategy.
I’ve accomplished these few things on my list but I didn’t plan it or really even realize I had achieved them until I looked back at the list. Maybe they aren’t supposed to be planned but my gut tells me if you want extraordinary things to happen you should be proactive about it. Darrell Royal says luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. The harder you work and more persistently you search for good fortune the more often you will find it.
In my New Years resolutions I have goals to knock off some of the things on my list but most of those are related to travel or one-time experiences. I made myself evaluate some of the day to day things I’d like to do more, some that I’ve done in the past. Work out (Cross Fit, Marathon), Reading (Business, Biography), Entrepreneurial projects, Eat Healthy, and blog more. Some people would view blogging as a waste of time. I would argue that it changes your outlook and you become more observant. You have thoughts and because you potentially could write a blog about them you think them all the way through. It gives you an excuse to think random thoughts all the way through and create an argument. I know that blogging helps you do these things because in not blogging in the past 6 months I have seen myself get away from these habits that I view as good habits.
I also identified quite a few things that I do on a day to day business that I want to eliminate or change the way I do. People talk about not having time as if there were people out there that have more time. Everyone has 168 hours each week and you decide what to do with that. An exercise in personal finance is to create a budget and place every dollar of your pay check somewhere, whether it’s in a savings bucket, rent, food, whatever. People always talk about feeling like they got a raise and the reason is the small miscellaneous purchases that are allowed and go unseen when you don’t budget eat up a pretty significant portion of that pay check. Well view your 168 hours a week life a paycheck and budget how you are going to spend it. No matter how busy you are I bet you will feel like you just got a raise in terms of “time you have”. You don’t really have more time you just strip out the miscellaneous.
Well in my exercise to identify the miscellaneous I came up with the following things that don’t seem like a big deal but put together are significant. RSS feeds on Google Reader (Dallas Cowboys blogs, Deadspin, Traditional Sports Media, Personal Blogs), Facebook, Fantasy Football, TV: Sports(College Football, NFL, NBA, College Basketball, SportsCenter), YouTube, TV: Other (Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office), Hornfans.com, Email, Wikipedia, Drudgereport, and Podcasts(Cowherd, Sports Guy, The Ticket). You might say tuning down my misc list would be easy… just turn off the TV and the computer. Some of these I do plan to eliminate but some I just want to schedule. By schedule I mean what I usually will do is sit down on at 5:30 on a Thursday to watch The Office which say comes on at 7 and then watch the show after it. All of a sudden it is 8 o’clock and I just lost 2 and a half hours of which only 30 minutes (22 if you don’t count the commercials) did I enjoy. A better solution would be to DVR it so that I could sit down and watch it later and plunge through the commercials and then get up and leave. That’s where my time goes, I go to watch something on TV or send someone a message on Facebook and get sucked in and lose tons of time to things that don’t add any value.
I’ve also decided that during my annual review of my “To Do Before I Die” list (or anytime really) I am going to add things. Here is the list of the old with the new and accomplished.
Places to visit:
Alaska
Hawaii
Australia
Africa
Antartica
Singapore
Brazil
Tokyo
Outer Space
Australia
Grand Canyon
Germany
Trip around the world
Safari
Pyramids
Participate in the Running with the Bulls
Take a Cross Country Bus Tour
Things to do:
Run a Marathon
Go Sky Diving
Bungee Jump
Get into the Guinness Book of World Records
See a space shuttle launch
Watch a volcano erupt
Experience an earthquake
See a tornado in person
Experience weightlessness
Make fire without matches
Ring the opening or closing bell on Wall Street
Hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Bike the hotter than hell one hundred
Conquer fear of needles
Live to be 100
Bleach my hair again
Coach a Football game at any level (Pee-Wee, Middle School, High School, whatever)
Dunk a Basketball
Give Blood
Go to a Michigan-Ohio State Football Game
Have a Portrait Drawn
Learn to speak Spanish or another foreign language fluently
Own a convertible
Randomly jump on a bus/train whose destination I have never heard of
Ride a Bull
Ride in a Hotair balloon
Teach a kid to play baseball
Cash a paycheck and give it all to a Charity
Drive an Escalade
Get Married
Go fly fishing in a remote stream
Grow sunflowers from seed and then roast the seeds it produces
Have something named after me
Learn to Bartend
Own a Black Lab
Ride in a Fighter Jet
Shave my head
Teach a kid to fish
Write a Book
Approach a girl I have never met and ask her out
Brew my own beer
Fly an Airplane
Go camping alone for an extended length of time
Go on a Cruise
Go to a Texas High School Football game in which I have absolutely no affiliation
Have Kids
Know my family tree
Make a large donation to my Elementary School
Own my own company
Read the biographies on 10 great men
Ride a Motorcycle
Take apart an engine
Weld Something
Things to continually do:
Keep God number one in my life
Be unconcerned with money
Remain in contact with a friend from High School until the day I die
Die a Dallas Cowboy fan
Accomplishments:
Go to Asia
Go Hunting
Go Scuba Diving
Go to a Baseball game at Wrigley Field
Go to a College Football National Championship game(Hopefully a UT win)
Go Skiing in shorts
Go to a Football game at Kyle Field
Go to an Army-Navy Football Game
Grow a Beard
Sing a song at the top of my lungs with some friends in a bar
Take a picture with a Longhorn
Graduate from College
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there” - Will Rogers
-hj
Written by Hujo on January 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Misc and Nerd.
$100 a barrel and you betchya I just rang the register. I bought iShares Oil Services and Equipment ETF (IEZ) last January when oil was $48 a barrel and some media source, that I was very lucky to have read, was wondering aloud whether or not the price of oil would ever recover. Well of course it did and its back to an all-time high even causing $5 gas in California.
I really don’t think this energy thing is a short term problem. It’s going to be a continuing problem because insightful change is not going to come from our “Energy companies” because they are making too much money and have too much invested in the current model. That current model being supply energy to the world in the form of oil and natural gas. Sure some companies like Shell will boast that they are leading the market by creating a program that will invest $1 Billion over the next 5 years in renewable energy research. That’s not an Energy company taking on an insightful new direction, that is an Oil company conducting PR damage control. Over that same 5 year period Shell could very possibly bring in $2 trillion in revenue and they are trying to write off one billion as a big inspirational bet? I’m not buying it. If that doesn’t impress you then maybe Exxon Mobil’s $100 million over 10 years will…
If these Oil companies, let’s call them what they really are, can’t give up on their favorite past time of selling oil then in 15 years Houston, TX will be the shit hole of America that Detroit, MI is today. Detroit is a city that is also built entirely around one industry and that industry had a fundamental flaw going forward that it ignored in the past. Their industry is the automotive industry and their flaw was that it was bullied by labor unions and competition came about offering a higher quality, more cost competitive product.
I’m sure Detroit told themselves “We’re set forever! People will always need what we sell.” I’ve heard this exact same argument from fans of the oil industry. Detroit is still selling cars but raise your hand if A) you want to work in the automotive industry or B) you want to live in Detroit. Houston is already the fattest city in America(ironically joined by Detroit), the summer humidity is disgusting, and the traffic is horrible. What makes it bearable is that people are making money hand over fist… for now.
What I don’t understand is why one of the majors doesn’t go all in and make a big bet on alternative energy. The could brand (hey there’s a concept) themselves as the new big bad Texas energy company that finally got the balls to go all in (Texas Hold Em reference) and alleviate people’s high gasoline prices, heating bills, electricity bills, and inflationary prices that come as a result of increased overhead that higher transportation costs cause as a result of fuel costs. Someone needs to step up and be the Southwest Airlines of the Energy industry.
-hj
Written by Hujo on January 15th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Uncategorized.
For those of you who don’t know, the Curse of the Bambino was the curse over the Red Sox that lasted 86 years from the time they sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees until they won the World Series in 2004. During that 86 year period it was believed that because they sold Babe Ruth to their rival a curse should forever prevent them from winning another championship.
Well in Dallas since June 12th 2006 there has been an equivalent curse. See Laura Miller is the infamous mayor of Dallas who lost the Dallas Cowboys to Arlington and very nearly lost the Texas-OU game. I’m sure there were more things she did wrong but those are some of the most notable. The most notable mistake was allowing the celebratory 2006 NBA Finals parade route to be leaked to the media on June 12th, 2006 after the Mavs Game 2 win over the Heat. Since that point there has been a curse of Dallas in the post season.
After tying the most successful regular season in franchise history, Dallas dominated the first two games of that Heat series and the only question was whether it would be a sweep or whether the Heat would be able to steal a game at home and force it to 5. After the route leaked all hell broke loose. The refs started setting records for times they sent Dwayne Wade to the free throw line. Dirk, one of the best free throw shooters in the game, misses a clutch free throw. Cuban was fined a quarter million dollars. Stackhouse was suspended for an NBA Finals game (had this ever happened?). When it’s all said and done it was the Heat who swept four straight games after the route was released.
Fast forward to January 2007. The Cowboys are in their first round playoff game in Seattle. Tony Romo engineers a late fourth quarter drive and completes a pass on third down to Jason Witten to give the Cowboys a first and goal at the 2. The spot is challenged and somehow reversed to put Dallas in a fourth down situation. No sweat, the Cowboys are down by less than 3 so a Martin Grammatica field goal will still give the Cowboys the late lead. Somehow a shiny slick ball sneaks it’s way on to the field (which after the season results in the NFL changing it’s policy on which balls are used when) resulting in a Romo botched hold and failed conversion attempt.
Then later that spring, also in the first round, the Dallas Stars rally to force a Game 7 only to be eliminated before advancing even a single playoff round.
That same month the Dallas Mavericks wrap up their now most successful regular season in franchise history and the 6th best regular season in NBA history at 67-15. Who do they draw in the first round? The hottest team in the league and their former coach who knows their personnel better than anyone on the planet not receiving a paycheck from the team (well he may technically still be getting paychecks but thats a different story). What ensued was the biggest upset in NBA playoff history and a Game 6 Golden State Warriors series clinching victory.
Hell even the freaking Dallas Desperados Arena Football team went on to a franchise record 15-1 regular season locking up both homefield and the #1 seed and then on July 7th, 2007… you guessed it. A first round playoff loss to Columbus.
Well over the past four months what felt so right was the Dallas Cowboys record tying 13-3 regular season, home field advantage through out, and the #1 seed. What ensues… a playoff exit in the Cowboys first playoff game.
Since the Curse of Laura Miller went into effect Dallas has sent forth 6 professional sports teams, 4 coming off their best regular season in franchise history, and not one of them advanced a round in the playoffs.
The worst part of it all… she has already left office so any hope that the curse was contingent on that can be thrown out the window.
-hj
Written by Hujo on January 13th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Funny Stories and Sports and Nerd.
So I’ve gone on my longest hiatus since starting my blog. No posts since September and only three posts since I started on my project at work on July 9th. Well I am sorry, it has been work hard play hard to the max since the project started on July 9th (for me at least) and ended December 14th. It’s been non-stop work, traveling, and fun. My recent work travels have brought me to Washington DC, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Chicago, Nashville, and London with weekend trips to Pensacola, Atlanta, Auburn, Las Vegas, Seattle, Port Aransas, and Austin.
Enough about me, on to the post. In this post I will attempt to clarify many of the ambiguous sayings we use and to declare a single unique accepted form of the word or phrase to be used from this point forward.
Shopping Online versus Off line- How can these mean the same thing. Too often I hear people say they got a product off line. But they don’t mean that instead of buying it online they bought it off line ie in a department store. Rather they mean they bought it on the internet. How can this be? From this point forward use of off line is banned. In a related subject use of The Web, The Net, or The Interweb (yes I am serious) is strongly discouraged as an alternative to The Internet.
Lowering the air conditioning- This was the hardest one to decide on. After much debate lowering the air conditioning means making the temperature cooler rather than lowering the rate the AC is working ie from High to Low.
Use of ‘right’ in directions. If somebody is driving and asks the navigator or back seat driver if they should turn left and they respond with “right” that should be taken to mean correct. I always try to say correct anyways because of this potential confusion but this will be the new protocol. If they respond “No, right” then that should be negating the proposition and offer the correct direction.
Brands are okay. Coke can be used to mean soda. Kleenex can mean tissue paper. TiVo can mean DVR.
Subway, Barnes and Noble. These should be used in singular if you are referring to a single location. You don’t eat lunch at Subways and then grab a cup of coffee afterward at Barnes and Nobles.
Beer Bong. I site Old School as the authority on this. Beer bong trumps funnel, sorry east coasters. Beyond that beer bong can be used as both a noun and a verb.
Mouses. If you are referring to more than one furry animal mouse then it’s mice. If you are referring to more than one computer hardware mouse then it’s mouses. Look it up.
Troubleshot. This was a favorite survey of mine as well as beer bong versus funnel. On my resume I wasn’t sure if the past tense of troubleshoot was troubleshot or troubleshooted. From this point forward it shall be troubleshot.
Texas A&M Aggies. These people should never be referred to or refer to themselves as Texas Aggies only Texas A&M Aggies. Texas Aggies leads to confusion that they represent Texans or the University of Texas instead of the whacked out school that is Texas A&M.
State University. I brought this one up in my pet peeves post but Oklahoma State University, Kansas State University, Iowa State University, etc should never be referred to as Oklahoma, Kansas, or Iowa without the State suffix.
Midwest. To be considered the Midwest a school must contain at least one school from the Big 10 conference (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania… well maybe not Pennsylvania).
Great Plains states. States that are commonly misinterpreted to be in the Midwest. Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma.
2005 National Champions. For football the season shall be referred to by the fall year ie the year when the regular season was played. Although Texas won the 2006 Rose Bowl they should be referred to as the 2005 National Champions. We need consensus on this.
Umpire. Baseball does not have refs or officials, only umpires.
Hometown. You are from where you went to high school. If you moved around a lot during high school then you are from where you spent the most years during your developmental years (age 14-22) not from where you lived when you were 6 years old.
Caribbean. Unless you regularly use reckon, ain’t, and yonder there is only one way to pronounce Caribbean. CUH-ribein. Don’t slip up and call it Care-UHH-bein.
-hj
Written by Hujo on December 17th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Nerd.
Last January I posted my view on Chicago Bear coach Lovie Smith. Good coach on the field. Good coach off the field. Good guy on and off the field. Well his antithesis in terms of good guy is Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
Belichick is a jerk. He’s not loyal to players. He runs them into the ground and cuts them before their pay day. Not loyal to his wife, he not only cheated but cheated with a married woman. Not loyal to Mara family, promised the ownership family he was going to take over the Jets when Parcells retired then opted out after Parcells retired months after Mara’s death. Not loyal to Ted Johnson who he made play the week after a concussion and is now facing a lawsuit.
Hated by Bill Parcells, there last head to head on Sunday night is 2003 at Foxboro I wanted so bad not just because it was the Cowboys but because it was Parcells vs Belichick. Atleast Bill Parcells was funny. Compare Belichick to ExxonMobil. Both have an image as being big and evil but what compounds it is they don’t care that they are hated, in fact they kind of embrace it. Hated by Eric Mangini who Belichick wouldn’t even shake the hand of when he took the Jets head job jumping straight from a position coach. Hated by Romeo Cremmel who will not talk to him. Hated by the Boston Globe reporter who he shoved after last year’s playoff game.
Hated by LT who after a playoff game last January called the Chargers “classless” and suggested “it probably comes from their head coach.” Hated by fantasy football enthusiasts because he lies about injuries. He won’t release injury reports during the preseason bc he doesn’t have to and he doesn’t elaborate on the in season report that is mandatory. A “Questionable” or “Probable” is all you are going to get. Having a banged up Laurence Maroney on my team at the end of the year last year during the fantasy football playoffs was a roller coaster ride. Hated by coaches. There are 32 teams in the NFL and 31 coaches are in the Natioanl Football League Coaches Association. Guess who is not?
The guy is best friends with Nick Saban. That alone tells you all you need to know.
People love the Patriots because they were a no name team with a no name pretty boy backup QB who was playing because of injury. They come out months after 9/11 when the country was united as ever and take the field as a team without individual intros and win on a last second field goal. It was easy to adopt a team named the Patriots at that time. Since then they have maintained this annoying lily white image despite taking players and using, abusing and then kicking them to the curb.
Why does Belichick still get the pass? Because people respect winning. People respect success.
Well, let me say they respect winning and success if it pure. If it involves cheating you will never recover. Barry Bonds is not respected. Barry Bonds is a jack ass to the media just like Belichick is but the reason Belichick is given the pass is because before now he wasn’t a known cheater.
I will say they should be allowed to have a defensive player with a helmet radio. When I first read that there were reports that the Patriots had video taped the Jets signal caller my first thought was, is that really illegal? To me it’s like table talk in a card game. If you are willing to talk to your partner across the table in an attempt to use it to your advantage you can’ be mad when your opponent successfully uses that against you. Stealing signs is HUGE in baseball. Tony LaRussa talked about keeping a player on the playoff roster solely based on that player’s ability to steal signs.
Last spring they brought up allowing the defensive signal caller to use a helmet radio and guess who voted it down? The New England Patriots! The head coach that came up the ranks as a defensive coordinator and is viewed as a defensive genius passes down a measure that would be good for defenses?
Years ago I had thought about how easy it would be to use this type of signal stealing in high school football. So many high school football teams signal offensive plays in from the sideline and then that number corresponds to a play on the wrist band. We sent the play in with signals, for instance a touch of the bill of your cap would be a 3 and a brush of the shoulder would be 9 so you would look up play 39 on your wrist band. Some teams were blatant enough to hold up cards or write the number on grease boards so you don’t even have to translate. If you just told you middle school coaches scouting at that game to write down the offensive signal for each play you could create defensive wrist bands with a note of what route each receiver in the formation was running and you would walk away with 7 interceptions and 15 tackles for loss.
If they are going to do it right in front of your face then why not? Well the reason why not is because in the NFL the offense can send the play in through the radio in the quarterback’s helmet but the defense is not allowed to use helmet radios. This means the defense has one of two choices. Send a player in with the defensive call which not only requires a substitution every play but this won’t work against no huddle offenses. Or signal the play in. It’s a decided disadvantage to the defense so the NFL outlawed using cameras to steal defensive signals. Whether you can use binoculars and a cryptologist I do not know.
What Belichick did was illegal and because the on field defensive signal caller currently can’t use a helmet radio it SHOULD be illegal. I read a story this week that he had cheated before against the Lions. Head Coach Rod Marineli radioed up to his coaching booth telling his coaches there was a camera pointed right at their defensive signal caller and asked if it was legal. It is against the rules so it is that bad. There was a rule and they had been warned about it before. Anyone who has watched an Eagles game or knows anything about Defensive Coordinator Jim Johnson knows the Eagles blitz more than any team in the league. The highest percentage way to beat the blitz is to throw a screen over it. The Eagles players this week were claiming that every time they dialed up all out blitzes in the Super Bowl the Patriots ironically had a screen called. And what is most blatant about the cheating this week is he did it against a former assistant that knew his ways.
“We never used sideline video to gain a competitive advantage while the game was in progress.” –Bill Belichick’s statement to the media
Okay Bill Clinton, what the hell does that mean??? 1. It doesn’t matter what advantage it gave you, you were told not to video tape and you did. 2. You didn’t use tape “while the game was in progress.” Is the game only in progress between the snap and the whistle and you used tape between plays when the signal was sent in but not “while the game was in progress”? 3. Or does it mean that you don’t use the analysis of that tape to your advantage during this Jets game you break it down and use it to your competitive advantage during when the NEXT game is in progress?
If you don’t think this guy deserves to have his words scrutinized, then I suspect you have never witnessed how freaking political this guy is in press conferences.
People compare this cheating to guys who break the rules by using steroids who get penalized a lot worse than Bill Belichick I might add. This is worse than steroids. Steroids may or may not help a football player gain an advantage and even if it does it’s an incremental improvement on a player by player basis. If I’m a coach and you tell me I can either A) allow a handful of players to use steroids or B) know the scheme the opposing defense is going to run on a play by play basis I am going with B every time.
The penalty should be worse. Surrender a first round pick as long as it’s not a top 18 pick? Weak. No suspension for Belichick? Weak. No forfeit of the Jets game? Weak. Fine him only 12.5% of his salary? Weak. Make them give up a first rounder no matter what, make them forfeit the Jets game, and get Belichick off the sideline for the rest of the year. Making the most talented team since the Broncos repeat team of the late 90’s potentially surrender 1 of their 2 first round draft picks (which is the only thing this punishment means in true football terms) is not going to set this team back an inch.
Wade Wilson has diabetes and bought Human Growth Hormone to help with impotency. This does not have anything to do with gaining a competitive advantage on the football field, yet he is suspended 5 games and fined over 30% of his salary.
There is a rumor that a team used multiple helmet radios last year which has resulted in the ugly green dots on the back of quarterback’s helmets this year indicating helmets that have radios. Any chance Bad Bill had something to do with this? You decide.
Add Bill Belichick to Reggie Bush on my list of guys that I relentlessly hate on Aggie-style no matter what.
Shady Brady and Bill Belicheat
-hj
Written by Hujo on September 16th, 2007 with no comments.
Read more articles on Sports and stirring things up.
« Older articles
No newer articles