The Sporting Life, and electrons...

Monday morning quarterbacking somehow turned into Tuesday morning quarterbacking and now it’s Tuesday afternoon. So just some this’s and that’s.

Sport Section

If you watched the Saints/Vikings yesterday, you were not alone. It was the most watched football game (excluding Super Bowls) since the historic game between San Francisco and Dallas that resulted in “the catch”. If you don’t know what that is, skip to the technology section. Also, it was the most watched television program of any kind (excluding Super Bowls) since the last episode of Seinfeld aired 12 years ago. If you don’t know what that is, there is no hope.

I also watched that game (as well as the earlier one) and it made me wonder. I really didn’t really care who won, there were good story lines on either side of the ball, and having the Saints go to their first SB is a good thing I guess, although I don’t know why they continually linked that with Katrina – a stretch in my book. But as the game wore on, I really had to feel for Brett. Yes, it was his choice to be out there, he knows what football entails, but it was painful seeing him struggle to take a wallop, get to his feet, limp around and go for another play. Are we really to the point of “win at any cost” where it is an objective to conciously try to injure your opponent? When a linesman has the QB in his grasp after the ball is gone, why is it necessary to elevate him more, and then slam him to the turf, with no attempt at restraint, under a body that outweighs the QB by 150 Lbs or so? Hot dog, we cracked his rib!! Great hit man!! High fives all around. I suppose this will label me as a softy who “doesn’t get it", but boy, it’s hard to watch. Now we get the hype building up to the Super Bowl.. yahoo! Which I will be watching, by the way. Good opportunity to make some nice food..

Technology Revisited

Some of the reason that blogging has taken a temporary back seat over the weekend is because I was stumbling around with my Droid. It continues to astonish me what you can do with the thing. Street views in Google, traffic in your hand, e-mails come streaming in. Golly, gee whiz. But, that’s not why we’re revisiting the technology section.

One of the more useful inventions of man is the Garage Door Opener. How many times do you remember in your youth you were commanded by mom or dad to “get out and open the garage door” in the driving rain, sleet, snow, or 90 degree temps, and you did as asked, getting wet, pelted, frozen, or melted while struggling to lift a wooden garage door weighing three times as much as you so mom or dad could drive into the shelter of the garage before exiting the car?

We are on our second go-round of this device (thank you lightning strike), and they have given rise to yet another inexplicable engineering phenomenon. Our first one we had, I painstakingly managed to finally convince the car to act as “the button” and that worked fine. We have a rather long driveway, and at first you could press the button as you rolled in off the street, and by the time you got to the threshold, it was open waiting for you. Well, over a period of months and years the distance from the door at which it would pay attention to you diminished. New battery? No matter. Finally you mostly had to drive to the door and push to open. So, after the lightning strike mandated a new one, we were pleased to see that the range again increased to “street distance”. Due to fear of failure I continued to use the little hand held device instead of going through the laborious “set main unit to learn, run to car, push two times, wait for light to flash, then press and hold until light goes out", failing time after time until something finally clicks. But, anyway, after a few months of good operation with the “new one”, the radius of effectively began to diminish. Street, then three quarters, then half until at last you were parked at the door with multiple pushes.

But what propels me to include this gibberish is that the other day, I paused at the street to get the mail, and out of habit pushed the little button. To my utter amazement, the door began to open! Again, no action on my part, just cooperation of the demons. That in and of itself is cause for wonderment, but after a couple of days of this, today I gleefully pushed the button only to watch the door remain stationary. Creep a few yards, nothing. Once again, I’m now back to almost touching the garage door with the nose of the fluttermobile before it listens to me. What’s up with that? Some have suggested that EMI from the base may be a factor, but who knows. I prefer the demon theory myself..

But there is no change in the need to

DFD