Random Musings

Saw in today’s headlines that Kerri Strug has gotten married. You may remember her from the 1996 Olympic gymnastics teams. She injured her ankle but still landed her vault to seal the gold medal. I met her once and then hit her on the back of the head with a baby bottle.

Sony has officially announced that they will stop manufacturing 3.5” floppy drives. Of course these weren’t actually “floppy” as those went out a long time ago when the 5.25” floppy went the way of the dodo bird. To be honest, I was surprised to hear that Sony was even still making these disks as I don’t know anyone who has used them for a long time. It’s really amazing where technology and memory have gone. I recently purchased an external hard drive with one terabyte of memory for $99. Not only can I remember true floppy drives, but I remember buying SyQuest disks with 25 megs for $200 and being blown away that they could store that much information. Then came the zip drive, 100 megs, amazing, then the jaz drive with 1 gig, even more amazing. Now those are pathetic as you can be a miniscule usb drive with 4 gigs on it for $20. What will replace this?

Airlines, ever in search of new revenue, are now actually talking about charging a fee to use the restroom on flights shorter than an hour. This follows up on some talking about charging for carry-ons, and of course just about everyone now charges for luggage. I have several issues with this. The first is that if a passenger was traveling without luggage, especially on a one-way ticket, this was a red-flag for security personnel. Now it means they probably just did some shopping to get the lowest fare, which is often done using a one-way ticket, and they don’t want to pay the additional fee to actually take stuff with them. Is this making us safer? Second, in most of the articles on this (and in Southwest’s ads) they say luggage was/is free. It was never free. You paid for it in the price of your ticket, and anyone who isn’t figuring that into the price of their ticket when they book an airline ticket now is just foolish.

Do the airlines really think they’re fooling anyone when they say that the ticket is only $200, but by the way you’re going to have to pay another $150 in order to actually get on the plane and have a seat reserved for you. Just charge me $350 and stop it! Would we put up with this anywhere else? If you went to a restaurant and the menu said the entrée was $8 but in fine print it says that the plate is $15 and silverware is $7 would you ever go back? No, and the restaurant would quickly change their policy or they would go under. Instead, the menu says that the entrée is $30. (we’ll discuss not charging for service another time) So, airlines, get with it. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re just making us more upset, so stop it. Just tell me what it will actually cost me to fly and stop putting fees on everything else!

Yesterday the Yankees visited the White House in order to celebrate their World Series victory. Can someone possibly tell me why this is necessary? I can maybe understand the collegiate water polo champions going because no one knows who they are, and this is there one chance at having someone important care, although the cost of getting the team there probably isn’t worth it. But these are professional athletes. They’ve been feted and cheered everywhere they went, including having a ticker-tape parade in New York, so why are they wasting the president’s time with this? I think it’s all about publicity. The president looks good standing with all these famous people and he builds “buzz.” Someone once recommended that we actually have two presidents. One who actually governs and one who does this ridiculous publicity stuff, and maybe they're right. I’m tired of seeing the president wasting his time. There are more pressing issues than to be having your photo taken with Jeter and A-Rod.

Traditionally the team has presented the president with an autographed jersey with his “number” on it. Obama is the 44th president, but in a breach of protocol, the Yankees gave him number 27, which is the number of titles they have. They could not present him with 44, because that is a retired number held by Reggie Jackson, “Mr. October.” There was some discussion that they Yankees would unretire the number for a day for Obama. I am glad they did not. And on this subject, even though the “gave” the jersey to Obama, it is not his. He cannot keep any present he receives while president, nor can other members of the government. Instead the gifts are catalogued and put into storage never to be seen again. My first question would be why, knowing this, anyone still gives gifts to government officials? My second is why the government does not offer these items for sale with the money going into either the general budget or to a special cause, like say education, AIDS relief, national healthcare, or paying down the national debt? Why continue to pay for storage space, and the personnel to take care of items that no one is ever going to see again. Sell it! That’s what EBay is for!

Can someone tell me why there is a huge disparity between how Ben Roethlisberger is being treated and how Tiger Woods was treated. Although Ben was not charged, he was accused of sexual assault, and this is not the first incident of this. While what Tiger did was despicable, I certainly am not going to defend him, his was at least consensual. I suspect that a large portion has to do with race. Now I don’t think Ben is getting off scot free, but he does not seem to be taking the personal beating that Tiger has taken. And while we’re on the topic, I’m tired of hearing people talk about the fact that this is a free country and that Ben didn’t do anything illegal and he should be able to do whatever he wants and not be punished. Are you kidding me? The NFL is an image driven entertainment product. Ben gets to work in the NFL. It is the NFL’s prerogative to let him play and if they feel that he is damaging to their image then they have to do something. If you doubt what I am saying ask the NBA what the “Malice at the Palace” did to their image, their product and their bottom line. I know lots of people who stopped watching the NBA because this merely confirmed for them that the sport was dominated by hoodlums and the league didn’t seem to care. I’m not sure they have ever fully recovered, and the NFL does not want the same to happen. They are not guaranteed popularity forever. It must be cultivated and protected, and that is what Roger Goodell is trying to do. And do not believe for a second that this is not also true in other arenas. Even companies that you might work for will feel the same way. I have absolutely no doubt that if a similar charge was brought against me even without charges, just like Ben, I would be removed from my current church and not appointed to another church.

Finally, some more points on the NBA. Can anyone give me a reasonable explanation, other than TV, why the NBA playoffs take so long? It seems like they are as long as the regular season. Why do they have so many days off between games? Play the games and get it over with already. And a message to the Cleveland Cavaliers. While it’s great to have “Thanks Fans” painted on the court, you cannot do that and bench your best players at the same time. I understand the risk of injury and all, but people are not paying a lot of money to see the scrubs play. People are paying to see LeBron James play, and this may be the only game they get to all year, so put him out on the court. You, even more than any other sport, are a personality driven league (see above), so put the personality people expect to see out there.