Tag: Misc (Page 6 of 11)

Gearing Up For Superhero Season

June 16, 2009 / DB

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve received an e-mail from someone who happens upon the blog that goes along the lines of this:

Dearest Blogger,

I recently found your wonderful weblog and have enjoyed it immensely. I especially enjoyed your recent post about potty training your daughter / watching a sporting event on your couch / the old lady who annoyed you at the grocery store. I was so moved by your work that I would like to reimburse you for the enjoyment you provided me. Please let me know what I can buy you to return some of that pleasure back to you.

Sincerely,

A Loyal Reader

I always respond with a nice note thanking them for the comments and pointing out that I blog for fun, not reward. However, these people are often persistent, and eventually I tell them just to buy me something from the Apple Store* and we’ll be even.

I may need to change my ways, though.

This looks someplace where I could use some gear from: Superhero Supplies.

AKA “Daddy’s Favorite Store!” amongst my daughters.

Not What You Think

October 24, 2008 / DB

So I bet you’re thinking, “Man, he’s got a new baby laying on his chest every night. He’s probably been watching a boatload of football and baseball.”

Wrong.

Unlike four years ago, when then three-month-old M. slept on me for hours at a time while I watched the Red Sox- Yankees and Cardinals – Astros do battle in their epic LCS, L. is a little too little to be able to hang on dad that long. Plus, with the whole waking every three hours thing at night, I’ve had to reign back my traditional night owl ways. Some nights, I’ve been going to bed around 10:30. Thus, I’ve hardly watched any baseball since the first week of the playoffs. I flipped by ALCS game five as I was on my way to bed last week and saw Papelbon was in in the 7th (I checked the game during Must See TV, saw the Rays were way up, and gave up). I thought that was weird but didn’t bother to stick around and see if he escaped without giving up any more runs. Of course, the next morning I wake up and see that I missed another epic game. Oh well.

I’ve watched a few minutes of the first two games of the World Series but have had trouble getting into it. Part of it is the teams involved. First, I have a thing with Philly teams. It all goes back to 1980. The 76ers lost to Magic and the Lakers in the NBA Finals. The Phillies broke my heart and beat the Royals in the World Series. And the Eagles beat the Cowboys in the NFC title game in January 1981. I’ve had little use for teams from Philly since then, unless they were playing a team I hated more.

As for the Rays, I should really be into them, right? Great story, proof that spending and drafting wisely can turn an organization around, and something that breaks up the Red Sox – Yankees – Cubs trio that ESPN forced down our throats all summer. Yet, I’m having a hard time getting into the Rays. It’s not because of this year’s team. It’s because they’ve been a horrible franchise with no fan support playing in the worst stadium in professional sports for a decade. As the Royals have withered on the vine over the same period, the Rays were the firewall anytime the word contraction got thrown around. At least Kansas City had a baseball history and a reputation as a good baseball town back in the day. If push came to shove, Tampa was one of two or three franchises that might get the ax before the Royals. So I’ve rooted for the Rays to be awful. While the idea of contraction seems to have been shelved for the time being, it is a scary thought if they can continue to be good.

As for football, between working the past two Saturday nights and not being able to sit in front of the TV for six hours anymore, I haven’t watched much. There is a bigger problem, though. The mental midgets at our cable provider and our local CBS affiL.te are in a pissing match over the rights to the CBS feed. Thus, we’ve been without CBS since L. was born. That’s three straight Colts game we’ve not seen. That’s three straight Saturdays without SEC football. That’ll put a damper on anyone’s football appetite.

Paragons Of Customer Service

May 20, 2008 / DB

We’ve been trying to sign the girls up for swimming lessons using the city’s parks & rec website. We kept getting an error saying we were already registered in their system that we couldn’t work around. So S. called and got a fairly young guy on the phone. After a couple minutes of fruitless explanations of what she wanted, basically to have our password/account reset, he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She just laughed, hung up, and called again today to talk to someone else.

The battery on her laptop tells us it is almost dead less than a year after she bought it. So I logged a point with Dell and got their traditional e-mail response that asks you to do about 1000 things before bugging them any further. My favorite part was a link to a section of their support site called The Dell Battery Center. When I click it, I get an error message that says the page does not exist. That explains why the battery is so shitty, I guess.

Friday Notes

December 14, 2007 / DB

I heard a rumor people are gathering in Kansas City tomorrow night to celebrate the life of one of the finest artists this nation has ever produced. I will not be making an appearance at this year’s Sinatra Party. I do hope all of you celebrate safely, though, and honor his memory in the proper way. I’ll find something nice to drink tomorrow night after I spend some quality time with the snowblower. Another rumor has it we’re going to get 6-10″ of snow tomorrow. Yikes.

A couple points to wrap the week up. It would be nice if Le Affaire du Petrino (I don’t know if that’s proper French) and the release of the Mitchell Report was an end to the bad news from the sports world for awhile. But there are always going to be selfish coaches that take the money and run, and while Petrino has set an especially awful standard for comparison, I’m sure he or Nick Saban or Larry Brown will be up to their old acts again soon enough.

As for the Mitchell Report, I watched a lot of the live coverage yesterday and was a little surprised by the tone. Basically the investigation was able to confirm, on an extremely limited basis, what we’ve all known for years. Since it was a toothless investigation, Mitchell couldn’t begin to measure the true scope of the problem. And despite those neutered powers, he and MLB have managed to piss off the players union which means our era of good feelings in the labor world may be over. I would feel better if Mitchell had pushed for MLB and the union to readdress PED testing immediately and not wait until the current agreement runs out in 2011. As it is, this is just a face-saving measure, and very late, by MLB that will probably backfire on them.

It is great that Roger Clemens got dragged into all of this, though. It’s just a shame he’ll never get the same treatment that Barry Bonds got over the past four years since his career is probably done. Not only a monumental jackass, but a cheating one.

Where Did The Week Go?

October 5, 2007 / DB

I’m not sure what happened to this week. Seriously, it seems like it was just Sunday night and I had grand plans for a bunch of blog posts, a bunch of projects around the house, and so on, and here I am on Friday having accomplished little if any of that. That’s what a cold going through the house will do, I guess.

So, hopefully lots to come next week. Favorite album #2 will be posted for sure.

I will leave you with an admission of a 70s song that, somehow, got stuck in my head and I had to break down and purchase it this afternoon. Thing is, I have no idea why. I didn’t hear it anywhere. It just appeared. So, a raise of hands, how many people remember the Bellamy Brothers #1 hit from 1976, “Let Your Love Flow”? ”Just let your love flow, like a mountain stream. And let your love flow, with the smallest of dreams…” Come on, you remember!

Go ‘Hawks!

Now Playing: Let Your Love Flow from the album “The Bellamy Brothers: Greatest Hits, Vol. 1″ by <a href=”http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20Bellamy%20Brothers%22”>The Bellamy Brothers</a>

The Lost Art (A Rant Of Sorts)

June 25, 2007 / DB

Lost arts: The bounce pass. The stolen base. Good customer service.

As we were working on our various projects around the house this winter and spring, I kept a mental list of customer service issues we had with the various contractors and businesses we worked with. There were a lot of unreturned phone calls, which are always annoying. To be honest, though, I lost track of my big list because one business’ especially poor performance.

We purchased our swingset on March 30. We set delivery for two Mondays later, at a specific time so that S. and I were both around to monitor things and watch the kids. The model we purchased was missing a couple parts, but the owner assured us that we would have them in a week or two.

The morning of the delivery rolled around, and 30 minutes after the installation was supposed to take place, there was still no sign of the workers. I called, and no one in the office knew anything about us getting a swingset that day. The owner was not in, but they promised he would call to clear things up as soon as he got in. By 4:00, we still hadn’t received a call, so S. called back. She got the owner and he said something like, “Oh yeah, we didn’t get some parts we needed so we can’t do it today. I guess we forgot to call you.” Nice. He said he’d be happy to deliver it on the following Saturday, but we were going to be away from the house that day. She explained how she had adjusted her work schedule to be around that morning, she did not appreciate us not getting a call, and he needed to find a time this week to deliver it when we would be around. The swingset was installed that Friday.

But that’s just the beginning. A few weeks went by, no sign of our missing parts, so S. called. The owner, setting a theme that would continue over the next three months, had no idea who we were and couldn’t track down our paper work. But he would get those parts over to us that week. Three more weeks go by, and the process is repeated. Eventually, we get to last week, with a total of three calls in between. S. talked to him last Monday, and he promised the parts would be at our house by Thursday. He offered some story about how he knew they were making lots of people mad, and they were going to hire someone else to handle the playground equipment side of the company. But no apology.

Friday, we still don’t have the parts, so I called. He claimed he had talked to S. the previous day and he had said the parts would be at our house over the weekend. I quickly reminded him they spoke on Monday, he said they would be in by Thursday, and I was looking at the swingset and they weren’t out there. I said I wanted the parts that weekend, or we’d need to get a refund for them and we’d go buy them someplace else. “Yeah, that’s definitely an option…” was his response. He said he’d check into if he could pull the parts from another set and call me right back. Two hours later, I finally get a call and he tells me that he’ll personally drive them over and install them after work Saturday night.

Quick, guess if he showed up Saturday night? That’s right, no appearance, no call. Finally, Monday morning he called and said he had the pieces and would send someone over to install them. The problem was one of the parts wasn’t the color we wanted. S. told him we didn’t want a mismatched part, knowing it would take another three months to get the replacement. A couple hours later, his guys show up, after a quick trip to Lowe’s to get a matching part, and install them in ten minutes. I cautiously inquired about what the hold up had been. One guy got real quiet and the other guy quickly said, “I don’t know, we just install for him, we don’t work in the office.” Well played, I thought. I mentioned how we had been told it would be a couple weeks when we first bought it. He snickered and said, “And a couple weeks turned into a couple more weeks, and a couple more weeks…” He knew where I was coming from.

After all of that, we finally have all the parts of our swingset. It only took three months and at least seven phone calls on our part to get them. Never got a decent explanation from the owner or an apology for our wait and their shitty service. We still would have been annoyed if they had communicated with us, but it would have been a different level of annoyance. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to do that when you’re trying to run a business. Now, we will tell anyone who asks about a swingset or basketball goal to avoid them, and we certainly won’t call them when we are ready to put a hoop in, which is where they do the bulk of their business.

So much for trying to go with the local business over the big, national chains.

IBM Presents You Make The Call

May 5, 2007 / DB

Every baseball fan remembers You Make the Call. I think it should apply to real life as well. So here’s my conundrum. Friday, I was out running errands and sitting at a red light near a middle school as the kids were getting out. A series of buses were making the left turn onto my street. After my light turned green, the next bus continued through the light and made its turn. I started to move through the intersection when another bus came charging through to make the turn. The driver was literally two and a half lengths back when his light turned red, but he decided to make the turn anyway.

So here’s the question: what should I have done? With kids on the bus, would it have been acceptable to honk? Honk and flip the driver the bird? Just give the driver the bird? Or sit silently? You make the call!

Unloading

April 30, 2007 / DB

A lot of ground to cover and, suddenly, nothing but time to do so. Here goes. 3000 words? We’ll see. Grab a beverage and dive in at your leisure.

A commenter asked Friday how I was celebrating the end of my grad school classes. Well, here’s what I did. First, I grabbed a big, fat carnitas burrito at Chipotle. Normally, I go with the vegetarian burrito. I figured I owed myself a little pork. Next, I read a book. Literally. My latest library book was an extremely quick read, and I knocked it off in about four hours. Then, the wife and kids and I went out to dinner (we’re having some work done around the house and our stovetop is out of commission for about a week). I enjoyed a tasty Stella Artois with my meal. Then, we came home, put the girls to bed and I went to bed shortly after. Why? Because I ran my first 5K in almost three years bright and early Saturday morning.

Like a lot of people, on New Year’s Day, I signed myself up for a New Man Plan. My back was perpetually sore and spasmy, my joints in constant pain, and I grew winded from simply climbing the stairs while lugging one of my kids. It was time to take corrective measures. Unlike most people, I’ve stuck with my New Man Plan, working out on a regular basis ever since. I did fall off the running wagon, a bit, over the last three weeks, so the race promised to be interesting. I just wanted to break 30 minutes, then run one race a month the rest of the warm weather months to stay in shape. I knew something strange was going on when I crossed the one mile marker and my watch read 14 minutes. No way was I running that slow, right? I figured I was right in my normal 10 minute/mile pace. My concerns were confirmed when I somehow ran the next mile in only six minutes. I crossed the finish line in 30 minutes, 46 seconds. But, I heard that because of some last minute rerouting, the course was closer to 3.5 miles instead of the normal 3.1. So that first mile was extra long and the second just mismarked, I guess. Anyway, I figure my official time didn’t beat my desired time, but I would have crossed in under 30 if the course had been the correct distance, so hey, I did it.

As promised, some thoughts on relevant sports issues.

Brandon Rush. Shame he’s going, for KU’s sake. I think he really wants to be in the NBA, so I doubt he’ll drop out of the draft unless something crazy happens. Unlike a lot of players, I think he could really help himself by coming back. But I can’t blame him if the money is there. I’ve gone back-and-forth on the age limit thing. I’ve decided, in general, I’m against it. But, I like what it does for the college game. I’m in favor of a baseball system, where you can declare for the pros out of high school, but if you go to college, you’re stuck there for three years. I think that for purely selfish reasons. It’s harder to fall in love with a team when the players don’t stay around. You can love the program, but the teams don’t mean as much to you when there’s a rotating door on the locker room. That’s a shame. I also think it’s bad for the college game because it means even more of the best high school players will sign with a small number of programs. The KUs, North Carolinas, Kentuckys of the world can load up every single year now, since their coaches can expect several players to either go pro or transfer after one or two years. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, I liked it the way things used to be better. Oh, and KU will still be good without Rush. Top 10-15 good instead of top five, but still good.

Curt Schilling’s sock. Stupid. People are idiots.

Randy Moss to the Patriots. Talk about reacting poorly to not winning a Super Bowl for two years! The Pats have gone nuts this off season. Better on both sides of the ball before the Moss signing. And remember, they were on the verge of blowing the Colts out in the AFC title game last year. It’s not like they were a crappy team. If Moss fits in, holy crap are they going to be good. The Pats have a way of making malcontents mend their ways (Corey Dillon, example), so I expect Randy to shut up and play for at least one season. Pats over the Saints in the Super Bowl.

The Colts drafted a wide receiver and an offensive lineman with their first two picks. Yeah, improving the offense when they’ve lost three key defensive players was exactly what they needed to do. Looks like it will be back to scoring 40 a game but then losing in New England in January because they can’t stop anyone. Enjoy last year.

What the fuck is up with Barry Bonds? There is drug testing now, right? How are we supposed to react to a nearly 43-year-old man who is on pace to hit 56 home runs? Is he on something that is undetectable? Or have all those home runs been legit? I have no doubt, based on the public evidence, that the guy used during his 2001 crazy-wack-funky year. But how much did they help that year? He’s one of the best hitters ever, playing in the juiced ball, juiced stadium, juiced pitcher era. Did they help him hit 10% more? That means he still hits like 65 that year. If he hits only 40 this year, and passes every test, do we have to reevaluate our thoughts of him? Part of his problem is he’s always been a first class asshole. All this indignation about his using has as much to do with the fact he’s an awful person as with the fact he was juicing. It will be interesting to see if his body can hold up.

All this nonsense about Hank Aaron needs to stop. The old man can stay at home if he wants to. He doesn’t owe Barry or baseball anything. As I commented over on The Soul of Baseball last week, what if it takes Barry a week or ten days to break the record? Does the haters expect Hank to haul his ass to every game? What if Barry is two shy of the record, and hits dongs in his first two ABs? Does Hank have to get on a plane and get to the game? Barry has often cried about how unfairly the world treats him. Frankly, I think it’s great that Hank ignores him, since he played in an era where he was the target of legitimate hate.

It’s all a shame. Barry is one of the four or five greatest players ever. How many of us are going to proudly tell our kids that we saw him play? I’ve seen him play live twice, and in each of those games he hit a home run (two home runs in one game, on a crazy hot day in St. Louis in 1997. It was so hot we couldn’t enjoy the fact we had third row seats, or something great like that. We just melted into our seats, slowly.)

I saw Bill Simmons wrote last week that there was no way the Yankees can come back late in the season this year. How many times in recent years have the Sox had a big lead in July and still finished second? I’ll believe it when I see it. Never count the evil empire out, especially when dealing with the slightly less evil empire.

What does Roger Clemens do? Go to New York to try to save the Yankees? Go to Boston and gravy train on what could be the best team in the league (Schilling, Beckett, Matsuzaka, Clemens, Wakefield. Pretty good #4 starter.)? Or stay at home in Houston for another $30 million? Nice problem to have. A-hole.

As I’ve written before, I hate the NFL draft, mostly because of the length and idiot talking heads we have to listen to. But I try to catch the Jets’ pick each year, because that is always the highlight. This year, I loved the kid who was preening for the cameras, heard the pick, and then waited to see how his buddies reacted before he went nuts. “Wait, who did we pick? Is he good?” Well done, Vinnie.

At the risk of jinxing it, Gil Meche has certainly been worth the money so far. In fact, for the most part, the Royals starting pitchers have been a pleasant surprise this season. That bullpen, though, ouch. For a franchise that has been in the tank since the strike, they have managed to produce some bats and the occasional arm. But that pen has been shitty since Jeff Montgomery’s glory days.

He might be a nice guy, but Ross Gload is my least favorite Royal. Just because of his name. Something about that name is really, really bad.

The Bulls sweep the Heat. I’m glad, just because of all the people out there who thought the Heat were going to repeat. Idiots.

I’ve pretty much kicked my NBA habit, so I avoided TNT most of the season. This afternoon, however, I watched a bit of the Suns-Lakers game. I have to say, the NBA in hi-def is a beautiful thing. Much better than college since they can swing the cameras down over the court. It’s like you’re in the front row. Why isn’t Carla Gugino in the front row like on Entourage?

Oh, go Warriors.

Interesting little conundrum developing across the pond. With my long-time favorite European soccer team, Juventus of Turin, relegated to the second division of Italian soccer because of their involvement in a cheating scandal (come on, cheating in anything Italian? How is that a problem?), I finally got over my issues with English football, and adopted Arsenal (the least English of all English teams, ironically) as my team. My choice was based on two things: My hatred of their rivals Manchester United and Chelsea and, like every other American fan of Arsenal, the fact I’ve read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, which is his autobiography told through his experiences as an Arsenal fan, twice. So anyway, like several other English teams, a rich American is angling to take over the team. The American in question in Stan Kroenke, part of the evil Wal-Mart cabal that drops truckloads of cash on the Missouri athletic department (that’s not fair, I don’t think he’s nearly as bad as his rivals, the Lauries). So while it would be cool for an American to own the club I follow, he’s not exactly my favorite sports owner. The Arsenal board announced over the weekend that they will talk to Kroenke about his plans, but have no interest in selling out to him. ManU fought a hostile takeover bid from Malcolm Glazer a couple years back, and failed. Mighty Liverpool was just bought out by an American. There is some concern that the Americans, looking more to profit than manage the clubs effectively, will ruin these English giants. It will be interesting to see how the Arsenal situation plays out.

Oh, and I have an addition to the places I need to see an athletic event. I want to see an Arsenal-Tottenham North London derby at the <a href=”http://www.stadiumguide.com/ashburtongrove.htm”>Emirates Stadium</a> someday.

Only 2000 words. Should I keep going? No. Instead, I’ll knock out a Reader’s Notebook entry and get that posted soon. Thanks for tuning in.

Pops

February 21, 2007 / DB

I love those random moments when you remember someone from your past and it makes you laugh and smile. Today, while unloading the dishwasher or folding laundry or some other domestic chore I tackle with aplomb, I suddenly remembered my boy Pops. I know a few of you remember Pops, too, but for those who have no idea who Pops is, skip down to the jump and read more.

I spent the better part of the 90s working at a warehouse in Lenexa, KS, shipping hardware supplies to stores around the country (Later, when I switched to the night shift, I got to drive a forklift all night. I’m a man of many fascinating surprises, aren’t I?). It started as a summer job, then morphed into a full-time gig when finances and an utter lack of interest in classes forced me to take a year off from school.

When I started, I was one of about four or five college kids who came in for the summer. Some of the folks in the warehouse were very welcoming, but others viewed us as uppity, educated prima donnas and did little to hide their scorn for us. A couple of the guys in particular, though, took an early liking to me. One of those guys was Pops. I called him Pops because he resembled former Pittsburgh Pirate <a href=”http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/stargell_willie.htm”>Willie “Pops” Stargel</a>l. Since I was an Orioles fan at the time, Pops called me Junior, for Cal Ripken, Jr. Over the years, more than a few people looked at us strangely when we peppered our conversations with “Pops” and “Junior” references. “So why is that skinny white kid calling that fat black guy Pops?”

Pops and I got along great. I still had a foot in the hip-hop world, and with the strong R&B influence I had from my mom, we could talk about current and old school black music. We talked a lot of sports, especially college sports. Pops was a big MU guy, so we had McDonald’s bets each time KU and MU played. As a summer hire, I didn’t have a work area of my own, but Pops quickly had me set up shop at his station. The morning after a bad KU loss, he would rush in and tape the story from the KC Star to our desk so it was the first thing I saw. I did the same when MU lost. We used clipboards to carry our work orders and mine was covered with pictures of KU players. He was quick to draw a mustache on <a href=”http://www.kusports.com/multimedia/photogalleries/basketball/02-03/ucla/6-01.jpg”>Jacque Vaughn’s</a> face or write “Wife Beater” on <a href=”http://www.ljworld.com/photos/2004/08/05/henleyrun.jpg”>June Henley’s</a> jersey. Oh, and we went round-and-round about <a href=”http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PHO/AAGK122~Magic-Johnson-Michael-Jordan-Photofile-Posters.jpg”>Magic Johnson vs. Michael Jordan</a>. Pops’ favorite line when defending Magic (remember, back then it was still an argument) was to rattle off his line from the clinching game of the 1980 NBA Championship. “Jumped center, 42 points, 15 rebounds, 7 assists, took tickets before the game, and sold popcorn during time-outs…”

But perhaps my favorite Pops memory is an unlikely one, though. He lived down near Longview Lake, and one summer Lollapalooza was held there, with Soundgarden headlining. The day after the show, he was going on-and-on about all the freaks he saw and asked me why I wasn’t there. Then, pivoting his 300+ pounds as if he was playing the bass, he started singing the bassline for “<a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outshined”>Outshined</a>.” Pretty impressive, I thought. But he went further. “I’m looking California….and feeling Minnesota!” Dude knew all the words to a Soundgarden song! “Yeah, you know you wanted to be out there, Junior!”

Anyway, that’s the kind of random stuff that pops into my head on occasion. Or, Pops into my head, I should say.

Adjustable

October 17, 2006 / DB

We went to the mall yesterday, and I noticed a display in the Victoria’s Secret window for a bra with “adjustable cleavage.” My first question, of course, was can I get a demonstration from an official VS spokesmodel? Since I was with my wife and two daughters, obviously I couldn’t ask out loud for that kind of thing. But it did get me thinking, and I’ve decided this could be the greatest invention ever. But, it also prompts some other questions.

First, how is the adjustment made? Is the bra like an old Reebok Pump, and the wearer needs to work a tiny pump with her thumb a few times to get the desired effect? Or, is it something simple like a zipper or velcro? Maybe a small crank. A motorized device triggered by a sliding switch? Or just a manual process that involves the wearer slipping some extra padding in?

Then, how are the settings labeled? Here are some ideas:
9-5 and Happy Hour (Get Noticed!™ Mode)
Business and Romance (Be a Knockout!™ Mode)
First Date and Third Date (Make Tonight The Night!™ Mode)
Everyday and Interview/Review (Get A Raise!™ Mode)
Meeting the parents and Meeting your ex and his new girlfriend (Make Him Jealous!™ mode)
Home maintenance being performed by contractors and Getting an estimate for said project (Get A Discount!™ Mode)

(First mode is obviously regular cleavage, second is enhanced cleavage.)