As the Skins get ready for a rare playoff game a lot of the media attention has been on the play of backup quarterback Todd Collins. I can see how this is a compelling sorry. He hadn’t started a game in 10 years, blah, blah, blah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the Skins have him and I’m glad he’s playing well but I’m assuming I’m not the only die hard fan who actually gets discouraged by this situation.
I want the Skins to have a good, long term quarterback. I’m not sure Jason Campbell is, or can be, that guy - but I’m positive Todd Collins can’t be that guy. Collins might be able to lead them deep into the playoffs - maybe even to the Super Bowl - but there’s no way he’ll be the QB in DC in 2 years (or even next year).
So I skip over the Collins stories. I’d rather read about Joe Gibbs or Gregg Williams or Portis or pretty much anything other than Collins.
I could make this a long story but I’ll try to keep it short. It starts off with me buying something from Verizon Wireless so you can guess where this is going.
I’m finally ready to give up on my Treo 700p. I’ve been using a Treo for years now. It seemed so cool years ago but now it feels like I’m carrying around a semi-functional brick (that’s the topic for another blog post someday). So, I decided to give the BlackBerry Pearl a try.
I decided to make the purchase online (it was 11pm on Thursday when I made this decision). It showed I was due for my “new every two” discount and they also had an online special going - so the phone would only cost me about $100. Good deal (except for selling my soul to them for another two years)!
When I got back to the office yesterday after the New Year’s break my new phone was here. I installed the battery and got started with it. I quickly discovered that either the unit was busted or I didn’t know how to use a trackball. I confirmed that I do in fact know how to use a trackball and therefore the unit must be busted.
Okay, the story is getting too long, here is the punch line. While on the phone with Verizon doing the exchange, waiting for some computer stuff to happen, I make small talk with the rep and ask if they ever have a chance to suggest improvements to their processes. She says yes. I suggest that they somehow work out a deal with their retail stores so defective online orders can be exchanged at a physical location instead of waiting for replacement phones to go back and forth in the mail. Her response, “that’s never going to happen - that’s a policy that will never change.” Of course, she’s right and I knew she was right before I even made the suggestion - but why not humor me? Why not say, “hey, that’s a great idea - I’ll mention it the next time I talk to my boss.”
Update: So after my complaining the replacement phone actually came today - so that was pretty fast service. Another “plus” is that they’ve stopped offering online activation (at least they didn’t with this phone) - which is good because the 7-9 times I’ve tried to activate phones online over the years have never worked.
We don’t watch tons of TV in our family, but we don’t totally avoid it either. As a technology guy I probably have more TV related toys than I can justify considering the amount of TV we watch.
My daughter, who is three years old, gets to watch a couple of shows here or there. In fact, there are only 4 different shows in her regular rotation. But it’s the Christmas season and my wife noticed the other day that our TiVo recorded Frosty the Snowman for us based on its psychic abilities. Of course, after telling our daughter she could watch it we discovered that TiVo had moved on and recorded other shows on top of Frosty.
I was thinking, hey no problem - there must be a solution to this. I have so many options at my disposal. First, I tried Amazon’ Unbox because I can pipe that directly into my previously mentioned TiVo. No luck - not available.
So I go to Plan B: iTunes. I’m a sucker and I picked up a used AppleTV on eBay a while back and in the past I have purchased (for $1.99 each) some episodes of The Backyardigans (one of the 4 shows mentioned above) from iTunes. It’s kind of a round about process - I but the show on iTunes and pull it down to my machine and then wait for the AppleTV to sync it over (why won’t Apple let me shop iTunes directly from my AppleTV?). Again, no luck - Frosty is not in the iTunes library.
I was starting to get nervous but I figured I had a couple of other options. My Verizon FiOS TV service has a pretty good On Demand selection. Of course, they don’t support the new CableCARD standard so I can’t get On Demand via my TiVo - but I still have my Verizon cable box around so I figured I could plug it in if I had to. But I wasn’t going to plug it in just to see if Frosty was available. I had low expectations but I poked around some to see if Verizon would let me search the On Demand titles via the web. Of course not. This is, of course, really dumb since it can’t possibly be that hard to make the info available.
Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea - NetFlix. We actually use the Blockbuster equivalent in our house (which is about to change since they just added $2/month to our service plan). I had been reading about NetFlix providing downloadable movies so I checked it out. Of course there wouldn’t be any (easy) way for my kid to watch this on our TV instead of the computer but I figured it was better than nothing. No luck here either - Frosty is not offered by NetFlix and their Watch Instantly service - and get this, from what I could tell there was no way to search which movies are available. I had to use an alphabetical list and jump down to the Fs.
So that was it - I was tapped out. Okay, I did spend a few minutes trying to figure out BitTorrent but I haven’t done anything with the peer-to-peer stuff since the original Napster days so I was out of my element and gave up quickly.
The whole thing seemed dump to me. I wanted to watch a show. I was willing to pay for it. I have several gadgets that are supposed to let me do this. Unfortunately, I don’t see a great solution any time soon. There are too many moving parts and different groups involved. I’d love to be able to sit at my computer, find a show or movie, pay for it, and then walk into my living room and watch it on my TV.
I’m feeling pretty bummed about this whole thing, and also a little guilty. I feel guilty because I wonder if I would feel so sad if it had been someone else on the team - not one of the star players. When I think about that question I realize that there’s a bigger issue going on for me.
As far as I can remember, I became a Redskins fan back in 1981, the first year Joe Gibbs coached the team. I was 8 years old. I’m not sure if I showed interest in it and my dad encouraged that or if my dad, a big football fan, decided that it was about time to get his sons watching football. Either way, a year after I became a fan the Skins won the Super Bowl and went on a great run for about 10 years.
I was very luck to grow up being a fan of a team that was doing well almost all the time. As kids we did all sorts of things like greeting the team at the airport when they flew back from Super Bowls, sitting the audience of the various local Redskins Report TV shows, or getting autographs whenever we happened to bump into a player out in public. In addition to forming strong feelings about the team during that time, my brothers and father and I formed a bond around being fans.
As a kid it was great because Sunday afternoon was football time - we never had any conflicts! If the Skins were playing, we were watching. Back then, half-time was a bit longer so we’d duck out into the back yard to throw the football around some. Sometimes Pop came out with us - that was always the best. We’d play around until Mom hollered for us because the game was back on. The first few minutes of the second half we were always winded, having just run in after one last long bomb.
I’m sure life was miserable for my mom and sister after a Skins loss - having half the family sulk around the house must have been no fun. After a win I’m sure it was a lot better.
Eventually I went off to college and a couple of years later Coach Joe Gibbs retired. Many a phone call back home involved talking to Pop about the Skins. After Gibbs retired the Skins were never quite the same so Pop and I would talk about what the Skins needed to do to get back to their old winning ways. We talked about coaches, other than Norv Turner it seemed like a new one every year or so. We talked about quarterbacks, the Skins managed to try several different ones every year.
After college, when I was living in Houston, I would go to a sports bar on Sundays, usually by myself, to catch the game. It was usually on the smallest screen in the joint and there were always more fans for the other team. But after the game, win or lose, I could give Pop a call to talk about it.
When I moved back to the DC area we would occasionally get together for Skins games. But the Skins usually weren’t that good and there always seemed to be conflicting obligations. Plus who wanted to go get into a funk with other people after a loss? What was once a fun, family bonding experience had now become a fairly depressing, solitary event. But I still enjoyed rehashing the various Skins news with Pop.
Then, back in 2003, Pop died. Obviously there are tons of things I miss about him but for some reason one of the hardest things for me was not having him around to talk about the Skins. Less than a year later the impossible happened, Joe Gibbs came back as the coach. What I would have given to talk to Pop about that move! I was overjoyed and heartbroken at the same time - Pop would have never believed it.
Of course, the second Joe Gibbs era hasn’t been the same as the first. Brian and I have families now and we rarely find time to catch a game together. Heck, if it weren’t for the invention of the DVR, and a very patient and understanding wife, I wouldn’t be seeing many games these days. My kids are too young to be fans and who knows if they’ll even be interested in football. I’ve been holding out hope that Gibbs would eventually get the Skins turned around and if they were winning more Brian and I would make the effort to catch more games together. Maybe the Skins are on the verge of another strong 10 year run, just about the time when I could bond with my kids over it.
For some reason this news of Sean Taylor has almost killed my desire to be a Skins fan, at least for now. Maybe it’s because I felt he was one of the key players on the team and without him I see several more years of struggling. It seemed like if he hadn’t been out with an injury for the previous two games the Skins could have won those - and maybe that would have made this season the turn-around season.
I guess my kids are still several years from being able to appreciate football. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe I should just check out of the Skins fan club for about 5 years and see how things are going then. It obviously won’t be with Joe Gibbs but maybe when Coral is 8 the Skins will have a new, great coach and we can watch some football together - and have fun.
I sat through last week’s game versus the Patriots and obviously as a Skins fan it was really painful to watch. I know there has been some debate about whether or not running up the score is something the Pats should have done or not. I wish they hadn’t, but that doesn’t count for much. I will say this - I think Belichick should be careful. I know Mike Wilbon and Charles Barkley feel the way I do - which is that teams retaliate against teams who run up the score but punishing them physically. I suspect the Skins were doing their best to do that last week, and with Taylor and Landry back there the Pats were rolling the dice on each play.
I don’t really know Belichick or even that much about him but it sure seems like he’s concerned about records and stats, which means he’ll be going for an undefeated season, which means he has a good shot at getting a key player hurt and blowing his chances in the playoffs. I think in the past the Colts have gone too soft for the last couple of games, but I suspect the Pats will go too hard. Without Tom Brady, that team is about average. I hate to see people get hurt but as long as it’s not career threatening I wouldn’t mind seeing the Pats go into the playoffs with Cassel under center.
And as for the Skins - well they go up against the Jets this weekend. Hopefully they will bounce back and win decisively. If they just squeak by, or lose, then I’ll be seriously bummed.
A little bird tells me that my brother has a bet with Gary Von the Skins game. I won’t reveal the details of the bet but here’s a question for you: what uniform is Riggo wearing in this video?
Sometimes I wonder what my mission in life is. Why am I on this earth? It seems like everyone is here for a purpose. We all do a lot of things but don’t we all have one thing that we do that seems to be the main point of our existence? Wow, that’s deep.
My mission in life seems to be stopping to “rescue” stray dogs. Where I live (the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC) there really aren’t many stray dogs who live on the streets. When you see a dog running lose with nobody around clearly trying to track it down you can be pretty sure it’s a family pet that has gotten loose. So, when I see a dog like that I stop and try and help. I’ve had varying degrees of success - but I always try. Sometimes the dog won’t let you get close - so I do my best to heard it away from traffic and then I move on. Other times the dog has no identification - I have taken a couple to the local shelter. Sometimes it is obvious where the dog belongs, a nearby yard for example, and you can just take them home. I’ve also found dogs wearing tags, called the owner, and had the dog picked up.
This morning I found two dogs running in the street on Columbia Pike. They seemed nice and while they wouldn’t let me grab them they were willing to follow me. We were right next to a house with a fenced yard and since I was in a hurry my plan was to just get them in that yard and then take off and let someone else deal with them (my good deeds apparently only go so far). The followed me and went into the yard so willingly that I’m fairly sure it was their yard. I then noticed the Sears delivery truck guy who had opened up the gate across the driveway, I guess to make a delivery. I asked him if he knew if these dogs had gotten out through the gate, “uh, I guess so” was his response. Cool dude, way to care.
Will apparently had the same idea and also contacted Andrew about it. Matthew was right behind and the ball got rolling on planning for the weekend. Brian and I have had a decent amount of experience with traditional web startups - having had several over the years as clients at Viget Labs. We weren’t sure how much we wanted to, or would be able to, participate in the weekend in DC but we knew we wanted to be involved.
When we started planning the weekend we were slated to be in our new office space by September 1st so we offered to host the weekend - it seemed like a good test of the new facilities. When I found out that the Startup Weekend schedule conflicted with another appointment on my calendar (the predicted arrival of my second child) I realized that my involvement would have to be limited.
Brian and I helped out with the planning over the weeks leading up to the event when we could but really Will and Matthew drove the process with guidance from Andrew along the way. As the weekend got closer we had to scramble a little to get the office space ready. We weren’t sure how many people to expect. We had a huge number of people express interest up front (something like 140), but then a week after we put out the request for people to do their buy-in we had less than 20 lined up. That was still about a week and half before the event and once everyone was there on Friday evening I think the count was in the 70-80 range.
I didn’t participate much in the actual building of the company, HolaNeighbor, over the weekend. (I did throw out a last minute idea, which managed to make it to the final 5 only to get rated 5th by all 6 groups.) I did my best to keep the facilities up and running. Saturday evening the network crashed hard and people started to bail. I was at home with my wife, wondering why our child hadn’t arrived yet, but I zipped back up to the office to see what was up (the office is just down the street).
I’m not sure what the network problem was - power cycling the router seemed to clear things up. At the peak we had close to 60 wireless connections, which was impressive to me, especially since our wireless network had been up for only a couple of days and was totally untested. The rest of the weekend seemed to go by without any major network problems - our 10 Mbps internet connection seemed to hold up well too.
From my perspective it was a fun and interesting weekend. In addition to meeting some cool people and having several interesting conversations I got to see how various people work, how they tackle a challenge like building a web application in a weekend, and I also got to see the new Viget office space rockin’! It was fun having people in the space, enjoying the double conference room, the garage door, and of course the Wii!
Here I am 5 days after the weekend and still no second kid. Maybe Startup Weekend will swing through the DC area again sometime and I can jump in a bit more. Brian and I have some ideas related to that - we’ll have to see how those shake out.
Oh, and this weekend is Startup Weekend Chapel Hill. At least one person from our Durham office is going to check it out and I think we’re slated to buy the gang down there lunch on Saturday. (We would have more folks attending if it weren’t for RubyConf going on down in Charlotte this weekend.) I’m sure they’ll have a blast and I can’t wait to see what they put together.
Startup Weekend is cruising along (without much participation by me due to baby #2’s schedule) and they have picked a name; check it out: HolaNeighbor.
The latest edition of Startup Weekend got kicked off in the DC area this evening. Brian and I are hosting the event over at our new space and so far things seem to be going great. We had a lot of people turn out tonight and we hope a lot of them come back tomorrow.
My wife and I are expecting our second child at any moment so I had to bail a little early today, and I won’t be able to fully participate over the weekend, but I hope to be able to swing by a few times to see how things are going. The Startup Weekend experience is just that - an experience. I’m hoping this group will be able to get something launched before the end of the weekend but no matter what happens I think the weekend will be a blast.
I was at Target the other day and bought my daughter some animal crackers when we got their to keep her busy while we shopped. After tax the crackers cost me $1.01. What’s up with that? Can’t someone, somewhere, knock a penny off that price and make everyone’s life a lot easier?
My involvement with 