Month: June 2010

A Perfect Example

When I mentioned earlier my criticisms of the President’s leadership related to the Gulf, I mentioned that he should either suspend the red tape, or blatantly disregard it in order to facilitate cleanup and containment. Via Instapundit, here’s a perfect example of what I’m referring to.

The opening lines:

We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.

Football

I Called It

When Pete Carroll left USC, I wrote that his seemingly inexplicable departure foreshadowed problems for the USC program.

Boy, was I right.

Given what happened with Urban Meyer, I wonder if Florida is next?

Football

What is Going On?

I’m on ESPN’s website and reading that Nebraska is going to be joining the Big Ten and that most of the other teams will be going to the PAC-10- including Texas, Texas A&M anc Colorado. Missouri is going to the Mountain West.

What the heck happened with the Big 12? Are the Big Ten and Pac-10 going to do the “super-conference” thing and have a championship game at the end of the year?

An interesting story for college football fans, I daresay…

UPDATE: This is a fascinating read about what college football could look like conference-wise in another 10 years.

Family

The Lass’ Graduation

I didn’t think to mention this at the time, or perhaps I did but in the euphoria of the moment I neglected to follow-through, whatever; the lass “graduated” from her pre-K class last week. Friday morning to be more precise.

It was a nice little ceremony thingy. The kids got books that highlighted some of their handiwork from the school year: drawings, projects and the like. There were pictures as well. They “sang” (screamed…obliterated?) a couple of songs as well.

Leaving aside that this was a pre-K class that they were graduating from; I’ll also note that she will be returning to this exact same class next year. Presumably, she’ll graduate from that class as well.

I could launch into a diatribe of sorts about the absurdity of graduating from pre-K classes and the like. The boy will be having a “graduation” from Kindergarten next week where he’ll walk across a “bridge” in the gym symbolizing his journey from one side of the gym to the other… Alas, these are the times we live in and making a stink out it doesn’t accomplish much.

I reckon the best thing to do is to make them aware that bigger, better and more important moments await them.

Misc

Tuesday Snark

Post author By Gerry
Post date June 8, 2010
1 Comment on Tuesday Snark

The boy started his Martial Arts classes last night.

At least he’ll know who’s ass to kick… and how to do it.

(I really, really tried to let it pass. Honest I did.)

Politics

Pathetic

Post author By Gerry
Post date June 7, 2010
No Comments on Pathetic

This is. Stupid common folks, they are SO troublesome and unreliable. Best to hang out with donors and flit about to create the illusion that they’re representing voters.

Via Instapundit.

Misc

RIP- John Wooden

Being a fan of sports generally, it seems appropriate to mark the passing of the gold standard in college coaching. I think it’s worthy of note that I’ve never heard or read anything negative about the man. No one’s complained about his coaching style, or his recruiting methods or anything. His players generally gush about him- it’s almost disgusting (in a good kinda way). I’ve only ever heard that he was the best at what he did. The college sports world is definitely a smaller place without him.

Politics

Crying Over Spilled Oil

Reading this (hattip: Instapundit) pretty much cements in my mind how Obama should have dealt with the spill. He should have been straight from the start- explaining that the process was going to be long, that there would be horrible ecological damage, that the federal government itself could not stop the leak but would do whatever is necessary to aid BP in getting the leak closed. That, in addition to the technology and know how, BP had all the incentive in the world to plug the leak. That now was not the time for the government to start investigations- the time for that would be after the leak was stopped.

Treat us like adults, in other words.

The problem, from my perspective, is that he’s been opportunistic- trying to figure out how to twist the outcome to his advantage. Thus, we get statements about “boots on the neck” and the like. Further, his base won’t hear that BP’s incentive is to plug the leak. So any kind of statement from him to the contrary will only piss them off. Modern politicians just don’t piss off their base. At least, not by telling them to sit down and be quiet.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the latest attempts at stopping the leak are successful. Will he try to glom up credit by claiming he was whipping BP behind the scenes or something?

Misc

Improved Garden

This is actually about 2 weeks old now. We’ve since mulched the lower portion of the garden. But for posterity’s sake, here’s what the rock wall ended up looking like:

Computers

Fix for cifs mount error

I have autofs setup on my machines so I can access some shares on a WinXP box without having to worry about entering cryptic mount commands. A couple of weeks ago I discovered the shares were not accessible. Which I found… frustrating. I worked at it briefly and wasn’t able to come up with anything at the time. Today, I finally got back to it and was able to rectify the situation.

Misc

Best Line of the Morning

Overheard on the radio this morning regarding Al and Tipper Gore:

“Does this mean Tipper gets half the Internet?”

Family

The Catch

Post author By Gerry
Post date June 2, 2010
3 Comments on The Catch

The boy’s friend hit the ball well off the tee and it made a gentle arc through the air towards the gap between the first and second basemen. On any other night, the ball would have completed it’s journey back to earth and continued rolling to the fence. A couple of kids would have chased it down and fought over who could throw it back. His friend would run the bases and that would be the end of it.

But on this night, the boy was playing at second base. Inexplicably, he moved toward the ball and began sticking his glove out. He watched the ball and, as it fell, he adjusted his glove down. When the ball hit his glove, it was down around his shins and his arm was fully extended. The ball popped up out of his glove briefly. The boy held firm, maintaining his balance and keeping his glove open and the ball quietly fell into place. He stopped and stood up.

All the parents watching in the stands cheered for him. All the coaches cheered for him. I heard one parent yell “Holy cow! That looked like baseball!”

7 practices, 4 games, 1 catch.

Family

I Did Not Know That

Said the boy: “Dad, scientists were the first people on earth.”

Me: “Why’s that?”

the boy: “Because they had to discover the dinosaur bones before the other people who aren’t scientists.”

Personally, I’m having trouble making sense of that. Perhaps I have to be 6 again to understand.

Misc

Ridiculous

Post author By Gerry
Post date June 1, 2010
No Comments on Ridiculous

This is just stupid. I first heard it discussed on the radio, then I went to look for something more concrete.

While I’m sympathetic to not blowing teams out for the sake of blowing teams out; I’ll also state that, being a competitor, I’d rather get blown out by an opponent than lose by a small score while they mock me by playing half-assed. If a team doesn’t have 2nd and 3rd stringers to throw in when it becomes obvious there is a mismatch, what else can be done?

Just for giggles, here’s some ways that rule can be gamed:

If down by 5 goals, the losing team kicks one in on themselves, thus ensuring victory.
For that matter, if a coach thinks his team is over matched, just have players score goals on their own team. Being undefeated was never so easy.
Once the 5 goal lead is reached, the better team scores on themselves to maintain the margin so they can continue to score goals.
Once the 5 goal lead is reached, stand aside and let the other team score. Then go back on the offensive.

If the idea is to have the rule retracted, I’d say the last one has the best chance. Any other ideas?