Dennis, Craig and I did some shooting yesterday afternoon at the range. My shoulder is feeling it today. We shot about 2.5 boxes of targets. Everybody shot very well.
I made a new friend at the range. The gentlemen shooting next to us came all the way out from Nassau (Bellmore, I believe). They had a really nice Do-All trap launcher and were throwing doubles most of the day - one low and far, the other high and descending rapidly like a duck taking to a pond. One guy, Kevin, shot about five different shotguns including a .410 over-under and a really nice 20-gauge. Kevin told me he likes to come out to the ranges out east because the ranges near him are in-and-out affairs where you shoot 25 targets at a time and they rush you. At our range, you can bring your own launcher and take your time for 10 bucks a shooter.
Just as we were leaving, the snow started falling, so Dennis, Craig and I made plans to take the ATVs out. Of course, once we came back to Wading River, we found out that the new battery Craig had picked up for my Cannondale wasn't holding a charge. So Craig was kind enough to let me borrow his 400EX. (On today's agenda - visit Riverhead Honda and get a new battery...)
We had a really nice run on some of the usual woods trails. Riding a quad in the snow is terrific - you slide all over the place, but still maintain a degree of control. Everyone was doing donuts in the clearings and kicking up big rooster tails of snow.
We also visited New Beach and made a little circle track in the parking lot. From there, we did some more woods riding and then crossed 25A to hit the trails alongside the William Floyd Parkway. We took a break in some of the firebreak trails back there, took our helmets off and shut our quads down, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness. After a while, we found that we could see quite well, although we weren't able to spot any wildlife.
After a few hours of sliding around and mocking the cars straining to get traction on some of the roads, we headed back. By the time we made it back, many of the main thoroughfares had been salted and plowed. 25A was in great shape, as was North Country Road. Only the smaller secondary streets were unplowed.
Great fun! I'm going to see if I can get another battery today and get my Cannondale running so we can do another run later in the day.
I was very scared yesterday morning, fearing for the life of our COO, Eric Porres, and his wife, Margaret, who are vacationing in Sri Lanka. An earthquake and subsequent tsunami have killed over 20,000 people in the region.
Thank God for technology. I tried to hail Eric on his cell early yesterday and sent an e-mail to his Blackberry. A few minutes later, an SMS text message came across the screen of my Treo - it was Eric and he reports that he is fine. Thankfully, he was on the other side of Sri Lanka.
WHEW!!!
My 2005 predictions for the media business are out. Weigh in here (in comments) or on the Spin Board.
I really want a Sirius or XM plug-in device for my iPod. Someone hurry up and make this happen.
;-)
I played a few more hands of online poker at Yahoo! today during lunch. While I was scarfing down my South Beach-friendly omelet, I realized that the dynamics of the game are completely thrown off by the fact that folks are playing with fake money.
Texas Hold 'Em is supposed to be a game of knowing your risk. If you are dealt crappy cards, you fold. Because if you don't, chances are you're going to run out of hard-earned cash PDQ. You bet only on hands you're reasonably sure you can win.
Unfortunately, when people play with fake money, there's no incentive to play strategically. If you run out of money, Daddy Yahoo just gives you more. So people bet the max before they even get to see the flop. So you can't tell how sure anybody is of their hand because everybody's betting the max.
So all those hands that you would gracefully fold in a real poker game become the shitty hands you let giant wads of money ride on in a fake poker game. Every hand, one person wins big and nine other people lose the same amount of money. After playing several hands, you realize that unless someone is particularly lucky, folks are simply trading money back and forth. No one wins big and no one loses big. If you happen to lose big, Daddy Yahoo fills up your account again, so no worries.
Bluffing is no fun, either. It doesn't matter if you bluff because there are probably five or six other player bluffing alongside you. Why not bluff? It's not real money. Usually, there's one guy with a good hand who wins and nine other folks who are bluffing. So you're not fooling anyone with a good bluff because everyone else is bluffing, too.
Once you realize this, you start to think that maybe you'll accumulate wealth faster than other players by playing only your really good hands and folding on the rest. Then you see the schmucks who win big hands by betting the max on an unsuited 2-6 and somehow getting lucky. And it becomes tough to fold on those crappy hands because it takes 20 minutes to play a hand - people playing with fake money sure do a lot of raising! But people don't automatically raise. Nosiree. They have to make it at least look like they're using some sort of strategy, so a couple people will call, someone will raise, the next guy will call, the next two will raise and so on and so forth until the betting has gone around in a circle so many times it makes your head spin. Then you get to see the flop. Then the betting commences before the turn. If you fold before the flop, you can probably go make yourself a cup of soup in the microwave before the next round starts.
So that's how online poker with fake money works. It's not really poker. Yet, people flock to places like Yahoo! Games by the krillions, eager to sit around playing an emasculated, crappy version of a great game with fake money, with no one really winning and no one really losing and no one really being rewarded for playing strategically because there are no consequences for losing.
Only in America.
Obviously, I hate spam in all its forms, but if more spam could be like this, I'd not complain about it so much...
Last night, I was not feeling well, but needed something to do to pass the time, so I logged on to Yahoo! Games and played some Texas Hold 'Em for a bit. I was playing at a fairly busy table and noticed that when a seat became available, somebody named "partypokermgr" sat down at the table briefly, offered up a redemption code for some free cash at the Party Poker site, and then left.
Odds are, someone at Party Poker wrote a script for this. (I doubt they're paying people to do this manually...) But I thought it was a rather innovative way to spam chat rooms, especially in a place where 100% of the participants fell into Party Poker's target audience. Party Poker is a client of my buddies at Earthquake Media - did you guys come up with this one?
You might be expecting to see something in this space about how a young agency executive, against all odds, braved sub-zero temperatures and a driving snowfall to drive a car most unsuitable for winter weather to New York City in order to get to work, even after being laid up by a flu virus for most of the weekend. Sadly, no.
Once I put my fuzzy cow slippers on this morning and looked at the blanket of white out my window this morning at 4:30 AM, the possibility of something like that completely disappeared. I'll just be working from home today, thankyouverymuch.
Normally, on days like this I'd be taking the day off completely to ride around on my quad. But we've got so many projects due this week, I'd be up a creek.
So Jim and I were talking a bit about Yahoo's video search beta. And then Jim came up with a really cool idea...Can you picture what it will be like in a year or two when some dishonest politician denies making a comment? All the bloggers will be able to call bullshit and link directly to clips showing the politician making the comment he denied making.
How cool with that be?
I signed up my home number for the Do Not Call list in the fall and I'm on the registry. Yesterday, when I was working from home, I got a call from someone pitching mortgage refinancing, so I told the caller I was on the list and gathered her company's information.
Since I was in front of my computer, I filed a complaint online. This morning, someone from the Consumer Protection Board called me at the office to talk about my complaint. He informed me that my complaint was being disallowed because of a loophole in the law. I understood that the law didn't apply to charitable causes, companies with which one has an existing relationship and whatnot, but there's another exemption. And it bugs me.
(a) "Unsolicited telemarketing sales call" means any telemarketing sales call other than a call made: (1) in response to an express written or verbal request of the specific customer called; (2) in connection with an established business relationship, which has not been terminated by either party; (3) to an existing customer, unless such customer has stated to the telemarketer or the telemarketer's agent that such customer no longer wishes to receive the telemarketing sales calls of such telemarketer; or (4) in which the sale of goods and services is not completed, and payment or authorization of payment is not required, until after a face-to-face sales presentation by the telemarketer or a meeting between the telemarketer and the customer.
Number (4) presents a huge loophole. Prett much anything that requires action subsequent to the phone call to complete the transaction is exempt. The gentleman from the CPB explained to me that "face-to-face" exemptions include mortgage refinancing companies, insurance salespeople, vacuum cleaner salesmen who want to come to the house, real estate folks - pretty much anything that requires further action after the call. He also explained that legislation getting rid of this exemption is going through the usual channels.
Pardon me, but doesn't this make the DNC law completely ineffective? Very few products are actually sold via a transaction completed on the phone. Maybe the DNC list will get rid of the guy who calls trying to sell an electric pimple popper or dent puller for your car, but it's not going to stop most of the phone calls that come in.
Thanks for the ineffective legislation, New York. At least the CPB is prompt in calling to tell folks their complaints are being disallowed...
I brought home a Super Nintendo when I graduated from college. It had been in my room at the fraternity house and it followed me to my first apartment. The Super Nintendo had replaced my NES, which had replaced my Commodore 64, which had replaced my Atari 2600, which had replaced my Telstar Pong game. It was when I brought this machine home from college that I told my mom "I don't think I'll ever outgrow video games."
And I didn't. Next came PC games, which I still play to this day. Then Playstation, then Dreamcast, then Playstation 2. I'm still dropping in at Best Buy after work to pick up the latest and greatest, and I'm 32.
And at 32, I'm only four years above the median age for PC and console gamers, according to the Interactive Digital Software Association. I personally know people who are over 50 and play The Sims, I regularly discuss gaming with people who are my age and older, and I think it's about time that people stopped thinking of gaming as something that only young kids spend time with. Those of us who grew up with Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision or what have you haven't stopped playing. I don't know of too many guys my age who don't have some sort of gaming device in their home, whether it's a computer or a console.
Yet, there's a huge uproar over the marketing of violent and sexually explicit games to children. The Grand Theft Auto series is taking flak every day, as are many popular titles. And once again, it's the parents who are making a big stink, crying "Won't somebody think of the children?!" and failing to take responsibility for their parenting.
Video games have a rating system, much like movies and music recordings. When a game has an "M" on it, it means the title is intended for a mature audience. And when you buy your kids rated M titles without checking them out first, you run the risk of exposing them to what many might consider inappropriate material. Period. There's no excuse for failing to take interest in the media your children consume or for failing to give them guidance.
But the parents continue to complain, saying -get this- that these mature products are being marketed to their kids and that their kids are asking their parents to buy these titles for them. And they want action - government action, specifically legislation.
I've said it many times and I'll say it again. The government is not a device to be employed to make the entire world safe for your kids. The first line of defense against exposure to questionable material should always be the parent. No one is forcing anyone to buy rated M titles for their kids. And some of us like coming home from a hard day at work and sitting down for a long session of stealing virtual sports cars and spraying virtual lowlives with virtual gunfire to blow off some steam. We appreciate that there are things in this world that adults should enjoy but kids should not. And I don't want my government telling me I can't have these things because if I have them, kids will want them, too. I don't care what your kids do when they come home from school, just as they don't care what I do when I come home from work.
So quit picking on Grand Theft Auto and all the other mature games out there. They're made for mature audiences and if you're uncomfortable with your kid having something that's made for adults, it's your prerogative (and duty) to use the word "no" every once in a while.
As the investigation into the U.N. Oil-For-Food scandal intensifies, I can't believe how politically charged the news reporting is getting. These articles have undertones of "Take THAT, liberals. The UN that you love so much is more corrupt than Tammany Hall and that Clinton guy you've elevated to sainthood has blood on his hands." Yesterday's front-page article in the NY Post was especially atrocious, with the reporter calling Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich "Pardongate" and making more references to the pardon than was probably necessary. Instead of telling us more about Rich, who he is and what he does, the reporter wasted too many paragraphs sketching out the relationship between Rich and the Clintons. And the fact that Rich allegedly did this stuff AFTER he was pardoned doesn't seem to deter the reporter from suggesting as many connections to the Clintons as possible - the pardon, the campaign gifts, etc.
Let me be clear about this. I don't care whether Hillary and Bill cashed in a voucher themselves. Just find the people responsbile who benefitted illegally from Saddam's oil vouchers (whoever they may be), arrest them and bring them to trial. And recover as much of the money as possible.
Foreign government officials and rich folks in the U.S. alike profited from this situation illegally. I don't care who gets embarrassed by revelations of impropriety. Just identify the guilty parties and bring them to justice, preferably with a minimum of partisan gloating.
I have a new tagline for The Home Depot. Well, maybe it's not new. In fact, it borrows from an old Lay's Potato Chip slogan: "No One Can Eat Just One."
The Home Depot - Betcha Can't Go Just Once.
The task was simple. Install a new faucet in the bathroom. I've done this countless times and it's easy. (Unless you don't have all the parts you need.)
So I pull the old faucet and the sink basin is all corroded on the bottom and it's ready to go. So off to the Home Depot I go. I get a new sink and head back to the house.
Turns out the drain stem is 1 1/4" and the trap is 1 1/2". So back to the Home Depot I go. For a 99-cent washer.
Turns out the old trap is too short to reach the new drain stem. So back to the Home Depot I go. For a $1.99 length of pipe.
Turns out the new sink has no retention clips in the box. So back to the Home Dep- nah, fuck it. Everybody deal with it! I'm knocking off this gig to eat pistachio nuts and watch football.
Last night, I reaffirmed my belief that a lot of people are probably spending waaaaay too much on high-end audio gear. If you're one of these people who absolutely has to have the top of the line gear for your home audio system, you're probably paying top dollar for equipment that produces sound only marginally better than cheaper alternatives.
Over the weekend, I hooked up my surround-sound receiver/amplifier to my TV and found out that the expensive speaker system I had purchased a couple years ago was pretty much kaput - must've been knocked around too much during the move. My center channel speaker was buzzy and my two rear satellites were distorting something fierce.
So I went to Best Buy and looked around at some of the speaker systems they were selling. Many of these were over $1,000, but I decided on a speaker system from KLH that was around $150. It included six satellites and a powered subwoofer. Upon getting home and swapping out the satellites, I put Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones into my DVD player and was totally blown away by the distortion-free sound. I watched only the first 20 minutes or so, and even my Mom was impressed with the way starships seemed to streak from one end of the room to the other. It was pretty loud, but the speakers just wouldn't distort or clip or anything.
Now, what additional benefit could I have gotten if I had blown $500 or $1,000 on new speakers? Maybe the ability to blast the sound to the point that my neighbors called the cops. Maybe a premium label to impress houseguests with. Other than that, not much else.
Listen to the stuff in the stores. If it sounds good, it IS good. And forget about spending an arm and a leg to get the latest Bose Acoustimass system or whatnot. It's overkill.
Last night, I came home and found several boxes waiting for me. One contained a new clock radio, to replace the one that could only wake me up with staticky renditions of Burl Ives singing annoying Christmas music. And it plays CDs and will lull you to sleep with background noise like the sound of ocean waves breaking on the beach or running streams. (Last night, I fell asleep to crickets chirping in the forest.)
In another box was a Star Trek DVD - the entirety of Season Two of TNG. Very nice - I watched the episode last night where Counselor Troi gets impregnated by an alien and Wesley Crusher decides to stay on board the Enterprise instead of leaving to go hang out with his mother at Starfleet Medical.
And then there was a new backpack. Just in time. It replaces the old ratty one with the torn straps that I got at the IAB conference a couple years ago. It's really nice and it has padding to accommodate my monster 17" Toshiba laptop. It's even got a little holder on the front for my Treo. Very nice.
Thanks, Dad.
Since the vast, vast majority of the FCC's enforcement of indecency standards result from complaints from the Parents Television Council, I propose we change the name of the government agency in order to more accurately reflect what it is that they do.
Perhaps we should call the FCC "the enforcement arm of the PTC" and make this the preferred term by which bloggers refer to it...
The MediaWeek story I reference above makes claims that FCC Chair Michael Powell might have been unaware of the source of the deluge of complaints. In that case, he deserves to be the permanent keeper of the Invisible Conceptual Idiot Baton. If it turns out he did know about this sad fact, he should resign (and quickly).
Dennis bought a new Mossberg, same as Craig's. I'm still sticking with my Winchester automatic. We stocked up on clay targets at the range's store, and Wal-Mart is still selling the Federal and Winchester target rounds very cheap. All in all, I'd say we went through 2 1/2 boxes of targets between the four of us.
Craig was off for most of the day. Dennis was looking good, hitting the overwhelming majority of his doubles. I'd never been shooting with Rob before, but his Daddy obviously taught him right. He's got a great stance, terrific technique and he follows all safety precautions to a T. I did well, starting off slow but I was hitting all my doubles by the end of the day.
One of these days, I'd like to get a trap that can throw birds and rabbits simultaneously. They're not very expensive, but you get burned on the shipping because the sit-down models weigh so much.
We may start looking into some club memberships in the area. I'd like to do some pheasant or quail hunting at some point.
Kim has been bugging me to put my holiday gift list up on the fridge. But I am a rebel, so I registered a gift list at GiftGang.com, a site recently launched by a buddy of mine.
And no, I'm not opposed to the idea of random admirers of my blog chipping in to get me that Sony DSC T1 I've been dying for...
;-)
I believe in what George Carlin dismissively refers to as "The Invisible Man in the Sky." Along with this belief comes a whole host of moral and ethical codes that I apply to myself and my way of living. At the same time, I hold no ambition to, through any mechanism, force these moral tenets of mine on anybody else in any compulsory way. Someone may ask for my advice, and I'm usually happy to give it, but in no way do I aspire to force any moral outlook that isn't based on verifiable fact on anyone.
I cannot prove that The Invisible Man in the Sky exists. Nor can I prove that the version of The Invisible Man in the Sky that I pray to is in any way superior to anybody else's perception of such a deity. Moreover, I cannot force my view on those who choose to not believe in deities or who pursue any other sort of religious or spiritual enlightenment. If I could prove the existence of The Invisible Man in the Sky, I'd be The Most Important Person Who Ever Lived.
But I can't and I'm not. At the same time, I don't see anyone else offering me what I would consider to be a moral, religious or spiritual alternative that, in my sole opinion, is superior to what I believe.
It's this religious freedom that the Founding Fathers of our country chose to protect in very special ways. Most of the other rules in our democratic system of government are made by majorities of representatives. If a certain percentage of our country's elected representatives think something should come to pass, it can make legislation that becomes the law of the land. I don't need to get into too much detail here.
But legislation concerning religious freedom is a tough thing indeed. The Founding Fathers gave this special attention because, in these cases, majority doesn't rule. Religious freedom, as well as the freedom of the press and other rights that can theoretically be infringed upon by an overzealous majority cannot be infringed in this way. It's NOT a majority rules situation when it comes to the bill of rights.
I'm not saying that certain rights are absolute. We know that the damage potentially caused by yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater trumps one's right to exercise free speech in that regard. We know that if your particular brand of Invisible Man in the Sky worship requires you to go around killing people with a long knife, your religious freedom gets trumped in that case.
And I'm not silly enough to fail to realize that all laws we make stem from moral laws. But the distinction between run of the mill legislation and that which effectively forces the religious codes of a majority onto the minority is one that the current administration fails to acknowledge.
It's when politicians tell me that abortion amounts to killing children and thus trumps a right for a woman to govern her own body, or when they tell me I can't buy beer before noon on a Sunday, or when they tell me content carried by the public airwaves that they willingly tune into is offensive and want to deny me the ability to see it - that's when I fly off the handle.
It's because, all of a sudden, someone else's view of what The Invisible Man in the Sky wants us to do is deemed to be more legitimate than mine.
You can see the futility of trying to find some common ground between a large number of people who have different views about The Invisible Man in the Sky and what he wants us to do. But there is common ground. And that common ground is known as reason.
I can't prove my vision of The Invisible Man in the Sky is the correct one, but neither can you. Thus, we're all permitted to entertain our own versions of morality and religion, as long as they don't cross over the boundaries of verifiable facts and the moral laws and compromises that follow logically from them.
My belief in The Invisible Man in the Sky is based on faith. That is, it's something I believe in, even in the absence of supporting fact. It's fine to have blind faith in something, but it causes harm to people when that blind faith dictates actions that infringe upon the rights of others. And when it comes down to faith versus fact when determining what we should be able to do, express, believe and think, fact should triumph every time. Otherwise we have no common ground on which to build the mechanisms by which we interact with one another.
Rather than deferring to reason when we make important decisions about our rights, we instead have countless situations in which competing tribes of people with differing versions of The Invisible Man in the Sky wrestle with one another over legitimacy. Not legitimacy of thought or expression, but legitimacy with respect to their beliefs and the favor of the rule of law. And all this is doing is turning the country into one giant pissing match, with people arguing and infringing upon one another's rights based on not facts, but things that people believe based on blind faith. It would be fine if the pissing matches were simply rhetoric, but they're not. We consistently go beyond words to actions - many times infringements of everybody else's freedoms.
Bill Maher, in a comedy routine I saw several months ago, described the triumph of "feelings over facts" in describing the prevailing values of our society. And THIS is precisely what's wrong with America today. No one who refuses to acknowledge facts can be reasoned with. That's what many of us fail to realize - when it comes time to resolve conflict, we have to base our compromises and resolutions on the facts and not on how we feel in our gut.
Lately, I've been confronted with many different situations in which I tried to resolve a conflict, but the person on the other side of the table dismissed the facts out of hand because he or she "feels" differently. It's an insurmountable obstacle when someone abandons all reason and refuses to acknowledge the common reality we share. And it's pointless to continue the debate at that point.
It's starting to happen with such alarming frequency that, lately, I've thrown up my hands and walked away from the debate entirely. It's not that feelings are unimportant, but if I'm willing to put the unverifiable aside for a moment to discuss how I should resolve a dispute in favor of trying to find some common ground we can agree on to craft a resolution, and the person I'm talking to isn't willing to do the same, the conflict cannot be resolved.
This is why reason must rule. It's the common ground upon which all conflict resolution must take place. Otherwise we're slinging around words that carry no legitimacy on the other side of the table.
This is why I didn't want to get out of bed this morning...
Clock Radio goes off at 5 AM.
You are listening to Clear Channel's WALK-FM.It's 50 degrees, rainy and gusty.
Here's Johnny Mathis.
[Johnny Mathis starts singing Christmas music]
I tapped snooze. WALK is the lamest "lite hits" station in the world. But since I snapped the antenna off my ancient clock radio, it's the only station that comes in clearly. And I need to wake up to the radio - for some reason, static or the alarm setting won't wake me up.
And, of course, Murphy's Law kicked in as soon as I got dressed for work. I left my rainjacket somewhere and couldn't find it, so I'm wearing a leather bomber jacket that's too small for me. As soon as I arrive at the train station, I exit my car and a wind gust turns my umbrella inside out, knocks my coffee out of my hand and sends my brand-new copy of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons flying out of my hand and into a puddle.
Not a great start. Hopefully karma will fall back into balance this afternoon.
