Just A Stop In To Say Hello

Hi folks. Just thought I would check in. Right now, I'm sitting front row, press box, at Cougar Field as the Houston Cougars take on the Santa Clara Broncos in the third game of a three game series. You guys know how much I love baseball, right? So I couldn't be happier than to be where I'm at, right now. And it's a great day for baseball. The sky is a high, cloudless blue. Game time temp was 63 degrees. There's a slight breeze.

The Cooogs are losing, of course. The score's 5-2 going into the fifth. But who cares? It's baseball.

I'm still working. Who knows for how much longer, but I'm still collecting a paycheck. The 11 hours days are really getting to me, though. They kind of appear to be getting to a lot of us, though, and tempers are getting kind of short. Some new people were brought into our building last week -- they've been working on the project, but from a different location -- and one of the guys sitting next to me nearly killed about five of them Friday as they're right behind us and they got on a loud, mundane, stupid-ass conversation about Fuddruckers that went on for so long that Avatar seemed like a five-minute short.

I'm going to end about here. I just wanted to check in and let everyone know I'm still around. I've just been working and doing mothership duties. Maybe things will change soon. Who knows.

Oh, before I go. Dear sports commentators. I'm happy that you finally discovered that hockey exists. But Team USA in this Olympics in no way compares to the Miracle on Ice US team. That was a team of amateurs in their early-20s taking on one of the greatest sports dynasties of all times in the 1980 Russian hockey team. This is a team comprised of NHL players taking on other teams of NHL players. There's just no comparison.

Uncle Drayton Gives The Fans The Finger

So I've taken today off and I've been getting some errands done. But now it's time for work, again. And I'm up at Cougar Field for some baseball action between the University of Houston and Texas State. But I'm surfing the web, and I just noticed that Drayton McLane just gave a big FUCK YOU to all Houston Astros fans.

He just gave Ed Wade a contract extension until 2012.

Someone, anyone...whatever happened to actually doing something productive to earn a contract extension? Gary Kubiak? Ed Wade? Hell, if mediocrity is a reason for a contract extension, I should have been extended by law firm instead of being laid off.

Just A Simple Question

Just a question: Why is Channel 2 wasting valuable news resources by doing a story on Ted Haggard? If I want to watch religious idiots, I'll just turn on Dr. Ed Young on Sunday mornings.

Questioning The Priorties At The Houston Chronicle Yet Again

Dear Houston Chronicle:

Hi, it's me, John, and excuse me again while I question your priorities.

You laid off numerous writers, reporters, editors, and support staff last March. You've got just one beat reporter covering the Astros, the Rockets, and the Texans (and he likes to take time off to go film movies during the season). And you won't even send your Houston Cougar beat reporter on the road to cover the team's basketball games.

Yet David Barron is writing stories about Olympic TV coverage, from Vancouver. He couldn't do that from his couch in Houston? But that leads me to my real question. I notice that Barron and Jerome Solomon are in Vancouver for the Olympics. I'm sure you have other people there, too. I like the Olympics -- I won't get to watch much this time out -- but I've got to question the priorities involved here. If you can barely afford to cover the sports that are actually happening in Houston, then shouldn't you be using wire stories for the Olympics. That appears to be good enough for the Cougars. And between Jesus Ortiz going to soccer in December, and Bernardo Fallas taking over the Astros in mid-January, you covered the Astros by way of the press wire.

The Olympics are a two-week event. The Cougars and the Astros are potentially in the news year around. Sure, a trip to Pittsburgh in mid-July isn't as glamorous as Vancouver in February, but the news that matters to Houston will be with the Astros on that trip to Pittsburgh, not in Vancouver. Look at what happened this week with the Cougars when assistant coach was put on leave while the team was in Bowling Green, KY. Of course, since the Chron beat writer for the Cougars wasn't with the team, that story got swept away until it was noticed that he wasn't at the game and the fan message boards started going crazy.

Then again, none of that is important as sending a guy to Vancouver to report on the TV coverage of what is happening in Vancouver.

Friday Musings: The Trapped Edition

Just a few musings to end the week.

1. I'm working at a site with supposedly 150 other adults -- about 75 men and 75 women. The men's room has one stall and one urinal. The women's room has two stalls. Now for the "adult part." Guys, act your damn age. If you're having to use the stall, don't piss on the fucking floor or the fucking seat. If you do piss on the seat, then wipe it up. And if you do the other thing on the thing, then flush. And don't leave a big brown mark on the seat.

We're supposed to be adults. So act like it.

2. I think I'm having some hearing problems. I've been having this buzzing/ringing/humming noise in my ears the past couple of weeks. I finally got permission to leave work one day next week and see the doctor. I'm thinking it's noise related. I've never worked in a louder environment. We all work in a big room, and it's like half of the people in the room have no concept of volume control on their voices. I tried the iPod thing with head phones, but I had to keep turning up the volume to drown all of the nonsense, and then the buzzing/ringing/humming started.

It's not bad when I'm at home, but at the hockey game tonight, they were so loud that I was covering my ears at times. I hope that it's just a stress thing and not something serious. But with my luck, I'm going deaf, though I swear that I can hear every word said by every person in the room in which I work.

3. I had to ask for permission to go to the doctor. I was a man once.

4. My life feels like a Bruce Springsteen song. Primarily, like Springsteen's "Trapped." So enjoy.

I Could Use Some Little Bribes

Another crappy day in clown land. More computer problems and glitches and stupid solutions that didn't work. And I'm a bit angry with the mothership at this moment -- apparently I'm supposed to push myself beyond exhaustion, not that it matters because I'm just too damned tired to write them anything for tomorrow.

Oh well, here's a song I found myself listening to quite a bit today. I shouldn't like it because the band's lead singer is married to Zooey Deschanel, and you know how I feel about Zooey. But I kind of liked the band before the marriage, so I won't stop now.

Anyway, here's Death Cab For Cuties with "Little Bribes."

Oprah-Dave-Jay Together Again For The First Time

I thought the ads in this Super Bowl were awful. Except for one. And the ending totally caught me by surprise.



Bravo to all involved.

According To The Chron, What The Saints Just Did Should Be Impossible

Well according to the idiots over at the Chron, what the Saints just did tonight shouldn't have happened. After all, Saints coach Sean Payton is only in his fourth season as a head coach, and coaches aren't supposed to be able to get teams in the playoffs after four seasons. In fact, according to these morons, coaches who can't get teams into the playoffs after four seasons deserve contract extensions because it's impossible to get a team into the playoffs after four seasons so you need to give the coach a new contract to show that you have faith in him.

It's a good thing I don't really believe any of the crap that John McClain or Richard Justice spew in defense of Gary Kubiak. After all, I bet money back in August that the Saints would win the Super Bowl. So once again, here's a big frak you to the McClain or Justice.

Way to go Saints. Good for you for doing what's supposed to be impossible.

Not An Addict

I've been under a lot of stress on this temp job -- long hours, no sleep, "malfunctioning" servers, etc. When I'm working and under stress, I usually find some song and just put it on repeat. Usually, it's The Beatles, but this past week, my iPod was on shuffle and it hit on this song from the mid-90s. "Not An Addict" by K's Choice, which frankly, I forgot was even on my iPod.

Let's just say that it became my song for the week. Which is why I'm sharing it with you.

K's Choice with "Not An Addict."

Some Random Thoughts

Some miscellaneous random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon...

1. Sorry I've been away. This temp job is kicking my ass. I work 11-12 hours a day, then throw in the commute time, and I'm gone from home about 13-14 hours a day. But I still have to write for the mothership, and by the time I'm done with that, I just want to sleep.

2. Conference USA is making me hate college basketball. When I'm not playing temp lawyer, or pissing people off over at the mothership, I still have my beat writer duties covering the Aeros and the Cougars.

I love college basketball. I love the passion of the fans. I love the better brand of ball, and the more fundamentally sound game that often comes out of the college game, and which the NBA is generally lacking. Then comes Conference USA. I've seen the Cougars play one game where they couldn't shoot 30% from the floor, yet barely lost. And last night they jumped out to a 11-0 lead on Southern Mississippi, yet lost the game on a tip-in at the buzzer 57-55 after shooting 25% from the floor in the second half and 32.3% for the game. That they were beat at the buzzer speaks not to the excitement of the game, but instead to the gigantic suckitude of both teams.

3. When you've got 200 people working on a project at the same time, all using the same portal, and all accessing one small server, of course you're going to have problems. The server can't take it. And ordering these 200 people to log off and try to access the server at the exact same time is what I call EPIC FAIL.

Yet I'm the temp employee...

4. If the Saints win today, I win dollars today. That means that the Colts are going to win the game today.

5. You've read my thoughts on The Blind Side. And I think about the same when it comes to Avatar. Yet they were nominated for Oscars but not (500) Days of Summer. And seriously, Meryl Streep got nominated for Best Actress by doing a bad impersonation of Dan Aykroyd, but no love for Zooey Deschanel?

That said, maybe, maybe, Jeff Bridges will finally get some love from the Oscar voters. Crazy Heart is a so-so movie (this year's The Wrestler, but not as good). Bridges, who is always good, is beyond good in this movie. But I wouldn't be shocked, or too disappointed, were George Clooney for Up In The Air or Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker were to win.

If you haven't seen The Hurt Locker, then you've not seen perhaps the most emotionally powerful movie of the year. I've seen it once, last August, but there are scenes in that movie that still stick with me. Most involving Renner. And let's just say that as much as I liked Up In The Air and Up, there would be some justice in this world if The Hurt Locker was to win the Oscar for best picture. For one thing, it's that good. Then there's the fact that the movie was produced and directed by the ex-wife of James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow.

She had about 1/30th the budge of Cameron. And she didn't have big special effects, 3-D, or a made up plant of blue people. Yet the world she created, though real, was more alien than anything Cameron could have ever imagined.

I'll try to write again when I get a chance.