Either this guy is terribly concerned about milk’s market share in the global beverage economy, or he needs to learn a little bit more about the people he’s hating.
Milk Fanboy?
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Champs Sports Bowl: FSU vs. Wisconsin
Before I get into the game I have to note my vehement disappointment with ESPN. I’m totally demoralized that they now have Billy Mayes doing promotional work for them, primarily for ESPN 360. That guy has to be one of the most annoying people I’ve ever seen on TV. I didn’t know all you have to do to hawk a laundry detergent is to yell for 45 seconds about how great it is. I hope that whole campaign is a bit of a joke by ESPN and it doesn’t last long. If they get the Shamwow guy on there, I might have to personally boycott ESPN for a while.
Okay, now for thoughts on the game.
Top notch win for the Noles. At half-time I wasn’t feeling all the comfortable with where we were, but we definitely stepped things up a little bit in the second half to secure a very solid win. I think Bobby stated it as succinctly as possible after the game when he basically said it came down to blocking. We weren’t blocking well in the first half and started blocking well in the second half and we got it done.
No question the defense won the game for us. Obviously we got 14 points from the defense on fumble returns, the first play being a pretty exceptional one, and they had an additional fumble recovery. They also played pretty solidly the entire game holding Wisconsin for 2 of 10 on third-down conversions, which has been a strong area for us the whole season. In an interesting move, Mickey Andrews, the defensive coordinator for FSU, was named the player of the game in recognition of the overall performance of the D.
The offense was nothing spectacular, but we did what was needed to be done to win the game, and we also won the time of possession by 10 minutes, which is something most experts were predicting Wisconsin was going to try to do to win the game. Christian Ponder wasn’t bad, but he’s going to have to really improve his passing game if we’re going to have a bigger presence in the conference and national conversation. That is likely to improve some with better protection from the offensive line and good lord do our receivers need to be more consistent catching balls. Its almost like they only want to catch passes that are hard to catch.
Um, Graham Gano is a beast. I know its sort of funny to call a kicker a beast but he singlehandedly won the field position battle. If I remember correctly, he downed 3 punts inside the 5 yard line, two of them on the one yard line, and averaged 48.2 yards per kick with a long of 58. He was also perfect on his PATs and he put two kick-offs in the endzone which weren’t returned. I don’t care who you are, that’s an impressive performance. Given our history with kickers, we’re really going to miss him next year.
Now begins the offseason game of who leaves early and recruiting rumor. Everette Brown is probably going early, which is going to hurt. Myron Rolle is also leaving for Oxford to take advantage of his Rhodes Scholarship, which will open another pretty important gap in leadership on defense. We’re also going to lose a handful of playermakers on offense at receiver, but we played alot of our young guys this season, so hopefully that fact and a more experienced offensive line will lead to some big strides for our offense next year.
Happy Christmas Harry
Well, Christmas day is winding down and I thought I would pop in for a quick hello and a Merry Christmas to everyone. I’ve had an awesome Christmas week so far, and its not even over yet.
Cris and I drove down to my folks house in South Carolina on Saturday. My mom was having her annual holiday party that night so we jumped right into the festivities. The next couple of days were spent trying to do all the final prep for Christmas gift giving.
Tuesday we all packed up the car and headed down to Atlanta to do Christmas with my sister and her family. Our Christmas ended up all spread out due to complicated travel schedules and some lacking communication earlier in the process of planning things out. That being said the day with my sister was awesome. We don’t get to see them near as much as I’d like to so I really appreciate the times we’re able to get together with them. We didn’t do anything particularly special with the day, but it that doesn’t matter at all. Besides exchanging gifts, we spent the day playing with the kids and eating an awesome meal prepared by my sister and brother-in-law. I think the thing that made me happiest from the day was seeing my niece looking healthy and energetic. She went through a pretty brutal year in terms of health problems and it makes me extremely happy that she appears to be past all of that.
Yesterday was one of the busier Christmas Eve’s we’ve had in quite some time. Because we were down at my sister’s on Tuesday, we were a bit behind getting everything wrapped and sorted out for Christmas Day. After finishing the last minute shopping and a marathon wrapping spree, we had one of the most interesting Christmas Eve services I’ve ever been to. Right after our pastor opens the service with a greeting and prayer, we always light the candles of the advent wreath. The unusual thing this year is that all of the power went out right after the Christ Candle was lit. Fortunately, we had candles lit in the sanctuary so we could still see. It actually turned out to be a very cool way to do the service. The candles weren’t designed to burn all that long so we shortened the carols we sang, but the message was there in full.
I also liked how our pastor dealt with it. The lighting of the Christ candle represents the bringing of God’s light into the world through the birth of Christ. He noted that the darkness had come, but it could not overcome the light of Christ. One of those give you chills moments.
Christams day was awesome. Again, just a great day spent with my favorite people having good time together and good food all day. It was great to have mom’s traditional Christmas Day brunch of eggs bacon and cinnamon rolls. I also had fun making dinner with Cris for my parents. I think my dad may have reached one of the first levels of nirvana having our chicken marsala.
My one big complaint from the day is that Santa decided to bring me a cold for Christmas. I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, because he treated me really well otherwise, but he was holding a grudge about something.
Tomorrow is Christmas #3 when my brother and his wife come up to my parent’s house. Unfortunately, and fortunately, Cris leaves tomorrow. Its sucks that she’s leaving b/c I’ve had a really great time spending the week with her here, but she’s going to her parent’s house to see them and her brother for a week and that’s a good thing. It always makes her really happy to go visit her folks, and I like it when she’s happy.
Well, I hope everyone had as good of a Christmas day as I did. And for anyone who’s wondering about the title of the post, its a reference to the Harry Potter movies when they say Happy Christmas to Harry Potter. It was either that or Happy birthday, since that is what Frosty the Snowman says when he first comes to life in his cartoon
Apparently Mayors were Feeling Left Out
Since everyone else in the country who’s economic situation sucks is asking for crap tons of money, the mayors of the country decided they’d get in on the action. When the idea of requesting a monetary package from the federal government to help upgrade the national infrastructure while creating jobs was first thrown out, I thought it was a good one. There’s been a lot of talk about our aging infrastructure and the problems its going to cause and lord knows we need to create jobs. The mayors claimed they could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in pretty short order.
Today the other shoe dropped. I missed the day at school where the explained that infrastructure included building a polar bear exhibit or a water park ride or starting a program to curb prostitution. I’m not saying these are bad things by any means and I would likely advocate all of these things given different circumstances. Essentially what they want to do is put a pool in the backyard instead of fixing the leaking roof.
This country needs improved roads, a reconditioned power grid, replaced bridges, more robust telecommunications facilities. I don’t think increasing the attendance at the Providence zoo or a Miami waterpark. And from my perspective, I’m betting attendance is down right now because people spend disposable income on activities like zoos and waterparks, and people just don’t have as much disposable income right now. Once the economy turns around a bit, I’m betting that attendance will pick up again.
The thing that really bothers me about this is that they’re requesting economic stimulus through the guise of infrastructure improvement. Its the same line of crap that congressmen use in their pork game. Bottom line, if we’re going to spend federal money on an infrastructure improvement project, it should be something that is going to more directly benefit society as a whole. Not the handful of people that visit a waterpark in Miami or a zoo in Providence.
One of my favorite parts of the article:
To reverse the current economic crisis, we must invest wisely. We must invest where we get the greatest return. We must invest in Main Street,” said [Miami, Florida, Mayor Manny] Diaz, who is the president of the mayors’ group.
Um, I think what constitutes “greatest return” is a hugely subjective thing here and I couldn’t disagree with you more. Try again.
Other crap requested in the proposal includes:
CNN also found in the U.S. Conference of Mayors‘ report a proposed $20 million minor league baseball museum in Durham, North Carolina; $6.1 million for corporate jet hangars at the Fayetteville, Arkansas, airport; $20 million for renovations at the Philadelphia Zoo; and a $1.5 million program to reduce prostitution in Dayton, Ohio. Officials in those cities told CNN the projects were needed.
I really hope if the federal government considers this, they break out a line item veto pen and get rid of some of this crap. I’m sure there are some extremely useful things in there, but I’ll be damned if I’m happily paying for a minor league baseball museum in the current economic environment.
Fun Freakonomics Facts
I love my Freakonomics daily desk calendar. Some totally random facts about totally random stuff. I thought these three days last week were worth sharing. For a little context, facts and figures are often bunched into a themed topic so here are the facts in the order I pulled them off.
10 December 2008 – On US roads, roughly 185,000 drivers, passengers, and motorcyclists have died since the last NASCAR racing death. (crazy to think about considering how fast those guys go)
11 December 2008 – According to the Centers for Disease Control, the rate of serious injury is higher for people who ride horses than for people who ride motorcycles. (great argument for me getting a motorcycle one day. yes I do want one, sorry mom.)
12 December 2008 – The people who get hurt riding horses are, like people who get hurt driving motor vehicles, often under the influence of alcohol. (You can get a ticket/arrested for riding a bike while drunk. I wonder if you can get an RUI if you’re drunk on a horse. What if the horse is drunk, but you’re sober?)
Interesting anecdote about the 10 December fact. One of my poli sci professors in college had a pretty interesting life before he settled down and got his PhD. He told a story once of hitchiking through Louisiana or some such place back in the day when hitchhiking was a more accepted form of transportation. He said he got picked up by a guy who raced cars professionally at a pretty high level. The guy said he felt safer on the track than he did on regular roads because even though they were driving so fast, everyone knew what they were doing and weren’t near as likely to do something stupid that would cause an a wreck.
The CEO of Merrill is an Idiot
I’ve been a little busy and haven’t taken the time to post, though a fair amount has been going on and multiple posts have probably been warranted. (I’ll try to catch up with those soon) Nothing like an ass of a rich white guy to bring me back.
First of all:
Merrill Lynch’s Thain, 53, who joined the ailing brokerage last December, is reportedly requesting a year-end bonus of $10 million, a source familiar with Cuomo’s investigation told CNN.
I must have been born and raised on a different planet than this guy. Never in my life would I ask for a bonus of $10 million. You don’t ask for a freakin bonus except under special circumstances like maybe your one of the guys from Armageddon and you’re going to save the world. If you’re a pro athlete you can write bonuses based on performance into your contract and that’s okay. And in that situation, you write a bonus in your contract for performing well, not for being an average to bad running back or for batting .150 as a lead-off hitter.
Let’s look at how Mr. Thain did for the year he’s requesting a bonus for:
In a strongly worded letter sent to members of Merrill’s board of directors, Cuomo points out that the brokerage reported losses for every quarter this year, and has lost more than $11 billion in 2008.
So you’re the captain of a ship that isn’t exactly sailing under its own power and you want a freakin medal? Is anyone else insulted by this? My first reaction is that this guy is a completely clueless, unintelligent moron, but if that were the case he probably wouldn’t be in the position that he’s in as the CEO of a major financial firm. So I have to go with the idea that this guy is a collosally, arrogant ass, and he’s about as out of touch with what’s going on around him as the CEOs of the big three auto companies, and the heads of the UAW appear to be right now.
If you’re the head coach of a football team with a 3-9 record you get fired, you don’t get a contract extension or a bonus.
Random Quote
Out of the blue random quote I thought of today that I think is funny. Don’t ask why I though of it.
“Raining down sulphur is like an endurance trial man. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, outside of soccer.”