It's a High-Tech World, and We Don't Even Realize It

Technology gets a bad rap sometimes. Texting while driving, cyber-stalking, facebook obsessions, tweeting EVERYTHING you do all day--all problems. Don't take it out on the technology, take it out on the idiots using them.

I know it gets said all the time, but where would we be without all this stuff? Forget living off the land, we feel like we'd be roughing it to not have the internet or our cell phone for a couple days. Don't act like it doesn't affect you...everybody knows somebody who says "I hate this cell phone, and I never use the internet." Even if you are telling the truth (and you aren't), nobody wants to hear it. We've all got to stand out for something, and if you need to stand out by being belligerent, more power to you. Just don't expect anybody to like you.

It's not like this stuff has been around for all that long, either. If you could go back in time just 10 years, I'd like you to drop a comment about texting while driving at a cocktail party. "Texting? What are you talking about...I mean, what are you WORDING about? Idiot, get out of here." Seriously, we take 20 minutes to invent words to talk about this stuff.

My buddy Brad and I were talking tonight and trying to figure out how old a particular baseball player was. In just a few seconds, we knew he was 34...and we're not even smart. Well, he's the one who found out, so maybe he is. But we got to wondering, how did people find this stuff out 15 or 20 years ago? I can't even remember back that far anymore. I guess you just try and find out by getting lucky. "How old is Eric Byrnes?"

"Beats me. Guess we'll never know."

"I'll write a letter to the newspaper. Maybe we'll get a response. I'll let you know in a couple months."

No way that would work today. If somebody tells me I have to write a letter, I'm like "what? No way! I don't even think I could find a piece of paper, let alone an envelope! And how much are stamps nowadays?" And if I get a letter in the mail, forget it. I'm nervous for a week. Maybe it's a ransom note...maybe I owe somebody money...maybe this is chemical warfare.

I'd like to see somebody go back 20 years and explain their facebook addiction. You might as well be explaining it to cavemen.

"Facebook? What? Do they have phonebooks with pictures in the future?"

"No, it's a website. Uh, it's this place on the inter...um...so it's this thing on my computer."

"You have a computer at your house? Nerd alert!"

"Yeah, I have a couple, but it's this place on the computer where people communicate with each other. All the computers are hooked together, all over the world."

"Wow, even in Russia? Russia sucks man...stupid Commies. So are there just wires all over the world or what? What are you, like pen pals with people everywhere?"

"Oh man, no, I don't know how it works. But anyway, there's lots of information on there, and I have a farm and a mafia on my page. I spend about nine hours a day on there. Plus more time on my cell phone."

"What? What are you talking about? You're a farmer and a mobster? Your page? You sell phones? I am so confused."

"No, it's a cell phone, like cellular. It's where I do my twitter."

"Get away from me, man. I don't want to hear anything else about your twitter."

What a Basketball Game Should Look Like

Whoa.  That game was amazing.

I was pulling for Butler, but it wasn't an easy decision.  I actually like Duke.  Coach K is a pretty classy guy, and his team reflects that.  Sure, it's a private school for rich kids, but so is Butler, so I can't really make a comparison there.  I hated Christian Laettner just like most of the rest of our solar system, but he's been gone for a long time, so maybe we should all get over it.

Hating Duke is not like hating the Yankees.  The Yankees (or more appropriately the "Bankees") win because they spend more money than anybody else can spend.  They get the best players in the world because they can out-bid anybody for contracts.  Duke doesn't have that luxury.  They pay Coach K a lot, but plenty of schools pay their coaches a lot.  Hate them because they're good?  Duke has been to the Final Four four times since 1999.  Michigan State has been there six times, and nobody hates the Spartans.

It's too bad everybody hates a team that is fundamentally sound, plays as a team, has less NBA prospects than the other elite teams, and graduates its players (at one of the best schools in the world).  It's too bad class gets confused with arrogance.  Yeah I guess they're a little arrogant, but you don't see nearly as much of the chest-pounding and dancing out of Duke that you see from just about everybody else.

But still, I was pulling for Butler.  This would have been one of the greatest sports stories ever.  Don't you love how the experts picked them to lose every game in the tournament?  Everybody said, "They won't beat Syracuse", even though they'd won every game since December.  I agreed with them, but after every game, these same experts talked about how they weren't surprised.  Same story tonight.  Not only did everybody think Butler would lose, they all thought Butler didn't have a chance.  Now after the game, they're all talking about how they knew this would be a close game.  Just once I'd like to hear one of the experts say, "I had no idea this team was that good".  Then I guess they wouldn't be experts.

But I'm a much bigger Butler fan after this game than I was before it.  When they lost one of the most heartbreaking finishes I've ever seen, none of the players fell down on the court and pouted.  Nothing is more irritating at the end of a basketball game than a team full of guys who collapse on the court and cover their faces.  Butler's players were probably more disappointed than most teams after a loss, but they didn't start crying, and they didn't fall down into sobbing convulsions.  They had to watch the celebrations, then shook hands with the Duke players.  I don't think I've ever seen a team lose with more class that Butler did.

I wish every team was like Duke or Butler.  I don't care about the superstars who go to college for a year just because the rule says you have to.  I watch the NBA to see those guys.  College basketball should be about guys who are going to college.  There shouldn't be a rule against guys going to the NBA right out of high school.  Ask LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Amare Stoudemire, and Kevin Garnett if that worked out for them.  Let them go straight there.  They can play, and you don't need a college education to play in the NBA.  You can go later.  You're an idiot if you have a chance to make $10 million a year and decide to go to college instead just because you want to have something to fall back on.

But tonight's game was what it's all about.  I hope we see a lot more of it.  Butler has almost everybody back next year from this team, so it looks like we could be in for a good show.  I'm just worried about all the people who will be die-hard Butler fans.  We've all seen it with the Red Sox, Steelers and Saints.  Be a fan, but admit it--you'd never heard of the Butler Bulldogs until they made it to the Final Four in 2010.

The All-Frat-Boy National Championship

As I spent the last few hours watching commercials (with some college basketball scattered in), I was dumbfounded at just how odd this tournament has been.  They say it every year, but 2010 has seen a strangely-high amount of upsets in the Big Dance.  But just when we think we have everything figured out, two of the whitest teams we've seen in a while are playing for the championship.

The Butler Bulldogs, the team from the tiny school in Indianapolis (the campus is six miles from the site of the Final Four), are suddenly America's team.  Butler is coached by Brad Stevens, a 16-year-old from Des Moines who won the chance to be a coach from collecting box tops from Cap'n Crunch.  I can't confirm this information, in fact I think I might have made it up, but if you've seen a picture of him, it's pretty believable.  His older brother, Gordon, is the star of the team.  They might not be brothers either, but they look a lot alike.  But seriously, the guy's name is Gordon, and he really is the star.  Gordon.  Yeah.  Probably their second-best player is a guy named Matt Howard, who is trying to grow the worst mustache in the history of adolescent mustaches.  Yes, even worse than Adam Morrison's, he's just not quite as ugly as Morrison.

Their opponent needs no introduction, except to say they are probably the most despised team in all of college sports.  The Duke Blue Devils are almost always good, and they have a tendency to have a rich-boy team.  It's like a fraternity team in Intramurals, except they're really good.  Their best players are named Kyle and Jon, and they're backed up by Miles, Mason and Brian.  Even the guys who aren't white are named Nolan and Lance.  Their coach is Polish.  His name, generally shortened to Coach K, looks like a two-year-old was left alone at a computer keyboard.  I don't even think it has a vowel in it.

If you don't like this kind of basketball, I have a feeling you might need to get used to it.  A few years back, the best high school players were going straight to the NBA.  Now there's a new rule that says players have to go to school and try really hard and get an education for at least a year.  Clearly that's their priority when they get to college.  So the best players are on good teams, of course--teams like Ohio State and Kentucky this year.  But they're freshmen, so they're not going to be very dependable.

The schools that get the second-tier players--the ones who won't make it to the NBA without some more work--have teams with juniors and seniors.  They're smarter players, and they're used to playing together, and they've had a few years to buy in to their coach's system.  So these talented teams that are often more fun to watch are losing to the more mature, more disciplined teams, and I think we might see that trend continue.  And I know it's a terrible stereotype, but most people are aware and would privately admit, that white players are not quite as good as their African-American counterparts.  If that's offensive to you, please, get over it.

So enjoy it with me, if you will, watching a couple of teams from small, expensive, private schools, play fundamental basketball.  You might not see any dunks, and there could be a lot of jump-shooting (using the word "jump" loosely), but I can promise you the competition will be great.  But if you're not already a true basketball fan, you just might hate it.

Happy April No-More-Jokes Day...

The more you love a holiday, the more depressed you are a day after.  Nothing worse than going to work on December 26th.  The day after the Super Bowl is awful because you just realized there's plenty more winter left but no more football.  Plus you're either hung-over or sick from the copious amounts of Crock-Pot cheese dip you ate last night.  July 5th, worst day ever.  Oh wait, that's my dad's birthday.  Sorry Dad, BEST day ever!  I hate the 4th of July because I'm just anxious to get to your birthday!  Yeah, that's it.

April 2nd is not quite as bad, but a little disappointing nonetheless.  April Fool's Day is the one day where blatant lying and unabashed tomfoolery are not only tolerated, but embraced.  I have such an active imagination that I'd love to just lie to people all the time.  As for the tomfoolery, well, I just wanted to use that word in my blog.  I love playing pranks on people, so April 1st is a special day.

If you're one of the six people who read my blog (thank you, by the way), you probably read about a terrible day that I had yesterday.  For the record, not one word of that was true.  A few of you figured it out, but a few of you just felt bad for me.  I have to say, it's kind of nice getting sympathy when nothing bad actually happened.

It was a tricky balance I tried to find with that.  Part of me wanted to write something completely outrageous, but I knew nobody would believe that.  So I wrote something that seemed plausible, but now people will read it and say, "that's not that weird, that guy's just a liar".  Sorry.

One of these days I'll come up with something really good.  Something like the story of Sidd Finch.  You may remember reading Sports Illustrated in April of 1985 (I don't, I'm just a student of history with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge), where George Plimpton wrote about the New York Mets' discovery of a pitching phenom who could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour (the previous record was 103) with pinpoint accuracy.

It was a great story about an English orphan who was adopted by an archaeologist who later died in a plane crash in Nepal.  The boy grew up, went to Harvard for a while, then traveled to Tibet to learn the ways of the "Great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa".  He became proficient in Siddhi, the mastery of mind and body, and subsequently mastered "the art of the pitch".

When he came back to America, Finch accepted an invitation to the Mets' Spring Training camp, where he pitched wearing one shoe, a hiking boot on the right foot.  At the end of camp, he told the Mets he needed some time to decide if he was going to pursue a career in baseball or his other passion, the french horn.

The story ran on April 1st, and on April 8th Sports Illustrated announced that Finch had held a press conference where he announced that he had lost the ability to throw with any accuracy and that he would not be pursuing his baseball career.  One week later, SI came clean, telling the world that the story was, indeed, a hoax.

Maybe the readers should have known, because the sub-heading of the article was "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse.  Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga".  It didn't help me, but when you look back, you'll see that taking the first letter of every word in the previous sentence and putting them together, you get "H-A-P-P-Y-A-P-R-I-L-F-O-O-L-S-D-A-Y".  Genius.

The real beauty of the story was in how elated Mets' fans were at this pitcher who could throw a ball that one player said was not "humanly possible" to hit.  Thousands of letters flooded Sports Illustrated, wanting more information, and their disappointment must have been comical to see when they learned the truth.

A hoax like this in today's instant-information society would be difficult--almost impossible, really.  Almost.  Maybe someday I'll think of something.  And if anybody tells Snopes, we're not going to be friends anymore.

How NOT to Spend a Thursday

Today started out just like any other spring day. I stumbled out of bed, checked to see how much snow had fallen, then made sure my neighbors hadn't stolen my car or tried to break into the house. I continued my daily routine by making my pot of inhumanly strong coffee and spilling yesterday's coffee grounds on the floor when I missed the trash can. As I sat on the toilet and read for the next 45 minutes, I began to develop a hunch that today would not go smoothly. Sometimes I marvel at my intuition.

My first appointment--a coffee meeting with a donor--began without event. I drank more coffee and realized I was wearing one brown sock and one black sock. If I've been up for three hours or more and that's all that's gone wrong so far, I'm doing alright. During one of my trips to the bathroom I decided to try going sockless, but after looking at my bare ankles, I decided this wasn't the solution. As I put my mis-matched socks back on my feet, I dropped the second one into the urinal, which had not been flushed. Sockless it is.

About a quarter-mile from the coffee shop on the way to my office, I noticed a Highway Patrol car following me closely with his lights flashing. Cops are always suspicious of those 2007 White Toyota Camrys, I thought to myself as I pulled to the shoulder. I wasn't speeding, but I knew exactly what the problem was. About a week ago, I'd been pulled over for not having a license plate on the front of my car (apparently I didn't buy the nice enough model to get a place to mount a front license plate). Graciously, I was given a warning and told to get that taken care of. I didn't, of course, and received a ticket today, along with a stern scolding from officer Filbert.

My next stop was the dealership for an oil change and an inquiry into how special you have to be to get a car with a license plate mount on the front. I guess it's my fault since I've had the car four years now. Right around the time I finished my third pass through Log Cabin Living magazine, a mechanic with a somber look on his face came to the door and called my name.  He rattled off a handful of things that my car needed, as I'd just passed 60,000 miles and never had a tune-up.  I knew it all had to be done, so I told him to get to work and I poured myself yet another cup of coffee.

After a few minutes, the old lady who had been staring at my lap for a terribly awkward amount of time, finally came clean.  She just nodded and said "I'd like to see that if you don't mind".  Right before I had a chance to say "I get that a lot", I looked down and noticed she was pointing the magazine that I'd long since stopped reading.  Close call.  I turned red for reasons she'll never know and politely handed her the magazine.  As I did, however, I managed to spill my hot coffee on her arm (I'm blaming it on the 8th-cup jitters), which already appeared to be afflicted with leprosy.

She screamed and yelled at me, surely not trying to be mean, just reacting to the newly acquired third-degree burns on her already-diseased arms.  She said something about me keeping my magazine, then she didn't let me help her clean herself up.  "I don't want you touching me!" is something nobody is ever prepared to hear, but especially not out of a sweet little old lady.  The looks of disapproval and, frankly, utter hatred, from the other patrons in the waiting room are something I'll never forget.  I couldn't handle it, so I spent the rest of my time in the showroom reading a pamphlet on the new Prius.

Two hours passed and new people came and went in and out of the waiting room.  I returned shamefully to the scene of the incident and read e-mails on my phone until Lyle came out to tell me my car was finished.  Part of me expected that everything would just get better after I tried to maim the old lady, but I somehow forgot that I'd have to pay for all the work the dealership had been doing on my car.  Maybe I was coming down off the caffeine binge or maybe I wasn't happy about spending $1,237 on my car, but as was looking at the bill, I had to use all of my strength to choke back vomit.  The best option was to swallow what had come up, but after doing so I immediately began to think just throwing up all over Lyle would have been a better idea.  It's not like I was making friends with anybody there anyway.

Sensing my unhappiness, Lyle kindly said, "these are just the things you have to do every few years".

I wanted to swear at him and punch him in the teeth--er, tooth--but I gave a sarcastic smile instead.

"Well, we did wash and vacuum your car for you, free of charge.  Thanks Mr. Creamer, your keys are in the car and it's sitting..."  His pause made me quite uncomfortable, mostly because it was accompanied by a confused look, which was quickly replaced by a terrified look, which followed after a speeding white car as it left the parking lot.

Nothing surprised me at this point, and Lyle went running into the shop area.  He returned to inform me that someone had, indeed driven off with my car.  I let him call the Police.  As he talked to the dispatcher, he started to ask me questions.  Turns out I don't know my license plate number, and I also don't know the policy number on my auto insurance.  When asked if I could get this information, I reported that it was at my house, and my keys were in my car.

Sometimes it is a great idea to buy the most nondescript car on the market.  Sometimes.  When the Police are on the hunt for a white Toyota Camry with unknown license plates, however, you really wish you had bought a yellow stationwagon.

As luck would have it, the Kalispell Police were hot on the trail of my car for a different reason.  Apparently one of our great crime-fighters noticed a car with no license plate on the front and commenced hot pursuit.  The car's driver, obviously not wanting to disclose the location of his meth lab, tried to escape.  He made it quite a ways (the Camry, after all, is one of the sportier vehicles out there today) before he lost control of the car and collided with an empty school bus.

About this time, Kalispell's finest were connecting the dots and realizing that this was, indeed, the vehicle that went missing from Kalispell Toyota only 15 minutes earlier.  We piled into a dealership car and drove about 10 miles to the scene of the accident.  When we arrived, the officer asked for my insurance information, due to the fact that the driver of the vehicle was "at-large".  This was my fault.  Awesome.

The good news is that, while my car gets fixed (on my insurance, for now), Kalispell Toyota has loaned me a white 2009 Toyota Camry.  Gotta love an upgrade!

'Should I buy an iPad?' flowchart

The following is from my friend Jake, who is an Apple zealot. He's a good guy too. Wonders will never cease.

It's about the iPad, the newest gadget from Apple that has everybody all fired up. Follow the flowchart closely and see where you end up. I tried a couple of different options and kept ending up in the bottom-right, where I thought I would end up.

Thanks Jake!

'Should I buy an iPad?' flowchart

PC vs. Mac, Why I'm Right

I often find myself locking horns in a debate about something not worth debating.  Not that I'm argumentative, but sometimes people just have no idea how wrong they are.  Quite often, however, nobody is wrong, but of course I'm even more right than my counterpart 10 times out of 10.

The perfect example of this is the argument over Mac or PC.  You may be wondering which one I prefer.  But if you know me well, you're not wondering at all.  Even if you've never seen my computer or heard what I have to say on this matter, you're thinking "Dave isn't cool enough for a Mac", and you're correct.  I'm also too poor for one.

Let me start this argument out by saying that I get it.  Apple makes the best computers.  Believe me, I have plenty of friends who love their Macs more than their moms, so I've heard the arguments.  "A PC is fine if you want to replace it every year" or "sure, get a PC, you'll be re-starting it every hour or so".  If you care that much about your computers, you have the right computer.  And unless you need the best computer made for your profession, you're kind of a loser.

I got my Gateway laptop 3 1/2 years ago and it works like a champ.  I paid $900 for it and I can't remember the last time I had to re-start it.  Sure, I have to re-start for updates every month or so, and that takes me about two minutes each time, but I can afford 24 minutes a year.  It hasn't been infected with anything, probably because I don't forward garbage emails and respond to every spam email and facebook invitation.  Not once have I wished my computer did this or that.  Actually, that's not true.  I periodically wish my computer would make me some dinner for me, but I'm pretty sure even Apple hasn't figured that one out yet.  As soon as it does, I'm the next convert.

I relate the Mac vs. PC debate to the Toyota vs. Mercedes debate.  If somebody tells me I need to buy a Mercedes, the easy answer is "I can't afford it".  End of discussion.  But when I try the same response about a Mac, the guy with messy hair and girl jeans takes a sip of his green tea latte and gives a condescending shake of the head, as if to say, "you poor Neanderthal, if you were more civilized you would understand".

Like a Mac, a Mercedes has bells and whistles that my Toyota does not.  It would be cool to have some of those things, but I don't need it.  What I need is a dependable car that can get me from point A to point B in relative comfort.  Similarly, I need a computer that I know will start right up, let me read and send email, use the internet (so I can educate the world about how to be more like me), and store some pictures and music.  I don't think I've ever used my computer for anything else.

For somebody like me, the only way I would make the switch (short of Apple coming up with a cooking computer) is if the price was the same.  And I don't mean the same like "well Mac makes a wristwatch that's $900"...I mean the same like a comparable price for a comparable computer.

On Amazon, you can buy a 13-inch MacBook for under $1,000.  Sounds like a pretty good deal!  You get a computer with an Apple on top and a lifetime subscription to the Apple Dork Club for under a grand!  But sometimes you get a cretin like me who doesn't mind using a mouse with two buttons.  So for a comparable PC (I agree that Acer or eMachines does not make a comparable product), HP has a 13-inch Pavilion for under $600.  As far as I'm concerned, it's the same computer.

The way I see it, there are three types of Mac users.

The first is the artists.  These people need a Mac to create music, art, videos, etc.  Mac is the best for that, no arguments here.

The second is teachers.  Teachers get a great deal on Macs, which I think is great.  More companies should give educators good deals on their products.  Hats off to Apple.

The third, and by-far the largest group, is the people who think they have to have the very best.  Some are wealthy and can afford to have the best of everything.  Maybe someday I'll be there.  But most of you have a Mac so you can sit in the coffee shop and look cooler than me.  You've been fed a line that says you have to have these things to be a functioning part of society.  You think you can afford the best of everything, just because the money is in your bank account or you have enough room on your credit card.  Of all the brilliant innovations Apple has made in terms of technology, none have surpassed their ability to convince people they need a Mac.