WE'RE GETTING RAZOR-BURNED

I started shaving when I joined the U.S. Navy in 1958. It was required - even if you had no beginnings of a beard. I, being mostly British, not 18 years old yet, and of the fairest of skin, had never shaved before - and there was a single-edged razor as part of our kit for post-reveille readiness each morning.

So there I stood each morning shaving skin which hadn't grown whiskers yet. It hurt. I had a continual red face until one day, I noticed little blond whiskers popping out. FINALLY I had reason to shave, and by the time I left the Navy four years later, I had every reason to shave at not-quite 22 years old. But the moment I gained my freedom I bought an electric razor and following the initial break-in period when I swore it was pulling whiskers out by the roots, I decided to go back to the old fashioned single blade razor and the shaving cream.

As I aged into my 40s, I realized I now had a serious, stickery, beard - and worse - it was, as I found when I grew a beard for a Pioneer Days celebration, RED! By then my hair had turned brown...but my beard was red. So, at that point a close shave became a personal requirement.

Somewhere along the line, Mr. Gillette and I became close friends, and not only could I only get a close shave with a single blade razor, but it had to be a Gillette.

Then my friend, Mr. Gillette slowly started becoming the friend who takes advantage of their best pal. Mr. Gillette swore, on a stack of research papers, that if one blade was good, then TWO blades were better. And I fell for it. It never occurred to me that they couldn't raise the price of a single blade razor - and its neverending requirement to replace dull blades - without pricing themselves out of the marketplace. So head-in-sand, I caved. I bought one of the new twin-blade Gillette razors. I even talked myself into believing it gave me a closer shave. That is I could go until say 2:00 p.m. before I really needed to shave again (though rarely did).

Then, in order to make the razors a bit more expensive, Mr. Gillette added a little white silicone-type strip atop the twin blades, again swearing on a stack of research papers, that this was the ultimate in close shaves. Well not on MY face it wasn't. I was back to needing a shave by noon. I wrote to my friend Gillette and told him the white strip was a loser, and I went back to the non-white-strip twin blades.

Mr. Gillette then countered, by taking the non-white-strip twin blade razors off the market. Yup. Gone. No choice. And, of course, wherever Mr. Gillette went, his competitors went, as well so there was no recourse.

Swearing, never again to be sucked in by Mr. Gillette (and considering divorce), I just learned to tolerate the white-strip-twin-bladed nightmare. I've stuck with them even though Mr. Gillette tried to get me again: he came out with three-blade razors, oddly 1/3rd more espensive....and then FOUR blade razors at half-again the price! Did he really think I was going to have four times the closeness of shave as I had had with the single-edge blades? I had my feet well dug into the dirt by then. I was STAYING with the twin blade razors - even if the white strip DID prevent me from having a close shave.

Oh but there's more.

Suddenly, twin blades (Atra) are disappearing from the marketplace. Oh occasionally a discount store, or even a Wal-Mart may have them, but by and large, one cannot find Atra blades without several gallons of gas being wasted in visiting stores in out-of-the-way hamlets. So Mr. Gillette wins. This round. Determined to come out the winner here, I'm putting my faith in this little tube of hormone cream being perfected, that causes your facial follicles to shut down for up to a week at a time. One tube will last a year...though I'm sure it won't be long until they'll have a two-tube pack. You know: one tube to shut the little follicles down, and another to wake them up if you want a beard...and at three times the price, of course.

WHY I'M UN-RETIRING FOR THE THIRD TIME

I'm not meant to be retired. I did it in 1996 after the NewsCorp experience. Moved part and parcel to California's mountains near Yosemite. Was here a matter of a few weeks before I got a job offer that had it all: interesting, new, different, a new company start-up that was challenging and swarming with incredibly talented, eager, delightful people and I stayed ten years. I was a web developer and by about the 9th year, I realized the web's underpinnings were changing enough that I thought it a good time to get off the train.

So I retired again.

I made it about three months that time. Simultaneously with the itch for some variety hit me, an offer in Corporate Communications came across my armchair, I jumped at the chance.

Four years elapsed like a snap of the fingers. Where did the time go? This time I had to admit that I stayed on the job a bit longer than I had originally intended, mainly because I liked being jazzed, frequently, by the atmosphere of working among truly bright, talented co-workers who treated each day as if they were starting the next Google or Facebook. Well...maybe not Facebook. They wanted to grab onto that limit in the sky. Facebook appears to have a death wish lately.

So I'm retired again.

And I don't like it.

I've found myself dawdling over the web's limitless job market sites. I keep thinking someone needs me, and I keep forgetting I'm pushing 70. And I too-frequently remember the head-rush created by all the great people I've worked among over the decades and how I miss the sizzling vibrancy of that creative atmosphere. My energy is better directed there than the really tough stuff I'm doing in retirement: like hand-feeding my scrub jays, getting the hummingbird feeders down so my wife can wash and refill the five or six of them. I probably should go out and weed-eat the yard, but my unemployed - and she likes it that way - wife does the yardwork because the yard is HER hobby - in no uncertain terms!

So here I sit, arms folded, scanning Indeed.com during perhaps the worst economy I've personally seen in my lifetime. I'm already tired of sitting. I've sunk to a new low: taking up walking and perhaps doing some tennis, feeding peanuts to Bingo, my pal Western Scrub Jay...and, in my spare time, sending out resumes to companies that probably won't acknowledge their receipt. But at least it gives me something to do.

THE BAFFLING WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY

My computer died. The one I bought in 2000 with Windows Millennium Edition.

I KNOW!

I can just feel a whole lot of people sympathizing with me. It happens to everybody. But it isn't the enormous bother of hooking up a new computer and all the replacing of software, which - oddly - always costs more than back three versions ago when I originally bought it.

It's that, even with the breadth of the world wide web, I can't find out the things I need to know. My printer, for instance.

After having replaced three printers in my recently deceased computer's 9-year lifetime, I bought this highly touted Kodak printer, and cannot use it because each time I install a new set of ink cartridges, it tells me my cartridges are empty. And it won't let go of that mantra. After printing a mere two or three pages, here comes the "black ink cartridge is low/empty" message. So I got two brilliant ideas while purchasing the new Windows Vista with Windows 7 Upgrade computer:

a. Buying a new printer (a given.) b. Buying a printer for which its ink cartridges will be available at retail stores for a good long time. A decade would be nice.

Boy! Was that an eye-opener. "Sorry, we cannot promise ink cartridges for a given printer would be available for X amount of time," said the technician at HP. Or my favorite, as Epson's most sterling tech guy, I'm sure, replied, "Well we can't make the same printer forever. There are advancements, you know." And the guy I nabbed at Lexmark merely chortled.

Well Duhhhh!

Well I'm aware that when you buy a low-priced printer, the ink you buy helps finance the rest of the printer cost so they can advertise a printer at $39.99 whose real cost is more on the order of $170.00 but they know they'll make that back in ink purchases. Which is why the printer companies are now investing in the "artificial" low cost inks business. Take a little water, glycol, food coloring and you've got cheap printer ink. It's guaranteed to fade even in reflected sunlight and therefore is no good for printing your family photos. You can buy "mineral" inks which give some permanence, but prepare your wallet for the big hit on those. And the UV-curable inks...well, only doctors can afford those.

Really? I thought to myself, so what are these big advancements in printer design anyway? A Printer's talent is in blowing colored inks in a pattern onto a piece of paper. What's different between the laser or inkjet printer now, over the same printers ten years ago? I mean, don't they still blow the ink onto paper in a pattern your computer dictates? And what is it about ink that causes each printer to need a completely different model of ink cartridge? And who invented 3 colors in one cartridge??? Do you ever run out of ink colors simultaneously?

Somebody could make a lot of money solving those two simple problems: Build a printer whose various models all blow ink from identical cartridges? Better yet, how about a printer that blows the ink as sucked from a 10-gallon jug under my desk? I wouldn't want to have a spill, but just maybe we'd get more than 3 or 4 pages out of a printer that way, and do away with little customized - and expensive - plastic boxes containing ½-ounce of ink! My savings could go toward cheaper inks.

I am, of course, aware of the basic problem: if they lasted a long time, HP-EPSON-LEXMARK-BROTHER-KODAK-and the famous ETCETERA wouldn't sell as many printers. And if ink got too cheap, they won't make any money on their printers either. But still I hold out the hope that SOMEBODY will put substance over form one of these days. Now back to my question: does anyone know, if I buy the HP D1660 printer I've got my eye on right now, how long I will be able to buy ink for it without delving into some black market in Taiwan? I'd like to go to Costco, Wal-Mart, Best-Buy or Target and pick a few cartridges up off the shelf sometime. Especially if I knew those cartridges would work in my next printer I'll have to buy in about six months.

COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEMS CREATE
MORE PROBLEMS THAN THEY SOLVE!

Far be it from me to take on Microsoft, or Unix, or whatever hoop-de-doo operating system comes down the line, but it's just plain stupid the way they force software and hardware companies to play their silly game. But it led to an idea for an invention, the ultimate in miniaturization.

I was so innocent when I bought a wonderful Mp3 Player at Wal-Mart the other day. I read the packaging which was straightforward: no operating system requirements, no requirements at all. The salesman did warn me that RCA products such as mine, have been generating many complaints from buyers, but that' didn't deter me. For thirty dollars I'd take the chance.

When I returned home, I went immediately to my shop where I keep all the tools necessary for opening today's product packaging: pliers, wire cutters, a saw, gloves, x-acto knife, hydraulic jack. After wrenching the packaging open, out dropped my Mp3 player, a set of ear buds, and a folded introduction to using it. The full story had to be gained online in a pdf manual.

My first warning-to-self occurred as I read the little user instructions: "Click on the Start Menu ( in XP or in Vista)." So that's their clever way of letting me know I need to be operating with one of those systems. I don't. They're so proud of that, they don't even mention Apple.

Immediately the fluff went out of my new marriage to RCA. But, as I lay on the floor of my new Camry LE trying to actually see the miniscule stereo jack for the MP3 player cleverly hidden beneath a black hinged cover at the (very black) BACK of a little console storage compartment, I had a thought. "This could be easier," I said aloud, "If somebody would just invent a miniature component stereo involving two components: a tiny pre-amplifier with a rechargeable battery, into which one slips the business end of a USB flash drive." Naa too simple. They're probably all over the place.

Nope. Nada. Sheer nothingness greeted my nimble fingers in Googling every keyword I could think of, including every electronic store with even the smallest presence online excluding Jerry's Second Hand Stereo Shop in Twitter City, New Mexico. Surely, I thought, San Disk or a maker of thumb drives must have thought about the millions to be made by a non-operating-system dependent little USB pre-amplifier the size of a big toenail. Plug...and Play! What a concept! There seems to be no problem coming up with miniature TV cameras that can be inserted into a vein inside an eyeball, so where's the "industry" not cowering in fear behind a Windows logo, but instead marching forth proudly with a non-OS-dependent flash-drive component stereo system? Here. I've done the hard design work. Even labeled it with my own company name - Jantron. (I dreamed it up myself). Click on this picture to see my actual thought, and if someone wants to build it, my idea's cheap. Just send me a little something in the mail, and we'll call it even. No, we'll call it mind-bogglingly thrilling.

The most difficult part of building this little item is it's independence from operating system requirements. It's really just a little agreement between a flash drive and a car stereo - they'll work things out. The tendency, though, might be beyond the ken of a hardware company choosing to build it: Apparently, nobody can build something related to a computer without their own (usually operating system dependent) software on board to allow you to re-organize your list of files on the flash drive with the assumption that you're not smart enough to save them to the flash drive in a useable order yourself. It's that stuff where XP or Vista enters the picture. Too bad. Unimportant. A car radio receives the signal and plays the darned song. All the amplifier needs to know is that when it's finished playing one song it goes on and plays the next Mp3 in line. How simple is that?

HERE WE GO AGAIN - ANOTHER CHANCE TO
TOSS THE BABY WITH THE BATH WATER!

In the very same breath today, CNN's report trumpeted Microsoft's new Operating System 7 by quoting a Dell worker saying "Our customers are very excited about Windows 7," and in the very next paragraph their story says, "The software maker is hoping the response to the new operating system differs from the lukewarm reviews and compatibility challenges that marked the release of Windows Vista, which hit the market in January 2007."

Who is Microsoft kidding?

I certainly don't know WHICH Microsoft customer was "very excited" but I know it wasn't me. They make BILLIONS creating new operating systems that require a complete hardware change. Mr. Dell pays Microsoft each time his company sells a computer with a Windows Operating System. If he wants to make any money, he has to charge extra for the extra-special hardware that can stand the onslaught that software burden causes. I'll bet in the secret compartment of Mr. Dell's brain, he hates seeing you ripped off as much as he hates having to do it. So what would be the motivation for Microsoft to build an operating system that could operate on your existing computer without expensive hardware upgrades, and could co-exist with all the programs you've added since the present OS was installed?

Remember, MOST computers sold are not the ones advertised at Best Buy for "$449". Those are for people who live in a tent and don't care how long their computer takes to download the 4 pieces of email they receive each week. Soon as you step up to needing Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or - God Forbid! - Microsoft Access, your computer price jumps by anywhere from $500 more dollars to over $1,000...and naturally, even more if you're a "business" customer.

But that's just getting started. Those programs don't run on a wishy-washy $449 computer, so if you want to do any projects at all, with a decent monitor or two, a couple of hard disks (one, probably just for Microsoft Operating System of the year), and a supercharged sound and video card, before you know it, you're looking down the barrel of a $6,000 computer.

Think I'm kidding? Go to Dell.com and start building the computer you feel you NEED, not what you think you can afford. Look how fast you can get to a $6,000 computer - and that includes cutting corners. If you really know computing, and need a good one, don't be living in $449 land. And those who just upgraded all that hardware to accommodate Windows Vista are now supposed to be all excited about Microsoft releasing a whole new operating system?

Not on their Human Factors Engineer's life! Cha-Ching!

COLLEGE BASEBALL ROCKS

Pam Ward © 2009 ESPN

I'm a new fan. No, not of College Baseball for which I have no memory of NOT being a fan. I'm a fan of Pam Ward. It took me several hours on ESPN's cluttered, over-detailed, slow-as-frozen-motor-oil website to find it, but thanks to a clip from yesterday's Virginia overhaul of LSU game, I found out who my favorite college baseball announcer is, and it isn't a "he". It's Pam Ward. Clear, crystal, no-nonsense facts is what you get from her. No coloring with personal opinion, but every aspect of the game is covered smartly, deftly, and in a cut-to-the-chase delivery.

That's hard to do, as my 25 years in radio taught me. The pressure at the super regionals level is enormous. Everything has to be perfect. The schedule is a nightmare alone, notwithstanding the structure of the "road to Omaha."

You'd think with ESPN, being basically in charge of bringing all information about the college world series to us, that they'd be trumpeting the enormous talents they do and will have on the air throughout the process of crowning the World Series championship team.

They're too busy in details. I really don't care much about how many times "Billy Frankenmeister" tried to leave first base and didn't. I really don't care about people who can quote the exact number of a player's stolen bases in their career and who can tell you all about each one. I want to know about the most important thing to me - as a viewer - (listen up ESPN):

The single most important element to a viewer watching sports, and who is interested in the college baseball system leading to the CWS, is the announcers. They give us the feel of the park, the audience, the players, and somehow keep track of all those facts and figures plus carefully watching and analyzing each play. They are enormously important, if not singularly important, to the viewer. Yeah the pretty pictures let you see what's going on, but the announcers are bringing you the facts behind the scenes...the stories within the story.

When someone does a sports announcing job as succinctly, as carefully, and as wonderfully handled as Pam Ward does, kudos need to be extended. Perhaps a mere mention on ESPN's cluttered/slow website might acquaint others with this true talent. You'd think there'd be some loyalty in a company toward a person who started at ESPN in 1996 as a sideline reporter and has now progressed to announcing games. Wouldja think? And wasn't that game between Arkansas and LSU a mind blower?!

August 4, 2007  

SOMETIMES THEY JUMP OUT OF NOWHERE!

One day in 1977, while program director of a radio station in northern California, I was plowing through the day's freebie records for our next smash hit, when a record with a handwritten label came into view. In those days, records were vinyl and had a large hole in the center giving away their status as a 45 RPM vinyl recording. When I received a record with the song title and artist written on a plain white label in marking pen, it usually meant it was rushed out before the labels could be printed, by an eager promotion department at the the company, Curb Records in this case. I played it for myself, since it was the daughter of an old corresponding friend and memories flooded back at me from years past.

Back in the day - 1958 - I was asked to assume the job of program director of the U.S.Air Force radio station at Karamursel Turkey. Novel, since I was in the Navy at the time! But there had been a program director prior to me, the late Don Brown, who had achieved legendary status among the other personnel of KTUS. It was obvious that D.B., as he was known, was sorely missed by the station staff and I vowed to ease the transition by continuing many of the policies Don had installed to keep the operation successful and prominent in the eyes of the command. It somehow didn't matter that Turkey has a long standing policy of not allowing any sort of broadcasting by anyone other than their state Radyo (radio) services.

Among the files of correspondence from Don Brown to record companies and artists back in the states, begging for current records that KTUS could, and certainly would, play were a few letters back and forth between Don and Pat Boone. Pat was the John Mayer of his time. You haven't heard girls screaming until you've taken your girl to a 1950s Pat Boone concert! He was a nice, safe friend that parents felt would be perfect entertainment for their darling daughters, hence not only the girls made him not only popular, but their moms were right behind them at the ticket windows. There was a sizable section of American society that appreciated Pat's "aw, gee!" attitude, his respect for the Good Book, and his moral choice of music selections - in conjunction with the great Randy Wood, owner of Dot Records. Pat was Beatlemania long before there were Beatles. (He still makes records: check out his website!

Back to 1977: I opened the envelope containing the record with the handwritten label by, then 21 year old, Debby Boone. She had been two years old when I wrote my first letter to her father, Pat. The record had been rushed out on the strength of heavy buzz within the industry, and without realizing it, we programmers propelled that buzz into actual record sales. Bigtime sales. Ten weeks on the charts - longer, in fact, than any of her dad's records. It was produced by Mike Curb, who later became, California's Lieutenant Governor.

I will never not idolize Mike. He came all the way up into the northern part of the state in the heat of his campaigning and appeared on my radio show merely to thank me for being among the first disc jockeys to play You Light Up My Life. Oh sure, we talked about the campaign for Lieutenant Governor, but he was quite obviously happier when we were talking hit records, promotion, artists and, to me, the good stuff. He remains one of the rare good guys in the biz, and he's still at it. Wynonna Judd, Hank Williams, Jr., Sawyer Brown or LeAnn Rimes, are on Curb's labels.

So what's up these days? As an old retired person I can pick and choose whatever I want to do, and right now I find myself being a fan again. There's this incredible saxophonist.

I first caught him playing on Michael Bublé's video of "The Way You Look Tonight" where he was a "freelancer" hired by David Foster to back up new Foster star, Bublé. I sat there with my chin on the floor watching the video, which had been recorded for AOL's Sessions series of web concerts. (It's also on Bublé's first DVD as a "bonus track.") This guy (at right), playing sax so smoothly and with an experienced sound so far beyond his actual years, and enjoying it so much that he didn't even realize he was doing his elephant dance when he wasn't actually playing. It's Robby Marshall who was attending USC at the time, majoring in, what else? Music. Yeah, Robby's young, and one heck of a young professional...and musically maturing at warp speed. He's already been a world traveler: among his treks was a series of concerts last year at a jazz fest in Peru; he regularly plays at the seriously jazzy clubs in L.A. Including one of the most talent-welcoming, sizzling-hot clubs, The Baked Potato, for example) and many others. He's able to join, or to put bands together in an instant and they all sound like they've played together for years.

Talent. I like Robby's smooth, mellow sound. I like his attitude as a human being, and I like that he's crazy about what he's doing. He balances the stressful musician life by occasionally heading north to hike and climb Yosemite and to have a little Mexican food at El Cid here in town. Robby's kind of attitude is what precedes success, and he's got the right attitude in spades, knows what a balanced life is all about, and should become successor to the type of adulation enjoyed by the late Stan Getz! Just watch the video at left or or click here. If you can find anyone playing sax better, currently, let me know. If you're among the graphically challenged, photos are here.

And, by the way, whenever you discover some real talent, take whatever steps you can to let the world know about the musician. In this modern age, the only way new artists to become known is by "street cred"... the new term for "word of mouth."

Right up front, I should say that my wife and I chose, carefully, to live in the mountains of California's Sierra Nevada and near Yosemite National Park. We moved here from New York City because trees, streams, lakes, and mountain peaks appeal to us. So we moved to this little "village" in the mountains because it is unincorporated, we don't have huge glass buildings housing computer companies, although the tradoff is the lack of shopping variety.

    But that's okay with us. Just 45 minutes, and a tad over one gallon of gas, gets us "down the hill" to Fresno, where we enjoy shopping galore, jostling with Fresno's half-million population for a cash register then the ability to depart quickly and unnoticed.

    The big problem is that down to Fresno and back we must share the two-lane road, having very few passing lanes, with people evidently just learning to drive in mountains. They probably do straight freeways quite well, but put them on a mountain road and all bets are off. For instance they don't know about the rule, "If there are 5 cars stacked up behind you, one pulls over into a side lane to let them by. They don't realize that the entire object of passing lanes is to pass you because you're obviously going too slow for our tastes. If you're the slowest on the road. Passing lanes do not mean should start speeding. They mean those holding up traffic should, in their snail-like way, enjoy the right lane, while we "professional mountain drivers" would naturally want to get by you.

    So I came up with an idea many years ago, that we should put LEDs to work for us: Encourage car manufacturers (are you listening General Motors?) to put a simple LED billboard just above the rear bumper. From the comfort of our car we can "text" other drives with messages displayed on our LED board. Or, merely stepping on the break puts the message indicating you're about to stop on the board. An extra one on the front that would show messages backward, therefore rear-view-mirrorable, would be nice.

    One message that cries out to be used in the mountains is shown here. One that would quickly become a local favorite is this one.

Think of the applications! I'm certain you could come up with your own customized messages merely by texting your signboard.

    You can readily see that the first car manufacturer issuing this little feature would reap billions in the customers' rush to own one, hence the suggestion to General Motors whose stock is...well...not in the mountain peaks of Wall Street...go for it!

EVERYONE NEEDS TO LIGHTEN UP

I'd like to be a DNA tester. I would go around to various countries and tell their people to lighten up; and if they didn't want to, I would take some of their dna and do a test, graphically showing them that even if they assume they're a full-blooded whatever, their dna from centuries, eons of peoples will tend to disprove that. Nobody is descended from someone who never migrated and along the way produced children.
    I lived in Turkey. Turks are very much into "Turkishness," even imprisoning people who "insult Turkishness" and yet, daily, reports are coming from the scientific community that are tracing the Turkishness of these wonderful peoples' DNA and are finding Turks are really only partially Turkic. They're more related to the throat singers of Tuvan, a republic located in extreme southern Siberia, where the DNA shows they were originally Oghuz Turks, the main Turkic people who later moved into Anatolia (Turkey). This occurred after the victory of the Seljuks over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert on August 26, 1071.
    But even this occurred centuries after their migrations began.

Back before Christ was born, Nomads of Central Asian Turkic descent coalesced into their first great empire, which, by around 551 AD, was a nomadic confederation that they called Göktürks or "Sky Turks". These tribes under a Khans dynasty, who affected, during the sixth to eighth centuries, the area from the Aral Sea to the Hindu Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania.
    The movement of the Turkic people was quite slow. Spending up to a century in one place or another, they gradually pushed west and south, mating all the way and producing offspring with the locals, the fellow travelers, and others they met along the way. This thoroughly jumbled the DNA picture to the point that most Turks have very little "Turkishness" in their genetic structure. The highest estimate I've seen is 11%. Granted there are Turks who came to Anatolia from other places and who have been in the land multiple centuries, and have done their own cross-pollinations over time watering down whatever their original genes were.
    What I'm trying to remind all people of is this: Almost no one on the earth today is pure anything. So why can't we be "one big happy and diverse family" since we ALREADY ARE one big family? As Elizabeth Foley said, "The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart."
    Back to Turkey: Over my lifetime I have been friends with so many Turks of very diverse backgrounds, who live all over the world now, that I have long lost track of how many, and in some cases who, they were. All I can say about them is that - whatever genetic soup they're composed of - I never found a Turk, or anybody else, I couldn't be friends with. It just takes trying to do so.
     If you can make an enemy, with much less effort you can make a friend. We just need to lighten up, earth...and be a happy family.

Great book on this topic: The Turks in World History by Carter Vaughn Findley.

THE HOME "CINDERELLA TEAM" SCORES BIG!

Upcoming College World Series
June 13 - 23/24, 2009
from Omaha, and in just

This replaces a series of thoughts I wrote here a few weeks ago regarding the College World Series. It's not that I had second thoughts, but because the whole texture of the CWS has changed for me. It turned out far better than I expected or could ever have hoped for. They're the U.S. Champions, and nobody can take that away from them...or me.
    Some history:     I was not quite 10 years old when I first heard about a "College World Series," whatever that was. But by the time I was a high school teenager, I began following the great college teams in their quest for a World Series trophy. Then just after I finished my junior year of high school, the first of many miracles occurred: University of California, who had won the first World Series in 1947, won their second World Series. I was in radio then, working at a small station in San Francisco, and I remember the news coming over the teletype.
    Somewhere in 1979, when I was 39 years old, but still in radio, a teletype brought me the message that some foresighted person, who had me in mind, had invented a television network devoted to sports, known as ESPN. I was hooked. I can't forget seeing their crisp, clean, clear video presentations on the old TV at my hangout, the Flume Burger Factory in Chico, California. The pictures looked better than I had ever seen.
    Hard to believe that was nearly 30 years ago. But the letters on a TV screen still make my heart jump, though ESPN now has had children and, in fact, grandchildren. ESPNU, their college sports channel was founded in 2005 just for me, I'm sure, though anyone is welcome to watch. I know ESPN had my College World Series viewing aspirations in mind. Didn't they?
   By 1979, 12 times California-based universities - mostly University of Southern California - had won the College World Series, but back in 1979 California State University Fullerton won it. Wait a minute: a state-run university winning the CWS that was NOT the Arizona State powerhouse with their four series wins. It was then and there that the first fantasy jumped into my mind...I drifted off into a land where my home team, Chico State University's Wildcats had somehow gotten into Division 1. Somehow had made it through playoffs. Somehow traveled to Omaha to play in the College World Series. Ahhhh dreams!
    Now we jump ahead nearly 30 more years. The University has changed from my hometown's Chico State, to my current hometown where we've adopted California State University, Fresno just down the road a piece, which IS a Division 1 school. And which did play in the playoffs. And which DID go to Omaha. And, "Cinderellas" that they've been called, DID turn into white knights, and last night turned into College World Series champions over a frightfully devastated University of Georgia the press' darling leading up to the finals.
    I love assumptions. Everyone just assumed Georgia would win it. But we locals knew the secret: Mike Batesole, a coach so likeable that even his team guys like him! They listen carefully to him, and Batesole's the sort of laid-back guy who believes in training your people to play intelligently, teach them everything you know, then leave them alone, to go out on the field and play harder, smarter, and with more heart than even they thought possible, and for the sheer fun of it. As legendary coach Augie Garrido says, "It's PLAY baseball, not WORK baseball!" These Fresno guys are psych majors, history majors, business majors. They're not planning careers in the major leagues; they're planning on running a small two-person business, or teaching, or working for an insurance company. Just guys.
     If a hero - as Christopher Reeve once said, is an ordinary individual "who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles", then I'd have to say he must have been talking about the Fresno State Baseball Bulldogs.
Perfect. I believe I saw the perfect baseball game: commentators, atmosphere, dedicated players from two great teams, a ton of spirit...And I was able to see it all on .

August 4, 2007  

COULD YOU REPEAT THAT AGAIN SLOWWWLY?

Is it just me, or there something wrong with companies that employ people in foreign countries to handle their customer service for American customers?

Not that I don't speak another language - I speak poor Turkish as it has been 45 years since I lived there, and I speak enough spanish to frighten even me - but I also don't go looking for jobs where I must speak one of those languages. So I hate calling my credit card company or other tech support and find I'm speaking to someone who doesn't speak English even at the first grade level.

I agree, most people who attempt to speak a language often understand the language better than they speak it, so I'm sure my new friend in India feels we're conversing just fine, but 10,000 miles, countless technical issues, and static-filled delays aren't helping either of us.

    Oh: And doesn't that satellite delay just about drive you freako when you're trying to interact on the phone? Same as when a TV commentator in Atlanta asks the reporter in Kenya a question, and the reporter's still picking his nose, and nodding his head like a bobble-doll, while he receives the signal - then gets this surprised "I've gotta wake up now" expression before answering.

    In trying to have an intelligent conversation with someone who doesn't speak my language well, is delayed by a satellite link, and whom I can't see speaking to me, it starts to burn me that the company I'm dealing with is taking the cheap way out of providing good technical and customer support...which, I was always taught, should be number one priority. And I don't pick up the phone and call people I never knew in Istanbul or Barcelona just to have a chat.
    Darn it!

NOTE: Opinions expressed on this website are those of its author. Since he writes merely to get things off his chest, he may, or may not, make requested corrections, but you are most certainly welcome to point out where they are needed...and where he might need some additional education on a topic after you've considered that he is, after all, a native Californian. Just click on "Send Me a Note" which appears at the bottom of each bloglet.