GFC Winter '09: Week 2: Technical Difficulties

Thanks to more weather over the weekend than SoCal usually sees in a couple of years, all games for this evening were canceled/postponed. And since next Monday is President's Day, the park will be closed no matter what. That means we will have two consecutive weeks without games, on top of the interruption later in the season thanks to Caesar Chavez Day (only in California). In that same two weeks, I will have played kickball in another state (Arizona) and another division (Pasadena). Hopefully we don't have a repeat of 2006 when we had four consecutive Mondays of rain and postponed games.

GFC Winter '09: Week 1

Thanks to the beautiful weather afforded to us here in Southern California, a new kickball season kicked off last night (a terrible pun, I know). With everyone returning from a team that went undefeated during the previous regular season (and thereby securing a bid to Vegas), things are looking pretty good at the start of this new season. In our first game we drew Kickin' It Old Skool, one of the myriad of brand-new and mashed-up teams that have brought some much needed change to what had become a stagnant lineup of teams. In fact, KIOS is so new that they did not become a team until this past Thursday. This was painfully obvious when the umpires had to take a few minutes before the game to give them a quick explanation of the rules and the major differences from baseball/softball. Needless to say, them being paired against arguably the best defensive team in the league had all the makings of a potential blowout. While we did manage to crank out some extra base kicks (even a two-run homerun), the 7-0 win could have been much worse. Despite all the rules changes, the rust of not playing for a couple months, and probably looking past our opponent a little bit, we played pretty well. Our defense was in mid-season form, and the seven runs scored was a veritable offensive explosion for us. Next week we have Feets Of Fury, whom we defeated in the quarterfinals of the playoffs last season.

Random Internet Search

Since I have nothing better to do on this lovely Friday night, I have been looking through Google images under "random funny" when I happened upon this gem:


Transformers were my jam growing up, so finding something like this at random is both insanely hilarious and quite disturbing. Here is a link to completely drink it in. Enjoy!

Cable Company

Anyone who has not lived in the sticks within the last couple of decades has at one time or another dealt with the source of much consternation for the average American: the cable company. Pricing that outpaces inflation, inflexibility for end-user hardware, and the dreaded service calls (a four hour window to show up?) have contributed to the ever rising stress levels of many Americans. Now that I am on my own and dealing with my third cable company, I thought I, like millions of other people, had my balls in the proverbial vice. But a funny thing happened. Out of the blue, my lineup of HD channels almost tripled. Then, after finally accepting the fact that my almost ten-year old broadband modem needed to go, I called about changing modems. The young lady who helped me was courteous and patient as I ran around making sure all my various devices had in fact connected with the new modem. Dealing with any kind of tech support folks is usually akin to pulling teeth for me, but this particular experience was actually pleasant. Come to think of it, the few times I have had to deal with Time Warner's customer support, they have been nothing but helpful, always patient and personable. So maybe the cable company isn't so bad after all.

2008 In Review

Now that 2008 has passed into the annals of history, I thought now would be a good time to reflect back on the year that was in all of it's glory. Among the highlights of the year were:

~ Seeing my first Garth Brooks concert ever; in LA, nonetheless. I was about fourty or fifty feet away from the stage, which made the concert that much more awesome.

~ Attending my first game at Angel Stadium (which the Royals won). Even though it's somewhat antiseptic and very much a reflection of it's Orange County environment ($11 for a Guinness!?), it's still a good place to catch a ballgame.

~ Seeing David Beckham play in person for the first time. While he is not a goal scorer or a classic number ten, it was pretty cool to see one of the best players in the world do his thing.

~ My high school 10-year reunion was this summer. I did not attend (the planned festivities did not come to fruition), but the fact that I have now been out of high school for ten years was a bit of a shock.

~ Thanks to a marketing ploy, I played in a kickball game with John Salley, Amanda Beard, and Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel Air (amongst other celebrities) on Fox Sports channel. Obviously, the rules were skewed in favor of the FSC team (probably why they won). It was still a lot of fun, though.

~ My kickball team played in the national tournament in Las Vegas over Labor Day weekend. We did not play our best, but we still had a good time, making new friends and drinking mass quantities of alcohol. We also qualified for next year's tournament by going undefeated during the summer regular season.

Overall, it was a good year. Hopefully 2009 will live up to it's potential hype.

Multitasking Is A Waste Of Time

As this country has claimed the title of most overworked populace in the world, we have picked up some nasty habits. This phenomena has been aided in large part by mutlitasking. We have all heard of it, and have been encouraged (or even forced) to adopt it as a "best practice" in our working lives. The truth is, however, that multitasking actually decreases efficiency and productivity while helping to increase overall stress levels.

By focusing on multiple things at once, we are allowing some level of inefficiency given the fact that our lack of a singular focus will cause mistakes across a spectrum of tasks, rather than a single task. This, of course, means we (or someone else for that matter) have to spend more time cross-checking our mistakes across several tasks, which adds cost to our given end-products. If we stop there, we have already built in more effort for a given task thanks to multitasking than if we had simply focused on a single task at a time. Since we are not alone in this waste of time, there is the very real chance that any mistake might not get noticed. Therefore, any efforts to rectify mistakes due to multitasking are factored exponentially since they are compounded as they progress.

I know what you're saying. Given the ability to have constant, instant information updates thanks to technological advances, multitasking has become paramount in our everyday lives. Well, I have to disagree. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well. And if you're chatting on your bluetooth headset while texting someone and IM'ing a few other people, all while trying to update a couple office documents and check the latest stock market quotes, you are bound to make mistakes. So the next time you are tempted to engage in multitasking, stop; take a deep breath, finish the task at hand, and move onto the next task, because not only will you get a lot more done, you will get a lot more done right.

Meterologists

Growing up in Kansas, I became accustomed to a certain level of skill from meteorologists. This could easily be quantified in the local NBC affiliate's three degree guarantee. If they were off by more than plus or minus three degrees on their temperature predictions, they would give money to some charity. Of course, they were rarely off by more than a degree, so they did not have to pay out that often. Fast forward to my current residence of Southern California. This weekend was supposed to bring a furious winter storm complex. Up to three inches of snow and 70 mph wind gusts. And you know what happened? Nothing. So thanks to my faith in the fire and brimstone weather forecast, I stayed at home and missed out on some awesomeness. Am I bitter? You betcha. Because a night out that I can not participate in equates to several potential lost opportunities. So for at least tonight all the meteorologists in SoCal get a big WTF? from me. Thanks for nothing.

National Repeal Day

In case you didn't already know, today is National Repeal Day. It was seventy five years ago today that the 21st Amendment was ratified, putting an end to prohibition. This amendment was historic for two reasons. First, by nullifying the 18th Amendment, it was the first (and to date the only) time a Constitutional amendment had been repealed. Second, it was the first (and to date the only) time a Constitutional amendment had been ratified by means of state conventions, rather than by state legislatures. By utilizing state conventions, the federal government was able to by-pass state legislatures who were believed to be too afraid to stand up to temperance advocates, essentially using a back door voting process already built into the Constitution. While the argument could be made that Prohibition was a noble social experiment, the reality is that Prohibition was a success only in its utter failure. It proved that legislating morality by simply outlawing activities does nothing but push them even farther to the fringes of society (something we could learn with our modern war on drugs). So raise a glass and celebrate your Constitutionally-protected right to drink!