o Radio Silence: Is it just me or has the global warming/cooling/changing crowd gone silent?
o Spoilers: It never fails to amazed me how inconsiderate the media can be. We've been watching the Olympics because we're interested in seeing how the events turn out. Yet, every single time I go to almost any news site, I am told how the events turned out before I even get to see them. Don't go to news? Don't worry, Facebook is spreading the word. Don't have Facebook? The results have been appearing in the sidebar of my online email account. Give me a break. Has our media become so filled with ADHD jerk offs that they can't let me see the events without trying to spoil them? Are they so fricken inconsiderate that they can't be bothered to put the results behind a link? Why is that so hard?
o Disaster: Every Olympics begins with people claiming it will be a disaster. Then things generally go well, putting the lie to the detractors -- except that every host city loses their shirt in building these stadiums. This is the one time where it seems that the detractors were right. Zika. Muggings. Empty stands. The water is awash in sewage. Injured athletes from unsafe facilities. That's all bad. Even worse, this is the kind of stuff that will kill Brazil's tourism industry. They used the Olympics to try to announce themselves to the world as a first world country and they come out looking like the worst banana republic... awash in crime, sewage, poverty, disease and incompetence. Not smart.
o A Bad Look: For those who don't know, the Russians have basically been banned for cheating. It was so bad that the whole team got banned. Then they appealed. Now, some of them are being let in but others aren't. One of the ones they let in was a female swimmer. If she had a reputation for integrity and people thought she was wrongly caught up the scandal, that's fine. But it turns out, she's been caught cheating with PEDs twice. Really? So the whole anti-drug regime is a joke, is it? Why bother punishing the rest of the Russians?
o Hall of Failure: The NFL had to cancel the Hall of Fame game because someone mistakenly used the wrong paint on the field and it turned into concrete. I can't blame them for cancelling the game to avoid injury. I think that was the right decision. I do think they should have been a bit more careful about field conditions in the first place, which likely would have avoided the issue, but merde happens. I mention this because once again, the haters are using this to pour out intense hate at the NFL and to wrap their issues into this. They are like Pavlov's dogs: "if the NFL truly cared about concussions, then they would have done exactly what they did only they would have done it because it was the right thing to do rather than because they wanted to kill players!! Wah." I think I'm ready to diagnose the internet as clinically insane.
o Don't Buy An iPhone: I recently upgraded from a Galaxy 4S to a 7whatever. I love it. It's been a fantastic improvement in so many ways. Seriously. Unlike Microsoft, Samsung actually seems to want to make your life better with each upgrade rather than worse. Anyways, my wife "upgraded" from the Samsung 4 to the iPhone 6something about a year ago. She's pissed. It turns out there is no way to clear out the clogged memory caches on the Apple, which means she is constantly being told she's out of memory. And that's not all. It does everything a little more poorly than my new one. It struggles to find a signal. The charger wire has broken twice in a year too. Just thought I would pass that on. Again, I'm not paid by anyone. I get nothing for saying this. I ain't no mommy blogger.
o Your Thought Here: Anything to add?
34 comments:
Oh, and the Costco bears are back! If you're looking for a 9 foot tall totally soft, high quality bear... Costco is your place. Totally worth it.
I would get my daughter another one, but I'd end up divorced if I did.
Here's the LINK.
It does look like a slow news day, though as the opening paragraph implies I'm sure it'll be back to Trump soon enough. I'm not a sports person so I haven't been following either the NFL or the Olympics though even I haven't been able to get away from the crap at the Olympics. On the phones, glad to hear that the new Galaxy is an improvement! I still have a S4 myself and I've never quite trusted iPhones... Too pricey and I found Apple's whole iCult following to be disturbing. I think I'll be sticking with the Galaxy regardless, though, and I know it's won over some people. A former iPhone devotee that I know of decided to go Samsung and was impressed that his phone still worked even after an encounter with his lawnmower! Good stuff.
Otherwise, nothing to add except I'll be starting my second round of jury duty ever this week, presumably on Tuesday. Last time I was called in the guy in question didn't show up for his case so they let me and the others go... I can't imagine that ended well for him. We'll see if I get the full experience this time around. Also, Andrew, did you get my e-mail?
- Daniel
Daniel, What a coincidence! I have jury duty next week.
I just saw it.
Very interesting coincidence! I always wondered how they handled lawyers getting called in for jury duty, especially with all the tricks that you've told us about for reading and conveying messages to a jury. In either case I'm actually somewhat looking forward to it as a break from work... Six months of overtime has left me more than a bit twitchy.
- Daniel
Most places exempt you if you're an attorney. Colorado does not. But no attorney in his right mind would let me serve on their jury.
Ha! Based on what you've said here I can believe it. Colorado seems like it can be a strange place sometimes, but nice if you can get used to it. Does it look like Cory Gardner sparked some sense into the state GOP, BTW, or is it as self-destructive as the last time you mentioned it?
- Daniel
An Iran scientist who spied for the U.S. before returning to Iran (apparently they had threatened his family) and denouncing the U.S. has been executed.
His case and the fact he voluntarily betrayed Iran (he claimed coercion) was discussed by Hillary and her staff on her hacked server.
The whole thing reminds me of 1984.
http://townhall.com/news/politics-elections/2016/08/07/iran-nuclear-scientist-in-us-spy-mystery-reportedly-executed-n2202607
Good Lord... you'd think even union people would be smart enough not to leave the AC on full blast before sunrise, but you'd be wrong. My bus was a meat locker this morning. It's August and I may have to a coat to work. Aaaa..
Andrew, I am going to sucker-punch the NFL for this. No other league is as big a bunch of control freaks as they are. This should have been easy to avoid. Maybe if they'd spent five minutes checking the field a week or two ago instead of litigizing for hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees because some reality show had the gall to mention the NFL's existence and not pay through the nose for it...
Ah, Goodell, the owners, and their cronies deserve all the s*** they get.
At least Chuck Noll protégé Tony Dungy, former Steelers linebacker Kevin Greene, and former OSU lineman Orlando Pace got the enshrinement they'd earned and deserved.
Andrew -
I have an iPhone 5s and am perfectly happy with it. (And I don't feel the need to upgrade every time a new one is released.) But I don't keep a lot of photos or music on it so I don't get the "Low Memory" messages. In fact, right now I have only one album on my phone (the latest Star Trek score) and a few podcasts.
Re: the NFL, I agree with Rustbelt above.
Re: the Olympics, Reason (yes, I know) did a tongue-in-cheek article on why most people don't give a shit about the Olympics anymore. Obviously that's not entirely true, though.
CBS News this morning did an extensive story on US Olympians and our medals so far, however they left out the fact the US Rifle won gold...the news media is bunch of liars just by omission..they're good at this stuff....
http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/08/06/american-shooter-thrashes-competition-take-first-gold-medal-olympics/
Climate Strange: The same day you comment on radio silence, I see this: Lowering Crime Could Contribute to Global Warming.
Olympics: I like the target events: shooting and archery.
iPhone: I'm on Sprint's iPhone for Life plan. If it sounds like a punishment, well...
tryanmax, That is ridiculous. First, it's impossible to figure out that kind of math. At best, they could guess at a handful of millions of variables. Secondly, that's just a stupid idea. Let's not fix a tangible problem because it might have a negligible effect on a made up problem.
I'm not as big of a fan of the summer Olympics, but I enjoy the swimming and the women's gymnastics (one of the few times I prefer women's sports) and the rare stuff -- water polo, fencing, weight lifting, Judo, etc.
We're on T-Mobile and I'm pretty happy, though I've had problems because their "stream without counting against data" stuff never seems to be data-free.
Daniel, Sadly no. They seem to back in "we've got to stop abortion and gays... nothing else matters!" mode. At least locally.
Although, I do like the Senate candidate. He's a black libertarian type. I'm really hoping he wins, but I doubt it very much.
Anthony, I seems crazy. But that's how the Soviets worked too. They didn't threaten you, they threatened your family.
Rustbelt, The problem arose the day of the game. The night before, they had the ceremony on the field. When they prepared the field the day of the game, they used the wrong paint, which turned all the painted surfaces into concrete basically. So it's not like they didn't bother looking at the field. The problem I could blame them for, at most, is that it's not wise to make fields do double duty that quickly. That's a problem they run into a lot with rock concerts in the regular stadiums.
Tony Dungy is awesome. A great human being and a well deserved honor. I'm a big Ken Stabler fan too. He's the kind of guy who belongs in the Hall for color. (I hate the idea that stats are what matter.)
Scott, She doesn't have that much either. It's all cache memory, but getting rid of that is a nightmare on the Apple. The Samsung has a button you can push to clear it.
Read above about the NFL.
Critch, The media tells the story they want to tell. And their coverage of the Olympics is rather pathetic. No depth. Rumors as true. Race to spoil. PCism up the wazzo.
Today, they said that Time had listed a Muslim chick fencer as one of the Top 100 most influential people in America. Really? I doubt anyone has even heard of her. Much less, are you really going to tell me a fencer is more influential than someone who cured a virus or designed a widget? The only reason they picked her is her religion.
No love for Youngstown, Pittsburgh-light, inductee Eddie D, Koshcat? Never really cared for him while I lived in the area – probably something about a, ahem, legitimate businessman being behind the weekly trail of dead floating face-down in the Mahoning River – but a newfound semi-respect after his speech. Heck, with his parting shot sending love to the troops, followed by Dungy and Fav-ruh thanking God so much, guessing the ESPiN producers’ “brains” suffered multiple aneurysms. Good.
Good morning all! Let's see - cellphone - Verizon Motorolla Droid Razr Maxx 5 yrs old - doesn't do many tricks. Tried to switch to Samsung 6S, but it didn't go well. I moved my SIM card to the new phone and it proceeded to sent out 19 text messages to one of my friends who then called me to make sure I wasn't being kidnapped and trying send her coded messages. That's why she's my BFF...;-)
Also - Olympics - I watched the American Women's Gymnastics team & Simone Biles, the 4' 8" gymnastics dynamo during the Floor excercises.
RE: The Women's Rifle shooting gold-medal. Piers Morgan made some snotty comment like "No surprise that the US won gold in a shooting contenst".
Hmmmm, wonder if/when the US Muslum woman medals in Women's Fencing if he will make a similar comments about "No surprise that a Muslim person would know how to wield a sword!" "Or I bet they wouldn't let her pick up a sword in Saudia Arabia!". Bets?
Btw, however, since the whole "Yey, a Muslim woman in a hajib is competing the Olympic, Time maybe forgot to take Ibtihaj Muhammad of the list. She is not being prime-timed since is that in the PR she made the mistake of whining about how unsafe she feels in America as a practicing Muslim. You can imagine how that went over....
Bev, It would be "racist" to judge her by her religion. It's also apparently racist to judge people by the traits associated with their culture.
As for commenting on guns specifically, that is such ignorance. First, Brazil has a much higher gun murder rate, so why not say it about them? And if you count war zones, then I would think that the Middle East should win this hands down. Of course, liberals love creating negative stereotypes for things they don't like.
Simone Biles is amazing. I love watching her.
Transferring from one operating system to another is problematic. My wife lost all of her contacts and calendar even though they should have transferred.
Eric, Liberals tend to dismiss discussions of religion from black athletes as a sort of "Isn't it cute how these noble savages still believe in a deity?" So it doesn't bother them. It only bothers them when a Tim Tebow comes along, then it's unacceptable.
P.S. Eric, One thing I have seen time and again is that liberals hold whites to a higher moral/educational/civilized standard than they hold blacks. It is a stunningly racist thing. And yet, they think doing so makes them non racist.
Transferring from one operating system to another is problematic. My wife lost all of her contacts and calendar even though they should have transferred.
That's why I link all my contacts and events to Google, so I don't have to worry about some incompetent store clerk deleting them.
Yeah, she thought she had, but it didn't work. That was our mistake. The cache thing and some other minor annoyances are on Apple.
My sister loves Blackberry, particularly because of the keyboard. I find them to be too primitive. I have no experience with other manufacturers. Wouldn't touch Microsoft if my life depended on it.
Disappointing to hear, but hardly surprising. Like we've been saying in the discussions here and on e-mail they really are stuck on stupid. Shame about the Senate candidate, too. Why can't there be a nice place to live with cool weather that isn't politically dysfunctional?
- Daniel
I confess I couldn't be more indifferent to the Olympics. Never really been a sports watcher.
I too have a iphone 5s without trouble. My wife has a 6plus and loves it. I think it is too big. I haven't switched because of the headaches involved with switching. Not a great excuse but there it is. I also have a 7-8 year old iMac that still runs great. About 3-4 years ago I had to replace the hard drive for a bigger one (went to 2 Tera) and upped the RAM at the same time. I've never had a computer last this long without getting bit rot. Unlike Microsoft, when Apple upgrades the OS, it doesn't erase half your stuff and totally change the look of your system.
Two ways to clear the cache that I know of. One is a hard reset where you back it all up and then erase the whole system and reload it. The other is to double hit the home key and it will open up all the opened programs. You can shut each of those off by swiping up. If your wife is like mine, she could try to clear the crap out of her photo and video folder. I back them up and then reload them under files such as Summer 2016. She fills her phone up with crappy 2 sec videos.
Global warming: I'm not sure outside of my neck of the woods but the crazies here are running around stating that Spring 2016 (or June 2016 or July 2016) was the hottest on record and proof of global warming and why we must let the fascist Obama control our lives.
I love the Olympics; I hate NBC. I know the men's 400 rely had won gold 2 hours before the bothered to show it locally. I don't think they bothered to air it until about 10pm. MY KIDS NEED TO GO TO BED FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! We watched some Judo, weight lifting, dressage and fencing. I love to watch some some of the smaller sports along with swimming and track/field. I can watch basketball anytime. Gymnastics is ok but the US team was crushing the life out of the other teams. BTW, I'm sure we are getting a sanitized version of the problems in Rio.
Russians have been cheating for decades. NEXT!
People actually watch and care about the Hall of Fame Game? NEXT!
The wife and kids tried to buy the 9 foot bear. I stopped it.
Of course the US does well in shoot because we actually enjoy going out and practice shooting. Getting better. More accurate. Shooters in Brazil mostly incorporate the ghetto style of aiming side-wise and throwing a lot of lead in the air.
I find it bizarre that the Brazilian crowds are taunting US athletes with the word Zika.
First, you're the ones with the Zika. That's like some messed up gigolo screaming VD at people he doesn't like. Self-aware much? Apparently not.
Secondly, we're the ones who are going to cure this and save their butts because America does things like that while Brazilians rob each other on the beach and fail as a nation.
Daniel, We'll see.
Anthony, Some people are, some aren't. As Americans, we allow both positions. :)
Koshcat, The wife and kids tried to buy the 9 foot bear. I stopped it.
You're an evil man. LOL! The bear is awesome. When Costco comes up with a Mrs. Bear, I'm going to need to risk a divorce to get one for my daughter.
I like the smaller events too. I think they're more interesting because I can't see them very often.
I agree about the Olympics. They should be showing this stuff live rather than holding it off until late. People do need to go to bed.
I suspect we aren't hearing much about the full scope of the problems. Yet, we've already heard enough to embarrass the country.
LOL! Yep. Ghetto style. And don't forget the African kids who hold AK47s over their heads as they shoot them. Never understood that one.
I love NFL football, but I've actually stopped watching preseason. It's pointless.
Sorry, I can't muster up enough words to post anything tonight. Keep it going here...
I saw a cop get out of his cruiser today and help a guy with a walker across a major street. I don't think I've seen that before. :)
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