Recent NFL observations Oct 9, 2007
1.  Pink towels:  I saw a towel draped over a player's shoulder pads, and it didn't look clean and white, but it also wasn't completely red.  I figured it might've been a fluke.  I saw another one and thought, This is an NFL team.  Don't they have enough money to get clean towels?  After I saw the same thing in several other games, at different times, and on different networks, it finally all came together:  It had something to do with breast cancer awareness. 

2.  Let's travel back in time to the last 5 or 6 games of the 2006-2007 season, where Jeff Garcia was the Eagles quarterback in place of an injured Donovan McNabb.  Garcia managed to take a below-.500 team to the playoffs, beating the division rival Giants, and losing in the 2nd round to the Saints.  When asked what he would do next season concerning McNabb, coach Andy Reid said he'd bench Garcia and put McNabb in as soon as he was healthy.  My immense knowledge of football and everything else said, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Jeff Garcia is a game-winner, McNabb isn't.  Andy Reid surprisingly wasn't able to read my mind and consequently didn't take my advice, and now look at the Eagles.  They're a joke of a team even with a healthy McNabb.  And they got rid of Garcia.  This is why I don't like the Eagles, even though I tell people they're my favorite team. 

3.  I think it's funny how teams that do well one year end up doing poorly the next year, and vice versa.  I can think of three teams off the top of my head:  the Saints, the Bears, and the Chargers.  All three teams had incredible records and made it to the playoffs last year.  They had Pro Bowl players and managed to consistently win and get better each week.  In all three cases, not much changed from last season to this season in terms of personnel, both players and coaches.  Yet all three teams are borderline atrocious so far this season.  Sure it's only week 5 and there's still a ton of time to turn things around, but the obvious question is:  What happened between last year and this year?  What changed?  If your players are generally the same, your coaches are generally the same, and the league is generally the same, what could possibly be different about this season to make you lose so many games so poorly?  Did you get lucky last year?  Were you overrated?  The "vice versa" is also true.  The example that comes to mind is Green Bay.  The team was so bad last year, it almost forced Brett Favre to retire.  But he decided to stay, as did most of his team and most of the coaches.  So what exactly changed from one year to the next to turn a terrible team into a pretty good team?  Who knows.  Maybe Brett Favre is like wine and gets better with age.  But what happened for the last several years when he wasn't good?  Maybe that was his valley and now he'll get exponentially better each year until he retires as the league's MVP at the ripe old age of 65. #sports
RSS to email Oct 5, 2007
Of the different ways to forward RSS to email, I've found that simple systems like RssFwd and Rmail are easier to work with but less configurable, while full-featured systems like FeedBurner and FeedBlitz are more complicated because they're so configurable.  All in all, RssFwd did the best job of simply delivering RSS items via email in a relatively timely manner, though there were delays of several hours in some cases.  FeedBurner and FeedBlitz are too full of cruft and self-promotion, and they generally lack any useful configurable options (like when to send what, how it should look, etc.).  Of course, the internal, site-specific solutions like Subscribe2 for WordPress work the best because they email new things as soon as they're published, not as soon as a 3rd-party site's robots notice new material. #technology
Apples and pears Oct 5, 2007
I grew up on a plot of land that had 8 apple trees and 3 pear trees, all of which were "organic" and wild, meaning they required (or rather, received) no help from us yet grew and produced fruit annually.  There were at least 3 different varieties of apples, including a small red variety with a shiny skin, a medium-sized red variety with a rough skin, and a small green-skinned variety.  The pear trees were all the same type:  Bosc, which is a brownish-colored variety with rough skin.  Every fall, there was a pretty sizable fruit harvest in our backyard, but we rarely partook of very much of it.  I would usually go around to my favorite trees (the small, red-skinned apples and the bosc pears) and knock a few down with a soft soccer ball.  My parents would usually get a few buckets from two of the medium-sized red trees and make a few gallons of apple sauce.  But other than that, the rest of the fruit was left to feed our plethora of backyard wildlife. 

Ever since I've been in the habit of buying fresh fruits and vegetables, I've bought red delicious apples.  I think it's because they're the least like the ones I grew up with.  They're big, sweet, and shiny, unlike the ugly, sour apples that fell off our trees.  I've also developed a habit of buying and eating bosc pears, which used to be rock-hard and unpleasant to eat.  They're still pretty rough fruits, but their hardness prevents them from rotting quickly, and they're much more palatable when cut up.  It feels weird paying for something I used to be able to get for free. 

I've gone apple picking (for money) a few times in the recent past, and I can't help but feel bad about it.  Growing up, I had essentially unlimited access to all the free apples I could eat, but I often didn't take advantage of it.  One good thing about apple picking, however, is that the smell of an apple orchard with apples lying on the ground brings me right back to every September of my childhood. #food
Subscribe to updates via email Oct 4, 2007
I've implemented a new feature on this here website:  Updates via email.  If you don't like visiting my site (and/or don't know about RSS) but would like to be notified when I post something new, you can subscribe to updates via email.  It's easy to subscribe and unsubscribe, and I won't sell your email address to spammers or send you spam myself. 

Edit:  Never mind.  I got rid of it.  It's stupid. #technology
Ezekiel 4:9 cereal Oct 4, 2007
I have just one thing to say:  Ezekiel 4:9 cereal is disgusting.  It tastes like a mixture of sand and sawdust, neither of which are good ingredients for food. 

Ok, I'll continue. 

Two things appealed to me when I saw this cereal on the shelf: 
  1. It's organic, so it appeals to Wendy's championing of all things organic.
  2. It has a Bible verse in the title, so it appeals to my championing of all things with Bible verses in their title (this is the only one I know of).
It turns out the Bible verse isn't about God or Christianity or anything similar.  The verse says, "Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself."  It's not exactly earth-shattering or life-changing, which really should've given me a clue as to how the cereal would taste.  And what the heck are millet and spelt?  I'll assume that's where the sawdust taste comes from.  The sand taste is more of a texture, as the cereal is dry and gritty. 

What annoys me about this situation is the following: 
  1. I payed like $8 for this minuscule box of cereal, and I knew after one tiny little bite that I didn't like it.
  2. Why do food companies make food that tastes horrible?  I can't understand how some dude (or dudette) in a kitchen thought of this wild concoction of grains and came to the conclusion, "Ya know what?  It's finished.  It's finally an edible food that people will surely like."  It's wretched.  It's inedible.  It's tasteless and gritty.  How in the world did it get past any amount of taste testing or quality control?
To be fair, this isn't an isolated incident.  I had pretty much the exact same experience with Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch.  I overpaid for a small box, knew after one bite that I didn't like it (it had the same sand-and-sawdust taste), and haven't touched it since. 

I'll admit, this is at least partially my fault.  I make all my food decisions based on sight, and both cereals look quite appetizing on the box.  With that in mind, I shouldn't be disappointed when things don't taste as good as they look.  But at the same time, I feel like I've been lied to.  Sure the actual product looks quite similar to the advertised product, but something's missing.  It's called taste.  Please, cereal makers, create food that has an actual taste. #food
Wait for green (5) Oct 4, 2007
As opposed to other traffic lights where you can optionally go on red or green, this light requires you to wait for green. 

#travel
Customer service expectations Oct 2, 2007
It's funny how little I've come to expect from customer service.  Even "little" is an overstatement.  I expect the worst when I call a customer service phone number.  I expect my situation to actually go downhill, to go from having one question to having ten questions, from thinking I'm owed something to actually owing something. 

So it was funny last week when I got a $9 check in the mail as a result of a run-in with customer service.  I got double-charged for parking at the Newark Airport; once on my E-ZPass and once on my credit card.  If it was a $0.35 toll, I would have let it go because it would cost more of my time to fix the problem than the $0.35 refund would have been worth.  But this was $9, and there's some invisible line between $0.35 and $9 after which I'm morally required to take action. 

I called E-ZPass expecting the worst, and I got even worse than the worst.  There isn't even a word for that.  I said, "You charged me twice."  She said, "That's not my problem.  You have to call the Newark Airport."  I said, "It figures.  Can you give me anything, maybe a phone number?"  She said, "There's nothing I can do.  Here's a number."  I angrily hung up and called the number.  I heard that ear-piercing tone that not only says, "The number you have dialed has been disconnected," but also, "Screw you and your previously good hearing ability."  I laughed.  I tried again.  I got the same message.  I hoped that electronic recording could somehow hear how hard I slammed my phone down. 

I searched online for a contact at the Newark Airport parking division.  I found it.  I called it.  It worked.  The woman I talked to was quite possibly the nicest, most accommodating customer service person I've ever encountered.  But remember, this is the airport in Newark, so there are a few cultural peculiarities that need to be kept in mind.  For one, "rudeness" doesn't equate to "meanness".  That's just how they talk.  Second, just because they sound rushed and annoyed doesn't mean they won't help.  I told her my problem and she told me what I needed to do.  She needed printed information, and she said she'd get back to me.  She got back to me and said I'd be receiving a check in the mail.  Four weeks later, I received said check and rejoiced. 

The funny part about this situation is that I've grown so accustomed to talking to unhelpful customer service people that I was completely floored to find one that could actually help me.  And not only was the person helpful, I actually saw the end result:  That $9 check in my mailbox.  Oh, what a day. #business