June 2007 – Page 11 – My Thought Spot

First Game

We played our first football game on Saturday. I am not sure what the final score was, but we lost. We were carrying a 18-8 score in our favor until the last play of the half. They were able to score a touchdown off of one of our cornerbacks. It was a pass into the end zone. Therefore, the first half ended with them getting the TD and a 2 point conversion to bring the score to 18-16.

As much as a numbers and stats guy as I am, I do horribly keeping score at a game when I am on the field. There is no public scoreboard and no announcements of the scores. Everyone has to keep up with the score themselves. I would not have known the half-time score had the coach not unmercifully berated us for letting them get that last score.

I have no idea what the final score was, but we lost. I think they were 2 TDs ahead of us at the end.

I did not play much. There was another safety that was there. It was the first time I had seen him, but apparently he had been practicing with the team early in the practice season before I arrived. The team had been playing together for several weeks before I knew about them and showed up. I guess the coach knew more about him and let him play instead of me. It was a bit frustrating to have been at every practice over the last three weeks just to sit the bench while someone you have never seen takes your place. I will just have to work harder in practice and impress the coach.

No one got ejected. That is always good. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. Our oldest, and most beloved player, caught a pass and dragged three defenders out of bounds with him. The play was whistled dead and the three defenders kept pulling on Carlos trying to bring him down. The Refs blew the whistles a good 5 or 8 seconds while they kept hitting on Carlos. Our bench cleared out (with the exception of about 3 of us) to start a ruckus. The Ref was going to eject one of our players, but could not remember the number of the player. The funny thing was, there was no personal foul nor unsportsmanlike conduct called.

The thing to remember is that we are not professionals and we don’t have professional refs. It is all about playing and winning…not necessarily about going about it in a fair and orderly manner. Therefore, if you show up for practice for 3 weeks straight and other players don’t, they may still get to play just because they are better, not because they are dedicated. On that note, we had 24 players at the game Saturday when we only have 8-14 show up for practice.

Meade mySKY

Meade mySKY This new product from Meade allows you to get information about the stars and other celestial bodies simply by pointing the device towards the object.

It works with GPS to get your location and time, then knows where you are pointing the device to display the astronomical information on it’s small screen. Or, you can work the other direction. Pick the heavenly body from a list and tell the device you want to locate it in the sky. The mySKY will instruct you where to point the device which will then give you an idea as to where to look.

This can be used with Meade telescopes which allow for computer interface. Ultimately allowing the mySKY to point your telescope right at the object you are interested in.

With the audio feedback and the visual display, they claim that it is better than having your own personal astronomer standing beside you. Especially with its knowledge of over 30,000 nightsky objects!

It is available for pre-order right now for less than $400 from OpticsPlanet. Check out GearGalaxy for more information about the Meade mySKY as well as other great astronomy gear.

This would have been wonderful to have back 20 years ago when I was on trips with my school principal. He would always take us star gazing and point out interesting objects. No matter how much I tried to study on my own, I never could “one-up” him with my knowledge. Maybe when I see him again next year I will pack one of these out of sight.

[This is a sponsored post]

Running update

I have not talked about my running in a while. I am still out there pounding the pavement. This morning I really felt a need to get some miles in. Really, not for the sake of having the mileage, but for my preaching today. Occasionally when I feel like things are not well solidified in my mind, or my mind is crowded by a lot of extraneous emotions and events, the running brushes all that away.

I went out to run for an hour. I expected that would be close to 6 miles. I was a bit surprised when I got home and saw my pace was very close to 12 minutes per mile. So in the hour and three minutes I was out there, I only did 5.83 miles. But, the miles were not the important thing, it was getting on the road that I needed to do.

I am only running 3 days a week, unless I have a race. And, sometimes on race weeks I drop my long run for the sake of the race. I am doing a combo aerobic/weight training time 3 days a week as well. Football falls on my three running days. We practice on Tuesday and Thursday nights as well as play our games on Saturdays.

So did it work? Was the message God wanted me to bring more clearly presented? I believe it was.

PodShow’s current promotion

I have recently been offended by PodShow, the podcasting network. They have a promotional audio clip which they are tacking onto the beginning of some of their podcasts (I am not sure why all of their shows don’t have this).

The promotion is a campaign to “help” them become a better company. They have a survey you can fill out which provides them basic demographics and not really much information on what they can do better as a company. But, their wording in the promotional audio, and the name of the campaign uses a word which I was taught was a curse word. I will not mention the word because I try to write in such a way that I am not embarrassed when my 9 year old son reads my posts.

The campaign says “Help us ‘stink’ less.” Aside from the wording they use, whose bright idea was it to market their company by saying, “We stink. We will stink when this is over. But, at least we will stink less.”? That has got to be one of the silliest ways to promote your company. Whether you agree as to the offensive/inoffensive nature of the word, it is still an odd campaign.

But, back to the main issue. I was listening to a religious podcast when I first heard this promo. I was shocked to hear it in the first place, but especially on a religious show. My family often listens to the podcasts that I download. I know which ones might be inappropriate for young ears. But when I am listening to a religious show, I don’t expect something like this to come up. Fortunately I was in the car by myself and listening alone.

I have written PodShow to give them my input. Though it has been a week, I have not heard from them other than the confirmation that they have received my email. I then wrote all the podcasts that I listen to which have had this audio tacked onto their show. I simply told them that I would not be listening to their shows until this promo is over. The responses I got back were interesting.

Two of them wrote me back within a few minutes saying that they greatly regretted that this offended me and that they would voice my concerns to their contacts within PodShow. They also offered to provide me with personal links to their shows without this promotional audio tacked on. At least until this promo is over. One of these podcasters I had never contacted before and the other I have sent an email telling him that I appreciate his show. Essentially little to no relationship with these hosts.

The third podcaster was the surprise. It is a podcaster with whom I communicate at least monthly on a personal level and almost daily through a mailing list to which we both subscribe. His response was kind, but hardly apologetic of PodShow’s tactics. He told me that he would let me know when the promotion was over and that I could listen again.

I have to admit, when I first read his response I read it in an offensive manner. However, he was not unkind. I want to say that. While he respected my opinion, he did not agree with me and did not indicate that he would be sending my concerns further up the food chain. Nor did he offer to provide me with an alternative to the show, which is something that I had requested.

This third podcaster I consider a friend. We come from two different worlds in many ways. But because of our personal relationship, I will not name who he is.

The first two podcasters are Lifespring! HymnStories with Steve Webb and Matt’s Today in History with Matt Dattillo. I give a hearty thank you to them as they seem to be more interested in their listeners than in the benefits they get from PodShow. This will in no way harm their PodShow relationship, but they have expressed sympathy to one lone listener. That will keep me listening and I hope you do too.