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Football is here. A mostly glorious event.

Last night the pro football season began for me. And how glorious it — mostly — was.

My team, a.k.a. the Houston Texans, came back from a deficit of 24 points to beat the San Diego Chargers. Randy Bullock booted a 41-yard field goal for a literal last-second three points.The kicker was drafted by Houston in 2012 but was injured that August with a groin injury. A Klein High School product who played ball and graduated with a petroleum engineering degree from Texas A & M, was given the game ball for what was his first regular season game. Oh, and yes, I was just thinking “ouch.”

It happened that the opening Monday Night Football game of 2013 was a double-header: the Washington Native-American Skins  vs. the Philadelphia Eagles with Houston-San Diego. Since I worked until 8 o’clock, the first game was going when I got home. I wasn’t particularly excited to see that particular game. I mean RGIII is a pretty exciting young quarterback to watch, provided he doesn’t end up on injured reserve after the first game. Less exciting were the two announcers for the game: Jon Gruden and Mike Tirico. And if humanly possible, many Houston fans thought the announcing pair for the second game — Chris Berman and Trent Dilfer — were even less exciting than the first two.

  “Chris Berman’s voice makes me wanna shoot myself in the foot,” Twittered “Lil Poop” to the Houston Chronicle.

Berman could be funny back in the 80s, when more people were stoned. Not so much these days. Trent Dilfer, the former Tampa Bay, Ravens, Seattle Seahawks, Cleveland and 49ers quarterback, is a pretty good NFL analyst, on the radio. Not so much a TV analyst.

I guess the Texans-Chargers game was an exciting contest. But I’d like my team to win like they were supposed to. I would like to see the Houston Texans go to the Super Bowl and, hopefully, win before I become too decrepit to do a limited Happy Dance. No matter how thrilling the game, if you have sleep problems like me, exciting at 12:45 a.m. doesn’t quite cut it.

Nonetheless, Houston seems to have a team better than last season’s. That’s a positive note. And to round out the start of football season, my high school has been at the top on the Associated Press prep polls from the start. My old school is No. 1 in 2A in Texas. Look it up.

An interesting note, a high school friend who still lives in the old hometown became involved in a kerfuffle with a regional sports site. It has been since straightened out last I heard. But Bobby has gotten a considerable number of folks, such as me, who agreed when my friend asked if I would be interested in receiving updates from him by text messaging. I said: Why the hell not? I have free unlimited text that I use. So, during the last two games which were won by old alma mater, I received short and to the point texts. Dick EFD, 2 yd run TD, PAT good. N 16, L 10. No commentary, no funny names. Just , who won, Baby!!! The home team has won three state championships. I saw them win one in person. I ‘d like to see them win another. And see the Texans win the Super Duper Bowl. Even if it’s on TV.

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Tote that laptop, load that Dell, take a little drink and you’ll land in … oh what the hell!

The last few days have been spent in what is now a too-common exercise. That is loading and reloading programs on my computer. Dell sent a repair person on Friday to fix my laptop. That visit included installing a new hard drive and doing whatever they do to repair a problem touch pad.

This type of stuff has been happening increasingly. I don’t know how long it has been, but it seems not a very long time ago that I had to restore my operating system to factory settings. Look, I admit that doing these type of things aren’t an equivalent to neurosurgery. But that makes them no less a pain in the ass. I now have the basic programs I need, but I still require a thousand tasks every time I finish another.

I thought owning a computer would be easier than this. I suppose part of my reason for feeling this way is that I once only used a computer, or PCs, or Macs, at work. Mostly I used Apple products, Mac variations. I don’t know if Apple has less problems than other computers. The first computer I owned was a used Mac and I never had any issues. However, I also never lugged my old Macintosh three or four times a year on flights to here or there. Nor did I take my computer to work with me every day.

My work computer is a tablet/notebook, Lenovo. It seems to be pretty sturdy and it should be because it is made for lugging around and for use in the field on a daily basis. You can’t break it or so it seems. I know if I could stand it up aside a pole and fire away with a Remington 870, that we’d see about that. However, that’s only a dream.

Still, you buy what you can afford if you can’t afford it and that is me to a t, or is it tee? Or if you were a tree, what would you be? Who the hell knows. I am working an evening shift, so I better get dressed.

 

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The computer man cometh

Yesterday afternoon I was writing along about something I wanted to say and was interrupted by the Dell lady. I spent the next hour letting her pick through my laptop and she finally said I was going to need another touch-pad and another hard drive. It supposedly will not cost me anything. It better not. But crap!

I guess I will either need to pay for an extended warranty or fix up one of the two kaput laptops I have if this one goes down after my next birthday in October. Happy Birthday! You need a new laptop. Damn, I hope not. I need to get one of those sturdy laptops with a durable case like the Army uses. I have a computer like that for my job. But it is a monumental piece of s**t. That’s MPOS, in troll talk.

Friday is supposedly the day the computer jockey comes to fix up this Inspiron. So I have all that re-loading stuff to look forward to this weekend. The Dell lady said she will “own” my case and will put all the software back on my laptop. Indian porn generator, perhaps? Sorry, it’s been a long day.

 

 

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Top 10, finally. Good effort, not too great results.

For quite awhile I have wanted to do a slide show so I could more easily and efficiently compose lists, perhaps even with music. Well today I started with the Top 10 concerts I have attended. It was neither an easy nor efficient use of my time and that of my alternative ego, Mr. Smith, who was kind enough to let us make use of his You Tube account.

The slide show may or may not have music. If it does, it may eventually creep into songs played in the concerts I attended, although once the music gets going the slide show stops until you decide to run it again. Or so it went when I tried it out. Well, no one said I nor Mr. Smith were techno-whizes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxlMvvCaW4Q&list=HL1378159071&feature=player_detailpage

A word about these concerts. Some are listed with other times I saw the act. For instance, I saw Fleetwood Mac as part of the ZZ Top extravaganza in New Orleans. This was around the time they released the self-titled album. It was likewise just after Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the group. Then they were the featured act at another City Park show in New Orleans in, I believe, June 1977. I know it was just before I departed Gulfport for sea duty in the Western and Southern Pacific. That particular show in the late Spring of ’77 was pretty much my favorite concert ever. That had more to do with the friends I went with to the concert. We had a blast, Danny, George Jim, Rene and his friend, whose name slips my mind, and myself. The music was really good as well. It seemed every song from “Rumours,” was producing hit after hit from the spring through past the end of the year.

Also, another very popular album at that time was Bob Seger’s fantastic “Night Moves,” another hit machine. Starting off the concert was the melodic and soulful Louisiana Leroux, which has been a.k.a. “Leroux.” The performance was rounded out by Kenny Loggins, who had not long before split with his longtime musical partner, Jim Messina.

About a month before stopping off at our first liberty on our New Zealand and Australian “tour” on board the old destroyer we were given word by the XO that Fleetwood Mac would be playing in Auckland, N.Z., while we were to be there. There were a limited number of tickets available for, I think $7. Not a lot of money but when you were grossing about $535 — $7 would be worth about $27 these days, according to the BLS — then it was a little bit of cash to think about. But I wanted to see if concerts in the U.S. were different than the ones in New Zealand. It was a little different. You didn’t see people smoking reefer as was prevalent at concerts in the USA back then. Other than that not much difference at all. Plus, it was really good music.

So, thinking about “back in the day,” while trying to work with Mr. Smith on movies or slideshows. Here is hoping the ones I do in the future are much better.

Well, I played the video again and no music that time. Also, I noticed a slight error. The Superdome concert I attended where the Allman Brothers were headliners was the first rock concert (perhaps even Southern Rock) to ever take place. There were some other MOR people who played between the opening ceremonies in Aug. 3, 1975, and whenever the concert was … about a month later.

 

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Future is here and it’s kind of weird but not too shocking

Once upon a time, I said that I only needed a computer that would act as a word processor and nothing more. Later, I developed a need for the Internet. Then came a requirement for working on spreadsheets. Photo editing eventually became a need because I started using a digital camera. Later my phone acted as a camera and a music platform as well. And then I found myself needing a Power Point, or in my case, the OpenOffice Presentation. Pretty soon, I was on Facebook and Twitter. After awhile, I was a regular computer geek.

Maybe I wasn’t a regular computer geek. Perhaps I was an irregular computer geek. Well, let’s say I was an irregular computer geek and a dyed-in-the-wool geek.

The future is here but I'm not shocked.
The future is here but I’m not shocked.

Some 25 years ago I didn’t even imagine I would be using a computer, much less did I think I would be using the damned thing every blamed day. I am five posts away from having 2,400 blog posts. What the hell is this blog thing? That’s like a diary isn’t it? I figured a few of my friends would look at it and we’d have some laughs. I have visitors from 27 different countries. Why would someone from Ukraine or Iraq or Ireland or even Morgantown, W.Va. Feel the need to read my musings?

I listen to music and read the newspaper on my laptop. I take photographs, do calculations, check the compass and even find my way on a map using my telephone. Imagine that? I don’t need a telephone man (or woman) to wire my house or connect a line to my home. I don’t even have wires going to my phone. I always take it with me when I go somewhere. I don’t have one ringer sound. I have as many sounds as I can afford or within my imagination. I am not charged for long-distance calls. I can send as many text messages as I want. I have 400 minutes of phone. Crap on a stick! I don’t even need a fourth of that.

I can remember my family’s first TV set, vaguely. My parents had black and white TV all their lives, even though they could have afforded color in the later years of their lives. I also remember the first telephone my folks had, at least once I joined them. Apparently they had one before I was born and then went without one for several years. Our phone was on a “party-line.” I can remember Mrs. Irons, who lived in the house across the front part of our field from us and also on our party-line, talking to her sister. Sometime they would be talking about canning vegetables or gossiping. I wasn’t supposed to be listening in. Most of the time, nothing the women said was worth eavesdropping.

When I first read the sociological gem “Future Shock,” I wondered about the type of society that could freak out over too much change happening too quickly. I have lived that type of change and, yes, it’s pretty amazing. Maybe it is the convenience that technology provides which provides a “future shock absorber.” Then maybe it’s not. Excuse me now, while I go put my TV dinner in the microwave for a couple of minutes.