So Anyways

Todd's Usage Whine #1

I've never posted about language usage that annoys me, which is really quite surprising since I hear and read examples of poor usage almost every day. I've learned to chill about it (usually), but it still bugs me.

Here's my number one pet peeve:

Say you're watching a sporting event on TV. It doesn't really matter what the event is, but let's take basketball as an example. Someone else walks in the room, notices that you're watching a game, and asks "who's winning?"

How the hell should I know who's winning (or, conversely, losing) the game? I can tell you who's ahead, but I really have no way of predicting accurately who the winner is going to be when the game is eventually completed. The score at any one moment might be a pretty solid indicator of who the winner will be, but then again, it might be completely misleading. Just because a team is ahead by 15 points with less than four minutes left doesn't necessarily mean they're going to actually win the game. Just ask the Arizona Wildcats about that (they lost in the NCAA tournament last weekend after leading by a wide margin with less than four minutes remaining).

If at that four minute mark, I had said Arizona was winning, I would have been wrong. They were, in fact, in the process of losing the game. They just happened to have a higher score than the other team at that particular moment.

I heard a sports reporter on the radio last night giving scores of basketball games in progress. He never once said that Team A was leading Team B. Instead, he said Team B was losing to Team A.

I'm sorry, but that was just inaccurate information, Radio Guy. Team B was trailing, but you really didn't have enough information to declare unequivocally that they were losing.

I'm all about precision, not perfection. I just need people to say what they actually mean.

Do I Have OCD?

I noticed something about myself the other day. Actually, I've known it for a long time, but I never thought much about it until recently. I'm thinking I may have some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder.

I count stairs. It doesn't matter where I am or how many times I've been there. If I'm climbing or descending a flight of stairs, I count the number of steps.

For example, my office is located on the ground floor, but the cafeteria and the nearest restroom are located on the 2nd floor. I trudge my way up that set of stairs many, many times a day. Everday. And, I know that there are 14 stairs to the first landing and another 14 stairs up to the 2nd floor. There have been 14 stairs there for years. That number doesn't ever change, but I count 'em every single time I use them. On very rare occasions, my count ends up at 12 or 13, so I have to then re-play the last few seconds in my brain to figure out where it was that I went wrong.

I don't ever repeat climbing the stairs just because I get a wrong number (if I did, I'm pretty sure there would be no question but that I've got a bad case of OCD), but I do have to figure out if the wrong number is the result of forgetting to start my count on the first step or if I got distracted by someone passing me by. In any case, I'm never satisfied until I climb those stairs the next time and confirm that there are indeed 14 steps just like there have been for years.

It's not just that particular set of stairs, either. The stairway to the basement has 13 steps down to the first landing and 18 steps from the landing to the basement.

The parking garage at Bank One Ballpark where we always park for Diamondbacks' games has 10 steps between landings.

I really have no idea why I do this. I think it has something to do with the rigorous marching band training I had back in high school. We had to fit exactly 8 steps in 5 yards - starting out with the arch of our foot centered on a yard line, we had to end up 8 steps later with the arch of our foot centered on the next yard line. That sounds fairly simple, but somehow it got drilled into my brain so much that I still think about it all the time. In fact, I still to this day try to fit 8 steps in between cracks in the sidewalk. I think I hide that fairly well so hopefully it's not obvious to others. People probably wonder sometimes, though, why I'm taking such small (or large) strides.

I think marching band scarred me for life.

Cry Me a River

I know he's been the bad boy of Major League Baseball for years, but I've always kind of liked Barry Bonds. His on-the-field performance was nothing short of awesome, and his off-the-field antics I thought were usually more entertaining than annoying. It always used to seem to me that he got a bum rap from the media and all the Barry Bashers who love to hate him. But, that was in the past, and like Mark McGwire, I'm not here to discuss the past.

My attitude about Barry began to change in the last year or two as he became more and more dominant at the plate. My opinion didn't change because he was dominant, but because when a pitcher actually pitched to him and the inevitable happened, he would make a point of admiring the beauty of his own work. A little too much mustard on that hot dog.

But even then, I didn't hate the guy. I could kind of understand how frustrated he must've gotten all those times at the plate when the opposing team was too afraid to pitch to him. I'm sure the relief he felt when he swatted one out of the park after countless walks was intense, and admiring his handiwork when he was given the opportunity was understandable.

But then, this summer came. Here he is 11 homeruns away from passing Babe Ruth on the all-time homerun list, and he admits that he used steroids. (To be fair, I don't think he actually admitted it as much as he avoided denying it, claiming that he took something his trainer gave him but had no idea what it was.) This summer, with the allegations against Bonds, the claims by Jose Canseco, and all the resulting hullabaloo was one rough off-season for baseball. The game may never recover the status it once had, and Barry Bonds was at the center of that storm. For that, I can't forgive him.

I was really happy actually to hear that he might miss the upcoming season. Maybe that's just what the game needs - a season free of 'Roid Man and the inevitable controversy when he passes Babe Ruth.

And then, I hear his diatribe yesterday during a break from spring training:

"I'm just tired, guys. I'm really tired. You wanted me to jump off the bridge. I finally jumped. You wanted to bring me down. You finally have brought me and my family down. You've finally done it, everybody, all of you. So now go pick a different person. I'm done."

When asked to whom he was referring, Bonds looked at the reporters around him and said calmly, "You, you, you, you, you, you the media, everybody. You finally got there."

Asked to detail what bothered him, Bonds said, "Inner hurt -- physically, mentally, done. Mentally drained. I'm tired of my kids crying."

Oh, by the way. Even if Barry doesn't play this season, he still gets $18 million guaranteed salary.

So, cry me a river, big boy. Better yet, just go away.

Ouch!

Ouch is about all I can think of to describe how I felt most of the weekend.

I spent a few hours on Saturday morning cleaning up overgrown plants out in our pool area. One palm-like tree was really out of control, so I spent a couple hours attacking it like a homopathic lunatic with a saw. I was determined to get that bad boy under control again and to show it who was its daddy.

I got that done, but not before the tree exacted its revenge on me. I still don't know really what happened, but about 30 minutes after finishing the job, my left hand began to hurt like hands are just not supposed to hurt. At first, I thought it was just an "old age" injury and the achiness would go away with a Tylenol or 3. That didn't work, and 3 hours later, I was in more pain than I remember really ever being in before.

The pain was so unrelenting that I finally got scared enough to let Ed take me to the "Urgent" Care center to see what was wrong. Three hours later, the "urgent" care folks finally did an X-ray and found nothing broken - so I was sent home with a prescription for super-heavy-duty Motrin and an admonition to get a 'real' doctor.

The hand is feeling much better today, but not before I had to rely on Ed to do pretty much everything for me, including tying my shoes since I couldn't grip anything with my left hand or fingers. Poor guy deserves a medal of honor for putting up with me. I admit that I tend to get kind of whiny when I hurt, and I definitely did my share of whining this weekend. I don't know what I would've done if Ed hadn't been there to tie my shoes...

I still don't know what the cause of the problem was. I went from thinking it was just arthritis-type pain, to thinking a bone was broken, to now thinking I got stung by a scorpion (or something equally evil). Whatever precisely it was that happened, the tree definitely got its revenge.

I swear I can hear the damn thing laughing an evil laugh whenever I step outside now.

A Generation of Nerds

I've noticed something recently. It seems that nearly everyone is a nerd nowadays. Everyone except me, that is. (That would really surprise just about anyone who knows me.)

I base this rather broad statement on essentially one fact - the number of people who wear things on their belt (phones, pagers, more phones, PDA's, MP3 players, and the like) are everywhere. Practically every person I see in my daily hustle and bustle has some sort of electronic contraption on their belt. And they seem proud of it. That just seems so wrong to me. I admit that I do wear a pager during the day, but that's only because I have to. And I take it off practically the second I get home at night and try to never ever wear it anywhere besides in the office.

<Old Geezer Mode> I remember back in my day, the only thing anyone ever wore on their belt was a calculator. The good ol' TI-35 was the cream of the crop back then and it was a bit of a status symbol to have one.

But, it was so terribly not cool to actually wear one in the convenient carrying-case-with-belt-clip-thingy.

That was reserved for the nerds. You could always tell who was a serious nerd around campus just by observing who was wearing a calculator on their belt and who wasn't.

I definitely had my calculator. And I secretly worshipped the thing. But, I wouldn't have been caught dead wearing it on my belt. Because, even though I was a nerd at heart, I was a closeted nerd. No need to advertise just how dorky I really was.

Now, I am just amazed at the people I see walking around like the phone on their belt is so cool. Like it makes them part of the jet set or something. Some of the guys around my office actually have 2 phones, a text pager, and some kind of PDA thing on their belt all at the same time.

Times, they are definitely a changin'. </Old Geezer Mode >

Is it Just Me?

Is it just me, or does this sound like the dumbest idea ever?

Apparently, Arizona isn't already wild-west enough. We've got the rattlesnakes and cowboys and even honest-to-goodness Indians Native Americans, but now we're gonna have shoot outs in our saloons.

For the folks trying to sell tourist tickets down at Old Tucson or in Tombstone, that might be a good thing, but for the majority of Arizonans, I just can't see that there's a big market for Saturday night shoot outs.

I still can't figure out why concealed weapons are allowed anywhere. I mean, if you're going to tote a big ol' honkin' gun around with you, shouldn't you have to let people know you have it? Wouldn't you want people to know that you could kill them if they piss you off? I don't see why keeping the gun hidden is important.

And, why is it so important to have guns (hidden or not) at a bar? So you can protect yourself from the other drunken idiot who has a gun? Because we all know that people tend to do dumbass things when they get drunk. And, if they're gonna do dumbass things, we might as well make sure they've got deadly weapons available.

Apparently, according to the gun enthusiasts, the reason carrying guns into bars is important is because criminals are already taking guns into bars and law-abiding citizens need to be able to protect themselves. Pretty solid reasoning there. Taking that a step further, perhaps we should start allowing concealed weapons on airplanes. After all, if the terrorists can do it, we need to be able to protect ourselves.

As Charlton Heston says "out of my cold dead hands..." I'm thinking there'll be plenty of those for us to peel guns out of soon...

The Curse of Todd

I've been afflicted by a curse most of my life. It comes and goes, but over the course of my lifetime, the curse has reared its ugly head with regularity.

What's the curse? I call it the curse of Todd.

Unless you happen to be named Todd, you probably have no idea how many different ways people can make fun of your name.

Just a few of the things I've been called over the years:

Toddler
Toad
Toadina
Toddly

But, sometimes people don't even have to change the name to make fun of it.

Like, for instance, when the band Big Head Todd and the Monsters was popular, my sister just thought it was hilarious to refer to her big bro as Big Head Todd. She still does, as a matter of fact.

But, the thing that seems to give people the most pleasure, as unbelievable as it may be after all these years, is to suddenly remember the nerd from Saturday Night Live, Lisa Loopner's boyfriend Todd. Lisa (played by Gilda Radner) was a seriously dorky nerd with a perpetual cold. Bill Murray played her boyfriend Todd.

My boss just remembered the nerds last week, and I was all of a sudden transported back to my early high school years when I'd dread every Monday morning since I knew everyone would've watched SNL and would have fresh new material to torment me with. Now, 20-some years later, I still haven't escaped the curse.

I'm thinking I'll just play along, though. Maybe tomorrow I'll head to work with some polyester pants pulled up to my throat and I'll greet everyone with "hello Mrs. Loopner!" Then, I'll give them a noogie.

If You're New

If you're new to the internet, you might want to check out this handy guide to how cyberspace differs from real life.

Saturday Insanity

Saturday mornings around our house are pretty entertaining - if you're an animal. For the humans, they kind of suck.

If you're a cat in our house, Saturday mornings are apparently the best time of the week to crawl behind the blinds in the bedroom and swat the little pull cord thingy against the wall. It makes lots of fun noise and you can do it over and over and over again for a really long time.

If you're a kitten in our house, Saturday mornings are a great time to run like a lunatic from one end of the house to the other, knocking things over along the way. But the real fun is when you get into the bedroom because there, you get to jump up on the bed, land in one of the human's crotches, and scamper across to the sliding glass door. That has what used to be a nice curtain hanging over it, but you can use that formerly nice curtain as a toy, too. You can latch your razor-sharp claws into it and climb way up so you're looking down on all the other animals. Then when you get bored with that, you can start the whole process over again.

If you're a young dog, you can use Saturday mornings to stretch and moan and moan some more and roll around on the floor scratching your back. The best time to do that is while it's still dark outside and the humans are trying to sleep. Of course, it's also a great time to come up the side of the bed and lick your human's nose.

And, if you're the old dog, Saturday mornings are the absolute best time to stand at the side of the bed where the humans are still trying to sleep and start barking for no particular reason - just because you can.

Yep, Saturday mornings at our house are just one big party. I'm thinking we need a few more pets just to add to the fun.

Podcasting

You'd think the fact that I'm an engineer would mean that I'm into all the latest techie-type stuff and I have my finger on the pulse of the digital nation, but that's just not true. I am part of the TiVolution, and I do have a blog (of sorts). But that's about as far as it goes. I don't have an iPod, I don't have satellite radio, and I don't podcast.

In fact, I admit, I had never even heard the term before today. Then I saw this article. Apparently podcasters create and swap audio files, much like traditional bloggers (like blogging is old enough to be referred to as 'traditional') create text (or html) files. I can just imagine what some of those audio files must sound like.

Unlike the couple in the article who records their pillow talk, I think when Ed jumps on the pocasting wagon (because he's always the early adopter in our house), I'm going to insist on no pillow talk recording. It'd just be too embarrassing, especially since it usually consists of:

Me:  What are you doing?
Ed: Sleeping.
Me: Fine.
Ed: What would you like to talk about?
Me: Nothing. I'm too tired.

Not exactly exciting to the average verbal voyeur out there surfing for some hot gay sex. When there is exciting talk, I'm not so sure I want the world listening to that either.

The Birds, the Bees, and the Boys of Spring

Every year around this time, there comes a day when the world seems to change almost overnight. Today is that day here, I think. The weather turns from the relatively cold, wet dreary weather of February to the warm, but not yet hot, sunny weather of March. The flowers start blooming in full force, the birds start chirping with a little more enthusiasm, the bees get delirious on all that pollen they're sucking up, and the boys...well...the boys decide to take their shirts off. Truly a beautiful time of year.

Back in my college days, that first day of "spring" usually resulted in an afternoon of blown-off classes and a roadtrip with a bunch of friends (and beer) to the mountains or to the river or even just to the park where the whole point was to be outside soaking up the sunshine and avoiding the books.

Now, that first day of spring results in an afternoon of blown-off meetings and talk of how we need to schedule an "offsite meeting" at one of the MLB spring training games. Spring training is a lot of fun, really. There's nothing quite like a warm, lazy afternoon out at the ballpark with a beer in hand, a game no one is much interested in on the field, and hot guys and even some hot women in the stands wearing very little. And, of course, there are the baseball players themselves, most of which are really quite hunky. I don't know why it is, but anytime I see baseball players out on the field, my mind starts to have terribly impure thoughts...

There's just something about spring and baseball...