The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

  • RE: Wake me when it’s over

    Johann wrote a post this morning that caught my interest so I thought I’d reply here:

    First, let me be clear that I don’t care if you speak ill of the Olympics 🙂 But I did find your post interesting.

    On Rooting for U.S.A.

    I think that most Americans are able to separate their love of country from the decisions their policy-makers have made in the past. Otherwise there would be nobody rooting because everyone would have disagreed with some decisions made sometime in our past.

    International politics and the Olympics will always be heavily intertwined, but setting aside domestic politics to enjoy good competition is pretty easy to do – for most.

    On Competition

    Since when has any sport not been about competition, and therefore beating your opponents? If this weren’t the case, I suppose they should only show the first 4 seconds of a sprint. Hell, why even get on the track then? You even mention remembering when Olympics showcased the world’s best amateur athletes. If winning doesn’t matter, how do you define Best? Winning implies beating others, you can’t have it both ways. If you want to win, you want to beat others.

    It’s Sport. It’s about watching amazing athletic feats and seeing the joy of years of hard work paying off. And in the end, if it’s your country’s athlete atop the podium, all the better.

    On Professional Athletes

    I agree that putting professional athletes out there takes something away from the games. However, it seems the professional/amateur line is getting more and more blurred. For example, do you take into account endorsements? I just read that after the ’04 Olympics, Phelps received some $5Million in endorsements, should that matter? I don’t think so, but it does muddy the waters doesn’t it?

    On Cheating

    Agreed that doping is cheating. I think that the athletes should be tested aggressively, and have some blood stored so it can be tested using better testing capabilities in the future. I’d think that would provide a real deterrent – sure you probably won’t get caught today, but I bet they’ll be able to find that substance in your blood a few years from now.

    On Phelps

    I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention that if Phelps hadn’t won every single gold, that he would have been considered a failure. That’s just laughable to me. It’s amazing to be so good at so many events, simple as that. I can’t recall ever watching the games with someone that got upset that the USA lost an event – it’s usually just a “Darn!”, and we move on.

    Go USA!

  • 364 Days Ago

    Tonight I fired up Axialis Icon Workshop and thought I’d check for updates since I haven’t run it in a while.  After installing the latest version, I looked for any new object packs which are just sets of icon building blocks their software allows you to quickly piece together.  There were two new ones out, so what’s so interesting about that?

    I copied the installers out to the network and noticed the timestamps on the other object packs I have downloaded:

    If I had waited until tomorrow night, it would have been a year to the minute of when I downloaded the first several packs.

  • Pillows

    Yay for pillows.

  • Transpalisades, RIP

    Jay and Katherine are finishing up their packing before moving into a new house, and Jay just called to let me know that he powered down his end of the link.   So as of noon today, the Transpalisades network is no more. 

    It turned out to be a great network and a fun learning experience, now I need to decide if I want to get on the roof to take the antenna down, replace it with an XM antenna, or what. 

    One big downside to it being gone is that Comcast is my only network connection to the outside world.  Before, when it had issues I could simply reroute my internet traffic over to his house and through his internet connection.  Yesterday when I my connection dropped I had no recourse, and it sucked.

  • 8 Months Old!

    With just a few minutes to spare, David is 8 months old!

    View them in Gallery.

    It was pretty challenging this time, now that he’s mobile he doesn’t quite sit in one spot very long.  Sure makes lighting difficult 🙂

  • Blog Outage

    Hi everyone, sorry for the blog outage that started around 11am today.   The Comcast borg decided I didn’t need an internet connection and unprovisioned my cable modem.  But that was just the start of things.

    As you regulars know, I’ve been very annoyed with Comcast of late – from the flakey internet connection to the more recent unavailability of NBC HD for the Olympics, I’ve lost my patience with their terrible service.   As I mentioned, I had a long chat with their tech support online the other night lodging my complaints.  That resulted in a scheduled appointment for Wednesday morning.

    Fast foward to today around 11:15, coincidentally 15 minutes after my internet died, I receive a phone call from someone at “Comcast corporate” inquiring about the case.  She called back shortly thereafter and told me that someone was going to be at the house by 4pm.    In the mean time, I get on the phone with tech support to figure out why my internet dropped and they couldn’t figure it out.

    Long story short, the tech shows up and can’t figure out why the HD doesn’t work and ends up calling in two reinforcements.  They end up finding water in the cable box out in the yard and they replace a bad component. Tada, NBC HD!

    The first tech tries to leave but I make sure he gets the internet back up and he ends up sitting on the phone for 30 minutes getting things straightened out with the main office so I could get back online.  Whew.

    Finally, I’m back online and we’re watching the Olympics in HD glory.

    P.S. I took David’s 8 month photos tonight but haven’t gone through them yet.  Hoping to get to that before the night is through.

  • Day at the Fair

    Today we had such great weather that we decided to head to the 2008 Illinois State Fair with David.  I figured he would only last a short time before getting tired, but instead he had a blast and we were there for nearly 4 hours.

    Click here for a photo tour of his trip!.

  • ER – Final Season!

    We just heard on TV that the upcoming season of ER is the final one!  It’s about time!

  • Yard work

    I did some yardwork this morning and made a little platform for the newly completed garden utility box to sit on – level even. Here is it, painted and in its final resting place. Some paint touch-ups are needed for areas not touched during the initial paint spraying.

    I like it, and Ana has starting filling it with her garden tools!

  • COMCAST, I AM MAD

    I’m sitting on the phone right now trying to get through to Comcast cable to ask them why my HD channels will be “available in a moment” but are all blank.  Ana scheduled the Olympic opening ceremony to record and now it hasn’t and we’ve missed half of it.  And I guess we have to watch the other half in Comcastic-shit non-HD glory.

    Comcast, you are a terrible cable company and I am FURIOUS  at you.  This is completely unacceptable.

    OOoh i have you on the phone right now…..