GodsendJen

This morning a friend was kind enough to turn me on to YouTube.  Despite the enthusiasm of several friends I just hadn't gotten into the online video craze.  Sure, they are sometimes interesting, but is it ever really worth digging through the crap to get to the good content. I don't know that YouTube is different, but I like being able to:

• Search for Videos by their "Tag." A tag is a keyword, and I've found "Humor" and "Comedy" to return excellent results. I found entire ComedyCentral specials from Stephen Lynch, Adam Ferrara and Ron White.
• When you watch the video you are given a list of related movies, ala Amazon. People who liked this movie also liked... The other videos typically have the same Tags or submitters.
• The search feature actually works.  I did a search for "Family Guy" and it returned a 2345 videos, and almost all of them were Family Guy episodes.  The exceptions were personal videos that members had titled Family Guy.
• Any member can upload videos, of just about anything that isn't "illicit." They have video blogs and sections of family videos.  I don't particularly care to go around watching videos of other people kid's throwing their food.  But if my sister uploaded videos of my nephew playing with all the toys I bought him....well that I'd watch.
• They have an API.  I don't know that I'll bother doing anything with it given that I'm not much of a videographer.  But if I had a video camera and kids I'm sure I'd cover this site with videos conveniently hosted for free over at YouTube.
  

Of course, with the good comes the questionable.  These videos are uploaded by members.  I somehow doubt those 2345 Family Guy listings are there with the permision of Fox. Because the people who capture and upload these are not professionals there are quality considerations.  I've enjoyed listening to the stand-up comedy while working on other things, but I don't know that watching the videos would entirely thrill me. Finally the download stream of videos still isn't where I'd like it to be.  Most of the videos I loaded played with no hitch. But occasionally there is lag and you watch a video at a greater speed than it is downloaded.  Then you have to stop and wait for the video to catch up.  This is especially frustrating mid-joke.

If you are bored and want a good laugh, check it out for yourself. YouTube.com

Everybody, meet  Lucy!  Jeff and I had talked about getting a puppy for a while.  The ongoing debate: he wanted a beagle and I wanted a Cocker Spaniel.  We'd take turns sending each other photos of puppies we found on PetFinder.org.  Last Wednesday Jeff found lucy.  She and her brother  had a Beagle mommy and a  Cocker Spaniel daddy. It just sounded like she was destined to be ours.  Her shelter was in Greenville Tennessee so on Sunday we took a road trip to pick her up.  So far she is a great puppy.  No accidents in the car, and none of that wimpering wining nonsense.  She is very fluffy and solid black.  There aren't any of those typical Cocker Spaniel curls in her coat yet and her tounge  has black spots.  I've never had a Cocker Spaniel before so I hope this is normal.   I thought those black tounges were just for Chow-Chows.

We made a few stops on the way home for Lucy to practice her outside potty routine.  So far no accidents, but we'll see what's she does while I'm at work today.  She definately likes the back yard and she loves Jeff.  These two are going to be play buddies. So far her favorite things are jumping in a pile of clothes and throwing mulch.  She will stay at my house most nights and Jeff's house on the other nights. Here's to puppy training.

The NFL owners and the player's association have ceased discussions, period. I don't think its that big a deal this year.  Yes, lots of good players will suddenly be free agents and have problems getting good jobs. Welcome to the real world.  But what about next year? 2008 and beyond?

Interesting things I've learned from the talking heads today:

• A typical business spends less than 30% of their revenue on player salariers.  The rest goes to overhead,R&D, marketing and even shareholders. The NFL players are asking for 60% of their team's revenue. They expect owners to pay for their overhead, transportation, and stadium costs with the other 40%.
• If their is no salary cap then their will also be no draft.  I don't really understand why this is the case, but John Clayton writes:
  
  Too bad the NFL could lose the draft in a couple of years if the collective bargaining agreement runs out. There might be a combine, but NFL teams will have to treat all college eligible players like free agents. That's a story for another time. 
  
  The draft has taken itself to new hype levels in recent years.  Not as big as the superbowl, but I do think its nearing March Madness proportions.  All those draft experts could be without anything to do.  All that coverage on the networks and in the media....gone.
  
• Almost half of the current NFL owners have never experienced labor strife or a strike.  Reports are that privately he has said that those owners might need that experience before they would understand why flexibility is good and why work stopages are bad.
• What happens with those TV contracts if there is a lockout or a strike?  The product wont be as valuable to the networks when play resumes afterward and you know the league will have to sacrafice part of the loot they are due in order to make ammends for that.
• Tom Condon (one of those big agenst with lots of clients) speculates that this could mean that a lot of rookies just wont get signed this year.  Certainly some teams (like Washington) might be stuck relying on rookies, but most teams will be uncertain on how to structure a contract for a rookie when no one knows if they will be playing or what the salary ranges will be in 2 years.
  

Maybe this is just a sign that I should invest lest time and passion into football. 

Monday night I turned on my TV and was sad to see that TiVo was recording the last episode of Monster House.  I had no idea they were taking the show off the air.  Its been a staple of my TiVo wishlist for a few years now.  The first episode I ever saw was Episode 13: Fright House that included a metalic monkey jungle, lots of complex doorways, and a sacraficial BBQ pit.  I was hooked.  There weren't a lot of houses I'd want to live in, but I got lots of great ideas and the predominace of set builders as crew gave some really interesting insight into how crazy things get built.  The entire concept of taking a subject that is traditionally geared toward women (Home Remodeling and Decoration) and spinning it into a show for a broader audience (like Trading Spaces meets Home Improvements meets the Man Show) was just a hit for me and it provided a topic of converstation with the wide array of "Men's Men" that I've worked with over the years.

Maybe some other network with a broader scope will pick it up and extend its life beyond 60 episodes.

The planets aligned and today I got the rare opportunity to spend the day with Dorothy.  My bright idea for a fun day out was to take her ice skating at The Cooler. We both rent skates and head onto the ice. I have difficulty standing in my skates, skating in my skates...well yikes! Dorothy isn't much better so we both go round the rink twice, holding onto the railing for dear life, and stop for a break. Dorothy braves it again and magically decides that she can skate. At this point I give up on the hockey skates I'd put on and go to the desk to trade for figure skates. Back to the ice for me and and Dorothy grabs my hand, look at me in earnest, and says "The secret to ice skating is beliving in yourself." She has proclaims herself my ice skating teacher and proceeds to drag me around the rink. I don't know how she went from clueless to professor so quickly, but wow. Other tips included "lean forward if you need to" and my personal favorite "they don't hold onto the wall in the olympics."

I've been using some of my free time on this assignments to work on some personnel projects.  This blog site is one, the other two are an online photo gallery and a web-based recipe database program.  The blog is obviously up and done in C#/.Net so that I can fiddle when the urge hits.  The recipe program is something I'm writing myself, and it too is going to be in C#/.Net.  For the photos I am selling-out.  Maybe I'm just not as concerned about customization, or maybe its because their are just so many free photo programs that you never need to do the work yourself.  Either way I'm going PHP and MySQL for it. Yes, I'm actually using something with a MySQL backend when I have ready access to a SQL Server here. I'll find a way to live with that decision somehow.

I'm taking the lazy girl's approach to this blog and going with some canned open source software.  The upside is that its all written in C#/.net so if inspiration ever strikes and can customize myself silly. The downside is this blog comes with some very limited style options. So if you can't quite stand the colors feel free to send me suggetions.  I might change it to some happy VA Tech colors in the fall, but for the moment I'm content to let it be.

The suggestion box is open.

Thanks to some help from my sister I was able to drag Jeff out to see my school girl heart-throb, Jon BonJovi in concert.  It was a really incredible show, and Mr. I'm Sure I'll Have an OK time but I'm not too excited about it was so stoked by the show that he surprised me with tickets to Jon's encore concert at Gwinnet Arena last night.

We had great seats again (on the floor, center ice) but what a difference a month makes.  The song selection was different. More slower mature stuff and a little less of the rocking stuff I loved from the 80s and 90s.  Midshow they addressed the recent tabloid stories.  After the admonition not to believe everything you read Jon turns the mike over to Richie.  I've never thought Richie had the vocal range to be a solo singer or to front his own band.  I wont change that view, but he sang I'll Be There for You, purportedly for Heather, and it was moving.  After that the show picked up a lot.  I don't think Richie was the tide turner though, it was a couple of very lucky folks in the stands.

Jon pops up on a pedastal in the middle of the crowd for a couple of songs mid performance.  First his big solo hit from Young Guns II (another fond droolfest from my adolecence), Blaze of Glory. All the folks by this platform are understandably excited.  But this one poor girl was so taken I really thought she might pass out.  She calms herself enough to enjoy the show as he begins his second song, Always.  It quickly becomes easy to forget this is a song about breaking up, because overwhelmed girl's boyfriend is on his knees in the aisle with a nice shiny diamond popping the question.  Anyone who missed what was going on figured it out as soon as the song was over and Jon looks at her and says "Well, are you going to give him an answer?" As romantics everywhere know, she said yes.  Points to the boyfriend for not asking on Valentines day.  Maybe he just got lucky, but this was orginial.  And despite it being a break-up song I suspect Always will be one of their songs forever.  After this little episode the concert picks up tempo, the band makes the standard jokes about beautiful Atlanta women and Richie being on the market, life goes on.  And I've gotten to remember what its like to be 12 again, wearing out my New Jersey tape playlist on the handy DellPod.

Jeff has some great photos if you are interested.

I've owned my domain for a few years, even had some web space, but never bothered with a blog.  Why now?  I'm chalking it up to a combination of boredom at work and just being guilted into by geek friends who can't believe I'm so slow to the game.  We'll see how long I keep it current and if anyone ever finds it.