Monthly Archives: January 2006

I’ve been away from the net for a few days – but still working at my ‘regular job’ – and it’s been a little bizarre. No email, no instant messaging, no real contact with the outside world. Just going to meetings, sitting in offices talking, taking notes (on paper!), completely divorced from my traditional hyperconnected workstyle. After the second day one of my coworkers made the observation that “this must be what it was like to work in 1975.” I’m assuming that was a rip on the lack of technology, not on my sideburns. I’m also assuming he didn’t work before 1996.
One of the guys I’m with has one of those fancy ass phones with the blackberry service and the web browser and all that. I tried it out a few times. It wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be. The web formats like crap on such a small screen, and in reality it’s not even that small of a screen, so you think it’d be better than it is. Some sites weren’t bad, but most were unreadable messes. It’d made me long for the time (2 minutes before) when I wasn’t connected at all. It certainly didn’t make me want to run out and throw down hundreds of dollars for one of my own, which I feared it would when I first picked it up.
My big hope was that when I finally managed to get back online massive innovation would have taken place around airline ticketing websites and I would be able to plug in something like “I want to take a 4 day vacation to Denver anytime in the next six weeks, find me the cheapest ticket(s) during that timeframe.” (I know basically nothing about computers, but I’m pretty sure even I could figure out how to write that query.) Well BIG SURPRISE, that particular website innovation didn’t happen. In conclusion, some things still make it feel like it’s 1975, even though they’re the best 2006 has to offer.

• On the issue of pond hockey, I made it over to the pond@calhoun for all three days of the big tournament, though I didn’t stay long any of the times. All in all I thought it was a great time. Highlights by day: (Fri) when Brian Bellows was shoveling the rink off before the “former NHL stars” game he accidentally threw some snow on my kid (it was like a hockey baptism!); (Sat) seeing all the games going and all the people there and the sun was out and it was just about perfect; (Sun) watching some good quality semifinal matches and mooching free beef jerkey off the Organic Horizon’s snack booth. Lowlights (not by day): the announcer dude mispronouncing Bonin’s name before the NHL stars game (come on, he’s a local hero); the fact that it was too hard to find out who was on the teams you were watching and/or find the team you wanted to see; and oh yeah, they ran out of stocking caps at the merchandise booth. I hope it comes back next year.
• On the issue of bad talk radio, me and what’s his name had another go-round over at KSTP on Sunday afternoon. Believe it or not, we’ve apparently made the official “final 4″ of the competition. I have no idea what that means other than the fact that they clearly need a more a more rigorous talent screening process. We didn’t get many calls this time around, but our topics tend to skew more conversational and less controversial so I guess I’m not really surprised. I also figured everyone who would be interested in our type of shtick would be watching football and/or doing anything but listening to talk radio on a Sunday afternoon. At one point the producer guy said he had just gotten a call from a woman complaining we weren’t getting enough calls. I thought that was pretty funny.
• On the issue of broomball, we lost our second in a row and have been shut out both times. JoePa took a broom to the face and had to leave to go get stitches. Talk about adding injury to insult.