In November 1991, the New York Giants returned to Tampa Stadium (the old “Big Sombrero”) for a regular season match up with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills in that stadium in Super Bowl XXV earlier in the year. As a long-time Giants fan living in Florida, I was thrilled they were returning and scored two tickets for the game. I invited my work friend Jack Marshall to come to the game with me.
The game itself was pretty exciting. The Giants posted an early touchdown when return man Dave Megget ran a punt back 70 yards for the score. Jeff Hostetler started the game but was replaced late by Phil Simms due to a back injury.
The highlight of the game (or the low point, based on your perspective) occurred during the third quarter. Jack and I had end zone seats, a few rows from the top of the section. At one point, we notice a number of people standing along the wall behind the top row, drawn by something outside the stadium.
Fortunately, I had my camera with me and caught this photo of the distraction: a fan’s recreational vehicle somehow caught fire out in the parking lot. I witnessed flames rising from the RV by at least ten feet. As the image indicates, the thick black smoke from the fire could be seen from a good distance. We never did find out what the cause was, but my guess is some cooking device wasn’t properly secured before the owners headed to their seats in the stadium. I imagine they were pretty upset to find their ride hollowed out by flames when they returned to their spot.
This is a short vent about Google. I needed to get this out…
Why does Google constantly warn you when your free 15 Gb of cloud storage is close to full, then make it so difficult to delete anything from your account?
Yes, I know the actual reason why – the scarier the warnings, the more apt you are to buy more of their cloud storage – especially once you discover the hoops to jump through to clean things up.
GMail isn’t so bad, while still not being simple. I generally clean out email by the year. I keep the current year and remove everything else. First I use the Google Takeouts tool to archive everything for a download, then import the mail into a local app for access. Generally, I mark all email based on the date, move it into a temporary folder and then delete it all. Pretty simple.
Google Photos, on the other hand, is a major pain in the ass. There is no bulk delete method there. You have to open the web app, mark the images manually (batches can be manually marked based on the date, but there’s no bulk marking method). This is time consuming to a level you wouldn’t expect from this behemoth of a tech company.
I discovered that when you rip an audio source using Audacity, then run the built-in exporter to create individual music files, you must remember to un-mute the source track before exporting. Duh.
I ripped an old Magazine vinyl record (The Correct Use of Soap)) last week. My process is to rip each LP side to separate tracks, then cut the individual songs to their own segments with labels. Then I clean the ticks and pops and amplify everything before exporting to FLAC files for my server.
Kelly and I set out for V Pizza last night and I pulled the Magazine album up in Symfonium and touched the play control and…crickets. Next song, the same. Tried another recent rip (Mott the Hoople’s Brain Capers) -same thing! I tried a few older items to make sure it wasn’t the audio app, but everything else worked fine.
When we arrived back home, I pulled up the original Audacity project files and that’s when I discovered, on both albums, that the A-side track was in Mute mode in the app – but not the B-Side in both cases. I opened Navidrome, pulled up the magazine album and clicked through each song’s start…and when I hit the first track from the B-side, I heard the music. Again – duh.
The fix was easy – un-mute the track, re-export the songs, push to the server, issue solved.
Modern parents have critical issues facing them, especially regarding their kids. We live in a brave but tough new world. I wish my parents were still alive so I could ask them just how they navigated the treacherous waters of parenthood. I just turned 70, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. I think I turned out pretty good. Kelly and I have chosen not to have any more children, too, so no worries about the future.
Naturally, when a new crisis in child-rearing appears in the culture, the choice is to either promote a solution or complain about it on the planet’s virtual soap box, TikTok. I found a complaint, provided via this story, about an event many have experienced – a child’s birthday party.
This woman’s child was invited to a friend’s party. Three days before the event, the host parent broadcast a number of “requirements” for gifts to invited parents. Hoping her child would grow as an environmental steward, she stated gifts should have no bright colors, make no sound, not be constructed of plastic and be packaged in recyclable (not disposable) materials.
These requirements, which the host parent referred to as “a strict rhetoric,” may be a bit strident to some of us older, experienced and sane folks who raised small children. However, I believe I know the ideal gift for this situation:
A bag of shit.
This unique gift satisfies the host’s “rhetoric” in every way:
Meets the color criteria. Not bright, but brown. Like the UPS truck;
The gift is silent, satisfying the no-noise requirement. The recipient, on the other hand, may have something noisy to say when they open it;
Certainly not plastic. Though plastic particles from various ingested foods might be there – you just don’t know these days;
“Waste-free” packaging? Simple – a brown paper bag. Recyclable and likely already in the pantry.
In addition to the low environmental impact of the gift and the packaging, this gift has an additional feature.
The host parents don’t want bright, noisy toys that their child abandons, leaving them no choice but to donate the toy to some organization. Imagine the horror – you have something you don’t need and the idea of giving it to someone who can use it just seems beyond pale, right? Sounds contrary to the “save the planet” ideas they are teaching their child. Whatever happened to “paying it forward”?
Not a problem with my gift idea. The recipient can extend the fun and share the gift by just waiting for America’s favorite night of sharing, Halloween. The kids can pay it forward by leaving the gift in its recyclable brown bag package on the step of their favorite neighbor – or perhaps some neighbor they don’t care for much, hopefully to improve relations. To make sure the neighbor receives the full fun experience, the giving child should light the bag on fire before ringing the doorbell, just to make absolutely certain their lucky recipient sees it. If observed from a safe distance, the giver will likely see the recipient doing a fun dance of joy when they spot the glowing gift.
This will provide great hilarity to everyone, and it saves Mom and Dad the trouble of making that stop at Goodwill. But most importantly, giving this gift to others builds a foundation of environmental awareness, sharing and charitable thought. What more could the modern parent ask for their precious offspring?
Here’s a couple of quick hit things I decided to vent about on a Monday.
Kelly and I would like to do more traveling now that we’ve settled in on retirement. But not here.
The world continues to be shocked…shocked! at the behavior of Kanye West and his current spouse Bianca Censori. Is the world really going to continue being shocked when they show up at some function, him dressed in all-black and her…well, almost naked? There was also a lot of hand-wringing over the photo of a kid peering around the corner to check her out. What’s all the fuss about? His look is like that one all the neighborhood guys had when someone filched a Playboy magazine from their creepy uncle’s collection. Despite all the cultural upheaval in the world over the past 20 years or so, there is one immutable fact: men, no matter their age, will always look at naked women. Or partially naked women. This is genetic.
Regarding Beyoncé’s Grammy win: no, she did not deserve to win Country Album of the Year. I say this not because of a lack of talent, but because there are dozens of women country artists dying to be heard today, most of whom you have never heard. Some will think she won because the Grammy voters didn’t want to appear “racist,” as she was up against all white nominees. But I think they’re all scared shitless of Jay Z, because of his influence and power in the industry. Whatever the reason, the Grammys proved once again that they are among the most meaningless, useless and pathetic awards handed out each year. Right after the Emmys and the Oscars. And the Golden Globes. And the Pulitzer Prizes.
