Category: Thinking (Page 6 of 14)

Michael Phelps Rant

July 30, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Dear ~~citizens~~ media of the United States,

Michael Phelps doesn’t owe you a damn thing. He doesn’t owe you/us/anybody another gold medal or an explanation about “what happened”. Stop using words like “disaster” and “disappointing” to describe anything he does or doesn’t do at the Olympics.

Ditto for every other athlete competing there in every other sport.

Ditto for every other athlete competing at any other level.

I swim, but I’m not really a swimmer. My longest workouts of an 18 week triathlon training plan are about what real swimmers–even the ones who are a long way from being Olympic athletes-do as a warmup before their main set. And I go about half their speed.

And they do this daily.

At 4:00 am.

And again at 4:00 pm.

For years.

With no real off-season.

What these athletes do is nothing like the trip to the gym that most of us take to “work out”. They aren’t chatting with friends between sets, listening to a 10 song playlist and calling it quits, or watching “Saved By The Bell” reruns on the screen of the cross trainer while they work to the point of almost sweating. I’ve had swimmers who weren’t even D1 level tell me their stories about swimming through their teammates’ vomit floating on the surface of the pool and having their goggles fill with tears from the pain they were suffering during training.

During the cycling road race, I heard one of the commentators mention an East German training tactic of putting a cyclist on the trainer in front of a concrete wall and having them ride for hours looking at nothing, just to build mental toughness. How mentally tough do you have to be to spend all your training staring at a black line on the bottom of a pool?

So, in closing, get off the guy’s ass. He’s been staring at the bottom of a pool for 20 years. So what if he wanted to coast into this Olympics with (relatively) little training and just enjoy the experience of being there and have some fun? He’s done this long enough to know he’ll get what he earned, and that’s something he has to come to terms with on his own (*UPDATE* Coach Vance points this out better than I did after Phelps’ post-race interview). He’s smart enough to know that he isn’t going to be the best in the world for the next 300 years either.

He doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.

The second we see swimmers jump into the pool and splash around like idiots instead of actually trying to win a race, it will be time to complain. Until then, anyone who is “disappointed” when watching (from their sofas or broadcast chairs) any of these athletes’ performances should hit the off button, get up , and go do something about it themselves.

Rinse and repeat for NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA sports, and all little league competition.

</rant>

So Use Google Plus

July 26, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

From Miguel Silencio

I’m sure I’m not alone in receiving those emails with ‘FW:” in the subject line. That’s why I continue to lose interest in Facebook. It has increasingly become a place where many people post everything from the ‘net they deem neat.

I remember telling someone 4 or 5 years ago how Facebook was so great because it wasn’t all spammy like MySpace. That and, “your mom isn’t on there”. Guess where your mom is now? And feel lucky if people are posting the forwards on Facebook instead of continuing to email them. My prediction is that it’s about to get a lot worse…wait and see what Facebook’s earnings are today. Now that they’re beholden to shareholders, something’s going to have to be done to increase their revenues.

There will be ads. Lots of ads. Right along-side all that useless content.

Invest a week into really using Plus. I mean really using it. It doesn’t disappoint.

Well…unless you want them to open up the API. Tick tock.

July 25, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

The name of any good fair food must be a compound word:

Turkey leg
Funnel cake
Cotton candy
Corn dog
Snow cone

July 19, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

What if a team didn’t let their GC contender dope, but doped their #2 rider and let him pull the top rider through the tour? Then when the #2 rider ended up getting disqualified, you still keep the GC crown.

Why not juice up an ox to pull the cart over all those mountains, sacrificing the ox and eating him at the finish line?

Not saying any team is employing that strategy this year…just saying.

Who Isn’t Contributing

July 19, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Given: It’s not working hard or being smart that allows you to build a business and create jobs. When I say “create jobs”, what I’m really saying is “create taxpayers who fund government programs that allow roads and bridges to be built/maintained and pay teachers”. What actually allowed you to build that business was your access to education (great teachers), roads, and bridges. Fair enough…let’s run with that.

Logical Conclusion: Since everyone in this country has equal access to public education, roads, and bridges, we should penalize (tax) people who don’t create jobs (taxpayers). Since they aren’t fully utilizing the resources government has provided to them by creating more taxpayers or at least paying in themselves, they aren’t doing their fair share for society.

I guess you could say that not everyone had great teachers, and that’s not their fault. So should we further penalize those not-great teachers for denying these people their opportunities to get out on the roads and bridges and make something happen for the rest of us?

I’m not sure I like the logical end to this argument.

July 17, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

What if, when the zombies do come, they attack and eat robots instead of people? That way, all of the robots that have cost people their jobs will be either eaten by zombies or too busy fighting the zombies to produce anything, freeing up those positions for people to go back to work doing robot tasks?

Robots will still be helping us, because they’ll be keeping the zombies in check.

Not any more outlandish than any of the other zombie scenarios you can come up with.

HT Instapundit.

Idea To Make Some Quick Cash

July 16, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Lots of people have ditched cable and satellite in the last few years and are using Netflix/Hulu/Amazon to meet their home entertainment needs.

But that won’t cut it for the Olympics.

If he took a notion to, a man could make a quick buck or two installing directional antennas on the roofs of these people for $50-$75 a pop. A man who knows what he’s doing could easily use the web to find the right antenna for each address, buy them off the web with free two-day shipping, then climb up on the roof and point it in the right direction pretty quickly.

Some Things That Aren’t The Same

June 26, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

People seem to get a lot of things that are similar confused and are unable to differentiate between them. I’ve noticed what ends up happening is that there’s a lot of confusion, faulty political identification, and grammar errors as a result. In no particular order, here are some things I’m aware of that aren’t the same:

congruent and equal
there, their, and they’re
momentum and force
libertarianism and objectivism
your and you’re (I won’t even bother to include “ur”)
profit and profit margin
country and western
learning and taking a course
VAT and Fair Tax
Java and Javascript
rugby and Aussie Rules Football
Hitler and anybody else you can think of
rich and wealthy
deduction and rebate
parenting and having kids
revenue and income
needs and wants
scotch and bourbon
it’s and its
solutions and fixes

Feel free to add your own or correct any I’ve listed here in the comments.

June 5, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Disney reported they are banning junk food ads on all programming directed at children, but…

All junk food marketing within theme parks will remain at the eye-level of a 4 year old.

<3 capitalism.

Why Some Twitter Threats Can’t Be Taken Seriously

April 24, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Lots of the threats documented here seem to come from people who think when a defendant makes bail means a case is closed. I’d bet the majority of these folks fall into one of the following categories.

They’ve never been charged in the criminal justice system. If they had, they’d have a lot better understanding of how it works. So they probably aren’t the “violent criminal” type, despite what they try to portray themselves as on Twitter. Eazy E said it best, “I never met an OG who never did shit wrong”.
They were too lazy to get a free education when it was placed in front of them on a silver platter. If you’re too lazy to do that, you’re probably too lazy to get off the computer long enough to engage in any sort of physical altercation with someone. This is in line with my theory that you are perfectly safe running in the dark in the early mornings, when criminals who are too lazy to work for a living probably aren’t awake.

Carry on.

In The Best Shape Of My Life (Again)

April 18, 2012 / Scott / 3 Comments

I’m thinking that on May 20th, barring any unforeseen injuries or mishaps, I’m going to start the Ironman 70.3 race in Haines City in the best shape of my life. At least, it will be a new version of “best shape of my life”.

Being in shape is a very relative thing.

I’ve been (much) stronger than I am now in the weight room.

I’ve been able to run faster at every distance from 100 meters to marathon at one point or another than I can now.

I’ve probably been able to do a 40k time trial on the bike faster than I can now.

I’ve definitely been able to get knocked down and get back up faster and more times…rugby has a fitness nothing else can emulate.

As far as triathlon goes, I’ve probably been in better “sprint” shape than I am right now too. My best 5k fitness level probably correlates with that.

But I’m definitely approaching a new level of fitness for triathlon distances Oly and up. Not that I’m anywhere close to fit enough for 140.6 right now…I know my place in the hierarchy. But it doesn’t seem like an insane distance now. Definitely seems matter-of-fact-doable.

May 21st, or maybe a day or two after that, I’m going to have some thinking to do. I’ll worry about it then, but it seems like a shame to miss the opportunity to start at this point and build into something bigger.

March 5, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

How can you hate the free market on a Wednesday when it is the very existence of the free market that allows you to successfully pressure for-profit entities to remove their advertising dollars from someone who says something you don’t like on Thursday?

This isn’t commentary on what was said, who said it, or whether it was right or wrong.

But doesn’t this prove (yet again) that free markets are a good thing.

What’s Missing From Every Help Desk App

March 5, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

If I were designing a Help Desk application from the ground up, there’s one feature I’d put front and center: Requester Competency Rating.

Every time help desk personnel handle a call or request, they should be able to rate the technical competency of the person on the other end of the phone. Right now, the default position for every support call is that the person asking for assistance is a pre-schooler, and you build up from there.

Case in point: a month and a half ago I registered a request for help with a vendor. I’d already spent a couple of weeks identifying a problem and eliminating as many possible causes as I could think of, documenting every step with data and including this information in my request. I was finally granted my request for a remote session today, where the person helping me spent over an hour performing the exact steps I’d already performed and included in my request.

The problem is that I have logged several requests with this vendor in the past, and each request has been in regards to an actual problem with their system that I’d identified and isolated. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a system that can flag any new requests I make in the future? Shouldn’t the default position be “incoming request from a guy who it’s safe to assume has already read our manual, read the community support forums, and still has a problem”?

Help desk people who deal with internal users (behind the firewall) probably develop a pretty good idea of who has technical skills and who doesn’t already, but there should be an easy way for them to share this information among themselves and for any new people who join the support team. Every time the phone rings or a ticket is submitted, the person who will be handling the request would have a huge leg up if they already knew what kind of user they are going to be dealing with.

And that’s not meant as an insult to non-technical users either. They need (and deserve) to have their hands held a little more than a tech savvy user, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that. It just doesn’t make sense to waste the time of someone who has already done half of the help desks work by isolating the issue for them. Why not leverage them to help provide better service to everyone?

What I’d Do To Make Triathlon Participation Explode

February 8, 2012 / Scott / 2 Comments

There aren’t that many high profile professional triathletes, and I don’t think there necessarily need to be. But I have a few ideas that could really make amateur triathlon participation grow by leaps and bounds. I think what is needed is the introduction of a team concept, and maybe some rule tweaking.

I think triathlon clubs membership would grow tremendously if there was a really compelling reason to belong to a club. I mean, I like to train alone because I have to race alone. So outside of some seminars here and there, what does a tri club really have to offer me? Training programs? I can find those for free or buy them online. I think I can get more for my money by joining a masters swim group and take a coaching beat down there a couple of times a weak.

But if the idea of triathlon “Club” was changed to triathlon “Team”, things would be different.

What if every race had a Team division, and it awarded points not just for the top 3 overall times a team turned in, but within age groups. For example, a race could award 10 points to the team with the top overall men and women finishers, 8 points for second, and 6 points for third. But beyond that, why not award 5, 3, and 1 points respectively for the top three age-groupers in each division? This would push clubs/teams to invest into the performance of members on race day.

It would also encourage clubs to go out and pursue age groupers and keep them in top shape to earn points for the Club throughout the season.

Everybody wins

Age groupers could really benefit from this type of setup. By paying to be a member of a club, they’d actually get something very tangible in return for their money. First of all, they get to be on a team. Not every age grouper is going to race every weekend, so there’d be chances for multiple folks to represent their club within a division over the course of a season. Secondly, the age groupers could gain a lot of tips from the “Overall” members of their club–that means training and racing tips along with what will most likely be a higher level of passion and intensity that will be contagious.

What about the “Overall” team members? Well, aren’t most of those types doing stuff like coaching and personal training on the side? The top level members of a club could actually be paid by the other club members’ dues to coach and pass along their knowledge. Worst case–they can use the club as a way to introduce themselves to potential clients. Even if there was no money involved, I can imagine some people would be happy to be one of the top dogs in a club for nothing more than a complete or partial reimbursement of race fees by the club if they place in the overall division.

Pros win too. First of all, they’d be in high demand by the more elite teams. Imagine a team made up of a few guys with some real jack…they just want to win. So the pro would not only get money from their sponsors, but also by team members and sponsors to wear their jersey.

Rule Changes

How cool would it be if you were able to draft teammates in a race? Safety seems to be the biggest and most logical reason drafting isn’t allowed, but if it were limited to teammates, that wouldn’t matter as much. I mean, you are going to be much more careful to not cause a problem for a teammate, right? And penalties for drafting non-teammates could actually be increased at the same time to further encourage safety.

This may be a long shot to happen, and I realize that.

Series Instead of Single Races

There are some race series already out there, and they make up their own sort of mini-seasons. But what if there were State-level organizations that awarded championships? Clubs could simply pay yearly dues to participate. It wouldn’t even matter that there were multiple races in a state on a single weekend. Points available at each race could simply be determined by the number of finishers at each race. A small club could strategically rack up points on a big tri weekend by sending key age-groupers to multiple smaller races.

This isn’t all that different from what WTC does for rankings and qualifications, so why can’t it be done on a bigger scale? And why can’t it be across organizations?

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Gettin’ After It!