Thank you for waiting.

I'm going to Vegas (Vegas, baby. Vegas.) next week. I bought my cheapo plane ticket via Travelocity, which was a mistake, because evidently you can just use them to find the cheapest fare and then book directly through the airline. Now I need to move my reservation (and pay God knows what fee) by a day and so I have been on hold for 35 minutes and 31 seconds (there's a little call timer on my ISDN phone).

So far I've spent my time reading bløgs and dreaming up clever remarks to make to the next available customer service representative that has been promised to me every 45 seconds for the past half an hour. Plus, they have absolutely awful hold music which consists of a tinny recording of these same two phrases of classical horns played on an endless loop. Jesus, can't they afford some muzak?

Also, I'm far too fucking polite to these people since I haven't been eating my croissant for the past 37 minutes and 44 seconds for fear that I'll have my mouth full when they finally do answer my call. Screw that. I'm stuffing my face.

Also do they think that a computer voice "apologizing" for the delay is really going to make me feel better? I hate it when people abuse language when they can't think of anything better to do. I've been listening to this infuriating music for 40 minutes and 33 seconds and they keep "apologizing" in the most insufferable manner imaginable. It's like when somebody tells you something awful and all you can do is say "I'm sorry" when it isn't even your fault.

[EDIT] After 1 hour and 6 minutes, Travelocity unceremoniously hung up on me and I lost their lovely hold music forever. I promptly issued a stream of cuss words and elected to call my airline (Song) to change my reservation directly. It took them two minutes 57 seconds to answer the phone with a real person, take my request, get my credit card info and execute the schedule change. I will never ever ever ever use those bastards at Travelocity again.

default

Last night my Mom asked me to fix her VCR. The problem (as it always is) was that the channel on the VCR was set to 2 instead of 3, so it wasn't recording off the feed for the television. For some reason it always returns to this setting after a power cycle.

"Why does it change?" she asked.

"I guess channel 2 is the default for some reason," I replied.

"Default? What do you mean?"

"You know. Default. It's the default setting."

"Like defaulting on a loan?"

Now maybe I'm just stupid, but I had no idea that the usage of default meaning "the standard state" is a very recent definition attributed in the dictionary with the note computer science. I guess the word doesn't really apply to anything except electronic gizmos controlled by software instead of an actual person. If you had asked me to define default, however, I would've immediately given that definition and relegated the concept of failing to fulfill an obligation to secondary status.

The word default is a huge part of my lexicon: I use it literally almost every day. Amusing to think that my Mom didn't even know what I meant.

CMO,IS

You should all take a peek at QM's 1/26 post to see how sweet I once was. Another picture of my room (when I actually lived there) is here.

Question for the Ladies

Is Tom Brady still "hot" even though he's got a grim mullet and a scruffy auburn beard? I mean, can he actually get away with this look and still cause women across New England and the wider world to swoon? He needs a shave and a haircut like nobody's business, but at least he's a good football player.

<i>Moneyball</i>

A couple of grim dudes were recently discussing the NFL in the bløgosphere:

"Bottom line is that turnovers absolutely kill you in the playoffs."

"Take away those turnover pts and the steelers would have won."

I hate comments like this, especially after having read Moneyball. What does this have to do with baseball you ask? Well, I think that all pro sports suffer to some degree from old-hand-pundit disease: farty old dudes who used to play constantly holding forth on a bunch of unquantifiable nonsense which they purport explains sporting success or failure.

Michael Lewis discusses the effect this has on baseball scouting during the brief episodes of Moneyball when he does not have Billy Beane's genitals in his mouth. In essence, people believe false theories about sports teams because they enjoy the mystique and tradition more than the cold numbers. As kraken always says, "I'd be surprised if there weren't streaks."

But let's get back to the two points stated at the beginning of this post. First of all, three crippling turnovers will kill you in any football game! What does being in the playoffs have to do with it? If this had been a regular season game would Pittsburgh have had a much better chance of overcoming their mistakes? And as for the remark about taking away the points off of turnovers, that's like saying, "If the Patriots had failed to score any points the game would be different," or "Well if the city of Pittsburgh had imploded before the game, the Steelers wouldn't have lost." The game happened the way it did, including the turnovers, and there's nothing left after that but excuses. The rules of the game were set down, the two teams played by the rules and one team was much better than the other. It isn't like Pittsburgh was a different group of guys in the third quarter (when they outscored the Pats 14-7), they just happened to have tried a plan of attack that had more consistent success than in other times in the game. They weren't trying to lose in the first half or the last quarter, I'm sure.

But beyond these quibbles are comments like, "Tom Brady is a great big-game quarterback." Do these people think he only gives a 75% effort when they're playing a regular season game against a non-division opponent? I'm pretty sure he brings his A-game every time he suits up. Sure there may be different levels of stress between some regular game and the Superbowl, but I'm fairly certain that being an NFL quarterback is a stressful job even if your team sucks. Put another way, Tom Brady is an amazing 8-0 in the playoffs; but he's 48-16 as a starter in the regular season. If you randomly picked 8 regular season games from his career, there is a nearly 10% chance you'd pull out 8 wins and zero losses. Throw out the anomalous 2002 season (when the team didn't make the playoffs anyway) and there's a nearly 25% chance that 8 random regular season games would all be wins. Brady doesn't do anything special in the post-season, he's just a good quarterback who's had a little luck!

What You'll Wish You'd Known

The always controversial Paul Graham posted the text of a talk he was supposed to have given to some high school students. Interesting comments which are worth reading by those of us who have long since graduated high school.

The Freedom Speech

W's second inaugural address is the "freedom speech" according to William Safire. It's a really beautiful speech—one of the best modern political speeches I've ever read. Unfortunately, the President sounded like a rube when he gave it (video here). Can you imagine rehearsing a big speech like this with him? The speechwriters give you this wonderful piece of prose and you have to try to help W do justice to the text. I don't hate W, but he is a bad public speaker. I read that speech and I can hear the cadence in my mind, the rhythm that the writer intended. Then I listen to W's delivery and it sounds like a remedial reading class.