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I just can’t think deep anymore, or at least think of several things at the same time.  This is a departure for me.  I have worked in the hustle and bustle of a newsroom for a long time now.  I have written lead stories under the gun with scanner squawking and producers stopping by every ten seconds to see how I am doing.  I have had three or four stories on my desktop simultaneously with the phone ringing and still had cranial bandwidth to listen in on the conversation someone else was having and make a well timed snarky quip.  I can run 5 weather computers while my cell phone bleeps away and people run in an out of the studio with Oprah up at full volume.  In TV you get good at this, and in fact I think there is a thrill to it.  I kinda like it.

I don’t know what is happening to me once I leave work.  Now, I am turning off the TV at home just to listen to a phone conversation intently.  I am increasingly annoyed when people talk during TV shows I watch (there aren’t many, so you have to work at it).  Don’t even get me started about how my mother watches TV.  “Who is that?  That is the guy who burned that building down.  What do you think he is going to do next?  I don’t like him.”

I like writing my blog at home before work.  My roommates are gone, and I can sit and look at the ocean and occasionally creative thoughts will actually come to the front of the transom, but clearly not today.

There is nothing wrong with a little thought.  Einstein famously commented that if you continually fill your head with the thoughts of others you’ll never have one of your own.  I suppose there is great irony in even quoting that, LOL.  I don’t think Albert had Facebook though.  Could you imagine his status updates: “Spooky action at a distance.”

My brain is a single core processor.  I think you take in what you can and at some point output something after processing.  I don’t think constant inflow or outflow is good.  Occasionally a reboot is needed.

My roommate just came back and turned on the TV.  That is it for this post.

I am getting a little behind here at work, but had to hammer this post out before I forgot.

So, I walk into Subway for lunch and before I could even walk up to the counter the guy behind the it says, “veggie”.

I was a little surprised.  I have come to this particular Subway before but not often enough where I think my order would be perfectly predictable.  So, I had to inquire:

“That’s right, if I can ask, how did you know?  I didn’t think I was here often enough to have a known order.”

“Oh, no, it is not that at all.”

“Then, what is it.”

“You just look like a ‘veggie’ that is all.”

Before you think Rual was a mind reader, he did have to ask the type of bread and cheese I preferred.  I chose not to dig into further details of his psychic powers.

At work I relayed this story and everyone agreed I looked like a ‘veggie’ more or less because I am a lean guy.  One of our producers cautioned, “Well, you shouldn’t complain.  I prefer veggie too, but they always assume I want the meatball.”

Do you look like your order?  They say you are what you eat.  Is that true?  Lemme know what you think.

I have an old school Moxi cable box.  When you navigate anywhere it makes clicks and bings and boings.  I have had several of these units over the years because they tend to overheat and stop working.  Prior times when I have had the box I have turned off the bleeps and bloops, but this time I left them on there.  My roommate likes the sounds, but last night I was seriously just about to jump into the set-up menu or jump out the window.

Why?  Well, I got home at about midnight and started poking around trying to find something to watch.  Each inquiry causing a click.  Nothing new on the DVR (which I only set up a few weeks ago) and nothing on to watch.  We get all the movie channels so I looked though those and then the On Demand and I don’t know how it is possible but there was nothing I was in the mood to watch despite literally thousands of choices.

I ended up starting to toss in random DVDs and watched some of Wrath of Khan (until the disk failed), then an episode of West Wing, then I watched the beginning of a TV show when I finally felt like sleep called.

Can this really be true?  I think there are simply too many choices.  Menu after menu.  In restaurants a menu that is too large is usually a sign it is not a good place.  You know the chef has to keep so much product in the back that many ingredients are not fresh or that he simply doesn’t concentrate on signature dishes.  I am not suggesting we have fewer cable channels or anything like that, but how we organize our viewing may need to change.

Maybe if I just hired a guy to pick stuff to watch for me.  He could just sit around and do that.  Maybe a little light chat occasionally.  The hours would be pretty brutal.  Midnight to 2:30am and back to work at 9 or 10 in the morning for a few hours.

Applications go in my in-box.

I talk with my friend Bill on the phone most nights.  I have known him forever and he is like a brother to me.  Fortunately he is a night owl since all this talking typically begins at midnight.  But this is not about my calling plan or even what we talk about so much as equipment.

Sometimes we Skype, that is when I bother to boot up my computer.  I usually drag it to work with me so it is the process of pulling it out and plugging it in.  And lets just admit that Windows Vista is not the fastest operating system to boot.  But if I get past that it all works.  This has not always been the case.  Prior to free night and weekend cell phone plans Bill and I were early adopters to VOIP programs.  I think we used to spend a good 2/3rds of our conversation saying, “Can you hear me?  I think we have a problem here.”  His wife still giggles when we talk about the good-ol-days.

But generally these calls are done from from my cell phone.  And I am not the biggest fan of having the phone jammed up to my ear for an hour.  I don’t fear cell radiation cooking my brain.  What I dislike is the feel of it.  Cell phones are generally designed to fit in your pocket.  Unlike old handsets from landlines, there really is no place to put your hand in the middle.  The earphone and mic do not line up with your ear and mouth respectively.  I don’t want to pay for a land line either, it just doesn’t make sense.  What I want is the shape and feel of a land line phone without having an extra bill.

For years I remember thinking, you should just be able to plug your cell phone in when you get home and then your house would know to ring the home phones and not the cell.  Well, that actually does exist.  There is a system called a Dock-N-Talk which connects your cell to your home wiring and there are other companies who make similar products.  In fact it can connect up to 8 phones through Bluetooth so everyone in your house can do it.  Interestingly I think this actually brings up a problem.  I have gotten very used to calling a number and have the specific person I tried to call answer the phone.  Can you imagine having to actually ask for a different person, “Is Bill there?”  It would be like a step back?  But I would welcome it.

I actually like vintage phones and wouldn’t mind having one.  If I got one of these things today I would actually have to go out and buy a landline set since I have been cell-only for such a long time.

Well, now I have to run.  I see I got an e-mail from Google saying I can now sign up for Google Voice, lets see how much more communication confusion I can become a part of.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but let me tack a few more on to this one.

This photo was taken at my son’s soccer party this last weekend in Paso Robles.  Ethan played on a very good team with some great kids so taking him to the park on a cold Sunday was not a tough call.  Now, getting there on time was.  I was elected to bring hot dogs to the party.  I live in the 5 Cities and didn’t budget enough time to buy some Farmer John’s Hot Dogs and the drive time prior to the noon soiree.  I knew I was going to be about 15 minutes late, and all I could see in my head was shivering kids holding empty hot dog buns wondering why Ethan’s Dad and local weather luminary, Dave Hovde, chose to let everyone down.

As the case was I wasn’t too late and the guy bringing the buns was even later than I was.  Then we played some parents vs the kids soccer.  Kids took an early lead, parents mounted an able comeback to graciously accept defeat.  Then it was time for awards and cupcakes.

The development of theme based cakes and cupcakes must have called for engineering of brighter and more permanent frosting colors.  The theme here was clearly soccer, so part of the cupcakes were green like grass and other parts were white and black simulating the ball.  The green and black might as well have been Sharpie.  Water, soap, toothpaste and industrial sand blasting equipment will not remove the stain.  I suspect it was designed by dentists but have no foundation for full prosecution.  I think it was made at the same time as the ink substance you use to make sure you didn’t miss any spots while brushing.

It must taste good though, because it is WAY too easy to get photos like this.

This picture looked bad, but the Darth Vader at my son’s birthday party was even an more insidious mixture of black and purple which stained skin for days.

I was a pretty busy kid.  I played a little baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer.  I never concentrated on any of them enough to have particular prowess.  I am glad a did a little of everything growing up.  I was in theater, choir and band too.  I could have been a cast member of Glee.

Most of those activities I did by myself.  My brother was two years younger than me, and the only organized sport he played was hockey.  We were always too distant on age to play on the same team but we did go to the outdoor rink together a couple blocks from our house.  We would play almost every night until our toes froze.

There was one parental combo ’sport’ I participated in: bowling.  My mother was really good at it.  When I was a kid the local CBS affiliate did a bowling show.  I can’t remember if it was weekly or less frequently, but Mom was on the show at least once.  I used to go to the lanes with her and watch, and eventually I would score games (this is before computers did all of that).  Mom started signing me up for kid’s leagues.  Initially I was not good, and no where near as good as my classmates.  I didn’t have the discipline or technique.  I got very upset at myself for mistakes.  I didn’t enjoy it.  While other kids were out to have fun, I wanted to be really good like my Mom.  But I didn’t stop playing though high school and despite my issues I got better.  I don’t think I ever had a great time.  In college I stopped playing.  That is until one night I ventured out to “Rock-n-Bowl”.  It was one of those nights which is more like a party at the lanes.  People threw down a few beers and tossed a ball at the pins.  They also had a strike contest which I signed up for for no particular reason.

They would pit you against someone and if you threw more strikes than them out of five opportunities you move on to face the next person.

Having not played in a couple years I didn’t expect to get far.  But I did.  I got to the finals and with a good sized mass watching me and some other guy I managed to hit 4 out of 5.  I won a bowling ball, bag and shoes.  I am not sure what time it was but I called my Mom and told her the story.

Sometimes your enjoyment of something can be delayed.

I still have the ball.

I think we all like to think of ourselves as unique, that our collective intelligence and experiences are unlike anyone else’s.

But when was the last time you picked up a sociology book or psychology text and read it?  How about the last time you glanced at a marketing survey?

Let’s put it this way, Google knows more about you than the IRS and NSA does.  A lot is known about all of us, what we read and eat and likely think from moment to moment.  Phones have cell tower triangulation and GPS.  With the right access I could probably figure out exactly where you are right now, who you have talked to, and possibly what you have even talked about.  With various security or traffic cameras we could probably get a picture of you.

No, I am not going off about Big Brother or trying to get you to read more Orwell.  While we have the capability to follow everything, I am not sure a lot of it is all that interesting.  Many of us fall into typical categories which means we become part of the informational din.  Many of us are not worth tracking.

OK, pretend you are an NSA agent for a moment.  Pick a subject.  Maybe one of your friends.  Do a profile on them.  Before I wrote this I did an experiment on Facebook.  I picked someone I sort-of know.  And I tried to figure out who they were in more detail and what they were up to.  It was so amazing easy, but not particularly interesting.  The upshot was this person doesn’t like their job and had plans to leave town this weekend.

I have no idea why people would complain about their jobs on Facebook or elsewhere.  People, your employers can read and are invested in knowing something about you.  I would recommend being smart about what you say, and smarter still when people pull out a camera at social events.

But I digress.  We all fit into categories.  This is why convenience stores are so convenient and why fast food restaurants are so fast.  This is why roads go where they need to and we have the kind of entertainment which suits us.  It is free enterprise to the extreme.  Not everyone likes all of that, but don’t kid yourself.  Even people who eat vegan or only watch independent films or don’t have the internet are just in another category.  Their behavior is just as predictable.

Individuality is still there, but definitely a local phenomenon.  The further away you get from yourself the more everything looks like an ant hill.

Where did all this arm-chair philosophy come from?  One sick day.  I suppose I should have just watched a movie or something.

More blogs from Dave Hovde available at davehovde.com.

Before I say anything, let me just say I love technology.  Generally I am the first adopter on anything.  I have the HTC Hero phone, I didn’t even wait for the second generation or even the operating system upgrade befor I picked it up.  So, far seems like a decent gamble.

However, there is one piece of new technology I have been soft on from the get go: e-books.

Why?  Price.  (among a number of other good reasons)

Between 250 and 400 dollars you certainly could buy plenty of normal books each year for that.  Honestly, think about it.  You could buy a low end laptop for that much now.  OK, e-books are priced cheaper than regular books but the cost difference only works if you buy 15 books or so a year.

And lets go back to laptops for a second.  Windows 7 and Apple are both thought to be edging toward touch screen laptops with long battery lives.  This would be the ideal kind of device to read books from.  A one-funtion e-book reader purchase right now seems optimistic to me.

And the “Nook, e-book” from Barnes and Noble?  Is it just me?  You say it quickly and it sounds like “The nookie book”?  An unfortunate moniker.

A much better piece of analysis was done by SLATE.

More blogs from me at davehovde.com

There is the living room tree for 2009.  My roommates picked it up yesterday afternoon.  It is either 8.5ft or 9ft tall, but still ended up being 6″ too tall for our room.

Right away I am on a ladder shearing off the top with a serrated edged kitchen knife.  I know you handy guys out there will shudder to think that this is the best tool a house with 3 guys living it it would offer, but that is the way that it is.

Last year I lived my myself and had a 6ft tall plastic tree, the kind with the lights already embedded in it.  Assembly was difficult, there was a brown level to assemble, then purple, then red.  All the levels needed plug-ins to align properly to put together the next ascending level.  It was fake, but it did add holiday ambiance.  It also fit in my place, but somehow didn’t manage to fit back into the box when I put it away.  Always something.

This year the place is much larger and so is the tree.  The smell is real and it is fresh.  Now I guess it is up to me to make sure something ends up underneath it.  Oh, that tree pressure.  It is like negative space in art.

Well, I don’t know how many of you have your trees already…but it doesn’t seem to matter where I am; I always seem to be near early tree acquisition.

Don’t panic, we decided to watch TV rather than finish decorating last night.  I am sure it will be splendid.  Now how to you get a star on top of a tree with only microns between it and the ceiling?