Maybe next year - finale

Well, it's over once more - College football with the Michigan Wolverines. Saturdays just aren't the same when the games aren't on. We did marginally better this year than last. 5-7 rather than 3-9. We added more notches in Coach Rodriguez's belt: the first coach in Wolverine history to lose BOTH of his first two games played against OSU, the first coach since the 60's to post two losing seasons in a row. The list just seems to go on. I hear that the Athletic Director was asked point blank if he was considering firing the coach and the AD just laughed. Roriguez was asked if he was worried about getting fired, and he reponded that he has a 6 year contract, and this is only year two, so no he's not getting fired. I guess we, the fans, will have to give him at least one more year to pull the team together - we don't have any say in the matter. I must admit to a particularly strong sense of being underwhelmed by him. I've heard that he doesn't have all the "pieces of the puzzle" yet. I've heard that a good coach MAKES the pieces of the puzzle - haven't seen much of that so far in his career.

Tate Forcier was disappointing today - he threw 5 interceptions. Never seen the man do that poorly before. I also heard rumours that he may be transferring. If he does that, I'll lose much of my respect for him. I find it hard to respect quitters. That man has an amazing talent; he should stick with the team and be part of its ressurection. He will be a tremendous foundation on which to begin rebuilding Wolverine football.

I do agree that we have not seen much depth of bench from Michigan in the last couple years. The talking heads attributed this to his only having one recruiting season so far. We really need to see some support for Forcier. He can scramble well, he has an arm like a cannon, he stays very cool under pressure, but he's only one person on a team of 11 on the field at one time. He can't do it all. We need to see some SIZE on the offensive line, some speed and good hands in the backfield and the receivers. We have a couple of receivers that do pretty well. But when they get tired and are off the field, there's nobody left to do the job. And ALL of the team seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes the quarterback gets lots of time to throw, and sometimes there's no time at all. And this is all within the same game!

All I can say, is next year had better be better. The coach will have even more trouble with his recruiting if he can't pull together more wins, and if he can't recruit, he'll lose more and have more trouble recruiting, and so on. With the players he'll be keeping, he has to build some depth.

Maybe next year.

A stitch in time . . . or not

So, the driver's side windshield wiper on our Explorer has been acting up a little lately (like for a year, I think). It wasn't attached very securely to the wiper arm. I've been meaning to get it replaced, really, I have. Well, tonight we had to take it to a Ford dealer to have a safety recall issue fixed. I won't deal with the Ford garage across the street from me - I don't trust them to deal fairly with me. Ive already had a bad experience with them. So, anyway to get off the rabbit trail and back on to the main track again: Coming home from Ithaca over Route 79, it started to rain rather steadily, so I turned the wipers on to a medium intermittent speed. Not too bad - for a  while. I began to notice that it was getting tough to see the right-hand lane marker because the inner section of the wiper was no longer making contact with the windsheild. So, I pulled over in Mecklenburg and re-situated the wiper blade. This worked wonders on clearing the windshield for a time, then it started all over again. As I was gettin quite close to home, I didn't bother to stop again to re-orient it - not such a good choice as it turns out: Coming down Burdett hill, the wiper blade suddenly went "Clunk!" and turned upside down and perpendicular (rather than parallel) to the wiper arm! Now I had the driver's side wiper not touching ANY of the windshield, no street lights, rain coming down in periodic buckets, and lots of incoming traffic. To say it was difficult to see the road is a tremendous understatement. I had to slow down to less than 30 mph, much to the irritation of the drivers behind me (with the exception of my wife, who was just worried about me). So I stopped at the local Walmart and bought a new wiper blade. Isn't it amazing how much better a functioning wiper blade works than a non-functioning (or at least sporadically functioning) one does. And all of this drama would have been avoided had I just replaced the blade when it first gave me problems.
Old Ben Franklin knew what he was talking about didn't he?

Feelin' good

You know, there's something about accomplishing something worthwhile. Even though it may take a lot of work, and you ache and are tired, you feel good. I've been working on the roof of my garage for the last several weekends. Actually longer than that, just that the last couple of weekends has been much more concerted effort. I'm making good progress, and the improvement in the second story of the garage - where my wood shop is - is phenomenal. I started out earlier (during the summer that almost wasn't) and got to the point where I had to leave the ladder and go up on the roof itself to do the work. In some cases, this wouldn't be bad, but my garage has about a 7/12 pitch to the roof. This means that in every twelve inches, the height goes up by seven inches. A standard roof pitch is 4/12 which is what I've done all my other roofing projects on. This roof is pretty steep, and it stymied me in trying to proceed. My wife objected strenously to my working on the roof that way. My son came up with a great idea for getting around securely on the roof - I borrowed his track spikes. They have just the small pin spikes, and so are ideal for getting good traction on the sheathing. I've also discovered that once the felt paper is down, normal sneakers give very secure footing.
Well, so far, I have the back section sheathed and papered. I also have the fascia/soffit repair done on the back. My roof slopes on all four sides, so, I'm just over 1/3 done. I anticipate having all of it done before the serious snow flies, and I look forward to having a 'Santa's Workshop' that is much nicer to work in this year. No snow blowing in through the cracks, or flowing down through the holes in the roof, my tools shouldn't rust as readily, and I won't have to dodge the collection buckets on the shop floor. Maybe I'll be able to keep the wasps and hornets out of there as well. Anyway, I've enjoyed working with my son, and seeing the progress. I'll have to wait for spring to put the asphalt roofing on - it won't seal properly in the cold.

Maybe next year

Well, the Michigan Wolverines have just one more game this season - almost no chance to go to a bowl game for post season play.
We started off with a bang - the first four in a row were wins! Hooray! Already this season beat last year (3-9).
Then came Michigan State, our second conference game. Watching the game was painful. We had opportunities to win the game, but we also have a young team, and inexperience ruled the day for us - we lost - in overtime.< br/>Next came the Iowa Hawkeyes - undefeated so far. We played pretty well up until Tate Forcier made a mistake in the fourth quarter. Coach Rodriguez pulled him and put in the backup quarterback, Denard Robinson, who, in my humble opinion, had yet not proven himself to be someone to count on in a pinch. Forcier had done so in several games prior to this. Well, because Robinson doesn't have the arm that Forcier does, we failed to score on our final series and lost to the Hawkeyes 30-28. It looked to me like the coach was upset and took it out on Forcier - at the expense of the team. We should have won that game and beaten the so far undefeated Iowa team.
Our final win came at the expense of poor Delaware State, who we beat 63-6 even with using the bench and not just first stringers. They were clearly out of their depth. I didn't enjoy that victory, even though it was ours - I felt sorry for Delaware State. Alas it was to be the last victory, thus far this season.
Penn State, Illinois, Purdue and finally yesterday, Wisconsin, all defeated us to leave us second from the bottom in the Big Ten conference; the only team below us in the Big Ten rankings is the one team we beat - Indiana. We have the same dismal conference record: 1-6, but we've one more win than they do.

It's still mathematically possible for us to become 'bowl eligible' but we'll have to beat the Buckeyes (that team from the middle of the state of Ohio) to do it, and guess who's in first place in the Big Ten? Yup. And they've only been beaten twice this season. Once by Purdue for the first time in a long time, and once by USC (hooray for the Trojans!). Our record against them with this coach, albeit that this is only his second chance, is not so good. He became the first coach in Michgan Wolverine history to collect a fifth in-a-row defeat from them. This year doesn't bode much better.
While I definitely do believe in miracles, I also believe that their purpose is to glorify God and not to cater to the silly desires of football fans, so I really don't expect a victory next weekend at the Big House (Michigan's Ann Arbor stadium). So another year down the tubes under the much touted leadership of Coach Rich Rodriguez. We did have a marginally better season this year, so I assume the powers that be will allow him to stay on, but, I really hope he can accomplish MUCH better things next year. It's not like he doesn't have any talented players, he does. Somehow he needs to figure out how to get them to play as a team, have some more endurance, not make rookie blunders, and so on and so on. But after all, isn't that what a coach's job is? I will grant that the team is young and inexperienced, and I hope to see great things from them in the years to come; I just hope that Coach Rodriguez can pull it off. Otherwise the team will have to go through yet another coaching change, which is never easy. Because if we don't improve greatly next year, I would expect the coach to be let go.

Fort Hood

You just have to wonder what was going on in all the minds of the people who've been mentioned as having doubts about this Major Hassan. I mean, he was transferred from his old base because of his attitude towards the army and towards America in general. He was researching suicide bombers and terrorist tactics and methods on the internet. He was in more-than-just-casual contact with a radical, jihadist imam. He was assigned a 'shadow' to try and prevent just the kind of thing that happened at Fort Hood. The FBI had him on a special watch list for his terrorist-like activity/interests. He had notations in his personnel file about all of this, and yet he was promoted just a few months ago. He bought a handgun recently and passed the FBI (note that this is the same FBI that's investigating him) background check - he was allowed to purchase the gun! Was this all political correctness carried to a deplorable conclusion? Or was it just pure laziness and stupidity? I don't condone profiling people based upon their appearance, national origin, the length of their hair, absence or presence of tatoos or piercings. However, when a person shows aberrent behavior, doesn't that justify the watchfulness? What happened to this man's "shadow"? The major's name doesn't sound anything like Peter Pan, who is the only one I know of who ever became separated from his shadow. Where was this person? What about the CO who approved his promotion? Shouldn't he be held accountable for some of this too? Or the person who ran the background check - and never bothered to search their own agency's files? How could this have POSSIBLY slipped through the cracks? You can be certain that if I exhibited the behavior that the major did, I would have my phone tapped, my computer hacked, and anything else deemed necessary to 'keep an eye on' me - as I should! But, in the interest of not offending a particular ethinic or religious group, it was let go and now many people are dead. What's wrong with us in this country? What happened to the 'land of the free and the home of the brave"? We as a country are so afraid of offending anyone - regardless of whether or not they are dangerous or wrong - that we're alienating our own citizens and placing them in harm's way - knowingly. Just to keep from offending people that already hate us! And yet, look at the lifestyle that many of these American-hating peoples strive for - OURS! Something is horribly wrong with this picture.

What are they thinking??

We got a newsletter from the local school system the other day that contained the announcement that ALL students in grades 5-8 will be issued cell phones to test their effectiveness as a teaching tool. We are reassured that there will be strictly limited internet access, and that the only possible texting will be to the teacher - yeah right! These kids are in the age group that writes and propagates most of the viruses, worms, and other assorted malware that plagues computer users. What will keep them from circumventing the "restrictions" of these cell phones?  The teachers? The rules? But of course! The past several years, the administration of the schools has handed down edicts, rulings, etc banning cell phones during school hours. What are they thinking? Are they all transplants from California where they're so tired of fighting marijuana usage that they're in the process of legalizing it? I think I understand the "reasoning": we have too many potheads taking up valuable real estate in our jails and prisons, so let's make it legal and TAX it! Multiple birds with one stone! Reduce the frustration of law enforcement personnel who feel that they're fighting a losing battle, reduce the census in the penal institutions, and reduce the budget deficit in one fell swoop! Brilliant - NOT! While I agree that some laws are just plain silly, there's enough evidence linking pot use to mental degradation, and acceleration of drug use to cause reasonable doubt in all but the most befuddled of stoners. It defies logic to make it legal. It's really a matter of expedience - don't make waves, go with the flow, hang loose, chill out, what have you. Leave your principles at the door and come right in! This seems to me to be an early step onto a very slippery slope - look at the erosion of family values in the past 40-50 years - it doesn't take much imagination to see where this could very easily lead. . . . Not a pleasant picture.

Hello

Hello.  I'm not sure why I decided to start this blog thing. I guess I just wanted a somewhat less structured place than Facebook to put voice to my thoughts, reminiscings and reflections.

As you may have deduced from the title, I don't have any particular topic that I'll be sounding forth on. I have a tendency towards Michigan Wolverine football comments, computer and technology reflections, and venting about what I consider to be political buffoonery.

It's all highly opinionated, or of a personally significant nature I'll admit, but, I don't intend to be any kind of pundit or fount of wisdom.

Feel free to comment if you wish, and read at your own risk - not that this will be an "adult" site (it won't) - just be prepared to disagree with my opinions and statements at times. After all, despite the efforts of the current administration, this is still a country where free speech is constitutionally guaranteed.