Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Interesting article on the iPad and boredom

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/06/why-i-returned-my-ipad.html

I agree with some of the points on there, and I'm guilty, too.  I've mentioned to people before that I think kids are overstimulated these days.  There is not much of a concept of boredom anymore, is there?  They have constant access to tons of things, and most of them that aren't even that beneficial to you (not educational, not active, etc).  TV, internet, twitter, video games, etc.  Boredom sucks, but it also makes us search for something else, sometimes something that we wouldn't normally do.

this week

Let's recap, shall we?

Last weekend was a three day weekend, and I finally took my motorcycle in to get it inspected.  In other motorcycle news, Taylor got a helmet and jacket, so now we can go riding together [safely]!  We needed to go down to Doc's on South Congress to pickup our shirts for kickball and softball (more on that in a minute), so we took advantage of her new gear and rode my motorcycle down there.  I'm way more comfortable on my bike than a month ago, since I hadn't ridden in a few months before that.  I really need to go out and practice my u-turns.

Saturday was our company picnic at Reunion Ranch.  I'd give it a 6/10.  We got there at 10am, and shortly afterwards, Andy and I teamed up for a washers tournament.  For those who are not in the loop, washers is the game where you stand about 20 feet back, and try to throw a washer into a small hole, or at least get close to it. It's kind of like horseshoes.  We actually did really well, surprisingly, and got all the way to the final game.  Unfortunately, we lost 19-21 (SO CLOSE!), and missed out on a $100 prize.  Damn!  I also played sand volleyball, which was more fun but we were bad.  Who would have thought that there'd be some serious volleyball players there?  We had barbecue which was good, and we wrapped up the day exploring the kiddie playground, maze, and ziplines.  That place seems dangerous to me by today's standards.  They had a 15 foot rock wall at the playground for kids to climb, but if you fell, you just fell 15 feet down into packed sand.  I mean, that place would be totally fun if I were a kid.  But I saw like 18 different places where you could easily fall 10 feet and break your arm.  Nice.

Saturday night was Justin's show, followed by people hanging out at the house.  Stayed up til 3AM, and figured that was late enough for me.  Others stayed up way later.

Sunday I guess I just hung out at the house, because I can't think of what I did.

On Monday, I went to work, then left a tad bit early to take my car to the body shop to get repaired.  I had two choices for my rental: a PT Cruiser or a Chevy HHR.  In case you didn't know, those are two out of the list of maybe 10 most hideous cars.

Crappy HHR

PT Crapper

Luckily, it wasn't a hard choice because you always say no to a PT Cruiser.  B&B told me it would be about 5-7 business days, but they didn't actually do an estimate so that might change.  I might call them today if I don't hear anything by this afternoon, because I think they were supposed to keep me informed.

Tuesday, we had softball practice.  Taylor, Travis, Andy, Molly, and I met out in a field and threw the ball around, pitched, and batted.  It was fun, and I'm looking forward to our game this Thursday.

...which brings me to summer sports.  I'm playing both kickball and softball, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.  Only time will tell if that was a good idea or not.  It's going to be a hot summer, and the fields for both are way the hell south.  Our Wednesday kickball team was given the name "Urine Trouble" (get it??), and yellow shirts.  Thanks, Austin SSC.  We got to name our softball team (We Got The Runs), but they gave us pink shirts.  Man, we can't catch a break.  Our first games are this week (today is kickball in fact), so hopefully we get off to a good start.  I don't have high hopes for softball, but I just like playing.

In other, more exciting news, I preordered the iPhone 4 yesterday.  AT&T's servers were apparently not ready for the onslaught, because it took me 5 hours to be able to progress far enough into the checkout process to actually complete the order.  It was pretty ridiculous.  Who wants an iPhone 3G?

In other, less exciting news, Texas is staying in the Big 12.  Colorado left for the Pac-10, Nebraska went to the Big-10, and everyone expected us and several others to go to the Pac-10.  Instead we get an even crappier Big 12 (with only 10 teams) that has no good team in the north now that Nebraska left.  Also, because the rules state that you need at least 12 teams to do a conference championship, we will not have a conference championship game anymore.  That is both good and bad I suppose.  Now we'll probably play all 9 other teams every year, round-robin style, which might cause less problems between us and OU fighting it out to go to the bowl games.