Are my eyes really blue?

I first noticed Vox about the time they changed from the code name of Comet. It was a new thing from SixApart, something that was evidently meant to replace LiveJournal, something to fill the entry-level niche in their offerings. If you needed professional-grade blogging that you hosted yourself, you wanted Movable Type. If you wanted that sort of thing and hosting to boot, you could buy into TypePad. Vox was meant to be the starter product, something that would let you blog, comment, connect with friends, and even provide a certain level of granularity in what you shared – complete with easy integration for pictures, video, and the like. And it made LiveJournal look like something slapped together in Geocities.

I think the ultimate problem was timing. Vox arrived just as MySpace was cresting and Facebook was first opening to non-edu users. Ultimately, most people don’t want to blog – they want an online presence where they can see their friends’ pictures and short status updates. You know…social networking.

It didn’t help that this was about the time WordPress started to go big and capture a lot of the casual blogger market. Vox sort of fell into the space between WordPress and MySpace – and as somebody who’s signed up for every single blogging service imaginable at one point or another, it never really passed the “what’s it for” test for me. I thought it would become the replacement for LJ. Then I thought it would be the secure repository for private rantings. Then it became something I kept around in case it ever became important. I don’t know that I ever used it for anything other than two-line Question Of The Day posts in the last two years-plus.

The rise of Tumblr didn’t do it any favors either. Tumblr and its workalikes filled a niche for people who wanted a blog to post quick articles, pictures, clips, quotes and the like – basically something bigger than Twitter without the hassle and inconvenience of a proper blog – and it’s telling that SixApart soon delivered TypePad Micro. It’s more telling that TypePad Micro is what they’re offering as a transitional tool.

Because at the end of September, Vox is going away. I’ll miss it. The themes were nice, the interface is perfectly usable, it’s the easiest civilian implementation of Movable Type for anyone with an urge to blog – but ultimately, it was just one more thing to sign up for and keep in the ecosystem, and people only have so many services they’ll keep track of. Between Joy’s Law and being in the wrong space at the wrong time, it just didn’t get the traction it needed.

We chose this.

Maybe it was the pomp and circumstance of the occasion. Maybe it was the flash of brass as a marching band paraded up the street. Maybe it was the brilliant green shining out of the TV with seventy thousand people roaring in the background. Maybe it was the fact that everybody else was talking about it. Maybe it was a father, or a sister, or a friend, or somebody else who first handed you the T-shirt, or the miniature jersey, or that oblate brown spheroid with the white laces on one edge.

And it took over our lives. Voices on the radio that were familiar as our own family. Names of young men who passed through our lives for a few years and remain legends to us decades on. Songs that we sing at our own wedding receptions – or will have sung for us at our funerals. Chants and cheers and gestures and bumper stickers. And traditions and superstitions. As Nick Hornby said of another kind of football, “what else can we do when we’re so weak?” Incantations at every snap, ballcaps tilted just so and filthy from twenty years’ use, chants held back until over the 50. Statues rubbed, alcohol-soaked cherries consumed, hours spent crouched just so for fear of breaking the spell if you move even an inch.

And it stuck. Even when the rest of the fan base seemed indifferent. Even when you couldn’t pull off one lousy bowl win in four decades. Even though you never actually went to the school and only set foot on campus for those few blessed gamedays when you get to see your guys live and in person. Even thought you have a spouse, and kids, and a job, and a mortgage, and a million things in your life that you know should be more important that what a few dozen college boys do on a Saturday afternoon.

Maybe it was because it was the only time all week when a seven-year-old could scowl “aw, bullshit” at an interception and know that Dad wouldn’t care because he was scowling it too. Maybe it was because after four years at a school without football, you wanted part of the experience you could really call your own. Maybe it was because you married somebody who carried the team and the band and the school in her heart for 20 years. Maybe we didn’t choose it at all.

But it chose us, and we went along without a fight.

Cheer for old Vandy, cheer for the black and gold…

* It always warms my heart to see Steve Wozniak at an Apple event – and to see Steve Jobs pointing him out. Those guys were the Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan of Silicon Valley back in the day, and if you were ever part of the Apple machine, there’s a little bit of joy that comes from being part of the long rainbow line.

* The Covent Garden store is a destination next time I go to London. I’d swear I saw it boarded up in June and didn’t realize that’s what it was, though I could be mistaken…basically I just need an excuse to go to London again.

* Da Wife, I think, will be happy to have HDR pictures…

* Wireless printing = we just took another big step toward iPad as laptop replacement.

* A complete rebuild of the entire iPod line. Not surprising, honestly.

* The iPod Shuffle is something I’ll need to buy, if only for exercising and long plane flights when I’ll need my phone battery. And at $49, that’s couch-cushion material.

* Actually, that iPod nano may be the way to go. If it has a dock connector, that’s the one to get, because that could be the travel pod, the exercise pod, and the car stereo pod all in one. (And looking at the demo, I don’t know how else they’re doing video out.) The Product (RED) version will probably be on my friv list as soon as it ships.

* iPod Touch has displaced the Nano? Not surprising. This is a product that nobody else has – there’s not an Android equivalent, or a Blackberry equivalent. No phone, no contract – it’s almost time to think of it as an iPad Nano rather than an iPod at all. And with the iPhone display, processor and cameras – plus FaceTime and iMovie – it’s just ridiculous. $229 for 8 GB, $299 for 32 GB, $399 for 64 GB = they’re gonna sell a million of these next week.

* Another social network? Ah well. Probably Facebook integrated. Actually it’s not a bad way to get new music recommendations – presumably your friends will be able to offer you more than a random Genius algorithm.

* And this is where the network started cutting out on me.

* Actually that could have just been my computer trying to save itself from catching an STD off the Lady Gaga video.

* After four years of malingering, the AppleTV finally gets some attention. This is the new HDTV interface, looks like – this is how you will get iTunes content straight to your big screen. Personally, the clincher for my household may be the ability to stream Netflix content right to the TV…

* Major cutting out now.

* How much abuse am I letting myself in for if I say “that wasn’t the beginning of that Glee episode”?

* Being able to stream from your iPhone or iPad to the TV is…interesting. Would certainly make it easier to go over to somebody’s house and show your own content…

* I always thought we’d buy the newer version of the AppleTV once we bought our HDTV, but that was two years ago – I certainly wasn’t expecting it to take until 2010 to get said newer version. But at $99, it’s good we waited.

* Here’s a question: is this is for the iPod Classic? Admittedly, it’s a hell of a niche product at this point, but it’s still one with a market, and I could certainly use one as the last-resort backup device…

* Coldplay’s Chris Martin as the capper? Not bad…although I was kind of hoping for the Killers ;]

It really is like a zombie movie. I did my part. I moved to the other side of the country. I made sure to vote, even when I wasn’t enthusiastic. For crying out loud, I even gave some money. The House returned to a Democratic majority, the Senate to an essentially Democratic majority, and then both majorities were expanded as a Democrat was elected President. The GOP, as constituted for the last two decades, has been taking it square in the face for two electoral cycles.

So how is it possible that the Republicans are steadily becoming ever more conservative, ever more redneck, ever more extreme? How is it possible that we can have Republican candidates for Senate openly talking about “second amendment solutions” to “domestic enemies” in Congress? Or saying “climate change doesn’t exist” as decades of data pile up and the average temps rise? Or saying that rape and incest exceptions for abortion aren’t permissible? Or turning over Social Security to some sort of privatization plan – less than three years after the stock market implosion wiped out billions of retirement dollars in 401(k) accounts? Or talking about all the bits of the Consitution they’d like done away with – things like entire amendments like the 16th and 17th? Or doing away with the entire principle that if you’re born here, you’re a citizen?

I’m not talking about message board wingnuts or isolated basement bloggers, I’m talking about duly-elected GOP nominees for high Congressional office. How – when a “liberal” President is pushing things that were the GOP alternative to Democratic plans twenty years ago – how is it possible that they can keep going further off the crazy end?

And since the economy is still stalled, and the wind is at their back – what’s going to happen if they win? What’s going to happen when you get a bunch of Birchers, birthers, tenthers, and other assorted teabag lunatics actually placed in office, convinced they have a popular mandate to do everything they’ve yowled about? And what happens if they actually win control of one chamber of Congress? Or both? How long until a GOP-controlled House of Representatives decides to impeach Obama, just for having the temerity to be elected President and do some of what he said he intended to do?

Here’s what you need to do. Ask your GOP candidates – or elected officials, hell – two simple questions. Do you believe that Barack Obama is a lawfully-elected citizen of the United States legitimately serving as President? and Are you aware of any legitimate grounds on which the current President of the United States might be impeached? If the answer is anything other than “No” then you – we – have a serious problem on our hands.

I’m not being hyperbolic here. I’m not off in some crazy libtard delusion world. I’m going off what’s out there, in the papers, on the “news”, actual reported statements and documented positions. And right now, I’m having a hard time not thinking about what my exit strategy is. Because so far, electoral defeat means nothing – they just keep coming, and getting more insane with every step. At some point, you have to think about saving yourself…any way you can.

I’d give anything to have written this.

The peak sports obsession was probably 1991-95. No matter how fixated people think I am now, it’s not like it was fifteen years ago. To wit…

BASEBALL THEN: Obsessive. Atlanta Braves every day, Birmingham Barons twice a week, on top of all major developments and dialed into the minor league situation for the Braves and White Sox alike.

BASEBALL NOW: Eh. Will look in on the Giants once or twice a week, but rarely for a full game. Vaguely aware of the A’s, esp. if it’s a long night and there’s nothing on TV. Will look at the World Series if the Red Sox are in it. Not really sure who the Giants farm teams are. Barons connection limited to a cap.

NFL THEN: Everything, all the time. Redskins obsessive, though unable to see every game. Also a vested interest in the fortunes of (deep breath): Chargers, Saints, Jets, Chiefs, Packers, Raiders, and (later) Jaguars and Titans. Watched every preseason game, every instance of Sunday and Monday Night Football, damn near every playoff game. Obsessive scribbling of plans for realignment/expansion of NFL (including something approximating the actual 8-division 32-team form that finally came to pass in 2002).

NFL NOW: Redskins, either on satellite radio or at my dive bar up the road, plus every time they’re on national TV. General interest in the welfare of the Saints (because of my high school connections) and Chargers (family connection or two). Unadulterated loathing for the NFL as an organization and firm conviction that the Super Bowl is to football what St Patricks Day is to real Irish bars.

NBA THEN: Everything, all the time. Suns fan, Blazers fan, could name the starting five of almost every franchise, never missed a playoff game or an NBA on NBC Sunday double-header. Could do a passable Marv Albert impersonation. Had Barkley and Majerle jerseys. Obsessive scribbling of plans for realignment/expansion of NBA with an especial eye toward an eventual team in hometown.

NBA NOW: Vaguely aware of Warriors. Even more vaguely aware of Wizards (via podcast of DC sports show) and Kings (because I know Sacramento is in the area and I know people who root for them). Unable to get stuck into actually paying attention, especially with hated Lakers and hated Celtics in prominence.

NHL THEN: Watched Stanley Cup playoffs to conclusion annually. Also regular attendance at minor-league ECHL games in hometown. Occasional scribbling of realignment/expansion plans to include team in hometown (and possibly maximize presence in Canada along the way). Missed half of own college graduation party in 1994 hunched around TV with friends watching “MATTEAU! MATTEAU! MATTEAU!!!” game.

NHL NOW: (crickets)*

SOCCER THEN: Watched US team in World Cup.

SOCCER NOW: No longer have access to Celtic, but DVR’d every available game when possible. Still casting about for a team in English Premier League. Watched entire 2010 World Cup obsessively thanks to streaming video at work.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL THEN: Alabama Crimson Tide obsessive. Would watch any D-I game turned on in front of me. Schemed up plans for bowl-based playoff system and conceived experimental “Division IV” for major powers to field non-scholarship one-platoon football teams to replicate old-style football and experiment with rule changes. Wanted Keith Jackson to provide running commentary on my life.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL NOW: Season tickets for Cal, faithful follower of Vanderbilt, vested interest in Alabama if not full attention. Will watch any D-I game turned on in front of me.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL THEN: Hardcore supporter of undergrad team – pep band, alumni booster club even before graduation, sports editor of campus paper, known as “SF” (for “Super Fan”) by players living in same dorm. Would watch any D-I game turned on in front of me. Obsessive interest in NCAA tournament and NIT.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL NOW: Obsessive follower of Vanderbilt, including alumni gatherings in the city and even a live game vs St Mary’s in 2009 in Moraga. Will be distracted by any D-I game turned on in front of me. Obsessive, all-consuming interest in NCAA tournament, up to and including foolish decisions about buying tickets and attempting to ditch work at the appropriate times to maximize viewing opportunities. Want Gus Johnson to provide commentary on my life.

VIDEO GAME FOOTBALL THEN: Played at the arcade constantly – first Cyberball, then various forms of pre-NFL Blitz. Independently discovered West Coast offense, and subsequently discovered zone blitz to stop it. Kept regular track of results to build possible storylines for intended works of fiction.

VIDEO GAME FOOTBALL NOW: Two or three EA Sports games on iPhone. Download, play once or twice, get frustrated, forget about. Have College Football ’09 for Wii but am equally likely to set up computer to play both sides and then watch, possibly wagering on outcome.

If only they could get one-button football on the iPhone…

* The problem is, I went to see my adopted NHL team play three times in recent years. They lost all three, in increasingly frustrating fashion – and then the same venue hosted Vandy’s awful loss in the tournament. Therefore the NHL is dead to me.

Without further delay, my predictions for the coming year…

1) ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE. Nowhere to go but down after the most successful season in Crimson Tide history (14-0, a Heisman winner in Mark Ingram, and the first ever defeat of the despised Texas Longhorns – in Pasadena for the title, no less). Still, that Heisman winner returns, along with Rhodes-hopeful QB Greg McElroy, so you have to feel reasonably good about the offense. Defense is a bigger worry, especially with the loss of Terrence “Mount” Cody and all-everything linebacker/assistant defensive coordinator Rolando McClain to that Sunday league. However, Florida is entering year one A.T. (After Tebow), LSU has some major question marks, Tennessee is in shambles…it’s hard to see where the threat is going to come from within the SEC.

PREDICTION: Another conference championship game appearance for certain, although anything else cannot be assumed reliably. Expect at least one upset loss, though probably not to San Jose State or Georgia State (HOW did that game get scheduled? Do they really need to be doing favors for Bill Curry?)

2) VANDERBILT COMMODORES. Nowhere to go but up after a 2-10 season capped by losing the coach two months before the season. Questions at QB (when you have 3 quarterbacks, you REALLY have no quarterbacks) and uncertainty around super sophomore Warren Norman (and Zac Stacy for that matter). Vandy is loaded at tailback and may have a pretty good defensive secondary, but trading the likes of Duke and Rice for Northwestern and Wake isn’t going to make their lives any easier.

PREDICTION: Most first-year coaches at Vandy tend to get lucky somehow; let’s call it 4-8 with at least one quality upset win.

3) CALIFORNIA GOLDEN BEARS. The biggest enigma on the list. Will the real Kevin Riley please stand up? Is anyone ready to be the second running back behind Sugar Shane Vereen? Can anyone rush or defend the pass? Will any kickoffs go for touchbacks? And most importantly, does Jeff Tedford have what it takes to exploit a conference whose power hierarchy has been set on tilt-a-whirl by Jeremiah Masoli and the NCAA? In a world where the Washington Huskies are the trendy pick, Jake Locker is a foregone conclusion as the first choice in the 2011 NFL draft, and that crowd in Palo Alto is selling tickets off their thumping of a team Cal hasn’t beaten in six straight tries, the only thing you can bank on in the Pac-10 this year is that the Cougars of Wazzu aren’t going to the Rose Bowl. Everything else is up for grabs.

PREDICTION: I don’t dare. Could be anything from the Doze Troll to 3-9, depending on the breaks, and the fact that they were consensus voted 7th of 10 makes me wary of anything too definite. However, I will say this with confidence: as goes Riley, so goes this team, especially in the absence of any convincing alternative at QB.

4) WASHINGTON REDSKINS. Let’s see: they’ve nailed down QB solidly for the first time in two decades, they have a non-idiot running the front office, and they have somebody with an IQ above room temperature as head coach. That right there should be worth three wins. However, even if you predict 7-9, it’s hard to look up and down the schedule and figure where the seven will come from when they have to play Green Bay, Chicago and Minnesota out of conference. Their best hope is that Hollywood Jay Cutler starts spraying INTs all over the field, that the wheels finally come off Princess Favre in spectacular fashion…and that Aaron Rodgers will take pity on the cries of “Not in the face!”

PREDICTION: 8-8, based largely on a dream of .500 in the division and the thought that they can’t possibly lose to Detroit, St Louis AND Jacksonville in the same year. Plus a couple of breaks from God to make up for the nightmare decade of Steve Superior, Vinny Cerrato, Jim Zorn and the tragedy of Sean Taylor (RIP 21). I mean, we’re entitled to a little luck at some point…

5) By mid-October, I’ll wish I hadn’t cancelled Fox Soccer Plus.

I didn’t have a job the summer between college and grad school. I was busy swapping out all my undergrad stuff for Vandy-issue black and gold – that is, when I wasn’t watching the World Cup or trying out my new Power Mac 6100…or going to Barons games.

It was the perfect storm. I was 22, I was fixated on all things sports, and my best friend from high school had a dad in local government in Hoover – right where the Birmingham Barons played. Which means that for an entire summer, I had premium seating to watch rookie Baron right fielder Michael Jordan.

There are a couple of things people don’t realize about that team and that season:

1) The Hoover Met, in 1994, was very nearly an un-leavable yard. In the pre-steroid age, a classic round-symmetric park was a tough enough thing to hit out of without being positioned with the prevailing wind blowing in.

2) The 1993 Barons won the Southern League pennant going away – and more or less the entire roster got called up to triple-A Nashville. So what rolled into Birmingham in April of 1994 was, essentially, a single-A ballclub plus a three-time NBA champion off-guard.

There’s no real way to dress up a .202 batting average, but the three total home runs don’t look as bad in retrospect. The thing that really stands out, though, are 50 RBI – and a team-leading 30 steals. And the guy I watched from behind the first-base bullpen didn’t look like he was going anything less than all-out. This wasn’t a guy on an extended fantasy-camp outing, this was a guy with something to prove to himself.

I was more than thrilled to have the Bulls knock off the hated Lakers in ’91, but I was rooting hard for Portland in ’92 and Phoenix in ’93, so I wasn’t really a Jordan fan by any stretch of the imagination. But after 1994, I respected the hell out of him.

All through 1993, you could feel things changing. January – Democratic President for the first time since I was in third grade. February – moved on to my fifth roommate in three years in undergrad. March – 13 inches of snow and preachers on the radio trying to assure their listeners that the blizzard was not God’s judgement. April – my first grad school official visit, to Emory (how different would things have been had I been apprenticed to Abramowitz?) and in May – the delivery of the 1993 Saturn SC2, aquamarine, that would eventually become Danny and would someday finish its career parked on a side street in Silicon Valley. But I digress.

June was change, but the wrong kind – I was back to the produce cooler. Yup, three years of undergrad at what was allegedly the finest institution of higher learning in the state and I was right back to doing the same job I did in the summer between tenth and eleventh grade. I didn’t have a lick of sense, of course; I should have been scrounging for a temp agency that could give me a nice air-conditioned berth in front of a PC (yes, folks, in 1993 I still had yet to become a Mac user) but instead I was right back to stacking bananas – at least we no longer shrink-wrapped a dozen cases of iceberg lettuce every morning.

This was the year that I went all-in on the NFL preseason for the first time. My collection of hats and jerseys and Nikes was starting to hit critical mass, and a family vacation to the Smokies was spent perusing NFL preview magazines and looking in on any and every preseason game ESPN aired. My beloved Redskins were looking at their first season After Gibbs, but nobody was worried – Richie Pettitbone, master of defense, was taking the controls and everything looked to be A-OK.*

I guess I never really paid attention to the NFL. The first Super Bowl I remember being cognizant of was when the Redskins beat the Dolphins, but I don’t remember watching it – that didn’t happen until the Super Bowl Shuffle-era Chicago Bears made a big enough splash that even a skinny nerd knew who the Fridge was (even if I had no idea what position he played – confusion made worse whenever Ditka lined him up as a running back).

The really funny thing was that this was right about the time that the Indigo Girls album “Rites of Passage” finally showed up in my collection. I was a little behind, obviously, but I was banging that tape through the Walkman on a loop for most of the summer, largely because “Ghost” was evocative – for the obvious reasons, but ones made worse by the fact that I was sending letters back and forth with the girl who would become Horrible. Yes, I was still technically with She Whose Name We Do Not Speak (and I was on that tip YEARS before J. K. Rowling), but She was working on the summer theater program in town and busily laying pipe with a stagehand while I was feeling guilty about how good it felt to get a letter back, so in retrospect I regret none of my conduct. Obviously I regret ever getting entangled with Horrible, but that’s a whole separate decade of sending a therapist’s kids to Harvard on a jewel-encrusted camel.

August 1993 was the first time it really occurred to me that you could go up in the mountains, someplace green and leafy, and it wasn’t nearly as godawful hot. It was a revelation almost as transforming as the 2002 realization that you could do that at sea level if only you went to Silicon Valley…

So there it is. Calm before the storm, more or less, or the lull waiting for the regeneration to finish maybe. By August, I would be out of the produce and working for the Dean’s office, ramping up for senior year – which was more eventful than the previous three years combined, but that’s another story altogether.

* A-OK = 4-12. Disastrous. Of course, the Skins turned in the same record this past season, so you can see what kind of decade(s) we’ve had…

I handed over my netbook to my father-in-law this week. As a retired 31-year IBM lifer, he has the time, the skill set, and the patience to mess around with it, which puts him three ahead of me.

What I found in the six months I donked around with it was that in the grand scheme of things, I rarely used it for anything but web surfing. I never found a really satisfactory blogging client for it, which was one of the big incentives to have it, and the advent of FaceTime has severely undercut the argument for needing the webcam for long-distance teleconferencing (which i literally used maybe once the whole time I had it).

The bigger problem, though, it that it was just weak. 1 GB of RAM being pushed by a 1.6 Ghz Atom processor isn’t exactly crazy horsepower. Video playback was damn near worthless; I tried but it took some seriously messed-up configuring to get Hulu to work – even when I booted back into XP, what I got was more slideshow than video. It was adequate at video playback for local files, but not in a compelling fashion, especially given the limited battery life.

What I realize now is that in every way other than text entry, for my needs and purposes, the iPhone 4 basically kicks the shit out of the typical netbook. Maybe this is because the netbook was largely underpowered when it first hit in 2008 and hasn’t really moved very far since. Maybe it’s just asking too much to compromise the hardware and still get a viable desktop-OS experience. Maybe this explains why Apple scaled the iPhone OS up instead of scaling Mac OS X down. And most of all, maybe this explains why everybody’s talking up Android tablets as the iPad killer, and ignoring existing devices that cost half as much.

Ultimately, though, the iPad isn’t getting it done for me either. It delivers improvements in text input, and the screen is far easier to handle books, PDF and video on, but those aren’t enough to rate having to carry a bag. I might consider the new Kindle for travel – I’m far more likely to read and listen to podcasts than I am to try to watch my own video content – and if I lost my job tomorrow, I would certainly look at an iPad rather than a new MacBook, now that we have the known good Mac mini upstairs.

I think what the iPad really is, in the end, is the first salvo of the notebook-replacement wars. There were tablets before, and netbooks, but the iPad is Apple’s way of hitting the beach with “we’re going to forcibly change the paradigm of portable computing.” The same way there were computers with USB ports before, or MP3 players before, or smartphones before, Apple’s going to burn a lot of money and advertising to push a new technology in a way that makes people want to try it out. The early adopters sink a ton of cash and get abused mercilessly in the press, the geek elite rolls its eyes endlessly (“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”) and a rev later, everybody else is building an “iPad killer.”

And when the day comes, I’ll probably give them a look too. Android 3 on a reasonably good hardware tablet might just be an iPad-breaker; the licensing model for a Wi-Fi tablet is a lot more promising than having to deal with carrier bullshit. I’m sure the usual suspects have something on the way; if Dell is pushing a 5″ tablet-with-phone now, I’m sure they’ll have their “iPad killer” out by Christmas, and of course there’s the Cisco Cius next year.

But for now, the shortcomings of the iPhone 4 aren’t enough to validate the monetary outlay to cover them. It’s not worth $200 for a bigger screen to look at text, let alone $500 and up. Back to “wait-and-see” – and, of course, trucking home with the work laptop every night for blogging…