Are my eyes really blue?

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I’m happy, tonight.

I’m not worried about anything.

I’m not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!”

I was there, you know. January 20, 2001, right out there on the mall. Up close, dressed all in black, because I knew what to expect. Because I’m just that good. You wanna know why? Read on…

Continue reading “The End”

I know the about-to-be-President is on the other side of this from me, and he’s WRONG, and I will tell you why: you could put off the digital TV switchover for FIFTY YEARS and at the end of it you would still have people complaining that they’re not ready to make the move yet. I have heard something about this literally at every commercial break on channel 11 here in the Bay Area for well over a year now. A media that drops the ball on nearly every news item of significance has covered the upcoming digital transition as if it were man landing on the planet Mars in a spaceship made out of diamonds and breasts.

Yes, there are end users consumers out there who somehow, some way, have not yet figured out that the magic talky box will stop working in the middle of February. The correct answer is screw ’em. The dogs bark, but the caravan proceeds. If you allow your technology to be dictated by the least among your user base, you will get HOSED.

So yeah, I officially have a difference with the administration. Looky there!

If this had happened with a Democratic President and Secretary of State, the gasbags would be losing their S all over talk radio and Fox News. The Prime Minister of a country that wouldn’t exist without the blind support of the United States is going to get up there and start crowing about how he’s got George’s pecker in his pocket? All the shit we take, all the trouble we get all over the world – and they’re going to punk out the President like that?

Obama better take some time on day one to get on the phone and warn some folks that South Side rules are now in effect for this kind of thing. The next words I hear from Ehud Olmert better be whatever is the Hebrew for “Not in the face!”

So Steve Jobs is taking half the year off. I won’t speculate on who knew what and when, just that for the sake of his loved ones I hope he pulls through this without to much drama.

Now what are the day to day implications?

For starters, AAPL will take a bath until investors can be convinced that Cupertino is not going to undergo a nuclear meltdown in the absence of Himself. But if you look at the executive team, I would comfortably put them up against anyone else in the industry. You have Phil Schiller, who when he’s not being the sidekick is in fact as ruthlessly effective a marketing wizard as exists in the Valley. You have Jonny Ive CBE, whose industrial design over the past decade-plus has been the heart and soul of the turnaround – everything from the original Bondi Blue iMac to the iPhone has come off his drawing board. You have Ron Johnson, who goes largely unsung in the business media but who is the mastermind of Apple Retail, and that should speak for itself. And then leading the charge is Tim Cook, who was acting chief during the cancer scare four years ago and who has, in the intervening years, taken on much more of the day-to-day operations than anyone would expect. For a long time, Apple has been preparing for Cook to take the controls, and he is as ready as anyone could be.

And after a few months, when Apple hasn’t collapsed into a smoking crater, I think the stock will be just fine.

One more note: we used to refer to Jobs as “Himself” out of fear that he would magically appear, Beetlejuice-like, if his name were spoken. Since Tim Cook is an Auburn man, he will be referred to in these pages as “Hisself.” I hope to God his record is better than Gene Chizik’s.

This is what happens when the head of your party in the legislature knows his ass from a hole in the ground and how to wheel and deal.

Tennessee politics isn’t as baroque as Alabama or Texas or California, but it’s never not entertaining. =)

…while I still can.

* So I have the new Vandy jacket, which fills both the Graduate School and the Outdoor Performance Clothes notches in my Stuff White People Like sweepstakes. It’s the first piece of all-new outerwear I’ve bought in four years – after drowning in jackets for about 15 years, it’s a fairly impressive drought. (In fairness, my wife unexpectedly bought me a simple black thing for my birthday last year which is quite stylish and consequently something it never would have occurred to me to buy myself.) Vandy III is a bit on the big side, but that’s not a bad idea for strategic layering purposes, and it’s a hell of a lot lighter than the leather stuff.

* Plus, since the Vandy women beat UT for the first time since 2002, I’m cised to wear it all week.

* I’m starting to believe that it’s actually a true fact that the sole measure of value to modern conservatism is whether it pisses off people who aren’t conservative. I mean, they actually sent that bald douche from Ohio to be a war correspondent? Seriously? It has become absolutely impossible to take conservatism seriously, with the obvious exception of the very talented crew at TAC.

* Even Pat Buchanan finds a nut once in a while – his shtick hasn’t really budged since he was WHCD, and it’s generally kind of eye-rolling not-again stuff, but his appreciation of the late Sammy Baugh was as fine a piece of sportswriting as you may see all year, and has the added benefit of coming from someone who actually grew up watching the Redskins in the Baugh era. In the pre-television NFL, not many people can say that.

* Speaking of sportswriting, I don’t know what ESPN was thinking, but I accidentally clicked on a Rick Reilly column and was immediately reminded why print sportswriting has all gone to hell. Same thing, over and over, beating a dead horse. Just like me. Except I don’t kill trees to do it and I don’t pretend that what I write is any more important than just some dork on the Internet. The kind of ill-founded logic, saccharine dreck, and general white Boomer foolishness that Reilly brings to the table is pretty much the reason I cancelled my subscription to Sports Illustrated ten years ago. Seriously, all you need is Deadspin and EDSBS and you’ll be just fine.

* NewNewNewJob continues apace. I think it’s going well, although I may have more metrics on that shortly, but I’ll tell you this: I don’t dread getting up in the morning anymore aside from the obvious OMG IT’S EARLY issue. And even then, I made it out the door today by 7:27 AM of my own free will. And less than 20 minutes later, was walking down the platform at my work train stop. Being able to commute entirely by public transit PWNS and don’t you forget it. I could actually have a drink after work with my colleagues if I felt like it. In fact I may be having a drink DURING work later this week, as the department holiday party is Wednesday afternoon.

* The weather is April-ish here. No, really. The high in San Jose today was 77. This is wrong on many levels.

* I am told, via reliable sources, that Washington DC is already basically un-navigable. One of my former co-workers (whose WVU education means that his children are basically being raised by a baboon) missed ten straight lights at the same intersection in a traffic jam today, parked in the nearest deck and walked a half mile to work. I’d love to see history, but I’m not about to wait in line for it.

* If I still lived in DC, though, you bet your ass I’d be out to see Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder et al on Sunday.

* My Buddy Vince Sez, “You know I will always support weed over blow. Unless the blow is free of course.”

Finis.

Just trying out another iPhone client. It’s a beautiful day here on the farm…basically indistinguishable from spring. Like, ditch class, pick up a case of beer and go watch the baseball team weather. Not that I ever did that. Certainly not with the professor bringing the beer. RIP Doc Sloane.

No shit folks – the Pre is Palm’s last best hope to survive. It is the first thing in years worth criticizing from the company that made the PDA a reality, and it actually does some interesting things. The UI is certainly attractive, and the presence of real multitouch will let it play right away. Whereas the iPhone had the whole Apple digital-media ecosystem as a selling point, though, and the G1 had both Google and the promise of a broader platform (and conceivable multiple carriers), the Pre’s party piece is its Webkit-based system where all applications are basically local web apps, which should offer developers a tremendously low barrier to entry.

(An aside: the iPhone and the first two legitimate competitors all use Webkit as the basis of their browser. As soon as I have the Bold in hand, I’ll have a look and see what the mobile web looks like without it. Not sanguine about the prospects.)

Problem is, though, they tied up with Sprint.

A phone is only as good as its network. It’s understandable why Apple went with AT&T – they didn’t really have a choice from a technical perspective as the former Cingular had the only dual-band national GSM network. It’s plausible why the G1 started on T-Mobile – they needed something to replace the aging Sidekick line as their tentpole device, and again, GSM. If you make your device GSM, you can pretty much sell it anywhere in the world right off the jump other than South Korea. If you make it CDMA, though, you’d better be HUGE in Seoul and North America because that’s as far as it’ll go.

Sprint is, to put it nicely, limited. It’s a PCS carrier, which means 1900Mhz coverage only, and it is proverbial for its coverage issues and the general inefficacy of its customer service. Too, CDMA devices are known for having less batter life than their GSM equivalents. Put it all together and it’s tough not to wonder if the network is going to be the weak link in the chain, and unlike the iPhone, there’s no way to unlock it and pop a SIM in there.

Still, this is Palm’s best opportunity. The iPhone is still the best-selling phone in America, but the presence of competitors means the time is ripe for somebody to pop out a compelling challenge, and Sprint seems committed to selling the hell out of it. Now, all they have to do is bring it in at a reasonable price point (and it’s becoming clear that anything over $299 is untenable in this segment, and under $199 would be much better) and maybe they’ll have a chance.

Hopefully, that’s an end to all the “Big” 12 caterwauling about what a great conference they are, how their offenses are the best in the world, how they really do play defense but it just doesn’t look that way because they are JUST! THAT! AWESOME! – well, three of their top four teams have just gotten the beatdown in bowls, and the fourth struggled and needed a last-second TD to beat the second-place team from a Known Not Good conference, and none of them blew the roof off scoring, and – more to the point – none of them could stop anybody. Yes, Virginia, the Big 12 has overrated offenses and plays less defense than the WAC.

And please, please, please lay off Ohio State. The Sooners have now shit the bed in five straight BCS bowls, including THREE title tilts, and will be known as Chokelahoma in perpetuity, or until such time as they can actually avoid taking the beatdown on national TV. That’s not bluster, or message board yammering, that’s MATH.

Your final rankings:

1) Florida. Look, Ole Miss – much as it pains me to say it – is just a good team, better than Oregon State (see below). They beat the top team in the country in each of their last two games, and convincingly. I know they’re the damn Gators, but what can you do. They didn’t back into it, they didn’t stumble into it, they just went out and took it.

2) USC, with a bullet. The Pac-10 was a lot better than we thought, and as a result, USC is better than we thought, and if you saw the Rose Bowl, or the Ohio State matchup – those weren’t games, they were autopsies. I still think there’s a certain measure of hype there, and the soft underbelly of the Pac-10 was softer than one can imagine (Washington and WSU, anyone?) but with the departures at Florida and Georgia, you have to think that USC will be the consensus preseason #1.

3) Utah. I know, I know, but look: it wasn’t a championship schedule, but they did beat everyone put in front of them, and looked plenty convincing against Alabama (their offensive line issues notwithstanding). I don’t think they’d beat either of the teams above them, but I bet they would hang just fine. Getting the first legitimately convincing BCS win for a non-BCS-conf team deserves something.

And therein lies the rub: the bowls mean that you get a whole month to wargame your final opponents. A month to scheme and watch tape and find the holes. There’s a reason that #2 almost always beats #1 in these title games, or that a middling team can suddenly look like a million bucks against their bowl opponents: prep time is everything. If, in 1992, Alabama had played Miami the week after beating Florida (barely) in the first SEC title game, they probably would have gotten their clocks cleaned. Instead, Brother Oliver had three weeks to solve the ‘Canes, and the resulting beatdown was one for the ages. (I own the DVD.)

BTW, the Heisman curse is real, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.