Are my eyes really blue?

Remarkably, in the span of one year, Google has managed to become both Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft, in that they have your computing experience by the nuts, and Apple, in that mainstream non-tech press now goes nuts for literally everything they announce.

Dial it back a bit and look at what actually happened Friday. A bunch of Google employees were given the latest version of an HTC handset. Not that big a deal – they all got a G1 two years ago, and Apple gave all its employees iPhones on the eve of the release in 2007. The phone itself is an HTC Passion, something that’s been kicking around the rumorsphere for some time – and it was inevitable that Android 2-based hardware would show up for GSM eventually. And while rumors are flying about Google selling the phone directly, nobody – NOBODY – in the United States has had success selling unlocked and unsubsidized phones to the general public. Apple came closest, when they sold the phone unsubsidized and allowed for at-home activation, and that experiment went by the boards in under a year. Unless Google is prepared to take a bath on every handset for the purpose of shipping them into as many hands as possible, they won’t have any more success than anybody else pushing a $500 handset with no service.

And yet – people are losing their minds. First they lost it for Android generally (and the Droid in particular) which sort of made sense. They lost it for Wave, which so far has turned out to be a big pile of WTF. And now they’re losing it for what is essentially a developer preview device that’s only been handed out to employees, not even third party developers let alone the broader public.

Ah well. I’m still not prepared to throw my hands in the air and say “I for one welcome our new Google overlords,” but having looked at the balance of my services, I’m more or less OK with the current state of affairs – some Google, some Apple, some self-provided (well, brother-in-law provided) service, and a smattering of other stuff from Yahoo or Evernote or Skype or Mozilla. To be honest, the notion of an 11″ netbook running Ubuntu is becoming increasingly attractive…

This is Joe Lieberman, advocating Medicare buy-in as an alternative to a public option, only three months ago.

Key quote: “As to how 47 million uninsured will afford coverage, Lieberman said only 12 million don’t have insurance because they cannot afford it. By allowing citizens who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid to buy in for a rate below the private market, the government can extend coverage to more of those who are currently uninsured, he said.”

There are only two explanations: Lieberman has lost his mind, or he is specifically out to undermine the Democrats at every turn – and sandbag the signature initiative of someone who specifically came to Connecticut to campaign for him over Ned Lamont in the primary in 2006. Either way, it should now be obvious to anyone that Harry Reid’s failure to shitcan Lieberman before the new Congress even opened is proof that he is not fit to lead – the Democrats don’t have 60 votes, they never did, and letting Lieberman create that charade, however briefly, has done far more harm than good.

…for not telling me there was a new version of ecto back in February. Now I have to pay for an upgrade. Maybe. We’ll see.

That was a strange year. I wasn’t really a kid anymore – I don’t remember if I was still getting toys or not that Christmas, but I definitely wasn’t by the next year. I was pretty much over my Star Wars fandom but hadn’t gotten into comic books in a big way yet, and for the first time, I was contemplating writing things that weren’t assigned in class.

I remember going to Cullman to go to JC Penney, because it was no further than driving to the other side of Birmingham for the same thing. I remember an obsession with orange Tic Tacs, eating an entire box at one go whenever I could get to it. I remember a whole slew of Christmas songs on four cassettes from Reader’s Digest, which was the first time I started to get the sense that our cultural memory of Christmas depends on Victorian England and wartime America in the 1940s in roughly equal measure.

Mainly I remember it being cold and quiet, and feeling like I was in some sort of limbo between phases of my life. I guess that’s why I drift back to it this time of year – that was one of those pivot points where I could change the direction of my life. Not a critical one, certainly not a patch on what came later, but the beginning of growing up.

I’m going over to MarsEdit for the time being – for some reason, you have to repost from ecto five or six times before stuff shows up. I’m not crazy about how MarsEdit formats with raw HTML, but whatever. I can’t believe ecto hasn’t been updated in years…

Still sick btw. Sinuses mostly under control, but coughing is out of control. Meanwhile, I finally had the cervical MRI yesterday – it was certainly more open than the last one, but I’d be lying if I said it was fun and enjoyable. I’m starting to seriously question my loadout – it may be time to go for a one-shoulder bag over the right shoulder, with as little as possible in it…I swear this is not just an excuse to look at Timbuk2 bags again ;]

Sinus infection again. Felt it coming on as early as Sunday night and jumped on the usual bandwagon of salt gargles, vitamin C, lots of ech eck eca herbs, plenty of liquids. Yesterday was irksome but tolerable. Today…well, it’s on. Couldn’t breathe from my bad nostril all night, even lying on the opposite side.
Every freakin’ year. Same side, too. I’m starting to wonder if there’s just something wrong with my right sinus…
ETA: Got worse as the day went on, to the point where I left early – and passed out on the couch during the Vandy-Illinois disaster despite having two Sudafed in my system. Why do we lose as soon as we get ranked?

1) The SEC has never lost a BCS title game.

2) Alabama has never beaten Texas.

3) From 2002 on, the #1 team has lost every BCS title game but one.

Offhand, you don’t like to see that math.

On the other hand, the Big 12 was dreadful this year – the Big 12 North produced exactly one bowl-eligible team, and they lost to Texas on a neutral site by one point, holding them to 13.

Much will depend, ultimately, on how well Bama prepares. The memory of last year’s humiliation in the Sugar Bowl should be ever-present. With a month to watch tape, Texas will presumably be prepared to stack the box against Mark Ingram and force Greg McElroy to throw. Whether Terrence Cody can replicate Nebraska’s success in threatening McCoy with a big space-eating defensive lineman remains to be seen.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And then make the fear work for you.

They didn’t back into it, they didn’t stumble into it, they didn’t pull it off in the last second on a miracle play – Alabama went out, took the ball to start, and beat down the Florida Gators like they’d stolen something. The #1 team in the country held scoreless in the second half, the #1 defense in the country shredded for 32 points and almost 500 yards…and Greg McElroy playing like some other guys who wore a #12 on their back for the Tide.

The only thing to give pause is that Alabama has never beaten Texas in eight tries. 0-7-1, the last one a 14-12 Cotton Bowl loss in 1982. Assuming they get by Nebraska (and the Big XII has a history of bad upsets in their title game), the Longhorns – perhaps Alabama’s most implacable nemesis among the big-ticket programs of college football – will be waiting in Pasadena.

From what I’ve seen, Texas has no shot to defend Alabama – every team in that conference seems content to give up 35 if they can score 40. The matchup would be Colt McCoy against an Alabama defense that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t really been confronted with a high-powered passing game all year, bar perhaps Ole Miss. But then, I didn’t start paying attention until the Tennessee game, so I don’t know what the deal is at this point.

NOW…the matchups in 1990, if the old rules were still in effect:

SUGAR: Alabama vs TCU

ORANGE: Georgia Tech vs Texas

ROSE: Ohio State vs Oregon

FIESTA: Iowa vs Cincinnati

COTTON: Florida vs Boise State

(I assume that the Big 12 takes the Big 8 tie-in, and that the only other locks are Sugar and Rose.)

Basically, the look of things is this: Alabama beats TCU, national champs. Alabama loses and Texas beats Ga Tech – Texas national champs. Alabama and Texas both lose – TCU national champs.

But right now, it’s almost a mortal lock that the matchup is Alabama-Texas, and most Bama fans will tell you that they’d much rather take a chance with the Horns than with TCU or Cincy, both of whom are red hot. The problem, if you assume the legitimacy of Boise State, is that there is no mechanism to cope with FIVE UNDEFEATED TEAMS.

BTW, to steal a line from a couple of years ago…”Dr Pepper Big 12 Championship. Somewhere, Mr Pibb is laughing his ass off.”

So a couple of weeks ago, I was up in Moraga for a Vandy game at St Mary’s. If you ever cross over Checkpoint Caldecott, I strongly recommend a trip to see the Gaels in action – their little 3500-seat bandbox gym lights up with as loud and rowdy a crowd as you’ll find in college hoops, and the team (chock full of Aussies) is actually pretty damn good. Vandy managed to blow an 11-point lead and won by 2, and St Mary’s had a shot at the end that would have won it.

But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that they played a LOT of recorded music, much to my chagrin as a former stalwart of my undergrad basketball pep band* – and sprinkled in among Miley Cyrus and random hip-hop was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. (Believing? Believin’? Whatever.)

Not only did the students go apeshit when the opening piano hit, they sang along. The whole damn song.

When the hell did a Journey track from my elementary school days turn into some sort of Gen-Z youth anthem? How does shit like this happen? My God, it’s not like we were all singing and dancing along to a Doors song back when I was in high sch–

–what?

Never mind.

One year ago today, I got a phone call I had been dreading. I had interviewed for a new job the week of Veterans Day, but owing to a combination of circumstances, I wound up posting 45 minutes late to the interview. I faced the guns against something like 9 potential interviewers (as it turns out, most of the rest of the workgroup) and went home knowing that if the lateness didn’t get me, the salary would (even if I’d volunteered to take the cut).

So I was fully anticipating the “thank you for your interest but we’ve decided to go in another direction” call. Instead, I got the “we’d like to offer you a job and a chunk of change (which with benefits will be more or less what you get now) starting first of the year.” That was my Christmas miracle.

Three hundred sixty-five days later, I have to say it was the best present I could have gotten. Because of this job, I don’t drive to work much anymore – I can commute by train and on foot, for free. Because of this job, I have enough sick leave to see the doctors to check out the pain in my shoulder, or rehab my bum knee, or not go to work if I’m spewing flu-like symptoms. Because of this job, I have enough leave to go to Colorado, Alabama, Oregon, Washington, Canada, all over California, and still have enough time to take off and squire Team Black Swan around the city. (Y’all come back now, y’hear?) Because of this job, my cellphone is mostly paid for and I can work out three times a week for no money. Because of this job, I’m typing this on a Mac that was made this year, instead of one that was already obsolete when I came to California. (Yes, the first machine I was issued at the last job was a TiBook G4. In 2007.)

Mostly, though, because of this job I am no longer occupationally miserable on a daily basis. The last time I could say that reliably was in 2006. Maybe the first couple weeks of 2007, when I was still at the Big Fruit.

Pair that with some growth in other areas, some necessary adjustment, and I daresay my life has turned around pretty much 180 degrees from where it was at the end of 2007, which was about as shitty a year as I’ve ever had without losing a parent. It’s good to be back above water. And so, once again, ladies and gents…welcome to Christmas. =)