Noooooooooooooooooooo!

1984 NBA Draft
1. Houston Rockets: Hakeem Olajuwon, C, Houston
2. Portland Trailblazers: Sam Bowie, C, Kentucky
3. Chicago Bulls: Michael Jordan, SG, North Carolina

2006 NFL Draft
1. Houston Texans: Mario Williams, DE, North Carolina State
2. New Orleans Saints: Reggie Bush, RB, USC
3. Tennessee Titans: Vince Young, QB, University of Texas

In 1984 the Houston Rockets won the coin toss for the first pick in the draft, and chose between Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon. Both became Hall of Fame players and led their teams to multiple championships. Sam Bowie had already missed two seasons in college when Portland picked him No. 2. Bowie played just 511 games in 10 NBA seasons, averaging 10.9 points and 7.5 rebounds.

Now the Houston Texans have had a choice between two of the most celebrated players in the last decade of NFL drafts and have taken a third alternative. Granted they just signed former first pick David Carr to a three-year contract, but the Houston Rockets had taken Ralph Sampson as the first pick in the 1983 draft and made it work. History has shown that when you have a Michael Jordan (or a Hakeen Olajuwon) on the board, you don't pass him up. And you don't pass up the second best player in the draft, either. Mario Williams would have been available at a lower pick than #1 overall, and the Texans should have traded down if they didn't want Michael Jordan on their team.

I'm not saying that Vince Young or Reggie Bush are the NFL equivalent to Michael Jordan, that's for history to decide, but NFL experts have said that they are two of the most special players in this generation. I'm also not saying that Mario Williams is the NFL equivalent of Sam Bowie. He's been a great player, has great physical skills, and is certainly the best defensive lineman in the draft. And he hasn't had the injury problems that Sam Bowie had in college.

The Texans will watch Reggie Bush's progress in the Big Easy, just down I-10 from Houston, and will have Reggie in Reliant Stadium once every 10 years for regular season matchups, most likely only once in the young running back's career. But the Texans will have the pleasure of seeing Vince Young's progress twice a year for a franchise that should be the ultimate rivalry, the franchise that left Houston for Nashville, the owner least interested in the fans short of Bill Bidwell in Bud Adams.

Football Weekend 2006

A group of friends and I have a little tradition where we go to an NFL game every year, as you may have read about here. Well, the NFL schedule is out early this year, usually the schedule doesn't come out until after the draft. Mike Ruocco is the selector this year, and he's already chosen the game:


Washington Redskins at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sunday, November 19th in Tampa, Florida
Beach, deep-sea fishing, Ybor Village (arrrrr!!!) and football. And a special guest, and possibly a super duper special bonus guest! I can't wait to guess the super duper special bonus guest like I guessed the location.

Site was down, site's back up

My site was down this morning, I noticed it when I started to get Outlook errors Wednesday morning. I did a little investigating and figured out that it wasn't the site itself, the domain name wasn't resolving properly. In non-geek terms, that means that the computer server (called a DNS or domain-name server) that's responsible for finding the actual address when you type in hevle.com wasn't doing the job right. Every web page is on a computer connected to the Internet, and every computer on the Internet has a unique address called an IP address (Internet Protocol address). Domain-name servers take an easy-to-remember name (like hevle.com) and connect it to a particular computer (like 67.15.110.8). Here's a good non-technical explanation of the domain-name system. DNS servers are maintained by the company that registers your domain name, called your registrar. Domain-name servers used to be hosted by ICANN but now they're all hosted by the registrars. You can host your own DNS, too. ICANN is the organization that assigns domain names to IP addresses. They keep track of which DNS is which through 13 root servers distributed all over the world. This is the organization that the Euro's were getting all bent out of shape because it is American-owned (hey, we invented the Internet, we get to manage it. Now go smoke your little black cigarettes.)

So when I typed in hevle.com in my browser, nothing happened. I figured out that it was the DNS because I could still access the site controls by using the IP address, but not the domain. So I called my site host and they said "Oh, you were supposed to get an email saying our domain name server addresses were changing". So I went to my registrar (another company in this case) and changed the DNS and within a couple of minutes it was up and running.

So it was an easy fix, but in the mean time, any emails sent today would have received an error message, which is a hassle. Many email servers will try to resend emails, so I'm hoping I didn't miss anything. And I think I'm going to move my site from my old host ev1servers.net to godaddy.com (who is my registrar).

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo.

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard.

Top 10 Cell Phone Pet Peeves

10. Driving and not paying attention

I can't tell you how often I see someone pull a bonehead driving maneuver and when I pull up next to them to give them a friendly wave, they've got their cell phone glued to their face. STOP THE MADNESS! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! JUST SAY NO! Whatever it takes. Just don't drive talking on the cell phone, because even if you think it doesn't hurt your driving, your driving wasn't that great to begin with. Try this experiment. The next time you've been involved in a critical conversation while you're driving, look in the rear view mirror. I'm willing to bet that anyone you can see in that mirror a) knows you're on the cell phone and b) wishes you a long, excruciatingly painful death.

9. Trendy cell phone ring tones

Cell phone ring tones are an expression of your personality, and it's an easy way to let your friends and co-workers as well as a large group of total strangers what a puerile moron you really are, on the inside. The only thing worse than trendy cell phone ring tones are old trendy cell phone ring tones. I set my phone on vibrate 99% of the time. Sure, I downloaded the freshest vibrate rhythms from vibrate.com, but they aren't inflicted on the rest of the world.

8. People who never call your home or office phone anymore

Some people will never call your land line anymore because they know your cell phone number. My cell phone is a work phone, and I usually don't turn it on on the weekend. It happens to be on right now because I grabbed it when I went out to lunch, just in case I had a flat tire or something. When I'm in the office I forward my cell phone to my office phone, because I travel a lot and people have gotten so lazy that they don't bother to call my office phone, they call my cell phone first and ask "Where are you?" Why do I even have a home phone? Since my neighbors built their McMansion I can't get decent reception in the house.

7. Letting it ring

The only thing more annoying than listening to some idiot's idiotic ring tone is having to listen to some idiot's idiotic ring tone over and over and over. People who screen their calls and just let it ring are idiots. All it takes is to touch any button on the phone and the idiocy will stop. Some people think that muting doesn't apply to them, or can't figure out how to mute the phone, so their phones go off in meetings, in restaurants, and even in the movie theater. Then they're too embarrassed (and rightly so) to answer it so they just let it ring. Everyone knows who that idiot is anyway. Take the phone out of your purse, turn off the ringer, and then apologize to everyone in the room.

6. Taking every single call

Some people have to take every single call that comes in. They say things like "Excuse me, I have kids!" or "It's my job, I'm in sales!" like no one else on the planet ever had kids or a job, and if they did they would be criminally negligent if they didn't have 100% communication availability with the grandparents/babysitter/nanny/kids/boss/customer/secretary. Well, most of the world grew up without parents or a job that had cell phones and turned out fine. Why are you so @#$&! special? The ultimate in feedback of your ranking in another person's priorities is when she takes a call in the middle of your conversation with her, and it turns out to be a wrong number. "[brightly] Sorry! Thought it might be important" [Note from Drew: I was using the term brightly as a double entendre] Someone interrupting your conversation just to look at their caller ID to decide whether to interrupt your conversation is telling you that you are less important than their cell phone. It's like looking at your watch during a conversation, it's impolite and offensive.

5. People who talk loudly on cell phones

People who don't seem to care or be aware that they are subjecting you to their entire (should be) private conversations, like on one of those tiny rental-car buses, in restaurants, or on a plane. Here's a clue: if other people talk and you can hear them, then they can hear your cell phone conversation in its entirety. People seem to be forced to pay more attention when they can only hear half a conversation. It's apparently easier to tune out the continuous drone of a complete conversation, where two people take turns speaking, than it is to ignore someone speaking only part of the time. Wait until you can have a decent conversation, get up from the table if you absolutely have to take a call, and step out into a more public area. DO NOT take a call in the bathroom. I can only speak for the men's room, but the old unwritten rule was that you could only speak to someone in the bathroom if they are doing what you are doing, e.g. if you're both washing your hands, okay, if one of you is taking care of business and the other is done, the conversation stops. No talking whatsoever in a stall, unless you are both in the same stall together. That rule should be extended to cell phones, you can only talk to people who are also in the same bathroom doing what you are doing.

4. People who keep saying "are you there, can you hear me?"

There's two versions of this one, first there are the people who interrupt every sentence they say with "are you there, can you hear me?" and second, there are the people who get a call, or who's call dropped, who repeat "are you there, can you hear me?" about a thousand times. I say "Hello" twice. Then I hang up. They WILL call back, or it WASN'T that important. Please stop. That Verizon joke stopped being funny about four years ago and it has rapidly transitioned through annoying to "[in Will Ferrell's voice] I WILL KILL YOU!!!"

3. Super loud ringers

Certain phones must be designed for senior citizens with hearing problems, because their ring tones are an order of magnitude louder than normal. If you have one of these, DO NOT set the ringer volume on the highest setting, even if you are a senior citizens with hearing problems. Not everyone wants to hear your tight new "Hello Eileen" polyphonic ring tone.

2. People who go through the checkout line talking on the cell phone

Seriously, get off the phone when you are interacting with another human being. It's only common courtesy. I know it's tempting to put those cocky grocery store checkout clerks in their place, with their condescending "I'm all that" attitudes, by not acknowledging their existance and carrying on a critical conversation like "I'm grocery shopping, what are you doing?" but really it's impolite. Just give them an obviously fake smile, mispronounce the name on their nametag, and argue about whether something is on sale or not. Ask to speak to a manager. Count all your coin change twice.

1. The Borg

These are the people who wear an ear-piece all the time, even when they're not on the phone. This is like being on the phone and talking to someone else with them. No one knows if you're talking to them or on the phone. Very disturbing. Plus it looks idiotic.

Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper by Jack Coughlin, Casey Kuhlman, and Donald A. Davis

Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper by Jack Coughlin, Casey Kuhlman, and Donald A. Davis.

The Alabama-Coushatta Indians by Jonathan B. Hook

The Alabama-Coushatta Indians by Jonathan B. Hook.

Super Cool

I had an interesting weekend. On Friday evening about 5:30 my buddy Tony J. called me and said he had scored his company's Astro's tickets (Diamond level), his wife Liz was not feeling well, and asked me if I wanted to go. I've sat in the Diamond level before in the Astrodome, and it was super nice, so even though I had some work to finish up, I said sure. I went by and picked him up and off we went. There were several celebrities in the audience with us, including President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush in their usual seats, the best seats in the house right behind home plate. We knew they would be there by the Secret Service agents all over the place.

So the whole time I'm trying to sneak peeks at the former President without looking like some psycho who the Secret Service should wrestle down and grind their face into the cement while shouting "Code Red!! Escape Plan Alpha!! GO GO GO!!!"

Some observations:
a) He's into the game
b) He drank lemonade, not beer
c) He and Barbara were checking something out on his Blackberry

(As an aside, it was ironic to watch both the teenage girls texting on their cell phones and the corporate executives texting on their Blackberries [Blackberrys? Blackberry's?] They both looked addicted.)

So just before the end of the sixth inning, I saw President Bush motion to the Secret Service guy sitting on a folding chair a row behind him and he said something to him, and a couple of minutes later they got up to leave. The entire row of seats in front of our seats was empty, so George and Barbara walked out right in front of me. They stopped to take a picture with some kids, and then I SHOOK HANDS WITH A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! AND A FIRST LADY!



I stole this picture from the BBC here because I forgot my friggin camera and even my cell phone. So no pictures of me with the President and First Lady. Oh well, that will teach me to always bring my camera.

I actually considered the probability of my getting to shake hands with the President of the United States a couple of years ago, and thought it very unlikely.

Super cool.

Getting Things Done

I've been renewing my acquaintance with the concepts of David Allen's excellent productivity book "Getting Things Done"


At El Paso, some of the executives went through the training with David Allen personally, and liked it so much they put our whole group through the training. We had one of the trainers from David's company put on a three-day course, and I won't be able to do the program justice by describing it here, but it is the most common sense method to approach personal productivity that I have ever experienced. It's less mystical than programs like "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey, although it is complementary, and I have been applying principles from both programs, using Seven Habits to decide what things to do, and GTD (Getting Things Done) to get them done.



The book allows paper-based systems or computer-based systems or both, and the trainer gave me dozens of tips about Outlook, handling email, using the calendar and task lists more efficiently, shortcuts for creating and tracking tasks and events. The principle of Inbox Zero made sense to me but I could never really achieve it until I fully surrendered to the concept of trusting my task list. Now, I have no (zero, zilch, nada) emails in my Notes inbox (yes, Enbridge is a Notes shop, meh), my Outlook inbox (yes, I still use Outlook for my personal email accounts), no voice-mails in my office, home or mobile phones. Boo-yaa! Unfortunately, my physical inbox is still not zero.

Quiz of the Day: How Geeky Are You?

Quiz of the Day: How Geeky Are You? Click here to take the quiz.

My score was 45/60, so I'm heading that way.

0 to 29: Stuck in the Last Century
30 to 60: Heading to Geekdom
61 and up: Seriously Nerdy

Air: Or, Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman

Air: Or, Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman.