Another one that falls into the "ridiciulous" category ...

Almost forgot to write about this. A few weeks ago my wife and I decided to go out and buy a new mattress. Our old one had served its purpose and started to become uncomfortable. We kind fo knew what we wanted and headed over to one these mattress chain stores. We settled on a Tempurpedic which is really nice and cost us about $1500.00. Not cheap, but hey, sleeping well is important. But if you think this is expensive, think again. I tried a mattress which cost $15,000. How ridiculous is that? And it wasn't even more comfortable. Kind of squishy and you kind of needed a ladder to get on top of it because it was so thick. Apparently, it's so expensive because it is handstitched. Who cares, it's covered by sheets anyway, so you won't even see it. Maybe they last longer? The mattress we bought is supposed to last 10 years, to make up the difference in price through longevity, the super-ridiculously-expensive would have to last 10 times as long, which comes out to 100 years. That's too long for my taste.

An Inconvenient Truth

If you haven't already, go watch it. It's Al Gore's documentary about Global Warming and I think it's very well made. Watching it leaves you with this feeling of sadness and depression. I hope as many people as possible get to watch this and maybe start worrying about it so that eventually a politician with an interest in the environment and its protection gets to be the president of the United States. Oh yeah, and tonight, I hope Al Gore wins the Oscar for his film. That would be well-deserved and add extra publicity to his cause. Hopefully, there are not too many oil companies sponsoring the academy awards.

And if you really think about it, there is so much we can do. But as long as the government doesn't promote alternative fuel/energy the people are unlikely to change here in the U.S. unless it hurts or helps their wallets. So make alternative fuel cheaper by subsidizing it. Pay half the cost for solar electricity and require every new house built to have some form of alternative energy usage, whether it is using solar to heat water or produce electricity. Just like Al says, we have the technology, let's use it.

Super Bowl XLI, the Inverted TiVo Experience

Everyone always talks about the Superbowl ads and how great they are. So I programmed my TiVo (it's really a Comcast DVR but everyone knows what TiVo is) to tape (oh excuse me, record) the Superbowl, all 4 hours and 5 minutes of the broadcast. And as I was watching the Superbowl yesterday it dawned on me that A Superbowl TiVo recording is probably one of the only shows, if not hte only, that people fast-forward through, just to get to the commercials. In a way, it's inverted TiVo. Kind of odd, isn't it. Oh and by the way, most ads were rather boring, except for the Bud commercials. They are mostly funny or cute but the beer still sucks. With that, congrats to the Colts and too bad for the Bears. At least Rex Grossmann lived up to the very low expectations that compared him to one of the worst quarterbacks in SuperBowl history, even before the game had started.

Painful Presentations at Work

We have probably all witnessed one of these, either at school, at work or at some event in our spare time. A painful presentation. What makes a painful presentation you may ask? Here is my list of things that indicate a painful presentation:

1. The presenter apologizes for the readability of his/her slides. Never a good thing, if you know it's unreadable, don't use it or break it into more than one slide. Making good slides takes skill and a few tries but everyone who gives presentation should know that a picture says more than thousand words and is a good thing. On the other hand, too much text on a slide and too many slides make for a bad presentation.
   
2. Soft-spoken presenters. I know not everyone can have a booming voice and assert himself well and look confident. However, if the entire audience has to collectively hold their breath to be able to hear the words than you are witnessing a painful presentation because a listener spends all his concentration on making out the words.
3. Presenters that can't speak the language. I know, sometimes they don't have a choice but to me it's the same issue as #2. It is so tiring to make out the words and try to understand what the hell is being sad that I lose interest and look out the window. The inability to master a language coupled with a monotone voice simply sucks.
   
4. A presenter who tries to be funny but who is not. Yeah, I know, we all like to be comedians but very few can pull that off. So , unless you have a good feel for an audience and what kind of style they respond to, keep to your roots. After all, in my line of work, most presenters are scientists or engineers and teh majority is not funny.
5. A color-blind presenter. How can you tell? Look at the slides. They may be readable but looking at them makes you want to vomit or reminds youof wallpaper from the seventies? Than you are witnessing a presentation by someone who is blind, color-blind or simply has bad taste.

So, I think you can survive a presentation if only one of the above holds true and the presenter can offset one shortcoming like crowded slides with being a good speaker. But if you can check off more than one of the above issues in a presentation then it is time get out. Reminds me of the Southwest slogan: Want to get away? All I can say is run, run fast otherwise you will be wasting an hour or more of your life that will never get back. What else can save a bad presentation. Well, free food of course but it'd better be good or else your brain and your stomach will hurt.

He did it again!

Do you remember Marco Materazzi? He was the cheesy, Italian defender that got head-butted by Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 Soccer World Cup Final. And oh well, it happened again. In a Serie A game in Italy, he got head-butted again by a guy named Delvecchio after allegedly provoking him. Makes you wonder what on earth he always tells the other players. I started playing soccer when I was 5 years old and kept playing on teams until I was 27. I never played professionally but games were still competitive and occasionally tempers flare. Unfortunately, provoking others is part of the game but in 20 years of playing I have never wanted to head-butt someone. And I have been called many things in games. For instance, when I was 14, my team was participating in a youth tournament in Denmark. We were well on our way in beating a norwegian team when things got a little nasty. Many fouls, yellow cards but we scored another goal. It was then, that the other team got frustrated and started calling us Nazis just because we were a German team. That didn't sit too well with us but we didn't head-butt or beat up the other players even though we wanted too. Having said that, it's unfortunate that Zidane and Delvecchio didn't keep their emotions in check. But I can't help to dislike Materazzi. Instead of standing up to others like a man he does it behind the referees back and when the other player touches him, he goes down as if shot with an AK 47. I think Materazzi is the epidemy of soccer. Instead of focusing on skill and being physical within the limits of the rules he chooses provocation to unsettle his opponents. One of these days he will get head-butted again and maybe then, getting up won't be as easy for him. I for one won't feel any sympathy for him.