1. I’m leaving for San Francisco in thirty-six hours and, as usual, my temptation is to overpack. Not clothes. Equipment. Do I pack the USB headset mic, and the USB handheld mic, and the iPod mic, just in case? Do I take an iPod alarm clock or just be content to wake up a buzzer?
2. It topped out at 103 degrees today here in Los Angeles. In my entire lifetime it never came within ten degrees of being that hot in coastal South Florida. And all anyone here can say when they find out I’m from Florida is “How did you ever survive the Florida heat all those years?” It’s kind of humorous, actually. The irony. Not the heat. And anyone who mentions the word “humidity” in the comments section is getting a butt-whooping from me. Don’t make me write an article on the myth of humidity.
3. I’ve been stunned to find that, despite the fact that these kinds of temperatures apparently happen here every year, a significant portion of Southern Californians don’t have central air conditioning. Where I come from there’s no such thing as not having air conditioning, and as I said, it never gets anywhere close to being this hot. How do you people live like this? Residences without A/C is something I thought only occurred in third-world countries – and I’m not joking about that. It’s every bit as shocking to me as if I had moved to New York and found that half the homes didn’t have running water, or moved to Ohio and found that half the homes didn’t have electricity.
4. The other day the Dashboard widget on my MacBook thought it was one degree cooler than the weather module on my iPhone. Couldn’t quite wrap my head around that one until I realized that Dashboard pulls its data from AccuWeather, while the iPhone pulls its data from Yahoo. Yes, I know that the exclamation point is part of Yahoo’s name, but I’m not including the exclamation point in this particular instance. The weather just isn’t that exciting.
5. I think attending the Apple Event this week, and then dealing with the editorial fallout from the presumably newly announced iPods, is going to be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to my attempts to get back to Miami for the Dolphins’ home opener on September 16th. Having Podcast Expo two weeks later was already pushing it, and now I’m going to be getting it from both ends for the rest of the month. It’ll be the first time I’ve missed a home opener in at least fifteen years. Still not quite ready to sell my ticket, though.
6. Speaking of the Dolphins, I’m a little worried that this new coach might be too prone to going with people he knows and feels personally comfortable with than going with the guys who are the most talented and the most capable of helping the team win. Coach Cameron immediately dumped Culpepper in favor of Trent Green, and while I don’t know what Culpepper has left, Green is more of the appropriate age to be one of Cameron’s assistant coaches than his starting quarterback. And then he passed on Brady Quinn in the draft in favor of Ted Ginn, whose father is apparently a close friend. In fairness, almost no one else wanted Culpepper after the Dolphins cut him loose, and twenty-two other teams also passed on Quinn. But trading for an old friend and drafting an old friend’s son are, shall we say, eyebrow-raising. You start making those kinds of moves, particularly from the outset, and they’d better work out.
7. On the other hand, at least this new coach actually wants to be here. The last guy never really wanted the job in the first place, had to be begged and coddled by the team owner before he finally agreed to take it, and from the start acted as if his heart wasn’t really in it. He stuck around two full seasons before he finally resigned, but in reality he quit on the team the minute Culpepper’s health went south. Even earlier than that, if you look at his second draft. There’s a lesson in there, I think. Just because you can talk someone into doing something, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you want out of it. You’d think after the Jimmy Johnson debacle, the owner would have learned that. Hopefully he has this time.
8. Last sports-related one, I promise. I really wish ESPN would cease referencing Appalachian State’s upset win over Michigan as “the greatest upset in college football history” every three minutes. First of all, you let history judge that. And second, if indeed it was the most monumental upset ever, shouldn’t that be so self-apparent that they don’t need to keep proclaiming it?
9. I’m starting to wonder if perhaps the solution to the conundrum of offering an iPod with email and internet access, which could be a maddeningly frustrating device because those features wouldn’t work outside of WiFi range, is to simply build AT&T’s EDGE network into the new iPod and offer it as a $20 a month service. You (probably) heard it here first.
10. If you’re going to be in San Francisco on Tuesday or Wednesday, either as a journalist or because you live there, holler at me.
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