Day: January 25, 2005

My wife the sportsfan

Maybe this should remain a secret, but my wife is the reason I watch football today … Specifically The Philadelphia Eagles … When we first started getting together, it was the World Series … I remember the pitcher’s name, Orel Herschieser, but I have no idea how to spell his name nor do I feel like looking it up … That was baseball, but after she got me watching this football thing, I really did get into it … I have been watching the Eagles everytime possible since 1992 or so … I went through Kotite, Ryan, Rhodes .. was there others in there? Gang Green and Randal Cunningham … Great games to watch, and serious let downs … Watching the McNabb/Reid Eagles has been awesome … So much drama in their beginnings and the injuries along the way … When the star quarterback went down, everyone thought it was all over, but the team came together and won … 2nd string QB goes down, and the 3rd stringer won games … Incredible … and 3 seasons straight I was let down one game before the Superbowl.

This year on Sunday, January 23rd with about 4 minutes left in the game, I cried. When Chad Lewis made that touchdown, I knew it, I knew it for absotively sure, the Eagles are going to the Superbowl this year! My wife cried … the camera panned, and there were many more people crying … Such a weight lifted on the entire city, the fans, the team … The Eagles are going to the Superbowl! Inasmuch as everyone “knew” they were going to win, I think there were many people that felt as I did, that you needed a clock that read 4 minutes and an unattainable score for the other team to overcome before you actually believed it … Then they present the trophy and there is Donovan McNabb asked to hold the trophy over his head by Terry Bradshaw, and I don’t care what Donovan said in the press conference, you saw it on his face as he raised that trophy … He almost lost it … He had been waiting for that moment for years, and then as the coverage goes on, you hear that the players have been waiting for that moment most of their lives, since they were little kids … People of so many age groups, of so many diverse backgrounds, social status and wealth all could appreciate this happening on the same level. The Eagles are going to the Superbowl this year, and we’re damn friggin happy about it. For the feeling of supporting your local sports team, there is nothing like it … For the “fair weather fans”, they may get caught up in the hype and think it strange the people who become emotionally involved … But we’re the fans that watched all the games all these seasons and who’ve seen the bad calls, the injuries … everything it took to get to where we are now … It’s been a huge emotional ride …

Oh, but back to my wife … She has been the only one to point out someone who isn’t so happy this year … Someone who has gone to the conference championship game 4 years straight and lost. Duece Staley … So far there’s been no mention of this, at least in any coverage I’ve seen … Karma? While most Eagles fans said they didn’t care whether the Eagles won or lost the Superbowl, they would just be happy to get there, I think that sentiment has changed … We want it all!

UPDATE: My wife informs me that it was about 1989 that we started watching the Eagles together … Buddy Ryan was the coach, and Randal Cunningham was the QB … Then Rich Kotite and Ray Rhodes … We even went to Engine 46 Steakhouse on one of our anniversaries because Ray Rhodes and Merril Reese broadcasted the Monday night coaches show from there. When they were done my wife asked Coach Rhodes if she could see his Superbowl ring. He showed it, and then moved on …

Worth it?

A power outage lasting about six seconds screwed me today (well, yesterday) … It makes me think again about having a solution for this, and then thinking of the cost of not only acquiring this solution but providing it … Then maintaining it … Of course what I speak of is a UPS solution … I believe it would be thousands of dollars to have something that would keep these boxes running for a sustained length of time … In the case of the six second power outage, it certainly makes sense, but what if it were a half hour or an hour? To me it doesn’t seem cost effective in that I hadn’t had a power outage prior to October 10th last year for over a year … In fact, my one machine’s uptime was about four hundred seventy five days, and that was a machine installed way after the prior power outage … So October 10th to January 24th is a substantially shorter period of time … Will another one happen soon, or will another one happen in five hundred days? If at all? … So does it make sense for me to make this investment for the people that pay bottom dollar to host web sites to not be down for a little bit whenever the power goes out? Is anything so mission critical that there can be no interruption of service? For me, no. I don’t consider the availability of the Internet a huge priority in my life … This is not to downplay my enthusiasm for having a reliable connection though … In other words, should it be understandable the result of such an occurrence? … and the people that freak because they get an email fifteen minutes later than they should have should just go pound sand? I mean I guess if you were paying a substantial amount of money for that availability it would make sense, but I charge peanuts in comparison for like companies that provide all the bells and whistles … Some may disagree, but there are levels in which most people come into something … Where some may pay $5 for something, they have other people paying $50 for the exact same thing … In my case, this isn’t the case … So, I have to incur the costs and suck it up when people don’t pay when I expect they should, etc … I foot the bill all the time, and I do nothing but play “catch up” and most of the time, the people I let go simply screw me … I don’t let this get me, I guess if I did I would go crazy … But being that it’s more of a hobbyist mentality working with the machines and operating systems, I accept these losses however much they hurt me financially … I do expect when I am through my learning and experience process (which is obviously taking a long time) that I will eventually have all of these things automated in that I will simply let everything happen … I will open it wide up and expect nothing but revenue … Then I will upgrade the datacenter, upgrade the connection, upgrade the environment and eventually upgrade my status to “well off” … That would be a good thing, but for now, I sit and wonder if the money I feel I shouldn’t put out, or that I am saving by not providing a solution will do nothing but stifle my forward progress … I mean, if people become dissatisfied as a result of a power outage and deem it unacceptable, then they will go somewhere else … Then I don’t have the volume neccesary to move forward … I sincerely hope that the way I have been doing things warrants the understandability … I am open to the people that utilize this service (whether they choose to pass this information on is in some cases in their hands) … and I also feel that my innovation in the way that I accomplish things is far superior to some better known ISPs out there … Or, web hosting providers I guess I should say … I also try to be very detailed when asked about a certain situation by people … I think I may be becoming a little more vague on my hosting site, but still truthful … Those that know about this site sometimes get way more information than they bargained for … If it helps, great … If it hurts, I would hope people would tell me why …