Dave's Thoughts of the Day: June 18th

I had a good night last night.  Really slow night in sports however.

Last night I decided to punt on doing anything at home and I got in the car.   I decided to find a spot to park on the road running along the beach in Santa Monica and watch the sun set while I listened to the NHL Stanley Cup Game on radio.  There was some plumbing going on at my apartment building... scheduled plumbing in fact, so I decided to let the handyman do his business and go somewhere else for a while.

All I did was trudge through the traffic.  Then I found a spot to park and watch the ocean and people who went up and down the street.  It was really peaceful out there, listening to hockey while it all went down.

I didn't see the sun set all the way, because I wanted to take a few minutes to go to Best Buy.  Glad I did... it turned out that the hockey game was a runaway anyway, so I took off.

At Best Buy I was looking for a Cable Modem but couldn't find the one I wanted.   It looks like Amazon.com is going to hook me up again.   What I found was a complete Samsung mini-store inside the Best Buy.  There was a good dude there helping me with questions I had about the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone.   I asked whether it'd have provisions for a screen cover and a car dock.  Bazinga!

This is going to be an amazing phone!  If I can persuade Verizon to set up some package deal where I get that nice ipad-esque case and the car dock with the phone I'm all-in.  It looks promising.

It's not "perfect" but no phone is.   There were really miniscule lags with scrolling and motion but the horde of features still wins out for me, and the scrolling/graphics/speed is about 500 times better than the DROID X2 I have now.   I worry about the S4 being all plastic and extra wide, but it's also pretty thin.  I just hope the battery life holds up.

Another conundrum took root recently:  what do you do to charge a phone at the end of the day?  They say you shouldn't leave a phone on its charger for an extended period of time, but to do that means you can't charge overnight.  That seems unfair no?   Otherwise you charge it fully at the end of the regular day but leave it on idle overnight?  You're draining about 10% of the battery that way.  What does one do?

It's not a good idea to just turn it off because if there's an emergency in the middle of the night, you NEED the phone to be on so it can ring and let you know.  This was never a problem with the original Motorola RAZR phone.   Well, to be fair, the phone didn't really do anything, but its phone capability and speakerphone were rock solid.   Considering its thin profile it was tough for a long time, and I didn't use a case either.  But I could go a few days without charging the phone at all.

I had a burrito for dinner.  Now, a burrito is tough to judge for healthiness.  It's entirely dependent on what you put in it.   This was a relatively low carb burrito... just meat, pico de gallo, guacamole, a little sour cream, and a tiny amount of cheese.  No beans or rice.  Probably wouldn't have been a break the bank burrito.

Subway has surprisingly good cookies.  Try a batch sometime, only three for about a dollar.

Wouldn't it be a good idea for the NFL to convert to the metric system?   Everybody else in sports is already on Metric.   Track and Field, International Swimming, Tennis, and a bunch of others.   So it's a *little* longer to get a first down.  These athletes are tough, they can handle it!  I just like the symmetry of metric measurements more.   Everything in else in the NFL is so even and calculated, but the entirely non-scientific measurement of the English system could be improved to a more calculated and easier to compute metric for games and stats.

Heck, why are golf tournaments not on metric by now?   I would think that with the preponderance of European events and players that we'd consider a measuring distance system that works well around the globe.  

I gotta admit, my Grandmother got me some White Peaches and encouraged me to give them a chance.  I did, and she's right -- they're pretty good.   Technically these are white nectarines but I think we can put them on equal footing with the yellow counterparts.

Speaking of beans and/or rice, my lunch was a tiny Taco Bell Bean Burrito.  Those bean burritos feel like they're getting smaller and smaller.  Remember when the McDonald's Big Mac was *really big*?  Go figure.


Ever wonder about "organized crime" i.e. the Mobs and such?   Do other criminals get offended by this term because it insults their own crime?  "What are you saying our crime in uncivilized??  Ordinary?!   Second Rate Transgressions??"

Would a street gang be considered disshevled crime?

Watch out for those bank robbers and their unsorted crime, know what I mean?

Anyway, with respect to gambling on sports, it's not something I do.  Many who do wagers on the daily games don't spend very much and usually just have it as a means for judging their sports knowledge.   I would guess the typical wager would be 5 or 10 dollars.   That's not much at all, but to me I still think 5-10 bones is pretty steep.

It balances out, I wind up blowing chunks of 5-10 dollars in other creative ways, often involving food.

We all get bogus catalogs and flyers and so on in the mail.   Would it be fun to get a clear plastic bin to put catalogs into?  That way you can see just how much garbage you get each year, and a different bin can be set aside for credit card offers.


I remember one time, long LONG ago before I was that good at swimming, when I snuck away from home and tried swimming in the ocean in Oxnard at sunset.  That was an experience... the waves thrashed me around and I was a wreck.  Thankfully I got out of there quickly -- never again.

Good luck to the San Antonio Spurs.......... in Game 7.  On Thrusday.  Ho ho!

That's all from here!  Talk to you all soon.