New Phone

As I mentioned in the last blog, I got a new phone recently. For some people they switch phones pretty frequently. But I tend to keep mine for years at a time, so this is kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leather bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

What prompted the change was that the headsets on my old phone kept breaking. I went through at least 3 or 4 new headsets in the life of this phone. I blame the design of the plug, with all the little flimsy pins and awkward hooks on the side of the connector. I know they need it for data capabilities and stuff, but it was much better when it was just like a simple mini-headphone jack.

Ironically (or stupidly, depending on how you look at it), my new phone uses the same exact headset as my old phone, so I guess I can look forward to having the same problems in the future. But first, more on my headset replacement saga.



Both headsets pictured above were ordered online during the last couple weeks, after my last one stopped working. They were both advertised as OEM, had the exact same model number, Nokia HS-5, and the hardware looks the same, but outside of that, the two could not be more different. You can see the packaging is different, but more importantly, one works like it's supposed to and the other one is absolutely horrible.

The one on the left was ordered off eBay, from some vendor in Hong Kong or China. It sucks. The sound in the earpiece is all echo-ey, the person you're talking to gets buzzing noises, and if you try to jiggle the connection, the call gets dropped. The one on the right, I got off Amazon. Works perfectly, no complaints at all.

You would think that a headset is one of the easiest things to make as far as electronics goes. It's just a wire terminated into pins at one end and a speaker at the other. Can't really mess up design that badly right? But I guess you can, and quality still makes a big difference.

To make me more mad, I thought at least I paid a lot less for the eBay one, but after going back and adding it up, I paid pretty much exactly the same for both. The eBay headset was something like $1.99 BuyItNow Price + $7 shipping + $2 insurance = $10.99 total. Insurance was mandatory too, when did sellers start pulling that crap? Amazon, the list price was $8.95 + about $1.50 for shipping and $.60 for tax = $11.15 total. Would have saved on tax too, if Illinois didn't happen to be one of the chosen states.

I always thought it was weird how the market culture on eBay or late night infomercials are so different from "traditional" retailers, at least in the way they price things. You don't usually see Amazon.com or BestBuy.com mark down the prices on their products and then jack you by rolling the cost into the shipping and insurance. In fact Amazon offers free shipping for a lot of orders and still has a pretty low price on everything.

So why do the buyers on eBay let sellers get away with all the BS shipping charges and mandatory insurance? There's no way it costs that much to send a little piece of wire to my house. It's not like it even got here that fast either. And if I wanted my shipment to be "insured", I would have asked for it. Am I the only one who thinks it's mentally retarded to pay $2 for insurance in case my $2 item gets lost?

Anyways, moral of my original story, if you're buying a headset for your cell phone, don't trust Chinese people on eBay. Not only will they sell you a terrible product, but you can get the the same thing, except better quality, for almost the same price on Amazon.

As for my new phone, it's pretty similar to my old phone. Looks similar, about the same size and shape. But it has a lot more features - 1.3 MP camera, takes videos, stereo mp3 player, MMC flash card slot, bluetooth and infrared connections, and more. My favorite feature, though, is that it lets you use any mp3 as your ringer. I think it goes without saying which song I copied onto my new phone first.

I'd been holding back on getting a new phone because most of the new models have cameras, and camera phones are banned from my work facility. But this one got such good ratings and had all the features I wanted, so I just had to pull the trigger. I guess I'll just have to keep it in my car when I go to work or leave it at home during the day.

On the plus side, I'm hopeful that the convenience of having a camera with me at all times will lead to more pictures taken and posted here. Can't say for sure if that will happen, or promise that the pictures will be interesting, but at least I know a blog with pictures is better than one that's just filled 100% with my tedious writing.

One last note, I know I've ripped on a lot of companies before, for being shady or having bad customer service, but in an effort to be a little more fair, here's a positive recommendation for once. I've been with 3 different cell phone providers now, and in my experience, I'm definitely most satisfied with T-Mobile.

They haven't been perfect, but overall, I have to say they are much better than Cingular or PrimeCo/US Cellular. You'll have to check for yourself if their coverage is good in your area, but I get very few dropped calls where I live.

More importantly, their customer service is very good. The plans and contracts are pretty straightforward, without a lot of the silly hidden fees I had with the other providers. And their reps at the stores are generally pretty helpful.

If you call up 611, they do give you that silly Kramer-Movie-Phone-esque "Why don't you just tell me your question" system that we all hate. But you can always press 0 and go straight to a live person, which is what I do, and from there the people are usually nice and knowledgable too.

So yeah, if you are completely confused by all the wireless provider commercials out there that accuse each other of having dropped calls, fees shorty fees, or bad customer service, that's my opinion. T-Mobile gets a Dudo509 blogspot thumbs up.

March Badness

It should go without saying by now that the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the greatest sporting event every year. Even though this year, the Illini got a terrible draw in the seeding and were bounced in the second round with the help of some shady officiating, you can't argue with the fact that overall, this tournament has been one of the most exciting ever.

But I'm not writing this entry to complain about the Illini, or even talk about the games. I just wanted to point out one drawback I noticed to the almost nonstop college basketball coverage of the last few weeks.

How can 63 games (64 if you count the play-in game) in 3 weekends ever be a bad thing, you might ask? Well, the basketball itself is great. But listening to all the play-by-play announcers, color guys, and studio analysts has got me talking all weird now.

Before March, whenever I wanted to describe something positive, I used to only use adjectives like "cool", or "great". Sometimes maybe "excellent" or "sweet", too, but that's about it.

Now, after listening to Jay Bilas, Dick Enberg, Billy Packer, Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg, Seth Davis, Greg Gumbel, and everyone else on CBS or ESPN talk about the games for hours on end, I'm catching myself using their words like "spectacular", "terrific", "tremendous", "outstanding", or "incredible".

And no, I am not happy about it. I know it makes me sound like a fruitcake, but I can't seem to stop myself from using those stupid words. Like I got a new cell phone recently, and when someone asked me how I like it, I had to seriously fight the urge to say something like "this phone is outstanding!". Or last week on a day when it was sunnier and warmer than usual, I think I told a coworker that "the weather is terrific outside".

If any of you catch me using any of those words in conversation, feel free to kick me in the shin.

World Baseball Classic

As most of you know, I love baseball. I've written more than a few blogs over the years about why it is my favorite sport, as well as to express my love for the defending World Series champions, the Chicago White Sox.

I guess it should come as no surprise, since my family came from Taiwan, where baseball is the most popular sport. Although I did not realize there was a connection until recently, that my love for baseball was due to being Taiwanese (and not so much because it's a great sport to play and watch). I guess it's kind of like when Dave Chappelle realized that he loved fried chicken not because it tasted good, but because he was black.

Anyways, the new big thing this year has been the World Baseball Classic, set up by Bud Selig and the MLB offices. Supposed to be kind of like soccer's World Cup, except for baseball, I guess.

When I first heard about the WBC idea, and found out my beloved "Chinese Taipei" (Taiwan's "official" name in worldwide competition)* was going to be one of the 16 teams competing, I was excited. In part due to politics*, but also because it is a tiny island nation 1/4th the size of Illinois, Taiwan does not get to compete in these types of international events that often. So the rarity of the situation, combined with my love for baseball, peaked my attention for the WBC.

Unfortunately, after the following some of the first round of play, it has been a major disappointment in my mind. It's not just sour grapes because Taiwan got eliminated already, in case you're wondering. Here the main things that bothered me about the WBC so far:

1. Poor TV Coverage

Ok, so I don't expect the WBC to get the same kind of hype as the Olympics, or the NBA, College Basketball, etc. And I know that the games involving Taiwan are in Asia, many time zones away.

But take last Saturday as an example. The Taiwan vs. China game actually had a primetime start of 8 pm. I was at a sports bar downtown with some of the boys that night, a place that was filled with TV screens in every direction. Were any of them showing the WBC game?

The answer is no. Almost every single TV in the place was tuned to the Duke vs. UNC game. It turns out that we were at a UNC gathering of sorts, but still. I saw one TV turned to something other than Duke/UNC, and it was some high school basketball game. Might have even been a girls' basketball game, wouldn't that be a kick in the nuts.

Anyways, my real beef is with ESPN. Did you know that the Duke/UNC game was shown on three channels at the same time? They had the regular coverage on ESPN, the "above-the-rim" cam/JJ Brokeback cam on ESPN2, and the Cameron Crazies cam on ESPN U.

It's a cool idea, I fully admit, but come on. This isn't the freaking Superbowl. It's a regular season college basketball game, between two teams in the 3rd best conference this year, that had no impact on the conference standings! Yes, it's a big rivalry for those who happen to care. Yes, it ended up being an exciting game. Yes, it does make some impact on the eventual tournament seedings. But 3 channels at once to the same game??

Really, ESPN, you couldn't have bumped just one of the angles to show the WBC game? Turns out the Taiwan vs. China game was pushed to ESPN Deportes. If you don't know what that is, don't feel bad. Neither did any of the bartenders I asked to change the channel there. At one point I took it upon myself to go up to a TV and start scrolling through every single channel. Nope, couldn't find it.

Point is, if you want people to care about your precious World Baseball Classic, you better not make too hard for us to watch the games. I don't know about you, but to me, if you're at a sports bar and you can't find the channel, yes it's "too hard".

2. Half the teams are a joke

When you look at the teams involved, it's pretty ridiculous to see what countries got invited. Out of 16, maybe half deserve to be there. Since when do people care about baseball in Australia? Canada? China? Italy? South Africa?

(By the way, I know Canada just beat the US last night, so maybe that deflates my point a little. More on that later though.)

Whoever picked the teams to compete was really stretching it, to say the least. China's team has no major league players and is managed by Jim Lefebvre, don't know if it gets any sadder than that. The Netherlands team might have given China some competition for "most pathetic team" if they didn't happen to own the Dutch Antilles, thus allowing them to claim Andruw Jones. On Italy's team, the only recognizable name is Mike Piazza, an aging catcher who I don't think is even an Italian citizen.

Which brings up another problem, nobody seems to have set any guidelines for determining who plays for who? As much as I think A-Rod is a phony in general, why should he have had to decide what country to play for? It's the job of the tournament organizers to make the rules. How are we supposed to take the World Baseball Classic seriously, if players are allowed to flip flop and decide on a whim which country they want to "represent"?

3. It means nothing

This is the biggest problem with the WBC. First of all, to most of these players, these are nothing more than glorified spring training games. And anyone who watches sports, whether it be baseball, basketball, or football, knows that preseason games don't mean anything. For example, last season's White Sox finished in last place in preseason standings, but went on to win the World Series. In 1985, I think the Bears went 0-4 in the preseason before going on to become one of the best football teams in history.

Part of it is because the players aren't in full game shape yet. Some guys in baseball simply don't reach 100% until May or June.

More importantly, the games don't matter as much because many of the players don't give their 100% effort to begin with. If you're getting paid millions of dollars to play a sport for your MLB team, are you going to risk a career-ending injury diving for a line drive? Are you going to slide headfirst into home plate? In bottom of the 9th inning, will you reach back for that extra oomph to throw a 100 mph pitch, or play it safe and throw 92?

Then there's the players that flat out decide not to play, because it interferes with their MLB jobs. The Dominican is pretty well represented overall but even for them, Pedro Martinez pretty much blew them off. Team USA is missing Randy Johnson, Mark Buerhle, Roy Oswalt, Roy Halladay, Chris Carpenter, and Barry Bonds, among others. The worst case might be the Japanese team - no Hideki Matsui, Kaz Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi, or Kenji Johjima.

I'm not saying it's right to choose money over your country's pride. In this case, though, I can't say I would blame a player if they did. Because I don't think the WBC means jack when it comes to national pride.

See that's what I'm really questioning, is do we really think that a country's pride is at stake based on the results of the WBC? I mentioned Canada beating USA earlier - does anyone actually think this means Canada is better at baseball than the United States? Yeah right.

So if nothing really is at stake, how can they expect the players to take the games as seriously as the games in October? And if the players themselves don't take it seriously, why should fans?

*****

Before I stop complaining, I have to ask, who made up these 4-team "pools"? The Asia one makes sense, but that's about it. Canada, Mexico, United States... okay I see a North American pattern... but what's South Africa doing in there? And if you're going to stick the Asian teams together, then why is the Dominican Republic set apart from Cuba and Puerto Rico?

Which reminds me, isn't Puerto Rico as much a territory of US as Dutch Antilles is part of Netherlands? Why shouldn't Carlos Delgado, Pudge Rodriguez, and Javy Lopez be on team USA, just like Andruw Jones is on Netherlands? Oh wait sorry I forgot, your whole tournament is a sham and nobody set any rules that make sense. My bad.

Okay, okay, fine I admit it, so I am a little bitter that Taiwan got bounced in the first round. Why couldn't they put us in a pool with China, South Africa, and Italy? We could've definitely finished in the top 2 of that pool and advanced. No, we got stuck behind Japan and Korea where we had almost no chance. (By the way I think Korea could go far in this thing, carried by a strong pitching staff. I'm impressed so far.)

I'll tell you why the pools were the way they were - the people who made up the tournament set it up that way so they would get the results they wanted. They can't put team USA in a pool with other good teams, and risk having them get eliminated early (the joke may still be on them!). They can't put DR and Venezuela with Cuba and Puerto Rico, because they have to make sure all 4 of those teams make the later rounds. So you split them up and throw some cupcake teams in there, under the guise of making your tournament seem more "international" than it really is. Meanwhile, your arbitrary decisions only make it that much more obvious that the tournament is more about manufacturing hype, than it is about determining the world's best baseball country.

There are few things that bother me more, than when the purity of sports competition gets tainted by businessmen in suits. This may not be as bad as if the NFL changed its rules to favor a more popular team over another, or if the NBA fixed its draft lottery to give the big market teams the higher picks. But it's still something that undermines the credibility of the game.

Like I said before, if there were a legitimate rhyme or reason to the rules and set up of the tournament, I wouldn't be complaining. But there isn't. There's no consistent logic to determining what countries/territories should get their own team, to what players should play for which team, or to what teams should be seeded together in the same group.

As a baseball fan, I'll probably still watch what I can of the later rounds, and I would be thrilled if this WBC thing ends up becoming like soccer's World Cup someday in the future. But as it stands, I just don't see that happening, unless they make some sweeping changes.

*****

Jordan

On a more positive note, I don't know if it's just me, but I get goosebumps every time I see one of those new Jordan commercials. You know the one, where they show kids in different parts of the world playing basketball, and reenacting some of his most memorable highlights.

Here's a link to one of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUkXsLXGjEI. Only thing is one of the kids looks like Tracy Morgan (a.k.a. Brian Fellows a.k.a. Woodrow)

Maybe it's just the cheesy dramatic music, but those commercials just get me. Not like any of us needed a reminder, but how great is Michael Jordan? How cool do you have to be, to have a commercial with random kids pretending to be you, and have everyone immediately recognize that it's you. Just by watching the way you palm a ball, drive to the basket with your tongue hanging out, or fake a defender off before hitting a game winning shot.

If there was ever any doubt, things like these commercials have convinced me that there will never, ever be another Michael Jordan. Not Harold Minor, Shaq, Grant Hill, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James. Not Tiger Woods for that matter either. Some of those guys might be superstars in their own right, but they'll never come close to matching MJ's greatness.

School Punishments

Something I was thinking about was the ways they punished kids for misbehaving in school.

Up through grade school the punishments were pretty simple: if you were kind of bad, like refusing to share your crayons, you go sit in the corner for a while and think things over. If you were really bad, like you said the "A" word or "H" word, you get sent to the PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE (oooooooohhh). If you were really, really bad, like you said the "S" word or "F" word, they might go as far as calling your parents.

Starting in high school, the most common form of punishment was the almighty "detention". Late to class? Stay after school for half-hour detention. Caught roaming the halls without a hall pass? Maybe come in for SATURDAY detention (ooooooooohhhh). Basically, they're saying that you're supposed to spend 8 hours in school a day, whether you like it or not. If you waste any of it, you're making it up by staying longer than normal.

Which is fine. But what happens if you keep getting in trouble, show up to class drunk, or get into fights in gym class? Then, they SUSPEND you. They tell you to stay away from their building until they decide to let you come back. If that doesn't work, then they send you away forever by EXPULSION.

Now, I know that sometimes when school administrators do that, it's a matter of protecting the other kids from you. But I think the main point of suspending or expelling you is to get your attention and make you realize that going to school is a privilege.

Thing is, the same people who are punishing you by preventing you from going to school, just spent the last few years punishing you by forcing you to stay at school for detention. Is it just me or does that not really make sense?

Maybe it's something like the Simpsons episode where Homer gets sent to the "H" word, and they punish him for eating the forbidden donut. You might expect that the punishment to fit the crime would be to withhold donuts from him for eternity. But this was the "Ironic Punishment Division", where they decided to force-feed him donuts instead.

I don't want to get into a whole long discussion about the social ramifications of taking a problem child, someone who probably needs the education system the most, and casting him off instead. I just thought I'd comment about how school punishments seem to go from one side (detention) to maybe the exact opposite (suspension/expulsion).

By the time you get to college, I think you only get punished by the school itself if you break the "honor code" (which basically just means cheating, if I'm not mistaken). Other than that, as long as you can make the grades and don't get in trouble with the law, they probably leave you alone for the most part.

I've never tried it, and I don't recommend it, but I imagine you could be a Ku Klux Klan leader on weekends, impregnate dozens of women, and kick abandoned puppies off bridges for fun - as long as you show up to the exams and pass, you're all good.

Although if you live in the dorms, you might get some punishments for certain things. Lob a baseball at someone's window and break it? Pay for the repairs and apologize. Exceed the Internet bandwidth limit? They shut off your IP and make you call up and beg for them to turn it back on. Caught with alcohol in your room? Here's a CD-ROM, put it in your computer and take the Alcohol 101 course.

Then there's my favorite, the "bulletin board" punishments. Say you throw trash out your window, the RA or RD might make you create a bulletin board to tell people not to throw trash out your window. Or if you get caught on the roof, they might make you create a board to tell people not to go on the roof.

Of course, I was always a perfect angel in all my years of going to school, so none of this is firsthand experience. Except the bandwidth thing.