Me versus The Facebook

So, I live 27°44′34″N 97°24′7″W / 27.74278; -97.40194. It's not a bad place to live if you have millions of dollars in college loans. But I digress. We currently have a 98 year-old mayor that is up for election this year. Okay, he's not 98. I tried to Googleize his age and I got no results. But let's just say that he still thinks the Charleston is the dancing rage of the season.

So, I was a bit of a surprise when my lovely wife dropped this bomb on me..."Did you know Mayor Garrett has a Facebook page?" I believe the kids call that, "WTF?"

How do you know when something in popular culture "jumps the shark"? When "giving DAP", movie quotes and Angela Lansbury are no longer culturally viable. Sadly, I believe Facebook has suffered this critical blow as well.

See, not all technology is bad. Take the Wii for example.

Shall we remember 2004 when we had our version of Coke versus Pepsi play out before our digital eyes? Originally, MySpace specialized in band networking and free publicity to venues and fans while Facebook angled the networking toward college students. These social networking sites made Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe millionaries selling out to NewsCorp while Mark Zuckerberg is fighting off Microsoft and Hong Kong businessmen to keep it's independence.

A mere five years later, I'm off MySpace and my wife is alerting me of new Facebook members eligible for social security.

Now, I don't want to sound rude or disparaging to anyone my parent's age logging into any social networking site. But what ever happened to a phone call and a static web site? I know this is hypocracy at it's finest (Blogspot, LinkedIn, Twitter, anyone?) but I guess the true issue I have with Facebook is that it's lazy and not very safe.

I start with the biblical sin: the static graphical interface can be achieved with simple HTML. The links are simple with no real jazz to them. All you do is write and load on the generated field, and viola...YOU HAVE THE SAME EXACT WEBSITE AS EVERYONE ELSE. Damn, even Twitter will let you change your wallpaper.

Tandem that with the information risk, and you have a recipe for continued problems. In 2005, Facebook suffered an attack with a shell script while currently deactivation issues leave tons of personally identifiable information on servers prone to data mining. And don't even get me started with social engineering and cyberbullying!

Now, octogenarians and city governments want to use this tool? I don't know, it just sounds to me that this was a good idea that has now gone terribly wrong. It's one thing leaving college students to their own devices writing on other "walls" and procrastinating for their exam. It's another thing when grown ups can't establish policy without having to create a new page for their new proposals (just blow up the Memorial Coliseum already!). And then it's absolutely detrimental when the professional workforce is wasting the work day posting updates of how bored they are at work.

And no, I am not joining Facebook. Do what President Obama does and email me.

Before I get to my three things, I like to thank everyone for wishing The Lovely and me a Happy Anniversary. Hopefully, this is enough of an excuse for my recent hiatus. Man, what the hell are you guys going to do when I am gone for Costa Rica? More on that next week. But, in the meantime...

My Three Things:
1) Never, ever let a car dealership say, "Oh, sure, you can borrow this car for the weekend." You might as well buy the freaking car right then and there.
2) Port Aransas is the most underrated beach town in Texas.
3) Why must people insist on scheduling cool events at the exact same date or time? Food and Wine Classic as the same at the ACS Open House as the same as a political fundraiser...that's like scheduling a computer security conference at the same time as SXSW. Whoops.

"Hey, let's be careful out there." Talk later.

Seven things

Ah, yeah, the Series of Tubes strikes again. A good friend of mine, Michael, from a previous life in Austin, chimed in and pinged me for a task only the Internets could offer. And whatever the Internet wants, the Internet gets. And besides, it's good self-inventory for my old bones to refer to the rarely-known bits about me. I'm older, but I'm never too old to reflect on my own odd trivia.

So, here it is. It's called Seven Things (as opposed to my three things at the end of each post). The rules are easy to break:

• Write seven things people may or may not know about you (that is interesting enough to float on a blog).
• Link the individual whom pinged to what you have created (look Michael, I made a post! Yes, I will clean it up).
• Share it with seven new people (the pinged becomes the ping-er).
• As a courtesy, let them know that you have homework.
  

So, it's post time. Seven things...

ONE: Growing up in San Antonio, my only major injury I ever suffered as a kid was four stitches to the top of my head. That's it. Four measly stitches. It's wasn't because I didn't try to hurt myself ever time I exited the house, it just never happened. With two brothers, you would think there would be more bang-ups.

TWO: For twenty-five weeks, I was the co-host and co-producer of an Alternative radio show called The ALT (pronounced A-L-T). We pulled of "The Next Big Thing" but only in the 131st media market in the nation. It was so cutting edge, we were on AM. It was sweet, until they pulled the plug.

THREE: Most everyone knows this one, but I used to fence for UT. I represented the Longhorns roaming the state and country picking a fight with my foils for four years. The one drawback was that it was a club team - no NCAA backing for this sport at Austin. At least there is one sport Ohio State can't lose to us. Burn!

How did "working for Kinky Friedman" not make the cut?

FOUR: Garner doesn't sound Latino. But I am. Well, half Latino. It confuses the hell out of the bigots, but my mom is a Ramirez, regardless of her fair skin. My grandmother speaks solomente espanol. She gets a kick out of me struggling with my Spanish. I have to say, it kinda helps me with my exotic look.

FIVE: And to boot, my dad is adopted. So, I am a Garner by name and spirit. But by genetics...fuck that, I'm a Garner, too. However, the one scary part about having an adopted parent is the medical wild card it presents later in life. I have no idea what the genetic history of my father is. So, when at the doctor's checkup, the family history is hazy on one side while somewhat certain on the other. And I have to say, it help with my exotic look.

SIX: It took me seven years to finish college. No, I don't have my masters. No, I don't have a rough draft of my dissertation. And no, I'm not going back. I have my BA and I am okay with that. And I have made peace with the "what the hell took you so long" statement. Hey, I got it done. I am "bona fide". They can't revoke a degree, can they?

SEVEN: I have a working draft of a film script. It's pretty good. Kind of a "coming of life" micro-epic. Any takers? Anyone?

Okay, that's my seven. Hopefully Michael is not disappointed in my "quality". If I was a bit more interesting, I might have had some real eyebrown-raisers. No rodeo cowboy vignettes (Dad), no migrant worker stories (Mom), no tales of college football (both Jeff and Andrew) and no Vegas intrigue (Sabrina). But, it hasn't been bad.

So, let's throw some people under the bus, shall we? Per Michael's instigation, I need seven people to keep this broadcasting rolling. So, why not throw down the contributors roll call? NEW RULE! We don't need to stalk bloggers, if we go wide open with this, then I just gain more contributors. Win-win, baby.

Courtney: The gauntlet has been thrown. There was a reason I called you out. You have a precise wit and a vocabulary to express it. The Seven is merely a start to your blogging greatness. Besides, I have to get your Northern Florida perspective.

Mason: I know you bring the noise (with a side of low-carb funk) to your other multimedia contributions. So, I would like for you to bring the pain as I know you can do it. Not that I'm calling you out or anything. Plus, you have about ten other things you juggle on a daily basis...but is that really an excuse?

Meli: Very compelling stuff you already have generated, both in this blog and personally to me. It would be fun though to see if you can make my jaw drop. Not that you dropping my jaw is difficult for you, my dear.

ML: The homegrown product has to have some interesting stuff that I had no idea about. You can start by talking about how difficult it was to get your MBA. Because law school was boring, I guess. Oops, I hope I did not spoil a future post.

Haas: First, you need to answer my damn emails. Second, get on the big board with the rest of us. Third, quit being the best dad ever and take a moment to write down some thoughts. If you are going to scare the hell out of me being a potential father, it might as well be in blog format.

Freaking Pena: Oh, I see how it is. You can fill out a questionnaire from the Caller-Times but you don't have time to make Mickey Mouse Club rollcall? If positive reinforcement is what you are looking for, I have a bottle of wine and a PS3 at the house. Now, get motivated.

Okay, that's six...I will have to recruit a seventh. To be completed...

MY Three Things for this week:
1) Okay, if it is a VIP room, you don't have to allow every Tom, Dick and Sherri in the VIP room. Last time I checked, that was for exclusivity. Not really exclusive if you have to wait ten minutes for a Jameson on the rocks.
2) I live in a city that is breaking the law. Awesome. Add another screw up to the list.
3) Thank you, Greg, for a great time this weekend. You can't go home again, but you can find a classy joint to have a drink at while you are home...again.

Talk later.

Thirty...I'm turning into my mother

So I've officially been thirty for one month, twelve days. I do not know what to make of it just yet. Before I turned twenty, I made a list of goals I wanted to accomplish by the time I turned thirty. Big and small. Thirty. It seemed like a distant age at the time. But, time flew by and before I could even catch my breath, I was thirty. Though, I was able to achieve most of the things on my 'twenties' list, one in particular, run my first marathon, has been placed on my "to be continued" list.

I know I'm changing as a person. When in my early twenties, I seemed to be just a little more outgoing and daring. Just after I finished college, I briefly contemplated the typical things most twenty-somethings do such as going sky diving (never did), getting my belly button pierced (also never happened), and perhaps getting a small tattoo (too permanent, so never happened). In retrospect, I am glad I never did any of those things. However, that freedom I felt in my twenties, seems to be dissipating. Part of me feels incredibly nostalgic and a little sad when I reflect on this time in my life when I felt like anything was possible and my whole future was ahead of me. Now I find myself turning into this ultra-conservative, (though, not from a political standpoint...fu Ann Coulter and your books! (aka forget you ;)) risk-averse person that is a stranger to the girl I seemed to be, or wanted to be, in my twenties! Oh my gosh, I'm turning into my mother!! That's not a bad thing. Though, it's certainly not something I would have admitted in my early twenties. My mom and I have always had the best relationship. I just never thought the day would come that I would actually admit that we are a lot alike.

What my thirties hold for me, I have yet to find out. I know I'll make another list of things to do (actually, I have a first draft in 'My Documents') and read the next Emily Giffin. But for now, I'm content with letting each day takes it’s course. However, I will propose this. Should thirty turn out to be a downer, I'll take a cue from 'Benjamin Button', and celebrate twenty-nine once again. Just kidding!!

Happy New Year Everyone!

I swear, this is NOT a sports blog...

...but I have to comment on the waning moments of the college football season. College football is the one thing in life that makes me consistently feel young(er) again. It was a mere 11 years ago since I first stepped onto campus in Austin, so the discussion can be gerrymandered toward how I'm getting older and the college athletes stay the same age. So, there. I haven't broken from the blog theme (WARNING: we now join the link party, already in progress).

However, this year has been one for distinct comment of and about my beloved Longhorns. Early in the season, one of my colleagues from the Texas Exes Corpus Christi chapter, Ron Lowe, claimed that the burnt orange and white would either be 12-0 or 6-6. As far as the spring game was concerned, the team looked either very Jekyll or very Hyde. It was a fair enough prediction for a prognosticator such as Mr. Lowe.

Ah, but how the season has played out...it has been one for the books with Colt McCoy breaking school records left and right in front of the guy that claimed the previous records. The Red River Shootout (I know, I know...shootout and cocktail party are not PC, so we must homogenize it with Rivalry and "game formerly known as the cocktail party") came and went with a very entertaining outcome putting the 'Horns at number one (with a big target on it's back) for three consecutive weeks. And with all the victories and all the achievements, eight seconds in the West Texas plains changed it all. Texas Tech was the sweetheart of the Big XII South for about thirteen and a half days when it was realized Mike Leech's group doesn't know how to carry a big game via bus. Not only was that apparent during the OU game, but also this year's edition of the Pick Your Corporate Sponsor Cotton Bowl.

So, what happens? All hell breaks loose, naturally. Even though the 45-35 lobbying during the "Jorvorskie Lane ate my other sign" game, the human polls had the Sooners ahead while the Bowl Championship Series computers had UT up over the bitter rivals. The Sooners won in Stillwater at Bedlam, and everything got reversed. Computers loved OU while the human polls state the case for Texas. So, with Tech barely getting by road powerhouse Baylor, OU and UT winning out, there was a three-way tie for the Big XII South. Since the Big XII never saw this coming and never thought in the twelve and a half years of existence, they created no internal contingency for a fourth-factor tie-breaking rule. So, what do they do? They use the most flammable tool in all of sports to determine who gets to beat the hell out of Missouri. It was like asking a Catholic priest to babysit a young boy (ouch, even that one hurt a little bit...but seriously, "Doubt" is a fantastic movie).

So, now we have Monday night. Ohio State gets their annual pass to make a payday, and the Longhorns prep for a big money bowl for the third time in five years. And we have the BCS to thank for that. Thursday night, the nation, and Longhorn fans begrudgingly, will be forced to watch another OU game. And we have the Big XII and the BCS to thank for that. But, how did we get here? I know it took only one loss in early November for Texas to reroute their travel from Miami to Glendale. But how did we get to the point where President-Elect (hurry up and be president, already) Obama is making the BCS a talking point? I will tell you how...we are a bunch of dirty, dirty capitalists. We should curtailed this garbage about two decades ago.

The last time the Buck-EYES and the Horns hooked up, it got all sorts of crazy.

The bowl system was the loosely associated compilation of games that determined, in no hard and fast way but merely by the a couple of arbitrary polls, which team was the best in the nation. It started with the Rose Bowl and expanded in a regional pattern taking care of the geographically-capable teams they could assign. For example, the Cotton Bowl, back in the day, featured the Southwest Conference (SWC) champion versus either the Southeast Conference (SEC) and/or the modern-day Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). But, people started to complain. With the human polls and multiple games, the co-champions started popping up. Then the arguments to the co-champions followed. Then the bowl shortcomings were argued. And this was all in an effort to save schools (which, generations ago, had their budgets attached to academic budgets) a big chunk of money.

In 1995, enter the Bowl Alliance. That worked okay, but then you had Pac-10 and Big Ten teams that were actually competitive, and that screwed up efforts as well. It did create co-champions, which brings the same argument before the Alliance about face.

At the same time, you had the corporate sponsor attached to the bowl name, i.e. the "title sponsor" for the game. A decade ago, it was the USF&G Sugar Bowl. It was the Florida Citrus Orange Bowl. It was the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl (lots of citrus lobbyists for the bowls ten years ago). It was the Rose Bowl Game (the Rose Bowl committee was a company within itself, so, they said thanks - but no thanks to the title sponsor).

Now, college sports is it's own cash cow. From Texas Monthly in November, the University of Texas, by itself, has become the archetype for college programs. Now untethered by academics and their shortened budgets, UT is on pace to reach a $126.8 million budget in fiscal 2009. Tandem that with the profitability of the Big XII budget, the huge money-grab that is the BCS title games plus the advertising that goes with it, then you have greedy bastards that now have the money to travel, but would rather protect the financial bottom line to build 100,000 capacity stadiums and new jerseys for the field hockey team.

It's inequity at it's finest. You want better colleges and better academics and better facilities and better faculty. But The University's biggest money maker is in a vaccum. The second highest-paid staffer at UT is Mack Brown. Now, that's what I call priorities. But I digress.

The argument falls short when you a) separate the athletic from academic in forms of budgets, expenses and donations (yeah, the Longhorn Foundation's sole purposes is to make UT the biggest dog in the yard, with generous contributions from viewers like you) and b) preservation of the bowls assist with making the focus on the student-athlete. There has never been a bigger oxymoron in the professionalization of college sports, especially football.

We have done this to ourselves. All Texas fans are complicit in the creation of this monster. Thirteen years ago, UT and the SWC did not have to succumb and dissolve. Granted, a present-day SWC would look like the ACC, but with that one move of resistance, the Alliance would have never been successful and the Rose Bowl wouldn't have a title sponsor that is funneling money from a $800 billion "bailout". If leadership would have been more prophetic (definitely unlike Dan Beebe and the Big XII "tiebreaker" debacle), the playoff system would have been installed with no outside meandering arguments.

We have done this to ourselves. College football ratings, according to ratings amassed from 2007, the average uptick in regular season viewing is up by 4% with the bowls averaging about 9%. If we hate the BCS so much for what it does to the competition level and the end-result, then why keep watching a bad product? I quit watching professional wrestling because it was fake. As Texas fans, if we complain so much about the BCS, why support it?

We have done this to ourselves. On a collateral level, all the sponsors have been soaking up the airtime with translated profits. AT&T has banked ever since it captured the Rose Bowl (as a "presented by" sponsor) and the Cotton Bowl. And let's not forget the Tortilla Chip Bowl all my cohorts will be watching on Monday. Yeah, they aren't hurting either.

I know I am spreading a ton of anarchy here for just a college football season that was one interception away from shutting everyone up (including the computers). It was going to be 12-0 or 6-6. But this is what we paid for. Every time we buy a collegiate-licensed Longhorn shirt, we are part of the capitalist problem, not the efficient solution. Now, we can't quit the BCS cold turkey. In 2005, they did get it right, even though Matt Leinart would disagree. But if there is no action the leadership of the conferences or the schools or the BCS precipitates toward a playoff, we cannot complain. I would love to be Utopian and say that we can achieve a true playoff with a grass-roots movement, but we will still watch the game, watch SportsCenter after the game (because ESPN is totally complicit in this as well) and buy that bag of chips to dip our queso.

UT lost to Tech. OU won out. UT drew Ohio State. OU has a shot at the title. We can lament all we want as 'Horns fans. But can we finally stop complaining and start realizing that the system is broken and nothing can fix it other than common sense? Plus, I don't want to be bothered while the game is on. So pipe down, will you? I will only need four hours, in between six-thirty and ten-thirty. Then we can email Barak Obama with our proposal.

My Three Things:
1) I think I can hold off on any champagne consumption for the next twelve months, right ladies?















2) "Benjamin Button" made me cry. Shut up.
3) There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to a party that is packed with a ton of very strong personalities. It actually makes for a very entertaining time. It helps to know how to hit the Pause button and allow for the conversational left turn to happen.

Merry New Year, everyone. Hook 'em, Horns. Boomer-Sooner-Fuckyou. And again, I assure you, this is not a sports blog. Talk later.