Band Wagon Jumper On~ers

So tonite the NY Giants beat the Greenbay Packers.

Since I have absolutely no football loyalties whatsoever, it really meant absolutely nothing to me. I am not one to jump on any sports bandwagons. I'm either a fan, or, I'm not. Simple as that for me.

For some people, however, band wagon jumping on is an artform. My neighbor is one of those. She jumps on and acts like shes been a fan all of her life when, in reality, shes rooted AGAINST the team she's now such a die hard fan of. It's irritating. When the NY Rangers were winning their Cup in 1994, she called me with 30 seconds left in the 7th game of the finals to talk about the game. I was 30 seconds away from winning the first Stanley Cup in 54 years, and she wanted to chat about how good the goalie was. I just screamed I CAN'T TALK TO YOU!!!!! and hung up. She still complains to this day, that I hung up on her.

I seem to recall that, in a taped interview on foxnews.com, one Shepard Smith declared that while he was a NY Yankee fan, he could not stand ANY other NY area teams...

Hey, Shepard....can you explain this?



This is the photo that you emailed to Greta Van Sustern tonite and that she posted in her blog.

Please don't tell me that you are a Giants fan now because Eli Manning is the QB and since he went to Ole Miss you are now a fan of the team. Does that mean that if Eli goes to, I dunno...who else has a team? Los Angeles? If Eli goes to a Los Angeles team (hmm...I'm not completely sure they have a team...Los Angeles...what? The Raiders are in Oakland with the A's. LA has the Dodgers for baseball, but, uh...I have no idea if they have football. Let's change that. Does Chicago have a football team? Chicago...uh...Dallas. I know Dallas has a team!! So let's go with Dallas, shall we?) Ok, let's back it up now...Shepard, does your newfound loyalties to the NY Giants revolve around the fact that Eli Manning is the QB, and does that mean that if next season Eli finds himself with the Dallas Cowboys (see...I told you I knew Dallas had a team!) because Tony Romo ran off to Mexico with Jessica Simpson and subsequently got run out of town by the fans, would that mean that you would abandon the Giants in favor of Dallas?

Tsk tsk if this is true, Mr. Smith. I was a huge fan of Bucky Dent, but when he left the Yankees, while I continued to follow Buckys career and remain his fan to this day, I was and still am, a Yankee fan.

Loyalties, Shepard.... ;)

News At The Speed of....Wow...

So today is the 11th anniversary of FoxNews. Congratulations to FoxNews!!

Now, since I don't want to start "cookie~gate, part deux", let me preface this by saying that my preferred news channel is indeed FoxNews and that my preferred anchorman is Shepard Smith. How can he not be? He doesn't take himself too seriously. He does, however, take his job seriously. He's not afraid to bear his soul while reporting...and he's not afraid to make himself the butt of his own joke. If I could apply a word to him, it would be "adorable"...something I'd be hard pressed to apply to any other anchor man (with the exception of Anderson Cooper...but I just find Coop adorable~it has nothing to do with his acumen when reporting the news. Shep Smith, on the other hand, is the whole package)

That said, I have to say this much: I am having a very hard time adjusting to the new set on the FoxReport. Yes, I know that it was time for a change, and I know that it's a beautiful state of the art studio, designed to bring us news at, well, at the speed of live.

I know this.

But I am just finding it busy and hard to concentrate on what's being said. I find myself watching a screen on Shepard's left or the little spinning things in the lower third or I'm looking around the screen when the little digital noise that's made when the lower third changes comes on.

I just can't quite adjust to it.

I know it's only been two weeks, but when I got home Friday night and found that Trace Gallagher was sitting in for Shepard (Yankee road game? LOL) I almost felt relieved and shut my TV off. I also avoided the weekend FoxReport for the same reason.

I hate not liking the new FoxReport. I know how proud of it Shepard is, and how excited he was about his new set (Greta Van Susteren even shot a handicam video of him taking her on a tour of the new studio before the grand unveiling) but I'm just not feeling the love.

It took me a while to adjust to the lack of Skinnerville and the broadcast from the news room for Studio B. Maybe I just need time to adjust to it. I'm an old doggie...it's hard for me to learn new tricks.

The Big Mac

No, not the McDonald's sandwich...the computer.

I read Greta Van Susteren's blog on Foxnews.com with fair regularity as it can be both funny and informative. So imagine my surprise this morning when I found a plea for help from Greta.

She couldn't open a PDF file. And wouldn't you know it...the ONE thing I DO know how to do is open a pdf! I even know what program to use to open it with! Amazing, I know, but true! So I was eager to share my singular grain of knowledge with Greta and her readers. Of course, just about everyone knew you needed Adobe to open the file with, but for one shining moment, I knew something about computers!

Like me, Greta uses a Mac. I'm new to the world of Mac and entered it with trepidation.

How silly of me.

My troubles started back in early summer, when a strong lightening storm passed over my neigborhood while I was at work. As luck would have it, a bolt of lightening decided to make contact wiht the earth outside my home, rendering 3 televisions, the sprinkler system, alarm system, garage door opener and my 4 year old laptop useless.

I wasn't too broken up, to be honest. The laptop's time had come. I was desperately trying to make it hang on until the end of the year so that I could save up to get a new one. One of the tv's time had come too. And I had already gotten its replacement but had been too lazy to carry it up the stairs, so it survived the strike.

I did my research on a new laptop, and had settled on a $1400 HP with a kickin' 17" screen and all sort of bells and whistles...and Windows Vista.

Now, EVERYTHING at BestBuy came preloaded with Windows Vista. So, knowing that it was only a matter of time before I had to upgrade to Windows Vista, I bought the laptop in good faith. I got it home, hooked it up, hooked up the new modem with the wireless router and...nothing. After 2 and a half hours on the phone with Verizon tech support, it was determined that my modem "had issues with Vista". So I packed the modem up, and headed back to BestBuy the next night, exchanged it for a new modem I was assured didn't have issues with Vista, and tried it again. Still nothing. This time I tried the tech support line for HP. After an hour and a half on the phone with a lovely gentleman located somewhere in India, I still had no connection to the internet. I decided to return the laptop to Best Buy. Sure, the picture on the computer was beautiful, crisp and clear, but what good was it to me if I couldn't get online? It was little more than a $1400 game of Mah Jong. At BestBuy, the geek at GeekSquad had to test the computer before they would give you a full refund (meaning they wouldn't charge you a 15% restocking fee). Well, even the geek couldn't get it to connect, and determined that Vista had compatability issues with the Norton antivirus that was also preloaded on the computer.

Up to this point, all I knew about a computer was how to push the button and turn it on. Now I can discuss compatability issues rather coherently.

As I dejectedly lugged my shiny new laptop to the customer service counter for my full refund, a man waiting in line for hte Geek Squad whispered to me: "Pssst...get a Mac".

The same words my coworkers had been saying to me thru my ordeal.

So, it was with great fear that I entered the Apple store in my local mall. Timidly, I walked around the table with the laptops on it, skillfully dodging Yuppies monopolizing salesmen and running children hell bent on beating the adult to the open computer. I read the product descriptions on Macbook and MacBook Pro a like, and after several visits and conversations with sales staff, I settled on the MacBook Pro, which proved to be more difficult to procure at my local store than I had thought. I was finally able to get a staffer at a different Apple store to hold one for me, and was soon nervously pushing the power button on my sleek new machine.

The initial butterflies were all for nothing. I can safely say that my MacBook Pro is the easiest foray into computing that I have ever had! I can only hope Greta Van Susteren feels the same way :)