The Things We Packed.....

With so much of the news dominated by negative events, I am sometimes forgetful of how truly generous and giving most people are; especially in Midland, Texas. I was reminded today.

Today we had nearly 100 good people show up to help pack over 600 gift boxes for our troops in combat areas overseas sponsored by our Christmas for Our Troops program. We packed movie DVD's, music CD's, t-shirts, socks, frisbees, phone cards, books, duct tape, chapstick, soap, stocking caps, cameras and much more. And usually not just one of each item. We had thousands of phone cards, disposable cameras, DVD's and CD's donated. And food. We had cases of Slim Jim's, peanuts, pretzels, crackers, cookies and candy, soup mix, drink mix.

One gentleman, who wishes to remain anonymous, put a $2 bill in each and every box, a good luck token. Each 2 cubic square foot box was packed to overflowing, but with enough room at the top to add 6 or 7 personalized Christmas cards sent by Midlanders and school children along with our personalized letter telling each recipient how much we appreciate his or her service on our behalf.

Here are some photos of the people who made it all possible

Greed: How much is too much...?

Some of the more persistant talk around town this week has been whether Cowboys fans will be able to see the Pokes/Packers game on Thursday night. To hear the buzz this topic seems to be as important as Iraq or Afghanistan. Personally I'd like to see it too. I've been watching the Cowboys since 1962. But if I don't I won't lose any sleep. Apparently some will....

But get used to this. It doesn't take a media mogul to figure out the future for Pro football telecasts. If you want to watch, you're going to pay more one way or the other. I haven't been following the NFL [the National Felons League] closely enough to know if they've announced, or not, that they are working towards getting all the games on their channel. Even if they haven't announced this, bubba, you can count on it. Any organization that pays a whole team of functional illiterates millions of dollars each to play a game, has enough money to make even more with their own TV channel. And who'll they make it from is you. Not me, because I won't be watching, but if you do, you'll be making them richer. In light of people still starving on this earth, probably richer than God thinks is appropriate.

Because our wives both worked for the same Dallas radio station from 1983-1986, I became fairly good friends with former Cowboys linebacker Dave Edwards. Dave played for most of the 60's and early 70s, was a Pro-Bowler, played in three Super Bowls and wore a Super Bowl Champions ring. Dave once told me that the most he ever made, including Super Bowl money, was about $90,000 for that year. I believe that he told me this because he was shocked that some players then, in the mid-80's, were making a half a million a year. Some players make that much per game now.

OK, you say, I'm a big Cowboys fan, I can fork over a few more dollars to Grande or Suddenlink each month to watch the 'Boys play. And if this was the end of it, perhaps I would too. But for one minute, do you think that if this works for Pro Football that the other sports giants aren't going to jump in too? My pick for the next pay sports venue will be the NASCAR Channel. The guys at NASCAR took sports media marketing to a whole new level. They ain't gonna' miss an extra paycheck.

So now, people like me and maybe you, who watched the Cowboys from day one, spent money at the games when they were losers and cheered when they were winners, are being charged to keep watching and to make the Jerry Jones' of the world even richer. Too greedy? A lot too greedy!

"An article on Forbes Magazine's website, published September 13, 2007, lists the Cowboys as the most valuable sports team in the world, with an estimated value of approximately $1.5 billion, ahead of the Washington Redskins ($1.467 billion) and the New England Patriots ($1.199 billion). They are also one of the wealthiest teams in the NFL, generating almost $250 million in annual revenue"

Local News...

I've been thinking that I need to become, once again, more involved in local stories of interest. Here are a couple of items making news around the area:

1] New Mexico Air begins service out of Midland International Airport. Now one can fly to Hobbs NM round trip for $150. The obvious question on most people's minds is....Why?

2] The Midland city council approves expenditures for 20 new larger police cruisers. I'm sure we need updated models.....now if the police force could actually be trained to use these to enforce traffic regulations the money would be well spent.

Car shoppin' with Ma....

So Ma and I go shopping for a new car for her this morning. We first go to an old line respected dealer where my family has purchased autos since the 60's. A young salesman approaches and the conversation goes like this:

Salesman: "Mrs. Craig I think you'll like this car, it has many good safety features, has a great ride, gets good gas mileage, is quiet and......"
Ma: "I'll take it!!"

Not exactly like that, but pretty close. I've never bought a new car in 10 minutes. We did today. She liked the color. So now Ma has a spiffy new car with a sunroof, genuine chrome wheels [wheels, not covers] and OnStar. It took only from 10:30 this morning until 3:00 this afternoon from first look until the car was in Ma's garage. It took this long because Ma needed to go home for a restroom break and to clean out her belongings from the old car.

I don't know if she needed a new car, she just wanted one and that's OK with me. Her old car was twenty years old and, I'm not making this up, had only 25,540 miles on it! Only driven to church on Sundays. It also was in immaculate condition save for the mirror she had just knocked asunder on the garage last week; a small garage entry, I'm surprised it hasn't happened before. And, we had talked about getting a new car for her, so she just didn't wake up this morning determined to buy a car, but today was the day in her mind.

Really, I'm quite proud of her, making a decision and getting on with it. She'd never been involved in a new car purchase so this was a learning experience for her and she did very well, although she was surprised that buying "cash" would not earn her a discount. With all the variables to be considered one of her most important worries was whether we'd get two sets of keys...."Your Father always had two sets of keys". "Yes Ma, we'll get two sets of keys".

One of my biggest worries was how much time I'm going to be spending explaining OnStar to her. I could see her eyes rolling as we talked to the operator while getting the system set up. But for an 84 year old woman who used to think that A.M. radio was high tech she really seemed to take it all in stride. I think it took a moment to grasp the concept of talking to your rearview mirror to someone in India who's progamming your car, but she caught on quickly.

All in all not a bad day and frankly one I'm glad I didn't spoil with some sensible comment like, "don't you think we ought to shop around". Sometimes the best gift we can give is letting others have their moments without comment. It was good to see her excited about something again and my Dad would have been proud of us both. Nice "Ride" Ma.

Heritage....

The awards above belonged to my Grandfather and my Dad. The Marine Corps Globe and Anchor insignia was my Dad's Father's and is from the First World War; he fought in the battle of The Belleau Woods. The Combat Infantry Badge was my Dad's. He landed at Anzio and fought his way into Italy with the 45th Division, then was re-landed on the shores of Southern France after D-Day, heading towards Germany until succumbing to frostbite in the Vosges Mountains. My Dad recuperated at Air Base Depot #2 in England while the 45th made it all the way to Germany liberating Dachau concentration camp on the way to Munich.

My Grandfather was a Marine Corps infantry private, my Dad an Army infantry sergeant. I was a an Army infantry officer.

Veteran's Day...

Surfin' Again....

Loading IE ver. 6.0 and AOL ver.9.0 on Ma's machine has her surfin' down the digital superhighway once again. Surfin' slowly on dial-up and AOL, but connected again none the less. Thanks to the guys at A.G.E. Systems for the IE 6 software. According to the experts there, I was correct, IE ver 6.0 cannot be found anymore.

Problem Update.....

We shall soon know if Ma's computer will be back up and running on the Internet. As I described on Monday, converging glitches caused her to be offline for about a week now. In the intervening time I have gotten her to think outside of her box and to consider going to bundled services including broadband. Now just when we were about to go in that direction, through my friends at A.G.E. Systems, I've found a copy of Internet Explorer 6.0 which will allow repairs to AOL. Staying with AOL is the easier way in her mind.

But she has made progress. She went so far as to call Suddenlink to get prices on bundled service which we discussed at her 84th birthday dinner tonight. I have to say that Suddenlink seems to be more expensive than Grande which I have and have recommended to her. But unbelievably, no actually quite believably, there were cascading problems with getting broadband too!

Seems she has Suddenlink as her TeeVee provider. Also seems that some years ago my Dad paid a considerable sum of dough to have all their incoming utility lines buried, including Cox Cable, now Suddenlink. So if we got Grande they most likely would have to string a cable across the now uncluttered yard......so Suddenlink is the only choice she'll even consider.

But on Friday I'll install IE Ver. 6.0, install AOL Ver. 9.0 reboot her computer without problem, I'm sure, and she'll be happy, back where she was before. I'm sure all of this will happen. I pray all this will happen

Law of Cascading Problems

First off let me say that my Ma, who'll be 84 on Wednesday, does really well on the computer. She's been online for 5 or 6 years now and can email, surf the web, Google and even has an account at Amazon.com.....which she uses! She knows what she uses really quite well. But try to explain change to her computer world and....well that's a challenging experience.

She's been on AOL the entire time she's been online and even with my explanations doesn't really understand that there's another way to dial into the internet that may be actually easier; using a regular web browser and an email client program. But after years of carping about fixing her AOL problems, I've come to realize that she does well on it so let sleeping old ladies lie.

But....over the last weeks she's been complaining about being disconnected from AOL after only 3 or 4 minutes. Again, quite proud of her....she actually called the AOL helpline and explained to me [after asking me if I knew what she had to go through to talk to a real person...gee really!] that the nice man in India checked her system and the problem is that she's never updated her AOL software. She's on Version 5....AOL is on Version 9. Thus the disconnect problem.

I called and verified this with a nice AOL guy in Pakistan who confirmed this and said all we had to do was to go to Wal-Mart, pick up the new Version 9 CD and install it and our problem would be solved adding that to be sure I uninstalled the old AOL software before installing the new. Check. So off to Wal-Mart I went last Friday to pick up the CD and install it. And this is where Craig's Law of Cascading Problems began.

Craig's Law of Cascading Problems says that, with computers, whenever you are faced with an answer that is too easy beware; in applying the easy fix you will generate a never ending series of new corollary problems that become increasingly harder to fix. And so it was.

I uninstalled the old AOL version and ran through the entire install of the new AOL Version 9...that is until at the end a warning box appeared stating, "Version 9.0 requires at least Internet Explorer Version 6.0, please install IE 6.0.....Good-Bye". My Ma has IE Version 5.5. Muffled cursing ensued as neither the nice guy in Pakistan, nor the instructions on the software CD nor on the AOL help website had made any mention of this. I had no clue that AOL was in any way linked to Explorer. But being the model of serenity these days I told Ma that there was a problem and I would have to download something on my computer, put it on a CD and return the next day, thinking that surely I would find IE version 6.0 on a download site somewhere and retrieve it.

Silly me. Microsoft©, being who they are, likes to expunge all earlier versions of a product once a new one comes out. There is not a complete IE Version 6.0 to be found on the internet. So, I thought, I'll go to Microsoft© and download the larger Version 7....the new browser. Being somewhat savvy in these things I looked up the machine system requirements necessary to run Version 7.0...Ma's computer being 5 or so years old. It looked like her machine would handle IE 7.0 or so I thought until I read the fine print. Version 7.0 is not compatible with Windows Millenium Edition. Ma has Window Millenium Edition. More cursing ensued. How can they offer a new browser that won't run on one of their own operating systems. Apparently Microsoft© is trying to expunge the Millenium edition too.

I found this out over the weekend and knew I would have to report my findings, Ma has become an email junkie and is getting the jitters about not having the Internet. So today I just had to, in the simplest of terms, explain to her the problems. "We couldn't update your AOL because the browser, which you didn't even know existed and have never seen is out dated. They no longer offer the best updated browser that is the simplest fix and the newer browser won't run on your operating system, which I know you've never heard of, because Microsoft© rushed a dog of a product out and now denies it ever existed".

I asked her if she understood any of this. She said, "well maybe I need to call an expert.......the nice man in India said all I needed to do was get a new CD at Wal-Mart".

Fall at last....?

Though the weather feels like early September instead of the 1st of November, at least last evening I could imagine that it really is Fall. As I was watering the flower beds, while Daphne frolicked with her ball a flight of 10 Canadian Geese flew over at tree top level, several honking their lungs out. The geese are part of the recently returned wildfowl group that winters at the "A" Street duck pond not far from my house. Apparently not chased south by cold weather up north, I suppose they just determined that it was time to come on down.

It was nice to see and hear them, they are pretty spectacular flying close over head. Too, I could imagine that I was back in Minnesota or Michigan where possibly the leaves are changing color a bit.

The Immaculate Lateral [s]...

[Precise running patterns not to scale]

By now, most of you have seen the video of my alma mater, Trinity University, and their instantly famous "immaculate lateral" football game on Saturday. This is actually a play that the then Quarterback Forrest Dunlap and I drew up at the Nugget Lounge in 1970. I'm surprised they waited so long to use it, but glad it worked. Except for the 8th, or was it the 10th, pitch back they ran it just they way we drew it up!

To the uninitiated the play looks like a hodgepodge, or at best extremely complicated. Which is why I decided to recreate our original diagram above. When seen this way, the obvious simplicity of the plan becomes evident. Doesn't it?

Update: The Immaculate Lateral [s] has taken on a life of it's own. Here is the Wikipedia analysis of the game and the The Play, which ESPN is now speculating may be the longest play, timewise, in college history.

Christmas for Our Troops...

Our service men and women, volunteers all, do a magnificent, tough job of protecting our freedoms. You can do a small, but hugely important part in showing them that they are appreciated by sending a small token of thanks this Christmas. And it's pretty darned easy. Just go to Christmas for Our Troops check our "needs" page and then take your gifts to one of our pick-up points.

Thanks to the Midland Reporter-Telegram for today's front page story, if you didn't catch it in print, here it is online. Also, frequent reader Jeff, contributes an article that he wrote mentioning Christmas For Our Troops.

Malibu fires....

As some people know, I have a connection past and present to Pepperdinie University. Pepperdine, sits on one of the most beautiful spots of any college I know of and has been in the path of the horrendous wildfires raging around Malibu. I have had several people email me and one reader, a news anchor with a premier outlet even called to see if I had any news. I didn't at the time, but do now courtesy of a contact there, Ronnie Zamora in the sports information office.

Hey Wallace,
Thanks for the concern. We're all doing fine at the moment, the fires seem to be moving east, away from campus. There is no school today and offices are closed again, but there's been no word on tomorrow yet. The winds are supposed to calm down today, and that will help the firefighters contain the fire, because wind gusts have been crazy- up to 80 mph in some areas. The school hasn't been too affected, some trees and grass have burned and a few cars in the parking lot, but all the buildings are still intact. Hopefully the fires will be put out today and people can go about their lives again, because PCH has been closed throughout the city and that has really shut Malibu down. Thanks for your concern again. I guess we just need to pray that the fires get under control and stop spreading and affecting different homes and buildings.
-Ronnie

Tennis Final....

Although you'd always like to win the big enchilada, coming in as runners up in the womens singles and doubles at a major tournament is a grand accomplishment. That's what our Pepperdine girls did today. It could have gone either way in both finals. Not to take anything away from the girl from TCU in singles, nor the great doubles team from UCLA who defeated the Wave girls, but Sylvia Kosakowski our #1 player was in both the singles and doubles finals and to get there had to play three matches a day for three straight days. That's about six hours of continuous competition level tennis each day. She was tired. I was tired watching her.

We were proud of the girls, but since Sylvia has dominated the tournament for the last three years, having previously won championships in both singles and doubles, we wished that she could have taken home one more trophy. Still, a great match for the girls.

Tennis Time...

Perhaps the best tennis event occuring in the USA this weekend is underway in Midland. The best kept secret too, apparently, with hardly a word appearing in the local paper. The attendance by local folks is well, underwhelming. I am a great tennis fan, but it sure makes me wonder why we need to spend several million dollars on a new tennis center with 30+ courts and stadium seating when no one seems interested in attending a premier event at a facility we already have.

But, none the less, this is your chance to see some of the top college players in the nation at the Racquet Club NCAA Invitational. The number and quality of teams that I noted today in attendance is amazing. UCLA, USC, Duke, the University of Miami, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, UT Arlington, North Texas, Oklahoma, SMU, TCU, Rice, Boise State, Arkansas, New Mexico..and I'm sure I've left some out. Like Pepperdine, my grad school alma mater and perennial top seeded womens contenders with players like Sylvia Kosakowski. I've known Sylvia for four years now through the tournament. Sylvia is a senior this year and is the 8th ranked doubles player in college tennis, she was also recently named an "All American". Sylvia won the womens tournament 2 years ago and was a finalist in womens doubles last year.

She looked good today winning all her singles matches and with doubles partner Anete Bandere from Latvia, she should be a potetial doubles champion again. Of course Anete always looks good, winning or losing. If you have any interest in tennis or just want to spend some time up close and personal with some great college athletes, try and make it to the Racquet Club this weekend.

The War.....

I've been meaning to comment on "The War" since it aired on PBS. I knew I would and seeing Ken Burns speak Tuesday night made me not let the opportunity slip away. I won't go into what a great series The War was, if you saw it you know, just what it meant to me. And that's a great amount.

Most of you know that my Dad died last November, one of a trilogy of tragedies in my life that occured last Fall that I'm still dealing with. My Dad fought in Italy and like most veterans of that age talked about it very, very little. Only in the last 5 or 6 years of his life did he reveal anything other than than he'd been in Italy, saw his best friend killed the first day there, later had his feet frozen and had been evacuated back to England for the duration of the war.

In going through records my Mom has had but had not shown me until my Dad's death, I've learned more. I knew that he'd been in the 45th Infantry Division but that was the extent of things. I've recently learned that he was a replacement in the division, sent to re-man the 179th Regiment after the horrendous losses they had sustained after they landed in Southern Italy. My Dad landed at Anzio.

Many people think of the ground war in Europe as starting with the "D-Day" invasion in France. "The War" did a brilliant job of portraying, in detail, that the war in Europe had started in violent fashion in Italy more than year before our forces landed at Normandy. Italy saw some of the bloodiest fighthing with the heaviest ground losses of the war. My Dad was with the 45th in their march up Italy, until two months after "D-Day" when they were sent to start a second front in France; they landed in Southern France near St. Tropez and started slogging towards Germany. My Dad didn't finish the march. After 8+ months in combat his feet were frozen in the French Alps.

What made "The War" very special for me occured in one 3 or 4 second clip in the 2nd episode. In this small slice of video a group of soldiers was shown standing around talking in Italy after the Anzio breakout. Nothing special about a group of grunts standing around talking except that one of them was the spitting image of my Dad. This was a fairly close shot, the soldiers being without helmets and one looked just like my Dad, young and handsome. Now, I know, the odds against this being my Dad are great...but wasn't it wonderful to believe it was and to get to see him all those years ago.

Sputnik....

I couldn't let today's anniversary go by unnoticed. Frankly it would have been lost on me unless I had read a small blurb in today's local paper. Today, 50 years ago, the world went into space. The Russian's launched the 183 lb Sputnik I into orbit to do nothing more than to prove it could be done and send out weak radio signals to prove that it was there.

I remember the day, or rather night, well. I was a young lad living with my family in New Orleans and vividly remember the entire neighborhood being out front in the street trying to catch a glimpse of Sputnik. I don't believe that we did, but just knowing it was there was science fiction come to life.

Just 12 short years later the US would land men on the moon. Fairly amazing considering the technology of the time.

Hear Sputniks actual transmission......

One more Air Show...

The 2007 version of the CAF Air Show is a done deal. I'm always excited when Air Show weekend arrives and equally glad when it's over. I had some great friends, new and old, help me out with my responsibilities all went well and we all had a great time. I got some great photographs from the ground and in the air....

The Big Gold Dog...

This week marks one year since the passing of Tres, The Big Gold Dog. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about that sweet big dog and all he meant to me. When he slept at night in the hallway, sometimes his paws would be touching the wall and when he was dreaming his feet would make a running sound as they brushed the walls. Sometimes I think I can still hear that sound as I go to bed at night. It is sad, but most of all he makes me remember what true loyalty, love and friendship is all about.