Dark Side of the Carton

Seriously Kobe. Are you blind enough to actually believe that Fisher didn’t foul Barry on that last shot? Even the Zen Master admitted that Fisher bumped him.

My mother in law owns a local flower shop and during rush times my wife goes up to help with all the orders. Often times this results in her working about 40 hours over the course of 3-4 days. During these times, I get to wrangle the kids and boy does it get tough.

So here is my chance to give a shout out to all the parents that do this each and every day. I don’t think that most people realize just how tough it is. You guys really deserve a pat on the back for keeping it together.

Having kids is a daily challenge. Most things you can get through by counting to 10 and taking a few deep breaths. On occasion, something happens that is a little more difficult to get through.

Rewind to yesterday.

My 4 yr old son decided to conduct a science experiment. I haven’t concluded if this was an intentional or accidental experiment, but it took place nonetheless. The experiment hypothesis would read something like this if you were preparing it:

Will a 3″ Lightning McQueen racecar shatter the display on my parents LCD TV if thrown hard enough?

What do you know, the answer happens to be a resounding YES! As proven by my son. I’ll take a picture of the damage later today and add it to this post. So painful.

UPDATE: Let me clarify that it was my son writing the hypothesis and, yes, it was my TV that suffered said fate.

I really scaled back all my sports posts because I realized that I don’t really have anything interesting or unique to stay on the topic and I really come off as a blatant Spurs homer, which I am.

I did want to take a moment to give the Spurs a shout out for showing up last night and showing the Hornets what it’s like to play a Championship caliber team. They weren’t prepared and didn’t bring it. The result is that the Spurs have a chance to engage in another battle with the top of the West, the Lakers.

Before the playoffs started, I was pretty sure that Boston would sail through the East and whip up whoever came out of the West. After all, the West is a battle this year. I was wrong. I think that the Spurs or Lakers, whoever comes out on top, is going to crush either Detroit or Boston. Boston has shown they don’t have the composure to compete at this level and the Pistons are just passed their time.

Regardless of how it all plays out, I think this is hands down the best post season ever. I’m sure my wife will be glad when it’s over as I’ve watched almost every single playoff game to date.

I’ve been a staunch supporter of Windows Vista since well before release. I’ve used it for well over a year and defended it’s use for a long time before arriving at this conclusion. That changes today. As Microsoft would say, my support has gone EOL. For you non-techs out there, EOL stands for End of Life. In short, I am no longer defending Vista or using Vista on any machine that I own. I give up. For all the benefits and things that I like about Vista, I just can’t deal with it’s bloat any longer.

My desktop is already XP and my current and future laptops will be downgraded as soon as I get them.

Viva XP!

If you walked up to me and asked me if I was competitive I would probably say no without even thinking about it. After all, I don’t consider myself to be a competitive person. I’ve been one of those people that honestly believed it was more about the effort than the outcome.

At 27 years of age, I am beginning to realize that people who tell you “It’s not about who wins, but about how you played the game” are just lying to you. After all, if you aren’t striving to win then why bother playing at all?

Last week was the orientation for my new job and of the group of 85 of us, we were organized into 10 tables. Each table represented a team. At the beginning of the week, we were told that there would be a points competition. At the end of each day there would be a 30 minute wrap up session where we would be quizzed on the presentations for the day and awarded points based on correct answers. Pretty cool right?

When you look at the mechanics, the organizer just incentivized the whole week of training. Pay attention, get the answers right, and you get points. What are we playing for? No clue. It was SECRET!

It didn’t take long for the rivalry to heat up with the competitive personalities at my table rearing their heads. Mine included. I took notes better than any class I’d attended in college. Just for the chance to win. It didn’t matter what we were playing for, we were going to win.

In the end, the prize was small and nominal and yes we did win. We felt good too. We felt accomplished. It was as if someone walked up and told us “Your table payed attention better than any other table in the room.”

We were all beaming with pride. It wasn’t until just then, at 27 years of age, did I realize that winning IS everything. You have to believe this or you won’t give it your all.

So why do we tell our kids that being a good sport is the most important thing and that winning is secondary? I guess it is to foster good social skills above domination.

This is something I am struggling with as I coach and Under 4 YMCA soccer team. Each and every week I have to hide my game face and encourage a group of kids to foster their love for the game. This is easy, but it isn’t easy to suppress the competitive spirit. After all, I pretend like it doesn’t matter, but I want to win and I want to win big.

When we are falling behind, I know it shows in my behavior.

So here I am. Telling you that yes it is important to be a good sport, but by golly you better be out there playing to win.