10/25/2006

He is Too Competitive to Just Retire

Well, the Formula One season is over and Michael Schumacher did not win his eighth championship. I don't feel as though Fernando Alonso really won the championship. He simply held on at the end and didn't lose it.

A lot of mediocre drivers have won the F1 championship.  Jacques Villeneuve and Damon Hill spring to mind. That's how it goes in the world of sports. There are triumphs and there are tragedies.

My wife predicts a coming "dark era" in F1 where drivers are bland and uninteresting.  Races will be boring and predicable.

We went to the first USGP to be held at Indy in 2000 and were lucky enough to see a Ferrari one-two victory.  That should be enough for anyone for a lifetime. You can tell the story for the rest of your life about how you saw the greatest Formula One driver in history win a race.

So long Michael. Now start making your plans to return.

10/10/2006

No Future in Newspapers

When I first decided to finish college (ten years after high school) I started looking at the educational programs available at my hometown public university.  I was determined to pick a field of study that would be easy to get through; that it be interesting was a secondary consideration.  The first goal was to simply graduate.

Knowing myself a little better at 27 than at 17, I thought about how poor my mathematical skills were and how uninterested I was in numbers.  I liked reading and I thought with a little instruction it would be interesting to learn how to write a little.  I chose journalism for my major with a concentration in radio reporting.   In radio reporting you learn to write a little, very little.

It was clear, even in 1986, that radio journalism was pretty much dead, and had been dead since the 1950's. What was I thinking?  I was wasting my tuition dollars on an education that taught skills that had been obsolete for thirty years. Getting a job as a radio news reporter would be next to impossible, but I ignored all the warnings given by friends, classmates and professors.

After years of struggle, my radio news reporting career never did take off.  I was never economically able to lead the nomadic life needed to chase the variety of positions in radio; to move from one small market to the next, to the next.  I did spend ten years and eventually became a station manager.  What a horrible job!  There have been many times down through the years where I thought I made a big mistake back in college.  Maybe I should have taken the newspaper track in J-school; gotten a comfortable newspaper job.  Now I'm glad I didn't.

Newspapers are now feeling the same effect radio news felt in the 1950's when television news was getting up on it's feet and starting to flex it's muscle. Newspapers are going out of business almost every day. Many blame the internet. Well guess what. The internet just left a message for TV news. It's coming for you too. That means I'm also glad I didn't become a TV news reporter either.

10/06/2006

The Next Time You Think About Talking to the Press

I don't know what to make of this.
(SUZUKA, Japan Reuters) - Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso spoke out about his loneliness on Thursday, accusing Renault of twice abandoning him at crucial times this season.
Poor baby!

10/02/2006

Tony Stewart Crock Pot

My wife and I were working around the house and just happened to have the NASCAR race in Kansas on the TeeVee.  Let me be clear.  We are NOT NASCAR fans.

We do agree that Tony Stewart is one of the more talented drivers in the series however. The named sponsor of the race was Banquet Foods, maker of those delicious pot pies.  We noticed a pot pie commercial with Tony Stewart.

Charlotte says something about how appropriate it is for Tony Stewart to be hawking white trash nutrition like pot pies. Then to our surprise, Stewart wins the race! Tony Stewart wins the Banquet 400.

Then this morning I see an ad for a Tony Stewart Crock Pot.  It's pretty well known that Tony Stewart's not shy when it comes to food. I think Tony Stewart will sell a lot of crock pots and chicken pot pies.