Tavern towers, Win 7 a-ok, look ma no sweat, Eagles over the edge
Friday I was out working at a branch all day. After work a bunch of us went out for a surprise birthday party for my boss. Unlike my days working for Entre/Ameridata/GE where social get togethers with co-workers were commonplace, since working here there have been hardly any social interaction outside of the work environment in my 9 years on the job. I figured I may as make it count, I did.
The party was held at an upscale sports bar named the Tavern on the Bay. I wasted no time getting the juices flowing, deciding to make Miller Lite the drink of choice. I had two glasses down in relatively short order. Our waitress was nice enough to tell us about a thing they offer called the Tavern Tower. This device held 80 ounces of draft beer. It had it’s own tap and a large sealed tube of ice to keep the beer cold. I figured I would be drinking a decent amount of beer and it would was cheaper than ordering by the glass so why not?
When the first tower was delivered it was visually impressive, it stood close to two feet tall and was filled to the top with Miller Lite. The waitress asked if I wanted extra glasses for other people. I did a brief survey and at the time no one else wanted to partake with me so I started off alone on my tower.
Being a sports bar, the place had tv’s all over the place. Our long table was positioned right in front of a big LCD showing the Phillies / Dodgers game, sweet! By the time the game was over I was too drunk to care much about the stupidity of pulling Pedro in the 8th inning who was throwing a shutout, only to replace him with relievers that immediately surrendered two runs to give the Dodgers the win.
Well eventually John showed up and he was willing to partake in my towers of Miller Lite. By the time the evening was over we had kicked three tavern towers. As you can imagine I was pretty hammered by that point. I am a very chatty, happy drunk so I was having a great time all evening embracing an aspect of my personality that does not normally come out otherwise.
My boss took my keys way before the third tower was drank which was nice of her. She wound up following me home in our car while another co-worker drove me home around midnight. It was a fun time for all. The next morning I was in a bit of a fog for awhile but I didn’t feel quite as bad as you would imagine after drinking that much, it was light beer after all.
Saturday morning was gray and rainy, it was a PA feeling morning. The good part about it was the grayness was ushering in our first real cold front of the season. When I mowed the grass Saturday afternoon I didn’t feel a bit of humidity, it was fantastic. Saturday night the temp dropped all the way down to the mid 50’s!
Saturday afternoon Ali did a 5 mile run where I followed on my bike for safety. The lower temps and humidity came in handy for the longest outdoor run Ali has attempted in years. I was impressed how easily Ali traversed the distance. She kept a very steady pace the entire time and didn’t even seem that spent by the end. She has really been doing an impressive job of following the training program to hopefully run her first half marathon in a few months.
I made an effort to do most of the chores on Saturday so Sunday would be laid back. However the weather was just so damn nice that I couldn’t resist going outside and working in it. I decided to trim back a few of the cabbage palms that are again overgrown with low hanging fronds and seed branches. I trimmed up four of them. I figure I will do them a few at a time. Trying to trim them all at one time would be an extremely long and laborious task.
The dogs had a great time hanging out there with us while we worked outside. Nicki hopped up in the truck and enjoyed the brief rides out to the fill pit to dump the fronds. Sadie followed behind excitedly. They played with each other outside a ton on Sunday. With temps hanging around 70 with no humidity it was just about PERFECT weather.
The weekend up to that point had been great. I had a blast Friday night and was enjoying the cooler weather immensely. Then I made the mistake of watching the 4pm Eagles game.
The Raiders in a word, suck. They had been blown out their last three games. The Eagles should have taken them apart in the opinion of any prognosticator you could ask. Of course the opposite occurred.
Somehow the Eagles offensive line made the Raiders look like killers. Donovan was getting hit the entire game and as a result resorted back to his happy feet that typically results in poor accuracy. I kept waiting and waiting for Andy to make some adjustments to the blocking scheme to account for the pressure but it never came. As I have pined about for years, one thing Andy’s Eagles historically suck at are making in game changes if something does not go as planned. They seem absolutely clueless on how to adjust on the fly.
I kept waiting and waiting for the Eagles to stop screwing around. They never woke up. They managed a measly three field goals against one of the league’s worst defenses and lost 13-9. It was an embarrassing loss, one of the worst losses in recent history.
The Birds have some real big problems. Let’s list a few.
The defense was much worse than the 13 points they allowed yesterday. For the second consecutive game they allowed a tight end to destroy them up and down the field. Trotter is TERRIBLE in coverage and seems to be targeted for exploitation whenever he is on the field. They made Justin Fargas look like Walter Payton.
The Eagles converted TWO of 16 third down conversions. If you know anything about football you know that is beyond bad. That this occurred against an up to this point lousy Raider defense makes it all the more astounding.
David Akers missed two very makeable field goals that would have been enough to save the Eagles from their humiliating defeat. He is no longer automatic and hasn’t been for the last few years.
WTF was all the hoopla about Mike Vick adding this huge explosive element to the Eagles offense? The guy looks absolutely lost with no confidence when he is out there. I have yet to see him make a single big play. He played the least amount Sunday of any game yet since his return. This is the reverse of what you would expect. Over time you would hope he would work better into the offense, not worse. It feels like the Eagles don’t trust him to do more than hand off the ball or act like a decoy. So far the Vick experiment can only be classified as a failure, at least in a football sense. It’s odd to me that McNabb supposedly lobbied to get Vick on the team yet Donovan looks annoyed whenever number 7 is brought out there.
McNabb SUCKS in situations where time is tight and points need to be scored. He just does not perform well when the clock needs to be managed and the throws need to be on the money, ever. I heard a stat one time that laid this out in black and white, McNabb is one of the worst in the league at coming back from a deficit.
In a way this feels like a replay of last season when the Eagles absolutely were horrid for a good portion of it and then miraculously got it together for the stretch run. Once again I can pronounce that the Eagles are not a good team. Good teams don’t lose that game. Good teams don’t let the Raiders even get closer than two touchdowns. This loss was on par with tying the stinking Bengals last year.
This is the soft portion of the Eagle schedule. I can only imagine how the upcoming games against the Cowboys and Giants will go.
So I have Windows 7 up and running at home and so far I really like it. Even now that I have a framework of apps installed as well as antivirus/spyware software loaded the OS still feels responsive and snappy. It all just seems to work well together, better than Vista out of the box for sure. I haven’t dug into it in depth to play with all of the new stuff but everything I have seen, I like. Of course doing a fresh install of the OS definitely gives you a head start in the performance department. I’m sure if I did an upgrade things would not have been quite as seamless.