Maybe he thought the Ray Rice video was just another Ice Bucket Challenge?

A couple of days ago, the NFL Players' Union filed an appeal of Ray Rice's indefinite suspension. AS much as it pains me to admit it, this is the right move.

I don't like Ray Rice. Well, let me backtrack. I don't know Ray Rice personally. When I still watched football, I disliked watching him play against The Patriots. Since I've made the decision to stop watching football, that is now a non-issue. As is well-established, Ray Rice knocked his wife (then girlfriend) unconscious this past spring, then dragged her limp body out of the hotel elevator. This is a despicable act. While I think could devote an entire post to issues concerning the phrase "never hit a woman", in this case, the expression holds true.

The girlfriend refused to press charges, and then married Rice. Everyone who wanted this swept under the rug used those facts - and the perfunctory two game suspension - as evidence that this was a non-issue. Janay even apologize for her "role" in the incident, and argued in Ray's defense that it was a one-time incident, and nothing like it had ever happened before.

Regardless of all of his defenders, Rice was indicted on aggravated assault, but allowed to avoid jail time by entering a Pretrial Intervention program that is almost exclusively for non-violent or victimless crimes. Per an Outside the Lines piece:

Atlantic County prosecutor James P. McClain has repeatedly declined comment to "Outside the Lines" about Rice's case, but a spokesperson for his office said: "Mr. Rice received the same treatment in the court system that any first-time offender in similar circumstances has received."

In an interview with the Press of Atlantic City on Wednesday, McClain defended referring Rice to pretrial intervention and allowing him to avoid trial. The decision was made "after careful consideration of the law, careful consideration of the facts, hearing the voice of the victim and considering all the parameters," McClain said.

My gut reaction to all of this was that he needed a good, long suspension. Maybe the entire time he is in the intervention program. It's twelve months long, so maybe twelve months of no football would be good for him. Maybe that's too extreme for a "first-time offender", but something more than two weeks was needed. However, the suspension is up to the discretion of the league, and ultimately the whim of Roger Goodell himself. Goodell heard the facts, he interviewed both Janay and Ray Rice, and ultimately, he decided that two games was plenty.

No one doubts what happened inside the elevator. No one doubted it before the second video was released, showing exactly what happened inside. I'm not going to link to the video, instead, here's a recreation, with Kevan Miller (the Bruin) standing in for Ray Rice, and Travis Moen (the Canadien) standing in for Janay. (Interesting note: Both Miller and Moen are listed at 6'2", 210lbs, and Miller dropped Moen with a single punch. Now image Moen as about 100lbs lighter, and not a trained athlete.)

None of this is to say that Ray Rice is a good or a bad person. I honestly cannot make that broad a generalization of his character, because I don't know the guy. Maybe this was an isolated incident that will never happen again. Maybe he's done things like this before, they were just never reported (I'm surprised there's been no investigation into ex-girlfriends). Or, maybe this is just the first of what will be multiple incidents. I can't say.

What I can say is that he savagely attacked a person half his size who posed zero threat to him. We all lose our tempers occasionally, but the onus is on each of us to keep our actions reasonable. Rice did not, and he should be punished accordingly. What is accordingly? The NFL's two game suspension was a joke, a slap on the wrist. They later extended that to "indefinite", which, actually, is also kind of meaningless. It's not an outright ban (though the Ravens did cut him), but it has no term limit.

Less than a month ago, the NFL changed its rules such that a similar offense by a player in the future would merit them a 6-game suspension. A second offense would ban them for life. Finally, the league is cracking down on abusers! Finally, they are sending the message that violence off the field is not the answer, and that domestic abuse will not - and should not - be tolerated! Finally, they are doing something to save face!

Face-saving aside, the new rule is harsh, but good. I mean, how hard is it NOT to beat your wife? However, the new rule combined with the indefinite suspension that was handed down a week and half later puts the NFL, and Goodell in particular, in a very bad position, and essentially forced the Union to appeal.

Here's the timeline in a nutshell: Janay and Ray arrested. Video of Ray dragging Janay out of elevator. NFL investigation. 2-game suspension. Outrage. New domestic abuse penalties. 2nd video released. Indefinite suspension.

Goodell claims he didn't know what happened in the elevator. He claims he didn't know the extent of the one-sidedness of the fight until the second video was leaked. Sources say, though, that even if he hadn't seen the video, both Ray was honest about what happened. Meaning Goodell had a first-hand account from the people involved, painting a pretty clear picture of what happened. He weighed that information, and made his ruling. The outrage was enough to force through new rules, but not enough to change the suspension.

Why not? Because in the absence of evidence, all the public could do was speculate about what happened. We all had a hunch, but no one except for Ray and Janay (for the part she was conscious) could actually say. Thus, the NFL had an out. They slap his wrist and hope for business to go on as usual. When it doesn't they make a show of "taking a stand" with new rules (and we'll soon see how well they stick to their guns with those). That's where this would have ended, until the second video dropped.

Suddenly, the NFL had to cover its collective asses. The Ravens cut him, arguing that they didn't imagine the scene correctly, and the NFL essentially booted him from the league, not because of what he'd done, but because what he'd done was suddenly extremely public, and they had to make sure the world knew that this was the first time they'd even heard about the incident in this way, and not, as it had been portrayed throughout the summer, as a mutual fight that just ended badly for one party.

Any way you spin that, though, extending Rice's suspension is just wrong. I don't think he should be playing this year, but the NFL collected the information, considered it, and passed judgement. To suddenly reconsider that judgement is unheard of. Imagine if your boss decided to dock your pay for being late, only docking you half the late time. Then, a couple days later, he decides to dock you an entire day, because in between the two days, the company instituted a new policy that states the late employee should be docked the full amount of time missed. You'd be furious.

Or, imagine if the justice system worked like this. The charges on which Rice was indicted carry a punishment of 3-5 years in prison. Imagine if he'd been sentenced to 3 years in prison. Then, a few weeks later, the statute is changed to make the punishment 5-10 years, and Rice is informed that his sentence has been extended to LIFE, not because new evidence showed he was guilty of some greater crime, but new evidence that corroborated his own story was presented that proved his guilt to which he'd already admitted.

So, yes, while I think his initial punishment was far too weak (essentially a tacit condoning of domestic violence), it is what we're stuck with. While the punishment should have been more severe to begin with, going back and changing it just throws the rulebook out the window. Rice and the Players' Union is right to appeal the indefinite suspension.

What is really interesting about this, though, is the ramifications this will have on Goodell. If the suspension is reduced back to the original two games, isn't that an indication that Goodell had ALL of the information back then, even if he hadn't seen the full video? The only justification for lengthening the suspension is that the video presented new evidence. The evidence, however, is mounting against the commissioner, and it might be time for him to own up to the fact that he screwed up.

An addendum to my NYC post

This didn't really fit in anywhere in that post, but I wanted to try to put an end to a long-running joke whenever anyone talks about using a pay phone in New York City. They do exist. They might not be as prevalent, but they are there. The booths are gone, the phones are not.

Yes, I get all fired up about silly things sometimes.

Much like New York City, this post is big.

The September 11th terrorist attacks were shocking and tragic, and changed the world and the way in which we live in it. The subtler aspects of this are seen in the birthdays and other events that happened around them. I can't imagine what it is like for kids who were born on September 11th or 12th, 2001, or even for their parents, in 2001, trying to celebrate the new life they'd brought into this world while the rest of the country was mourning. I do, however, have a bit of knowledge about older folks who simply happened to be born around that date, in that my mother-in-law celebrates her birthday on September 12th.

As a result of this, I found myself thinking a lot about New York City on and around September 11th, as my wife and I were planning on visiting my in-laws in the City on the 13th and 14th. Had I known exactly where we'd been staying, I'd have thought about it a bit more.

It's time for a confession: I know almost nothing about New York City. It wasn't important to me as a child growing up in New Hampshire. When we went to a big city, we went to Boston. We never went to New York. It's far, it's hard to drive in, hard to park in, and expensive to stay in. Boston was an hour away, and, while it is also hard to drive and park in, we know tricks to get around that. Frankly, even after all these years and all this exposure, Boston's geography is still somewhat confusing to me, so New York is just a cosmic mystery.

For example, I didn't know Bowling Green
State University was a New York Subway stop.

I don't think I could even feasibly list all of my misconceptions here. Basically, I always thought that all the big buildings were right near each other, all the sports teams played in the city, all the burroughs were all the same place, and it was slightly larger than Boston.

Working backwards, that was the first misconception destroyed when I learned that Central Park was bigger than Boston. Over the years, I learned more truths, but I still know next to nothing about the city or its layout. Some of what I learned was a couple of years ago, when I made my first-ever trip into the city to celebrate my (then future) sister-in-law's graduation from her Masters program. The biggest thing I learned from that trip: I don't really like New York.

For clarity, we stayed near Times Square, possibly in Hell's Kitchen, and spent the weekend in that area. My father-in-law drove us into the city and found parking. That was terrifying. Driving in Boston sucks, but is doable. Driving in midtown Manhattan is one of the circles of Hell, from what I can tell. We then proceeded to walk pretty much the entire breadth of the island to get to my sister-in-law's apartment, a sixth-floor walk-up, and then walk what felt like half the length of the island to get back to the hotel (but was probably only like a mile). There was a fantastic street fair on 9th Avenue, though, so that was awesome.

That trip, we ate dinner at a Greek restaurant that was somewhere around the northern end of Central Park (we took the subway there and a cab back). The food was great, and I got to try octopus and sweet breads. Then, my wife and I wandered around the city seeing some of the sights (Madison Square Garden, a great little breakfast place) before hitting Grand Central Station and taking a train out of the city.

My impressions were that the city was crowded, dirty, crowded, and noisy. Also, crowded. I was both irritated by the near-constant honking of horns and impressed by the way New York drivers (particularly cabbies) had developed their own "horn language". A quick series of three short beeps meant something different than a quick honk and then a longer one, which meant something different than just laying on the horn. Pretty much all of it was lost on me, but it was kinda cool.

All in all, though, I didn't like the City. Times Square was pretty much the low-light. What a wretched place it has become. Yes, it's technically better than 20-30 years ago, when it was a seedy cesspool of strip clubs, prostitutes, and drug dealers, but that doesn't make it "good". It's basically become a giant outdoor mall, full of neon, noise, and commercialism. New York City has some of the best restaurants in the world, but all you'll find in one of the most well-known sections of the City are chain restaurants like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co, Applebee's, and yes, even McDonald's. Oh, and Gui Fieri's latest "Man Cave" themed assault on our senses and colons. It was interesting to see once. I never want to go back.

The Times Square subway stop is way more
enjoyable than the actual Times Square.

 Apparently word had gotten around to the family, because at the conclusion of this last trip, both my father-in-law and my sister-in-law hoped that I had a better experience in The City this time.

Let's start with getting in. We decided to eschew driving in for taking the train early Saturday morning. We got to the train station plenty early, bought tickets, and listened closely to the announcement that the train we wanted to take was coming in on Track 1. A few minutes later, a train arrived on Track 1, so we hopped on, and were off.

In the wrong direction.

Ten minutes later, at the next stop, we hopped off this train, and waited for the correct train to roll in. Fortunately for us, trains were using Track 1 to go both directions, so the New York-bound train was running late, and was due to arrive any minute. Had the trains been running on time, we'd have had to wait an hour. Hooray for being behind schedule!

Finally on the right train, we pulled into Grand Central Station and went in search of breakfast, finding bagels, croissants, and coffee so strong that I could feel the new chest hairs as they grew in.

We looked up where we were going - the Financial Distrtict, on the southern tip of Manhattan - and set off to take the subway, getting on the wrong train (though going in the right direction), finding out the train we needed to take wasn't going where we needed to go, and finding our way on a different train to Battery Park, around the corner from the hotel, and from where you can glimpse both the Statue of Liberty as well as the new World Trade Center tower.

Ok, so another preconception set on its head. I'm sure people explained it 13 years ago, but it never sank into my head that the World Trade Center, isn't really near the Empire State Building, or Times Square, or Central Park. Again, it's a big city. Lower Manhattan on the weekend is pretty nice - it's practically empty. No traffic, few people.

Not pictured: most of what I picture when I think of New York City.

We met up with the rest of the family, dropped of our suitcase, and set out for our first destination: Governor's Island. Ok, this is pretty cool. It's an island that was first used to defend New York City. As such, there is a large, walled fort with a bevy of canon mounts on the points of the walls. Eventually, it was transformed into a military post, at which my mother-in-law's father was stationed at the time of her birth. She's been back at least once, but neither my wife or I had ever been, so it was cool to see where her mom had been born and grew up.

Those concrete platforms at the base of the wall are canon mounts.

 It also gave a slightly different perspective on the city, as we took the short ferry ride across the bay, and could see the entire financial district, as well as the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn itself. The city is at once both smaller and larger than you think. From this perspective, all you can see is Lower Manhattan, a handful of buildings making up the Financial District, a space probably smaller than Boston. You have to keep in mind, though, that most of the city is actually hidden from view by this relatively small chunk. And then you note that those 30+ story buildings are built right up to the edge of the water. In most cities, you have an almost Gaussian distribution of building heights from the city limits on in to the downtown area. Not New York.

We also played mini-golf on an art-project course that made
fun of Chris Christie (the giant ape) and Mayor Bloomberg (not pictured).

One thing I've learned about vacations with my in-laws is that it involves lots of walking. As noted, the previous trip to New York felt like we covered the entire width of the island. On a recent trip to Washington, DC, I'm pretty sure we walked about 5 miles each day we were there. The family talks about a trip they took to Arizona years back, and I'm pretty sure they walked there from Pennsylvania. They refer to their trip to Nevis as the "worst vacation ever", and I'm guessing it's because walking through the Caribbean Sea probably sucks.

This trip, I was prepared. At least, I think I was. I forgot to check the pedometer app on my phone, but I would guess we walked somewhere between 3 and 5 miles on Governor's Island. When we got back to our hotel, I needed a rest, but I wasn't exhausted, as I had been on earlier trips (most notably, the Washington DC trip). I did, however, take advantage of the comfy bed to catch a few minutes of shut eye before showering and getting ready for dinner.

For dinner, we were heading to Little Italy. Being of Italian heritage on my father's side, I was excited. Also, as a fat kid who loves Italian food, I was doubly excited. When I found that we'd be walking the entire way, I was less excited, but not much, and I didn't want to let it bother me. So we walked. And walked. And...actually, it wasn't that bad. As we moved further up the island, the crowds did increase, which did bug me, as our little group continued to get stretched out, and the pod in front had to periodically wait for those in the back to catch up. As frequently happens, I ended up in between the two groups, eavesdropping on both conversations, but involved in neither.

After a short time, we arrived at The Feast of San Gennaro. Sadly, we missed the parade. Not that I'm a huge fan of parades, but this particular parade is featured in "The Godfather, Part II" as Vito Corleone scampers across the rooftops in order to take out Don Fanucci and take over his territory. The rest of the weekend, the feast is a large street fair, reminiscent of the Hell's Kitchen fair in which we partook a couple of years ago.

Not pictured: Robert DeNiro.
Pictured: a bunch of guys who think they sound like DeNiro.

 Right away, we were presented with rows of food carts lining either side of Mulberry St with the space between filled with people. Normally, I would shy away from this. During fair season (the few months around the Hopkinton and Deerfield fairs), I am better able to deal with crowds. I still don't like them, but they don't make me want to walk in the other direction. The biggest issue was that we hadn't eaten since breakfast. I'd tried to have a cup of coffee in the hotel room, but spilled most of it (sorry Hampton Inn!).

This is when my wife showed why I married her. She sensed my growing frustration - not to mention my sensory overload - and knew exactly what I needed: food. I know how that sounds, the fat kid needing food to keep himself happy, and while that is something that I certainly do sometimes, this was more a situation of not having eaten in almost ten hours, and just needing something to recharge. Those candy bar commercials are not just shameless attempts to get you to eat junk food - sometimes hunger makes us cranky, and a little food can help us re-energize. In this case, it was an order of Zeppoles.

Zeppoles are a uniquely Italian delicacy, and by "uniquely Italian", I mean "something that shows up in nearly every culture in some form". They are basically small balls of fried dough. Some call them doughnuts, others call them munchkins (though zeppoles are usually a little larger than that). When made right, they are best called delicious. These came in a paper bag, with powdered sugar sprinkled in. A quick shake, and they were well-coated, and yes, delicious.

Top: the remains of a stuffed artichoke.
Bottom: the remains of some calamari.
Below the frame: my nearly-full stomach.

From there, we met up with the rest of the family towards the far end of Little Italy, and got an outdoor table at a little restaurant called Puglia. We started the meal with some Chianti, some bread, and three stuffed artichokes. For the six of us. Someone (father-in-law) was a little excited about them being on the menu. After destroying that, we had some calimari, and then dinner. By this point, I'd gone from "need food to recharge" to "need sleep to digest". We truly celebrated the Feast by feasting. Instead of napping at a popular restaurant's table, we decided to walk the length of the festival, ignoring street hawkers and taking in the sights and smells of the different food stands.

After one final stop at Ferrara to pick up some cannoli for later, we headed back to the subway, which reminded me of some things I don't like about New York. It is noisy. All cities have some noise, but like so much else, New York does it on another level. The festival was noisy, with people talking, music blaring, vendors yelling. We left Little Italy and walked through part of Chinatown, where the music was replaced by the near-constant honking of traffic, and the street hawkers were out in full force, chattering away at all volumes, trying to entice us into their tiny little storefronts to buy various items of questionable quality. We finally got to the subway, and descended into the relative peace.

Which was quickly disrupted by a train pulling in, and another pulling out.

And this is the problem: you are constantly assaulted by this noise. You can't maintain a conversation, because you can only get a few words in before the next barrage of noise hits you. It's wave after wave, and just when you think it's going to settle down, another wave of noise crashes over you. It, even more than the walking, is exhausting.

Fortunately, our hotel was fairly quiet, and we slept quite soundly.

The next morning, we walked up to my sister-in-law's apartment and had a quick breakfast on the roof of her building. The sun shone down on us as we took in the sweeping views of the city. You can see a lot from 33 stories up. From one corner of the building, we could see the Brooklyn Bridge, the new World Trade Center tower, and all the way up to midtown, including the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. The view was, in a word, majestic.

Top: World Trade Center not far from the apartment building.
Bottom: Empire State Building in the distance. Not really anywhere near each other.
Not pictured: My preconceptions shattering like the T-1000.

Ho-hum, just the Brooklyn Bridge. No, seriously, the view from up here was amazing.

In the end, this was a better trip to the City than my first one, and I can see myself willingly going back to see more. There is a lot to see and do in the city, and it is awesome to behold some of the landmarks that we see in movies and on TV in person. I do think we made the right decision not to spend our honeymoon there, but I wouldn't mind spending more time there, and I can understand why people love living there. Personally, I will stick with Boston.

Click to enlarge.

Google Drive for Old People

Am I old? I sometimes joke that I am, but I'm only 35.917 years old. To the high school kids I pass at the bus stop on my way in to work, I might be old, but in general? Not so much. That said, am I out of touch?

I ask because I refuse to use "the cloud" in general, and Google Drive in particular, at least not in any substantial way. I have a Google account, and use Drive to transfer files occasionally. It was crucial in our wedding planning, as we could share spreadsheets and other files among ourselves without using disks or USB drives or even e-mail. We wrote our entire ceremony from scratch, and Drive allowed easy collaboration between me, my wife, and my sister (who was performing the ceremony, and thus reading the whole thing).

So, for those things, I'll use it. However, the push to use Drive, Box, iCloud, or other such services as a replacement for internal storage makes me cringe.Both my phone and my tablet have micro-SD card slots that is compatible up to 128GB. 128 gigabytes! I don't want to get technical here, but that's A LOT (sorry for the tech-speak). Okay, so that's not actually all that much in terms of modern desktop/laptop computers, but it's nothing to shake a stick at, either (it's also just a bit more than the 15GB I have available through Drive). That tablet has 16GB of internal storage, the phone has twice that, or 32GB. Neither is tiny, but 128GB makes them so much bigger, and really, means I should never have to save anything to the cloud.

The problem is that Google, in its infinite wisdom has decided that it doesn't want people directly manipulating the SD Card in the expansion slot. This means that you can insert a card and view things on it, but you can't transfer data from internal storage to the SD card, even if the device wants you to. My tablet keeps telling me that the internal storage is 75% full, and that I should transfer some stuff, but when I click the button to start the transfer, it tells me I can't do it.

It's like telling someone they need to eat healthier, and then telling them they're not allowed to eat vegetables.

When I asked around about this recently, one response I got was "What's an SD card? Is that like Google Drive for old people?"

I get it. There is a push to use cloud storage for everything. If hard drives can be smaller, solid state devices, the overall computer can be smaller, lighter, and more energy-efficient (though I do wonder about the trade-off between having a larger hard drive and having to access a remote server). They don't need to have storage for all of your games and save data, photos and videos, music and other assorted files. All of that can be on the cloud. The hard drive just needs enough space for the operating system and whatever programs you're running. 

And that's great. My laptop is a beast, and it is smaller than my old one. I would love for it to be lighter, and have longer battery life. It's why I like the tablet. Super light, but can still function as a computer. I am reticent, though, to store my files "elsewhere". I like having the data in my possession. I like having off-line access to it.

That's my first issue with the cloud: it's not 100% reliable. If I have power, I can turn my computer on and access the hard drive, an external hard drive, a USB drive, or a variety of other storage options. If I can connect to the internet, I can access Drive. If I can't connect to the internet...too bad. I can hear the response: how often are you not connected? but that misses the point. It's not that I have periods of no connectivity right now, it's the idea that I might. There are times when wifi doesn't work. There are places you can't get a 3g/4g signal. Sometimes, the server goes down. It happens.

My second issue is one of security. Sure, everything's mine, and secure, and encrypted (for some services), and when I delete it, the files are gone. I think we've seen in the past couple of weeks what a load of crap that is. On top of the recent celebrity photo leak, it's been well-publicized over the last year or so that Google has no problem "reading" your e-mail. They view data sent through their service as fair game, arguing that there's no expectation of privacy when you turn your data over to a third party, which it claims is what you're doing when you use Gmail. Is Drive any different? I've not read the terms of service, but is uploading a picture to Drive any different than sending that same photo via e-mail? If they're twisting the word of law to justify scanning your e-mail, it's not a stretch to imagine they'd do the same thing to peek at your photos. 

I will never understand how people who are so serious about protecting things like their credit card numbers or other personal data can just throw stuff into the cloud with no regard for privacy. Even if we were to argue that the service in use respected their clients' privacy above all else, there's still the worry of hackers. How many SECURE sites have been hacked over the past few years? Web security software might as well be called "Maginot Line". The notion that nothing is truly deleted from a computer, while not entirely true, is true enough to give anyone pause before uploading that picture of yourself chugging eight beers at once.

Do you know what is far more secure? An SD card that I can physically remove. A USB drive I can put in my desk drawer. 


I don't know. Maybe this makes me old. I have no lawn to yell at kids to get off, so maybe this is the signifier. Maybe, I'm that old guy shaking his fist-clenched cane up at the sky and railing against this new-fangled technology. If so, then so be it. Personally, I see it more as an unwillingness to sacrifice my privacy for the sake of a modicum of convenience. If that's what being young is, I'll gladly be called old.

You can take the cook out of the kitchen, but no, you can't.

I've been trying to write something here everyday, just to keep writing, and to hopefully get into the habit of writing everyday. I missed a few days over the weekend, because I needed some time to get stuff done around the house, but also because I needed some time to relax, which I did while not doing stuff around the house.

Friday ended a 12 straight days of work for me. 4 days at my day job, 4 days at the Hopkinton State Fair, and then 4 more days at my day job. Not much got done around the house in that stretch (at least, not by me). I made a fantastic dinner...that I didn't get to eat until lunch the next day.

I love to cook. If I could sit around the apartment all day cooking, I probably would. In fact, that's pretty much what I did on Saturday, but more on that in a moment. Once a week, I get an e-mail from the Disney Food Blog, which I usually look at briefly, always intending to read more closely later, though I rarely do. This past week, though, they teased a recipe from "Be Our Guest", the Cinderella-themed restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. I've never eaten there, but I've heard great things, so I was curious.

The recipe was for a braised pork shoulder over mashed potatoes with a red-wine sauce. A pretty simple-sounding recipe, but what caught my interest was that there were instructions for plating. My confidence in cooking has grown over the years, and I believe that I know enough technique to make just about any recipe I can find (short of molecular gastronomy, but I'll get there). My biggest hurdle is plating, though. Most cookbooks will delve into great detail on the proper way to hold a knife, and how to chop, slice, boil, scald, simmer, sear, braise, and grill, but few - if any - go into detail on plating. As such, it's not something I've learned. So, to find a recipe that seemed easy, and came with plating instructions? Let's do it!

Not to mention, I like pork shoulder, and I knew the mashed potatoes could be swapped out for mashed boniato, one of my favorite side dishes ever, and, somewhat coincidentally, something I discovered at Disney World. If you like potatoes, but have never heard of boniato, you should try it. It can be tough to find (I've had great luck with Hannaford supermarkets in New Hampshire; Market Basket, too), but if you do find it, peel it, dice it up, mash it (preferably with a food mill), add some butter, and some milk, and have yourself a helping of mashed awesome. The flavor is starchy, and sweet, but not as ripely sweet as a sweet potato or a yam. To kick it up a notch, add some crispy bacon and a nice smoked cheddar.

I decided to make this recipe after work. If real-life featured foreshadowing, unrelated alarms would have started going off, and would have been well-deserved. To start, I had to go to three different grocery stores to get everything I needed, and by the time I got started cooking, it was 7:00pm. Now, the roast braised for almost 2 hours, so I figured I'd be pulling it from the oven around 9:00pm, which was late, but not out of the window of acceptable dinner times for me.

Dice and saute some bacon. 7:20.

I set about cutting up veggies. A bulb of fennel. A carrot. An onion. 7:30.

I needed to brew some coffee. 7:45.

Cut the roast into 4 pieces and season all of them. 8:00.

In the middle of all of this, I got a phone call from my wife. She'd forgotten about her fantasy football draft that was that night, and she was working. She asked me to sign in as her, and monitor her picks. I agreed, and propped the computer up on a chair near the kitchen so that I could monitor the draft, the chat, and my dinner.

This just added to the delay, though, and by the time I got the pork into the oven, it was almost 8:30. It wouldn't be done until almost 10:30, which was a little late for dinner. There was no turning back now, though, so I put it in, set the timer, then went about the rest of my night, cleaning, peeling, and dicing the boniato. Making (probably terrible) draft picks (I'm bad at Fantasy Football to begin with, and not paying attention to the NFL doesn't help with that). Tending to the roast. By 10:00, the draft was over, and everything was ready except for the roast and the sauce, and this was when I really screwed up. I had waited far too long to start prepping the sauce.

The recipe was simple: dice some carrot and some onion. Cook until softened. Add 4 cups red wine, reduce by half. Add four cups braising liquid/beef stock, cook until thickened.

A reasonable cook would probably try to time the wine reduction with the pork being done. What did I do?

Wait until the pork was almost done before even starting the sauce.

Long story short, I finished with a nowhere-near-as-thick-as-I'd-have-liked-it sauce, drizzled over pork set atop mashed boniato with a side of sauteed haricot verts in plastic containers to go in the fridge for lunches over the next few days. They were tasty. I'd have liked to have had a serving fresh and hot, in a bowl as intended.

This is the problem when I cook - time management. More than that, it's a fundamental understanding of how long something will take to cook. I've recently learned how to make bacon jam (recipe to come). The key step is to let everything simmer and reduce for 30 minutes. In my head, that recipe takes 30 minutes, plus a few more for prep time. In reality? I have to cut bacon, and then crisp it up. That alone can take up to ten minutes. Then, there's the onion. Another 5 to 10 minutes. That adds up. Ideally, I'm prepping while stuff is cooking, but that is risky, as it can lead to burned food, or improperly prepped food. If I prep everything beforehand, cooking goes smoother, but the entire process takes longer.

On Saturday, I made chili. I'd been craving it lately, for whatever reason, and had thought about making it on Friday, but was overruled, as my wife and I needed to do some honeymoon planning, and she knew of my predilection for hours-long recipes. I tried to reassure her that I'd made my planned recipe before, in under an hour, but she held firm and made a far quicker dish so that we'd have more time. So, I made chili while she was at work. Since I had the day to myself, I made the super-involved chili.

And yes, it took me about 3 hours. I guess plating is not the only thing I need to work on.

If he can run, the Ravens might be interested.

A couple of days ago, I rambled about how I will not be watching the NFL this season, or in the foreseeable future, due to many factors, including their tacit acceptance of domestic abuse. I mentioned that my favorite sport is largely free of these kinds of incidents.

The key word being "largely".

It doesn't mean it never happens. Case in point, University of New Hampshire goalie Casey DeSmith, who was arrested over the weekend for alleged domestic abuse and resisting arrest. From the article:

A female victim was “thrown to the ground, jumped on top of and was repeatedly punched and spat upon,” Durham Deputy Police Chief Renee Kelly told The New Hampshire. Kelly added that DeSmith, 23, “appeared intoxicated” when police arrived and reportedly resisted arrest after being taken to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. The police also found “physical evidence” on the victim’s body, Kelly said.

As a man, this angers me. As a hockey fan, this saddens me. As a loyal UNH supporter, this just makes me question my continuing support.

Now, I used the word, "Allegedly", as that is what this is. He has been arrested, but not proven guilty. I am a firm believer that the ability to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental right and is vital to be considered an enlightened society. However, what is that burden of proof? I'll probably never know all of the details of this case. I know that there is physical evidence of an altercation. I know what the victim accused him of. Do I need a court of law to find him guilty to believe he did these things?

To answer that, I ask another question: could there be an alternate explanation for the incident? For example, when we hear a generic story about one guy punching another guy, we think closed fist, big wind up, action-movie-style. That punch, however, could have been a little jab to the ribs. In that case, the punch could have been an accidental bump in a crowded bar. Or something that was supposed to be playful that got carried away. Or, it could have been an attempted kidney punch. The point is, we hear the incident report, and we form a picture in our head. For some incidents, we could be way off.

The more I read this report, though, the only alternative I can think of is that the victim is lying. I can't speak to her trustworthiness, but what I can acknowledge is that line about "physical evidence" and that the police believed her, and arrested the starting goaltender for the flagship sports team at the university. Something tells me, she is telling the truth.


This is where my fandom becomes an issue. As noted in my football post, hockey is my absolute favorite sport, and UNH is my favorite team (just above the Boston Bruins). I don't think this casts a negative light on the sport as a whole, unlike the Ray Rice incident. Rice's abuse was the latest in a long stream of violations, from Albert Haynesworth swiping his credit card through a waitress's cleavage to Julian Edelman allegedly groping a woman in a bar to Ben Roehlisberger's multiple rape accusations. What it does is make me question rooting for UNH and the light it will cast on the team and the school.

At the moment, DeSmith has been suspended indefinitely, pending the official investigation. The season starts in just over a month. It's easy to suspend him now, as there's nothing going on. In a month, though, if the investigation is still ongoing, will Coach Umile and the University stand behind their actions and maintain the suspension? What happens if sufficient evidence is found to pursue the case? If he's found guilty, but only given probation? What if he finds a way to weasel out of the charges, much like Jared Remy? Should he be allowed back on the team then?

I don't know that I have any answers to these questions. My gut reaction is to show him the door. My supreme hope is that he gets no special treatment, which is always a worry in a case like this. UNH has football, and they are pushing to make it more relevant, but the big sport on campus still seems to be hockey. As such, players tend to have a more privileged campus life, treated like celebrities around town. That's fine, as long as they are held to the same standards as the rest of the community.

On the other hand, I don't like the idea of making an example, in terms of levying a more severe punishment on this kid so that future players will know that none of them are above the law. I'm not sure that is fair. And, while his actions were disgusting, he still must be treated fairly. At the moment, I have no reason to doubt the official story. As such, I feel that DeSmith has thrown his UNH career away. I don't know the NCAA rules on suspensions and eligibility, but as this would be his fourth year, if a suspension or a dismissal counts against his eligibility, this could be the end of his college career.

What I do know is that if he somehow ends up back on the UNH roster, and on the ice at the Whittemore Center, I will have trouble cheering for him personally, and for the team's success as a whole. And that unease will resonate forward through my years as a UNH fan.

Privacy Still Exists

Hey guys. Hey, I found a backdoor into Google, and hacked Ryan Gosling's calendar. Want to know where he's going to be tomorrow night? Also, I went through George Clooney's gmail account, and found some personal e-mails about a medical issue he had recently. Want to read them? Also, I intercepted some e-mails from Stephen King to his publisher: three of the manuscripts that he wrote over the long weekend. Want to buy them from me and publish them as your own work?

I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess that the answers to those three questions are, "No", "Nope", and, "What are they, three more sequels to his good books?" In other words, "No". I think it's safe to say that we all agree that buying a copy of someone's personal schedule and tracking their movements is better known as stalking. Reading someone's private e-mails about a personal matter is a blatant invasion of privacy. And intercepting a manuscript and publishing as your own is both stealing and plagiarism (and in this case, just plain dumb).

Why is it, then, that so many people are OK with celebrity photos being stolen and sold off without permission? More than OK, many people eagerly seek out and...um, "download" these photos (if you know what I mean).

I am speaking, of course, of the posting of nude photos of various celebrities over the weekend, including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. 4chan and Reddit exploded (not literally, unfortunately) with activity, and Google searches for "Jennifer Lawrence" skyrocketed.

I will admit that when I first saw the news, I was intrigued. I am not embarrassed to say that I appreciate the human body, especially that of an attractive woman. Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are all quite attractive, and all women whom I would not object to seeing naked. Pushing my honesty further, I did a single Google search that turned up articles, but I didn't read any of them. I stopped and backed off. I can't say I had any altruistic or noble reason for doing so. I just didn't see the need to go out of my way to see some naked women.

As I browsed Facebook that morning, I ran across a tweet from Lena Dunham:

Remember, when you look at these pictures you are violating these women again and again. It's not okay.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) September 1, 2014

My first reaction was to scoff, but it did make me think about the entire situation, and look into further opinions, from people such as Mara Wilson and other internet writers. These photos were not intended for the public. They were not a part of some magazine shoot, or some day out in public. They were private shots intended for their own private use. They were stored on a secure server, to which only these people should have had access, as opposed to a photo gallery on Flickr or Facebook, or stills from a movie. The method by which these photos were obtained was flat-out illegal. The posting of them on public internet sites might not be illegal, but it sure is scummy. Looking at them is pretty much just as scummy.

Let's stop blaming the victims, too. I've heard from numerous sources that they shouldn't have taken the photos if they didn't want them posted. That might win the award for dumbest thing said on the internet this year, but then, it has a lot of competition. How does that even make sense? On the surface, it's a meaningless truism, akin to "the best way to avoid getting a computer virus is to never turn the computer on". Digging deeper, it's far too close to arguing that someone was raped because the way they were dressed implied they wanted to have sex, even though they refused and resisted. Yes, they took photos of themselves, and left them on storage devices that were hackable. No, that does not give anyone but them the right to access, download, and then post those photos.

Who am I to tell people on the internet what not to look at and what not to download? I would say, "I'm no one," but what does that even mean? What does the original question even mean? Are there people on the internet who do have the ability to tell others what they can and can't do? Most forums have a moderator, but in general, there is no regulation on the internet. In light of that, we, the ordinary nobodies that make up the bulk of the internet must regulate ourselves. So, I say this as an average, regular guy: Don't look at the leaked photos. Don't download them.

This highlights a larger problem with the internet in general, though, and that is the fact that much of the internet is seemingly built on theft in the guise of "Free Culture". Free Culture means that we can build on what has come before. Cover songs, mashups, sampling, remakes of older movies, spin-off novels. These things borrow from the past to advance our culture. Support for the idea of Free Culture grew in response to an increase in restrictions on usage due to copyright laws that many believe restrict creativity more than they protect the original content creator. "Free" as in freedom to use, not "free to download and re-post".

Many people have latched onto this idea as justification for copyright infringement of all sorts. Many websites now merely aggregate articles and lists and videos from other sites and try to pass it off as their own. File sharers rip their CDs and DVDs and post the files online so that other users can download them for free. Lyrics sites post song lyrics, then take in ad revenue based on people visiting their site. Porn sites take videos from DVDs, photos from magazine, and both from pay sites, and post them on aggregating web pages for anyone who can pass the dreaded (read: pointless) age verification test.

That's where the real problem lies with this situation. Most of the people downloading these photos have spent the past decade repeating the mantra, "Why would anyone pay for porn?" Sites like 4chan and Reddit are havens for people posting ill-gotten nasties. Browse the site for a few minutes and you're bound to see multiple threads asking for complete sets of some model, or complete video of some scene. None of them have been paid for. Many are downloaded from other similar sites, or from a file sharing service. It's never mentioned, but it's all copyright infringement. It's gotten to the point where some video companies have tacked on a plea at the beginning of videos asking people to actually pay for the video, not just watch a free copy. What's fun is that these pleas are left in the pirated copy that is then distributed.

In this environment, what makes a leaked photo of Jennifer Lawrence any different than a leaked centerfold pictorial? What makes it any different than a pirated copy of the XXX parody of "The Avengers"? All were illegally obtained. Downloading any of them constitutes a copyright violation. So what's the big deal?

The big deal is the expectation of privacy. The big deal is consent. (The big deal is also that some of the women in the photos may have been underage when the photos were taken, adding another layer of sleaze and illegality to all of this.) The Playboy centerfold poses naked for you to see of her own volition. The actors and actresses in the XXX parody film are hired to be filmed having sex with the expectation that you will watch it. These celebrities took pictures for themselves, or for their significant others in private, with their own equipment, and as such, they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Further, they've given no consent for the pictures to be viewed by anyone other than their intended recipient.

Snatching those photos from celebrities' personal accounts is akin to sneaking into their home to take photos of them. It's peeping tom-ism. To seek out, view, and download those photos is to give tacit approval to this kind of behavior. If it is not criminal, it is borderline, and it is most certainly sleazy.

If there is a silver lining to this dark iCloud, it's that this has made me stop and think about the way in which I use the internet, and the way I think about the content found therein. The fact is that this isn't the first such leak. This has been going on for years, even back before the internet, when such pictures would be sold to less-than-reputable magazines (though without anyone really knowing about it until the photos were published), with people mostly just looking the other way. Maybe hat the focus of all of this is Jennifer Lawrence, and she is pretty much America's Sweetheart right now, will help us realize how terrible we're being when we allow these things to happen, or, even worse, take part in them. I know that I have.

Are You Ready for Some... Free Time on Sundays?

In February of 2012, the New England Patriots played the New York Giants in the Super Bowl, a rematch of the 2008 Super Bowl, in which the Giants ruined the Patriots' dream of a perfect season. It was the perfect chance for revenge, for redemption, and the Pats lost again. We watched the game at a buddy's house, five Patriots fans and one Giants fan (my then-fiance, now-wife). She was quiet as the Giants drove down the field to win the game, making improbable play after improbable play. I took off my Pats jersey and hucked it across the room. I'm not proud of my actions. I'm less proud of how I handled the car ride home.

I sulked.

I was angry. The Giants won four years earlier, crushing my team's hope of a perfect 19-0 season. Why did they have to win again? No one thinks Eli Manning is as good as Tom Brady, so why has he beaten Brady twice in The Big Game? I tried to be respectful of my wife's excitement, and keep my fuming to myself. I would say I failed, but I think the biggest failure was even thinking of it in those terms. Of course she was excited - her team just won the Super Bowl!

So, my team lost. Big whoop. I don't play for them. My self-worth is not tied to their success in any way, shape, or form. Them being good or bad does not reflect on my character. I should have been excited that my wife was excited, instead I was miserable.

This made me start to re-evaluate the way in which I approach sports fandom, but particularly football. For some reason, football brings out the worst in me. I get angry. I get loud. I yell at refs. I rail about bad calls on Facebook. I might yell at refs during hockey games, but after the game is over, meh (for the most part). When I watch football, though, that anger can last for days. Sometimes even weeks. I still twitch with repressed anger over the Golden Tate "Fail Mary". I still don't like Richard Sherman for mocking Tom Brady after a regular season game. This cannot be healthy.

Through the 2012 season, I tried to be more cognizant of my football-related mood swings, and realized that I was more upset about things that involved my Patriots than other teams. Bad call in the Patriots' favor? Thumbs up! Color commentator argues that the other team's player is better than his counterpart on the Pats'? Stop being so blatantly Anti-Patriots, you raging jerk! I'm going to fire-bomb your swimming pool and then steal all of your neighbor's socks and frame you for it!

So, I decided to be more neutral. I decided to become a "fan of the game" in 2013.

This decision was helped by the fact that the Patriots management acts like they and the players are one big family (see: the outpouring of support after Myra Kraft passed away) until it comes to contracts, then they are as cutthroat as any Wall Street investor, treating players as commodities, not people.

The results, however, were mixed, as I started out neutral, but fell back into old habits of hating certain teams and players, especially when they played the Patriots. I have no scientific evidence to back up this claim, but I believe that the aggression inherent to football invokes aggression in its fans. I have no reason to doubt that domestic abuse increases during football games.

The idea of not watching, of stopping altogether never really occurred to me. Football is a tradition in my life. Lazy Sundays in the Fall, the windows open, cool dry air and the crisp scent of fallen leaves. Lazier Sundays in the winter, cold and snow outside, heat and a blanket on the couch. Dan Dierdorf mumbling around his tongue. Jon Gruden making ridiculous comments.

My wife actually brought up the idea this summer, after Ray Rice beat up his wife, dragged her by the hair, essentially blamed her for instigating the incident, then was suspended by the league (who didn't even watch the video of the incident) for a whole two games. Players get more than that for smoking pot! After years of watching players get accused of a slew of various transgressions - many against women - and get off scot-free, without even a slap on the wrist, this was the last straw for her, and I can't find any reason to disagree with her.

On top of that is just the health and safety of the players. Concussions are rampant, but worse may be the long-term damage these players are doing. As Steve Almond points out on Salon:

...medical researchers have determined that brain trauma isn’t just due to the big hits that cause concussions. It’s due to the thousands of sub-concussive hits that are inherent to the game and occur on every play. The brain is a soft organ. When it slams against the inside of the skull, it gets damaged. No high-tech helmet is going to insulate players from basic physics and physiology.

It's not just the big hits, which the league is (poorly, IMHO) trying to regulate out of the game, but the constant pounding that the players take with each and every play. This is not to mention the havoc wreaked on the rest of the body through both the brutality of the game and also the way these athletes distort their bodies to bulk up so much. I've read stories about guys who played when I was a kid who can't function during the day without a host of painkillers.

Again, piggybacking off Steve Almond's piece linked above, we can argue that the players know these risks, but what does that matter? We are the reason they make so much money, making it appealing for them to put themselves through this misery. Yes, they play because they choose to, and because the owners are willing to pay them so much to do so. These owners though, are businessmen, and they aren't going to throw that kind of money at a player unless they are getting a return on their investment. Ticket sales, merchandise, concessions, parking, TV money. All come from the fans. Not to mention, public funding for stadiums, local tax breaks, and the entire operation being tax-exempt. All because local fans demand the team stay in their city.

Almond gives other very good reasons to boycott football, at all levels, and the more I think about it, the more it just makes sense. I will miss my lazy Sundays on the couch, but Doctor Who is on Netflix, so there's always that.

What really worries me, though, is how is this different for my absolute favorite sport, hockey? Is the NHL much different than the NFL? I think the players are more down-to-earth, and you hear far fewer stories about criminal behavior from NHL players; the culture just feels different. Salaries are high, but rarely as ludicrous as in the NFL. I'm not sure about teams demanding new arenas. I know that Boston actually did the opposite, and forced Jeremy Jacobs to pay for improvements to North Station when he privately-funded his new arena.

The most important issue, though, is brain trauma. The league has tried to cut down on the big, concussion-inducing hits, but checking is still a part of the game, and as noted, any action that causes the brain to slam into the skull can lead to long-term damage. Now, the physicality of hockey is different than that of football. It is possible for a hockey player can go an entire game without being hit, regardless of position. In football, pretty much the only player with no expectation of being hit is the kicker and punter. And even they get hit on occasion. Other than that, on every single play, nearly every single player slams into someone else. Quarterbacks get hit. Running backs charge into groups of defenders. Wide receivers get run down by safeties and corner backs.

Frankly, I just don't think you hear about hockey players having the long-term health issues you hear about with football players. What's more, I truly believe you could take the hitting almost entirely out of hockey, and still have a great sport. Yes, some old-timers and "purists" would complain, but the majority of the fan base would keep watching, and maybe even enjoy it more. Contrast this with football. Fans have railed against newer rules against unnecessary roughness my mockingly calling for the NFL to go to two-hand touch or flag football. One problem with this is that while it would get rid of the BIG hits, the linemen would still be colliding on every play. The other problem is that it would utterly change the game. If you look at international hockey, such as the Olympics, you see a game focused more on speed and finesse, and less on hitting.

So, football, it's been fun, but I can't ignore the way you mutate and corrupt everything with which you come into contact. Hockey, you're cool (get it? Sorry, I couldn't resist).

Into the Pool

So, a couple of days ago I posted about my happiness. Yesterday’s post turned out to be about happiness. Today, I thought I would continue on this theme of happiness.

This is my fourth year at the Hopkinton State Fair, and I’ve seen a lot of happiness at the fair. There are those crazy derby-goers who manage to be one of the lucky 5,000. There are the kids who get to run around the petting farm, playing with goats and sheep. There are the people who, after waiting all year, finally get to chow down on a perfectly cooked buffalo sausage again (this group includes me). Lots of people go to the fair, and many of them are happy.

No matter what though, no one is happier at the Hopkinton State Fair than the dogs leaping into a forty-foot pool from a forty-foot dock: The Dock Dogs.

For those that have never heard of Dock Dogs, it’s a pretty simple concept – dogs jump off a dock into a pool. They have three different contests: Speed Retrieve (a toy is affixed to the far end of the pool, the dog leaps in, swims out to retrieve and get back out of the water as quickly as possible), Extreme Vertical (basically a high jump), and Big Air (basically, the long jump). I think the number of dogs registering for each event determines the number of times they are done, but at Hopkinton, the Speed Retrieve and Extreme Vertical tend to get just one or two competitions over the course of the weekend. The rest of the time, and the event most people show up for, is the Big Air.

I’m not sure why this one is so popular amongst the dog owners versus the other two. I would guess, though, that the Big Air is probably the easiest to train a new dog for, as it is a fairly natural action. A toy is tossed into the water, the dog jumps in after it. In Speed Retrieve, the dog has to know to swim to the toy at the end of the pool. In Extreme Vertical, the dog sits at the end of the dock and leaps straight up.

Whatever the event, though, the highlight of the event is the dogs. They are pumped to be chasing, or jumping, or whatever they’re doing. They jump, they bark, they creep forward when their handler’s back is turned, because they just have to have that toy. Then, they finally get the command to release, and they get to tear down the astroturf to leap into the pool and get their toy. Sometimes the dog gets to the end, sees the water and freezes. The owner implores them to get the toy (no pushing the dog in – one of the few unbreakable rules of the Dock Dogs – if the dog doesn’t want to go in, it doesn’t go in), and the crowd cheers them on, and usually the dog will hop in and get their toy.

Whether the dog jump one foot or twenty, the crowd cheers, and the dog is praised, because they went in. They had fun. They don’t know there’s a competition involved, or prizes on the line. They just know that their beloved owner is playing fetch with them, and they just want to get that toy and bring it back to their owner. As the announcer says when a dog pauses at the end of the dock, then only jumps about three feet, “That dog just jumped fifty-three feet in his mind.”

If you couldn’t tell by now, I love watching the Dock Dogs. I rarely get to watch an entire competition, as I usually get a call in the middle, but the time I get to spend there is some of the best time I spend at the fair. When I’m having a particularly bad day, I try to make my way over to the dock, and just watch those dogs. I’m not going to make some tired, tortured point that maybe we can learn something from those dogs about doing what we love, because that’s not always possible for a variety of reasons, the major one being that we’re human beings with human being problems and stresses that dogs simply don’t have.

They’re just tons of fun to watch.

Derby Day

When most people think of Derby Day, they think of horses, funny hats, mint juleps, and 8 hours of coverage for an event that last about 2 minutes. For me, Derby Day makes me think of well, horses, yes, but also rednecks, fair food, and a year's build up to something that has to be anti-climactic 90% of the time*. Basically, it's the Redneck Super Bowl.

I work at a couple of fairs in the late summer/early fall. The first of these is the Hopkinton State Fair, over Labor Day weekend. I don't work for the fair itself, but for a contractor that does work for the fair. I provide tech support for the ticket-selling system. I spend 8-9 days at the fairs, surrounded by fair-folk, fair-food, and fair-events. Over the course of the weekend, I try to wander through most of the exhibits, take in some of the animal shows/demonstrations, and just see the entire fair. I didn't grow up in the city, but I might as well have. There was a dairy farm next door to one of my childhood homes, but that's as close as I've ever gotten to working on a farm. So, it is interesting to me to see these kids and families, raising animals from birth, grooming them, tending to them, farming with them. Plus, my first year here, four years ago, was the first time I'd seen a goat up close and personal.

Goats have weird eyes.

At night, Hopkinton has specialy-ticketed events in their grandstands. While the events on some nights vary from year-to-year, Saturday and Sunday are reserved for demolition derbies. Sunday it's the smaller cars, 4-cylinder engines, front-wheel drive. They're apparently fun, but the Main Event for the weekend is the 6- and 8-cylinder cars, the big boys, the Saturday Night Demolition Derby. Event starts at 6:30, grandstand gates open at 5:30, people will start lining up between noon and 2:00 to get the "best" seats.

This is the event of the year in these parts. When we have pre-sale days, people show up at 7am and wait in line until 2pm to get Derby tickets. Hearing stories that these people tell to the sellers (because many of the sellers are local, and many of the customers are regulars, everyone seems to know each other), many of them set aside money over the course of the year to come to The Derby. Others, simply do without something for the next month. The Derby is $8/person. For a family of 5, that's $40, which doesn't seem like much, but that's on top of admission. Admission is anywhere from $30-$50, depending on how many children are in that family.

So, you're talking about $70-$90 dollars, just to get into the fair and the event. Parking isn't free. Food and rides and souvenirs are not free. One day at the fair with your family could cost you upwards of $200! That's not pocket change!

This is just looking at a small family. We see orders of 10 tickets, or more, just for the Derby. When ordering online, that can be over a hundred dollars, easily. Of course, when you order online, you can pay with a credit card, making it much easier to fork over a couple hundred dollars than if you came to the Fair to buy the tickets, as the Fair only takes cash (Yes, Visa and Mastercard, you can crow that The Hopkinton State Fair doesn't take American Express, but they also don't take Visa and Mastercard, either).

The other reason Derby-goers prefer to buy online is because the Derby is the one and only event at the Fair that will sell out. And not even, "There are only a handful of tickets left, let's just count the drivers as attendees, and we'll have a full 5,000." No, this is a full 5,000 tickets sold, and usually by mid-day on Saturday. So, the best way to guarantee you have a ticket is to buy in advance. If you can't get to the fairgrounds early (or if they decide not to do advanced sales in a given year), you have to order online. It's great! You order from the comfort of your home. You put it on your credit card. You get a confirmation number, and you head to The Fair, comfortable in the knowledge that you can take your time getting there, because your tickets are secure.

Unless something goes wrong.

And things go wrong. Boy, do they go wrong.

This is why I am here though, to deal with the things that go wrong. I'm on the grounds from before the gates open until after the last seller is pulled, phone in hand, waiting for one of the gates to call and say those 5 little Lovell-esque words, "Matt, I've got a problem." Then, I rush over to the gate, weaving and wedding my way through the crowds to get to the problem gate as soon as possible. If I'm lucky, the seller has solved the problem while I was on my way, or it's something simple, and easily resolved.

Many times though, something has gone wrong. Terribly wrong. The order cannot be found. These are the calls that I wake up dreading on Saturday morning. They are coming. Every year, I hope that I don't get any, but to no avail. I can't tell you the actual number, but some pretty high percentage of all online orders are for The Derby, so, when a call comes in that they can't find an order, I can usually assume it involves Derby tickets, and I race to the gate, hoping that I will get lucky and find what the seller could not.

I do have more robust search tools at my disposal than the sellers, so that helps, but sometimes, there is nothing I can do, and I have to inform the eager fair-goer that they do not have Derby tickets, and as the day grows later (or if they didn't bring cash), that they will not be able to go.**

Why does this happen? Well, sometimes people buy for the wrong day. Four years ago, this happened more than a few times. The website was confusing, they tell us. Or, and sometimes far more amusing to me, our computer screwed up. My absolute favorite incident of this type was in my first year working at The Fair. In the middle of Saturday afternoon, a young couple presented a will call print out to the seller, who looked them up and printed out their tickets: two admission, two Sunday derby.

"That's not right," the gentleman said. "We ordered tickets for Saturday." The seller has no authority over this, and did what she was trained to do, and called me down. The gentleman presented me a print out of his order confirmation, and told me that the computer screwed up his order. I looked it over, looked it up in the system, saw that what printed looked right, and then, as I was out of options, called my supervisor - and the guy who wrote all the software being used. I told him the situation. He was immediately suspicious.

"Sounds like a scam," he said. "I'll look into it. Give me his confirmation number."

I read it off to him. He looked it up.

"Yeah, they ordered these this morning. Online sales for tonight's Derby were turned off before he ordered these."

I wondered if he saw "derby" and just assumed it was the right event.

"Nope, it's clearly a different day. This happens every year. They go online, see that it's sold out, buy the wrong day anyway, then come to the fair and get angry, hoping to score some free tickets. Send them up to the main office."

I explained to the couple that when they bought the tickets, online sales for Saturday were already turned off, so they couldn't have bought Saturday tickets. The gentleman was adamant that he'd chosen the Saturday Derby. As proof of this, he presented a printed out screen shot of the order page.

Showing that there was no available option for Saturday, and that he had selected Sunday.

Those are my favorite calls. Customer error where the customer provides the evidence of their error. Kind of does my job for me.
I pointed out that he had chosen Sunday, but he remained firm in his conviction that we had messed up. I let him fume, and reiterated that I was sorry, but there was nothing I could do.

It's a phrase I use often at The Fair, especially on Derby Day. If the Derby is sold out, I'm sorry, I can't give you tickets. I know you ordered a while ago, but I can't do anything. I can't give you a refund. My boss can't give you a refund. It's not our money. If I could, I would give all of these people free tickets and be done with it. It would amount to about 20 people per year. Big whoop. I am, unfortunately, bound by regulations set by The Fair, who is in turn set by regulations in the fire code. The grandstands seat 5,000, so that's all that can go in.

Still, the customers fume and rage. I let them. Thankfully, none of them have been physically or verbally abusive towards me or the sellers (I like to think that part of my job is to give the customer someplace other than the seller to direct their ire - the sellers have nothing to do with the way the system works, or the way the prices are set, or really any of the problems they call me down for), though some have come close. As long as they aren't abusive, I let them fume. I understand that anger, that impotent rage. Something went wrong, I'm not going to get to do what I've been planning all year. There's got to be somebody to blame.

Most times, it really is a customer error. They entered their credit card information wrong. They entered their name wrong (honestly, how difficult is it to put your last name in the "last name" field?). 99% of the time, though, they flat-out refuse to admit they could have made a mistake. It's out system at fault, not them.

Last year, I dealt with a woman and her sizeable family who stood outside the gate for over an hour arguing that they had bought tickets online. I don't think they were even there for the Derby, they just wanted to get into The Fair. She didn't have a confirmation e-mail or number, but she swore she'd ordered tickets. She wasn't in the system. No version of her name was in the system. We check myriad credit card numbers, and none of them were in the system. We got partial matches, but none with her name or address. Her kids ran to the car to get other possibilities. She tried to pull up the confirmation e-mail she thought she'd gotten. Another of her kids was trying to pull up her bank account statement on another phone to prove the money had been deducted (a rather lengthy process as no one knew what credit card she'd used).

I'm no genius with money, but it seems to me that if you have so many credit cards that you can't remember which card you used for what purchase, it's time to rethink your lifestyle. Honestly, I speak from experience as someone who used to live something like that. Simplify.

At any rate, she couldn't find any shred of evidence she'd finished - or even started, really - the order, so we couldn't, either. She refused to believe this. She'd placed the order; she'd seen the money taken out of her account (one thing I suspect, again from personal experience, is that the type of people getting by through the use of multiple credit cards because they don't actually have enough cash to pay for things aren't checking their accounts all that rigorously; I could be wrong). The kicker is that she could have been in the fair an hour earlier if she'd just accepted this and bought tickets. She couldn't do that, she said, because she didn't have enough in her checking account to get the cash to cover it.

I really try not to make judgements just based on appearance, but I think I'm somewhat decent on appraising character after meeting and talking to someone for a bit. My comments up above, about this family living on credit cards, and probably not being the financial hawks they were claiming to be? Yeah, I stand by them.

She didn't have enough money to buy the tickets. That's why she'd bought online, so that she could use a credit card. Some people, like my sister's first husband, uses his credit card a lot, but is diligent about paying it off. It works well for him. He gets reward points, has excellent credit, doesn't pay much in interest, and because he's so good about paying, they keep extending his limit, so he has a good "emergency" cushion. People like this customer, and many others we see every Derby Day, seemingly don't get it. They think it's a "magical goodies creator" that can get them what they want right away, and put off the financial impact for a while, not realizing that it just keeps ballooning.

There are people for whom I truly feel bad when I have to break the bad news. This year, I was called to look up an order for an older couple. When I got there, he handed me his ID, and I looked up the order. It was in the system, but it was not completed. I later found out it was an issue with the expiration date being entered wrong. That's it, the expiration date! Something so seemingly simple and benign, but without which the order can't be completed. What made this news especially tough to deliver was the address on the ID, telling me this couple was up here in New Hampshire from St Petersburg, Flordia. Most guests turned away can just go home. Not this couple.

One of the first customers I had to turn away understood that she had messed up, and took responsibility. That's always nice, but makes me sympathize with them so much more. They were so excited, they'd gotten through the traffic, and through the crowd at the gate. They could see The Fair through the fence, but they couldn't go any farther.

In truth, I feel bad for all of these people I have to turn away. By Saturday of this fair, I am tired. My legs hurt, my feet hurt. If I'm lucky, my ankles are only sore. My shirt is soaked through with sweat. All of that is bearable, though, if I can end a trip to the gate by handing tickets over to a customer. Sure, when things go wrong they fume and rage, and sure, some of them are trying to pull some petty scam (though I feel like that has dropped off over the 4 years I've done this), but I really do feel bad for these people who are so excited to be coming to The Fair, and in particular, The Derby, only to find out something went wrong. Even though it is almost always user error, I feel bad for them.

I felt bad for the woman yesterday who claimed to be from Florida (though when I looked up her order, the address was local) who bought 11 tickets online, thinking she'd bought Derby tickets, when she'd actually bought 10 adult admissions and 1 child admission (which should have tipped her off, as there are no "child" grandstand tickets - you take up a seat, you pay the same as all the other seat-taker-uppers). I felt bad for the family a couple of years ago who bought for the wrong day. I even felt bad for all those people who thought their order was complete, and printed out the "confirm your order" screen, rather than the "your order has been placed" screen, when the system still did that a few years back (fortunately, that's been done away with).

This is one of the biggest events of the year for many of this people, and while I might find that a little silly, who am I to judge? I used to sit in the Whittemore Center lobby at 7am to get the best seats when Maine came to town to play UNH, and actually looked forward to those games because of it. It was a fun way to spend a Friday or Saturday. We'd play games, watch movies, order food. The staff left a door open so we could duck inside and use the restroom as needed. One year, Maine's head coach came out and chatted with me for a bit. Other people line up days in advance for concert tickets. Still other people line up around the block for a cupcake or a seat at a trendy noodle bar (admittedly, I might consider doing this for David Chang' noodle bar). I've stayed up all night reading or playing video games. I've waited in lines for midnight showings of comic book movies. I've pre-ordered CDs and books. I've contributed to Kickstarter for projects by my favorite webcomic artists.

We all have different tastes. I'm not a fan of tractors (though I appreciate the historical tractors on display here) or pick-up trucks or demolition derbies, or many of the other redneck-y attractions here at The Fair. But then, this isn't a fair for me. The people coming here are into this stuff, and it is important to them. They are willing to spend more in a day than I spend on groceries in a month (probably close to what I spent on my UNH season tickets this year), and while I think that they might need to recheck their priorities, maybe I'm wrong. Who knows what these people do the rest of the year. This weekend, they want to attend Derby Day at Hopkinton because it makes them happy. What else matters?

*This year, the Derby started at 6:30, and was done before 8:00. Unheard of. The finals are usually just starting when I'm heading home for the night between 8:30 and 9:00. Not the first year I've heard grumblings of disappointment after the Derby. Maybe there's too much build-up?

**Yes, the Derby sells out, but if you really want to get in, there are always people selling spare tickets when the crowds line up to get into the grandstand, so all hope is not lost.

On Happiness

I am a pretty happy guy. I just got a pretty nice new-to-me car. We live in a sweet apartment that has space, central heating and cooling, plows in the winter, as well as access to a pool, hot tub, and exercise room. I just got married.

I cannot, in all honesty, say that I love my job, though to simply say that I do not hate it is not fair either. I like aspects of my job - love them, even - and I like the environment.  I have flexible hours, a great degree of autonomy, and a really good boss who seems to understand that mistakes happen, and that it is important for employees to feel valued and respected, which I do. Unlike some jobs I have, I almost never dread going in to work, and the days that I lie in bed and ponder calling in sick to spend the day sleeping in or vegging on the couch have more to do with my wife having the day off than anything going on at work. I think the best way to put it is that I enjoy my job, and that is pretty darn good.

I mentioned a wife in that last paragraph, and I did indeed get married recently.  She is beautiful and smart, and can light up my day with her smile. I've known her for over 6 years, have lived with her for four, and I still want to spend every waking (and, frankly, non-waking) moment with her. I've known plenty of women.  I've had crushes and gone on dates, and even been in relationships. There is one big difference with my wife, though: she is the first woman to make me want to better myself.
I snore, and a big reason for that is that I am overweight. Being overweight leads to other issues too, from not fitting in certain seats to not being able to be as active as we would both like. I want to lose weight so that I can snore less, and she can sleep better. I want to lose weight so that when we get on the plane to go on vacation, I am not spilling over into her seat. When I was being fitted for my suit for the wedding recently, and the shirt they'd picked out for me (that had fit a couple months earlier) was too tight, I was devastated. Not because I was fat - I've been fat for a while now - but because I felt like I'd let her down.

As an example of how awesome she is, she saw my expression, squeezed my hand, and smiled up at me.

This is not to say things have always been rosy. There have been some rough patches. It's not easy to balance school, work, and home when you're working towards a normal degree, let alone a nursing degree. I don't mean to disparage those that have gotten an MBA, or have gone back to school to get a degree in something like English or Economics. The thing is, for most degrees, you work during the day, go to class at couple nights during the week, and do your homework the other nights. The rest of the time, you tend to the house, spend time with the family, veg on the couch, etc. When you're taking night classes to work towards an associate' and then a bachelor's degree in nursing, things are not that simple.

First off, it's not just class, it a class and a clinical, meaning the nights you're not sitting in a classroom, you're working in a hospital. So, there goes your weeknight free time. Secondly, if you're working, it's probably in a hospital, and while I'm sure there are nursing positions in the hospital that have very regular hours - working until 3:00 means you leave at 3:00. Unfortunately, the ER is not one of those places. So, if you work in the ER in one town, and take classes 30-40 minutes away, you're not going to want to take shifts that might not let you out on time and make you late for class. This means nothing 1st shift, and 2nd shift is pretty much right out.

This leaves 3rd shift. Overnights. Even on weekends. In this scenario, your week looks something like: get up on Monday around 3pm, shower, eat breakfast, start homework/prep for clinical. 6pm, head to class/clinical. 10pm, finish with class/clinical, go to work for 11pm, get out around 7:30am, drive home and flop into bed to sleep. For a few hours during the day. On the rare night you're not working, you try to catch up on sleep. On the nights you don't have class/clinical, you're doing work for them.

You know what's not included in that schedule? Free time, because you don't really have any.
This was my wife's schedule for the better part of three years. When she graduated, both she and our families were effusive in their praise of the amount of work involved, but not just on her part. They were praising me, too. I deflected most of it, usually with the argument, "What else was I supposed to do?" because, for the most part, that was how it was.  She was in school, and needed my support.
Here's the deep dark secret about that: it took me a while to realize this. For the past few years, living alone, I did things a certain way. In particular, I wrote when I wanted to, did dishes rarely, and barely cooked for myself. After we started dating, I started learning how to actually cook. When she moved in, I started to care about dishes getting clean (mostly because we needed them to cook). For a while,  we shared in these chores, which we great, because it gave me time to write, or play video games, or read, or veg. Not long after she started school, I undertook another NaNoWriMo challenge (write a 50,000-word novel in a month), but I had trouble finding time to write, as I had to come home and cook dinner every night, which meant washing the dishes from the night before, which meant first emptying the dish drainer from the last time dishes were washed. By the time I was done all of this, I was tired, and just wanted to sit on the couch, so I did. Tension built, until one day I came home and, according to my wife, "Looked like someone killed [my] dog." I told her that I was frustrated that nothing was done in the kitchen (she hadn't worked the night before, so she didn't HAVE to sleep in), and that I felt like I was alone with the chores (except laundry - she did a lot of laundry, as she needed scrubs constantly). Her response was that I was alone. She was in the house, but all of her energy went towards school and work.

It took me a couple months after that to fully realize what she meant, and how selfish I was being. She was working as much as she could, and spending most of the rest of her time dealing with school stuff. She wasn't ignoring me, or bored with me, or losing interest in me (all very real thoughts that went through my head), or just slacking off. In fact, she was doing the opposite of slacking off; she was working two full-time jobs that consumed most of her time and energy. For me to complain that she didn't wash the dishes, and how that was a terrible inconvenience for me because I wanted to do something else that night was pretty selfish of me. I worked one job (for a while it was a miserable job, but that's neither here nor there), came home, and had the whole night to myself.

Once this dawned on me, there was no other option that seemed palatable to me but to support my wife in any way I could.

Now, as noted, when she started school, I was in a miserable state. I hated my job and made no money. Around the time she started school, I started helping a buddy at a couple of local fairs in the fall, which helped bring in some extra money. More important, it led to my current job, just a few months after working at the fairs. Suddenly I was making money more money in a more enjoyable workplace. This didn't curb my selfishness, but I think it helped me finally see it.

She had nudged me to work at the fairs. She nudged me to apply for the new job. She got me to eat less processed for and to cook more for myself. She has repeatedly given me confidence and support, and I felt like I let her down. I couldn't let that keep happening.

I like to think I took some things away from that. Our needs might not always be in sync, but we support each other the best we can. Neither of us is perfect; we don't always live up to our nobler aspirations, but we've each other, and support each other. I do what I can for her whenever I can, not because I have to, but because I am a happy guy, she is the main reason for my happiness, and I want nothing more in the world than for her to be as happy as me.