This post is completely unrelated to anything
I just got tired of seeing that football post sitting on top of my long-neglected blog. I wish I had the energy to blog, but frankly I get more than enough off my chest just kvetching to colleagues and friends. (Much to their chagrin, I might add.) So, who needs a blog?What was I thinking?
Before the season started, I honestly thought the Vikes could manage nine wins. Luck out here and there, maybe 10.I drank the Kool-Aid. I thought the defense was going to be so much better that the offense didn't have to win games. I thought the offense was going to be good enough (in the running game anyway) to score 14 to 17 points per game.
I now see I was completely wrong about the offense. Adrian Peterson is the real deal, but the offense as a whole has shown itself capable of scoring 27 points. Unfortunately, that's over three games, against three rather so-so defenses.
For those of you keeping score at home, that's three touchdowns for the offense, and three for the defense this season.
Speaking of Defense, it is an even bigger surprise to my mind. After all kinds of offseason hype about clamping down the pass defense, the Vikes have proven to be vulnerable to any team willing to abandon the run. Any team. The conventional wisdom from the first few games is that the defense played well enough to win. I don't think so. If not for some lucky breaks against the Lions (and an injury to John Kitna), that game would have been a blowout.
Yesterday, Damon Huard looked like the second coming of Dan Marino in the second half. After throwing 10 passes for under 40 yards net in the first half (many of them short dumpoff balls), the Chiefs tossed the ball 19 times in the second half for about 160 yards and a touchdown. They converted on four third down plays, including a third and 15.
They had drives of 61 and 84 yards to begin the second half. And folks, this is Damon Huard we're talking about here. What do you think Favre, Romo, McNabb and Cutler are going to do? My guess is they may throw the ball a few times. That's my guess.
Read more...
Reality Bites
We learned a great deal about the 2007 Vikings yesterday:* We learned there will likely be no 2008 Vikings this season. My $2.50 wager for them to win it all looks like a loser. Darn.
* We learned that the Lions (if they can get over that loser's mentality) are a very, very good football team, with pretty amazing talent on the offensive side of the ball. They will scare people this year.
* We learned Tavaris Jackson is no rookie Dan Marino or first-year-starter Daunte Culpepper under center. He looked very, very, very much like a rookie yesterday.
* We learned that Adrian Peterson is really, really good, but we learned that we really need Chester Taylor too. The coaching staff (wisely, I believe) is reluctant to let Peterson carry too much of the load.
* We learned that Brooks Bollinger is really, really bad... Read more...
In Philadelphia
I love Philly.That is all.
The police
Went to The Police show last night at Madison Square Garden, and I left more convinced than ever that Stewart Copeland is the greatest rock drummer of all time.OK, I'm biased. I come from a family of musicians, including two drummers. But holy cow. Looking at The Police as individuals, it's hard not to come to the inevitable conclusion that Copeland adds the special sauce that turns The Police from your average Ramada Inn band to something special.
Seriously.
London training data posted
I've posted a link to a zip file containing the training data I used for Access training at the CIJ conference this year, as well as a bunch of stuff I used last year.It might be a bit confusing because the narratives were really designed to be notes to myself, and not really designed to be used as distributable tipsheets. But I included them anyway just for the heck of it. Maybe someone will find them valuable.
If you have any questions about the data, feel free to contact me directly.
In London this week (cue music)
In London this week training at the Center... sorry... Centre for Investigative Journalism annual conference. It's my fourth trip to the U.K. to train in computer-assisted reporting, and we're off to a great start.Heather Brooke kicked off the morning session with a great overview of the nascent CAR movement in Britain. She was fabulous as usual. I'll post a link to her presentation a bit later.
Another good sign early on: David Donald has a good 17 students in his beginning Excel class. In 2003, I believe we had 17 students for the whole weekend. That's pretty amazing progress in a short time.
More to come...
Joy is removing Adobe Acrobat
I've just experienced a special kind of thrill. I removed Adobe Acrobat from my computer. Completely. I replaced it with a far more simple, straight-forward PDF reader called Foxit reader.
Foxit doesn't have all the bells and whistles, of course. But at about 10 percent the footprint of Acrobat, and without that annoying download manager, Foxit is more than enough for me.
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