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In today’s podcast, I take a look at the Green Bay Packers’ heartbreaking playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals from Sunday night and compare that to my past dating life. Don’t worry, I bring it all together for you. Are you doing the “If Only” Dance? Lend me your ears and I can help!
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It was one of the biggest games of the season. Any season, really. Any time my Green Bay Packers are dueling with the Chicago Bears, it is must-see television. Regardless of standings and divisions, the Packers-Bears rivalry is fierce. And to be honest, it was bigger than usual, because the Packers are trying to push their way into the playoffs. Every win counts.
At my church, we were having a pot-luck lunch. I was eating a little shredded beef and watching Ryan Grant take it to the house on the first Packer play of the game. We were having fun, and the Packers were winning.
Then I had to go to work.
I sat in the car at the office parking lot while listening to the last precious few minutes of the game that I could hear. I didn’t have a radio at work, so this would be it. After this, it was going to be word-of-mouth.
Thank God for Google.
My computer at work blocks just about everything: email, Twitter, Facebook, ESPN, whatever. But it doesn’t block Google, and I can’t think of a workplace that would. So, when I want to keep up with a game, I type the team name in the search box, and the first result on Google’s results page is a scoreboard with a game clock. I just hit “refresh” every time I check in to see the score, and I’m okay.
This game was different, though, as the Packers were up 13-0 when I left the car. After a few refreshes, it was 14-13, Bears. I was stunned. I had no idea what was going on; who was in? Who wasn’t in? Did anybody get hurt? Did we give up a big play? WHAT?!?
Then I saw a little box that was updating with Twitter results down the page. It wasn’t blocked because it was google.com, not twitter.com! I moved to the options section (see above picture) and clicked “Updates”. Up came a scrolling, constantly-updating commentary on the game from the Twitter universe.
There’s no game on as I write this, so you’ll have to imagine it.
It was beautiful. I could just keep checking, and any big play was commented on by plenty of people! It was like having a crowdsourced play-by-play of the game (and the Pack won, too!). I could see when somebody missed a field goal, when Jay Cutler threw an interception (or two), or any big defensive stand.
If you’re at work and you want to keep track of the big game, just search for the team name on Google and click “Updates”. Then you can see what the world is talking about as it happens.
This has other great implications, too:
Anything you can search Twitter for, you can use this for. Obviously, you want to work hard and make sure you’re getting things done, too. But if you can’t miss the big news or game, Google’s new real-time search is a killer way to do it quickly and easily.
Last night, my Green Bay Packers beat one of their toughest challengers this season, the Baltimore Ravens, 27-14. It was a fun game to watch, and it feels good to watch a team that lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers only a month ago put on a streak and rejuvenate their hopes for the playoffs.
But boy, was it ugly.
Between the Ravens and the Packers, there were over 300 yards of penalties in this game. It was in the top-3 most-penalized games of all-time. Ouch.
But after all is said and done, they won. They overcame the penalties, and won the game. When people look at the 2009 season, they’ll see a “W” on that one. They won’t see all the penalties, they won’t see the sloppiness. They’ll see a victory. Do you treat life like that?
Are you focusing on the penalties of life? I do sometimes. It’s easy to get down on yourself for the mistakes you make. But they don’t tell the whole story. At the end of the day, did you get a victory? We make mistakes. Everybody does. Just like every NFL team gets charged penalties, we all screw up. It’s a part of life. What happens next is what matters. Did you pick yourself up and dust yourself off? Or did you wallow in it and feel sorry for yourself?
Mistakes DO tell part of the story – you need to watch them and learn from them. Post-game press conferences all indicated that the Packers were happy to win, but they need to learn from all those penalties and fix those problems. It’s time you did the same.
No, this isn’t going to be another debate on why I like my Zune better than the iPod. Today, we’re all together: we are owners of portable media players. And it’s not just limited to us: there are those who were more economical and chose simpler, non-brand-name media players, and even some that use their mobile phones, such as their Blackberry or Droid, to carry around music and video.
In any case, the main reason we got these things was music. We love us some music, right? Heck, even the option to carry around some video is pretty cool too (if we can). But our little media players can do us one better, and I learned it while I was sitting at a desk.
Recently, I took upon a rather boring desk job to pay a few bills (one being this giant party I’m throwing next October). This job basically entails staring at a computer screen and answering customer service emails for 8 hours a day, second shift. It ain’t glamorous, I’ll tell you that right now. But while there, I realized that I needed brain stimulation if I wanted any chance of surviving this job.
As I’ve stated before, I’ve got a Microsoft Zune. While putzing around on the Zune Marketplace, I started perusing the podcasts. I’d always thought about grabbing a podcast – after all, they seem to be pretty popular, but I never really knew anybody that listened to them. I figured this would be a good chance to try a few out.
Holy cow. I should be kicking myself for not trying this years ago.
Think about all the time you spend doing mindless activities: driving a car, sitting at work (for some of us), cleaning the house, working out, etc. There are about a billion different times of day when we could be putting our brain to good use. Enter the podcast. Here are a few cool reasons to start loading up:
A podcast, for those of you who have gotten this far and still don’t know what they are, is essentially a radio show. For some podcasters out there, it’s adapted from their actual radio show. For others, it’s like their blog on steroids – interviews, audio clips, and special content can be found on their podcasts. What kinds of stuff can you find out there? Anything.
After some trial and error, I’ve hammered down the podcasts I look forward to listening to every day (links go to the RSS feed address to add to your podcasting software):
There are tons more out there, from comedy to Christian, food to music. Go search around, either in your iTunes, Zune Marketplace, or even Google. You’ll find some good stuff.
One way is through your media software. The iTunes Store and the Zune Marketplace both have dedicated sections to podcasts. If you don’t use either of those, there is another very popular option: Juice.
Juice is a cross-platform podcast subscriber that organizes your podcasts and syncs them up with your media player of choice (or, if you want, you can just play them through the software).
Podcasts give your brain a little food to work with. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. After all, learning is an ongoing process throughout your life. Why not give it a try? Do you have any favorite podcasts you want to recommend? Let’s hear about it in the comments!
I’m no doubt endearing myself to the dozens of you Practical Nerds that happen to be New England Patriots fans, but I don’t like Tom Brady. I haven’t for a long time. My biggest beef with him was his attitude that he was just flat-out better than you ever will be. I pay enough attention to football and other major sports that I know you have to have a swagger about you that makes you great. No problem. But I always hated the Patriots for running up the scores during their undefeated* season when clearly they had games in the bag. No need to throw a 30-yard pass to Randy Moss when there’s 3 minutes left in the game and you’re up by 21 points.
Anyway, I was sitting back watching the Baltimore Ravens and the Patriots do battle last Sunday (my other option was watching the Bears-Lions which, while being a division matchup, was boring as sin during the second half). It was a fun football game with lots of back-and-forth momentum. Oh, and then this happened:
I’m not a big fan of Ray Lewis, but he scores big points for me here. And Rodney Harrison has single-handedly made NBC Sunday Night Football worth watching with his comments, because guys like Keith Olbermann just make me want to throw my laptop through my television.
Brady was grazed by a lineman that clearly was just falling in his general direction and he yelled at the referee to throw a flag for roughing the passer. For those not familiar with football, it is illegal to hit a quarterback with full force after he’s thrown the ball. It’s a big penalty. Tom Brady went down for the season last year after a lineman crashed into his knee during Week 1, so now he’s paranoid about getting hit again. The call was not justified, in my opinion. If the guy gets bumped, he gets bumped. It’s football.
That aside, what can we learn from this? Life, like football, is full of hard hits. No matter what you do, you’re going to have to take a few. Like a helmet and shoulder pads, you need to protect yourself to take the full force of life with things like a positive attitude, a strong moral compass, and taking personal responsibility.
When you get hit in life, do you start looking around for the referee? When life throws you a little hiccup, do you cry “foul” to whoever will listen to you? Sometimes you won’t see them coming, as Brady didn’t see the guy crashing into his knee last year. And yeah, the consequences could be huge. But you can’t go through life trying to avoid all the hits. It will just make them that much more devastating when they land.
And they will land. It’s not a matter of “if”, but a matter of “when”: loved ones die, you lose a bunch of money, you get laid off, the love of your life can leave, your car can break down, etc. These things happen. You need to prepare yourself for these problems and be able to pick yourself back up quickly.
Need some more similarities between the game of life and the game of football? Here are a few:
The game of life has considerably more “plays” than football, but your approach should be very similar. Your thoughts?
