Is LSU the next Duke?

Well, it was a crazy day of college football. At least for those following the Big 10 and Rose Bowl births. One thing's for sure: Michigan will be making its second Rose Bowl appearance in a row. Maybe this year they won't embarass this state I call home.

Much in the same light, as I type this post LSU is losing to Ole Miss. What happened to you, LSU? You used to be good. LSU?!!!

Let's see, more sports embarassments...check this out if you haven't already. Total craziness. And here's what I think about the whole thing: (a) the players that went into the stands deserve to be suspended indefinitely (as they have been) if not thrown out of the league; okay perhaps that's a little harsh but I don't think there's ever an instance where a player crossing that line is justified, and (b) detroit fans are complete punks; in general there should be better security at sporting events and those charged with enforcing such security should start throwing fans out of the games and perhaps pressing charges against such behavior. But hey, what do I know.

Tonight Chad (my coworker here in MN/ON for those unaware) and I had dinner at the house of one of the owners of the paper we're here training. It was an enjoyable evening indeed, and we even managed to cross the border with a bottle of wine with no problems. We're getting good at this game.

Hmm, well, Florida and Florida State are battling it out at the moment and with 6:00 left in the game I can type no longer. I'm not even sure who I want to win this one - so much emotion tied to this game - but I know I have to see how it finishes.

Lastly, I'll simply say that I've been bitten by the airport express bug. That is all I will say.

Goodnight,
RB

bvmikevath crosses the border

I haven't posted in a while. No excuses, just a combintation of lazyness and a lack of exciting stories to share. My week in Michigan was enjoyably low-key, and now I find myself on the road again. One of my coworkers - with whom I was supposed to travel this week - came down with a nasty case of pneumonia, resulting in a last minute itinerary change that led me here. I'm in Fort Frances, Ontario. Located just across the river from Internation Falls, MN, Ft. Frances is the home to a wonderfully pollutant paper mill. And a pretty rediculous border crossing. See, we're actually staying in "the falls" so we've had to cross over each day. Let me share our adventures:

Monday: The guy checking cars that pass through (customs) asked us to park and come inside so that we could talk to both the immigration people and the customs people. Immigration gave us the appropriate documentation to expedite our crossing each day, but asked that we bring by some extra paperwork on Tuesday just to be safe. Customs let us go with no problems.

Tuesday: The guy at customs again let us drive through with no problems, but then we parked and walked in voluntarily so that we could give the paperwork to immigration. A different lady was working that day but after a little bit of waiting everything was worked out.

Wednesday: Total chaos. The customs guy was a total ass, accusing us of smuggling software across the border, because they had let us through for two days prior. They were talking about making us pay all these taxes and penalizing us and all this craziness. At this point Chad lost his temper and got a little short with the Customs Officer. I don't blame him. So they made us sit and wait for a while. But the funny part was that as soon as the woman from the newspaper walked into the customs office to help us sort it out, everyone switched from bitch-mode to super-laid-back-anyone-can-cross-the-border mode. So she ironed things out with them while Chad and I shared a laugh about it all with the immigration ladies - our new best friends, apparently). In the end the customs people apologized for their harsh canadian ways, and all was right with the world.

Today was much easier. Crossing the border I mean. And now I'm sitting in the hotel having a glass of boxed wine and watching friends while laying out tomorrow's paper on my powerbook. Go Apple.

And on that note, goonight.

Wearing Tube Socks With Style

Ignore the time stamp on this one, I'm writing from the Roanoke airport and it's about 12:00 pm. Fortunately the airport has free wireless but blogger is being somewhat of a hassle so I'm stuck typing this text file for now.

The area immediately surrounding the airport here is quite beautiful. The horizons of rolling mountains is a welcome change from the flat landscape of lower Michigan (beautiful though it is). In fact, it's such a beautiful day that a part of me wishes I had one more day here to play in the sun. A larger, He-Man sized part of me, however, just wants to get back to Michigan.

************

Ok, I'm on the plane now. I usually don't like to use my computer on the plane, as I refuse to be the guy who uses the cabin as his personal office. You know the type: making calls very loudly while having a drink and making a big show of the spreadsheets he's staring at in Excel. "Buy! Sell! I don't care, I want steel. I don't want alloys. Steel, Harry!" I don't like that guy. And I feel pretty secure in my current use of the laptop, as I am sitting quietly against the only windowless window seat on the plane (as the jet propeller is spinning a mere 3 feet to my right) in worn out jeans and a t-shirt listening to The Magnetic Fields. On this plane I'm student traveler Mike, and that's fine by me.

Enough of that. I wanted to tell all those Rufus Wainwright fans out there to check out the Want Two Player on his website. You can hear/see a few previews of his new cd/dvd combo coming out later this month. Be warned, though, that good old Ruffy has taken his dramatic sensibilities to new heights with this one. For now I'm not really talking about the music, but just things like the web/liner art. If you thought iron clad Rufus from Want One was crazy just wait until you see what he has in store for you this time.

(Ahh, pretzel twists and Diet Pepsi, two things no flight is complete without.)

Changing gears again, here are some funny stories from Staunton:

---> As I may have mentioned, the bar located on the first floor of the holiday inn that was my home for 10 nights was THE hotspot of Staunton's nightlife. I went a total of three time, once last Thursday and then again this Wednesday and Thursday. By the third night, the bartender greeted me by name and knew my drink (Tanqueray and tonic) before I even reached the bar stool. I even got introduced to another bartender in the following way: "Penny, this is my friend Mike. He's got a tab running. Tanqueray and tonic if he needs anything." I'm a little embarrassed to admit that but I'm slightly comforted by the fact that there were others at the bar who shared a much higher level of "regular" than I. And to think that I spent 4 years going to bars in South Bend and never came close to such status as I achieved in Staunton in a few nights....

--> This past Wednesday, at the bar, there was a couple performing quietly on stage. I'm pretty sure they were married. The husband was sitting on a bar stool playing guitar and singing, while the wife was standing and singing. They had very little presence in the bar that night. But here's the funny part: they reminded me so much of the characters in that SNL skit with Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer. The one where they're singing their own renditions of pop music. See, this couple sang things like The Stones, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, The Soggy Bottom Boys, etc. but the wife was singing all the melodies (with the husband occasionally harmonizing) and it was a little scary and a lot like that skit. But it made the bartender and those of us at the bar laugh quite a bit.

--> Yesterday was our last day on site at the paper in Staunton. We didn't have a whole to do other than fielding the occasional question and gather some info/data to bring back to Baseview. Or so it seemed until about 4:00 when the IT guy at the paper kicked the plug our from the wall and all the servers went down. I happened to be in the server room moments after it happened (the reason for this is quite ironic, as we had just finished a session in which I instructed him on proper server maintenance). News editors, adtakers, and layout artists came flooding in, all very pissed they they had lost their server connections. The IT guy - who had been completely laid back about everything since the day we arrived - was now sweating, running around frantically trying to get the servers back up. A few minutes later it seemed like everything was okay. Crisis averted, right? Of course not. The database which holds all information for the classifieds (customer accounts, ads, billing info, layout stuff, etc.) would not restart after crashing when the power went down. Note that this is the very same database that we had been there to set up and train. It was, in a very tangible way, the foundation for everything we had done at the paper. And now it was dead. I realize this is all sounding overly dramatic but this really was the scene yesterday afternoon. Without this database the classifieds could not go to print and the newspaper could not bill any of their customers. And so for me, a first timer on the job, it was looking pretty terrible. After numerous phone calls to managers and support staff at Baseview, things finally got resolved, though I'll spare you the details. And after an 11 hour day, the longest of the week, we went home. For good.

Wow, retelling that last story has me ready for a mid-flight nap. Maybe the attendant will bring me a pillow.

~Student Traveler Mike