Brett Favre: The Legend Continues
Week four’s Monday Night Football match-up was one of very few in recent history to live up to its pregame hype. I rank it as probably the second-greatest MNF ever.
The first was, of course, when Favre came out to play the Raiders on December 22, 2003. This not only solidified his status as the toughest quarterback to ever wear an NFL uniform — both mentally and physically, ensuring that his “iron man” streak of consecutive starts continues even to this day, it also happened to be the day after his father and high school football coach, Irvin Favre, died tragically of a heart attack.
Favre took to the field that night with one thing on his mind: this game was for his Dad.
Favre was nothing less that legendary, ringing up four touchdowns in the first half alone on his way to a 41-7 victory.
“I knew that my dad would have wanted me to play. I love him so much and I love this game. It’s meant a great deal to me, to my dad, to my family, and I didn’t expect this kind of performance. But I know he was watching tonight.”
Many people have given Brett Favre a lot of grief for getting the itch to play every fall. My guess is that most of those people simply hate their lives or their jobs so much that they simply cannot fathom what it’s like to do something you love for a living.
Brett Favre is at his best when he has something to prove. For him, every game is the most important one. He knows, even as he continues to set new NFL records and extends his streak of consecutive starts, that each game could be his last. The adversity of his personal life has taught him to take nothing for granted.
Favre rarely lets the fans down, and he showed up again to the Metrodome. True fans everywhere were smiling, and cheering.
Monday night’s game between Minnesota and Green Bay was the most-viewed television program, sports or otherwise, in the history of cable television, drawing nearly 22 million viewers.
The Packers actually contained Adrian Peterson quite effectively; holding him to just 55 yards rushing.
It was by no means a runaway victory as Aaron Rodgers established himself as a solid strategist on his feet, to be sure. To put it simply, Rodgers was brutalized all night long by the Vikings defense, who put him on the turf 8 times. But for a dropped pass by Donald Lee, though — a 9-yard rope right to his chest in the end zone, this game might have ended differently, but the Packers were up-ended and had to settle for a field goal.
This was a fitting first meeting as rivals for Favre and Rodgers, and the elder continued to educate the younger. In a game that featured a little bit of everything, Favre and the Vikings were victorious, with a score of 30-23.
It was as it should have been, and in the end another chapter in the legend of Brett Favre had been written. A legend that, thankfully, did not end a few years ago when Favre first decided to retire. As a true Packer fan, and a true Brett Favre fan, I am just happy to be able to watch.
Last Monday night in Minnesota, as Favre set yet another NFL record becoming the only quarterback to defeat every team in the League, Favre was still playing for his dad, and still loving every minute of it.
CloudBerry Explorer: Hidden Gem of the Day
Anyone using Amazon S3 storage solution from Amazon Web Services has probably already heard of some of the more popular explorer titles out there like JungleDisk, Bucket Explorer, and the S3Fox Firefox browser extension.
If you use a Mac, you already have a couple of other options that you probably like. Windows has really suffered a shortage of decent S3 browsers, and certainly a shortage of freeware apps in that vein.
I recently discovered a litte gem called CloudBerry Explorer — from CloudBerry Lab. This is a freeware title that far surpasses the power of anything I’ve used so far.
S3Fox suffered its frequent timeouts and crashes.
BucketExplorer is a decent title, but quite pricey.
JungleDisk created a huge problem for me with its automated backup solution that archived hundreds of thousands of backup items in a single directory — not to mention it also costs money. I’d long ago decided that JungleDisk was not a viable option for me since its obnoxious file tagging system is what most likely caused the time-outs with S3Fox in the first place.
I threw CloudBerry Explorer right into the fray by making it browse the JungleDisk backup archive with it’s more than 170,000 files. It took awhile, but listed them with ease. Deleting the archive was my mission since I now use Carbonite for all automatic off-site backups. Up until CloudBerry Explorer, I had been unable to find an app that could handle an archive of that size. Choosing to delete the entire directory sent me through another sequence of listing the files and then deleting them, one at a time. The status report was able to keep up without a problem. CloudBerry Explorer provided constant feedback during the entire deletion process. After about two hours, I had a fresh start and an empty archive.
I am still poking around at all of its features, but CloudBerry Explorer has a really nice set of features that make cloud storage as easy as drag-and-drop for any user. I give it 4 out of 5 thunks, and the only reason I am not giving it a 5 is because it relies on the Microsoft .NET framework. If this were a Java app that could be used on both Mac and PC, this would definitely garner a 5/5 thunks rating.
Forever Free Because You Showed Up for Work
Thanks to all who have served and are now serving in our Armed Forces.
Election Day ‘08
Well, it all comes down to this. I’m not going to convince anyone to change their mind at this point, so I’ll just say I voted, and happy Election Day to all. Thank God we are all still free.
Plug-in Hybrids and CFL Bulbs
It’s interesting to browse the materials of plug-in hybrid vehicle proponents such as Plug In America, but has anyone considered the additional load the new wave of electric vehicles is going to put on our existing, pathetically aged energy grid?
Also, the places which would see the greatest environment benefit from mass adoption of plug-ins are the same places whose power infrastuctures are already greatly stressed and overburdened.
I see the same sort of possible — maybe unanticipated — environmental impact when it comes to the massive influx of CFL bulbs practically being rammed down our throats. It’s becoming harder and harder to find standard incandescent bulbs. While energy consumption is a definite long-term benefit (assuming you don’t get faulty bulbs that burn out after a very short time — of which I’ve already had three in just the past year alone), what is the environmental impact of having to dispose of these bulbs through special, more costly recycling services. In addition, consumers are now forced to change their habits of simply tossing a spent bulb in the trash. Instead they are supposed to actively seek out local disposal regulations and recycling sites.
I’m all for energy conservation, but not at the expense of common sense. Ultimately, corporate America has to listen to consumer demand or they go out of business. Rather than rush this stuff to market, maybe a little more time could be spent thinking about a long-term environmental impact. Seems pretty basic, but I never hear people talking about that side of the issue.
