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No Monday update as I was still recovering from a cold that has been kicking my butt since last Thursday. Ugh.

Good news! Pitchers and catchers report! It’s that much closer to baseball season. Interesting that some people are already declaring the Philadelphia Phillies to have the best pitching rotation ever. Hold up people. A lot of people were saying that about the Atlanta Braves some years ago in the 1990′s. For all of that pitching (Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Avery/Neagle/Etc), they managed exactly one World Series title. One. When the Phillies win multiple World Series titles with this rotation, then they can be declared the best ever. It is a scary rotation, no doubt. But the Phillies have other problems. They still have a weak bullpen and they lost a very important offensive weapon in Jason Werth.

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Okay so for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I watched the Grammy Awards. It was not by choice. My wife came in and changed the channel and I was too tired to get up and go somewhere else to not watch. Some thoughts:

1. Whoever produced the entire show deserves an Emmy award. The sets for the musical acts were amazing and the move to an old style black and white view when Bruno Mars performed was a nice touch.

2. I am so tired of hearing from people how “awesome’ Lady Gaga is. Newsflash: She’s not awesome. The song she performed was such an obvious ripoff of Madonna’s song ‘Express Yourself’, it was all over Twitter in minutes. I hope LG gave Madonna a credit. Lady Gaga is an average talent. She’s a brilliant marketing person. She has made her outrageousness work for her. Speaking of Madonna, I was in a restaurant when a Madonna song came on. I’m not even a Madonna fan. But in listening to that song, I realized just how bad pop music (for the most part) has become over the last 5-10 years.

3. Muse was excellent. I’ve heard them on the radio before. I was really impressed with them.

4. What is it with some hip hop artists that they always have to look pissed off? Eminem won an award and you would have thought he was being sent to the principal’s office at school. Lighten up guys. You too Dr. Dre. Remember, we know that before you joined NWA you were dressed like this.

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I saw the movie ‘Waiting For Superman‘ and it was inspiring, saddening and angering all at the same time. This movie has come under heavy criticism from teachers unions and to be honest, I have no sympathy for them. AFT President Randi Weingarten wrote a piece about the movie that is so dishonest it’s hilarious. First, the title of the piece says the film “casts teachers and unions as villains.” This is a common tactic by union heads. If a union is criticized, they label the criticism as an attack on teachers which is complete nonsense. Director Davis Guggenheim went out of his way to praise good teachers and enforce to the viewers how hard these people work, their love for what they do and the love they have for their students. Weingarten also writes:

There are more than 3 million teachers working in our 130,000 public schools. Are there bad teachers? Of course there are, just as there are bad accountants, and lawyers, and actors.

What she neglects to tell readers is Guggenheim pointed out this staggering statistic:

1 in 57 doctors lose their medical license. 1 in 97 lawyers lose their law license. 1 in 2500 teachers lose their teaching credentials.

She goes on to write:

It is shameful to suggest, as the film does, that the deplorable behavior of one or two teachers (including an example more than two decades old) is representative of all public school teachers.

The film does nothing of the sort. She’s referring to a scene where a student was given a hidden camera to record what went on in his classroom. Kids played dice and did other things while the teacher sat at the front of the class reading a newspaper. Milwaukee school Superintendent Howard Fuller fired this teacher and several others. What Weingarten fails to tell you is that these teachers had their jobs reinstated with full back pay because of their tenured status. Fuller apparently did not go through all of the correct procedures to fire these teachers.

Teachers unions have unfortunately put themselves in this position because their goals unfortunately have revolved around their own power and have not acted in the best interests of children. Teachers unions have their place. I have no issues with that, but teachers unions also behave as if all teachers have some kind of fundamental right to teach. They work so hard to protect the employment of obviously awful teachers to the detriment of the children being taught.

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Here’s a clue for having any kind of political debate: Don’t make broad based statements you cannot support or use to build up a strawman argument you can easily knock down. Have specifics for your claims and arguments you can support. You just look silly otherwise.

Sometimes a challenging situation can produce something great. The photo above is an image of two good friends of mine and their kids. Steve & Bonnie Biedermann came into my life as part of our weekly church small group. We quickly became friends. Bonnie plays the violin and we’re both part of the worship team at our church. At one point, she asked if there was room in our life group and at the time we were kind of full, but we made room and I’m happy to say that my wife and I are better for it. Steve has been a mentor to me the last couple of years. We just truly value their friendship.

Bonnie asked me to do family photos for them for Steve’s birthday. The special part of this birthday was that all three of their kids – Todd, Scott and Barbara would be spending the long weekend with them without their own kids. Scott lives in California, Todd in Pennsylvania and Barbra in Alabama, so the logistics of getting all of them together is not easily done. In fact, Bonnie said to me it was the first time in nearly 10 years all three of them had seen each other at the same time.

Bonnie wanted photos at the beach. Shooting at the beach is challenging. Shooting at the beach in mid-morning sun and windy conditions is even more challenging. Super thanks go out to my wife who acts as my assistant on these shoots because to be honest, some of the shots I was able to get would not have been possible without her. Things did go relatively well, and this shot is one of my favorites from that day.

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Jason Fried, CEO of 37Signals talks about why work doesn’t happen at work. Excellent stuff here. Thanks to Tom for the heads up:

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So I actually found myself inside a Walmart at midnight last Friday (Thursday night). The big item I was there for? Well, not me. But my wife. She wanted to get a $10 waffle iron. It was midnight and the big deals hadn’t even started yet but the place was packed. They had certain areas roped off so that people would sit in their lawn chairs for 5 hours waiting for the door buster sales. So many people wanted to get their hands on a garbage $200 Gateway laptop.

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So the NY Times wouldn’t publish any emails from the ‘Climategate’ fiasco because they were obtained “illegally” but they are happy to publish sensitive documents obtained illegally by Wikileaks. This is why people don’t trust the media. This is not about bias so much as it is a total lack of consistency.

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If you’re a Keynote user, you should check out this site. Some great free stuff available.

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So we officially turned off our cable on Friday and turned on the Roku devices we purchased. So far, after a few days, I haven’t missed cable at all. Cable television companies, for the first time ever, since pay television came into existence, are losing customers. The cable and satellite companies have nobody to blame but themselves. People for the longest time have said, “Give us a la carte programming. Let me pay for what I want to watch instead of ‘packages’ filled with channels I don’t watch.” The response has been nothing but sneers and bogus claims of lost revenue as a result.

And mark my words. You know how cable and satellite companies are going to respond to this? Not with business innovation and new ideas. No, they’ll respond with lawsuits and fierce lobbying of clueless politicians who will proclaim whatever new restrictions they are advocating for on behalf of satellite and cable companies is being done for the interest of the consumer. Sure.

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I don’t know if this is funny, sad or what. But I’ve started watching ’24′ again from the beginning. Why? Because whether it is time or increased age, I can’t remember anything about the earlier seasons. Granted, I remember big events (like Jack’s wife dying in the first season and Nina being the traitor) but totally forgot about other stuff so it’s almost like watching it all over again! Granted, I am sure that as I get into later seasons, I’ll remember more and probably turn it off, but for now, it’s pretty cool.