Dear Jay Leno:

You knew for FIVE years you were losing your late-night gig. Then you pushed anyway to remain on TV in a later-evening fashion. I do not buy into the “not my fault” “everyone’s angry” bullshit coming from you. I buy into you being happy being paid, and no matter who gets hurt, Jay comes out on top.

For the record, I stand with Conan O’Brien. Whee he goes, what he does — I’ll support him.

And as for Jay Leno? His humor has never worked for me – stand up, or as a variety show host. NBC shot themselves in the foot keeping him out of fear about what he’d do with a rival. They ruined their own late night schedule because of it.

But one thing that was not said was the fact  I was excited about the upcoming change of the store from one brand to another.  I was thrilled that the retail location at 400 East Lake road was going to get the traffic that the site had long deserved.

That’s part of the reason I began chronicling the renovation at the location.  Because what was a caterpillar would be a butterfly soon enough.   So twice I’ve posted about the cocoon that was the dormant retail space in Boot Ranch.  What I failed to do was actually announce when work crews started to show up at the address in May.  What I failed to address 0 with pictures and what not – was when the fences were put up, when the stucco facade was stripped and repainted over the summer.

Publix should be rising from the ashes of Albertsons the second week of December.  A year after I observed the in-waiting voidness of the location.  Painted, with untold renovations having happened inside and trees actually planted in the parking lot (which has long, long needed some shade trees), the building’s transformation is all but complete.   It looks splendid and I’m eager to check things out.

And then again, who pays attention?  The fact people don’t pay attention is why the proverbial wool keeps being pulled over society’s eyes.  But I digress, different rant, different time…

My issue isn’t about money being paid out in the rescue plans…  no, it’s how we’d gotten to the point where “too big to fail” actually existed, and how that issue is still causing grief on the US economy even after all the trillions handed out to financial institutions and other companies in the USA.

The issue is size. Go back to earlier in the decade and you had airline industries pleading for help as they slashed back and retooled their businesses while they were bleeding red regarding their finances.  Stock prices were down, amount of debt was up, etc, etc.  Why was the load so heavy?  You want to blame the unions?  Perhaps blame the white collar guys because of mismanagement?  Blame social conditions because they were absolutely craptastic after 9-11.  All of that plays into it in one part or another but really, that’s not the entirety of the problem.  No, the problem that led to the failures was the buying-out-the-competition of years prior that left the legacy carriers bloated and unable to sustain their own weight.  Part of it was the government turning a blind eye for the sake of letting business do their own thing while business was turning very anti-competitive with thanks to the big boys dominating everything.

Yes, competition still existed.  Yes, many of the smaller carriers simply failed while the bigger, stronger companies bought up their assets in order to strengthen themselves…  But they got too big.

Too big is too big.

You go to the US Auto Industry and you find the same problem — for decades, General Motors swallowed up competitors and added their name to their product line BUT simply sold clone cars that were also available under  different brand names.  Add their complacency that damned innovation in the name of profits and you had the makings of a fine mess.  Ford, Chrysler?  Just as guilty.  And no one in the government thought to break up any of these Big-Three in the name of capitalism.  “Where goes GM, so goes America” after all.

And too big was too big.  We’ve all seen it, GM’s come crashing down under the weight of their empire — bloated and endeared to profit before innovating.  In fact, the US auto industry has fought innovation more often than not — witness the documentary “Who Killed The Electric Car” for an example of this.  Hell, the aged “Unsafe at Any Speed” book by Ralph Nader is another example of this.

The US banking industry is the current example of this too.  The error that the government is playing into is that — in order to keep the financial industry from imploding in on itself, big must swallow big and get bigger in order to keep things afloat.  Trying to make things smaller — more nimble and adaptable – isn’t a consideration in all this mess.  Nope, profits are up, the Dow Jones is up and that means things must be getting better.

They’re not.  Because too big is too big.

This is not an attack on profit margins and all that jazz, it’s not an attack on capitalism…  This is a plea for sanity.  We’ve seen bubble-after-bubble in the market where an industry becomes extremely hot, everyone flocks to it, then the market explodes and those who are left are the ones who swallowed up as many of their rivals during the fallout…  Leaving massive, hulking companies that become “too big to fail” because of how it would hurt the economy and how it would hurt the worker or society in general.

The problem is, the companies are too big to stay solvent too.  Not without a sustianed market uptick.  If they do stay solvent?  They stagnate.  Why innovate when you have the market cornered?

It’s not that simple, but it shouldn’t be thought of as so complex that we should all turn a blind eye toward it.  When you have one big company doing all the hiring, they dominate.  You don’t have alternative places to run to for jobs because there aren’t many or any options.  And when they shed jobs in the name of profits, stock price and financial expectations?  There are not many other options for work in the industry because the big boy(s) have the market cornered.

Too big is too big.  That’s why you’ve heard people crowing about tighter regulations.  Something should be done to encourage competition and limit business size.  Everyone can have a profit, but encouraging the big to get bigger is a hinderence.

For those who are unaware (and the general web-cosmos out there), I’m deaf.  Stone deaf.  Lost my hearing by way of genetic disorder and lost my hearing at 18.  I was implanted with a version of Cochlear’s Nucleus-22 processor (known as the ABI) but didn’t go through with having it “turned on” (so to speak) until October of 2001.

…and if I knew how well I would hear with this implanted device, I would have gone through with it much sooner. 

The thing is, with the implanted device, you have had to wear body-worn equipment to make it work.  Stuff on your person.  And for eight years, I’ve been wearing what essentially is a obsolete piece of equipment.  The Spectra-22 was originally state -of-the-art in about 1989 – give or take a few years.  While the entire concept of a late-deaf person hearing again is fantastic, technology sometimes does limit as much as it enables.   Like in my case.

I’ve been complaining to my audiologist in Los Angeles about hwo I cannot “turn the corner” with sound — while I hear and understand most everyday sounds, noises and what-have-you, I have an issue with understanding spoken word from people.  I’m not all that great understanding generally day-to-day talking.  Watching TV?  I need closed captioning.  Trying to chit-chat with family or friends?  Harrowing experience where I have to do more speaking than attempting to listen.  Group conversation?  Fughettaboutit.  There’s no friggin’ way I follow a conversation that is more than me and someone else.

Part of that is the limitation of the speech processor hardware.  Part of that is a limitation of the implanted device in itself.  Part of that is just me — after all, I started losing m hearing at around age 13 and conversation soon turned to blah-blah-blah unless I really focused.  calling it laziness wouldn’t be out fo the question.  In fact, part of me feels like that’s exactly what it is — laziness and lack of actual focusing on what I hear due to quality.  Oh, I can listen and follow music just fine…  Speech?  Different story.  Different complication.

One that I hope gets appended with a recent change.

In April I started having issues with my now-arcane Spectra-22.  I shot off an email to my audiologist about issues I was having and asked about replacing the device — I did have insurance on my equipment after all.  But my doctor explained that the Spectra had been discontinued as it was now technologically obsolete.

“No…  Really?”   I muttered with thick sarcasm from where I was sitting.  The hearing-noose that the Spectra is/was (and I’m not ungrateful, I’d gladly wear that piece of equipment instead of being deaf) was clearly dated with the technological innovations that were showing up elsewhere in society.  Of course, cell phone technlogy or computing technology isn’t quite comparable to a human prosthetic — is it?  From processors onboard your iPhone or Blackberry to different innovations with software that had certainly taken place since the Spectra-22 hardware was introduced, I have been pretty certain that “turning the corner” with understanding speech was only a speech processor upgrade away.

A couple of weeks ago now, I ventured to Los Angeles on my yearly sojourn to see my audiologist at the House Ear Institute.  This time around, instead of using arcane sofware tied to the arcane speech-processor I was wearing as I entered the building, we were going to be replacing that hardware with the new Freedom speech processor from Cochlear.

Cochlear's Freedom Processor BTE unit

One can see from the processor picture alone that there is a lot less hardware involved in the unit.  Instead of having to wear a body-pack to handle all the technological mumbo-jumbo, it’s all contained within the first 1/3rd of the prosthetic.  The rest?  Audio control and batteries.

It’s taken me a few days to adjust to sound as it’s relayed with the device – and when I mean sound I mean general hearing.  You have different aspects that you can tune with this device (the microphone volume and the microphone sensitivity) that both play into what you are able to hear.  On the Spectra, you only had the option of turning up or down the sensitivity of the microphone on the unit.  That led to a lot of noise clutter even as you used a second setting to reduce background noise.  It was part of why speech was only blah-blah-blah.  Though I must admit that i am yet to master the improvements that I can have with a strong sensitivity without a loud volume and what not.

Practice will make perfect, however.

Yet I had an event, just listening to sound like I normally would, that encouraged me.  Actually two.  One was listening to TV in my hotel room and having to turn off closed-captions due to them distracting me as I tried to listen to a talk show on TV.   Imagine that?  Going through years upon years of needing the crutch that is closed captions and then having to turn them off because they were distracting you.  Mind you, I was not picking up the full conversation that was going on but I was understanding key words being used instead of hearing the throw-away words like and, then, if, to, but that give no perception of what is going on in the conversation.  Instead, I was making out key words that gave me a gist of what was being said.  Add the tone of a speakers voice and their body language and you aren’t on the outside, looking in so much.  You’re at the doorway and you’re eavesdropping.  That’s what it felt like.

The other little ephinay I experienced was simply listenign to my iPod.  Yes, it’s odd that someone who is clinically deaf has an iPod to begin with…  let alone enjoys music at all but here I am.  Listening to music tended to be quite like listening to AM radio with outstanding reception, or FM radio for that matter.  Could have been better but it was great all unto itself.

And yet I listened to the typical stuff on my MP3 player — The Doors, REM, Counting Crows, Aerosmith, the Beatles, what not…  the quality was closer to CD quality than I’d ever had before.  CD Quality!  CD Quality!

That’s encouraging!  More than encouraging.  Sure, everything isn’t going to be perfect any time soon, but I look forward to trying to get there.

Technology can indeed be grand.

Well, unless of course it’s trash tabloid-ism or an arrest warrant… But I’m not talking just-printed-on-paper but I mean a by-line of one sort or another. I can say that from experience as I’ve gotten that kick — seeing “John Fontana” linked to letters-to-the-editor, or being sourced/interviewed by USA Today, being quoted in The Hockey News, The New York Times Slap Shot blog and la-de-da.

But I can also say that wasn’t where I intended to go with writing when I started out as a kid.  My intention wasn’t to be a face-in-the-crowd (though no matter what you write or publish, you are another face in the crowd of literature) in the newspaper.  Not another source for magazines and what not.  Not a weblogger.  I planned on doing things creatively and having my own book.  Or books — plural.  Take your pick.

But that never happened.  See, when i was a teen I got away from story writing so much and was writing poetry most of the time…  a habit that’s followed me into adulthood.  Lyrical verse more-so than deep observations and perspectives…  Well, yeah they are perspectives but they are my perspectives.   Sometimes just pop, sometimes inspired by events or people or feelings  in my life.

Over the years, I’ve had some of them available to the masses through the web…  Certainly you can find a couple of them on this site and probably elsewhere on the web…  But they’ve never really been published in the sense of print.  Never published in the sense of being out there for any traditional form of mass consumption.  I haven’t bothered to take the time with sending out poems to magazines who have niches all of their own (and aren’t available unless you pay for a subscription or pay for a copy — while you’re not getting paid for your contribution).

I ought to put together a manuscript and do something with it.  But I’m hesistant.

Catherine Durkin Robinson, local blogger and Creative Loafing contributor, has written two book manuscripts.  Her first one is being published, chapter-by-chapter, on a blogspot site.  The other, a more recent work based on her life as a teacher in Hillsborough County, is being sent around to literary agents in hopes someone will pick up the work and mass-market it.  Sadly, that has not been the case and the rejections have been comical at best.

Their loss.  I’ve read the book and it’s not only a good read, it’s provocative and controversial enough to be read widely by those fearing school-district scandals.

I also have another friend, in the Pacific Northwest this time, who went out and self-published her first novel.  The book, Steel Goddesses, is currently available on Amazon.com for purchase.  It takes a lot of courage to go out on a limb like that and self-publish any work…  But it sort of cuts out the middle-man of having to appease literary agents who tell you what a proper market for your writing is-or-isn’t and tells you to change your work to fit that niche.  At least that’s what I’ve seen with rejections served up to Catherine.

So the idea I am kicking around is actually putting together a manuscript of poetry I’ve written over the past decade and self-publishing it.   I realize that poetry is not exactly a hot seller and not going to lead me to riches…  It’d cost me more to publish than the commissions I’d get in the long run from doing it…  But it does what I have long sought to do — take the writings jammed in Mead notebooks that I’ve carried around since High School and take some of those verses and show them to the masses.  Will people connect?  I have doubts.  Will strangers read what I’ve  written?  Even more doubts…  But it’s mine, and it’d be out there.  My claim.  My piece of literature.

My book.

It’s a thought, at least.

Every time your car gets room to run, not as many obstacles, and the engine at least sounds like it’s starting to purr…. Well, a lug nut is coming loose and the entire engine block is about to come apart in a grand mess.

The point is — One thing goes right, something goes wrong.

…do I find out I can’t find a print copy of The Hockey News in Palm Harbor. Sheesh.

Only catch is that you need to fill 20 of the items on your ballot. Ballots with less won’t be counted…. So look over everything – EVERYTHING – and vote.

This was before their was wider network access to MySpace and therefore I had to join in order to view any member’s profile information or photos. So in early 2005 I joined MySpace…

And hated it the entire time I was involved.

MySpace was like the AOL of social networks to me. Oh, it had a lot of bells and whistles you have seen copied and imitated by other networks… It introduced people to the web in general in a lot of ways (design wise – with customizable profiles where you could change every aspect of your profile with a bit of CSS know-how, which fathered an entire sub-market of web design sites). It was the forefather of other social network sites and catered to the mainstream while it’s “competitor” — Facebook — was aimed specifically at the college crowd and linking college students and alumni.

I connected with a few people on MySpace – old friends, new friends – but generally loathed the experience. MySpace was technologically obsolete, even if it’s vision was advanced. Social networking and it’s strength for marketing and message spread was something only just catching on.

The problem with MySpace was that it did not advance itself like most web properties do — no significant design changes, no huge additions or subtractions. Oh, there was one significant change that helped put it on the outs with me and others: More flash advertising. Videos, interactive applets and other intensive ads that belabored my browser and annoyed my web surfing experience. I don’t want to see a video for “Miss March” when I just want to see the message that was sent to em from an old friend! I just wanna’ log in and get it done.

Why did I stick around four years with MySpace? Friends who aren’t on Facebook (which I joined at the behest of hockey bloggers in 2006 or so, after the network started allowing the general public to join). Family as well. Just appeasing them because there was no way to stay connected to them without a Myspace profile.

But really, it’s over now.

I didn’t like the Web 1.0 design, I hated the crappy design jobs that people employed on personal profile pages, I hated (abhorred, loathed, etc) all the flash bullshit that was lumped onto people’s profiles (tons of youtube videos stacked on top of each other, tons of different photo album bells and whistles in the middle of the profile, etc) as well as the advertisements.

In the end, MySpace felt like a toy that had never had it’s packaging improved. A toy that’s never had it’s design flaws corrected besides the barest of changes. A toy that’s been improved-upon and leaped over by it’s competitors.

A toy that’s lost it’s novelty and wore out my patience early on. I endured. But no longer.

When someone Retweets (RT’s) another person’s message (rt @username ) — they can cut down the original message to get under the 140 character length. But if you’re going to add text to the Retweet, do it BEFORE the RT. Otherwise, you make it look like your comment was part of the original message someone posted.

One other thing: if you’re going to follow someone because they cover a certain subject matter, don’t badger that person when they go off-topic and talk about something else. No one, and I mean no one, is on topic 24/7/365.

Sorry I have not posted here on Der Stonegauge for something like… well, a long while. How long? So long, in fact, that it’s an opinion of a falsehood and not the truth. That’s how long.
Part of it’s just lacking motivation to write something not hockey related. Part of it is the inability to collect thoughts. I get an idea for a blog post and by the time I am back at the computer I find myself having to report on something else.

I’ll try to be more involved here, but if life calls — I have to put everyone (both of you) following Stonegauge on hold again. Sorry.

That had nothing to do with the news that has been buzzing around lately. Odd coincidence, though…

I guess it was when a friend on Facebook posted this status that I really woke up to it:

looks like captain tripps does exist!!! awesome!!!

Ah yes, “Captain Tripps” — the nickname for King’s super-flu from The Stand. What’s next? Corin Nemic joining Fox News coverage, staking out the Center for Disease control and trying to insinuate this is all the Democratic Party’s fault? (Corin Nemic, for those who don’t understand the reference, played Harold Lauder: outcast-nerd-turned-turncoat; in the miniseries. He also used to be Parker Lewis. “Not a problem.”)

Anyway, forget The Stand for a minute and lets just go back to the sensationalism of the coverage of the Flu. From what reports would have you believe, death-rates are high (like 10%+) and we’re all screwed. Joe Biden didn’t help things this morning by stating public caution.

But really, I wish people would just stop watching TV coverage of this and just become aware of the facts and just go about their lives. The flu sucks and is known to be deadly… But unless people start showing severe symptoms and start dropping dead in mass in New York instead of showing only mild symptoms… Well, it’s a panic that seems straight out of a work of fiction.

…And to be honest, King’s work of fiction was a lot better than the news coverage we are seeing in reality.

Let me point to it again — read the articles here. If you only want to spend time reading a single article, read the fourth in that series. And calm the hell down!

So — that being said, for those looking for Segway scooters, their are two dealerships outside of the Tampa/St. Pete market, but relatively close by in West-Central Florida for you to check out if you are shopping for a Segway:

Chrysler of Sarasota
6826 S. Tamiami Trail
941-922-1521 (no web site)

Segway of Central Florida
Office 352-383-9900

Both of these dealers were provided to me by Tampa Bay Segs – which is a tour operation based in St. Petersburg. Across the bay, if you’re interested in seeing Tampa from up close, check out Magic Carpet Glide.

It’s amazing! It’s spectacular, and it’s leaving me in stitches with every week’s new offering. Check Clarketplace and see absurdity at it’s finest!