Stupid Vs. Wrong

August 12, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

We here in the south love our college football. In fact, it would be easy to say that many worship college football. If a pittance of the devotion some give to their team were directed toward more worthy causes, there could be a substantial positive change in this world.

Don’t get me wrong, I love football. I love tailgating, fatty foods, friendly arguments, and the whole game day experience. But I don’t live or die with it. If my team loses, I am pretty much okay twenty minutes afterwards unlike some who can’t recover until a potential perfect season starts again the next year. Maybe that’s the benefit of your team never being very good, I don’t know.

I’ve noticed a disheartening trend among some fans. It happens when one of the players messes up and gets disciplined by the coach or school. All of the sudden, that kid is labelled “bad”… a ne’re-do-well. I have to say that upsets me more than the many losses my team racked up last year.

What many forget is that these are just kids put in a crazy situation that contains spotlights and cameras all pointed at them. When they do something stupid, everyone acts surprised and offended as if they have soiled the hallowed reputation of the university. Of course they are going to do something stupid! They are eighteen year-old boys. If all of my stupidity at that age was laid out on ESPN, I would have had a ton of labels thrown on me also. And my guess is that these superfans have skeletons, as well. Come on, if you are willing to paint your fat, nearly-naked body as an adult, what stupidity did you enter into as an adolescent?

painted

Here is what we need to remember. There is Stupid and there is Wrong – and they are two totally separate things. By stupid, I don’t mean unintelligent.

Portsong’s definition of Stupid – impulsive actions a young man undertakes with no forethought or consideration of consequence. Stupid.

“Hey, stop the car. You see those cows, let’s go cow-tipping?” – Stupid

“You bring your gun, let’s shoot that cow.” – Wrong

Need I list more examples? They are boys! Don’t confuse stupid behavior with bad intent. Stupid and Wrong are totally separate things. You get your belt out for wrong. You take away a privilege for stupid.

There are plenty of gray areas. “You wanna smoke some of this,” blurs the line between stupid experimentation and wrong. But I think you get my point. Just because a kid does something that gets him disciplined by his team or coach, he isn’t a bad kid. He’s just exercising his prerogative to be his age – lights, cameras, and microphones or not. Fans have created this surreal college sports environment where they expect young men to live up to a ten-thousand page code of conduct that they themselves would have torn up and eaten on a dare at their frat party just a few years ago.

Putting expectations like that on an 18 year-old kid is both stupid and wrong.

A Call to Tech Support

August 5, 2014.Reading time 4 minutes.

The wifi in my eldest daughter’s laptop died recently. Being the home’s Chief Technology Officer, I worked through the handy troubleshoot on the system which told me it was working perfectly. Of course, the inability to connect to the internet and the distraught look on my poor daughter’s face told me it wasn’t. No worries, I bought a USB dongle and she was up and running.

Little did I know that my trouble-shooting skills would soon be needed again. A week ago, she informed me that her dongle wasn’t working. Of course, at 11:15, my system was shut down, so I didn’t pay much attention and went to bed. When I awoke, I realized it wasn’t her computer – there was a wholesale internet outage in the house!

I think that is mentioned in Revelation, isn’t it? The Mark of the Beast and the inability to access High-Speed Wireless is in chapter 13, if I remember correctly. I looked outside and it didn’t appear the Battle of Armageddon had begun yet. A check of the beds told me the wife and kids were still here, so the rapture hadn’t left me behind (Whew!)

But I still had no internet.

This has happened before and I fixed it. What did I do? Oh yeah, I unplugged it and it rebooted itself. So I pulled the plug and let it regenerate. Unfortunately, the light blinking was still red long after power was restored. So I called my ever-helpful internet service provider and got stuck in the web of automated attendants who sound helpful, but are very patronizing. Don’t they know I am the CTO? That should give me some status, I would think.

My biggest problem wasn’t the self-righteous know-it-all computer voice on the other end of the phone, it was the fact that my cell phone service is spotty in the basement where the router resides. So I put the phone on speaker and listened as best I could. Like a rat pushing through a maze, I found the tech support cheese after seventeen minutes and the new, smarter sounding Tech Support Weenie voice tells me we are going to have to restart the system.

TSW: I will now tell you how to restart your system. This is a medium level procedure and will take approximately 3-5 minutes.

Okay

TSW: Can you see your internet router?

Yes

TSW: Please find the power cable on the back of the router and say yes when you’ve found it.

Got it

TSW: I didn’t understand you.

Er… Yes

TSW: Trace the cable to the electric outlet. Unplug the cable and wait 10 seconds before plugging it back in.

Well, that’s what I did before, but okay

TSW: Did this solve your problem?

NO!

At that point, my spotty cell service affected my ability to clearly hear the next steps in the process. What I am pretty sure it said was for me to disconnect all cables, kick the box across the room, plug it back in and see if any lights were blinking. Repeat until no lights function.

Done!

After I hung up, I went to work early and left this note on the floor:

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