Rants

Goodbye Rocky Mountain News

Jeromey Balderrama

I’d be remiss if I didn’t spend a little time observing the end of an era. Starting tomorrow, Denver becomes a 1 Newspaper Town, as the Rocky Mountain News published their last edition today.

To commemorate (or commiserate), the Rocky put together a well-produced video talking about the course that brought them to the end. I would suggest taking some time to check it out:

I feel badly for the staff at the Rocky, those are no longer have jobs and have to worry about how they’re going to take care of their families.  I want to put that out there, as this is a horrible situation and you never want to see anyone lose their livelihood under these circumstances.

At the same time, the failure does require some analysis. I’m not an economist or a newspaper expert, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts:

One of the things that bothers me about the economy is the tendency for people to scapegoat the recession.  While there are things genuinely affected by the economy, it’s simply not that simple.  I believe that in the cases of some businesses, the current economic climate exposes and accelerates failing business models.

Circuit City serves as a good example of this.  It’s been known for sometime that Circuit City was losing market share and wasn’t keeping up with their competitors.  Some say it’s due their sales atmosphere, others say that circuit city failed to grasp the changes in the electronics retail climate (e.g. Geek Squad vs. Firedog).  Today’s economy may have expedited their fall, but the writing has been on the wall for Circuit City for some time.

I see newspapers going through the exact same thing.

If you watch the video, they reference circumstances that threatened the Newspaper industry: classifieds and blogs.  As well done as this video is, when Jeff Legwold starts criticizing bloggers he demonstrates the industry’s failure to grasp new media.  It’s easy to paint bloggers with a broad brush of unreliability.  The importance of speed in news & blogs comes with its own set of problems, but rather newspapers spent a great deal of time grandstanding and criticizing, when they should have been adapting to this model.

Technology improves, media changes. The printing press has enjoyed a centuries-long dominance of media, a dominance which slowly eroded due to the radio, then television, and now the Internet.   Things evolve, and businesses must change.  I’ve subscribed to the daily and weekly newspaper before, only to find that those quickly stacked up in my recycle bin, going unread.  Why? Because our generation consumes media differently, and in some ways more efficiently.  It’s easy to vilify Craigslist as a mean dog that ate all of your lunch, but newspaper industry’s failure to recognize the changes and opportunities is what brought this about.  This is not unlike the music industry’s reluctance of digital music, ultimately crippling their power and influence.

Does the printing press still have its place in media?  Yes, but no where near the prominence that it’s enjoyed over the centuries.  The newspapers that will succeed are the ones that will embrace this, as an opportunity to scale down their overhead, migrate to delivering their content to new media, and letting go of old business models.

In the case of the Rocky, it quickly became obvious that their parent company wasn’t willing to invest the time and resources to allow them to do this.  They ignored the writing on the wall until it was painfully obvious, then set up the Rocky for failure.  Scripps Media put the Rocky on sale on Dec 4, giving a 2 month deadline for the sale of the paper. Most people couldn’t sell a house in 2 months during this time (especially in this climate).  This goes back to my original point – the economy isn’t the cause of the decline, it simply accelerated the effects of poor business model and decisions.

My prayers are with the employees of the Rocky Mountain News today, and hope that they will continue to be able to apply their skills through meaningful work.

Lack of Home Field Advantage

Jeromey Balderrama

Maybe I’m reeling from the Broncos loss to the Raiders on Sunday, but this article from ESPN’s Bill Simmons about the lack of Home Field Advantage in New Stadiums got me thinking.  Simmons is pretty articulate, so here’s the reader’s digest version:

Teams with new (or significantly remodeled) stadiums in the last 10 years have compiled poor records against point spreads.  In 2008, the (spread) record for these teams are 29-44 this season.  In fact, the teams with new stadiums have fallen below .500 in beating-the-spread numbers 5 of the last 7 years.  The conclusion: SOTAS (state-of-the-art stadium) teams have watched their home-field advantage evaporate in a pile of money.

At first glance this seems coincidental, but when you think about how new stadium have changed the experience of going to NFL games, it’s pretty easy to understand why home field advantage isn’t what it used to be for these SOTAS teams.  Simmons tells a pretty good story of the Foxboro  gameday experience in his column, and it’s pretty similar to ours’.

Each Broncos home game, we make our way down to Denver with our tailgating gear in tow about 4-5 hours before game time.  Going to Broncos games does take the better part out of our day.  We leave the house at 10 and don’t get back home until 8pm. We arrive at the stadium, set up the grill, the chairs, the awning, the ladder golf and have our pre-game celebration.  We usually eat and drink pretty well before the game, and gluttony is still a fraction of the cost of the food & beer in the stadium.  We then take the 20 minute walk to the stadium and usually get to our seats right after kick-off. 

Our seats, while in the nosebleed levels, are great seats when it comes to watching the plays develop and being with fans that make true financial sacrifices to support their team.  As Simmons points out though, the NFL’s actions – both negligent and intentional – have diminished the role of the everyday fan at these games.  I never went to a game at the old Mile High, but I definitely heard the stories: stories of how loud that stadium got, and also stories of people who had season tickets during the stadium transition and got screwed out of great seats.  As Simmons points out, people who used to scream at the field are now sitting in the upper levels where they scream towards the sky. 

Simmons also makes a great point about the length of the games:

Throw in the dirty secret that it isn’t really fun to attend an NFL game in the 21st century — the routine of "kickoff, TV timeout, three plays, punt, TV timeout, five plays, field goal, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout, someone gets hurt on first down, prolonged TV timeout, three more plays, touchdown, extra point, TV timeout, kickoff, TV timeout" gets old after about 25 minutes

-Not to mention that during those TV timeouts, you’re subjected to ads there in the stadium. Everything has become sponsored by someone.  I thought it was Eddie Royal that brought us that first down – not Lowes.

I’ve been lucky enough to sit down in the 4th row from the field before, and while heckling the visiting bench is fun, most of the people down there really don’t give a damn about football – at least when compared to the people in the upper levels.  Bethany and I have sat in the club level when she got tickets from work and the people around us seemed annoyed when we made noise for the defense.

While I do consider myself lucky and blessed that I have the opportunity to go to the games, I can’t help but wonder about the comment Simmons made:

“The bad news is that, with just a few exceptions, it’s now more entertaining to invite your friends over, tailgate in your backyard and watch your favorite team on TV. You get the replays. You get HD. You have your own bathroom. You’re saving money. You can stand up if you want. You don’t have a commute. If you have the NFL package, you can flip around to other games during commercials. What’s the downside? You got me. I had 10 times more fun watching the Pats-Jets game at a New York City bar last week than I would have had at the actual game. And the sad thing was, I knew that would be the case.”

Playing at Mile High used to be a lock for Denver, but we’ve now dropped 3 games in-a-row at home.  I understand that the Broncos have a lot of other problems, but one can’t wonder if the Mile High Magic has diminished at Invesco and other brand new stadiums.

Tech Gripe: Does Qwest cap uploads?

Jeromey Balderrama

This is another question/technology gripe I’m throwing out there to see if anyone is experiencing the same thing: Does Qwest DSL drop your connection when you’re uploading large files?

I was doing some Greenfoot work tonight, and am trying to upload our new tracks to a hosting/steaming service.  The service is asking for WAV files so that they can encode on-the-fly – fair enough.  I upload the WAV files ranging from 40-55mb, not huge by any means, but sizeable.  I tried uploading directly to the web site, but about 20% into the upload my DSL connection drops for a few minutes, reconnecting to a different IP address and breaking my upload.  I’ve tried different protocols/applications (Live Mesh, FTP), which resulted in the same behavior.  I’ve eliminated any doubt that this is being caused by a specific machine, then eliminated my router from the equation.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me using Qwest DSL, so I’m left with my original question: Is Qwest dropping DSL connections that are uploading large files?

I *think* I’m solving the issue by breaking the file into 2mb pieces, FTP’ing the files to a non-DSL machine and uploading them that way.  Talk about a pain in the ass!

Madden 09: A month in

Jeromey Balderrama

I’m a Madden junkie, so naturally I went out the day the game came out bought it right away.  Unfortunately with as busy as I am, I didn’t even take the shrink wrap off the game until 10 days later, then really haven’t played it consistently or extensively since I opened it.   After about a month in and playing it over a half-dozen times, I have a pretty good sense of the game.

The realism of the game is pretty impressive, and overall the performance on the X-box 360 is pretty good.  Before last Christmas, I played Madden primarily on the Wii, PS2 and PC, so the controls took a little bit of adjustment.  They really don’t seem to have changed that much, but still the game took quite a bit of adjustment.  At the same time, the game has become a lot more difficult to play. 

One of the touted features is that the game adjusts to your play: if you’re good at running, the game’s AI gives you a tougher run defense; if you suck at passing, easier pass defense, etc.  While theoretically this is a great idea, the implementation results in you just getting your butt kicked up and down the field.  There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of consistency between the game play.  Personally I’ve had too many instances where I have 1-2 moments of greatness, followed by a half-dozen moments of mediocrity.

While some of these new features are exciting, there are still many things that EA Sports has yet to improve, and even degrade in some instances.  Some I’ve noticed:

  • The In-game commentary is terrible.  Last year they had this ambiance created by the radio announcers that actually came off really well, it seemed strictly play-by-play. For some reason they went out and got a big name commentator – not John Madden, but Chris Collinsworth – but it was really half-assed.  Collinsworth never references any player by name, it’s always “The Quarterback, The Running Back”, and the statements are irrelevant and get old pretty quickly.
  • We still don’t have an easy way to update rosters.  Madden still wants you to connect into the X-box live lobby and start playing with someone else – never mind the fact that you’re not really interested in playing on-line yet, but would like to have Favre on the Jets or Eddie Royal not wearing #3 (although it was cool having John Lynch playing safety for the Broncos). Only then, will it begin to download the latest rosters.  I don’t understand how with the easy environment provided by the X-box Live Marketplace or in-game on-line interactions, EA still has this archaic method of downloading and applying roster updates.
  • Failure to understand 2 Runningback Systems – Over the decade, the NFL has evolved to the point where many times have a “Runningback by Committee” approach. I can easy rattle off the Broncos, the Saints, the Dolphins, the Panthers, the Cowboys, the Steelers – that’s only to name a few.  Despite this, Madden still doesn’t comprehend that these teams sub running-backs in an out on a whim, making it pretty challenging to duplicate this scenario in the game.  The closest they come is having a 3rd down running back, which doesn’t cut it.  You should be able to assign goal-line running backs, or better yet be able to line up 2 halfbacks in the backfield.

I still have a lot of game play to go, and more thoughts may develop on the game, but at this point I’m pretty disappointed with the ’09 differences from ’08.  I know when next August comes around I’ll probably be a tool and drop the $60 on the game yet again, but I would welcome major innovations (or even fixing these minor issues) with the next edition of the Madden franchise.

Social Problems (caused by Evil Conservatives)

Jeromey Balderrama

As you may know I’m still on the process of trying to finish my school.  With my increasingly heavy workload at my job, I’ve been working through school at a snail’s pace, which has resulted in me taking a lot of classes that have nothing to do with my education and are generally a waste of time. Enter my latest class: Social Problems.

I signed up for this class because I apparently need an Arts/Humanities credit and figured this would have been an easy course.  Little did I know that this class is just another example of political indoctrination in higher ed, and this class should essentially be renamed “Social Problems caused by Evil Conservatives".

I try to stray away from politics in my blog, but as far as my political leanings, I classify myself as a South Park Conservative: I’m a fiscal conservative that doesn’t subscribe to social right wing views, but I despise liberal socialism.

I realize that there is a level of political complexity when you’re talking about Sociology, but I don’t understand how spending the first 10-15 minutes of each class period talking about the political candidates. We don’t discuss the issues, but more just make baseless disparagements without any claims – with the instructor making statements such as "Sarah Palin is setting back the woman politician by 30 years", but without any details.

Now we’re on the topic of Health Care, which basically becomes a Republican blame-game as to why we don’t have universally socialized medicine.  In addition, when it comes time for us to watch the movies, our instructor went to the best source he could find: Michael’s Moore’s "Sicko".  I’m not saying that the movie doesn’t make valid points, but really, Michael Moore?  And are there any plans to show any other documentaries like Dead Meat or Uninsured in America to some kind of balance?  At this point it doesn’t look likely.

I’m not naive to think this type of bias doesn’t exist on college campuses, but I am continually frustrated that this kind of propaganda runs rampant in the guise of higher education and inclusiveness, creating an aura of anything but tolerance and acceptance for anyone that doesn’t agree with them.

Call for Help: I’ve been given a pretty lame assignment in this class. I’ve been asked to ask someone about their experience receiving medical treatment in the US.  What kind of treatment did they get?  What was the end result, not just physically, but also financially, socially, etc.  If you have a minute and have a story to tell, would you mind sharing it in the comments section of the blog?  It would be a really big help, especially if it’s a positive experience getting the medical attention.