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USC over Washington in last 2 seconds!

USC Beats Washington in the last 2 seconds! NOTICE: everyone stayed well past the end of the game to celebrate!I’ll leave all the forecasting and second guessing to the ‘pigskin prognosticators’ and the ‘experts’ everywhere. All I can say is that it was a great game to watch… especially if you were lucky enough to be in the historic Los Angeles Coliseum!

I took this picture right after the game ended and if you check out the giant screen, you will see a close up of the two opposing coaches after a tough fight.

I guess the picture of Coach Pete Carroll really impressed me… in fact, most ‘SC coaches show real class in handling victory or defeat… of course, at a top division 1 school like USC and Washnigton Head Coach after the Game‘SC, you don’t get your contract renewed if you don’t win…. and as they said in ‘Ghostbusters’, “I’ve worked in the private sector… they expect results!” Nevertheless, having coaches who show class and win is a real credit to the guy doing the hiring.

It does look like Pete Carroll is giving the Washington Coach a kiss on the nose… but the noise level necessitated close contact. It felt like row 2 in a Rolling Stones Concert… only louder!

There were plenty of complaints from bloggers who thought some of the new rules sucked… but then it was their team that lost. Some complained about the officials… but I observed something else.

Southern Cal has been hampered this year by a wide range of penalties… and it just seems to me to be a way that officials are using to ‘level the playing field’. If you add ‘SC’s penalties back into the mix… the games aren’t close. For example, if you were a Washington offensive lineman, you never got called for ‘holding.’ Hmmmm…. I haven’t seen this sort of thnig since the ACC officials won the Florida game for Florida State some years back.

Here’s what others think:

Fight On!

Roger Freberg

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On the Internet…. there are no more secrets!

A rather rabid Trojan FanIt is amazing what stuff people will put on the internet… whether it is a simple web site, an email or — as we have recently discovered in the Foley case — an instant message.

Recently, top GOOGLE executives “warn politicians of internet power.” The article opens with the provocative statement :

“Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.”

Has the world come to this? Politicians that HAVE TO tell the truth??!! Sheeeesh….

Telling the truth is just good business, good for relationships and an excellent way to develope healthy bonds within a family and between people. This does not mean being untactful… as in… “yes, hun, those pants really do bring out the whale in you!” What it means is telling the truth…. don’t exaggerate… don’t evade or avoid… just say what you mean and mean what you say. It may seem difficult at first, but as it becomes habit…well… it is the only way to live and life becomes so much less complicated this way.

INTERNET SEARCHES

I remember once I gave a political speech and an eager beaver reporter decided to see what dirt he could find out on me… so he asked me about myself, primarily to see if he could ‘catch me’ in a lie. Soon I recieved a phone call that he had discovered I was a fraud… a trickster!…. a scoundrel! Hmmmm…. how’d he figure that out sooo fast?

What the Tribune reporter had done is call the then Los Angeles Rams and see if anyone remembered me… no one did, but then I was part of the ‘great forgetables’ that pass through athletic turnstiles each year…. besides, it wasn’t the receptionists fault anyway… it was her first day. Today, he could have zipped along the internet and found me. He busted a gut, but he did apologize.

EMAILS

My wife sued Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and over 1000 documents — mostly emails — were used in setting up her case written between 1991 – 1999 … it still amazes me what people write in a medium that is not confidential. Too many people look at emails as coversation and forget they are evidentiary. Let’s just say that the emails were enough to turn even a hardened stomach …  and the university settled seven years ago.

What amazed me most about Laura’s experience was how so many basically ‘good people’ could go so wrong. Philip Zombardo did a ground breaking experiment years ago placing Stanford Students into two groups — prisoners and guards — and over time watched as they morphed into everyone’s worst nightmare.

Today he has a new book entitled: THE LUCIFER EFFECT: Understanding how good people turn evil. The book costs about $18 not including postage and provides a real insight into the evil that can be seduced and rewarded even in the best of us.

WEB SITES / Instant messaging

What can and can not be placed on web sites and in blogs is continuing to be a point of discussion. Where does the rights of an organization stop and an individual’s free speech begin? Here are a couple of today’s articles in the Daily Trojan on a couple of aspects:

New facebook Stalkers: YOUR parents?

Parents are taking more of an ‘inspect what you expect’ approach to watching their ‘adult children’… especially if mommy and daddy are still paying the bills. Parents just want to know what they are paying for.

Students Ignore web danger at their peril

The jist of this:
“In the meantime, students should be aware that the Internet is and always has been a public space, and anything that crosses its connections could end up on the news tonight.”

Here’s some sites you may not have seen:

“SETAC ASTRONOMY”

In a Robert Redford movie in which he actually looked young entitled ‘SNEAKERS”, someone invented a code breaking device that unlocked all codes… the code name was ‘Setac Astronomy’ which incorporates all the letters needed to spell out something like… ‘No More Secrets.”

Today, secrets can still exist… even within the C.I.A. (sometimes)…  but with the internet, ‘secrets’ can be leaked from whistle blowers at Eron or displayed by Drudge’s popular Report introducing America to our favorite cigar maiden Monika Lewinsky…. it’s hard for the good old boys and girls to keep a lid on bad news. Gosh, I guess they thought that no one would ever know.

Thanks to the internet, the world is becoming more open, freer and more data can be reviewed by the average person.

Information is power.

Roger Freberg

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Walmart or Costco?…. there is a choice out there!

Where we shop says a lot about who we are. It tells people about our attitudes and values in the things we buy and who we buy from. Although I can’t get all worked up about ‘sweatshops’ in other countries … I try not to patronize the domestic equivalent…. Walmart.

Costco vs. Walmart... there is a choice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, there is usually a choice in where you can spend your dollars and that choice affects your community and beyond.

I have always tended to buy from UNION shops if I could… however, I would trade with non-union folks IF I believed that the employees were well treated and shared at some level with the success of the business. I observed that Costco’s people work hard, but they pay and seem to treat their people well… they appear to be fair and the usual grumbling seems minor. As one union friend of mine told me… ‘there’s nothing we can offer them to join ( the employees usually recieve higher salaries and benefits when they become unionized).’

San Luis Obispo, California just recieved it’s first ‘box store’ and listening to the local politicos, you would have thought that the world was going to end. It’s ironic that the city’s coffers will be stuffed with the unanticipated gains from the store they fought so hard to keep out.  As I mentioned, the benefits to the city are significant as well as to the consumer.

Looking back, I can remember that only a few years ago, it seemed like shopping locally was really adversive. When you walked in and asked a local merchant, ‘how much he was selling his lamp for?’… he would typically respond by asking,”well…. how much do you have?” Times have changed and with greater choices come lower prices.

shopping at CostCo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The car on the left is obviously NOT mine but from a post by someone proud of their visit to Costco… obviously a thrifty soul as he is driving the vehicle featured in the last ‘Pink Panther’ movie… I think this …er…ah… car is said to be priced around $16,000. Come to think of it, I think something like this ‘auto’ was in the last Austin Powers flick, too?

I my neverending quest to provide reading material, here are a couple of links to recent articles on Arkansas-based Walmart that might just give you a chance to pause:

OCT 3rd Editorial

Walmart to cap wages & Add part timers

I guess I’d rather put a couple of nickles into someone’s pocket knowing that they’re making a happy living… and yes, I enjoy the discount, too!

 

Roger Freberg

 

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I’ll take a ‘Jolly Roger’… make it a double!

a drink that you can find in a very special sports barMost people who know me, know that I have little respect for soccer or soccer players. No matter how hard they try to market themselves as ‘the world’s finest athletes’… I just find the entire process incredibly boring.

Interestingly enough, some time back when ‘Professional Women’s Soccer’ folded, a yahoo from MSNBC decided to write about what an incredible crime it was for women’s soccer to crash! To add fuel to the fire he even blamed the fans for not showing up and supporting this ‘sport.’ I could tell this guy was minus a few cards in his deck as he seemed to think the government should intervene or at least investigate. Yeah, I bet it was probably part of the vast right wing conspiracy.

Well, Rog decided to tactfully write a letter to him at MSNBC…. yeah riiight…. and show him how closely women’s soccer resembled embalming cats. For some reason, he was offended and posted my letter along with my email address. He expected the millions of loyal soccerettes and soccerellos to come and wack the heretic! Oh, I got a few who tried to show me how soccer… although boring… was better than a baby sitter… but I was very surprised by how many folks agreed with me!

One sports bar, I believe in the Detroit area… but somewhere a long way from soccer, wrote me with an amusing story. They had printed off and posted my letter on MSNBC and began to toast to my health. Isn’t that cool? The only question they asked was , “what’s your favorite drink?” Hey, I have a lot of them and they all come in a ‘long neck’… but Miller High Life is my favorite. They then wrote back and said they wanted to know my favorite DRINK…. hmmmm…. okay, I like a dry martini, on the rocks with two olives ( olives are healthy). They then said that they were gonig to name a drink after me… the ‘Jolly Roger’… I think that is better than a statue and it doesn’t gather any bird droppings either.

Almost forgot this story… thanks hun… yep, I’ll have another ‘J.R.’ if you don’t mind.

 

Roger Freberg

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You left just when you were getting interesting…..

 Kristin in Iraq 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Back in 1997, my eldest daughter graduated from high school and entered the united States Military Academy at West Point. Her summer after graduation was spent doing the cadet version of ‘basic training’.

Kristin had entered the academy with a few challenges. Although stronger than many men, Kris did not like to run. It is to her credit that she conquered that and eventually ran in two Washington D.C. Marathons.

Some people think that she owes a lot to her McFee ancestors who never gave up, others feel it was all due to a unconditional love and acceptance of her mother…. but few knew the real truth as I do…. Kristin loves a challenge.

About this time, the New York Times magazine published an article on the summer basic training of the cadets referred to as ‘Beast.’ I wrote the following:

The Beauty of Beast Barracks

Published: November 2, 1997

As the father of a daughter who survived this year’s Beast experience, I enjoyed Winerip’s article on West Point’s technique for breaking in plebes.

A big plus for parents: my daughter now knows how to clean her room (in fact, she can clean anything), and her academic work actually gets done!

It was a wonderful article.

Roger Freberg
San Luis Obispo, Calif

The letter had some unintended positive effects.

While many parents and others whined about this or that, my letter engendered sympathy for my daughter… and a protective brotherly nature from the often hazzing upper classmen. They thought that she had already been through enough having to grow up with me as her dad! ha! 

Funny, not much Kristin can’t do now.

Roger Freberg