Just a Rant

                Today, I was on my Mac looking at the upcoming mock draft of Mel Kiper Jr. when all of the sudden a pop-up occurred. No big deal right, just an ad.

                Boom! I tried to exit the ad when 150 more pop-ups appeared on my screen. In easier terms to understand, I was screwed. My Mac was screwed and so was my day.

                I can’t believe there are people out there just trying to ruin people’s days and the internet hasn’t found a way to stop it. What I have realized is that the internet is way too vast to stop bad things from happening on it.

Sports, Gambling, and Technology

                Since the dawn of time, sports and gambling have gone hand in hand. You could argue that gambling on sports is the most American thing to do these days. Now more than ever, Americans are gambling on their sports because of the technology we possess.

                Think fantasy football. You really don’t even have to try to win anymore because your phone will tell you who to play and when to play them, but that’s a whole other story. The point is all you have to do is dig into your pocket and tap your phone a couple times to gamble in today’s society. It’s really awesome, but also crazy dangerous.

                My friend Matt, reminded me of this phenomena when he showed me a new app on Thursday. It is an app that allows you to pick any baseball player that you will believe will get a hit that night. If you pick right on 56 straight days, you win 5.6 million dollars (56 in honor of Lou Gehrig’s hitting streak.) What I loved about this app is there is no losing money, so it’s not really gambling. Not to say I won’t gamble on sports, but at my age I don’t have the money. My favorite thing about the app is that it helps me keep up with baseball. In a long year of long games, it’s easy to lose touch sometimes, but this app allows me to focus on a different player every night.

                Technology has made sports better, and hopefully will continue to do so. As long as the game doesn’t change (football, basketball, baseball, etc.) maybe technology and sports will be as grand of a duo as gambling and sports. Or perhaps, technology, sports, and gambling are already the ultimate trio of America already.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

For those of you who don’t know, Pandora is a music radio app that you can get on your phone. I finally downloaded it recently after setting aside my hatred for anything besides local radio.

You see, my junior year of high school I worked as an intern for a local radio station and even had a show that I would DJ some times. It made me fall in love with the small town radio way of life and really propelled me into doing journalism in college. I realized that it was dying, but I knew that local companies would always advertise with their local radio station. Right?

Wrong. While listening to Pandora today I realized that instead of the usual Taco Bell or Bud Light commercials, Pandora was advertising for local companies. I immediately knew what was happening. Radio stations in small towns and even big cities are going to end and it won’t take long for them to die out.

I really hope that in small towns like Batesville, Arkansas, my hometown, local businesses will continue to advertise through their local stations. Unfortunately however, even deep in my heart of hearts, I know the world is changing and most likely leaving local radio behind.

 

"The Peter Roulier Facebook Scandal"

Let’s be honest, Facebook is for old people now. There really is no getting around it. I never check my Facebook anymore and that’s because I don’t give a hoot about what my grandma did with her knitting squad.

But, this Monday I was forced to check my Facebook after a catastrophe happened. I looked down at my phone to see that my dad and my grandpa had both called me. At first I thought I had missed my birthday or something because this is a very rare occasion. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize something was going down. What could it be?

It turns out my very immature friend had remembered my password and username on my account. Being the little bastard that he is, he thought it would be funny to post old embarrassing photos of me. And apparently I had new girlfriend according to Facebook. My dad and grandpa were calling to congratulate me and tell me how proud they were. This was the worst day of my life.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. In this particular case you can clearly see how within a couple of hours people thought I had gone crazy and was dating a model. And the sad part about today is, people actually count social media sites as a credible source of information. Even my incredibly intelligent father was fooled by something so ridiculous.

Food: Part 1 of Infiniti

Have you ever been sitting down watching a show and thought to yourself, I would love to be doing what they are doing, eating whatever they are eating, or even just be where they are? I catch myself doing this all the time, but most of the time I can’t seem to move my lazy ass.

This Tuesday happened to be a little different though. Anthony Bourdain’s show on Travel Channel, No Reservations, is probably my favorite show on television and this time he was in Amsterdam.  I couldn’t help but drool at the bratwurst sitting on a pile of sauerkraut at a fancy bar in the middle of the Amsterdam river. Even on my outdated TV I could still see the “meat in tube form” (as Anthony likes to call it) sizzling and bubbling.

I felt like it was my calling, I had to do something about this urge. I literally stole my roommate’s car and drove to Wal-Mart. I bought a 6 pack of juicy brats and cooked them all. Although it wasn’t nearly as good as the Danish brat on television I felt very satisfied and moved by my journey.

 I don’t believe there is any more powerful media persuasion than food on T.V.