Deep, Insightful Sports Analysis

From an article in today's Times, explaining why the New York Giants have struggled so much over the last twelve months:

"The Giants had a third-down conversation rate of 40.6 percent last season, but in their final two losses of 2012 that rate dropped to 30 percent. This season it is 34.7 percent. . . ."

Now, I don't claim great knowledge of football strategy, but if the Giants are engaging in conversations with the opposing teams on 40% of their third downs--instead of trying to move the football down the field--I think I know why they're having so much trouble!

Fun with Typos

From a student paper:

"It was the clam before the storm."

Or I THOUGHT it was a typo, until I read about Tlingit myths that tell of Shorooknangalangalang (also known as "Timmy"), the Great Clam of the South, who, according to legend, heralds the End Times.  It is said that, when Timmy opens his. . . let's say, "mouth," and speaks the nine forbidden words (apples, Thursday, wigwam, eleven, pellagra, pellagra [yes, twice], screwdriver, Beyoncé, and flan), then the heavens will open, the 7-Elevens will close, and all will be as it was at the beginning. . . of last week, so, y'know no biggie.  (He IS just a clam, after all.)

Long Day

As faithful readers of this blog know, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I have a "FasTrak" toll tag in my car--one of those little boxes you stick on your windshield, enabling you to zip through toll lanes at bridges and tunnels.  The toll tag is linked to a bank account, so I get e-mail updates whenever the balance on the toll tag is replenished, historically twenty-five dollars at a time.  Today, however, I received a notice that, based on my patterns of usage, FasTrak was now going to debit eighty dollars at a time from my account when my available balance drops below some predetermined level.

Annoying? Sort of.  In the long run, though, this makes little difference: After all, this just means that, instead of being charged $25 every five days or so, I'll be charged eighty dollars roughly every two to three weeks.  What was disturbing, though, was that I saw an e-mail from my BANK before I saw the e-mail from the folks at FasTrak, which meant I was taken aback by the new debiting scheme.  More disturbing was the fact that there was a typo in this notice.  So, instead of seeing a charge to "FasTrak Oakland"--as I've come to expect--I saw eighty dollars going to "FasTrak Orkland."  Whether this meant money was going to a Tolkien-esque Wonderland or to Mork's old home planet, I knew not.  Either way, I thought this boded ill.

And the day got progressively worse from there.