I’ve been cautiously following the Brett Favre saga on espn.com (and just about every other sports web site out there that’s covering it) and I have three simple words for the Jets: don’t do it.
Chad Pennington is your starter. He deserves a chance behind the revamped offensive line. The new WR weapons will be a nice addition to his available receivers. You’ve built a stable of quarterbacks already for the now, near future, and distant future with Pennington, Clemens, and the rookie Erik Ainge. Even Brett Ratliff might get his shot soon.
Don’t add the wishy washy Favre. What everyone fails to mention is that he took about a year to become comfortable in the Green Bay offense when Mike McCarthy came aboard for the 2006-2007 season. Favre had 18 interceptions that year to go along with 18 touchdowns. Last year things obviously took an uptick, but going to a new team with new players and a new staff and Brian Schottenheimer’s inventive offense will take a while to get used to. He might not even be in the greatest of game shape–add that to the rumors that some of his teammates felt like he was out of gas in the playoffs. There are so many reasons against this, but most of all, do you want to sacrifice your future and your current beloved quarterbacks (and draft picks!) for a soon-to-be 39 year old with a wavering desire to play the game?
Go with your QB who was a Doug Brien field goal away from the AFC championship three years ago. Go with the QB who came back from two shoulder surgeries and is one of the most accurate passers in NFL history. Go with the QB who has the most impressive play-action motions outside of Indianapolis when the running game is working. Go with the QB who knows he wants to be there and wants to end his career as a Jet.
Don’t do it Jets. Don’t trade for Favre.
Over the past 24 hours, the service we’ve all come to love (and hate) named Twitter has entered bizarro world. People are thoroughly upset about the fact that folks they’ve been following–and more importantly, the count of folks that follow them–have been trimmed down considerably.
It looks like the feeble attempts to reduce spam has also wreaked havoc upon legitimate usage.
Read some of the commentary on their support page at Get Satisfaction for some hilarity on how much this is affecting the lives of its users:
Followers and Following are all gone - when will this be fixed?
It’s strange that after all this time and all the negative press, Twitter manages to alienate even more users. They had finally made their platform a bit more stable by reducing the amount of information that could be grabbed from their API and then they go and screw up everyone’s relationships. I doubt this will be the last straw as there aren’t really any viable alternatives (I mean seriously, can you tell someone at a bar to follow you on Jaiku… would they even know how to spell that easily?) and there are so many other services tied into this service.
To make a long story short: Get your act together Twitter. Please.
As mentioned before, I decided to hit up Austin Jelly this morning to see what the craze was all about. I’d worked at Cafe Caffeine a few times before and for the most part, it felt like that.
David Walker of 302 designs introduced himself. Strangely, he mentioned that I looked familiar to him and he seemed rather familiar to me as well. I’m going to have to try to figure that one out.
It wasn’t as social as I expected it to be, but I figure most of the regulars were out seeking new iPhones. Then again, I actually had quite a few things to get done this morning and had my mind wrapped around too many things to pay too much attention to my surroundings.
Here are some tips I’ll use for my next venture out there:
- Grab a centrally-located table. It’s easy to go unnoticed on the outer tables if you want to socialize. The centrally-located tables had the most conversation and action, naturally.
- Make sure you’re not so head down into your work that you actually have time to talk and introduce yourself to others.
- Make sure your day isn’t interrupted by an hour long conference call where the VOIP USB speakerphone at home is necessary.
I’m actually looking forward to my next adventure out there (I make it seem like it’s so far away when I can literally walk there in less than five minutes) when I get back from the Bay Area in a couple weeks and looking forward to meeting some of the folks I didn’t get a chance to meet today.
I took a step in the direction of getting out of the home office and working collaboratively with others when I talked to the other two SugarCRM employees in Austin today to see if they wanted to get together once a week and work together at a coffee shop, or somewhere equally interesting.
Naturally, they were both excited about the idea and we’ll talk about it while we’re all out in Cupertino next week. As one of the early employees, I could probably give them a lot of insight they wouldn’t get working in their individual silos for the most part. And, I can figure out if there’s anything I can, or the company can, do to make their lives easier.
A win-win situation and all it took was a little initiative to ask.
