RIP My Laptop (?)

Some people are prone to anthropomorphizing their pets. For others, their cars. I'm not one of those people, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes grow attached to inanimate objects.

My laptop appears to be dead. (If you're wondering, I'm writing this post from work. Don't tell the boss, OK?) Two days ago, everything appeared to be fine. I shut it down like normal before going to work, and there didn't appear to be anything wrong. Once I came home the next day and tried to fire it up, though, I got nothing. Pressed the button, no response -- the screen didn't light up, the hard drive didn't start whirring, nothing. Maybe it's toast, maybe it's just an internal power problem ... it's hard to say.

If it is toast, I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. The laptop was brand new circa July 2007, and it's been with me from Hilo to Jakarta to Beijing and back again. It's just odd having a hole in your daily existence like that all of a sudden. I can't update the podcasts on my non-fruit-based MP3 player, I don't have access to any of my film clips, songs or pictures ... I can't even pull up the Web site of the HP service center to see where I can take my laptop in the hope of getting it fixed. It's an oddly helpless feeling. Even if the laptop itself can't be salvaged, hopefully I can at least have the contents of the hard drive moved over to a new laptop. I have most of the files burned onto DVD-Rs or stored on another computer, but I know I'd lose at least one downloaded (and paid for!) album and all my bookmarks if I had to start from scratch. I spent part of last night scribbling down what files and programs I'd have to replace ... and just when I got Championship Manager working again, too!

What got me thinking was the thought that there aren't many things I have that would leave such a hole in my daily life. I like having my books and DVDs, but I can't think of one that would leave a gnawing feeling in my stomach if I lost it. The same goes for my clothes -- I'm certainly not a clotheshorse, and I have a tendency to hang onto clothes (especially T-shirts) long after their usefulness has passed.

I can probably think of two or three things that would leave me a bit misty-eyed if I lost them, and they're not what you'd think. My uncle Jim gave me an orange backpack for my 18th birthday, before I went on tour with the Troopers, and it's gone just about everywhere with me since -- all across the US on tour, Hawaii, multiple stops in Japan, Beijing, Jakarta, Bali, Malang, etc. There's also a small, battery-powered alarm clock. It's not anything particularly flashy, but I've had it for years and just feel better knowing it's there.

The last one is my hat. It's the only hat I own, and it was a Secret Santa gift back in, I think, 2004 or 2005. Like the other two, it's been with me for years and it's just a reassuring presence. I actually left my hat on the shinkansen while traveling from Okayama to Himeji to see Himeji Castle. Getting it back was fairly painless -- I reported it missing at the Himeji station (I left it in the basket on the back of the seat in front of me), and once I was done wandering around I was told I could pick it up at Osaka station, where the train terminated. The whole time I was walking around the town, though, something just felt ... wrong, I guess. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more than a little relieved to get it back.

I imagine a large part of this peculiarity is down to making a concerted effort not to accumulate stuff. Moving long distances every other year or so makes one leery of getting too comfortable and weighed down with clothes, furniture, a house, etc. It's great when it becomes time to move, but in between it can feel a little Spartan.

Long story short, I'm in the market for a new laptop. Lots of storage space, wireless card and processing power a must, but other than that I'm pretty flexible. I'm not a Windows or Mac adherent, either. I've always had Windows at home and Mac at work/school and neither have given me enough problems to put me off them. Suggestions?

That hopey-changey thing

Being a sports journalist overseas requires an expansion of one's horizons. Sports like rugby and cricket take on as much importance (if not more) as baseball and hockey, and that thing Americans call soccer is now football. I try to slip college football and basketball into the section when I can, but the biggest news recently has been conference realignment, and even Americans find that stuff esoteric.

Soccer, of course, drives the bus here. I was into the sport long before moving overseas -- sometime just before the 1994 World Cup, if memory serves -- but it's still quite a shift to live in a country where soccer is by far the No. 1 sport. While I was back in the States, being a soccer fan -- particularly a fan of American soccer -- felt like something of an underground movement. Only the biggest occasions were broadcast over the air, and you had to spring for satellite TV plus the sports package to get anything resembling a steady diet of soccer outside of the Mexican league on Univision, Galavision and Telefutura. Soccer fans could still feel like part of their own subculture, and if you were among those supporting Major League Soccer since its inception, it felt like following REM while they were still playing bars in Georgia.

There's no such feeling here. Soccer is big business, and the country's power-brokers all want a piece of the action. Constant squabbling and power plays by officials have left the sport in a hot mess, which I will detail after the jump. In short, it's best to beware those who ride in promising change, spewing high-minded ideals while offering little in the way of substance. They could be just a different shade of ugly as those you currently revile.

Stretching my legs ... err, fingers

As the gaps between my blog posts will tell you, I'm somewhat out of the writing groove. It used to be I'd turn around a story or two a day, but since coming to Asia that has dropped precipitously. Working on the desk and being increasingly unwilling to work on my days off will do that, I guess.

My days off usually don't involve much more than relaxing, catching up on podcasts and maybe an errand or two. Today was different, though. Not only did I pay my water, power, cable and Internet bills (productive, no?), I spent the evening covering Indonesia's World Cup qualifier against Qatar. I used to cover soccer somewhat regularly when I was on the sports desk, but since being moved to "fireman" those opportunities have been scarce. Tonight's story was the first I've written for the paper in a while (now with a sidebar!). I did a piece on the Jakarta Bintangs in the special section we put together for their annual Grand Final function, but apparently it's not on the Web site. I also live-tweeted the match, which you can find in my timeline.

The traffic on the way to the game was awful, the weather wasn't much help, I was shvitzing like a poodle and kickoff was delayed about 15 minutes (pushing us right up against deadline), but it still felt good to get out and actually do something. If nothing else, I proved to myself I still have the ability to turn around a decent gamer in 20 minutes. All those years of covering high school football must have really stuck in my brain.

Good thing, too. In just about a month, Jakarta and Palembang are hosting the Southeast Asian Games -- basically a mini-Olympics for this region. The competition proper starts on November 11, but the soccer actually begins on the third. Odds are I'll be working the desk for most of the event, putting out the daily section and taking care of everything not related to the SEA Games, but I am on the list for credentials and will hopefully have a chance to get out and do some writing of my own. Even if the event is a massive clusterfuffle, as it appears on track to be, it'll still be great fun to cover (see: 2010 Commonwealth Games).

After that? My contract here expires on December 6, and it's hard to say what will happen. I've had people ask me (directly and indirectly) to stay, and there have been vague suggestions of chaos if I leave. I'm sure they'd be happy to offer another contract, but given that it's not always clear if the HR people are on the same team, I'm not about to assume as much. Plus, there's the nagging question of how long I want to stay in newspapers. How long will this continue to be a viable career? I've managed to save a bit of money, but do I still want to be topping out at $30,000 a year as I get into my 40s? There will come a day when newspapers and I part ways -- it's just a question of if I leave voluntarily or if I cling on to the bitter end, whenever that may come.

For now, though, I'll just enjoy dusting off my writing chops and proving (if only to myself) there's still some life in these fingers. Tomorrow I'll transcribe the whole post-match news conference and try to knock out an opinion piece for the paper.

Foobaw!

We live in amazing times. Even from the other side of the planet, I am rich with college football on my TV. Just this weekend, these games are on my cable package:

Mississippi State vs. Memphis
Michigan State vs. Youngstown State
Missouri vs. Miami (Ohio)
UCLA vs. Houston
Tulsa vs. Oklahoma
Boise State vs. Georgia
Middle Tennessee State vs. Purdue
Minnesota vs. USC
Texas A&M vs. SMU

Nebraska's opener against Tennessee-Chattanooga isn't on there, but that's a small annoyance, really. I'd much rather catch this one on the radio and get the rest of the non-conference slate (Fresno State, Washington, at Wyoming) on TV.

Running water? Not so much, but at least I have football to keep me company.

Lone Tree?

While I was out temporarily trading The Big Durian for The Good Life, I spent part of my vacation helping my dad and stepmom move out of Grand Island, which I consider my home town, to Central City. They decided to move into the house that my grandma and grandpa had lived in since the  early 1990s (I forget the exact year) after dad's parents moved into the city.

We nicknamed said house "the tree house" as it was not only surrounded by a bunch of cottonwood trees, but standing in front of the entrance was a group of trees as tall as we'd ever seen at the time (see top photo). Nebraska sees its fair share of severe weather, of course, and I know people in the family wondered what it would take to bring down those trees, even if no one ever gave voice to those concerns.

Last week, we got that answer. Quoting from my dad's e-mail:

After Friday, nothing surprises me. We had winds clocked at 140 blow through here Friday at 6:05 a.m. and take out two of the big trees the house is built around. Both about 150' tall. Been cutting and hauling wood since 10 a.m. Still more to do today.  Should have the last of the central stand of trees out by end of today.  Wow!

The "leaning" tree that was caught by the 4 others to the south would have taken out the garage and both cars, had it landed. It's all "stuff," and can be fixed, so we move forward at what used to be the "tree house," but which may become the new "Lone Tree." :)

Lone Tree, if you're wondering, is what Central City used to be called. There wasn't a tornado or even a severe thunderstorm, just heavy rain and ridiculously strong straightline winds. Is that what they call a microburst? My days of wanting to be a meteorologist are long behind me.

Everyone is OK, thankfully. That corner room will need patching up, obviously, and the cleanup will take a while. Dad tells me they hauled away more than 10,000 pounds worth of timber that fell during the storm (which should put paid to the notion that trees don't grow in Central Nebraska). I forget the exact count of rings on those big trees that fell, but it was more than 70 on each.

It's going to be odd going back there in December. That house, and the surrounding trees, has a lot of memories attached to it. There are the usual family events (Thanksmas, 4th of July, reunions, etc.), but it's also where my dad got remarried (I was underdressed, shockingly enough) and it's one of the places I took Kim, the only girl I've introduced to my parents.

I guess time and gravity really do destroy us all, structures included.