TJ Crawford’s Abstract Ideas

So a spoon is really just a nickname for a 3 metal or 3 wood. So confusing is golf some times.

Yesterday I wrote about the Cleveland HiBore XLS driver and compared it to last years XL. In that article I said I wouldn’t spend the bones to upgrade just yet, however this one I would. I stopped carrying a 3 wood for the last 5-6 years as I just couldn’t find one I couldn’t hit. I traded it for a 2 Hybrid. However after getting Trev this XLS I’m SOLD. It has a very low profile but a larger head (from volume) that creates some great stability. The face is relatively flat on the bottom and has a great shape on the sole plate that won’t let you dig it in an chilly dip it.

Now how do I convince my wife I need this bad enough to spend the $179?

I added phone service from Charter the other day and it works just fine (saved us $70 bill every month from AT&T). I started having issues with our connectivity every time the phone rang however. I placed a service call and while I was on with them I ran a Speed Test to see if i lost all connectivity. However to my surprise everything was just fine. With a little nudge in the right direction from the tech about cordless phone interference. I started digging more.I got the specs on my D-Link Router and it was running @ 2.4 to 2.483 GHz. My primary set of phones is 5.8 GHz but low and behold the office phone was a 2.4 GHz model. For some reason it started causing interference randomly.

I would say I was pissed but since it involved a trip to BestBuy & ultimately CircuitCity I was ok with it.

Interestingly enough this is a much larger issue and the FCC has now dedicated a slice of spectrum to cordless phones based on a current European standard. DECT 6.0 is a newer standard that cordless phones are now running on. As you can see by the graphic below your network connections (via WiFi only) can be interfered with by 5.8 and 2.4 GHz cordless phones.

By the way I bought a GE only because it had a dedicated GOOG-411 button. Directory assistance beware, your business model is being hacked and turned upside down.

Oh yeah it turns out that my getting Charter phone service had nothing to do with the phone interfering. It was just a coincidence.

Last year I replaced my Ping Si3 Driver with a Cleveland HiBore XL (9.5 degree, S-Flex, Gold shaft). I love it. I spent the time to get on the launch monitor and got it fit perfectly. Trevor tried out for the golf team and as incentive, and reward we told him if he made the team we would get him a new set of clubs. He had been using my wifes set of Golden Bears because he was in this weired transitional period where he couldn’t fit a full set but out grew his junior set.

So to cut to the chase he got fit as well and ended up with this years model of the HiBore XLS (12 degree draw, R-Flex, Gold Shaft). Despite the differences in bias and shaft I will have to say it feels great. It has a little bit more of that buttery feel and the acoustics are a bit louder with the increased size.

You can see the most prominent difference in size in tis photo of the Sole as they stretched and widened it.

Here you can see the stretch in depth as well as the change in scalloping on the XLS.

This also show how the slope on the back has changed. I was surprised it didn’t look more pronounced.

On the face of the XLS you can see how they widened the contour on the bottom and it looks a little more like a boat. They also deepened it up. How can you miss the ball with a face this large? Answer: YOU CAN’T!

They also differentiated the XLS with a reverse color scheme on the head cover, new graphics on the shaft and grip as well as the coloring on the club head itself. Also there is a logo on the toe that changes color in sunlight and UV lights to help prevent counterfeiting.

I am definately a gadget and tech junkie so clubs fit right into that, as the golf marketers have found out. I would love to have a new one but one years change in tech just doesn’t justify it for me. I will say Cleveland has figured it out better than any of them by pricing their driver line $100 cheaper than Taylormade and $150 cheaper than Callaway’s FT-5. They are turning out some fantastic clubs that perform as good as they look and feel. These will be flying off the shelf.

I updated my blog install to Wordpress version 2.5 and it definitely feels nicer. As I was looking through some of the features I noticed a snippet on a plugin that generates a mobile site for almost any PDA, Smartphone etc. One of my biggest pet peeves is trying to view websites on my Windows Mobile device. It’s not because more sites don’t offer a mobile version but more about Microsoft not delivering a very good mobile browser experience.

Since I have been working on mobile project lately I wanted to see how well the plugin worked. When you install it there is a php file that gets added to the plugins directory and then a theme to the themes directory. The site will do a browser detect and when it sees a mobile browser it will dynamically use the slimmed down theme. The theme is all text and link based so there are no graphics in the template. However graphics are supported in the post which is perfect. This streamlines the download on the phone.

Our 2 youngest (11 months) had been a bit slow to crawl. We were hoping they would get moving however now that they are can we tie them down. Trent LOVES the stereo equipment and rushes over so he can push every button and turn every knob. It took me 30 minutes the other night to get the settings back to the correct place. Speakers were turned off, surround turned off, muting, etc. Amy had to grab something from the back room a few days ago, a 20 second task, and Trent was sitting playing with some toys. As she was walking back down the hall the stereo got cranked up to a level that was WAY TOO LOUD. Trent was sitting in front of the stereo again looking at her like "WHAT?". 

Velcro could work too!

Here is the first crawl just a few days before.

My wife has always liked medical things and has made comment on several occasions that she would have loved to have been a nurse. When she saw in the paper that the Bodies Revealed Exhibition was in Sacramento we knew we needed to go (even though we did the standard "do you really want to go?" at least 7-10 times).

This last weekend we packed up the twins with all of the standard diaper bag gear and headed down to Sac. We had called Amy’s sister and Bob (The Brother-in-law) and planned to meet them. We were a bit surprised to see such a small building as I was thinking museum type spaces. However the small accommodations didn’t detract from the displays at all. It was absolutely fascinating, the manner in which they preserve the bodies lets them do all kinds of creative displaying.

The process uses acetone to remove all the water from tissue on a traditionally preserved body. They then use a polymer in conjunction withe a vacuum chamber that somehow replaces all the water with the polymer. Your left with a plasticized mummy. With everything being plasticized you can remove bone, skin and other tissues leaving organs, blood vessels, muscle etc. My favorite one was the blood vessels (see image). You can’t believe how fine of a network runs throughout the human body and I was amazed that one of the largest concentrations was in your heel. On displays of the heart and lungs they even colored the arteries vs the veins so you could see how blood circulated out then back in. 

When we bought the tickets they let us in with our strollers, but a few minutes in the head attendant nabbed me and made me check mine, thus having to walk around the entire time holding Trent. He is the lighter of our twin boys but at 22-23 pounds and as squirmy as a worm out of the ground, it was tough holding him for 45 minutes. He also wanted to touch every display we walked within 3 feet of. We got to talking with a sympathetic attendant that told us it wasn’t fair as there are people that come in all the time with wild 2-4 year olds and, in her opinion, that was worse. Interesting fact, you tip one of the displays over and it cost the exhibitor $1,000,000 to replace. Wow!

There is a great deal of controversy over this exhibit though. All the bodes are of Asian origin and word has it they are all obtained through the black market. You can imagine how they came to be on the black market too. Within the Asian cultures it is definitely a no, no to have your body treated in such a way as these have been preserved. I can’t really condone taking peoples remains and doing something against their wishes, but I would have to tell you that it is unbelievable informative and educational, beyond anything I learned in the class room.

If you get the opportunity to go I highly recommend it as you will learn and see more about the human body in 45 minutes than the average person sees in their educational career.