Tuesday...UPDATED

Just to confirm...I did complete my official registration for the 2012 Turkey Trot this AM.  Two interesting facts on the registration: 1) the online registration service charge is $2.88 which exceeds 10% of the current early registration fee of $27: and 2) the co-race director is PV grad Missy Knott.

I'm guessing that my pal Tim who is one of the owners of the online registration company sets that add-on fee based on his company's economics.  This is a little different than the cash-or-credit convenience fee at a retail store, or the user fee at an out-of-network ATM, but it strikes me as a little high on the relative price of the product.  Conversely, a $2.50 processing charge seems OK for this type of thing, and a total registration fee of less than $30 for a charity event (with long-sleeved t-shirt included) passes my smell test.

UPDATE:  My pal Tim advises me that the service charge actually goes to three separate entities involved with the online transaction.  His firm gets a flat fee of less than $1.50.  The balance of the service charge goes to the credit card company and the data-processor-hosting site who each have their own add-on fees that the Turkey Trot has elected to pass on to each registrant (like almost all charity events choose to do).  END OF UPDATE.

For you other confirmed trotters in the Peanut Gallery, the entry fee goes to $32 after September 30th.  That's a small coffee and a pastry at the coffee shop.  Just sayin'.

That growing roar that you hear from The Chorus is the discontent by the fans with the NFL's replacement refs.  I didn't watch the game last night, but for a team to win (or lose!) on a last-play Hail Mary with a decision by the officials is a recipe for bad press.  Like I said before, the regular striped-men have their fair share of disputed calls; the replacement crews seem to have a few more than normal games, and the flow of the games has definitely been affected.  I think all parties will be best served to get the strike settled and return the focus to the games, not the refs.

I see from the TV ads during football games, NASCAR races and golf events that the Fall TV premiers are beginning to be shown this week.  Am I just getting too old, or is this just a bunch of noise?  And they had the Emmy's on Sunday?  I only know this from the red-carpet pics on Yahoo yesterday where the women's competition for fashion reviews was featured.  I just can't keep up with the bombardment of publicity for the new shows and new seasons for the old shows.  Hmmm.  Maybe I'm just not sufficiently bored to need the mindlessness of TV for entertainment.  Or maybe I'm just too old.

Golf brings it's International marquee event to Chicago this weekend with the Ryder Cup matches.  This is a biennial (every two year) competition between the US and Europe.  They play 28 matches over the course of three days.  16 of the matches are with two-man teams, while the 12 Sunday marches are man-on-man singles.  The team that wins the most matches wins the Cup.  Scoring is done on the match-scoring system which means each hole is a separate contest.  A team or a player wins a match by winning more holes.  Totals strokes are not meaningful, only the strokes on the hole in play matter. 

The Ryder Cup has become a big deal in golf.  While almost all other tournaments are every-man-for-himself, the Ryder CUp is a team event.  The competition has become intense, and various players over the years have wore the wreaths of heroes or horns of goats for their play in deciding matches.  I suppose that the media has stoked these fires.  But technology has allowed fans to be instantly involved with the competition, and every factoid is analyzed.  We'll see something this year that will be fodder until the next match in Europe in two years.

Speaking of factoids, there was a story in SI or one of the papers this week about some new-to-me statistics that they keep on run-production in MLB.  They now measure things like runs-scored-by-home-runs as a percentage of total-runs-scored, and home-runs as a percentage of total-fly-balls.  These stats bring into arguments the efficacy of the stolen base and sacrifice bunts.  Hmmm.  Pretty soon, they'll be checking shoe-size relative to frequency of hitting into double plays.

Now to work.  Thanks for reading.

BCOT