Thursday

Our trip to Augie last night was unsuccessful. Wisconsin-LaCrosse won in a nail-biter, with a winning three-point shot by my pal Pete's son with one second to go being disallowed by a whistled push-off foul. Ouch! Then again, Augie played poorly and probably didn't deserve to win. Their #4 in D-III national ranking will be gone, but so will the pressure. Now they can concentrate on getting better.

Tonight, 2 and I are moving up the cultural spectrum and are attending a lecture at the museum on the Frederick Remington exhibit. I've always been a fan of his Western sculpture work.

2 had a fender-bender this AM on her way to work. No injuries, and relatively little damage to her wheels. She can provide details at her leisure. Suffice it to say, it was a learning experience.

And 4 seems to have good news on a Spring internship at a TV station in CR. She too can give details when she has the time. She deserves another, "Way to go, Kiddo!"

The geek-squad in KC at my securities information desk sent me by overnight delivery a new electronic token (the size of a computer memory stick) that is a random number generator for my secure entrance to the system. Every time I log in I have to go through several pass-code queries to establish my bona fides. I had wondered what happened when whatever the power source in my initially-issued token expired. The cover memo with the new token indicated that the old token was scheduled to expire on 11/30/07. Tomorrow. I was oblivious to that fact. Techies rule.

I am only remotely interested in the NFL game tonight between Green Bay and Dallas. What does engender some curiosity is the fact that the game is not being broadcast by a network or major cable system, but by The NFL Network, a start-up system owned by the league. And The NFL Network has not reached contractural agreements with most of the major cable systems. So the game will not be available in many markets. Why? One word. Money.

This is the same type of problem presented around here with The Big Ten Network which has not reached agreements with many of the cable systems. So a lot of Iowa games are not shown here. Unless you have Dish (which I do).

Ultimately, the consumer will pay. Cable rates will go up so that cable companies can have access to these NFL Network or Big Ten Network games. And the NFL and Big Ten officials will hold themselves out on high ground saying that it wasn't them raising fees. Rather, it was the cable systems who took advantage to raise their already-too-high monthly fees. The reality is that the Big Ten and the NFL are doing these things because they can. And the consumer will pay.

They'll pay the higher access fees because they can't afford to actually go to the games.

Got to go.

Have a great evening.

Yea to 4!

BCOT