This is a story about Mother's Day... sort of.

My wife Helaine, herself a mother, bought a nice gift for my mom, wrapped it and took the package (really a padded envelope) to our local Post Office where one of the clerks weighed it and affixed the postage. She didn't mail it.

Helaine planned on mailing the gift when my folks returned from a vacation. That turned out to be Tuesday of last week, when she drove the envelope to the Post Office and dropped it in the box in the parking lot.

It was delivered the next day... back to us, with the sticker you see. Packages over 13 ounces, when mailed using stamps, must be physically presented to a clerk at the Post Office. Period. End of story.

It's for security, the sticker said. In this post 9/11 world we're not supposed to question security - but I will.

Here in Connecticut, more than most places, we understand what postal security means. This is where Ottilie Lundgren died. She was poisoned by anthrax that probably passed through the huge Wallingford mail distribution center where three million anthrax spores were later found and removed.

But if the Postal Service is worried about security, why in heaven's name would they have my carrier bring it back to my house? If it was dangerous, it's doubtful it would have the proper return address anyway. As I remember, the 2001 anthrax letters all had phony return addresses. The same was true when the Unibomber's package exploded at Yale, less than a mile from where I'm writing this.

The whole process makes no sense to me. In fact, I'm so confused why the Postal Service is doing this, I asked them to comment.

The rule actually predates 9/11, going back to the mid-90s. The weight limit, recently lowered to 13-ounces, complies with the weight limits for Priority Mail.

In an email response response, Doug Bem from the US Postal Inspection Service included this all purpose line:

I am not denying that.

All I'm asking is, why send it back to me? It's either worrisome, and should be treated that way, or it's not and can go to my mom's house.

To a certain extent the Postal Service has their hands tied. They can't open my mail to check what's inside.

So instead, they declare a one size fits all rule which treats all 13 ounce stamped packages as suspicious... and then they just wash their hands of them and drop them off at your house.

If 13-ounce packages pose a threat, dispose of them. If not, deliver them.

If there's logic in the Postal Service's madness, it evades me.

I used to turn on the TV when I'd get home from work. Then as now, the hours after midnight were a wasteland of programs with lower production values and cheaper commercial time.

Late night Cleveland television provided my my introduction to Eddy Arnold. We hardly played him on the radio, and I wasn't watching any on-screen concerts. Eddy Arnold is my first remembrance of a two minute 'per inquiry' record ad.

You see them all the time now. They have mainly moved from single artists to genre compilations, but the concept's the same. Music by artists who no longer sell albums is sold to consumers who no longer buys albums.

Often, the TV station or cable network is paid a commission for each item sold. There's no guarantee the station will get anything. So, these ads are only seen in time periods where conventional ads can't be sold.

"Make the world (long pause) go away," Eddy would sing as the ad began. Then for the next 115 seconds, the pitch would proceed.

How deeply is this ad burned in my pschye? Indelibly! I still remember where you sent your money: Eddy, 1030 Terminal Tower, Cleveland... that's Eddy, 1030 Terminal Tower, Cleveland.

Eddy Arnold died today, and with him a piece of TV history. He probably didn't even know.

I wonder if the album was any good?

No, seriously. For this and most other websites, Google controls who lives and dies. Isn't that part of God's job description?

Google drives the Internet. The percentage of Internet hits that can be directly credited to Google is mind boggling. Google has made finding the obscure simple.

The whole concept is Earth changing. Think about it. In a few seconds you can find the 2nd male lead from an obscure 60s sitcom. Are there facts more esoteric or more well hidden? Without Google (and to a much lesser extent, the other search engines), there'd be no way to find them.

Unfortunately, that means when you're on Google's shit list, you've got real Internet trouble.

Five months or so since hackers broke into this site, I still feel the results. My traffic is way off. Today is a good day and it's about half of what it was.

I'm no more self absorbed and boring than I was five months ago. It's got to be their fault!

Even today, Google's webmaster tools tell me geofffox.com's most important keywords are:

1. crack
2. serial
3. key
4. torrent
5. code
6. mp3
7. keygen

Those words have been gone since January!

Google is a lot slower than you'd think. Pages are indexed quickly (I have posted an entry and found it on Google 20 minutes later), but integrating data from a site into more complex search results takes time. And as its computers decide how to value what I've written, Google's opinion of me reflects its mistaken belief I'm some sort of outlaw.

It might have been worse. Since the break-in this blog has been more finely tuned to reflect what Google expects from a valuable site. Over the long run, that should matter for something.

I'm not sure why traffic is important to me, but it is. My income from this site is pennies a day. Actually, revenue has fallen much faster than traffic, an understandable effect of fewer search engine referrals.

Bottom line, the whole hassle since January continues and continues to be frustrating.

I watched again last night and am watching right now. With a contested game, they do a very good job - entertaining and informative. As I suspected, my bad experience seems to have been a byproduct of the game.

As it turns out, sometimes you do get a second chance at a first impression.

(I know you know this in May 2008, but since this entry will be around for a while...) Barack Obama handily won North Carolina against Hillary Clinton, to whom he then lost Indiana.

The Indiana results came in as if they were from a movie.

First Hillary Clinton went strongly ahead by double digits. Then, as more votes came in, the margin shrank. When Senator Clinton gave her victory speech, she was ahead by 4%. Now that margin is 2% and shrinking, but nearly all votes are counted.

She will win Indiana, but not by enough to really claim victory. The pundits have been keeping busy this early morning, coming up with reasons she will leave the race, or should leave the race.

November seems so far away.

Make sure you're sitting correctly, otherwise you can get off the bike with some parts numb.

I need pockets. I had to leave my wallet. I didn't take water.

The cord from my iPod is too short. I couldn't stand on the pedals at all.

Speaking of iPod - Dylan, Shangri-las, 60s Motown, Dion, Willie Nelson. What the hell was I thinking?

Rollerbladers have the best bodies - period. Runners are next, though not close. Bikers often look like they're just trying to coast to an ambulance.

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He's a big Mets fan, so I found it necessary to remind him of their current plight. I'm like a sixteen year old in this regard.

I talked about our MLB video purchase and then he trumped me - he actually bought a minor league video package. Chris Velardi - you are hardcore!

Pretty soon the conversation moved to an announcer I remembered from when I was a kid. Hopefully my dad will leave a comment, because he's the reason I know this guy.

Back in 1958 (when I was 8), the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco. What had been a three team town, was left with the Yankees alone.

You've got to remember - neither team (NY Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers) left because of lack of support. They just got much better deals out-of-town. There was plenty of pent up National League interest and support in New York.

One radio station, WINS, decided it would make the best of the situation and continue to broadcast the Giants' games. Instead of sending announcers out with the team, then paying for a remote line, they put Les Keiter in the studio.

I remember hot summer nights, driving in the car with my dad. The windows were rolled down. The radio was on. It was a summer of Mays, McCovey and more than one Alou. Juan Marichal was becoming a genuine 'phenom'.

Keiter worked with a background loop of crowd noise¹, the sound of a bat, and a reasonably steady stream of wire service reports. He recreated the games.

The scores and stats were real, but the flavor of the game was totally the product of Keiter's imagination.

Alas, the experiment didn't last. That Marichal was covered meant it went at least to 1960.

Maybe Les Keiter's call wasn't as exciting as the real thing, or maybe New Yorker's got the message the Giants weren't coming back and lost interest. The broadcasts ended. Keiter moved on. The Yankees went back to being the only game in town.

Les Keiter is in his 80s now, retired in Hawaii. He spent a few seasons recreating the games of the Hawaiian minor league team.

He's why I still remember most of the names from the '58 San Francisco Giants and why I missed a departed team I was really too young to remember.

¹ - The crowd noise loop was much too short to be used every day, especially with an irritating and predicably timed, "woo hoo" every few minutes.

The Phils were up by eight when I tuned in. Mark Grace and Daron Sutton (color and play-by-play, respectively) had long since lost interest in the game and drifted off to other topics.

Weird. Surreal. Strange. It was still a ballgame to me. That's what I wanted to hear. I was disappointed.

Granted, they were probably disappointed too... in the D-Backs who stunk up the joint this evening. It sounded like they didn't think anyone was still watching.

They had an evening like their team's!

The one weak point of the MLB package is, they only send one TV feed of the games I had no choice.

As Helaine and I talk more and more about what we'll do after retirement, we realize some sort of health insurance is necessary. Right now, self financed health care for older Americans is ridiculously expensive, if you can get it at all.

We're banking on universal care.

However, there are unintended consequences in universal health care - some good and some bad.

How will we keep our medical facilities from being inundated, if treatment is free? Should there be a limit on end-of-life care which prolongs life with little life quality? If so, who makes that decision?

What are we going to do when employees of companies with good benefits packages begin to retire in droves, because they no longer need the one thing that kept them working - insurance?

Some people have speculated about a huge wave of retirements at the US auto makers. There are other large institutional employers which will be hit the same way.

In some ways, this is a good thing. The allure of entrepreneurship will increase if a start-up comes fully equipped with insurance. Businesses, like that run by my sister and brother-in-law, might decide to go where the weather is better, if they would remain insured.

Universal health care as an abstract concept sounds pretty good. The devil is in the details.

One problem many mature industries face is how they've increased their profits before this strong competition arrived. With little subscriber growth, newspapers cut their news hole. Theaters are stretching the number of commercials and promotions they run before the feature.

TV's done both.

I was looking at hulu.com tonight. It's a strangely wanting collection of old and new TV shows plus Grade C or lower movies. Though it will compete with over-air stations, tonight It offers the opportunity to make real world comparisons - then versus now.

First, I called up a copy of The Bob Newhart Show: Season 2, Episode 22, "By the way... You're fired." It's nearly 35 year old. The running time for this half hour show is 25:19.

Next, it was The Simpsons: Season 19, Episode 12, "Love, Sprinfieldian Style." This 2008 show runs 21:49

That's 3:30 less show or seven minutes per hour!

For TV, it would be easier to compete with the older run times and episode counts. Whether that would be enough or not is open to question.

This is an organization that does good work. It would be nice to think, a home re-built by Habitat could reclaim or even save a neighborhood.

The turnout was a a lot less than they wanted, though the raw weather might have had something to do with it. Still, the day raised a few thousand dollars, with teams from local churches and a few local colleges.

I suspect, at some time in the not too distant future, Helaine will be lifting a hammer to get involved.

Helaine is beautiful and smart and puts up with (most of) my crap, but there's more.

She is the ultimate sports fan. When we married, it was her subscription to Sports Illustrated that started coming to the house. Her 'perfect Sunday' is sitting home, in her pajamas, watching NFL football - especially the Eagles.

This time of year she's following the Phillies.

I got the call tonight around 10:45. I answered, but Helaine said nothing. All I could hear was crowd noise. Loud, happy, excited crowd noise.

"Un***kingbelievable," she finally said.

And then, she asked me to say the phrase. I knew what she wanted.

"Put another one in the win column for the Phightin' Phils."

After blowing a lead, then going down by a run in the top of the tenth, Pat Burrell's walk off homer won the game. Helaine will sleep happy tonight.

She's a helluva find.

Blogger's addendum: A regular blog reader somehow got a copy of the radio aircheck from Burrell's homer. Enjoy!

There are too many things she likes. She said she'll just pick. Uh huh.

They're on the road, heading out from Branson, MO. They'll be home in South Florida Sunday evening.

"It's better than I could have imagined," added my dad, referring in general to the trip and specifically to the seven shows they saw in Branson... six of which they loved - especially The Platters.

This was a trip I originally thought would be 'snake bit.' As it turns out, they're having the time of their lives... even on a bus!

Because our professional interests are the same, we end up together from time-to-time. Such was the case last night when WFSB hosted a National Weather Service Skywarn seminar.

Skywarn is the NWS program to train laymen to spot severe weather. No matter how sophisticated our equipment gets, eyes on the ground are nearly always better. Skywarn is sometimes affiliated with ham radio, though not always.

At least a hundred folks, mostly men, assembled in a conference room at WFSB-TV's new facility in Rocky Hill. Two meteorologists from the Weather Service's Taunton, MA office
worked their way through a PowerPoint presentation, telling why and showing what severe weather is all about.

In the back of the room, a gaggle of meteorologists from Channels 3, 8, 30 and 61, stood and kibitzed. This was material we'd each seen many times and knew well. We were glad to be there... glad to see the public's interest... but probably already well beyond the program's level.

From time-to-time there is interstation criticism on forecast or warning decisions NWS makes. On a night this, it's difficult to see anything but the dedication and passion these 'government boys' have. They do want to save lives.

As long as I was at the station, I asked for a quick tour. Mark Dixon, one of the meteorologists took me around. The facility is impressive.

The construction is new, so WFSB's studios are designed to operate with a lot of computer assisted equipment.

Instead of three or four cameras rolling around the studio, there are eight, each at a fixed position. The control rooms are meant for smaller crews, without discrete audio or font operators. The working newsroom is large with clusters of desks and lots of monitors.

Though my station has dozens of monitors in the control room, the trend now is to digitally split immense flat panel screens, allowing them to show all the video. It saves space and eliminates heat. WFSB uses this concept in its control rooms.

Doesn't that create a single point for catastrophic failure?

Our weather areas are similarly equipped and similarly in the studio. I couldn't resist having my picture taken in theirs.

Kudos to WFSB for offering up their facility.

¹ - Ryan, if you've been scarred for life by that experience, my apologies.

They took me anyway, though it makes me wonder why I keep a calendar if I don't always check it.

As long as I was out and had a few minutes, I stopped to get my oil changed on the way back to work. In my George Bush 41 with the grocery scanner moment, I went to my first JiffyLube.

They were empty and knew who I was. That makes most experiences better. They could not have been nicer.

I found out synthetic oil is a lot more expensive than that stuff that comes directly from the ground. Also, from outward appearances, my engine doesn't look like it's been chugging along for nearly 10 years. And, if you ask nicely for your antifreeze to get topped off... it still doesn't.

I'll do that myself at home.