mcinerney

I’m a big sports fan, especially basketball. I cannot possibly guess how many hours of sports I have watched in my lifetime. In person, on TV (and TiVo), SportsCenter, etc. I don’t watch any television shows per se. Meaning, I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy or even 24. I never got into the Seinfeld or Friends years. That said, the TV is on quite a bit at my house. And 99% of the time, some kind of athletic event is what is showing. Basketball season is the worst. There are multiple professional and college games on every night of the week. I suppose it is a minor miracle that I bring the garbage to the street each week.

My point to this is simple. I have watched sports my entire life and I’m not sure I could name five worse injuries to watch than the one Shaun Livingston suffered the other night. You can see it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn2_XPls68E), but be aware it truly is sickening. I am somewhat glad it was a non-contact injury because it is the kind of thing that could haunt another person if they were responsible for it. I hope he is able to recover from this injury because he has the potential to be a really good player.

The injuries are tough to stomach for anyone, but if you have ever played sports and done something as simple as breaking your finger or nose or twisting an ankle, you know how painful it can be. I cannot imagine something as serious as Shaun Livingston’s knee injury.

The injuries that one could say are worse to watch are:
1. Joe Theisman breaking his leg on Monday Night Football (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clM8mPPDx9E&mode=related&search=)
2. Dave Dravecky breaking his arm while throwing a pitch
3. Jason Kendall dislocating his ankle on a play at the plate

I’m struggling to think of worse injuries to watch. Sports are great to watch 99.9% of the time, but these injuries do not fit in that fun category.

Cell phones, email and internet. It is 2007 and obviously everyone has access to these technologies. The question is, how well can you access them from one single device? It used to be that you needed a cell phone, PDA and computer. That has been changing, but usually at the cost of something. Some of the PDAs that turned into cell phones were so big, you couldn’t throw them in your pocket. They were also quite expensive. You didn’t want to carry them with you everywhere because they were bulky and for fear of losing it or having it break.

I believe there is finally a solution. I’ve been using a Blackberry Pearl for a couple of months now and love it. I think they have finally found the right combination of size and functionality. It is almost the exact same size as my RAZR phone. The Pearl is roughly 4” X 2” X 0.5” and weighs only 3.1oz. The screen is big enough to read full emails. I think most people are scared off by the QWERTY keyboard with each key being multiple letters. Not to worry. The key to typing on the key pad is the predictive text. It is more than solid. You rarely, if ever, need to worry about whether you are typing an “e” or an “r” (which share the same key), etc. It is actually surprisingly good at proper nouns as well. I don’t even have to correct it on a name like “McInerney,” which is reason enough to make the investment. Web-browsing is also quite good (both WAP and HTML). The full web-pages load impressively quickly. The battery life (in two months) has been not failed me. The navigation is made easier than other Blackberry devices by the introduction of the trackball.

I’m two months into the use of this Blackberry Pearl and I’m still searching for a negative aspect to it. The biggest reason of all (aside from the fact that it can predict McInerney accurately) to purchase a Blackberry Pearl might be the price tag. I believe they are roughly $150, potentially less with activation and service agreement.