But at one point a commentator (I believe Patrick McEnroe, John McEnroe’s little brother) said something like “I expect to see Lopez to…” and then I missed the rest of what he said. Because the closed-caption stream at the bottom of the screen had translated his words into “I expect Cee-Lo Pez to”.

Whoever was transcribing knew they were talking about Lopez. Yet when that person heard “see Lopez” he heard it as “Cee-Lo Pez”. You had to have hip-hop on the brain to have thought he said “Cee-Lo Pez” when the topic of discussion for the past ten minutes on this show had been the Safin - Lopez match.

The show is called “Stars” and you can guess the content — it’s all about stars. Unfortunately that’s an over-broad topic to try and cover in a 15 minute planetarium show. So the show skims over tons and tons of history, with insipid graphics and rather dull narration provided by Mark Hamill.

If they had picked a narrower topic, like say black holes or red giants, I think it would have helped. Because then the show would have had a narrow focus, instead of meandering aimlessly across the vast general topic of stars.

I actually heard a few of the adults around me doze off. And the only reason the kids didn’t also doze off is they were ignoring the boring animations on the plantarium dome and just whispering to each other. There’s just no way you’re going to get kids interested in science this way.

I really hope they’re able to add better shows in the future. Sudekum is a nice facility, if they can get some content to match they should do fine.

After three months, six visits from various repairmen, from two different appliance repair shops, and the replacement of three parts (one of the parts replaced twice), I finally appear to have a working washing machine. They ended up replacing the pressure sensor (that’s the part that got replaced twice), the main water valve, and the main control board.

All this so the darned thing would fill with water during the rinse cycle. That was its problem — it could fill just fine during the wash cycle, but whenever it got to the rinse it failed to fill and would beep an error code. But today, after this last repair visit, I’ve been able to run the full wash/rinse/spin cycle without error three times. So I am cautiously optimistic that it has finally been repaired.

Seriously, the only reason I put up with all that is because it’s all been under warranty (one year parts and labor). If I’d known after the first repair visit how long this would take, I would have returned it to the store and gone shopping for something else.

Frigidaire, it turns out, is a brand of the European conglomerate Electrolux. I did not know that. And it kinda surprised me when I found out. I’ve had a good impression of European consumer brands — they always seem well designed and well engineered. I mean, like every little boy I’ve lusted after BMW’s and Mercedes’ cars. And my house is full of nice cheap furniture from Ikea.

But apparently there’s an exception to every rule and Electrolux is it. There had to be at least one bad European brand out there and I found it. Judging from their washing machines, you should never buy anything from them. At least not without the one year warranty.

I’m sitting how at the Mineta airport, in San Jose. I decided to take this airport because it was closest to the training, and it’s smaller than either SFO or Oakland. So much less crowded.

As you might expect from an airport in the heart of Silicon Valley, they’ve got free wi-fi. And it is fast — this is probably the fastest public wi-fi I’ve used. I ran the CNET bandwidth tester and it gave me a reading of almost 1400 kbps. Pretty darned fast even for a private wi-fi, let alone a big shared wi-fi network like this one.

Travel is going to take me a while today because I have a 3-hour layover in Denver. At least the timing is pretty good — I’ll arrive in Nashville around 5:15 p.m. Which means by the time we deplane and I gather my luggage from the carousel it will probably be 6 p.m., late enough to avoid the rush hour but still early enough that I have time to run some errands. Time to do stuff instead of just heading home and collapsing into bed.

The training class unfortunately wasn’t worth it. I gave it a “No” on the evaluation, where they asked whether I would recommand the course. Biggest problem was our instructor. A really nice guy, but he admitted he’d only been with the company a couple months. And it showed — for any questions even remotely outside the text he had to keep calling in the lead instructor to help out. At least the lead guy was there, otherwise we’d have gotten very little value out of the course.

Well, I am looking forward to being home, to sleeping in my own bed. Even if it does mean I have to go in to work on Friday.

I know perception isn’t always truth, but it has a way sometimes of becoming the truth. With all these senior-level departures Yahoo starts to look like a sinking ship. And that appearance starts to scare away new talent, which makes it even more difficult for Yahoo to compete. Which might in fact make Yahoo into a true sinking ship.

I really hope they find a way to get back up on their feet. Much as I like Google, competition is also good for the marketplace. We need a strong Yahoo that competes well with Google.

Anyway, the only thing I actually wound up buying at the festival was a bag of kettle corn. Which got me to thinking — when exactly did kettle corn become a staple at outdoor festivals and events? I definitely do not recall ever seeing kettle corn as a kid. Not at state fairs or art shows or concerts or any kind event I went to during my youth.

Yet now it’s almost ubiquitous. It’s at ball parks, I’ve seen it at both the Ohio and the Tennessee Renaissance Festivals. I saw it sold at the St. James Court Art Show last year, and now here in Nashville at the Artisan Festival.

It’s gotten to the point where you kinda expect it to be there. I would have been surprised if there hadn’t been a stand selling it at the Artisan Festival.

Somebody must have been behind the re-emergence of this snack. I just wonder who?

Anyway, one of the ads was for a border collie rescue group. And I kid you not, their URL took up half of the tiny classified ad. That’s because they spelled out their entire organization’s name in the URL: bordercollierescueofmiddletennessee.com.

I’m looking at that URL and thinking, couldn’t you guys find something shorter? There’s no way anybody is going to be able to type in that url on a first try. And I couldn’t clip the ad out because I was reading the paper at the library. I know, it’s a free weekly and I could just grab a copy on my way out but then I’d be killing trees just to get that one ad.

It only makes sense in terms of being able to search for the terms on Google. Still even then it took me a while to find them because there are apparently border collie rescue groups in eastern and western Tennessee as well. So they all three show up when you do searches around terms like “border collies tennessee”. I eventually hunted them down when I remembered to include “middle” as one of the search terms.

Anyway, now that I found them I’m tempted to go and check out some of their adoptable dogs. Probably an older one, because they’d be house broken and would be a bit mellower than a puppy or younger dog. Besides I always feel so sorry for those older dogs — they must have spent years with somebody and then got abandoned or turned in to the rescue group.

Now Mom is not a technophile. For example she’s possibly the last person in North America who still pays for her groceries using a check, no debit card for her. So the biggest criteria was to get her something simple. And I decided I’d better get myself the exact same phone as I bought her. So that if she had problems or questions I’d be able to walk her through since I would have the same device.

At the time Sprint had a really good deal, especially with the group discount that my employer at the time had negotiated. For $50/month I get service on two lines plus the two identical phones cost just $49 each. Hers is silver mine is red, but they are otherwise the same basic Samsung phone.

But this week Apple announced their new iPhone, and the new capbilities plus the new pricing are really tempting. However I’m just six or seven months into this 2-year contract with Sprint. Plus even if I could switch, I would still need to keep Mom’s current phone and phone number.

Basically it just seems too complicated and too costly. The earliest I could even consider switching is right around Christmas 2009, some 18 months in the future. By then there will probably be at least one more generation of the iPhone, and Google will have slipped out the Android-based phones.

I’m so sad I won’t be able to join the iPhone gang though. They’ve really got a winner from what I’ve seen. Oh well, on the bright side I’m saving money.

The thing I like best about country music performers is that they respect their audience. The transition between acts never took more than 10 minutes as the roadies hustled equipment on and off the stage. I’ve been to rock concerts where they took an hour to get the next act up.

I think for me the two highlights of the night were Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban. Both put on great shows, and I was especially impressed with Keith Urban. Because he was the closing act, and it was past 11 p.m. by the time he hit the stage. There was flagging energy from the dwindling crowd but Urban managed to rev eveerybody back up.

The one thing I will never understand though is why there aren’t more accidents at these stadiums. Steep stairs and beer do not mix, I saw a lot of people who were quite unsteady as they climbed up and down the stairs.

I actually haven’t been back to San Francisco since moving out to Louisville. That was what, like six years ago? Unfortunately won’t have a ton of free time on this trip, though I plan on flying in Saturday before the training. So I’ll have part of Saturday and all day Sunday to wander around the old haunts.

Strangely the thing I want to do most is get a sandwich from Freddie’s. Assuming they are still there — it was a little sandwich shop a couple blocks off the madness that is Fisherman’s Wharf. Close to where CNET’s old offices were on Chestnut Street, it was a favorite lunch spot for those of us working at CNET. Reasonable price for a big sandwich and chips. Good chips too, I can’t remember the brand they sold but they were good. The roast beef sandwich was my personal favorite.