Nothing But Iron: Ache Michigan October 4, 2008 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. Last night had feel of the killing frost that would mark the end of tomato season, but the cold stalled out at 37 degrees leaving a perfect sunny morning in its wake, and, according to the 10-day forecast, at least a week more of garden viability. It seems that Wisconsin’s loss at Michigan last week was the killing frost of the Badgers’ season. It is inconceivable that the Badgers can now play for anything more than a conference championship and maybe a Rose Bowl bid, neither of which has the meaning it did before our program had accomplished it. I suppose the idiosyncratic nature of college football’s post season dictates that there is precious little meaning beyond conference titles anyway. More distressing, at least in the context of watching sports, is the revelation (confirmation for some) that the Badgers are just not that good. The vaunted defense? Not so vaunted. Punishing run game? Not so punishing. Passing threat? Not threatening. And that was against a Michigan team whose season was a swirl of toilet water from the bottom of the bowl. Instead the Badgers kissed new life into the somnolent Wolverines like a prince in some stinkin’ fairy tale. Now comes the positive spin, because that’s what I do, right? We are not the Minnesota Golden Gophers, and last week’s game was not as painful as ripping out my eyebrows with extra-sticky duct tape. O.K., I got that out. I can feel my brain’s sanity preservation centers starting to warm up. New week, new game. OSU is in town. Logic dictates that the Buckeyes will have an easy time of things, even though these are not the ultra-scary Buckeyes of the recent past. In Wisconsin’s favor: 1) The underdog status has been returned to its rightful owner. 2) Home game. 3) The Badgers just have to be as good as The (other) Ohio University. 4) Players learn, teams grow and that which resembles a killing frost sometimes isn’t. I thought I should briefly mention Brett Favre’s six-touchdown performance against the Cardinals, contrast that with Aaron Rodgers’s plunging stock (there’s that word again) and then do a brief synopsis of all players in the NFL who played on different teams last year compared to the players who replaced them. On second thought, I am going skip all of that and talk about baseball. Down two games, the playoff situation now looks bleak for the Brewers, but at least it is bleak in October. And who knows? Stranger things have happened than a two-game home winning streak against a good team. And then stranger things have happened than Philly losing a critical game at home. The bright, shiny, sequined silver lining is that the Cubs do post-season bleakness far better than Milwaukee. With semi-sincere apologies to Cubs fans in my readership, I take pleasure in that. Lastly, an amusing non-sports anecdote. The hospital in which I work uses medical management software from a local (but huge) company called SEPTIC, which is called that because that is pseudonym that I chose to insulate people who are smart enough to really mess up my computer. The background is that I have long been a critic of SEPTIC, whose glitchy, messy, yet plenty-expensive product causes me flashbacks to the Ctrl-Alt-Del glory days Windows 3.1. In the great spirit of Microhard, also not a real name, SEPTIC has mastered the art of consumer entrapment; hospitals invest millions for SEPTIC systems (hey, that’s kind of funny), then they are stuck because they don’t have millions to spend on a new system when someone with an ounce of entrepreneurial sense (not to mention a couple tons of start-up capital), for example, a company named after a crunchy fruit that grows on apple trees, realizes the opportunity to topple the fumbling giant. Anyway, I got invited to a user meeting at SEPTIC, so I could see the next great thing that my hospital should buy to make my professional life less efficient than it should be with the marvelous invention of the computer. When I got there, I was immediately struck by the grandiosity of the campus. I say campus because I felt like at was on the grounds of a private college where I could pay $30,000 a semester for my kid to learn about investment banking, or some other pertinent profession. My immediate thought was that SEPTIC would have spent more on making its product look like iTunes and less on making its buildings look like the Monona Terrace, if I were running the company, which thankfully I am not because I do have a little pride left. But that’s not the story either. SEPTIC is only a few minutes from my house, so I drove there. When I arrived I was directed by a series of very important flag waving parking lot guards. I reached a point at which I could turn, so I slowed to aske which way I should go. "Keep moving!" shouted the guard in a tone that seemed a bit far removed from "We love you because you are our customer and without you I paint crosswalks for a living, which really sucks in the winter." I asked which way I should go to park my car. "Either way, but keep moving!" he yelled. That voice sounded so familiar. Then it hit me, in his spare time he does infinite-loop customer so-called service voice mail menus for large corporations. Press the pound key, but keep moving! But that’s not the story either. I got out of my car and walked toward the various shrines that SEPTIC had constructed for itself. Partially lost, I picked the middle shrine and entered. I found a help desk and a pleasant woman pointed me to a nearby registration desk without any admonishments to keep moving. To get a name badge and bag of free useless items, like two hard-bound books each filled with blank paper, I would first have to register by typing information into a notebook computer. I filled in the blanks, hit the enter key, and to my utter, yet concealed amusement, I got an error message. A SEPTIC employee had to use her own computer to complete the registration. I knew then I was in the right place. That’s the story. In the spirit of fairness, I should add that the new product looked better than any of SEPTIC’s prior products. Not yet powerful, but at least useable, akin to Windows 98. Credit reader RB Kamps for pointing out that the reason Carl Sagan (see recent NBI) doesn’t go to church has less to do with his atheistic beliefs than it does his death in 1996. My bad. I needed a famous atheist for literary acrobatics. Google provided. The problem with Google is that it sometimes gives you just enough information to reveal your stupidity. Next time I will enter, "famous atheists who didn’t die a long time ago". Admit it, my episodic ignorance is endearing because it makes you feel good about yourself. _____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports publication and information systems review service. The author apologizes to any NBI readers who work at SEPTIC, which is probably a much better company than the author realizes, for reasons that completely escape the author and those with whom he works in his day job. ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.