Often, while in the car to and from work, or when driving home from A's games or Cal football, we have our radio dialed in to local sports talk stations, hoping to gain some insight on the just-concluded game, or hear how other fans are speculating the team will do in the next contest. Yet, annoyingly, it seems that very few of them understand how to act on the air once they get there. Quite invariably, the vast majority of callers, seemingly almost all men, would rather appear "cool" than get the point, preferring to make small talk with the hosts, who themselves sound quite fatigued by the practice.

For example, on your typical radio call-in show, the host will "go to the phones" to "Bill in Alameda". Bill, upon being introduced, will say, "So, how's it going?" or "Hey guys, what's up?" and the host, who has already been talking for the better part of an hour or more on exactly just "what is up" has to quickly go, "Hey Bill, how's it going?", to which he responds, "I'm good. Now, I wanted to talk about the (fill in team name or player or situation here)."

It's not as if the caller really has no idea "what's up" or "how it's going" with the sportscasters. After all, even in the odd chance they weren't listening to the show to begin with, they probably had to listen on the phone when they were on hold, and have some idea. So for all of us listening for some tidbit of info or helpful discussion, we have to wade through the forged pleasantries - and start the routine again with the next brain-dead caller. It's almost enough to put in a CD or flip to the FM dial rather than listen. Just thought I'd mention it.

Listening to ''Know You Can (Rick Pier Vs Dav'', by Whatever Girl (Play Count: 7)

It's interesting how easy it is to grow accustomed to software and its functionality, to the point you don't even think about it, except in the rare situation where you find a computer where it's not installed. For me, a small utility for Mac OS X called "X-Assist" is the very definition of this - as it's the first application I'd go out to the Internet to find to install on any clean, new, Mac OS X machine.

When Apple moved from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X in the 2001 timeframe, users lost a feature known as the "Application Switcher", where you could go to the top-right corner of the screen and select open apps, and move between them. Also - the application you would be using would be represented by its name and icon. While it could be argued the "Command-Tab" functionality replaced this to some degree, to me, it's not as flexible as X-Assist, which does all of this and more, including listing recent applications and gaining one-click access to control panels.

Unlike most pieces of software, which make incremental point upgrades on a semi-regular basis, X-Assist met my needs right away, and hasn't needed a new version for three years - last being updated in November of 2003. A lot has happened since then, even as Apple moved from Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.3, 10.4 and is now previewing 10.5, but X-Assist continues to be an integral part of my productivity, and the program has integrated seamlessly with each new generation of the OS.

While Steve Jobs and the Apple team have done a fantastic job introducing greater simplicity to the Macintosh over the years, the wholesale elimination of functionality isn't always a good thing. Lucky for us, independent software developers are often there to help to fill in the rare gaps.

Listening to ''DJ Urban - Jack Your Big Booty'', by Dave Clarke (Play Count: 5)

It's often said that with every new baseball game, you see something you haven't seen before. Although we experienced tonight's A's game at home on TV instead of at the Coliseum, we rode the lows of an early 2-0 deficit, and the near-euphoria of seeing the red-maned Bobby Kielty turn a 2-1 game where the A's were behind to a 5-2 contest with one swing of the bat, when he cleared the bases with a grand slam on the first pitch he saw. It was his first career grand slam, but not the first time we have seen the A's snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in this incredible season that almost assuredly has them in the playoffs - and potentially going deep.

Yesterday, we received a very special FedEx package, which included a pair of post-season strips for all potential A's games, from the American League Divisional Series through the World Series. The seats, in section 114, row 28, seats 5 and 6, are the same we've held in our partial season-ticket package all year, at field level near the first-base side. With tonight's victory, the A's reduced their magic number to six, meaning that any combination of A's wins and Angels losses adding up to six locks up the American League Western Division, and puts the A's in the post-season for the first time since 2003. That year was significant not just because it was the year my wife and I were married, but also the year where the A's managed to take a 2-0 lead in the divisional series against the Boston Red Sox and throw it away, continuing their unprecedented streak of post-season futility.

With the crack of his bat tonight, following an impressive five-inning, 11-strikeout performance by pitcher Kirk Saarloos, Kielty turned the game around and put the team back on track after a one-game slump Monday night. On Friday and Saturday, with the Angels back in Oakland to do battle, we will be back in our seats, with the potential to see the A's celebrate on our field. To help us get there, the A's have to continue winning, and each day may bring a new hero. Tonight, Kielty's jog around the bases is the whole story - a night he may never forget.

Listening to ''I Feel Love'', by Kluster (Play Count: 7)

Apple has famously taunted Microsoft during the company's Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) the last few years, using lines including "Redmond, Start Your Copiers", in the mindset that whatever new features and products Apple was to introduce would soon be absorbed into the Redmond, Washington-based software monolith in short time. This year, Steve Jobs went so far as to withhold some of the newer features of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), in part due to fear of co-optation from competition. But recent developments have shown that Microsoft isn't solely focused on Apple for ideas to borrow - er... steal.

Just a week or two after Microsoft imitated Apple with its announcement of its Zune line of MP3 music players, tomorrow, Microsoft is slated to introduce a service called "SoapBox", which mimics the extremely popular YouTube, in that it will allow users to load videos and share them for the Web. While it's currently in lock-down mode, open only to a select few, the doors will be opened to the general public soon, and I don't expect they'll be all that overwhelmed.

If Microsoft were to focus, they could make some amazing software. They have some of the brightest minds in the business, and more money than God (I checked, he's overdrawn...), but their idea of innovation is imitation - whether it was the Palm PC copying the Palm Pilot, Internet Explorer knocking off Netscape Navigator, MSN aimed at AOL, or most recently, the introduction of Live Search (copying Google), Zune (copying Apple) and now SoapBox. Surely, consumers are smart enough to see right through the smoke screen.

Given how Microsoft stock (MSFT) has been relatively flat for the last twelve months, twenty-four months, or even five years, the idea that this is a growth company has been absolutely shattered. You'd have been better off taking your cash and putting it in a low interest rate savings account than aiming to support the leader in imitation. This story is spread so thin, it's got holes.

Listening to ''Dangerous Power'', by Gabriel & Dresden (Play Count: 1)