The Nebraska Alumni Association is doing this thing about 24 Hours Of Giving. Maybe it’s not the Alumni Association. Maybe it’s the whole university. Maybe they were bugged about having their budget cut a little while back. I don’t blame them.

Here’s what the “Glow Big Red” is about:

Glow Big Red and its 24 Hours of Husker Giving will take place for the first time from noon to noon on Feb. 14 and 15. It’s a 24-hour giving event in support of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and we ask all Huskers, near and far, to participate by lighting your home Husker red, flying your Husker flag, wearing Husker gear and supporting students with a gift to a program on campus that is meaningful to you.

So.. uh, you going to contribute?

About Last Night...

They had a 150-year birthday party celebration for the University of Nebraska. It was apparently exciting AND rather weird. And of course, Scott Frost had to steal all the thunder.

Scott Frost looks so casual doing that, like he’s done it his whole life. Ronnie Green sounded like he really meant it, and did his best with a throat I wouldn’t expect from an executive-level dude.

And if you expected Tom Osborne to jump out of that cake, I gotta say, you’re really just a bastard because Tom is getting pretty damned old. Just leave him to that rocking chair, man.

Rick Pitino WAS NOT HAPPY

I believe he was so enamored with the officials at the end of the game he told one of them “I LOVE YOU” as he left the floor.

Then there was an argument about whether he said “stinks” or “stings” because we have clear video of him expressing his love for an official, but we’re worried about the letter “k” or “g”. Journalism is really amazing and a damned tough vocation.

Wait. I seriously don’t get it, though. BTN cut the video on Petino’s “LOVE YOU” moment to “U” because, well, they want to represent the conference well. Otherwise, nobody in journalism came right out and said it. It’s as if they are all terrified of saying the word “FUCK”. They can allude to it. Not say it. I think it’s weird.

A New Heart Monitor - YAY

I didn’t do a Flakes Tuesday. It snowed, and it was a crappy day here in the Twin Cities. I had another appointment at HCMC - Hennepin County Medical Center - which I should point out, has now been renamed “Hennepin Healthcare”, because some study group somewhere found that the word, “County” in the name gave it a bad connotation.

Listen. We have the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. It takes for-fucking-ever to get in there, but that’s the place you go for the ultimate health care in the world. It raises the bar for healthcare in Minnesota. I’ve heard from other people around me that HCMC has a bad name. That’s because it’s downtown. That’s where they send the non-suburbia people. It’s where they sent me because it was closest and that’s what mattered most. I have felt loved every time I walked in the place. I have always felt cared for. There has not been a time at which I did not feel that I was the center of attention for whomever was treating me.

Having said that, I wished I’d never met a single damned one of them.

I’m explaining all of this because it can be quite the drive from Chaska, a Southwest suburb of Minneapolis, all the way to downtown Minneapolis. It was easier for me to get there when it was -30 real temperature (something you have to explain because people will go “IT FEELS LIKE -60” when they post their photos of weather apps on social media). The roads were clear because at -30 no one went out. Except the duty-filled, dumb, or determined, one of which was me.

Tuesday, it was snowing. It was snowing enough that it was building, and the snow plows were behind. There’s always this constant battle between the guy who’s okay doing 25mph in the right line with everyone behind him and the guy driving a big 4WD pickup who believes he’s impervious to ice. It can wear on your nerves. It is stressful. I find my stress is always relieved by seeing a giant 4WD pickup in the ditch because the combination of speed and ice will not be denied.

On the way Tuesday, I was headed up 35W when just ahead of me in the right lane suddenly a guy in a small sedan did a multiple-360 and disappeared in a puff of snow off the side of the freeway. I noticed he was looking down a little too often, and the problem is when you’re driving in snow and you’re looking at your phone, all you have to do is hit an edge, and it sucks you in like a political candidate promising all the world to you if you only vote for them. I cheered as he hit the snow. It’s very rare that someone is injured in that. People never stop for it. If they roll, however, it’s a completely different story.

I got to my appointment. I had asked if the heart monitor could be sent to me. They said they’d had disasters and preferred that, no, I would come in. The nurse shaved a little bit of my chest. Then she took what what looked like a little bit of sandpaper and scrubbed my chest. Next, she applied the heart monitor, which really looks like more of a patch.

I want to apologize for the photo. I wanted to crop it so that you didn’t have to see so much pasty, pale, old man flesh, but when I did, it was even more horrifying than the photo you’re seeing now. (I have to admit, I am embarrassed by this. It is not easy getting older. It’s even less easy when you expose yourself to the world. It’d be easy if I was drunk off my ass in the Bahamas in a speedo, but then I’d sober up, and say, “Holy shit, why am I a meme?” Then I’d discover the writing on my forehead, “I”m an asshole”. I think some friends did this to me once in college.)

Look at this thing they put on me. It’s bloody damned-well amazing. The older heart monitor have a lot of chords, and the thing about that is, it requires you to be much less mobile. I wore the older heart monitors during cardio rehab, right after I got out of the hospital. I can’t imagine doing this now.

The middle of the device is a button. I push it if I’m feeling... “weird”, I guess. At the moment I push it, I have to make an entry on a notebook about what I was doing. It gathers more data at that time. I’ve pushed it once since I got it. I had heartburn, which is a trigger for me having heart problems. I thought I’d had to just push it and keep it down during last night’s Minnesota game.

I did not.

I opted for Guinness instead.

I realize maybe I’m not making all the best heart/health choices here, but I’m not going to stop living just because I’ve been dead once. I try not to drink like a fish anymore, sometimes I fail. Guinness is a good option. I don’t drink a lot of it... and here I am, apologizing for who I am. It’s kind of weird living life that way. I suspect a lot of us do.

Anyway. Heart monitor, new technology. I wear it for 10 days, and I send it back with the notes. Imagine the data this company is going to gather. It’s clear they’re going to get more information from what I don’t tell them than what I do.

Example: I got heartburn Tuesday at 1:26 pm. I pushed the button. I wrote this: Normal workload, about an hour after i ate lunch. oddly enough, it happened after i drank water.

Heartburn is a sign of heart problems for me. It’s a trigger. I know some people have shortness of breath, tingling in their arm, and my doctor told me about people having pain in their throat. For me, it’s heartburn. But after drinking water? That points to a stomach problem.

I walked on the treadmill Wednesday. I tried to run it up a bit. No problems.

Imagine 10 days of your life being monitored. Imagine gathering all that data. Imagine looking at the lives of hundreds of thousands of people through the microscope of heart monitor data.

What will they learn?

It’s fascinating to think about.

I’m not a medical professional, but I don’t think hospitals have ever been good about outcome. They just send you home. They don’t really, really know what happens after you’re gone. That’s a big problem, because they just kind of assume what they’re doing is working.

We can talk all we want about how horrible this doctor was, or how bad the experience you had when someone couldn’t diagnose your problem, your illness. Worse yet, they couldn’t diagnose it in time to save someone you loved.

I have to believe when we have devices like this that it will get better. They will gather data from shit-tons of people. Maybe they will understood us better? Or maybe they will be able to manipulate us more?

On which side do you fall? Optimistic or paranoid?

News

Handling Nerves Nature of Game - Huskers.com - Nebraska Athletics Official Web Site
He approached the batters’ box for his first career at-bat with the Nebraska baseball team and remembered what his high school coach had always said about handling first-time nerves.

Never look into the stands in your first trip to the plate.

So what did a panicky Jaxon Hallmark do?

He looked into the stands.

NU Notes: Luensmann Ready To Roll - Huskers.com - Nebraska Athletics Official Web Site
When Chad Luensmann prepared to take his turn on the mound, Nebraska coach Darin Erstad, ready to offer a few handclaps and welcoming words of encouragement, instead backed off.

“I saw foam come out of the side of his mouth, and it kind of scared me,” Erstad joked. “So I just kind of stayed back and didn’t say anything.”

Erstad compared his junior pitcher to a caged, rabid dog because, frankly, that’s how Luensmann felt now after missing the entire 2018 because of Tommy John surgery.

Huskers Open 2019 Campaign at UC Riverside - Huskers.com - Nebraska Athletics Official Web Site
Nebraska heads West to begin the 2019 season when the Huskers face UC Riverside for a four-game set this weekend in Riverside, Calif.

OMG OMG OMG OMG OFFSEASON!

Documents reveal UNL Athletics knew nature of accusations against Washington
An attorney for The University of Nebraska Athletic Department was informed of the nature of the case against Maurice Washington in mid-September of 2018, according to law enforcement documents obtained by 1011 NOW.

Nebraska lawmaker says case against Husker player illustrates need for bill banning ‘revenge porn’ | State | kearneyhub.com
An Omaha lawmaker said Tuesday that the allegations against Nebraska running back Maurice Washington illustrate the need to ban “revenge porn” in Nebraska.

State Sen. Megan Hunt would do just that with Legislative Bill 164, which she introduced along with five co-sponsors.

Attorney didn’t tell Huskers about pending charge vs RB
An attorney for Nebraska running back Maurice Washington said Wednesday he never told anyone at the university about the nature of potential charges against the player in a pornography case that cropped up just as last season was getting started.

Two Husker football players cited for ordering pizza with stolen credit card information | Football | omaha.com

They cited two Nebraska football players in February for misdemeanor theft in connection to a complaint that someone bought pizza with stolen credit card information.

I honestly do not understand how this works. One of them paid the other, then that guy sent an app money via PayPal, and that app used stolen credit card information to pay for the pizza? That’s what I get out of it.

Did they write the app? Did they steal the credit card info and put it into the app? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED.

Then There’s This

Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh eyewitness accounts of the incident involving Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Publisher John Robinson Block – The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh

He shouted that he wanted a picture of himself and his daughter taken in front of the Guild sign and demanded it run on the “front page of tomorrow’s paper.” He fervently demanded the photos be taken NOW, right away and forcefully grabbed his daughter’s forearm, pulling her into the picture as she tried her best to pull away from him. She was crying, shaking and pleading with her father that she did NOT want to be in ANY photograph.

She screamed, “Please, please Daddy, no!” multiple times. And multiple times he yanked on her arm, trying to pull to his side so a photo could be taken of the both of them.

This doesn’t sound very professional.