Kerry Osborne’s Oracle Blog

My dad (Roddy Osborne) got inducted into the Texas A&M Sports Hall of Fame a couple of months ago. My dad played for Bear Bryant back in the late 50’s. I knew he was a quarterback, but I didn’t realize that he played fullback his sophmore year. Turns out he was also the punter and the punt return guy (who knew). Oh yeah, and did I mention, in Bear Bryant’s system, the quarterback played middle linebacker too! He got drafted by the Cleveland Browns and played a couple of seasons there. (I think there was a guy by the name of Jim Brown playing there then).

Anyway, here’s the video that the committee put together. They played it before his acceptance speach at the banquet. By the way, that’s John David Crow (Heisman Trophy winner in 1957) narrating. It has some good footage of my dad playing (I didn’t know he could pass!).

My dad didn’t talk much about football when we were growing up. He actually didn’t want my brother and me to play because it was so hard on his body. He had huge scars on his knees and one on his shoulder that went from the front arm pit all the way around to the back arm pit. That scar was like an inch wide with cross hatches every couple of inches. He was so beat up that when his Air Force company was shipped out to Vietnam, they wouldn’t allow him to go. Anyway, there are only a couple of stories that I remember him telling:

The first one occurred during a game between Texas A&M and Arkansas in 1957. The story has been repeated many times over the years (often incorrectly). I once heard a preacher tell the story in a sermon and he had it completely messed up. I had to straighten him out after the service. Anyway, here’s how I remember it:

The Aggies were ahead by one point with a couple of minutes to go in the game. They were driving and close to scoring. Back in those days, the coach didn’t call the plays. The quarterback was responsible for calling the plays. So coach Bryant sends in a substitute with a message to not throw the ball, just to run out the clock. My dad calls a roll out, expecting to burn some clock with a long, slow developing play, but not intending to throw the ball. So he rolls out and lo and behold, a receiver (I think he said it was Gene Stallings) is wide open in the end zone. He told me that the guy was so open he just couldn’t help himself and so he throws the ball. Well one of the Arkansas defensive backs (Donny Horton) is a sprinter on the track team and he breaks on the ball along the sidelines and intercepts it. And there is nobody between him and the end zone 90+ yards away. Well somehow, my dad catches this guy from behind, and my dad is reportedly one of the slowest guys on the Aggies team. That tackle saves their undefeated season (they were 7-0 at the time and #1 in the nation). Later Bear Bryant was asked about the play and he says, “The difference was that Horton was running for a touchdown. Osborne was running for his life.”

The second story he told that stuck with me was about the last day he played football.

After playing a couple of years in Cleveland, my dad was drafted and entered the Air Force. He was stationed in Bitburg Germany. Apparently they had some sort of semi-pro league there and my dad was a player coach. The story I remember went like this (I’ll tell it from his perspective):

Did I ever tell you about the last time I played football? Well I was a player coach in Bitburg, so I suited up, but never played because I was so out of shape. Well our first string quarterback got hurt and so I put in our second string guy. And I told him, what ever you do, don’t get yourself hurt. Because we don’t have another quarterback except me. And sure enough, on the second play, the guy takes off on a run and gets clobbered and I have to go in. Well we’re backed up close to our end zone and I call a pass play and I roll out to the right and it’s like the seas parting. There is no one between me and the end zone.

So I take off running…

And I’m running, and running, and running…

And I look over and the referee is keeping up with me…

Running backwards…

And on about the 10 yard line, a big old fat lineman catches me from behind…

And I roll over on the sidelines…

And I throw up…

And that’s the last time I played football.

Several other guys got inducted at the same time. Greg Hill and Quintin Coryatt were the two that made the biggest impression on me at the banquet. Greg Hill was a great running back in early 90’s that was drafted in the first round by Kansas City. Quintin Coryatt was a linebacker in the early 90’s. As part of the Wrecking Crew, he was probably most well known for “The Hit” which was aired repeatedly after a nationally televised game against TCU. He was drafted with the number 2 overall pick by the Indianapolis Colts. Here’s a video of “The Hit”.

I went to the Dallas 100 awards banquet last night at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center. The Dallas 100 is an annual award for the fastest growing privately held companies that are based in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Enkitec was number 81 this year - not that great, but still not too bad considering the state of the economy over the last couple of years (we were 42nd last year by the way).

Sam Wyly was the guest speaker at the presentation. He didn’t actually give a speech, but rather gave an interview which was interesting. He’s best known as the founder of Michael’s Stores which sold for around $4,000,000,000 a few years back.

As usual, there was a dinner after the presentation. And as usual it was some kind of meat with asparagus. I guess asparagus must be one of those things that can be cooked a little bit ahead of time or kept warm without too much trouble because it seems to be standard fare at these types of events. Anyway, it’s always nice to have a dinner with asparagus because you get reminded of it the next morning. I won’t go into the details here but if you’re interested I highly recommend this article on the Discovery web site. Whew!

I am constantly amazed by how people, myself included, occasionally over exaggerate. It’s pretty common in normal speech but it seems to be almost required in marketing material. Words like Greatest, Biggest, Most Effective, Fastest, Fluffiest, Zestiest, etc… I sometimes wonder how people come up with this stuff. For example, I ran across this video on utube:

Best Guitar Improvisation Ever

Entertaining no doubt, but “Best Guitar Improvisation Ever”???

Who voted on that? Were professionals allowed to compete, like say Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Slash, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Carlos Santana, Buckethead, Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Roy Clark, Django Reinhardt, Chet Atkins, B.B. King, Jimmy Page, Andres Segovia,  …  ? (sorry if I left off you’re favorite, but you get the idea)

Some of it is shameless self promotion, but I blame most of this stuff on marketing guys. I don’t hold it against them, they have to make a living too. But they do a couple of things that amuse me.

1. They make the previously mentioned exaggerated claims.
2. They make up official sounding statistics to support their exaggerated claims.
3. They write their own quotes (and attribute them to people that they wish had said them).
4. They are obsessed with “look and feel” stuff (”It’s more important to look good, than to feel good”).

Let’s begin with bullet number one (exaggerated claims):

Here’s a couple of outrageous claims I ran across (names altered or withheld to protect the guilty).

• “Joe and Bill are recognized as the two best-selling Oracle Authors in the world.  With combined authorship of over 25 books, Joe & Bill are the two most respected Oracle authorities on the planet.  For the first time ever, Joe & Bill combine their talents in this exceptional handbook.”

• Did you know that there’s a way to burn 3 to 15 pounds of fat PERMANENTLY and SAFELY . . . WHILE YOU SLEEP?! 100% Guaranteed!

• “Because you haven’t just found people who know a little bit about what you’re going through – you’ve found the undisputed heavyweight Oracle experts.”

That last one was bad enough without emphasizing the outrageous claim by using a bold font. And just to show I’m not playing favorites, that one is from the web site of the company I work for!

Continue reading ‘Worlds Greatest Guitarist’ »

I read in the Fort Worth Star Telegram this morning that the Texas legislature had passed a law (Texas House Bill 171) which requires school administrators to use common sense. I guess there has been a problem with this in the past (actually the bill explicitly states that there has been a problem - “School administrators are allowed to consider mitigating factors but sometimes choose not to exercise common sense.”). At issue was strict “no tolerance” policies in some school districts whereby kids were getting sent to alternative schools for infractions as absurd as leaving a baseball bat in the car, leaving fishing tackle (including a knife) in the car, forgetting to take a pocket knife out of a pocket, getting beat up (that’s right - both participants in a fight get the same punishment).

Oddly enough, no one voted against this bill. How could you vote against “common sense”. Can’t you just see the negative political ad next election …

You know the unflattering black and white images, with the voice over saying something like:  “My illustrious opponent voted against Common Sense. Surely you don’t want to elect someone who doesn’t even believe in Common Sense!” …

During dinner, my daughter asked me what I was going to do at work tomorrow. I told her I was going to try to use common sense, even though it wasn’t required by law in my profession. At least it doesn’t yet… But imagine if we could just get a few more organizations in a few more states to start taking this idea seriously. Just imagine what could happen. Reminds me of that bit from Arlo Guthrie’s song - Alice’s Restaurant:

“… And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it’s a movement. …”

(by the way, if you’ve never heard “Alice’s Restaurant” you should go buy it from iTunes right now - I mean right now - don’t even finish reading this - do it now!)

Anyway, this common sense thing sounds like a great idea that could really catch on. I can think of a few organizations where common sense could really be valuable (a lot of them are in Washington). Although I’m not sure how they would enforce it… But that’s a job for another day.

Last week was interesting. On Monday I was on my way to lunch with a couple of co-workers (Randy Johnson and James Garner) when the SUV in front of us launched itself off of a bridge. It looked like a scene from a car chase on a movie (but without the explosions). It just launched off into the air and then disappeared from view. I’m guessing the drop was 40 or 50 feet and the SUV was doing maybe 45 or so. James was driving and he was able to pull over into a parking lot right next to the bridge. We all bailed out and went running down the steep embankment. The SUV was floating in the middle of the lake. The front end was under water but we could still see the passengers through the front windows. They looked like they were in shock. You know how time seems to slow down when adrenaline gets released in your system. Well this was definitely one of those experiences. We spent what seemed like forever trying to get their attention and to get them to roll down their windows so they could crawl out but they never moved (it was probably like 15 seconds). Then Randy says, “We gotta get them outta there” (we’re from Texas, so that’s the way we talk). And about 3 seconds later he’s ditched his shoes and wallet and phone and he’s in the water. And I’m thinking “Rats, I guess I better go help him”. Meanwhile, James has dialed 911 and is running back up to his car to get a crow bar to break the window out. So I jump in and start swimming the 50 yards or so to the vehicle, which is surprisingly hard to do in blue jeans by the way. Another couple of guys follow us into the water as well, so there are four of us altogether.

So Randy is first to the SUV and he is at the front trying to get the passengers to wake up and roll the windows down, but he doesn’t get much response from them. Meanwhile, a couple of us swim around to the back of the truck and start trying to get the hatch open. It ended up taking three of us to get it opened. Once the door was open, the water went rushing in and in a matter of about 15 seconds the whole thing was underwater. There was a very scary couple of seconds while the passengers were clambering over the seats to the back hatch and the water was rushing in. Fortunately they were able to climb towards the back and we were able to pull them both out and then pull them back to shore. Did I mention how hard it is to swim with blue jeans on?

I really believe that the passengers were in serious risk of drowning and that if Randy had not jumped in as quickly as he did they may not have made it out. They were pretty shook up. And had the vehicle sunk before we got them I think it’s unlikely they would have been able to get themselves out. We would not have been able to help as you couldn’t see 2 inches in that water. And the water was a lot deeper than I expected. After the SUV sunk we were briefly treading water above it and I never kicked anything.  Anyway, here’s what Randy looked like in my mind’s eye on Monday:

Randy Johnson - SuperDBA

I felt more like this guy (did I mention the blue jeans, hard to swim in thing):

Kerry Osborne - Swimming in Blue Jeans

So what to do after a heroic water rescue? We went to Taco Diner and had lunch on the patio. No one even asked us why we were dripping big puddles under our chairs. Then we went back to the office, got our stuff and took the rest of the day off. It was a good day!