A fairly common weekend setup for me actually - what you can't see is it takes two mice and two keyboards to run as I haven't bothered to set up a KVM switch for the work laptop seen to the right. I keep the workflow guide for the program I am using (I wrote the guide, idiots wrote the program) on the laptop so when I find a mistake in something I can make the changes immediately before I forget. In this case the center screen is the actual work item and the two satellites are reference materials, music, and email. I was considering going to five main screens but I'd have to add another video card - next computer perhaps. Anyway, back to the actual blog post...
This weekend, we accomplished a slightly less serious task as we decided to take care of an action item that has been pending since we got here - go see a school football game. Purdue's first home game of the season was against Indiana State and we went to see what college football at Purdue was all about before the term got even busier.
With all the hype and bustle on campus associated with the football team and game days, we really expected both the game and the overall event itself to be pretty exciting. Purdue is part of the Big Ten and therefore 'serious' national football. The large number of people tailgating and driving in and generally being festive outside the stadium and the $20 price to park in a field literally a mile away (the buses don't run early enough to get us there for noon on a Saturday) would seem to agree.
However, at least compared to the NFL football which is primarily what I've seen before this, the game did not seem particularly high-end. There were a surprising number of obvious mistakes made by both sides (people just plain dropping the ball, Purdue's utter and inexplicable failure to run out the play clock in the 4th quarter to the astonishment of the crowd) and the play often seemed hesitant, like they didn't quite know what to do. Now, this was the first game of the year for one team and the second for the other, so maybe that's some level of inexperience at work, but I thought with all the hoopla that the action would be a bit more awesome. There were a lot of supporting bands and cheerleaders but the crowd was not that worked up most of the time. I also feel like they charged too much for tickets because the stands were not full - though in the picture below they look empty mostly because all those hundreds of people on the field walked down from their seats in the stands.
The halftime show was a collection of many local and not-so-local marching bands playing, as shown above. You could mostly hear them and tell what they were playing, but it was nothing particularly special.
Overall, that is about how I feel about Purdue football. I thought it was perfectly adequate but not outstanding entertainment. I assume later games against rival teams may be more energetic on the field and in the crowd, but this one was a little tame. Afterward we went home, napped, and then went out to eat and to the movies (Saw "The World's End") making the day almost completely off (our first since leaving NH in early August) and overall I would recommend the movie to the game. Glad to have gone anyway to find out what we were missing and get a little taste of school spirit. I won't say we won't go to another game, but I can also say I won't feel as bad missing them while working on other stuff from now on.
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