TJ Crawford’s Abstract Ideas

So a spoon is really just a nickname for a 3 metal or 3 wood. So confusing is golf some times.

Yesterday I wrote about the Cleveland HiBore XLS driver and compared it to last years XL. In that article I said I wouldn’t spend the bones to upgrade just yet, however this one I would. I stopped carrying a 3 wood for the last 5-6 years as I just couldn’t find one I couldn’t hit. I traded it for a 2 Hybrid. However after getting Trev this XLS I’m SOLD. It has a very low profile but a larger head (from volume) that creates some great stability. The face is relatively flat on the bottom and has a great shape on the sole plate that won’t let you dig it in an chilly dip it.

Now how do I convince my wife I need this bad enough to spend the $179?

I added phone service from Charter the other day and it works just fine (saved us $70 bill every month from AT&T). I started having issues with our connectivity every time the phone rang however. I placed a service call and while I was on with them I ran a Speed Test to see if i lost all connectivity. However to my surprise everything was just fine. With a little nudge in the right direction from the tech about cordless phone interference. I started digging more.I got the specs on my D-Link Router and it was running @ 2.4 to 2.483 GHz. My primary set of phones is 5.8 GHz but low and behold the office phone was a 2.4 GHz model. For some reason it started causing interference randomly.

I would say I was pissed but since it involved a trip to BestBuy & ultimately CircuitCity I was ok with it.

Interestingly enough this is a much larger issue and the FCC has now dedicated a slice of spectrum to cordless phones based on a current European standard. DECT 6.0 is a newer standard that cordless phones are now running on. As you can see by the graphic below your network connections (via WiFi only) can be interfered with by 5.8 and 2.4 GHz cordless phones.

By the way I bought a GE only because it had a dedicated GOOG-411 button. Directory assistance beware, your business model is being hacked and turned upside down.

Oh yeah it turns out that my getting Charter phone service had nothing to do with the phone interfering. It was just a coincidence.

Last year I replaced my Ping Si3 Driver with a Cleveland HiBore XL (9.5 degree, S-Flex, Gold shaft). I love it. I spent the time to get on the launch monitor and got it fit perfectly. Trevor tried out for the golf team and as incentive, and reward we told him if he made the team we would get him a new set of clubs. He had been using my wifes set of Golden Bears because he was in this weired transitional period where he couldn’t fit a full set but out grew his junior set.

So to cut to the chase he got fit as well and ended up with this years model of the HiBore XLS (12 degree draw, R-Flex, Gold Shaft). Despite the differences in bias and shaft I will have to say it feels great. It has a little bit more of that buttery feel and the acoustics are a bit louder with the increased size.

You can see the most prominent difference in size in tis photo of the Sole as they stretched and widened it.

Here you can see the stretch in depth as well as the change in scalloping on the XLS.

This also show how the slope on the back has changed. I was surprised it didn’t look more pronounced.

On the face of the XLS you can see how they widened the contour on the bottom and it looks a little more like a boat. They also deepened it up. How can you miss the ball with a face this large? Answer: YOU CAN’T!

They also differentiated the XLS with a reverse color scheme on the head cover, new graphics on the shaft and grip as well as the coloring on the club head itself. Also there is a logo on the toe that changes color in sunlight and UV lights to help prevent counterfeiting.

I am definately a gadget and tech junkie so clubs fit right into that, as the golf marketers have found out. I would love to have a new one but one years change in tech just doesn’t justify it for me. I will say Cleveland has figured it out better than any of them by pricing their driver line $100 cheaper than Taylormade and $150 cheaper than Callaway’s FT-5. They are turning out some fantastic clubs that perform as good as they look and feel. These will be flying off the shelf.

I updated my blog install to Wordpress version 2.5 and it definitely feels nicer. As I was looking through some of the features I noticed a snippet on a plugin that generates a mobile site for almost any PDA, Smartphone etc. One of my biggest pet peeves is trying to view websites on my Windows Mobile device. It’s not because more sites don’t offer a mobile version but more about Microsoft not delivering a very good mobile browser experience.

Since I have been working on mobile project lately I wanted to see how well the plugin worked. When you install it there is a php file that gets added to the plugins directory and then a theme to the themes directory. The site will do a browser detect and when it sees a mobile browser it will dynamically use the slimmed down theme. The theme is all text and link based so there are no graphics in the template. However graphics are supported in the post which is perfect. This streamlines the download on the phone.