Wright Stuff

Joe Paterno

2011-11-10T06:59:00.005-06:00

If you are a college football fan, you know the legend of Joe Paterno, known as JoePa by faithful fans. But fan or not you have most likely heard the name Joe Paterno. Paterno, the legendary coach at Penn State University. The coach with the short stature, a light voice and thick glasses but has coached at the top level for 46 years.

Unfortunately a huge storm hit the news lately about a former coach of his, Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was arrested and has been charged with 40 criminal counts, accusing him of serial sex abuse of minors.

This all snowballed to end Paterno's career this week, when he announced he would retire at the end of the season. Sandusky's crime is heinous.

There is no excusing what he did.

Whenever something bad happens to someone we like, we say it is "unfortunate" or "they did not deserve this" for them. But when something happens to someone we dislike, we say they deserved it. Well, JoePa truly did not deserve this to tarnish his long career.

JoePa will be forced out because he did what he was supposed to do and relying on them to do what they are supposed to do.

Let's back up and follow the time line of events.

1969: Sandusky starts his coaching career at Penn State as a defensive line coach.

1977: Sandusky founds a foster home dedicated to helping troubled boys, which grows into a charity to help children with absent or dysfunctional families called The Second Mile.

1983: Pen State is selected as College Football's National Champion for the 1982 season by the Associated Press.

1987: The AP voters choose Penn State as the National Champion for the 1986 season.

1994: A boy in the report (Victim 7) meets Sandusky through The Second Mile program at the age of 10.

1994-1996: Another boy meets (Victim 6) Sandusky through The Second Mile when he is around the age of 7 or 8.

1996-1997: Yet another boy (Victim 4) meets Sandusky through The Second Mile at the age of 12 or 13 in his second year of participating in the program.

1996-1998: A boy (Victim 5) is taken to the locker room and showers at Penn State by Sandusky when he is 8-10 years old.

1998: January 1, the victim from 1994-1996 (victim 4), along with Sandusky's wife, as a member of Sandusky's family party for the 1998 Outback Bowl.

1998: Victim 6 is taken into the locker room and showers when he is 11 years old. When he is dropped off at home, his hair is still wet from showering with Sandusky. His mother reports the incident to the University police who investigate.

Detective Ronald Shreffler testifies that he and State College PD Detective Ralston, with the consent of the mother, eavesdrop on two conversations with the mother and Sandusky. Sandusky then proceeds to admit he has showered with other boys and the mother tries to make Sandusky promise to never shower with a boy again, but he does not.

At the end of the second conversation, after Sandusky is told he cannot see her son again, Schreffler testifies that Sandusky says, "I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead."

Jerry Lauro, an investigator with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, testifies that he and Schreffler interviewed Sandusky and that he admits to showering naked with the mother's son and admits to hugging him in the shower and also admits that is was wrong. The case is then closed after then County DA Ray Gricar decides there will be no criminal charge.

1999: Sandusky retires from Penn State but continues to hold emeritus status.

December 28: Victim 4 is listed, along with Sandusky's wife, as a member of Sandsusky's family for the 1999 Alamo Bowl party.

Summer 2000: A boy (victim 3) meets Sandusky through The Second Mile when he is between 7th and 8th grade.

Fall 2000: A janitor named James Calhoun observes Sandusky in the showers at the Lasch Football Building with a young boy (victim 8), pinned up against the wall (the detail will be left out). He immediately tells the janitorial staff. Fellow employee Petrosky cleans the showers at Lasch and sees Sandusky and the victim who he describes as being between 11 and 13.

Calhoun tells other employees what he saw, including his immediate supervisor Jay Witherite. Witherite tells him whom he should report the incident to but he does not make a report. Victim 8's identity is not known according to the court.

2002: March 1, A Penn State GA enters the locker room at Lasch Football Building and sees a naked boy (victim 2) who he estimates is 10 years old and Sandusky in the showers. (detail left out). The GA tells his father immediately.

March 2, That morning the GA calls Paterno and goes to his home where he reports what he has seen.

March 3, Paterno calls Tim Curley, the Penn State AD, to his home and reports the version of what the GA had said.

Later in the month, the GA is called to a meeting with Curley and Senior VP for Finance and Business Gary Shultz. The GA reports what he saw and both men say they will look into it.

Approximately March 27, the GA hears from Curley and is told that Sandusky's locker room keys have been taken away and that the incident has been reported to The Second Mile. However the GA is never questioned by the University police and no other entity conducts an investigation until the GA testifies in the Grand Jury in December 2010.

2005-2006: A boy (victim 1) meets Sandusky through The Second Mile at age 11 or 12.

2007: During the spring track season, Sandusky begins spending time with victim 1 weekly and having him stay overnight at his residence in College Township, PA.

2008: Spring, Sandusky and victim 1 terminate contact when he is a freshman in a high school in Clinton County. After the boy's mother calls the school to report sexual assault, Sandusky is barred from the school district attended by victim 1 from that day forward and the matter is reported to the authorities as mandated by the law.

Early 2009 an investigation by the PA attorney General begins when Clinton Co. PA teen tells authorities that Sandusky had inappropriately touched him several times over a four year period.

September 2010 Sandusky retires from day-to-day involvement with The Second Mile, saying he wants to spend more time with his family and handle personal matters.

November 5, 2011: Sandusky is arrested and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts. Two days later on November 7, PA Attorney General Linda Kelly says Paterno is not the target of the investigation into how the school handled the accusations. But she refuses to say the same about University President Graham Spanier. Both Curley and Shultz have both stepped down from their positions and have surrendered on charges that they failed to alert police to complaints against Sandusky.

Child abuse is a very serious crime. But it is also a very serious accusation. Paterno immediately told the AD, his boss, about the information that was made known to him. He did not cover it up and he believed that his superiors would investigate and alert the authorities if it was substantiated.

(Just announced that Paterno was fired effective immediately and President of the University has also been fired.)

Sandusky was no longer part of the football program all the way back to 1999. The year before, the police eavesdropped on a call between a victim's mother and Sandusky where he admitted to wrongdoing with her child. The County DA decided there would be no criminal charge. He should have been banned from any affiliation with the school at that time.

Then in 2000, a janitor observed Sandusky with a child in the shower. He tells other employees but nothing is done. Then in 2002 the GA sees Sandusky and tells Paterno. Paterno tells the AD. The AD talks with the GA and the Senior VP as mentioned before and informed him that they were going to look into it. Paterno also heard this and continued to do his job leading a multi-million dollar football program on the reassurance that his boss, the Athletic Director, would investigate the accusation.

Coach Paterno could have done more, yes. Everyone could do more in their everyday life. Coach Paterno's fall is because it happened to be a former football coach and some incidents occurred in the football facility. It could have been stopped several years before but it wasn't.

One has to look at the situation objectively, no matter how hard it is. The Graduate Assistant went to Paterno with vague references of "touching" or "horsing around" by Sandusky and a youth. He did not know that the Graduate Assistant had witnessed a sodomy or rape. When he reported it to the AD that is what he reported.

When the AD and Senior VP talked with the Graduate Assistant, what did they get out of the conversation? Did they get that it was a rape or sodomy or the graduate assistant continue to mention the same things said to Paterno which made it sound like it was "horsing around."

Does he deserve to be fired? I do not believe so. An outstanding coach with more character than most college football coaches who reported what he knew and did what he was supposed to do but was left out to dry by his Athletic Director's failure to investigate and report findings.

R.I.P. Steven Craig "Victor" Williamson

2010-07-24T17:18:00.007-05:00

This is the only photo I could find on short notice.

I first met Steve 'Victor' Williamson in the fall semester of 2000 when we took Intro to Engineering together. This was beginning my second year at the University of South Alabama and I don't remember how long he had been there. I don't really remember how we met in the class or if it was when we were put together to do a project together was the first time we actually met and became friends.

We had to do some project for the class and of course we had lofty goals. We were going to use light or IR sensors to detect a break in the beam when a matchbox car going down a slope would break it. We could then calculate how long that car took to go from top to bottom. Simple really. But it never did work unfortunately. So we rigged up the matchbox car with a piece of copper wire and put wires on the top and bottom of the slope where the wires would brush each other and complete a circuit. Obviously it worked sporadically at best.

But over the course of doing this project, we became fairly good friends. At the time I was in the dorms and downloading videos and music. We scanned the network and found lots of computers sharing random stuff that we would pilfer through, grabbing copies of stuff that interested us. We figured out the 'net send' command in windows at the time and would have belly laughs thinking about people getting these network popup windows saying random stuff.

About that time I was starting to get interested in Linux and had a box, which I still have today, for Mandrake Linux 7.0. That's when the true friendship began, computer software and hardware. I got out of Electrical Engineering, my major at the time, and shifted more into computer engineering which eventually became Computer Science.

I don't remember the specifics, but he ended up leaving the University. Some of these jobs from this point forward become a little fuzzy. At one point he was working at Books-A-Million at Airport Blvd and McGreggor Ave. in Mobile. I would occasionally go by and see him, he would give me a free drink of some sorts. I remember I really liked some white vanilla slushy like drink. His love of computers continued unabated by his barista jobs.

At some point he began working a cargo shipping company that was based in downtown Mobile. I don't remember what he did exactly, but he was down there late at night sometimes.

He would come over from time to time and we would get his favorite kind of pizza, Godfathers. Lots of sausage. He really liked their pizza.

He was working for a Chevron gas station in Tilman's Corner at one point and living off of Rangeline Road in the apartment behind the house. It was like a loft apartment above the person's boat lift. It was funny to hear about him being woken up or using the computer when his landlord would use the lift. It would shake his entire place. I think I ventured out there to see him once or twice.

Somewhere in this time he started taking some MCSE classes through South Alabama that met at the Brookley Center. He took all of the classes after scrounging up the money and began taking the certification tests. They were fairly expensive and I don't remember how many he completed, but he never completed them all.

I believe he lost his job somehow or something and owed back rent to his landlord when he was kicked out of the place. I also think this was the time he moved to Birmingham to get a job and be near his dad who was offering to help him out some.

I don't remember much about his first jobs up there, I just remember when he got the job at Smith Software and began getting big into Linux with the Birmingham Linux Users Group. I started getting more interested and active with Linux towards my later years in undergrad and grad school. We talked about all kinds of computer related stuff and off the wall stuff. He would take trips down to see his mom and stepfather. He could come by and crash at my house some, bringing computers to hook up and leech stuff off of my hard drives. I would get him stuff like Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Ms. Marple. Agatha Christie based television dramas. I was never really into it as much though.

We did share another fascination though. He was really big into the World War II stuff. So I would get WWII videos and we would talk about WWII tanks, planes, ships... you name it. It was another fun time we had.

His time at Smith Software was a rocky one. He would go out and do installs, upgrades and stuff like that as well as maintaining stuff around their office. It sounded like a place I would never want to work in the software business. I believe their software was inventory control like stuff. Looking at their web page and remembering our conversations, their big thing was it's 'Marine Management Software'. It was a bad place for him, he wasn't satisfied and the work was kind of crappy.

I think it was about this time he befriended some people in the Birmingham area that recycled computer and electronic parts. They would go through stuff and get the useful things and try to reuse them else they would send them for recycling. This was about the time I became president of the student chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery at South Alabama. As we didn't have a website nor a good server to host one on, he found a 1U rackmount server that he gave me for the ACM. It was only recently retired and replaced. I still have it in my closet. He even made sure to give me a custom made build of Ubuntu server with the specific driver we would need for the RAID on the motherboard.

In return I gave him an old case the ACM had that he liked. It was purple, a color he seemed to really like and the hard drive went in from the side. So you had easy access to the power and IDE (PATA at the time) ports. It was an Integraph case that a friend back in Cullman had oh so long ago. The front rose up and slid in on the top. I think he really liked it.

By this time he was getting really good with Linux, far surpassing my level which I had neglected. I still supported all of his efforts. I always hosted an FTP server and he always had access to it. It was a place where he could keep his resume and some files that he may need or want. He also always had access to my video archive. He and I were fans of Doctor Who but I we haven't talked about it in quite some time. I don't know if or when he may have lost interest in the show.

During the last year or two we didn't talk as much online as we used to. I was at work during the day and he sometimes was too. He seemed to always be going around and doing something at night. I should have contacted him more, but that is/was something I wasn't too good at.

After his job with the recycling place went sour somehow, he took over a computer repair shop in Birmingham. We chatted about it a lot, I advised him to do what he wants but it was a very risky venture with someone who didn't have much money put back and the economy going the way it was. Plus the computer market was going away from small places to Best Buy or online stores like HP or Dell. He made it work for quite a while, but he eventually had to fold it due to money and bills.

Over some of our last conversations online we told me about his new quad core machine and how it did this and that. I told him about my new computer, also a quad core and all of the hard drive space I had.

Now here are some more random memories I had of Victor that I don't really remember how they fit in the timeline. He had an old Pentium III computer that he use for what seemed like FOREVER. I kidded him a lot about getting a new computer and getting out of the Jurassic age. He had an old IBM hard drive that he used for a long time. It still worked but I remember it sound so bad I joked, and still tell people to this day, that it had rocks or gravel for bearings. He had a Mazda Miata at one time which he side swiped into a concrete barrier. I don't remember what he finally did to retire it though. Then his grandmother gave him a big brown boat of a car. It was either an Oldsmobile or a Buick. We joked about 'the boat' and 'the shit wagon' too. Used a lot of gas and he kept it crammed full of junk. I told him it would probably get much better mileage if it didn't have a ton of junk in it. He always got a laugh out of it.

He spent the night at places that Kacy and I shared. House 1, House 2 and even House 3 that Kacey bought. I know she didn't like him too much and I think he sensed it too but he still liked her. He would get a little angry that she didn't care for him too much and had problems with him staying at our places. I think that's why he didn't visit too much. He always mentioned how he thought Kacey and I would end up together. He didn't like Jonathan that much and he really didn't like Kenny that much either. He would always ask how she was doing, how they were doing. Each time, when I moved out of her house, when they got engaged and when they got married, he always said he thought she and I would end up together.

He came and stayed at my house in Cullman at least once. We set up computers and copied stuff. Back when he was in Mobile we would get together some and game a little. I still remember the epic eight hour game of Age of Empires between he, Kacey, Jonathan and myself. I still also tell people about that epic game too.

Like I have mentioned, Victor was into Linux and Open Source Software. Blender is an OSS project and with him having interest in modeling and stuff he took to it as well. He set up a system to grab nightly code revisions, build them and have them available to download online. I don't know if this is still going or what, but for a long time he was involved with that by giving back to the community.

Victor was a liquor guy, Jack Daniels I think. Didn't go for beer at all. He was a bit of a connoisseur of pens and pencils. Collecting certain kinds of pens and mechanical pencils. Well, more like a specific kind of mechanical pencil. I never really was into pens like him. He was the one who got me into audiobooks and podcasts actually. He was a fan of Leo Laporte on the Screen Savers on TechTV and Call For Help. He got me into those shows, then when Leo left after it was gobbled up by Comcast and G4 Victor go into the early Leo podcast 'the return of the screen savers' which eventually became TWIT (This Week in Tech). I still listen to it fairly often.

The last time I saw Victor, Vicki and I met him for lunch at Atlanta Bread Company. He always had to stop there when he was in town since they didn't have one in Birmingham. I like Panera and suggested him go there but he just didn't like it. But we met there and we talked. I introduced him to Vicki. It was good to see him, wish we could have spent more time hanging out. I wish he could have came down and seen my new place with all of the geeky stuff.

I don't know what happened over the last few days of his life but I hope he is at peace. I hate it happened the way it did. I didn't even know he was down in the area. I wish he would have contacted me. No one knows if I could have made any difference in what happened, people tell me that I couldn't have but no one really knows. I just hate that such a good friend of mine took felt so desperate or out of touch or hopeless that they felt like the best or easiest way out was to take their own life. And at such a young age too.

I still have a couple things the gave me over time. He lent me a copy of the book 'The Last Starfighter'. It's a bit of a ratty looking book, torn cover, worn but I never got around to reading it. It's now on my list to read soon. He got me a copy of Dune when he worked at Books-A-Million, I enjoyed reading it at house 1 and I still have it somewhere. I remember he always wore leather work boots. I remember his thick glasses, his deep voice, his laughter and how he would glare when I make a joke at his expense. How he would come up with a question to ask, rub his face, motion with his hand and almost always begin with “Okay, how about this...”. He had a peculiar walk and way of talking.

He was a big fan of racing. He would go to races at the race track near Birmingham. He was into the endurance type of racing. The 24 hours of Daytona, LeMon's, stuff like that. I was more of a NASCAR type of race fan back then though, before my cousin passed away. I was slightly into indycar type of racing.

He really liked spicy food, but unfortunately spicy food didn't like him so well. His acid reflux would kick in. He said he had it almost all the time. He was the one that got me started on spicy food, I got that from him. His stepfather grew Habernos at their house on Dauphin Island and would make hot sauce out of it. He once gave me a baby food jar of it and it LIT MY MOUTH ON FIRE! So I started eating more and more spicy things now I really enjoy it and can hold my own against Habaneros now.

Victor, wherever you are, I hope you are at peace. I believe there is some sort of spiritual entity that looks over us and sometimes gives us subtle guidance through signs. I don't know if there is something like heaven or if we pass through and go on to live in another life. I just don't know how it works. If there is a heaven, I hope to see him and many others there when my time comes. If we have multiple lives, then I hope to see him and many others there as well.

His funeral service will be held in McIntosh, AL on Sunday July 24, 2010 at 1:30pm.

If I think of more memories, I will revisit this and add on to it. I will borrow this phrase from Adam Curry. To all my friends, I hope I live a hundred more years and you live a hundred years and a day so I never have to see any my friends pass away.

2010-07-24 8:00pm:

Another favorite thing of Victor's was the Colossal burger that Ruby Tuesday's had. I don't think they have it anymore though. One time he finally drug me out to get one with him, I don't remember if I met him there or if he rode with me. But we went to the one that was in the Bel Air Mall because he liked it there. Sometimes he was very peculiar about places and this was one of them. Probably primarily because the cook knew exactly how to fix his burger.

If you did not see the Colossal burger, it was two huge 1/2lb hamburger patties. It was a burger you ate with a knife and fork, not with your hands really. A google search just turned up that it clocked in at over 2,000 calories, but somehow he stayed fairly slim. Wish he would have told me that secret before he passed. But the cook wasn't there that day so he tried to explain at first, then just asked if the waitress would bring the cook out. The waitress did so and he explained how he liked it and the cook went back and fixed the burgers for us. I think he mostly finished it while I just couldn't, I only ate half of it and we talked for quite a while. That end of the mall was pretty sparse, but I did get to see some people walking through.

2010-07-25 7:29PM

One weekend during the normal Mobile summer, my mom came down to visit and we planned an outing to Dauphin Island to visit Victor and his mom Eva. So we got there and mom was introduced to Eva and we sat down and talked for while. Then we decided to go tour Fort Gaines. All four of us loaded up and drove down to the east end of the island to the fort. We all spent several hours going through fort and seeing all of the sights from the underground areas to up on the fort walls where cannons would have thundered during the civil war. I have several photos from the tour that I will have to find and post here when I find them.

Another good memory that came back to me today was when Victor came up and stayed the night in Cullman. We went over to my friend Wesley's house and Victor was in awe of his setup. He had a room dedicated to Anime and computers. He had either four or five large bookshelves pretty much full with anime, manga and the items that came with anime box sets. Plus his RAID array of space to store all of his goodies. Wes would tell him the specs or something about a computer and Victor would just glare for a second and do that head bob saying the words a little drawn out, “Damn!” and laugh. Of course we hooked up computers and copied stuff back and forth all throughout the night until I got tired and went to sleep. He would stay up a little longer and continue pilfering through stuff to see what he might want.

The next morning, a Sunday I believe, mom got up first which is usual. She wakes up anywhere between 4am and 5am. I wake up later but Victor was still asleep. After a while mom started cooking breakfast and Victor woke up shortly afterwards and we continued to copy stuff and see what was on tv. Mom then called us into the kitchen for breakfast and when my mother cooks, she cooks for an army. Biscuits, gravy, bacon, sausage, even country ham I think, hashbrows and eggs with two big glasses of milk. Well all got big plates of everything and slowly ate while chatting. Mom and I got a little bit more like we normally do, but Victor got an entire plate full yet again with another big glass of milk. Later mom asked me if he was starving, I told her that I didn't know. I don't know how often he got a good home cooked meal, especially breakfast. But mom being a mom, was quite proud to not only have someone over for breakfast but also have someone over for breakfast who loved it and probably could use the fellowship too.

Later that evening, he loaded up his car to head back down to his place in Birmingham. I never got around to seeing any of the places he lived in Birmingham nor did I get by his computer shop he had. That is one of my many regrets. I didn't get by to see him in the 'ham. I'm sorry man.

A solution to marriage? Just maybe.

2009-07-12T18:39:00.003-05:00

I was reading the other day at how so many people are divided over the concept of same sex marriage. While I'm not going to go out and get a boyfriend, I have known and have been friends with a few people over the years who were drawn to partners of the same sex.

Marriage predates reliable recorded history and has been part of the church since the beginning of recorded history. This is one of the points that some have when opposing same sex marriage. They think marriage is and should only be reserved for the union between a man and a woman. Which I am fine with but many same sex couples are opposed to being merely recognized as 'civil unions'.

The daughter of the republican presidential nominee from the campaign in 2008, Meghan McCain, has been very outspoken about and trying to rally support for same sex marriage within the Republican party. However, in my opinion there are many more pressing issues than that to be more concerned about. So I submit my idea to the web via my blog for the consideration of anyone who wishes to read it.

The founding fathers very clearly wanted a nation that would take in and embrace people of all religions. But they also used religious underpinnings when founding this nation that we call the United States of America. However, since that time we have had a great movement to separate Church and State. The merits and results of which can be hotly debated on both sides as to the affect it has had on this country.

Since the nation was founded, marriages have been recognized by the church and the state. When you decide to marry your loved one, you have to go to the court house and apply for a marriage certificate, yada yada yada. But since marriage is very much a religious union between two people and we want to separate Church and State, they why don't we rename the entire institution where it applies to the State as being a Civil Union.

Let this sink in. When you go to the court house, you apply for a Civil Union Certificate. Now if you want to have your 'Civil Union' recognized by the Church, you would then plan to have a Marriage ceremony, which is where the Church recognizes and blesses your 'Civil Union' in the eyes of your Church to be a Marriage.

Another pause to let this sink in as well.

This continues with the whole thing of separation of church and state as well as opening up for the potential embrace of Same-Sex Civil Unions, because everyone is joined in Civil Union according to the State and only the Church can recognize a Union as being a Marriage.

Not only does this help with the whole same-sex marriage/civil union thing but it also protects the sancity of marriage for the church. But it does more than that. The terms divorce and annulment are many times used interchangably by the different states in the union. Some recognize the dissolution of a marriage as a divorce while others recognize it as an annulment.

However, an annulment is another church term. An annulment means that a marriage is consider null and void and it works retroactively. Meaning that the marriage never existed which, in the case of Catholics for example, allows them to be remarried. Since marriage in their eyes and in the eyes of most churches is a lifelong contract between two willing parties that is ratified by Devine sanction. Which means that a valid ceremony/contract must be performed and that both parties must enter into it willingly. If any of these conditions lack, then the marriage is not contracted, Divine sanction is not obtained, and there is, in the eyes of the church, no marriage.

Thus a divorce would be what you had to do in order to dissolve your union in the eyes of the state. Then in the case of a church santioned marriage, you would need to seek to have it annulled in the eyes of the church in order for it to no longer be a valid marriage.

So in summary, Civil Union would be what the State and Federal levels of the government would recognize along with the dissolution of such being a Divorce. The church would recognize Marriages however the church sees fit (be in allowing same-sex marriages or not) as well as a Marriage being considered null and void being called an Annulment.

This will make thing easier and it will also appease both sides of the argument about same-sex marriage/civil unions.

QED.

Musical Interests and Collective Soul

2009-06-14T11:43:00.004-05:00

I owe my love and fascination with music to three bands, Collective Soul, Better Than Ezra and Train. But truly a concert back in the summer of 1999 was really what cemented my love of music.

If you have not heard of the band Collective Soul, where were you in the 90's? They had hits like 'Shine', 'Simple', 'The World I Know' and 'December' which surely everyone has heard once if not multiple times. All of these songs were on my "must listen to" list at the time (AKA my personal mix tape).

Fast forward to 1999 and their new album Dosage and the first single 'Heavy'. Another one of those songs that immediately went onto my 'lastest favorites' list and what had evolved to my mix CD.

In 1999 there was a radio station in Birmingham, Alabama simply known as The X. It was 107.7 WRAX or The X. A great radio station that had a history of great music. In the 90's this station and the Birmingham area introduced the masses to many bands that went big, those bands remember and thank The X and Birmingham for bringing them to the forefront of music.

A friend and I get tickets to a music 'festival' of sorts on the southern side of Birmingham at Oak Mountain Amphitheater called 'X Fest'. Many bands played there but the three that stood out the most was Marvelous 3, My Friend Steve, Train and obviously Collective Soul.

My friend and I arrive and listen to some of the bands like My Friend Steve comes on and plays the song I know most by them 'All In All' and Marvelous 3 with their hit at time 'Freak of the Week'.

Around this time Train was getting lots of airtime in Birmingham with their song 'Meet Virginia' which had been playing for months but was only just now catching on nationally. So they were the last band on before the headliner Collective Soul. They were playing all of their songs from the album and I remember being enthralled by their music and Pat Monahan's bongo solo.

They ended their set and the stage was reset for CS to come on. I don't remember the set list or order of songs, but I remember being awed so much by their performance and the finale of 'Heavy' that I decided to that, even if I never become a music star or anything like that, I still want to learn to play.

So you can really say that concert by Collective Soul back in 1999 was what set me on my path to learn and play music. To this day, Collective Soul and Better Than Ezra continue to inspire my interest in music.

Here are some links that might interest you:

Collective Soul's Website

Collective Soul's Twitter

Collective Soul's 2009 Tour

Better Than Ezra's Website

Better Than Ezra's Twitter

Better Than Ezra's 2009 Tour

Dusting off the ole blog

2008-10-22T12:26:00.003-05:00

Sorry its been a while since my last post but things happen and things get neglected. Matt and myself launched at fan site/blog for USA sports based around the new Jaguar logo. So if you haven't heard or seen it, visit ThunderJags and give us some feedback. Oh and click an ad or two if you like it.

I'm still slowly organizing and putting stuff away in the new place. I've been working around the latest roommate, who still has a huge amount of crap in the game(?) room. I mean really, how many guys has THAT many clothes and shoes?!? He would seriously rival many women I know in both of those departments. In addition to that he has started smoking, at least its outside.

I am considering joining the Jaguar Football Support Club, if anyone is interested in going in with me for now. We can get good priority seating, but I want to know who wants to go in and/or possibly going to games so I can see how many tickets are needed. So send me an email and let me know if you're interested in season tickets or just going to take in a game.

Hopefully I won't take so long between posts next time since I have some things floating around in my mind to blog about.

Rally for the Republic Speeches

2008-09-03T19:00:00.007-05:00

Here are the speeches from Jessie Ventura and Ron Paul at the Rally for the Republic. I wanted to have them all in one place so here it goes.

First up, Jessie Ventura:

Jessie Ventura Part 1

Jessie Ventura Part 2

Jessie Ventura Part 2

Barry Goldwater Jr. Introducing Ron Paul

Now, Dr. Ron Paul:

Ron Paul Part 1

Ron Paul Part 2

Ron Paul Part 3

Ron Paul Part 4

Ron Paul Part 5

Ron Paul Part 6

Ron Paul Part 7

Ron Paul Part 8

Ron Paul Part 9

Ron Paul on Glenn Beck September 3, 2008

Week 1 College Football Results 2008

2008-09-03T00:08:00.004-05:00

Last weekend marked the beginning of the College Football season. Alabama worked out a high profile game to begin the season. The match-up was to be at a neutral site between two teams in two conferences that do not meet on a regular basis. Thus a game was scheduled at the Georgia Dome between Alabama and Clemson.

Recently the season was expanded from 11 games to 12. However, SEC teams have to play 8 conference games. The conference has 12 teams broken down into 2 divisions, Eastern and Western. Each division has 6 teams. So, each team much play the 5 teams from their division. In Alabama's case it is Arkansas, Ole Miss, LSU, Mississippi State, and Auburn. Which leaves 3 more SEC games to be filled. One is reserved for a teams 'rival' in the other division, for Alabama this game is Tennessee. The two other games are rotated through the remainder of the Eastern division teams, where they are on the schedule for two seasons where each team will have an away game and a home game against that opponent. This season Alabama plays at Georgia and hosts Kentucky.

So that is the 8 game SEC schedule for Alabama. Now that leaves 4 non-conference games that have to be scheduled. Most teams pick 'cream puffs' as they are called. These are teams that are willing to play a big school at that big school because they stand to get a sizable chunk of change. Each team has them. Alabama plays two Sun Belt Conference teams in Western Kentucky (South Alabama's rival basketball school) and Arkansas State. Tulane was picked up as a third, which is not surprising because Alabama has played them several times in the recent past. Some teams have even played teams from a lower division. Last season Michigan was upset by Appalachian State in Michigan. Appalachian State is from the next lower division, what used to be called Division II ( I think they are now called 'Football Bowl Subdivision' while the old Division I is now known as 'Bowl Championship Series').

Now we come back to the final, or in all actuality the first, non-conference spot. Occasionally you get teams schedule a strong non-conference team to help give them a better strength of schedule ranking. In Alabama's case, or more like in Saban's case, it also serves in another capacity. A key recruiting tool.

While the signing season just ended what seemed like a couple months ago, recruiting is a year-round thing. Coaches want to get the best players for their system at positions that need filling. Thus this game served to showcase Alabama's talent, hard work and their overall program on the national stage. What a huge recruiting tool.

There were a fair share of 'cream puff' games going on this past weekend. Its not unheard of for one of those 'cream puffs' to come back and bit you in the rear. Just ask Michigan last year, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh and somewhat Tennessee this week. Sometimes the case may be that you just don't look too good against these 'cream puffs'. Take Georgia for instance. They were ranked #1 coming into the season and have one of the best teams in the nation. However, their performance against Georgia Southern was lack luster thus they fell to #2.

Analysis of the game had Clemson being the top team in the ACC this season coming in to play the 5th or 6th best team in the SEC. Clemson has alot of speed on its side and what are considered the best running back tandem in the NCAA.

I think this quote summed up the game pretty well: "Alabama came ready for a fist fight, Clemson came ready for the High School dance." Which was true. Alabama did a great job containing the Clemson speed except for one play (opening kickoff after halftime ran back for a touchdown). The running back tandem of 'Thunder and Lightning' were held to 0 (zero, nada, nothing) yards rushing.

Alabama won the game 34-10 on the shoulders of some veterans and freshmen alike. Jim McElwain has done a great job simplifying the offense and using the run to open up the passing game. He found a game plan that chewed up time off of the clock and gave everyone lots of confidence. Clemson only held the ball for a little over 18 minutes of the game. Its hard to keep up or come back from a big deficit if you cannot hold onto the ball.

It must be stressed: This is just one game. There are 11 more games to come in the season and each game must be taken serious. One game is not an indication of how good the team is or how good they will be down the stretch. Tough games are yet to come at Georgia, at Tennessee, at LSU and at home against Auburn. But what you can take away from this game is that the team as a whole has improved, have worked hard and want to win. With this young talent, Alabama could be quite formidable in the next couple seasons.

After the win, Alabama moved up in the AP Poll. Previously 24th they are now 13 while Clemson fell from 9th to just outside of the top 25. In the coaches poll Alabama moved up to 17 while Clemson fell to 22.

NCAA Polls

Jerry Reed (AKA The Snowman) dies at 71

2008-09-02T15:54:00.007-05:00

Jerry Reed, a very gifted actor and musician, passed away yesterday from complications from emphysema. Jerry had several hits which included "Amos Moses", "When you're hot, you're hot", "East bound and down", "The Bird", and "She got the goldmine (I got the shaft)" in the 70s and early 80s.

Probably most notably he was in a few movies in the mid-70s with Burt Reynolds. You may remember him as 'The Snowman' driving the tractor trailer in the timeless movie "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Smokey and the Bandit 2". He played the Bandit in the little known sequel "Smokey and the Bandit 3". Instead of playing a 'good ole boy' he played a ornery heavy in "Gator" which was directed by Burt. Later in 1998 he played a hateful opposing coach in "The Waterboy" with Adam Sandler.

It was Reed and Kris Kristofferson who lead the way for Nashville musicians to make their way into films. With people like Dolly Pardon, Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers following their lead.

His interest in music began at 8 in Atlanta when his mother got him a $2 guitar and taught him how to play a G chord. He later dropped out of school to tour. Then at 17 he signed his first recording contract. At first he established himself as a songwriter for artists like Elvis Presley ("U.S. Male", "Guitar Man"), Johnny Cash ("A Thing Called Love"), Brenda Lee, Tom Jones, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and the Oak Ridge Boys.

Reed and Chet Atkins won a grammy for a collaboration "Me and Jerry" in 1970, then in 1971 Jerry won a grammy for "When you're hot, you're hot", and in 1992 Atkins and Reed won another grammy for "Sneakin' Around".

Reed performed on the road into the late 90s doing about 80 shows a year. "When people ask me what my motivation is, I have a simple answer: Money."

In June of 1999 Reed had a quadruple bypass.

I enjoyed some of his music and especially his work in the first two "Smokey and the Bandit" movies (never saw the third one).

Here are two of my favorite songs by him, the first is probably the best know by anyone who has gone through a divorce. The second is a favorite from the "Smokey and the Bandit" soundtrack.

Video 1 Youtube link here.

Video 2 Youtube link here.

Hurricane Gustav blows on through

2008-09-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

Gustav reared its head yesterday here on the gulf coast. Louisiana took the full force of its landing but Alabama was on the far eastern edges. While we didn't get the sustained winds of 100+ MPH, we did get some tropical storm force winds and higher gusts, plenty of rain, and our share of tornado warnings.

At my previous place of residence, whenever it came a normal Mobile rain, it would form a rather large puddle of water in the back yard that I affectionately dubbed "Lake Ponchakacey". So I was eager to see how my new place would fare with a tropical system. My new definition of flooding was a puddle near the back patio that might, just might get both of your shoes wet at the same time. It will not completely cover your shoes but would be enough to seep in and get them nice and wet.

Now I have a few limbs down in the yard, like most everyone else in the area, that I must clean up.

New Orleans fared pretty well this time around. The new levees held strong even though they did have plenty of over-topping at the Industrial Canal as shown on several news reports. But they did not fail and New Orleans has been spared again. But it was clearly shown that the residents of New Orleans took this storm serious and evacuated and that New Orleans is truly screwed if a strong hurricane hits them just right.

Louisiana is starting to access damage and cleaning up. But eyes are again on the tropics with Hanna threatening Florida and the rest of the east coast. Ike is heading towards a date with Cuba and possibly the Gulf of Mexico. Ike really scares me, because kicked helped to kick the nazi's rear end, so I'm sure he's probably pissed at the course America has taken in the last few years. Then behind Ike there is another tropical depression which would be named Josephine if it were to develop further.

Its like a transatlantic storm super highway out there.

South Alabama Thundercats?

2008-08-26T13:55:00.003-05:00

Jaguar goes RARRRR!!!!!!!

South Alabama unveiled its new sports logo today and as you can tell from the title, it looks very, very reminiscent of the Thundercats logo. So come out and support your South Alabama Fighting Thundercats next fall on the gridiron!

A case of 'maybe you should look closer at the details'

2008-08-25T22:41:00.004-05:00

I was just browsing around and came across this site. As a curiosity I glanced down to see what was supposedly open on this supposed computer. Then I completely lost it when I noticed of the IE windows open in the task bar of this computer in the image. I took a screen shot so I could post it for posterity.

Feel free to visit this site while you can to see it for yourself.
http://www.orangelabel.com/icons.htm

New Residence and pumpkin pie?!?

2008-08-21T23:32:00.004-05:00

Thanks to the helping hands last Saturday, all of the major stuff of mine was moved to my new place. Its a 5 bed room 2 bath house that measures 3,000 square feet. The house sits on a corner lot which gives this place a huge yard, so Thor has a large, fenced back yard to play in.

Slowly everything is coming together. Phone service was up when I moved in. Cable was set up today so now I get clear tv reception and I can browse the web again.

A wall had been torn down between two bedrooms which looked bad and made an unevenly large room. Not really with the help of BJD, but more like BJD with my assistance has since began putting the wall back into place. The studs are up and paneling is in place on my side of the wall with a couple nails in it for a little hold.

While the wall is exposed, Shanon and I are going to run coax and ethernet into this wall to do it nicely. Its probably overkill to do it that way but I would rather do a job right than to have it done sloppily (and possibly cause me to lose my deposit).

I paid a visit to my former landlord to give her a check for the last bit of bills and she wanted to show me what she has been doing to my old room. When she flicked on the light, I was assaulted by a huge orange glow. The room is very much orange. Very much pumpkin orange. It really makes you feel like its Halloween and pumkin pie time.

John Mark Stallings 1962-2008

2008-08-03T09:54:00.007-05:00

For anyone who is acquainted with Alabama football, especially during Gene Stallings time as head coach, they should know the name John Mark Stallings. He is the son of Gene and Ruth Ann Stallings and was one of the most avid fans of Alabama football and his father Gene's coaching.

John Mark was born with Down syndrome and his health has been fragile for years from coping with a congenital heart defect. He has continually been a source of inspiration for his family and Alabama fans. A very good discussion of what it was like to raise a child with Down syndrome was written by Gene Stallings in the book "Another Season: A Coach's Story of Raising an Exceptional Son."

A reporter from the Tuscaloosa News wrote a touching piece about Gene in September of 2006 saying that he may live in Texas, but he has a piece of Alabama with him. In the article they write about his Alabama memorabilia and the words 'Roll Tide' coming from John Mark's bedroom where they could hear the sounds of a recorded game between Alabama and Florida from the 2005 season. John Mark recalls the names of his favorite football players such as Jay Barker, David Palmer, Brodie Croyle and Mike Shula. But he saved his deepest reverence for those he considered the most important members of the team, the trainers.

Back in 2008 Gene talked about how his son changed his perception of football and his approach on the field, "I had a whole lot less tolerance for the gifted and a whole lot more tolerance for the guy that wasn't quite as gifted. With Johnny, I saw him struggle to walk, struggle to kick a ball, struggle to do everything that he did. So, I had a little tolerance for the guys that had to struggle. If you had talent and didn't lay it on the line, I didn't have much tolerance for you."

In December of 2005 the University of Alabama equipment room was formally dedicated the "John Mark Stallings Equipment Room." While some may not think this is much of an honor, it was deeply cherished by John Mark. Its a fitting tribute to an Alabama son who accompanied his father to every practice and game. He was even awarded a National Championship ring. I think Mal Moore could not have been more correct in his statement about John Mark's passing, "For someone who never played or coached a game, I think John Mark may have touched more Alabama fans than any other person ever did. I would like to thank the Stallings family for sharing their love for John Mark with all of us."

After nearly 40 years of coaching, Stallings announced he was retiring in 1997. John Mark's reaction was to burst into tears upon hearing the news.

John Mark was 46 years old and an Alabama fan through and through until his passing. The 'Bama Nation truly lost a friend and brother.

Andrew Cuomo attacks ISPs

2008-07-22T23:28:00.003-05:00

In case you have not heard but New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, eldest son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is on a rampage and he is beating his drum very loudly. What he is drumming up support over is his perseverance to get rid of child pornography. Do not misunderstand me, child pornography is a disgusting and heinous act committed by some very sick individuals. But the way some ISP’s are going about helping him eliminate child pornography is flawed.

The way ISP’s are going about doing this in New York is by eliminating the entire ‘alt’ hierarchy from the newsgroups. But the newsgroups contain thousands of discussion groups that are used by millions of people around the world. These were home to discussions before the web even. Some discussion groups go by sci.math, rec.motorcycles and even comp.os.linux, but there are many, many more. I’m sure if you perform a simple search you would find at least one thread for every programming language you can think of and more. Other highly popular languages like C++, Java and C# have multiple discussion groups dedicated to them.

Furthermore, Cuomo’s strong-arm tactics backs ISP’s into the corner over this issue. If they do not support it then they could be considered as supporting child pornography, which is complete preposterous. Currently Cuomo has turned his attention to Comcast, to which a two-page letter was sent and was received by Comcast on Monday. It threatened ‘legal action’ on child pornography grounds within five days if Comcast executives failed to agree to a certain set of rules that was devised by Cuomo. Also in the letter he states that he wants Comcast and other broadband providers to “volunteer” to take actions to “surgically directed” only at child pornography and “not at any protected content.”

If this were true, it would not be a bad thing. It would actually be a very commendable thing. However his tactics have already led ISP’s such as Time Warner Cable to kill some 100,000 discussions groups. If you are a conspiracy theorist, then here is something to feed your mind. Among the groups that got the ax were talk.politics and misc.activism.progressive. Another ISP that joined his crusade, Verizon, deleted presumably ‘unlawful’ discussion groups which included us.military, ny.politics, alt.society.labor-unions, and even alt.politics.democrats.

Cuomo had a response of, “I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry.” I liken that to burning down an entire library because one obscene book happens to be found on a shelf.

Cuomo even praised AOL for agreeing to help “eliminate access to child pornography newsgroups” but failed to mention they actually eliminated all newsgroups back in January 2005. Before Cuomo’s rush to action.

However, Comcast does not even run or host its own newsgroup servers. Rather, it outsources it to a company in Texas. The chairman and native Texan that runs the company labeled it as “fascist crap, ignorant” and “we welcome the New York attorney general to the battle of child pornography.”

Comcast is not passive in the child porn fight. It helped to organize an industry-wide agreement with a number of attorneys general. It was good enough for the National Association of Attorney but was not enough for New York and not enough for Cuomo. Comcast is a very small presence in New York State at about one half of one percent. The only reason they have that much is because it serves communities in Pennsylvania and Connecticut that happen to spill over into NY. It has been dominated by Verizon and Time Warner.

But Cuomo wants these broadband providers to sign what he calls a ‘code of conduct,’ which conveniently has not been made public.

Now step back and look at this in another way. Look at it from the point of view of the constitution. This could be an infringement on the first amendment’s write of free speech. Any governmental efforts at censorship must be narrowly focused. Censoring 100,000 newsgroups because some 80 newsgroups may have illegal images would fail that test. The courts have ruled that if a government official delivers a credible threat of prosecution, that target can ask a judge to clear stuff up through a declaratory judgment. However it’s a catch-22. Comcast, like its rivals, seem to be unwilling to confront a state attorney general fearing that they will claim that they are merely trying to protect the children and that these companies are sympathetic to child pornographers.

A spokesman said that Comcast’s attorneys are evaluating this request and that they may enter into some sort of agreement with New York which could substantially similar to agreements announced with AT&T and AOL recently.

What could this mean in the long term? It could encourage more attorneys general to play net censor, especially if the attorneys general come to view broadband providers as submissive, off the books sources of revenue. It appears that Cuomo is doing just that since his press release said Verizon, Time Warner, and Sprint will pay over $1.1 million to fund further efforts by the attorney general’s office and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to remove child porn from the internet.

It’s either a shakedown racket or a heavily veiled attempt to get rid of pirated software on newsgroups. That is if you can find any that isn’t actually spyware or virus ridden decoys. But these companies know that Cuomo can cause them millions in legal bills and public relations damage. They are basically paying for protection like right out of the Sopranos. A soldier comes in and says ‘nice business you have here. It would be a terrible shame if something happened to it.’ But this seems to be fine for a New York attorney general, but it would be extortion for a private-sector lawyer.

Constitution Schmonstitution

2008-07-09T22:35:00.004-05:00

Thank you congress. Thank you very much for helping to further shred the Constitution of the United States.

If you do not know what I'm talking about then you should be ashamed of yourself. But, recently is came to light that Bush's administration had been authorizing illegal wiretaps behind the back of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) courts. These courts were put in place after Nixon and the Watergate scandal where they were illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee. So Bush has been going around these courts so they did not have to get court orders, in a secret court, to wiretap Americans.

The telecommunications companies went along with these blatantly illegal requests. However, the legislation passed today, July 9th, 2008 and is expected to be signed into law quickly, will provide retroactive immunity to these telecommunication companies. Effectively ending what lawsuits are pending against them and sealing any information away from public scrutiny.

The vote passed the Senate by a vote of 69-28 with Democratic majority leader Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton, among others, voting against the measure. Much to many of Obama's followers dismay, he voted in favor of the legislation after vowing on more than one occasion that he would filibuster the measure if needed. This debated sparked the formation of the group "Get FISA Right" on his social network. This is the largest user-created group in his social network by a large margin and they plan to continue exerting lots of pressure on him in the coming months.

Apparently Obama's thoughts of change does not seem to be much different than Bush's direction. I think Obama, Bush and McCain all could benefit from reading Ron Paul's 'The Revolution: A Manifesto'. Heck, if they would read it I will lend them my copy.

Is Deregulation of the Cable Industry good for the consumer?

2008-07-04T00:12:00.002-05:00

The Cable industry has argued that government regulation will hold them back from giving the customer better services. Deregulation has been very good for the cable companies. It has let to much, MUCH higher prices. Up until 1984, local governments kept cable prices in check. But their deregulation has led to price hike after price hike (excluding 1993-1996 when the rates were briefly regulated).

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the doors to deregulation and yet more price hikes. Since the Act was passed, cable rates have increased by 59% which is nearly three times the rate of inflation. So we have the problem of high prices, low competition and horrid customer service. While smaller operators actually improved their scores, larger companies continued to lose ground according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In the words of Dr. Claes Fornell who heads the study, Comcast set "an all-time low for the largest cable provider in the country." She also said, "there seems to be an element of monopoly-like pricing in the cable industry."

After Congress' deregulation of the cable industry worked so well, is it not fair of them to call for the government to stay completely away from network management and any net neutrality issues? But to cable's credit, it at least provided a real alternative to DSL and also put pressure on telco companies with VoIP service.

Cable has built a broadband infrastructure that, while not cheap or particularly fast when compared to other leading countries, reaches many Americans and in most cases are capable of faster speeds than DSL (DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades which are beginning should see more significant speed gains over DSL in the next few years). All of this without government regulation.

But looking at some recent FCC oversight hearings on network management which focused on practices at Comcast. Its easy to see how important it is to have some sort of public-interest regulator looking over the shoulders of these companies. The internet has become a key resource quick to rival water, heat and electricity as a utility. So such issues are a bit more than some puny private sector dispute.

While new laws and increased regulation may not prove a necessity to keep the internet healthy in the US, it would still be a shame if Congress and regulators like the FCC were so company minded that oversight was a mere formality and enforcement was toothless. This is not a desire by some to involve government in every private sector dispute, but more of a recognition that internet access in a low-competition marketplace is a bit too important than to have total self-regulation.

Like I read, if you think of it as wolves and chicken coops. When the chickens in the chicken coop are the most innovative chickens in the world, where it is a place of near magical scope and a wide variety of egg shapes and colors are laid by the chickens. Any good farmer would at least pay someone to watch the coop with a shotgun to keep the wolves at bay.

R.I.P. George Carlin

2008-06-23T09:12:00.003-05:00

Legendary comedian George Carlin died Sunday in California from heart failure at 71. He had a history of heart problems. He was born on May 12, 1937 in New York. Some of his accomplishments include: being the first host of Saturday Night Live, released 22 solo albums, authored three best-selling books, nominated for six emmys, nominated for ten grammys, won four grammys, and made appearances in several television series and movies.

Carlin influenced many contemporary comedians such as Denis Leary, Bill Maher, Stephen Wright, and Lewis Black. In 2004, he was ranked as the 2nd Greatest All-Time Comedian behind Richard Pryor. Carlin's final HBO special entitled, 'It's bad for ya', aired March 1, 2008 and was his 14th special for HBO.

On Tuesday, it was announced that he had been selected by the Kennedy Center as this years recipient of the very prestigious Mark Twain Prize for lifetime achievement in comedy. He will be missed.

Below I have embedded and linked to some of his best skits. Like all George Carlin stand-up, it will have several swear words so I would not open them at work. Enjoy some of my favorite clips, because George did. There are many, many more on youtube.

An excerpt of George Carlin's appearance on 'Inside the Actors Studio'. He talks about teaming up with Kevin Smith in 'Dogma' and 'Jersey Girl'.

Skit known as 'Some people are stupid' (one of my favorites)

Skit known as 'Baseball and Football' (Another favorite and probably the first skit I saw)

Skit known as 'Voting'

Skit known as 'Airplane Safety'

Skit known as 'We Like War'

Skit known as 'Global Warming'

Skit known as 'Things you never see'

Skit known as 'George Carlin on White People'

Skit known as 'George Carlin on Language'

Skit known as 'Ten Commandments'

Skit known as 'Seven Words' that caused him to be arrested for 'disturbing the peace' after a show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1972 after uttering all seven words.

AMD/ATI finally treating Linux on par with Windows

2008-06-19T23:03:00.003-05:00

Several months ago AMD announced new ATI Linux drivers and that they were going to open up their GPU specifications. Well, the talk is over and the real thing has finally happened. Over the last several months, ATI proprietary Linux driver has gotten to be on par with NVidia's Linux driver. But there are two open source ATI drivers that are picking up new features and is being improved upon on a daily basis.

AMD continues to publish programming guides and register information routinely for their latest hardware. Now AMD has really stepped up and evolved their linux support by leaps and bounds. They are working to push new high-end features into their linux driver (example is the multi-GPU crossfire support) with their new Radeon HD 4850. On top of that, they are now showing off Tux on their product packaging and will be including Linux drivers on their product CDs too!

Previously Linux drivers were an afterthought. Some examples were when ATI introduced the X1000 (R500) series cards. Consumers did not see any Linux support for seven months after it was released. More recently the Radeon HD 2000 (or R600) series cards took six months for any Linux support to be had. This should now be a thing of the past. With the recently announced Radeon HD 4800 (or RV770) series cards, they will ship the Linux driver on the CD included in the box (unlike nVidia who has never shipped Linux drivers with their product). Plus, they are getting ever so close to offering all of the same features in Windows and Linux drivers alike.

One reason why it would take so long between new GPU releases and Linux support was that the amount of code being shared between the two driver sets was very little. But since last year saw a new OpenGL driver introduced, now more and more code is shared between the two driver bases. This sharing of code is not too dissimilar to what nVidia does with its code between Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Obviously excluding any of the platform specific parts. This has seen nVidia having a pretty good record of delivering support for Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris within days of a new product lauch. With the exception of nVidia's GeForce 8 series cards and their bugs and performance issues of late.

As mentioned before, ATI will be prominently displaying Tux on their official packaging and they have asked the AIBs to include Tux on their packaging as well. Which this may just mark the first time Tux will be prominently displayed on a wide-scale computer hardware package targeted for desktop users.

Also, I would like to add that some of the performance numbers being floated around for the new ATI boards show that nVidia may have given up the performance high ground to ATI. It will be interested to see nVidia's response to both the performance and such high quality Linux support. This could really heighten Linux support across the board for all Linux users.

Firefox 3 and XP

2008-06-17T16:08:00.004-05:00

Firefox 3

Today is download day for Firefox 3. People all around the world is coordinating to get people to download Firefox 3 today in an attempt to set a record for the most downloads of a piece of software in 24 hours.

I went ahead and downloaded it but I have not installed the final version yet. Most of my extensions do not support Ff3 yet. So I'm going to give them a little more time to get their stuff together before I start using it. Otherwise, I will have to go out and find replacements for them.

Windows XP, arguably one of the best versions of Windows to ever be released, is starting to creep towards the end of its selling cycle. Microsoft is still on track to use its bouncer mentality to force big PC makers to quick offering XP on new machines. But their strong-arming isn't nearly as influential toward businesses to upgrade to Vista or to sway developers to write Vista-specific programs.

This will only help Microsoft bolster their Vista numbers because people cannot get XP, which is still the most widely preferred version of windows on new PCs as of earlier this year.

I read an article, which I will link to below, that says the big problem for Vista is that 92% of developers are ignoring it. Linux is getting more love with about 13% of developers are writing apps for it this year and about 15.5% are projecting to write for Linux in 2009.

But beyond the 'new graphics engine', a peer to peer mechanisms, a new networking stack, and WinFS. Oh wait, Scratch that last one since it was dropped early on in Vista's development. Plus scratch the new networking stack since it was actually ported to Windows XP.

But beyond that, Windows XP is not going anywhere in the near future anyway. Mainstream support will not end until 2009 and extended support will go through April 2014 anyway. But XP will still be available on PCs from smaller pc makers (aka system builders) through January 31, 2009, ultra-low-cost pcs through June 30, 2010, a low-end XP Starter Edition will be available in 'emerging markets' also through June 30, 2010.

But also, Vista Ultimate and Vista Business come with downgrade rights. So some computer makers are using this option to offer machines that appear to be XP products but are 'factory downgraded' to XP. The bad thing is only the pricier versions of Vista qualify for this, but you can 'upgrade' to Vista for no added fee either. MS says it will continue to make XP discs available to computer makers in order to enable downgrade rights through at least January 31, 2009.

"Pondering Windows XP's demise" by Ina Fried
"The Open Road" by Matt Asay

Olbermann on Articles of Impeachment

2008-06-15T12:46:00.003-05:00

While I have not been too fond of Keith Olbermann since he left ESPN and joined MSNBC, I did like this segment of his show on MSNBC covering Dennis Kucinich's presentation of Articles of Impeachment on president Bush. That and Kucinich has a smokin' hot wife.

Link for those who are 'embedded video challenged'.

Firefox Javascript tip and more

2008-06-12T23:08:00.004-05:00

Have you ever went to a website and clicked on a link and had your browser resized? Well never fear, I am here to give you a little tip that you can apply in Firefox to stave off that annoyance.

In Firefox open Tools -> Options. Click on the Content tab. Click on the 'Advanced' button beside the 'Enable JavaScript' checkbox. Then uncheck the 'Move or resize existing windows' and you are done.

In case you didn't read about it, Firefox 3 is scheduled for release on Tuesday, June 17th. Mozilla recently released RC3 of the browser. It was very stable and easy to use like a full release version back at beta 5 I thought.

Some of the changes that will immediately be noticeable is its memory footprint. With Firefox 2 it could gobble up lots of memory and bog down your system. That has been fixed with some memory leaks being patched, a change in what plugins have access to, and it no longer pre-caching pages you might visit for a speed increase.

Visually, its pretty pleasing with new looking forward and back buttons. The location bar will be one of the next changes you will notice. When you type in a location you want to visit, a drop down list of matching sites will appear. Each entry is somewhat large but that makes it easy to read I guess.

The location bar does a search of the recent website you visited. Suppose, I watched a video on youtube.com that had the title 'Steel Guitar Hero' and wanted to return to it. I could type into the location bar 'Steel' and it will have a drop down list of places that contains the word 'steel'. In order to narrow down the results, you can further enter 'guitar' which will get me closer to what I am looking for.

Whenever you go to a URL, you will see what I refer to as the 'hollow star'. Clicking it is an easy way to quickly bookmark a website thereby making the 'hollow star' into a 'gold star'. By default, all new bookmarks will be placed in the 'unsorted bookmarks' folder to help keep your bookmarks more tidy. If you want to further organize the bookmark, you can click the 'gold star' again and it will bring up the same menu as if you had gone to the 'menu bar' -> 'bookmark this page' or used the keyboard shortcut 'ctrl-D'.

At that point, you can rename the bookmark, save it to a specific folder and add a tag. So, if I tagged my website as 'awesomeness' I could then type 'awesomeness' into the location bar and all of the bookmarks that I have tagged as being 'awesomeness' will come up. Or going back to my previous example using 'steel guitar hero', I could tag it with the word 'oblair' and do the same thing.

There are many more new things in Firefox 3 that is just waiting for you to discover them. Like the identity button but you can read about that somewhere else or simply watch the 'overview of Firefox 3' video. The first part it goes over is the location bar and bookmarking that I wrote about.

Download Firefox 3 and enjoy.

HD 3D info

2008-06-10T20:33:00.002-05:00

I told some of my friends I see regularly about this but I wanted to blog about it for all of the other people who may not have heard it yet. Matt and I were extras for the filming of Final Destination 4 that was partially shot locally at the Mobile International Speedway.

We all know that most, if not all, of the current big budget films are shot digitally. So, being the techie that I am, I wanted to know some information about the cameras being used to film the movie. I know they used at least 3 cameras to film but I did not know that there were only 5 cameras like those in the world currently. So, I had to find an IT person to get the info about how much data was being captured.

The IT guy told me that the camera would produce 20 Gb per second per eye. In cause you didn't know, 3D is recored per eye. One for the left eye and one for the right eye. So that is a total of 40Gb per second per eye. But it would also record a third stream which was a combination of left and right eye. So, the little tent that would move around with the cameras were each storing 60Gb per second of uncompressed data. Now we didn't ask how or what they were using to store these enormous amounts of data. If you do the fuzzy math, one minute of filming would produce about 3.6Tb of uncompressed data. If anyone has any knowledge of what kind of system they use to store this huge amount of data, please reply or email me. I would love to know.

I cannot wait for sometime in early 2009 to see this movie in the theaters. When myself and some of the people I met at the shoot plan to watch it, I will post it here for my further friends and readers (if there are any reader out there beyond my friends) to come and join us.

iPhone 3G followup

2008-06-10T20:14:00.004-05:00

I did a little number crunching after I heard what was said about the iPhone on stage. Jobs said it would be "half-price", but I noticed it actually costs more. Here is my breakdown.

Old 8GB iPhone costed $399. Add on $60 per month for 450 minutes of voice and the unlimited data plan (manditory for the iPhone). Then with a 2 year agreement (since you are required to sign a 2yr contract with AT&T to get the iPhone 3G) it would total $1,839.

New iPhone 3g 8GB will cost $199. Add $70 for the basic monthly voice plan and unlimited data (no word if the 450 minutes is still the norm here). Again with a 2 year agreement it will cost $1,879. Which is $40 more over the life of your contract and neither total includes fees or taxes).

Users who are classified as 'Business users' have a minimum monthly service plan of $85. That extra money gets you the ability to get email via Exchange.

Plus, in order to thwart the hackers, the new iPhone must be activated in stores instead of the comfort of your home and it will not be available to purchase at launch.

*This should clarify the previous post that noted the $199 price of the 8GB iPhone 3G being 'after rebate'. Rather they make it manditory for you to get an AT&T account (if you do not already have one) and pay the extra $10/month to recoup that 'discount'.

WWDC Coverage

2008-06-09T21:56:00.002-05:00

So, today all of the hard core Apple people were clogging the tubes with their coverage of World Wide Developers Conference today. I thought I would sip the kool-aid and watch some of the coverage while I was running some tests with my thesis guys.

Steve Jobs announced a couple things today. The one that excited most people, but we already knew for a week or more, was the 3G iPhone (dubbed online as the iPhone 2.0) but more on that later (save the best for last you know).

But beyond that, the announcements were lackluster. The name for the next version of OS X will be called Snow Leopard. One word, boring. The .MAC service will be rebranded as 'Mobile Me'. All .MAC users will be upgraded to Mobile Me. Again one word, boring.

Old iPhone's will have a firmware update to 2.0 software. It will have enterprise, SDK, and 3rd party apps support. It will be free for iPhone owners and will cost $9.99 for iPod touch owners. But some of the numbers quoted by Jobs are astounding if true: "90% customer satisfaction, 98% are browsing online, 94% are using email, 90% are using text messaging, 80% are using 10 or more features." Plus, 6 million have been sold in the first year until they ran out last week.

They had a list of new challenges: 1) 3G support 2) Enterprise support 3) third party app support 4) more countries and 5) more affordable. Some of the aesthetic changes are: black plastic back (I suspect for better reception), solid metal buttons, a nice display, camera, flush headphone jack, and improved audio.

The addition of 3G to the iPhone will impact data transfers and make them roughly 2.8 times faster. But 3G has been know to suck battery life in phones. Jobs announced that the iPhone 3G will have 300hr standby, 2G talk time of 10hrs (5hrs previously), 5hrs of 3G talk time (most phones have 3hrs), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7hrs of video, and 24hrs of audio.

The iPhone 3G will also have GPS integrated into it. With GPS, it can do tracking and show a pulsating dot moving across a Google Map as the car drives down a road. Plus, 70 countries will now have the iPhone as well, including Canada (as stated several days ago).

Enterprise support includes MS Exchange ActiveSync, push email, calendar, contacts, secure access to corporate resources with Cisco IPSec VPN, WPA2 and 802.1x authentication. Now the last obstacleon the list is affordability.

The 8gb iPhone started at $599 and is now $399. This also caused some strife with people because the price dropped $100 pretty quickly after it was launched so some people received rebates that could be used in the Apple Store. The iPhone 3G 8gb will sell for $199. But this is a bit misleading. It will cost $199 after signing a 2 year contract with AT&T, so its prices AFTER rebate will be $199. Same way with the 16gb iPhone, $299 after service contract, blah blah blah.

But all of this was a bit boring. I expected something on the Macbook line to be announced, like maybe a tablet version. With these features and 3rd party apps coming soon, this has somewhat peaked some interest in the iPhone. But I still will not get one because it is locked to AT&T only. I am very pleased with Verizon and have yet to find a place that I regularly go that does not have near flawless service. Jeremy cannot pass under a cloud without his service crapping out. I can walk around in 'the dungeon' with no worries about dropping or missing a call. Plus, Verizon is buying Alltel wireless for $28.1 billion to further expand their network.

Now if Verizon would only stop monkeying with the firmware on the phones to cripple certain features...

ISP's trying to bring back bandwidth caps

2008-06-04T22:02:00.004-05:00

On Monday, I saw an article on Yahoo! News about Time Warner Cable trying out metered internet usage in Beaumont, Texas. People in this area will have a monthly allowance for the amount of data they upload and download. If they go over this limit, they will be charged $1 per gigabyte.

They claim that this is an attempt to fairly deal out internet usage, which they claim is uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers. They also claim 'We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure'. However, the investment should have came from all of the millions of dollars given to telco's by the government over the last several years.

The article also goes on to talk about how phone companies are less concerned about congestion and will be unlikely to impose metered usage on DSL customers since their networks are structured differently.

Time Warner Cable gave some info about their tiered service. One will be $29.95 a month for 768 kilobits per second and a 5 gigabyte monthly cap and another will be $54.90 for 15 megabits per second and a cap of 40 gigabytes per month. The price covers the internet portion of subscription bundles that include video (think video on demand) and phone services. Both of which the downloads and uploads count toward the monthly cap.

Comcast, which is the country's largest cable company, has suggested that it may cap usage at 250 gigabytes per month.

This is just a way for these companies to make more money to pad their bottom line. They see a trend where people are using the internet more and more and feel that its their best way to increase their profits. With iTunes, Amazon, Audible, NetFlix and many other services that use the internet for sales and delivery, these companies have set their sights on us users who use it for entertainment to increase their profit margins.

I have started watching TWiTLive.tv streaming broadcasts of Leo Laporte. The video and audio is 564 kilobits per second. If you multiply that out its in the neighborhood of 2 gigabytes per hour. He broadcast about 25 hours a week. If someone watched all 25 hrs per week and did nothing else, that would total over 100 gigabytes per month.

If you watch a movie from NetFlix, each one would be (roughly estimated) 2 gigabytes or 6-8 gigabytes for a high definition movie. This is completely ridiculous. It reminds me of 1995 when metered dial-up internet was around. Remember what happened to that?

Yahoo! News Article
CNet: The Digital Home Article

Legend Bo Diddley dies at age 79

2008-06-02T14:07:00.004-05:00

Bo Diddley (1928 - 2008)

Legendary rock pioneer, Bo Diddley born Ellas Otha Bates, has passed away at the age of 79. He is often cited as a key figure in the transition from blues to rock, introduced more driving rhythms and hard-edged guitar sounds. Plus, who can forget his rectangular guitar.

He was born in McComb, Mississippi about 170 miles from Mobile.

Could OpenGL 3.0 make significant leaps over DirectX 10?

2008-05-16T00:10:00.003-05:00

So, two of the big selling points for Windows Vista is security and DirectX 10. Well the whole security thing is just that it has a real firewall that is enabled from the beginning and not just half of a firewall like they used in Windows XP. The Windows XP firewall would only block outgoing stuff, it would do nothing about incoming stuff. This is easily remedied by using another firewall....TADA!!! your safe.

Now, the whole DirectX 10 thing is that you can't get DirectX 10 on Windows XP. What a great ploy at their disposal? A way to make people upgrade to get that when so many other things have been backported to XP. Brilliant!

Oh wait, this could backfire too. Vista has been released for over a year now but how many licenses have been sold? As of the mark of one year of availability, the number of new computers sold was about 250 million. How many of those were Windows Vista PC's you say? About 100 Million. So about 2/5ths of new PC's sold during that time were Windows Vista PCs. Those people will not be looking to buy Vista anytime soon considering they just purchased their PC.

Also, its pretty simple that a game developer wants to get to the widest audience possible. The widest possible audience is people running DirectX 9. But they also want to provide the best experience possible. Here is where OpenGL 3.0 can come in and try to sweep the rug out from underneath M$.

OpenGL 3 will be completely backwards compatible with OpenGL 2.1, 2.0, 1.5, 1.4, 1.3, 1.2, 1.1 and 1.0 just like always. But it will also push the OpenGL 3.0 API into the next generation and will finally be able to compete with Direct3D 10. Plus, this same functionality will be available on video cards that support OpenGL 2 and DirectX 9. Thus no requirement to get a new video card (unless you want more performance for the bleeding edgers).

So the short of it is that you could get the same functionality as Direct3D 10, in an open standard, and it would be available on Windows XP machines as well as Windows Vista machines.

But, like with everything else, there is a down side. DirectX is more than just graphics. It has DirectInput, DirectPlay for communication, and some less significant things. While OpenGL is just a graphics library API. It doesn't have input or sound, to get those you pretty much have to do it yourself.

OpenGL has a chance to make a big mark but it is at somewhat of an disadvantage too. Do you use DirectX 10 and make it Windows Vista only? Or do you go OpenGL to get the same functionality but on more platforms with the need to write your own input, sound etc?

I will be pulling for OpenGL since I like open standards and most of my favorite games use OpenGL.

Lacking Inspiration lately

2008-05-13T22:36:00.004-05:00

The title says it all, I have been lacking inspiration to blog lately. No football news to speak of much, I'm not that fond of baseball (its not like USA is a real contender this year anyway), and the NBA sucks.

But I do have a couple things to write about, hence the blog post. First, USA had the ground breaking for the new Student Center at the corner of Stadium Blvd. and Old Shell Road. This has displaced the 'old shack' and the oozeball courts. Well rest assured, oozeball will continue in a different location. It will be located between the JagTran building and The Grove. Also, it will be expanded from four courts to five now.

At the groundbreaking, I got an autograph from Coach Jones and a photo with him and the photo can be seen below.
Over the last few days I have started using Twitter. Its a pretty cool way to keep up with people since each 'tweet' is limited to about 140 characters. So you don't get the blabbering like with a bad blog post. I don't have it update me via sms because another friend of mine gets text messages every 25.2 seconds from twitter updates.

Also, I took some time to update my webpage at the school of CIS. Its nothing special but its my page. Thanks to Jeremy who made the template for the ACM website and allowed me to use it for my page as well with some modification. I plan to make more changes to it along the way.

Posting lag

2008-04-23T14:03:00.002-05:00

Well, its that time of year when there's not too much to post about.

Coach Saban was in Mobile yesterday to kick off their state tour leading up to this falls football season. He hinted at how much Mobile mattered in rebuilding LSU when we was there and how it will be key to rebuilding the Crimson Tide back to its national prominence.

In a couple hours from now, groundbreaking will take place on the new Student Rec Center adjacent to Stanky Field. Now, for the people who are not familiar with South Alabama baseball, they will initially laugh at the name 'stanky field'. Eddie Stanky was a major league player, manager and eventually coach at South Alabama. He took USA from unknown to a widely known NCAA baseball team.

This same area where the new student rec center is going to be built, is the same area that students gather each spring semester to play 'Oozeball' before finals start. I wonder if it will still be held at the same area or if they will move it to another place on campus.

Also, tonight USA takes on Alabama at Stanky Field at 6pm.

Finally Thursday is release day for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I will be attending a release party at Picklefish from 7pm - until.

South Paw for the win

2008-04-09T22:26:00.002-05:00

The Chicago Tribune ran a contest coinciding with the NCAA Tournament to see who had the best mascot. After a flury of votes at the last minute, South Alabama's own South Paw won with 51% of the vote over Baylor's Bruiser.

Charlton Heston dead at 84

2008-04-06T00:23:00.005-05:00

Charlton Heston, actor known for such roles as Andrew Jackson, Moses, John the Baptist, Michelangelo, Marc Antony, Cardinal Richelieu and Henry VIII. But probably more well known for the roles of George Taylor from 'Planet of the Apes', Judah Ben-Hur from 'Ben-Hur' and Detective Robert Thorn from 'Soylent Green'. Also known for his political activism for being president of the Screen Actors Guild, Chairman of the American Film Institute and probably best known for being president of the National Rifle Association.

In 1998 after being elected president of the NRA, he delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying, "America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don't trust you with our guns."

In 2002 he revealed that he had symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's disease saying "I must reconcile courage and surrender in equal measure."

In 2003 he stepped down as NRA president and later that same year was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest civilian honor.

Family spokesman Bill Powers said he died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife of 64 years, Lydia, at his side. Powers declined to comment or provide further details on the cause of death.

Another hollywood legend who will never be replaced. Rest in peace Mr. Heston.

Love the Muppets

2008-04-02T01:14:00.002-05:00

I love the muppet video for Mahna-mahna but I think this is right up there with it.

Link for the embedded impared.

Random posting

2008-04-02T00:49:00.002-05:00

I have been a bit too busy to post lately. I fought a bout with food poisoning and does that ever suck. Beware the ground beef :(

Saw plasticized human bodies at the Gulf Coast Exploreum. It was quite cool but I couldn't help but think 'where did the bodies come from and how were they obtained?' Anyway, no matter how it went down it was an educational trip. Now we want to plan another trip down to Museum of Mobile to see the World War II photo exhibit.

We missed seeing Doug and the rest of 'robbing Peter' perform during the Azalea Trail run. I was saddened by this but alas, sometimes a groupie cannot make every single gig.

I was working on planning a viewing of some Doctor Who for the weekend to get ready for the new series starting Saturday. But one of the invitees said he probably would not make it to watch Battlestar Galactica. So this sent my creative juices flowing. While possible not everyone will enjoy this, I had quite a long laugh with this. This is most of an email I sent to all of the invitees.

I'm going to spoil the last season of BSG for all of you. On top of that, I will even give you something from the future (I feel the shock and awe coming from the screen).

The Doctor and his companion is going to be battling the Sontarans but this rag-tag fleet of ships with one remaining battlestar is going to cross paths with them.

After much fighting between the humans and the cylons (or are they cybermen?) the Doctor, with the aid of his sonic screwdriver, will destroy the cylon robots (cybermen maybe) and base stars. Then in an act of compassion he will show that the humans can live with the 'skin-jobs' since they are a new race of beings (and he will point out how brilliant that is). But sadly, they cannot continue on to Earth since their civilization is too advanced and would upset Earths balance. So they will be sent back home, Earth will remain oblivious to the 12 colonies, and the Doctor will fly off, through time and space, to yet another exciting adventure.

Then in about two or three years time, Ron (creative mind behind BSG) will not have any luck with any other television (Caprica will flop) or movie ideas and will pitch a 'reinvention' of Battlestar Galactica 1980 as a new series for SciFi (with a funny bearded Almos just like the funny bearded Lorne Green).

Since the Earth is not at technologically advanced as the 12 colonies are, they will take it upon themselves to help to advance them to help fight the cylons (or cybermen). **Side note: doesn't this sound like Dalek's wanting to advance them to a higher advancement? Just maybe? End Side note**

This will lead to yet another visit from The Doctor and a different companion with a little help from U.N.I.T. to set the Earth straight again and protect its inhabitants from the evil cylons (probably called the cybermen...very close to cylon don't you think) and the 12 colonies (dalek's anyone?). Oh, don't forget the sonic screwdriver and maybe, just maybe, a tin dog.

Enjoy!

Have you been Rick Rolled yet?

2008-03-26T22:34:00.002-05:00

I remember hearing one particular song by Rick Astley when I was growing up in my hometown. Little did I know that some years later it would come back around and be cool again. I'm talking about Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up'.

Throughout the years I would hear snippets of the song here and there. I remembered who it was, forgot, and remembered again. Now its a wild internet meme phenomenon. Even the people who join the group Anonymous, the hacker group protesting the church of $cientology, at protests play the song during their demonstrations. Everyone then joins in and sings the lyrics while waving their signs in time with the music. Quite amazing considering.....I remember when the song came out.

Well, here is the link to the video since embedding has been disabled on most of the videos. This is the VH1 pop-up video version which describes some of the things in the video. Enjoy!

Also, thanks to yougotrickrolled.com here is a great pie chart describing what Rick Astley would never do:

Victor Ellis lost his fight with cancer

2008-03-26T22:23:00.004-05:00

Former University of Alabama linebacker, Victor Ellis, succumbed to his fight with cancer last night at the age of 28. Ellis played for Alabama from 98 through 2001 and was named a permanent team captain.

Victor graduated in 2002 and began working for the University until several months ago when he was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of cancer. Ellis was diagnosed with cancer after developing a persistent cough last summer. Tumors were found in his lung and kidney and cancerous cells in his chest cavity and elsewhere.

Friend and fellow player Ahmaad Galloway led the way with many former Alabama players in raising money for his medical costs.

Rest in peace Victor.

Doctor Who Series 4 preview

2008-03-23T19:32:00.004-05:00

What does the Doctor see?

Well, in just a couple weeks Doctor Who will be transmitted again on BBC One. The ending of Series 3 was exciting and a bit odd. Martha decided to stay so the Doctor will have to find another companion. But the preview for Series 4 looks extremely exciting (I'll just say I saw glimpses of BOTH previous companions) and the return of another foe of the Doctor that I shall not mention.....yet.

Back to the new companion, it will be someone the viewers have already seen (think one of those Christmas specials). But we will have to wait until summer for these new episodes to be aired here in America on SciFi.

Sweet 16 2008

2008-03-23T19:19:00.003-05:00

The field of 64 have been whittled down to 16. So, who was upset? #2 Duke and #2 Georgetown were upset in the second round. Memphis, Tennessee, Texas, Stanford and UCLA all had close games.

Some of the interesting match-ups in the sweet 16. Michigan State and Memphis because Memphis still has some questions to answer about how they will respond against a good team where free throws could be the deciding factor. UCLA and Western Kentucky interests me because WKU is a Sun Belt team taking on a #1 seed. Wisconsin and Davidson, can Davidson's dream stay alive or will Wisconsin be the one to dash their hopes.

NCAA Round 1 Complete

2008-03-21T23:47:00.002-05:00

The field is set for round 2 of the NCAA tournament with some surprising faces completing upset bids. #10 Davidson upset #7 Gonzaga to start off the day of upsets. While Matt, Shanon, Big Joe Duke and I were waiting to be seated at Bob Baumhower's Wings, we watched #12 Western Kentucky force overtime with #5 Drake.

While seated we then got to watch Western Kentucky fall behind and then catch back up. After trading some free throws, WKU was down by one point with 5.7 seconds left. The coach drew up a good play, Ty Rogers would inbound the ball to a player. Ty would trail him down the court drawing the focus to him then passed it to Ty a few feet behind him. Ty got the shot off and nailed the 3 pointer to upset Drake in overtime 101-99.

We were hoping that South would pull an upset but the outside shooting for Butler was too much. I hope the NCAA Committee do not think that it was a bad idea to invite USA because Butler is pretty good.

#13 San Diego upset #4 UConn in overtime so Sunday will see a matchup of #12 and #13 seeds.

The battle between the #8 and #9 seeds is typically a toss up, but I had a feeling Pelphrey would lead Arkansas over Indiana due to all of the problems Indiana has had coming down the stretch.

Then rounding out the day of upsets was #12 Villanova beating #5 Clemson. Which also sets up another match between seeds 12 and 13 in Villanova and Siena.

Well, this ends the great season that the Jaguars had. Unfortunately we have to wait several months before we get to see how the Jags look next season, but on the bright side only two players were seniors. However those two seniors really meant alot to this team.

Go Western Kentucky. At least make it to the sweet 16.

FLOSS-USA Workshop March 22nd 2008

2008-03-20T23:34:00.002-05:00

Thought I would post that the new student organization that Rick Green and I started last semester, Free Libre Open Source Software at the University of South Alabama (FLOSS-USA) will be holding its first workshop on Saturday, March 22nd at 2pm in Faculty Court East room 21.

The topic is different ways to run Linux.

Rick Green will present how to virtualize one Operating System in another Operating System using Windows, Linux and VMWare.
Jeremy Blair will present how to run Linux applications within Windows using andLinux.
Mr. Michael Black will present how to setup and run Linux on a flash drive.
I will demonstrate how to use a Live CD to familiarize yourself with Linux and how to install Ubuntu to have a dual boot system with Ubuntu and Windows.

Half way through round one

2008-03-20T23:22:00.002-05:00

Well, the first 16 games of round one was completed today with the winners advancing to play this weekend. No big upsets yet. #2 seed Duke avoided an huge upset by squeaking out a close game with 15 seed Belmont.

South Alabama takes on Butler tomorrow in Birmingham. Since I'm a cheap college student I didn't spring for tickets to the game so instead a small group of us are going to congregate at Bob Baumhauer's Wings Restaurant to eat, drink, and cheer on the Jags. Come join us!

Go Jags!

4 foot 9 inch, one armed Steve Novick running for Senate

2008-03-19T02:01:00.003-05:00

He's a democrat running for Senate from Oregon. He has his own beer named 'Left Hook Lager' and has t-shirts that reads 'Hooked on Novick'. Check out one of the videos he is running for his campaign.

Link to video

Tracking South

2008-03-16T18:20:00.004-05:00

The NCAA Selections were released at 5pm and USA (26-6) was selected as a #10 seed in the East bracket. Their first round opponent will be another mid-major in #7 seed Butler (29-3). Butler is the Horizon League regular season and tournament championships and made it to the sweet 16 last season as a #5 seed. Some of Butlers big wins were against Michigan, Virginia Tech, Texas Tech, and Ohio State but not overly impressive. The first two rounds will take place in Birmingham at the BJCC. Matt and I are looking into tickets for the game on Friday since we would have a place to stay (thanks mom!).

While Pelphrey and his Razorbacks lost the SEC Championship game, they did get a bid to the big dance as a #9 seed in the East bracket (just ahead of USA mind you).

Go Jags!!!

Thanks to USA for their logos page and Matt for his great photoshop work since apparently I suck at it.

John Pelphrey is making his name known in the SEC

2008-03-16T12:02:00.003-05:00

It was sad last year when John Pelphrey announced he was leaving South Alabama for Arkansas, but it was something we all knew was going to happen sooner or later. He was destined to be a big name coach, but not in at a mid-major school.

But few thought that in his first season in the SEC with Arkansas, that he would be challenging for the SEC title. The unique thing is that with the basketball tournaments, if you can get hot at the right time, all you need to do is win four games in a row. Today Georgia and Arkansas will be playing for the SEC Title and an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament. Georgia was next to last in the SEC (16-16, 4-12 SEC) while Arkansas is 5th out of 12 teams (22-11, 9-7 SEC).

As of the last bracketology update on ESPN, they still have the Jags in the tournament seeded #10 in the Midwestern bracket playing #7 Oklahoma in Birmingham. With the winner of #2 Tennessee and #15 Austin Peay playing the winner. Remember, this is not the official seedings. They will be announced today at 5pm on ESPN. I'll be wearing my USA shirt and cap. Go Jags!

Could upsets bump the Jags from the dance?

2008-03-14T10:05:00.002-05:00

I like to see the underdogs get some revenge from time to time (as long as its not against Alabama or South). But this year, I'm not pulling for the underdogs as much. Since USA lost in the semifinals and being a mid-major school, it doesn't help to get into the big dance.

So, a little recap of last night. Alabama pulled out a big win over Florida, which isn't a bad thing since Florida was a bubble team. Syracuse lost the other night, again which is good since they were a bubble team as well. #13 Louisville was upset by Pitt, while Pitt does have a decent overall record, their record in the Big East is not that good. West Virginia beat #15 Connecticut. Georgia downs Ole Miss in overtime. While some of these aren't very big upsets, they have fairly equal season records but the losing team had better in-conference records.

So, now some bracketology. According to Joe Lunardi from ESPN, USA would be a #11 seed in the East bracket with a possible opponent of #6 seed Washington St.

Sun Belt Championship

2008-03-12T15:17:00.002-05:00

Again, Matt and I attended the Sun Belt Conference Championship last night at the Mitchell Center between Middle Tennessee State and Western Kentucky. MTSU came out strong in the first half holding the lead until the end of the first half when the hilltoppers hit a three at the buzzer to take the lead going into the locker room.

But the second half was all Western Kentucky. MTSU would close the lead then the hilltoppers would find a way to break their momentum and won the game by 10 points.

The win by Western Kentucky will probably help South Alabama's chances of getting into the NCAA Tournament. With two wins over the hilltoppers and the hilltoppers being the Sun Belt Champs, it will help USA's RPI ratings. While the NCAA Selection board does not go by RPI (supposedly) it can only help our cause.

As for bracket projections, one site was projecting the Jags as a 9 seed in the Little Rock bracket with a possible opponent of Oklahoma. While another site is projecting them as a 12 seed and a possible opponent of Gonzaga. While this is all speculation, it does give hope that the Jags could get an at-large bid.

Either way, congratulations to Western Kentucky Men's and Women's basketball teams for their achievements this season and winning the Sun Belt Championships. Until next year, good luck in the NCAA's.

Jags fall to Middle Tennesse State

2008-03-11T00:31:00.002-05:00

Despite Demetric Bennett's 32 points, the Jags fall to the Blue Raiders ending our 17 game home winning streak. Bennett was the only player in double digits for USA, while MTSU had four.

In most games the fans never agree with the calls made by the officials, but there were many times that the same thing happened with us resulting in a foul, that did not with MTSU. I guess this is what happens to the host team when the arena is filled with your fans during a 'neutral' event.

According to the ESPN analyst on SportsCenter, he believes that South Alabama deserves and will receive an NCAA At-Large bid come Sunday, during the selection show. It would have been better for USA to just win the Conference but if we still get in I'm happy. With this game and the upset of #22 Gonzaga, many people think that between these well deserving mid-majors possibly getting bids and the Conference Champions of these Conferences getting automatic bids. It will knock some of the 'bubble' teams out. One of them could be Florida.

If the Jaguars fail to get an At-Large bid, they have an automatic bid to the NIT Tournament for being the #1 seed of the Sun Belt Conference.

So, give it up to Ronnie Arrow and Jags. Especially for the two Seniors Daon Merritt and Demetric Bennett. Bennett averages 20.1 points, 41% 3pt, 83% FT, 5.9 Rebounds and 34.8 minutes per game. Plus Merritt averages 11.5 points, 32% 3pt, 72% FT, 2.8 rebounds, and 32.5 minutes per game. Thats quite a bit of statistics that will have to be replaced.

This will not be the last time I write about this team since they still have the NIT left if not the NCAA.

Go Jags!

Jags advance to semifinals of the Sun Belt Tournament

2008-03-10T14:15:00.006-05:00

Matt and I attended all four games held at the Mitchell Center yesterday. The first game was South Alabama and the University of New Orleans. UNO was pesky and stayed in the mix the entire game. Only with 10 seconds left did the game really look like USA was going to pull out the win.

The Jags avoided a repeat of last years embarrassing upset in the quarterfinals. UNO put the Jags on the charity stripe 49 times throughout the game. With the Jags hitting 37 of them. Brandon Davis scored 27 leading the Jags scoring.

Bo McCalebb scored 25 for the UNO Privateers, adding to his nations leading active careering scoring numbers. This puts him ahead of names like Wayman Tisdale and David Robinson to make it to 21st in the history of the NCAA.

This also pushes the Jags record in the Mitchell Center to 17-0 for the season.

In other games that I saw yesterday, Middle Tennessee State outlasted Troy. MTSU played a solid game holding off a couple runs by Troy, but in the end the lack of an inside game and missed 3's doomed them in the end.

Arkansas-Little Rock topped Florida Atlantic 66-60 despite only going 14-32 from the free throw line. Neither team looked particulary good. It was after the 10 minute mark in the first half before either team made it to double digits in scoring.

The final game of the night was Western Kentucky Hilltoppers and North Texas. WKU dominated the game from the tipoff pretty much. The lead by UNT was short lived. A late rally from 20 points down was stopped by strong defensive play and missed shots.

The officiating was pretty bad for all four games. I'm not a referee, nor do I have the urge to be one (especially in basketball). But there were a lot of bad calls. Hopefully the officiating will get better.

Now, I have to note that the mascot for WKU is quite puzzling. He is some sort of red blob thing. Most of the time people were wondering what he was supposed to be calling him an ink stain, blood clot or just plain ugly.

Plus Hilltoppers? Just because they sit on top of a hill. If your school sits in a valley, you wouldn't call your team the valleywags would you? These guys must not be too creative.

The only thing worse is the Stanford Tree mascot.
Just sad.

John Turner joins USA's football coaching staff

2008-03-08T10:36:00.005-06:00

On friday, Coach Joey Jones announced the hiring of John Turner from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga as offensive line coach. Turner joins Les Koenning, Dameyune Craig and Bill Clark on the coaching staff.

Turner was at UT Chattanooga since 2003 and was promoted to Assistant Head Coach after the 2005 season. Under his tutorage, his line players surrendered less than a sack per game on average over the previous three seasons combined. He has also coached under Terry Bowden at Auburn ('97 and '98), Tommy Bowden at Clemson ('01 as a graduate assistant) and Western Carolina in 2002.

His ties also extend into the High School ranks with stops at Daleville HS ('94-'97, State champions '92 and State finals '93), Dothan HS ('94-97'), UMS-Wright Preparatory here in Mobile ('99-'01).

His brother, Brian, is a safeties coach at Troy and his father is a retired high school coach in Florida.

Coach Jones is building a fairly young and solid coaching staff. Youthful enthusiasm will definitely help get the program on its feet and will hopefully help with recruiting in the area. Lots of good players are signed from this area each year, if only a few of them stay here to play for the Jaguars, it will be some big wins for the Jaguars.

Jones adds more coaches to football staff

2008-03-05T16:05:00.006-06:00

Coach Jones has announced the hiring of a couple coaches for the football program at USA. The first announced was former Auburn quarterback and Mobile native Dameyune Craig as running backs coach at USA. He was most recently the quarterbacks coach at Tuskegee.

The second hire was former Texas A&M offensive coordinator Les Koenning, Jr to fill the same duties at USA. He has 27 years of experience with all but one of them at the collegiate level. The last 10 years he has been coordinating offenses and calling plays starting in 1998 at Duke, before going to Houston in 1999, TCU in 2000 and at Alabama from 2001 through 2003 under former Alabama coach Dennis Franchione when he left for Texas A&M with Franchione.

Koenning has coached teams to 9 bowl games including three straight with A&M, and in 2000 TCU participated in the GMAC Bowl in Mobile.

The third hire was former Prattville HS Head Coach Bill Clark as assistant head coach. In addition he will coordinate the defense and coach linebackers. He spent the last nine years with Prattville where he was the two-time Alabama Class 6A defending champions. His last two teams won 30 consecutive games and the 2007 team ranked #2 in the nation according to USA Today's national high school poll. His overall record at Prattville was 107-11 with his last regular season loss dating back to the second week of the season in 2002.

So, Coach Jones has swept onto campus to thunderous applause and he is continuing this momentum with some good hires for South Alabama.

Now if we can only get an overhaul to the USA Sports website I would be much more happy.
usajaguars.com

A tale of two parties

2008-03-05T15:37:00.004-06:00

Well, McCain secured the number of delegates needed to become the Republican party's presidential nominee last night. With that, Huckabee conceded and ended his bid for the nomination. Though I still have my Ron Paul stickers in my vehicle window and the yard sign is still up.

I was tuning into AM 710 today hoping to catch 'The Ultimate Sports Show' only to find out that it was yanked because of low numbers. It has been replaced by 'The Schnitt Show', which gave me a bit of a laugh due to the name. But he started saying how McCain wasn't his first, second, or third (maybe even fourth) choice on the Republican side but he stated that McCain was for lower spending, less taxes and so forth unlike Bush. Well, if you are for lowering taxes you had better lower spending. I cannot spend more than I make in a years time for more than a very short time. Else the bank will come knock on my door.

On the other side, the democrats are in the midst of a huge battle between Clinton and Obama, which is really polarizing that party. She has ended his 12 state winning spree and tighted up the gap in the delegate count. What can be said though, is Obama cannot seal the deal. He has had chance after chance and just can't put her away. Even after outspending her 2-to-1.

But here was a video Schnitt linked to from his page that has a song that his show made about Obama.

External Link Here

Since I know some of you read my posts through some sort of RSS Reader and some of those readers do not display embedded videos, I will start adding hyperlinks to the videos along with the embedded videos.

Guess who is ranked 28th in the nation...

2008-03-04T22:40:00.003-06:00

The USA Jaguars Mens basketball team, thats who. Unfortunately, they are ranked higher than the Crimson Tide but thats not here nor there.

But the Jags have finished up a great regular season with a record of 25-5, a perfect 16-0 at home in the Mitchell Center and winning the Sun Belt Conference Regular Season Championship. With this they will be seeded #1 when the SBC Tournament starts later this week. They get a first round bye and will face the winner of the first round pairing of Denver(9) at New Orleans(8) on Sunday at 12:30pm.

Mom may be coming down this weekend and if she does I will take her to the game on Sunday to let her take in the scenery. If anyone else would like to go, let me know.

Paul questions Bernanke, the dollar, and fuel savings tips

2008-02-27T23:59:00.003-06:00

Yesterday the dollar hit an all time low compared to the euro (about 1 euro to $1.50). The price of oil per barrel also hit an all time high getting to over $101. We all want lower fuel prices but are we really willing to change our ways to make this happen? Are other people willing to give up their fuel sucking SUV's for something else?

I'll give some tips on how to extend your fuel mileage right now, without having to do anything under the hood of your vehicle, without putting anything into your fuel tank, and even without anything drastic on your part.

1) This is obvious, minimize your driving. If you can walk somewhere, do it. If you want to go pick up a burger on the corner, maybe stay in and cook something at home or walk.

2) Car pool. Sometimes I count how many individuals I see driving a SUV alone. It doesn't take long for me to top 100 and quit.

3) Accelerate gently from a traffic light or stop sign. I have personally extended the mileage I get out of a tank of fuel by 50-70 miles just by doing this.

4) Be wary of your brakes. If a traffic light has changed up ahead, coast to a stop. Don't stay on the accelerator up to the light.

5) If you go to a fast food restaurant, go inside to order. You can save a good bit of fuel by going inside and restarting your engine.

6) Consider public transportation. Unfortunately, Mobile does not have the best public transportation, but other cities do and can be used to decongest the roads and save fuel.

7) Recycle. In 2006, Americans spent nearly $11 billion on over 8 billion gallons of bottled water, then tossed 22 billion empty plastic bottles into the trash. In bottle production alone, more than 70 million bottles of water consumed each day in the US uses 1.5 million barrels of oil over the course of one year.

Every ton of aluminum that is recycled saves about 37 barrels of oil. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a 100 watt light bulb for 20 hours. Recycling one ton of glass saves 9 gallons of fuel (oil). Recycling one ton of paper saves 17 trees, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, 7,000 gallons of water and 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity - enough energy to power the average American home for 5 months. Recycling 1 ton of newspaper saves 15 mature trees. Every day, Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That's the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week. One ton of high-grade recyclable paper can substitute for approximately 3 tons of wood in making new paper products. Every year more than 900 million trees are cut down to provide raw materials for American paper and pulp mills. Recycling 1 ton of plastic can save 1-2 thousand gallons of gas. 1 ton of recycled steel saves the energy equivalent of 3.6 barrels of oil, and 1.49 tons of iron ore over the production of new steel.

New research shows that drinking a bottle of water has the same impact on the environment as driving a car for a kilometer. The production of a bottle of water generates up to 600 times more CO2 than a liter of tap water.

Water aside, the plastic used in both single-use and reusable bottles can pose more of a contamination threat than the water. A safe plastic if used only once, #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE) is the most common resin used in disposable bottles. However, as #1 bottles are reused, which they commonly are, they can leach chemicals such as DEHA, a known carcinogen, and benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), a potential hormone disrupter. According to the January 2006 Journal of Environmental Monitoring, some PET bottled-water containers were found to leach antimony, an elemental metal that is an eye, skin, and lung irritant at high doses. Also, because the plastic is porous you'll likely get a swill of harmful bacteria with each gulp if you reuse #1 plastic bottles.

I know this is all idealistic, but maybe one day it will begin to become mainstream thought.

Anyway, here is the video of Paul questioning Bernanke on CNBC 2008-02-27:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybFGh1sUcQ

Some links where research was pulled:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/121/bottle
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/17/eawater117.xml

'Still Alive' in Rock Band

2008-02-27T13:01:00.003-06:00

Jonathon Colton performing his song 'Still Alive' with the help of Veronica Bellmont from Mahalo Daily, Merlin Mann blogger, and Leo Laport who you should already know for sure. Check out the video:

Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

Vista Wonders!

2008-02-19T10:16:00.002-06:00

Short embedded video about Vista I saw yesterday and just got around to posting.

What happens in facebook, stays in facebook? Probably not

2008-02-18T14:12:00.002-06:00

Watch this embedded video:

Facebook: What They Really Have On You
Watch more DIY videos on 5min.com

Knight Rider Revived

2008-02-17T23:05:00.004-06:00

The photo is an image of the original Knight Rider tv series. It was a show I used to watch as a kid growing up. I had the K.I.T.T. toy car that would talk. I had a lot of cool adventures with that car. But I just watched the new TV Movie that picks up 25 years after the first series. K.I.T.T of old has been dismantled and a new K.I.T.T. has been built. Instead of a Trans Am it is now a Cobra Mustang (to be accurate its a Ford Mustang Cobra GT500 KR image below). I liked how the story was not a replacement or remake of the original but rather a continuation. The story was pretty good and seeing a Mustang in action always has my attention. If you have not seen it, I believe it is worth watching. Thus I will not spoil anything but it was nice to see 'The Hoff' make a cameo.

Sessions at it again?!?

2008-02-17T22:52:00.003-06:00

The government should never give immunity to any company on US soil to get them out of being liable for something they may have done that was illegal. Thus I am against the retroactive immunity Bush is trying to get through congress. But ole Jeff Sessions (Senator AL) is trying to do something else now. You might have read my previous post about him, but for those who did not here is what Sessions said back in December.

"The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than protect our nation's security."

Sessions is now trying to give immunity to other corporations from possible penalties from copyright infringement. Follow this link to read the full article. Here is a little excerpt from the article for your convenience.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has sponsored an unusual provision at the urging of the nation’s banks granting them immunity against an active patent lawsuit, potentially saving them billions of dollars.

Adopted with little fanfare , the amendment would prevent a small Texas company called DataTreasury from collecting damages from banks for infringing on its patented method for digitally scanning, sending and archiving checks. The patents were upheld last summer by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after they were challenged.

I'm sorry Mr. Sessions but I do believe that you are no longer representing the people from your district but instead siding with certain people within your party.

Say it ain't so Joe!

2008-02-15T14:23:00.002-06:00

In December 2006 Alabama was going through a coaching change and Joe Kines, Defensive coordinator, was the interim head coach. Kines did a good job of defensive coaching during his time at Alabama but was not retained as defensive coordinator when Saban was filling out his staff. He had been working in the athletic department as a fund raiser, but now he is heading out to Texas A&M for a stint as their defensive coordinator. But we have to remember Ole Joe for his short time as the Alabama head coach. Thank goodness that there is youtube!

Also in other news, Joey Jones is southbound to be the first head coach for South Alabama. He was announced at a press conference at 11am this morning. He will also be introduced during the half time festivities at Saturday's basketball game.

Jones played and graduated from Murphy High School and was a standout at Alabama under Bear Bryant for three years from '80 to '83. He was hired to start up the Birmingham Southern football program that was dismantled in 1939. Now he is set to come home to Mobile to start up the Jaguar football program.

While I was out

2008-02-08T11:00:00.000-06:00

Well, while I was down and out with what appears to have been the flu I didn't get to write about national signing day. This is the day when High School seniors get to sign their national letter of intent for college football. I don't know if this is the same day for other sports, but who cares.

Alabama comes away with the golden crown of the nations best recruiting class. Fans of other schools may dismiss this as just an off season nothing but it has been shown time and time again that it leads to lots of wins. Here are some cold hard facts.

Bama signed 7 of the top 10 players in the state of Alabama, every single one in the top 5. Auburn was shut out of the top 10.

Bama signed 15 players that were offered scholarships to Auburn. Auburn signed not a single player that was offered a scholarship to Bama.

Alabama has broken the LSU/Auburn sweeps of players from the Mobile area in the last few years. They are starting to recruit outside of the southeast (landing recruits from the Michigan and West Virginia areas). But the biggest thing is that Alabama is back to being a big name amongst prospects.

Attorney General to Congress...

2008-02-08T10:44:00.000-06:00

The AG Micheal Mukasey was in front of the House Judiciary Committee and this is basically what he had to say:

The Justice Department will not be investigating if waterboarding is against the law.
The Justice Department will not be investigating if Bush's warrantless wiretapping was illegal.
The Justice Department will not be enforcing any contempt citations that Congress might bring against the administration officials who do not honor subpoenas for testimony.

Great! Enter the era of recourse-free government. I can just imagine the episode of South Park where the music industry person continues to say "We are above the law!" then squirts some hair gel into his hand to fix a sprig of hair on his head.

I read it here.

Down to three...

2008-02-07T12:12:00.000-06:00

Just moments ago Mitt Romney has 'suspended' his presidential campaign. So now its McCain, Huckabee and Paul.

25 years, yet he still looms larger than life...

2008-01-26T16:45:00.000-06:00

25 years ago today the legendary coach Paul William 'Bear' Bryant died.

Bryant said one time, "I'd probably croak in a week if I ever quit coaching." He was off by a little bit. Just 37 days after retiring, coach Bryant died of a heart attack at the age of 69.

His funeral was fitting for a President. So many people showed up in downtown Tuscaloosa that they filled three churches. The five-mile procession rolled slowly down tenth street, past the stadium where he coached for 24 years, past Memorial Coliseum where his office was. Then on to I-59, where all traffic stopped to allow its passage. People lined the interstate from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham to pay their final respects. Officials estimated nearly one million people lined the 53 mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, just blocks away from Legion Field which was a home away from home for Alabama.

Homemade banners hung from overpasses, construction workers in hard hats held up messages of "Bear, We Love You and We'll Miss You." Dozens of former players along with other famous coaches mourned his death. Eight players from his last team carried the coffin to the grave site.

Bryant grew up poor as the eleventh of twelve children in Arkansas. Years of hard work had made Bryant strong and hard headed. One day, a man in a covered wagon came to Fordyce, Arkansas offering a dollar a minute to anyone who would wrestle a bear. Young Bryant jumped at the chance since it was better than picking cotton all day for 50 cents. He entered the ring and quickly charged the bear and got it into a bear hug. The bear broke free and bit Bryant on the ear. When he saw blood he quickly left the ring and the man skipped town before Bryant could collect his money. But that was when he became known as "Bear" Bryant.

One afternoon while he was in eighth grade he watched a varsity football practice. The coach walked up to him and asked if he knew how to play. Bryant explained that it was his first time seeing the game. Then the coach told him "See that man down there with the ball? You just go down there and try to kill him." Bryant knew how to do that. When the player caught the ball, Bryant ran him down and destroyed the poor safety. The following Friday he was in the starting lineup. Soon he was an all-star on the very talented team and won a state championship in 1930.

Bryant was enamored with the University of Alabama. He had heard about the Crimson Tide and coach Wallace Wade who had taken his men to three Rose Bowls. Bryant was offered a scholarship to Alabama, the only problem was he was one class short from graduating. It didn't matter, he jumped at the chance to play for the Crimson Tide. He moved to campus in 1931 and attended and graduated from Tuscaloosa High while practicing with the team. Then he enrolled soon after.

Bryant was a good football player but was overshadowed by the legendary Don Hutson, his former high school rival. He was known as "the opposite end" but earned a reputation as a tough player. During a game against Tennessee in 1935, Bryant would reaffirm this reputation by playing with a broken leg. He had the game of his career and an Atlanta new paper requested and received an x-ray to prove his leg was broken.

While as a player at Alabama, he did not win a National Championship but in 1933 and 1934 Alabama captured the first two SEC championships.

Head Coach Frank Thomas hired him as an assistant coach when his playing days ended. Bryant was 23 years old. He married his college sweetheart Mary Harmon and they would have two children. After four years as an assistant coach, Bryant took a job at Vanderbilt and earned the reputation as a demanding coach and strict disciplinarian.

After the 1941 season, Bryant was invited to be interviewed for the head coaching job at Arkansas. The job was his at 28 years old. But Bryant was driving home and was proud. But the day was December 7, 1941 and he overheard on the radio that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day he became Leuteniant Commander Bryant in the US Navy.

After four years in the Navy, he came home and eventually became head coach at Maryland. Bryant got into a dispute with the president at Maryland after he fired one of his assistants without telling him and reinstated a player that had been kicked off the team. He quit and took the coaching job at Kentucky.

Quickly Kentucky turned into winners going 7-3 in his first season. He led them to their only SEC title in 1950 with an 11-1 record after an upset over Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl and snapping their 31 game winning streak. In 8 years at Kentucky he took them to four bowl games. However, Kentucky was a basketball school led by Adolph Rupp and football was rivaling basketball in popularity. Rupp wanted basketball to be number one and Bryant wanted football to be number one. During a Kentucky sports banquet, after both teams won the conference championship, the university presented Rupp with a brand new Cadillac and presented Bryant with a brand new cigarette lighter. He knew it was time to move on.

So, in 1954 he moved west to Texas A&M. He thought he had the formula for success and wanted to test it out at another school. He inherited an aweful program with few good players. Texas A&M was a tough places to lure players to. No girls, no glamor, military uniforms and at first glance it looked like a penitentiary instead of a college campus.

Bryant knew that he had to instill dicipline and toughness in order for them to compete. So one day during summer practice he loaded up the unsuspecting Aggies into two buses and headed to Junction, Texas. This practice is arguably the toughest training camp in football history. He started with 48 players and came back with 29. Gene Stallings, one of the Junction Boys was quoted saying, "We left in two buses and came back in one, and that one was half full." He put them through hell to build character and to make them realize that things were going to be done his way. While that team had heart and determination they finished the season 1-9, Bryant's only losing record as a head coach. The next season Texas A&M won the Southwest Conference Championship.

During this time the once proud Alabama football program had fallen on tough times, winning only 4 games in the previous 3 years. They fired coach Ears Whitworth after losing 40-0 to Auburn. A press conference was held in Houston, Texas and Paul "Bear" Bryant was announced as the new head coach at Alabama. He called a meeting beforehand with his A&M players and said simply "Gentlemen, I've heard Mama calling and now I'm going home." Crimson Tide football was about to enjoy an era that may never be matched again in the history of college football.

Alabama players had heard how tough he was and how things were going to change. It wasn't long before they saw it first hand. Bryant called a meeting for the afternoon and were warned not to be late. One of Alabama's best players showed up late and was locked out. After a few minutes of him pounding on the door, coach Bryant turned to his assistant and said, "Go see who that is. And tell him, whoever it is, that we don't need him." Then he spoke to the players saying this.

"I'm not worried about whether I'm going to win or lose. I know I'm going to win. I know that. And I'm not worried about my assistant coaches. I know they're winners. And I'm not worried about whether Alabama is going to win. I know that. The only thing I don't know is how many of you in this room are winners, and how many of you will be with us."

While recruiting his first class of players he told his freshmen that if they followed his rules and played the way he demanded, they would win the National Championship before they graduated.

He instantly turned the program around with a 5-4-1 season, which was more wins that in the previous 36 games. His second year they went 7-2-2 and earned a trip to the Liberty Bowl. Then in 1961 he went 11-0 and won the National Championship after beating Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl. His promise to his freshmen proved accurate. It was Alabama's sixth National Championship and Bryant's first.

Then a young quarterback from Pennsylvania was impressed by Bryant's reputation and decided to sign with the Crimson Tide in 1962. He was Joe Namath. He threw three TD's in his first game beating Georgia 35-0. Alabama won the National Championship in 1964 with Namath and repeated in 1965 with Steve Sloan as quarterback. Kenny Stabler then succeded Sloan in 1966, but the undefeated Crimson Tide lost the National Championship to Notre Dame team with an inferior record. If you want to read about this story, look for the book "The Missing Ring: How Bear Bryant and the 1966 Alabama Crimson Tide Were Denied College Football's Most Elusive Prize."

Alabama would field good teams through the 60's going 90-16-4. But a 6-5 season in 1969 was the only disappointment. Alabama was named team of the decade and Bryant coach of the decade.

Another disappointing season in 1970 going 6-5-1 had critics and fans wondering if Bryant's magical touch had aged too much. Bryant himself had wondered if the college game had passed him by. He considered retirement and even offers from the NFL. He knew he had to do something different.

The 1971 season would be a turning point for Alabama. First, Bryant was credited with helping to stimulate the integration of southern college football by recruiting Alabama's first black player. Secondly, Bryant would engineer an offensive change from the pro-attack to the wishbone and setting us the dominance of the 70s.

While the University of Alabama and other southern schools had an integrated student body for years, no SEC school had a black athlete on their team. Bryant was by no means a racist but simply did not pay much attention to the issue of integration, mainly because he continued to win with his formula. His formula needed some adjusting.

Bryant saw good black players moving out of state, then coming back and beating his teams. He knew this was an unfair advantage and the trend had to change. Within a year all of the other SEC schools had black athletes on their roster.

Leading up to the '71 season he secretly worked on the new offense. Even putting up tarps to hide it from the public and the press. When they did invite the press to watch some practice they would show the old pro-attack offense until they left. Alabama surprised the heavily favored USC Trojans and won 17-10.

The wishbone triggered Bryant's dominance of the 70s where he won three more National Championships in 73, 78 and 79 and won 8 SEC championships. Alabama finished the decade with an incredible 103-16-1 record. Considering 1970 was 6-5.

On November 28, 1981 when Alabama rallied with 2 touchdowns in a 28-17 win over Auburn, Bryant surpassed Amos Alonzo Stagg's record of 314 wins.

The Liberty Bowl was a fitting place to end his career. It was his first bowl game as the head coach at Alabama and the last. After a disappointing season in 1982 he announced that he was retiring at seasons end because he wasn't pleased with himself anymore.

"This is my school, my alma mater. I love it and I love my players. But in my opinion they deserved better coaching than they have been getting from me this year."

That last game was a win over Illinois 21-15. A fitting end for the legend. It capped off 323 career wins, at that time the winning coach in college football history.

Paul "Bear" Bryant concluded his Tide career with a 232-46-9 record with an 82.4 winning percentage, six national championships, 25 winning seasons, 24 bowl game selections, national coach of the year 3 times, SEC coach of the year 10 times, and broke Stagg's record of 314 victories. He was inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame in 1986.

Bryant was more than a coach, he was a motivator. He knew people and he knew how to get them to play above their expectations. William Poling said, "Coach Bryant knew more about you than you knew about yourself, he knew when to give you hell, and he knew when to pat you on the back." Florida A&M coach, Jake Gaither said of Coach Bryant, "He can take his'n' and beat you'rn', and he can take you'rn' and beat his'n'." Former Kentucky player, George Blanda often stated, "This must be what God looks like. He'd walk into the room and you wanted to stand up and applaud."

The lives that he touched were probably the most telling witness to his greatness. He understood that there were more to a player than a strong arm or fast legs. Building character was essential to the building of a winning team. His intentions over the years were to help the players to be better persons every day, to help themselves, to teach a lesson on and off the field.

Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. The name es an inspiration in itself, conjuring images of a man in a hounds tooth hat standing by the goal post, coaching his team to yet another victory. Years of experience were etched in his gentle face, but behind the grand fatherly exterior lay what could 'be described as the right stuff, the stuff that created a legend.

They feared him as a coach but were the best of friends after graduating. He knew what his former players were doing and would be the first to call them to congratulate them, or the first to call to console them.Bryant's last game.

The Bear watching his players before a game.

For Jeremy, the 'bama twins.

Latest Jags Football update

2008-01-26T16:15:00.000-06:00

Athletic Director Joe Gottfried would like to name the first head coach for USA by early February but the list of people who have been interviewed is fairly impressive. So far he had met with Alabama's defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, Auburn running back coach Eddie Gran, Clemson wide receivers coach Dabo Swinney, Clemson defensive coordinator Vic Koenning, South Florida assistant head coach Dan McCarney, Birmingham Southern head coach Joey Jones, Tulane coach Chris Scelfo and former Southern Miss coach Jeff Bower.

Whoever would be the first head coach, they would have a pretty decent situation to start up a football program. If you look at the local area, its very rich with football prospects. The florida panhandle, southern Georgia, southern Alabama, southern Mississippi and over to New Orleans areas has lots of good players. There is Ladd-Peebles stadium which seats over 40,000 with artificial turf for home games. Plus the sun belt conference isn't that bad of a conference.

Gottfried should widdle down the list to 3-5 soon and probably will announce a hire in early February. It will be interesting to see who is hired.

Dodd earns my respect

2008-01-24T17:15:00.000-06:00

Senator and former Presidential Candidate Chris Dodd really earned my respect. Watch the video on this website where he strongly voices his opposition to telecom immunity.

Welcome our new traffic camera overlords...

2008-01-23T12:59:00.001-06:00

I was stopped at the traffic signal at Airport Blvd and Hillcrest Rd and noticed some construction going on. New lighting had been erected and were being worked on. Then I noticed on the top of the pole was a nice new traffic camera aimed at the intersection. Then I looked at the poles and noticed the same cameras mounted on them pointed at the intersection.

I then realized that what we had feared and loathed was happening right here in the middle of WeMo (West Mobile for those who do not read the Lagniappe. We thought it was relegated to places like London and New York but alas, it is right here in Mobile. I took a photo with my phone but I do not have a way to get it on here yet but when I do I will post it.

Is Bush trying to make Strait of Hormuz like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident?

2008-01-13T21:46:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul spoke about his fears of something like this happening two years ago:

South Alabama Football

2008-01-11T14:49:00.000-06:00

Well, Joe Gottfried is roaming about interviewing candidates for the first head football coach in the history of the University of South Alabama. Earlier this week he traveled up to Birmingham to interview Joey Jones. Coach Jones was hired in June 2006 by Birmingham Southern to start their football program, which debuted this past season. Coach Jones is a Murphy High graduate and former University of Alabama standout.

In his 13 year career his record was 125-38 as a High School coach. From 1996-2005 he was at Mountain Brook High School and had a record of 101-27. Previously MBHS had endured 9 consecutive losing seasons and he turned them around to win the 1996 6A state championship. Birmingham Southern's record was 3-7.

Next on Joe Gottfried's list of interviewees is Clemson assistant and former University of Alabama player Dabo Swinney. He joined Tommy Bowden's coaching staff in 2003 and was promoted to Assistant Head Coach after the 2006 season. He has also served as the Wide Receivers coach. "He has had a receiver finish first or second in the ACC in receptions each of the last three years. In his first year, he had three of the top-10 receivers in the ACC, a first in Clemson history." Plus he has the reputation of being one of the top recruiters in the nation.

Swinney was a walk-on at Alabama and quickly earned a scholarship. He was coached by Tommy Bowden at his position while at Alabama. He previously coached at Alabama under Gene Stallings from 1993-1995 as a graduate assistant coach, from 1996 - 2000 he served as either Wide Receivers coach and/or Tight Ends coach in each season. Then in 2003 he joined the staff at Clemson.

Of the two candidates we have heard about thus far. I think Swinney might be a better fit for USA. He is young and energetic. He is a good recruiter (ranked 5th on the Rivals.com list for the last couple years). I am always hesitant about hiring someone who is so quick to jump around. Nothing against Joey Jones, this is his hometown and he certainly knows the area but he has barely been at BSC for a year and a half and is entertaining the idea of going to USA.

On the flip side of things. Swinney has not been a head football coach anywhere so this could be a daunting task to ask him to be a new coach and start a program all in one. But he does exude the youthful energy which could be harnessed to get this program up and going.

Other names that have been mentioned as possibilities for this position were Jeff Bower, who was let go from Southern Miss this season and former Georgia head coach and current ESPN analyst Jim Donnan.

Iranian speedboats, primaries, and FISA....oh my!

2008-01-11T14:06:00.000-06:00

Yeah, 'Oh my' is my reaction because if anyone has watched the video you have to have some doubt about it. The supposed Iranian voices do not have a very good accent. On top of that, it sounds like an amateur phone prank. It was on the level of calling up your neighbor across the street, while peeking through your blinds, and asking them if their refrigerator is running and then advising them that they had better go catch it. I strike it up to FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) by the pentagon trying to let us bomb Iran.

But after the pentagon and the press has reported on the initial video about 'the speedboaters threatening our warships' they are quietly saying that....maybe, just maybe the voices on the recording may not have been from the Iranian speedboats. This comes from ABC News which is linked here.

I recently saw a very good video about Frank Luntz and his polls for Fox (faux) News. He twists the questions in such a way that he can get whatever answer he wants then pick and choose what he wants to use to support whatever he wants.

On the topic of Faux News, their snubbing of Ron Paul in New Hampshire hasn't looked very good for them. The 'not enough room' argument was obviously not the case. Gretta Van Susteren actually supported the idea of having Paul at the debate (if she truely felt this way or if it was a way for them to use the 'not enough room' argument I don't know).

In the New Hampshire primaries there have been some grumblings about odd vote counts and missing votes. Mr. Kucinich has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount in what he says, "unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots." There have been testimony from a person who worked on some of the software used on these electronic voting machines about how he was asked to make a back door way to make someone win. I am not alleging fraud but there must be checks and balances to ensure a completely fair process. I applaud Mr. Kucinich and hope that NH will conduct a recount.

Now my last bit of news I want to write about has to do with FISA and the phone companies. I have voiced my opinion about warrantless wiretaps and the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Survellance Act) courts. Then I ran across this article. It appears that telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps that have been used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because they have repeatedly failed to pay their phone bills on time. I have not heard this mentioned on television or in the main stream media but I saw this on Yahoo news after checking my email. Its funny if you ask me.

Here is a question that was not part of the re-airing of the South Carolina debates for some odd reason:

Also another link to a site with a video.

Its 2008....thats double 1004! Oh and computers too.

2008-01-02T22:28:00.000-06:00

Another year has passed and a new year has hit us square in the face. This is the time that college football hits its finale with the bowl games. People make new years resolutions that last anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months on average. People puts out those top whatever lists. You hears the top 100 songs for the year countdown on the radio.

Obviously of all those that I mentioned, my favorite is college football. But let me ramble some more here before I get to that.

-Computer Section-

I carried both of my desktop computers with me when I went to see mom so I could reinstall Windows on it. So, I formatted and reinstalled Windows and my applications on Christmas Eve. One of the applications that came with the motherboard was Gigabyte's @BIOS which allows you to flash your BIOS within Windows since floppy drives are getting more and more scarce. I was having problems with keyboards on this particular motherboard so I thought, maybe one of the newer BIOS releases might fix it. So I download the update and use the @BIOS utility to start the flash. At about 87% it had a write error. Now, this motherboard has a dual BIOS since the BIOS chips are not socketed like many other motherboards and so you can recover from problems like this. Well, just in case I try to flash different BIOS versions but each one would error out at 87%. I prepare a floppy as a system disk and added the BIOS file and flash utility.

When I restarted finally it started to hang up at the nVidia RAID detection screen which comes up just after the POST. After hitting up several forums I pull the CMOS battery to reset the CMOS. I could then get into the BIOS without having to hit the nVidia RAID detection. After looking around I found the Dual BIOS/Q-Flash utility in the BIOS but it would freeze at the confirmation prompt before entering it. So after contacting Gigabyte, I applied for an RMA number, got the reply and packaged it to ship off today.

So what did I learn from this? Keep a floppy drive around because you still need it. But I also have to say that the new AMD Socket AM2 dual core processor with DDR2 ram and a raptor hard drive makes for a mighty sweet machine.

-Alabama Football Section-

The first 20 minutes of the Independence Bowl was great, Alabama jumped out to a 27-0 lead but then quarterback J.P. Wilson made a mistake and threw an interception. From that point on the team was fighting an up hill battle even though they were winning handily. For the remainder of the game Alabama can only muster a field goal but hold on to win 30-24. So Alabama avoids back to back losing seasons for the first time since the early 50's pre-Bear Bryant era. Recruiting will be helped by this too I'm sure.

Rich Rodriguez jumped ship from WVU to take over at Michigan next season. He had all but signed with Alabama last year before the governor of West Virginia and WVU helped to up his salary. Now Rich Rod is trying to weasel out of his buyout clause which will cost him $4 million. He might have been able to negotiate his way through it but now that he left and is trying to squirm out of it from Michigan I'm sure they are not going to let him off too easy. He signed the contract and I don't feel any bad thoughts about WVU trying to get their money.

-Fiesta Bowl Section-

As I'm writing this I'm also watching the Fiesta Bowl between West Virginia and Oklahoma. Now, if any of you that read this watched it too I have some criticisms to make. If OU looses the game its because of the coaches bad calls. They have a change to cut the lead down to 4 points early in the 3rd quarter but he opts to go for two and fails (score is 20-15 at this point). Then on the very next play he calls an on-sides kick which they do not recover. Two big plays that takes your team, who desperately needs the momentum, and completely deflates them and gives the momentum back to WVU.

Later, OU scores again and goes for two again. Guess what....they do not make it again. Coach Stoops, you are harming your team more than helping.

Finally OU scores and kicks the extra point to make the score 41-28 with 10:14 left in the 4th quarter. Lets see if they can win the game.

Well, I scrolled up to write something else and WVU scored again to make it 48-28 with 7:02 left in the 4th quarter. I think its over with now. Yep its over, 48-28. Congratulations to WVU who came in a big underdog after losing their coach. But I still make the case that Stoops kept his team out of the game and didn't give them a chance to win.

FBI Database

2007-12-22T12:10:00.000-06:00

Well, well well. The FBI wants to build the worlds largest biometrics database in the world, named Next Generation Identification, at the cost of a cool $1 billion. This is supposed to give them more ways to identify people at home and abroad in one place. They have already started compiling data for this and expects to award a ten year contract so they can expand the amount and types of biometric info it receives.

But here is the other kicker to this story.

"At an employer's request, the FBI will also retain the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks, the paper said."

Again, I am completely apposed to this. The only instance that I am in any way in favor of something like this would be for convicted felons and even then I still have reservations. Knowing that my information could be in that database one day makes me feel that I am guilty until proven innocent.

Update: It has now made the front page of Digg linking to the Washington Post article.

Backward priorities

2007-12-21T22:55:00.000-06:00

Well, if you have listened to any of the news stations, its pretty safe to say you heard about Jamie Lynn Spears announcing that she is pregnant at age 16. But what you probably did not hear anything much about was that congress passed a $70 Billion dollar spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't you just love it.

Congress gave Bush $70 billion for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in a massive omnibus spending bill. The Consolidation Appropriations Act funds all federal departments, except for the defense department, for the fiscal year of 2008 to the sum of $516 billion. Obviously bush threatened to veto the bill if it lacked money for military operations. On Dec. 17 the omnibus bill was passed with $31 billion for military operations but no money for Iraq. The senate added $70 billion for war funding on Dec. 18 to avoid a possible veto.

In other news the fine senator from Alabama, Jeff Sessions, had the following thing to say about "civil libertarians":

"The civil libertarians among us would rather defend the constitution than protect our nation's security."

I thought these go hand in hand? Don't get me wrong, I like to have a safe and secure nation....but if we give up our civil liberties to do so, then what good is it? I like to reflect back to the writings of Benjamin Franklin for this little quote:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Senator Sessions, I think you could rethink what you said, brush up on the Constitution, and maybe read some of what the founding fathers wrote about freedom and the constitution. Oh and maybe you should study the oath you take when you take office. I don't consider myself a genius, but I'm pretty sure part of your oath is to defend and follow the constitution.

The Iowa caucus is fast approaching as well as the New Hampshire primaries. On December 16th, also know as the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, grass roots supporters raised over $6 million to go toward Dr. Paul's campaign. A staggering number for sure. But please help spread his message far and wide.

Update: I should have said that while I support defending and protecting the nation, I do not feel that we are in any immediate danger from terrorist attacks. That guy from Law and Order would have you think that just because he played a hard nosed character on television that he would be the same way in the Oval Office. Plus he wants people to think that we are living a mere breath away from another attack and possible nuclear war. Freddie, stop the war mongering, keep the peace, and eat a plate of shut the heck up!!

The only immediate danger we are facing is our obsession with what celebrities are doing every minute of their lives, uncontrolled spending by our government officials, and most politicians.

Happy Tea Party Day 2007!!

2007-12-16T12:11:00.000-06:00

This is shaping up to be another big day for the Ron Paul campaign.

Around noon central time, donations have went over $2.5 Million for the day and $14.1 for the 4th quarter. The first big day was November 5th with about $4.2 million for the day. If the current donation rate continues, today will eclipse that total.

With a mere 18 days until the Iowa caucuses and 23 days until the New Hampshire primary every dollar counts. The word is spreading, people are listening and Dr. Paul is surging. The last poll in New Hampshire that I heard had Dr. Paul in 3rd place with 11% with the leader holding at 24%.

Those revolutionaries out there that support Ron Paul and read this blog, get out and talk to people. Help spread the message.

The Metal

2007-11-30T18:27:00.000-06:00

Unconstitutional license check strikes again

2007-11-17T21:20:00.000-06:00

On the way home from Doug's Shrimp Boil I was going down Cottage Hill and low and behold I come upon a road block. 'No sweat' I think, I'm not a criminal, I have a valid license, I have insurance and I just got my tag renewed. But as I'm pulling up to the officer, I cannot help but already have that feeling that I have done something wrong.

I was driving down a public road, minding my own business, however I have this feeling that I have done something wrong when I haven't. So, I pull up to the officer finally and he asks for my license, registration and proof of insurance. I get my license and proof of insurance card out of my wallet and get the tag registration out of the glove box. I sit there listening to Better Than Ezra when he tells me that my truck is not on my insurance card. I pull out the second card that I have in my wallet and it too does not have my truck on the card.

So, he informs me that to pull over to the access road to receive my ticket. 'You have to be kidding me' I think to myself, I would not say that out loud because then I would probably be arrested for something he would make up on the spot. I get home and check my documents online with Progressive to make sure that my truck is listed. Currently I have insurance jointly with my mother and she recently purchased a 2008 Ford Escape. Somehow when they added it and removed mom's Explorer, my truck was removed as well. But the temporary has it on there but not the permanent one.

After calling Progressive, my truck is back on like it should have been from the beginning. I have printed out a temporary insurance card for my truck. Now I have 3 days to go to the police precinct and show them my proof of insurance and still pay $20 to clear my name. How stupid.

Brian

The 5th of November Remembered

2007-11-06T21:29:00.000-06:00

Well, yesterday was the 5th of November which was the date in 1605 when Guy Fawkes and a group of English Roman Catholics had plotted the 'gunpowder plot' to blow up the houses of Parliment and kill king James I of England. This was to stop Protestant rule by killing the protestant aristocracy. This was also part of the plot in the movie 'V for Vendetta'.

But also, it was a rallying cry to push donations to Ron Paul's campaign. The slogan, "Remember, Remember the 5th of November". But this is not a case of trying to destroy things, but a peaceful revolution to take our country back, to bring the constitution back into the being the guiding force for our government.

Yesterday, the Ron Paul Campaign received around $4.2 Million dollars in donations in about a 24 hour period. This eclipses the amount Mitt Romney received in one day. As of the time I am writing this entry, donations to his campaign fund is nearing $7.5 Million dollars since October 1st or the 4th quarter of the year. A lofty goal of $12 Million dollars was set to help his campaign to 'be taken serious' and to politic in the early primary states.

While there is still a long way to go to the $12 million dollar mark, he has already passed his $5 Million dollar mark from the 3rd quarter of this year. There are more dates planned for mass fundraising. One is This November 11th (veterans day), another is the Ron Paul Money Bomb, and a recent one I found is Tea Party '07 to commemorate the Boston Tea Party on December 16th.

Pass the word on to your friends and family, Ron Paul is real and his ideology is sound. I thank Doug for talking about Dr. Paul and about his platform. I don't know who all he has turned onto Dr. Paul but I have started convincing people to look at him. So far I think my vote has gotten two more votes. One of my 'convertees' could possibly get three or four more votes.

This campaign will probably be a grassroots work all the way. Its not just 'a cool thing' to support him, but you must take your typing, take your words, and take your voice to the polls and vote.

I'll be there, will you?

Remember, Remember the 5th of November...

2007-11-05T13:30:00.000-06:00

Today is that day and there is a plan. Today, all over America people are donating to the Ron Paul campaign. So far over $2 Million has been raised for the campaign just on this one day. Mitt Romney has the highest online, one day donation total with $3.1 Million. I expect this to be eclipsed today.

Thanks for Doug for the link to a semi-real time graph of donations: here.

Remember the 5th of November!

Premature halloween gorging sends dog to veterinarian again

2007-11-04T12:38:00.000-06:00

Thor found his way onto the table on Monday and ate quite a few chocolate whoppers....wrappers and all. Tuesday he seemed okay except for twice vomiting. Wednesday morning he was vomiting more often with chocolate and wrappers coming up. So, the vet wanted to see him to make sure he did not have high levels of theobromine, which is a naturally occurring stimulate in the cocoa bean. According to 'Dog Owner's Digest', "theobromine increases urination and affects the central nervous system as well as heart muscle".

On the scale of toxicity, White Chocolate is the least toxic because it contains the least amount of theobromine at about 1mg per ounce. While the most toxic is baking chocolate which has about 450mg per ounce. Furthermore, hot chocolate has about 12 mg of theobromine per ounce, milk chocolate has about 60 mg/oz, and up there near baking chocolate is semi-sweet chocolate with 260 mg/oz. Dog Owner's Digest has a way to remember the order of toxicity, "What Happy Moose Says BAA? Or: White-Hot-Milk-Semi-Baked."

Well, Thor had to stay overnight so they could induce vomiting, take X-rays, and monitor his condition. He vomited wrappers three or four times before going to the vet and they induced vomiting two or three more times getting out large amounts of chocolate and wrappers from his stomach. He finally home on Thursday evening.

Then Friday, mom was playing with him on my bed and he suddenly yelped when mom touched his face a certain way. He then got down and kept licking his lips like there was something there he could not get off. I finally got him up on the bed and was checking his mouth when I noticed he had a tooth barely holding on. So, we decided it would be best to go ahead and pull the tooth. We tried to use floss to take it out but that never did work. So we had to use a pair of pliers (how redneckish is that?). We pulled it and it quite bleeding quickly and it looks fine now.

Now the only worry I have is to make sure he poops, which I have not observed yet (I know, not the most exciting thing).

Football round: November 4th 2007

2007-11-04T12:10:00.000-06:00

Well, Alabama did most of the things needed to win the game but one. They could not prevent turning over the ball. They could have capitalized on a couple other things but did not. It was a good game and shows that the team is farther ahead of schedule than previously predicted.

I watched some of the Notre Dame/Navy game as well yesterday. Tied at 28 inside your placekickers range and you go for it on 4th and 8 is grounds to be fired over. Especially when your team is already 1-7, your team has not lost to this foe in 43 years, and its a service academy. You're paid to give your team a chance to win games but he clearly gave that game away. I don't care if its a rebuilding year or not, I don't care if you have a 6 year contract, I don't care what excuses you want to make. That is stupid. They may have to pray for divine intervention to win against typical cupcakes Air Force and Duke.

So, who looks good enough to win the National Championship? Ohio State looks good, it just depends on the outcome of their game with Michigan. Oregon looked good knocking off USC and Arizona State. Oklahoma looks good but I don't think they what it takes to win it all. LSU will stumble and this years 'cardiac team' will come up a little short at some point. Kansas is undefeated but do they have what it takes to win against a big team? I don't think so.

This season is heating up and will be fun to watch down the stretch.

Ron Paul moves up in New Hampsire Polls

2007-10-29T18:02:00.000-05:00

According to two websites (Alaska Repor t and Free Market News Network) Ron Paul is polling in 4rd place now, passing Fred Thompson who is in 6th place in a survey of likely New Hampshire primary voters. Thompson is estimated to be in 2nd place nationally in the polls.

Those who are considering making a donation to the Ron Paul campaign, check out the website This November 5th.

The War in review

2007-10-03T10:41:00.001-05:00

There have been countless documentaries, movies and games produced covering World War II but none that I have seen are quite as good as Ken Burns 'The War'. He stated that he did not want to do another war documentary after completing 'The Civil War'. However he changed his stance after many years of people asking him to cover this war. But the deciding factors were two statistics: 1) Every day we are losing 1,000 World War II veterans in the United States every day 2) an unbelievably high number of high school students across the nation believe that the United States fought along side the Germans AGAINST Russia.

This has been an excellent documentary highlighting some of the people involved in the war without focusing on the generals or even the equipment used. The people highlighted were from four small towns in America that were changed forever by the war. One of those towns was Mobile, Alabama. But it wasn't only limited to people who served, it included family members who were affected by their friends and family serving in the armed forces.

The documentary, broken up into a seven part series aired its last episode last night. However they announced it will be reairing on Wednesday nights later this year, so if you missed it the first time around check it out, you will not regret it.

Three mistakes....and Willie?!?

2007-10-01T14:54:00.000-05:00

No, I didn't do anything wrong or anything like that. I'm talking about the game Saturday against Florida State. It was a very close, defensive game and the winner was going to be the team with the least amount of mistakes and unfortunately that was not Alabama. Although we only made 3 mistakes, the last two made the difference.

First was an interception. The second however gave FSU 7 points by fumbling the ball inside their own 10 yard line on 3rd down and long. Wilson was trying to make something happen for a first down and made this mistake. The third mistake took the wind out of the sails though. It was a breakdown in coverage that allowed a short pass to turn into a very long run for a touchdown. However, even though the three mistakes gave FSU a huge advantage and ultimately won the game they still scored again and make it a close game.

Well, I was talking to mom earlier today and I told her that Willie Nelson was scheduled to play the Wharf amphitheater in Orange Beach next month and she went crazy. She insisted I get tickets because she has always wanted to see Willie Nelson in concert. So we are in Section 103 Row Y for Willie Nelson on Saturday, November 3rd 2007.

Four weeks in and things look pretty good...

2007-09-27T15:37:00.000-05:00

Well, its been four weeks of games in the college football season and stuff seems to be going pretty well in Tuscaloosa. Alabama is 3-1 when they could have been 4-0 or 2-2 (if Shula was still coach). After allowing 28 points given up to Arkansas to give them the lead late in the game, Bama comes back to win with mere seconds left with a touchdown pass to Caddell. The defense could not stop the running back duo of Arkansas until the last series (granted McFadden didn't play the last series).

However, last weekend Alabama lost to a better team in Georgia. But, they showed something that has been lacking in Tuscaloosa for several years. While Georgia was a the better team, Alabama played them close and could have come out on top pretty easily. They played up to a better team and gave them a run for their money.

This loss was probably better for Alabama than a win. Why? Well, sportswriters and fans suddenly had heightened expectations. Some were talking about being 8-0 when LSU comes to town. Some were even talking 14-0 with a 13th national championship. This got those peoples unreal expectations out the clouds and back down to earth. Alabama still has some work to do. They don't have the talent to play with the top 5 teams in the nation week in and week out. However, we are well on our way to getting back to that place again.

The other team in the state (for those who cannot discern what I am talking about ask me sometime) is not playing too well. They are now 2-2 with losses to South Florida and Mississippi State which should have been pretty easy wins. But those fans puffed out their chests that 'they are back'. Well, that has yet to be seen. At halftime, they were only up 21-20 on New Mexico State (another cupcake). Plus they have some big games against at Florida, at LSU, and at Arkansas. So, unless things turn around I see possibly a 7-5 record at the end of the regular season.

Notre Dame. What else can I say. They are 0-4 with little signs of life and the urgent need for a team period. They are seriously looking at losing the first 8 games. After those first 8 games, they have Navy, Air Force, Duke and Stanford. Well, typically Navy, Air Force and Duke would be considered easy, cupcake games but with this team those games are not easy games and could be nail biters. Possibly, at best, this team could be 3-9 at the end of the season.

Better than Ezra at the House of Blues - Sept 14, 2007

2007-09-23T17:20:00.000-05:00

Well, I have been a Better Than Ezra fan for a very long time. I saw them live for the first time a few years ago at Bayfest in Mobile. I have wanted to see them again for a while but the real 'itch' started a few months ago. I saw a concert scheduled in Baton Rouge and was planning to go until Doug told me about a concert at the House of Blues in New Orleans, which is much closer.

So, we decided to make a go of it.

Here are some photos of my visit to New Orleans.

Stopped in Waveland, MS and this is two pictures of destruction from over 2 years ago still.Driving into the city I snapped this picture.
Random pictures taken while driving around trying to get to the hotel.

After eating at Pierre Antiones in the French Quarter, I walked down this alley towards Jackson Square to get access to St. Louis Cathedral.

Here are some photos from inside the Cathedral.

Then, obviously, I need a photo of me in front of the Cathedral.
Statue of Major General Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square.
Photo looking back from Jackson square on the statue and St. Louis Cathedral.
Obligatory photo of me, Jackson and the Cathedral.
Photo of the playbill for the House of Blues showing Better Than Ezra for Sept. 14, 2007.
After picking up the tickets, here is a photo from the hotel room showing that General Lee was our protector.
They warned me that the use of a camera during the show would result in me being thrown out, but I had this photo taken after the show while they were breaking down to show that I was indeed there.
The next morning after the show, I snapped this photo of General Lee. The sunlight in the morning was much better at illuminating the side of the statue facing the hotel.
We went to Cafe du Monde across from Jackson Square for Beignets for our breakfast. So, I went up the stairs across from Jackson Square towards the Moon Walk to snap a morning picture of Jackson Square and the Cathedral.
Photo of the horse drawn carriages that are at Jackson Square. They offer tours of the French Quarter, cemeteries and such.
Here is a photo of a building damaged from storm surge and flooding.
An exit from I10 that has been closed since the storm. Its very creepy.
The trip was awesome. New Orleans was great and I cannot wait until I visit again. The concert was superb. While the House of Blues was a fairly cramped space, it was very nice and intimate. I was out on the floor with a lot of people but I wasn't cramped. The only complaint I had was the middle aged woman behind me who was smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Kevin, Tom, and Travis put on one hell of a show and their chemistry and talent show through the concert. If you have not seen them live, its a must see show. If they were to play HOB again next weekend, I would SOOO be there!

Now, how could I not post a couple pictures of Thor while I was at it.
Here he is with his head underneath my pillow.
Again he was asleep on my bed and he woke up when I moved to snap this photo. All he did was open his eyes, not movement. Oh, what a hard life this dog has.

Ken Burns, The War

2007-09-09T20:46:00.000-05:00

I attended the free preview of Ken Burns latest documentary entitled 'The War'. They focus on four towns (including Mobile) and how they changed during the course of World War II. But the main focus is the people from those towns. They interviewed many people for the documentary.

It was a very stunning mix of clips that was very touching. At times you had the audience clapping at something in the film, then other times you could see people shaking their heads or drying their eyes. It will be a very poignant series to watch as it airs on PBS. It is a 14.5 hour documentary that will be aired on Sunday nights starting September 23rd. For the schedule you can visit PBS here. For more information about 'The War' at the PBS website, visit the link here.

The DVD of this documentary will be available October 2nd, presumably at Books-A-Million. It will contain 15.5hrs of film plus some extras such as deleted scenes and interview outtakes. You can pre-order it from PBS here which is good because a portion of the proceeds goes to help fund public television.

College Football Week 2

2007-09-09T20:40:00.000-05:00

Well, two weeks into the season and I’m happy with the direction Alabama is going. They are playing with an attention to detail that they haven’t had in several seasons. The receivers are throwing blocks down field for other receivers and running backs. The special teams are doing good too with long returns and good blocking.

I know they haven’t played a team of the caliber of LSU or Florida but Vanderbilt is not your typical Vanderbilt team of the last 10 or 15 years. They have some big play makers, a good defense, and a hunger to be better.

Our offensive line is strong. John Parker Wilson is throwing the ball well and spreading it around to many different players. Plus our Freshman running back has rushed for over 100 yards in the first two games including some long runs like the run to start the Western Carolina game for a TD.

No one thought in the pre-season that Michigan would be winless in their first two home games. Especially, a loss to former division I-AA Appalachian State (they renamed the division to something else). Notre Dame on the other hand was a prediction I gave before the season and not to rile up Vicki. They lost a lot of talent and I don’t know how long its going to be before they are back to the level of play they had last season.

They have a bad offensive line and have a hard time moving the ball consistently. Their defense is on the field too long and has a hard time getting pressure on the quarterback. They are starting a freshman at quarterback after using all three quarterbacks last week against Georgia Tech.

Auburn played a very sloppy game against Kansas State and didn’t deserve to the win but you have to hand it to them for pulling it out. But during the week, I told people to watch out for a possible upset on the plains when South Florida comes knocking. South Florida played them very tough and had several chances to win the game in regulation. But their placekicker missed 3 field goals and had a fourth blocked, but he came through when it mattered most.

In the overtime period, Auburn gained only 2 yards on a run that was followed by two incomplete passes and settled for a field goal. But South Florida had some deception still to pull. After a couple play action runs by the quarterback and running back, they finally put the ball up in the air for a 14 yard TD pass to end the game. So, Auburn falls out of the AP and Coaches Top 25 with this loss.

Next week, Alabama hosts Arkansas at Bryant-Denny Stadium, Auburn hosts Mississippi State and Notre Dame travels to Michigan for the battle of the winless teams. I guess the good thing to say about this game is that at least one team will come out with a win.

Blogging absence

2007-09-09T20:38:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, I haven’t written in a while. Well, a few weeks ago I met Matt and a couple of his friends to go to the Molly Ringwalds show at the Soul Kitchen. It was an extremely good show.

A good friend of mine and my mom’s passed away last week so I traveled up for the funeral. Aubrey was a very good person, he offered to help mom and myself on many occasions. He would help do things from plumbing, door installation, and brakes. When mom had a horse, she kept it at his house. They used to go to the flea market together on weekends. He was a very good friend to us, parent to his daughters and grand children. Aubrey is going to be missed.

Yesterday was kickoff for BEST this year and it went very well. Big Joe Duke’s explanation of the rules was really good, and for those who missed it, please refer to the rules 4.1.1 and 4.1.2 for this years competition. Scoring will be much more simple than last years competition, but compliance check-in will still have the same complexity. I attended the wiring meeting after the kit distribution and feel it will be very helpful. Because I was in there I was not able help load the field onto the truck, for which I’m sorry about that.

Slow Moses at Soul Kitchen

2007-08-12T11:03:00.002-05:00

I know, I know. I haven't posted in a long time, but I will rectify that today....finally.

So, last night I went to the Slow Moses reunion show at Soul Kitchen in downtown mobile. Slow Moses disbanded in 1999, about the same time I moved to Mobile so I didn't get to see them and if I heard about them I don't remember it. But Doug told me about their reunion show coming up.

It's really hard to describe their music. The best I can describe it that sometimes its reminiscent of a Dave Matthew'ish folksy sound with hints of jazz and heavy dashes of feel goodisms.

The band is a collection of some amazing talent. Ryan Balthrop is vocals, guitar, and according to their cd jacket 'comic relief'. Molly Thomas lends vocals and violin to the sound. Chris Spies on the keyboard. Phillip Stein was tearing up the lead guitar. Ben Tenhundfeld playing the five string bass. Tracy Duarte on the huge drum set. Joe Vendetti stood in as the sound man in place of the Soul Kitchen regular. Then finally, Hurricane Horns stepped in on a couple songs. Then a couple other people came on stage to play with the band during the encore.

I cannot tell you what you missed if you were not there. Everyone was so talented and the chemistry was definitely apparent when they took the stage. But everyone seemed to have some sort of solo and each person simply shined. I cannot say which one was the most memorable because I cannot single any one out. Hopefully, Balthrop's words will hold true and they will have another concert together again, but much sooner than 8 years from now.
Sorry for the bad audio, my camera doesn't do very well recording live music. But hopefully this won't be too bad.
Guitar Solo:

Violin solo, vocals, then a keyboard solo:

Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger

2007-07-05T16:17:00.000-05:00

Dancer girl

Hand Jig

Upgrading from Ubuntu 6.06 to 7.04

2007-06-01T19:27:00.000-05:00

Well, I haven't blogged in a while and I thought I would write about something I have been doing today. While it can be searched for online, I thought I would go ahead and write my experiences down.

We have 5 linux machines in the lab at school. Two of them are Kubuntu and 3 are Ubuntu. So, I thought since they have release 7.04 out that it might be good to A) update those machines and B) it would give me some extra experience with Linux.

First off, you cannot upgrade directly from 6.06 to 7.04. Instead its a two step process where you have to upgrade 6.06 to 6.10 then upgrade 6.10 to 7.04. While you cannot simply do it through the package manager it has to be done from a shell.

First off you need to get to the /etc/apt/ directory and modify the sources.list file. The code name for 6.06 is Dapper Drake so this sources file references 'Dapper' for updates. You need to find and replace these with 'Edgy' (Edgy Eft is the code name for 6.10). While I had found that you could use the command "sed 's/dapper/edgy/' /etc/apt/sources.list" to find and replace text within a file. However, I could not get it to save it.

So, under Ubuntu I used "sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list" to open VI as a super user and modify it. After typing 'i' to put VI into insert mode, I go through the file and replace 'dapper' with 'edgy', they hit Escape a couple times to make sure to get back to command mode. Then I can type ZZ and it will save and exit VI. But for Kubuntu, I may have done it a bit less nicely by using "sudo kate /etc/apt/sources.list" where I can use a find and replace in the file without having to do it by hand like I did in VI.

I then verify that all instances of dapper have been replaced with edgy and continue. Then again from the shell, I use the command "sudo apt-get update" for apt to get the updates from the server. After than finishes, then the long process begins. This is the distribution update portion. So, I use the this shell command "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". Then it will go out and download all of the required packages and stuff to install.

Once the distribution upgrade finishes, you should double check your process finished properly by using the command "sudo apt-get -f install". Once this finishes, you can reboot your machine and you will be up and running with Ubuntu or Kubuntu Edgy Eft.

Now, updating from Edgy Eft (6.10) to Feisty Fawn (7.04) is a bit easier. You don't have to go to the shell, update the sources list and run apt-get. Instead, this time you can run {gksu "update-manager -c"}. The software update tool will start and it will tell you that you can install X number of updates. But it will also have a place saying "New distribution release '7.04' is available" and a button you can press to begin the upgrade. Click this button and it will pop up a window with the release notes for you to read over. You then click the 'upgrade' button again and another dialog will pop up asking if you want to start the upgrade and give you an estimate of how long it will take to download them.

The next dialog will show the progress of preparing for upgrade, modifying the software channel, fetching and installing the upgrades, clean up, and then prompt you to restart the system. To verify the version you are now running you can run "cat /etc/issue" and it should say something to the affect of "Ubuntu feisty ". Then you can enjoy running Ubuntu/Kubuntu Feisty Fawn release.

The next version is slated to be an LTS or Long Term Support version, which the last LTS version released was 6.06 Dapper Drake. On the ubuntu website it says that they issue a new desktop and server release every six months. Plus, you get free security updates for at least 18 months on the desktop and server. With the LTS version, you get three years support on the desktop and five years on the server.

Hopefully, if any of the readers out there is running Dapper and is thinking about upgrading their distribution, this will be helpful.

Also, if anyone reading this can give tell me a better way to find and replace text within a the sources.list file I will update this with that information.

Hazy, smokey day...

2007-05-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

So, I went to take Thor outside and it was hazy and smells of smoke. But there are no fires around here. Nope, this smoke is from the fires in Georgia. I heard this morning that the smoke and haze is from at least Huntsville down to Cullman. I do not know how far west it extends beyond here.

Mom has a stomach infection when I got up here on Friday. Its starting to get better now that she is on broad spectrum antibiotics. She will have to take them for two weeks then go back for a check-up.

Heroes season finale was pretty good. I did not like how it ended really. It inferred some things but it did leave things open for a couple characters.

I saw the highlights of the second Republican candidate debate and Ron Paul was great. He is really growing a strong base in the online community and hopefully this will grow outside of the online community as he gets more exposure.

Practice Safe Hex....

2007-05-01T18:46:00.000-05:00

A simple hexadecimal number has been making its rounds on the internet lately (No, I will not publish them here). Users at Digg.com have been furious that their posts have mysteriously disappeared (who would have thought that would happen?!?). But, since it is a piece of....ummm.....art now. I will post a youtube video of a song dedicated to this simple hexadecimal number.

Enjoy!

Busy time

2007-04-23T15:43:00.000-05:00

Its the end of the semester and everything seems to converge at this time. But I am making a little time to help create a new student organization, which we do not have a name for yet. But its going to center on Free and Open Source Software, which Linux is a good poster child for. So, hopefully you will hear more about this in the near future.

Roundup...

2007-04-11T09:25:00.000-05:00

Well, I have been playing the beta for Lord of the Rings: Online and I have been liking it. Obviously, its still in beta so it has some small things that could be improved but overall, its quite nice. We'll see how it goes ;)

They finally figured out who the father of Anna Nicole's daughter is....maybe this story will die finally.

Don Imus said some...not so good things on his radio show. Now the community...well, Reverend Al Sharpton and Woopie Goldberg, are saying he is getting off easy and should be fired. Which is quite funny coming from Sharpton, considering he had an illicit affair and a child with someone other than his wife. Maybe, before people take his side he should apologize for that. Additionally he is a Reverend and the last I heard, Reverends were very forgiving. More so than the public. Imus has been on radio for many years, then he messes up once and all hell breaks loose. Give the guy a second chance. First Michael Richards now Don Imus, don't ruin more careers just because of a simple dumb statement.

There's nothing more serious....

2007-04-02T21:40:00.000-05:00

There's nothing more serious than a Rhino charging your @$$!!!

Well, the best show on television has returned with a new series of Doctor Who. The first episode of the series introduces a new race called the Judoon. They are a police like race (Think peacekeepers sorta) who come to earth to apprehend a non-human criminal.

This series introduces a new companion for The Doctor, Martha Jones, portrayed by Freema Agyeman (whom is extremely hot, might I say). Martha is going to be a very good companion for The Doctor since she is smart and witty. As usual with Doctor Who, the cinematography is great and the story is told very well. Certain things that you think are weird or maybe irrelevant in the episode is explained towards the end and it makes you think, 'Why didn't I recognize that' or 'why didn't I figure that out'.

No new battlestar until 2008...

2007-03-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

Yeah thats right, no new Battlestar until 2008. But guess what, I don't care. So far every story in season 3 has pretty much sucked. What started out as a great series in seasons 1 and 2 has turned into crap. I think season 4 will be its last and by the look at its current writing level...none too soon. I think the only thing that was worse was 'who wants to be a superhero'. I also hate to say it but maybe something similar is happening to Lost. With some of the writers/producers being tapped for new stuff, the original vision for the show is being lost and its appeal is faltering.

But, The Riches is still going strong. Andy Barker PI seemed quite funny from the first episode. Raines also seems pretty good from the first episode. Jeff Goldblum was very good and the premise is somewhat funny. We'll have to see how the series goes from there.

Its been a while

2007-03-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

Hey, sorry its been so long since I last posted but I had some stuff to share. Monday, Kc, Vicki, Jeremy and myself worked on cleaning up the back yard. It looks much better and kc has spruced it up with some plants in one corner of the yard. A bunch of bricks are going to be hauled off along with plastic lattice and about dozen bags of leaves and other junk.

I have to hand it to Frank Miller, while I didn't get to go see the movie with the group on Saturday and have yet to see it. I am very eager to watch it. On a $70 million dollar budget they produced this beautiful looking movie. Hopefully, more of his visions will be make it to the screen with him directing. So, if anyone has not seen 300 or would like to see it again, let me know.

A new show premiered on FX that I watched. Its called 'The Riches' and from the first episode it looks very good. The show stars Eddie Izzard, Minnie Driver and Shannon Marie Woodward (which I know in a roundabout way). I am not going to post the synopsis here but I will definitely link to it. All three cast I named above do a wonderful job in the pilot episode and it really has me wanting more so far. I have never seen anything of Eddie Izzard but he was great. The entire family cast was great and I would recommend it.

Also, here is an article about 'The Riches'. Enjoy!

Visiting the family

2007-02-23T19:52:00.000-06:00

Well, Thursday morning I left out going home to see the family and such missing Picklefish this week :( Oh well, sometimes you just miss out on stuff. The drive was uneventful, no wrecks and very minimal slow downs from construction. On the way I was listening to an audio book given to me by Tammy. Its the first book in the Dresden Files series. Although I haven't finished it yet, I can tell you it has been very enjoyable. The best part is that James Marsters (Spike from Buffy and Angel) is the voice talent.

Thor was quite excited to see mom as usual. She loves to give him doggie treats. Actually, right now as I'm writing this he is on the bed falling asleep with his head on a mound of stuff resembling a pillow and curled up next to my Alabama comforter.

Some people in the ACM wants to get involved in a contest Google is hosting where you make a 3D representation of your school and submit it to them. The winners get a paid trip to Google with all kinds of goodies. I think I will try to help some with this :) Hopefully, in the coming months you will be able to look at USA in 3D using Google Earth!

Mardi Gras was a great time downtown with BJD and others. I watched a guy get arrested, one carted off in an ambulance with supposed head injuries (don't ask me), and a guy falling off of a float during the Order of Myth's parade. Plus....um......I got to see a girl flash the float for throws.... WOOOOO!!!!!

Peace out

Oh, my Ballmer hurts...

2007-02-19T18:30:00.000-06:00

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has blamed all of the pirates out there for the low sales results for their new Operating System Windows Vista. Stevie boy, maybe you should put down the Microsoft Genuine Kool-Aid and drink something else. The pirates aren't the reason why your new OS isn't flying off the shelves. Its your companies stubborn resistance to listen to what your customers want and do not want. This coupled with the lack of drivers for prevalent hardware and incompatibility with lots of existing software and you've got yourself several good reasons not to buy it if you ask me.

I have LEGALLY downloaded my free copy from the MSDNAA partnership website my school has. I have not installed it yet and probably will not unless I am forced to. Hopefully, by then it will be a dual boot with Linux or maybe in VMWare.

I think the best thing I have heard lately was when they sponsored a programming contest at a nearby company. I think they had 3 copies of Vista Home Premium as prizes for the contestants. Obviously, the Xbox 360s went first. But team after team comes up to choose their prizes and skip over Vista. Finally, the last team comes up with a choice between Vista and wireless keyboards (which were meant to be given away as door prizes) and they choose the wireless keyboards. So, instead Vista is given away as door prizes to people who were less than enthused to receive them.

Finally, Mardi Gras 2007 comes to a close tomorrow with the Fat Tuesday celebration. I'll be downtown having fun.

Concert Tuesday night

2007-02-05T01:15:00.000-06:00

For those of you who read my rants and stuff, here is a preview of a concert coming to Mobile Tuesday night. The Soul Kitchen, in downtown Mobile, will be hosting Yonder Mountain String Band for a concert. I will definitely be there and for those of you who are unsure or what not. Here are two videos of this talented foursome. Enjoy, I know I did.