Dusting off the ole blog

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.

Jerry Reed (AKA The Snowman) dies at 71

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

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?

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!

New Residence and pumpkin pie?!?

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

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.

Constitution Schmonstitution

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.

More iPhones and a documentary

iPhone

More information has come out from AT&T about the iPhone release and plans. While I'm not going to dig into the plans for the phone itself, I just want to reiterate the pricing of the phone itself for customers.

Steve Jobs was very quick and loud to announce the 'low price' of the iPhone. Well the prices for the 8GB and 16GB iPhones will different depending on where you fit in. I will be giving the prices in 8GB/16GB format so I don't have to reiterate myself each time.

So, to get an iPhone 3G without any contract at all, you will have to pay $599/$699. For customers who are not 'upgrade eligible' you will have to pay $399/$499. Finally, for customers who are 'upgrade eligible', opening a new account or adding a line will be paying $199/$299 for the iPhone. I do not have any sources that explicitly say that iPhone users will be 'upgrade eligible' when the iPhone 3G is released, but many are touting that they will be. Only time will tell about that for certain. Typically, a customer is 'upgrade eligible' when their contract has expired. Which I would expect AT&T to be money hungry enough to do just that because Apple fanboys would still be willing to pay that premium just to have the iPhone 3G.

Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a very nice piece of technology and it is starting to have a real impact on mobile phone industry. The multi-touch interface and web browsing capabilities were very innovative. I have qualms about the multi-touch because I have large fingers and had problems typing with the on-screen keys. Plus the lack of feedback when touching the keys or numbers was not very user friendly. LG has the Voyager, which has a touch interface with feedback whenever a touch button is activated, which is very nice.

However, the blackberry still seems to be the corporate phone of choice by many companies. Be it the features it has, the pricing of the phones or their possible avoidance of certain mobile carriers (*cough* AT&T *cough*). Holding a blackberry is very nice and I do very well using the qwerty keypad even with my large fingers.

I want to see the reviews of the iPhone 3G after 2 or 3 months of use by an impartial judge. Even then I will still probably be using my LG 8300 phone because its cheap, good, and has excellent signal.

Voting Documentary

Someone twittered a link to a video online, that originally aired on HBO, being shown at freedomdocumentaries.org called 'hacking democracy' about electronic voting. Its a long video at one hour twenty-one minutes, but something very interesting to watch. They visit a company in Huntsville, Alabama and go through the trash from Diebold (completely legal).

R.I.P. George Carlin

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.

Firefox 3 and XP

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.

XP

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

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

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.

iPhone 3G followup

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

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

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

Charlton Heston dead at 84

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.

Doctor Who Series 4 preview

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.

Jags advance to semifinals of the Sun Belt Tournament

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

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

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