Entry 6: 8 October 2002, 4:50am

The first round of the MLB playoffs are now over, and for a change, all four underdogs advanced over the favorites. I love it. Any time George Steinbrenner loses, I'm all for it.

Actually, I love parity in sports. I'm sick of the Yankees, the Braves, the Lakers, and any college football team from Florida. I root for the Cubs and the Buccaneers every year. This baseball postseason I think I'm gonna root for San Francisco. I'd like to see Barry Bonds get a World Series ring at least once in his career.

And yes, even though I was born and raised in Oklahoma, I'm against the Sooners. Mainly because I went to Oklahoma State back during the Switzer era at OU, and we were taught from freshman year that we were allowed to root for OU only one time of the year: when they were playing Nebraska. The other 364 days of the year OU was, and always will be to me, the enemy.


Entry 7: 8 October 2002, 4:10pm

Changed the background colors on the pages when I noticed that the links on the left side were difficult to see with a blue backdrop. BTW, the colors were blue and gold because those are the colors of the University of Tulsa, therefore probably the closest thing we have to official city colors. But then I remembered, I didn't go there. Besides, they've got the worst college football team in the country (longest current losing streak in Division I-A). So I went with not only my college colors of orange and black, but they were my high school colors as well (Tulsa Washington Hornets). Plus it's October and these colors are nice and Halloweenish. May change them again in November; they'll definitely be some greens and reds here for Christmas.

If you received a CD-ROM in the mail for Tulsa e-Pages, here's some advice. Chunk it, scratch it up, put a match to it to see if CDs warp the same way vinyl records do, but do not, under any circumstances, install the thing on your computer. It's out of date, takes forever to install, cannot be uninstalled (at least not in Windows 2000), and messes up other programs. A feature on html allows a web page to automatically go to another web page after a specified amount of time. This feature worked just fine in Internet Explorer before I installed this CD. It don't work no more. And I haven't installed anything else recently, so it has to be the culprit. I've talked to other people and they've had similar problems with this CD as well, so I know it's not just me.

But even without the glitches the program causes, just the simple fact that it's already out of date should be enough reason not to install it. Besides, their web site pretty much does everything the CD does, plus it's a lot easier to keep current. It has lots of good stuff about Tulsa, and I would recommend the web site in a second. Whenever I get around to creating a links page it'll be on it. Just don't install the CD. You'll quickly regret it and your computer will hate you.

Entry 8: 10 October 2002, 5:01am

Something I've always wanted to do was see just what the nation's television markets looked like in terms of size and shape. Thanks to the attempted merger of Dish Network and DirecTV, I was finally able to see the maps for each state. Putting them all together, I have made a national map of what those in the industry call Designated Market Areas, or DMAs. The picture to the left is a thumbnail of my result. Larger versions are available here: (640x480) (800x600) (1024x768) (1200x1024) (1600x1200)

Two things struck me as really interesting. First, the very populous state of New Jersey has no television stations of its own. Half of the state get their news from New York City, the other half from Philadelphia. Second, take a look at the white areas in Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. That's all one market. Denver. I'd be interested to know how well-treated the people in the area of northern Wyoming are when it comes to news about their area.

Entry 9: 12 October 2002, 5:39pm

A couple of word associations to help you remember which is which...

Which side is the port & which is the starboard?  As you face forward, looking at the bow (front) of the ship, the left side is the port and the right side is starboard. The way to remember that: left has fewer letters than right, and port has fewer letters than starboard.

The stalactites & stalagmites in a cave. Which come up & which drop down? Even easier. Stalactite contains the letter 'c', as does 'ceiling'. Stalagmite has a 'g' in it, and so does 'ground'. So stalactites drop down from the ceiling and stalagmites rise up from the ground.

Entry 10: 15 October 2002, 7:05am

OK, the Scooby-Doo marathon on the Boomerang cable channel is half-over. (To remind those just joining us, over each weekend in October the Cartoon Network spinoff is airing every Doo cartoon ever made in the 20th century for Saturday morning television.)  I think the marathon is getting to me. I'm starting to get weird thoughts. Why aren't these teenagers in school? What kind of parents would let their teenage kids travel all over the world unchaperoned?

The girls never carry purses. Wouldn't a purse be convenient to carry, say, spare glasses for Velma?

Do you know of anybody, outside of those in correctional facilities, whose entire wardrobe consists of one outfit? Or if they have more than one outfit, that look completely identical to each other? How do they get their laundry done?

And if our gang actually do have change of clothes, where are they kept? Behind the front seat of the Mystery Machine, the van is completely barren. Most of the time, Shaggy & Scooby don't even have seats; it's like they're riding in the back of a covered pick-up. Where do they sleep when they're in-between towns? They don't have any tents or sleeping bags.

Where do they get the money to do all this traveling? And how did they get the Mystery Machine over to places like Scotland and China?   For that matter, why would the Chinese government let four American teenagers and a talking dog roam the countryside in their own vehicle without any sort of an escort? And how did Fred get a Chinese driver's license? When that adventure was over, how was the gang able to get the talking dog back to the States without creating an international incident that would have lasted long after the gang were past their teens?

A talking dog that can run on his hind legs? Just what's in those Scooby Snacks anyway? And if those treats can make a dog smart enough to think intelligibly and run like a human, how do you explain Shaggy?

Even notice that when the gang splits up "to look for clues" the only time we ever see Fred & Daphne's group is when Velma's with them? We never see Fred and Daphne by themselves. Just what exactly are they investigating by themselves? Is the threat of potential danger a turn-on to them? And when the danger has passed, do Velma and Shaggy ever try to ditch the rest of the group for a little alone time of their own? After all, given how much Shaggy eats, he has to be doing something to stay that skinny. Just running and hiding all the time can't explain it all.

<sigh> Two more weekends of this. And from here on in it'll be even worse. It's time to bring in <shudder> Scrappy!