Entry 46: 4 March 2003, 3:38am
OK, nice stuff first. The picture at left is one
of the political cartoons about the death of Mister Rogers. (Rather, it's
by a political cartoonist, and it's one of those that appears in the opinions
sec--oh, you know what I'm talking about) The caption says it better than
I ever could (click on the picture for an enlargement).
Next, the spooky stuff. A
link to an
interesting mind-reading trick Please go try it out now & come back
when you're done.
Weird, wasn't it? OK, now for the rant. USA Today listed what
they call the hardest thing to do in sports. (Again, here's the
link for
the entire overview). Their Number One choice: Hitting a Baseball.
A baseball? Hitting a f#@^ing
BASEBALL??!!!!!
Alright, granted it would be extremely difficult to hit a Nolan
Ryan fastball. But it's not impossible. Heck, with the right amount
of luck
I could do it. For that matter, with luck
and just a little bit of skill (talking my extremely non-athletic level
here) just about anybody could do nos. 1, 4, 5 and 9, given just the right
conditions. In other words, four of these supposedly hardest things could
be done every once in a while by complete non-athletes.
Hitting a 90-mph fast ball? Try catching a 130-mph jai-alai ball
using just a curved stick. Try even
completing a 2½-minute
synchronized swimming routine without resting or coming up for air at
the wrong time.
And how could they put a marathon run on the list without even
including its much-harder counterpart: the Triathlon.
That one, by the way appears on a list of what I guess the newspaper
considers Hard Things #s 11-20, as on another page they have a survey
called "
What
Did We Miss?" But even here, there is no mention of anything related
to either Synchronized Swimming or Jai-Alai. It is a little comforting
to point out, though, that the current results of this survey, being voted
on by the general public and not those dingbats at the paper, has the
Triathlon currently in a comfortable 2-1 lead over second place (stopping
a hockey shot).
Right now the
Benny
Hill's Golden Classics I'm currently watching makes more sense
than the sports department at USA Today.
Oh, if you want to know how that mind-reading trick was done,
here's a
link
to the answer. But don't spoil it by checking out this link before you
first try the trick.
Entry 47: 11 March 2003, 2:38am
Happy Birthday To Me
Happy Birthday To Me
Happy Birthday, Dear Martin
Happy Birthday To Meeeeeeeeeeee
Yes, the day that provides the reason for my gray hairs has arrived.
Today I turn the usually-meaningless age of 38. And let's face it: after
you've turned 21 birthdays aren't fun anymore. All they do is remind
you that you're getting old, old, old. Another year passed that I can
list all the things I've wanted to do but haven't. Another year that I'm
about
I'm probably starting to get Alzheimer's. I totally lost my train
of thought.
I
can remember that the present I wanted for my 30th birthday
and didn't get is looking less and less likely to happen before my 40th,
meaning I'm not likely to ever get it.
About the only thing I can be thankful for at 38 is that, even
with the ever-increasing gray hair, my hairline hasn't started receding
yet.
Getting old sucks.
Two birthday stories before I try to
put it behind me. (Actually three: I was going to wait 24 hours before
doing this post to see if my best friend even remembered my birthday.
She has forgotten before. Well, she remembered it this time, and if what
I want for my birthday this time happens, I'm gonna be too sloshed to do
any coherent typing this time tomorrow. We'll see.)
Don't know if it's still the case, but twenty years ago when it
was pertinent to me the only day that you could register to vote and
register for the draft at the same time was on your 18th birthday. Since
I was gonna have to play hooky from school to go downtown and do both,
I decided to do them on the same day. So I spent the morning of my 18th
birthday in downtown Tulsa registering for both.
Spent the rest of the morning waiting for my dad. It was also
the only time I've ever locked my keys in the car.
(Damn, I just realized that my 20th
High School Reunion is this year. %$*@!
Old. Sucks.)
Second story: I was born at what is
now the Tulsa Regional Medical Center on this day 1965, at 10:11 in the
morning. At that very time on the East Coast, however, it was
11:
11
on the
11th. Three 11s, all nice and tidy. I always thought that
was cool.
In 1987, my then-best friend's mom gave birth to a little girl
(who is, therefore, celebrating her Sweet Sixteen today), coincidentally
giving her the same birthday as me. When I learned the actual time of
her birth, though, my eyes went wide. She was born at 11:12pm.
Meaning that, the moment she was born, on the East Coast it was
12:
12, March
12th! (Insert
Twilight
Zone music here)
A follow up: the head writer at USA
Today in charge of that idiotic "10 Hardest Things to Do in Sports" piece
had an online chat session last Thursday. One of the things he mentioned
was that the staff making these selections deliberately avoided the inclusion
of any events that consisted of doing a bunch of different sports, either
successively or at the same time. Under that criteria, it's understandable
why events like the Triathlon and Decathlon, as well as any other type
of Athlon, didn't make the list.
This also explains the absense of synchronized swimming, which,
when you get right down to it, is nothing more than a combination of
swimming and gymnastics, with a bit of water polo (the treading water
part) thrown in. So although I still strongly disagree with their choice
for Number 1 (out of their choices, I'd put Landing a Quad in Figure Skating
as #1. Then again, if you can bribe the right judges to look the other
way that'd make it a lot easier), I'm not as peeved as I was.
None of what was discussed in that chat session, however, still
explains the absence of Jai-Alai from the list.
Oh, by the way: did I mention that being
old sucks?
Entry 48: 12 March 2003, 5:59am
Well, as birthdays go, had better, had worse. Didn't get slonkered
due to schedulding conflicts, will try again next week. Probably just
as well. I have to go back to work later today; not really comfortable
getting plastered on what is essentially a 'school night'.
Entry 49: 19 March 2003, 3:47am
Have spent virtually the entire past week trying to get my computers
working. That right, plural. No sooner than one starts working properly
than the other one goes splat! In both cases the problem involved the
dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Different messages in each case, but still...
My brand new computer was the first to go. Getting hard disk problems.
And moreover, I had copied most of my irretrevible stuff onto the new
unit's second hard drive, and I couldn't get Windows 2000 into a proper
recovery mode to retrieve anything off the drive. So, the first hard drive
had to be completely wiped and the OS reinstalled. Whilst doing so, I decided
to have my fancy video card installed, the one that has a coax input to
that you can watch TV on it. Unfortunately, the video card doesn't work
with W2000, so I had to go back & use my copy of WinME. Fine with me,
2000 wasn't thrilling me all that much anyway.
But of course, things don't go that easily (lotsa times I feel
like Sally on
Coupling: "There is nothing so good in this earth
that I can't screw it up.") The computer keeps thinking my copy of ME
was an audio disc. Well, with that video card I had only one option remaining:
go all the way back to 98SE. It's working, but the new computer doesn't
appear to run nearly as fast under it.
The other problem is that that second hard drive, the one that
had all my important stuff on it, was on a non-DOS partition. Fine if
you're running 2000, but unreadable by 98SE. But, since my other computer
was still running 2000, I hooked the hard drive up to it, and started
downloading stuff onto both computers (networked). Once everything was
off that drive, it could be wiped and changed to a DOS partition.
About two-thirds into the transfer, the OS on the old computer
craps out. Took two days, and was able to get that copy of 2000 repaired,
so I was able to complete my transfer, and earlier tonight I finally have
that second hard drive back on the new computer.
And almost immediately, the new computer has started locking up,
just like it did last go-round. Well, that pretty-much clinches it: while
none of my problems appear to have been occuring
on that second
hard drive, I'm pretty much convinced now that the problems are being
caused
by it.
If the problems can hold out till pay day, I think I'm gonna try
a totally different tack: take the fancy video card out of the new computer,
put it in the old one, wipe the old OS & put 98SE on it so the card'll
work (maybe the ME disk will work on that machine), reset the new machine
to the internal video card, by a copy of XP and put it on the new unit,
and most importantly,
take out that second hard drive and
use it as a damn paperweight!
Absolutely, positively the last time I ever buy a Maxtor hard drive.
Strictly Western Digital from here on.
Anyway, that's why I haven't done an update until now. For most
of the past week my local copies of my web files, ad well as my FTP program,
were on the broken computer.
Lotsa thing I'd like to say about what's
going on in the world, but I don't believe I have that much time right
now, so I'll go with the short stuff:
--Check out this link. An interesting
thesis
on the similarities between Frank Herbert's
Dune and the Middle
East. Suffice it to say, that Arrakis sounds a lot like Iraq is
not
a coincidence.
--Favorite French joke so far: "Going to war without France is
like going deer hunting without an accordian."
--Although I don't totally agree with Bush on what's going on and
the best way to go about fixing it, I have to admit that The Dixie Chicks
deserve all the bad press they can get for
saying
what they did at that concert in England. Partially because I don't
go to music concerts to hear the performer's political views, but mainly
because I really
don't care about celebrities' political views.
Most of the time the stars open their mouths to say something they feel
they believe in, they're more apt in my opinion to just put their foot in
it. What they think about something is not likely to sway my opinion at
all on the issue. Chance is much greater that I'll just start disliking
them.
Perfect example: because of Martin Sheen's blasting of the president
(story in the same Dixie Chicks article above), Visa has removed my
absolute favorite TV commercial in a long time. So now, whereas I didn't
have much of an opinion on Sheen one way or the other, now I dislike
him. While I had never seen an episode of
The West Wing mainly because
of counterprogramming, I will now
never watch the show, even next
month when Matthew Perry guest stars.
I have a much greater respect for singer Leann Rimes. When asked
for her opinion about the potential for war, she flat-out said that
she didn't want to give her opinion on the subject, because she didn't
want people to dislike her. That girl's gonna go far!
Two totally-different topics before
I sign off and post this thing: first is a quick link to little sis's
ex's new
website.
Most of you won't know him, but hey, if I provide a link to his page
maybe he'll reciprocate for me.
Also, just want to remind certain persons of my all-time biggest
pet peeve: people who tell me they're gonna call, then don't. Maybe
particular individuals will read this and remember certain broken promises....
OK, done enough thinking for tonight. Plus, the dryer just stopped,
so time to take out the clothes. More in a few days.
Entry 50: 24 March 2003, 1:25am
Some pics of a Pentagon news conference this past Saturday updating
the media on the war. The woman is United States Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke.
What the hell is the deal with that outfit? I sure hope she's color-blind,
because the only other possible excuse for such a monstrosity is to provide
much-needed humor in an otherwise seriously-tense situation.
A pretty good
article
in Time Magazine's part of CNNs page that does a pretty good job of explaining
why the French are acting like they are during all this. Still doesn't
excuse them, though.
Another
article that appears
to do a pretty good job in separating fact from fiction when it comes to
some of the reasons we've gone to war.
