December 31, 2002
Sun Bowl Final: Purdue 34, Washington 24
After falling behind 17-0 in the 1st Quarter, Purdue stormed back to score 34 straght points in what has to be the worst officiated college football game I have ever seen. The CBS announcers could not find the infractions at least 1/2 the time, and I'm talking about personal fouls and pass interference, which should be very easy to see. They even ejected a Purdue player for the typical after the play pushing that always happens in football. It went both ways, Purdue was the benefactor several times on phantom personal foul calls.
The Big 10 is 3-0 in bowl games this year. The stage is all set for Ohio State now - can they pull a Nebraska and upset a heavily favored Miami to win the National Championship?
Permalink | Comments (1)December 30, 2002
You are your garbage
Interesting story from Portland....
Cops rummage through fellow officer's garbage and use drug residue sniffed out by a dog as basis for search warrant to bust her. The Police Chief, Mayor, and DA all say that garbage, once put out for collection, is public property. A reporter for a local weekly rummages through the garbage of the 3 officials involved and writes very cool story on what she found. As you might guess, 2/3 officials were not amused. The DA it seems is smart enough to realize he really can't cry foul without looking like an idiot. The Mayor and Police Chief aren't so bright.
We had an issue with this in Leesburg. The Leesburg police told us that we owned the garbage until it was in the garbage truck, and the fact that it was on the side of the road in no way diminished our personal property rights. It would be no different than leaving a bicycle in the front yard. It in the open and in plain view, but it is still private property.
We shred everything with any personally identifying information on it. If this type of crap becomes widespread I could see the trash compactor making a comeback as a personal privacy tool.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 29, 2002
George Washington - Action Hero
The old ladies that run the Mount Vernon Trust are concerned that kids today aren't interested in George Washington and they are more likely to recognize Eminin than the guy on the one dollar bill. So, they are spending $85 million to build a museum that will recast George Washington as a young swashbuckling action hero.
Yeah, that will solve a problem brought on by decades of neglect and the PC fad in our education institutions.
Permalink | Comments (2)Book Review - Sandy Koufax, A Lefty's Legacy
Koufax is probably one of the least understood hero's of the baseball world. The final 5 years of his career were probably the best 5 consecutive years by any pitcher, ever. He walked away at age 30 with an arm on the verge of permanent disfiguring damage, and for the most part, has not been heard from since. He declined to participate in this book, so its all based on old interviews with Koufax and interviews with friends and family. What emerges is a portrait of Jewish kid from Brooklyn with a live arm, who after 5 years of riding the pine in the majors, suddenly emerges as the most dominating pitcher of his era. The book is interestly structured, with chapters alternating between his life story and an inning by inning account of his perfect game in Sept of 1965. I'm not certain the author really "figures him out," but I certainly enjoyed the book. You will too if you are a baseball fan.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 27, 2002
Why We Moved reason 468
From the Leesburg police blotter
Date: 12/24/2002
Time: 0841
Location: Residence
600 block of Nathan Place NE Incident: All Other Offenses
Juvenile Petition Service - Threats Juvenile petitions charging an 18-year- old Hyattsville, MD woman with Threats was served.
Looks like my former neighbors are at it again. Too bad we didn't press charges when she threatened to shoot Michelle. That would make this a repeat offense. Hopefully the Leesburg police will realize that the so called MD resident really lives right there, even though her car has MD tags. This is the third police report for our old block - which had maybe 15 houses, since we moved 3 months ago. I'll bet all were the psychos across the street from us.
Permalink | Comments (0)Microsoft is doomed
I was pricing PC's yesterday - trying to decide if I want to upgrade my old PC, or just buy a new one. I can get a new 1.8 GHZ AMD system, sans operating system, for $420 from a local PC integrator. Win XP Home edition adds $110 to the system.
Think about that. The OS software is about 25% of the entire system cost. While PC prices have dropped consistantly, MS is actually trying to raise its prices. Something has to give, and I think it will be corporate America's reliance on MS. Most people understand that Windows basically sucks, but they think they need Outlook and Office. There are Office alternatives out there. If Mitch Kapur is successful, we might have an Open Source alternative to Outlook before he end of 2003.
Permalink | Comments (3)I win!!!!!
After months of trying, I have finally managed to win Dodd's weekly caption contest. The fact that it is a holiday week, and the number of entires was unusually low, had absolutely nothing to do with it!
Permalink | Comments (0)December 26, 2002
It's a Christmas Miracle
Well, maybe it wasn't quite a miracle, but I am pretty damn proud of myself for what I pulled off as Michelle's Christmas present this year.
I used ULead DVD Slideshow to create a retrospective of our 15 years together. This was not as easy as it sounds. I work from home most of the time, and Michelle is homeschooling the kids, so a secret project requiring extensive computer time, plus extensive snooping around the house gathering up old photos time, was a logistical nightmare. I started back in October by downloading a trial version of the software to make sure it actually worked as advertised, and that VCD format CD-R's would work in my DVD player. Obviously it worked, although the DVD player is picky about which brand of CD-R it will read. It likes Memorex, does not like Imatation.
Step one was assembling about 250 pictures. Pictures from 1987-1998 or so were found in several photo storage boxes in the closet in my home office. That part was easy. However, pictures from 1998-2002 were scattered all over the house in various drawers and cabinets. Eventually I did assemble a sizable stack.
Next step was to scan them all. That is just as much fun as it sounds. Again, I could only do this when Michelle was not home. So it was a 2 month process of scanning 20 here and 20 there when she was out for an hour or two. I finished up the scanning and editing in early December (I started in late October). Editing? Oh yeah, I learned in the trial run that the pictures display well on a TV as long as they are nice and bright. So I had to brighten up just about every scan. Also, many of the older pictures had scratches that really showed in a scan, and many early pictures the kids had bad red-eye problems. All fixed in the final product.
Once all the scanning was done, I started grouping the photos in a slideshow, trying to decide how best to organize things. Again, not as easy as it sounds. What was I trying to say about our 15 years together, other than that I've loved every minute of it? Eventually, the solution came and it was obvious. The slide show is organized around the kids. There are 4 chapters: Before Kids, Breck, Delaney, and All of Us, with a unique soundtrack for each chapter. Getting the music and pictures to end at the same time was a nightmare. The software is only in version 1.0. It only allows 1 second increments when changing the slideshow speed. So if you have 60 pictures in a slide show, the length changes by 1 full minute if you add or subtract a second. I had to flashback to JR High Algebra as I started figuring out how best to get the ends to line up. It ended up being a combination of additional pictures added and editing the MP3's to shave a second here and there until everything worked. (The softwre automatically looped to MP3, so if the slideshow did not end with the music, it would restart the song and then abrubtly stop with the last photo)
I have to admit I was somewhat surprised, and very relieved, when I burned the final copy and it worked perfectly. I'm guessing I put about 40 hours into this altogether. Michelle fessed up that she found some pictures in the scanner once (oops) and also went into the photo boxes herself and noticed they had been disturbed. However, she didn't have a clue what was going on.
In a wonderful coincidence, she got me a new digital camera. Ours is an antique that we didn't use as much as we could have because of the lack any zoom ability. My new one is much nicer 3 Megapixel Olympus with a 8X optical zoom. I might start doing an annual retrospective as it's a neat way to capture the memories. From now on though, I'm starting with digital media, no more scanning!
Permalink | Comments (2)December 24, 2002
Nollaig chridheil agus Bliadhna mhath ùr!
It looks like Santa crash landed in our family room, and he hasn't even been here yet! My kids have no idea just how good life is for them. But then, Christmas in my family was always a celebration of excess, so I'm just keeping the family tradition alive!
Actually, Michelle and I did a pretty good job of cutting back this year, however the grandparents didn't buy into the cutback program. I guess one of the joys of being a grandparent is forgetting about how much you bitched about the grandparents spoiling your kids when you were raising them.
Several websites claim the phrase in the subject is "Merry Christmas" in Gaelic. Seems like a lot of words just to say Merry Christmas, but I'll go with it. And on that note, it just occured to me that I have no Guinness in the house, and we all know you can't have Christmas without Guinness :)
Peace.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 23, 2002
Secret Preacher Man
Amazing blog from an anonymous Protestant minister in Texas who doubts, among other things, the very existence of God.
An excerpt:
Likewise, we think having faith means being convinced God exists in the same way we are convinced a chair exists. People who cannot be completely convinced of God’s existence think faith is impossible for them.
Not so. People who doubt can have great faith because faith is something you do, not something you think. In fact, the greater your doubt the more heroic your faith.
I learned that it doesn’t matter in the least that I be convinced of God’s existence. Whether or not God exists is none of my business, really. What do I know of existence? I don’t even know how the VCR works.
What does matter is whether or not I am faithful. I think faithful is a hell of a good word. It still has some of its original shine. It still calls us to action.
Emphasis is the original authors. I found this at Boing Boing
Permalink | Comments (1)Oops! That's $20 Amazon won't make from me
Last week, I mentioned The Library Lookup Project here on ODonnellWeb. What I didn't cover was that the link to my local library was not funtioning properly, and that I was able to decipher the javascript and fix it. (It really wasn't that big of a deal).
I put the lookup link on my Mozilla toolbar and went on with life. A couple of days later, some baseball blog referred me to a new book, Sandy Koufax A Lefty's Legacy. The book sounded interesting so I clicked over to Amazon to take a look. Then I remembered the library lookup, so while I was on the Amazon page I clicked the link and the window revealed that my local library had the book and it was due back in today. So I reservered the book online at the library and did not buy it. The library copy is sitting on my desk right now.
Cool.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 21, 2002
Ultimate College Basketball Simulation
This looks to be the ultimate college basketball simulation for the PC. I play Out Of The Park baseball from the same company - and it is a major, major time waster.
Must not buy....must not incur wrath of the wife...must resisit urge to buy....
Permalink | Comments (1)December 20, 2002
Things I'm tired of this Christmas season
--Gap commercials featuring dancing, lip-synching models in striped sweaters.
--Old Navy commercials on a fake Family Feud set .
--Canadians that don't like Christmas.
-- Trent Lott.
--Liberals that think we need an actual detonation / release on American soil before we have proof of WMD in Iraq.
-- The Catholic Church.
--People that whine about the rampant consumerism of Christmas.
--Non-christisans that bitch about the Christianity of Christmas.
--The weather in the DC area.
--Anybody that files a law suit involving a Nativity scene.
--Surely retail clerks.
--Poorly designed e-commerce web sites.
Feel free to add to the list...
Permalink | Comments (0)December 19, 2002
The Science of Christmas
We've all seen the email by now claiming that engineers have shown that Santa can't possibly exist. Somebody over at Kuro5hin has devised a plausible, scientifically sound explanation* of how Santa pulls off the Christmas Eve magic.
* if you can accept wormholes, and evergreen trees channeling the hopes and dreams of kids, as plausible and scientifically sound :)
December 18, 2002
On Coaching Youth Basketball...
Anybody have experience, or an opinion, on the how best to teach offense and defense to a 3rd grade basketball team?
Keep in mind that this is a county league and I get 2 hours of practice a week on a half court . The other coaches in the league all seem to be going zone because they think its easier to learn. However, my feeling is that zone is too easy and the kids will learn a lot more about the game and improve a lot more over the course of the season if we play straight man to man. To keep it simple my plan is to teach straight up man to man and as soon as they seem to get the concept of staying with their man and can avoid the temptation to all rush the ball handler I'll add ball side deny and weak side help and recover concepts. That will be it for defense.
On offense, knowing all the other coaches will be in a zone, I figure I should just teach the kids to spread out, pass a lot, maybe do the Gene Hackman thing and require 4 passes ;)teach them to cut to the basket after passing the ball, etc. Again, keep it real simple and force them to involve everybody in the offense.
Any opinions?
Permalink | Comments (0)December 17, 2002
Best 2nd Amendment related post ever
Go read this now and don't come back until you have read it. None of the silly drivel I post here is even in the same class as what Rachel has posted today.
Permalink | Comments (0)Homeschooling on the rise in DC suburbs
The author of this article about homeschooling in Montgomery County, MD (suburban DC) did a pretty good job of getting input from both sides of the debate. I'll help her out by deconstructing some of the more inane comments from the public school proponents:
But Leong said many families home school because "there is a desire to want to provide that support for their children. Many of them do feel that closeness, that kind of relationship with their children, is a plus for them."
So, a close relationship with your kids is not a plus for everybody? No wonder so many kids are screwed up.
However, home-schooling families still tend to be white, Christian, and conservative, according to Christopher Lubienski, an assistant education professor at Iowa State University, who has done extensive research on home schooling and other education reforms.
Last time I checked, most families in the US are white and Christian . The current makeup of Congress would indicate that a slight majority are conservative too. News flash - homeschoolers look just like ordinary people. Who would of thunk it?
"Just a desire to home school is not enough," Karres said. "A parent either needs to be an educator herself or be willing to work hard to get the skills that teachers have."
ALL parents are educators, union membership is not required.
She said home-schooling parents need to know the content of the curriculum well and keep abreast of the latest developments in education, just as professional teachers do. She advises home-schooling parents to use the public school curriculum as a guideline.
Yeah sure, new math and whole language reading have worked so well after all. And while we are at it we will serve them nutritious food totally lacking of any flavor, maybe pick a few fist fights in the hallway between the bedrooms, and sneak into the master bathroom for a quick smoke between classes. After all, we wouldn't want our kids to miss out any important educational opportunities.
Bah, these articles are so lame. I liked it better when we were not newsworthy.
Permalink | Comments (2)The Library Lookup Project
This is cool. John Udell is writing bookmarklets that automagically check your local library for book availability, from the book's page at Amazon, BN.com, etc. I think this is awesome, and I could see it being very useful to homeschoolers as we tend to consume way more than the average number of books per family! Of course, if it gets too popular could Amazon, etc. start encrypting their URL's? A direct assault on libraries would seem to be a stupid PR move. But then, patenting "one-click" shopping wasn't exactly a stroke of genius either.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 15, 2002
Book Review: James Lileks - The Gallery of Regrettable Food
You'll laugh, you'll laugh so hard that you will start to cry, then your eyes will tear up and you'll have to put the book down for a moment to get your composure. You know how good Lileks is on a good day. He wrote his book over the course of many good days. Only Lileks could make a book out of making fun of those really bad cookbooks of the past. Jello molds? Been there done that. I was surprised to learn that making toast is a very sensuous activity, virtually guaranteed to attract handsome twins in tuxedos to even the comeliest housewife. That last sentence makes complete sense if you've read the book.
However, I feel as though I'm not really done with the book until I actually try one of the recipes in there. Who wants to come over for a delicious batch of 7-Up pancakes?
Permalink | Comments (0)December 14, 2002
Ruin Ben Stein's Country
Nicely done editorial from Ben Stein on how to ruin America.
Unfortunately, I think Congress will see this as a "mandate."
Reblogged from Michele
Permalink | Comments (0)December 13, 2002
Holy Search Results Batman!
While playing with the new Google Viewer, I just noticed that I am the number #1 search result for "Chris O'Donnell" on Google.
Woo Hoo!
Permalink | Comments (2)December 12, 2002
To catch a counterfeiter
This is a great story. Some scam artist messed with the wrong poor college student when he wrote a bad check for a laptop on Ebay. The student tracked him down and worked with local police to nab the guy.
Excellent.
Permalink | Comments (0)Smallpox Vaccines comming to a health center near you
President Bush has decided to revive the dormant nationwide inocualtion plan for Smallpox. The article doesn't say when the general public will be able to get one.
Question for both my readers. Will you do it?
I have what I think is a better idea. What not make the vaccine available to all without actually taking the injection? Let me put a bottle in the fridge. It is effective for 4 or 5 days after exposure. If a smallpox outbreak hits, I can pull out the vaccine bottle and my wife, who is experienced in such matters, can administer it to us and the kids if and when we deem necessary.
The 1/1,000,000 chance of dying from the vaccine is relevant when the risk factor of contracting the disease could be zero. However, if smallpox hits, 1 in a million will seem like great odds.
Permalink | Comments (1)A Lesson in "Fairness"
A Pro-homeschool column from The Peoria Journal-Star.
Background: A school administrator is IL has been sending the police to harass homeschoolers, threatening to take custody of their kids, etc. The usual authoritarian crap you expect when the status quo is threatened. You can read the sordid history of events in IL at Daryl's blog.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 10, 2002
You can't post public records in a public place!
At least, that seems to be the main argument of Courtney Love. She has threatened to sue The Smoking Gun because they posted copies of public documents resulting from an investigation of a doctor in LA who was a little to loose with the happy pill prescriptions for Courtney and other celebrities.
FYI...The Smoking Gun is a website that has made a business, or at least a hobby, out of getting their hands on court documents and other public records that celebrities would rather us not see.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 07, 2002
Yes Virginia, you can Fed-Ex a letter to santa
This is cute. Somebody sent a letter to Santa via Fed-Ex, addressed only to Santa Claus, The North Pole. Fed-Ex delivered the letter to Santa in Smowmass CO. Seems like its a little close to Christmas for Santa to be vacationing in the Rockies!
Reblogged from Darryl
Permalink | Comments (0)December 06, 2002
Geeks 1 Spammer 0
Spammer Alan Ralsky is drowning in catalogs and other old school junk mail. It seems the geeks were none too pleased at a recent newspaper article detailing the high society lifestyle that a career in spamming was providing. The author of the original article did not provide the address of the spam mansion, but did say that he contacted Alan by looking him up in the county records. Somebody looked him up and posted his address to Slashdot, where the geeks have signed him up for virtually every mailing list known to mankind.
Nice.
Permalink | Comments (0)December 05, 2002
Tastefully Festive
Here is my attempt at exterior holiday decorating that won't get me riduled over at Michele's blog.
December 03, 2002
The other guy in weird science
Ever wonder what happened to "the other guy" in Weird Science? You know, the one that gets to kiss Kelly LeBrock?
I like seeing these stories of child actors that turn all allright.
Permalink | Comments (0)Props to Marriott
I spend enough time bitching about bad service here that it's only fair that I report good service too.
While in GA for Thanksgiving, we stayed at The Marriott Towneplace Suites in Alpharetta. I was thrilled to find a $65 a night rate for a two bedroom suite on Marriott.com. Even better, I cashed in some Marriott rewards points to cover two of the nights.
So, I was quite surprised when I checked out to get tagged for $104 a night. The clerk on duty at 8 AM Sunday said that she could not do anything about pricing and that I would have to call on Monday.
Last night at about 9 PM I called Marriott Customer Service and complained. They said that when I used the Rewards points online the reservation system defaulted the rate to the rack rate (list price). So they wrote up my complaint and forwarded it to the hotel manager for review. He called me this morning, barely 18 hours later, to tell me that I was absolutely correct about the $65 rate, and that I would see the credit hit my credit card tomorrow.
Maybe somebody from Amazon will read this...
Permalink | Comments (0)Retro GI Joe comes home
I returned home from Thanksgiving with a few very cool toys resuced from my mother's attic. Breck is thrilled, so I guess I won't be putting these up on Ebay anytime soon. And yes, I did look at Ebay - I think I could get a couple of hundred dollars for all three.
GI Joe USS Flagg Aircraft Carrier (this is not assembled, I don't even know if I have all the parts.)
These actually belonged to my youngest brother. I had the original 12 inch GI Joe's, of which a few did survive and Breck has had those for a while.
Permalink | Comments (1)December 02, 2002
Cheating makes your marriage stronger
It must be true, I read it on the Internet.
In other news, Lisa Marie and Nicholas Cage call it quits after three months.
Permalink | Comments (1)Remind me...
to never travel on Thanksgiving weekend. Ugh! 13 hours to Atlanta last Wednesday (should be a 10 hour trip). I took a different route home - to avoid to I-85/I-95 corridor as much as possible. The result? A 12 hr 45 minute trip. Ugh again! I-81 was a parking lot in Roanoke yesterday and traffic reports were indicating an overturned tractor-trailor 100 miles ahead - exactly where I was headed. So we exited the interstate in Roanoke and took back roads across central Virginia through Charloteesville to finally make it home.
Permalink | Comments (0)