February 27, 2003

Real Evil

I was going to post something really cool and insightful, but now I'm irritated after spending 10 minutes going through the options for Real Player and undoing all the sneaky crap they have hidden in there. I think I went to 5 different windows to opt out of various automatic notifications of new and exciting content available on the Real network. The only reason I have the damn app on my computer is because Netscape Radio needs it. Netscape Radio, formerly known as Spinner, is a very cool application, even if it is owned and operated by minions of Satan.

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War is hell - Deal with it

Allegedly, on the first wave of ground attacks in Desert Storm, we nullified thousands of Iraqi soldiers not by shooting or bombing them, but by mounting snow plows on the fronts of Arbrams tanks and simply buried them alive in their WW1 style trenches.

Predictably, the reporter sees this as a bad thing. He seems to be particularly upset that this tactic left him no dead bodies to photograph.

If this really happened, not only is not a bad thing, the person who thought this up is a genius. We defeated the enemy with virtually no bloodshed and minimal risk to our soldiers. That my friends, is the definition of a successful military engagement. The battlefield is no place to worry about playing fair.

It's also no place to worry about press access. It's interesting that so many press folks are opposed to war, until its their turn to cover it and possibly win a Pulitzer. Then suddenly they demand to be on the front lines with the Marines.

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February 26, 2003

Linux Update

Still can't sync the Palm. The problem seems to be that I don't have permission to access the serial port. I have chmod 777 the port, and I added my user account to the root group since root owns the port. That should have fixed it but it didn't. I guess the next thing to look at is what else might have the port locked up.

Installed the printer. Seemed to go well. Red Hat's install configurator recognized my printer and got the brand and model correct. I opened up Open Office, created a one word document, and printed it. The printer was on page 5 of printing gobblygook when I lost interest in how long it would go and turned it off.

Downloaded the Flash player for Mozilla. The install failed.

Are you seeing a trend here? Yes, I'm a Linux newbie, but I'm far more techie than most. If I'm having this much trouble setting up RH 8 on a brand new PC, there is no way they have any chance at the SOHO / desktop market in the near future.

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February 25, 2003

Mark Selby - Dirt

I'm banished to the basement tonight. The homeschooling moms monthly night out is a pot luck here at ODonnellWeb world headquarters. I watched American Idol, that Marine can sing. I have to think his value as a recruiter far exceeds his value as a combat soldier. I hope he goes all the way. Now that the kids are in bed, I'm sitting here greatly enjoying Mark Selby's new album. It's smokey southern blues, they kind of stuff they play in roadhouses on dusty state highways in southern towns you've never heard of. It doesn't rock out like his first release, this album is more introspective, but that is not a bad thing at all.

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February 24, 2003

IKEA Rocks!

I realize that this will probably reduce my cool quotient a bit...but we are all about honesty here at ODonnellWeb.

I had never been in an Ikea store before yesterday. It's probably a good thing. Easy access to IKEA would be very detrimental to my financial position. My God is that store loaded with really cool stuff that I never knew I needed, until I saw it yesterday. Somehow we managed to get out of there after only spending $25. That is probably directly related to the fact that we spent the day next door in the largest indoor outlet mall in the US, stocking on up spring and summer clothes for the kids.

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Linux roadblock

I've hit a serious roadblock with the Linux project. I can not get my Palm Pilot to sync with Evolution. Evolution is a Outlook like contact manager for Linux. It is suppossed to have out of the box sync capabilites with Palm, but I spent several hours trying to get it to work, to no avail. I have to be able to sync my contacts and calendar, its job critical. Without that ability, I can't use Linux regularly. I'll work on it some more.

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Weird Blog Posts

I've gotten this as the the email address on 4 comments to this blog recently - all on very old posts.

"? echo("viRtz") ?> ? echo(system($cmd)) ?"

I'm not a programmer...but if I had to guess.

The echo command just repeats back what you typed, if I remember correctly.
$cmd sounds like it might be an effort to get a command prompt.

Is somebody trying to hack moveable type blogs?

Update: Its script kiddies trying to use a PHP exploit. I don't allow HTML comments so it doesn't work here anyway. MT 2.6 has a fix for this. I guess I should upgrade soon.

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February 22, 2003

First Post...

From Linux!! I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours fighting network configuration issues in Red Hat 8.0

I started with a brand new computer, Celeron 1.7 GHZ, 256MB RAM. I installed Windows XP first in a 20 GB partition. It went flawlessly. Then I started on Red Hat.

It seemed to go well. But when I booted into Linux I could not get a network connection. So I went back to Windows and hit Google for help. I spent all last night fighting with Linux to get an Internet connection thru my Wireless Lan setup. Linux won and I went to bed.

I woke up with the brilliant idea to just move the wireless router upstairs to my office and plug the PC directly into it. Somewhere in this process I hosed my Linux install. So I reinstalled Red Hat, this time with normal Ethernet. Again, no connection. Hours of surfing around in Windows led me to the conclusion that the on board Ethernet adapter on this PC (SIS 900/7016CI) is not Linux friendly. So, off we go to plan C.

Plan C was to take the Linksys Ethernet Card out of an old PC and put it in my new PC. Again, Red Hat was not impressed. Some nosing around the web, and reading thru the log files led me to believe that DHCP was the problem. So, I booted back into XP, reconfigured my router, reconfigured the Wlan in XP, confirmed it was working, and booted back to Linux.

Again - nothing.

About this time I broke for dinner. Michelle asked why I was putting myself thru this when XP worked properly. The open source thing appeals to my "be different, screw the establishment" side. Being maried with 2 kids and a mortgage, I have very few outlets for my anarchistic leanings. Operating systems fills that void.

God that sounds lame.

Anyway, at this point I decided I would reinstall Red Hat one more time, and if it failed again I would use XP until I could get a Linux geek friend to come over and help.


The 3rd time was the charm. I have no idea why, I entered all the same configuration data as I had before. I'm guessing I missed something when I manually changed from DHCP to static IP's.

So, now starts a new series on ODonnellWeb, Living with Linux. For the next 30 or so days, I will try to live my day to day computing life in Red Hat, only going to XP for games, or if I absolutely can't get something to work in Linux. Stay tuned...

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February 21, 2003

VA Parents deemed qualified to teach kids to drive

The Virginia legislater has passed a bill that will allow homeschooling parents to teach their own children to drive. Previously, homeschoolers had to take lessons from a commercial driving school. No word yet on where homeschooling parents will obtain those scare films, containing graphic footage of accident victims, that were a staple of drivers ed for all of us.

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Rational Parenting

Rational Parenting has been consistently posting very thought provoking content that should be leading to a very active comments area. It would help if a few of you would visit and say something!

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39 Dead in Fire at Great White Concert

Watching the TV footage, it didn't look like there were more than about 300 people at the show, and over 150 were injured trying to escape. There was a cameraman at the show, and there is footage of the entire event as it occurs. It just seems like with that small of a crowd, and the way the fire started behind the stage, more people should have been able to escape. I wonder how many side exits went unused as people panicked and ran for the door they originally came in? When flying, I always memorize the number of seat rows from me to the nearest exit, so that if the plane when down, I could make my way to an exit in the dark and / or smoke. I guess I should start doing the same thing at the movies too. (I don't get out to rock clubs very often.)

CNN coverage

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February 20, 2003

Why I vote Libertarian

Government spending up 22% since Bush took office.

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February 17, 2003

UPS Logic?

I know UPS is expert at shipping stuff, but explain this.

PACKAGE PROGRESS Date Time Location Activity
Feb 16, 2003 10:00 P.M. RICHMOND, VA, US ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS DELAY

Feb 15, 2003 3:38 A.M. RICHMOND, VA, US ARRIVAL SCAN

Feb 14, 2003 10:35 P.M. CHANTILLY, VA, US DEPARTURE SCAN

To get from Chantilly to Richmond, the UPS truck had to pass within 2 miles of my house! They've added days to the delivery time, as well as about 150 extra miles that they did not need to drive.

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February 16, 2003

The Blog as BBS

This article at Slashdot crystallized why blogs have re-energized the Web for me. Before the general public had access to the Internet, I was a BBS nerd. I never ran my own, but I spent a lot of time dialing in to BBS' in Atlanta. I was a paid member of The Index System. The guy had I think 32 phone lines coming in to his BBS. It was cool because when you dialed in you usually knew the other people online at the same time. If the Internet is the great public meeting house of the world, the BBS was the corner pub where everybody knew your name.

Blogs evoke that feeling for me. I don't know how many readers Bambino's Curse has, but I know about how many regular commenters Ed has. It's really only a handful, but a small, vibrant and interesting community has sprung up in the comments section there. The comments section here has never quite done that, however that is mostly my fault. Ed stays very on target at Bambino's Curse, its Boston Red Sox 24 x7. You have no frigging idea what you are going to get when you come here! I often think about focusing this blog more, but I decided it would be less fun for me if I did it.

I have however, met (virtually speaking) a lot of interesting people because of blogs. I'll refrain from listing anybody, only because I don't want to rack my brain to make sure I'm not forgetting somebody. You know who you are anyway ;)

So, to all of you interesting people that visit here and write your own blogs, keep it up!

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My Fellow Americans

I *never* wholesale cut and paste, but this is so good I'm making an exception. It's from Neil Boortz, speechwriting for the President.

My fellow Americans:

Almost twenty-five months ago I stood before the United States Capitol before you to recite a pledge to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Forty-two presidents before me have interpreted those words as a pledge to protect and defend this country from all enemies, whether those enemies be foreign or domestic, national governments or international terrorists, secular warlords or religious zealots. The grave responsibility a president accepts is to serve the interests of the American people and our Constitution, not to treat the interests of our people our Constitution to inferior to the desires and edicts of the United Nations.

We know that every dysfunctional personality needs an enabler to survive and prevail. This is as just as true when the dysfunctional personality is ruthless dictator who abuses and murders his subjects as it is for a person who abuses alcohol or drugs.

Saddam Hussein is dysfunctional; dangerously dysfunctional, and has found his enabler in the United Nations and in the nations of this world who seek to appease and comfort him rather than to force him to address and correct his aberrant behavior.

Today the French Foreign Minister told the United Nations Security Council “war is always the sanction of failure.” Well, the French Foreign Minister is absolutely correct. In this context, “sanction” means “penalty.” And war is, indeed, the penalty for failure; and on this day the world stands witness to failure on two fronts.

First, we have documented the failure of Saddam Hussein to live up to his repeated promises to meet the requirements of over 17 United Nations resolutions dealing with disarmament. We have also seen the abject and continuing failure of the United Nations to enforce its sanctions against Saddam.

It is now clear that the United Nations has made it’s choice. The UN role will be appeasement, not enforcement. The United Nations will continue to play the role of enabler for a dysfunctional and dangerous tyrant. In three months the United Nations will convene a conference on disarmament. Saddam's Hussein's Iraq will co-chair this conference. This, my friends, is the surreal world of the United Nations, where a country that refuses to abide by its promises to disarm is rewarded with the co-chairmanship of a conference on disarmament.

While the United Nations pursues the role of enabler, the role I must pursue is clear; and I restate it for you now.

I am privileged to serve the citizens of the greatest country in the history of civilization. I intend to honor the pledge I took to protect this great country and its people, and I renew that pledge to you this evening. The United Nations can serve whatever interests it deems best. We’ve tried to work with this body to address the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, but it is now clear the United Nations is unwilling to step up to do the job. I, however, am ready to do mine.

I'll close this message tonight by speaking directly to Saddam Hussein.

Mr. Hussein, your time is up. You have developed menacing weapons, and you have shown your willingness to use those weapons, even against your own people. You have murdered and tortured, threatened and terrorized. You have dispatched rape squads to control and punish your detractors. We've seen enough. We know enough.

It is now time for you to stop your program of deceit and terror .. and the United States and its allies, those nations with the courage to act when the need is great, are going to see to it that you do. We’ve endured 12 years of your deception, brutality and deviance. Our patience is at an end.

You have two choices, Mr. Hussein. You can leave and survive, or you can stay and die. If you leave, we will not follow. If you stay, we will pursue.

Make your choice, Mr. Hussein, but make it fast.
We’re on our way.

Thank you, my fellow Americans. And my thanks to those leaders in the world who fear the consequences of a failure to act more than they do the changing winds of public opinion. And may God bestow his blessings on the United States of America, and his infinite mercy on Saddam Hussein.

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February 15, 2003

Buckeyes 17 - Orangemen 20

Season over. We finished 4-4 for the season, and this game was round 1 of the single elimination tournament. It was a very even game and a lot of fun. For the first time this year, the kids did a really good job of playing basketball the way I wanted them too. We had a great high post game going. Unfortunately, my high post kids were about 1-15 on the 8 foot jumper just inside the foul line. We took a lot of shots, almost all of them the right shots from within the offense. The shots just didn't fall for us today. If we play this game 10 times we probably win 7 of them. Oh well, the next game would have been against the Rangers, that team with the 3-2 trap that freaked me out back just before the season began. In a lot of ways its better that the season ends on a relatively good note, We lost, but we played real well. It would be hard to make that point after the likely 30 point loss to the Rangers.

So I handed out trophies after the game, and now I get a coaching break until baseball season starts in April.

Sometime in the next week or so I'll post my "what I learned, what I would do different" thoughts, partly as a reminder to me in case I am doing this again next year, and partly to help the next clueless parent who finds himself coaching his son's basketball team and happens to stumble into this site.

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February 14, 2003

Valentine's Day Haiku

Babysitter sick
Quiet dinner with wife out
Dinner with kids in

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February 13, 2003

Fredericksburg under siege!

Its not quite that bad, but something odd is going on. On her way to a docotor's appointment yesterday, Michelle saw armored military vehicles patrolling near the local hospital. There was also a manned military vehicle in the parking lot of the doctor's office, and it were still there, guarding against some unseen threat, when she left an hour letter.

I still get a weird feeling every time I drive by the Pentagon and see the soldiers manning a big ass, truck mounted, automatic weapon. It just doesn't feel right. Soldiers partrol the public streets in other countries, not here in the US.

I guess I ought to get used to it, I don't see it changing anytime soon.

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February 11, 2003

Feb 14th is also National Condom Day

I guess it sort of makes sense, but it seems like a lame way to raise awareness. I mean, the message sort of gets lost in all the Valentine's Day stuff.

According to this column in The Purdue Exponent, the real problem with this is that Valentine's Day has nothing to do with sex.

Remember the movie The Sure Thing? Replace the cross country trip with dinner and a movie, and replace Nicolette Sheridan with your significant other, and the metaphor still works quite nicely. Maybe Valentine's Day shouldn't be about sex, but in 2003 it most assuredly is. If your married with kids, Valentine's Day is basically an excuse to get a babysitter and enjoy a dinner free from arguments about which Pokeman monster is the most powerful.

Which brings up an interesting question. How did the celebration of a Christian martyr become a Hallmark holiday? Mark?

Of course, none of this applies to me. For me, Valentine's Day is a celebration of the love of my life. I mean, can anybody really explain why somebody like Michelle would voluntarily consent to spend her life with me?

(cut to scene of Wayne and Garth with Alice Cooper)

I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy.

Did I sufficeintly cover my ass with that last bit?

Note to self: Move blog - don't tell wife.

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February 10, 2003

Is Hockey Always this Boring?

Breck wanted to go to a Washington Capitals game for his birthday. I had never been to an NHL game, so I was all for it. I had been to a few minor league hockey games in Atlanta, I remembered them as great fun. We had good seats - first row of the upper deck, right over a goal.

What up with all the line changes? The goalie is the only guy on the team that spends more than 90 consecutive seconds on the ice. And given that, do they really need a 20 minute intermission between periods? I think 10 would be sufficient. Also, if you have an offensive advantage forming, maybe you should follow through on it instead of giving up on the play for a line change. I saw that happen at least 5 or 6 times last night.

The offense looked about as organized as my 8 year olds playing basketball. The Capitals plan seemed to be to get it over their blue line and then dump it into the corner and hope something good comes from it. And on breaks, they start towards the middle (you know, where there goal is) and then always, always pass it to the sideboard or the corner. I have news for these guys, they can't score from the corner.

Maybe I just saw a dull game, but I was very disappointed. I found the game to be exceptionally dull, and IF this was representative of professional hockey these days, I'm not surprised by the NHL clubs declaring bankruptcy. The Caps lost 2-0, but I did get to spend $8 on a hot dog & Sprite.

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February 09, 2003

Jayhawks 37 - Buckeyes 14

We lost, to finish up the season 4-4. We still have the single elimination tournament, so we'll play between 1-4 more games. The jayhawks have been scoring 50 points a game, so we did an OK job on defense. As usual, there is no teamwork on offense. One pass and throw up a stupid shot is our MO. It's frustrating that the kids with the most actual basketball talent are the ones that won't listen. Several of the kids that came into the season clueless have improved dramatically, both in ability and understanding of the game. The kids that came in thinking they play basketball still can't, primarily because they refuse to play within a team system, and just dribble until they lose it or are stopped, in which case they throw up a 30 foot prayer.

I'm frustrated. I don't know if I've decided I don't like coaching basketball, or this particular group of kids has just worn me down.

2 months until Little League practices start!

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February 08, 2003

left jab; uppercut; left jab; knockout!

Sara Jeffries, a homeschooled teenager in Oklahoma, takes on the education establishment, and delivers a flurry of jabs like she is fighting Glass Joe in Punch Out A sample quote:

Sincerely, home-educated students are always looking for community service activities. What can we, as home-educated students do to help teach your students to read? We could tutor them, but we'd have to use our own tried and true curricula.

Ouch!


(Reblogged from Daryl)

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February 07, 2003

New Fan Mail

From: "Gosia Gramsz" | This is Spam | Add to Address Book To: chrisodva@yahoo.com Subject: Greetings from Poland Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 21:12:19 +0100

Hello Chris!
I`m your big fan(my friends too)..
I love "Love And War" with You and Sandra Bullock,oh and of course Vertical Limit!
In "Three Musceters"You were also wonderful,but I don`t have to tell You this,because You know it.
I hope that your career will be greater and greater and You and your family will be healthy and very happy,and of course that I will see your new film,especially romantic commedy!
Remember about your fans in Poland@

I'm completely available for a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock. All she has to do is call.

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February 06, 2003

College Basketball Notes

In case you haven't noticed, we are at the 1/2 way point of the Big 10 basketball season and Purdue is sitting pretty in first place.

Also, I went to a Georgia State University alumni function last night (my graduate degree is from GSU) and had the opportunity to meet and get an autograph from Coach Lefty Driesell.

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February 05, 2003

The Smithsonian is not free!

Michelle just related this story to me...

She was chatting with a friend a few days ago, making plans for an outing with the kids. Michelle's friend suggested heading into DC to visit one of the Smithsonian museums, commenting that they are free.

At this point, Breck interjects into the conversation to explain that the Smithsonian is not free, it's paid for with taxes, and that we are the taxpayers. He continues by saying " My daddy says that the government takes too much tax money from us."

Quick, somebody nominate me for father of the year. I'm obviously doing a great job!

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February 03, 2003

Nuggets 26 - Buckeyes 17

So now we are 4-3. We were down two going into the 4th quarter. but we fell apart. It didn't help that we were whistled for 6 fouls in the 4th quarter, while the other team was whistled for two. I'm sure we committed six, but I'm damn sure they committed twice that many. Oh well...

For some reason I don't understand, this team performs very poorly when my two best players are on the floor together. I thought it was just a first quarter thing, because we always fall behind early. But I realized tonight it not just the first quarter, it whenever those two are in the game together. I think they are worried that if they pass it to the other they won't get it back, so they don't pass.

We have one game left, against one of the best teams. I've seen them play a couple of times when they had the game before us. They have one kid who we absolutely can not handle one on one. he will eat us up. So I am going to teach the kids a triangle and two defense at practice this week, and have the two kids outside double the super stud every time he touches the ball. from what I've seen of them, super stud does not like to pass, and the teams entire offense seems to be to get it to him and get out of the way.

They play a 3-2 zone and trap the wing guards when they get the ball. However, the leave the middle wide open when they double - so I'm going to try to get my wing guards to make a quick pass into the middle before the double team gets to them. It won't work, because the wing guards will panic and freeze when they see the double team coming. As I've said before, double teaming should not be allowed at this level. It's a cheap tactic to win without teaching the kids basketball fundamentals. And it works.

So, we'll end up 4-4. Not bad considering the coaching handicap these kids have had to work with all year :)

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A hillbilly tribute to Kiss

Presented for your listening pleasure, Kiss My Grass: A Hillbilly Tribute to Kiss by Hayseed Dixie.

You have to check out the Mp3's of this - it really defies all explanation. They apparently did an AC/DC tribute album a couple of years ago that sold 100,000 copies.

FYI - they posted .PLS files, which are MP3 playlists. If your browser gets confused (mine did) just download the .pls file and open it locally with Winamp, it should work fine.

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Columbia Disaster Cartoons

Slate has gathered a nice selection of cartoons from papers around the country. I think my favorite was the moon landing flag at half mast...

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February 02, 2003

Britney, with a twist.

I can only imagine the conversation...

Hello, MTV? This is Boris, I am manager of t.A.T.u., girl singing group in Russia.
MTV: Sorry, we don't do foreign language videos.
Boris: Oh no, they are bilingual, and that is not the only bi that they are.
MTV: Can you repeat that please?
Boris: My girls, they sing, they dance, they wear short skirts and white shirts like Britney, except they are in the rain, and they kiss... each other... a lot.
MTV: Are they cute?
Boris: Very.
MTV: Can they sing?
Boris: Does it matter?
MTV: Uh, you better send that video to us, today. Can you use Fed-Ex in Russia?
Boris: Of course we can. Call me tomorrow when you see the video.
MTV: You can count on it.

The website, with the video, is available here.
Their recent performance at the MTV Europe Video Music Awards. And I do mean "performance."

They just hit #1 in England, and according to their website, the video just hit TRL Live, which is the 2003 equivalent of getting on American Bandstand.

When I think about it a bit, I'm shocked that this had to come from Russia. I mean, it never occurred to some record industry mogul to "hook up" an open minded and desperate to be famous pair of Britney / Christina wannabes? It's pure genius.

Damn those Russian's. We beat them to the moon, we won the Cold War, but they got perky, cute lesbian teen pop stars on MTV before we did.

Source: Samizdata, a perfectly respectable website. I wasn't looking for this stuff, honest! But upon finding it, I felt it was my duty to warn both my readers of the upcoming lesbianism trend in pop music if these girls actually sell a bunch of records here.

Not that there's anthing wrong with that.

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February 01, 2003

Buckeyes 26 - Barons 17

We are 4-2. This was the roughest kiddie basketball game I've seen all year. The other team had apparently never been introduced to the concept of a foul. The hacked, pushed, and tackled my kids like we were playing Rugby. We did the usual Buckeye thing and fell behind early. It was 6-0 and the end of the first quarter. It was 14-8 at halftime as we came back big time. We were actually in the bonus in the 2nd quarter. I don't think I've seen 5 fouls called on the same team in a game, let alone in a quarter. And being that these are 8-year old boys, the ref lets them play for the most part. We pulled away in the third quarter and the ref stopped calling fouls on them. If he had continued at least 2 of their kids would have fouled out.

I've come to realize that 8-year boys are not going to run an offense in basketball, even a very simple one with 1 or 2 options. They are going to dribble around and throw up 25 foot shots. Or, they are terrified and won't shoot at all, no matter how open the look is. Breck was standing wide open on the foul every single time we had the ball on offense. I think they passed it to him twice. I even called time out to point out to the guards that the high forward was wide open for an easy shot. They didn't pass it. Oh well, they are having fun, even if they don't care that they could score twice the points with half the effort of they would actually listen and try to do some of the things that we work on in practice.

2 more games, and then the single elimination tournament. And then baseball season!

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