A record I’d rather not see broken….

The Seattle Mariners lost 17 straight in a row recently. And the manager didn’t get shit-canned. I’m shocked. Last year, Don Wakamatsu got canned for an even shorter streak, but there were some other clubhouse drama issues as well. For starters, he brought back Ken Griffey, Jr. who did nothing but whine and eventually retired in the middle of the season…

I told somebody at work recently what I thought of David Beckham (think man-diva). Today he told me rumors of his own line of underwear. Guess what, he’s right.

The Sounders FC lost yesterday (I’m watching the rerun right now on root sports). But, the Mariners won, so I’ll take it. Apparently they’ve already clinched a play-off spot, according to my father, though he could’ve also been talking about the CONCACAF Champions League…

Sorry Charlie, but you’re not starting the Seahawks this year. Pete Caroll is going with Tarvaris Jackson instead of Charlie Whitehurst… A bit of risk in my opinion. But then again, going with a back-up is a risk, too.

So I can watch….

I have HBO as part of my cable service. I don’t really watch that often (I mainly have it for my roommate. Though I have been following the HBO2go app for may Android powered HD2. Since I have a comcast.net email address (Comcast is both my isp and my tv provider), I apparently can stream HBO on my phone. An interesting development. And even greater development is I can stream it on my laptop. And apparently I can stream Xfinity’s on demand programming, too. I just finished up Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:

The Vegan Police
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — MOVIECLIPS.com

This could be a very interesting development….

Help wanted….

Hasselbeck has received a Matt Hasselbeck Well-Deserved Shit-Canning. Well, it wasn’t exactly a Well-Deserved Shit-Canning, but it’s the same end result: he’s not here. IIRC, he’s gone off to Tenessee, and there’ll hell lead the Titans to there Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating. I wish him the best, in his future losing season. Which probably means that Seattle is looking for a new quarterback (though, I will root for Charlie Whitehurst. I just the offensive line holds up…). It has also been heard that the ‘Hawks were seriously considering Brett Favre. God Forbid. I saw his last play last season. He should not take the field again. Ever! Before, I thought it was just funny to joke around with him being old (like his suspension due to testing positive for Geritol). But now, my position is that he needs to stay retired. For his health. Seriously. Besides, the conditions of the turf at CenturyLink Field are not conducive to the use of walkers on the field. Perhaps if he’d actually ran instead of just telling the oncoming rush to get off his lawn….

While we’re on it, the NFL needs to seriously address concussions and head injuries. Sure we love to see all the hits, and ball carriers getting crunched, but there are people getting hurt. I know a lot of you think the NFL is devolving to touch football, but many of these players are beating themselves senile. And most NFL careers and ended by the time the players are in there thirties (many of them earlier). And I just don’t think it’s right to sacrifice your entire life just for 16-18 hours every fall in your 20s…. Perhaps the NFL could also borrow a page from the NHL’s book. Make ‘attempting to injure’ a call-able foul. Once called the offending player is immediately ejected from the game, and the league has to review it before he can return. Or maybe, the league could borrow the concept of the yellow and red cards from MLS. Yellow = your first and last warning from the officials. Red = you’re ejected from the game, and your team is playing short-handed for the duration….

Technorati Tags: Football,Matt Hasselbeck Well-Deserved Shit-Canning,Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating

Anybody have a….

Ok, one of my hobbies is fixing computers (if you haven’t figured that out already…). One of my friends (actually my former district manager) comes to me on e semi-regular basis (I’ve configured 2 laptops, and I think three towers over the years for him) for his IT needs. His first computer, a Gateway Pentium II, he gifted to me about a year and a half ago. It’s a good tower, and the hardware is still sound. It will probably never run WinXP, and don’t even go there about Vista or 7. At first, I thought I was going to put WinME on it, and run some of my old games on it. The problem is that the more I look at it, the processor is too old for even my old games. But, there is hope. Apparently it has a socket one processor. And there appear to be Pentium 3 processors available for it. But the better part of me hesitates at spending any more money on it. Something is telling me that I’d be better off just parting it out. But it’s still here in my room, gathering dust and waiting….

So if anybody has a Pentium 3 socket 1, I might be interested in it. But that’s not a really high priority. I already have a tower that works very well, and I just got a laptop (in fact, this entry is being written on it…).

In a somewhat related story, we got a new Wi-Fi router. My boss was trying to sell me his old computer, which I wasn’t interested at all in (he was asking way too much for it, and when I looked at it, it doesn’t have enough upgradable shoulders for me). S, he was then going to sell me his computer desk, and the monitor (the computer desk, I thought, would be good for my brother and his iMac, and I’d use the monitor for my aforementioned fossil). In the end, I decided against both of them, but he also had a Wi-Fi ‘N’ router available. That I couldn’t pass up. When I put the cable modem and router out in the living room (so my brother could get a decent connection on his box in the kitchen), I had connectivity issues. When I put the Internet Gateway in my room, I get a decent connection (wired is always better than wi-fi), but I felt bad for my brother. So I put the ‘n’ router in my room, and took the laptop out to the living room. And promptly got a 16 mps connection. So the router can stay in my room without guilt. This also means that I can take the wi-fi card out of the tower (it works perfectly, I just like the empty slot next to my video card for air circulation…).

BTW, I’m giving Linux another try….

80+ yesterday….

It was over 80 degrees yesterday, and today we had rain. Go figure. In fact, I was woken up by thunder this morning. I guess that was Summer’s token appearance. Though with the weather the rest of the country is having to endure, I will not complain about the year(s) without a summer in the great Pacific NorthWet….

And it was my day off today, as well…

It’s over. Finally!

Now we can have a football season again. The NFL lockout is over, and there’s now a 10 year deal. We’ll have peace and football for a decade. Which is good. A few years back, the NHL had a labor issue, and it went to a lockout. And eventually the entire season got cancelled. They still haven’t recovered from it, IMHO. If you cancel your season, and your fans take up new sports, then there is a very good chance that they’ll not come back. The NFL labor dispute wasn’t going to be any different. The players make a lot of money. The owners do, too. If the labor dispute had gone to to the point to where games had to be cancelled, then… I  shudder at the thought. No matter who would’ve won, the fans would’ve lost. And I’m sure they would’ve gone on to other sports (like the EPL) and not have come back. In America, the MLS runs from Spring to Fall, and in Europe, there football season lasts from fall to spring (I have Fox Soccer Channel as part of my TV service, and I can watch in-season soccer year round).

Professional sports (ie the NBA, NFL, The New World Order (Mind-Control Division), need to realize that the fans’ loyalty comes at a price. And alienating them by arguing between players and owners isn’t the best thing to do to guarantee your future. Remember, your revenues and your paychecks ultimately come from us, through our ticket purchases, cable tv fees, etc. And if you’re not playing, we’re not buying….

The 27 Club gains another member

Amy Winehouse is dead. I never really listened to her music, but I heard of her self-destructive behavior (which is part of the reason why I didn’t listen to her…). So sad. She had the talent to go far. But she also had the self-destructive behavior…. Questions should be asked when one of your biggest hits is titled ‘Rehab”, and the main line is ‘NO, No, No’…

May she now have the peace that she cou;dn’t apparently find in this life…

Finally, some decent TV worth watching….

Beavis and Butthead are coming back!

Sneak peak, courtesy of MTV:

MTV Shows

I may eventually forgive Mike Judge for King Of The Hill…

In less than 4 hours…

The last space shuttle will come in for its final landing. Ever. I remember the first launch, when I was in the first grade at school in Goergia (this was sufficiently important stuff that we watched it in class, even in the first grade…). A few days later, we saw the landing. Live. After the first few missions, they became sufficiently commonplace that the news no longer preempted the regular programming to show the launches. The exception was one day in 1986 when they broadcast the live launch in school (for some reason or another, my teacher at the time didn’t turn the tv on, but it was on in the adjoining classroom). But it was turned on right away when it was realized what had just happened. May Christa McAuliffe frolic in the Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory.

A lot more of the technological innovations we enjoy have come from the space program than you really know. Not being able to put people into space on a regular basis will eventually have an adverse effect on the economy, and I’m afraid people don’t realize that. Yes, it takes our tax dollars, but the innovations that we can derive from them will in the long run bring an even greater return on the investment.

0-7??!!

If tonight’s Sounders FC match was a boxing fight, it would’ve been stopped early. That’s the jist of what I can say about it. Casey Keller did a real kick-ass job in the first half, but then they pulled him at half-time, and Manchester United brought in somebody (who’s name I can not recall). And he promptly scored himself a hat trick. Which anybody should be proud of (most soccer teams rarely score three goals for the entire game, let alone individual players…). But this is a friendly match, it doesn’t really count towards any teams’ record (though this is also the preseason for the English Premier League, and some of the best performances are always from players looking for work….).

60,000+ fans. Seattle is definitely a soccer town…

So Long, Borders

So, it is apparent that Borders is going to have to liquidate. One of my work sited was located near the Federal Way store, and I was on relatively speaking terms with the employees. So, when they initially filed for bankruptcy, and published that this store was initially going to stay open, I was happy (and a little bit relieved….). Then in April, they announced that the store was going to be liquidated. Two days before the store’s final day, one of the employees told me that the whole company will probably be liquidated by June. He was only a month late….

Who’s to say why the company ultimately failed? I have a couple of theories:

• They failed to develop an e-reader. Spamazon has the kindle. Barnes & Noble has the Nook. And you can buy and download a whole shit-load of books onto one of them, far more than you could carry if you had to carry books….
• The Internet. Why go to the bookstore when you can have it shipped to your door, after having ordered it without even bothering to put your pants on? Or, if you’re tech-savvy enough, you could even get it for free (though that may involve legally dubious means, exercise this at your own risk…).
• And the reason why I never shopped at Borders: The Pierce County Library. I don’t think the Pierce County Library actually killed Borders per say, but because I live only three blocks from the Parkland/Spanaway branch of the Pierce County Library, I never really had the need to buy a book from Borders. They have an even better selection. The length of a loan is 3 weeks, but that’s more than enough to read a book, and it’s free. Oh, and they have e-books, too.

On the day they finally closed the Federal Way, I downloaded my first E-Book from the Pierce County Library to my phone. Border’s died because they didn’t adapt to the times. People just don’t go to the bookstore anymore. There used to be time when there were these things called music stores (at one time, the South Hill Mall in Puyallup had three different stores that carried only music). Now they’re all gone. People are now downloading music (iTunes, anyone?).

That’s the nature of business. And life in general. Adapt. Or die…

Wi-Fi is good, but….

A wired connection is even better. When I was moving my files from my tower to my laptop, I had a LAN already already set up, so I thought I’d just drag and drop the files. But when you’re moving over 60 gigs of files, a wi-fi LAN perhaps might not be the best of ideas. I was only getting 500 KBs/sec, and it would've taken me about 12 hours to do everything. But if I used a wired connection, it only took me about 3 hours. But since I didn’t have enough network cable available, my brother had to go without an internet connection while I did the move.

But if you’re not moving over 60 gigabytes of data from one computer to another, then wi-fi is generally good….

So there’s a new Harry Potter out…

I’ve never really cared for Harry Potter (or Twilight, for that matter. When faced with Team Edward or Team Jacob, I’ve always preferred Team Grandpa Munster…). The best way to deal with Voldemort, or any wizard for that matter is to get a balance scale, a duck, and an unruly mob:

Snape way played by Alan Rickman, who was also the voice of God in Dogma. So, I wonder, why can’t Hogwarts have Jay and Silent Bob, too?

Why didn't I hear this growing up?

I though I heard once or twice on the radio when I was in high school, and no more. I thought the tune was catchy and a bit uplifting.

After those 2-3 times on the radio, I never heard it again. Until I was at the mall the other day, and the played it over the intercom, and I Soundhounded it (Soundhound infinity was a free app of the day at the Spamazon app store a while back, and I got it).

Very good song. Too bad Micheal Been passed away, and he didn’t get the mainstream success he deserved. In the ‘80s, a lot of bands put out even worse music, and saw more success than him….

Heineken Tastes Like Piss…

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. Corona tastes like bottled urine. The last time I had a Heineken, though, I had a headache that lasted till about 4 in the afternoon the next day. And I only had a beer and a half. I;ll stick with Guinness or Henry’s, thank you…

Now, we play the music video:

One wonders what drugs they were on. Heineken may be Dutch urine, but I don’t think ‘shrooms are part of it. Good song, great band. Questionable beer, and what the hell were they on when made the video? And why didn’t they share it?

Fun with 2 Computers….

So, when I got my laptop a couple of weeks ago, it took me 2, almost three nights to copy all my files over to it (I did it with the Wi-Fi LAN). But I’m glad I did. I did a maintenance wipe on my tower tonight. There is no virus that can survive a ‘format c:’ command. Actually I didn’t do it just for the maintenance aspect. I wanted to try a different configuration with the partitioning (only to realize that once I’d set all my partitions up, I liked the original setup better). But this time, I can take my time putting it back together. Especially since the aforementioned laptop happens to have all my music copied to it…. But  I do have an impetus to fix the tower eventually. It is my room’s primary TV, after all….

Did you know?

That those really neat looking themes from Windows 9x will work on Windows 7? My shiny new Windows 7 laptop is right now running the plusWindows Millennium theme. I figured out that the Win9x themes will run on WinXP when I was dual-booting ME and XP a few years back. Then when I went to straight XP, I copied the <C:/program files/plus!> directory into my xp directory, and the themes worked. In Windows 7, just copy the plus! directory to your program files directory, then start THEMES.exe. Though for best results, change the windows 7 theme to windows classic first…..

23 years ago and change…

I remember the spring of my 8th grade year. I just started taken an interest in the local professional sports scene (my favorite team was the now defunct Tacoma Stars. I still hero worship Steve Zungul and Preki. Today, I consider myself a fan of the Sounders FC…). The previous fall, I had finally figured out how the sport of gridiron football is played, and I ‘borrowed’ my parents’ walkman to listen to Seahawks games on the radio (Pete Gross went to The Beer Volcano and The Stripper Factory even before there was a Flying Spaghetti Monster). And then The New World Order (Mind-Control Division) decreed that baseball season should start, and I started listening to games on the radio. For the first part of the season as I was listening to the Mariners on the radio, Dick Williams was the team manager. They canned his ass midway through the season, and I paid little attention to it at the time, instead following the anitcs of Jimmy Snyder before he got shit-canned after the season and they brought in Jim Lefebvre, who eventually got the team to post its first winning season. Ever.

Anyway back to Dick Williams. He had an illustrious career as a player and a manager, and skippering the Mariners was the twilight of his career. Dick Williams passed away yesterday. Like I’ve said before, I never really followed him. He was almost an afterthought, and was gone beofre I realized what a contribution he had already made. Now he can join Dave Neihaus….

Not Guilty...

So, they returned a verdict. Casey Anthony is not guilty. There are many people who still think she did it, but it comes down to this: there were 12 people in Florida who had the best position to decide guilt or not, the jury. And they said not guilty. That's all I need to know. Whether our not she actually did it is now irrelevant.

People may say that justice was denied for Caylee, but the criminal justice is set up the way it is for a reason. Everybody deserves due process of law, and unless the prosecutor can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, you are considered innocent. Think about it. Would you want it any other way if you were accused of a crime you didn't commit?

The start of another summer

Over the years a resident in Washington State, I've come to realize that we do have an actual summer. It starts right around the fourth, lasts through most of July and August (with the exception of Hydroplane weekend) and ends right before my birthday.

Beyond that, if you can're see Mt. Rainier, them come inside out if the rain. If you can see it, then come inside, it's about to rain...

So I'm watching the family fourth on King 5

And what can be more patriotic song to set fireworks of to than the Monday Night Football theme? Although a couple of years they used the Immigrant Song... They've also used Smoke On The Water this year.

This takes me back. I remember my first fireworks display that I went to. I was actually scared to death of them for several years later, because I thought they were coming right towards me. I guess they'd why I've always preferred watching then on tv...

Happy Fourth….

Ok, so I’m celebrating my Fourth of July the same way any red-blooded American ought to: by giving my Full 90 with the Sounders FC.While blogging on my apartment’s wi-fi from my laptop. May the LA Galaxy receive a Tom Brady Well-Deserved Beating…. So far, I’ve seen on penalty kick (note: a hand-ball is not the best of moves when you’re on D…).

As for the previous game (New England Revolution vs. Real Salt Lake), somebody ought to shit-can the referee. There is no difference betwwen incompetence and malice, and referee in that match was both….

So, It’s National Get Dunk and Blow Yourself Up Day…

AKA the Fourth of July, or Independence Day (Coincedentally the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the end of Jeff Goldblum’s career….). I don’t set off fireworks. I just hope my neighbors don’t cause too big of a fire and burn my apartment building down. I usually watch it on TV, and let the professionals blow themselves up….

I read somewhere that less than 50% of Americans know who we defeated in the American revolution to gain our Freedom. I supposed it was a worldwide Axis of Evil, comprised mainly of Genghis Khan, the Canadians, the Mexicans, Rodan, and Barbra Streisand. And George Washington had to call on Brian Boitana and Robert Smith from The Cure…

Guess what's on Cooking Channel!

Iron Chef! The classic Iron Chef! As in the original Japanese version. Life is even better now. Iron Chef America is good, but it's also wise to pay your dues to the original, where you can legitimately wonder if chairman Kaga is wearing a dress, or pants (if memory serves me correctly, his wardrobe was one of the greatest expenses in the shows budget...). You can also see the really tall chef's hats (whenever I saw Sakai's hat, the thought always came to mind that the taller the heart, the smaller the penis.....)

Tonight, it's Battle Pumpkin. Allez Cuisine.....