Meet my new best friend

My new best friend....until I suck the life out of him and throw him away, empty and useless!

Hamsterzilla

My 14-year old claims our pet hamster, Scouty, reared up and hissed at her while brandishing his giant bloody teeth. Can you believe the cute little guy would do that?

MP3 verdict

It will be interesting to see if the various software products (WMP, ITunes, etc.) and online stores (Rhapsody et al) begin a stampede off the MP3 format after this news. Perhaps this will lead to increased interest in Ogg.

Unknown $&%^$#&#& Number

I love gizmos and gadgets and I'm constantly amazed by the incredible things that can be done with communications technology. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to this amazing stuff, too. My Blackberry, which is a truly modern marvel, has become the bane of my existence. Why? Because some doofus has accidentally programmed my cell number into his or her fax machine, modem, or other automated gadget.

Need to take a shower? Unknown Number calls six times. Taking a dump? Unknown Number calls 15 times. Sleeping at night? Fageddaboutit, Unknown Number calls 62 times. My personal record is one day on which Unknown Number called me over 100 times.

As much as I despise the faceless doofus who started this, I reserve a superspecial dollop of vicious, white-hot hatred for my cell provider. Whom, amazingly enough, has no way to tell me who Unknown Number is. For god's sake, how can a phone company be unable to verify what number is calling me? Didn't they know it at the time they connected the damn call? Don't they have some freaking computers with databases and crap like that? But no...their only solution to this problem is, Hey, we can change YOUR phone number. Thus forcing me to change my business cards, my email tags, call everyone I know with my new number, etc., to say nothing of all the computerized records companies have with my number in it.

Maybe I can still get my trusty old beeper back.

Go Demons!

The DePaul Blue Demons won their third straight game and have improved their post-season chances. Big wins over USF, Marquette and the Irish have the Demons over .500 in conference, with three big games to go before the Big East tournament.

Fish face

Honestly, when I first saw this, I thought, damn that is my little brother! My second thought was....wow I want a couple of those for my koi pond....

Hot new software

Linux has never had a jazzy, slick-looking media player. Realplayer, Rythmbox, mplayer, etc., have just never been up to snuff. But Songbird has the makings of a terrific media player.

And if you need to download those giant ISO's...try uTorrent....the new release is slicker than snot.

Cactus League

When I whine about the college football season being over, my brother is fond of saying "pitchers and catchers report in two weeks". Click here for the Cubs Spring Training schedule which starts March 1 in Mesa against the Giants and everyone's favorite HGH-enhanced hitting ace.

NU 2007 signings

Click here for the story on the 2007 recruiting class at NU. I'm no expert, but the apparent lack of national focus is disturbing. 17 of the 19 signees are Midwesterners, and indeed 10 of the 19 come from Illinois and Ohio. A nationally-famed school like NU should be able to attract recruits from across the country, and indeed, how can the school expect to compete in the Big Ten with a limited recruiting scope? Scout.com ranks NU's recruiting class as #56 in the nation, and #8 (of 11) in the Big Ten.

In contrast to the football story, applications for admission to NU are up 19% year-over-year, partly due to the switch to the Common Application form. But if the school can draw record numbers of students, why can't the football program?

My friend Sean drew this picture. He has an elaborate, artistic story outlined, and he is working on the drawings to illustrate it. And no, its not porno....but that may be a good second choice for him if the comic book version doesn't sell! Please vote in the comment section - should Sean do a comic book, or a porno?

Fugue State and the hope for a better (or at least longer) future

I frequently joke about the ill-mannered behaviors of co-workers who seem to conveniently fall into a fugue state. Merriam-Webster defines fugue state as "a disturbed state of consciousness in which the one affected seems to perform acts in full awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect the acts performed".

I recently suffered thru my own scotch-induced fugue state (Dewar's seems most likely to cause this), and found the experience (or, really, the lack of the experience) to be quite disturbing. Thus I was encouraged to read in this month's Discover magazine about progress being made in stem cell research. Scientists at the University of Newcastle in England have grown human liver cells using stem cells from umbilical cord blood. Thus while I have no specific cure for the fugue itself at present (maybe upgrading from Dewar's to Glenfiddich?), I do have future hope for a replacement liver so I can continue experimenting with various scotches.

Quote of the Day

"I think he thought I'd been talking to other guys." - Melinda Abell, of Blue Springs, Mo., on her boyfriend being found guilty of second-degree domestic assault for shoving a cell phone down her throat.

You can only hope it was a super-thin Razr as opposed to a chunky Blackberry.