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.

Urban Dictionary

I know its stupid, sick, and immature, but I love to read the Urban Dictionary. Today's front page defines the term surge protectors. Go take a look and see what hipsters think this means.

2 points for playing a safety except in Washington

In today's Chicago Tribune, John Kass eloquently summarizes the growing public discontent with the ultra-cautious Democratic leadership and its Iraq strategy. Non-binding resolutions? Tough questions? There's nothing we can do? Come now. The Democratic party complained bitterly about the actions and policies of the Republican majority, and now that the Democrats are the majority, we'd like to see them step up and drive the changes they campaigned on and were elected for by the people. One might think with the apparent divisions in the Republican party, the new majority party might be able to find a way to move its platform forward?

Thank god scotch is not distilled from corn...

Because corn trading on the Chicago Board of Trade hit an exchange price change limit of 20 cents per day Friday, with per-bushel prices rising to $3.96. Per-day price changes are imposed by the CBOT to limit price volatility and allow time for the market to digest major news - like the Friday morning USDA report detailing strong domestic corn demand along with strong exports.

Friday's Chicago Tribune had two articles about this, primarily focusing on the root cause of the rise of corn prices: ethanol production. One article focused on the impacts in Mexico, where corn prices have driven a 14% increase in the price of tortillas, a dietary staple in the country. The other article focused on the basics of the commodity, and hinted at the possibility of further price increases as the number of operating ethanol plants in the US will increase by roughly 50% in 2007.

Flacid with rage

The Colbert Report is one of my favorite shows, and I have a friend who is an Apple fanatic. After he crowed for what seemed like hours, I stumbled across this Colbert video where he pokes fun at the IPhone (and the porn comment is funny too).

The end of all things

Yes, life as we know it and the value of living it is over the year. With their 41-14 pasting of Ohio State, the Florida Gators closed out the college football season with a bang. Ohio State peaked on the first play of the game, a 93 yard kick off return for a TD by McGinn. After that, it was not so much as Florida piled up the yards on the ground and in the air, running sort of a weird I formation with both qb's lining up. While OSU fans might be dejected, the city of Columbus was relieved as an OSU victory would have almost certainly resulted in a major crime wave there.

See you on 9/1/2007 when NU opens at home against Northeastern.

Charging blues over?

Google on eCoupled to learn about the potentially nifty new technology which is about to be introduced. Wireless re-charging in and of itself sounds great, but even better is the fact that the myriad and sundry different bricks, plugs, and power adapters could be replaced by a single gizmo. I don't know what you have, but I have a cable for my Blackberry, which re-charges off USB on my laptop. But I also have a wall adapter for it when the PC is not handy. And I have a brick for my laptop. And I have a brick for my MP3 player. And a base station for my cordless phone. I could keep going, but you see the point - replace all the power sources and recharging stations with a single eCoupled power pad or bucket, which doesn't need to be replaced each time you buy a new phone or MP3 player....its gizmo nirvana!

Toxoplasma Gondii

The current issue of Discover magazine had a brief article about Toxoplasma Gondii. Being generally ignorant, I was unaware of this parasitic creature. A female friend educated me that pregnant women who own cats are quite familiar with it, as the routine toxosis it can cause is known to be harmful to fetuses.

The Discover article focused on a different aspect. Recent studies have uncovered correlations between toxoplasma and schizophrenia, and indeed, there is some evidence that the little beast may account for the most significant cultural differences between countries and peoples. Correlations have been made between toxoplasma and male stupidity, between toxoplasma and female libido, between toxoplasma and neuroticism and schizophrenia. Click here and here for references....Google for yourself and try to decide if this is symptomatic of a medical tulip craze or totally legitimate, and then drive yourself to Walgreen's and get a test kit.

Number of the Beast

If you are a frequent reader of Distrowatch, you've seen the news that Ubuntu is the #1 Linux distro for the second year in a row. Ubuntu's growing popularity is reflected in the number of interesting variants of the distro. Want Ubuntu but prefer the eye candy of KDE? Get Kubuntu. Student or teacher? Get Edubuntu. What would Jesus download? Get UCE, Ubuntu Christian Edition. Want to run Linux but you only speak Klingon? Wait for the Klingon translation.

And now there is literally one for everyone, as Ubuntu Satanic Edition, "the distro of the beast", is now available. You can run Windows and feel like you are burning in Hell, or run USE and only look like you are burning in Hell. Its great to have choices!