Ha ha

While searching for a torrent for an episode of FitNation, I saw this funny tidbit on beta.digg.com:

Nielsen ratings for October show G4TechTV is among least viewed networks, barely beating Biography and FitTv. Good job Comcast!

user samureye

Okay, so it's almost a year old. I'm always happy to see someone pointing out how much Comcast sucks (update: I think Digg's founders include former TechTV hosts Kevin Rose and Dan Huard).

Leo and Pat (notoriously retiring, no useful personal links found) will rise again. In fact, it seems they have a show, This Week in Tech, which is podcast...

(Update: And if I paid any attention to the iTunes store top podcast listings, which obviously I don't, TWiT is regularly close to the top.)

Up Your Irons

Or "Be Quick, or Be Egged."

Boo, hiss and general jeers to the cads responsible for pelting Iron Maiden with eggs and bottles, and screwing up their audio at Ozzfest this past Saturday. By "cads responsible," I probably mean Sharon Osbourne.

The Plaintiff

Regardless of whatever fueds might have been going on between Sharon, Bruce and anyone else, the fans who paid their hard-earned money do not deserve to have a band's set ruined for them.

The audience does not deserve your anger. Wayne Newton taught us that.

By all accounts, Maiden rocked hard despite the shenanigans.

Cajuns of the Middle Kingdom, Hallelujah, Hare Krishna, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

Doubtful, you were quickly converted to the odd fusion of Chao Cajun at Durham's Southpoint Mall. In exile, you found some respite at Cross Creek's Little Easy Cafe.

Beef and brocolli with mashed potatoes would have been all the postmodern rage, but lo mein, labelled simply "pasta," with blackened bourbon chicken was more your style.

Atavist.

Taken by a smiling young lass at the American Candy booth (no Commie juju beans here, no sir!), you walked on in endless cirlces, knowing the paths never change and the destinations were all the same. You were chased by the children of Yaldaboth, with their pitchforks and assumptions, but you could always lose them in an alleyway in Brussels, or a slow train to Siam.

Perhaps, you thought, some sect or other would read the signs and offer solace. "We know of your travails. We chained Melkor in the bowels of the Earth for you!" But you knew it was wishful thinking. They have trouble with traffic lights.

Did it even occur to you that you were living in a Van Morrison song? "Dig!," you might offer, after introspection.

You dreamed about Kris Kristofferson and George Harrison, and awoke thinking Dylan had died.

I wish I could play a banjo, and chamois clean all the windows, singing songs about Edith Piaf soul.

What is was was football

The biggest thing going in Cumberland County right now, that I care about anyway, is the fallout and the picking up of sundry pieces after the scandal of the century.

Bob Paroli was the head football coach at my alma matter, Douglas Byrd Senior High, for 25 years. I had his son, Coach Mike, for World Geography back in the day. Even then, over 12 years ago, we all thought the elder Paroli would have to hang it up soon. He was certainly at retirement age. He had seen some great players: Joe Horn (Yes, the New Orleans Saint who got fined for calling his mother on a cellphone from the endzone. Really nice guy, though.), Juane "the ball-carrier" Bradley, and my old classmate from elementary school, Kinnon Tatum, who went on to Notre Dame and the Carolina Panthers (Edit: Somehow I forgot the great back Marcus Reaves). Everyone figured Coach Paroli would quit one year soon, and Coach Mike would step up and takeover.

Übercoach Bob Paroli
Source: DiscoverFayetteville.com

Then, in the mid-90's, Paroli's crunching, all-runs offense and solid defense had a resurgence. They got close to the state championship game, if not in it, for a few years. But when you get to that level of play, you just can't not have a passing game, and Paroli never would. That might work against Cape Fear, but not Garner, Raleigh Millbrook or West Charlotte. Still everyone loved Bob Paroli for getting that far so consistently. The money he brought to Doug Byrd was obvious, and soon all the athletics stuff was getting upgraded, including Bob Paroli Stadium. I heard the football money even contributed the lion's share to the new music and "cultural arts" building Byrd built back then. Even after a few less than stellar seasons, he was approaching the state's best HS coaching record, held by Bobby Poss, former coach of rival (no really, we hate them down to their very souls) South View in Hopeless Mills.

Then the unthinkable happened. After the '04 season ended, the 74 year-old Paroli announced he was leaving Douglas Byrd, to take over coaching a few miles down the road at Seventy-First. Most of his assistant coaches, including Mike, went with him.

Ye gods and gadzooks! "New days are strange, is the world insane?!?!," we wondered, Black Eyed Pea-like. Our Eagles needed to be strong to have a chance against Paroli's Falcons. We needed to save face, so he needed some what-for. As the Parolis beefed up Seventy-First, Byrd rejoined by hiring relative unknown Dwayne Pelham, alum of App State and, incestuously enough, Seventy-First. Pelham kept mum to the press about what kind of offense he planned to run, and Byrd showed poorly in last week's regional scrimmage Jamboree, inviting criticisms of a "smoke and mirrors" program by the local paper.

Last night was the first game of the season for most area schools. The spotlight game, Seventy-First vs Pine Forest, was shown on TV. Paroli's Falcons stomped on the Forest Trojans, 28-0. Douglas Byrd went down south to traditional Lumbee lands to face Purnell Swett. They play rough ball down there in Robeson County. I wasn't too hopeful, but the nightly news returned an Eagle victory, 21-12.

On September 23, Douglas Byrd will travel down Raeford Road to Seventy-First to settle a score with their old coach and his new Falcons. We need our Eagles to dispense that afore-mentioned what-for. But...

How do you root AGAINST Bob Paroli? Bob Paroli IS high school football.

I feel like the child in a messy divorce.

Not much is new

I'm sitting outside my sister's house using their wi-fi. The swing is shady, at least.

All of a sudden I am going to an instructional technology conference at Elon on Monday, with my old friend and colleague Sarah Reuning. It will be good to talk to other IT folks, share ideas and do the "networking" thing. I'm looking forward to it.

Damn, it's hot.

I was glad Discovery landed safely. Now let's replace those buckets of 1970's technology so we don't have to cross our fingers every time we launch one. Better yet, let Burt Rutan fix it.

I've been reading Spencer Well's The Journey of Man after Tai Chi and before bed. Wells is a leading genetecist and one of the folks responsible for mapping modern man's colonization of the planet by mapping the mutations, or polymorphisms, introduced into the human genome over the last 50,000 years. It is amazing how much can be reconstructed about the human journey, which is shown to be irrefutably out of Africa and across Eurasia and Australia (and then the Pacific and the Americas) in branching waves, putting to rest speculative and sometimes racist ideas of multiregional evolution from earlier hominids. For the umpteenth time.

Anyway, that's pretty much my news from the Ville.