Pack Opens 2004 Season on MNF @ the Panthers
Not real
great news. The Pack plays much better late in the season. Facing such a tough opponent this early is as close to a gauranteed loss as you can get.
Incidentally, here's the pre-season schedule:
Mon., Aug. 16 - vs. Seattle Seahawks - 7 p.m. (ESPN)
Bishop's Charities Game along with the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption
Aug. 19-23 - vs. New Orleans Saints - TBA (state)
Midwest Shrine Game
Aug. 26-30 - at Jacksonville Jaguars - TBA (state)
Sept. 3 - at Tennessee Titans - 7 p.m. (state)
Oh, Before I Forget ...
Stop over at the Gweilo's place to see
Monday's cutie. Do I detect a Japanese theme this week?
WiFi
Today I joined the 21st century.
Prompted by my fight with SBC (which I will document at a later date), I picked up the following
items.
They are highly rated, yet low in price, so I think they are best choice out there right now.
I've got cable access for the internet, but it only comes into my desktop in the office area at the rear of my flat. In order to use my laptop in my bedroom or in the living room, I use dial-up. I've had a phone line for that expressed purpose, but thanks to incompetance at SBC, I cancelled.
I really needed to set up a wireless network anyway because once the wife gets here we'll both need to use the internet at the same time. Also, if I'm watching the baby in the living room, I can still check email, download porn, or work on
"keeping it real". So, I just had to have it.
Here's the great thing, and I've noticed it with recent purchases from
Amazon and now from
Buy.com, ...they don't all ship out of the west coast anymore. This means that packages that used to take 7 day, now take 2!
I ordered my package on Friday afternoon about 2pm. It arrived Monday at around 11:30am! The shipping slip showed that it was sent from a warehouse in Chicago. The same thing happened with a recent Amazon purchase, ordered on Friday, arrived on Monday. And both times I selected the FREE SHIPPING offer that says
7 to 9 days delivery.
These packages used to take forever to get here to Milwaukee, ...now THAT'S progress.
Assholes
Democrat activists
terrorize the home of Bush advisor Karl Rove.
Imagine if the situation was reversed and a bunch of Republican activists terrorized the home of a prominent Democrat or Presidential advisor. You would never hear the end of it and the victim would be portrayed as a hero who stood up to thugs.
We'll see how much attention this gets.
I'll bet it gets as much attention as this act of typical
Democrat/Union thuggery from
last week, ...in other words. None.
"Robbed" is an Understatement
The NBA is a joke.
Think about this ...
In the NFL, the officiating of a game is an actual issue. People, coaches, and players can TALK about it, discuss it, and even force the league to make changes (instant replay, QB rules, possesion rules, coach challanges). Everyone knows what the rules are. Bad calls are penalized and bad trends are corrected.
This is how a league acts when it cares about being a fair league.
Even MLB does this to an extent. Umpires are challanged routinely. Face-to-face arguments on the field between the coach and the ump are a time-honored tradition. Baseball changed the rules on the strike zone and forced the umps to comply. Also, they added two extra umps in the outfield for playoff and world series games.
Not the NBA.
The officiating in the NBA has been a complete joke for years and David Stern doesn't seem to care. Merely uttering the words, "the refs blew the game" would cause a heavy fine from the league. Coaches and players are forced into silence while the rest of us can see the obvious.
The games are not called fairly. The worst and most blatant example I'd ever seen was The Bucks vs 76ers conference championship series in 2001. This was when Tyrone Hill went through the entire series with only a handful of fouls. This from a guy who averages a handful of fouls a GAME. By the end of the series he was actually grabbing people and throwing them out of the way, knowing it wouldn't be called. The Bucks, on the other hand, were called called for every minor touchy foul the refs could find.
The Bucks complained, the fans complained, many promoted conspiracy theories that David Stern did not want the small market Bucks to face the Lakers in the championship series because it would cause low ratings.
The league has to know that is has a credability problem when it comes to the refs. The fact that they do nothing about it tells me that they like it this way.
And why do you think that is?
Why would a league prefer a situation where the games were not governed in a fair and honest way?
My take, ...because then they "influence" who wins and who loses.
Like in
this game.
I watched this game. It made me sick.
Why I'm No Longer a Christian #672
The pope comes out swinging
against sports and entertainment on Sunday.
He says modern day culture is undermining the family, ...unlike papal pedophilia I guess.
I Don't Watch Much Reality TV, But ...
I have been watching
The Apprentice on NBC Thursday nights. It's fascinating and I just can't stop watching it.
I initially ignored the show when it debuted because I didn't want to see a show about good-looking, successful, ambitious young people being successful, ambitious, and good-looking. But it turned out to be more than that.
They started with a large group of young professional people who were either entrepreneurs or successful in some form of business. Some were business owners, sales people, marketing folks, real estate, and finance oriented.
What makes the show great is Donald Trump. He acts just like you'd expect him to act. Tough, fair, smart, totally business minded. A very demanding but rewarding kind of a boss.
The contestants divide into two groups and are given a business task. They have a short time to plan a strategy and one day to execute it. They team that makes the most money wins and gets a reward, like a yacht trip, a picnic at Trumps mansion upstate, etc.
The project manager of the losing team must bring him or herself plus 2 others from the team into the "boardroom" where they are grilled about what went wrong and who was responsible.
Someone on that team gets fired.
The show is getting really tense as there are now only 5 members left and only two shows left in the season.
My prediction is that Amy's boyfriend (Nick) will be the next one fired, leaving two teams of two. But it's hard to predict that, because if his team wins, then he cannot be fired. He and Kwame have shown the least amount of skills, judgment, and leadership ability.
Bill, Amy, or Troy would be good winners. They've been the best. We'll see. I'll be watching.
Almost more interesting, click
here to audition for one of NBC's upcoming reality shows.
Calling Michael Moore ...
Let's see if he and the other Bush bashers respond to this
bit of info ...
Best Burgers in Milwaukee
MSN readers have voted on the best burgers in various cities around the country. Milwaukee's results are
here.
Kopps came in first in the readers poll as expected. Kopps is a bit too salty and greasy for me, but at least they don't use reject White Castle horse meat like Culvers. I hate Culvers burgers. (It's not really horse meat, but it doesn't taste like beef to me). Culvers came in 5th.
Solly's came in second. I've heard good things about that place. Mazo's, a place I've never heard of, came in 10th in the readers poll and first in the editors poll.
As for me, I'm partial to the Grecian Burger at Grecian Delight, but I've never had it when I was sober.
Pandora ...next week?
So, I was all keyed up to rock Indonesia, killing terrorists, stealing intel, rescuing prisoners from the US Embassy, ...but I ran into a little snag that even
Sam Fisher, or perhaps even the two-faced seat warmer
Richard Clarke can't solve. My GeForce 2 GTS 64mb is not cool enough to play with Ubisoft.
I need to upgrade.
I've steered clear of Intel and ATI and stuck with AMD and Nvidia my whole computer DIY life. So, I naturally hit the review zines and message boards to see what Nvidia had to offer. I found very few recommendations for Nvidia. It seems the underdog graphics card company that stole the show for most of the late 90's and early '00s has hit some hard times.
They are being outperformed by ATI. I tried, I really tried to find a GeForce model that compared to the ATIs, but could not. GeForce cards run HOT. So hot that it affects their performance. I already know that my box has awful ventillation, so I'd be immediately screwed.
The biggest strike against them, ...inconsistancy. I didn't want to take the risk of buying a card, struggling with it for 3 weeks, then waiting 6 weeks for the RMA process to send me a new one. Screw that. I don't want to spend almost $200 just to go through that kind of pain.
The problem is that ATI's are (and always have been) more expensive. I don't have the cash for a new 9800 pro or xt right now. So, off to ebay I went. I found a supported GeForce 4 ti that would agree to play nice with my 4x agp motherboard for $25. I put in my bids and if I can get it for under $40 I'll take a chance on it.
If not, then the Indonesian cuties will have to wait a few weeks or months until I can come to the rescue.
See? Parenthood and married life is ALREADY getting the way! (Parenthood and married life being the reason I don't immediately have the cash for new video card)
Good Jab
Rush had a cute jab at the French today.
He reported that the French had raised their terror level because they found some bombs on a train,
which is true.
He then added:
"They raised their terror level from
Run to
Hide."
Oh, ...THAT Liberal Media
Too
funny.
This Simply Must Be Seen ...
to be
believed.
Read it all, but check out that picture.
It's a Girl ...probably
Here's a two things I anecdotally learned about Japanese childbirth customs:
1. They do not seem as obsessed with knowing the sex of the baby. In the US it's common to know at around the 5th or 6th month (apparently), but in Japan they usually don't even check until the 8th month. It's been a struggle getting the wife's doctors to comply with our REPEATED requests to check on the baby's gender. I guess her doctors feel rather put out by all the requests and have rudely brushed off the questions until now. They couldn't really tell for certain because the baby's legs were closed, but they are 60% certain it is a girl. If so, the Beijing baby chart is right again.
2. They do not use the "blue for boys, pink for girls" theme when dressing the baby or decorating his/her room.
So, ...it's a girl. Me, the father of a girl.
It's odd, but I can now see how people feel that women have fewer chances to succeed in the business world. Looking at demographics and using common sense you can see that this is rapidly changing, but I can't help feeling differently towards the future of a potential girl than a potential boy.
When I thought about having a boy, I immediately thought of his future, the opportunities he will have, ...the potential to hold positions of power. I also thought of the sporting events we would watch and attend along with his grandfather. The car shopping, movie watching, knowledge imparting, ...watching him play a sport, receive a diploma, write a book, ...succeed. Whatever he would do, I just want him to succeed.
But when I think of a girl, ...my thoughts come to whom she will one day marry.
I also think of her and my wife shopping, running off and doing girl things while I watch the game on tv alone. I think of buying her a car that is really really really safe and has NO backseat! I think of medical school, law school, grandchildren ...but I do not think of positions of power. Marriage and kids. That's what I think of. I immediately assume her income will be the "2nd income" in her family, next to and below her husbands.
I know thing don't have to be this way. I'll make sure she grows up knowing the same.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Good to see Prince get in. A true musical, artistic, and performance genius.
Then there's this
funny bit about ZZ Top being introduced by Keith Richards:
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards gave a semi-coherent induction speech, praising the band's consistency and longevity. Richards wore a colorful headband and what appeared to be a collection of jewelry and fishing lures hanging from his hair.
Thailand Week at the Gweilo's Place
I'm loving this
themed, weeklong picture posting.
But unlike Playboy, I also go for the articles, much like
this one on the French engaging in military exercises with the Chinese merely days before a crucial vote in Taiwan. China likes to intimidate Taiwan during elections so that they do not vote for candidates who favor independance. It's just shocking that France would participate in this.
Well, I guess it isn't that shocking.
Visa
The wife went through the final step in the Visa process at 2pm Japan time at the US Embassy in Tokyo.
Step one required us to fill out a variety of forms and gather a stack of data to corroborate our application. Step two brought us to the Embassy to hand in these forms, have a short interview, get everything stamped and notarized, and pick up a new set of forms. Step three required us to fill out the new forms, and gather a new set of personal, financial, medical, and criminal records.
Step four was today. She was to hand in the completed papers, have an interview, and if all went well, ...pick up a Visa to allow her enter to the US and apply for permanent resident status.
This is the step that worried me the most because it is where most visa denials occur. We have no margin for error. She is due on June 14th and any delay in this process would mean that my baby would be born in Japan and not in the US. Anticipating a successful interview, she had already purchased a ticket to fly to the US on April 14th.
There were three new pieces on information she needed to gather. She needed a police report from each country she had resided in to prove she was not a criminal or terrorist or evil genius. She needed one from the UK (where she'd lived for about 4 years) and her native Japan. She also needed to get a medical check up at an approved clinic. This part was a real racket, she had to pay several hundred dollars at a designated clinic to have a check up her own doctor has probably already done.
She received the police clearance from the UK several weeks ago, and requested one from her local police station. She also had her medical check up but had yet to pick up the results. She waited until the last minute and decided to pick up the police clearance and medical results on the way to the embassy.
This had me worried all weekend. Anything could have gone wrong and prevented her from coming to the US in time. The computers could have been down at the police station, preventing them from giving her the clearance. The medical results could have been lost. We had no margin for error.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly.
She picked up her forms without hassle, took the trains to Embassy, waited in line, went through security, and took a seat. They eventually called her name and she was asked only 3-4 simple questions. Then they told her to take a seat and they would call her in about 20 minutes with a visa. It only took 10 and she was out of there an hour and a half after entering.
Some people wait years and years for a visa, but due to our close relationship with Japan, the process took a total of a month and a half.
She called me from the train platform to tell me the good news.
She will be here April 14th, flying business class on my airline miles. April 23rd or 30th we'll have a wedding dinner (still being planned). Two weeks later we'll have a baby shower.
One month later we'll have a child.
I Agree
Europe has a long, sad
history of weakness and appeasement in the face of terror and facism. Why should the 21st century be different than the last?
And there are morons in the US who want us to emulate the Europeans.
Weekend Test
Are Maria Menounos'
boobs real or fake?
Apechild makes a good case, I say real.
via
fleshbot
Baby Shopping
Shopping for items FOR the baby, ...not shopping for actual infants. One is enough for now.
This weekend I was driving around in the so-called-spring weather pricing baby stuff. Now, I'm no stranger to feelings of inadequacy, in fact it sleeps right next to me along with doubt, anxiety, a compulsion for lists, and an 80 pound sausage of a dog. Inadequacy itself is the staple in the spine of my paperback, ...I'm used to it. Hell, ...I even enjoy it because it gives me something to think about and plot against and makes lists about. I'm comfortable with my current set of inadequacies.
But NEW inadequacies unnerve me. You'd think I'd have gotten used to them by now.
You'd think that a pregnancy, ultrasounds, frightening trips to the hospital, and reading books on new parenthood would either unnerve me in advance or sufficiently prepare me for the feelings of doubt and general dorkiness that I assume all soon-to-be-new fathers experience, but it did not.
No, my new inadequacy presented itself in an aisle of vapid, stupidly bland, innocuous baby toys.
I managed to look through the breast pumps, baby tubs, diapers, car seats, baby clothes, baby toothbrushes, ear thermometers, first aid kits, strollers, bassinets, swing-a-ma-jigs, changing tables, and dinnerware without feeling anything more than the preemptive lightening of my wallet.
Then I saw
these.
Those clear plastic, water filled chew rings. The things that babies gum and drool over for hours. The sight of that toy brought along a host of smells and textures that are about to be re-introduced into my life. The smell of baby drool, ...part saliva, part strained apricots, part graham crackers. The moist coatings of goo that will soon coat my baby's toys, my remote controls, my keys, my phone, ...I could smell it and feel it and see it, and for the first time I thought "get me the hell out of here!"
The reality of a newborn can probably only be appreciated first hand. Each time I dip this subject into my imagination I come back with a different feeling. Sometimes I feel excitedly happy. Sometimes I feel like Al Bundy, suffocating under a pile of imagined bills. Sometimes I can forge no feeling at all.
I do know that fatherhood will provide many opportunities for hilarity. For example, most products I saw were clearly marketed towards the mother. The picture generally shows a mom and a baby, with the baby looking up appreciatively at the mom figure. Everything is so non-threatening, the language and the colors try to recreate the notion of the motherly bond.
This product, however is clearly marketed towards the dad.
In fact, they should have gone a little further and put dad in the picture sitting on a recliner, drinking a beer, and watching the game.
Kerry Against Social Security Privatization
Reason #4322 to vote against Kerry, he supports the continuation of a system doomed to fail. Everyone my age and younger knows that unless the system is changed, we'll be raped by social security taxes to pay for the senior citizen boomers, but will never receive any benefits ourselves.
If you care about this issue, read this:
Later, at a town hall meeting in Hollywood, Kerry vowed not to privatize the Social Security retirement system nor to cut benefits.
Drunks
Photo evidence of last weeks alcohol fueled excursion to Milwaukee street.
Happy Weekend
May
Filipina week last forever.
If You Do Anything Today ...
Read
this.
Scroll down to
Heard some of the moveon.org and read the rest. No one does it better. It's mostly about how the President's 9/11 ads made him remember the way he felt on that day, and how he should feel for each remaining day. The end of the post is stirring stuff.
Here's a humorous clip.
The theme of the Democratic primaries was clear: Bush is the problem, not the war. Clarification: the “war.” The “alleged” war. The “war” is a smokescreen to keep us in fear while a few top-hatted plutocrats convene in Texas to complete their grand strategy: we’ll invade Iraq for reasons we know will fall apart, and then we’ll turn the oil revenue over to the people under UN supervision, and the publicity will cause Halliburton stock to fall so we can buy it back at artificially depressed prices. Let’s all do the secret Mason handshake! Right. Paging Oliver Stone: you’re needed to script-doctor the third act, where Karl Rove’s shocktroops put Bill Maher and Howard Stern in a trunk so they don’t blow the whistle on the secret code in the electronic voting machines that returns a 99.9% mandate in the 2004 election.
Do We Need Another Reason?
Why not, ...North Korea's brutal, psychotic regime
has the vapors for a Kerry Presidency.
How much do you want to bet that every enemy of the US is really praying for a Bush defeat in Novemeber.
It really tells you something.
Take a Taste of the SATs
Here's
5 SAT questions. Yep, I got 5/5.
And, yes ...the only reason I'm mentioning the site is because I got 5/5.
WND
My
spaz of a dog doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Just thought I'd share that.
He Catches Like a 3 Year Old Girl
via
Drudge
A Very Telling Article
Bush is in California this week. Today he spoke at USC and
Bush supporters rivaled (and perhaps surpassed) the Bush protestors in number. What's most interesting is that the Bush supporters also surpassed the Bush protestors in knowledge and intellect.
Here's a few sample quotes, but please read the whole (not long) article.
Bush protestor:
Along with the sea of anti-Bush posters, the protesters chanted their messages from a megaphone with sayings such as, "George Bush - we know you - your daddy was a killer too," and "Hands off Haiti."
Bush supporter:
"People don't support a war in Iraq, but if you look at it, we've liberated an oppressed people," said Ryan Reid, a business administration student at USC. "Saddam Hussein, thank God we caught him. He's killed over a million of his own people since the 1980s, and these people obviously wanted to keep him in power. I think we did the right thing."
Bush protestor:
"If you wait, Bush will take everything you have, and that's a guarantee. He will take your oil, he will take everything," said Lyzegte Blanco, a senior at Harbor College. "That's pretty much why we got Saddam Hussein out of office, because we wanted the oil. With Bush, there's always a hidden meaning."
Bush supporter:
The largest group of Bush advocates at the four corners was a group of Iranians waving flags and shouting praises of the president's international policies.
"We're here to support President Bush because he's for democracy, not only in Iran, but around the world," said 59-year-old Reza Ershadi.
Paranoid and unsubstantiated ramblings with a bitter, ignorant, twisted tongue versus well-spoken, freedom loving immigrants.
Which side are
you on?
Via the
professor.
Who Doesn't Want a Crazy Filipina Girlfriend?
Like
this one.
The Tiresome Pompous Puss-Bag
Yep, I'm talkin' about Kerry.
The
Professer has the links, here's the excerpts.
From
Lt. Smash:
LESS THAN ONE YEAR after the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq, the United States is conducting a joint military operation, along with our allies Canada and France, to restore order in Haiti. And it's been sanctioned by the United Nations.
Whatever happened to the "irreperable damage to international order" that Operation Iraqi Freedom was supposed to bring?
And from
Tim Blair:
The candidate who wouldn't "support the president to proceed unilaterally" against Iraq has transformed into a Haitian hawk:
Kerry (D-Mass.) said he would have sent troops to Haiti even without international support to quell the revolt against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"President Kerry would never have allowed that to get where it is," Kerry said, though he added he's not "a big Aristide fan."
A Kerry administration would have given the rebels a 48-hour ultimatum to come up with a peaceful agreement - "otherwise, we're coming in," he said.
"I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally," he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.
You’d think all that Botox would’ve frozen a few thoughts in place; instead, they flop around inside Kerry’s head like dying bats.
More 20/20 hindsight from Kerry. Of course, we all know about those speeches and position papers he delivered on Haiti BEFORE the crisis, right? Yeah, right.
Here's to hoping he continues talking in the third person, "President Kerry this, ...President Kerry that ..."
