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2005

  • in Sports
  • 1 min read

ESPN.com – NBA – Stein: Spree, Sam sulk season away

ESPN.com – NBA – Stein: Spree, Sam sulk season away. Marc Stein is a wise man – and he’s absolutely right. In light of Flip’s firing today, I point you to this analysis that all T-wolves fans should be thankful that Spree rejected the Timberwolves contract extension offer (3 years, $21 meelion) and haven’t signed Sam to one.

I agree with his analysis that Sam & Spree are far more to blame for the lethargy of the team than Flip. Sure, Flip has given KG some latitude, and Flip’s bizaare substitions were questionable, but at least Flip was doing something to inject energy into the team.

It will be interesting to see McHale coach the team – something he’s never done, but there is no questioning his breadth or knowledge of the game.

Here’s to a better second half.

Why I love Ubuntu

I installed Ubuntu on another computer today – my gaming box.

Threw in a 20 gig HD I had laying around, threw in the install disc, and 20 minutes later had a fully functioning dual-boot system.

This will enable me to get back to one of my goals – learning PHP and dedicating 2 nights a week to it. Pulled up synaptic, installed screem & bluefish, and I’m ready to go!

I even installed gnome-blog so I can blog to my hearts content right from my desktop.

In 20 minutes I had a fully functioning linux install, up to date with all security fixes, and patches necessary. Apt-get a few things, had MP3 working and I was surfing away.

My only 2 complaints: This brown theme does nothing for me, thoguh I love Gnome’s Industrial theme. And ran into my first major Ubuntu bug. I’m running an Intel 865 chipset board, using the onboard sound. Sound works in Gnome, but a few of the games I installed have no sound. Must be an ALSA / OSS thing. I tried installing a few ALSA plugins, but no luck yet. I’ll have to throw Doom3 or UT2k4 on here and see how it fares.

Upgrade Complete

I’ve upgraded the blog to WordPress 1.5 gamma. Used last night’s nightly build, and everything seems to work. There’s a few bugs in the admin section, but they’re just visual.

I’ll have to mess with the visual settings a little bit, the categories tree structure has been replaced by an alphabetical list which I don’t care for. Oddly enough, in the admin section it’s still in the tree form. Oh well.

Changed the theme. Was using Kubrick for WordPress 1.2 – and they made that the standard theme in 1.5! That just won’t do. So I downloaded ShadedGrey from WP-Themes.info.

Will have to play around with it a bit more, but so far so good.

I am Joe's Hard Drive

I just finished Chuck Palahniuk breakthrough novel Fight Club. Yes, the novel that inspired the movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. (On a side note, I’ve mentioned to one of my friends that I don’t think Ed Norton has ever done a bad movie. Even that one with Robert DeNiro – not a good movie, but it had DeNiro.)

The book was amazing. It’s very short, just slightly longer than a novella. The movie was surprisingly closer to the book than I expected, but the book’s ending was better. I can see why the movie couldn’t go that direction and applaud the way the movie did end in keeping with the spirit of the book.

I am Joe’s impressed reader.

The book makes you question everything – how you live, American consumerism, and what matters. The prose’s style is quick and captures you. You quickly overcome the quirkiness of the prose itself and have a hard time putting the book down.

The book has been on my want to read list for years, and my wife got it for me for Christmas. Now to collect the rest. Unfortunately, most of his books are trade paperbacks, and are fairly small, so paying $10-$14 is a bit much. I’ll have to check half.com to see if regular paperbacks were ever published.

  • in General
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Vacation…

Vacation is half over and I haven’t done a damn thing. And I like it.

Lots of playing WoW, and I have worked on the server a bit (damn DHCP and firewall giving me errors).

I’ve also aggregated all of my music onto one machine, which will lead me to cleaning some hard drives and installing linux on one of my other PCs. That machine will have rsync automated to back up the master collection on the server so I won’t have to worry about another hard drive crash.

Back to more vacation.

Favre 4-ever



100_0249, originally uploaded by silwenae.

I had mentioned some of the other Christmas presents I received this year, but this one is by far my favorite.

From my parents, an authentic Favre jersey, autographed and framed, with a pigskin matte in the frame. It’s huge, the picture doesn’t do it justice.

Now to get the basement finished so I can build my shrine to the Packers.

89.3 The Current

I’m consistently impressed with 89.3, KMCP, The Current. The music keeps getting better and better. I had some money left in my MusicNow account, so I took Mary Lucia’s advice and picked up Ted Leo & The Pharmacist’s Shake the Sheets. I had looked for it at Best Buy, but they had had only 2 of their older albums. I also picked up Tegan & Sara, a Canadian folk duo (sisters, I think) that have opened up for Sarah McLachlan a few times.

Both discs were their newest releases from late in 2004, and both kick ass. Ted Leo reminds me of a fast driven Tim Mahoney, with a similar vocal style, but very different musically. Tegan & Sara are impressive in their own way, with poppy, fast alternative.

About 2 weeks ago The Current started giving away bumper stickers one or two nights a week. Unfortunately, the volunteers were always in downtown St Paul or Minneapolis, or Uptown, and I live in the boonies in the suburbs. I was pleasantly suprised to get a letter from The Current yesterday with a thank you for donating, and one bumper sticker and 2 window clings, and a promise that my welcome kit would come in a month, and my vinyl record in a few more. Time to get a car wash, peel off my Kerry sticker, and replace it with something better.

Current Bumper Sticker

Super Day

The big enchilada. The game they all play for. The Super Bowl.

I love football – it’s the one sport I have a passion for. While I hate baseball, hockey is ok (if they ever play), like NBA basketball, really like NCAA basketball and would put NCAA football a step above that, it’s NFL football I make a point of seeing week in and week out.

NFL Europe, training camps, I’ll do whatever I can to get my fix during the offseason.

And today is the day that all that hard work culminates in one game for the players.

But what drives me nuts about the Super Bowl is some of the hype (not all, but some). 8 hours of pre-game – 8 hours? Really? And after Janet Jackson last year, this year’s focus on being “tame” – and it’s just ridiculous. So it’s okay to have an erectile disfunction ad, but yet Fox changes the name of the Best Damn Sports Show to the Best Darned Sportshow? It’s ok for Mike Ditka to tell me about limp dicks but Fox yanks Mickey Rooney’s ass in a commercial spoof?

All ranting aside, here’s hoping to a close game like last year, some decent commercials, and good friends and food to watch the game with. (And go Pats!)