February 20, 2003 (4:04 p.m. CST)
New Shorthorn article: Grant slash causes layoffs. The headline for this article isn't necessarily correct. (Don't look at me, I didn't write them!) As no layoffs are even possible until August, using the present tense is a bit misleading. Altogether, I am happy with the article though.

I've been on the phone most of the day today, arranging for address changes. No, Caramelhead and I are not separating or divorcing; we're just moving to a larger apartment. I did turn my friend Kristin into a panicky freak by telling her that we "need time apart." Actually, the wife swindled our apartment complex into giving us a sweet-assed deal on a larger unit in the same building. The synergy of the move amazes me, as we got the deal on the last day it was being offered by the complex, and it coincides with a visit from my wife's family, who are coming all the way from northwestern Minnesota to hang pictures and restack shelves.

I left early in the morning so the people at the hostel didn't see me. I owed them 35 marks, but all I had to my name was an empty backpack, my map of Hamburg, a half-eaten bag of corn chips and a porcelain buttplug.

The above text is my contribution to a fictional biography of Rachel, on of my SB3 rivals. I would post the link to put the excerpt in its proper context, but the page on which it resides will be erased in a week. Sometimes, things are better out of context.

February 20, 2003 (12:40 a.m. CST)
I wonder what Martha Burke has to say about this -- A man is trying to enter an LPGA tour event. "What if he wins by 30?" asks a friend. But what if he loses by 12?

Nothing would make me happier than barfing out some random noise from TV's twilight hours: "With minimal assistance ten minutes later...she's a rather common person...how heavy these rains have been...when people are depressed...put this on the center of your back...after balancing those previous components...Lincoln quickly clawed itself back into the game...you rang, m'lady...there's no telling where they'll build freeways nowadays...that last picture was a zebra...a hamburger that good, this late...some key individuals have stepped up...the scene with you and Jaime Pressly in the jacuzzi...has a violent crime cost you money...they're eatin' too...you don't have to be a millionaire to talk to beautiful girls...the great white, the tiger and the bull shark...one ball left, no pressure...such as the London blue topaz...because the Iraqi government...Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe...watch Kobe score live...covering the war and other things...week two of basic underwater demolitions SEAL training...the murder of Lisa Sullivan...wish I had a good girl who missed me...the most loyal fans in music...the punishment for the worst crimes was death...with the help of thirty German servants...and the board...for a man's 52 regular jacket...prided themselves on the number of vanilla beans in there..."

February 19, 2003 (10:33 p.m. CST)
I love this game! No, I'm not talking about the NBA, I'm talking about a evil little game I play with some of my friends and co-workers. It's simple: I sing an obnoxious song and try to get it stuck in the heads of the other players. There's no scoring, no rules. In fact, they don't even get to retaliate. It's my game, and the world is my arena. My latest game was played at irish-girl.com, where I impregnated the minds of a few random people with the 'Dukes of Hazzard' theme song. Muahahahaha!

And the weird referrals keep rolling in...
nick gatto stump -- Nick Gatto is a one-armed football player. Really...and he's pretty good. (13th, Yahoo)
Amy Poehler Nude -- Mmm... (5th, Google)
streisands son and aids -- I'm not up on my Barbra news. Is her son HIV-positive? (7th, Google)

Caramelhead is happy. "The Bachelorette" star Trista Rehn selected my wife's pick, the poetry-writing firefighter. Now she'll have to go back to drooling over Jimmy Fallon.

February 19, 2003 (4:01 p.m. CST)
I have time for a short post before I go to work.

B.A.'s Weblog (see righthand sidebar for link) pointed me to this: Selections from My Name is Blanket, some twisted fiction written from the point of view of Michael Jackson's youngest child 43 years in the future.

Caramelhead and I went window shopping for digital cameras last night. We don't have the money available for a new camera right now, but the plan is to get me one as a graduation gift. Any recommendations are appreciated, but I demand at least 2.0 megapixel resolution.

According to EW.com, Kate Hudson will host Oscar's scientific awards. There's no real reason to mention this except to namedrop Hudson, thus adding another celebrity's name to this page. Hah! Take that, search engines!

February 19, 2003 (1:34 a.m. CST)
Popdex is acting foolish. I'm getting what appear to be false citations. This page says that the German-language Stephans Notizblog linked to my blog. I see no such link. These two indicate that Chuck Brown linked to both my homepage and an obscure article I wrote for The Toban seven years ago. Again, no matching links can be found. My only guess is that my ISP's cache is a few hours old and needs to be refreshed.

I just checked The Shorthorn Web site to see if my articles were posted. I wrote two pieces for the Wednesday issue: a news article about funding problems at the IEEE mentoring office and an opinions piece about the NBC mini-series Kingpin. Only the latter ran, which leads me to believe that the editorial staff was unable to reach me while I was at H&R Block (see below). I had let them know that I could be reached on my cell phone if they had any questions about my article. Unfortunately, Fungushead left the cell at home to recharge prior to leaving for the tax office. I only realized this after 5 p.m., and my attempts to reach my editors were fruitless. I could be wrong; the article may have been held back due to space concerns or because breaking news gobbled up its allocated space. I'll find out tomorrow.

This one's for all the perverts who come here looking for nekkid pics of Nikki McKibbin (as far as I know, none exist...yet): Entertainment Weekly's defence of Frenchie Davis, the American Idol contestant who was disqualified after it was leaked that she had posed topless for a pron site. There is a pic of Nikki on EW.com's page, but she is fully-clothed. As for Davis, who did Fox execs think they were getting in their casting calls? Nunnish Englishwomen with neatly starched linen blouses and ankle skirts? Uh, no.

And the Evan Marriott fans keep rolling in...11 hits to date. And don't ask about Sarah Kozer -- she seems to be even more popular than our beloved, monosyllabic Joe.

February 18, 2003 (8:32 p.m. CST)
I just found the usage statistics for my Web server. Of the 9500-plus pages and documents hosted on the server, my blog is the eleventh most popular (total hits). When total bandwidth usage is considered, the blog comes in second, behind only a Justin Timberlake MP3 that someone has put up on their site. (I find it amusing that my blog accounts for almost two percent of the server's bandwidth consumption.) Finally, this page comes in as the fifth-most common entry page to the omega.uta.edu domain.

Funny search engine referrals from the last twelve hours:
"sexual tension" "medical student" "attractive woman" -- Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #9, Crappy Ex-Flame Rant #11 and Crappy Ex-Girlfriend Rant #3 respectively. (3rd, Google)
+"tina fey" +scar -- "I just wanted to destroy something beautiful." (2nd, AltaVista)
carpet crawlers german text -- Was ist dieses? (32nd, Google.de)
dawson's creek chloroform -- I feel dirty...and aroused. (12th, Google)

After finishing my latest article for The Shorthorn, I raced homeward to meet Caramelhead at H&R Block to have our 2002 income tax return prepared. OUr appointment was scheduled for 4:30 p.m., but writer's block and traffic conspired to make me twenty minutes late. When I pulled up to the tax office (located in a local strip mall, between a Starbucks and a grocery store), I saw the wife sitting, patiently waiting for me. I figured I was dead - "Shit, I'm late, and we were skipped. We'll be here forever, and Fungushead will make me pay dearly." Thankfully, I was wrong; the delay was due to a tax preparer calling in sick. I bitched to the manager, and he gave me a prepaid long distance phone card to shut me up. It worked. (And yes, we're getting a return, but I won't tell how much or how little.)

One last thing to mention. I have done a good thing. The lovely Lola -- 11 percent of my competition in SB3 -- was having some trouble wooing her boy. I decided to stick my pimply nose into the morass just to see what would happen. I hope it works, because people get frightened when I walk around in my diaper and cherub wig, firmly grasping my bow.

February 18, 2003 (9:12 a.m. CST)
Now that it's had a few hours to work its magic, Site Meter is telling me some bizarre things. The trend of people searching for illicit pictures of reality-based television shows continues. My own problems finding a good MP3 copy of the new Evanescence song seem to be mirrored in the search string of an otherwise random visitor. And then there's the guy who was looking for "Whistles go WOO WOO" (which I linked to a few weeks ago). Without further delay, I present a new feature to this blog...weird CPPoB search results! (My placement among the results returned by the search engines is in parentheses.) Here goes:
sarah kozer pic -- The last of the jilted lovers from 'Joe Millionaire,' now famous for her work in bondage fetish videos. (6th, Yahoo)
Evan Marriott porn pic -- This guy again? (8th, Yahoo)
throwback houston astros clothing -- This, I can understand, as an entry from eight days ago mentions this jersey specifically. (1st, AOL)

I realize that mentioning these search results will only boost my place in future searches for the same terms. Oh well. I think it'd be interesting to try to skew future results by continuing to do two things:
1) Making sure that this page always includes the following words: "nude," "naked," "fucking," "porn," etc.
2) Using every available opportunity to mention the names of celebrities, especially reality TV show cast members and obscure b-listers. The day that I get a hit from someone looking for "Raisa Gorbachev nude" is the day that my blogging life will become complete.

February 18, 2003 (2:33 a.m. CST)
One more quick update. You may have noticed a new addition to the righthand lefthand sidebar, the small multicolored square graphic. No, I haven't joined some GLBT association, it's a link to Site Meter, a free service that gives webmasters access to free counters and, more importantly, information on referring sites. I'm curious to the types of search engine queries that send traffic my way. Thusfar, the results have been spinechilling: I rank tenth on Yahoo's list of matches for evan marriott pic underwear and fifth on AltaVista's result for nikki mckibbin stripper. It looks like the search engines consider me an expert on the subject of scantily-clad reality TV personalities. Oy.

I've finally been restored to the DFW Blogs sidebar! Hooray!

February 18, 2003 (1:55 a.m. CST)
My latest Shorthorn article hits the stands later today, but you can read it now: Slippery subject. In the words of Shorthorn Editor-in-Chief Beth Francesco, "It's the best story about lubricant that I've ever read."

Last night I came to a decision -- I need to blog about my dogs more. Right now, Gretchen is curled up in one of her usual late-night sleeping spots, on the tile in front of the apartment door. She seems much happier when sleeping on cool surfaces, preferring her current spot, the linoleum of the bathroom or the bare aluminum floor of her kennel to any of the carpeted or upholstered napping places in the apartment. What do I care where she sleeps, as a sleeping dog is generally a content dog. I'm tired enough to want to go to sleep myself, but that would require me to wake her up so I can take her for her last walk of the night. "Let dem sleepin' dawgs lay," sez I.

I'm considering adding a 'Cast of Characters' page, so visitors to this page (as well as the Quotes and Ex-GF Rants pages) can put names and faces to the people and pets that I frequently mention.

February 18, 2003 (12:43 a.m. CST)
Jeez, it didn't take long for the TV networks to unsheathe the long knives and stab away at Michael Jackson's carcass, didn't it? Dateline NBC aired "Michael Jackson Unmasked" tonight. That's funny, because if you switched over to ABC, you'd find a feature on Primetime Thursday entitled "The Many Faces of Michael Jackson," followed by another rebroadcast of the 20/20 special that began the deluge last week. You'd expect Fox to be on this bandwagon, too -- and they are, albeit a bit late. They'll be showing Jackson's own edit of the Martin Bashir interview (on which the 20/20 special was based). That's not to mention the endless stream of news features, late-night talk show monologue bits and interviews with anybody ever associated with Jackson. I've never been the biggest Michael Jackson fan, nor will I ever be. Enough, however, is enough. Leave the guy alone and let him make as much irrelevant music as the world cares to buy. Just monitor the safety of his kids, Lord knows the world can't allow any harm to come the way of poor Blanket Jackson.

As a resident of Farkistan, I often regurgitate links that I find on FARK.com onto this page. More often than not, these are links to some silly entertainment story or a bit of weird news. Tonight, I'm posting a different type of FARK link, information about the Cliff Wilson Scholarship Endowment. Cliff was Kilipo4, a Texas Tech student and an old school Farker. He passed away in a car accident earlier this month. Like many Farkers have already, I plan to make a donation to the endowment set up in his name.

February 17, 2003 (2:26 a.m. CST)
Click on the link, Dave. Sign up, add to the link-whoring pyramid scheme. You know you want to, Dave.

I'm due to write an Opinions column about the NBC series Kingpin for Tuesday's paper. My head's bursting with ideas, but my plan of downloading the episodes I missed to catch up was foiled by their scarcity online. I still have enough fodder for a pretty good column, and I'll be sure to post the link to the article here sometime Tuesday.

I'm afraid that I need to curl up in bed now and get some sleep. I have a late start on Monday mornings, but I'll need all the time I can spare tomorrow to write.

"Good day. My name is Eldrick, and I'll be the guy who will be brutalizing your rectum with a 7-iron tonight. Yes, that is a Titleist ball gag."

February 17, 2003 (1:35 a.m. CST)
Something went horribly wrong with the inventory process at the department store where I work. Every six months or so, my employer (who will not be named here, but is readily identified by looking elsewhere on this site) hires one of the several third-party companies that specialize in retail inventory to come and count our entire stock -- pants, diamond rings, headboards, sneakers, frilly blouses, etc. Usually, the process takes the better part of one night, but last night was an exception. Due to what the store manager termed politely as a "computer error," the beancounters were still in action when I arrived at work this morning. Some of the managers stayed overnight to supervise and/or babysit the wingnuts. Details are sketchy...I was told by some that certain verboten displays were tallied, but other rumors cite mass absences from the inventory-takers and failure to keep a running count prior to this technical glitch. Whatever...I don't care. I didn't have to be there, and that's all that matters to me.

I found this story interesting -- a camera has been developed that records an image of reflected terahertz-band radiation (rather than radiation from the visible light portion of the spectrum like most commercial cameras). This is notable because the new terahertz cameras seem to penetrate thin, porous materials like most clothing and sheets of paper, and can give the owner nude images of fully-clothed people, among other things. Potential applications, aside from the inevitable "terahertz porn", are thought to include security and medical uses.

Expect a new rant about the trials and tribulations a resident of north Haltom City must weather to order a fucking stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut. No more on that subject, I don't need to rile myself up any more than necessary.

February 16, 2003 (3:04 a.m. CST)
After two days of relatively mild temperatures, another cold snap has rolled in. Well, it's cold for Texas. It did force us to turn the A/C off, though.

Something just struck me now: a quick look around the Dallas-Fort Worth sports scene reveals that three of the four major league sports franchises are helmed by head coaches with under a year's tenure. The freshest face in the Metroplex belongs to the Cowboys' Bill Parcells (hired January 2, 2003), who joined recent arrival Buck Showalter, manager of the Texas Rangers since October 11, 2002. The Stars' head coach Dave Tippett has had a bit longer to set up digs (since May 16, 2002), so maybe he could show Buck and The Tuna around town. The only fixture in the area has been the nepotistic but likeable Don Nelson of the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas teams seem to attract larger-than-life coaches -- Tippett seems to be an exception, but he follows on the heels of the abrasive Ken Hitchcock, who redefined the image of the headstrong NHL coach throughout the '90s.

Some random thoughts on this season's SNL: Chris Parnell makes a shitty George Bush. The whole "Chris Kattan as another pseudogay character" thing is getting very old. Amy Poehler does a disturbingly-accurate Michael Jackson. They need more Smigel. Dean Edwards needs more lines. The performances by the musical guests (especially the White Stripes and the Dixies Chicks) have outshone those of the hosts (yes, that means you Matthew McConaughey). John McCain wins an award for 'Best Use of SNL to Settle a Personal Score'. Best commercial: "Nutri-Quick". Worst recurring skit (tough choice): "Top O' The Morning To You".

February 15, 2003 (1:34 a.m. CST)
An e-mail from my good friend Kelly (Old Man) Lewis has identified the Valvo box illustrated in the previous entry as hailing from Germany and likely to have contained a vacuum tube. He also pointed me to the Valvo Web site, which is entirely in German. The only English word I recognize is "copyright."

While scrolling through some old posts, I noticed that my listing on the Eatonweb portal had my old URL. I took the time to resubmit my post with the new URL, but I doubt it'll drive traffic up too much.

A while ago, I participated in the quest to identify the person known as Mustard Man. The person behind the search (which was successful, by the way) has undertaken other quests, with varying degrees of failure. Help them out.

February 14, 2003 (6:34 p.m. CST)
You'd think that all of those anti-trust lawsuits would've made their point by now. I guess not, as Microsoft seemed intent on alienating users of the popular Opera. Morons.

For lack of anything interesting to say, I have to resort to a random GIS image. It's Valvo! I have no idea what a Valvo is/does, but it's Swedish and it looks like an elongated ghost from Pac-Man. That should be enough for anybody...

February 14, 2003 (2:20 p.m. CST)
Yahoo! - alternating between halfway cool and really, really dirty. Today, Yahoo! is featuring a Celine Dion e-valentine on their homepage. Gads.

I've won the 'Rookie of the Week' award from the Shorthorn. Don't get me wrong, as I'm rather honored, but the conferment ceremony left something to be desired. "You were the Rookie of the Week, here's a gift certificate for free beer." was the jist of it. Then again, it's hard to roll out the pomp and ceremony when people are playing volleyball in the office...

I really, really don't want to go to Penney's today. There's something less tham glamorous about coughing up chunks of phlegm when finding a sweater for a customer.

February 14, 2003 (2:51 a.m. CST)
Happy Valentine's Day!

Tonight, I did something that I never would think of trying if I still lived in the Prairie Provinces -- I turned on the air conditioner. Right now, it's a humid 64°F/18°C with a thunderstorm about to roll in. In Winnipeg, it's a much less tolerable 3°F/-16°C. During moments like these, I realize why I love Texas so much...no mittens necessary!

Let me get off on a tangent here... I wonder what it would be like to live the life of a mad scientist. There's be no lack of things to do: forcing your mindless underthing to do your most menial of tasks, building and maintaining the curious looking machines in your lair, devising new twisted experiments to try, luring stranded motorists into your castle to for use as test subjects, buggering the mantelopes that you've bred... Oops, that last one is reserved for a special subclass of mad scientists, the "mad and very gay scientist with a bestiality fetish." Innocent animals beware those mad scientists...

It looks like my efforts to Googlebomb myself have succeeded. A while ago, I proposed to a few people that we trade links to each other with very specific anchored text. The plan never came about, but it looks like my presence on the Web has not gone unnoticed. A search for the term Pretty Big Duck pulls up a few hundred hits, almost all of them relating to me somehow. Many are posts I made to the various Where's George and Where's Willy Web sites, but others are links to entries of mine in contests like The Caption Machine. Even my SETI@Home profile made it in. My homepage is only twentieth on the list of hits, meaning I have more work to do.

SURVIVORblog 3 is off to a good start, with people bickering about the order of the list of contestants. It also looks like Skidmarked's Caitlin has gone offline, as her blog has sat idle for almost three weeks. This means nothing to me now, but it may be more relevant when the game heats up.

February 13, 2003 (10:01 p.m. CST)
I've decided that The Shorthorn office has interesting restrooms. Until a few years ago, the newsroom served as UTA's campus bar. Although most of the vestiges of tavernhood have disappeared, the bathrooms remain as a testament to the facility's past as a tavern. How else does one explain the need for three toilet stalls and five urinals to service a newspaper with a staff of around 30-40 people? And that's just the men's restroom (I have yet to reconnoiter the women's bathroom). My only beef with the bathroom's layout is the size of the stalls -- the two regular-sized stalls (those not built to accomodate handicapped men) are narrow, with the toilet paper dispensers mounted at knee level. I'm not a tiny guy, so these stalls are far from my favorites. Aside from that one problem, there are two other features that puzzle me: the periodic buzzing sound only audible in the shitter, and the styrofoam cup mounted beside the urinals with the sign "DO NOT THROW THIS CUP OUT" hung above it. I've asked, but have yet to receive an answer.

Verizon is in court this week to fight a subpoena issued by the RIAA ordering the telcom to release the name of an Internet subscriber fingered for downloading a crapload of MP3s. Verizon is trying to delay the enacting the court order, recently approved in the first round of legal wrangling, until their appeals have been heard.

BOOM! "I am Aaron Downey! Death to all who oppose me!" Well, not quite. But a round of nasty concussions for the boys, starting with you, Jesse Boulerice. If you didn't see the hockey fight between the two, then try to find video of it. The Dallas Stars' Downey floors Boulerice (of the Carolina Hurricanes) with a one-punch knockout. A brutal left hook to the jaw. Boulerice is out for three weeks, but his reputation is out for the rest of the season, or at least until he pummels someone in similar fashion.

Finally, a shout-out goes to Shorthorn editor Chris Piper, who was kind enough to buy me a Odwalla Strawberry C Monster drink today. (Get it, "sea monster"?) I guess my raspy voice was a bit too much for him, and he took pity on me.

February 13, 2003 (1:30 a.m. CST)
I'm sick. Coughing, sneezing, stuffy head and restless sick. Now, what would be a good remedy for this misery? Fuck NyQuil, I need grain liquor. With Mentho-lyptus. And Codeine. I want to stumble around my apartment dressed in nothing except my pair of piggy slippers. I'd pass out on the sofa only to wake up a few hours later with the dogs licking my knee and me wondering how I wound up drooling and garmentless on the couch. That would make me feel infinitely better, I'm sure.

On a happier and speedier note, Wired magazine compiled a short list of the fastest crap on Earth.

I've linked a new Shorthorn article, Building may be approved. Hardly my best work, but I was sick and overtired when I wrote it. More importantly, the story was neutered by the fact that it was written with the expectation that the UT Board of Regents would rubber stamp the building's plans on Wednesday, as opposed to Thursday (or later). Instead of holding the story back, the decision was made to alter a fair bit of the wording and run it anyway. Unfortunately, this went against some of the conditions stated by the College of Science when I was doing the background work...something I may have to answer to in the near future.

February 12, 2003 (11:29 p.m. CST)
It's official. I've been selected. I'm a survivor. It's not CBS...it's an infected elf. I'm a contestant on SURVIVORblog 3, a Web/blog game. For a month-and-a-half, I'll be posting to two blogs (this one and the group blog for the game) simultaneously, meaning that my posts here may be a bit less frequent. If that becomes the case, it's not because I've ceased to love you, it's because I've ceased to care been preoccupied.

Apparently Cost-Share Tutorial has UTA Homecoming Pride, too!

Since I can't seem to find my blog's listing on Blogdex (nor can I add it again), I've submitted my site to Popdex, which appears to be a clone of the former site.

February 12, 2003 (2:35 p.m. CST)
It'll be Homecoming Week next week at UTA, which means that the campus soon will be whipped into a five-day frenzy of apathy. Well, a small portion of the student body will get excited and participate, while the remainder will just go about their regular schedule. Some students may not notice or even care about Homecoming, but those few probably would be oblivious to a whack to the noggin with a snow shovel. The university has draped the lampposts with red, white and blue banners, complete with ridiculous text like "The College of Liberal Arts says Go Mavs! UTA Homecoming" and "College of Science has UTA Homecoming Pride!" Nearly every group, association and entity on campus has a banner in their name, including the Physical Plant and most of the fraternities and sororities. Somehow, I doubt the custodians are bursting with "Homecoming Pride".

February 11, 2003 (1:49 a.m. CST)
I was going to leave the blog alone tonight, but I made the mistake of picking up Caramelhead's copy of People Magazine. I skimmed ahead to the DVD reviews and uncovered this gem about the upcoming DVD release of "Sweet Home Alabama": "Bonuses: eight deleted scenes and an alternative ending." Shouldn't that read "alternate ending?" Does this mean that Reese Witherspoon's character ditches both men and moves in with her life partner Dina and her six cats at the end? I sincerely doubt it.

Here's a funny bit of writing from the goons over at SomethingAwful.com: "How to Survive in Any RPG". Anybody who played Dragon Warrior or any title from the Ultima or Final Fantasy series should get a chuckle or two out of the piece.

Pigpecker drama!

February 10, 2003 (12:01 p.m. CST)
In a Friday afternoon training session at the newspaper, we discussed the correct "style" to use when writing. In a journalistic sense, style refers less to less to the artistic way that a journalist writes than the technical. It determines which form of a spelling to use for a word (i.e. "doughnut" instead of "donut" Mmm...I could go for some Krispy Kreme mini crullers right now), when to use acronyms (common acronyms like NATO and FBI can be used at any time) and when to capitalize titles. My problem is that I'm used to the Canadian Press (CP) style, and The Shorthorn uses the Associated Press (AP) standards. It'll take some getting used to, but the transition shouldn't bee too tough.

I miss orange sports jerseys. At one point in the 1980s, almost every professional sports league (except the NBA) had at least a couple of teams sporting orange. The NHL had the Flyers, Oilers and Islanders (the old Vancouver Canucks never wore orange, their colors were red, yellow and black); Major League Baseball had the Astros; but the NFL was the king of orangeness, fielding the Bucs, Broncos, Browns and Bengals. You could even cound the Bears and Dolphins, who had orange piping on their helmets, jerseys and pants. Alas, the heyday of orange uniforms is gone, with the Astros reverting to a conventional red/white combination, the Bucs trading their old kit in for a striking red/pewter set, the Broncos opting for a uniform with only red-orange accents and the Oilers substituting copper for orange on their shirts. Thankfully, I'm not the only person who misses these uniforms, because a few of the teams mentioned above made Page2's Top 10 Throwback Jerseys list on ESPN.com.

While scrolling through my last few posts, I took notice of something -- no images. Thus, it's time for another random GIS result! This beaut comes from a Web site devoted to the home handyman, and is part of a detailed process for wiring your home with up-to-date cable and phone jacks. (Here's the full set of instructions, for those who are interested.) One a side note, I have crimped coaxial cable before, when I was working for AT&T Broadband. They sent the customer serive reps on ridealongs with cable installers to get an idea how the process worked, and I made myself useful by measuring and cutting cables for my partner. But I digress...here's the pic.

February 10, 2003 (1:45 a.m. CST)
A brief post before I head to bed.

In hardly the most skillful display of his career, Michael Jordan played in his final NBA All-Star Game. Jordan did net 20 points, but missed a dunk and only shot 33 per cent from the field. Jordan will leave the court arguably as the king of basketball, but which of his heirs apparent will step up to take the throne upon his departure? Kobe Bryant has to share the spotlight with Shaq. A.I. has to contend with his thug image. Originally on track to compete for league MVP honors, Chris Webber has seen part of his season lost to injury (as has the much-maligned Vince Carter). Garnett isn't going to win a championship with the Timberwolves (and he's not going to be traded with that contract of his, either). That leaves T-Mac and a small handful of others, none of whom look like a legitimate crown prince right now. Hell, half the guys on the All-Star teams aren't fit to carry MJ's jockstrap, let alone replace him.

According to Entertainment Weekly's "The Shaw Report," fat girls are now in. I've never been fond of that emaciated, "heroin chic" look, so this revelation is a good thing. I hope that writer Jessica Shaw is referring to well-proportioned women (like my current celebrity crush, Norah Jones) rather than fatties like Anna Nicole Smith. Somehow I doubt that MTV will be flooded with rubenesque women anytime in the near future, unless Christina Aguilera develops a thyroid problem. And while I'm on the subject of skinny singers going fat, have you seen the latest Vanessa Carlton video ("Pretty Boy")? It looks like she's crammed on at least forty pounds since her first song his the airwaves. The poor girl started off as a featherweight -- having just dropped out of ballet school -- and now she has let herself go...or get pregnant. THe poor director for the "Pretty Boy" video tried his best to hide her in loose clothing and keep her hair draped over much of her face, but it didn't quite do the trick. She's not quite in Mama Cass territory yet, but she has merged onto the freeway to Sandwichtown.