What a weekend; ugh, I don’t want to go through that again.
First, I finished the training class at Erb’s Business Machines, learning a lot about IBM’s ImageUltra. Looks like something we can use at work.
Second, my Memorial Day weekend project: the retaining wall around our driveway. We have a split foyer home with a garage that is at street level; the driveway to the garage is about 32″ below ground level. We had a non-mortared stone wall that I have rebuilt and relandscaped at least three times in the 18 years we have been in this house. This time I got rid if the stone and replaced it with interlocking retaining wall block from Menard’s. It looks good and it should last longer than the stone before a rebuild. (Gosh, I hope so; I haven’t been that sore for a long time!)
Third, dirt. Lots and lots of dirt. With the rebuild of the retaining wall, I had to haul in dirt to fill in behind the wall. I also used a layer of landscaping cloth so that water can run through but not the dirt. We hauled in four pickup loads of dirt to nearly level out the area around the new wall. I have to get one more load of dirt but I want it to be “black dirt”, which is best for growing things. The dirt I have been using has a lot of clay in it and won’t grow much.
Fourth, another graduation reception. This one is for my nephew Adam. He plans on going to the local community college for two years and then transferring to Iowa. It was a nice reception.
Fifth (and final), I’m still tired from moving the dirt and I think I have a sinus infection. I’m going to bed earlier than normal just to try to get healthy.

Not too much time lately. I have been quite busy and haven’t had much time to sit down at the keyboard. Not that I don’t want to take the time, it’s just that there’s too much going on:
1. I have been at Erb’s Business Machines this week. I have spent the last three days in training learning to use IBM’s Director. It is an impressive piece of software and I think we can use it a lot at work. Erb’s is an IBM reseller; we have purchased a number of servers from them recently. Their business is in Cedar Rapids (about 60 miles from my home) so I have spent about two and a half hours in the car getting there each morning and coming home at night. I have two more days there learning “all there is to know” about IBM’s ImageUltra. I hope that training is as informative.
2. I play slow-pitch softball for our church team in a recreational coed church-sponsored league. While we do win some, we don’t really care about scores. We have a lot of fun needling each other (a foul ball goes over the side fence near the dugout and we have at least one wag that yells “Touch ‘em All! It’s outta here!”) and in general just having a good time playing ball. We have had makeup games this week as well as regularly scheduled games. Lots of evenings with chunks of time gone playing.
3. It’s graduation season and I have been to receptions and have at least one more to attend. That takes up a lot of time on the weekends as the receptions are out of town.
We should be back on a more regular schedule after Memorial Day; then I should be able to get back to the daily entries that have to do with idiots in the news and other such IMPORTANT items!

Matrix Reloaded. Last night. WOW! What a movie! I was kind of in awe of the special effects in the first movie; they have added a few more but for the most part the special effects are very similar (and why not - it is the same Matrix even though Neo can now control it more to his liking). Yeah, they pretty much dominated the movie, but not to the point that the acting was lost.
Keanu Reeves reprised his role as Neo, “The One” as we found out in the first movie. He is now in love with Trinity, played by Carrie-Ann Moss. He is still battling agents, but as he states early in the movie with the simple comment “Upgrades”, the agents are better - still not as good as Neo, but better than they were before. Lawrence Fishburne again plays Morpheus; we find out what a true leader he really is. We actually see Zion and find out a few things about that as well, from the Architect. Also, we are introduced to Niobe, played by Jada Pinkett Smith, who is a ship’s captain like Morpheus; and Commander Lock, played by Harry J. Lennix, who has a romantic interest in Niobe (who used to be romantically involved with Morpheus). The most interesting of the “programs” are a set of twins, played by Adrian and Neil Rayment, who have the ability to kind of ghost-out and reappear pretty much anywhere. We also see the return of Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, who is now free from mainframe control and has some interesting powers now.
The movie was action-packed and the soundtrack is first rate. It is definitely set up for a sequel, perhaps the final as many movies tend to go with a trilogy ala The Lord of the Rings (the books, not necessarily the movies!). I rate this movie an 8 out of 10.

The run is over. The Lakers lost to the Spurs 82-110; I guess a better description is they were DRILLED by the Spurs.
While the Lakers shot an acceptable .450 from the field, the Spurs shot .557. Seemed that no one was playing any defense on the Laker team. From what I saw (only saw about midway through the third quarter on) Kobe decided that defense was for someone else. However, he was not the only one playing “Olé” defense - you know, kind of wave at them as they go by you to the basket.
Tim Duncan proved he deserved the MVP tonight, scoring 37 and grabbing 16 rebounds. Not only that but he was scoring on everyone; Shaq, Robert, Slava, it didn’t matter - he was in another zone. Tony Parker stepped up tonight also, with 27 points. Looking at the stats, you really couldn’t say that even one Spur had a bad game.
Not so with the Lakers. While Shaq carried them with 31 points and 10 rebounds, no one else really stepped up. Kobe all but disappeared. He ended the game with 20 points and I think I saw him score only 5, and he took 19 shots to score 20 points - very Jordan-esque. Robert could not break his shooting slump, only going 1-6 tonight. Slava scored 12 and generally did a nice job off the bench. But there simply is no other way to put it - the Lakers were humbled tonight.
The team now gets a much longer off-season than they are used to. Questions will linger here. Are they going to break up some of the team and try to rebuild? Are they going to stick with the team they have now and get after them to improve? Are Rick Fox and/or Brian Shaw going to retire? Are they going to dump Samake Walker (I hope so)? Is Phil going to coach next year? If so, is he going to talk to Kobe to try to teach him how to play with the rest of the team? Rumor also has it that Robert Horry wants to move back to his home in Houston to be closer to his family; could this happen? It will be an interesting off season. Lets hope the guys take off a couple of weeks to a month just to heal up and then begin training for next year. They should draft in higher spot than they have in the past few years; maybe something will come of that

HEY! I almost forgot! Saturday we (KC, Breezomatic and I) went to see X2, X-Men United. What a movie! Actually some acting going on in the midst of all the special effects, unlike a lot of action movies that are out there now.
I have been an XMen fan since reading the comics in my youth. Granted, that was a long time ago and I have forgotten most of the plot lines and character details. That does not mean I can’t step in and see the movie and be thrilled by sticking to the details I remember. There is a lot of interesting trivia about the movie; it can be found here.
Patrick Stewart is a great Professor Xavier. Heck, he’s already bald and his demeanor is so much like what I remember from the comics that he is a natural fit. While Ian McKellan does a great job as Magneto, I remember the comic picturing him as more of a muscle-bound specimen than Ian can play. Hugh Jackman is excellent as Wolverine; you really can empathize with his character’s lost past and search for identity. The addition of Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler was intriguing as Alan is one of those actors who seems to give a great performance no matter how bad the movie might be (Josie and the Pussycats); and he does a good job here. Halle Berry as Storm is great; very much like the Storm I remember, but in this one Nightcrawler seems to bring out a side of Storm that is not in the comics. Famke Janssen as Dr. Jean Grey does a good job; her role is set up as Phoenix in the next XMen movie. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos reprises her role as Mystique and is getting better with each movie she appears in; my question is how can she do the flips and action scenes clothed only in paint and some foam prosthetics and not lose them? (In a cast of very hot women, she is definitely the hottest! - sorry, I had to say that)
No, I won’t discuss the plot line other than to say you are introduced to more XMen and some of the students at Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. However, some of the characters don’t fit the comic book character. I don’t know if that is better or worse, but I do know it is different. The one thing I keep asking is “Where is Beast?” Beast is one of the main XMen team, similar to Wolverine but driven by his intellect and not so much by his temper.
All in all, the movie captures your attention from the beginning and keeps it throughout the entire two hours and thirteen minutes. It is a good movie with some really good actors working together. I’d rate this one a 9 out of 10.

One more thing about the post I had yesterday about playing the post in the NBA. No, I guess I don’t mind the contact personally; it’s been a part of the game for so long that I simply accept it and play on unless it is blatant or when the contact coule easily lead to an injury. Heck when we play pickup the games are not as rough simply because we call our own and have the offense call when they think they get fouled.
I am not getting on my “high horse” about how rough it is in the lane. It is; if the fans were to watch what goes on away from the ball instead of watching the ball itself they’d see the same thing I do — mass mayhem in the pits. What burns me up is not the contact, but the discrepancy between play in the post area and play away from the basket. It seems that if you breathe too hard on the player away from the basket you get tagged with a foul but in the pits anything short of pulling out a hand-axe is acceptable, unless the player getting hit is shooting.
Why is it that a post defender can put a forearm in the offensive player’s back and then wedge him out with hip bumps and knees to the hamstrings? Why is it that the same tactic is a foul when a point guard has the ball outside the three point line? I guess these are questions that are similar to the eternal paradox: “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” No one knows because no one lasts long enough to get to the center without biting.

I came across a program new to me today called UltraPlayer. I am quite impressed with it. It allows playback of all the same things Winamp does, but also plays back streams from internet radio and Real Audio/Video (without having Real installed, which I don’t want). I am listening to internet radio now and am impressed. The quality is as good as MP3s and if I want I can save the stream as an MP3; pretty cool. The skins are cool also. I have checked out a few and they are extreme - nothing like typical program skins. Check out UltraPlayer - if you try it you may like it; I know I do.

Why can’t the Lakers play a complete game? They tend to play hard only when necessary. That is why they lost to the Spurs tonight, 94-96; they just didn’t play well enough for long enough. Playing two and a half quarters hard doesn’t make up for slacking the other one and a half.
Tim Duncan had another fine game (27 points, 14 boards), but tonight it was Tony Parker who came through with 21 points to be the x-factor. Bruce Bowen did a nice defensive job and got inside Kobe’s head; Kobe ended up pleading to the refs too much. (Yes, I believe he WAS fouled a lot but that doesn’t mean you quit playing to bitch.) The problem for the Spurs was, again, that down the stretch they didn’t have it. They only scored 16 in the fourth quarter (to the Lakers’ 30) and didn’t have anything going but Duncan.
The Lakers just didn’t get it in gear. It’s seemed that no one got it going until midway through the third quarter. Stanislav Medvedenko had a great night scoring 13 (5-6 from the field) and really provided energy to start and sustain the rally back. Devean George seemed to be in slow motion and wore the collar tonight going 0-7 from the field. I feel sorry for Robert Horry; he was 3-10 from the field tonight and just couldn’t hit anything but layups. The last-second shot he took couldn’t have gone any farther in the basket and come back out. (more on that later) Shaq had a miserable first half but ended up with 20 points and 12 boards. Kobe took 31 shots to score 36 points; not bad but not great. In my opinion, Kobe is the one that made a tactical error; he had Bowen up in the air and didn’t take the shot, he instead passed it to Robert who missed the game-ending shot. Kobe should have taken that one (yeah, I know, I’m on his case about shooting too much) to force the call from the referees and then get the free throws.
I feel I have to make a comment about the referees. Tonight before the game, the commentators were making the claim that the veteran referees were not going to let the fans, the coachs or the players sway their calls. Well, they were still decidedly home-court. The commentators talk about hand checks outside; i.e., “Kobe didn’t like the hand check that Bowen put on him”. If all Shaq had to do was put up with hand checks, he’d be smiling the entire game. The technical call on him was a joke. He got a lob pass and three Spurs grabbed in order his head, his left shoulder and his waist. Not one went for the ball. A foul was called and immediately a technical was called on Shaq for slamming the ball into the court and subsequently bouncing into the crowd. The way the rule reads is that if there is no play on the ball, then it is an “intentional” foul and the player fouled shoots his shots and his team is awarded the ball out. No such luck here. Shaq faces double and triple teams every game and gets bumped and hit frequently without calls. Most post players in the NBA face the same thing. I think it is time they cleaned up the game inside and made it more finesse. Perhaps the referees don’t have the kahunas to make the calls, but they better find them before the game gets entirely out of hand.

How about this story from Yahoo Technology? “Is There Any Reason To Buy Microsoft Anymore?” I know Microsoft is far from being a dead company - at this point they simply have too much clout. However, many companies are looking over other options and an article like this would not have even been considered five years ago.
I am not a fan of Microsoft. The latest EULA (End User License Agreement) with XP components allows MS to check out what is on your computer; they say the reason is to update it but also there have been reports of software being removed. Also the way they have made it illegal to even own code that can crack DRMA encoding - never mind if it is a programming exercise or if it really is an effort to steal copyrighted material - you are presumed guilty and have to prove innocence. I think that MS has gone too far.
On my computer I have two things that are Microsoft: Windows 2000 and Microsoft GIF Animator. “Don’t you do anything with your computer?” you might ask. Here is a rundown of what I do:

• Browse the internet? I use Mozilla - more secure than IE and better ad-blocking capabilities; it is a free download. As a side note, my virus package found a virus on my PC last month - it was a VB script downloaded from a web site. I didn’t get an infection because I don’t use IE (Internet Exploder) so no VBScript was run.
• Email? I dumped the security risk called Outlook Express long ago. Yes, Margaret, many viri today are activated by opening the email message and if you have previewing turned on in Outlook Express you ARE opening the email to preview it. Again, most of the viri here have VBScript payloads. I have been using Mozilla Mail, part of the Mozilla browser package, for quite some time. I also use the Mozilla Calendar plug-in, which isn’t even offered in Outlook Express.
• Office Suite? I use OpenOffice.org; with it I can read and write MS Office documents and can do most of the functions that MS Office can do; again, a free download. It contains a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, presentation manager and HTML editor.
• Web page editing? Forget FrontPage. I do use it at work, but I use TSW WebCoder. It is similar to HomeSite and is very powerful, and again - free. Of course, you have to put in a little effort and learn HTML, but if you do FrontPage properly you are also editing the HTML directly. If you have ever looked at the HTML code that FrontPage generates, one wonders why web sites created with FrontPage are frequented at all - WAY too much code is put in comments and redundant links.
• Instant Messenger? I use Trillian. Not only can I use MSN Instant Messenger, but also AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo Instant Messenger. Once again, free. Why settle for on-line IM from one service when you can chat with all 5 major services?
• Music? I don’t use the WiMP (Windows Media Player) I use Winamp. I still haven’t updated to version 3 of Winamp because I am happy with version 2.81. Why update to Windows Media Player 8 or 9 when both of these versions have the horrible EULA that says if I convert MY CDs to MP3’s I am a criminal? By the way, I use CDex to convert my CD songs to MP3 format so I can play them on my JaMP3.

The point of all this is to get you to see that there is much more out there than Microsoft. Much of it is better: easier to work with, lower cost, more secure. Heck, I even have partitioned my hard drive and installed a dual boot of Mandrake Linux. Since the installation of Mandrake, I know that when I upgrade my operating system next it will NOT be with Windows XP or Longhorn (the code-name for the next-generation Windows). It will be with a distribution of Linux.

Today, I am officially old. My son, ZDog, graduated from Central College today. We left for Pella on Saturday, not having any info as to when Baccalaureate was. We found that it was at 2pm (we had hoped to find times listed on Central’s web site, but no luck). As it turned out we pulled in to Pella and just missed Baccalaureate. That afternoon and evening we spent loading up his stuff into our van and his Bronco. Today was the Commencement. It was a nice ceremony, but I can’t say I liked it - sitting on bleachers is not something I want to do any more and that is the seats we got. Oh well, it was kind of fulfilling to see him walk across and get the sheepskin.
Afterwards, we took pictures of ZDog and Jess, ZDog and Wardo (a former roommate and good friend), ZDog and his math department profs (he was a math major), ZDog and family, etc. You get the idea. LOTS of pictures to commemorate the event.
Later we went to Eric’s house (KC’s brother who lives in Pella) and had a cookout reception. Had some good food and some other family members over for the reception. All in all a nice day for ZDog. Now he gets to pound the pavement to find a job; which I don’t think he’ll have too much trouble doing.

Lakers Win! And without Phil Jackson. Best wishes to Phil for a speedy recovery from the angioplasty surgery he underwent. That was quite a shock. Of course, the coaching staff (many former NBA head coaches among them) did a fine job in his absence. The Lakers beat the Spurs 99-95 to even the series 2-2. Now we go back to San Antonio.
I didn’t get to watch but only the last two minutes of the game (that is for another entry). Duncan had another fine game with 36 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists. He just didn’t get much help down the stretch. Tony Parker threw an inbounds pass in the waning seconds that was picked off by Kobe Bryant; much like Isaiah Thomas’ pass picked off by Larry Bird. Aside from Duncan, the rest of the Spurs shot 23-57; not too impressive.
Looking at the stats, Shaq had a horrible shooting day. A closer look provided a clue as to why - Duncan, Robinson and Rose combined for 16 fouls. Shaq was 6-17 from the floor, but an amazing 17-23 from the line. Shooting like that from the line will negate the old “hack-a-Shaq” rule; he ended with 29 points 17 boards an 5 assists. Kobe had 35 points (10-24 shooting). But no one else really stepped up; as a team they shot only .394 from the field. The Lakers will need someone else to step up if they are to take a game in San Antonio and win the series.

Here it is, only one day late; the Friday Five:

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
Somewhat; I can be quite organized, but it only seems that way to me. I tend to allow things to deteriorate to chaos before getting off my duff and fixing that. Hey, it may be a mess, but it’s MY mess!

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
I use an iPaq from work to organize my life somewhat. I use it pretty well for the planner part, but that is pretty much it.

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
What, are you kidding me? I’m working on KC’s computer, have components, floppy disks and CDs strewn all over my desk at home; not to mention the pop tarts and Diet Dew I have within reach. At work it isn’t any better because of the number of projects I have going right now.

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
I tried it once; it never seemed to work. I don’t keep them that way any more because my most used ones are at the head of the stack.

5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?
My life. I can’t seem to plan the day-to-day to work out without a lot of conflicts. I tend to do what I have to do instead of what I want to do. Although, it is getting easier with my kids out on their own!