From Spatterdash, our Tune for Tuesday band, comes the next installment. This week’s Tune for Tuesday is Dim a tune about the darker side of loving. It was originally written by Dada and is well done by Spatterdash. Right click on the link and choose to save it on your computer. Enjoy!

Again, I have spoken with one of the copyright holders and he is OK with me posting their songs here. (As far as I know, this is legal.) You can check out the CD reviews for their second CD, Truth Serum, here. I didn’t write any of these reviews, either.

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
I do like a white Christmas, but only for sentimentality. Hey, somebody’s got to shovel the driveway; and with both kids gone, that somebody is THIS body.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
The ideal holiday celebration is to wake up with my wife and cook a nice “mess” for breakfast for the family. (A mess is hash browns, ham, eggs and cheese all cooked together.) Then to open our presents. Later that day we get together with my family (her family usually gets together on a weekend around Christmas) and just relax and enjoy the day with family.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
We have gotten away from this, but while the kids were at home we would go to our early evening church service at about 7:30. After visiting with everyone who is only in the C&E club at church (Christmas and Easter club!!) we would pile into the van and drive around town and check out all the people who had huge Christmas lithg displays. While we were driving around, we would eat chocolate covered cherries. We did that for probably 15 years with the kids but haven’t done it the last two years.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
I made a vow a few years back that every time I pass the Salvation Army bell-ringers that I would drop SOMETHING into the bucket. Usually it is only a couple of coins, but the bell-ringers are everywhere so it really adds up. Also, we up our giving through church in the holiday season. And at work, my department sponsors two or three families. One more thing I do is help out at the Taco Eating Contest held at the Missippi Brewing Company (a local pub); the even raised almost $2500 for local charities this year.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
I guess that I’d like to get a snow thrower. Shoveling the driveway is getting to be a chore, what with work the way it is going. That would be a material gift. Another material gift I’d like is a big-screen HDTV with a surround sound system. (Probably ain’t getting either one!)

I was going through my old emails today, kind of cleaning out the old folders and such. I ran across this gem. Are you insane?

I missed it last night. Work can be hell; we have a number of our field sales folks in this week and I spend last night updating laptop software. Got home about 11:30pm. Yuck. Missed the Hawks.

The Hawks lost to the UNI Panthers last night 77-66. The Hawks had just clawed their way into the top 25, too. In defense of the Hawks, (and in favor of the Panthers) the UNI Dome is a tough place to play basketball – it is also where UNI plays football. Domes like that are hard on a visiting team’s shooting.

The Hawks were led by Pierre Pierce’s 15 points; he was joined in double figures by Jared Reiner (12) and Jeff Horner (11). The Panthers were led by Eric Crawford’s 24 points; he was joined by Brooks McKowen (15) and M Schneiderman (11). Looks like Glenn Worley is up to his old tricks; 9 minutes played, 4 fouls. All the stats were very even, not indicative of an 11 point game.

The Hawks now have a number of days off for finals. They travel to play the talented and dangerous Texas Tech team on Dec 22. Looks like Steve will be going to see his old coach Bob Knight. Let’s hope the young pup shows the old dog some new tricks and the Hawks can come away with a win.

Happy Birthday, Big Al!!

From Spatterdash, our Tune for Tuesday band, comes the next installment. This week’s Tune for Tuesday is Vander Veer a light and lively tune about a local park in Davenport. Right click on the link and choose to save it on your computer. Enjoy!

Again, I have spoken with one of the copyright holders and he is OK with me posting their songs here. (As far as I know, this is legal.) You can check out the CD reviews for their second CD, Truth Serum, here. I didn’t write any of these reviews, either.

But I still love Lucy! Some of you out there with enough winters under your belt remember the old “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In“. Others out there remember that Nick at Nite played reruns of this popular show. Anyway, I had to borrow Arte Johnson’s end-of-show line.

Actually, what is interesting is the link to open an extended entry on this blog. Like this…

Makes Bill a geeky guy. Yeah, that’s right. I’m at work. I just can’t stay away; well, maybe I can.

The Iowa Hawkeyes beat the Northern Illinois Huskies 65-57 to win the Hawkeye Classic. Pierre Pierce led he way for the Hawks with 16 points with Jared Reiner (13), Jeff Horner (10) and Brody Boyd (10) rounding out the double figures scoring. Marcus Smallwood led the Huskies with 19, the only other Husky with double figures was Todd Peterson with 14. Brody Boyd also had an amazing 7 steals.

The Hawks looked like they expected NIU to roll over and play dead while they walked out with the win. However, the Huskies had other ideas. They led by 13 at one point and Iowa simply looked stunned. I guess Hawkeye coach Steve Alford chewed some ass in the locker room at halftime because the Hawks came out with some fire. They didn’t immediately cut into the lead, but they seemed to be mentally with it as opposed to sleepwalking like they did in the first half.

The Hawks have yet to play a team for an entire game. They tend to go into lapses during the game. Playing like that in the Big Ten conference is a recipe for a losing season. Lets hope the Hawks get their mental act together before then.

The Hawks beat the Eastern Washington Eagles in the first round of the Hawkeye Classic tonight 70-54. They were led by Pierre Pierce’s 17. Greg Brunner (15) and Jeff Horner (12) were also in double-figures scoring. The Eagles were led by Alvin Snow with 17 and also had Brendon Merritt in double figures with 13. The game seemed pretty close, but the Hawks were kind of sleep-walking out there. Then they went on a burst and opened up a 15 point lead. After that it was play even for most of the game. They did go on another burst but the Eagles’ bench played well enough to make the score as close as it was.

Pretty typical for the Hawkeye Classic. They haven’t really had any powerhouses in the Classic for a long time. Yeah, the announcers kept stressing how the Eagles are favored to win the Big Sky Conference, but teams like the Eagles don’t get invited to play on the road to play close games; they get invited in as an easy win for the host and to make money for their program. They probably will do well in the Big Sky conference, but it is not nearly as competitive as the Big 10.

I think I am going to quit listening to the announcers. Mac Macausland is actually making me yell at the TV. I was talking with my brother about that and he believes that Mac paid somebody off to get the job. I know it can’t be because of his abilities.

The Hawks will face Northern Illinois tomorrow night in the championship game of the Classic. The Huskies (who are picked to win the West Division of the Mid-American Conference) beat the Illinois-Chicago Flames (who are picked to win the Horizon League Conference) 53-54. Maybe tomorrow won’t be a yawner.

We got our first real snowfall last night. I think we got 2″-3″. Thing is, you can’t tell that now. It has almost all melted over the course of the day.

Thought the old Monty Python’s Flying Circus skit was as good a title as you will find for this rant, especially this part. I have an email account with Yahoo!. I have had said account for about 5 years now. I find it convenient to have an internet email account to collect all the blurbs from the places where I have to sign up in order to purchase on-line.

I used to use Net@ddress, but they went the pay-for route. I have to laugh at that; when I used them, their tag-line was “Free internet email for life”. I guess life ended for them earlier than they thought.

Anyway….. Yahoo! has been advertising the heck out of their new spam tools, called SpamGuard. You know the drill: “Blocks more spam than nnnnnn” (Pick your rival internet email.), “Better spam tools!”, etc. Well I have yet to see the better spam tools. Granted, I do get a lot of spam in that account mainly because I have had it for so long.

As an example, I had last checked my Yahoo! email at about 11pm last night. Tonight at 7pm I have 78 emails in my “Bulk” folder, which is designed to catch the spam that is filtered. I also have 13 emails in my “Inbox” folder; out of these 13, eight are clearly spam. You know, advertising stuff to make my breasts larger, my penis longer, my hair grow where it hasn’t for about 10 years, make my bank account grow, make my house loan with lower interest, and of course one of my favorites – make me desirable to teenage girls who want to do all kinds of things with a dirty-old-man like me; you know — you’ve all seen this tripe. So anyway, out of the 91 emails I received in the past 20 hours, 5 were actually from people I know.

Now three of the five were jokes (the other two were Lockergnome newsletters); some forwards of forwarded jokes that had been forwarded to me before. You all know this drill, too. I still have email jokes saved on my system that were sent to me when I dialed in (with a 1200 baud modem) to a local bulletin board system (BBS, that is – what we did before the internet came to the masses) and got into discussion boards and also downloaded jokes. Many of the emails that I receive today as “new” email jokes I first pulled down from the old BBS in the early ’90s. I imagine they were passed around on paper in the years before being emailed.

ANYWAY….. I get 8 very blatantly spam emails in my Yahoo! Inbox. This is quite typical, but why can’t Yahoo! find out these obviously spam emails in advance and move them over to the “Bulk” folder before I get there? I thought this SpamGuard was the greatest thing since salted crackers. Why can’t it determine that email is spam when there are junk email strings with text that make no sense or sent to about 50 alphabetically consecutive email addresses? AAARRRGGGHHHH!