I just saw this on one of the Yahoo forums. (Yeah, I tend to hang out there and laugh at people who pretend to have brains when they post.) But this was too priceless not to post. Note that wherever the poster talks about “Yahoo Forums” that Blogs and Blog comments could be ably substituted!

Happy Birthday goes out to the Apple Macintosh. It turns 20 this week. Wow, 20 years of Mac. I am not a fan of the Mac; I have tried to use them in the past. While the UI was OK, it just didn’t do what I wanted and there was simply no way to tweak it. Times may have changed with OSX, I don’t really know. But what I DO know is that Mac ushered in the graphical user interface (GUI) to a computer. Also, they made the big push to make the personal computer PERSONAL. You know, “The computer for the rest of us”. Apple is also a huge innovator with too many items to list on this little blog.

Happy Birthday Apple Macintosh.

ZDog and J came over from Des Moines (via Pella, where J is a junior at Central College) and spent the day yesterday. They got here in time to go to the Missipi Brewing Company with us for lunch. Breezomatic went with us as well. Now the Brew has some pretty good food if you like pub food, which I do. The main reason they came home, though, was to pick up a chair for J that we have here that KC was using to sit at her computer. Now I guess I have to go to returned goods where I work and get another chair for KC. Maybe, maybe not; she hasn’t said anything yet, but I’m certain she will.

Anyway, ZDog and J spent the better part of the day here. We visited and played some cards. Also, ZDog had a brake/blinker light burned out on the back of his Bronco. I had never shown him how to change bulbs, so he got a quick lesson in Simple Car Repair 101. Pretty easy to swap out a burnt bulb. Anyway, we all had a nice visit. Another reason they came over is that ZDog had purchased a new TV (32″ screen I think) and was going to bring his old 19″ TV here so Breezomatic could have it at school. That was the main reason for Breezomatic to come home for the weekend.

Originally we were going to go to QC Live, a bar in Davenport, with some other couples to watch the band Spatterdash. However, I got a call from the lead singer (who happens to be my boss at work) and said they were going to cancel. His mother-in-law was not doing well and the doctors were questioning if she would make it through the night. With this turn of events, we had one of the other couples over for pizza and a movie. (THAT is why the Hawkeye basketball post was late.) ZDog and J stayed for the pizza and then went on home. Breezomatic left earlier as she wanted to hang with her roommate.

All in all it was a busy day (no references to Busy Mom here, please!).

The Iowa Hawkeyes beat the Ohio State Buckeyes yesterday 79-65. First off let me say that we had company yesterday and I couldn’t get to this to enter it then (more on that later). This was pretty much an atypical game for the Hawks. They had less turnovers, less fouls (although Glen Worley managed to foul out in just 19 minutes of play) and more assists than their opponent. Like I said – definitely NOT like the Hawkeyes have been playing lately.

The Hawkeyes were led in scoring by Jeff Horner’s 20 points; he was joined in double figures scoring by Brody Boyd (19) and Pierre Pierce (15). The Hawks were led in rebounding by Horner and Greg Brunner with 8 each and in assists by Horner with 7. The Buckeyes were led in scoring by Brandon Fuss-Cheatham with 17; he was joined by JJ Sullinger (15). The Buckeyes were led in rebounding by Nick Dials with 8 and in assists by Fuss-Cheatham with 3.

Looks like Horner is emerging as the player the other team has to stop. Yeah, Pierce still scores points, but Horner makes the Hawks go. He is the point guard and still leads them in rebounding? If I were a front court player for the Hawks I’d be embarrassed. Also, there is a ton of room for improvement. Aside from Worley’s inability to stay in a game, there is still the free-throw (foul shot?) bug. Iowa was 29-45 (64%) as a team. I’d say that Brunner (1-4) and Sean Sonderleiter (1-7) have a lot of work to do. Pierce (7-11) also could use some time shooting free throws. One thing I can’t fault these guys on, though, is effort. They play hard. Now if they’d just play smart. At times, the game resembled a mis-placed football game – lots of contact and no whistles. Against OSU, Iowa is going to win that battle even as short-handed as they arre now. Let’s hope the Hawks keep the roll going when they travel to Michigan on Wednesday.

So Bill Gates, the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful head of Microsoft says we need to make the spammers pay, as described in this article in Yahoo. Well, I have my own opinion on that but be forewarned that while I am not in favor of spam my opinion is not popular. First let’s see what Big Bad Bill Gates has to say:

1. Method 1 involves requiring the sender of spam to solve a puzzle that only a flesh-and-blood person can handle. Where does he come up with such a puzzle? These solutions will be programmed within a few minutes of such puzzles being put in place and we won’t even see a slowdown in the spam.
2. Method 2 involves a “computational puzzle” that a spam sending computer could not handle, but a computer sending only a few emails could handle. Again, this could be circumvented by the spammer without so much as a hiccup.
3. Method 3, described as the most promising, is monetary. Recipients would set a level of monetary risk on all incoming email and if what is determined to be spam enters their computer the sender would have to immediately fork over the cash. Um, Bill, didn’t you see the latest exploit of your precious “most secure OS ever” Windows XP? It involved turning people’s computers into “zombie computers” that can put out spam as originators. So Mary’s friend Joe gets the latest exploit and turns his PC into a spam machine – Mary will still accept his email free. DUH! What about email spoofers who use legitimate addresses to send email from their PC? Same thing can happen.

Now I am no spammer. I used to be a major forwarder of jokes, but I have since all but stopped that as well; after a while the jokes all seem to be recycled. I found one the other day that is a recycle of one I got on bulletin board email from 1993! My take on this is simple but not popular. We will ALWAYS have spam. Hell, I can’t go a week without getting two or three unsolicited credit card applications in my US Mail box. Not to mention the political junk mail, the stuff from Dominoes and other such flyers and mail. If we can’t stop it there, how are we going to stop it in email? Simple – we aren’t. The best we can do is get a spam filtering program and use it.

At work we use Spam Assassin; we get upwards of 10,000 spam emails stopped by Spam Assassin every day. Our blacklist gets updated by a service and we don’t have to worry about it at all. Yeah, once in a while it does let some through, but not very often. I know some who use Spam Assassin at home, but I think it is a bit of overkill. Kind of like driving a three penny nail into the wall to hang a picture with a sledgehammer.

At home, I use Mozilla Mail (no way would I use Outlook or Outlook Express – they are simply virus farms) but have recommended Thunderbird, a Mozilla derivative, to anyone wanting a better email program. There are built-in spam killing tools that are easy to use and quite effective. Since I’ve been using YahooPOPs to get my Yahoo mail into Mozilla Mail, I have found the Mozilla spam tools to be better than Yahoo’s spam tools. Yeah I get spam in my Inbox, but it is getting less and less as Mozilla learns the junk mail rules.

Today is historic. Bob Keeshan, better known as Captain Kangaroo, died today. Many folks my age and younger grew up with the Captain, Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose. How very sad that we lose such a treasure and a great pioneer to children’s programming. Unlike the crap they have today, Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Rogers were not only entertaining but educational as well. Today’s tripe pales in comparison to these two.

I can’t believe it! I’m on time for the Friday Five! Here it is:

At this moment, what is your favorite…

1. …song?
I’ve really been getting in to Bon Jovi’s “Lay Your Hands on Me” lately.

2. …food?
It’s hard to decide between a Sancho’s Sancho Grande and a Missipi Brewing Company BrewBurger.

3. …tv show?
The one and only TV show I tried not to miss was “Dead Like Me” on Showtime.

4. …scent?
Hmmm. My wife’s hair? I know it isn’t a scent that is on the market, but it is my favorite scent!

5. …quote?
That would have to be my blog by-line: “Who lied to you and told you life would EVER be fair?” Words to live by!

Oh, just remembered something that happened at work today. If you have ever seen a Compaq or HP laptop, there is a key in the lower left labeled “Fn”. It allows you to do extra things with existing keys. Today, when talking with one of the laptop users on the phone, I asked them to press the “Fn” key and the “F4″ function key (to toggle the video output from the laptop panel to an external projector). She said “I’m pressing the F4 key, but where is the Fn key?”

We just finished the big political week here in Iowa.

We had the national pep rally State of the Union speech. I mean really, did you ever hear a State of the Union speech that was NOT optomistic and full of promise for the upcoming year? Did you ever hear a State of the Union speech where the analysts came on right afterwards telling you how you should think? (Followed by the endless drivel of someone else telling you how you should think?) Did you ever hear a State of the Union speech where the opposition party was pissed as hell less than supportive of the President? I didn’t think so. Hell, if they cut all the applause it wouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes.

We also had the Iowa Caucus. Caucus…. hmmm; sounds like something a crow does when it’s angry. Or maybe a plural of the Spanish kaka? Many here in Iowa take this caucus thing way too seriously. Oh yeah, “We are the political barometer for the candidates”…. yeah, right! The last winner of the Iowa Caucus who became president was????? That’s right, Virginia, it was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Political barometer, my ass. I remember in the ’80s when New Hampshire tried to be the first state to have a primary. My God, you’d think that somebody shot our Governor (wait, that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for all folks – SOMEBODY is always pissed at the Governor). We asked the DNC and the RNC to make New Hampshire get back in line at their second position; and they did. I’ve actually attended a caucus meeting; it was held in a friend’s living room! Jeez – big timin’, right?

Anyway, I’m glad all that political BS is over with. I have my opinions on politics but it is based on individuals, not parties. Let’s get back to basketball season and get away from the congresscritters.

It was -1° F outside this morning, with 20 mph winds out of the north west. As my dad used to say: “It’s colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra.” I don’t know how he knew just how cold a witch’s tit is but a brass bra would make it even colder! Anyone out there have another euphemism for cold?

Just added the WeatherPixie for the latest weather for my area. Also added a Radio Blog. Saw the WeatherPixie on Christine’s blog and thought it looked OK. Saw the Radio Blog on Busy Mom’s blog and was rather impressed. So….. I went to the respective websites and put up my own version of these two. Whaddyathink?

The Iowa State Cyclones beat the Iowa Hawkeyes 84-76, and looked good doing it. I have to say that Wayne Morgan, the Cyclones’ head coach, has done a wonderful job since taking over a program that Bob Eustache (the former coach) left in disarray. He is starting a freshman backcourt in Will Blalock and Curtis Stinson that is among the quickest I have seen; and while they will make freshman mistakes, they will improve. The frontcourt, held down by Jackson Vroman and Jared Homan, simply outplayed Iowa’s frontcourt along with help from Damion Staple. And if there is a better shooting guard than Jake Sullivan I haven’t seen him. John Neal turned his little-used substitute role into hero as he hit two big three pointers and had a nice steal to help seal the deal for Iowa State. They simply outplayed Iowa’s team.

The Hawkeyes were led by Jeff Horner’s 26 points. He was joined in double figures by Brody Boyd (14), Glen Worley (13) and Pierre Pierce (12). The Hawks were led in rebounds by Worley with 9, and in assists by Pierce with 5. The Cyclones were led by Jake Sullivan’s 22 points. He was joined in double figures by Jackson Vroman (18), Curtis Stinson (12) and Damion Staple (11). The ‘Clones were led in rebounds by Vroman with 16, and in assists by Vroman and Stinson with 5 each.

Horner had a nice floor game and seems to have gained a shooting touch, going 6-12 beyond the stripe. However Worley was up to his old tricks, fouling out. Sean Sonderleiter also fouled out while playing only 16 minutes with two clearly bonehead fouls. I mean really, guys, if you are going to foul someone FOUL them. You only get 5 and then you sit and watch. Make them count, don’t make them ticky-tack. Sullivan had a very nice game getting everyone involved and being a good floor leader for the ‘Clones, along with scoring a bunch he had some steals and some heads-up plays that led to turnovers for the Hawks. Speaking of turnovers, when are the Hawks going to value the basketball? They finished with 23 turnovers (to Iowa State’s 9) – jeez, they should open a bakery. I mean really, when I played in YMCA leagues I played with guys who were not so careless with their passing and non-chalant with their dribbling. And the season is only going to get tougher for the Hawks, hosting Ohio State on Saturday.