Smug alert

South Park strikes again

Between this and Scientology, Matt and Trey have been really ornery so far this year. Hope it keeps up because it's been pretty biting.

Damn hippies.

H/t to GOPVixen and NRO.

Hoping this isn't as bad as her acting...

Three 6 Mafia recording with Paris Hilton

And you thought being described as gangbangers was bad enough before.....I'm just hoping the audio sessions aren't being filmed.

More Stupid Human Tricks

Georgia's favorite Congressional nutjob, Cynthia McKinney, is back in the news, after she struck a Capitol Security Guard.

I just love how my fellow Georgians of DeKalb County have found the nerve to send this woman to Congress on six separate occasions.

Of course, we'll probably not hear too much more about it after today. After all, she wasn't quail hunting, and the beloved MSM can't make a moonbat liberal look bad, can they?

Shuffling a Card

White House Chief-of-Staff....Out: Andy Card. In: Josh Bolten.

I don't think this really is the "shakeup" that some of us wanted to see. Having someone from your inner circle step down, to be replaced by someone else from that inner circle, doesn't exactly make me think there's much of an effort to bring in new blood, new faces, new ideas.

Not to mention I'm not really sold on bringing in someone from OMB who hasn't seemed to worried about runaway spending, given his former position as WH Budget Director for the last three years combined with our disapproval of runaway spending. Not a good precedent.

Guess we have to wait and see on this one - I'll still give the benefit of the doubt but given previous missteps by this administration I'm still wary. Is this the "fresh blood" that will make a difference?

At least I'm not a bust

You are a full house




You are friendly and outgoing. Whenever you go to a party, you are anything but the wall flower. You also have a lot of luck and can bluff fairly well (at least while playing with your buddies).


Take this quiz at QuizUniverse.com

A hole grows in Brooklyn

Sinkhole Closes R Line in Bay Ridge

Aside from the obligatory SUV driver joke, this caught my attention after being on the front of the AJC's website this afternoon. Why it was, I don't know, since Atlanta has not gotten large enough geographically to include a borough 800 miles away. I think.

Interesting, though, because this water main break is located right where I used to live for a little while. In 1998 I spent a summer sharing an apartment in Bay Ridge while working IT in Manhattan so dealing with the R was a daily grind. Sometimes, rollerblading to work was faster.

It's just funny (especially since no one was hurt) to see a big hole with a SUV in it, right near a building where I used to live. Of course I wouldn't find it so funny if I still lived there.

Spot the Stupid Person

Federal Judge Refuses Delay on New Orleans Mayoral Race

Which person's comment wins the award for stupid person of the day, in this story about the upcoming New Orleans mayoral election (featuring Choco-man Ray Nagin, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, and a bunch of other people, most of whom have no clue)?

a) "I'm very proud of what we're doing." - Al Ater, Secretary of State, in working to contact displaced residents have the election as scheduled on April 22.

b) "We can see that train wreck coming in slow motion" - Attorney Bill Quigley, on the side of those who want a delay in the date of the election due to said displacement.

c) "This is a Florida in the making" - Urban League President and former NoLa mayor Marc Morial. Bad, but not as bad as....

d) "We are seeing people from Iraq being treated better than people from New Orleans." - Al Sharpton

If you picked (d), congratulations! That means you think good old Fat Albert is loony too.

Great Danes Avenged

George Mason 86, Connecticut 84.

I think that is the lowest seed ever to make the Final Four.

I guess Billy Packer was wrong about them belonging in the field, huh?

Motorhead + Marionettes + Madness

Gotta love European humor.

Then again, I guess Lemmy can make anyone rock out.

What was I thinking?

Reviewing the first round I guess I should have kept my original bracket.

In the one I went with, I picked Kansas to win it all.

Oops. Second year in a row that Kansas gets bitch-slapped in the first round in a major upset. Last year Bucknell, this year Bradley.

Ugh.

At least, like last year, Bradley backs up their first round win by winning again to move to the Sweet 16.

Poker odyessy begins anew....

Some of you know that I enjoy poker. I mostly go to Full Tilt Poker's website to play, as they have a lot of freeroll games, not just actual money games. I used to do just ESPN Poker Club, but ESPN was having too many problems with other parts of its site (like fantasy football, accessing older articles) so to heck with them. CBS and CNNSI have better sites anyway.

Returning to the topic....

Given my recent success in satellite tournaments, I decided to attempt the pay tournaments as well. I did not do very well to start out, and lost about 35% of what I started with. I only cashed in one tournament out of seven. Not a good ratio and a good way to bust fast (considering the one I won was the smallest stake.)

I decided to try the ring games - these are limit tables, so there is a set amount to bet each hand, not like TV where someone can push a few million chips on one hand with high drama. As I'm not too adventurous, I stuck to small-stakes tables.

Last time I tried this, I got smoked very quickly, so I've been hesitant to do so again.

This time? Doubled up in two hours from my reduced position, won a bonus, and got two qualifiers for second-level satellite tournaments. Also got into a tournament this Sunday where the total prize pool is pretty darn big. Not an entry into the WSOP, but a pretty good prize as long as I'm in the top 27 out of about 150. Very good prize if I make the last 9, last 5, or win.

Fingers crossed, hoping I don't fall on my face. I just hope I remember how to do tournaments by then! I also hope I'm done mowing the lawn by then too - can't do it tomorrow so I have to wait until Sunday. Tomorrow is an appointment with a dog, vaccines, and a bath. That will be a fun car ride!

What we learned from Day 1

1) Always pick a 12 over a 5. We had two of them today: Texas A & M over Syracuse, and Montana over Nevada.

2) I hate Rocky Top. Especially after they escaped against Winthrop, even though I picked them to win. No matter, I picked them to lose against Wichita State in the second round so it's still on track.

3) It would have been nice if Southern could have pulled off the 16-1 upset given that they are a New Orleans school. Still, a decent showing for a little more than half the game. LSU did move on, though.

4) Don't live blog when there is someone in the house with a circular saw, plywood, and grout. (But, the ceiling is fixed, and I don't have a view of the attic anymore.)

5) The SEC isn't so bad as we thought, going 4-0 with Alabama, LSU, Tennessee, and Florida wins, against the "powerful" Big East's 0-3 from Syracuse, Marquette, and Seton Hall. Who's the power conference now?

6) Stick with the first bracket. I went a paltry 9-7 today, already losing 3 Sweet 16 teams (Marquette, Syracuse, Pacific).

Well, tomorrow is another day. Actually, I guess that day is now today. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Have a drink or eight to celebrate.

Tourney Thoughts

***to be updated throughout the day***

3:10: A 14-2 run lasting all 5:00 kills Pacific. Boston College 88, Pacific 76.

3:01: Two shots with 4 seconds left for BC. First one made, second one...made. Pacific ball....missed shot at the buzzer and a SECOND overtime.

3:00: Pacific drains its third 3 of OT. Back and forth battle, Pacific up two with the ball, 30 seconds left...

2:46: Traveling on BC with 5 seconds left??? Pacific unable to get a shot off, turns it over, BC tries to call timeout, but there's only 0.2 seconds left. Overtime on the way....

2:44: Pacific ties it up with a 3 with 9 seconds left!!!

Consider this the official start of Madness. No one wants to lose this one. BC's made 6 free throws down the stretch and Pacific isn't missing anything either. A good fight.

2:42: San Diego - It was not a fish taco. It was a hot dog stand. And the arena has been re-opened. Tip-off around 4:30. That means 15 hours of basketball instead of 13. Yay!

2:41: #11 UW-Milwaukee 82, #6 Oklahoma 74, Final. So much for Boomer Sooner.

2:40: 1 minute left, BC could not make a shot to put them away. Pacific gets 3 foul shots and makes all of them with 45 seconds left. Whoa....

2:39: #7 Wichita State 86, #10 Seton Hall 66, Final.

2:29: Old-fashioned 3-point play (fouling out Oates for BC), followed by a layup for Pacific. Down to a 2-point lead with a little over 4 minutes left. UWM may not even be the biggest upset of this time slot.

2:23: Big 3 for Pacific, Lead is cut to 5, down from 13. 55-50, 6:25 left.

2:15: All three games are double-digits now - BC up 51-40 with 11:00 left, UWM up 60-46 with 8:00 left, Wichita St. up 68-52 with 6:00 left. The fourth game, supposed to be Alabama-Marquette, is delayed as the arena in San Diego has been cleared for a security threat due to a suspicious package. No more details available but tipoff (set for 2:40 EST) is most certainly delayed a while. (It's San Diego - it's probably a leftover fish taco.)

2:03: UW-Milwaukee up 11 with 11 minutes to go so that looks to be the first upset of the tourney right now as an 11 over a 6. BC's gotten their legs back and has gone out to a 9-point lead early in the second half. Guess we'll wait to see if Pacific can get another run going. John Oates (C) for BC just got his 4th foul with 14 minutes left, so now would be the time.

1:50: I'm putting the over/under for Masters Promos today at 35. I'm at 3 right now.

1:32: Halftimes all around: Wichita St. over Seton Hall 40-24, UW-M over Oklahoma 33-31, and BC & Pacific are tied at 34. Considering they were down 9 early in the first half, nice job by Pacific to get back in the game.

1:17: 11-4 run for Pacific has them tied with BC at 28. Johnny Gray's made some big shots so far and BC's crashing the boards at a frenetic pace. I don't think CBS will be switching away from this game very much.

1:04: The long timeout in the BC game, 5 minutes in, seems to have given Pacific a little energy. They're only down 7, so they're holding on strong. They've had some lucky bounces on shots, but you need those to pull off a 13-4 upset. If they can keep it at single digits we could have early drama.

Seton Hall is getting lapped now, down 40-20. And Cincinnati wouldn't have provided a better game?

12:49: Second verse, same as the first; Boston College really looks fired up and Pacific seems out of sorts. Maybe I shouldn't have picked Pacific after all. BC is up 8-2 and Wichita St. is up 27-15. Only Oklahoma and UW-M seems competitive right now.

12:38: First game switch, with Wichita St. up 16-6 on Seton Hall. Not a good sign for the Pirates that CBS has given them up already. They may want to wake up soon.

12:32: Seton Hall so far proving they didn't deserve any seed, let alone a #10. They look very slow and sloppy against Wichita State.

12:23: Talking about games later today and a potential Winthrop upset of Tennessee....they have heard of jinxes, right?

12:15: Coverage has started. I don't think I've ever seen guys in suits, at a desk, in an office, as happy as Clark Kellogg seems to be.

How to celebrate a birthday

1) Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Go to work, go to the grocery store, watch some TV, surf the web, and go to bed.

2) Take the next day off from work so that someone can finally come to the house to look at the hole in the ceiling.

3) Veg out in front of the TV for 13 hours watching the first day of March Madness.

Sometimes it's the small things that make you happy. In my case, it's not having to hit Alt-Tab all day at work to check on scores.

Happy birthday to me...

Only one more year until I am officially over the hill. 30 seems a lot closer today than it did yesterday.

The Liberal Baby Bust?

An interesting article can be found here regarding birth rates, here and abroad, couple with social and economic mores.

Hat tip to RCP for the link.

The red get redder, and the blue get blue balls from not getting any?

That's an odd bracket....

So I get the brackets and I'm filling them out. I finish it, and something just seems, well, wrong. I don't know why at first, but then it hits me:

I've picked the same bracket as everyone else. At least, everyone on ESPN or FOX. I had almost no upsets, 3 #1 seeds making the Final Four - blech.

That just didn't seem right to me. So I re-did it. I feel much better now.

1st-round upsets: Iona over LSU, So. Illinois, over West Virginia, Kent St. over Pittsburgh in a 12-5 special, San Diego St. over Indiana, Utah St. over Washington (another 12-5), George Mason over Michigan State, Northern Iowa over Georgetown, UW-Milwaukee over Oklahoma, and Pacific over BC. (13-4).

(Sorry that I can't include Albany over UConn here.)

Early exits: Iowa, Tennessee, Villanova, and UCLA (round 2), Memphis and Florida (sweet 16).

D. C. Regional: UConn over UNC
Minneapolis: Arizona over Ohio State
Atlanta: Duke over Texas
Oakland: Kansas over Gonzaga

Championship: Rock, chalk, Jayhawk. Kansas over Connecticut.

Fun with fish

Got to take Alex to the Aquarium today. No, not the Atlanta one. We went to Chattanooga, since I had to go halfway there to drop off the spouse for a retreat. Figured I'm already halfway there, might as well.

Thankfully, Alex had a blast. He loved the sharks and snakes, and the turtles and frogs and gators, and all the other little fish too which he kept calling Nemo. But the sharks were his favorite.

Hopefully I'll be able to put up a picture of his standoff with a spider crab that was bigger than he was, or of him petting a stingray.

We spent about 3 hours at the aquarium and he was extremely well-behaved during the whole time. Maybe there is hope yet. Now we know he'll probably do OK if we go to the Atlanta aquarium for an entire day.

Dance fever?

Not sure if I should be worried about this.....

Took Alex to Mama Fu's tonight - little Asian chain. He behaved very well, was quite polite, minding please and thank yous, and even did prayer hands before eating his chicken and noodle plate.

That's not the scary part. The scary part was him, in his own little way, enjoying dancing to any music that comes on. Tonight, unfortunately, that meant such songs as "Rock the Boat", We Built This City", and "Funkytown".

I'll just pass it off as normal rambunctiousness. It would be just my luck if he rebelled as a teenager by listening to Starship.

Ma Bell Strikes Back

Released today at 4:00 PM:

"AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will acquire smaller rival BellSouth Corp. for $67 billion in stock, in an apparent bid for total control of their growing joint venture, Cingular Wireless LLC.

AT&T was formed by San Antonio-based SBC's acquisition of AT&T Corp. in November. The deal added a substantial national reach to the former Southwestern Bell's local business, which is concentrated in 13 states, including Texas, California, and the Midwest.

BellSouth is the dominant local telephone provider in nine Southeastern states.

The merged company would have 70 million local-line phone customers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers."

As a BellSouth DSL customer I'm not really very thrilled about this. AT&T has never worked very well for me or anyone I've ever heard as a custoemr or former customer.

Considering that this deal now will create a network with this much market-share part of me is also hoping this buyout/merger does not pass antitrust muster. The dollars on this deal totaling $67 billion is 50% larger that the Bank of America/Fleet Merger which almost didn't pass antitrust review.

In one company, you now have recombined BellSouth, SW Bell, Pacific Bell, and Ameritech along with Cingular,

In another, you have Bell Atlantic, MCI, Nynex, joining with and assuming the name of Verizon.

Only Qwest remains as a Baby Bell.

Any legal minds want to impart why this might actually go through?

Birthday time

One of the great things about March (aside from the fact that a gloomy, crappy winter is almost done) is that there are so many special days during the month.

Right now, though, bigger than my birthday, my brother's birthday, a grandparent's birthday, or anniversary, is my son's birthday.

It's hard to believe Alex is now 2, when it seems like just yesterday he was coming home from the hospital. It is just as hard to believe how far he's come since then - speaking sentences, climbing stairs, actually going from being this small baby who eats, sleeps and cries to being an actual child who sings, runs, jumps, plays, talks, cleans (???), eats real food, and smiles.

We are especially enjoying the smiles. A very happy birthday, indeed.

Jeez...ANOTHER BLOG?

Yes, that's right. I have started another blog.

http://tomahawkbraves.blogspot.com

For all your Atlanta Braves news, updates, and opinions. Or at least, your comments to my news, updates, and opinions.

Just one competent public official, please

New Katrina video shows La. governor assuring levees safe

So the feds aren't as incompetent as we thought after all. Still pretty incompetent, but a little less so. Yet for some reason Senate Democrats try and put more blame on the White House when it actually deserves a little less.

Six months later and I'm having a hard time finding anything good to say about any Louisiana public officials. Part of me is surprised at Blanco's foolhardy assumption, but sadly when it comes to Louisiana politics it's always stupidity, ignorance, negligence, or criminal deceit - pretty much sums up every LA governor going back a hundred years.

Besides, we all know what happens when you assume things....

Better get that rust out fast!

I walked to TJ's across the street today - good sub shop, just opened. Sat down to watch the beginning of Dodgers-Braves Spring Training.

John Thomson was the starting pitcher today against a lineup of mostly Double-A players. A nice way to start getting ready, right?

I got to sit through the first half inning, during which I saw:

Out, Single, Walk, Walk, 1-run single, 2-run single, Deep fly out, 1-run single, out. The Dodgers bat around, score 4 runs.

Not exactly the sort of good start I'm sure Roger McDowell was looking for. Granted, it's early, but getting cuffed around by minor-leaguers doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

IEATAPETA Day!

Sounds like a good way to celebrate my birthday.

H/t to Red State.

Mooooo......