FlaSoxxJim

Heh, thanks for the concern. It is appreciated. Yes, we did alright, but we have major league devastation both north and east of us. That lady lake church that got demolished had just been rebuilt and they actually built it to codes specifying 110mph hurricane force winds. Obviously, it didn't help. The single most brutal thing I've seen in local coverage was a house that had been uprooted and moved and in which all three residents were killed. When a news crew came on site there were $#*&%! ghoulish looters sacking the place to take what they could and actually asking what the big deal was becaause all the residents were dead anyway. Yeah, I'm so proud of the way us Floridians can come together in a time of need.

You whiners aren't the only ones dealing with the harsh winter weather. Hell, I almost couldn't wear shorts outside this weekend it was so nipply.

QUOTE(T R U @ Feb 5, 2007 -> 02:01 AM) cocaine is a helluva drug* * Ad paid for by the American Coke Council. Copyright @2007 American Coke Council Coke – It Does a Body In®

QUOTE(knightni @ Feb 5, 2007 -> 02:17 AM) I'm glad someone got the joke. Hey, we didn't all ride a short bus to school.

QUOTE(CrimsonWeltall @ Feb 5, 2007 -> 12:18 AM) Just curious, Tex. What would your opinion be on forced vaccinations in a public health situation where an easily communicable disease broke out? Though that isn't the case here, it is a reasonable question and a logical place to steer this debate. Equally logical would be for those here who don't think the government should be legislating the medications we take to ask if it would be alright if the govermenment decided to force all kids to take Ritalin if it is deemed that school behavior and performance would improve. Barring that sole hypothetical (thus far) instance of needing to quickly control a highly infectious contagion, I just don't think the government has the moral authority to sepercede the wishes of patients, their families and their doctors in these matters. As such, they shouldn't be granted the legal auuthority to do so either. Requiring school-age kids to have certain immunizations before they enter the student population is separate matter, but even there we still see uncommon rare instances where some kids react negatively (getting sick and even dying). Indeed, benefit-to-risk analysis of several decades of these requirements are changing the way these immunizations arre approached now.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 11:06 PM) All the Coke commercials are played at the movies. I dont get out to any of those anymore either.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 10:59 PM) The GTA ad is six months old though. All the coke spots were. I guess i don't watch enough TV that isn't programming selected by my 7-year old.

QUOTE(Rowand44 @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 10:31 PM) The doritos one with the fat chick was probably the most disturbing commercial ever. Not half as disturbing as the Flowmax ad with all the old dudes and their enlarged prostates. The Grand Theft Auto-styled Coke ad was good. The Bud Lite Hitchhiker ad was funny. Yeah, the FedEx Ground Ad with Harry, Joy, Bob, and Mr. Turkeyneck was pretty funny. I liked the Connectile Dysfunction Ad too, but I had a hard time explaining that one to the kids.

QUOTE(knightni @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 12:39 AM) I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave...err..Mike. I saw what you did there.

OK. I'll bite. Almost two years ago I ran into a blogspot blog that a few of my high school (some even grade school) buddies were running. They are good lifelong friends but the blog was absolute conservative hogwash and of course I needed to chime in to tell them such. Trouble is you have to register at blogspot to post so I had to do that. When you register you get set up with a free blogsite which I didn't particularly want becasue I knew I'd not keep up the care and feeding on the thing. But I did post one lone entry back in March 2005, and this was it: Look at all the Shiny Buttons! Hey Kids! I was pretty sure I didn't want or need one of these Blog sites. And I'm pretty sure nobody out there has a big cavernous emptiness inside them that can only be filled by the, er..., pearls of wisdom I'll no doubt prove to be the source of. But then I wandered onto someone's BlogSpot page and wanted to make a comment in a thread an it appears the only way to do that was to register and get a username and all that claptrap. So, Zip! Bang! Kapow! I'm in the Blogosphere. OK, so the inaugural post on one of these here Blog site thingies is supposed to be a tone-setting, get-it-rolling thing of beauty and substance. Well, I'm screwed then, because I'm going to lead off by sharing the epic story of... the 4 Million Dollar Fart. This is a true story that I encountered while looking up some historical coral reef grounding restoration information for a work project. There was a research vessel named the Columbus Iselin that was owned and operated by RSMAS, the marine science school out of the University of Miami. They grounded on a Florida Keys coral reef back in 1994, causing major structural damage to the 1,000-year old reef spurs and destroying several hundred square feet of living reef. Oops. I was aware of the accident when it happened, and in fact the Iselin came back to the oceanographic institute I work at to be repaired afterward. What I never knew was the real reason for the grounding. Apparently, the ship's captain had an extremely severe case of flatulence that evening and was slowly but surely asphyxiating the poor first mate with each bilious blast. Eventually, the captain let fly something so vile that he and the first mate had to clear out of the wheelhouse for several minutes to get some fresh air. And, of course, that is when the ship ran aground on the reef. The captain originally was too embarrassed to tell the true story and instead said he passed out in the wheel house for several minutes leading to the accident. Ultimately he came clean and, ashamed, resigned and turned over his captain's license. The University was assessed nearly $4 million in damages, much of that sum to go toward restoration efforts such as described here. No reference on that site to the gas that grounded the vessel, but that aspect of the story is related here. Now, don't you all feel better (or is that dumber?) for having learned all of this? The good news for me is I figure I have nowhere to go but up with future entries on this site Later Days.

QUOTE(3E8 @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 03:01 AM) That would totally win on ratemypoo.com Yikes. Such a place actually exists. I'm frightened.

QUOTE(Reddy @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 11:54 AM) but it is a way of honoring the country AND the flag... therefore... the Anthem = Pledge Fair enough. Crimson did say 'Pledge or something similar,' though I was refocusing on teh mater at hand and LCR and the Pledge in the clasroom.

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 01:15 PM) BE safe, my conservative friend. Even though not nominated this year, I would have a drink with ya when you return safely. Me too. First round is on me. Stay safe.

QUOTE(Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 10:52 AM) Baseball Players do National Anthem ≠ Pledge of Alliegance

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 4, 2007 -> 08:58 AM) The appropriate course was for the state to make the drug available to every female in the state. Those that can't afford it, should receive it for free or a reduced cost. For the Governor to decide what should be injected into any person's body is wrong. That's my position as well. Allowing universal access to a drug that really seems like it can save many lives is the right course, and making sure that personal economics don't stop someone who wants the drug from getting it is an ethical emperitive. Even launching a huge state-funded public awareness campaign would be great. But legislating that every girl be forced to take the drug is the wrong approach.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Feb 3, 2007 -> 07:35 PM) you should make them burn an American flag in homeroom everyday. if you did that you could probably get a guest appearance on the "O'reilly Factor" and maybe even "Hannity and Combs". imagine how sweet that would be You could also have them all wipe their ass with a copy of the Constitution every day, but then you'd probably have the Department of Justice flying in to recruit them for some job openings.

QUOTE(Rex Kicka** @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 01:17 PM) Mac Clones ran PPC as well IIRC. You know, you're right, because one of the other clone vbendors was called Power Computing. I think maybe they pulled the plug with the move to the G3 processors. QUOTE(southsideirish71 @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 12:18 PM) I currently have a Macbook intel with a a core duo proc, I run XP under a parallels virtual machine session that has my office apps, and some of my windows based apps on it on my 22 inch wide display, and my mac apps under the laptop display. With the virtualization extensions under the newer processors I get pentium 4 performance in my virtual xp session which works great. If you didnt know it you would think its running under its own machine. Now that being said, I wouldnt run a major math program like some advanced analyitics tools or CAD under a virtual machine. But for office apps and some proc intensive tools, they work fine under my virtual machine. Now the next version of parallels which is in beta has support for coherence, which will allow you to not have a virtual session up, but just have shortcuts natively on your mac to run microsoft apps under the veil of Apple. http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/coherence/ http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/ I just yesterday took delivery of my spanking new 17" dial core macbook pro, and I'm on the cusp of deciding whether to go with parallels or BootCamp. I'd rather not have to restart to switch between OSs, but like you i fear doing anything very processor intensive under emulation. in particular, I'll need to be able to run Windows to access a Smithsonian Institution Metaframe application server either through either Citrix or VPN, then uss a .ica networked version of IE to manipulate the contents of some Smithsonian web servers. I'm scared of running a virtual machine to run yet another virtual machine, but actually working on a cheap iron Windows box makes me queasy. Prolly go BootCamp for starters, as long as the beta is still free anyway.

QUOTE(Kid Gleason @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 01:45 PM) They were O.K. I've tried getting into them in the past, but they always fall short for me. Their best song, IMO, is the same one most people hate: "What Girls Want". That being said, his suicide was a huge shame. I like that one, but i like them all. Diane was my favorite off IPO, but it all sounds good to me. I guess the power pop does it for me where the glam does it more for you. Similarly, maybe that's why as you've got me back into some of the Faces stuff I think I've come to the concliusion that I still like the Steve Marriot Small Faces stuff more. Good stuff all though.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 12:58 PM) How could there be a Dr Hook greatest hits CD without "The Cover of the Rolling Stone?" Its sacreligious I tell you. maybe it's a label contractual thing as, technically. Rolling Stone was by Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show. I dunno, but I agree it should be there, if only to remind me of my freaky little lady name of Cocaine Katie.

Material Issue was just such a great band!!! Soxy inadverdently mentioned the name of a babd i used to see back in the college days and I got to thinking about a number of the bands i used to enjoy live. Material Issue was a huge favorite. It's funny that i never really thought of them in terms of being a Chicago band because I only ever saw tham when they would do Mabels shows in Champaign. IPO didn't even come out until two years after I graduated, but even back in 1987-1989 you knew what a great power pop band was when you saw them. I was so far removed from it in 1996 when Jim Elliot killed himself that I only noted it in passing. But damn, now it's hitting me what a tragedy it was. So, I've been spinning my copy of IPO the last couple days and I found their other 3 CDs used online and hopefully the show up today and I'll be in happy power pop heaven for a week. Anybody else here get a chance to see these guys while they were still at it? Thoughts?

QUOTE(Texsox @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 07:45 AM) This had me thinking. Who/What is Apple? Hardware? Software? OS? Balance of the three? It's not Motorola chips anymore. Would Apple be Apple if Dell started making computers that ran on the Mac OS? Would Apple be Apple if they offered a choice of Mac OS or Windows on their hardware? Would Apple exist if everyone was smart enough to use a PC? Maybe it was done wrong, but 10 years ago the Jobs-less (I think Scully was in charge) and fairly directionless Apple opened up the hardware and for a short couple of years comapnies like SuperMac were making some pretty sweet 0.40 Mac clones. For a while, the fastest macs and the only multi-processor Macs were not Apple boxes. I had one as my desktop box for a couple of years until the switchover to the Motorolla PowerPC chips and the arrival of the 7600/8600/9600 line (I think I have the timeframe right).

So while Punxsutawney Phil was popping out of his mound hole, this buncha AWOL SoxTalkers was popping out of mound holes of their own.

QUOTE(BobDylan @ Feb 2, 2007 -> 02:51 AM) I'm sure you've learned a lot about good and evil, about morals and ethics. Ahh, Harry Potter, you're so deep. Actually, yeah, morality is a big part of the storyline, but the plain truth is they are just fantastically written books that manage to engage a multi-generational audience. Plenty of people don't find them appealing or won't give them a spin, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. But these are the books that 20-30 years from now my kids will be reading to their kids, and they are the books that got millions of grade schoolers (even the boys!!) to realize that reading is actually fun. For me, it's just hard to overstate the significance of that accomplishment.

QUOTE(RibbieRubarb @ Feb 1, 2007 -> 12:58 PM) I see NOTHING wrong with a product that gets millions and millions of kids to read books. I think it's great!!! Bingo. The series got MILLIONS of kids excited about reading. No small feat that. I am sooo looking forward to the last book. And I'm putting y'all on notice now. Anybody posts any spoilers here without a BIG WARNING and ruin it for me before I read it, it's a Killing Curse for that poor soul!

QUOTE(LosMediasBlancas @ Jan 31, 2007 -> 07:25 PM) But isn't he wearing the same suit in all of them? Is it all from the same speech? I assume the audio was taken from several sources and rough-matched to video clips from a single event. No way he hit all of those lyrics in one appearance.