Nothing For Now

For Eva

Conan O'Brien!

Musicals!

NETS WIN!

The sweep of the Knicks is complete. Cross-river rivalry? MUAHAHAHA!

Very Bad Things

I'm almost glad that I haven't had the time to follow baseball closely this year. The Yankees just lost to the Red Sox yet again. Their record is now an abysmal 8-10. Yesterday, Derek Jeter was actually booed in Yankee Stadium.

This Yankees team is so lackluster when they play and boring as people that if fanhood wasn't such an irrational thing I'd stop caring about them. One of the chief complaints about the Yankees has always been how straight-laced and corporate they are were. Only now can I agree with that. There are some intersting personalities on this team- Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, and Jorge Posada chief among them- but none of them are being interesting.

By that, I don't mean that I want players who act like assholes. I'm not asking for them to brag about their lack of a workout program or get attacked with butter knives a la David Wells. But don't act like little Jeter clones. Please.

When asked why he and Brown both got their 200th career victories this season, Mussina replied, "That's because we're all old." That cracked me up for some reason.

***

Meanwhile, Roger Clemens is still thriving with Houston. He won for the fourth time in four starts, managed not to get completely pounded in Colorado, and tied Gaylord Perry for 14th on the all-time victory list, with 314. He has a .333 batting average and 3 RBI. Heck, he even took a walk today. Who knew he had plate discipline?

And everyone who thought Clemens would get beaned if he ever played in the National League was so very very wrong. The guy is getting standing ovations on the road. I realize St. Louis and Colorado fans don't exactly have vicious reputations, but still. How many times does a guy get standing ovations in April, just for coming on the mound? How many guys get standing ovations for kicking the home team's ass? Last year's sort-of-farewell tour is starting to pale in comparison.

I really miss Clemens. And Soriano, too. Sori had 3 hits in his last game, a Rangers victory over the Mariners. He says he misses his friends on the Yankees.

***

You know what? On further thought, I'm going to give the Yankees some time. Sabermeticians will laugh in my face for suggesting this, but I do believe in clubhouse chemistry. I don't believe it means that everyone has to get along, or even be mostly professional and stoic like Torre's Yankees have been. I just think that players need to get to know one another, to feel connected. Even if they hate each other, it's something.

The Yankees had an exceptional amount of turnover from last season. The infield and outfield have been transformed and the pitching staff is virtually unrecognizable. Brown, Sheffield, and Rodriguez are all stars, and star athletes usually have pretty strong personalities. So maybe it's just taking them a while to find out how all the new pieces in the clubhouse fit. All they need is to find their rhythm and they'll be fine. There's too much talent on this team for it to have a losing record.

Losses

When I first read the blaring headlines announcing that former NFL football player Pat Tillman had been killed fighting for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, I was sad, then a little bit pissed. Why should the death of a football player merit so much more attention than all the other American and coalition deaths that have been happening every day in Afghanistan and Iraq? What made him so special?

As it turns out, Tillman sounds like a rather special person. He gave up a football contract worth $3.6 million, and all the fame and comfort that would have come with it, to join the Army and fight for his country. He was a college football player who actually graduated- and with high honors and a 3.84 GPA, at that. And once he joined the military, he refused all requests for media coverage because he didn't want any special treatment.

I think what Tillman understood better than the reporters interested in him was that he was just another soldier, all of 27 years old, choosing to serve his country and paying the ultimate price. There are hundreds just like him, and thousands of parents and loved ones mourning them. I can't resent the attention Tillman's death is getting. Maybe it will make people remember all the other young people, filled with promise, that the U.S. is losing to war every day.

Rest in peace, Mr. Tillman. You did good.

Barely There

With the benefit of almost 24 hours of hindsight, I think I can safely say that the Housing Lottery was my worst experience in school so far. It was even worse than waiting outside in the boiling heat forever for class registration last semester, which I'll thankfully never have to do again.

I basically sat in a steaming gym for about 2 hours, waiting for my roommate's lottery number to come up (hers was better than mine) and watching as dorm after dorm on our list got filled. The nice dorms went first, which we expected, but as even the mediocre dorms- the ones getting renovated next year, the crowded, smelly ones- started to fill up too, I was getting seriously worried about having to pick an off-campus dorm.

Living off-campus isn't so bad when the weather is nice, but considering that the school year spans the entire cold period of the year, from late fall to early spring, I definitely didn't look forward to the prospect of walking the extra distance every day through rain, sleet, snow, and bone-freezing temperatures.

But my roommate and I got lucky. Well, as lucky as you can get with a quasi-crappy lottery number. We got the second-to-last room left on campus. Yes, it's in a smoking dorm with riot-proof hallways that's isolated on the edge of campus, but it's better than having to take a shuttle to school, like people in the farthest dorm do.

Seriously- I'm lucky. There were people crying at the end of this. At least I didn't get wait listed, with the prospect of being dumped in the basement of some weird dorm a mile from the school.

Just another fun day in the weeks leading up to finals. Blurgh.

Breaking

Okay, I'm just taking a ten minute break to type this entry and turn my brain off for a while. Since two weeks ago I have spent every waking minute either looking for squirrels for my animal behavior project or studying for my computer science exam. Well, I stopped taking squirrel data on Monday and I finally took the exam yesterday. You'd think I'd be happy, relaxed, and taking a nap, right?

Of course not! The exam had an extra question that was due 24 hours later, today was the housing lottery, I have to write my animal behavior lab by tomorrow, and there's computer science homework due Saturday. So I basically haven't rested all day. Week. Two weeks.

I had to take a room in a smoking dorm because it was the last one left on campus. I still haven't finished that bio lab. There's two weeks until finals. I'm so damn tired.

And I need to stop whining and get back to work.

Now.

Feeling Clever

Thanks to the wonders of Google's cache function, I found one of my lost blog entries. You can see it below; it's eloquently titled 'AAAH!'. Anyway, I just remembered that Google crawls are slow; they take a little while to catch up to the current state of web sites. So I searched, I found, and voila. :)

Now if only I had minimal computer science competence...

Technical Difficulties

Yes, there are entries missing. The server lost them. No, I didn't back them up. Yes, I'm pretty pissed right now.

In other fun computer news, I discovered that my machine had a few pieces of spyware installed on it without my knowledge. At least one of those, Viewpoint Media Player, came from an AOL Instant Messenger update. So if you use AIM, use the Control Panel to check your Add/Remove Programs list and get rid of Viewpoint.

Of course, not all pieces of spyware are that simple to remove- some, like Ezula, leave self-installing programs deep in your computer so they always seem to pop back up again. And once I started deleting the spyware, it started taking vengeance on me by redirecting me to certain web pages I didn't ask to go to and freezing my computer. So I ended up using freeware like Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware to clean everything up. I won't even go into everything I want to do to the losers who write these programs, but let's just say that I was cursing like a drunken sailor last night.

What the hell justifies these things? I ask to install one program and I get a few more without knowing it? I want to go to one web page and get directed to another? I want to change my computer's settings and I get told that I don't have the administrative privileges? WTF?!

Okay, I'm calm now. Lesson of the day: Never trust technology. I should have backed up my blog entries, but I didn't. I should have started investigating as soon as I noticed my computer was slowing down, but I didn't. I paid the price in time, stress, and just plain fear that my data was being stolen or my activities monitored. Go me.

By the way, if anyone has a cached version of my last few blog entries in their computer, I would be extremely grateful if you could get it for me. Thanks.

AAAH!

What happened to Mike Mussina?! Did I miss something here? Did he hurt himself during Spring Training or what? Because after his first two games of the season, Mussina's line isn't supposed to look like this:

2 GS; 0 CG; 9.0 IP; 19 H; 11 R; 2 HR; 4 BB; 3 SO; 0 W; 2 L; 11.00 ERA

C'mon, Moose; you're supposed to be the team ace. I'd hate to stake the season on Kevin Brown's back. Just repeat the following mantra: Sample size, sample size, samplesize, samplesize, samplesize...