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In the Greater Fuquay megalopolis, we got around three inches of rain from the remnants of Gaston (pronounced with pompous French accent for greater effect). Apparently, though, Virginia got hit worse than we did. Check out some pictures from Richmond and behold the flooding.
Fantasy Football season is upon us again. I made it back from the East Coast Baby Tour in time to participate in my first live draft, this for the ISCABBS Yahoo league.
I was drafting second, and the guy drafting first wasn’t there, which meant that I knew who he’d pick (based on Yahoo’s default autodraft lists). The results are as follows.
I went with Running Backs early – having an early pick in a serpentine draft means you get one superstar player, but not a ton of choice of other top-tier players. So my WR’s are somewhat suspect – I may need to engineer a trade for a better one unless Keyshawn goes like gangbusters. I rarely play in leagues with individual defensive players, so I was kinda picking blind on that one. And I’m a bit QB-heavy, though Brunell and Rivers are kind of lottery picks – maybe one of them will turn out. I’m somewhat disappointed that someone snuck in and picked up my two sentimental favorites (W&M Class of ’97 grad Darren Sharper, and Panthers DB Mike Minter) before I could, though.
I’ve got a couple more live drafts coming up – the ComedyWorx league on Wednesday and the NC WISE league on Friday. I’m picking near the end of the WISE league
I haven’t been writing much lately because I’ve been absolutely slammed at work. The giant hardware order we’ve been needing for a year has finally come in, and we’ve got all of a month or so to build it, install it, and migrate our production application to it. Oh, and this environment is a completely different platform than we’ve been running in pilot on for the last four years.
We head out tomorrow for the East Coast Baby Tour, so don’t expect much in the way of writing before next weekend.
Just so all my fans don’t think I’m dead or anything.
Google often changes their top-page logo to reflect holidays, world events, etc., etc. So visitors to the site yesterday got an Olympic themed one, specifically swimming.
The image was great, though probably not in the way that management wanted. Someone must have tipped them off, because by later in the day, the image had an, er, subtle change. See for yourself.
Original Image
Replacement Image
You’ll be able to find Poseidon after the games, hawking Levitra in late-night infomercials.
I hit the 100-songs-purchased milestone via the iTunes Music Store last night. The 100 carries an asterisk, because some of the songs were various free downloads, or won through the Pepsi promotion, or whatnot. But in my “Purchased Music” playlist, there are now 100 entries.
Song #100? “Copperline” by James Taylor. Just missing the cut, purchased minutes before, was “Feed The Tree” by Belly.
Given the free downloads or album discounts, I’m probably at around $80 spent in the music store. That’s probably more than I’ve spent on music in the last few years combined. There’s a moral there somewhere, I’m sure of it.
Larry Larr The Wizard and I showed that we’re a couple of rednecks by hitting the local Wal-Mart to get an autograph from a wrestler. But this was no Ivan Koloff, it was the 16-time World Heavyweight Champion, The Nature Boy, Ric Flair.
Whoooooooooo!
I got to the store around 4:30 for the 6pm signing. There were signs up all over the place saying “Ric Flair is only signing copies of his book – no other items. You must pay for the book before he signs it.” I was like the 40th person in line. Apparently the front people had been there since 2pm. The Wizard joined me around 5pm. An “off-duty” Wal-Mart employee was in front of us, so people would come by and tell him what was up. As we got closer to 6, Flair was apparently in the back posing for pictures with managers and other employees.
Finally, Ric Flair himself came strolling past our line with a grin on his face. After he sat down, the people came back reiterating the rules. They also said that they’d be taking pictures for a $2 donation to the Children’s Miracle Network. You’d get your picture taken with Flair, a free print from the Wal-Mart photo lab, and a floppy disk with the picture file on it. I had brought my digital camera, but figured that deal would be easier.
The line moved quickly, though as Larry said, “Herded cattle get more personal attention.” When I got up to Flair himself, he was very polite, but we didn’t engage in any chit-chat. I told him that I always enjoyed watching him perform, he thanked me, signed my book (“Ric Flair 16x”), shook my hand for a picture, and it was over. Next.
We had to be back at CWX by 7pm, and the line to get the prints was long, so we passed on that.
So it wasn’t a soul-touching, life-changing experience, but I did get to shake hands with a legendary performer, and have the picture to prove it. And, from what I read in line, the book looks pretty good too.
Whooooooo!
I got yet another piece of referral spam in my website logs today. And, unlike most referral spam, it was disguised as to be not quite so obvious. I followed the link, and it turned out to be a discussion forum where some people who are writing some “revolutionary” opt-out spamming link-checking crap are referring people whose sites they’ve scanned. Obviously not a product that anyone would want, which is why they proudly announce that they’re signing you up ahead of time, and you can always ask to be removed if you don’t want it. That sort of thing has another name – “spam”. And no spammer who does it thinks that they’re spamming. “But you can just hit delete or send us an email asking to be removed! That’s not spam! Spam is unsolicited email crap that you don’t ask for first, unlike . . . uh, maybe that is what we’re doing.”
Forged referral fields are generally consiidered low-class and unfriendly, but these people don’t seem to get it. They’re convinced that their new opt-out product is going to be so useful and revolutionary that it needs to be advertised in referral spam. The unusual thing is that most referral spammers are anonymous, spewing ads for porn sites, whereas this one at least has humans on the other end, so you can see how they think.
You can read the whole exchange and see for yourself. Then, if you want to update your firewalls to keep them from visiting your site, you can try either IP address 80.202.228.57 or, as one poster suggested, 80.202.228.0/24 and 69.93.255.210/211.
I’m sure I’m going to leave out some important details or whatnot, so there may be a followup post at some point.
I got to Green Bay Wednesday evening, flying into their one-room airport. Took a cab to the hotel, which was about two blocks from Comedy City and located right next door to a ghost mall. That mall was creepy. Really creepy. A big, two-story mall attached to a giant department store, and only about 10 stores in the entire place were open. You could hear your footsteps echo as you walked, and it was startling on the rare occasions you turned the corner and found another person. Apparently, that used to be the mall in Green Bay until they built a nicer one out in the suburbs, and now stores are abandoning the old mall in droves.
Having nothing else to do, I swung by the club to find their practice going on. After saying “Hi,” I hit Coach’s Corner bar for dinner. I think I popped a fuse in the poor waitress’ head when I asked her for “sweet tea” to drink. She stared a minute, then asked “Yoo meen like ice tea?” Yeah, that’s probably the closest you got. No sugar when it arrived, of course, but the ham/beef/three cheese sandwich was great. Those people love them some cheese. Back to the club, their Wednesday night high school league show was starting, so I stayed and watched that. Pretty decent for high schoolers. AC4 alum Carrie Masse was there with her fiancee, and her sister was in the show, so we hung out for a bit. After the show, it was off to the hotel for bed.
Thursday morning, I went with Green Bay club manager Ken Goltz to the local classic rock station, Eagle 106, for their morning show. Apparently CC has a deal with them where they send a player or two over to hang out on the morning show from 8-9am every Thursday. I wrote more about that experience here, but needless to say I entertained them with stories of Southern living.
Walked around GB for the next couple of hours, which was fun. People who have been were telling the truth – it’s just a big small town. No skyscrapers or anything, old downtown buildings, very well kept-up. Downtown’s not ghetto at all. And the weather couldn’t have been better – low to mid 80s with no humidity. Went back, took a nap (my last real sleep for the weekend), and hung out until JMatt arrived in town around 6pm or so. Ken took us to A&W for burgers and cheese curds. An aside about cheese curds – when I heard about them, I was envisioning something nasty like cottage cheese lumps, or the Wisconsin equivalent of chittlins. It turns out that they’re like smaller mozzerella sticks, but filled with cheddar instead. Insanely good.
7:30 marked our first show of the weekend, with JMatt captaining me and Green Bay player Jon IForgotHisLastName. Ok show, we never really found our rhythm. Their analogue of Jack Spencer, a guy named Jim Lauer, voiced the shows Thursday and Friday nights. I say he was their Jack Spencer because he rocked the booth like nobody’s business. Outstanding work. Talking to him later, I found out he was a computer geek (aren’t we all in the voice world?) whose claim to fame was that he had built the Packers’ website. woot. We went out bowling after the show, where six of us bowled and this giggly CC player named Mary kicked all of our asses.
Slept until 11am the next day, hit Titletown Brewing Company across the Fox River for lunch. More cheese curds and meat sandwiches ensued. After that, it was on to the highlight of the trip – Lambeau Field. The renovations from the past few years are done, and the rebuilt stadium is incredible. There’s a huge atrium built onto the side of the stadium, open year-round, housing resturants, the hall of fame, a big shop, and more. Friday marked the opening of Packers training camp, so the place was a zoo. In fact, as we drove up to the stadium, the players were walking from Lambeau across the street to the training facilities. As apparently is Green Bay tradition, many of the players would hop on a local kid’s bike and ride it across the street, so the sight of a 250-pound linebacker sitting on a 12-year-old’s bike with his knees up at his chin was pretty amusing.
The crowd also meant limited seating for the stadium tour, which we wanted to go on. The CC guys were meeting us for dinner around 4:30, two hours away. The only open tour slot was at 4:30. Luckily for us, there were two single slots open at 3:15 and 3:30 for the hour-long tour, so I took the first one and JMatt took the second one. We hung out in the Packers Hall of Fame (huge) until time, then went on the tour. I had a nice tour guide who kept quizzing the group on dates (“When were the Packers founded? When did the NFL start?”). The Lambeau tour took us from the statues of Vince Lombardi and Curly Lambeau out front, to a luxury box, down through the tunnel the players walk out of on gameday to the front row of seats. Absolutely incredible.
Dinner was next at Curly’s Pub in Lambeau, with a group of like 10 in attendance. We made it back in time to get ready for the two Friday night shows. Rounding out the Raleigh team were AC4 alum Pat Quigley and CC owner Mike Eserkain, who has a cute daughter about Hayley’s age. Shows were a lot better Friday night than Thursday, as I was getting my playing rust knocked off. I captained the first show before a full house that featured 70 high school students, who were chiefly amused by gender-bending. During one of our scenes, with JMatt playing a girl and me playing a guy, one voice could be heard loudly above the others saying “That’s pretty fruity.”
The gang hit Titletown again after the show for an evening of darts, pool, and whatever that tabletop shuffleboard game is called. The computer geek team of Wade and Jim won one game of pool, before I put the 8-ball in the wrong pocket and lost the second game. Oops.
Another late sleep followed on Saturday morning. AC4 alum Matt Worzala picked us up for a Saturday afternoon cookout. Brats and burgers were on the menu, and I had my first bratwurst. And my second, and would have had my third had there been more available. That was some good eats. Some NFL 2k5 on the Xbox (where JMatt and I teamed up for a 10-0 deficit playing Green Bay vs. San Diego before the XBox reset itself, possibly out of shock that Green Bay would be losing to the Chargers), Bocci ball (often mimed, rarely played), and Tiger Woods Golf passed the time until showtime.
The 7:30 show on Saturday was our best one. Playing with the incredible Ken Goltz and under the leadership of, well, me, we rocked the house. A game of Musical Rumble featured a painful rendition of “Elevator music about a tornado” by me, but we finished strong with a Beastie Rap about Haryleys. The 9:30 show wasn’t quite as good, but along with Carrie Masse, we did alright.
We hit the bars afterward, and I was wearing my Carolina Panthers #30 Mike Minter jersey. The ID guy at the first bar stopped me and said “You can’t wear that in here. If the bouncers see you in it, they’ll kick you out.” And he was dead serious. I was amused, but took the jersey off. We didn’t stay there long, heading over to another bar called “Harry The Hipster.” We stayed there until it closed, hung out at CC for another hour or so, and finally made it back to the hotel a little after 3am. I got up at 6am, barely made it to the airport in time for my 7:15am flight, and got back to Raleigh a little after noon.
The trip, the city, and the people were incredible. I highly recommend that anyone who hasn’t gone take the opportunity to go. As far as the show, they run a somewhat stripped-down version of the standard CSz show. They’ve elliminated the Groaner, vending, cheers, and a lot of the stuff from the ref spiel. One of their choice rounds seems to involve the audience picking a Lego out of a bucket with the name of a game on it. The Legos are color-coded, so you don’t run the risk of getting a singing game right after a singing game, for example. And they play a style of Five Things where everyone leaves the room, they get the five things on separate pieces of paper, then when the team comes back, they rotate the guesser with each item. That was a lot of fun, and I think we should play around with it some here.
It was really a great time. I think Holly got jealous hearing about how much fun I was having, because she says she wants to come with me next time.
