I watched Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures last Saturday. It was interesting, but what disturbed me most about the movie was Nicole Kidman's accent. Apparently she's Australian, but that has to be the most bizarre accent I've ever heard.

The NFL is really cracking down on late and overly hard hits.

In NFL Blitz for Nintendo.

Nope, I'm not kidding...

The rain in Spain will mainly stop space planes.

After the power outage, the IP on my web server changed. I updated my DNS entries (Zone Edit, they rule), and everything should be back to normal now.

I really ought to install Zone Edit's client software so I don't have to bother to update by hand on the rare occasions that my IP does change. But there are a lot of things I ought to do.

One thing I had been putting off for a long time was updating my stats script. I think I had been running version 2.1 or something for well over a year, and I was three full versions behing. I got the new one working last night, other than some minor cosmetic tweaks I'm still need to do.

It rules. It's a whole lot faster than the version I had been running, and actually returns its report within a second or two, compared to over a minute sometimes for the previous version. It also has a lot more information, including a graph of traffic broken down by weekday, a daily traffic graph for each month, and much better recognition of search engines and robots.

Anyway, if you run a web server, I highly recommend their free product. Props to the Awstats guys.

Oh yeah, and I finally replaced the logs going back to April of last year. I think that's when I first installed the stats program and accidentally deleted my log files going back to when I built this machine in December of 2000. Hooray for obsessively checking your logs!

Now I can dazzle you with statistics... For example:

Year-over-year monthly traffic to Gimpysoft.com for the month of October increased 481%!

Inbound referrals increased over 262% from September to October of this year!

Investment information can be obtained from my CFO P. Gyakui, who can be contacted at pgyakui@gimpysoft.com. We at Gimpysoft.com look forward to a long and profitable relationship with you, the reader. Thanks for stopping by.

Of course, everybody and their brother loves Google. They're making money from their search engine without annoying intrusive advertising, and they really seem like a company with morals...

Then they jump into the news business. I'm no journalist, but I would think it would be difficult to run any sort of news service without any sort of editorial slant, even if it's just from the selection of which stories to feature. However, I haven't been able to put my finger on any sort of bias whatsoever from Google News.

Is there any info out there on how Google generates its news front page? I would have to assume it's completely automated, since that is the Google Way. how do they decide what a legitimate news source is?

Just wondering without complaint... Google news has been my primary news source for a while now... It's interesting how they can accurately aggregate stories about the same news item so you can read several different takes on the story. I wonder how they pull that off without human intervention...

I'd love to work for Google, but my own mediocrity stands in the way. They've got some smarties on the team though, apparently...

I thought I killed my web server earlier today with a new web stats analyzer. I got home much later to discover that there had been a power outage at Fort Awesome.

I really need to invest in one of them new-fangled UPS deals one of these days...

So metric units make sense... Why is our calendar still so fucking kludgy? Apparently the French tried to fix that too. It didn't quite work out, apparently...

My benching of Brett Favre in my fantasy football league this week is in no way to be interpreted as a lack of faith on my part in the ability of my team to defeat the filthy Buccaneers in the game to watch this coming Sunday. If it's not on TV in your market for God's sake, get your ass to a bar. Hell, get on out there anyway. I'll see you guys at Mulavaney's.

The victory will come on the ground rather than in the air. I'm just glad that I have Ahman Green in at least one of my leagues.

Full Disclosure: I must admit that I enjoyed that flash intro at the Buc's website. Do they do that for every game?

Ken Lanye (he stays up late so you don't have to) has brought to my attention last night's Conan show. Apparently Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer were on doing some improv Simpsons scenes.

A friend of mine from work recently turned me on to America's Army, the completely free first person shooter commissioned by the Department of Defense to be used as a recruiting tool of sorts, I guess. I'm not generally up on all the latest FPS games, but I enjoy this one. The multiplayer servers actually get people on who do work in teams to accomplish the objectives of whatever map you're currently working on.

I spent an extraordinary amount of time playing last night, all spent trying to get across a bridge defended by snipers and crazy guys chucking grendades. I played all last night on the "assault" side, which has to get across the bridge. it was very tough, and I kept dying just a couple minutes into each ten minute mission. I really need to figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I just couldn't stop playing last night. I'm sure I'll be right back on it tonight, too.

My sense of humor is stuck solidly in the fourth grade, so I find on air bloopers like this one from Fox News hie-larious.

I like my political commentary from aliens, so I was devastated when I heard that Sam and Cokie were going to be leaving ABC's sunday morning political gab-fest "This Week". Well, it looks like George Stephanopoulos isn't doing too well himself.

I'm just happy for the new Chris Matthews show that sits between Fox News Sunday and This Week, which I still watch because I find it much more tolerable than Meet the Press. I don't know that I've ever watched Face the Nation, though. I wonder if my CBS station carries it at all? I'll have to look next sunday...

I thoroughly disagree with the idea of making George Will host. I like the guy and all, but just can't see him working in that role.

Hey, good luck over there in Iran. Keep up the good work, folks...

We do not consider your firing on military aircraft an act of war. Carry on...

Ooooh... Check out the curves on that one...

Be sure to check out today's Strong Bad Email before you continue on to Strong Bad's Home Page. Don't leave before you check out Stong Sad's Weblog.

If he updates it again by the end of the week, he's going on my blogroll...

I've always wanted to run for office, even if just for fun. Little did I know I've already been elected. I guess that solves my problem with party affiliation, too...

Don't forget to come in to work tired tomorrow because you woke up early to catch the leonid meteor shower.

Find out where to go to view here.

The Gimpyclock has now been fixed. Sorry it took so long, I've been lazy.

I don't think I'll fix the timestamps on the last several posts, mostly because I'm lazy...

I don't really understand why this isn't getting more play. I think that the strongest argument against war with Iraq is the fact that we appear to be badly screwing up the one in Afghanistan. I supported that, assuming that once we had knocked down the Taliban we were planning on coming in with reconstruction money. It doesn't look like we're doing that. We're still being attacked, and since we're not coming through with the aid, we're not doing much to show people that they're better off under Karzai's government than under the warlords.

I remember seeing Rep. Ford on "This Week" two weeks ago talking about the issue of aid to Afghanistan. I was hoping that would go somewhere, but it doesn't look like it has. I think I'll write my representative a quick email to see what's in the works for that, though...

Surprisingly, some of the most heavily commented articles on Slashdot these days are the articles on Cell Phones.

Like many others who run websites, I obsessively check my traffic and referral logs. I like to see who (if anybody) is linking my site and what they have to say about it. About a month ago, a URL showed up in my referrer log. I followed the link, and it was advertising a new "referrer marketing" service. For a fee, they would hit millions of websites and say that they had been referred to the site by a URL of your choosing. Then people like me who obsessively check their referrer logs would pull up that site to see why it had linked to us.

Well, they seem to have now ramped up. I now have 14 entries in my referral logs with misleading URLs like http://www.somesitewhoseoperatorsurelywillburninhell.com/party.html or http://www.imabigfatspammingidiot.com/awards.html. So go to the site thinking that I've been invited to a party or won an award, only to find that I remain friendless and unappreciated. But at least I have some porn to look at! Thanks guys, I never would have figured out how to find porn on the internet without your innovative marketing techniques!

Bastards...

But Juan said it best...

I had another silly dream about The Sopranos last night.

I haven't had a cigarette since about 7:30 last night. I'm not even really trying to quit, I'm just trying to save some money, and haven't had time to grab any today. I'm sure I'll be getting another pack directly after work, but I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just quit.

Well, that never works anyway... Two hours until I can smoke again...

Splitters!

This is awful... Pages and pages of Science and Math jokes. Just one:

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are shown a pasture with a herd of sheep, and told to put them inside the smallest possible amount of fence.

The engineer is first. He herds the sheep into a circle and then puts the fence around them, declaring, "A circle will use the least fence for a given area, so this is the best solution."

The physicist is next. He creates a circular fence of infinite radius around the sheep, and then draws the fence tight around the herd, declaring, "This will give the smallest circular fence around the herd."

The mathematician is last. After giving the problem a little thought, he puts a small fence around himself and then declares, "I define myself to be on the outside."

Well, you maybe. Not me apparently. More Phish dates through the beginning of March have been announced, and more are soon to come. They're going to be in Denver on Tuesday 2/18 and near Chicago Thursday 2/20, but I doubt I'll be able to catch either of those. Oh well...

I didn't feel the need to mention it, since so many others did, but after last night's quality bloggery I feel compelled to mention that Ken Lanye is indeed back. Welcome back, Ken...

Somebody get this guy a paying gig...

Another weekend, same as the rest... Went out to a couple of bars Friday night, enjoyed an unseasonably beautiful day on Saturday before falling asleep on the couch very, very early, then going to bed when I woke up late, and watched The Packers kick the crap out of their latest opponent. (The Detroit Lions this week... A sound 40-14 trouncing.)

Sopranos Spoiler Alert (stop reading, Raj, there's nothing more for you here...)

The Conspiracy to cover up the fact that the moon landings were fake scores again. Will the truth never be told?

A message for Gurney Halleck in anticipation of our matchup on the Fantasy Gridiron this weekend.

Best of luck!

Fresh off the Najeh Davenport, ahem, mess, another toilet related story to make the Packers look bad...

Come on folks, the line isn't that long... Of course, I don't see anything about a zero-tolerance sink-pissing policy on the offical website. I guess I can see where people got confused...

You may wonder why I didn't mention this story of a robotic drone being used by the CIA to kill Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi over in Yemen. It seems that a lot of the news stories, and some others were trying to play up the robotic aspect of this story.

This doesn't scare me. Yemeni intelligence operatives let us know that he was there, and somebody in the CIA guided this plane to take him out. It's not like this drone was just circling the world, found the al Qaeda guys itself and decided to take action. I honestly don't see how this is all that different from taking him out with a cruise missile.

I'm not quite as sure about cell-phone calling robotic dinosaur home security, though...

Grimlock no like guard house!

Republicans: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

Midterm grades are in...

Well, a lot has happened in the last 24 hours, so I guess it's time for my thoughts.

Thought 1: Didn't those little tabs on the flaps of cereal and cracker boxes work in the past? These days, whenever I get a cereal box, I try to punch out the female side of the box top so the slot will fit and I invariably tear one side or the other, making the latch useless. Did those boxes used to be made out of better cardboard?

Thought 2: Kansas State races went somewhat well. Democrat Kathleen Sebelius won the governors race over wing-nut republican Tim Shallenburger, we're still counting in out Attorney General's race, so there's a chance the Democrat could win over his whack-job Republican opponent. I was slightly upset about Adam Taff losing for Third District Representative, but Dennis Moore is just fine too...

Thought 3: Hooray! No more Hutchinsons in Arkansas!

Thought 4: The Republicans are in charge of everything now, but I don't get the feeling they're going to do anything too terribly extreme. I'll take Liddy Dole over Jesse Helms any day... I kind of feel (and hope) that that's indicative of the direction the party is going nationally. (Except here in Kansas. They force me to vote for Democrats over here... I feel so... dirty... Dirt... Won't come off...)

All in all, I suppose I'm somewhat happy about the way things turned out.

Johnny Cash's new album includes a track called "Hurt".

Yup, it's that one.

The last track on the album is "We'll Meet Again", which you may remember as the music that plays at the end of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

I think I probably need to go buy this album this evening...

You know, I really don't have anything against the Dolphins. They seem like a group of good guys, and I'd like to see them go places. (As long as they're not playing the Packers...)

I was mildly upset when I saw them pick up Cris Carter. He played with the Vikings long enough that I have a significant stor of ill-will for him. I was happy to see his performance in last night's game, in a slightly guilty sort of way. HBO's Inside the NFL did a special on his return to camp last weekend, and I watched it. He didn't look good, and he did nothing but complain the whole time.

Before the game, some of the Miami players were saying that he still needs to get in game shape. That's certainly not a slam, but it was more negative that I might have expected. Did you see the Miami players pointedly looking away from him on the walk back to the sidelines after his fumble in last night's game? I get the feeling that he isn't entirely welcome on that team, at least until he puts in the effort to do a decent job. In all the interviews I saw with him before the game, all he's talked about is "having fun". But as I said, I never really liked the guy.

Ouch, but this one hurts. I remember talk about Aikman coming back out of retirement earlier in the pre-season. It looks like that's getting closer to becoming reality. I guess Aikman isn't the worst of that Cowboys team that I always hated so much, but I just couldn't bring myself to have any good will towards a team with both Cris Carter and Troy Aikman. I do feel sorry for Fish fans, though...

Who knows, maybe they could bring Deion out of retirement too and make a trade for Randy Moss... Now that's a team I could hate...

Well, I guess all us Packer fans were all on pins and needles waiting to see how Brett was going to do on his first day back from the knee sprain. Well, he did just fine. The game wasn't even really as close as the score looks... Just some trash points at the end. It sure looked like Favre was playing hurt, but it didn't seem to affect him too much. He did throw that interception early, but I think he just came out with something to prove and that clouded his judgement a bit.

The boys got the win, leaving them on top of the NFC with a light schedule through the rest of the year. Two comments by Al an John struck me last night: Green Bay has never lost a playoff game at home, and they have only started a season 7-1 two times. Those years were 1966 and 1996.

Go vote. If you live in Kansas, I guess I'd suggest Republican Adam Taff for Third District Representative (although that race is a toss up; I think they're both good guys), but every other office, for God's sake vote Democratic. I honestly don't think that even Arkansas was as conservative as the slate we have for state offices up here. I even whipped out a Libertarian vote just so I could vote against our senator Pat Roberts.

The American Civil Liberties Union is a bit of a mixed bag these days, but still an important organization. One more piece of information you might want before voting tomorrow is the ACLU National Freedom Scorecard for your candidates.

Excellent Fark photoshop contest tonight: Unlikely New Yorker Covers.