Once again, I've disabled comments as comment spammers have once again killed my server. The new version of Movable Type has comment spam filtering built in, and they've even made changes that keep the server load from getting too heavy when under heavy comment spam attack. Since I run five weblogs with this installation, I need to purchase the Personal License at $70. I think I might actually spring for that once I get my new web server rebuilt (started on that again this morning), but until then comments will be disabled sporadically as these attacks come and go.

jdoublep at Badda Blog has discovered Underground Ozarks, a Missouri/Arkansas/Kansas Urban Exploration website. Currently there aren't any photo galleries for KC or Kansas sites, but I'm hoping that we can change that sometime soon. Bex is down.

Made it back from Chicago and Wisconsin safe. I knew I was in Wisconsin when I heard a weather report Saturday saying it would be in the 20s on Sunday and thought with relief, "Thank God it's warming up."

The trip was fun. I got to see Mom and Dad, saw my sister for the first time in a couple of years. Got a Cuisinart along with a haul of other cool gifts, and didn't get stuck in Chicago due to weather. When I go to Chicago/Wisconsin for Christmas, I think I spend an extra day there due to snow about 30% of the time.

There was wonderful family drama on Christmas day with the extended family. There is a different standard for Alcoholism in Wisconsin, so when you get my extended family together on Christmas day with an open bar, I'm surprised that these sorts of disturbances don't happen more often. Regardless, it was a fairly one-sided blow up, with pretty much everybody piling on to one of my step-cousins. Once he was escorted away the celebration continued.

The Packers beat the Vikings. There is still a chance that the Vikings could miss the playoffs entirely (hope hope), but if they do make the playoffs, there is a chance that the wild card playoff could be Green Bay/Minnesota. As I have little faith in the Packers to go far in the playoffs, a third Green Bay/Minnesota game this year would be a welcome thing. Let's go for the sweep.

A joke from my father:

Q: Why are the Vikings purple?

A: You'd be that color too after choking for 38 years.

And:

Q: What do you call a Viking with a Super Bowl Ring?

A: A thief.

Here's to hoping that Green Bay takes out Chicago in the meaningless game this Sunday, and that The Pack surprises me in the playoffs.

So he was a screwed-up lush, at least his show was entertaining. And he talked about pro sports. Last month Renshaw's Freak Show was dropped from the morning schedule at 810 WHB after he, apparently in a drunken stupor, went of on station management and was yanked mid-show.

Well, its replacement has been on the air for a while now, and I am not impressed. The Border Patrol with Stephen St. John and Bob Fescoe just doesn't do it for me. This is not a proper review of the show; In the month that the show has been on the air, each morning when I get in my car I tune to 810, hear that they are talking about college sports, and tune the radio back to something else. Apparently they don't talk about anything other than college sports, at least not any of the 20 or 30 times I've tuned them in. For God's sake, we live in a town with pro sports. Mix it up a bit. I'm not sure that I've ever heard the guys talk about the Chiefs.

Maybe that's what people are looking for in a sports show around here. Not having grown up here, I couldn't care less about the Jayhawks or the Tigers. I know it needs to be covered, but throw us pro sports fans a bone here.

I won't listen to The DA Show on the competing station because of DA's patently offensive promo during Whitlock's show the day of Renshaw's meltdown. So NPR it is, unfortunately. Football season, and no football commentary worth listening to in the morning. It really is a shame that a town this size and this sports friendly can't have a decent morning sports show.

Damn, I miss Renshaw.

Yesterday afternoon the Packers played the Jaguars. Late in the game, with Green Bay trying to mount a comeback from an 11 point deficit Favre threw up the middle to Robert Ferguson, who made the catch and was then tackled by Donovin Darius.

Well, I guess tackled isn't really the right word. While Ferguson was still in the air, Donovin threw a clothesline so brutal it tore Ferguson's helmet off and left him with no feeling in his legs for several minutes. It was ugly, brutal, and completely uncalled for. This is football, and these things happen. I could believe it if Darius came out and said he was throwing the arm to Ferguson's chest and missed. What does he have to say about it?

“It’s part of the game,” he said. “I was just running over trying to make a play, trying to separate him from the ball. I never intentionally try to hurt someone. I love to play the game, and I play it 100 mph. Unfortunately, he got hurt. Everybody that saw it from our standpoint said it looked clean.”

Darius said he would never cheap-shot another player.

“I always play within the rules. I have no need ever to play outside the rules,” he said. “If there’s anything to say to Ferguson, he understands this was nothing intentional. I just pray for his speedy recovery.”

If he still thinks that that was an acceptable move, he needs to be shown othewise by the league. He'd better come down with a hefty fine. I'd prefer to see him suspended for a game or two, but I'm sure the league won't do that at the end of the season.

This is horrible! The Love Shack has burned to the ground.

You go to a blog gathering, you start to read blogs you didn't before. Now I'm kind of upset that I'm going to be out of town this weekend (for the Young Pups wedding) and will miss Tribulation Christmas. M.Toast posted an excellent review of the stage show, which dramitizes the coming End Times. Unfortunately, the last show is Sunday at 6:00.

Next year... Next year...

I haven't made it out to a Kansas City blog meetup in quite a while... It's been at least been a year, probably longer than that. There are a lot of new faces in the last couple of years. The folks that run KC Bloggers have done an excellent job finding the locals, and with the help of The Pitch's Tony Ortega's generous offer of Free Booze the turnout was pretty darn good at last night's meetup.

Like I said, I haven't been out to one of these blog meetups in a while, and the only face I remembered was Jay Manifold of A Voyage to Arcturus. He is thankfully still employed and wondered about my employment status. I was happy to inform him that I was no longer employed by Sextel, and it even turns out that he used to work for the company I'm with now. It's a small world, at least for computer programmers in Kansas City.

I chatted with Tony Ortega briefly. He talked about his exploits with the New Times in LA, name dropping Matt Welch and Ken Layne along the way. You will find no judgement here; If those were names I could drop, I probably would be dropping them with wild abandon.

The two locals I've been reading most lately are jdoublep from Badda Blog and GHW from Thanks For Not Being A Zombie. I didn't run into GHW, but jdoublep was out with his SO. She and Bex hit it off, and I think she's going to get Bex on her Roller Derby Team. I was more anti-social than usual due to a very early morning yesterday, but folks seemed nice, and I'll definitely be making it out to the next gathering.

Yesterday was Bex's birthday, so to celebrate we went out to a restaurant that was recently reviewed in the Pitch. I've been thinking very hard to figure out when I've eaten a better meal, but I've been coming up empty. It may very well have been the best meal I've ever eaten.

We both wholeheartedly recomment 1924 Main for all your dining needs. At a $30 prix fixe three course dinner, it's not even that bad for a nice night out. The paired wines are even reasonable, and damn tasty.

Their menu changes weekly, so be sure to check out their current menu on their website. Last night I went with the Muscovy Duck Sausage Salad with Savoy Cabbage, Fingerlings, and Poached Apples to start, which was pretty durn good, but I think I preferred Bex's Sea Salad with Lobster, Grapefruit, Sugar Snaps, Shitakes, and Dynamite Aioli. My main course was a Grilled Ribeye with Buttermilk Potatoes and a Plethora of Walla-Walla Onions. They do not lie about the plethora. The onions came carmelized, grilled and fried, and there was a manly pile of them indeed. The carmelized onions were just as sweet as the dickens. For dessert I had Cheese and Fruit and Bex had a Cranberry Tart with an absolutely lovely Ginger Ice Cream. No sissy ginger candy ice cream, either... This tasted like it had fresh ginger in it, and plenty of it.

Gah... Just thinking about it makes me kind of upset about eating today's lunch of Nacho Cheese Pretzel Combos and Diet Mountain Dew. Kansas City Bloggers, see you tonight at Jilly's for the Pitch thing.

Yeah, this potential Sprint/Nextel merger is big news locally. Myself, I managed to escape Sprint several months ago, but best wishes to those still working there. Reports are very sketchy from what I've read, but the last I heard they were going to keep thier operational headquarters in Overland Park, KS and move the corporate headquarters to Nextel's place in Reston, VA. That would help some with potential local job losses, but I'm sure there will still be some.

Guys, my company is still hiring programmers. If anybody would like me to put in a word, let me know.

So last Friday we headed out to The Brick to see In The Pines. One of the guys in In The Pines is the husband of a friend of Bex's. We've been meaning to get out to see them for a while, but they always play on school nights, and we've always chickened out and went to bed. With a show on a weekend, we decided that we absolutely would not miss this one. We made it out there, and the band was good. I did enjoy the music.

However, those hipster types kind of get to me sometimes. It's one thing to drink PBR. At least it's cheap, and I will not begrudge anyone their cheap beer, even if it is a bit of an affectation. Trucker hats I can sort of deal with as well, particularly since I own two. (My cherished Hytorc: Nut Busters caps.) However, a PBR trucker hat is just inexcusable. I saw two at the show Friday night.

As for The Brick, I work at a very smoky bar. Honestly, it's about the smokiest I've ever really been in. That was, until I went to The Brick. Damn, they must have no ventilation in there at all. I was just nauseous the whole time in there, and later Bex told me that if I had asked to leave, she would have been fine with that. As much as I hate to admit it, there is a (small) part of me that kind of hopes that the metro-wide smoking ban in bars passes. Jesus, when did I stop being a libertarian? When did that happen?

Bex came up with a great idea for Kitchen Couch. The idea is good enough that I don't want to jinx it by saying anything about it before we get to work on it, so I will just say that there may be something there sometime soon. I'll let you know if we ever do get anything posted up there.

As for the Packers, I'm reluctantly starting to admit to myself that this team is going nowhere. They barely squeaked one out against Detroit, and just looked bad doing it. I haven't looked up stats yet, but they had to have given up over 100 yards in penalties. Some of those penalties were weak, but many of them were just sloppy play. Nick Barnett's antics were kind of pissing me off, and Favre has started playing badly again. Now not only is he making dangerous throws, he's missing throws that he used to make. His pass protection, which used to be pretty much rock solid, is starting to break down now as well. Ugh. That was painful to watch, but hopefully things will improve this Sunday. At least we've pulled into the lead in the NFC North with the fucking Viking's loss to Seattle.

Then there was last night's The Wire. Spoilers follow. Put Season 1 in your Netflix queue now if you haven't been watching.

After I spent a couple of days talking up ESPN NFL 2K5, please allow me to take it all back. I've been spending more time than I care to admit in the last couple of days playing franchise mode on the game, and I've spent a lot of time on my franchise. I've created a weekly workout for them that seems to work pretty well, I've customized the stadium music at Lambeau, I've tried to get other teams to trade me some players for Tim Couch and Mike McKenzie, and I've played through the preseason and a couple of weeks into the season.

So last night I'm playing week three. I receive the opening kickoff, and the game freezes up. Oh well, I guess these things happen. I reset the game and try it again. This time I get through the opening kickoff, but the game freezes up again when I try to make a player substitution. Well, turns out this problem is not uncommon and the only fix is to discard your franchise, start over, and hope that your new franchise doesn't get corrupted.

I'm sorry, but that's just not acceptable. I'm just glad it happened now rather than sixty playing hours into my franchise. Apparently, the bug commonly crops up during your first draft between seasons. Well, I guess it's Madden for me now.

OK, I was indifferent towards Cake's new album Pressure Chief until now. I'm not enthralled with the first several tracks, but I've found myself listening to the last five tracks over and over for the last couple of days. And that doesn't even include "Dime", which is also one of my favorites.

"End Of The Movie" - Short and sweet. I love this song, and I think I'm going to have to rip this to my X-Box to be Lambeau's "Time is running out" song in ESPN NFL 2K5.

Speaking of which, that is one of the many cool features of ESPN NFL 2K5. You can customize the stadium music with music you've ripped to your X-Box. Not only with custom tracks, but you can tell it which clips from the tracks you've ripped to play. As sad as it is, I've probably spent more time on the non-football features of NFL 2K5 than I have the football features since I've bought that game.

I'm doing a bit of research to see if it would make sense to drop Priest Holmes off my fantasy football team. I really don't think he'll come back this season, and even if he does, I doubt they'll be leaning on him like they used to. Unfortunately, I know that if I drop him, he'll end up having a monster day the last week of the season after being picked up by the guy I play in the league championship.

While looking, I came across this from The Sporting News in 2001:

Subject: Week 3

From: Tom Feary

I'm very surprised you guys didn't issue an apology to all of your owners for telling us to "drop" Priest Holmes and pick up Tony Richardson. ... Tell me this, is this a one-game burst for Holmes or will we see more of this from him through the year?

***Tom: Thanks to you and the scores of other readers who took time to remind me of the Holmes' comment. But knowing what we knew at this time, Holmes was a dud. He looked terrible in the first two games before doing a pretty good Marshall Faulk impression on Sunday. To be sure, the Redskins had something to do with that.

Is Holmes going to do this every week? Please. This guy is the picture of inconsistency. Remember when he took the world by storm in 1998 by busting out with a 173-yard, two-TD game? The next week he had 29 yards on 14 carries. Later that year, after getting 227 yards and 103 in consecutive games, Holmes posted games of 27, 39 and 11 yards. What will he do this week? Beats me. All I know is that he has a tendency to disappear just when you think he has settled into a groove. Holmes looked like a different player on Sunday, slashing and cutting as well as anybody. We'll see that player a few more times this year, but I still would want Richardson on my roster as well.

When was it that Priest Holmes came on? 2001 or 2002? I thought he was a high draft pick even last year, but I could be wrong about that.

Well, my gmail account made it almost six months before I got my first piece of Spam. At least the filter caught it.

Why the hell didn't anybody tell me that you're not supposed to put two spaces after a period any more? Now I'm never going to be able to break the habit.

When your dad is getting kicked around in a fairly public controversy do you comment on it, or do you just keep your mouth shut? I think I'll opt for the latter.

Or, you know, the exact opposite of everything I said. That could be how it goes down.

The Revenge portion of the season continues this Sunday as Green Bay heads into Philadelphia for a rematch of last year's divisional playoff game. I think we have a good chance to win this one and reestablish ourselves as a serious playoff contender this year. Earlier this week I was looking at the Eagles schedule for this year. Here are the teams they've beat:

Giants (5-6)
Vikings (7-4)
Lions (4-7)
Bears (4-7)
Panthers (4-7)
Browns (3-8)
Ravens (7-4)
Cowboys (4-7)
Redskins (3-8)
Giants (5-6)

They got slaughtered by the Steelers. So far this season, they've only played three teams with winning records, and they got crushed in one of those games. Granted, Green Bay had some early losses to some questionable foes. We dropped one to the Bears, we got blown up by the Titans before they started losing their entire team to injuries, we dropped one to the Giants, and lost a shootout with Peyton Manning.

Early in the season our pass defense was still in disarray after that fuckswitch Mike McKenzie held out and was eventually traded to New Orleans. Anticipating the problem, Green Bay had the sense to draft cornerbacks early, and though our secondary is still young and gives up big plays occasionally, our rookies are just now starting to show the potential we drafted them for. First round draft pick (and former Hog) Ahmad Carrol was named NFL Rookie of the Week after his first interception in the St. Louis game last Monday.

No, we still aren't getting any pass rush to speak of. Even our blitzes don't seem to get any pressure the QB. I think this is going to be another of those games where McNabb can run for five or six yards pretty much whenever he feels like it. I'm sure TO is going to get around our secondary for at least one long-ass touchdown catch. We still play way too soft in coverage in long yardage situations.

Offensively however, I think we're looking better than we did this time last year. Ahman Green will most likely be back on the field, and even if he isn't, Najeh Davenport has been dropping the deuce on opposing defenses since Green's been on the bench. Mike Sherman calling plays seems to have made a difference, and most importantly Favre seems to have calmed down and stopped throwing so many interceptions. Hell, he's almost looking good enough to justify the often excessive Favre worship we hear from every corner of the NFL. Favre's interception in overtime last year was just as responsible for our loss in last year's playoff game as That Unfortunate Defensive Play. I don't know what Favre is doing differently this year, but he's looking good again. Not flashes of brilliance considerably dulled by very questionable judgement, but good.

Early this season, in a somewhat drunken stupor following our horrible, horrible, horrible loss to the Titans, I sent this email to a friend:

I don't think I've ever said this to anyone before, and I won't again. It's not the right thing to say, and I'll deny it if you tell anyone I said it.

Brett Favre is past his prime. He is more of a liability than an asset at this point in his career. He's earned the right to play as long as he wants to. On top of that, I am absolutely not looking forward to a season without him on the team. Nevertheless, this team is not going to get any better until he is in retirement. In the meantime, I'll be blaming things on Sherman (and he deserves plenty),
but the Pack isn't going to be a contender again until Favre has hung it up.

I'm glad to have been proved wrong on that in subsequent games this season. I continued:

Please, hang on to this email and shove it in my face when the Packers are playing in the NFC Championship game this season.

Well, we're not in the NFC Championship game yet, but the way things are shaping up in the NFC this season, it's looking more and more likely that this Sunday's game is a preview of just that.

How about that... The blogger over at Farm Accident Digest didn't like his nom de blog, so he decided to come up with a new name. When none of the new names were to his liking, he went all old school.

It's enough to make me want to whip out a classic Gimpysoft skin. Or not.

Bex is off to spend time with her sister this evening, so I have the night to my self. Though I would like to say I'll work on the new web server tonight, in my heart I know that I'll probably spend the evening playing Halo.

The attacks continue, and they killed the server again yesterday, requiring a reboot when I got home from work. Some enterprising comment spammer has come up with an ingenious way to get around my filters. Simply post loads of comments with no advertising URLs at all, just a bunch of random text and an email address. It's genius! They never get filtered, but I still have to go in and clean them up.

Come to think of it, I may actually get to work on the new machine tonight. I'm about getting tired of nothing being on this site but bitching about the web server.

I totally need this shirt.

Gimpysoft.com: All Comment Spam, All The Time. I think today's outage was due to yet another comment spam attack, but I can't be sure until I get home. I think I've finally found a temporary solution, but the permanent solution will be getting the new web server going, which I hope to do this weekend if I get some time to work on it.

In the meantime I apologize to you, my loyal reader, and most of all to the poor saps I've convinced to let me host web pages for. Like they say, you get what you pay for.

To give an idea of the scale of the attacks, last month was by far the most traffic I've ever had at this site. My previous monthly high was 17,438 page requests in June of last year. Last month was more than double that at 36,657 page requests. So basically, I had as many attempts to post comment spam last month as I've had legitimate traffic in any month since this site has been around.