Dear Ryan,

Stop using the word "issues" so much. You sound like a tool.

Love,
Ryan

I'm dabbling in some Palm OS programming and I think I'm going to be ready to start working on a little project here soon. Are there any Palm users out there? If so, is there any software you'd like to have that you haven't been able to find elsewhere? If you're not a palm user, what would you like to do with one if you had it? Any ideas anybody?

Just throwing it out there... So far the best I've been able to come up with was a racquetball league manager/score tracker. That's pretty lame. Please help me come up with something better.

Snow?

I know it's early in the off season, but why do I get the feeling that Green Bay is going to kind of suck next season? Our O-Line is what kept us marginally alive last season, and it's been blown up with early free agency losses of Mike Wahle and Marco Rivera. They're trying to fix things, but I'm still very worried.

Yes, Favre is back, and we still have Ahman, but I really wonder how the changes on the line are going to affect them. Favre doesn't always make the best decisions under pressure, and I worry about his protection now. As talented as Ahman Green is, a ton of his running yards over the last several seasons were attributable to good blocking. Will he be able to keep up his performance with so much change to that unit?

I reserve judgment, but I get the feeling I'm not going to get my hopes up too high this season.

Rule. HBO is bringing back The Wire for at least one more season.

I do agree with what they say in the article. Whenever you're waiting for months for a decision from a network as to whether a show you like will be picked up for another season, you never expect the news to be good when it comes. Kudos to HBO for being patient with the best thing they have going right now.

Looks like my no cable won't last much longer than early next year. But next year will be a good year to have HBO: The last season of The Sopranos, and now we get another season of The Wire.

Also, I guess I can drop that Google News alert for "HBO The Wire" now. Really, check out my Google News Page.

It's not the first Wednesday of the month... Why are the tornado sirens going off?

Just busy. Some recent highlights:

After the sixth week of still having flu symptoms, I finally sought medical attention last Friday. Antibiotics, better by Saturday afternoon. Should have done that long before then.

Not having TV has been good for the most part. We still keep up with Arrested Development either with an antenna or at Bex's folks place. Last night, we watched both episodes of The Simpsons and Arrested Development. It made me miss cable. Then we watched Kelsey Grammer's The Sketch Show. It reminded me why we cancelled.

Non-computer programmers can skip this paragraph. I've always been somewhat ambivalent about tabs vs. spaces for indenting code. After reading this article, I am absolutely, completely convinced of what the right way is: Tabs to the logical indent level of the line you're currently writing, then spaces for further indentation if necessary on a single line of code that is split across two screen lines. Now you can choose whatever tab stops you like in your editor and things still line up. read the article, and if you don't code like this, start now.

I had my first Bridge class last Monday. Bridge seems like it's going to be a lot of fun, but dang is it a complicated game. Also, our bridge instructor seems to have taken teaching lessons from the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket. It was suggested that we download and play through the first chapter from the Learn To Play Bridge program found at the American Contract Bridge League. Actually, we were told that if we did not do that, we should not return for next week's lesson. It was also suggested that many of us would not make it through the intensive twelve week training course. I have made a promise to myself not to wash out.

Lee: Why have you enrolled in my bridge course, maggot?
Ryano: SIR! To win, SIR!
Lee: So you're a winner, eh? Let me see your Bridge face.
Ryano: Sir?
Lee: You got a Bridge face? AAAAAAHHH! That's a Bridge face. Now let me see your Bridge face?
Ryano: aaaaaah!
Lee: Bullshit, you didn't convince me. Let me see your real Bridge face.
Ryano: AAAAaahh!
Lee: You don't scare me, work on it.

Other than that, not a whole lot. Harry graduated from Puppy School last Saturday. We still need to work on several commands, but he is certainly coming along.

OK, lunch is over, time to head back to work. Good day, all.

Yes, Thomas Frank really is the official commentator on All Things Kansas. How do I know? Even when he doesn't have something to say on a subject, people wonder why he doesn't have anything to say.

Whine #1: Not showing up for an evening racquetball league is one thing. I can stay at the gym and lift weights. Not showing up for a 6:00 AM racquetball league is unacceptable. You're telling me that I got out of bed at 5:00 this morning for nothing? Jackass.

Whine #2: My backup racquet pretty much sucks. The last time I played was probably about three weeks ago, just after I had first gotten sick. I guess after changing clothes that day I must have left the gym and left my racquet on a bench or in a locker. I always keep my racquet in my car, but it isn't there. It isn't in the gym's lost and found section, and it isn't anywhere I can find it in the house. That sucks, I guess I need to buy a new racquet now.

Whine #3: You know how sometimes you're in the bathroom standing at a urinal alone and somebody comes in and chooses the urinal right next to you? That's somewhat uncomfortable and obviously against the rules. When somebody does that in a public shower, it's just downright creepy.

Somebody read some javascript on the NFL Shop's website and got a list of words you can't have printed on a jersey.
That reminded me of the night we spent in Houston trying to see who could come up with the most inappropriate NTN Trivia name that would make it up onto the screen. Gurney_Halleck won by coming up with the first and second place entries:

VDRASH and
MLSTR

I still use VDRASH occasionally if I'm at a bar with trivia...

It's kind of strange when you first find out about something that happened down the street on the internet.

Well damn it... I always tune in too late to catch the good stuff. First I miss John Renshaw's on air meltdown, then today I miss Jason Whitlock quitting on air about half an hour into his four hour show.

Well, that kind of sucks too. Whitlock's show was always a good alternative to news on the drive home. Now there isn't anything at all worth listening to on 610 AM other than Jim Rome, and to be honest that can be dodgy quite a bit of the time too. (I do notice that 610's web guy is on the ball, though. Whitlock is already gone from the website.)

I was never really much of a sports radio listener until I landed here in Kansas City. I kind of got into listening to Jim Rome at lunchtime, then I found John Renshaw, then started listening to Whitlock in the afternoon occasionally. Now that Renshaw has been banished to the graveyard and Whitlock is gone, I'm guessing I'm just going to listen to sports radio a bit less.

Dang... blo.gs, my favorite "recently updated" service is for sale, apparently because the fellow (or gal) who runs the site is tired of losing money running the service:

i don't have a price in mind, so don't ask. cash-flow wise, the site has cost approximately $3500 to date (mostly for hosting), and has earned less than $750 (mostly from google adsense ads).

Now that's a sales pitch.

Dang, it would suck if he doesn't get an offer and just shuts the site down entirely. Of course, I'm probably responsible for about a quarter of his bandwidth charges with how often I'm hitting his site.

Good Lord. Though it somewhat pains my former libertarian heart to wish for an expansion of state power, I hope that this becomes a trend that sweeps the nation.

Seattle Police officers Lyndell Jones and Jeff Rodgers carry out a unique mission: They're the only cops in the state who can bust drivers for simply cutting in line.

The pair stand near a freeway ramp from the West Seattle Bridge corridor to northbound Interstate 5, where commuters in the one-mile queue resent the minority who nose in front just before the ramp.

I don't run into this much with the commute to and from my new job, but I used to see this all the time at a particular freeway onramp I used when going home from my last job. I tend to be an angry driver under good circumstances. When people would try to cut into line when traffic is backed up, I often wondered if that day would be the day I caused a full-on Road Rage Incident.