Hey, cool! Toine himself stopped by over the weekend to let me know about an upcoming show. Thursday, October 20th, Bacon Shoe opens for the one and only mc chris at The Hurricane. mc chris had The Bottleneck pretty well packed out when we saw him there a month ago, so I've got to think that The Hurricaine is going to be packed to the gills for this show.

I'll be there, what's your excuse?

So what are the other Gimpysoft.com topics I've been avoiding in my fall hiatus? Yes, we still have Sunday liquor sales in Shawnee. This is a very good thing, because I pretty much have to be drunk to make it through a Packer game this season. A loss to Detroit I could almost deal with. They were supposed to be good this year. The loss to the Browns was just unacceptable. Still, I'll be heading out to The Final Approach in Shawnee.

The bar was called Mulvaney's two years ago and was owned by a big Packer fan He always used to keep the Packers on the big screen and on the sound system. We're two owners removed from him now and the Packer fans are still showing up for the games, so they keep the games on. We haven't had a Packer game against a Chiefs game yet this season, so I wonder how that will go when it happens, but so far I've been able to experience the misery live rather than on the opposing team's highlight reel.

While working on the Bridge Studio's website I've been listening to 620 WTMJ, a Milwaukee Sports/Talk station. Making their picks, everybody picked the Pack for the last two games. Nobody has any illusions about this week. We're going to get creamed, and that'll pretty much officially end this season. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised, but I'm not expecting much today.

Gah, it's been busy. Any computer time I've had has been spent on the Kansas City Bridge Studio's website, which I expect to do some final testing on this morning and send off to the Studio's owner for his approval. I've never claimed to be a good layout/graphics sort of person, so the site is very basic, but I think it has a pretty well put together back end that will make it pretty easy for the directors to enter each game's score immediately after the game. Right now they have to edit an HTML page and upload it to Geocities. Because of that, they don't store any historical scores, and it's not the easiest process for the directors. I think my system is nice, it'll store all the previous scores, and it's pretty easy to use.

There are some more things I could do with this, but I think what I have is enough to get something out there, then I can talk with the owner of the studio about what he might want changed and what enhancements he thinks would be useful. I'd really like to figure out if there's a way to get individual player information from the scoring software. It would be really cool if in addition to score history we could show individual players their historical records. I'm pretty sure I could parse the score files to get individual player information, but I wonder if there's a better way to get it from the score software.

Anyway, with a few enhancements, I actually think this could be a package that I could possibly sell to other Bridge clubs, particularly if I could hook up with a good designer that could make the pages look a little nicer. That's into the future a bit, though. I'm looking forward to getting this up live and taking a break with it for a bit.

Yup. It's gonna be a long season.

Don't forget to make your Gimpysoft Football Pick 'Em picks before the games tomorrow.

My concerns coming into this season of Packers football were:

1. New guards mean Brett Favre is going to be spending more time on his backside.

2. No defensive improvements to speak of mean we're going to have to score a lot of points.

3. Javon Walker's contract holdout would poison the locker room and cause problems.

4. Though it seemed good that Brett spent a lot of time working out in the off season (he apparently came into camp in the best shape in years), his problems have recently seemed to be with decision making rather than performance. He would always get the ball where he wanted it to go, it's just that he shouldn't have thrown it there at all. Furthermore, I worried that all the conditioning would affect his throwing motion that he's been used to the last several years.

So we had a game yesterday. Brett spent a lot of time on his back. The defense looked OK at times, in particular against the run, but it seemed like the only thing that kept the Lions' passing game from exploding was Joey Harrington.

As for Javon's holdout, I kind of feel bad now. Yes, I understand how one sided NFL contracts are, and that in particular leads to how players have to negotiate. They need to get paid now, because they're just one ACL tear away from never getting that big payday.

Brett did not look great. He had throws not go where he wanted them to go, but I think a good amount of that was due to being hurried because the line just couldn't protect him at all.

And don't get me started on the penalties. That was the most god-awful sloppy game I've ever seen that team play. They gave up over 100 yards in penalties, nullifying every single big Green Bay offensive play, and turning mediocre Detroit gains into huge plays. It was pathetic. That is just unacceptable at the professional level. I wanted Ahmad Carrol to do well since he's a Hog, but he just can't get it together. He either gets burned, or grabs and draws a penalty. I'd say get him the hell out of there, but who's going to start in his place?

Worst of all, I fear my prediction about Favre is going to come true. He's just too old to be thrown around like that for long. If this keeps up, he's going to get hurt this season and end his career. If he does make it through the season why would he come back next? If he's getting thrown around like that by the Lions, what happens when we face a real defense? We play Pittsburgh in the middle of the season, and we have the Eagles, Bears (twice) and Ravens all in the last six games.

The team has started off slow and turned it on towards the end of the season many times before, and half the league it telling themselves today that the season is sixteen games long, but I just didn't see a lot of reason for optimism out there yesterday.

As much as I'm generally OK with not having cable, there are times when it would be nice. For example, last night I got suckered into watching about fifteen minutes of "So You Think You Can Dance". I then left the room until it was off the TV.

Today, I can't bear to do anything but watch the horrendous pre-season-opener concert on ABC. If I had cable, I could be watching a proper pre-game show on ESPN. Right now Kanye West is on, so it's not terrible, but I think he's the highlight of the evening.

The Beach is on hiatus tonight. I'm currently cracking my third beer, and a Pepperoni Lovers Pizza is presently on its way to Camp Lick My Balls. For all my reminding everybody to get their Gimpysoft Pick 'Em picks in today, I missed the deadline by ten minutes. I'll have to do next week's on Tuesday. (Why is that not in my Palm Pilot?) I did manage to set the lineups in all my fantasy leagues, though.

I only need to make it through another 45 minutes of lousy music before we have what might actually be a good game. Thank. God. Football is finally here.

See you in February, Bex.

Just finished up my third and final fantasy football draft of the season. I think I did all right in all of them, but we'll see starting the day after tomorrow. Just a few days and the long offseason is finally at an end.

Also, if you want to show your football prognostication prowess, don't forget to register for the Gimpysoft Pick 'Em. (Private Pool: Gimpysoft, Password: gimp) If you're already registered, don't forget to make your picks by Thursday.

Thank the Lord, we're almost back in the Promised Land.

The morning of September 11, 2001 I was driving in to work and heard reports that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. All the early reports made it sound like it was a small plane, I assumed a single engine of some sort, and assumed it was a tragic accident. I walked past the TVs in the lobby where I was working at the time, went to my desk, and proceeded to send an email to my Fantasy Football league taunting my opponent his loss to me following the previous night's game. That is one of the many moments that just stick with me and pop up whenever I need to think about what a jackass I am.

Well, we have no cable at home, I haven't been listening to my normal amount of NPR, and I really haven't even been online much for the last few weeks. I knew the levee had broken and New Orleans was flooded, but I remember hearing radio reports shortly after Katrina passed over the coast, and they mainly highlighted the fact that the levee had not yet broken, so I didn't realize how much damage had actually taken place near Biloxi. Tonight I got called in to the bar to bartend, and what I saw on TV tonight is the first I've seen of how bad it really was. I saw pictures of places I know, and everything was just gone.

I've luckily heard from my friends who have friends and family in the area, and am glad to hear that they came out relatively well. I have home repairs to make, but I'm lucky to have a home. I can't afford much, but I was able to get at least something to the Red Cross. I'd just like to add my meager voice to the chorus of calls to give what you can to help them get things back to normal as quickly as possible down there.