chessandlena.com

...really ouch. East Carolina controls West Virginia from start to finish.

...yep.

You can say that it wasn't a conference game, you can say that it's better to lose early in the season than late, you can say any damn thing you want, but we still were dominated by a MAC team, which we had hitherto dominated, and-- let's face it-- which we were expecting to dominate this year. At least Virginia Tech was in the game with these guys!

I'd been holding my breath since seeing our defense allow Villanova to move the ball on us effectively and consistently in the opener last week; and now, I'm exhaling in one huge, extended sigh. Even if this year is another topsy-turvy upset-fest, it's going to take a lot better playcalling, execution, and esprit de corps than the Mountaineers showed yesterday. I had hoped we were fortuitously going to be able to bypass the new-coach blues with our promotion of an insider. So much for that.

I'd also been on tenterhooks about a potentially more fundamental issue with the program since the Rodriguez Diaspora, and that's the departure of Mike Barwis and his insane in the membrane conditioning regimen. I don't think our prior style of play, our offense, our defense, our anything is going to work without the no-quit, always-on, train-for-explosiveness conditioning that was his hallmark. And I sincerely hope that this is not the case, but the flaccid, hopeless gameplay I saw from us against ECU is the nightmare world that flashed in the back of my mind when I learned that Barwis was leaving too. I guess we'll see.

Oh, well. Life ain't easy for any college football fan. Way to go East Carolina, Pinckney, Holtz, and alla those guys. To my Mountaineers... guys, we love ya. Getcher war faces back-- the rest will follow.

plinking away on the cloudbook again, I can't resist messing around a little bit with this pathetic little webcam. This machine will ostensibly run skype video, but I just can't imagine how ridiculous it would look.

Ah well. That's bear in the pic with me. Two dudes watching the giants-redskins season opener tonight. Yeah.

the gauntlet has been thrown: Google Chrome is upon us. Chrome is google's new browser, not just multi-threaded, no, but multi-processed... their solution to the browser memory leak and javascript blocking problems.

The scary part is that they ginned up their own google-brand chick tract to explain it all for you. Of course, it's better-drawn, coherent, and a lot less insulting...

If you've never seen chick tracts, you should. Some of my favorites: last rites, evolution, Jesus saves your kitty, drugs, Islam, D&D, and of course, homosexuality.

Maybe the similarity is all in my mind. But after reading chick tracts, I can't look at a simple, set-you-up-and-sell-you-this comic without thinking about them. Leaves my flesh cold.

...they're magically delicious!

practically nutritious.

tragically seditious.

spastically malicious.

drastically officious.

...I need to go back to bed.

Back, synopsis of football weekend to appear tomorrow-night-ish. Meanwhile, check out hiking the law school hill.

...well, not really. She's sicker than a dog. We were going to hang out tonight with Pat and Bud*, but Lena arrived at the airport after a several-hour bout of congestion, nausea, fever, and vomit, and-- bonus-- all in a confined space crammed next to others, at forty thousand feet! May I take this opportunity to say, nothing looks better than a wife you haven't seen for three weeks who's been puking for the last twelve hours. Actually, she looked pretty good for all that.

Anyway, rather than infect our friends, we decided to confine it to just me. Lena and I drove home and she promptly collapsed into bed, where she is still. And, if I know the girl, where she'll be until Sunday afternoon.

* yes, that's THREE-DAY JEOPARDY CHAMPION BUD HUMPHREY!

Not all sci-fi is mind candy, even though it may be clothed as such. An essay on perhaps the coolest, most widely-read science fiction novel written in these latter days points out this serious moral challenge: Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality. Mind candy because the book showcases some of the coolest concepts in science fiction ever: the battle school, the ansible, the little doctor, hive intelligence; yet decidedly not mind candy because of the moral questions it raises: deliberate cruelty as shaper of character, intent versus action, guilt as redemption.

The author of this essay points out that Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, has been criticized by some as an apologia for Adolf Hitler; but he is quick to also assert that he does not, in fact, believe this. But have a look. Rather thought-provoking discussion.

It is with great pleasure that I report to you that cat number TWO has passed through the portal of her own accord (see parts one and two of this saga).

Dasha, Bear and I had a late evening training session; Maya, of course, was under something in another room, quite out of reach. But Bear went through on his own again (still with some hesitance, even trepidation; but he powers through it), and Dasha figured out that she had to do something other than dig at the bottom of the human door. [aside: among Dasha's quirks besides peeing all over the house is the way she digs: she uses both front paws at the same time. It's very cute.]

After some cajoling, tapping, and swinging the cat door open for her to see that it was indeed possible, Dasha decided to dig at the top of the cat door. No luck... until she stopped digging and hit the lower part of the door on the way down, popping it open. It's fun to see Dasha when the cogs are turning in her head. So then she started sniffing all around the edge of the cat door. During this operation, she accidentally bumped the door open several times. Eventually she noticed this, and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y pushed her nose into it and went through.

The lesson definitely sunk in; later tonight, I shut them both in the garage again and just left, thinking, "I'll give them half an hour, then open the door and go to bed." It wasn't five minutes before I saw both Bear and Dasha cruising through the kitchen. VICTORY!

...and then there was one.

the Godzillionaires.

[ed: as an extra super bonus of worthless personal information, "godzillion" has become my go-to numerical tag for extraordinary amounts of money. Rather than be tied to any particular count of zeroes, a godzillion is simply measured as enough money to destroy Tokyo.]