Science Fiction Writer?

I am: Gregory Benford A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Even though I have only read Timescape and Foundations Fear I enjoyed both novels. I guess I should check out some more of Benford's work.

According to the quiz site, Greg Benford actually took this quiz and it told him he was Arthur C. Clark.

Defacing the Capitol

Approximately 300 anti-war protesters were allowed to spray paint on part of the west front steps of the United States Capitol building this weekend. The protesters were allowed to spray paint "anarchist symbols", "Our capitol building" and "you can’t stop us" on the Capitol Steps.

According to U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Chief Phillip Morse

"The graffiti was easily removed by the dedicated [Architect of the Capitol] staff, some of whom responded on their day off to quickly clean the area."

He added, "It is the USCP's duty and responsibility to protect the Capitol complex, staff and public while allowing the public to exercise their First Amendment rights … at the end of the day, both occurred without injury to protestors or officers."

This is interesting when compared to my own experiences on the Capitol front steps. In 1979 I was traveling with the Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps. We had been on the road for several hours and hit Washington DC late one night and the Corp director decided that the kids in the busses needed a stretch break. Breaking with his normal tradition of finding an out of the way place with bathrooms he decided that we should substitute bathrooms for culture on this stop. So we pulled up in front of the Capitol building at 2 AM in the morning and unloaded 3 bus loads of kids so they could run up and down the steps for a few minutes, check out the Columbus Doors and blow off a little steam before we continued on our way.

We had been on the Capitol steps for only a minute or two and a Capitol Police vehicle showed up. The officer scanned the crowd for a moment, spotted the group of adults standing off to one side and he approached us to find out what was going on. We explained that we were from Wyoming, just traveling through and stopped so the kids could see something of Washington DC besides the beltway. He nodded, and walked away talking into his radio. Two to three minutes later five patrol cars surrounded our busses and we were politely but firmly told to load up and move on – NOW!

Being hicks from Wyoming we didn’t understand the way things work in Washington DC. I guess if we wanted to stick around for more than a few minutes we should have started defacing the property.

One last nit to pick with Police Chief Morse The exact wording of the First Amendment is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

No where in there do I see anything about the public’s right to vandalize public property. We won’t even go into trying to describe what part of defacing the Capitol building is considered “peaceably assembling.”

The No Fun League Strikes Again

In an continuing effort to remove all the fun from proffesional football the NFL fired the latest shot in the battle against allowing fans to enjoy the sport they are paying to attend. The NFL has decided that there will be no tailgating allowed at the superbowl.

This is purely an NFL decision. The City of Miami and the Dolphins organization allow tailgating during the regular season.

I personally don't go to NFL games. I've been to two in my lifetime. Both because I was working with the Casper Troopers Drum and Bugle Corps who were performing at the halftime. So I have never had the option to do any tailgating. But it does look like fun. Why would anyone not want to hang out in the parking lot before the game, grill some meat and drink a brew, or two. It sounds like a great way to start a game. It sounds like even a better way to end a game. Grill some more meat, relax and wait for all the traffic to empty out. But then what do I know? I don't work for the NFL.

First Volleyball Lessons

I tried something new last night.

The Parks and Recreation Department here in Ridgecrest holds a youth volleyball league for kids 10 and older that runs from March to May. From my experience the last couple years not a lot of the 10 year olds from Saint Ann School sign up for this league. So I decided to see if I could get more kids at school interested in joining a league buy holding a beginners volleyball camp last night. I invited all the 4th and 5th grade girls that were interested in learning to play volleyball to come out for the camp.

My goal for the camp was to give them a taste of what it is like to be on a volleyball team, teach them some basic skills and get them some exposure to the game. I planned on concentrating on teaching them how to pass, how to underhand serve and an introduction to the rules of the game.

I had 10 girls show up for the camp. One of my best eighth grade players showed up to help me out. I put her to work running the girls through a couple warm up laps, some agility drills and stretching. Then I showed them the ready position, and the proper hand position and stance to pass a volleyball. I worked my way down the line of girls a couple times tossing them the ball and correcting their passing style. Then I divided them into two lines and had them toss and pass the ball back and forth while my 8th grade assistant coach and I worked our way around correcting arm positions, hand positions, feet, knees, elbows, etc. Just about any mistake you could imagine the were making. I let this drill go on as long as I could, occasionally switching which side was tossing and which side passed, After a couple minutes I would spread the two lines apart a bit farther. Slowly working them apart from about 4 feet back to around 15 feet. I would have liked to spend a lot more time with just this basic drill, but after about 20 minutes the girls started getting bored and when they get bored they get goofy and sloppy.

So I moved them to either side of the net and let them toss and pass back and forth over the net for a few minutes. Then I let them try passing back and forth over the net for a while. When they tired of that I showed them a normal passing drill. One line of players in the back middle of the court and a short target line in the middle front. I toss a ball to the first girl in line, she passes to the target who catches the ball, drops it in my basket and goes to the end of the passing line. The passer goes to the end of the target line. It was a little slow going at first. But as they got into the rythem of the drill we managed to keep it moving at a pretty good clip. I didn't run these girls as hard as I usually do my regular team. Normally I push the older girls quite hard with this drill. They get two times through the drill with me tossing the ball to them. After that they whole rest of the court is fair game. I tossed most of the balls to these beginners. But after they watched my 8th grader run though a couple series where my tosses forced her to cover about 80 percent of the court they wanted to try also. So I let them. The passes were awful, but what the heck, they're just learning. I love the fact that they wanted to try the more challenging drill.

I gave them a break and let them rest while I went over the rules of the game, referee's signals and general terminology. Then it was on to serving.

I showed them the proper footwork and arm swing for an underhand serve. We worked on it for a while without a ball, just trying to establish some rhythm. This shodow serving with a line of girls stepping a swinging in rhythm always reminds me of an old Temptations dance move. But I've learned not to mention that to the girls. I really don't like seeing the confusion on their faces when the say "Who?" But then they get even more confused when I say "No. Not the Who, the Temptations." I just don't know what parents are teaching their kids these days. But for sure its not good music.

After some shadow serving I lined them up and let them serve a couple with me watching. Once they had all gotten at least one ball over the net from midcourt, I lined them up on each side of the net at midcourt and let them serve back and forth a while. Then I would move them back a step or two and keep serving. I only had one or two who managed to serve the full length of the court. But they did pretty good for first timers.

Once they started getting bored with the serving. I lined them up and taught them how to hit downballs. Most of them had a hard time with this. They just aren't big enough to hit a ball with an overhead swing yet and get it to travel very far. They weren't too interested in doing this until I explained that this was the first step to becoming spikers they were suddenly much more interested.

After a few times through the downball hitting lines. I arranged them on the court for a starter game. We didn't keep score, each girl gets to serve 3 times then its a sideout. We got through that drill with just enough time left to run them through a couple suicides before time to go home. As they walked out, most of them looked tired.

I felt pretty guilty an hour later when I took my oldest daughter to her club practice and the youth league basketball practices were just ending. Two of the 5th graders who ahd been at my camp were running in their basketball practice. I guess they got a great workout that evening.

I'm going to have another of these camps in two weeks. I hope they all show up for it also. I had several parents thank me for doing that camp. I didn't tell them that I have some selfish motives for doing this. If I can get the 4th and 5th grade girls interested enough to play in the city league and take the summer camp that the city offers for two years, by the time they are in 6th grade I won't be dealing with a team full of beginners. I would like to be able to make my 6th grade teams competitive with the public middle school's seventh grade teams. Since the public schools don't play their 6th graders and I do, it will just make my 7th and 8th grade teams that much tougher to beat.

The camp was fun. There were several girls who will need a lot of work, but there were also several who were catching on very quickly. I don't know if any of them will eventually be great volleyball players or not, but I tend to look at every young girl and see the next Logan Tom. Maybe one day I'll find one. I would love to some day sit and watch some young lady winning a national championship or an Olympic medal and I nudge the guy next to me and say, "I knew her when she still thought that catch and throw was a legal volleyball move." Until then I have a whole new crop of young ladies to teach about passing, serving, hitting, sportsmanship and teamwork. I can hardly wait.

The United States of New Orleans?

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco angrily criticized President Bush because he failed to mention the City of New Orleans in his State of the Union address last night.

Guess what Governor Blanco? Last night was the State of the Union Address, it wasn't about New Orleans, it was about America as a whole. He didn't mention Ridgecrest in his address either. Should I be angry and put out over that?

Besides her anger at her cesspool not being mentioned the Governor is upset that the entire state of Mississippi has received more federal relief money than the City of New Orleans did.

Gov. Blanco accused the White House of repeatedly delivering less money than Louisiana has needed to repair the damage to housing, schools and hospitals. By comparison, she said, Mississippi has been handed much more help.

"I just want an end to the disparities, once and for all," the governor said.

I got news for you Governor, The brunt of Katrina did not hit New Orleans. The worst part of hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi. New Orleans received a firm, but glancing blow. The main difference between Mississippi and New Orleans in the post Katrina era is that the people and government of Mississippi have been busy working to rebuild their state from the moment the winds subsided. New Orleans and the government in Louisiana have done nothing to help themselves except whine about what the federal government is not doing to fix all their problems.

To borrow one of my dear wife's favorite phrases, Governor, it's time to put on your big girls panties and start fixing your own troubles. We had family who were in hurricane Katrina, they got themselves out, then went back and cleaned up their own property, fixed their own damage, and went back to their jobs. Right after Katrina hit my family made financial and property donations in an effort to help. But feelings have changed. I will start feeling sorry for the people in New Orleans again, when I start seeing news stories about the rest of the population standing up and doing something to help themselves. But as long as the only thing the Gov. Blanco can do is whine that George Bush is not talking about New Orleans, helping New Orleans, or doing her job for her, then she and her cesspool called New Orleans can all go to hell.

State of the Union - 2007

There are a lot of recaps available for the Presidents State of the Union address this evening. So I'm not going to try and do that. I'll just mention the few of the things I liked and some of the stuff I didn't.

I like the part about the strong economy. I like the idea of a voucher program, even though it didn't call it that. He just talked about school choice.

I really would have like to hear him take a strong stance on immigration. But I have all but given up hope of expecting this President to take serious action to secure our southern border.

What I fouund most disturbing, but highly expected. The President speaking about the war in Iraw says

"Let us find out resolve and turn events towards victory"

and half the audiance just sat there on their hands. If you can't guess which half, it was the dems. I don't know what kind of message the democrats in Congress could send to America to make it any clearer. The Democrate majority in Congress do not want victory in Iraq.

You need further proof of this. Several minutes later, the President while speaking of the dangers of pulling out of Iraq before peace is established there said:

"Out of chaos in Iraq would emerge an emboldened enemy with new safe havens, new recruits, new resources and an even greater determination to harm America. To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September 11th and to invite tragedy. Ladies and Gentlemen nothing is more important at this moment in our history, than for American to succeed in the Middle East, to succeed in Iraq and to spare the American people from this danger."

The Repblican side of the aisle stood and clapped immediately. Slowly a few select dems on the other other side of the aisle also stood and politely clapped. But most of them remained seated. None more obvious than the Speaker of the House who sat, stone faced with her hand folded in her lap while her President called for victory in the war on terror to protect all Americans.

I am a firm believer that you cannot trust what a politician says. They are politicians and they will say whatever it takes to get elected. You have to learn what they think and what they want based on what they do, how they act, and what they support or object to. Nancy Pelosi by sitting there with her hands in her lap made it clear that she does not want us to win the war on terror and she does not want America to be safe. So what the hell does Nancy Pelosi want? Other than to be in power in the House of Representatives we have no idea.

I just can't understand the mindset of someone wanting their own nation to lose a war. Are they so morally bankrupt that they would put their own ambitions, thier own glory and their own job ahead of the welfare of their own country? Even more disturbing is the mindset of 50% of our voting citizens who support them in their desire to see our nation fail.

As for Jim Webb's Democrat Rebuttal to the State of the Union Address - What a pretentious asshole! This clown claimed that we need a new strategy in Iraq that doesn't involve

"a precipitous withdrawl that ignores the possiblity of further chaos"

but in the same breath insisted that we need

"regionally based diplomancy and a policy that will take our soldiers off the streets of Iraq's cities and and a formula that will in short order allow our combat forces to leave Iraq."

There is no mention in Jim Webb's speach of how they expect to win the war when their whole goal is to get our troops out of Iraq. Not one word about victory.

Oh wait! I forgot, the dems don't want victory. They only want to cut and run.

The people of the state of Virginia who voted for this buffoon should be ashamed of themselves.

2007 Academy Awards Nominations

The nominations for this years Academy Awards was released this morning. The list is here.

Scanning this list I thought for a few moments that I was going to score a 0% this year. But alas, I had to settle for a meager 2.5%. That means that I only saw 2 of this years nominated films in the theater. I saw two others on the list at home on video after its theatrical run was over.

So why is it that a guy who for many years spent every Saturday afternoon at the theater watching movies only saw 2 of this years nominated films in the theater. What changed?

Am I too busy to go to the theater? Maybe, but probably not, I still watch a lot of movies. I just watch them from home now.

Am I sick and tired of the "crap" that Hollywood is producing these days? Absolutely.

Am I unwilling to put my hard earned dollars into the hands of hollywood actors and actresses who insist on shooting off their mouths telling me how much they hate my country, my government, and me for voting for the politicians that I voted for. Again - Absolutely.

Is the theater business pricing itself out of business? If my family of five goes to the movies and if we use every discount we can (matinee price, discount coupons for snacks, sneaking snacks into the theater, etc) it still runs around $40 for our 80 minutes of entertainment. If we don't worry about doing this on the cheap we can drop over $50. Compare that to a video or pay per view movie at home with popcorn and soda for everyone runs us about $9.

Finally the main reason I didn't see most of this year's nominees at the theater is that I just wasn't interested. There were only a small handfull of movies released this year that I felt I wanted to see badly enough to go see them. And only three of them were nominated for Oscars, and they were nominated in the "animated feature", "art design", "visual effects" type catagories.

Bears and Colts

I've never seen or read about a knock down drag out fight between a bear and young horse where the horse won. Superbowl XLI isn't going to be much different.

Sunday afternoon was a little tense in our house. One of my favorite teams, the Bears were playing against my dear wife's favorite team, the Saints.

My dear wife is a long time aints fan. She has really enjoyed this year watching her favorite team transform from the aints into the Saints. I usually enjoy watching the Saints play, especially this year. I have on two different occasions sat and yelled at the television when the dolphins were passing up chances to pick up quarterback Drew Brees. It's good to see that on rare occassions my guesses as to who is going to be good QB material proves true.

While my dear wife was cheering on the Colts in the second game I really didn't care who won. In the end I succumbed to my dear wife's anxiousness and ended up cheering on the Colts also.

The best part of the evening was the red beans and rice my dear wife made for dinner. She wanted to cook something cajun just in case the Saints won.

Go Bears!

Online Drivers Licence Database

In an ultimate act of stupidity the new Democratic controlled congress has determined that the Department of Homeland Security's Driver's License Database should be made available online for anyone to access.

Fortunately you can request that your drivers license be removed from the online version of the database.

Follow the link below and do a search for your drivers license. Then submit a removal request.

Online Drivers License Database

Wilderness Survival

Would you survive in the wild? Your Result: Yesiree!....   You could live in the wild if you wanted to! You know what to eat, do, and stay away from! You could get shelter, food, water fast and easy-and the right treatments to injuries, snake bites etc...You know the outdoors like the back of your hand!!
Wouldn't last 2 minutes!.....
Not to sure...
Most likely you'll survive....
Maybe........
Would you survive in the wild? Quizzes for MySpace

Either I could survive, or I watch too many TV shows like Survivorman and Man vs. Wild. Besides, there's a big difference between knowing how to survive and actually being able to survive. Back in the dark ages my survival instructor in Boy Scouts said there are only two rules to survival: 1) If you panic you are dead, 2) if you give up hope you are dead. Everything else is subject to change depending on your environment, circumstances and other factors.

SSUSD New Food Policy

The Sierra Sands Unified School District has a new food policy that they are implementing. Food items with a high fat and sugar content will not be provided to students.

When I first saw this article in the Daily Independent I scanned it thinking that this was just one more attempt by the school district to try and force us parents to raise our kids the way they want them raised. But I was surprised to find out that high fat and sugar content foods are not being banned from the campuses. They just will not be available from the school. If I want to send my daughter to school with a lunch of Snickers bars with Cheese Whiz and soda I can still do that. She just won’t be able to buy that stuff from the school cafeteria.

I have to applaud this decision. Back in the dark ages, about 13 years ago I went to 6th grade with my niece for bring a parent to school day. Her Mom and Dad had unavoidable commitments that day so I filled in. I had a blast that day, right up to the point where we went to lunch. We filed into the cafeteria, grabbed out tray with our food on it and sat down to eat. Lunch that day was nachos. Lunch was a handful of corn chips with some half congealed artificial cheese-like substance dumped on top of it, a small bag with a couple dry hard cookies in it and a cup of juice.

Now I am not a picky eater. I will eat almost anything and if it doesn’t kill me I’ll try seconds. I love nachos, I love cookies and I like to have a small glass of juice with my bowl of cereal in the morning. But this lunch was awful. I could feel my arteries harden as I ate it. The feeling of my blood thickening at the same time that my heart rate was jacked up due to a raging sugar high was very distressing.

After lunch we went back to the class room where the teacher was smart enough not to expect the kids to be sitting in their seats. She had lessons planned that allowed the kids to get up and move from table to table around the room. I don’t know if this was planned or just a survival measure because every kid in that room was bouncing off the walls.

So after that experience I’m all for the schools supplying a healthier lunch option. If the kids want sugar and fat they can bring it from home. They just won’t be able to buy it at school.

This policy will not affect snacks that are sold at athletic events and fund raisers as most of them take place before or after school hours. The district is working on trying to get parents to support the new policy for class parties. I hope they don’t get too carried away trying to enforce this new policy for parties. Parties are supposed to be parties. I just can’t see a bunch of kids having a birthday party with celery sticks instead of cupcakes.

Coach Swapping?

The Miami Dolphins are interviewing Mike Shula for their open head coaching position.

If the Dolphins hire Shula it would mean that Miami and the University of Alabama will have traded coaches.

I like this idea. Mike seems to be a lot like his father - very smart and a good head for the game. More importantly, he seems like a real stand up guy. I also like the idea of a kid who was a ball boy when his Dad coached the Dolphins growing up to be the head coach himself.

The only guy out there right now that I would rather see in the Dolphins Head Coaching spot would be Marty Schottenheimer if the Chargers are stupid enough to fire him.

Vocabulary

Your Vocabulary Score: A-

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

I guess an A- is OK for a guy who only got C's in English in high school and slept through Freshman English in college.

Another Weekend Gone

Another weekend is coming to a close. It was a pretty good weekend. But it could have been better. It could have been longer.

Actually this weekend was a four day weekend for us. Friday was a normal flex Friday at work so we got that day off, then Monday was a holiday. There is never a bad four day weekend. But now that this one is coming to a close I could use a day or two to recover from my weekend. This was the one weekend each year that the whole family hates. It was time to take down our Christmas decorations. Right now we have almost all our decorations down and packed. The garage is full of plastic boxes. Normally we would have spent this afternoon shoving them all into the attic. But we decided to change or storage situation this year. Since the attic has been getting full we decided to clean out the shed and store a lot of the Christmas boxes there. But since the weather has been cold all weekend I didn't get the shed completely emptied out. So the boxes will have to stay in the garage for a few more days.

This weekend was pretty much four days of undecorating, volleyball practice and frustrating attempts to keep my computer working. My oldest daughter had volleyball practice three of the four days this weekend. On Sunday she got a double dose. We went to open volleyball in the early afternoon where we just played and had fun with some of her friends. Then we went to her regular practice that evening. I had fun at the practice. I have volunteered to help out in whatever way needed. Usually they only let me sweep the floor and shag some balls during drills. Sunday night I got to toss balls for drills for quite a while, then scrimmage with a couple other players for most of the rest of the practice. The scrimmaging was fun, working with the drills was more like coaching and I've been missing that the last couple months.

I have been having some computer problems with my laptop. About two weeks ago my Microsoft Word program has decided to stop working. I have been struggling with it for several days now and not getting very far. The program starts normally but once I start typing the program locks up somewhere between the first and tenth characters that I type. Everything just freezes. I can click on the close button or on the button in the toolbar in an attempt to close the program at which I get a messagebox that tells me the program is unresponsive and I select the option to close the program. Sometimes it closes after several minutes of doing nothing. Sometimes it never closes. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing seems to work. I have defragged the hard drive, repaired the Word installation, reinstalled Word, etc. For the most part nothing works. For about three hours on Saturday everything was working just fine. I was able to use Word to create a handout for a beginner volleyball camp. But then suddenly Word just stopped working again.

So until I can get it straightened out, I'm stuck using Thunderbird as a word processor.

So tomorrow its back to work again. I'm not looking forward to that. I only have one more week at this job. I was told last week that I had until this next Friday to finish the project I'm working on then I was being let go. So I have four days to finish my project, prepare a final report, present a briefing on difficulties encountered with the project, and find myself somewhere else to work on the base. Oh, boy, sounds like its going to be a fun week.

Daily Independent Changes

The Daily Independent, our local "daily" newspaper had been going through changes lately. Several months ago they decided that we no longer needed color Sunday comics. So they replaced them with black and white versions that were added to the weekly television listings section of the paper. Since this section of the paper is a different size than the rest of the paper, in order to make the Sunday comics fit they had to be shortened. So all the characters in the comics were distorted. Additionally they dropped several of the comics that they usually carried. I hated this decision. I have enjoyed reading the Sunday color comics since I was old enough to read. Also my father taught me that the best gift wrapping paper in the world is the color Sunday funnies. Now I have to use just plain old wrapping paper.

The next big change happened this week. The paper changed their delivery schedule from Tuesday through Friday evenings and Sunday mornings to Monday through Saturday mornings. I like the idea of getting a "daily" paper six days a week instead of only five. But I don't like not getting a Sunday paper and getting a morning paper is a total waste of time. The paper claims that this change will provide better customer service because the news will be more timely. Their example was instead of having to wait until Sunday morning to find out who won the Friday night high school football game we can find out on Saturday morning. My response is that they could have solved that problem years ago just by offering a Saturday paper. However I suspect that changing to paper from evening to morning delivery will not get the news to most people any earlier. I think many folks will be in the same boat we are. Our news has just been delayed an additional 9 hours not sped up at all. Since I don't have the time to read the paper before going to work in the morning, the paper either lays on the kitchen cupboard or on the driveway all day until we get home in the evening. Then we get to read about everything that happened the day before. At least with the evening paper we could sometimes read about things that had happened that morning. Now all our news is at least 24 hours old.

The worst part of this is the change to our Sunday routine. My dear wife and I loved to drop the kids off at Sunday school after church, get ourselves a donut for breakfast and go home, curl up in our chairs, and read the paper while enjoying a quiet breakfast together. Now without a Sunday paper, we find ourselves watching the news on TV instead.

This has been some pretty drastic changes to a newspaper that only really needed to hire a some reporters to collect more local news and start publishing a "daily" paper everyday.

I had already paid for my annual subscription before all these changes had been made. But I have to ask the staff at the Independent one question. You have been making a lot of changes lately and I don't like any of them. Now what are you going to do to convince me to continue my subscription when it comes due later this year?

San Francisco Politics

USA Today is reporting that

The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA, a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found.

Suddenly San Francisco's radical left wing politics is starting to make sense.

Nick Saban’s True Colors

Two weeks ago the press started asking Nick Saban the Miami Dolphin’s Head Coach about the rumors that he would be leaving the Dolphins to be the next coach at the University of Alabama. For two weeks Coach Saban emphatically replied:

"I'm not going to be the Alabama coach," he said last week.
Saban said he wouldn't comment on the Alabama opening anymore.
"I'm just making a rule to never comment on something like that again because every time you comment on it, it just makes for another story," Saban said. "So I'm not going to comment on it five years from now, and I'm not going to comment on it next week."
He reminded reporters of his stance after Miami's season-ending 27-22 loss to the Colts on Sunday, adding the Dolphins job is the one "I'm committed to doing well."

“I guess I have to say it,” Saban said. “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach.”

This answer was not enough for the media however and at every press conference they took every opportunity to ask him again about the Alabama job. Each time Nick Saban denied any interest in the Alabama job.

This morning, Nick Saban told the Dolphin’s owner, Wayne Huizenga, that he is leaving the Dolphins to take the Head Coaching job at the University of Alabama.

Good Luck Nick and good riddance. I liked Coach Saban when he was at LSU. As a Dolphin’s fan I was thrilled when he was hired two years ago as the new head coach. But that was before I discovered that the man in a hopeless liar. He stood up in front of several different podiums over several weeks and repeatedly lied his ass off to the entire sports world.

Congratulations to the University of Alabama you just agreed to pay a rumored 40 million dollars over 7 - 8 years to a man who will stand up and lie to you at the drop of a hat to further his own interests.

It is my understanding that the most important aspect of a college coach’s job is recruiting. How effective is Nick Saban going to be as a recruiter when prospective player's parents realize that this man is a liar. Will anyone at the University of Alabama, any alumnus, any prospective player, any current player at UA ever be able to believe anything their new head coach ever tells them. The man is a proven liar.

Good Luck over the next few years Alabama, you’re going to need it.

Who Am I?

I decided to try a new modern approach to answering the old question of who am I? Since there aren't any ancient seers living on top of any mountains around here for me to visit I had to try the modern approach - I googled myself.

I discovered that I am a:

• A guy in Denver who likes to write reviews on Amazon.com
  
• a Ph.D. student in Chemistry at UC Santa Cruz
  
• the Administration, Events, Exhibits, Restoration and Media Administrator at the Governatorial Mansion in Des Moines IA
  
• a men's clothier in St-Laurent, Canada
  
• a research pediatrician in Anaheim CA
  
• the Head of the Computer Science Department at the Universtiy of Alabama
  
• a pediatrician in Newport Beach, CA
  
• the President & CEO of APOK Technology, Inc
  
• a Macromedia Certified ColdFusion Developer
  
• a low income housing developer from Sunset Beach, CA
  

Wow, I'm a pretty complex guy. I guess if I ever get tired of being all those things I'll go back to being just a simple small town Mechanical Engineer, Software Developer, volleyball coach, webmaster, blogger, husband and father.

Boise State Fiesta Bowl

Boise State knocked off Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl this evening in single overtime. I missed the first half of the game because my daughter had volleyball practice this evening. But the final 90 seconds of the game, and the overtime was some of the best college ball I watched all season.

Boise State started the half with a 21 – 10 lead. They quickly ran that up to 28 – 10. Then they started making mistakes. Eventually Oklahoma tied the game up at 28 – 28. Then with only one minute on the clock Boise State’s quarterback threw an interception that Oklahoma ran back for a TD and a 7 point lead. Boise State was driving downfield trying to tie the game back up. When their drive eventually stalled they found themselves facing a 4th and 18. That’s when the Boise State coaching staff pulled out all the stops. They ran a perfect hook and lateral which scored the game tying touchdown with 7 seconds left in the game.

In overtime Oklahoma scored a TD on their first play. Boise State managed a first down and then once again their drive stalled. The scored a touch down on another trick play from the 3 yard line and decided to go for two to win the game. For the extra point they lined up with 4 players wide right. The QB faked the toss right, switched the ball into his left hand and held it out to the running back who was blocking for him. The RB scampered left into the end zone.

It was a fantastic finish. But for Boise State tail back Ian Johnson the excitement was just beginning. During the post game celebration Johnson was standing with his arm around his girlfriend, a Boise State Cheerleader. When the questions were over and with the camera still centered on the couple, he dropped to his knee and proposed.

She said yes.

Call me a romantic or stupidly sentimental but I thought it was a perfect end to a marvelous football game.

The only thing wrong with this game was that the 12-0 Boise State Broncos were not playing Ohio State for the national championship. But for that to happen division 1 college football is going to have to bite the bullet and admit that they would like to have a true championship game instead of all the money the bowl system brings in. I suspect that the money is going to keep winning for many more years. Even though Utah in 2004 and Boise State tonight showed that there are teams in the country who do not play in BCS conferences that deserve a shot at a title.