Quotes from last night's Predators - Oilers game.

EDMONTON COACH CRAIG MACTAVISH
On the topic of Jason Smith…
"Unreal, just the way that he played. Two fights and you couldn't ask for more commitment and better leadership from Jason. It means a lot."

As if there isn't enough spam in my e-mail, I am now getting spammed as I walk around the quad. It seems like every other block of the sidewalk is chalked up with something. It's especially bad around election weeks for homecoming queen or the worthless student government (not to say that homecoming queen is worth anything either). Before these elections, any available space on sidewalks around campus are covered in "Vote for me so I will feel special" messages. Walking around campus makes your shoe soles look like they are supporting gay pride. Elections for student government were held weeks ago and there are still messages which have not washed away. In addition there advertisements for a company selling lecture notes and event notices for things that happened within the past week.

A company called Unotes is openly advertising on the sidewalk that they have lecture notes available for all of those large, freshman lecture classes. I find this mildly offensive since I was never offered this service when I was a freshman. Why would anyone ever want to be a responsible student when they could skip class and party for a nominal fee. If they try hard enough, I'm sure they can get a copy of the tests as well. After all, most students believe they are entitled to a degree just because someone is giving the University money. And what a great image for parents of prospective students. Couldn't they chalk up something about Playboy coming to town for the annual co-ed issue just to take up the remaining empty sidewalk?

The other major defacements on the sidewalk are very large, artistic announcements for a church event that happened this past weekend. While I applaud them getting their message out, can you stop burning it into my skull as I walk around the quad? The same thing goes for the "God on the Quad, Monday 8PM" messages between each of the previous announcements. Personally, I find this hilarious. In my mind, I picture these kooks in white robes standing around on the quad looking up to the sky waiting for God to come down and say hi. Wouldn't you think if God was coming to the quad, there would be banners and signs posted around town and announcements on TV?

My favorite sidewalk spam are the messages about a yard sale that happened this past weekend, "Yard Sale for Invisible Children". Do invisible children really need a yard sale? Are they selling invisible clothes that their invisible toddlers grew out of? Maybe they have some invisible toys that other invisible children don't play with any more? Do I have to pay with invisible cash or will you take an invisible check?

As much as this sidewalk spam amuses me, I get so tired of seeing it every day. These chalkers should have to come back and wash the sidewalks of their powdery drivel, especially the day after elections. If these people had to take responsibility for defacing the sidewalk, there would be a lot less graffiti. I think it would be a great idea if the election losers had to scrub the sidewalks the day after the election. That could be entertaining.

A new review has been posted for 300. I can't think of anything witty to say.

I found out today that my parakeet, Athena, is ancient. Apparently the average lifespan of a parakeet is 7 years. I've had Athena for at least 11 years and maybe as long as 14 years. I can't remember exactly when I got her.

When I went to feed Athena this morning, she didn't look so well. She had a large buildup of poop on her rear and her rear looked a little swollen. So, I went to work a little worried and ready to do some research. Nothing I found online could help me figure out what was wrong, but everyone seemed to say if your parakeet looks sick, take it to the vet now. Parakeets don't show signs of illness unless they are really sick.

After a couple phone calls, I found a bird doctor and left work to take Athena to the doctor. The first thing he tells me is that there is a chance she will die from just looking at her. Small birds can become frightened, and their heart can continually beat faster and faster until they die. How comforting. We got Athena out of the cage and he looked her over. She was a little underweight, but was as feisty as she could be even being sick. The doctor noticed that one of her nasal holes had become clogged. This was mainly due to old age. The area around their beak where the nasal holes are grows like our fingernails, so he took a Dremmel and ground the growth off until the hole was cleared.

The doctor did a mouth swab and got a stool sample in order to run some tests. I feared the worst, but it turns out that she just has a bacterial infection. I have to give her some antibiotics, but she should be ok for a while longer. I left the vet with a sick bird, some medicine and another $143 put on a credit card. I hope it was money well spent.

I found out today that I did a lot better on my first topology homework than I originally thought. One question was broken into 5 parts and I thought each question was treated individually. I actually got 41 out of 60 points, so I almost managed a C.

Today in class we started talking about Transformers. Ok, not really, but he kept mentioning maximals. I have no idea what a maximal is in topology, but in my world they are a group of Transformers from the Beast Wars series.

Still no mention of a mid-term. I think it's a bit late in the game to plan on a mid-term. At the earliest, it would be next week, which is 6 weeks before the end of the semester. I'm still crossing my fingers that we skip the final as well.

Spring break is over and the peasants are sad. It was so nice to have a week of nothing (or almost nothing). Aside from a few critical tasks (shopping for a car and taxes), the week was spent relaxing and doing what I do best, playing video games. My primary goal was to test a few different baseball games and to decide which one I wanted this year. The worst part of spring break was completing taxes as I found out the government doesn't know what lube is. They screwed me hard. I'm ready for that national sales tax any time now. To ease some of the pain, Erika and I went to see Craig Ferguson in Birmingham. Despite being crammed into the comedy club like sardines, the show was hilarious.

I thought that yesterday would be miserable after enjoying nine days of waking up whenever I wanted and lounging around at home most of the day. 6 AM came rather early yesterday but I managed to stumble to the shower and be awake and ready for work by 7:30. When I got to work, I couldn't even remember what I had been working on. Thankfully, I was given a project to work on until I could collect myself. Right before the break, the state of Alabama decided to change the standards that students must meet to graduate with a degree in education. Why that matters to me is that I have to go through all the work I've done since I started here and rip out those standards. Then I'm in a holding pattern as I wait for the new standards to be implemented and for the department heads to decide what they want to do to evaluate the standards.

Topology class was a party as always. The professor finally gave back our first homework assignment which we turned it in about two months ago. He hopes to give back the second homework this week which we turned in 6 weeks ago. I got a whopping 41 out of 110 points on the first assignment. The highest grade I know of was a 57 by the brain of the class. By my calculation, my grade should be a B. I don't feel at all bad about my grade either. My future grades should be better (by how much I don't know) because of a nice little forum called Ask a Topologist. People post the homework problems and we get at least an idea of what the answer should be. Most of the responses are cryptic, but it gives us a head start in answering the problem. We were supposed to have a mid-term 2 weeks ago before spring break. We are still waiting for him to announce when it will be. I'm certainly ok if we never have a mid-term or a final. Just let our homework be our grade.

By the end of the day I was pretty tired. I had to lecture after normal work hours so I ended up working an 11 hour shift. I came home to eat dinner and tried to do my review for 300. I got started on it, but my muse wasn't helping. I ended up watching Dancing with the Stars and CSI: Miami while trying to find the motivation to start the review. I did eventually manage to get halfway through the review before deciding to play Lord of the Rings Online for a few minutes. I played about fifteen minutes before I crashed and decided it was time for bed.

Wow! Surprisingly enough, I've been keeping up with my reviews. I don't know if that's because I've been extremely opinionated or the movies have been interesting enough that I've wanted to write about them. I just posted my review for Ghost Rider. I can almost guarantee you'll get a chuckle.

Today might as well be the first day of spring break. Campus is dead. In my boredom, I decided to confront one of the people that turned against Erika and me last year. I did this on my own accord because for some reason I haven't moved forward. I've been puzzled as to why this person stopped talking to us after all we did for her including helping her move during Spring Break last year.

So, I sent her an e-mail telling her what i saw and asking for answers to what could have possible gone wrong. It didn't seem harsh although I did accuse her of being disrespectful and discourteous to Erika. Well, Erika didn't really want to be associated with it which I found out after I sent the e-mail. Apparently it bothers me a lot more than it bothers her.

I'm not a confrontational guy, so now I'm having second thoughts about what I did. I have no idea what will be said if anything. I did request a read receipt so I'll know that she read it. I'd hate for my work to be discarded without reading. Even if I do get answers, I don't see a friendship being repaired. I probably should have just moved on and forgotten about it; I have other friends now. If other people want to be stupid and hold grudges, go for it. I guess that e-mail was just my closure to the situation. I said what I wanted to say. Time to move on.

Aubrey and Karon are Proud to Announce the Birth of their Child, Jason, on February 26, 1975.

Unfortunately, Jason is the reincarnation of a goat.

Aubrey and Karon are confused. So very confused..

What Did Your Birth Announcement Say? at QuizGalaxy.com

Just posted a movie review for The Astronaut Farmer. I also neglected to tell anyone that the review for Children of Men was up as well. Enjoy

Think about your belly button. Is it still there? Is it an innie or an outie? Has your belly button been munching on your shirt again? Congrats, you have just performed omphaloskepsis (om-fuh-lo-SKEP-sis): contemplation of the navel.

And knowing is half the battle! YO JOE!!

This morning I was to give a lecture to a group of disinterested students about LiveText, the system for which I've been hired to manage. I walked into the auditorium to be blasted in the face by sweltering heat. By the time I walked in there, turned on the computer and projector, and then walked out of the room to find someone to turn on the a/c, sweat was beading up on my forehead.

I started class and tried to log into LiveText only to get an error screen. I tried a few more times thinking maybe I typed in the wrong password or had the Caps Lock on. Nothing I could do was working. Crap, what now? The whole lecture revolved around showing these students who could care less how to use LiveText. I cracked a few jokes before deciding to go old school. I pulled the projector screen up and grabbed a dry erase marker. My lecture consisted of me drawing out the screens on the board and talking about what would happen. Amazingly I was able to go for 30 minutes before I gave in that LiveText just wasn't going to work.

All of this comes on the heels of talking to a professor yesterday about a project they are trying to complete. Someone who has no clue about computers (can barely operate Word and email) initially wanted me to show her how to use Access to collect data for this project. Maybe I should just stab myself in the head now and get it over with. I find out from my boss before the meeting that this professor couldn't even fill out a template that had been created in Excel. All she had to do was type stuff in a box, but my boss had to do it for her because this professor just couldn't wrap her head around using Excel. I understand that not everyone is a computer whiz, but when someone shows you how to type in a box, can't you be a good little monkey and hit the keys?

I went to the meeting wondering how I would get out of setting the database up and managing it for her. Luckily the project was so big that it really needed a full-time person working on it for a couple of months to complete. That wasn't going to fly for me and they were reluctant to hire someone else to do the work. For a brief minute I contemplated doing it on the side, but I knew what I would charge would be at least double what they could talk a college kid into. I finally convinced the two professors involved that Excel would do what was needed with manual data entry by graduate students. But as neither person working on the project knows how to use Excel, I've been roped into creating the spreadsheet for them. I don't really mind since it's slow right now. I'd rather spend the 2 hours doing brainless, productive work than spending the days and weeks it would take to build a database.

As if that weren't enough, I'm in contact with a graduate student who has a professor wanting a database application to be built. The grad student has basic knowledge of databases and Access and I've been able to show him a few tricks, but his professor wants this big application that should be designed by a professional with a user-friendly interface. Of course the professor thinks this is a small task that can just be whipped out. I think I'd have a better chance of understanding topology than this student has in getting this application together. What happened to just using pen and paper?

For the record, topology is a bunch of drivel about balls and families that makes absolutely no sense.