It seems that someone finally sat down and figured out what we mean when we say “Dude”. Linguist Deciphers Uses of Word *Dude*. Something the world has much needed.

Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity – an effortless kinship that*s not too intimate.

Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspected as gay.

So here is to cool solidarity, man. And now I won*t feel so out of place when I use “dude” well into my 30s.

So I have started to put together a site for my brother Jay to document his extensive travels and host some pictures. Hopefully we will have this up and running by the end of the weekend.

Here we see Jay and our cousin Jenny McWilliams.

The second in a series of disturbingly thought-out, fictional news articles about my fantasy football team.

Calculating the odds

Coming into week 13, the Squirrels had a simple formula for success. Win out and hope for a couple of breaks. The first part was handled easily with a 77-38 victory over the rival Wailing Wallabys, but one major break went against the Squirrels as Shaun Alexander rattled off a 32 yard TD late in the Monday night game, leading 6th place WVU to a victory over Thomas* Nightmares. Though tied in record, WVU holds a 48 point lead over the Squirrels and the two teams do not play again this season.

What could have been a simple playoff scenario has suddenly become much more complex as the Squirrels sit in 7th place, looking to leapfrog three teams in just two weeks. There is still hope for the team, however. Like a poker player moving all-in, the Rabid Squirrels are counting their *outs* with the teams ahead of them. From worst to first, here are the teams in question.

6. WVU. SITUATION: This is perhaps the most troubling team, as they hold a significant points lead over the Squirrels. In order for the hometown team to pass them, WVU must lose to either the fading niners or the 9th place Freezeboys. THE SKINNY: The chances are slim, but the Squirrels still have a few more outs even if WVU makes the playoffs.

5. Bucs. SITUATION: At 6-6-1, the Bucs pose another threat to the Squirrels* chances. However, their game against top-ranked WV Colts in week 15 gives us hope that they will get a critical loss and allow the Squirrels to pass them. THE SKINNY: One of those situations where the Squirrels have to hope for good things from others. But with the Colts riding high, the chances are excellent that the Bucs can be leapfrogged at the wire.

4. WV Rattlesnakes. SITUATION: The Snakes are also 6-6-1, but the Squirrels play them in week 15. If they can pull off that victory, they*ll pass them. THE SKINNY: As simple as it gets. Win and you*re in.

3. Niners. SITUATION: At 8-5, the Niners would appear to be firmly in the top bracket. They will play a major role in the last two regular season games, as a victory by them over WVU this week would help the Squirrels* immensely. Should they LOSE to WVU, then Rabid Squirrels fans will be rooting for the Niners to drop the final game in week 15. THE SKINNY: Root, root root for the Niners, unless they lose this week. Then it*s root, root root for the last place Nightmares to pull off the unlikely upset. If the Niners lose twice, two victories by the Squirrels will give them a solid chance to pass the third place team.

2. Purple Pride. SITUATION: Also 8-5, the second-place Pride hold a 22 point edge over the Squirrels but can still be caught due to some fortuitous scheduling. The Squirrels and Pride match up in a major clash this week, and in week 15 the rival Wallabys will square off against the Pride. There*s a chance, albeit at somewhat long odds, that the Pride will drop both games, giving the Squirrels a chance. THE SKINNY: Win two, hope the Pride lose two and also pick up 23 points in the meantime? It*s a longshot, but possible.

1. WV Colts. SITUATION: At 9-4, the Colts have sewn up a playoff spot. THE SKINNY: Rooting for the Colts has become a major pastime around Squirrels* HQ, as they factor into one of the critical playoff scenarios. If the Squirrels make the top bracket, they will likely face the Colts in the first game. The two teams split the season series, with the Rabid Squirrels taking the week 11 matchup by a score of 99-75.

Conclusions are tough to come by

Two of the teams are fairly straighforward: The Colts beat the bucs and the Squirrels win out, including that week 15 win over the Rattlesnakes. That will catapult the Squirrels into 5th place with an 8-7 record. Assuming this happens, then one of the following three must occur:

1. The Niners beat WVU in week 14.
2. The Niners lose to WVU in week 14 and to Thomas* Nightmares in week 15
3. Purple Pride loses to the Wailing Wallabys in week 15 and the Squirrels pick up at least 23 points in total scoring on the Pride in the last two games.

What are the odds? It*s not easy to calculate them, but they*re certainly better than they were three weeks ago when the Squirrels were languishing in 9th place and held a 3-7 record. I wouldn*t buy those playoff tickets just yet, but they*re beginning to look a lot more tempting.

I like to think that I am as stoic as the next red blooded American male but there are a few things that get me all choked up and teary. The problem is, the don*t really seem to make any sense. Maybe someone with a Psych PhD can enlighten me.

1) The final sled run in Cool Runnings.

2) Convoy by C.W.McCall.

3) The last 15 minutes of The Replacements.

Seriously, what is wrong with me. I get all choked up and teary whenever I hear/see any of these.

That is who I got an email from in my spam-box today. Normally I just delete everything in there but I am fascinated by this new wave of “Christian Lending”, “Christian Dating” and “Christian Debt Reduction”. All of this while I attend a church that many “Christians” consider to be a non-church. Odd that.

What is a Christian lending institution? While the population of Muslims in this country continues to increase, it is still a pretty good bet that in any given workplace over 90% of the employees would identify as Christian if the chose to identify a religion. So what qualifies a company as a Christian company? Is there a church affiliation? Do they have to get certified somehow? These are questions I need answered.

Anyway, if anyone wants “Sincere Mortgage Quotes from Reliable Christian Lenders” I would happily forward this email on to you. I*d post their message but it showed up in a bunch of chopped up graphics and I don*t feel like piecing them together.

Just finished watching the final episode of Long Way Round , a reality show on Bravo that chronicles a 4-month transcontinental motorcycle trip that Ewan McGregor and another actor, Charley Boorman, took over a 4 month period. Swear to god, they stated in London, crossed all of Europe and then through Asia all the way to Siberia, took a boat to Anchorage, and then all the way down through Canada and the US to New York. They crossed 20,000 miles, pitched tents, stayed in shitty motels, ate all sorts of odd things in various countries, got into accidents, everything you would imagine.

Not only that, they did so without much in the way of support day-to-day. There was a cameraman with them all the time, but the support vehicle only hooked up with them at border crossings. Still, for all the compelling stuff that they had, the most amazing part was near the end tonight. They had finally made it to their final stop before the last 100 mile jaunt into NYC and they were reunited with their families (unbeknownst to them). Seeing Boorman*s kids jumping all over him was really cool. But even more amazing, to me, was the next morning, when they hit McGregor with another surprise. Apparently he hadn*t seen his dad in a really long time, and he also happens to be a motorcyclist. So the producers flew him in from Scotland and had him show up with one of the support guys, both of them on bikes. The guy says, “Hey, guys, I*d like for you to meet Laurence from BMW (that*s the kind of bikes they were riding).” *Laurence* pulls off his full helmet and turns around, and as soon as he realizes what*s going on Ewan absolutely shrieks, “DAD!!!” and I swear, he covered the 20 feet between them in 3 steps. It was really fantastic to watch.

I don*t know why that is, really. I guess it*s because there*s so little on television that*s truly legitimate. Don*t get me wrong, I*m sure a certain amount of license was taken with this show like it is with any other, but I can*t imagine that THAT moment, the absolute emotion, was anything but real.

Simply a fascinating article at ZDNet about how Google googles. Not an overly technical article but it outlines some of the unique problems and creative solutions that the search engine company runs up against.

“# Over four billion Web pages, each an average of 10KB, all fully indexed.
# Up to 2,000 PCs in a cluster.

# Over 30 clusters.
# 104 interface languages including Klingon and Tagalog.
# One petabyte of data in a cluster — so much that hard disk error rates of 10-15 begin to be a real issue.
# Sustained transfer rates of 2Gbps in a cluster.
# An expectation that two machines will fail every day in each of the larger clusters.
# No complete system failure since February 2000.

And it is all hidden behind a deceptively simple, white, Web page that contains a single one-line text box and a button that says Google Search.

Actually, it is probably running amok everyday. But this morning two things have caught my eye as I surf idly through my morning.

First is this crazy book report from Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez. Some excellent Flash work and you will never look at To Kill a Mockingbird the same way again. Whether that*s a good thing or not is left as an exercise for the class.

Second, Stuart Davis points out something that I never would have thought of. But now that I have, it may haunt me all day…

“here*s the weird thing about Dan Folgelberg*s name. if you look up the section of the dictionary that has the words that most closely resembles his name (like, where would you put *Folgelberg* in the dictionary), you discover that he would be put right in between *folding* and *folia*. are you thinking what i*m thinking? yeah, it*s #!@% WEIRD alright, there are NO WORDS in English which begin with F-O-L-E, and also ZERO WORDS that begin with F-O-L-F and also ALSO ZERO words in English that begin with F-O-L-G. wha? huh?”

Stu goes on to offer many interesting suggestions to fill this glaring hole in linguistics.

Ahh I remember it well. It wasn*t my first journey into the world of the obsession-inducing computer games but it was the first time I lost weeks to one. And now they are back and on the web in glorious DHTML.

DHTML Lemmings

Fear thsoe little buggers for they shall steal your soul!
And just for fun here is more information about the original game and the little furballs that started it all.

Over the holiday weekend I got the GEDCOM file for the Sauerbrei family tree and dumped it into the genealogy software on the site. So if you are interested, check it out. A good place to start is to click on the Surnames page unless you are looking for someone in particular.