With all the concerns, be they alarmist or otherwise, that cell phones cause bad things to happen in your head, does a model that transmits sound through bone seem like the best idea?

There's a Japanese company that's selling just such a model, intended for use where noise makes traditional cell phones difficult to use. You apparently hold the phone to your forehead, and a port on the phone transmits a signal that the skull bones transmit to the cochlea. You plug an ear, and you can hear the call.

Apparently the technology is already in use in Japan in standard phones, and are popular with the elderly as they can hear the "bone phone" better. I think I'd opt for the TTD/TTY, thanks.

As much as I hate to admit it, I find that I am now actively watching three reality shows. As if the cell phone wasn't making me feel like enough of a sell out.

But if I'm going to sell out, I might as well do so full-bore. Call it the Max Power path to destroying the soul.

American Idol is back, with three episodes this week following our intrepid band of judges and host Ryan Seacrest from town to town looking for young people who can sing. I've only seen parts of the two episodes shown so far, but that's enough for me to safely say that looking for young people who can sing is more difficult than it sounds. It's apparently going to get harder tonight when the show moves on to Houston. And, as is often required, as the talent drops the emotions spike. Houston is apparently chock-a-block full of tone deaf drama queens.

I don't get the sense that the producers are trying to build up any contestants too much yet. The Hollywood portion of things will start to set that up, I'm sure.

Over on America's Next Top Model, the consensus (well, a consensus of three) is that this year's group isn't quite as attractive as last year's group. They're hardly bowsers, but there are a lot more "striking" women.

There's also a lot more drama this year than last, as there's more one on one tension than last year's factionalism. Camille is shaping up to be this season's Robin, at least based on drama. There seems to have been an early assault on plus size women, as the only contestant classified as such went out in week one (though it was more for refusing to do a shoot and not being able to articulate why than anything else), and the contestant most noted for having large boobs went out last night. Given how much time they spent going on about Elyse's suspected eating disorder last season, you'd think they'd want the curvier women around longer.

And, of course, there's a new episode of The Apprentice on tonight. Sam will put his snake-oil salesmanship on the line as project manager (at least that's what I get from the promo), so I'm going to predict that the men will finally win a competition and the women will get to pare down their roster.

Unrelated to TV, kudos to former BU Ice Dog Carl Corazzini on his first two goals a NHLer, both coming in a 4-1 Bruins win over the Rangers.

So I was a little off in my prediction as to the next candidate to drop in the Democratic primaries, due primarily to my missing that Joe Lieberman wasn't campaigning in Iowa, explaining why I didn't hear him mentioned much in pre-caucus discussion (I can only plead a mix of ignorance and temporary insanity).

Dick Gephardt will apparently take the collar instead after his surprising fourth-place tumble, not even bothering to go to New Hampshire.

I'll be very interested to see how John Edwards' close second place finish translates up here, though I don't know if he'll get out of single digits in a race with three New Englanders and Wes Clark, who would have to file New Hampshire state income tax for 2003 if they had such a thing.

Not that any of this means that much right now, what with the Pats in the Super Bowl and all. Woo hoo!

I was going to post about yesterday's episode of The Apprentice, but I wound up writing most of what I was going to say in a comment over on the Bruce's blog. Go read that - after you finish here.

What I am going to write about is another reason why I picked the right woman to marry (not that there was any doubt). I was going down to Providence today to look over a college bowl tournament site, and went to the ATM to get money for the train ticket, when I discovered I didn't have my wallet. It was where I'd left it - in my desk drawer at work, where it is 99 percent of the time I leave it somewhere other than its designated coat pocket.

I had nothing - my ATM card, credit cards, even a calling card, were all in the wallet. I had my Babson ID, which was pretty much useless. The $1.25 I had to take the T over to South Station was all the money I had on me.

Thankfully, I was able to make a collect call to Sarah's office, and even more thankfully a co-worker of her's that I know answered.

(For those of you wondering where my new cell phone was, it was sleeping peacefully in a bag at home. I'd realized I'd forgotten it when we were already driving into Boston, and figured I wouldn't need it. I also turned down Sarah's offer to take hers, saying I didn't know who I'd be calling. Double oops.)

So what does Sarah do to help me in my hour of need? She gets on the T, takes out some money for me, gives me her ATM card just in case, and then gets back on the T to go to work. Does she rock or what?

And as it turned out, I wasn't the most screwed person on the train. Providence is the last stop on the line I took down, and as I was getting my things, a guy sitting diagonally across the aisle from me looked around plaintively and asked those of us still in earshot, "Doesn't this train make a stop at Worcester?"

For those of you who don't know the geography: Providence is an hour due south of Boston. Worcester is an hour due west. Suffice it to say the guy was screwed if he needed to be in Worcester any time before, say, 5 pm (it was 1 pm or so when we pulled in).

In any case, the meeting went well, and I got a chance to wander around the Providence Place Mall, which is amazing. I think it's cool, and I don't even like malls. The train station is also directly across the street from the Rhode Island state house, so I got a much better look at it than I normally do from 95. I think I unfairly diss it in Mark Across America, though I still like the greater simplicity of Maine's capitol building better.

Sarah and I then ate dinner out, and came back in time to tune into the BU-BC hockey game and see that we were losing 3-1 and yanking Sean Fields for the second game in a row. We did tune in later, just in time to see us go down 5-1. At this point, I'll just be happy to make the Hockey East playoffs, home ice be damned.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am Mark Coen, and that I approve of the preceding message.

(Those of you living in or near a primary state, or who like to watch political ads, get this. The rest of you will at some point - though you may wish otherwise when you do.)

I like space. As I mentioned back when we lost the space shuttle Columbia, it's always been an interest. So you'd think I'd be happy with all this talk about going back to the moon and to Mars. But I'm not, really. I can't escape the feeling that it's election year BS that'll fade to black sometime around January 20, 2005. Even if W gets re-elected.

It's not that we shouldn't go back. We should. And I know it's going to be expensive. How can't it be, given that we have to come up with all new stuff to go back? But I'd be a lot more comfortable with the expense and the hoopla if it didn't seem like the whole plan is another way to keep W in the news in a positive light and provide some sort of "vision."

I would be much less cynical if the announcement was a little less over the top. I mean, a permanent return to the moon is pretty big in and of itself, even without the Mars talk.

And while it seems like the cost for most of this is coming from existing programs, there's still going to be a cost involved. Which means more spending, which is an unusual follow-up to tax cuts. Unless you've got a lot of stock in an aerospace firm, or have friends in the industry.

There's also part of me that thinks we're trying to get back to the moon before the Chinese, who are looking to get into space in a big way. I suppose they can use the room.

In other news, I can't say that Carol Moseley-Braun's decision to drop her Presidential bid and back Howard Dean does much for me. There's a funny picture on CNN right now that show her at a podium, with Dean in the background clapping and looking kind of peeved.

While it's nice to see the herd thin out, it'd be better to see a larger name drop out. Between Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, my vote to drop is Joe Lieberman. He's not going to be a factor in Iowa (he'll finish fifth, at best), isn't looking to do much in New Hampshire (where he could take fourth place, as long as neither Gephardt or Edwards get a bump from Iowa), and I'm not sure if any of the February 3 states are going to help him. I suppose he may try to hold out until Super Tuesday, when most of New England and the mid-Atlantic states vote. Good luck to him.

Damn it's cold.

I've been looking at the world a little differently recently. Why, you ask?

I now wear glasses.

Friends and colleagues will tell you in no uncertain terms that this is a long time coming. From a diminishing ability to read signs to the near-permanent squint I've adopted when using the computer, the signs that I needed some sort of eyewear were pretty obvious. But, in true procrastinatory fashion, I didn't get around to getting things checked out. At least not until my wife dragged me into the optometrist.

I got to read eye charts, pick out numbers from their differently-colored backgrounds, and even did some sort of 3D test where I had to pick out which circle of a group of three appeared raised. We did the air puff glaucoma test (which wasn't as bad as some have made it out to be), and some other stuff, too. Finally, I got into the chair and played the "which is clearer?" game.

When all was said and done, the doc said I had an astygmatism, which he described as my eye being shaped more like a football and less like a baseball. I'm also apparently slightly nearsighted (I think; I can't remember which -sighted it was). Nothing too out of hand, but still worthy of glasses.

So it was off to Lenscrafters to pick out frames and such. I actually found a pair pretty quickly, something like the second or third pair I tried on. I was angling for Drew Carey-type black rims, but the wife wasn't buying any of it. In any event, I'm told by various people that they look good, they don't make me look different, they make me look smarter, and that they make me look younger. Heck, I would have gotten glasses years ago if I knew they could do all that!

Anyway, the good news is that print appears much sharper now than it had in the past. The bad news is that the lenses distort how objects look. Not too badly, but as long as I'm wearing these things my monitor will never look the same again.

Mike Burger wrote with some clarifications regarding college hockey conferences, filling in the knowledge gaps. Two things of note from him:

1. Splitting up the Alaska teams was purposeful, as schools didn't want to make two trips to Alaska each season. For the CCHA, teams make 3 trips to Alaska in a 5 year period (outside of Nebraska-Omaha, who goes every year). Games don't count against game total, much as when a football team travels to play Hawaii at home.

2. CHA is mostly leftover programs from when division II hockey got shut down (which I should have known, looking at the membership). Mike thinks Robert Morris joining CHA and things standing pat is most likely (that jibes with most of what's out there) or that the ECAC will poach from Atlantic Hockey, Atlantic Hockey will poach from CHA, leaving leftover teams (like Air Force or Bemidji) out in the cold, so to speak.

I missed Paul O'Neill's 60 Minutes appearance tonight (admittedly, I got caught up in the Eagles-Packers game), but there was something about the White House's first response to this whole thing that's been bothering me.

The quote, from White House spokesman Scott McClellan:

"It appears that the world according to Mr. O'Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people." (emphasis mine)

It's probably been noted by others, but to me this pretty much says the official White House position is that the ends justified the means. Which makes me think it less likely that O'Neill is talking out of his hat.

I know you can't exactly say during a campaign "If elected, I plan on invading Iraq no later than March 2003," but it does strike me that he could have at least mentioned his interest in using the military to force regime changes. I think there are a few people who would have thought about their vote a litte more, if not differently (both for and against him).

I had two things happen to me at church today that had never happned before.

I got left hanging when giving the sign of peace. At one point in the Mass, parishoners give each other a sign of peace, usually a handshake or a wave and/or nod if you're not in handshake range.

We had a woman sitting right in front of me, and after Sarah and I gave each other the sign, the woman and I exchanged little nods while I extended my hand. There was no hand in return. Suffice it to say I wasn't thinking the most peaceful thoughts after that.

I had a family cut in line for communion. This turned out to be less of an affront than I thought. The family was just trying to get back to their pew, and the side area of the church we were in has a very narrow aisle.

There was a third thing that I'd not seen (or, more accurately, heard) before, and this was a letter from Archbishop Sean O'Malley prepping us for the coming "reconfiguration" of the diocese, which will include the closing of several parishes. While the sex abuse scandal is a definite factor, I think this would have happened at some level anyways. Between the drop in church attendance and the rising costs of running parishes, some consolidation is inevitable. Part of the letter today noted that to get all the church property in Boston alone up to code would cost $140 million.

No announcements yet as to who's going to shut down, but my guess is that you'll see a bunch of closings in Boston, in part due to changing demographics and part due to the value of property in the city. We'll see.

After boring you with talk of college football conference shifts all fall, let's switch gears so I can bore you about college hockey conference shifts.

Let's start with Vermont, which is leaving the ECAC for Hockey East. It's a smart move, as it puts them in a conference which has most of the other public universities that play division 1 hockey (UConn is in Atlantic Hockey) and with some of Vermont's fellow America East schools. Personally, I look forward to making a return trip to Burlington, as my one trip up there was a lot of fun. Good crowd and a good college town.

The move leaves the ECAC at 11, which isn't so bad, except that a vote coming this week may cut that number to 8. There's a proposal in front of athletic directors from division 3 schools that will prevent schools that "play up" to division 1 in a sport from offering scholarships to athletes in that sport. Eight schools would be affected, four in hockey, and three in the ECAC (RPI, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence). There's a possibility of grandfathering in the schools who currently fit this bill, and the main proposal may very well fail anyway. But it'll be interesting to see how this comes down.

Should the ECAC drop to 8, they may be unwittingly helped in finding new members by the University of Findlay. They announced this past week that they are going to drop hockey after the end of this season (and, in a classy move, didn't tell the head coach that until 2 hours before the press conference). This will leave Findlay's conference, College Hockey America, with just 5 teams. It will also lose its automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

CHA isn't totally screwed, as Robert Morris is joining for women's hockey and may find itself pressed to bring the men along (they are currently planning on playing independently). They may also be able to get a team or two to jump from Atlantic Hockey; there's apparently talk that Quinnipiac may join.

Part of the problem is that CHA is kind of a catch-all conference. Dismissing Findlay, memebers include Bemidji St. in Minnesota, Niagara, Alabama-Huntsville, Air Force, and Wayne State in Detroit. If CHA were to fold, it wouldn't be too hard to see Niagara go to the ECAC, Bemidji and Air Force to the WCHA, and Wayne State to the CCHA.

This assumes that those conferences would want them. Niagara and the ECAC seems like a good fit. Bemidji and Air Force would get the WCHA to 12 teams (though having three Colorado schools could make for tricky scheduling). CCHA is already at 12, though they could try to ship Alaska-Fairbanks to the WCHA. Whether or not they want to trade the Nanooks for Wayne State is another story entirely (same goes for getting Bemidji and Air Force into the WCHA).

Oh, and to make matters even odder, the ECAC could try to poach from Atlantic Hockey. There's some talk about Holy Cross and Sacred Heart having some interest. Who knows?

About the only thing for sure out of all of this is that Vermont is moving and Findlay is going bye-bye. I think there'll be a push to maintain the six conferences at levels giving each an auto bid to the tournament, especially given how hard folks worked to expand the tournament to 16 teams.

In unrelated college hockey news, an OT win by BU over Northeastern last night makes the Terriers 6-6-6. Demonic possession may just explain this team. It's also entertaining to think that they'll take their Record of the Beast to our local Jesuit friends on Friday night. It may be our best hope against BC at their rink.

In case you've not seen it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill is charging that W was planning for an Iraqi invasion months before 9/11, not too long after taking office. Some of this is coming out in a book, while there'll also be a 60 Minutes piece. The White House is downplaying things, mostly painting it as publicity seeking and as O'Neill trying to push his own belief and opinions.

On some level, this sort of planning makes sense and happens regularly. What would make me more concerned would be if there was a plan to invade from the beginning, and that 9/11 became a handy excuse. Not only does that cheapen our 9/11 response, but it suggests a level of duplicity that I'd prefer not to have in elected officials (which, I know, is asking for a lot, regardless of party).

Having this drop right before the primaries get under way is also interesting timing, but perhaps not so interesting as if this were late August.

Actually, Shawn beat me to the punch with commenting on The Apprentice. Clearly, Shawn has a marketing mind yearning to be tapped.

I thought the show was OK, though I fear an increase in group drama in the coming weeks (certainly the scenes from next week's installment suggest one). I know it's a required part of the genre, but there's usually too much of it. My hope is that most of the drama will remain in the context of the challenges, and not in pointless bickering at home. The last thing we need is a Real World featuring people old enough to know better.

If nothing else, the show confirmed that I would never fit into a business climate, at least not if the people they've selected to participate are any indication. Some of them are fine, but I think I'd find the temptation to slap the more annoying types too strong to resist. Most notable in this group is Sam, who is a walking definition of shameless huckster. Don't be surprised if he wins the whole thing.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the show was getting to see Trump's apartment, which is done up in some sort of Roman Excessive Revival. I actually think he uses the same marble and gilded trim combination as Belden Jewelers does in their mall outlets. Garish doesn't even begin to describe it.

I'm not sure if it's good karma or bad karma, but the pairing of Bill Callahan and the University of Nebraska football team has a correctness about it that's hard for me to put into words. I think it's some sort of anticipatory schadenfreude (I assume there's a modified term in German for this).

Speaking of the Raiders, please welcome Shawn De Veau to the family of bloggers linked at left (for those of you unsure on the connection, his blog's URL combines his two favorite football programs - the University of Miami and the Raiders). We can only hope he spends more time talking about his gambling exploits than the virtues of Pat Buchanan.

I was happy to encounter a poster for a web site while walking from Back Bay station to the Copley T stop. It showed a bean on a fork, and bore the legend, "Live to be an old fart." You, too, may now enjoy the wonder that is MagicalFruit.org.

I, like so many others, have set up a pesonal radio station through Yahoo's Launch Music. Right now it's pretty much rock-jazz-blues, though it threw some sort of dance/electronica track at me yesterday (apparently it's a fave among all listeners, but not so much by me, as it became the first song I gave the dreaded "never play again"). Otherwise it's just refining what I like in the genres (not so much bands like Green Day or light jazz, thank you). It's given me two tracks off of Bob Mould's Workbook, which is phenominal. Then again, it gave me one of the songs right after trying to foist Phil Collins' version of "True Colors" off on me, which seems like a good apology.

First it was John Hinckley getting back in the news. Now it's Joe Gibbs returning to the Redskins. Apparently, we really do love the '80s.

Kudos to the LSU football team for their Sugar Bowl win, though I will note that:

It wasn't the best football game on today, that honor going to the Green Bay - Seattle wild card tilt, and

It wasn't even the best thing on TV at the time, given that the WBZ-TV Sunday night sports show featured Peter Gammons playing rhythm guitar and singing to promote Hot Stove, Cool Music, an album of songs by baseball player/musicians and full-time musicians whose sale proceeds benefit the Jimmy Fund, a local charity for research and treatment of childhood cancers. Gammons wasn't as bad as you might think, but strictly in the "don't quit your day job" category.

Speaking of which, they did find a little time to talk baseball. Gammons thinks the A-Rod deal could still happen, but only if the Sox offer a lot more cash. Assuming the status quo, then, Nomar will play out the string, not get the $15 mil/yr he wants, and move on. Orlando Cabrera and Edgar Renteria were named as likely replacements.

Given her recent nuptuals (and soon to be recent denuptualizing), I am setting the line for number of Britney Spears marriages at five. To wit:

Wedding #1: the one to this guy from home, who will cash in the last of his 15 minutes of fame in 2005 on either Celebrity Mole or The Surreal Life.

Wedding #2: another quickie to a guy in her show, more likely a musician than a dancer or tech. It'll go more than a day, less than a year.

Wedding #3: this will be the one that is wistfully remembered in her autobiography I Wasn't That Innocent as the "real" marriage of the bunch. I'm thinking restauranteur. They'll go 5-6 years, with a couple of kids.

Wedding #4: a grab at celebrity, an actor TBA. Two years, tops.

Wedding #5: Britney marries a kindly older man, retired. Parallels to Anna Nicole Smith will be raised, but he won't be that old. They'll average about three weeks together a year until he passes on about nine years into the marriage.

That should take Britney up to about age 40. By 45 she'll start dating the eldest son of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.

OK, this low carb bullshit has to stop. Now.

I understand this Atkins thing is popular, and it even gives good results as long as you only snack on ham cubes for the rest of your life. And I can understand why Subway is offering low carb wraps, as it fits in with their healthy alternative advertising without throwing Jared at us again.

But low carb beer? Folks, beer is nothing but carbs. Do us all a favor and drink water instead. And then there's the local coffee place who just tonight advertised their low carb coffee offerings. Oddly, black was not one of them.

I'm not exactly the model of utmost health and nutrition, but you know what? It's not going to kill you if you have a side of potato salad every once in a while. Just don't scarf a pound of the stuff.

Speaking of which, there's apparently a study out connecting portion size to obesity, which shouldn't surprise anyone who asked for a small soda at McDonalds and got what we knew in our youth as a large.

While Patriots Day is the typical day for marathons around these parts, I participated in three marathons yesterday without having to pin a number to my shirt.

First there was the traditional marathon of football, starting at 11 am and ending sometime after midnight. It's less of a marathon nowadays given the number of bowls that take place after New Year's Day, which is kind of sad. I miss the days of furious channel surfing (or, in the really old days, knob turning).

Cutting into the football (especially during some of the less competitive games) was the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci-Fi. Got to see "A Stop at Willoughby," which is one of my favorites, and the classic "To Serve Man."

Cutting into both of these was ESPN showing their coverage of the 2003 World Series of Poker, some of which I'd seen a few times and other parts I'd not seen at all.

So as you can tell, it was a very exciting New Year's around these parts.

Taking pages from both Couture and Craig Barker, I give you my five word month-by-month recap of my 2003.

January - Newly Britainicized, return to snow.
February - BU wins yet another Beanpot.
March - War, not bacon, during Lent.
April - TRASHionals in Boston kicks ass.
May - Tummy trouble while closing Babson.
June - LA, Carolina, a new car.
July - Millionaire audition and wedding prep.
August - I turn 34, RAs return.
September - School opens, Sox cowboy up.
October - We do, kiss kiss, Ireland!
November - Knee stops bending, Millionaire taping.
December - Work sucks, but Happy Merry!

While I can't say that I'm surprised at any of the NFL head coach firings to date, I will say that I feel somewhat badly for Dick Jauron and Dave McGinnis. Not that either man is blameless for the lack of success that led to unemployment, but neither has sole culpability, either.

The problems with the Arizona Cardinals defy enumeration. There's also a history of poor play, which doesn't help matters. I don't know how much of their ongoing misery is due to McGinnis and how much comes from upstairs, but I do see a pattern with this team. They've not had a coach last five full seasons since Jim Hanifan, who was head coach from 1980 to 1985 - when the team was still in St. Louis.

It's not that they should just stick with coaches for the hell of it, but there's a pretty clear cycle of hiring and firing without any improvement in record. When that happens, it's time to look at what's been the constant during this run of futility - and that leads straight to the Bidwell family, owners and administrators of the team. A new stadium slated to open in 2006 is supposed to help with revenue, but it's not like they haven't opened their checkbooks before (hello Emmitt Smith and Dexter Jackson). Perhaps they'd have been better off keeping David Boston.

For Jauron, you'd have to think that trying to win with the likes of Jim Miller and Kordell Stewart would buy him some time. But when you only win 11 games in the two seasons following a 13-3 campaign, getting pink slipped isn't all that surprising. Oddly enough, the Bears will probably be pretty good thanks in part to Jauron playing a lot of younger guys. Grossman, Thomas, Booker, and Terrell combined have fewer years in the league than Chris Chandler.

I wouldn't feel so badly about this if it didn't mean more opportunities for teams to poach Romeo Crennel or Charlie Weis from the Pats.

As I set up housekeeping on my cell phone, I find that I'm not particularly pleased with the selection of ringtones. I can punch in my own (it's a pretty basic phone, so no polyphonic nonsense), but in what little web searching I've done it seems that everyone expects me to actually pay for ringtones. That ain't gonna happen.

So, if anyone can point me to a location where I could get free ringtones, or have ones that you'd be willing to share, by all means drop me a line.

Sarah is watching more of MTV's highly annoying Rich Girls, and from what I could tell from the six minutes I was exposed to it one of the twits was unable to make nachos, and in return got sent to a rich aunt and uncle's place in Seattle and was given a set of sapphire and diamond earrings. Maybe they should have given her a cook book instead?

Between this show, that Paris Hilton debacle, and Jessica Simpson's dumbfest, I really am starting to consider killing my TV. I don't think there's a jury in the country that would convict me.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, as I was allowed to watch the entire Pats game in relative peace (Sarah and her mom were out shopping for most of the first half, and even brought me lunch). That the game ended with a 31-0 score seems too perfect. It's omens like that that make me nervous.

While the day after Christmas isn't often a day for self-loathing (self-loathing having been used up during the previous week, either due to too much time in the mall or a mistletoe and eggnog-induced session of tonsil hockey with someone from the mailroom during an office holiday party), I do find that, on this Boxing Day, there's a small part of myself that hates me. Why?

I gave the green light for the wife to get me a cell phone for Christmas, and she went ahead and did it.

To some extent, my position on cell phones remains unchanged. They are a tool of evil, allowing rising self-importance levels and facilitating any number of roadway fatalities because a soccer mom piloting a Ford Excursion is discussing the latest offering from Starbucks with another soccer mom driving another Ford Excursion rather than doing something as passe as looking at the road.

There is also the secondary problem, that being one of over-availability. For that, at least, I have the comfort of the power button. I suppose if I only have the phone on when it seems most necessary, I can mitigate most of the dark power cell phones generate. But that strikes me as the same fallacy that one employs upon getting that first credit card that you swear is only going to be used for emergencies. The day comes where you're a little short of cash and you charge your textbooks. Next thing you know going to Cancun for spring break is a Defcon-1 emergency and you're maxed out.

Clearly, I have more thinking to do on this issue.

I'm writing from Maine, where my mother-in-law got a new computer for Christmas. Considering the old one was running Windows 95 and was probably running a 486 (at best; it may have even been a 386), things are going much quicker now.

Regarding the alternate holiday greeting, only Matt Boggie sent something along, and it was a good one. According to him, a co-worker developed the saying "Happy Merry," which manages to combine the usual adjectives and can be used in as sarcastic a fashion as needed (or even non-sarcastically, go figure).

So a Happy Merry to all!

Comments on a couple of stories I've seen in the last day or so.

1. You've all probably heard by now about the cow in Washington that had mad cow. While that concerns me, what concerns me more is that even after the cow tested positive, the "unaffected" bits of cow were allowed into processing. Most quotes I've read makes this practice seem perfectly normal. I can't say I share the sentiment. I may be over-reacting, but I'd like to think that when it comes to food safety a little over-reacting is OK.

I'm also of the understanding that a law that would have prevented meat from mad cows from going to processing was passed by the Senate but died in the House. I'm sure there are some holiday steaks going to honored representatives as we speak.

2. Ralph Nader isn't running for president, at least as a Green. This leaves the party with several options, the most notable of which is Peter Camejo, one of the 800 or so people who ran for governor in California during the recall. He finished fourth with three percent of the vote.

Related to this the Greens are trying to figure out if they should run a national campaign or a "safe state" race so as to not draw off votes from the Democractic candidate. I don't think that's going to be as much of a problem this time around, especially if Dean gets the nod. I think he'd appeal to the Green crowd a lot more than Al Gore. There's also some percentage of voters out there who were just sick and tired of the Clinton-Gore thing and voted Nader in, well, maybe not protest. Call it resignation, I suppose.

In any event, they should run a national campaign. If they're serious about being a viable third party option, what's the point in skipping states? Might as well continue to build a base.

I think I broke my blog. It seemed to get stuck on the publishing page, and now it's being problematic to load. Hopefully it'll clear up when I publish this.

Oh, something else that bugs me about the holiday season. Do you know anyone who, with just a pair of scissors and the right application of pressure and force, can cut wrapping paper so that it looks like it was cleaved with some sort of diamond-tipped instrument? Well, I'm not one of them. Seriously. Whenever I try to cut wrapping paper, it looks like a grade schooler went at things with safety scissors. I'm the person they were targeting when they invented gift bags. But I know the visceral thrill of tearing into paper on Christmas day, so still I wrap. But just Sarah's presents. She's done yeoman's work on the others.

I won't even get into the mystical art of wrapping, which I've not been able to master, either, though I'm hardly alone among my gender in that regard.

I've come to discover that one of the things I most dislike about the holiday season isn't specific to it, but is rather something I loathe year-round that gets exacerbated by the holidays.

Dawdlers.

Here's an example. This afternoon I was working my way from the Copley Place mall to the Prudential mall. The two are connected by a walkway above Huntington Avenue. The walkway is of medium (and usually plentiful) width, with the columns that support the walkway blocking off the middle every so often. This creates the usual left and right lanes, with some opportunities for passing in the middle.

Today I got blocked by a quartet of dawdlers who were strung out across 2/3 of the width of the walkway. Oncoming pedestrians made access to the middle impossible. I had to cut my stride way down (I tend to have an even longer stride in malls when I'm alone, as I tend to view shopping in such a fashion as something of a military exercise that must be completed post haste) and bide my time, growing more irritated with each passing second. Finally, I was able to break through a gap, hold up for a second behind another pair of dawdlers, and break clear.

Only to be held up at the doors into the Prudential mall by teen dawdlers. Blast! They were more easily circumvented, but still an added annoyance.

As it turns out, I made my way to the intended store, nosed around, picked something out, waited to pay for it, actually paid for it, put it in my backpack, and was leaving the store when the original foursome strolled by.

As you may have surmised, I'm not much of one for window shopping or people watching.

In other holiday news, the wife raised a good point today when she voiced a growing frustration with having to say "Happy Holidays" when talking to people of indeterminate holiday practice. Given that it's not always easy to ask what holiday is most appropriate, she's left with the most general blandishment, which gets old after the hundredth time saying it in a day (the perils of doing a lot of work over the phone).

So we tried to come up with something more appropriate, or at least more accurate. Sarah was good enough to fix my suggestion, "Felicitous Gift-Giving Occasion," improving it to "Joyous Gift-Giving Occasion." I have to admit that I liked using felicitous, given that it (a) sounds like something the Victorians ginned up, and (b) said correctly, there's a suggestion of mockery that can't be proven.

I'm trying to come up with something that better suggests the crass commerical aspect of the season, but am only making the thing longer. "Joyous Consumptionary Spending Period," for example, sounds like a holiday message penned by the Fed.

Anyway, suggestions along this line are more than welcome. I'll even post them on Christmas to give us all a little holiday cheer (assuming I can log on from Maine).

For a while, when I would sign up for things on-line or otherwise give personal information for something spamtastic, I would use an alias rather than my given name. I'd completely forgotten about it until this past weekend, when I started to get a slew of spam at my Hotmail account that used my alias. I wonder what list left in a dusty corner of some spammer saw the light of day?

In unrelated news, today was my first day off for the two weeks we're closed at Babson. Sarah doesn't get the early part of this week, so I got to do something I've not done in some time today: goof around in the apartment on my own. Now, it's not that I like to be rid of my spouse, but I don't get that much time to be on my own.

And, in true form, I used that time to little purpose, watching TV, reading, and playing Taipan, a game based on the novel of the same name where you try to make your pile trading various things (mostly opium, if you can afford it). I did do some laundry, and made a pretty decent chicken chili. I'm thinking I'll have to attempt a chowder next, probably corn. The dining hall here does an OK one, but you can't beat homemade.

Thanks to all who played along with the beards quiz a while back. Figure it's time to give the answers, though there was only one picture that seemed to give people trouble.

The answers:

a. Fidel Castro
b. Saddam Hussein
c. Johannes Brahms
d. Karl Marx

Many thanks to Scott Monty for suggesting Brahms.

There may be a bit of a controversy about the Marx picture. As Matt Boggie writes:

"C, I’m not sure of, and frankly, there’s no way anyone else but me would get D. I’m not quite sure how you got the photo, or how you might know him, but he’s obviously Mr. Clo, the retired band director from Gloversville High School, Gloversville, NY. He also played French horn in the Fulton/Montgomery County Concert Band. He once convinced a young trumpet student of his that he’d had a plastic lung installed in his stomach to allow him to sustain notes longer, which he inflated and deflated by raising and lowering the elbow of his right arm while playing."

I know things should be buzzing, what with Libya playing nicey-nice and Clay Aiken graduating from college, but I really don't have much to say on the major issues of the day (that being if you can accept that what the Yahoo news headlines are constitute the major issues of the day).

What is sticking in my craw a little bit is the issue of rental books at public libraries. I suppose it's a good way to raise money, but to me the idea of a public library is that I should have access to books without needing to pay for them (outside of whatever taxes I paid to get them on the shelves in the first place). And, really, do we need to create another barrier to getting people to read, even if it is relatively small?

Three football posts real quick while the Jets have the ball.

1. Congrats to the Fighting Blue Hens of Delaware on their 1-AA football title. As much as I'd have liked to see Colgate take the crown given their improbable run (considering the school does not give athletic scholarships), it's good to see an old Yankee Conference school take the title.

2. Congrats as well to the Johnnies of St. John's of Minnesota. They end a season that saw their coach, John Gagliardi, become the winningest coach in college football history by winning the division 3 title over Mount Union, who was riding a 55 game winning streak into the game. Maybe the no-contact practices and calling your coach by his first name will catch on elsewhere.

OK, maybe not.

3. If you've been watching the Pats-Jets game, you may have gotten to see Suzy Kolber interview Joe Namath on the sidelines. You know all that crap that William Shatner takes for talking like every word is its own sentence? Namath was actually doing that. He also said on no fewer than 3 occasions that he wanted to kiss Kolber. Thankfully, we didn't get to see if he succeeded.

When Joe Theisman said that Namath was a "happy guy," Paul Maguire concurred with a knowning "Oh yeah, he's happy." Surprisingly, no references to Christmas cheer.

I was chagrined to see that Mike Jarvis, aka "Baldy," has been let go as coach of the St. John's men's basketball team. But then I saw that the Red Storm had lost to Hofstra and Fairfield this season - both times at home. It didn't help that his recent rosters were festooned with reprobates. Well, OK, maybe not festooned, but he did have a couple of players who spent more time at municipal court than at the basketball court.

Anyway, the reason for the chagrin on my part is that Baldy was the coach at BU when I was first a student there, and he did a good job with a non-marquee program. Which is probably a good thing, as he might have to go back to that level.

If you're interested in baseball (and perhaps even if you're not), you've probably heard by now that the Manny for A-Rod deal is toast. Bud Selig used his tinhorn despot powers to put the kibosh on further negotiations, and the Sox management termed the talks "dead," which isn't encouraging.

So I've been trying to come up with alternate deals, and have come up with two off the cuff and not particularly well thought-out options:

1. Send Manny to the Orioles for prospects, use money to sign Vladi. I think Angleos is just crazy enough to buy into this, though we'd probably have to pay part of his salary. I'm also not sure what Vladi's target figure is, but he turned down $14 mil a year in Montreal.

2. Send Manny to the Devil Rays for their starting eight, keep Rocco Baldelli, and trade the rest as needed. I imagine this would also require trading off Johnny Damon, though I suppose they could platoon for a year.

In either case, we'd still have the Nomar question. Going back to an earlier post, this is taking on even greater shades of the Carlton Fisk debacle. I can see him moving on after a disgruntled '04 and us getting nothing for him. We'd then get to watch him spend another decade playing high-level baseball for someone else, wondering where it all went wrong.

And let's not even begin to consider Pedro and the other free agents at the end of '04.

Oh, I forgot a trailer.

The Butterfly Effect stars Ashton Kutcher as a guy who can manipulate time with his mind. I'll give you a sec to stop laughing at that image.

Said guy uses his power to try to bring back a girlfriend of his who'd died, but winds up screwing up someone else's life. So he goes back again, and you can see where this is going. Any resemblance to the sketch "Time and Punishment" from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror V is probably incidental. At least it never rained doughnuts in the trailer.

Inasmuch as I was astounded by an Ashton Kutcher movie trailer that didn't immediately make me want to retch, I was more pleased with his appearance in a trailer for Cheaper By the Dozen that I saw while in the concessions line, wherein the family dog bites Kutcher's character in the genital area and refuses to let go. I know, it was a movie, but it made up at least partially for his year of over-exposure.

I am happy to report that The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King pays off much better than The Matrix Revolutions. Granted, it would have difficult for it not to. I was happy to see the hobbits get to kick some ass, but not so happy to see less of characters like Legolas and Gimli (though they made the most of their time on screen).

The logisitical geniuses who run the local theater had it playing at the same time in two theaters adjacent to each other. You can imagine what it was like getting in and getting out. I suppose it helps them in terms of concentrating the madness, but crowd control wasproblematic, and there was a great deal of congestion getting out. It was also the first time I've ever seen the cleaning crews clean up after a line of people waiting to get into the theater.

One person I went with also had the great fun of becoming line buddies with a very loud-talking guy who'd already seen the movie at a midnight showing and was planning to go back again on Friday. And, as line dynamics often indicate, we let our comrade take one for the team while we did what we could to avoid eye contact with loud-talking guy, lest we get drawn into it. The wingman isn't just for bars.

And, of course, there were many previews:

Spider-Man 2 had a pretty good trailer, nothing too out of the ordinary for the superhero/action genre. I'd either forgotten or not known that Alfred Molina is playing Dr. Octopus. I find that funny for some reason.

Walking Tall is a remake of the 1973 film starring Joe Don Baker as Buford T. Pusser, a Tennessee sheriff who's out to rid his town of corruption. Filling the role of Pusser is The Rock. I'm a little ashamed to say that I want to see this, but I like The Rock's action movie persona.

The Mask 2 - or Son of the Mask or Untitled Mask Project depending on where you get your titles - would be on the short list of Least Essential Sequel Ever. The trailer was bad - some dramatic intoning about Loki that turned into a baby doing some sort of acrobatic flip out of a walker to a standing, arms-outstretched "ta da!" sort of pose. I don't even think they mentioned a title, come to think of it, which bodes poorly. Oh, they've also apparently replaced Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz with Jamie Kennedy and Traylor Howard (the girl in Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place).

All I can think is WHY?

The Chronicles of Riddick features Vin Diesel as the title character, who is apparently a central figure in some sort of sci-fi/fantasy clash that involves a character played by Dame Judi Dench. And if that isn't a sentence I never thought I would write, I don't know what is.

It's apparently a sequel to Pitch Black. Not having seen it, the odds of seeing the sequel are long. Very long.

I, Robot had a trailer that was done in the style of an advertisement, but said almost nothing about the movie. I suppose that's the point, but I never really care for trailers that do that sort of thing. I could go to the website, but I can't remember the URL, even though it was prominently placed in the trailer. Guess I'm not geeky enough.

Can I also note that there seemed to be twice as many ads before the movie as usual? While I assume it's because it was the opening night of one of the biggest movies of the year, I fear that it's a trend. The last thing we need is a half-hour of ads and trailers before the movie even starts.

Quick question for anyone out there who is/was watching Monday Night Football. When Lisa Guererro was interviewing Mark Duper on the sidelines, did she actually use the phrase "bitching and whining" in reference to current WRs and their desire for the ball? I was only paying half-attention, and the crowd noise presented further difficulties. Anyway, if anyone can confirm or deny, drop me a line.

Prompted by recent news, here's a little quiz for you all.

I wrote a bit of a weekend recap, but apparently the blog gods didn't want you to read it, as it was eaten during the publishing process (though, to be fair, I was also doing something else in another window and may have caused the problem myself). So rather than try to write it all again, I'll mention two things I did not mention at the time:

1. Commiserations to the Bruce, who in the span of the weekend saw his A's lose both their closer Keith Foulke to the Sox and their MVP shortstop Miguel Tejada to the Orioles, of all teams.

Having said that, keep an eye on the O's. They're also after Vladi Guerrero and Ivan Rodriguez. Not sure if they have the scratch to land them both, but even one of them would be a big boost.

2. I've now seen two (which may be both that have aired) episodes of the Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo. One features a table of Ben Affleck, Don Cheadle, Willie Garson, Emily Procter, and David Schwimmer; the other five cast members from The West Wing (Timothy Busfield, Alison Janney, Richard Schiff, Martin Sheen, and John Spencer). There's some fairly atrocious card playing, but some good as well. Kevin Pollak hosts, dressed like a generic Vegas hipster doofus doing an impression of Kevin Pollak. Poker pro Phil Gordon provides expert commentary.

If you've watched either the World Poker Tour or ESPN's coverage of the World Series of Poker, the Bravo show will be hard to get used to. It's a lot more chummy, you can hear the crowd a lot more, and there's much less lingo. But it's not particularly bad, just more like watching your weekly game, but with famous people.

The game featuring West Wing cast members is doubly incestuous, as the show is appearing on Bravo in reruns and Josh Malina, who plays Will Bailey on the show, is executive producing the poker series. This all puts the Sports Night episode "Shoe Money Tonight" into perspective; sadly, Felicity Huffman isn't playing in the tournament. But Scott Stapp from Creed is. The Lord goes all in!

My prediction of us being snow-free after yesterday proved a little premature. We did get rain, and there was significant melt, but there's still a lot of white. And now we're getting more snow on Sunday. At this point it'll be followed up by a mix on Monday, which should be lots of fun for the commute (even my commute, which is a 2 minute walk but all downhill; there's a good chance I'll slip and fall on my ass).

We had our divisional holiday party yesterday, which was festive. I was subcontracted out to write a sequel to last year's quiz, so I got to spend a good 15 minutes taunting co-workers who were looking for answers. I also managed to not get stiffed during the yankee swap, getting a Barnes and Noble gift card in return for an assortment of savory goodies presented in some sort of canoe looking thing. Today is the college holiday party, which will be moderately festive.

I'm not brimming with holiday spirit quite yet, and I think I had a little beaten out of me in the three seconds where I was exposed to Ebbie, the version of A Christmas Carol starring Susan Lucci in the Scrooge role. I also wound up passing on the Mr. Magoo version, as I wasn't in the mood for its musical interludes the night it was on.

After much foot-dragging, the recap of the Ireland trip is now available at left. It's OK; I hope the delay hasn't created expectations that the finished product won't meet. Though, really, was there much danger of that to begin with?

As some of you long-term readers may remember, today is my sister Cathy's birthday (for those of you who in the short- and medium-term, here's some background). She'd have been 36 today, which seems almost impossible given that I can't think of her as being anything but 20.

In any event, for today I'm asking readers to do one thing for me: if you have a sister, call her. If you have more than one, call all of them. Use the opportunity while you can, because it sucks when you want to make that call and can't.

I don't know how I feel about the possible Nomar trade. Inasmuch as A-Rod would provide greater scoring punch without giving up defense, Nomar is one of us. He's used to the crazy fans and cranky media. I'm getting a Carlton Fisk vibe, wherein a well-loved player gets sent packing for money reasons and spends the bulk of a hall of fame career elsewhere. We got lucky in that Fisk got jerked around even more by the ChiSox, greasing the skids for a return to Fenway (albeit as a retired player). I don't think we'll get the same thing with Nomar, if the war of words between John Henry and Nomar's agent, Arm Tellem, is anything to go by.

And while I'm loathe to back baseball owners, if the figures that have been bandied about are accurate, Tellem is stuck in 2000. The bubble has burst.

I also thought it was interesting that Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean, leaving former running mate Joe Leiberman out in the cold. I've not read much of this, but I wonder if Al's thinking back to his own campaign and how the more liberal Dems voted for Nader. The flip side, of course, is the possibility of losing more conservative Dems who don't want the guy who legalized gay marriage in the White House. This might be a case where the Democratic dads who voted for Reagan have Democratic sons who vote for Bush.

For those of you who remember The Station nightclub fire that happened in Rhode Island in February, you may be interested to learn that the owners of the club and Great White's tour manager were indicted today on 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter with criminal negligence and 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter in violation of a misdemeanor.

That's a lot of counts. Even if they only got 30 days per count, that'd be over 16 years of jail time.

Got back from a weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee about an hour ago, and look at all the snow! Seriously, look at it; given the weather report for this week, it'll all be gone by Thursday at the latest.

I was in Chattanooga for TrashMasters, probably the top invitational trash tournament in the country (well, it and Michigan's Ann B. Davis are 1 and 1a). Quick recap: my team finished second after losing to the the team that won three times: once in prelims and twice in the playoffs. Had we beaten them at any one time, we'd have won the whole thing. Clearly, though, you lose three times to one team and it's meant to be.

Personally I started well, and was the tournament's leading scorer fairly deep into it (trading the spot on and off with Craig Barker, linked at left) until one of my teammates (Greg Sorenson, also linked at left) got back to his usual self and wrested the title away. Finished fourth overall, not bad, but I'd have preferred playing a little better in the playoffs and actually winning the thing.

Unrelated to the tournament, some observations:

* For all the weather hoopla, I had a mostly problem-free travel experience. We left Logan late on Friday morning due to poor visibility in Atlanta, but landed on time. We left Atlanta a little late today, and considering that Logan was closed until 1 pm that we left at all was surprising. We were a little late, but we had to wait for a plane to leave so we could take its gate.

* At the airport today I was subjected to Denver-Kansas City, even after it became a whitewash. I'd have appreciated a cut to the then-still close Pats game, which I heard most of the first half of on the drive to Atlanta.

* While Boston has the Big Dig, Chattanooga has the Little Dig, some sort of street improvement project that I suppose looks more daunting to navigate than it really is. I think we did have to make one detour, but nothing serious. At least not as serious as the parade that sent our dinner convoy on a bit of a roundabout way.

* Krystal, the southern knock-off of White Castle, is OK, but it is no White Castle.

* I also got to eat at Sonic, and had a combo I'd not recommend: the pancake on a stick (which has a sausage in the middle) and a watermelon Coke. The pancake on a stick actually wasn't that bad, but the watermelon Coke will remain a once in a lifetime experience.

* Finally, I rounded out a "places I've not eaten at" trifecta by lunching at Buffalo Wild Wings. Tasty.

* Going back to Friday, I spent a lot of time at the Atlanta airport waiting for various people, and got to learn that it has several shops, but no arcade. I suppose getting your money a quarter at a time is less efficient, but throw us a bone.

* We then decided that the airport probably had a lone '80s arcade game in a neglected corner of one of the more remote terminals. And it was probably this one.

* There was also a crazy man at the airport who missed his flight, had to rebook, and then decided not to get a hotel room because he'd already spent $150 on his new flight. He spent most of his time pushing around a Smart Carte with a couple of suit boxes on it talking to anyone who'd listen and asking people to read a screenplay he'd written. I imagine it involved a talking pie.

* While not part of the trip per se, anyone who can explain in a satisfactory manner how USC can be #1 in both polls and not playing Oklahoma or LSU should write me. The BCS people are talking about how we're getting two great bowl games out of this (Oklahoma-LSU and USC-Michigan), but I'd have to think Oklahoma-USC and LSU-Michigan would be pretty good, too.

* And while I don't know if it can happen, I'd like to see Delaware and Colgate make the 1-AA football final. Funny how they can decide the national title on the field.

* Anyone who saw the Al Sharpton episode of Saturday Night Live should write me with a review. The NBC affiliate we had showed a best of Steve Martin.

While I've been able to throw up the usual sort of pop culture nonsense that often populates my posts, it's actually been a pretty trying week.

Today, my aunt had a fairly serious operation. She's 78. "Fairly serious operation" and "78" is not a combination that instills confidence, especially as she'd been hospitalized not that long ago due to the problem that led to today's visit to the OR.

As it turns out, things went very well. We actually spent about an hour talking with her at the hospital. She was a little tired not surprisingly, but otherwise in good spirits. Of course, the Coen women seem to have a pretty sturdy constitution (I had two great aunts who lived well into their 80s, and my grandmother, while not a Coen by birth, lived to 92).

We're not completely out of the woods where my aunt is concerned - there are other health concerns that may prove equally problematic - but we're doing pretty well right now, which is nice.

The less enjoyable part of the week started Monday night, when it was discovered that one of our students took their own life at some point during the day. Sarah and I were actually heading off campus when police first started to respond, though at that point it wasn't clear that anything that serious was happening. It was when we returned and saw the collection of vehicles - including a couple of unmarked police cars and an ambulance that was eerily parked at a distance from the building in question - that we started to suspect something serious was afoot.

I've been lucky in my 12 years of RA/RD experience that I've never had to work on a suicide. I've known people who did, and I have to say that their experiences were pretty much borne out over the 72 hours following the first report. It was a less than optimal combination of the nightmarish, the surreal, and the depressing.

From a professional standpoint, it's clear to me now that you can have all of the crisis management and operating procedure you want, but it's still going to be a mess. This is especially true after hours, when you're trying to track down staff that's gone home or is out for dinner or what have you. I will say that I think we did a pretty good job of tracking people down and getting plans set into motion. I had the dubious honor of trying to console some residents who clearly needed someone with more of a counseling background. I think I did OK, but at the time it was painful. I honestly didn't feel like I was making a damn bit of difference.

As the night wore on I had a chance to do more informational stuff with our residents, which was better. I actually had information and could answer questions about what services were available and what the next day or so would bring on campus. I don't know that I told people much new information, but students did seem to appreciate the effort.

Things slowly got better as the week continued - there was a short remembrance service the next day, and a candlelight vigil last night that gave people a chance to talk and share memories and stories. The funeral was today, and a number of students were able to attend, which also helped.

I will say that one of the more unusual aspects of the entire thing was seeing the reaction of the student body. It really ran the gamut. There were a number of students who were deeply hurt - classmates, teammates, etc. - but there was also a not insignificant number of students who seemed to have little reaction. I suppose if you don't know the person the reaction isn't as strong, but there was in some cases even little reaction that it had happened at all. Everyone approaches this differently, so there may be more reaction later. Hard to say.

I'm pretty proud of the work our RA staff did this week, especially those folks who had a deeper reaction. I often wonder about the job they do, given that I don't get as much chance to see and talk to them as I would like (there being 22 of them, I don't always get a depth of interaction), but this week they definately stepped up.

Anyway, that's the sort of week it's been. It's getting better, and even the Yankees getting Javier Vasquez can't prevent that - for now. :P

Unbeknownst to many, New Hampshire is getting a minor league baseball team. As is often the case, the team held a contest to choose a name. One clearly stood out - the New Hampshire Primaries. It both reflects the state's historic role in presidential elections, it also had a cool logo.

So what happens when you let the people vote? The obvious choice comes in LAST.

The team will henceforth be known as the Granite State Fisher Cats. The fisher, for those of you who don't know, is a type of weasel (so in a way it appears they've still honored their political connection).

The other three names in contention were the Manchester Millers (which lost by less than 25 votes), the Granite State Mountain Men, and the New Hampshire Granite. I like the Millers (I wasn't aware that a lot of milling went on in Manchester, but I'm likely ignorant on the topic) and Granite (even though it's one of those non-plural nicknames), but Primaries was perfect. Maybe too perfect.

Just remember that this decision came from the state that we entrust with an early position in selecting our presidents (and as Chris Rosenberg pointed out, went for Pat Buchanan twice).

Reader Shawn De Veau notes that he was subjected to Bobb'e J. Thompson during NBC coverage of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade (shocking that NBC would use the parade to promote their shows!). His appearance included a number of athlete impersonations and thanking God for his success. Another reason I'm glad I don't really watch the parade.

In other TV news, we were (well, I was) channel surfing during 24's commercial breaks and found that Lingo has made some improvements to their set. This does not include the dim yet bubbly woman who is now apparently Chuck Woolery's co-host. She's basically Vanna White without the walking around and clapping. According to a press release I found on-line, her name is Stacey Hayes, and she is both co-host and on-air judge, telling Chuck when words aren't spelled right and so forth. She does have a fair bit of on-camera experience according to her bio at covergirlinternational.com, though I'm sure "eye candy" was high on the list of qualifications desired at hire for the co-host spot.

While I can verify that The Tracy Morgan Show isn't bad, I can't really say that it's good, either. For every funny moment there was another one that didn't quite work, and for every part of genuine acting there was a part where it felt like those late-in-the-show SNL skits where everyone's reading off cue cards (or are those the early skits now?).

In any event, the show is at least entertaining enough to ride out the season. The cast also has some semi-recognizable faces in Heavy D (appearing without his Boyz, playing an auto mechanic), Marc John Jefferies (former People PC spokeskid) as the older son, and Tamala Jones (whose been in a number of movies, including Head of State, The Brothers, and Booty Call) who plays Morgan's wife. (Oh, and let's not forget veteran actor John Witherspoon, who also plays a mechanic).

But the cast member you've probably heard most about is Bobb'e J. Thompson, who plays the younger son. Aiming to be this generation's Webster/Arnold Drummond, he at least doesn't have to play an orphan. As much as you may want to fight the idea of a savvy, smart-talking seven year old, you can't look away, either.

If nothing else, the show provides a half-hour respite from crap like The Simple Life, which I'm sure will do better in the ratings but will cause more neurological damage, too.

While the Frank Solich thing may not hit a nerve with folks, hopefully the issues surrounding Tommy Tuberville at Auburn will. In this case, the school's president and athletic director had a secret meeting with the head coach at Louisville about replacing Tuberville. Not only did the bulk of Auburn's trustees not know, but the Louisville president and AD weren't in the know, either.

Tuberville's had even less success at Auburn than Solich had at Nebraska, but it still doesn't excuse this cloak and dagger crap.

In related bowl news, TCU is passing on the GMAC Bowl due to exam dates (they prefer a couple of other CUSA-aligned bowls). Turns out the GMAC folks may look outside of CUSA for a team. Time to write them about UConn!

Tonight ended a rather lackluster 3 game ECAC string for the BU hockey team. They went 1-1-1 over Thanksgiving week, losing the annual tilt with Harvard (the first BU loss at Harvard in 21 years), tying Dartmouth by giving up a goal with 14 seconds left, and beating Yale (of small comfort given that Yale was 3-7 entering the game). Now begins the main part of our Hockey East slog, with brief interruptions for games against Niagara and Minnesota (who is having problems of their own, as they currently stand at 6-7-1) and the Beanpot. We get to start with a game at BC on Friday. Great.

Speaking of Catholics, at the end of Mass today the priest read a statement from all four Massachusetts bishops (Boston, Worcester, Spriingfield, and Fall River) regarding the recent SJC ruling regarding same-sex marriage. They termed the ruling a "national tragedy" and would at least like more time than the 180 days to figure this thing out. What they'd really like is a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and woman and no law permitting same-sex unions at all.

All of this was couched as for the "protection of marriage," which makes me wonder why the bishops never get together to decry how easy the state makes it for married couples to get divorced. Isn't divorce an even bigger threat to marriage? If divorce wasn't an option, you'd have to think that people would choose their mates a lot more closely (and probably not on national TV, an added bonus). You'd also have fewer legal problems as you'd not have to worry about child support, visitation, and all the other stuff that makes families suffer and lawyers rich.

Considering today's statement came at the start of Advent, perhaps they're saving the anti-divorce statement for the start of Lent.

So let's say you have a college football coach who, in six years, guides his team to a 58-19 record, with a 9-3 mark this year in what is probably the toughest conference in the country. How do reward such performance? You fire your head coach.

That's what Nebraska did to Frank Solich today, ending his run as the 'Huskers head coach effective immediately. The assistant coaches will apparently run the team for their bowl appearance (expected to be the Holiday Bowl).

Granted, it's not all been pretty in the land of corn. Nebraska didn't look particularly great in its losses, and you can argue that the team's been inconsistent under Solich, going from a national title run in 2001 to a 7-7 finish in 2002, the team's first non-winning season in over 40 years.

But it strikes me that the biggest problem Solich had, and the one he could never overcome, is that he's not Tom Osborne. Given that, it's probably a near miracle that he lasted six years.

The real question now is who will want to follow Solich? While the Nebraska AD claims that he never consulted boosters regarding Solich, other reports suggest otherwise. Even if the AD is telling the truth, the timing of the Solich firing wouldn't make me very comfortable in taking over. But there'll be someone out there who'll want the job, and good luck to them. Don't be surprised if whoever it is gets the hook after a 10-2 season.

In other college football news, Syracuse lost to Rutgers today, bringing their record to 5-6. Next week they get to face Notre Dame, who has the same record but has won three straight. Paul Pasqueloni should start getting his resume in order. Maybe he'll want to go out to Lincoln?

And in early bowl news, Kansas will play NC State in the Tangerine Bowl. Kansas is 6-6, with wins over UNLV, Wyoming, Iowa State, Baylor, and 1-AA Jacksonville State (the only team with a winning record in this bunch). They did beat Missouri, but then went 2-5 down the stretch. Anyone who can explain why this team is bowl worthy should drop me a line.

OK, shopping didn't turn out too badly. I got to nose around a Borders with Sarah's dad for most of the time, and only had limited exposure to the chaos at our local Target.

Quick correction while I'm here. The Fox Sports poker thing I was watching actually did have some name players, but they were gone by the end. I'll stick to the rest of my critique, though.

I fear that I'm going to be brought shopping this morning (and by shopping I mean pointless milling around punctuated by the occasional purchase of something). Given how much I enjoy that (as you probably picked up from my description), you can likely predict how much I'm looking forward to the post-Thanksgiving crowds on top of the pointless milling about.

I should just be happy no one tried to drag me to a 6 a.m. opening, I guess.

OK, that's better. I'd have returned to a state of relative coherence earlier, except that I went back for more pie. Serious tactical mistake.

In any event, things turned out well. Even though my brother's family couldn't make it, we still had food for 20, so it looks like leftover surprise for the next week. If you're in the neighborhood and feeling peckish, let me know.

We did our American duty and watched both NFL games, as unwatchable as they may have been (in case you missed it, Detroit topped Green Bay in an ugly contest, while Miami unvaunted the Dallas defense). For now we're watching a little bit of the centennial Egg Bowl (Mississippi-Mississippi St.), but that was looking routish. So we've been flipping a bit, mostly between the Bond marathon on Spike (currently on The Living Daylights, so we've taken Spike out of the rotation for now) and the Fox Sports no-limit poker tournament, which is horrible. Bad commentators, poor graphics, players I've never heard of, and even a dealer who seems a little unclear on how to deal hold 'em. I think Rupert's boys took a face-plant into the tailgate of the poker bandwagon.

(Speaking of which, while doing health and safety checks this week I ran into no less than a dozen rooms with some sort of poker setup.)

And if you're looking for a late-night Thanksgiving tradition, tune in to Letterman to see him try to guess what sort of pies his mom baked for the family dinner in Indiana. This annual event has even spawned its own prediction game among the Usenet Letterman fans, though I missed the deadline to enter this year. I'm going with pumpkin and apple, though this may be a year where Dorothy goes off the board and makes a non-pie. Crazy!

So. Full.

Happy Thanksgiving! Or, if you're reading from outside the US, happy Thursday!

We're hosting Thanksgiving this year, which would be much more of a concern if Sarah's parents weren't down and doing the bulk of the cooking. The only thing I'll really get to make is the green bean casserole, which isn't much to hang one's culinary hat on. But we always had it growing up, and what whitebread American family wouldn't serve it? OK, I'm sure plenty wouldn't. Cut me some slack.

In an announcement that should stun no one, the folks over at Fox admit they were greedy in going back to the well with this whole Joe Millionaire thing. It'd be nice to think there's a lesson learned in all this, but I doubt it.

For what it's worth I wound up watching a fair bit of this year's installment, and didn't think it was the crime against nature that some did. It wasn't great TV, either. But I do think that this couple seems more genuinely in love than the first pair, who seemed to hold on just long enough to get the maximum benefit out of their relationship.

I will also say that I am not fond of using subtitles when the person speaking is already speaking English, even if it is accented. All 12 women were fluent and spoke clearer than some native speakers I know.

Were I in charge, Kevin Harlan and Randy Cross would never work a Patriots game again. Harlan is apparently some sort of team jinx, as:

1. He mentioned at the outset that Brady hadn't been picked off in six games. He got picked twice today.

2. He mentioned that Adam Vinatieri had never missed a field goal in a domed stadium. He then promptly banked one off the upright.

3. He finally mentioned that the Texans had never blocked a field goal - just before doing so in the overtime.

Cross gets cut because, well, he sucks. He and Tim McCarver need to go on a three-hour cruise.

I finally said goodbye to my Mac Classic today.

Bought in 1991 just as it was becoming obsolete (or perhaps just after it did), I've dragged the thing around for a while until I could get things transfered from it to the current machine (a balky external drive was slowing things down, but I finally got it straightened out). It wasn't too bad, outside of having to load things one floppy at a time (and copy, at least on one end, at speeds that were state of the art in, say, 1988).

In any case, it's been interesting to go through some of the old stuff. I've found many of the top 10 lists I was required to compile during my turn as BUCB ombudsman, and they're all excellent proof as to the subjective, and often short-lived, nature of humor. A good three-quarters of the entries make no sense. You could argue they didn't at the time, either, but the gossamer nature of context puts all such argument to rest. Some of the entries are funny as stand-alone statements or because they reference people I still know, so there's at least that.

Playing some of the old games has been fun, too, though many of the old games are a little buggy. At some point nostalgia will give way to practicality and I'll toss the less reliable games, but for now I'm working through the best I can.

On the flip side of my very positive Millionaire experience are three things that suggest that the folks behind the show may want to ratchet up the publicity a bit:

1. I've run into a number of people who still think Regis is the host.
2. Even more people think that you still have to do the fastest finger.
3. Most can't place the time and channel on which it's shown (12:30, WCVB-5 for you in the Boston area).

I imagine problem 3 is the main contributor to the other two problems, especially as most folks are working or doing something other than watching TV at 12:30 in the afternoon. The UPN affiliate had it last year and aired it at 5:30, which worked out well.

We got back from New York yesterday from the Millionaire taping, and I won't have to go back. I got to tape relatively early (second of my group of nine, with two holdovers from the day before going first) and was done by 4 pm.

Of course, I can't say how I did. I will say that we at least broke even, which is a good thing given the various costs involved. Not surprisingly, perhaps, most of the contestants in my group were from New York or New Jersey, or had a connection in the area. We did have one guy who came in from Las Vegas.

Overall, it was a great group of people. I'd feared that we'd all be too nervous or competitive to talk much, but it worked out.

Which was a good thing, as "contestant isolation" meant not having anything to read, listen to, or otherwise occupy one's brain from the time we got there to the time we left. I'd half-thought about bringing a book but didn't.

The show staff was great, from the PAs who were with us in the green room all the way up to Meredith, who was very sweet and (for lack of a better word) genuine. We chatted a little bit during breaks (on how I was doing, where Sarah and I went on honeymoon, etc.). She's tinier than we expected, but TV does make things look bigger (good for the studio, which is small; bad for me, who is not).

After taping we went back to the hotel (the Lucerne at 79th and Amsterdam, nicely appointed and well-staffed) and walked over a couple blocks to Luzia's, a family-run Portuguese restaurant, for dinner. Should you find yourself near 81st and Amsterdam any time soon, you should eat there. I had what was to me an unusual dish of cod, eggs, potatoes, and olives which actually worked quite well.

After that we went back to the hotel, had a sangria-induced nap, and wound up visiting with Boggie and his wife Jenny, who spent the previous four hours at a premiere for Henry IV parts one and two. Leaving Jenny at home (work in the morning), the three of us visited some local hang-outs and wound up in Times Square at 2 am, where it was bright as day and almost as busy.

All in all, a fun trip. One of these days we'll have to go to New York just to sightsee.

Did I mention I was asked to dress "springy" for the Millionaire taping tomorrow?

Got a call last week from a member of the production staff asking me to do this, not surprising given that the show will air in June. The problem I ran into is that the shirts I was planning to wear/bring (needing to have a change of clothes) have logos on the pocket, which is a no-no. This required getting news shirts. And a new pair of pants. And shoes. And socks to go with the whole thing. Funny thing is one outfit is very much fall-like (tans and browns). I suppose they'll be happy as long as I'm not wearing a cable-knit sweater.

People keep asking if I'm nervous, and I don't think I am, really. What I have been doing is psyching myself out. I'll be reading something or watching TV or what have you and I'll either (a) think to myself that I have to remember what I just read/saw/heard just in case, or (b) I'll suddenly come up with a question based on what I'm reading/seeing/hearing and realize I don't know the answer. It's been a fun couple of weeks, to be sure. I suppose I will get nervous at some level when things actually start to happen (and admittedly I'm getting a little edge on just writing this).

I'm a little ticked right now. On the heels of my question regarding UConn and a Big East bowl bid comes an ESPN.com article that notes that Notre Dame, if they go 6-6, can get the Big East's last bid assuming that no other team wins seven games.

Miami, Virginia Tech, and Pittsburgh are all in, taking three of the five Big East berths. Of BC, Syracuse, and West Virginia, BC is most unlikely to hit 7 wins given their last game is against Virginia Tech. Syracuse has a tough drive to 7 as two of their remaining three games are against West Virginia and Notre Dame. The Mountaineers just have to beat Temple.

The NCAA rule specifically covers teams who play 12 games and win 6 and are in a conference that has agreements with bowls, and UConn would more than qualify there with their 9-3 mark and their Big East membership (which, unlike Notre Dame, will soon include football).

What it comes down to (assuming we ignore money, which of course will dictate the outcome) is whether or not the conference wants to promote an up and coming team that had a good season, or a traditional team that will never be a football member of the conference (and who had to stage a major turnaround just to get to 6-6). I'm a Notre Dame fan, but I can't root for a .500 Irish team to box out the Huskies.

Could the Big East give a bowl spot to UConn rather than, say, Boston College?

UConn finished their regular season on Saturday with a 51-17 drubbing of Wake Forest (remember the heady days of the season when the Deacs were in the top 25?). They end the season with a 9-3 mark, with two of the three losses being quite respectable: a 10 point loss to BC and a 7 point loss at NC State (the third loss was a drilling at the hands of Virginia Tech).

It may be more appropriate to offer UConn a MAC bowl bid, given that they went 4-0 against MAC foes. Regardless, it doesn't seem fair that UConn will get snubbed while a very dull 7-5 (or even worse, 6-6) team could get to go somewhere.

I suppose I should be more angry with the lack of options for independent teams (outside of Notre Dame) in general. Not only does UConn look like they may not get to take their 9-3 record out for a bowl game spin, Navy may very well finish at 8-4 and go nowhere (and Navy even has a win over then-25th ranked Air Force).

Personally, I'd rather see North Texas play either of those teams than whoever the best 6-5 team in CUSA is (the UAB-South Florida tilt seems key here). But that's probably just me and my East Coast Bias.

Suggesting that one good link change deserves another, I have added a link to ProjectExplorer under the "Other Stuff" category. Check it out!

According to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles web site:

"You may change your name with no documentation as long as there is no attempt to defraud."

You do have to go to a full-service branch to get a new photo and signature capture. I suppose the awe-inspiring majesty of a full-service branch of the Registry is supposed to be enough to keep people from making fraudulent name changes.

It strikes me that this is the sort of thing that would have changed over the last couple of years. I also don't know if we want the front-line folks at the Registry trying to determine when someone's pulling a fast one. Nothing against them, but it seems like the sort of process that should require at least a marriage licence or something.

In a related customer service note, the people at Sovereign Bank tell us that name changes can be done by a teller. Which contradicts what a teller at the Kenmore Square branch said at the end of last week, which was generally "I don't know." Part of me thinks we just should have closed the account. Anyone out there have an account with Banknorth? Are they any good?

And a hearty welcome back to Allyson Harper-Nixon, the first person to actually come off the bench among those links riding pine. I hope it's not another 9 months between posts!

Oh, I forgot to mention one of the films previewed on Friday. Calendar Girls is about an English gardening club whose middle-aged female members make a calendar featuring pictures of themselves in various states of undress to make money for one of their husbands who has, from what I can tell, cancer. It's based on a true story and stars Helen Mirren and Julie Walter.

I should also note the absolute testosteronic trough of the weekend, when the wife took me to a craft fair at a local school. There were a few booths of interest for me (a couple food-related ones and a guy selling old maps), and we did manage to get a Christmas present for one of the kids in the family.

Football helped restore manliness from there on out, as did a hockey game (BU wins 6-1 over Merrimack). The christening we went to was pretty much a push as far as gender balance goes, but was a splendid afternoon.

Ending the week with the Pats game was nice, if but a little bizarre at times (please see the game ending play off of Ty Law's second pick as an example). It also stuns me what may be the team's biggest obstacle to going deep in the playoffs is their punter. I can't help but think that there are 4 or 5 guys out there who the Pats can bring in who can punt better than Ken Walter, who reportedly ranks 32nd in the league (the NFL.com page only gives the top 30 punters, and he's not among them).

Considering all the other positions he's played this season, perhaps Dan Klecko can take over.

As the Bruce correctly surmised a few days ago, Love, Actually is a movie specifically engineered for my wife, and we did go see it last night. It is actually pretty good, as far as ensemble romantic comedy goes.

It's not the sort of movie you can easily sum up, given that there are something like 8 or 9 different love stories. Suffice it to say that a variety of people, all of whom have vaguely interconnected lives, spend the five weeks before Christmas in some form of romantic flux. And while it's often sappy, it manages to not have everything turn out perfectly.

Given the size of the cast and the relative lack of a lead, it's hard to say if anyone did better or worse than anyone else. I did think Emma Thompson did a good job with a role that made her change direction very quickly at times. Kudos as well to Liam Neeson and Laura Linney. You'll also probably see more of Martina McCutcheon, a former player on EastEnders and British TV presenter making the move to movies.

I don't know if you have to run right out and see this, but it'll at least be a pleasant diversion.

On, and on the preview front...

Saw previews again for Something's Gotta Give and Stuck on You - the former is a rental at best, the latter depends on your stomach for the Farrelly brothers. We also got a preview of The Cat in the Hat, which may be great and may suck. Either way, it's likely going to make boatloads of cash.

Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston get together in Along Came Polly, which looks pretty formulaic. Jim Carrey gets his bad memories toasted in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which at least has an interesting title and supporting cast (Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson).

Kind of a thin group, really.

I'm having some sort of blog-related ennui, in that I want to write but am having trouble with the motivation and the information. I've not really written on anything coherent in some time, just dribs and drabs. Maybe I'm being seasonally affected.

Part of it too is that the things I most want to write about are kind of second-personal (a term I just made up about things involving another person that may or may not be my business to discuss in public without prior authorization). I can say it's not domestic - married life is still swell - but it's more that I had a chance to get back together with someone I'd not seen in a while who has had a less than stellar 2003.

Without getting into specifics, then, I will say I was impressed with this person's resilience, though I shouldn't have expected anything less. I don't think I could come out of the same circumstances nearly anywhere as strong or positive. It was also nice to see that, even after some years and life changes, there are people who are not only interested in renewing aquaintances, but can carry the relationship forward into the present day. Most of the time it's a "hey, nice to hear from you" email and resultant silence.

So a nice positive note for a week that's about to become very blustery.

Something I forgot to mention back from the weekend we were in Maine is that I saw what might be the least fraught idea in niche cable/sattelite programming: the NFL Network. They were getting a free preview, and if the finished product is anything like it the channel is going to be the pigskin equivalent of crystal meth.

Sadly, the schedules suggest it's going to be more like whatever drug is repetitive and boring (quaaludes?). The signature show NFL Total Access, airs at 8 pm, again at 11 pm, and is then repeated the next day at 2 am and then from 5 am to noon. Most of the other non prime-time programming is repeated from earlier in the broadcast week. Hopefully this will change as the network grows. At least it's not infomercials.

OK, I'll admit it. I thought Art Carney was dead.

I'll admit to not having a very good track record with these sorts of things, at least if my dead pool entries are anything to go by. Part of my problem was having two entries that split my total body count of five (Bob Hope, Warren Zevon, Leni Reifenstahl, and Katherine Hepburn on one entry, Strom Thurmond on the other). I also seem to have picked some pretty feisty octogenarians (Barbara Billingsley and Shelley Winters, for example).

And in an annoyance for this week, I don't get Veterans Day off. I don't know if very many people do, but I find it interesting that we get Memorial Day off but not Veterans Day. Wouldn't the powers that be rather we take time to honor veterans while they're alive? I know that days off most often translate into car dealers putting on loudly-advertised sales or malls opening at 5 am, but I can't help but feel the living veterans are getting the short end of the stick here, especially if they're also not getting the day off.

Notes from the weekend...

* For those of you who played in a TRASH regional, the first tossup and bonus of the first pack (assuming you played the packs in numerical order) were written by me. I just thought that was neat. Undoubtedly, some of you would have another adjective to use there.

* I really wish I'd gotten to see more of the college football carnage, though I did get to see about half of Bowden Bowl V while flipping back to Virginia Tech's loss at Pittsburgh. I really would have been interested in Oklahoma's 77-0 waxing of Texas A&M, if only to see how the Sooners managed not to score in the fourth quarter.

* Got to see a little bit of the lunar eclipse on Saturday night while waiting for a table at John Harvard's in Framingham. I'd forogtten about it, which seems to be the standard case whenever astro-phenomena are afoot.

* I managed to aggravate my knee problem on Friday, which led to some gimping around over the weekend. I did manage to spend large chunks of yesterday in bed with the heating pad and ice pack, and took some ibuprofen, all of which seems to have gotten me back to semi-normal.

* For this week's fantasy football game, I had three choices for 2 RB spots: Michael Pittman (TB), Anthony Thomas (CHI), and Moe Williams (MIN) (I'm sure those of you who participate in this sort of thing see what's coming). Pittman and Thomas were facing run defenses of similar rank, while Williams was facing a weaker defense but appeared that he'd be losing carries to the returning Michael Bennett. So I talked myself into starting Thomas and Pittman... and thus missed out on Williams' 2 TD catches and 171 total yards.

The good news is that I have about a 7 point lead going into tonight with Donovan McNabb. I have half a mind to bench him to preserve the win, though even in his depths he's not caused me to lose that many points.

* In good holiday news, we got a new Christmas tree this weekend, a 6.5 foot fakeroo (can't have real ones in the residence hall, fire codes) to replace a 3 foot fake that could open and close like an umbrella. In bad holiday news, we don't know where we can put it in the apartment where it won't be in the way.

* We got the stuff we bought at Waterford last week, and it came with a care manual. We thought this was unusual, until we got to the passage noting that the faceting and shaping of some pieces can, if left in direct sunlight, focus beams to the point where it'll scorch wood. That's good to know.

* As irritating as it is to go to Walter Brown and see the alma mater drop a 4-0 decision to UNH, it's exponentially more dispiriting when you realize that the last time BU scored on UNH's Mike Ayers was 17:19 into the third period of a BU win over UNH on JANUARY 23, 2003. The Terriers have not scored on Ayers in 254 minutes and 24 seconds of hockey. I'm not sure if there is a NCAA record for longest shutout streak by a goalie against any one specific team, but if there is Ayers must be getting close.

And in a move I should have made a long time ago, I've added Amanda Conaway to the links at left. A Terrier with the good sense not to get mixed up with either the RA or college bowl crowd while at BU as a student, Miss Amanda has nevertheless become stuck with us now. Thankfully, she's taken the energy that most of us put towards trivia and/or regulating and put it towards a fine appreciation of various distilled and fermented beverages. What were the rest of us thinking?

Proving that I'm not the only person thinking about this, the Blogalicious Lone Star State correspondent, Brian Hight, reports that:

* Troy State will be heading to the Sun Belt next year (in fact, the conference web site notes that they'll be a full member in 2005).
* Utah and New Mexico States have already been poached by the WAC (if I read the papers at all, I'd have noticed this happened a couple of weeks ago).
* Rumor has TCU ditching CUSA and joining up with Mountain West, thwarting a mini-Southwest Conference reunion.

Sticking with CUSA, it'll also likely be losing St. Louis and UNC-Charlotte to the Atlantic 10 (offer made for them to join the A10 today), and Army has already given notice that it's returning to independent status in football after 2004. Which makes things tough for CUSA, as it loses some of its basketball power and (if I can count) means only 11 football teams and thus no title game (not that it'd be a huge earner, I suppose, but it's the hot thing to have).

I really have nothing to say about The Reagans, other than regardless if its yanking was caused by a populist groundswell or some Right Wing Media Death Squad, we were probably saved from four hours of crap TV. Unless you subscribe to Showtime, in which case you'll be paying to watch it. Suckers.