The Ultimate Fighter 2

Their slogan this season is, "See How it Feels When it's Real!"
Yeah. Right. I'd do that if it actually had some FIGHTING in it! The first season was pretty cool. There were some wussies, but not like this season. What's the deal? These guys stand up facing each other and do nothing but dance around the ring like they were disco daddies on the roller rink circa 1970. Macho-macho-man! I wanna BE! A macho man!



Anyway, just thought I'd vent a little about my frustration with where the show's going. When are they going to start getting gritty and going for the jugular?

INXS Rockstar

Of course the topic on lots of folks' minds tonight will be ROCKSTAR! Tonight at I believe 9pm Central is the last show. Who will make it and who are you cheering on? The final three are Mig, Marty, and JD. Here's my take. GLAD THE GIRLS ARE GONE! None of them were right for INXS. Yeah yeah Jordis could sing... but not right for the band, which I'm glad at least the public was finally beginning to base their votes on what's right for INXS. And Susie...blech. She couldn't be gone fast enough. The chick's got a one octave range it seems, and that octave's tenor.



My vote's for Marty. He won my vote when he did The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" on acoustic guitar without accompaniment. Impressive. He's got rock star charisma, and a fantastic work ethic. I think he's a great fit for INXS. I also like Mig, he'd be another nice fit, but not as nice as Marty imho. JD needs to go flip burgers. He's got a crap attitude and it shows (although not as bad as it was in beginning/mid-season).

Where's Your Girl Geek?

It's 9:10pm, and I'M STILL AT $#&U*(#@ WORK! This is getting a smidge ridiculous now. After working 60.5 hours, INCLUDING a full 10 hours on Saturday, having one single day off was really nice. But now back to the grind and I've been here 12 hours today and I'm starting to just not care anymore. It's the law of diminishing returns -- you have to let me get out, get fresh non-office air, and a little bit of entertainment if you expect productivity out of me. 12 hours nearly straight is NOT going to get the job done when someone's miserable. ARRRRRRRRRRGH!

Dolphins 'flipping' to be Found

I thought this story was pretty heartwarming:

Lost in Katrina, dolphins 'flipping' to be found
In 'unheard of' rescue, trainers find tame bottlenoses washed into gulf



GULFPORT, Miss. - In an “unheard of” rescue operation, eight dolphins that were swept out of their oceanarium by Hurricane Katrina have been rediscovered hundreds of yards out at sea where trainers are tracking, feeding and caring for them.

“To find all eight of them on your doorstep is just unheard of,” said Moby Solangi, president of the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport. “When we first saw them, they were really starving. When they saw their trainers, they were absolutely flipping.”

The eight Atlantic bottlenose dolphins were swept out of their tank by the storm surge from Katrina, which then destroyed the oceanarium.

Since Saturday, when the dolphins were found, their trainers, along with a dolphin rescue team from Florida and a marine biologist from Seattle, have been boating out into the Gulf of Mexico three times a day to visit the school of dolphins.

The six females and two males are fed fish filled with vitamins and medicine to help treat their infections. None of the dolphins suffered life-threatening injuries, Solangi said, but they all endured multiple scrapes and lacerations.

Whistles and buckets
The team of rescuers coaxes the dolphin to a pair of floating mats by using whistles and banging buckets together, sounds the animals learned to associate with eating while in captivity, Solangi said.

“More than likely, they’ve lost all their hunting skills, their social skills,” said Jeff Potter, a marine biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service who participated in rescues following the tsunami last December. “The biggest thing is to try to get some food in them. We’re trying to build up their strength before we actually try to reacquire them.”

The dolphins, trained to respond with flips and the like to the delight of show crowds, are being taught how to beach themselves on the mats, which is how the rescuers eventually plan to secure them for transport to safety.

Officials say the U.S. Navy is preparing to deliver saltwater pools in which to keep the dolphins, but those are not expected to arrive before the weekend. In the interim, a swimming pool at a hotel will be placed on standby in the event an emergency rescue is necessary.

The dolphins range in age from 4 years to 40. The two youngest are the males, Noah, 6, and Elijah, 4. The females are Jill, 40; Kelly, 31; Jackie, 31; Tamara, 20, Shelly, 20; and Toni, 17. Jackie is the mother of Toni and Elijah; Kelly is Noah’s mother.

Many animals were evacuated from the oceanarium before the hurricane, though the dolphins and a number of sea lions remained. Officials said they believed the steel-wrapped concrete holding tanks, which survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, would outlast the worst blows from Hurricane Katrina.

In looking at the twisted wreckage of what used to be his oceanarium, Solangi said it was a miracle that any of the dolphins made it through all the debris without more serious wounds.

“I'm absolutely amazed,” he said.

Casting Crowns

Casting Crowns released their new album on August 30th. My pal Ed brought it to my attention today, so I hopped out to iTunes and sure enough, the new release, woohoo! It's downloading as I blog, heh heh.

I'm going to go listen to it while I crank out some code.

I made some killer pan-seared spicy scallops for dinner last night -- I was flying without a net and no recipe, they turned out fabulous! The artichokes were so-so, would've been better fresh, but Albertson's apparently thinks too highly of their artichokes at THREE DOLLARS PER ARTICHOKE! The recipe I was going to use (Alton Brown from Good Eats on Food Network -- Broiled Chokes) would've cost around $28 to make just that, nevermind the scallops. No waaaaaay!

Busy weekend this time around -- playing Suede tonight and Sideline tomorrow. My dad's 59th birthday is on Saturday -- Happy Birthday Dad, I love you! :)

Let's Get Ready to Grumbbbbbllllleeee!

< grumble >
I just don't get enough sleep anymore, and unless I've Benadryl'd myself into oblivion I'm waking up at least 3-4x a night. And I work with eccentrics. But then again doesn't everybody?

Why do TabletPC's insist on running 80 processes on startup? Why do people use Hungarian notation in Java programs? Why can't people say constructor in their code instead of using the obscure "ctor"?

Offices are a veritable haven of germs. Coworker X can sneeze 30x in a day and that's an average. One of those "mop it up, please" kind of sneezes too. Then there's Coworker Y whose 80 decibel belches can be heard from 25 feet away. Don't touch my laptop, eww. And why yes, I don't have a problem seeing my code with 1400x1050 res, I'm sorry you're old and going blind.

Tonight it looks like Jenny Labow's opening for Hansen for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Nuff said, lol. Seriously though, my problems are mere trifle irritants compared to what people are going through in the South right now, their homes decimated. If you donate, and everyone should, make sure it's to an upstanding charity, and not one of those sick fly-by-night operations that seem to pop up whenever disaster strikes.
< /grumble >

Labor Day

For me was for laboring. I figured that Labor Day may as well stand for the one day a year I actually clean something. :) Tore up the place, tossed old junk/clothes. Of course it seems to put me in some kind of cleaning mode, because all of a sudden nothing is safe from my narrowing eye as I eyeball what I can scrub, pick up, or throw out.



Did get out to see three movies though: 40 Year Old Virgin, Revenge of the Sith (yes, we were the last hominids on the planet that hadn't yet seen it even once), and March of the Penguins. They were all great -- penguins was definitely cute factor, Sith was finally the best of those first three episodes, and 40 had some good laughs, albeit rather lowbrow.

Managed to not have to set foot in a club even once. *YES* Spent a bazillion dollars at Barnes & Noble, disguised as a "book sale". Book sale means I spend WAAAAY too much money on books that will take me the next 2.3 years to read. Read voraciously.

Since my schedule's been hectic, I'm probably going to try some blog vignettes over the next week or two and see how that goes. My version of blog vignettes means I'll be blogging only from my hx4705 with bluetooth keyboard or from my BlackBerry 7100t. I'm curious to see if my blog entries increase being able to mobile blog on the run.