NFL

Just what I need. The Buffalo Bills just signed the recently cut Terell Owens to a one year deal for $6.5 million.

I have to put up with TO AGAIN? At least it wasn’t the Eagles…

Sigh

What can I say really. The second half was amazing, but you can’t win when a referee does not understand the rules.

A smart man once told me that if the entire game comes down to one call or play, then you weren’t meant to win anyway…

Such is the life of being an Eagles fan.

Time to watch the Steelers / Ravens game. I mean come on, if the Ravens win, I think we all can admit that a Ravens / Cardinals SuperBowl has to be one of the least cared about sporting events in a LONG time…

Dan Wetzel is an award-winning sportswriter, author and screenwriter. He has covered all levels of basketball as well as college football, the NFL, MLB and NHL.

He also makes sense when it comes to Philly’s Donovan McNabb:

Yet there’s a strange juxtaposition with McNabb. (And with him, isn’t there always something?) He’s a sympathetic and popular figure all across America. Except in one town – Philadelphia.

Philadelphia fans get a bad rap. They’re painted as unreasonable and nasty when intense and demanding is more accurate. They are forever dealing with the day back in the 1960s when some people booed Santa Claus (who may have been drunk and deserved it).

Whatever. If you’re going to label Philly fans dogs, then at least acknowledge that while they can be as mean as pit bulls, they’re also as loyal as golden retrievers.

The Eagles would never need extra time to sell out a playoff game to avoid a local blackout as Arizona did two weeks ago. Never.

That about says it. It’s the same across the board, The Flyers, The Phillies, The Eagles, the list goes on and on…

Wow. Uh, wow.

Wow. Holy frick wow.

If I had all the money in the world and ever again ever had to worry about spending or saving a single dollar, I wouldn’t have bet a dime on the Eagles beating the frickin Giants.

Wow.

What can I say, I’ve been busy. Emily is growing and changing so fast that we can hardly keep track. I’m trying to take as many pictures as possible and store them all in my gallery.

I’ve been scanning and scanning and scanning for my Comic Book Database System. It is taking a while, but the geek side of me loves having all of that information cataloged.

The Christmas tree is up, and boy do the cats love it. They think it is a large green scratching post with lots of cat toys hanging upon it. It is quite a party.

The Eagles are still pretty crappy. Although they seem to be headed in the right direction, and beating the Giants sure helped my blood pressure. The Flyers are headed in the same direction, but their constant ability to take games into overtime is certainly NOT helping my blood pressure. Penn State is headed to the Rose Bowl versus USC. That should be a good game. Boise State is headed to the “San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.” That’s quite a mouthful and a game that very few care about. I’ll be watching. Enough about sports…

Work. Heh, let’s not talk about work. I’ve been slowly working on moving server stuff around at work. Most of the core stuff is all hosted on VMware’s ESX virtual server system. It’s helped a lot and made a lot of things easier on my end. However, here comes the bad part. Previous people that were employed by the district decided to go outside and bring in consultants and have them “look at things.” Well, their suggestion was to have fewer servers, not more. In the process, they migrated every individual server into one server that was supposed to take care of. Thank god the people that made said decisions are no longer employed by the district, and it has taken me years to start splitting the servers up again. It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you carry all of your eggs in a large basket and that basket breaks, you have a mess of yolk all over the floor. However, spread the eggs out in many smaller baskets, and when (not if, let’s be realistic) one of those basket breaks, you only lose an egg or two. Duh. But, such is life when you work in Education. Again, those people are no longer at the district, and thankfully the replacement people agree that my way is “better.” I’ve already moved our major database system (fund, child, and transportation accounting) off of the main server onto its own samba server. The thing has really never run so well. I am now in the process of doing the same with printing. So far, that is going well too. I’ve moved all of the web services (http, MySql, DNS) onto their own servers and they have been running well for over a year with little or no problems.

Now if I could just ditch the 450 MacBooks we have, I might actually like going to work again…

What can I really say about the Eagles. First, their last game ended in a 13-13 TIE (YES TIE) with the 1-8 Bengals. Second, my “beloved” quarterback Donnie McNabb didn’t even know the game COULD end in a tie.

Uh. What? I mean. Uh. Huh? Quoth R-Diddy (Ray Didinger the sportswriter to you non Philly people):

So where do they go from here? They will win a few more games, they may even finish over .500, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot, not if your mission statement is winning championships as Jeff Lurie has always claimed. Right now, the Eagles are moving in the wrong direction. Seeing players celebrate a tie in Cincinnati is all the proof I need.

That’s pretty brutal, and I agree 100%. The words “pissed off” just don’t seem to do this whole situation justice.

One more quick quote:

The Eagles are a clueless, shapeless mess at the moment.

Now THAT sums it up.

Just as I thought, the good old fans of Philly didn’t disappoint. Oh well, let’s put politics aside for now.

Flyers got killed in the open period. It was 4-0 by the end of the first, and Stevens had to pull Biron for the backup Niittymaki (whom posted a shutout from that point on). I think the loss had mainly to do with the fact that the Rangers had already played 4 regular season games and this was the first game for the Flyers. That’s what I am hoping anyway. In the end, the orange and black came back and almost tied the game several times in the 3rd period, but just couldn’t get it done. I’ll take the 4-3 loss (for now).

Eagles take the win! Better yet, Dallas quarterback Romo broke his pinkie finger on his throwing hand. Sorry folks, but hahahaha. I am an Eagles fan. I am required by law to hate all that is Dallas.

On a different note, I finally broke down and ordered a cold air intake for the Ram1500. I’ve been reading forums here and there and some people have boasted better gas mileage. I honestly won’t hold my breath, but it will give a chance to tinker around under the hood without breaking anything major. Pictures will follow…

I feel as if I have lost the urge to blog. I dunno, maybe I just don’t have anything important to say these days. Although, let’s be honest, when did I ever. Check the archives, there really isn’t anything groundbreaking there. I really should get back to posting more. I’m not sure what to say.

I pretty much hate watching the Eagles anymore. Watching yet another year of crap and horrible offense piled on top of shockingly mediocre defense is really getting to me. Watching big Andy Reid talk about how “we have to improve” and how he has to call better plays year after year is driving me nuts. The Eagles offense never changes, it never evolves, it just continues to suck when it is needed most. They are terrible in the clutch.

The Bills went 4-0 before exploding to the Cardinals. 4 and freaking 0. The Buffalo Freaking Bills. They are basically at the top of the AFC and still the Eagles fart along at the end of the pack. Oh well.

The Flyers are just getting their season underway and really, I can’t honestly say I am hopeful. The head office has made some changes, but nothing super dramatically different happened from last year. No big signings, no major changes. I can’t see the team getting that extra push it needs with signing cheap has-beens or even cheaper never-were players.

Penn State is 6-0 and ranked #6 in the country. So far, they haven’t (in my opinion) played any teams that have really tested them. That’s coming up though, I promise you.

The Soul won the Arena Bowl. Holy freaking crap. Although that still doesn’t make Philly a championship city. I think I am one of the few people I know that even cares about the Arena League.

The Phils have made it to the post-season this year. They look to be playing pretty strong, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time before they too rip my heart out and stomp on it. Give it time, it’s there.

Lastly, work kinda sucks. The whole “lets buy Macs” thing is really starting to burn me. They just don’t work the way we need them to. They aren’t lasting and/or taking the abuse that high school kids and teachers (more teachers it seems) dish out. But that’s what happens when truly uninformed people make truly uninformed decisions. I can hardly wait until their warranties expire, because that alone may drive our budget into the hole. So far out of about 450 MacBooks, we have had to replace 6 hard drives, 3 motherboards, 3 wireless cards, and over 120 batteries. I only say over 120 because at this point we have totally lost count. Add all that up and I would have to say that I am not impressed. Don’t even get me started on the supposed super friendly and even more super helpful Apple tech support. In a nutshell, it doesn’t exist.

Done!