Wednesday, December 24

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Joyous New Year to you and yours!

Sunday, December 21

Sufjan Sampsonia S***

Cleaning out my blasted tabs. It was 42 tabs in 6 windows as of yesterday morning. I'm currently down to 19 in 3 windows.

+ I've had this one open for quite a while, and it's from 2005, but it's still really funny (someone posted it on Facebook the other day: Chinese Factory Worker Can't Believe The S*** He Makes For Americans.

To Tell the truth, I didn't even read it. The headline's enough.

I've often thought this, especially with some of the stuff the twins get in Happy Meal's: The Chinese worker who made this must think we're crazy.

Or, more probably, wishes they made so much money that they could throw around crap like we do.

+ The new Sufjan Xmas album is out! I haven't even listened to it yet, but will endeavor to today. Someone has put it up. My ethic: listen away. Buy it if you like it.

+ Brad mentioned fun with Google Maps on Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh.

!

Sampsonia Way? Didn't I work on a house down there when I worked for the Pittsburgh Project?

Yep :-)

Ok, that was everything postable. Down to 14 tabs in 3 windows. Much better. Gotta run!

Saturday, December 20

Happy anniversary to me

Doing some research for Madhu. I've been posting here at interact for over 8 years. I'm sure you'll agree that's a lot in internet time. Here's the link to my first month. Kinda' quaint.

And I began posting long before that over at MetaFilter, where I really got in on the ground floor. I lurked for a little while, then grabbed user number 252, and first commented on thread 572, January 27th, 2000.

Yes, interact is languishing a little right now. I've been spending more time on Facebook. But I am proud of this weblog, not least of all because it's one of the things I've done longest in my life.

Monday, December 15

Xmas album request

Dear T-Bone Burnett,

You know what this world needs? A Christmas album from you in the vein of 'O Brother, Where Art Thou' and 'Walk the Line' with a heaping serving of Allison Krauss. Think you could pull that off?

I have been a good boy this year.

Sincerely,

Sean

Tuesday, December 9

Panthers scouting report

Saw the Panthers last night and the last quarter and a half was really good. They ran roughshod over the Buccaneers.

If the running game hadn't gone berserk, and if they had lost, Jake Delhomme would have been the goat of that game.

I was pretty frustrated for the first two and a half quarters. The passing game was not working well and TB had really never stopped the run. So why in tarnation did they keep passing?

Here's the AP's take.

You might protest that they needed to establish the run or they wore down TB, but that wasn't my view. Maybe a little. It was more like the offensive coordinator finally got the message that the run was working and the pass was not.

Let me hasten to say that no one except Mike Martz loves the pass more than me. Maybe Steve Spurrier. But you have to go with your strengths and what's working.

'Goat' might be too strong, but Ronde Barber had a pretty bad game for TB. He had a couple of significant penalties and got stiff-armed to the ground on one of the long TD runs. On the plus side, for him, he had an interception.

Carolina's defense was ok. They did enough to win in the end. They certainly didn't dominate.

The stars were the blockers (offensive line + TEs + FBs) and the RBs.

But back to Jake. The Defense got a three-and-out on the first series and Carolina started with the ball inside TB's 50. To take advantage of that, they should have gotten a TD. And they made good progress, until Jake took a stupid sack when he should have thrown the ball away. 3 points instead of 7.

They AP story says the wore down TB, but, again, I disagree. They just finally stuck with what was working.

Worse than Jake's sack were his two interceptions.

But all well that ends well.

Sunday, December 7

Siobhan, Paul, Jaq, Mal (and IC)

+ Should we have named Elizabeth 'Siobhan'?

(Irish feminine of 'Sean'. Jean:Jeanne::Sean::Siobhan. Pronounced 'shi-VAWN' (approximately)).

Answer: almost certainly not. Not only would she always have to spell it, no one would ever be able to pronounce it. And it's probably a little too Sean-centered.

Three informative links: 1 2 3

But, extremely cool name.

Don't worry. If we had, Wil wouldn't be Sean William ;-)

+ I find out from Paul that the gender analyzer thinks there's a 75% chance that this weblog is written by a man.

+ Jaq has a long post about enjoying Firefly/Serenity, which we sure enjoyed, too.

+ But something I've been thinking about recently: I'm just not willing to take on the commitment of a tv show and all of its episodes. We watched the first season of Battlestar Galactica together and I watched the fourth and then we were done. Firefly's shortened run was just about right for us. I wonder if I would have kept watching it if they had kept it going...

+ Iowa City is one of only three cities in the world that is a City of Literature according to UNESCO (along with Melbourne and Edinburgh). Cool (but didn't bother to research the specs).