i was reading a magazine today about the next generation home entertainment machines. they are going to be DVD/CD/Tivo machines with built in capability to serv audio and video to any TV in the house via wireless networking and will be connected to the internet for downloads. there is a fight now on how to set up the intellectual property laws that will no doubt be tested when these type machines hit the consumer in the next 3-5 years and there are other fights over who owns the equipment, the data, and the content of the data. all this boils down to the fact that while it may be more expensive in some respects, the day is coming where you can watch any program past or present any time you want and replay it as many times as you want.

along the same lines, i downloaded a bunch of “triumph the insult comic dog” videos of the conan obrien show. while i don’t usually thing triumph is that funny on the show, the star wars premier and the bon jovi special videos are hilarious. go to your favorite file sharing program and check these two out.

also, if you use XP, download SP1 released yesterday. there are some pretty significant security fixes in it.

i don’t know how many people know this, but our friend gregory jack (#39) got to play left DT against the ducks on saturday. he was in for the last 1:40 of the game, got in on one tackle, and was on top of the pile when the game ended. i just went back and watched the tape of the tv broadcast. congratulations, gregory! maybe you’ll get more playing time as the season goes on. when he’s out there i’ll believe that we have someone on the field that cares.

oregon and washington are beautiful. the weather was perfect–highs in the low 80’s, negligable humidity, clear blue skies. we just don’t have trees like those in the south. maybe 100 years ago the southern pines looked like that but those are all gone now. everything up there is green. we drove up to seattle from portland by way of the mt. st. helens national park. the scenery is simply gorgeous. trees everywhere, lakes with crystal clear water, big snow covered mountains. we didn’t get to see the crater on mt. st. helens because we had already spent a long time in the park and we didn’t want to stick around and try to find the best viewpoint and hope for the clouds to clear. even so, it was pretty impressive. we visited lava canyon and you can still see where the lava ran down the mountain over 20 years ago. some in the group (who will remain nameless) did break the rules and stole some rocks, though. actually, maybe “some rocks” is an understatement. we split them up when we packed our bags to go home and some of us had a hard time lifting our luggage with all the pumice that was in them. they even have signs in the park about “Don’t be a pumice picker.” i took a picture.

other than the beauty of the landscape (and the horrendousness of our football team) the only two other interesting things about this trip were:

1. you can’t pump your own gas in oregon. daniel got out of the van, picked up the nozzle (the pump was on) and started to pump the gas when the lady at the gas staTION ran out of the store yelling at him. she was horrified that he would even try to pump the gas. they told us that it was state law that you couldn’t pump your own gas. said it was for environmental reasons but i don’t know if that’s really it. we found out later that its a $500 fine for pumping your gas. i just found it weird that we had 2 chemical engineers, 1 computer engineer, and an architect on our trip so we could design, build and run an oil refinery to make the gas but we can’t pump it into a minivan.

2. we suck at maps. saturday after the game we decided to drive to the coast and see the sunset over the pacific and eat in a nice restaurant at a little tourist town called newport. on the map it looked like it would take an hour to get to the coast and then maybe another hour to newport. wrong. it was dark when we got to the coast so we think we saw the pacific ocean and it was so late when we got to newport everything was closed and we ate at burger king. the next day we were going to drive up to seattle via mt. st. helens and mt. ranier and make it to a 1:00 mariners game. wrong again. the 3 hour drive to seattle took 7.5, we didn’t even make it to mt. ranier and we showed up in the bottom of the 8th to the baseball game. then they wanted to make us pay to get into the stadium for 1 inning of baseball. needless to say we didn’t get to see the inside of safeco field.

overall, it was a great road trip to see a sorry football game. thanks daniel, john, leigh anne, marilyn, koby, jason, and aaron for a great trip. we turned out to be a winning combinaTION even if our bulldogs didn’t. i look forward to another trip will yall with great anticipaTION. maybe after the michelin man gets off suspenSION we’ll play a little better.

i got in from jackson monday night at about 12:15am. by the time i got to bed it was 1:00 and i only got 4 hours sleep before getting up and going to work. i had very little motivaTION to work and was pretty tired by the time i got home yesterday afternoon. i laid down to take a nap at around 5:00 and woke up at 2:30am. at that point i got into bed. i feel kinda funny today. i don’t know if its the 12 hours sleep last night or the changing time zones twice over the weekend. i hope i get back to normal soon.

btw, i looked it up and nouns that end in -TION are known as NominalizaTIONs (i believe that is a new one).

its only wednesday and my week of work is over. i’m taking tomorrow off to go get a driver’s liscence, tag and title in mississippi and to register to vote. i’m hoping that all that will only take the morning and i’ll have the afternoon to goof off. we leave for oregon to watch the dawgs play on friday afternoon. i hope we at least make a good showing out there. i think i read on their website that we are the first SEC school to ever play in that stadium. it would be nice to come away with a win over a top25 team on the road on the first week of the season. i think it would do a lot for our national image if we end up being pretty good and make it to a bowl game. right now, though i’m not hoping for much. i’ve heard lots of things about our defense not being as good as in past years but that’s something that you’ll never be able to predict until the season starts. if a mediocre defense plays well as a team then they will keep you in the game. if a bunch of very good athletes don’t play as a team (like we’ve seen the last few years) they won’t be as effective. if we can put points on the board i think we’ll have a chance. of course we’ll still have to overcome the handicap of terible play calling. someone hit sparky over the head and tell him not to call a run between the tackles on 3rd and 11.
also, i hope the fires in oregon don’t affect the weather. they are predicting highs in the low 80’s and clear for the weekend in eugene but i wonder if we’ll be able to see the smoke from the 500,000 acre fire burning a little ways south of there?