Hey, do you ever... have to remind yourself to breath? 

No?  Yeah, me either.   :: shifty eyes ::

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"Exactly:  you didn't think."

I don't know why I was thinking about this today, because no one was in trouble or made any bad decisions, but my mind was wandering slightly while waiting for the second Monday Night Football game to end so that we could tape NFL Primetime. 

I'm sure many of you (like people read this) have heard this from a superior, whether it be a parent, a teacher, a coach, etc...  You made a bad decision and did something wrong, whether you meant to or not.  If anything, it makes it worse if you didn't mean to.  They say something like "How could you do that?".  Then you say "Well, I didn't think that it would..."  Before you can even finish your rebuttal, they say "Exactly: you didn't think".  

It takes your ability to defend yourself, and demeans you at the same time.  Wow, that's frustrating.  I promise to (try) not to ever say that to my future kids.

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So this nice old lady keeps calling on every morning I really need to sleep late.  I have a shift today from 3pm to 2am, and I was hoping to sleep until at least noon so that I'd make it to 2am.  But Ms. Riley just has to call...  at 9am.  Why does she call?

Our home phone number is one digit away from the number of a church, and Ms. Riley attempts to call that church on a regular basis.  At first, we tried to direct her to the correct phone number, but at this point it's just an annoyance.  I know it sounds mean, but it's truly bothersome...

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I found this story on Digg this morning, but the Digg submission was totally ridiculous.  The title was "Obama - 'if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong.'"  It seems like a pretty controversial statement, but Obama's real statement was as follows:

"It's not my track record. It's not that I can't give a pretty good speech; from what I've heard I can preach once in a while.  What it really does lay bare, I think, in part: We're still locked into the notion that somehow if you appeal to white folks then there must be something wrong."

Sen. Barack Obama
(D) Illinois

If Obama needs to keep explaining his race and how it affects his candidacy, then it'll actually affect his candidacy!  Why can't people just be judged on what they think, say, and stand for?  Because we're human, and there will always be people that will vote for who they're comfortable with.  Newsflash: racism still exists.  But it's refreshing to see that Barack is as much of a player as he is.  It's an indication that times are changing.  I can't imagine that 20 years ago this would be possible.  And it'll make way for future possible presidential candidates who aren't white men.

Of course it helps that Hillary is running.  I've heard from Republicans that they've actually considered voting for Obama, if only to prevent Hillary from winning.

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I was browsing the stats from SubmitYourVote.com this morning, and made my way to the world map view to see what kind of traffic we were getting from around the world, and I was impressed!  It's very spread out:

 We're all hoping that in the next couple weeks that traffic will increase overall.  We had an amazing day or two at launch, but since then it's been mild.  Once the community aspect kicks in, people will share their polls and votes will be cast!

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Ok, first of all, I know this isn't real.  But it looks amazing and really makes you wonder.  Like, wonder how they made it look so real!  The word on some of the YouTube comments is that it's probably some sort of viral marketing for an upcoming movie.

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Just a small example of what some fantasticly written political parody can sound like.  At times their articles sound 100% believable until that one quote hits you the wrong way and you say "what?  naw...". 

"At the rate they're going, they will reach 2016 at the same time as the United States—and given their geographic position relative to the international date line, possibly even sooner."

(not) Defense Secretary Robert Gates
from TheOnion.com

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This is too cool.  However, I'm already so used to using a standard Xbox remote for playing Halo, etc...  It'd be interesting to learn to play with this new configuration, but I'm not sure it would be beneficial or give an edge over other players. 

Half of me wishes I had the kind of time to figure out how to do projects like this one, but the other half is glad that I have a decent job and a life.

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So we're not perfect, either.  It's true, we've had a rocky decade or two...  Can't believe Florida or Florida State aren't on this list anywhere, though. 

Top 10 are as follows:

1. Texas Tech
2. Oklahoma
3. Texas A&M
4. Alabama
5. Kentucky
6. California
7. Washington
8. Auburn
9. Oklahoma State
10. University of Miami

The other interesting note about this list:  University of Miami is the only private institution.  Therefore, we are the private university with the dirtiest football program.  Cheers to us.  </sarcasm>

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Steve Spurrier needs to get a grip.  He's the head football coach at the University of South Carolina, and is upset because the university rejected two football players from admission because of poor academic records, even though they met the minimum requirements set by the NCAA.

It should be apparent that rejection from a university is because that player doesn't meet the standards of that school.  It's no surprise that a school would choose to have higher admission standards than the NCAA for student athletes.  If anything, I would be happy that the university would not accept a player simply because he played football and was OK'd by the NCAA.  And while Steve Spurrier might be used to the good 'ol days at Florida, anyone familiar with Florida colleges should be aware that UF is not for the coldest beers in the fridge, if you know what i mean.  More accurately, it's for people who drink the coldest beers in the fridge.

Steve Spurrier isn't the admissions office.  His word is not the final say in whether a young man is allowed to attend a university.  And while he says "I can't operate misleading young men," maybe it's time for him to change, and not the university.  Now that he knows that promising admission to young men might not be the truth, he might change his ways.  But it's not likely.

Bearden told The State that the special admissions committee thoroughly reviews each applicant, including grades, records, test scores and classes taken, and admits students who have a realistic chance of succeeding.

ESPN.com

So if the university didn't think that these student (ahem, athlete) had a realistic chance of succeeding off the field, should their football prowess override that decision so that they can succeed on the field?  At what point does college football lose its affiliation with academic institutions altogether?

In Division I, an academic sliding scale (based on GPA and standardized test scores) exists. A minimum GPA of 2.0 is required. The higher your GPA, the lower your minimum SAT or ACT score can be. For example, a student with a 2.0 GPA must score at least a 1010 on his SAT or an 86 on his ACT. However, a student with a 3.0 GPA is afforded a minimum of a 620 on his SAT or a 52 on his ACT.

Well, I'm surprised that they have this sliding scale.  It's more impressive than I thought it was, but basically they're saying that you can somehow get not-terrible grades and prove your ignorance during a standardized test.  A 620 SAT score?  Most everyone I know scored higher than 620 on either the math or English sections individually.  Even with the 2.0 GPA (averaging a C), means you can score just over 500 on each of the SAT sections.  The scale for the SATs ranges from 200-800, which means that 500 is terribly low. 

It'd be interesting to see if this scuffle in South Carolina bring to light the abysmal academic standards that the NCAA has for its athletes.  It's no wonder that a university would choose to hold its students to higher standards.

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I stumbled upon this image on Digg.com today of someone cleaning a 1,000 gallon fish tank.  Talk about extreme:

Now, I don't know a lot about marine aquariums, but I've read that this isn't the best way to clean a tank, especially with all of the external variables that his skin can be adding to the tank's system.  I know not to clean fishtank glass with soap, so I'd have to expect for his swimsuit to not have any detergent residue...

It looks like he has some Lookdowns in the back, and there's something in the back left corner, but I'm pretty sure it's not a ray.

I'd love a tank just like this someday.  Cleaning it would be a problem, but if you were able to keep some really unique and interesting fish, then I'd think it'd be worth it.  The only two tanks I'm keeping currently are a 12 gallon saltwater (with a Scissortail Goby, a Clown Fish, and a Damselfish), and a 1.5 gallon beta tank.  Someday... someday...

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On Wednesday, the site that I've been working on for the past 6-8 months was finally released to the masses, and I'm pretty excited about some of the praise that it's received in only a short few days. It all started when the site was reviewed on Profy.com in line with the release on Wednesday.

That review started a trickle-down/snowball effect of blogs either writing their own review or tracking back to the original Profy post. The two sites after Profy that were most exciting were from Mashable.com and KillerStartups.com. And with each site with a review, there's opportunity to post comments. The number of comments on each site varies from none to 4 or 5, but it's still random everyday voicing their own opinions about a site that I've worked pretty hard on. And I'm psyched about what they had to say!

So I thought I'd share some of the interesting comments with you here

...very pretty interface...  ...minimalist site design...

SubmitYourVote.com - Pretty UI for a Crowded Space
Profy.com

This is a good thing, in my opinion:  minimalism is considered clean and easy to use, something that is sought after in Web 2.0 design.  It's the opposite of busy, cluttered, and overbearing.

...I’d have to say that their interface is a little more professional web 2.0 than some of the others...

SubmitYourVote.com - A Social Polling Site
KillerStartups.com

...and a nifty Ajax feature that takes your polling results and places them in an attractive circular graph form, complete with a color-coded graph legend and percentages. In short, it's gorgeous, and I could see a lot of uses for that type of attractive results presentation...

SubmitYourVote.com - Pretty UI for a Crowded Space
Profy.com

This was all me.  I'm not normally a person to boast and be outspoken about my work, but this really makes me proud.  People that don't have a stake in our site think highly of the design and features that were (a) my idea and (b) implemented solely be my coding.  And even though the traffic on the site has sputtered to a pittance (oh well), what I contributed to the project is apparently quite good, and it lifts my spirits and my ego a little bit.  It makes me want to code and design more!

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After about 4 years of dating, my cousin Maggie and her boyfriend Matt are engaged! And, it sounds a little harsh, but finally! I've never been to a wedding before, ever... And it was only a matter of time before these two got married. So it's basically the day we've been waiting for, and we couldn't be happier!

Maggie called tonight, and I was the only one home, which meant that I had the opportunity to tell the rest of my family the good news. It's quite a feeling to let a couple of people know such happy news, knowing that they've been waiting for it as long as I have...

I was promised that I'd be asked to sing at this wedding... Big responsibility. Can't screw that one up.

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