Ride with Pride!

Guess what finally showed up...

Oh yeah. Stylin'. I've been contemplating what to get for a personalized license plate for quite some time, and I pretty much settled on something Purdue-themed (surprise, surprise). The problem is that the abbreviation for Purdue University is "PU." So if you get something like "GO PU" it sounds like potty talk. I was also in the All-American Marching Band (AAMB), so I thought I could work that in, but "PUAAMB" probably wouldn't be good. Neither would Purdue Mechanical Engineer (PU ME).

Now, you know that I like references that you have to already know to get. Therefore, my number one choice came from my band heritage. In the AAMB, our most played song by far is "Hail Purdue," our school song. If we're going to play the intro and chorus, the drum majors call out "Hail, IC," to play the verse and play the chorus is "Hail PP," etc. The most common rendition by far was to play the verse, sing the chorus, then play the chorus, for which they call out "Hail, PSP." Therefore, "HAILPSP" would have been an awesome plate, that only Purdue band alumni (a very select group of dorks) would get. But of course, Sony had to introduce the PSP. So, unless you want people to think you worship an expensive, glitchy handheld gaming device, that idea was dead. It's really too bad though!

I was amazed that "BOILERS" was available, so in the end I couldn't pass that up. I just hope no one thinks I work for a company that makes actual boilers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Purdue In the Mailbag/Fandom

Purdue got a mention in Stewart Mandel's College Football mailbag this week.

Q: With a victory over Minnesota, is Purdue now the worst 4-0 team in the country?
--Keith Nicholson, Middleton, Wisc.

A: You tell me. They're a 15-point underdog this weekend against a team that's already been clobbered by one Big Ten foe and barely beat another.

I love my Boilers, but I would have to think that they are. I will restate that if they beat Notre Dame, I might have some sort of out of body experience. Also in the mailbag he discusses how Michigan State will always hover around 6-6.

This brings me to my next thought- Of course my heart is with Purdue, but I'm also a Michigan State fan, because I spent several years of my childhood in Lansing, and everyone (and I mean everyone) in my family went to school there, including my older brother Howard. I broke the mold by going to Purdue, paving the way for Carly to cause fewer ripples by choosing Northwestern (and dropped cash like it was hot in the process). Hey, at least we're all in the Big 10. Therefore my college allegiance rankings look a little like this:
1. Purdue
2. Michigan State
3. Northwestern
With the unofficial #4 being whoever plays Notre Dame. Now, Kate brought my attention to this letter to the Purdue Exponent:

I grew up 10 minutes away from Notre Dame and I am a die hard Irish fan and always will be. If I ever get tickets to a Notre Dame game I will happily leave this campus and go to South Bend. Now don't give me wrong, I love watching football. I attend the Purdue games, I wear Purdue apparel, and I cheer when they score. However I will never let that get in the way of my love for Notre Dame...Judging by the Facebook group, "Yeah, I go to Purdue; but I still love Notre Dame - Go Irish," which I am a member of, there are at least 297 other people that are in the same boat I am. So please don't bash us because we love the Irish. You can't expect us all to suddenly become Purdue fans. I'm sure we all like Purdue football, but we love the Irish.
Anthony Nobles
Freshman, Undergraduate Studies Programs

For some reason, that makes me want to barf. To me there's one main reason to be a fan of a school- because you went there. You can also be a fan of an institution that a loved one attended, but jeez, be true to your school, man! If you love the domers so much, why didn't you go there? If you tried, but they turned you away (for academic or financial reasons) why are you still a fan? I don't get it. I was born and raised to be a Spartan fan, but it turned out that Purdue was a better fit for me. I still root for MSU, but I can't even imagine turning on the Boilers for them.

In a related thought, while Kate's dad lived in Indiana he rooted for Purdue and the Indy Colts. Upon moving to North Carolina, he became a Wake Forest, Duke, and Carolina Panthers fan. Swtiching Pro franchises- maybe. But when we went to see Purdue at Wake Forest, he wore WF stuff, and had the audacity to refer to Wake as "us" and Purdue as "them!" Come on! Your daughter graduated from Purdue, and your only connection to Wake is a recent geographic proximity!

To spare Kate the trouble of leaving the comment I'll say "Marc, you're such a tool for caring about that - let it go" or something of the sort. That was her usual reply when I would (frequently) go off on this tirade, and she's probably right.

Shout-outs/Updates

First of all, I have an update on the Atheist's Nightmare. In case you didn't see Jamie's comment, here's what an actual, grown in the wild banana looks like (actually, there are about a billion varieties, but this one is typical):

That's right, tiny and chock full of seeds. You know what that means, right? The banana that the guy was demonstrating as absolute proof of God's great design? It was genetically engineered. Years ago people realized that eating natural Atheist's Nightmares was difficult, so they developed strains that were bigger, tasty when ripe, and had no seeds. Therefore, this guy was saying that God's perfect plan gave man a fruit that couldn't replenish itself. This is a level of idiocy that I didn't even consider during the first post, because this isn't even a theory debate- it's a factual error. By the way, you can check out wikipedia or even Purdue's horticulture department for more info than you ever really wanted on bananas.

On a side note, Saturday morning Jamie and I were flipping channels looking for cartoons when we saw the banana guy on the religious channel. Apparently he has a regular show- in this episode he was ambush interviewing people in a mall, asking various ska8tr bois if they thought they were living in accordance with God's plan as they looked around uncomfortably, thinking "Wait, you aren't from MTV!"

The second update is that my brother Howard noticed my good tech/bad tech post and pointed out that the bathrooms in Chicago O'Hare have a fantastic automatic seat cover thing. Good call! I spend a lot of time in airports and long ago deemed O'Hare to have my favorite facilities, on account of the seat covers and the fact that the stalls run almost floor to ceiling for excellent privacy. And if you think this is the first time I've had this conversation, then you probably don't know me very well.

SLC Golfers

Of course the first thing Jamie and I did when we got to his house was sit down for some Donkey Konga action. And not just any Donkey Konga- Imported Japanese Donkey Konga. The first reason that this was great was that the songs were like 95% new, albeit in Japanese- which ensured that I spent the rest of the weekend trying to sing songs I didn't really know the words to. Most of them had at least a few English phrases in them. Some of them even had English titles like "Wild Challenger," which was great because the whole song clips along in Japanese but for the last line the guys shouts "WIIIIIILD CHALLEEEEEENGERRRRR!" Therefore I spent the whole weekend yelling "Wild Challenger" every time I thought about it.

Second, apparently Nintendo gives Asian children more credit than American kids (or 27 year olds) because the drum patterns are considerably more involved. Not necessarily more difficult, just that in the US release they stick to good old eighth and sixteenth notes, and this one has lots of sextuplets and half-note triplets. In any case, you earn coins based on how well you play, and I noted that we were making a lot more money than we usually do. Jamie replied "I think it's just that the Yen is really weak right now" and we laughed and laughed. Of course, it was like midnight, which was 2 a.m. to me, so that might've been a factor. Many of the songs sounded like the background music at Chinese restaurants, so it made me hungry and we ended up going to the most gigantic Chinese buffet that I've ever seen. Seriously. We're totally going there again. Throw in the fact that we went and saw Fearless Friday and we had a very Asian-inspired weekend.

The highlight of the trip was probably the frisbee golf we played on Saturday. We usually play at least one round while I'm there at the local course, but this time we trekked up to Solitude, a ski resort in the mountains that maintains a course during the summer (fun because we've skied there before). You can read a description and see a map here, but it doesn't really do it justice. Notice that they recommend taking the lift up to the top- this wasn't available to us because there was too much snow- you can probably guess where this is headed. We asked if we could still hike up, and they said "Uh, I guess." We asked if anyone has done it with this much snow, and they said "I highly doubt it" with an implied "moron" at the end. Well, never ones to back away from a challenge, we set out for the course.

Ski slopes look pretty steep while you're gliding down them, but have you tried to climb up one? The first bit was easy because there wasn't much snow, but it was still steep and muddy. After that we hit the ankle-deep slushy snow. Mind you, I was wearing my jeans, a long sleeve shirt and my running shoes (oh yeah, I had just run 16 miles that morning) that are virtually devoid of traction. Jamie had on shorts for God's sake! The next hour unfolded like a surreal arctic exploration gone bad. Trudging through the snow, getting lost among the trees, looking for markers ("that's hole 8- we must be on the right path!"), stopping to almost puke. I wasn't too scared because my phone had 4 bars, but then Jamie mentioned that we should definitely turn back before it started getting dark. At the sixth tee I did my damnedest to convince Jamie to just start here, because the going was getting pretty rough. Seriously, we were slipping and sliding all over the place and my feet were soaked. But no, we'd come this far by God and Jamie was going to play from the first tee, so we kept going.

We made it to the top, and right as I was about to tee off, a moose walked across the fairway about 30 yards away. Not a little moose- a giant black moose with big old moose antlers. It may have been the biggest mammal I'd ever seen, shy of like, an elephant. It was at least bigger than the Budweiser Clydesdales. Of course it was gone by the time I got my camera phone out, so I have no proof.

Even though most of the course runs perpendicular to the main slope, none of the holes were what you could call "flat." There was always a pretty steep grade to contend with, and we quickly realized that going down was going to be more treacherous than getting up. We both biffed it in the snow once, but luckily it provided some nice cushioning. Plus, what happens when you fling a heavy, flat disc into 6-8 inches of wet snow? Why, it almost disappears entirely! We were okay for the most part, but we did spend a considerable amount of time looking for lost discs (I'm happy to report that we came back with them all). Actually, that was probably the most peaceful part- off the beaten path in the trees with the sun filtering through, listening to the melting snow drip off the branches like rain. At one point I was scrounging through the snow, and I looked up to see two deer staring me down, maybe 10 feet up the slope. They were no giant black moose, but they were still big enough to beat me up. I yelled to Jamie "Deer! Big deer! Okay they ran away!" and Jamie replied that it's probably because I was yelling like a tourettes patient.

All in all, it was a good game. Aside from the cold wet feet, the difficult climbing, the fact that it got cold half way through, and all the snow, mud and slush, it was a really good time and I'm glad we defied common sense and gave it a go. Jamie won by 3 throws, but he always wins because he's actually good at disc golf. I'm bad enough before you factor in my hypothermic loss of motor skills. We'll have to try it again when the conditions are a little better.

By the way, it was a 2 for 3 football weekend because MSU couldn't seal the deal against Notre Dame. Purdue miraculously beat Minnesota, a game I experienced on my cell phone while tempting fate on the ski slope. Hopefully the Boilers will at least put up a good fight next weekend- beating Notre Dame would make my season.

Back in the SLC

Today I'm blogging from Park City Utah, where it is currently 40 degrees and raining. When I got off the plane, I was wearing shorts. I thought this place was supposed to be a dessert! In any case, I like the whole greater Salt Lake area. I have 2 days of meetings, and then I'll be staying the weekend with Jamie. He imported the Japanese version of Donkey Konga, so we can expect a pretty wild weekend. I'll let you know if the neighbors call the cops.

On the plane I finished Marley & Me. I enjoyed it, but it was definitely more skewed to the female demographic. It's basically the writer's autobiography, but everything is told in relation to his dog. As the title implies, Marley was about the worst dog you could have- he was always horribly misbehaved, and would destroy entire rooms of their house in an afternoon, but he was a part of the family. They even got thrown out of obedience school when the instructor couldn't control him. One of my favorite quotes appears during the second round of training. Marley passes the class, finishing in seventh place. The author writes "So what if it was out of eight participants, and the eighth place finisher was a pit bull who seemed intent on taking a human life. This was a victory." In any case, I recommend the book for dog lovers or those who like a family feel good story. Be prepared for a heart wrenching ending though- I was pretty much crying on the plane.

In other news, the guy at the front desk here's name is Zink (I realize it's spelled differently). I noticed it last time I was here, but I still find it intriguing. If I were a chemist or something I might take to naming my kids after elements, but I'd have to be choosy. Based on about 5 minutes of thought I might name a kid Copper, but not something lame like Gallium or Barium (of course you could call him Barry for short).

It's time for good technology/bad technology!
Good Technology- Car radios that automatically adjust their volume with your speed. Brilliant. I think every car should have that. If Ford can put this feature into a freaking Focus, what's stopping Honda?
Bad Technology- Overly sensitive auto-flush toilets. Sometimes as soon as I get that sani-seat cover down the damn thing flushes, taking away the 0.25 millimeters of wax paper that was going to save me from disease before I can sit down. Sometimes you can drape a piece of toilet paper over the sensor to level the playing field (and totally defeat the purpose), but other times it's just a race between man and machine.

And finally, while checking the weather I stumbled upon an add for this page, which should surprise absolutely no one.

Bananas- Explained!

I've debated about whether or not to post this for a little while, because on the surface it seems like I'm discussing religion. I'm not. This is about bad science, and why you should think about things before you let them alter what you believe. Without further ado:

The Atheist's Nightmare


Did you watch it? Good. Let's summarize- The banana is absolute proof of creationism because it is so clearly designed to be something for humans to eat. Among the many reasons are:
1. Fits well in human hand
2. Non-slip texture
3. Perfect Shape for human mouth
4. Angles toward mouth when held
5. Skin color indicates ripeness
6. Easy-open tab at top
7. Biodegradable wrapper

Before we proceed, I want to make it clear that I have no problem with religion. I think people should be allowed to hold whatever beliefs they want, and should be free to worship (or not worship) however they wish, as long as it's not hurting anyone else. I will never say that it is wrong to believe in God, but I think it's wrong to believe in God because of stupid crap like this.

This is an example of what I like to call "anti-science." The basic scientific method is a process in which you collect evidence through research or experiments, process it all, and develop a conclusion. Do we think this crazy Australian started with a clean slate, studied the banana with no preconceived notions, and eventually concluded that it had to have been created by the almighty? No- he already knew what he wanted his conclusion to be, so he looked exclusively for facts that could support his theory, without analyzing the big picture.

Once in church I heard a sermon about the "watch theory." In this video the guy gives a "soda can" theory, but it's basically the same thing. My pastor's message was that it was ridiculous to believe in the big bang theory- that a working universe could explode out of a drop of matter. He said that if you were walking in the woods and found a pocket watch, with all it's working springs and gears, would you think to yourself "Hey, this watch must have spontaneously exploded out of a spec of dirt?" Of course not. So, if there are watches, there must be a watch maker. In turn if there are universes, there must be a universe maker.

This is classic anti-science. It sounds good at first, but does not hold up to any kind of scientific scrutiny. I would explain further, but if you need it you're reading the wrong blog. The problem is that people like to look at a random series of events and believe that it's the only way things could've worked out. For instance, let's say you flip a coin 10 times and you get 10 heads. Some people would cry "See! There's only a 0.0977% chance that could have happened, so God must have done it." Others will say "Yes, but that's the same odds as the other 1023 patterns, and if we got one of those, life would still go on." Which is to say that if our planet had a boron atmosphere, boron-breathing life forms would probably develop and go on to marvel at how great is was that this all worked out.

So yeah, bananas are great, but that doesn't mean they were designed with humans in mind. What would that theory say about other fruit? How about pears? Those aren't mouth shaped! Or watermelon? Those are huge, heavy, slippery, full of seeds and messy! Does this mean they weren't meant for humans? How about coconuts? I can't get into one of those without a small array of power tools, and it's barely even worth the effort. What animal was meant to eat those? And let's face it- pomegranates are just a waste of time.

The theory that bananas = creation ranks somewhere slightly north of "Adam & Steve" but way below legitimate logic. If you want to argue that there's a divine creator, there are much better cases that aren't confined to the produce section.

Bonus points for people who noticed that was Kirk Cameron.

More St. Mary's Today

That paper just gets better and better. Even without the grammatical and spelling errors, it still reads like it was written by a fifth grader. Kate's comment got me to look at the letters to the editor, and let me tell you, it just oozes with professionalism. Have you ever seen a paper that prints "Editor's Note: You are so completely wrong it is incredible to think that anyone can be so stupid." Touche!

Or how about a caption that reads "...one of those involved is administered medical care in the parking lot after one of the opposing gangs scored a hit." "Scored a hit?" That's how we refer to someone being shot?

Additionally, our clever editor refers to Great Mill's Road as "the Highway," so that gives you some perspective.

Totally unrelated: There's a cricket in my laundry room, and I don't know how it got there. He's driving me nuts, but everytime I open the door he clams up and I can't find him. His days are numbered.

Pete Makes Uni Watch!

Purdue hasn't really been noteworthy to most sports columnists this year, but at least we got mentioned in Uni Watch. More specifically, Purdue Pete's number was mentioned. Here's the text, stolen right from the Uni Watch Blog:

Purdue mascot Purdue Pete usually wears No. 1 (at least the live character does — the cartoon version is usually wears a “P”). But this is his 50th season, so he’s wearing No. 50 — except during the school’s recent game wearing 1966 throwbacks, when he wore No. 66.

This is something I totally would've noticed, except that Purdue sucks waaay too hard for their games to be televised in Maryland. For the record, Uni Watch was the greatest influence for the whole mess o' links blogging style I employ.

Wednesday the 13th

I don't know if everyone's familiar with the Despair website and their Demotivators line of products, but good God were we laughing at these at work yesterday. There are several new ones, and this Overconfidence one slays me.

In other news, when I got home yesterday there was a flyer in my driveway for Builtrite homes. It's never really clear if the flyer was meant to be taped to the mailboxes and blew off, or it was on my door or what, but I get a lot of informational leaflets in my lawn. Anyway, Builtrite is the new home builder in my neighborhood, which is currently engaging in the Southern Maryland "Scorched Earth" method of land development, tearing down forest that J. Lawrence Millison personally told us was "Protected wilderness that will never be built on." I guess my point for bringing this up is that if anyone still doesn't have a firm grasp on our local housing market, these new single family homes will start from the 370's. Plus, don't get me started on businesses that spell words wrong in their name to be "catchy."

Since we're discussing the cultural hotbed that is St. Mary's county, take a look at this article. Keep in mind that St. Mary's Today is basically the local tabloid, but this brawl did actually take place at the gas station across from my old apartment. I love this paper- it's such a train wreck. I'm amazed that it actually gets published.

No Big Thing

I'm pretty surprised by the concern people have expressed about my last post- not the current tree that's down, but the one that punched a hole during hurricane Isabel. While it is a little odd that the guy didn't notice the tree limb during my home inspection, he did point out the hole and where it was repaired. And, most importantly, it was easy to fix and now the wall is as good as new. It was in the garage, where there's no insulation or anything so fixing it was pretty strait forward. Now, if it was like my poor friend Chris that had a tree punch through shingles, plywood and insulation, that would be a problem. In any case, a dude showed up with a chainsaw yesterday and cut up the tree in a few hours, which is proof that somebody is at least monitoring that house. I thought maybe this would be the time I went out and asked "Hey, what's the deal? Does anyone live here?" but every time I peeked out the window he looked pretty busy and I didn't want to bug him. One more missed opportunity!

This weekend was pretty busy. Friday we moved the last of Kate's big stuff to her cottage, meaning she got her leather couches and I got the futon/fu-chair combo back. Saturday we moved some small stuff, and I killed some time trying to figure out why her wireless router won't work. The biggest chunk was spent with D-Link support on the phone with an Indian women who had no freaking clue what she was talking about and breathed so heavily into the microphone that she sounded like one of those reporters that're out in the hurricane telling you that you should under no circumstance go outside. When it was all said and done the wireless part still didn't work, but she can still get on the internet just by plugging directly in. Saturday night Kate and I saw Lady in the Water. In lieu of a full review I'll just say that it was a little dumb, but I still liked it.

Sunday was spent doing chores I've been neglecting, and then watching the Colts in glorious HD. Now, people have been debating the start time of evening football games for years, but jeez, that game didn't end until like 11:30! If it had been a blowout I would've just gone to bed a halftime, but I can't sleep while a close game is going on. The latest study shows that 40% of US households with a TV are in the eastern time zone. Why can't the games start an hour earlier, like 7:15? I realize that it would then start at 4:15 on the left coast, but come on, the end is the important part and they could still see that. I thought I was done with caring about TV scheduling, but football is TiVo kriptonite. I can't stomach the thought of watching a game after it happens. Actually, I could, but I couldn't go all day without looking up the score, and I'm not going to watch a game that I already know the outcome of. Plus, I can't TiVo stuff in HD. Although I understand that if you fast forward through the commercials and timeouts you can watch the whole game in like 90 minutes.

So, as far as football goes, this weekend was a 2 out of 3- meaning that Purdue won, the Colts won, but Notre Dame also won. More specifically:

Purdue- My Boilers are 2-0, but I have some serious concerns. We beat Indiana State last week 60 to 35, so it would seem like there's nothing wrong with the offense. But the fact that a division II school with no stars hung 35 points on us is troubling. This week we beat Miami of Ohio, but they took us into overtime. I realize Miami can be pretty pesky for a MAC team, but come on- Northwestern destroyed them last week, and then this week the Wildcats got beat by I-AA New Freaking Hampshire! The short version is that we've been having trouble beating weak opponents. Not good.

Colts- I was glad to see Indianapolis beat New York in the Manning bowl, but I'm also left with some concerns. Namely that we have no running game since Edge followed the money to Arizona, and we sure can't stop the run. Luckily, Peyton Manning is an amazing quarterback, and even though the Giants were playing against the pass in a nickel defense all night, they could still move the ball through the air when they needed to. So even though they beat the Giants (who are pretty good), Indy has some stuff to work on.

Notre Dame- I hate Notre Dame and want them to lose.

That's about it for now. Have a great week!

Oh No! Ernesto!

I wanted to post this last night, but in that great MetroCast tradition my internet was out. I'm super glad that no trees fell on the house (and moreover that no one was hurt in general) but check out what I found in my back yard when I returned from Connecticut.

So I've been in Maryland for almost 4 years now, and I've seen 2 forest-clearing storms where literally hundreds of trees are knocked down. Seriously- Greenbrier (my neighborhood) has trees down everywhere, and other places are even worse. These trees take like 30 years to grow, so how are there any left? I guess I'm just glad they're in my neighbor's yard and not mine. Hopefully it'll get hauled away before too long. I don't think anyone actually lives there.

Story time! I know a tree hit my house during hurricane Isabel in 2003 (before I lived there). During the inspection they pointed out the new piece of siding- of course it doesn't match. The color's right but the texture is different, but you have to be looking pretty close to notice. So I thought "Big deal. They fixed it, so what's the problem?"

Anyway, when I was cleaning out the attic (getting ready to finish it off) I saw some light coming from that side of the house. When I got down there, guess what I found- that's right, a big old tree branch! Plus, there was a big hole in the wall that was only covered by siding. So what happened was during the hurricane, a tree hit the garage and punched right through to the attic. To clean it up, they cut off the branch, replaced the damaged siding, and nothing else. They didn't fix the broken plywood, and they didn't even take the giant tree limb out of the attic! So when my family came to help with the attic my dad helped me patch up the holes, and cut up and haul away the branch. That definitely scores a 9 on the half-ass-o-meter.

Connecticut #1

I'm visiting Daniel and Carly in Connecticut right now. I'll write about it later, but the best exchange so far has been:

Marc: I didn't realize there were so many Amish people up here.
Carly: Those are nuns.