Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Via my pal MD here at the office, comes this very troubling story about babies dying from herpes contracted during their circumcisions. I’ll save the squeamish by putting the specifics within the link ----->

A deputy from PA introduced me to the delights of Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer, which I have to say is yummy. He says it’s hard to find in this area, but I think I might be able to find it at Wegmans, which seems to carry everything.

I’m happy to see that they make a diet version. If I can’t find that here, then I may have to get the deputy to stock up when he goes home next time.

What does it taste like, you wonder? It tastes just like a root beer barrel candy. Oh yeah.

Aw, I’m sad that this season is almost over. Just the finale left and I’m thinking it will be a good one since the teams that are left are pretty evenly matched.

Quiz answers can be found here.

Players—Quiz 11—Final Score

***Standings corrected because I had a wrong formula for kdeweb here***

Jared—130—1175
Jaynee—95—1035
jen—160—1030
kdeweb—90—1030
tygertyger—180—960
Ace—130—950
chrissw—80—945
SteenShell—125—830
princess jami—90—645
bryankelli—175—615
BigOrangeMichael—0—515
fij—0—470
Tara—0—460

I’ve thrown out the offer for someone else to be the Game Leader for season 7 at Reality TV Planet. It’s a lot of work to manage the game and I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m ready to just watch next season and take the quizzes someone else works up. I ran out of creative questions about halfway through the season - there are only so many ways you can ask about the tasks and nits of the Race.

Anyway, thanks for playing. I hope you’ll all consider keeping in the game next season as well.

Click the link for my thoughts on the episode ----->>

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Dan Snyder is no friend to Redskins fans.

The Washington Redskins are for the first time requiring season ticket holders who buy their seats with a credit card to use a Redskins Extra Points MasterCard, a move the club said will ease ticket distribution and increase fan loyalty, but others said could enhance the team’s profits over the long term.

The requirement that fans must use a Redskins credit card, which affects those buying tickets to FedEx Field’s 66,500 regular admission seats, was announced last week in a letter to season ticket holders.

[...]

The cards, issued by league sponsor MBNA Bank, also will enable the Redskins to track their customers’ spending habits, allowing more targeted marketing.

The requirement could have an even greater, long-term financial benefit to the Redskins if a sizeable number of fans subscribe to the card and use it regularly, according to one sports industry analyst. An NFL official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said cards such as the Redskins Extra Points MasterCard benefit teams financially.

[...]

Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has earned a reputation around the NFL for aggressive marketing that has turned the franchise and FedEx Field into one of professional sports’ biggest moneymakers. Since buying the Redskins in 1999, Snyder has signed sponsors, added more premium seating and luxury suites, opened Redskins merchandise stores and signed up fans for value-added items such as the Tailgate Club. Last season, Snyder installed 4,000 new general admission seats, some of which had partially obscured views, as he boosted FedEx’s capacity to 91,665, the largest in the NFL.

It’s all about money for Dan. Sure, he wants the team to win, but only because it means more money in his pocket.

Fans aren’t happy. I love this guy’s thinking:

Mike Burke, 46, of Sterling, said he has no intention of obtaining a Redskins credit card.

“I will probably write a check or go over there with $1 bills and count them out in front of them,” said Burke. “I may bring quarters over there and drop them off.”

Yeah, and I would demand Snyder’s presence to count it all.

Via Jay is an interview with a link spammer - you know, blogdom’s pestering comment spammers. Here’s the part that raised my blood pressure:

Will the initiative by Google, Yahoo and MSN, to honour “don’t follow” links defeat Sam and his ilk? “I don’t think it’ll have much effect in the short, medium or long term. The search engines caused the problem” - we didn’t quite follow this bit of logic, but Sam continued - “and they’re doing this to placate the community. It won’t work because most blogs and forms are set up with the best intentions, but when people find hard graft has to go into it they’re left to rot. To use this, they’ll all have to be updated. The majority won’t be. And there’ll just be trackback spamming.”

ARGH!

The good news?

“The hardest form to spam is that which requires manual authentication such as captchas. Or those where you have to reply to an email, click on a link in it; though that can be automated too. Those where you have to register and click on links, they’re hard as well. And if you change the folder names where things usually reside, that’s a challenge, because you just gather lists of installations’ folder names.”

Here’s how much of a dork that I am ...

I was watching 24 last night and while I sort of wondered who Jack would call from outside CTU, it never crossed my mind that it would be him. So when he came in to the rescue I clapped excitedly and even teared up a little.

And then I laughed at myself because I’m such a nerd.

I think this is the best season of 24. I love this show.

LATER: Oh, and the new lamp for the big screen arrived yesterday. That was the easiest thing to replace (it took less than 10 minutes) and the picture is so much better than it ever was. We’re thinking the original lamp was damaged since it didn’t last as long as it should have and now we also know the early warning sign of the lamp going out is a degraded picture.