Dec 10

Earth to Randy Moss: Put down that doobie. It’s causing some major short-term memory loss, my friend.

After the Patriots 38-13 shellacking of the Pittsburgh Steelers moved them one game closer to immortality, Moss said the team used second year safety Anthony Smith’s pre-game “guarantee” as incentive to pound the Steelers into submission. Afterward, Moss had this to say, “I’ve played in the league for 10 years and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a player ever say anything like that. There’s trash-taking each week, but just to guarantee a victory – that’s something hard. I don’t know if his teammates had his back or whatnot, but it was said, it was documented and it was printed. It came to us and we went out there today and you [could] see we wanted it more.”

Umm, Randy, I’d like to remind you that you were a Viking in 2003 when your 6-3 squad took on the 2-7 Oakland Raiders in Week 11. Your head coach, who loved to give away the gameplan to anyone who would listen, went on the local radio show of current Viking play-by-play man Paul Allen and his puffy sidekick, Twins rat and Gopher hockey analyst (“What do you think of me now?”) Jeff Dubay, and when goaded, gleefully said he guaranteed a victory “without a doubt.”

Your future team, the Raiders, won that game 28-18. Unlike your current team of classless buffoons, I don’t recall that Raiders team being so outraged that, instead of celebrating a first quarter TD, they ran over to Mike Tice to talk trash. Nor do I recall them being as classless as your current head coach after the game, when he said “You know, I think Rodney put it the best, so I’ll just leave it at that. But we’ve played against a lot better safeties than him, I’ll tell you.”

But that wasn’t the only guarantee that year. Simeon Rice did the same in Week 9 against the Carolina Panthers. His Buccaneers lost. So he tried again the following week against the Packers. Yup, you got it, another loss.

Come on, Patriots. We know you’re good. Heck, even with an old, slow front 7 on defense, you’re dominating people. You’re the best ever – we get it. You have the greatest QB and greatest WR in the history of the game on your team (sorry Brett, Joe and Dan. Sorry Mr. Rice). I want to root for you. I love a good dynasty. I enjoyed watching your plucky team take out the Greatest Show on Turf. But I just can’t root for you anymore.

Why? Because of the way you consistently talk trash and disrespect your opponents. Because of the way you steal signs and disrespect the game. And because your coach is about as likeable as a dungheap. Let’s face it, you’re nothing more than a bunch of bullies.

Which is why I hope that the Colts get another crack at you in the playoffs and beat you, silencing you and your giddy crowd. Then you’ll get a lesson in class from the master. Mr. Dungy won’t take a shot at your HGH-laden safety and he won’t talk about your affinity for cheating. He’ll win with class. I just wish you would, too.


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Dec 6

I’m a cheapass. I do the oddest things to save a few cents. Most of them center around utilities. I turn the heat down a couple degrees when it’s cold out and the AC up (or off if my wife doesn’t notice) when it’s hot. I turn lights off. I burn wood in the fireplace, which freezes every room in the house except the living room. I keep my tires properly inflated. I drive five miles out of my way to save 2 cents on a gallon of gas. I use those long-lasting lights. I knit my nose hair into sweaters. You know, common stuff.

So when one of my four computers (yeah, and at any given moment all four are most likely on. Maybe I should focus on that as a potential cost saving) died the other day I, diagnosed it as a hard drive failure. Because it was a PC the wife got from work (no, it’s not hot, they just give away their old ones), I didn’t have an OS.

Enter Linux and the open source (or as I like to call it “Sweet ass free”) movement. I picked up a cheap 320GB hard drive at Frys and was on my way to free OS paradise. Since I’m rockin’ a Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM, I chose Xubuntu as my Linux distro of choice.

I know nothing about Linux. Other than it’s free. And nifty. And Xubuntu supposedly runs great on crappy machines such as mine. But I’m told the Ubuntu based distros (like Xubuntu) are great for newbs like me because they are easy to install and use.

So I downloaded the latest version (Gutsy Gibbon or some other adjectived animal) , burned the image to a CD and plopped it in my drive ready for free OS bliss. Wrongo Commish. My machine took three hours to load the damn disc before I realized the error in my way. Yup, you guessed it, I’d downloaded the Live CD instead of the alternate install. Apparently the Live CD requires 192 MB of RAM. My cheap ass machine didn’t have that kind of firepower.

Try again. This time I went for the alternate CD. Blammo, I’m ready to rock freedom from Microsoft. I plop in the CD and go through the relatively easy, supposedly 20 minute process. 4 hours and multiple failures later and I’m still not rockin’ a new machine. The damn thing kept failing during the software install. As a last resort, I checked the CD for errors and lo and behold there were some!

So I downloaded again, burned and installed and was surprised as hell to see the new OS on my system in about a half hour, with minimal interaction on my part. But it wasn’t truly ready for my grubby fingers to play with – I had two hours worth of updates to install before the shiny new operating system was ready to try out.

Initial Impressions
Since I’m not a gamer, out-of-the-box I get all the apps I need – OpenOffice (for composing Barney hatemail), Firefox, GIMP, an image viewer, a CD burner and even some sweet games like a Tetris clone – and it’s free. It’s a cheap ass’ wet dream.

But I know there are problems ahead. I’d like to eventually get a wireless internet connection going and that doesn’t sound easy. I’d also like to get my old Creative Zen Jukebox Xtra (surprise, surprise, I got it three years after its prime for cheap) connected, and I’m guessing that’s not bloody likely. Transferring video from my video camera? Iffy at best. But we’ll get there. I’m already thinking about converting one (or both) of my other computers over to Linux and giving a big middle finger to Bill Gates. But we’ll see. For now, I’m happy with my cheapo computer and its new-found zippiness.


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