Well I voted today at 11am. Pretty low turnout, and not a very big ballot at all. There was like maybe 8 races going on. There wasn't even a line or any waiting. In 2004, I remember it being really crowded, and a much larger ballot. Seems they've resorted to circle ovals with Bic pens instead of fancy punch-outs or special inks. I know my Presidential vote means nothing, but my effort was more about local stuff. I'm not going to watch any network TV tonight because I'm so sick of this election. Looks like I'm gonna have to put up with Potsie and the gang for another hour tonight. His father really doesn't like him.

Since it's Taco Tuesday / Pick 'Em Tuesday, I got to see how my random picking systems worked from last week's picks. Suffice to say, it ranged from really good to really bad. I used four methods: using Sorry! cards, playing cards, dice and coin flipping. So basically, the process was looking at the Pick 'Em screen, picking a game, and plopping down two down cards, and who ever had the highest card (Aces high) gets picked for the game. Same principle for playing cards & dice. For the coin, a 1987 Canadian penny, with heads as 'home' and tails as 'road', and each game was flipped. The results with using the spread:

Sorry! cards: 5-9
playing cards: 3-11 (ouch!)
Dice: 10-4 (damn) (with every die reset at 1-5 and no interference)
Canadian penny coin flip: 7-7 (penny reset with heads up)

I used the Sorry! cards last week. Yeah, that's just.... great. I'm going to do the same 4 things this week and see how that goes. And now we have freakin' Thursday night games, which is completely ridiculous. Of course, the NFL would put games on every single night if they could, and put teams in every city in every country and put them all on the NFL Network, in their quest for global takeover. I think they should concentrate more on schooling their refs so they don't screw up so much, and drug testing their players than worrying about expansion, especially in Europe or North America. And what's going on in the Meadowlands is ridiculous. The new Jets / Giants stadium, the Jets are offering Personal Seating Licenses in an auction, with the top bid going as $82,000, with a minimum bid of $5,000 and at least two seats required. And that's not even including the price of tickets; just the right to buy tickets. Well apparently only 310 people dropped down the dough, and the Jets have 1,380 remaining.

As much as I love sports, I don't think I could stomach a full season ticket plan, let alone dropping a boatload of money on tickets in general. I also have this theory that there should be no such thing as season tickets, so that any fan at any date can get a front row seat to a sporting event, instead of these turds who keep tickets in the family decade after decade after decade. Every baseball fan should get to sit behind home plate for a game once, every football fan should get to sit behind the 50 yard line once, basketball courtside seat once, etc etc. Of course there's always minor league baseball, college sports, Little League, public leagues, etc etc, but it's still not the same. Tho I'm sure my theory is a terrible idea, in terms of revenue.

And I would like to close this entry by saying, "They never made a vinyl LP record big enough to hold Paul McCartney's ego."

Geez, even my legs are still sore from walking for miles. I spent my November 1st in Urbana, IL, going to the Hawkeyes / Illini football game which the Illini damn nearly blew, and made a stupid 4th quarter timeout with like :28 seconds left before kicking the game-winning field goal. It was my first ever trip to Memorial Stadium, and I got to see the tackiness of Field Turf for the first time. It was my first loud college football game. The only other NCAAF game I've been to was a Illini / Wildcats game in November of 2002 at Dykes Stadium, and that was a pretty quiet game. These Illini fans were really into it, they were even screaming after every 1st down, tho I'm sure it was due to the rarity of 1st downs in Illini football. After the game, we went to Murphy's, which was extremely loud, and me and my buddy ordered cheeseburgers, but he got his 20 minutes before I got mine, which was rather annoying, plus they didn't have the Fish 'n Chips I was looking forward to.

The game was alright, but the really cool thing was Illini hockey! Wow, cheap, only like 5 rows of seats and I got to sit in the front row in the corner, where I could literally reach over and almost touch the ice because there was no glass in front of me. I've never been that close to a hockey rink in my life, usually I'm stuck in the far back 300 section at the United Center for Blackhawks games. And who were the Illini playing? Frickin' Robert Morris College! We drove 2 1/2 hours to see a stinkin' local crummy hockey team?? A pretty good turnout for a Saturday night game. The fans were really into it, booing RMC when they hit the ice, and after all 6 Illini goals, the crowd screamed and pointed at the RMC goalie, "It's all your fault!" a few times, which reminded me of a Simpsons Thanksgiving episode, and then shortly after that, to some sports song, the crowd chanted "You suck!!!" towards RMC, and when the P.A. announcer said "1 minute remaining in the period", the crowd said "Thank youuuuuuu!" I would highly recommend home Illini hockey, even if you hate sports. Tho the guy on the Zamboni was pretty cocky and did some sloppy driving. We made sure we booed him. I have to say this game was one of the damn coolest experiences of my sports watching life.

I have to say, it was madness being in a town with Big Ten football. People were drinking beer on the street, screaming, and chugging beer, even right up to the ticket entrance. Tho I have to say it was really nice not to see stupid vendors in the aisle, tho at halftime they still did the Chief song, but with no Chief Illiniwek! They could have at least changed the song or something. Oh and get how much gas was down there... $2.15 a gallon! Next time I'll have to remember to bring some gas cans with me.

You know who I miss in television? Norm MacDonald. From his writing on "Norm", "Roseanne" and "Saturday Night Live", as well as his Weekend Update anchoring, which was the last time I enjoyed that on SNL, and in those days, that was considered to be the best part of the show. I miss his wit.

Halloween, I did nothing.

# - I've been writing a lot about the World Series lately. Boy, they have really turned that thing into a farce. MLB, by selling its soul to Fox, now really have their nuts in a vice, with all these Fox late Eastern primetime starting times, which made an absolute mockery out of Game 5. It was cold, windy and a 1" per hour rain was falling, and the infield was quickly turning into a mud field. They should have put the tarp on the field in the 4th inning, but being the douches they are, stretched it out to the mid-6th which conditions were unplayable, and the Rays got a run out of it. Apparently there is no rule in MLB that once a postseason game becomes official after 5 innings, there is obligation to finish it. And it's lame to call the game if the Phillies were up 2-1 if it happened, it being the World Series and all, like they're gonna crown the Phillies at like 2:37am after a given period of wait. Now Tuesday night's continuation has been suspended, with a possible Wednesday being suspended as well. Selig even joked that they'd wait till Thanksgiving if they had to. *Moan*. Stuff like this wouldn't happened if they just used common sense, and LISTEN to the forecasts, and move the game up to a mid-afternoon start so they wouldn't have to deal with rain they KNOW is coming, but Fox is just too damn insistent getting that primetime showing. It's my prediction that all baseball playoffs will end up on cable in the future, due to things like this happening and Fox realizing what a horrible investment it is, and I doubt other networks will throw the huge money at it.

# - Today was free 'Steal A Base / Steal A Taco' promotion day from Taco Hell, since in the World Series Game 1 in the bottom of the 5th, Tampa Bay Ray Romano's shortstop Jason Bartlett stole 2nd base, everyone in America gets a free crunchy seasoned beef taco on Tuesday, October 28th from 2pm-6pm (I know). So at 2pm I drove down to the Taco Hell hybrid and got myself a mid-afternoon snack. I look forward to digesting it sometime in the 2010's.

# - As for every Tuesday to me is known (or should be) as "Taco Tuesday", Tuesday is also my "Football Pick 'Em's Tuesday", given the lack of a better name. I have to say, this has been, without doubt, the absolute worst season I have ever done, both College and Pro. For Pro, I'm playing with a spread, so it makes it even harder. First I resorted to favorites, then home teams, then 'who's got the better uniform', then underdogs, considered using the Chicago Tribune Friday's sports section NFL roundup, and now in complete desperation, I've resorted to completely random picking. Those include: using the deck from the board game "Sorry!" using two down cards to find the higher one (a few teams got Sorry cards), a pair of dice from the board game "Yahtzee!", or a coin flip with heads being 'home' and tails being 'road'. I haven't decided what coin to use, I thought maybe a penny from the year I was born, or some out of place penny from 1987 of Can-o-da (if anything significant happened that year in Can-o-da, drop a line). I'll be keeping records.

# - Halloween is Friday. It is not a holiday I celebrate. I haven't trick or treated since October 1990, and when you're 5' 6", that's when you know the end is near, and I was never the vandalizing type, so I had no use for it anymore. It always seems like it rains and is cold and windy here on Halloween, tho when I went, it was usually pretty decent. I was never really into costumes, I hated any makeup or masks, tho I did go as the devil a few years (SATAN!) including one of the lamest costumes I ever came up with (or heard of) in Kindergarten, where I went as "Man with beard", even tho I couldn't even spell the damn word at the time. Back in the day, my favorite candy was: Milky Ways, Butterfingers, Reeces Peanutbutter Cups, Sweettarts, Nestle mini chocolate bars, Junior Mints, Twix, Nerds, and those soft pink bubble gum wads that came in white & blue wax paper. I never really cared for the stuff with nuts, coconut, or were chewy, and Candy Corn always made me feel sick. Around the neighborhood, there was always the cheapskate bastards who gave us sacks-o-pennies, people who cheap-out and use the self-serve Brach's candy bin in the local supermarket and stock up on cheap caramel Brach Royals & jelly drops (my parents) or the religious freaks next door who gave out Baptist literature only to be littered on the front lawn, and your typical hard jelly-filled candies that cut your mouth and tongue up. I'm just glad I don't work in an office where I would be expected to participate in dressing up. If they asked, "Where's your Halloween spirit?", I'd reply, "Back in 1990, where it belongs".

# - Bird is still the word.

Man, I haven't written a blog entry in a while. Now here's a bunch of random thoughts.

# - Tennis. One thing I learned about myself, is that in tennis, I will inexplicably lose my ability to properly serve. I always start off with really good, fast low-bounce serves, but somehow during the latter half of playing, I'll completely lose it. As was the case in my most recent game where I lost in the only set 6-7 (3) after having a 5-3 lead. Tho I'm pleased that I can still haul this tall turd-ass body across the courts like I'm still 15.

# - Card games. I've realized that I am not going to get any better at Cribbage. I've completely exhausted the strategy and I'm going to be as good as I am forever. Only the worst string of hands can defeat me. And in a random related note, the words "Euchre stick" popped into my mind recently when one of my friends went the mall years ago looking for one. I have yet to find one online, tho I'm assuming it'll be some dice-like object with all four suits on there, for when you "stick it to the dealer" in the game. Tho it's always more fun to make your own knick knacks for games.

# - Bowling. While playing some Nintendo bowling (yes, the kid in me still gets nostalgic for those old games, those games had a lot of charm and were simpler and more fun to play than some of today's graphic-heavy games with monster controllers with like a dozen frickin' buttons and multiple directional pads & thumb sticks. And I have emulators & ROMS so I have hundreds of NES games on here) I bowled a 188 and a 189, including a game where I had an incredible eight 7-9 splits to pick up, which I did pick all of them up. Meaning, I know the geometry of the game, it's just never translated on the actual lanes. I usually average an awful 120 with 156 being my all-time best.

# - Food. After eating at my favorite Mexican restaurant the other day, I finally started to see the economy on a plate. My steak burrito (on a wheat tortilla) was priced the same but noticeably smaller, by say at least 33%. Oh well. I'll take smaller portions rather than larger prices. And today I had a Frisco Melt from Steak 'n Shake. Nothing like a totally greasy, soggy burger with fatty beef and two slices of cheese devouring it. It's the kind of burger on sourdough bread that I would love to eat every week, but know I shouldn't and only get it once every few years. Their fries still suck.

# - Fall '08 TV. A short list of the new shows I'm watching. "Worst Week" is by far my favorite new show, but I've never seen the original and I have no idea how much is changed, but Sam seems to have the worst luck ever. Sam's future mother-in-law looks like my old ding bat 8th grade Lit teacher. "Gary Unmarried", a CBS sitcom starring Jay Mohr. I haven't seen Jay since he was a skinny kid on SNL where he wasn't ready, and it's weird seeing him all middleaged. The show is alright, but the first 4 episodes were all of Gary complaining about his lousy divorce settlement, and the ex-wife is a total *****, and it seems like the same 'ol cliches with a hint of originality. I bet it runs for 13 episodes but probably not past 22. "Kath & Kim" on NBC starring Molly Shannon & Selma Blair. Holy crap what a piece of crap this is! The daughter is an insufferable complete total brat and has no sense of reality, the mother is extremely lame and both act extremely spoiled, and the plots are completely unrealistic, and quite frankly, extremely nauseating. I hope NBC cancels this show as soon as possible. "Life on Mars" on ABC, about a 2008 cop with a Cosby kid gf (Lisa Bonet) who gets hit by a car & is suddenly transported to NYC 1973. Now what would I be doing in 1973? Buying stock in new companies and placing bets on World Series & Super Bowl winners while building a kick ass vinyl record set? Perhaps. Or would I be out buying Topps baseball cards, or starting a band playing music or pitching movie & sitcom ideas to studios from after 1973? Perhaps (oh I'm a cop in' 73 & I'm supposed to be fighting crime? Maybe I can get around to it....). But we all know that the cop is lying on a hospital bed in a coma, and he seems to be stuck in one really bad dream. Already by the 2nd episode, it seemed "less 70s" because you don't see everyone smoking or drinking or see people hanging out in the street being hippies. And I'm going to close this entry by saying "Bird is the word".

Well with the new tv.com change, our avatars have gone from 84 x 84 pixels to 200 x 150 pixels. I really don't care for the new layout (ow, light bulb) and I'm somewhat nervous posting this, because I've already had lots of trouble of pages & comments not showing up, and other things not sending. So here's the new avatar, a quartet "flag" (no love for you, stupid Cubs).

The White Sox logo is the stencil-silhouette batter logo, which first appeared in 1976 when Bill Veeck took over the team. It survived 3 uniform changes until the end of the 1990 season. It is the authentic correct version, which was scanned from one of my old Sox pennants. Versions of that logo that you see on stuff produced today, on the S, an uneven horizontal width problem, as well as the X, whose right-angled slash is thicker than the left-angled slash.

The Blackhawks logo is the old indian head that was featured on the red road sweaters from 1975-76 - 1999-00 seasons (note the flesh tone outline) and was replaced with a wider, smoothed out logo sans the flesh tone outline that came out for media use in the 1992-93 season, but was not put on the jersey until later at said point.

The Bears logo, whom apparently for a long time had two primary logos that they used interchangeably. If I had to guess, I'd say that logo came out in 1974 after they switched from a white wishbone-C on the helmet to an orange one with white trim, and was produced until at least the late 90s, which I have a cap with that logo sans the text behind an orange wishbone-C. This logo was scanned off of my 1985 Bears Super Bowl XX pennant. And despite what Wikipedia says, the other primary logo, the current navy & orange ink blot-esque bear head, has been around at least EDIT: Thanks to the Fleer Sticker Project of a posting of a 1960 NFL Marching Band Songs LP put out by the NFL, the Bears ink-blot logo has been around since at least 1960.

The Bulls logo was introduced in their inaugural 1966-67 season, and was designed by American sports artist Theodore W. Drake in 1966 and was given payment of court side seats for the 1966-67 season. Apparently I just learned this, that the red on the tips of the horns is apparently blood. Reminds me of the image of Dennis Rodman kicking a sitting photographer in the balls in a mid 1990s Bulls game. Hmmm.. apparently Drake also designed the Notre Dame Leprechaun logo. Yes, lose Notre Dame, lose. You and your stupid Independent conference and your lucrative NBC television contract.

Personal fanship of the teams in order: 1984, 1990, 1982, 1987.

Tomorrow I'm expecting a package that's sure to be the jewel of my cap collection.

This weekend was ridiculous. Almost all of the rain has finally passed, and I got over 7.5" in my rain gage. Friday & Saturday's Sox games were pushed to Sunday for a doubleheader which I don't think they'll get both games in (they did and won both), and the stupid Cubs were in Houston for their series, are now playing a game on 9/14 & 9/15 in Milwaukee, which is total b.s. because that's clearly going to be a home field advantage for the Cubs, since their fans like to drive up to Milwaukee being 90 miles away. There's no reason why MLB couldn't have waited until 9/29 when the season is over.

Earlier last week I played a tennis match and somehow won. In the first set, I started off 0-4 & I was down 2-5 in the set, and the score 30-40 which was the set point, which seemed like certain doom. Then somehow, I forced a deuce, and then proceeded to win the next 3 games, then lost the next one to make it 5-6, and won the next game to force a tiebreaker. I started that one off 4-0 and won it 6-3. Even tho I was exhausted, with the help of my cheater juice (homemade Gatorade with freshly squeezed lime juice) I was able to breeze through the second set, and won the match 7-6 (6-3), 6-2.

It's not that my opponent is bad, it's just we're really crappy inconsistent tennis players. My serve was rather nervous at the beginning, and I kept double faulting a lot. I also had some really close shots, including a backhand tap that just barely landed over the net & in-play. I also had a total desperation shot work, where I was deep out of bounds near the chainlink fence with my back turned to the net and did a high over-the-shoulder flip, which somehow actually worked and I was to regain position. I also remember that I don't have to absolutely kill the ball on the serve, just hitting it smoothly was enough to get good speed & 3 Aces. Tho my two-handed backhand completely sucked, so I abandoned that pretty quickly. My forehand, which has for a long time been my weakness, is starting to finally feel natural and actually got some non-girly shots with it. Being a lefty I've forever dealt with righties who prefer forehand, tho luckily I've never met a righty with a really good backhand. I also returned a right-side serve to where I was actually standing behind the court to the right of me (that's what long arms will do for ya).

So that's that. And it being a public court, I kept finding crap on the court like hair pins and rocks. I wish the damn neighborhood kids would stop treating tennis courts like their own personal wreckroom. And finally, the Bears lost the game today against the Carolina Panthers and blew a 17-3 lead to lose 20-17 because they were too busy being stupid. Of course, getting stuck with horrible field position a lot didn't help either.

It was August 28th, 1990. A bit of unfortunate Illinois & U.S. history was made. That would be the Plainfield Tornado, a 16-mile path and the only August F-5 tornado in U.S. history. It was my 2nd day of middle school, and I remember I had to make a poster for computer Mac class about a 5" floppy disc. At 3:30pm, I watched the hail fall from the sky (about quarter coin sized) and heard on WGN-AM then-Meteorologist Roger Triemstra on the radio saying "oh there's just a little tornado going on in Plainfield, nothing to worry about".

Well, this was the days before Doppler radar, and there were no warnings put out because it was a rain-wrapped tornado, making it incredibly difficult to spot. It was a very hot and humid day, it was 90 degrees with Dew Points in the 80s (tropical rain-forest type), with a cold front coming & abnormally strong upper level winds. As you can see, the tornado took a southeastern path, which is pretty rare, which happens with about roughly 3% of all tornadoes.




29 people would die, did $165 million in damage, and was a few miles down the road which was just a bit too close for me. A few days later me and my parents went down to Route 30, and I walked in the cornfield where the tornado first hit. What I saw, was some downed corn stalks in about a 60 foot path, and the path kept getting wider and wider and then you saw black dirt, and then completely bare stripped trees. The tornado was never photographed. It still gives me chills.

This is another one of those "it matters only to me" type of blog entries, but here goes it anyway. For as long as I've had a computer since 1994, I've had a background image. They change over the years but rarely, and I thought maybe it would be a somewhat interesting topic. My current one is a field of green leaf clovers, it's not perfect since I had to mess with it for the higher resolution, but I think looks really nice:

Usually on March 1st I'll break out the clovers. Then when late Spring / early Summer starts, I break out the hail pic:



I like the frosty glass look. Then when it's the dead middle of the Summer, I'll want Autumn, which has this nice foliage from some place in the Northeast of cooler & pleasant weather:



And then when it's cold, I break out this (yeah I'm Schizophrenic, I know):



This old desktop image invokes memories of long hours spent at Napster in the early 00's:



This one was of College earlier:


And this was either a Windows 95 or 98 product, which I altered to make it more greenish:


And that's pretty much my history, give or take some tiled Windows graphics or some local homemade sports logo tiled graphic. One of the first? I don't have it anymore, it was the logo graphics to the Front Page Sports Baseball '94 PC game. I remember that game had some serious simulation issues, Barry Bonds would hit like 120 home runs in a year. Given people tend to rotate desktop images on a weekly basis, I tend to be an old shoe stuck in the mud kind of habit. Mmmm, stuck.

I've had Cheese Ball Fever for about a week now. And to show you what I'm talking about, here's a pic of the canned product back in the day:

Growing up in the 1980s, this was by far my favorite snack, and out of the blue one day recently I realized I haven't had a cheese ball in years (like a decade) and wondered, "where the hell are the cheese balls??". Well I did some research, and to my sadness, Planters stopped making these in 2006, and now focus on stupid healthy nut varieties. Well finding another brand of cheese balls was surprisingly difficult, and I came up with Utz Cheese Balls, which in (very logical) 35 ounce tubs:

Has anybody ever eaten these or have a brand to recommend? Other cheese corn puff products outside of Planters & Cheetos have been met with horrid results. And well, I take my cheese snacking very seriously. ;)

If I had to recommend a great cheese corn puff product, it would Cheetos All Natural White Cheddar Puffs. Seriously good stuff. And they're not greasy or have that chemical aftertaste. And they're usually not where the regular Cheetos are, they're where all the baked snacks are (at least from the Jewel & Dominicks around here).

In other news, I can't believe Bernie Mac has passed away. I found him hilarious, loved how he was so loud and not afraid to tell you what he thought, was totally old-school & absolutely hated the new-school, had one of the better sitcoms on TV and he was a Chicago guy and a huge White Sox fan. R.I.P. Bernie, if that's possible ;)

One headline I saw recently was that "Dark Knight" has a chance to beat the "Titanic" 's $601 million box office record. Funny, two movies I had no intention of ever seeing are huge mega hits. I don't really see what the big deal is with this Batman movie. How many people are going to this movie because they say it killed Heath Ledger? And why so much interest in a movie that's deemed really dark and warped? And how come in a time where people are scaling back in creative ways on their gasoline intake, suddenly a wallet eating movie ticket becomes the "gots to has it" thing? And there's nothing anything good about the Joker. He's just another version of a clown, and a very evil one at that, and that ain't cool.

Man it is hot. They've been forecasting 80s and 90s for the past week and the next week as well. It's the norm but I still don't like it. I'm trying to keep cool as best as I can with cool showers and soakings. At least there's no bugs.

Yesterday Arby's had a sale: .99 cent Regular Roast Beefs, all day Thursday - no limit. I was quite shocked; I've never seen Arby's run a promotion like this before. Picked myself up a couple of them. A little Arby's sauce to go with it. Mmmm.

Recently I have been researching Naperville's past through the web, and finding some really weird results. Apparently in the early 1970s they were going to build a Western Electric plant near me on what is now the Springbrook Prairie. Also been finding out the history of schools and the districts, and how local farmers allowed a $2 per acre tax on their land so they could raise funds to expand my old Elementary school to keep the school there, and in the late 60s & early 70s, the wheat & corn farmers actually helped build the additions to keep costs down.

Of course back in those days, this area was nothing but vast corn, soy and wheat fields, and roads were few and narrow. Today, it's built up solid with multi-lane roads, 10,000's of houses, schools, retail. It is nothing like it was even 20 years ago. The city experienced a growth spurt of biblical proportions. Some population numbers: 1980: 40,000. 1990: 80,000. 2000: 125,000. 2008: 150,000+.

In my quest for historical information, I ran across an older former resident on Flickr, and we started rehashing a bunch of fuzzy memories of former stores, places, road configurations of a very different town from the 1970s & 80s, a brown building I remember at a busy intersection that I had not seen or thought about since the early 1980s long gone, turned to be the original Francis Granger Middle School, which there is very limited info on the web. I'll probably be making a few trips to the library until I figure this all this out. If you left this town 20-30 years and came back, you would have no idea where you were because it has changed so much. And I at least take comfort, that when I'm on the road, if people are blocking me or slowing me down, I can yell with confidence that "Hey! You don't belong here! I was here before you all were! Go home! Get back!"