Dragging My Computer Into The 21st Century

I'm not a tinkerer. Although I use computers every day while working in the software mine, I'm not the guy who is constantly tinkering with the clock speed on the CPU or swapping out the video card every time PC Magazine writes a glowing review. My current computer is over five years old.

After my recent bout with Facebook-related viruses I beefed up the firewall and virus protection software on my machine. This led to a pronounced slowdown in performance. I finally got sick of it and decided to update the RAM. It was only then that I noticed how much RAM my computer was rocking. 256MB. Yep. I doubled checked to make sure the front of the tower didn't say Commodore. How pathethic is that?

Like I said, I'm not one to tinker. The machine worked fine for a long time. Performance wasn't an issue. But still. 256MB? I was surprised the thing would even boot. At this point in history, 256MB of RAM is like driving around in a horse-drawn carriage or mowing your grass with a yoked goat. It's like washing your clothes with a rock. It's like using a hammer and chisel to look inside the brain instead of ordering an MRI.

I'm proud to say my computer is now humming along nicely with the maximum allowable RAM for its model: two 1GB DDR RAM cards. Which are already obsolete, since DDR2 (the current standard) is soon to be replaced by DDR3. But hey, at least my copy of Lotus 123 runs like a champ.

Sunday In The Park

After a week of rainy, cold weather we caught a break Sunday and got sun and more fall-like temperature so Macy and I headed over to Lindenwood Park for a bike ride. I think we got cheated out of the whole colors-of-fall thing with the cold snap last week, but I took my camera anyway:

A Higgs Boson Is Ruining My Life

This story is simultaneously scary-awesome and laughable. I honestly don't know which attribute will turn out to be defining.

First a little background: a Higgs boson is a hypothetical particle that is believed to be responsible for imbuing all matter with mass. It is predicted to exist by particle physics but has never been observed. It's one of the big things the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is looking for. You know about the LHC -- it's the enormous particle collider that brought about fears that turning it on might destroy the universe. Now that's how you do science.

Anyway, a couple of respected scientists are positing that the reason science has been unable thus far to detect said boson is that they themselves go back in time and prevent it. It would, they say, explain why the U.S. collider project was defunded back in 1993. They also point to problems with the LHC when it was first fired up; problems that shut it down for a year. Just recently, one of the scientists working on the project was arrested for doing jobs for al Qaeda on the side (physicists are not immune to the down economy it seems).

As far as conspiracy theories go, this one's got legs. It seems so clear to me now I don't know how I didn't see it before. It probably had something to do with not knowing what a Higgs boson was. Long story short, I think Higgs bosons have been going back in time and screwing up my life.

That time I didn't make the baseball team? Higgs boson. Maybe it got in my eyes and distracted me in the batter's box, or messed with my reflexes so I couldn't get to that ground ball. And all this time I thought it was because I was lanky and uncoordinated!

I know damn well a Higgs boson is the reason I was only runner up in the district spelling bee all those years ago. It's the only explanation for why I was asked to spell "quietus" when the winner got friggin' "triangle".

I didn't get a lot of interest from the girls in my high school. For years I thought it was because of my sullen nature and the widely held belief that I was either on drugs or perhaps crazy. Nope. Higgs boson.

I bet that lottery ticket I bought in 1997 should have been a winner. Damn you, Higgs boson!

My eyes have been opened! Nothing that goes wrong is my fault. It's all the result of sabotage by a malicious particle from the future. Right now, I bet they're plotting against me, getting ready to send an agent back to 2009 and keep me from dating Kate Beckinsale or discovering oil in my back yard.

I must say, it's liberating in a way. Nothing I do is my fault. I'm free of responsibilty for myself and my actions. This must be what people who want to expand the welfare state feel like.

Soccer Seasons Ends With A Shiver

It's been decided that our last game (which was "colded-out" last Saturday) won't be made up. The decision was made after getting feedback from parents during Sunday's game. I can't say I'm surprised, though I am disappointed. At least I won't have to make up a practice plan, I suppose.

This was a weird season, as we had three games postponed, made one up on a Sunday after cancelling a make-up the day before due to weather, and ended up playing four games in a five game season after cutting a sixth game for a weekend tournament that never got scheduled.

All that and I may have made a mortal enemy of our photographer after cancelling pictures for fall (and rescheduling them for spring). That came about due to the total fiasco that was getting a schedule put together and rosters finalized.

Anyway, I'm glad it's over since it's turning colder by the day (it was 41 for Saturday's game) and there are still parents out there that can't figure out to dress there kids warm or buy them a water bottle (I bring spares, but still).

Where's Our Marilyn Manson For The 2010's?

I watched The Filth and the Fury on Saturday night, a documentary about the Sex Pistols. A good portion recounted the public outrage over the band and it's [screw] everything mentality. There were calls to ban the group's music, protestors outside their hotels, that sort of thing. It reminded me of the uproar over heavy metal in general and artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica and even Prince in the 1980's (remember the PMRC? Was there ever a time someone in the Gore clan wasn't trying to tell us how to live our lives?).

Before that was Elvis. Remember when it was forbidden to show him on TV from the waist down? I don't, actually, but it happened. Something about his pelvis ruining the moral fabric of America. That fabric appears to be very fragile,: it can be torn by teenagers masturbating!

More recently was outrage over Marilyn Manson, who took the shock antics of Alice Cooper (another target of the morals police) and gave it a 21st century special effects upgrade. We were all assured that his music caused teen pregnancy, devil worship, and school shootings.

(As an aside, isn't it amazing what a musician with a goth aesthetic and a penchance for controversy can accomplish in the field of "getting women ordinarily out of his league"?)

Anyway, after watching the Sex Pistols drink, smoke, wear swastika t-shirts and generally act like jackasses for two hours, I began to wonder who will be the next band to take up the mantle of "destroyer of the moral fabric". Somewhere out there, right now, are a bunch of obnoxious kids practicing in mom's basement. They're going to grow up, write some catchy songs and adopt something, some look, some profane tendency, some public persona, that will convince a sizeable portion of the population that the band will kill America once and for all. That this time it's for real; they'll succeed where Elvis, The Beatles (after they found drugs), Judas Priest, Ozzy, Public Enemy and Marilyn Manson all failed. I can't wait. I just hope it's after all this emo crap dies out.

Maybe Soccer Shouldn't Be An Outdoor Sport In North Dakota

We're trying to play a makeup game today for Macy's soccer team after cancelling makeup games yesterday due to wind chills in the low 20's. Two weeks ago it was in the 70's and I was more preoccupied with remembering bug repellent for the mosquitos. Today I'm telling my girls to put long underwear on under their uniforms. On the upside, there won't be any bugs out today. A night in the teens tends to slaughter the mosquito population. Nothing like a cold night to get your bug genocide on.

The winds are supposed to be lighter today and the temperature should be close to 40 at game time. If we can dodge the snow flurries we should be able to get the game in. Donna is going to brave the elements and get some video. I'm going to attempt to take a team picture in case we can't make up our last game next week. Right now that looks about 50-50. There's no money in the budget for plowing snow off the fields.

10' 30"

Macy did her mile run today, finshing 2nd among the girls and 7th overall. Her time was 10 mins, 30 seconds.