New Years Eve

Wow has this been a long, yet productive year. 2005 looks to be lining up to be a great one also, let us only hope.

Anyways, I here that greatness can be obtained by your location on New Years Eve. Some smart dude come up with that (me for the plug I'm about to deliver) and I think I have to pay close attention to him and all his infinite wisdom that he bestows upon us. I am pretty sure that the place he was referring to on New Years Eve for this year is located on Rt. 73 and is called the Country Inn.

Can greatness be bestowed upon you for being at the Country Inn tonight? Absolutely. 10 years from now I think people are going to look back and be able to claim that "I was there" at the Country Inn on December 31, 2004. With my own eyes I got a chance to see Aaron Scott before he really hit the big time. He is a young up and coming singer who has already opened up for some of the biggest names in the industry like Rascal Flatts and Kenny Chesney. I'm really looking foreword to listening to him tonight.

I'm looking foreword to obtaining my greatness for 2005, if you want to obtain your greatness, come to the Country Inn tonight. Don't deny yourself the opportunity to say "I was there".

Internet Tsunami

I know this guy was just trying to be helpfull, but it kind of bit him. Matt Drudge from Drudge Report direct linked to him BLOG when he had some movies of the recent Tsunami's that just rocked Asia. 10 Terrabytes of Transfer in 24 hours. Wow, talk about a serious amount of number of hits.

NOAA does have a nice little animation of the model of the path of the Tsunami. I have a friend who works at NOAA and he told me Sunday night that 4,000 people from his hometown in India have been declard dead when the overall deathtoll was mearly 8,000 people. It's expected to reach 100,000 after the fall out. NOAA's Animation

There are some very interesting videos posted HERE. He's having bandwidth problems and is trying to get the videos back up.

If anyone is interested in helping any of these people, I have a friend who recently returned to Sri Lanka last year after both he and his wife Seela finished their doctorates. They were both 75 miles inward so they are fine, but are very busy helping out. The WVU department of Geography and the NRAC are combining to put together an aid package to send to him directly. If anyone id interested in making a donation, I'll post the accountinformation once we get it set up.

Nice little surprise.

I got a little pleasant surprise in my e-mail today, I checked it and seen a familiar name that I know. I got an e-mail from my nephew Daniel just wanting to say hello. Which to tell you the truth, kinda made my day because it had been some time since I had spoken with him.

He was telling me that he is now engaged and is going to be married this April to a girl named Kamey. She seems like a real nice girl, even though I've never met her. I added a few pics of him to my picture site under family.

I told him to do a BLOG and I've seen he has obliged by starting one. Now if we can just get a few people to post in theirs who have them (hint hint).

Weekend Tidbits

* My short little six day break is about over with, but I can say I enjoyed it and got a little bit of much needed relaxation over the week.

* I did manage to send an e-mail to my sister Kim, aka the "Blacksheep", and wish her a Happy Holidays. I received a return e-mail a little later wishing me the same.

* How about those Pittsburgh Steelers!!!! They won again and ran their record to 14-1 on the season and clinched a first round bye and home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

* I managed to do another movie file this weekend, yes a second, and it was one that I had in the back of my head to do for sometime. I had to sort through all my pictures and old movie files to get the appropriate content, then I had to make sure I had the right song to go with those pictures. I did try something different this time by adding an actual movie file in it and fading the sound. I did accidentally get the same picture in the movie twice, and since it was a fit chick in a bikini, I just thought I would add a little transition to go with the music and kick back to the same picture. This one is a little humorous so here it is.

* My Latest Movie File I hope you enjoy it. I do however get the impression my friends and family are trying to tell me something. I'm not sure what it is though.

Christmas Media File

I threw together a little Windows Media file from the pictures from Christmas Eve.

Hope you enoy. Holly Jolly Christmas


I just would like to take this time and wish everyone a VERY Merry Christmas, I hope Santa Claus was good to you.

A few Christmas Eve Pics

This is just a taste of Christmas Eve.

NORAD is tracking Santa Claus

Every year NORAD, tracks Santa's trek around the work and even catches some very rare video footage of Jolly Ole Saint Nick.

NORAD's Santa Link

Keep track of where he is tonight, the most special night of the year. Let's all wish him a safe trip around the world tonight.

Inside the Actors Studio

Flipping through the channels tonight, I managed to stop on Bravo. The show Inside the Actors Studio was on and it captivated me. I guess it's a film class that's broadcast on television, because the audience seems to be completely full of film students.

A show that I, and I think I can say everyone has seen in the Cartoon The Simpsons. We have all seen the show and probably each know 100 characters by heart. I've watched the show for so many years, that you seem to forget that there are real people behind the voices. Other than Yeardly Smith I couldn't put a human face behind any of the voices.

It was nice to see this very talented group of actors on stage and demonstrating the voices of the characters for us all to enjoy.

David Blaine

Street Magician David Blaine recently did a live, gory illusion on the Carson Daly Show. Be forewarned, this could be considered very grotesque.

The Illusion

His Website

Long week

What a week this has been, to get any time off for Christmas I have had to make up a boatload of hours. This week I have decided to work 7 10 hour shifts and will work another one Monday so I can have a little bit of a break for Christmas. I'll be off from Tuesday till Sunday and that will be my longest break from work or school since before I started college in 1999. It will be nice to relax a little bit. I'm not real sure what I'm going to do with my time off, but you can rest assured whatever I do will either be something I've needed to get done or just a little bit of relaxing.

With Christmas coming up this week, it should be a great week as usual. The Hall family Christmas has just grown to a point where Parking was going to become a serious issue. I've counted as many as 80 people there before, and when parking is limited it creates a burden on neighbors. This past summer there was a few discussions about renting out the Marilla Recreational Center and holding it there like we did for Valerie and Bobby's wedding. That plan seemed to get a little bit sidetracked though as the year wore on. I actually started a thread for it in my forums, but it seems like I am the only one who ever posts over there. Maybe the family just isn't into the whole message board thing. Good thing I at least got a few started doing BLOG's.

This year the Christmas Eve festivities will be at Nick and Terri's new establishment, it has all the room, space and parking we should need to accommodate everyone that we are going to need to. I heard Terri hung up a picture of Dad and a couple of the patrons donated a flag as a memorial to him. My mom said it was very touching to see, but I haven't had the chance to see it yet. I'm sure after Monday I will have a chance to go and spend a little time with Terri at the Country Inn.

I'll be sure to take pictures of everyone and try to do a little media file about it if I can find an appropriate song to do. Christmas day really hasn't been a big thing for me, it has always been Christmas Eve for me. The excitement leading up to it. Whether it be Santa Claus stopping by and paying a visit, or the rekindling of long lost friendships, or just seeing family members you don't see all year Christmas Eve has always had a very special meaning to me. This year shouldn't be any different. Hopefully I can capture it in pictures and we can keep it forever for the next generation to enjoy. Hopefully they wont make toomuch fun of the way we dressed. Anyone remember the Disco era?

Some People are just plain stupid.

I was surfing the net this morning and saw this video. Talk about what may be the dumbest guy in the world.

Warning, could be disturbing

Country Inn Night

It's Thursday night and Nick and Terri are going to have their first band to play at their bar since they took over. The Chicken Pickers are the featured band for the night. I hear they are pretty good, I'll have to make it up to hear them sometime soon.

I haven't managed to get up to the bar the past week or so, been a little busy making up hours for a nice little Christmas break.

It's also Thursday night and no Survivor. Arrrrggghhhhh

Survivor Final

Tonight is the two hour final of this seasons Survivor. We are down to the final four tonight and will name the sole survivor tonight also. The four remaining survivors are Eliza Orlins, the very quite Dr. Scout Cloud Lee, Twila Tanner and the last male survivor Chris Daugherty. My personal choice Chad is already a part of the jury, so going into the last show I would have to say I'm cheering for Chris, for no other reason other than I think he has played a great game and managed to survive and put himself in the final four when all indications were that he was going to be voted out weeks ago.

The first immunity challenge of the night was a vertical human maze where you had to climb around this vertical maze to come back with a pair of pieces of wood and return them to the bottom. There were ten sets of pairs that the contestants had to find and return to the base to form a two word answer for the for immunity. Chris went to the highest point for at the start and won immunity for tribal council.

At the first tribal council of the night, I guess the first question that I was asking myself was now that Chris had won immunity, was he going to honor his alliance with Eliza and go against Scout and Twila and try to eliminate one of them, or was he going to make it simple by eliminating Eliza, probably the games strongest remaining player at the point. Well, Chris is obviously playing for the money because he voted Eliza out, eliminating the only player who could be a stronger physical challenge player than he was. Eliza was a little upset, but it is a game. I think it was a great strategical move on his part. If he wins the next immunity, he picks who he goes to the final two with. Personally, Eliza and Twila have been at each others throats from the very beginning and I sided with Twila because she worked her ass off in the camp and told it like it was.

The next day they went through the traditional rites of passage, that's when the final three players go on a journey and see the torches of all the players who have been eliminated from the game to this point. It gives everyone a chance to reflect upon time they may have spent with each and every individual player to this point.

Me, it gave me a chance to reflect back to the posts I have made about Survivor since my first one on September 23.

The final immunity challenge is usually one of endurance. This one was no different, the three survivors had to stand on a stump with a bow drawn, if they released pressure from the bow, it would pierce a eyepiece that came out when it was first drawn, thus eliminating them from the challenge. Scout was the first to pierce her piece and be eliminated. After 1 hour and 7 mins, Twila pierced her paper piece nd awarding final immunity to Chris. This allows him to basically pick who he wants to go against in the finals for the million dollars and guarentees the either him or the person he picks $100,000 minumum and $1,000,000 to the other. What amazed me was whe n Scout stepped off, why did Chris and Twila continue to battle for the immunity. If I'm Chris, I'm wanting to go against a very open and loud personality in the finals rather than a cancer survivor who has flown in under the radar.

At Tribal council, Chris played strategy and eliminated Scout from the game, leaving Chris and Twila as the games final two players. I think Chris chose Twila to go to the finals with him because of her open persoanlity. I'm sure she has ticked off a few Jury members along the way with their personality conflicts, or her swearing on her son's life and then it being a complete lie. I think he will beat Twila, but he would have lost to Scout, who played a very honorable game.

At the final tribal council, the game switches and now the players are no longer voting, it's now put into the hands of the seven jury members that they had previously voted off. All seven Jury members did have a chance to ask one question to each of the final two players before they make their vote on who they are awarding the million dollars to. I really didn't see any surprises from the jury as far as questioning, it seemed more like a bitch session about why they were in the Jury and Chris and Twila were stil in the game.

For the final vote, the jury members do not vote anyone out, they vote for who they want to win the million dollars. After the votes were tallied, Jeff informed them once again as he usually does that he would talley the votes in the US. He does a sequnce when he parachutes out of a plane and rides a motorcycle into a live audience in Hollywoood to read the results of the final tribal council.

The winner needed to see his name on the parchment 4 times to get a majority. After six read votes, Chris was declared the winner of Survivor Vanuatu and the winner of the Million Dollars.

Mark "Stats Guru" Devault

I was sitting here paying some bills when I got an IM from Mark, he asked if I had read today's paper. Not knowing specifically what he was talking about I said no (I basically glance at it online anymore). It seems Bob Hertzel gave Mark a little recognition on his website in today's paper.

It seems like there is a little discrepancy between the WVU press guide and Mark's site. The press guide is subject to human error that could never have been caught had the king of MySQL not decided to put his passion for WVU sports and his expertise in Database design and caught the error. Mark pointed out that the Guide had WVU with a home record of 18-1 in 1986, where in reality we were 13-1. A simple handwriting error had given us credit for an additional five home games. The "Stats Guru" is quickly making a name for himself.

Mark has designed a few unique databases that are one of a kind. He has the one for Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball and he's just starting the WVU Football database. Not to overlook that he also created a Morgantown High Alumni site that's one of a kind.

West Virginia University has had some great people associated with it throughout he years. Jack Fleming was "The Voice of the Mountaineers" for many years before he passed away. Jerry West can safely be argued is the single most marquee player in WVU basketball history, and AC Whitey Gwynne a pioneer in the field of athletic training. These guys have all come and gone in their time at WVU. Today, it is Mark Devault that may just join his own brother Bill on that list of Most Famous West Virginians with the truly innovative set of databases he has designed.

From all of us stats loving WVU fans, thank you Mark.

Mozilla Update

Penn State University has told 80,000 students to stop using Internet Explorer and switch at an alternative browser such as Firefox, the one I mentioned in yesterdays post.

I read somewhere that within the first 24 hours of its release, Firefox 1.0 had five million downloads.

There are some very bad security glitches with IE and I switched to Firefox a couple weeks ago. I would highly recommend everyone who reads my BLOG to switch browsers.

Open Office

As the twenty-first century keeps on rolling, technology continues to grow and our society continues to become more and more electronic friendly. Products such as Microsoft's office has almost become a necessity to almost every household. It is pretty much become the industry standard.

If someone wanted a copy of Office, they would be limited to a few options. First would be the obvious and pay Microsoft the $150-$900, that's from the student edition to the enterprise edition that has everything. Secondly, if the first one isn't an option, people could start to seek out a pirated version of the software from Kazaa, Imesh or any other file sharing software. Being how the RIAA has monitored such file sharing software lately, this could end you up in court.

There is a solution to all of this though.

I work in an office and have a few close outside friends that are programmers and network administrators. Over the past few weeks I have tried a few new ways of thinking. The first thing I did was realize that there are some serious unrepairable security holes in Internet Explorer. I'm a former Netscape user and just got frustrated with them about five years ago. I have found a customizable free browser that I would almost venture to say that every programmer I know uses and that is Mozilla's Firefox. The more I use it, the more I like it, but now back to my original post.

I have been an Office user for years, but I have recently found a free open source version of the software that is compatable with everything that I have used so far and that is Open Office. What open source means is that the source code for the software is available and can be manipulated to meet the users specific demands. Although the product as is is good enough for 99.99999% of its users.

On a side note, most hackers and people who write and distribute worms and bugs are doing so and directing them at closed source Microsoft Products. There are other operating systems such as Linux that they tend not to target because it is so open source and not a company making billions of dollars off of the public.

Open Office features include a Word Processor (Word) a Spreadsheet (excel) and a Presentation (Power Point) as well as an HTML editor. I checked out the spreadsheet, and I can write the same formulas in Open Office as I could have in Excel. Side note, I couldn't do the same operations in Coral (since the last time I used it) or Microsoft Works (the free version Microsoft gives you that basically wasn't compatable with anything else.) Open Office gives you an option as to what format you wasnt to save your document in. The only drawback that I haven't used it professionally and tried to save a compatble .dbf file so that it is dbaseIV compatable.

But, for the average everyday user, I give it two thumbs up.

Survivor Night

What am I going to do next week. Tonight we will eliminate it down to the final four players, meaning that a special Sunday Night showing will be the final show of this season, meaning this is the last Thursday Night for Survivor.

During the rewards challenge Julie Berry managed to win a series of challenges and be the last survivor standing. We won a reward where she got to go to a volcano and spend some time there. They told her she could take one person with her, so she chose Chris Daugherty, the last surviving male to go with her and her reward of hotdogs and beer. Of course during the private little trip with the two, there was a little bit of strategizing going on in Julie's case.

The immunity challenge was from questions of a story that Jeff told. Of course it was one of those tounge twister type story, which made it that much tougher. When it was all said and done, with headlights gleaming at me thtough the TV set Eliza Orlins guarenteed herslf a place in the final four.

Coming down to the last Thursday Night tribal council and leaving us with the games final four players the question was whether the alliance would stand stromg and vote off Julie, or would Eliza go together with Chris and Julie and vote out Twila Tanner. Seems like the only one who is safe other than the person with immunity is Chris. At Tribal Council the alliance for the final four stood, much to Eliza's surprise and Julie was voted out.

Penny Wise

Read a cute ARTICLE article today about paying off a debt in pennies. Seems like a man in Utah was given an $82.00 fine for driving with a headlight out. As in his own little form of protest, he decided to pay the ticket all in pennies. 8,200 of them to be exact.

Court officials said they had the right to have him make a "more acceptable" form of payment and that they had the right to refuse his payment in pennies. The guy contended that the pennies were legal tender.

That left me wondering a little about that debate,so I did a little research on my own and I went to SNOPES to get the rundown to see if this had ever been addressed before.

Seems like the guy was right:

Title 31 (Money and Finance), Subtitle IV (Money), Chapter 51 (Coins and Currency), Subchapter I (Monetary System), Section 5103 (Legal Tender) of the United States Code states:

United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.



Snopes defines it in a little more detail, but it does make for a good read.

Survivor Night

I missed last weeks show because of Thanksgiving and the WVU football game, but it seems like I missed one of the best shows ever when the womens alliance was broken.

If you would have asked me two weeks ago who was going to win, I would have said Ami had played a very strategic game and was going to walk away with it, even though I didn't like her.

After what I saw thta happened last week, this week could mean goodbye to Ami. When tribal council came around, 4-2 Ami was gone. She had a great set of boobs that I didn't mind looking at, but other than that I didn't really care for her for some reason.

Oh well, down to the final five.

Country Inn

A few pics from the opening day of buisness at Terri and Nicks's.

Pleasant Surprise

Talk about a pleasant unexpected surprise, I got a chance tonight to talk to my best friend from college. She left Morgantown last March and our contact has been limited to none since then.

If I remember only one person from my college years, it will be my old office mate Ginger. Tonight I was uploading some pictures on the net and I saw on my MSN messenger that I received an e-mail from her, quickly I jumped on and told her I was online. To my pleasant surprise she logged onto MSN messenger and we had a voice conversation for a good while.

We caught up on the past eight and a half months and joked around like we were still at the office together. It was a great time. She showed me her work website and caught up on old times. If you have one friend like Ginger in your lifetime, you are a lucky person.

Talk about a great birthday gift!

A Dream has come true

I have a sister Terri, who is one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet and give you the shirt off her back to help someone. Most of her life she had worked as a waitress in the restaurant business. She met her husband Nick when they both used to work at a local restaurant here in town called Ali Baba's.

Times changed and both of them were given more lucrative careers in the Vocational Rehabilitation profession here in West Virginia. It was a good job and a good living, but both of them had a dream of someday opening up their own restaurant. Years went by and one thing led to another and that dream seemed to sit on the back burner. Until about a year or so ago when the Vocational Rehab market dried up for lack of a better word and they were both put out of a job.

Since that time, Terri went to work at a restaurant/bar on the Grafton road, but I don't think she ever felt completely comfortable there. Nick was working 16-18 hour days installing satellite dishes in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

One of Terri's oldest and dearest friend, Tyler, took Terri on a drive to this restaurant/bar on Rt. 73 in Fairmont. Tyler introduced Terri to the owner and she was explaining that she was wanting to get out of the buisness and made an offer to Terri that I guess was pretty sweet.

Terri went home and talked to Nick and he also liked the idea. Over the past few weeks they scrambled to get financing to buy the buisness and have managed to do so.

So, as of Tomorrow, December 1, 2004. My sister Terri and her husband Nick are the proud owners of the Country Inn on Rt 73 in Fairmont. This is a golden opportunity for both of them and a dream come true.

Needless to say, I am one very proud brother.

Long weekend over

My first four day weekend since Christmas is over with and it was back to work yesterday. I was, and still am a little under the weather so let's just say that I wasn't overly excited about getting back to work.

I did manage to get some of my grandfather's music converted from from a Real Audio Format to a .wav and .mp3. I did a little windows media file of his music with some old family pictures, but then realized I have more pictures of him that would have been more appropriate for the music. I'll try to re-do and publish that when I'm feeling a little bit better.

Thanksgiving

Wow, what a day. As usual, Terri cooked a feast fit for the finest of kings. She and Nick are just naturals at hosting people, maybe in the next few days these two are going to have a little Surprise Announcement, but more on that later.

I do have to wish my Neice Val and very happy 21st birthday today. Hey, you're finally legal!! Happy Birthday Birthday girl.


Of course after we stuffed ourself for the Thanksgiving feast, we managed to make it to Suburban Lanes for our traditional Thanksgiving Night bowling festivities. I can't remember the first time that we did all managed to go bowling together, but I also can't remember the last year we didn't go.

Overall, it was a great day. I did manage to get a few pictures of everyone I hope, here's just a few samples, go to my picture page by clicking the word Thanksgiving to see the rest.

Family Portraits

Hey everyone, just a little reminder to anyone who is reading this and will be attending Thanksgiving dinner at Terri's. I'm wanting to do a series of family portraits of everyone to host on my website.

Pictures are a piece of time that we can capture and have forever. When we fail to capture an image, we lose it forever. The very few images that we do manage to capture will be keepsakes that someday will be a pleasant reminder of days passed.

I'll try to make CD's for anyone who should happen to want a printable copy of any and all the images. The pictures I take are at 5.0 megapixel and if you want prints, you can have them blown up to 20"x30" and not lose any resolution on the pictures (no pixelating). The one's I host on the site are cut down in size and resolution considerably to be able to load fairly quickly.

Weekend Tidbits

Yet another weekend has came and passed me by. It was a nice relaxing one that saw a rainy weekend for the most part. One with the tidbits.

* The Morgantown High Mohigans ran their record to 12-0 and advanced to the State Semi-finals against Riverside with a 45-14 ripping of Nitro. The Mohigans are 2 wins away from their third undefeated State Championship in five years.

* Saturday, my brother in law Nick's sister got remarried in Pittsburgh. I wish her and her new husband John the best.



* Sunday saw my beloved Steelers not play so well, but they still managed to get a 19-14 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals to run their record to 9-1 on the season.

* WVU was off this weekend, but are still ranked 20th in the USA Today/Coaches Poll . We are scheduled to play the University of Pittsburgh Thanksgiving night.

* WVU also kicked off basketball season with an 82-70 win over Saint Peter's saturday night.

* In football, MHS, WVU and the Steelers are a combined 29-3 on the season. I can't remember the last time the three of them combined for that type of a winning percentage.

* There is a very good chance another family member will realize a lifetime dream on my birthday this year. Not going to jinx it and won't say anything until it happens, so you'll just have to stay tuned to see if the someone's dream becomes reality.

* Jean and Rich had to go to Florida this weekend, I guess Rich's dad has had some health problems that need their attention. I hope things work out ok for them.

Morgantown High Alumni site

Mark recently updated his Morgantown High Alumni site and eliminated his own forums where I think only him and myself were the only ones posting and tied his site into a more active forum for Mohigan Alumni.

He did a great job with his site for the class of '84. Mark is truly the master of MySQL databases. For those of you who don't know, Mark also put in numerous hours putting together the WVU Men's Basketball Database that is one of a kind. He's also managed to do one for Women's Basketball and my begging and pleading long enough he has managed to do a WVU Football database that he is just getting started. He's also been known to be a clutch softball player when he's not in front of a computer.

The Alumni site is starting to look like it could be something very special and a very valuable resource for finding and keeping up with Alumni from Morgantown High. It would be nice if someday all classes could have a way of finding each other.

Survivor Night again

Once again it is my favorite night of the television week.

It's the week following Sarge getting voted out, and it seems like Chad and Chris both committed what I would call survivor suicide last week in their voting by turning against the men that they are and voted Sarge out last week. Even though the women already had the numbers, this could very well have been a fatal mistake.

The Rewards challenge had the remaining 8 survivors split up into two tribes of four to compete in the obstacle course. Eliza, Chad, Chris and Ami won the very unique obstacle course to win the reward challenge and a chance to get away from camp for a while.

For the immunity challenge, it was a battle of strength and balance in who could climb a pole and grip on for dear life the longest. It came down to Chad and Twila as the last two holding onto that pole. In the end Twila managed to win the battle of wills to win the oh so coveted necklace of immunity.

This brings yet once again the question of will the women continue to stick together and continue to pick the men off one by one, or will some of the women not targeted for the womens final four break ranks and side up with the men and vote one of the leaders of the womens tribe out. When it all came down to voting, my personal favorite Chad Crittenden became the second member of the jury when the women continued to hold on to their strong alliance.

The final male Chris Daugherty will most likely be voted out next week leading to an all woman final six.

The weekend

It was another good weekend for me, so I guess I'm a little bit lucky in that respect.

Friday Night started out with Morgantown High attempting to win another state Championship. The Top ranked Mohigans beat Cabel Midland 49-7 to advance to the state quarterfinals next Friday night.

Saturday was a big disappointment as the Mountaineers showed the nation how NOT to play special teams by getting embarrassed by Boston College 36-17. A win would have locked WVU into a BCS bowl. We can still win a share of the league title by beating Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving.

Sunday brought about the Pittsburgh Steelers successfully running their record to a league best 8-1 with a 24-10 thrashing of the Cleveland Browns.

My favorite teams gave managed to extend their records to a combined 27-3 on the year for me.

On a personal note not much went on for me this weekend. I did manage to stop by and visit my sister Terri this morning. It's always a pleasure to stop by for a little BS session with her.

Survivor Night!!!!

OK, last week was the merger so it's Game On this week. The battle lines have been drawn and they have been drawn by gender. Ironically if you would go back to week one of the show when they first landed on the island, the locals basically treated the men like gods. Right now it looks like the women are going to pick the men off one by one.

In the rewards challenge, it was a challenge of the minds on Vanuatu culture. Leann Slaby was the last one standing after the battle of wits. Of course Jeff would never make her go enjoy the reward alone so selected Julie Berry to go with her on her reward of a nice little helicopter ride around the island and a nice lunch on top of a dormant volcano.

Back on the island, Eliza feels like she was slighted by her fellow women because she was the first woman knocked out of the rewards challenge. Of course the men picked up on this, but I don't know if they will be able to exploit it.

On the reward challenge, the survivors has to assemble a puzzle. On the first round, all five women got the puzzle correct and all three men got the puzzle wrong. When it was all said and done with a few more rounds of puzzles to assemble, only Ami Cusack was left standing and had acquired immunity. With Ami winning immunity, that left all three men susceptible to being eliminated.

At this point of the game, I think the women think that Sarge is the strongest player and the biggest physical threat to them and their gameplan. Tonight, the person voted out will become the first member of the jury that they will need to get a popular vote from to win the Million Dollars. When the votes were counted Lea "Sarge" Masters was voted out.

Hump Day

Woo Hoo, we are over the hump and now looking for the weekend. Not too much to say tonight (believe it or not), but WVU is up for a big game this weekend against Boston College. A win could guarantee a BCS bowl game and a big pay day.

A win could either give us a chance to play in the Tostito's Fiesta Bowl




or it could mean a game in the Nokia Sugar Bowl



Either way it plays out, a win will create a lot of excitement here in town.

Stay Tuned...

Monday's tidbits

* It was a nice little weekend, I managed to get some Christmas 1998 pictures scanned and made a Media file of it.

* Morgantown High was off this week before the playoffs, but now go into the playoffs ranked #1 at 10-0.

* West Virginia University beat Temple this weekend 42-21. Kay Jay Harris scored four touchdowns as WVU ran it's recored to 8-1

* We are currently rnaked #10 in the Coaches poll and 13th in the AP Poll.

* A win Saturday against Boston College locks us into a BCS Bowl Game

* The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the last of the unbeatens this weekend. The beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-3 to run their record to 7-1 on the season.

* The combination of my HS alma Mater, College Alma Mater and favorite NFL team have a combined current record of 25-2 for the season. Talk about a good year.

* I came up with the idea of maybe doing family portraits this year for everyone next time we all get together. I think it would be a nice addition to the website.

* After reading Kim's Journal this morning, I noticed a little statement by her that she wasn't there for Dad's last Christmas. I know for a fact she was there, she just arrived later. I was showing Ed where to park the moment Jane walked back into my life, and that was that Magical Christmas of 1998. Unfortunately though, after she showed up I got sidetracked in my picture taking and never really got a chance to showcase the 50+ people who enjoyed Christmas eve there that year. I just hope my memory doesn't fade when I reach her age. =)

* George is starting the second floor of his addition. They have done a great job on it and are now starting to show some real progress.

* On personal note, there has been a few inquiries about my Resume as of late, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

* I bought the Shrek 2 DVD this weekend. I confess, I'm a big kid.

I'll Be Home For Christmas

This is my next attempt at a movies file, my first one that I did was Wonderful World and I think I like how it turned out. I hope everyone liked it because it was fun to do.

This weekend thanks to my neice Valerie I managed to get a hold of some pictures from the Hall Family Christmas in 1998. Our traditional family Christmas's had changed over the years and we all wanted to have another one like we all remembered. Dad really wasn't up for it at first, because he had his almost traditional "I Have to Work" line ready to go. Seems like every major holiday he used this line and really didn't want to take part of it.

That year was Magic, because none of us listened to him that year and decided to have one of our long lost Christmas's at his house anyways. He wasn't initailly responsive to the idea and it had me worried, but in the last day leading up to our Christmas Eve he managed to get involved and took the night of Christmas Eve off. That morning I knew it would be a magical day.

In our family, Christmas Day is usually a day spent with the individual family unit, but Christmas Eve was when everyone gathered together and is the time that everyone seems to remember the best.

1998 was a magical Christmas eve for many of us in many ways. We did not know it then, but this one Christmas Eve that we basically tricked him into having, was his last. He passed away some seven months later but had did not start having health problems until a couple months after that night.

So, in its world internet debut after Mom gave me the idea to do it, here is I'll Be Home for Christmas.

Survivor Night

Woo Hoo, my one weekly show that I actually look foreward to is on tonight. I've missed two of the past three weeks, but I'm up for watchig my second week in a row and hopefully start getting back into the full swing of Survivor 9.

Lopevi won the reward challenge of the chocolate cake, cookies and ice cold milk. Talk about something that would be real reward after being out there a few weeks.

The Big surprise of the night came when Jeff told them to drop thier Buffs and that we are now at the merge. It's no longer tribal immunity, but it is now individual immunity.

Individual immunity challenge was broken down into first two heats of five survivors with Sarge and Eliza winning the first heat. In the second heat Ami and Rory advanced to the finals. Sarge was the first survivor to manage to win individual immunity.

Of course, now that we are at the merge, my personal favorite is STILL Chad. He has managed to make it to the merge. The new merged tribe name is Alinta, which was a local word for fire maker.



The first Tribal council after the immunity means appears to be a power struggle between the men and the women, the women had the numbers 6 to 4 going into tonights tribal council.

The survivor voted off was Rory Freeman and it appears that the women have a very strong alliance, Ami gathered the first four votes and appeared to be gone until the next six ballots said Rory.

Game On.

SHIT!!!!

Oh well, I go that off my chest. I really thought Kerry was going to win, boy was I surprised.

I vote today

Today is election day in the United States. The incumbent President George W. Bush is going against challenger John F. Kerry, and it should be a very close race. I've avoided posting who I was voting for until today.

On September 11, 2001 this nation came under attack. Terrorists Hijacked four planes and ran two into the WTC, one into the Pentagon, and one crashed in PA. The action was united, and our President vowed to get those responsible for the attacks.

I did not directly know any of the victims, however one of my best childhood friends lost his wife that day in the Pentagon. Shelly Marshall was someone I never had the opportunity to meet, because Don Eric and my lives had taken different paths and we lost contact through the years. As children, we all ran around in the same small group of friends, and up until we graduated High School we ate lunch together every day.

I was shocked when our nation was attacked, but stunned to find out that Don's wife was a victom of the attack. Her killer must be brought to justice.

Here we are 3+ years later and Osama Bin Laden is still running around. From a Conservative Democrat who in five Presidential elections has NEVER voted for a Democrat for President, today in memory of Don's wife and every other victom of 9-11, I'm voting against the man who failed to bring their killer to Justice. George W. Bush, you lost my faith and my support. I'm voting for John Kerry.

This is Shelly Marshall's memorial tree that I drive past every day.

Weekend tidbits.

Yet another weekend has came and gone. Seems like they are getting shorter and shorter, but they are getting interesting to say the least.

Saturday was the WVU vs Rutgers game, WVU won, but there seems to be a little discipline problem with out game breaking wide receiver. I think coach Rich Rodriguez needs to address it, it has already gotten out of hand. Anyways Mountaineers win making my teams 2-0 on the weekend.

Saturday was Trick or Treat with a lot of funky looking people being let out. If you see either one of these two run and hide.



I did actually get a chance to see and talk to Jane over the weekend. I always enjoy talking to her and catching up on old times. I did manage to get a picture of Her, Chris, Sydney, Lucas and Ian in exchange for a few Reeses Cups. I think I got the better end of the deal.



We sat up and talked talked for a few hours about old friends, politics, Family, what its like to raise triplets and about any other thing that we could think of.

Sunday comes along, and I would have to say it's been pretty eventful. A family feud seems to be fueling up over some old and worn out issues. I'll just offer a simple bit of advice to all, anytime you post something over the internet, remember that it can be read by nearly anyone online and innocent people can get hurt. I have my own opinion over the entire feud, but choose not to specifically address it electronically. It's honestly not that high on my life's list of priorities.


Sunday does have a few happy stories, two of my nieces have decided to become Bloggers and I think Terri would like to get into it. If she does do one I'll link it for all of us to share. She is a very beautiful, articulate and intelligent person, I look foreword to reading her thoughts.

Weekend closes out with the Pittsburgh Steelers beating the New England Patriots ending their NFL record 21 game winning streak. Morgantown Wins, WVU Wins and the Steelers win. Another 3-0 weekend for me. This is a good year for me in football.

HACKED

I should have know better than to use my regular generic password when I created this account, seems someone went in and played around a little with the template and even managed to go into the HTML code and delete a specific part of it. Not the whole thing, but only the part that had to do with links.

Could it be a computer glitch? Maybe, but no one else's BLOG's were affected by this potential glitch. It must have been specific to me for some reason.

It's a good thing that I actually know how to write HTML. No matter, I went in and rewrote what needed to be there and replaced the links that were originally there. I guess the hacker wasn't experianced enough to know that most of the links were in a previous post.

My Blog is obviously back up and running, so enjoy. Oh yeah, to the hacker.

MoHawk Bowl

Every year about this time, my High School Alma Mater lines up to play some football against cross town rival University High. The game has been traditionally played at Mountaineer Field for a few years now, because usually these two teams are the top two teams in the state. The 1999 game drew an unheard of 20,000 fans easily the largest crowd to ever watch a High School football game in West Virginia.

Last night, Morgantown came into the game 9-0 and ranked #1 again, but University High, which is in the middle of a rebuilding year, came into the game 5-4 and ranked #14.

The game was scheduled to start at 7:30, but mother nature decided to drop an inch and a half of rain upon us yesterday afternoon. That and we were having thunderstorms so the game was pushed back first till 8:10, and then once again until 9:00. We game finally got under way at 9:00.

Once the game started it was a tough fought contest until halftime with Morgantown taking an 11-3 lead. A few Morgantown miscues within the 5 yard line and a dropped sure interception for touchdown by the Mohigans was the difference between a close game and a first half blowout.

After the teams came out at halftime, Morgantown showed why they are the #1 ranked team in the state and ran the margin to 38-3, probably knocking the crosstown Hawks out of the playoffs. Spencer Farley rushed for 156 yards and 3 touchdowns in leading the Mohigans to their 10th win of the regular season.

10 down, 4 to go to be the 2004 WV State Champions.

Survivor Night

Do you believe it, my favorite show on television and I have missed the last not one, but two shows. Oh the Humanity, I haven't missed that many shows of survivor since I started watching it.

Two weeks ago we had a Presidential Debate and I didn't watch. I felt it was my duty as a Moderate to watch the debates and see who I liked. Travis Sampson was voted off. He gave me the impression of someone who was no threat to win the game, but those are the kind of players who sneak into the money like Clay Jordan managed to do in Survivor Thailand.

Last week WVU played Syracuse at home and I'm not missing the Mountaineers on television. Lisa Keiffer managed to be the next one voted off. Can't say much about it because I missed not one, but two weeks in a row.

I will be watching it tonight and trying to catch up on what I had missed over the past two weeks. My first week favorite Chad Crittenden is actually #1 in this weeks viewer popularity poll. I'm looking foreward to getting back into watching Survivor.

Daily Show with Jon Stewart

What can be said about the man. During this crazy 2004 Presidential election, one man has seemed to be the real man of reason. How ironic is it that it comes from a half hour daily news show on comedy central.



A man who just a year ago I would have called a B movie actor, and honestly the only movie I can think of with him in it is Big Daddy other than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, one of my favorites I might add.

Stewart and his crew has managed to take a news story, break it down to just the bare facts, and then turn around and satirically make you look at it in a different perspective. The man's popularity has grown immensely over the past few months. Everyone in my office either watches it daily, on repeat or they TIVO it.

OK, I'm a Yeti Geek

I know you have all seen them or played them once or twice, Yeti games are somewhat addictive. I actually have them all downloaded on my jump drive so I can play them if their site ever goes down. So far there are 8 Yeti games that are already officially out and I have seen numerous versions of the games altered in one way or another.

There are even some Yeti games that appear to be Yeti games, but are not part of the official site. Games like Stagedive appear to be yeti games, but obviously they're not. I do have to hand it to them though, when I fisrt saw it I thought it was one of their games.

Not much else to say today, it's kind of a blah weekend so far. WVU has already played and won Thursday Night, MHS won last night and the Pittsburgh Steelers have a bye week this week, so not much going on in the way of football.

Baseball starts its World Series tonight, the Boston Red Sox coming off what could arguably be the greatest comback in the history of sport in the ALCS will be taking on the St. Louis Cardinals. Should be a good series, but I think I'm pulling for the Red Sox to win this game, just so we can stop hearing about Babe Ruth's Curse.

New BLOGers

Hey, what do you know, I know have a Mother, a Brother, a Sister and a Neice who are now all BLOGers. Seems like everyone is wanting to get into the 21st century, hopefully I can convince all my siblings to do a BLOG.

On a professional note, this week has been very hectic for me. Doing a lot of running around for the
US-China Clean Energy Workshop. I did a little bit of work last year on the Coal Liquification plant that China wants to install near Mongolia. I went to the Pittsburgh Airport to pick up Ms. Hu Yuhong from the China Coal Association.

It was a hectic couple days, but they are now over with and life is back to normal.

Steelers win again!!!!!!

What a good weekend of football for me. It started out with my Alma Mater, WVU, beating UConn 31-19 wed night.

Next came my High School Alma Mater Morgantown High beat Woodrow Wilson 45-12.

It was a nice start to a weekend, two of my favorite teams both won and it would be up to the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat their arch rival Dallas Cowboys 24-20 with a late game Vinnie Testeverde fumble and Jerome Bettis 1 yard touchdown run. It was a great game, probably one of the better ones that I've seen so far this year, but my Steelers prevailed and moved to 5-1 on the season.

They are off next week and face the defending Champion New England Patriots in two weeks. New England currently has an NFL record 20 game winning streak. I hope they win next week so the Steelers can stop their streak.

I finally got them

I finally did it. I managed to get the only two pictures of all my siblings finally scanned and on the internet. I never could understand why there aren't any more of them, thee are pictures with a lot of us, but we never seemed to get all of of us in the picture except for twice.

A little history, there are five of us. Me, Kim, Terri, Pam and Gary. I was raised by my paternal grandparents here in Morganotwn. Kim was raised by my maternal grandmother in McClellandtown PA. Terri was raised by my mother. Pam and Gary were raised with my dad and Jean. So, with a family feud here and there, the five of us rarely managed to get into the same picture.

There were two incidences when the pictures occured, the first was a few years ago at my grandmother's house during a summer cookout and BBQ. Kim had came in from PA for the week to stay with my mom and Terri for a week during the summer. My Dad had a BBQ at my grandmothers and both Kim and Terri came to visit me for a couple days for the first photo opportunity.



There were numerous times when we could have had another picture taken, unfortunately it was my father's funeral before the five of us managed to get in front of the camera together again.



It was a challenge to find copies of these pictures and actually get scanned and uploaded.

Mom's 1st Multi-Media File

Would you believe that it's Thursday night and I of all people missed my favorite television show? How did I miss survivor? Oh well.

Actually I went over to my mother's place tonight and gave her a quick little tutorial on how to do Window Media Files. She liked the It's a Wonderful World that I did and wanted to do one of her own. It's actually a pretty esy process so I walked her through it. Give her a little time and I think she's going to master this, especially now she knows this is pretty easy.

We sorted through some pictures that she wanted to use, and I think we finished with about 20 or so that she wanted to add in. She also wanted to add the music, so that was a tough decision, but she finally came up with I will Always Love You, and she chose the original Dolly Parton version of the song. She had a CD of the recording so I ripped it into an mp3 for her and rounded up the pictures to help her get started with her first file.

So, in it's world internet debut for your viewing pleasure, this is my mom's first media file I Will Always Love You. Great Job Mom.

It's Survivor Night!!!!!

Woo Hoo, the on show that I actually look foreward to watching. I really didn't get much of a chance to post because of the Presidential debate last week. Last week was a unique one, for the first time in Survivor History, two castaways were eliminated instead of just one.

John Palyok was eliminated by the men. Which is kind of ironic because the men basically won the immunity challege as a team, but then followed up with an individual immunity challenge.

On the women's side, they also had to take a trip to tribal council. I think the women are in a lot of disarray right now. Mia Galeotalanza was voted out. There is alliance trouble in the womens camp, so I think their unity is in serious trouble.

It's a little early to really garner an opinion about any of the survivor castaways yet. I still am cheering for Chad as my personal favorite in the early going, but the game is full of changes and surprises so that could possibly be subjected to change. Although historically when I pick an early favorite, they are usually around till near the end.

On to tonights show. So much for my preshow premise, Yasur, the women won the reward challenge and also won the immunity challenge. During the reward challenge the Yasur was the first to match up five like symbols in the memory game. Their reward for the day was a 24 hour time period with one of the islands natives. He managed to show them that food was all around them, they had just not recognized it. He helped them gain a few of the luxuries from home that they had been missing. It's amazing what you can do with Bamboo.

On to the Immunity challenge and the puzzle game. The women were very organized and beat the men quite handidly. Rory Freeman sat at the head of the board and was the eyes for everyone for the men. He was extremely disorganized and possibly cost the men a victory. When it came to tribal council though, Rory's five man alliance stayed strong as the men solidly voted out Brady Finta .

The Weekend

Here it is Sunday evening already and the weekend is gone. There was so much going on around town I never really got a chance to to everthing that I wanted to do. Seems like everything was happening Saturday evening or during the day.

Early Saturday I wnt to my sister Terri's house to watch the WVU-VT football game. We were trying to will the Mountaineers to victory, but we just came up a little bit short. I had a blast going to my sister's house, she is one of the best hostesses you could ever imagine. There was a small group of us trying to cheer the 'eers to victory, but we came up a little short. I have have high expectations for them this year.

Saturday evening there were a lot of things going on, but I couldn't be everywhere at once. Kelly had a party that I really wanted to make it out to, but never quite made it to Canyon.

I was planning on going to Morgantown High Game with a couple of friends, but ended up going alone and met up with Chris to get a couple Multi-media files of the game.
MHS won, so that made my teams 1-1 for the weekend.

The Morgantown Balloon festival was supposed to have light up night on Saturday evening, but I didn't make it out for that photo opportunity.

Sunday was a chores and NFL day. I love waking up early and going grocery shopping in the wee hours of the morning. I've started going to a remote store just so I can take a nice relaxing Country drive on my way there.

Sunday afternoon, my Pittsburgh Steelers put a little ass whoopin on the Bengals. So, my teams ended up 2-1 for the weekend. I would have rather have had a 3-0 for the weekend, but I can't complain.

I also got a chance to talk to my brother Gary a little tonight. Gary is just one of those people that are natural at playing the guitar. My grandfather had the gift, but I didn't get that gift, and neither did about anyone else in our family other than my brother Gary and my sister Pam's oldest son Moke. Those two have just with the natural musical talent.

I have given Gary a Challenge that he's going to try to do by Christmas eve. I'm going to record it and publish it on my website, but I don't want to say what is is as of right now. It'll be a nice little pleasant surprise if he can manage to learn what he needs to learn and I can capture it. Stay tuned...

WOW

On a little side note I just checked my websites statistics and I was basically about knocked out of my chair. Total number of hits since I started this site on June 26, 2004...100,440. I'm completely stunned and had no idea I was getting that many hits. I was thinking maybe 1,000 hits if I was lucky, but 100,000?

My High School Alma Mater

I went out tonight and watched my Morgantown Mohigans crush Preston High School 70-6. Moragntown is very deep and talented this year, they look like they could quite easily run the slate and win the State Chmapionship again. Since 1997 they have complied a 89-9 record, which is really quite impressive.

I will have to thank Hector from The Eric McGuire radio Network for inviting me for a second week in a row to get a birds eyes view with the Voice of the Mohigans. Even though last week he called me the worst color commentator in the history of broadcasting. I get called that from a guy in a Pink Batman cape. Thanks once again to Hector allowing me to take some great pics from a unique view.




On a less happy side, my Mountaineers dropped a game rival Virginia Tech. This means we lose the Black Diamond trophy, but I think we'll get it back next year.

Mount Saint Helens

On May 8, 1980 at 8:32 AM North America witnessed what I would call the biggest geological event that any of us ever had or ever will see in our lifetimes. A beautiful majestic mountain.

We were able to witness probably one of the most significant nature induced topographical change of a landscape that could be observed and recorded in many, many years.


We were fortunate for the first time to be able to record an event of this magnatude. There are a lot of multi media files that will allow us to relive that day in 1980 at Mount Saint Helensthat was pretty remarkable.

Now today, we are now having a series of small Earthquakes in the area that has some scientists concerned. It's most likely going to turn out to be nothing, but we did have an Earthquake in California thats also garnering our attention.

In the title I have posted a internet cam from Mount Saint Helens that refreshes every 5 mins just in case something does happen. It's going to be something to pay attention to and watch over the next week or so.

Smitty

A few weeks ago I went to PigStock here in Morgantown. It was the first official WVU Pep Rally here in Morgantown. Coach Rich Rodrigeuz was there and they did the statewide sportsline.

As I was standing in line to get my Hot Sausage BBQ I saw a guy who I used to hang around with a lot a few years ago. I saw my old drinking buddy Smitty. I really hadn't had a much of a chance to talk to him in the past few years, so it was a pleasure sitting down and shooting the shit for a couple of hours.

I did manage to get the on picture of him and got his e-mail address. I sent him a message to the address he gave me and it came back undeliverable. Talk about being disappointed, I even wrote the address down on a piece of paper and it so as to make sure I didn't get it wrong.

Well, span ahead a few weeks till today when I check my e-mail and who do I get one from? Yep, Smitty managed to find my e-mail address and sent me one from his adelphia account. I managed to replay to that account and BCC'd it to his Yahoo, one way or another I'll have an active e-mail account from him.

Seems that the picture that I took of him at Pigstock was the link that reconnected us. He said a friend he tailgates with was surfing the web and found it. Talk about a small world. Anyways great to hear from him and I hope we can make it to a football game or two together this fall.

Survivor Vanuatu

Years ago when there were only a small handful of TV stations available, television programming was something that was taken very seriously arounf the big 3 networks. Programming was viwer oriented and first class all the way. Everyone had their favorite show and looked foreward to that one day of the week that their show was broadcast. Tuesday nights were ABC for me with Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Three's Company. Thursdays were dominated by NBC and Bill Cosby with the Cosby show, a different World, Cheers and Night court. Oh how I long for the programming of yesterday.

In today's age, their is but one show other than WVU Football that I looke foreward to. Thursday nights at 8:00 is the one time of the week you will find me paying attention to the television. I'm a nut. Survivor nut. The only show that I will actually say I look foreward to. I'm sure in days to come that you will see that it's the one show that I love. This is in a day when the networks saturate the airwaves with crazy reality television shows.

I love the show and have had my favorites for the show. I have two all time favorites from the show Tom Buchanan from Survivor Africa and I think everyone's favorite survivor Rupert from Survivor Pearl Islands . I was fortunate enough to get to see both of them play a second round in Survivor All Stars.

This round of Survivor is a little too early for me to pick a favorite, but stay tuned I'm sure I'll start posting my opinion about a few select players before the round is over with.

Maybe I'll dedicaye Thursdays to Survivor in my Blog. If I did have to pick an early favorite in my opinion, it's going to have to be Chad Crittenden . He's an amputee that seems full of life.

Good Luck Josh

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have been known to play a game or two of softball in my life. It's the one thing that I truely look foreward to every summer.

A few years ago we picked up this 14 year old kid to play softball for us. Tall lanky shit who had a pretty decent arm and was the son of our third baseman. His name was Josh Judy.

Josh was a kid who I watched grow from a wetback men's sotball player to someone you dared people to run on. In a few short years this "Kid" as I previously called him grew into a man with a 90 + MPH fastball at age 18. He had a couple worthwhile events over the summer, for one he eliminated the Jefferson Jinx for University High school. A great tribute for a kid who less than a year earlier saw his HS football career ended with a torn ACL. He did manage to top that game though by pitching Morgantown's Post 2 to a State Championship. Not to bad for a 14 year old son of a third baseman that we picked up.

Well, Josh has moved on, he's now playing baseball at Indiana Tech. I've posted the link in the title so it will be a little easier to follow his progress. It's been a real pleassure watching him develop as a player ofver the past few years. I'm wishing him the best of luck and success in his career.

Go Kick ass Josh.

Six degrees of Separation, Kevin Bacon Edition.

I saw this site a couple days ago and I had to laugh. I'm sure all of have tried it at least once. You name any actor from any movie and you have to link them to Kevin Bacon in no more than six moves.

I used to play it with a guy at work a few years ago, and we would try our best to come up with some strange ones for link together. I seemed to like to tie everything back to "A Few Good Men" where he costarred with Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson. To me those three opened up a connection to a wide array of actors to link to Kevin Bacon. This site takes all the fun out of it and finds the quickest link to Bacon.

Interestingly you can alsom find the Oracle of Baseball and connect any two players also according to Oracle of Baseball.

Family Multi Media Files

I got a chance to capture my brother gary playing a little bit of guitar tonight at my nephew Calvin's birthday party. I mananged to get three small movies that I took with my new Camera. I had a chance to break it in a little tonight and decided to try a movie file or two. I was really surprised with the quality that I managed to get out of it.

The link in the header is a link to my PHP Bulletin Board. I started a thread called Multi Media and posted a few things there. I also did a little Windows Media file of It's a Wonderful World with a few older pictures I have form the past year and a half or so.

We WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

The Mountaineers stop the Scotty McBrien jinx and finally beat Maryland. Actually Our Ex-QB wasn't graduated last year and Ralph Friegen could no longer steal our plays. Seems like since he went to Maryland, Maryland has known exactly what we were going to do offensively and knew our weaknesses on defense. Anyways, we finally got a little revenge when the 7th Ranked Mountaineers snap the jinx and beat 21st raked Maryland Terrapins.

It was a great game that ended up 13-13 in regulation play. Maryland took the first possesion in overtime and went 3 and out, which ended up in a 3 point goal. West Virginia took over and got a first down at the 12. The game ended up with a quick toss to Chris Henry for the WVU win. We are now 3-0.

TGIF

What a long week it's been. We are sitting here in Morgantown on the eve of what's anticipated to be the biggest football game of the year for WVU. Martyland has handed us our asses the last few times we have played, and we are currently ranked #7 and wanting a little bit of revenge. They seem to have hamered us not once, but twice last season and I think Rich Rodrigeuz and crew are wanting a little bit of redemption. Hopefully we can get a little bit of revenge and win this game.