A friend has done a ground hog day thing about the weather this winter. There has been a lot of snow in the north-east. I am having a similar feeling. Back in November I posted a picture of my car covered in snow for the second time before Thanksgiving which is very unusual for North Carolina.
December, January, and February sure seemed cold and windy and wet. In reality I do not think they were all that unusual weather wise. It just seemed that every time I wanted to be outside it was cold. Signs of spring began appearing this week. There are daffodils all over town and there is something up in my back yard. Trees are beginning to show leaves and the critters have started to shed. I was going to take some photos and post when suddenly....
It is March and it is snowing - and accumulating. This is very unusual for North Carolina. I count 10 times ever in all of central NC according to the NOAA site. It was 58 Saturday morning and gradually got colder as the day went on. It was 38 and rainy on Sunday. I drove home from the basketball game in sleet. They can't put the salt brine down until the rain stops or it just gets washed away. Luckily most people were not on the roads and overall they were not that bad but I did slide a tiny bit on one turn.
By the time I got home the mulch in the front yard was turning white. By 10pm the car is white too and it is just beginning. The prediction at that point was for 1-3 inches in Raleigh, less than an inch further south and east, and 3-6 inches north and west towards my place. While many counties had called of or delayed school by early evening, my county waited until 11:30pm.
-SML
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Another Senior Night
The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) regular season ends with Duke vs UNC - in both the men and women. It is senior night for one team or the other (alternating) each year. It is always a big game known nationally as the battle of tobacco road and compared to Yankees vs Red Sox rivalries. It is often a battle of top teams.
The women played today at Duke and once again senior night was special even though it didn't turn out exactly as I hoped. The rankings nationally had UNC at 9 and Duke at 10. They were tied for third in the ACC. UNC won the match up earlier this season in Chapel Hill. UNC played better overall this time around. Duke played incredibly well. The end result was Duke winning 81-79 in overtime.
During the post game press conference:
"We will use this game as motivation," Hatchell said. "Everything happens for a reason, and this may be a blessing in disguise. I hope so."
Maybe she said or intended to say "had better" instead of "will"? I predict some rebounding practice between now and Friday.
Besides motivation, there are a few other positives out of tonight's game:
1. A point from Coach that this was a televised game and probably the best one all season. It was a great game for women's basketball. The radio commentator for the Tar Heel Sports Network reiterated that point as well but her take was that "If you didn't care so much about the outcome" it was a great game.
2. Playing at 11am on Friday means a few hours more rest before Saturdays game (assuming we can win). They might even get to stay and watch the next game for a bit. The coaches will definitely get to scout the next opponent after a win instead of with their minds on an upcoming game.
3. The end goal is a NCAA Championship. A good seeding for the tourney can help. UNC has lost 5 games this year. All 4 conference losses were on the road. They have a chance to fix those mistakes and show that they are better now as they go through the conference tournament. Some say that a win over MD would help our standings considerably. Well, we are now in that side of the bracket.
Rebound ladies. From here on out is one and done.
-SML
The women played today at Duke and once again senior night was special even though it didn't turn out exactly as I hoped. The rankings nationally had UNC at 9 and Duke at 10. They were tied for third in the ACC. UNC won the match up earlier this season in Chapel Hill. UNC played better overall this time around. Duke played incredibly well. The end result was Duke winning 81-79 in overtime.
During the post game press conference:
"We will use this game as motivation," Hatchell said. "Everything happens for a reason, and this may be a blessing in disguise. I hope so."
Maybe she said or intended to say "had better" instead of "will"? I predict some rebounding practice between now and Friday.
Besides motivation, there are a few other positives out of tonight's game:
1. A point from Coach that this was a televised game and probably the best one all season. It was a great game for women's basketball. The radio commentator for the Tar Heel Sports Network reiterated that point as well but her take was that "If you didn't care so much about the outcome" it was a great game.
2. Playing at 11am on Friday means a few hours more rest before Saturdays game (assuming we can win). They might even get to stay and watch the next game for a bit. The coaches will definitely get to scout the next opponent after a win instead of with their minds on an upcoming game.
3. The end goal is a NCAA Championship. A good seeding for the tourney can help. UNC has lost 5 games this year. All 4 conference losses were on the road. They have a chance to fix those mistakes and show that they are better now as they go through the conference tournament. Some say that a win over MD would help our standings considerably. Well, we are now in that side of the bracket.
Rebound ladies. From here on out is one and done.
-SML
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Senior Night
There is just something special about Senior Night at a college basketball game. Or maybe only at schools that really appreciate these student athletes and recognize that they are also still college kids. I wonder though, how much it confuses the opponents?
Coach Hatchell starts the seniors on senior night if at all possible. For some it is the only start of their college career and some of those come out at the first dead ball since senior night is a conference game and there are no easy conference games.
Thursday night Laura Barry got her only start. She scored within the first minute of the game - her first points of the year by the stats I found online - which resulted in the bench jumping to their feet and a huge cheer from the crowd. Good for her, good for the team, and good for the crowd. She was wide open and her teammates got her the ball. My thought was that Miami (the opponent) wasn't really prepared for the different starting lineup. Laura stayed in the game until the first media timeout (almost 5 minutes) even after other substitutions. She must have been doing her job well in the coaches eyes as well as in mine.
I remember other years like that as well. With a senior reserve player with few minutes who started on senior night and scored the first basket. Sometimes the years blend together but my memory says it was Jennifer Nelms.
There were 8 seniors honoured this year. Two managers, the video coordinator, and five players: Alex Miller, who has ended her career after continued issues from last year's injury, and Laura Berry, Heather Claytor, Iman McFarland, and Rashanda McCants who all started.
The Carolina Fever (student fan group) was also very supportive. Near the end of the game, instead of the Lets-Go-Tar-Heels chant, they were chanting Thank-you-sen-iors. Though I still do not know what was up with the bright spandex leggings and off the shoulder sweatshirts that many were wearing.
Thank you Seniors for four wonderful years of fast paced team work.
Lets keep it going all the way to April!
-SML
Coach Hatchell starts the seniors on senior night if at all possible. For some it is the only start of their college career and some of those come out at the first dead ball since senior night is a conference game and there are no easy conference games.
Thursday night Laura Barry got her only start. She scored within the first minute of the game - her first points of the year by the stats I found online - which resulted in the bench jumping to their feet and a huge cheer from the crowd. Good for her, good for the team, and good for the crowd. She was wide open and her teammates got her the ball. My thought was that Miami (the opponent) wasn't really prepared for the different starting lineup. Laura stayed in the game until the first media timeout (almost 5 minutes) even after other substitutions. She must have been doing her job well in the coaches eyes as well as in mine.
I remember other years like that as well. With a senior reserve player with few minutes who started on senior night and scored the first basket. Sometimes the years blend together but my memory says it was Jennifer Nelms.
There were 8 seniors honoured this year. Two managers, the video coordinator, and five players: Alex Miller, who has ended her career after continued issues from last year's injury, and Laura Berry, Heather Claytor, Iman McFarland, and Rashanda McCants who all started.
The Carolina Fever (student fan group) was also very supportive. Near the end of the game, instead of the Lets-Go-Tar-Heels chant, they were chanting Thank-you-sen-iors. Though I still do not know what was up with the bright spandex leggings and off the shoulder sweatshirts that many were wearing.
Thank you Seniors for four wonderful years of fast paced team work.
Lets keep it going all the way to April!
-SML
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Memories of Robinson Hall
I found Requiem for Classical Physics on Fedora Planet. Matthew Daniels has been doing a great job on updating the Fedora User's Guide. He is also a physics major. I was an astrophysics major and enjoyed double slit experiments. My optics class and the advanced lab class were my favorite classes. Maybe that's why I followed the post and liked the post, but he does try to keep it simple for the non-geeks. Hopefully others may enjoy it as well.
Now I think I'll go grab my copy of Timeline by Michael Crichton where quantum physics meets medieval history in the world of fiction.
-SML
Now I think I'll go grab my copy of Timeline by Michael Crichton where quantum physics meets medieval history in the world of fiction.
-SML
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Historic Stadiums
Do you remember the Mastercard Priceless ad where they go to different ballparks? It was baseball parks. It used material from a real story and had controversy over the rights to that usage. It is one that came to my mind today.
I've been to Fenway (of course) and to a game in St Louis (in the 80's at the old Busch Stadium) and maybe one other. It is not so much seeing the different ball parks or ball teams. I have no interest in seeing all the parks but I wouldn't mind seeing more of the historic ones. I missed out on getting to the original Yankee Stadium and to Shea Stadium but there is still Wrigley Field and these days you can probably count Dodger Stadium as one of the few other old fashion ones.
On the other hand I appear to be collecting memories of historic basketball arenas. Last night I went to historic William Neal Reynolds Coliseum to cheer the UNC Tar Heels in a road win over the NC State Wolfpack. Not only is it fun to see the buildings but it is also fun to see the differences in fans and cheering traditions. The NCSU band is good. They played some great music and whoever was on drums last night is great! There were a lot of kids there including whole school groups. The box score showed just over 6000 in attendance and the coliseum holds 9500 so it was a good crowd. There was a lot of blue in that crowd. We ended up sitting high up behind the UNC bench which turned out the be near the Carolina Fever student group and the season ticket holder bus trip folks.
Other venues I have seen (historic and otherwise)
Carmichael Auditorium (UNC)
Dean E Smith Center (UNC)
Cameron Indoor Stadium (Duke)
Reynolds Coliseum (NC State)
Boston Garden (2006 NCAA Women's Final Four)
Wells Fargo Arena (Arizona state hosts 2005 NCAA Tempe Regional)
I have also been to the RBC Center (home of the NC State men's basketball) but only to see a couple of Hurricanes games.
A quick search of the experts on the internet suggests that my "must see" list should include Kansas, Penn, and Minnesota. Being more of a women's hoops fan, I have to add Tennessee, Connecticut, and Stanford.
-SML
I've been to Fenway (of course) and to a game in St Louis (in the 80's at the old Busch Stadium) and maybe one other. It is not so much seeing the different ball parks or ball teams. I have no interest in seeing all the parks but I wouldn't mind seeing more of the historic ones. I missed out on getting to the original Yankee Stadium and to Shea Stadium but there is still Wrigley Field and these days you can probably count Dodger Stadium as one of the few other old fashion ones.
On the other hand I appear to be collecting memories of historic basketball arenas. Last night I went to historic William Neal Reynolds Coliseum to cheer the UNC Tar Heels in a road win over the NC State Wolfpack. Not only is it fun to see the buildings but it is also fun to see the differences in fans and cheering traditions. The NCSU band is good. They played some great music and whoever was on drums last night is great! There were a lot of kids there including whole school groups. The box score showed just over 6000 in attendance and the coliseum holds 9500 so it was a good crowd. There was a lot of blue in that crowd. We ended up sitting high up behind the UNC bench which turned out the be near the Carolina Fever student group and the season ticket holder bus trip folks.
Other venues I have seen (historic and otherwise)
Carmichael Auditorium (UNC)
Dean E Smith Center (UNC)
Cameron Indoor Stadium (Duke)
Reynolds Coliseum (NC State)
Boston Garden (2006 NCAA Women's Final Four)
Wells Fargo Arena (Arizona state hosts 2005 NCAA Tempe Regional)
I have also been to the RBC Center (home of the NC State men's basketball) but only to see a couple of Hurricanes games.
A quick search of the experts on the internet suggests that my "must see" list should include Kansas, Penn, and Minnesota. Being more of a women's hoops fan, I have to add Tennessee, Connecticut, and Stanford.
-SML
Golden Shovel of Wiki Gardening Award?
Thanks Karsten for mentioning the work done on the Fedora Docs Project wiki cleanup. I didn't know there was a Golden Shovel of Wiki Gardening Award.
It has also been fun reading up on the packaging guidelines and package maintainers procedures. That renaming work is moving along nicely as well. Check out the new entry point for the Package Maintainers - it is the category page so any new pages will automatically show up at the bottom simply by adding [[Category:Package Maintainers]] at the bottom of the page. That work was just done this past weekend, so I was very pleased to see an email this morning pointing another user to a process page by using the NEW page name.
It is easy to use the old names since they redirect with most people not even noticing. This means that many others who are working at this cleanup in other groups go unnoticed. So I would like to pass on the Golden Shovel of Wiki Gardening Award to Fabian Affolter who has been moving a number of the user pages around. He has been working on moving and redirecting the pages of [[FirstnameLastname]] to the format of [[User:loginname]] and the only reason I noticed was by seeing all the moves in the Special:RecentChanges page of the wiki.
Finally, for those that don't know (or don't remember), this "wiki cleanup project" is accomplishing several task but the biggest is to make the search feature work better for everyone. In my mind, this is especially important for new users so that they can find what they need and stick around to help Fedora grow. It is not a hard task. Anyone can help. Find out how in #fedora-docs.
-SML
It has also been fun reading up on the packaging guidelines and package maintainers procedures. That renaming work is moving along nicely as well. Check out the new entry point for the Package Maintainers - it is the category page so any new pages will automatically show up at the bottom simply by adding [[Category:Package Maintainers]] at the bottom of the page. That work was just done this past weekend, so I was very pleased to see an email this morning pointing another user to a process page by using the NEW page name.
It is easy to use the old names since they redirect with most people not even noticing. This means that many others who are working at this cleanup in other groups go unnoticed. So I would like to pass on the Golden Shovel of Wiki Gardening Award to Fabian Affolter who has been moving a number of the user pages around. He has been working on moving and redirecting the pages of [[FirstnameLastname]] to the format of [[User:loginname]] and the only reason I noticed was by seeing all the moves in the Special:RecentChanges page of the wiki.
Finally, for those that don't know (or don't remember), this "wiki cleanup project" is accomplishing several task but the biggest is to make the search feature work better for everyone. In my mind, this is especially important for new users so that they can find what they need and stick around to help Fedora grow. It is not a hard task. Anyone can help. Find out how in #fedora-docs.
-SML
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Oktapodi
Great short!!!
OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORT: "Oktapodi"
The thrilling tale of one octopus' quest to rescue its partner from the cooking pot is one of five nominees for Best Animated Short Subject.
View the short at the "Oktapodi" Web site
[As seen on CBS Sunday Morning show Sunday Feb 22, 2009]
I miss the days of "Best of the Fest" at the Somerville Theatre [particularly April 1990].
Those were the days of
[Corrected link for April 1990]
OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORT: "Oktapodi"
The thrilling tale of one octopus' quest to rescue its partner from the cooking pot is one of five nominees for Best Animated Short Subject.
View the short at the "Oktapodi" Web site
[As seen on CBS Sunday Morning show Sunday Feb 22, 2009]
I miss the days of "Best of the Fest" at the Somerville Theatre [particularly April 1990].
Those were the days of
- Bambi meets Godzilla
- The Cat Came Back
- Creature Comforts
- Early Pixar shorts
- Many, many, more
[Corrected link for April 1990]
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