in a continuing struggle to make the friday five, along with myself, more interesting, i am going to answer 4 of the 5 truthfully and lie about one
feel free to guess which is not true

if this works, it'll be a weekly feature - the friday fib

1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/heroine? Why?
batman. duh! he was cool...

2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?
a mr. potato head

3. What's the furthest from home you've been?
san francisco (live in cleveland, oh area)

4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
esperanto

5. What are your plans for the weekend?
watch tape of alias from last weekend (so no one go and spoil it for me)
me and my wife are going out tomorrow evening to hear her cousin's husband's band
other than that, still wide open...

i kinda like these "let other people do my work/thinking for me" blogs...

so, today's question is: what should i do this weekend?

this is the first week of my intense work schedule and i must say that although i have a pretty good mental outlook, physically i am tired...

i could look at my taxes, but not sure i want to face that at this moment...

cross country skiing a possibility for saturday, but doesn't look good for sunday - and my bros. wants to go with me and he's only available sunday...

there's always sledding, ice skating, a movie with the kids...

but none of these really seem to work for me (although i probably will try to get a little bit of skating in, and (go ahead and laugh) but kangaroo jack might be fun...)

oh yeah, me and my wife are going out sat. night and there's no yoga class sun. pm...

so anyhow, what's your suggestion...

since i am enlisting you to help me with the title of my presentation, why shouldn't i take the next step and enlist your help in creating it...

if you feel like it, please post in comments answers to the following questions:

a. how would you describe the nature of your blog(s)? i.e. personal journal, creative writing, political, photography, etc...
b. what is your level of technical expertise/what software do you use?
c. why do you blog? what benefits do you perceive from blogging?
d. is it ok to use your comments and/or blog in my presentation?
e. what do YOU think should be included in a blog presentation?

great entries in the title contest (see previous post) but the jury is still out - so feel free to enter ( or enter again )

do keep in mind that they need to be appropriate for a public presentation at a community college and should be of the nature to make the presentation seem interesting to the college community...

contest

i need a cool title for my blog presentation (see previous entry). i have no prize to give, but will offer lavish praise to the winner which might even include a link to their site...

submit your entry via comments

winner will be announced when i feel like it

i've been reading some interesting discussions online re:the recent SQLServer worm. It seems that everyone wants to find that one entity to blame: whether it be microsoft, system administrators and some even take the radical view of blaming the hackers. as with many situations in life, there is no one party to blame. because of the popularity of microsoft's software, of course it is going to be the target of most attacks. providing additional motivation for hackers is the fact that many do not like microsoft. regretably, historically, microsoft has provided the security holes to make such attacks relatively easy. of course in this case, a patch was available for six months. sys admin's argue that it is sometimes difficult to apply a patch, it can cause problems, so many patches come out, etc... yet, still until someone can always produce flawless software patches are a reality and it is the job of sys admins to apply them. again, microsoft could help here by produce less buggy code. it just cracks me up that most of the posts on the discussion boards see this in terms of black and white - it is either evil miscrosoft or lazy sys admins...

anyhow, in other news, i am going to be doing a presentation on blogs at my college - further details will be released as they are available...

ok - this starts my six weeks of intensive work. from now until spring break (3/7) - with the classes i teach and the one i take, i will have at least 12 hr days 3 days a week and at least 8 hour days the other two - granted - there is "down" time between classes - but that is spent working on grading, prepping for classes, misc. responsibilities...

the good news is that, with any luck, i won't be taking home any work over the weekends, and after spring break to recover, i will be working a relatively light schedule for the last 1/2 of the term.

so between now in then expect my posts to be any of the following: frequent, infrequent, tired, full of misspelling, crabby, grouchy, depressed, unfocused , trivial, goofy and inane

pretty much business as usual...

spectator sports

i assume the super bowl is going on now. i barely know who's in it (tampa bay and oakland, right? - wasn't tampa bay in the afc - anyhow...) i have not followed football since the browns left cleveland for baltimore several years back. prior to that i was a big time football fan - in the 80's i split season tickets with a friend - was there for the raiders "ice bowl" playoff game and the dreaded "drive" of elway and the broncos - by the early nineties two factors cost me my interest a:my marriage and family b: the browns mismanagement/coaching. the browns leaving for baltimore was the last straw...

since then i've gotten real cynical about big time sports - and i'll even throw college football and basketball in that category. the players are overpaid and spoiled - and often horribly behaved. my sports interest was somewhat revivied when the indians made a run for the world series (hey, even if your not particularly interested in, say, halley's comet, you want to see it, right, cause you know it's a once in a lifetime thing). but that died pretty quick...

although yoga is so much more than an "exercise program" and i feel it's prime benefits are not physical, a physical benefit of my yoga practice is that it has made ME interested in being active - not a spectator. in shcool, athletics was always just for the athletes and it was never taught how great activity is even for unathletic folks like myself. the sports i do watch now - usually oddball sports, biking, mountain biking, skiing, etc... i watch more to inspire ME to be active - not that i even do all these things - but seeing them inspires me to be more active whether it be thru skating, trail running, etc... i have no illusions of any athletic prowess - but i have learned on my own how being a participant - no matter how inept - is so much better than being a spectator

so back to the super bowl - my only interest is whether it will pre-empt/delay alias...