I'd never be smarter than a 5th grader...

I need to figure out how I can be a contestant on the show "5th Grader." For the record, I'd be a millionaire right now... I even got the Chuck Yeager question. However, in reality, I actually wouldn't be a millionaire right now, I'd have a half a mil, and I would have announced to the world that I'm not smarter than a 5th grader (which I'm sure is glaringly obvious anyways). I'd never bet that $500,000 without knowing the question... no matter what the subject was. For anyone that hasn't seen the show, contestants can walk away with their winnings at any time until they get to the million dollar question. Once they get to that question, they have to decide if they want to go for it before they see the question. All they get to see is the subject area the question will be in. Last night, the subject was US History, and the woman on the show felt that she knew that subject really well, so she went for it. The question was: Who was the first American to break the sound barrier. You could see this woman go pale and then turn green as she became nauseas because she realized the colossal mistake she made. At first I felt sorry for her... but only for a minute. Isn't there some "Bird in the hand" cliche that comes to mind here?


On a much more serious note...

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the tornadoes that went through the south... For everyone else that is safe and sound, be thankful, and give your children an extra hug tonight.

News Notes

Just a short entry today... a few news articles that caught my eye...

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Young journalist sentenced to death in Afghanistan for reading about women's rights on the internet
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=511423&in_page_id=1770

Isn't nice to know that our troops are over there helping to protect these people

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And here's a prime example of the government having their head up their ass...

Pennsylvania takes on online auctions
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/homepage/20080130_Bidding_goodbye.html

Of course, I could fill an encyclopedia with examples of this kind of stupidity

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On a lighter note, too bad this isn't true... it would actually be kinda cool
http://www.serioussportsnewsnetwork.com/2008/01/petty-to-just-play-guitar-hero-iii-for-super-bowl-halftime.html

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More Random Randomness

Temperature yesterday, 50 degrees. Temperature today, 5 degrees, -15 wind chill. Like the cliche goes... Michigan weather... if you don't like it, wait for a few minutes... and you still probably won't like it.

Johan Santana to the Mets... YAY!!! He's out of the Tigers division and even out of the American League. All the better for us :-) Now if we can just manage to keep Brandon Inge happy, things will be looking good for the Tig's

I saw Untraceable a few days ago. It reminded me of a movie version of an episode of CSI or NCIS or something like that. It was ok, not one I would add to my collection though. There's my movie review for the day.

Speaking of TV shows, House was new last night, and it was good, but what's up with it being new and a Christmas show at the end of January? Fox's December scheduling must have gotten messed up a little I'm guessing.

A Couple Of Random Pointless Questions

1. Super Bowl Saturday

Why isn't the Super Bowl on Saturday? Is it such a big deal that the game has to be on Sunday? If it was on Saturday night, people could stay out at Super Bowl parties all night and not worry about having to get up early and going to work hung over. I bet they are just afraid to mess with a formula that has been working, but I doubt it would hurt the Super Bowl's popularity or ratings if it was held on Saturday.

2. Hello, Newman

Why didn't Newman get a his own show after Seinfeld went off the air? Am I the only on that thinks it would have been a good spin-off? In fact, what ever happened to the spin-off in general? (Besides "Joey", but I was never much for "Friends" anyways). Maybe someday I'll hop into Mr.Peabody's Wayback machine and look at all the cool spin-offs from the 70's and 80's.

Ok, that's enough pointless stupidity... for now, anyways

Brrrr...

The weather that was in Green Bay last weekend seems to have made it's way here finally. It was -4 this morning... Mmmm, good old fashioned winter, the way it should be, and the way it used to be before we screwed up our environment. Just think how much better off we'd be, and ultimately how much better off our environment would be, if we took all of the money we are spending right now to send troops to the Middle East (to effectively protect our oil supply) and invested that money into developing alternative energy sources. Oh, wait... we were protecting everyone from those weapons of mass destruction... that's right... that's why we are over there... nothing to do with oil... or big fat governmental contracts with Haliburton...

I guess I kinda hopped up on my liberal soap box there for a minute... I was just planning on talking about the weather, that's all.

Anyways, a few other little notes...

Am I the only one that noticed that Brett Favre kinda gave away that game to the Giants. No one seems to be talking about it much, but he didn't have his best game (It still would have been nice if he were a Lion though). I guess the Packers weren't as destined as I thought. As a result, it turns out that Manning will be playing in the Super Bowl... not the Manning everyone expected before the season started, but Eli has played well. It doesn't really matter though. I expect the Patriots to crush the Giants, so here's an early congrats to all my friends in the Boston area... It was an amazing season. Patriots, Red Sox... even the Celtics are looking good... Hopefully this year the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons can steal some of the attention the New England area has been getting ;-)... (The Lions aren't in any danger of stealing attention from anyone)

The Winter X-Games 12 start tonight. This is the highest profile snowmobiling event of the season. It's kinda a big deal here at work, so I figured I should at least mention it. The TV schedule, for reference:

http://expn.go.com/expn/story?id=3163738

Update...

T.J. Gulla is my guy... He's my racer from the office pool, so go T.J.!!!... I know, kinda weird... We don't have a Super Bowl board, but we have a Winter X-Games Sno-Cross pool... just for fun, of course ;-)

Find Me A Wormhole...

Well, I'll probably watch a couple of football games this weekend. I have a feeling they might not be too exciting though. It seems that New England and Green Bay are teams of destiny this year. I like San Diego, but it seems like there is no stopping the Patriots this year. Besides, the injuries for the Chargers aren't helping their cause either.

In the other game, the Giants have an uphill battle, and the weather will be just what the Packers like... about five below at kick off. It's always kinda tough to win at Green Bay anyways. Looks like Favre has a good chance to go to another Superbowl...

By the way, Detroit has one playoff win since 1957... Ugh

We are now gonna take a break from reality and slip off into an alternate universe... the imaginary place where the Lions got Brett Favre instead of the Packers... and the Lions had Barry Sanders and Brett Favre in the backfield at the same time... and the Lions won four Superbowls in a row in the 90's... and four more in the 2000's... and I won the Lotto... and it rains donuts and the snow tastes like mint chocolate chip ice cream... sigh...

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program

Well, at least pitchers and catchers report in a little over a month... YAY Tigers!!!

Slip Sliding Away

Winter driving can be an adventure. I don't worry about my own driving... it's everyone else on the road that I get concerned about. The roads were fine today, but I was thinking back a couple years to one of my more memorable trips to work one morning...

It was early one winter morning. We had gotten a few inches of snow, with some ice on the ground below it, so the driving conditions were not all that great. I decided to take the back roads to work, figuring there would be less traffic, so less idiots to try to dodge during my trip. That was probably a mistake.

I had just left town and headed north bound on Stark Road. There were a few cars, but not a lot of traffic, so I figured everything was going as planned. The roads were bad, so I was driving pretty much the same as everyone else... pretty slowly... about 40 mph or so.

As I was going along I noticed ahead of me... coming at me... that there must have been an impatient driver. She was in my lane, and it looked like she was passing the car in front of her. I thought that was kinda odd, given the road conditions. Then I realized that she wasn't trying to pass anyone... her van was fishtailing. She had lost control of her vehicle and was coming straight at me in my lane. The car I had "thought" she was passing was in the other lane, so there was no place for me to go. Nice.

My first thought was "Damn, I just paid off this truck and took full coverage off of it." My second thought was "That's probably a dumb thing to be thinking about right now." I knew I couldn't panic or slam on my brakes, because then I'd lose control of my vehicle too, and then it would really get ugly... so I let off the gas and started to pump the brakes (I know anti-lock brakes are supposed to take care of that, but that's just instinct for me). Then I noticed that the fishtailing van was starting to drift toward the ditch, so I figured this was my only chance... A small space was opening up between the two vehicles. I didn't know if it would be big enough, but I didn't have a lot of options... I aimed right between the two of them. The van continued to drift into the ditch, and I somehow squeezed through with literally less than an inch to spare between the vehicles on each side of me.

I stopped and went back to see if everyone was ok. The van driven by the woman wound up going into the ditch, but she was fine. And no, she wasn't running around in her underwear shouting "Help me Tom Cruise". It wasn't that that bad, but the van was kinda dented up from the ditch and she did look pretty scared. It turns out the guy in the other lane was her husband. They were supposed to be following each other to town to make sure they made it safely, so I didn't have to wait with her for a tow truck to get there.

I kinda thought they might say something like "Thanks for not smashing head first into either of us" but they were a little shook up, so I let it slide.

I'm sure everyone has a story like this, and I have a bunch more, but something just made me think of this one today. So, everyone be careful out there, and keep it between the ditches... and in your own lane whenever possible ;-)