The Great Nick Ball

OK so the other night I was channel surfing, procrastinating from some homework assignment or another. I was flipping through what I call the Edu-tainment channels (History Channel, Discovery, etc.), when I came across a show I had never heard of before called Parking Wars.

I glanced at the description in the channel guide and learned that it's a reality show about, of all things, parking enforcement cops(meter maids) in Philadelphia. I decided to check it out. Since reality television has covered basically everything else remotely possible, I figured this is just a continuing trend of lame copycat programming.

But honestly, the show is kind of entertaining. Well, entertaining enough for a Tuesday night when absolutely nothing else is on. The show follows the parking enforcement people around as they ticket people with expired meters, put boots on cars with outstanding tickets, or tow cars of people in tow-away zones. Sounds exciting huh?

The goal of the show seems to be to humanize the people who work in parking enforcement. But it seems to do the opposite. One of the episodes showed a chick waiting on the corner of a street until the clock hit exactly 4 pm, the time when cars can't park there anymore. She then started moving down the street, marking cars to be towed. And its hilarious seeing people explode at the meter maids when they catch them leaving a ticket. People yell profanities and insults at the parking enforcement people as they move down the street slowly, checking license plate numbers for tickets.

Overall, not bad. If your ever bored Tuesday night with nothing else on, flip over to A&E and check it out. Some cheap entertainment.

Found this while I was doing some random surfing in the YouTube. Basically, they are piano lessons by this guy, Shawn Cheek. But he does much more contemporary songs then your average piano teacher.  Stuff like Hey There Delilah, some Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stairway to Heaven, and even some Aerosmith. Man, I wish I would have taken piano lessons from this guy. Piano is boring to learn cause it's all classical stuff or very basic. With these kind of songs, I probably wouldn't have lost interest.


He has a whole bunch of free intro songs on YouTube, but all the good stuff you have to pay for on his website. Definitely something to check out if your into or want to learn piano or music. I need to dig out my keyboard from wherever it is to give it a shot.

The last couple of days have been pretty busy for me, moving all my stuff from my old webhost, Dreamhost, to my new one, Slicehost. So if your reading this, the move worked :-).

I've been pretty unhappy with Dreamhost the last year or so. I'd been with them since 2002 for my various web projects. They were pretty awesome, and very flexible with what you could do. But, they have way oversold. The hosting servers are slow, databases are slow. And reliability isn't quite up to what I expect. Sure, they are fairly inexpensive, and give you a whole bunch of bandwidth and space, but you get what you pay for. Ironically enough, earlier this week when I was considering moving away from Dreamhost, my site was unreachable and their web panel was down for maintenance. So that helped into my decision. Plus it helped that I discovered SliceHost.

I've been looking for a good Virtual Private Server(VPS) host for a while. The problem is most are either: a) way too expensive, or b) too limiting. I read about Slicehost in a couple of places and decided to check them out. I was quite impressed. I'll post a full review here in a while. I'm still trying to move all my stuff over from Dreamhost. DNS propagation is a bi**h.

I bought the Orange Box Half-Life bundle today. I already consider it an awesome buy and I have only played one game! Portal, part of the package, is so cool. It's a adventure/puzzle game that seems really simple, but it is very,very addicting and fun. The bundle overall has won many awards, and Portal has especially been very well received. The dark humor and gameplay is such a great part of it. If you haven't played it already, you have to check it out. It's available on Steam for Windows, the 360, and the PS3. This bundle is a steal at 60 bucks. I haven't even touched the other four games yet. And I still need to play the challenges and advanced mode.

Here is a vid of the end credits from Portal. Cracked me up.

Here is a video from Bill Gates' keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show last night. Hilarious.

Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video

Below is a letter to the editor I submitted to my local newspaper, The Modesto Bee.

While I may agree with Ron Paul on many domestic issues, his foreign policy views scare me. The United States can not afford to be sitting on the sidelines as terrorism and despot states threaten our security and well-being around the world. Have people already forgotten our unprovoked attack on September the 11th? What if we would have just sat back and not responded after Pearl Harbor? Nazi Germany would have won the war.

Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups are still active. Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons, is in turmoil and could be at the brink of civil war. Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, and that radical regime is a constant threat to the United States and other free nations. North Korea remains a threat to us and our allies in the region. With all these threats, and the many others that could develop, the United States need a strong leader who will keep us as the leader of the free world in maintaining global security.

Electing an isolationist is the most dangerous and naïve mistake that this nation could make in these dangerous times. Don’t make the mistake of supporting and voting for Ron Paul.

Happy new year everybody!

During the San Francisco 49er vs Tampa Bay Buccaneer game, I spotted what appears to be a Buccaneer employee operating a video recording device, which from what I found is against the rules.

According to the link above, page 105 of the NFL Game Operations manual says: "No video recording devices of any kind are permitted to be in use in the coaches' booth, on the field, or in the locker room during the game." It later says: "All video shooting locations must be enclosed on all sides with a roof overhead."

The link also says "And, a memo from Ray Anderson, NFL head of football operations, to head coaches and GMs on Sept. 6, 2006 said: 'Video taping of any type, including but not limited to taping of an opponent’s offensive or defensive signals, is prohibited on the sidelines, in the coaches’ booth, in the locker room, or at any other locations accessible to club staff members during the game.'"

Just based on what I've read, this appears to be a violation of the NFL rules. I couldn't find a copy of the state Game Operations manual, but the link that I cited from is an NFL article, so it should be considered an unimpeachable source.

The first image below shows a person using a standard high-end consumer level camera to record the game. The second image shows the person is wearing a shirt featuring the Tampa Bay Buccaneers team logo. I quickly took the pics with my camera phone, so the image quality is kinda crappy. I'll see if I can get actual screen captures later or a video of it.

Long time since my last update, but I've been busy with school and studying for my A+ certification. I've passed my first certification exam, and am taking the 2nd one Wednesday. I have school exams and a lot of stuff to finish this week, so expect nothing until then.

Here is a link to the indictment. Makes for some very interesting reading.

Honestly, I'm surprised. I though that after 4 years of no indictment, the feds had nothing. Most interesting tidbit to come out of the report is finally proof of a failed steroids test, way back in 2003 or 2000. All you people (all 5 of you) who still think Bonds didn't take anything, the time to jump off that sinking ship is now.

I want to know what happened to the tax evasion charges. The bulldogs at the IRS always tend to get their man.

Sad, Bonds apologists are claiming that this is all race based. Folks, if he lied to a grand jury, it doesn't matter what color, race, religion, etc., he is. If he's guilty, he deserves whatever the government throws at him. Our court systems depend on truthful testimony from witnesses. If you violate that, you deserve what you get.

The timing of this couldn't be better for Bud Selig. Right at the start of free agency, pretty much guaranteeing that Bonds won't be even be considered to be signed by a team. Too close for me to put it off as a coincidence. This indictment pretty much puts an end to his career.

This could get very ugly for baseball. With the possibility of Bonds just saying "Screw You" to baseball and naming names. Its time for baseball to expose every user of steroids, and not just go after players who are at risk of breaking the sacred records of baseball. I'm sure the joke that is the Mitchell investigation will help.

On a side note, Greg Anderson was released from prison. On leaving the prison he had no comment, something he is quite experienced with.

The trial is going to be a circus. I can hardly wait. Sigh, I just want to watch baseball. Is that too much to ask?