Interesting factoid about my beloved Mountaineers – our program has the most wins of any Division 1-A team without winning at least a piece of college football’s mythical national championship.
Sustained excellence over the years, or a good program that has not crossed over to great? Tough call.
http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/misc/div_ia_wins.php
Staying up late and missing sleep is highly overrated. I went to our game Wednesday night and was positively dragging on Thursday. I’m not sure today is much better. If nothing else I’m reminded of how old I am getting.
It was still a fun time, though. I always enjoy going to Mountaineer Field and seeing a game live. Garrett seemed to have a pretty good time too, even though he doesn’t understand everything happening on the field. We figured out early on that if we give him his own bucket of popcorn and a soda, everything would be OK. Wednesday was no exception, although I did have to add nacho chips to the pot. I do need to give kudos to whomever in the press box decided to play the SpongeBob clip on the video board after Pat McAfee hits his extra points. Fidgety little kids stop squirming whenever that crazy yellow thing appears.
Even for a late evening game for which I cannot tailgate at because I am ushering around a preschooler, nothing beats gameday at Mountaineer Field. There’s just an energy that pulsates around the lots. Hearing the drumline in the tunnels, the Expanding Circle Drill, the rush of energy when the team takes the field, “1…2…3 (clap) First Down!”, a touchdown. It gives me chills thinking about it now, and I was just there 36 hours ago.
I have a feeling Pat White’s block in the 2nd quarter will be on many Mountaineer highlight videos this year.
7-1, steamrolling towards a BCS berth. An appearance in the Elite Eight by men’s basketball, and a Top 25 preseason rank as reward. A WNIT finals appearance for women’s basketball. Both soccer teams in postseason action.
2005 is a great year to be a Mountaineer. Please, nobody pinch me – I don’t want to wake up right now!
GAME DAY…..uh….finally.
Eighteen days have passed since the mighty Mountaineers last took the field. Action returns to Mountaineer Field tonight with a televised tussle against UConn. The good guys in Old Gold and Blue are 6-1 on the season, and are pushing forward towards an undefeated conference record and the BCS bid that goes to the champ.
Tonight will be an interesting experience for me – I will be taking our oldest son to a game for the first time by myself. The training wheels are off, as his mother will not be there this time.
In advance of tonight’s game Mon County schools are letting out early today. Smart move.
On to other things. A big ole’ Thumbs Down to the person who thought the Reply All button for e-mail deserved widespread acceptance. It’s the bane of lousy forwards, personal conversations, and other abuses of e-mail – personal or work. At my company, our division is bad about this. An e-mail will go out to the whole team about something happening to the network, and there will be at least 10 fools who have a complain or concern about this, that, and the other who hit Reply All to voice their opinion. For the rest of us, it’s like a spam bomb.
Collegefootballnews.com has a hilarious column this week. In the Cavalcade of Whimsy, the writer (who normally is tongue-in-cheek anyway) takes a massive swipe at ESPN’s love affair with the Vick family. Apparently last week’s Chokie television coverage included a cut-away shot roughly every five seconds to Mike Vick (aka Ron Mexico) taking in little brother Marcus, who was taking time away from scoping junior high school cheerleading camps to play some football.
Is there any new show on the air that is funnier than My Name Is Earl, NBC’s new gem? Earl gives me something to fit into the Tuesday DVR schedule.
Now that I’m no longer dependent on coaxial delivery of my internet, I’m wondering if the time is right to go DSS. The only bad part is that Morgantown is lumped into the Pittsburgh DMA for TV channels, meaning my local broadcast comes from the confluence 70 miles north. I may need to experiment with a set-top antenna and see if Clarksburg comes in. Those are handy for news and, on occasion, Mountaineer sports.
Still trying to catch up after a weekend spent traveling to family. I like for the kids to spend time with their relatives, but I don’t particularly enjoy the mobilization required to accomplish this. Picking out the baby necessities, loading the car, checking the necessary fluids, drive for multiple hours, unloading said necessities, setting up said necessities, changes to sleep schedules & daily routines, getting the kids to go to sleep in a foreign environment, repacking said necessities, reloading the car, driving back for multiple hours, unloading the car, getting said necessities back into proper places….I would suck in the military.
It’s been a long time since I trick or treated in a vertical neighborhood. We have the fortune to live at the base of the hill on our street, meaning we had to haul two kids up a nice climb last night. It was a great night for Halloween, weather-wise, meaning we got to spend some time getting to know our neighbors under the moonlight.
I’ve been in project mode for my classes over the last couple of weeks. After working in the real world for awhile, doing projects for class (at least undergrad) seems like a breeze. The case study handed out for my accounting class did not seem daunting in the least. This is a far cry from my prior tour of duty on campus, when I had no real experience and didn’t take school seriously at all. Hopefully the grade I receive will reflect my comfort with the case.
Speaking of projects, I feel like I’m knocking my database projects out of the park. I like how my professor handles his assignments – work on them early and turn it in early for feedback, then make corrections if needed. This is only how projects are done in the workplace, so it only makes sense to start this in the academic world.
We’re getting the basic level introduction to SQL in class, and I’m returning to my comfort level of the pre-GUI command line. I actually find it cool (in the most nerdy of ways) that I’m telnetting into campus boxes. The nerd factor doubles when one considers that I use my own Linux distro (Red Hat Fedora Core 4) to telnet into the B&E’s Linux box.
As I type this, my e-mail client detected a viral message being sent. A quick check of the attachment characteristics online turns up nothing, so I’m wondering if this is just a one-time shot or if there’s another bug wave about to crash.
I’m also listening to a corporate divisional conference call in the background. I really hate it when a conference leader scripts their remarks and tries to make them sound casual, especially when the recitation of those notes makes it obvious that a script is being read.
