Ya know, they call them Killer Whales for a reason...

And with one shot, I’m now excited about Purdue basketball again. 

 

Purdue beat #25 Virginia 61 to 59 on a nice little floater by Tarrance Crump.  I still don’t expect too much out of Purdue this year, but I think they will be a lot tougher at home and be that team in the Big 10 that other teams hate to play because they know that the Biolers will battle them every minute of the game. 

I can’t help myself; I have to point this out.

 

“Dong-A PharmTech, based in South Korea, announced it has initiated the approval process for Zydena, its new erectile dysfunction (ED) drug, in China by filing for import verification.  The company expects to penetrate into the market by 2008.

 

Dong-A’s Zydena was launched in Korea in 2005 and has risen to over 20 percent (by volume) of the prescription ED drug market, according to the company.  In Korea, Zydena thrusts up directly against Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.  The company is now probing markets outside of Korea.

 

Dong-A has recently completed a 340-patient, double-blind, placebo-controlled, Phase IIb, dose-ranging study at 15 sites in the U.S.  The company now intends to take a nap and doesn’t feel like cuddling.  Final results of this study are expected in December.”

I’m back.  I went to the Grand Canyon on the 18^th, spent a few nights in the canyon, then traveled to Long Beach, CA (that’s right – the LBC) for Thanksgiving.  Deep fried a turkey, ate a lot of food, had a good time with friends, and reminded myself that I never want to move to SoCal. 

 

So, I get back home Saturday night and find that my sink in the kitchen backed up.  It wasn’t my fault because it happened sometime around Wednesday, according to my downstairs neighbor.  Water everywhere.  I’m still trying to dry things out.  I’m not a happy camper.  Problem is, I share a drain line with at least two other people.  The guy upstairs says he hasn’t used his sink in over three weeks because he is stilly trying to finish the remodeling of his kitchen.  Well, that water didn’t come from my sink.  My HOA was giving me the run around today as well.  At least my insurance company responded pretty quickly. 

 

I should have taken before and after pictures, but seeing all that water everywhere freaked me out.  I was more worried about getting it up off the floor than taking pictures. 

In trying to keep with a Utah theme, I got this little news blip from my friend Stew who lives on the Right Coast.  Funny thing is, I didn’t hear about it.

 

It seems that a guy living in an apartment in Ogden, Utah (a little less than 1 hour north of me) was collecting beer cans.  Not sure if he drank all of these, or if he was planning on recycling them.  I’m guessing these are empties that he left because he didn’t take them with him when he left.  Interestingly enough, his neighbors had no complaints about the guy and the owner of the apartment stated that he paid his rent on time every month.  What the pictures do not show is that at one point all the cans were stacked up with paths running from room to room.  The owner was trying to clean out the cans when they all fell like a string of dominos…

 

 

 

 

 

 

If this guy is Mormon, he obviously didn't follow their little rule about no alcohol.

November 5 - LONDON - A 22-year-old man suffered internal injuries after lighting a small firecracker he had inserted into his buttocks, paramedics said Thursday. The incident took place Sunday, when Britain celebrated Bonfire Night, traditionally marked with fireworks to celebrate the Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in the 17th century. (Associated Press)

 

So, this guy celebrates Guy Fawkes' Day (link) by sticking some sort of firecracker up his butt and lighting.  A bottle rocket I might understand, but something like a powerful firecracker, no.  Oh, did I mention that this guy was a soldier that just got back from Iraq?  So, either the service made him a little crazy, or there are rednecks other place than the U.S.  I'm thinking it is some of both. 

 

 

I added a little video that just cracks me up.  Mostly, it is so I can play around and see what I can and can’t do with this site.

 

Take a look under the counter.

 

Enjoy

So I held my nose and voted today.  It wasn’t too bad.  I ended up voting for the guy I didn’t want to only because there wasn’t a third choice.  Other than that one, everything else was straight forward.  Utah is using the new electronic voting machines with the touch screens this year.  It’s the first election here using them.  Most of the poll workers did a lot of training on them, so most were prepared for them.  My voting location got started a few minutes late as they got the machines up and running, but it wasn’t anything major.  For the last few months the state has been advertising that the new machines make things easier.  They made fun of Florida in the process. 

 

What is amusing about this is that the Democrat challenging Orrin Hatch voted today using a paper ballot.  They offered that choice at each location, in the event that someone didn’t trust the machines.  The situation is funny because the guy has a computer background and runs an internet portal company.  He stated that he doesn’t trust the machines the state is using.  Thanks for telling us this after most of us have voted. 

 

Check out this link for a very funny blog: http://boiledsports.blogspot.com/

So Lance Armstrong ran the New York Marathon and made more news than the winners.  Nothing surprising there.  What is surprising is that he squeaked in under 3 hours.  His thoughts on the marathon?  "Without a doubt that was the hardest physical thing I've ever done."  Excuse me?  You've just called all bicycle riders everywhere a bunch of pansies.  Armstrong spend the whole month of July riding thousands of miles on a bike and beating everyone, but then calls a simple 26.2 mile run the hardest thing he's done.  Well, maybe if he trained a little harder, which he admitted to not doing more than 16 miles at any one time.  Okay - he's retired. He doesn't have to go break any record.  He did what a lot of people do, run one to say he did it.  And 3 hours isn't bad for the first one. 

 

I just have to take a moment and brag because I can now say that I've done an endurance event better than Lance Armstrong.  1999 Boston Marathon - 2:57:34, overall place of 600 out of more than 10,000.  In your face, Lance! 

I love this time of year.  The changing colors, the weather, the football games.  But I also hate this time of year.  I hate it because I am a registered independent voter, which means that every freakin’ politician in the area is calling me and sending me flyers.  I average 2 calls a day over the last two weeks.  Most of them are automated and leave a message.  The one live person that called me last week didn’t seem to like it when I asked if the candidate she was calling for stood for bothering people at home during dinner.  I asked if the guy stood for harassment because I’ve been getting his automated calls every day.  She hung up on me. 

 

That said, you would think I wouldn’t vote for said candidate, but the worst part of this whole thing is that I may vote for the jerk because I don’t like the person that is currently in that position.  And that is why I hate this time of year.  I hate, absolutely hate, voting against someone rather than voting for someone.  When you vote against someone, the person you end up getting may not be any better than the person you vote against.  I have a severe case of voter apathy.  I look at most of the people running and I think about how pathetic this is.  There are one or two county council members who seem worth keeping, but everyone else completely turns me off.  I will vote, as I see it is my civic duty, but it won’t be enjoyable.  I’ll hold my nose and vote against someone.  And most likely, a few years from now, I’ll be holding my nose and voting against the person I voted for this year.  I would vote Libertarian across the board, but there aren’t enough Libertarians running this year.

 

I’m thinking of taking an airsickness bag with me when I vote and see what kind of looks I get.  If nothing else, it might get me through the line faster.

Someone explain to me why Purdue can’t have what Louisville has.  Please.  Why can this smaller, Big East school put together an offense that is impressive to watch?  Why can this school get itself into a position to play in a BCS bowl and Purdue, a larger, Big 11 school cannot?  Why can Bobby Petrino get these great players and Joe Tiller can’t? 

 

I hope Louisville does well this year.  I hope they keep winning.  It looks like they will win tonight (but against West Virginia the game is never over early).  I hope they play one of the big boys in a BCS game.  Actually, I would love to see them play ND and beat the snot out of them.  I would cackle with delight to which this little, lowly Big East school down on the banks of the Ohio, a school with not a lot of football history, take ND by the facemask and shake them like a redneck baby.  I would love to see them beat ND so badly that most media writers question why ND was there in the first place.  But it is only a hope, and as my grandfather used to say, you can hope in one hand and spit in the other – see which one fills up first.

I’ve been away.  I was in St. Louis last weekend for my grandmother’s funeral.  Well, funeral service.  She donated her body to science, so we didn’t have a burial, which seemed odd.  In a way I think the family handled it better because there wasn’t a viewing and spending an afternoon at a cemetery, but there also wasn’t the feeling of closure.  The party/wake we had afterwards was good, and we mostly laughed and remembered the good stories.  There was also a little bit of polka in her honor.  In her prime, she could really roll out the barrels.

 

Being in St. Louis for the close of the World Series was pretty cool.  For a town that was just rated as being the most dangerous (St. Louis proper, not the massive suburb that surrounds it) there was very little vandalism or craziness after game 5.  St. Louis is just a baseball city, and the fans are real fans that expect to win.  Kinda like the Yankees, just not as consistent.  I have to admit that the last three games looked more like Detroit lost, rather than St. Louis won.  But they don’t give Mulligans in baseball.

 

I find it interesting that St. Louis beat Detroit in both baseball and the designation of most dangerous city.  Hmmmmm…

 

And lastly, Sony is finally going to get the PlayStation 3 out.  They started showing the commercials last week.  It freaked me out.  What the hell are they trying to sell with that thing?  At first I thought it was the next Chucky movie.  Sony needs this thing to do well as the company is not living up to its past.  But what do I care?  I’m not going to buy one – I don’t have the time to sit around playing video games.