Ramblings

First things first, I got back from seeing the Black Dahlia. Please avoid this movie. De Palma should be blamed for most of it, but I think some of the blame for this crapfest falls on the guy who adapted a great book into an incoherent mess of a movie. Twice a friend called during the movie and both times I considered walking out and taking the call.

For the last two weeks work has kicked my ass to the curb. I'm exhausted and all I've done is sit at a computer and make phone calls. Usually, it averages out to a few questions a day. Some days will be a little heavy on the research, and some days I won't have a single question. These two weeks it's been research question after research question. It's been so constant I've actually had to delegate some of it out to others. It's been not only pain in the ass hypothetical research, but the kind that gets you entered into the FBI watch list. When I cold call five companies asking how you would siphon jet fuel from a pipeline, I wouldn't be surprised if I was reported to some FBI database. I don't even know why I thought I could sweet talk one of them into giving me an answer. Do the FBI offer bail?

I also had to do a little research on lowriders. After the "Esez!" script, I thought I was finished with lowriders. I was embarrassed I knew most of the answers off the top of my head. That information is taking up some valuable real estate in my memory banks.

Mr. Petty was right. The waiting is the hardest part. Like waiting to see if you get the apartment that is only five minutes from work.

One of the things that irks me about the whole getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden is that we have to wear clothes. Because if I didn't have to wear clothes than I wouldn't have to always do laundry.

There is a report that the Florida Marlins are going to fire their manager, Joe Girardi, after this season is up. I don't know why since he took a bunch of rookies, and had them playing above their heads the last half of the season. I don't want to go into why the Marlins would fire a Manager of the Year candidate. I want to talk about Girardi possibly being hired by the Cubs for next season. Baker's gone on Oct. 2nd, and there's going to be ton of pressure by Chicagoans for the Cubs to hire Girardi. He's a Chicagoan himself and had two stints playing for the Cubs. I have no doubt that Girardi is a fine manager. My point is the players coming up in the Marlins system are clearly better players and better prepared to make the jump to the big leagues than the Cubs young players. Girardi deserves some of that credit, but doesn't the scouts and those who develop the players in the minor leagues deserve a lot of the credit. I think the Cubs problems is deeper than the manager and a couple pitchers who can't stay healthy. The Cubs have drafted top tier talent. They apparently can't develop them like the Marlins can.

It's taken awhile but there are more and more hacks becoming available for the Blogger Beta. One of them is employed above as I've moved my labels up to the top in the form of tabs. You can find the hack here. I suggest using the tweak at the end of the post too if you have a lot of labels. The tweak allows you to select which labels you want to show. Unfortunately, this requires going back and adding a period after every label you don't want to use. My first time through I thought the period was for the ones you wanted to include, so I had to go back and redo everything. Those with a site tracker might have noticed that every time you post you get two to three people trying to put spam in your comments. That's what the word verification is for. Well, reposting all 395 posts twice has rocketed my visit count. I apparently now average 48 visits a day rather than the previous 18.

I've also tried to find a decent "recent comments" hack that doesn't require me going through another blog and a second e-mail address. So I'm stuck just using the consistently inconsistent blogger comments feed. That's why the first comment is from a post back in August. If anyone finds a decent hack let me know.