Flack

That's true, and over the past seven years, I've rented all the ones I wanted to see.

My "PiVo" (a PC-based DVR) has 100 gig availabe on C: and 400 on D: ... so I'm in the same boat, I have it filled with stuff I'm having a hard time getting around to watching. Add in all the downloads and my DVD backlog and I could literally spend years watching new things without spending a dime.

That's what I noticed, too. As I lost more interest in Netflix I noticed I was keeping movies longer and longer. Just last month I realized I had kept the same three movies for three weeks. I've gone through their back catalog and while I hadn't rented everything, I was having a hard time picking out old stuff that I was interested in. Those Redbox kiosks are full of all the new releases, which is what I've been most interested in lately.

Last week, after almost seven years of service, I ended my Netflix account. There were no hard feelings – I still love Netflix and I hope that they pummel Blockbuster and their crappy late fees into bankruptcy – but things change over seven years time. Thanks to the wonderful world of high speed Internet access, I now download tons of movies, shows, and documentaries to watch every week – more than we could possibly watch in a lifetime, many of which aren’t readily available for sale or rent. With the addition of PiVo in the living room, I can now watch all these downloaded things on our living room television without ever touching a keyboard. The other reason I dropped Netflix is because of Redbox. You may have already seen these kiosks outside of McDonalds or inside grocery stores. They are DVD rental kiosks. You walk up to them, insert a credit card, and rent a movie. It’s a buck for 24 hours. Keep it an extra day and they charge you another buck. Keep it twenty-five days and you own it. On their website (redbox.com) you can rent movies online and pick them up on the way home – convenient for me as I pass several of these on the way home. I was paying Netflix $20/month, averaging 10-12 movies a month. Obviously, through Redbox, the same amount of movies would cost us less. To tell you the truth I suspect I won’t be renting anywhere near that number of movies, but if I decide to, the (no commitment) option is there.

My sister and brother-in-law need to part with their "puppy", a great dane. If you or anyone you know is looking for a free dog, here's a wonderful opportunity for you. If no one takes him in then they are going to torture him with a hot poker and laugh about it. Okay, not really. Instead he will probably go to the pound where someone may adopt him or they may put him to sleep. Are you willing to live with that on your conscious? I thought not.

About two weeks ago we had an unusually cold spell of weather sweep through Oklahoma. During that flap of weather, we discovered our home’s heater was no longer working. Dad and I messed around with it for a few minutes Easter Day before deciding neither of us knew what the problem was. After spending one night too many cuddled around the gas fireplace, we called our local HVAC repairman out to the house. On the first trip, the repairman said that some part of the furnace had been damaged by rainwater; according to him, the exhaust port had dislodged itself (or something like that), which was causing rain to drain into the furnace. Quickly it became evident that this was going to cost us two visits – one to fix the problem with the furnace, and another to fix the problem that had broken the furnace. I was right, and we soon were handed our bills, a $200 bill followed by a $300 one. So yes, $500 later, we now have a working heater just in time for summer. Now we have discovered that the air conditioner is not working, either. It seems to me these two problems may be related, although I understand that they may not be. We’ve tried to put off calling the repairman until at least one more payday goes by, but the combination of ceiling fans and box fans are no match for the Oklahoma sun – and this week they are only predicting weather in the mid-70’s. Next week they’re predicting it’ll be in the 80’s. We’ll have to call someone out before that.

Out of all the people in the United States, we, the O’Hara clan, have been recruited to join a highly prestigious and select group of individuals. (And no, it’s not to join the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.) We have been chosen to become a Neilsen TV Ratings Family. Ok, so it’s not exactly an elite group – over one million people are selected each year to participate. In fact, given the odds, it’s fairly surprising we haven’t already done this before. Yesterday in the mail we received our television diary. The diary consists of a week’s worth of entries. From this Thursday to the following Wednesday, we are to track and document all the TV programs we watch during that time period. There are even small blanks to denote if the program was watched on VHS, DVD, or DVR. Neat. You might think that simply the honor of being selected would be enough for most people to fill out the diary and mail it back in, but there is an additional incentive in the bottom of the envelope for those who need one – five bucks! Not in the form of a gift certificate, or a redeemable coupon or a money order – I’m talkin’ five brand new, crisp, one-dollar bills, to spend any way we choose. Score! (Dropping the sarcasm for a moment, I’ll bet there’s a psychological test somewhere that shows people are more likely to participate in unsolicited surveys when given cash, in advance. I’ll just betcha.) Anywhoo, as tempting as it is I’m resisting the urge to simply write “SpongeBob SquarePants” on every page and mail the thing back in early.

Back in 1994 I actually bought a book called something like "Your Guide to the Internet" which contained thousands of FTP and Gopher links. IIRC, Archie was more like a search engine but I don't remember what it searched. And yeah, I did many, many websites in Notepad myself (and still do, whenever possible). I've always felt like that was the best way to learn HTML and to get things to look the way I wanted to. I was never a fan of all the extra gobbledy-gook FrontPage puked into even the simplest web page.

Last night while watching one of those "extreme skateboarding" television shows, I was reminded of an old skateboarding story of mine. I actually have several entertaining stories about my old skateboarding adventures, but this is one of my favorites. In the mid-to-late 80's, skateboarding was experiencing a rebirth. Longer, wider decks replaced the skinny plastic decks from the 1970's, allowing for a multitude of new tricks to be performed. The first "real" trick (excluding "wheelies") for every skateboarder to learn was the ollie. In an ollie, a skateboarder (while riding on a flat surface) leaps into the air, with his skateboard leaping along with him. An ollie is performed by lifting your front foot while slamming your rear foot down at the same time. This action causes the board to fly up. At this same moment, the skater leaps into the air, and slides his front foot back down, levelling out the board. The end result is the appearance that you (the skater) and your skateboard have magically jumped into the air. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yPsQyI1CAc Despite being one of the first tricks all skateboarders should learn, it's much more difficult than that video makes it look. In fact, I tried for months to no avail. Almost inevitably I would pull my front foot sideways, turning myself 45 degrees. It worked okay, as long as I wasn't moving. If I was actually moving forward and tried to ollie (called a "rolling ollie"), I would land at a weird angle and throw myself to the ground. Remember, this was way before YouTube, the X-Games, or any of that. All I had to go on was things I'd seen on TV or in magazines. To me, it looked like these skaters were simply leaping into the air and their boards were magically sticking to their feet. That gave me an idea. Using an old worn out pair of high tops, a hammer, and some nails, I attached a pair of shoes to an old skateboard. The high tops were snug enough that my feet would stay in them even without being laced up. The end result was exactly what I was seeing on television. On the corner outside my house, I would wait for cars or kids to come rolling by. Just when they would look, I would jump into the air, sometimes spinning, without the board ever leaving my feet. I can only imagine how amazed some of those onlookers must've been Occasionally I'd fall, at which point I'd land on my back with a skateboard still sticking on to my feet -- if that happened, the jig was up. But, more often than not, I'd land on my feet, impressing passersby by performing great aerial maneuvers (well, at least in my head).

In the dawn of the World Wide Web (which I began surfing in 1995), there wasn’t a huge amount of original content being created and posted. The lack of original content can be contributed to three major factors: - Complexity/Costs: With no freely available Content Management Systems (CMS), those wishing to publish to the web had to learn at least HTML and FTP at a minimum. In the early days, there was a steep learning curve in getting your thoughts and ideas on the web. There was also a financial side to hosting content – many ISPs did not automatically include a web site with their basic plans. - Lack of Audience: With so few web surfers, creating and posting new content on the web seemed kind of pointless. It took a few years for enough people to get on board to make posting web-specific content worth the effort. - Links: To really understand this part, you have to understand where the web came from. Prior to the World Wide Web, most people accessing the Internet got their information from FTP sites, Gopher links, and occasionally through Archie (how quickly things become obsolete). All three of these methods hosted text files for others to be able to find and access them. When the web was learning to walk, its first role was essentially to serve as a graphical user interface (GUI) to all those text files. As a result, many early web pages consisted of little more lists of links point pointing to other people’s (previously written) text files. It was interesting at first, but when hundreds of web sites all pointed to the same few files written by the same few people, it got pretty boring. Eventually, and fortunately, creative people began permeating this newfound medium. I Most of the early content that went up would be considered web PAGES, but eventually, people began putting up web SITES. It seems strange to discuss the differences between the two, but what I mean is, most early pages were simply a couple of standalone pages with information or links on them. As these grew they became sites: large, intertwined groups of pages that instead of linking readers to external sources, contained all the information they were presenting on their own pages. One of the first such sites that I remember discovering was a page called The Big Fun Glossary. “Big Fun” was a giant, three-story farmhouse, located just outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Sometime in 1995, three girls (Sara, Jessika and Peggy, known as the Malvern Girls) moved into Big Fun; soon, several of their friends had joined them. From what I have read, Big Fun sounds like a cross somewhere between MTV’s The Real World and Charles Manson’s Spahn Ranch. While no murders were ever conspired (or at least committed) at Big Fun, wild kids did what unsupervised wild kids do: they drank, they did drugs, they partied, they acted goofy, they collected doll heads, they spray painted things, they mummified animal corpses, they did all sorts of interesting and quasi-legal adventures that are interesting to read about. One of the inhabitants of Big Fun (“The Gus”) chronicled the group’s adventures in a giant document that came to be known as the Big Fun Glossary. Consisting of over 50 pages of definitions, the document was frequently printed, copied, passed around among friends and amended. Every in-joke, made up definition and person was written down and preserved within the glossary's pages. As most of the inhabitants of Big Fun had little or no money, living conditions took a turn for the worse during the winter of 1995. Before long electricity to the house was shut off (generators and gas heaters were brought in to keep the inhabitants warm). Eventually the housemates also lost running water. Eventually, life at Big Fun began not to be so much fun, and in the spring of 1996 most of the inhabitants moved back to the city. The entire experience lasted less than a year, from the Fall of 1995 to the summer of 1996. The Gus landed a job at a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), and soon converted The Big Fun Glossary into a website. The Glossary, which remains online today, reeks of 1996 web design. There are frequent warnings of “giant, 700k downloads.” What photographs are on the site are small in size, the background graphics break in any normal-sized browser, and the design is decidedly static. That being said, the Glossary serves its purpose and acts as a time capsule, capturing the life, times, thoughts, and happenings in and around the inhabitants of Big Fun. With all the weird and wacky jokes related to the Big Fun crew, it is sometimes difficult to remember that these are all, in fact, real people. The Gus, now 39, maintains his own blog to this day. A simple Google search turned up Jessika Flint’s Friendster Page, which leads to both her eBay Store and her own domain. Some of the other Malvern maniacs have online presences as well; I’ll let you do the searching, if you’re interested. It's hard to explain what my fascination with the Big Fun site is, but for some reason I revisit it maybe once a year or so. The site never changes, but there is so much to take in that, within a year's time, all the stories and adventures (or at least the details regarding them) seem fresh again. I am sure that the thought of living in such squalor sounds like much more fun than it really is; and, by the time you get to the end of the timeline, it doesn't even sound like that much fun. Fantastic romantacism, perhaps. If you find yourself bored someday and wish to kill a few hours reading about a bunch of kids getting high by drinking cough syrup, stealing bear from a local cult’s end of the world party, and a general collection of tales of debauchery, check out the Big Fun Glossary. The Big Fun Glossary

Commodork in National Mag! A couple of days ago I found a pretty exciting discovery! A fellow gamer informed me last week that my book Commodork was featured in the May, 2007 issue of Tips and Tricks Magazine (Issue #145, the one with God of War on the front cover). Below are scans of the front cover, the page my book appears on, and a blown-up picture of my book. Tips and Tricks Magazine cover. Page Commodork appears on. Closeup of Commodork blurb. One of the funny things about writing a book is, long after you're "over" the experience, neat things like this crop up. Thank you, Tips and Tricks. I really appreciate it. Oh, I almost forgot. I also recently ran across Matt Wilson's Boring Beige Box, a podcast that deals with retro computers. In Issue 17 Matt discusses my book Commodork as well. Awesome -- Thanks, Matt!

Once again, Sun Valley’s annual Garage Sale Day went off without a hitch. The kids, Susan and I woke up around 7am, piled into the van shortly after and made a b-line for dad’s house. Mom, Jack, Linda and Griffin were already there waiting. Last year, Dad, Mason and I made our way around the garage sales on dad’s two riding lawn mowers, Dad driving one with Mason and myself on the other. This year, I brought over the golf kart, and the three of us rode our way around the neighborhood while Mom and Jack walked and Susan and Linda each pushed baby strollers. My golf kart has four cup holders, so it became the rolling drink stand. It also became the “stuff hauler” – as Susan, the kids and my mom began acquiring “stuff”, it all got loaded in to and on to the kart. I think I ended up taking either three or four loads of stuff back to dad’s garage to unload. At one point in time we had half a dozen books, a Hot Wheels car, some board games, a small ice chest and a palm tree hanging off the kart. At one garage sale I found a “spider web bungee net” like Johnny’s. It’s basically a bunch of bungee cords woven together to look like a big spider’s web, with plastic hooks around the perimeter. It’s really handy for transporting things in the back of your truck (like Dell servers …). I told Susan, “you never know when you’re going to need something like that.” I’m sure no one thought I would ever use the thing. At the next house, we found a kid-sized bed frame for Morgan. After paying for it, Dad and I threw it right on top of the golf kart, and I broke out the bungee spider-web! Several people thought it wasn’t a good idea, but the idiocy of driving around a golf kart with three people in it (Dad, Mason and myself) full of crap with a bed frame and a SpongeBob floppy couch tied to the roof with bungee cords was too ridiculous for me to pass up. The cargo, both human and non-human, made it back to dad’s house safely. After everyone was tuckered out from all the sales, I spent the afternoon giving the kids rides around dad’s yard in the golf kart. Here’s a picture of Mason and Griffin as we prepare to head out for a spin.

Tomorrow is Sun Valley’s annual Garage Sale Day, the one day each year where dozens of people from the neighborhood I grew up in all have a garage sale on the same day. I know some of you are thinking, “what he really should be doing is getting rid of crap instead of amassing more of it,” but Sun Valley Garage Sale Day is less about buying stuff (although we almost always come home with something unique) and more about running into old friends. It’s like Homecoming, if at Homecoming they sold ugly lamps for fifty cents. Last year, Dad and I took his two riding lawn mowers out for a spin on Garage Sale Day. (Mason rode with me.) This year we’ve added my golf kart to the mix, which Mason and I relocated over to dad’s garage earlier this week. I’m sure no matter who ends up riding what, everybody will have a good time. Earlier this year Dad, Mason and I went to the citywide garage sale. This year, even more so than the last one, the items were extremely picked over, and it was very obvious that the smaller and more expensive items go straight to eBay. There were no electronics, no videogames, nothing like that. In the past I’ve picked up old computers and lots of Atari games at that sale, but over the past few years there have been fewer and fewer of those types of items. Hopefully Garage Sale Day will still yield a few treasures. And hopefully, they’ll be small enough that Susan won’t notice if I sneak a few more things into the garage.

I didn't see this site mentioned in the thread, but maybe I missed it. This is a great website full of tons of old pictures, videos and stories relating to Showbiz Pizza and CEC. http://rock_afire.tripod.com

Media outlets have been airing news of the Virginia Tech shootings non-stop for 48 hours now. The air waves have been so flooded with coverage of the story that I've had to turn off the television and quit checking my normal web news sites for the time being. The story all but drowned out the twelfth anniversary of the Murrah Building (April 19th, 1995). In fact, I didn't even realize today was the anniversary until Johnny mentioned it to me after lunch. Funny how those things slowly fade. For a few years I can remember we were asked to have a moment of silence for those killed by Timothy McVeigh (et al) in the Murrah Bombing. Two years ago on the tenth anniversary the story once again made headlines. Maybe Oprah, Geraldo and Connie Chung will revisit the story on the 15th or 20th anniversaries. For now, Seung-hui Cho will hold the spotlight. Just as we (Oklahoma City) inherited the "April Disaster" torch from Waco, we shall now apparently pass it to Virginia. Last night on MSNBC reporters interviewed a female Virginia Tech student who was also at Columbine when the shootings there occured. I didn't catch her name but I suppose I should look it up just in case she gets a job anywhere near me so I can move far away from that bullet magnet. So anyway in honor of all those tragedies I shaved my head. Well, not really. I mean, I really shaved my head, but that's not why I did it.

...and fuzz to fuzz. After a short-lived life span, the mohawk is no more. I honestly didn't realize what a big deal it apparently was. Although most of the comments I received were positive, Susan absolutely hated it (and said as much, multiple times). Among other adjectives, "trashy", "white trash", "horrible" and "awful" came up more than once. So long, 'mo. We barely knew ye. In case you're wondering what happened to it ... well, there's only one way to get rid of a mohawk ...

I’ve wanted one for 25 years, and now I have one. A Mohawk. (Wow, this is going to take some explaining.) I should start by saying that to me, hair is just, uh, hair. You wash it, you comb it, you cut it, repeat. I have particularly thick hair that grows rapidly. I’ve never had a bad haircut for more than a week or two; it simply grows out too quickly. Throughout my life I’ve had many notable “hair adventures”. There was the time Susan and I dyed it blue in honor of Best Buy (I was an employee at the time and I wanted my hair to match my shirt.) There was the time I had it colored “nuclear orange” while living in Spokane. There was the year or two I shaved the back and the sides, leaving the top long (the infamous “top knot” style). There was the time, in grade school, that I had it frosted. After Footloose came out, I even had a spike (which was a MUCH bigger deal back then than it is now.) The point is, I’ve abused my hair follicles many many times over the years. Each time, within a few weeks, whatever I had done to it was ancient history and my thick black hair had returned for more punishment. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but last night Susan took Mason to get a haircut and came home with a bald five-year-old boy. From what I gathered, there may have been a small “English to Espanol” translation problems that complicated the situation. Personally it didn’t look that shocking to me. I grew up in a neighborhood where many of the boys got their heads buzzed at the beginning of summer (a seasonal ritual I somehow managed to escape). Mason didn’t seem to be particularly upset about the hack job. I told him he looked like “the army guys in my videogames” and he seemed okay with that. Susan, on the other hand, was much more upset over the whole situation. She was worried that Mason might get teased at school over his new ultra-short do. So, I decided to take one for the team. I told Mason I’d get a haircut that looked just like his. Of course I had no intention of spending $9 + tax to get my head shaved; I knew Susan could do the dirty work with a pair of clippers in five minutes. The execution was carried out quickly in our kitchen. When Susan began, I suggested it might be funny for her to “leave a Mohawk” for a few minutes. (Note to all married men – as it is with Jesus, so it is with wives. “It is easier to receive forgiveness than permission.” There’s no way (NO WAY) Susan would EVER let me get a Mohawk if she thought I was going to keep it for more than five minutes. I’d put the odds of permission at 0% and the odds of forgiveness somewhere around 3.2%. It’s still better odds, but not much.) Once I had what I wanted, a quick round of cat-and-mouse ensued (my hair being the mouse, Susan’s clippers being the cat). The mouse has escaped for the time being, for the time being, but I doubt it’ll survive the weekend. I have to sleep sometime …

This week Susan and I along with Johnny and a dozen of our co-workers are receiving SAN training from Dell. Our group is pretty diverse, consisting of a few people who have never heard of a SAN, a couple who have worked on SANs, and then the rest of us who fall somewhere in the middle ("I have a general knowledge of how SANs work but I've never physically touched one.") Ten minutes into the training course we discovered our instructor ("Anne") had managed to write technical jargon all over our conference room whiteboard with a permananet marker. I can't really blame her (who the heck stores permanent markers in a whiteboard tray?) but it still made us chuckle. A bit of cleaning spray removed the writing from the board. It's 12:30pm, and we have terms like "iSCSI", "CX300", "LUN", and "FC" written all over the whiteboard. It'll be interesting to see, with full bellies, who the first to nod off will be ...

Two days after Susan’s surgery, everything is pretty much back to normal. Sue’s been working from home and will return back to the office next Monday, but she’s also been out to Wal-Mart, to the hospital to visit her Uncle Ronnie, and all over the place. She did tell me that yesterday afternoon she took a three-hour nap, which tells me she might be pushing things a bit too hard too quickly, but other than that everything’s going great. I had planned on staying home with Susan the day after her surgery, but Johnny (my co-conspirator at work and fellow partner in crime) passed out while visiting his mom in the hospital. Passing out in the hospital is kind if like saying, “hey, run a bunch of expensive tests on me,” which is what they did. A couple of days and one angiogram later, they found … well, nothing. Since Emily would be at work by herself, I decided to come into work on Wednesday, and boy, am I glad I did. Without getting all geeky, I’ll just say that we had a major server outage at work on Wednesday that caused all kinds of managers and developers to scramble until we were able to figure out what the problem was and fix it. I rarely pat myself on the back about work-related stuff, but in this particular case I reacted very quickly and came up with some solutions that got everything back up and running in a hurry. It was a good day to be here. Dad bought a new computer last weekend and is already experiencing the pain that is Microsoft Vista. I know my uncle went through the same growing pains recently when he found that many of his favorite programs weren’t Vista-compatible. Dad has discovered that Corel Draw, his AntiVirus software, and his current version of Nero all are incompatible with Vista, so we’re on the look out for replacements. I read yesterday that Microsoft will stop shipping OEM versions of XP at the end of this year, which means beginning in 2008 all computers will come preloaded with Vista instead of XP. (Unless they begin shipping machines with some flavor of Linux.) It’s been weird eating without Susan. This is going to sound weird, but at dinnertime it almost seems like Susan’s a waitress now instead of part of the family. The kids and I sit down, Susan delivers our food, and then she leaves to go fix herself a cup of soup or broth or whatever while we eat. Her meals are very disassociated with ours at the moment; we’ll need to work harder on incorporating hers with ours. I’ve also already noticed that, when eating in front of Susan, I feel like a pig. While eating I think, “I can’t believe I’m eating this much food.” I wouldn’t be surprised if I begin to lose weight by proxy as well.

Susan’s surgery was a total success. When the nurses wheeled her into her room after recovery we expected to see her medicated or at least drowsy – not so. Susan was quite lucid, awake, and in no pain at all. For an hour or so they had her on oxygen and was monitoring her blood pressure, but now they’re not even doing that. Susan says that her stomach feels like she just did 100 sit-ups, but other than that she feels great. Susan’s recovery room looks more like a hotel suite than a hospital room. The room has wood floors, two large chairs, a large couch, and a flat-screen television with free movies-on-demand, pay-per-view, cable, and wireless Internet (which I’m using to post this). With the surgery done and behind us, we’ve mentally moved on to the next crisis … Anna Nicole’s baby’s daddy (eye roll).

Mason with a bucket-o-eggs. Morgan, the Easter princess. We colored eggs, the Easter Bunny hid them, the kids found them, everybody came over, we all ate, everybody went home, we all napped. That about covers it. 72 more Easter Pictures here.

Next Tuesday, April 10th, my wife Susan checks in to the hospital for lapband surgery. It is hard for me to describe exactly how I feel about the impending experience. Obviously, we're both very excited. I'm also a little scared, and maybe a little ... well, jealous isn't the right word ... envy, perhaps? Not envious that she's doing the surgery -- I'm glad she is -- but perhaps a little envious that she has the courage to go through with it, where I know I don't. The biggest thing I'm feeling right now is anxiety. Every surgery (even laparoscopic) has risks involved, so there is anxiety that everything will go right, anxiety about recovery, anxiety about short term and long term effects, etc. When I was in third grade, my mom had gastric bypass surgery -- "stomach stapling," as they elequantly dubbed it back then. My grandma later had the same surgery, so I've seen the ups and downs of these surgeries first hand now a couple of times. There's no doubt that by medically shrinking your stomach, you can lose weight; however, messing around with "mother nature" can produce some side effects as well. My mom needs a monthly B-12 shot because of her surgery. Granted, lapband is the least intrusive form of "restrictive weight loss" surgery, but it's still changing the way your body works. The biggest hurdles in my mind will be the mental ones. At least for me, the hardest part of my own quest for weight loss hasn't been the physical needs as much as it's been the mental ones. Like I said earlier today, when you're on a strict diet all of a sudden you're the jerk that won't go out and have a beer with co-workers after work, the health snob who orders a salad when everyone else at the table orders a steak, or the loner at the birthday party who sits in the corner while everyone else enjoys cake and ice cream. It's hard, it's damn hard. It means giving up going out to dinner with friends just to "catch up." It means not going out to dinner to "celebrate" because of a good report card. It means finding something to do on Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter, and every other holiday when everyone else you know is sitting at the table, eating. It is a complete life change for as long as you live. On the flip side of this is all the positive reasons behind choosing this surgery -- the potential to increase not only your life span but your quality of life as well. It's a personal decision that unless you've lived as a morbidly obese person and had the exact same experiences as another person, you probably cannot completely comprehend. I hope that everything goes as planned and that she's happy with the results, both physical and mental. Susan now has a MySpace page and will be posting blog entries about her surgery there.

A few years ago these were going for $600-$700. They've dropped in price since the Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command combo machines were released.

We do have several minor league teams around town, including the Blazers (Hockey) and the Redhawks (Baseball). For football, it's all about college -- OU and OSU. College Basketball (same teams) are also pretty big around here. I think there's even an indoor football league here that has quite a few fans. Unfortunately, there's no major league baseball, hockey, football, and after next week, no basketball (unless the Sonics eventually relocate here.)

The Stranger and I went to the Hornets vs. Sonics basketball game last night. Over the past two years, the "New Orleans Hornets" have been known as the "New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets." The league in general has been very careful not to refer to "our" team as simply the Oklahoma City Hornets. Most of the official merchandise available still says "New Orleans" on it. Two years of having an NBA franchise here in OKC is coming to an end. At the end of this season the Hornets will migrate back to New Orleans. It remains to be seen if the post-Katrina NOLA economy can support such a massive franchise. I suppose we'll all find out. Our local stadium has begun dumping merchandise at "close out" sale prices. $75 jerseys are now $25. $20 baseball caps are now 2-for-1, and t-shirts are now $10. As I said to Stephen last night, I wouldn't mind having a Hornets shirt or jersey, but my Chicago Enforcers shirt (from the brief XFL league that came and went a few years ago) never gets worn and I suspect a Hornets one would meet the same fate soon. The reason last night's game was particularly interesting was because of our opponent, the Seattle Supersonics. Depending on which website or newspaper you hear the story from, there's somewhere between a slim and a good chance that the Sonics will be relocating to OKC within the next couple of years. While it would be exciting to have another (or any) NBA franchise here, the Hornets aren't currently playoff contenders, and the Sonics are worse than that.