Archive of July 2005

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Poker is NOT a sport!

Last week on the local sports talk radio they were discussing whether poker is a sport or not.  And they arrived at the conclusion that it is indeed a sport because after all, it's shown on ESPN.  What?  Are you out of your mind?  Although ESPN is nearly all sports, this clearly illustrates a return to their roots as the "Entertainment and Sports Network".  Welcome to the entertainment folks…although personally I don't see it.

A long time ago I railed against golf and bowling not being sports.  Basically, for most people they are recreational activities.  But theycan be consider to be a sport at the appropriate competition level.  The litmus test of course is "if you can drink beer while you're doing it, it's not a sport".

So, now let's look at poker…you can drink while playing poker, so it's not a sport, right?  Alright, you can also play poker, not drink, take it very seriously and make some outrageous money at it!  No doubt about that, but sitting around a table making staring at a handful of cards and chucking chips is not a sport.  There's almost no physical exertion.  It might be an intense mental battle and prove challenging, but that makes it no more that a friendly(?) competition.  But it's not a physical activity that is required for it to be a sport.  With the serious money that can be made playing poker these days you might stand a better chance of arguing that it's a legitimate livelihood!

So I guess my litmus test now needs to be modified too: "If there's no physical activity and you can drink beer while you're doing it, it's not a sport."
July 23, 2005 @ 08:44 am | Category:
Saturday, July 16, 2005

Active Calendar

As part of my ongoing upgrade, one of the features I wanted to add to my CycleLog was a monthly calendar.  I've written some calendar stuff previously, but I didn't want to do another "one off" or reinvent the wheel if I could find something that potentially would be reusable.  And I must say, I was certainly not disappointed when I found Active Calendar.  This is an absolutely wonderful and well written piece of calendaring software licensed under the LGPL.  So this is my plug for Giorgos Tsiledakis and his well thought out and implemented work.  Thus if you're a PHP developer looking to do something with calendars, I'd highly recommend you check out Active Calendar before you waste your time writing something inferior and less flexible to this work.
July 16, 2005 @ 08:42 am | Category:

Jackass: Mark R. Downs Jr.

I don't know Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, PA, but after reading this, I'm pretty sure he's a jackass.  I'm all for competition, and a T-ball coach should be teaching it as well as the basics of (yawn) baseball.  But what's the lesson here?  That's it's okay to whack out a disabled kid if it's going to prevent you from winning?  Nice life lesson Mark.  Like I said: Jackass!
July 16, 2005 @ 08:18 am | Category:
Thursday, July 14, 2005

Baltimore Street

Baltimore Street
July 14, 2005 @ 12:50 pm | Category:
Friday, July 08, 2005

It’s Not too Hot!

I've been incredibly busy the past several weeks, thus I've had little time for blogging.  And this post is probably about a week late, but as they say, "better late than never"…

For all of you who have been whining "It's too hot", please just shut the hell up!  You're likely the same people who will be whining about it being too cold next winter.

Summers here in Western New York are generally a nice 75-80 degrees most of the time.  I can accept that, but the past month we've seen a lot of 85-90 and even several 90-95 degree days.  Warm, you bet. Oh, and it's also been quite humid so it is somewhat suffocating.  What can I say?  Bring it on!!!  Sorry, I miss the warmer, muggy weather I grew up with in Illinois.  I believe it was just last week that I heard on the news that this is the warmest summer we've had in a decade.  Let's hope we don't have to wait that long again!  In the meantime, it's wonderful weather to hop on a bike and go climb the steepest hill you can find!
July 8, 2005 @ 12:41 pm | Category:
Sunday, July 03, 2005

LIVE 8 Irony

Yesterday was spent trekking off to one of Colin's concerts and attending a picnic at one of my wive's relatives.  So after a long day we got home last night and plunked down on the couch and started channel surfing.  As is typical on a Saturday night without cable TV, there was little too choose from.  Thus we stopped to watch some of the LIVE 8 concert.  After a couple of acts there was a musical montage of photos featuring malnourished children in Africa (obviously).  After this was a commercial break…for TRIMSPA.  So as I was watching this I'm thinking it's kind of strange that here I am watching something about the plight of poor starving people in Africa and it's sponsered by this?  A company that exists and thrives off selling pills to overfed, fat, lazy Americans to help them lose their world leading excess pounds!  It was at this point that my wife turned to me and asked, "Does anybody else see the irony in this?".  I doubt most people did, but I certainly did honey!
July 3, 2005 @ 07:35 am | Category: