More on Kittys.

So, a comment on my last post reminded me something. I posted about our new kitty a little while ago. But I forgot to tell you wonderful readers that we got another one. Specifically, we got Misha's sister since nobody else was going to take her. I couldn't stand the idea of having her go feral, or be turned over to the county shelter. We have a good shelter, but they are very full.

So we have two kittys now. We (really, I) named the new one Sierpinski, though we often call her Sierpi for short. They have similar coloring patterns, except that Sierpi is black with white (it took me three tries to spell "white" right there. Not typos, just three wrong spellings...) instead of grey with white. 

Anyway, here are some photos of the two kittys. It is kind of tough to get a picture of just Sierpi on her own.

538

Astute, politically savvy readers know the meaning of the number 538. They also know the importance of 270. For those that might be a little behind in their high-school civics 538 is the number of electoral votes for a presidential election, 270 is magic number to move to White House.

I have been watching this election shape up for a long, long time. I may not be the political junkie that some of you out there are, but I find presidential politics to be darn interesting. In furtherance of that, and with a healthy thanks to my boy Paul, I have been cruising around a pretty awesome new site.

Some of the numbers there are pretty encouraging for someone of my personal leanings. But more interesting for me is that nobody in the news seems to be looking or talking about the numbers in this much detail. Now, I am not a statistical genius. In fact most of my knowledge in statistical analysis comes from a few college classes a growing love affair with in-depth statistical analysis in a sports context. That said, based on my somewhat limited knowledge, the methodology here looks quite solid. I understand sports announcers not digging into SABR type numbers. Most viewers don't know what to do with honest statistical analysis, and it is too tough to explain. But here, the people that watch MSNBC, or CNN are obviously fairly well informed, but nobody references numbers this in depth. Instead they use one or two polls to give them a jumping off point. It seems to me that honest, hardcore, statistical analysis of an election should have a place in the media. Alright, enough ranting about the statistical illiteracy of the populace, I do enough of that when I am talking about sports.

Small Personal Update Space:

My life is 90% boring, and I like it that way.

I just finished reading The Center Holds. It was pretty good. Not quite in the league of The Brethren, but good. I am about to start on Democracy Reborn. Let there be no doubt that I am a dork...

Only new music lately isn't that new, but if you haven't listened to Band of Horses, you should probably fix that, lest your life seem empty and grey.

Oregon vs Boise State

I thought I would share a few of my thoughts on this game since I am not particularly sleepy.

But before I do, I have to drop an insanly awesome link. If you haven't heard of Hulu.com, you have problems in your life. Seriously, what do you do all day? I suppose if you live somewhere with Comcast's OnDemand, this would be of a little less interest. If, like me, your cable company doesn't have such a service, this website is pretty rockin. It seems to work like this: Get yourself a free account, watch tv shows and movies for free with fairly limited interuptions. So far I have had no freezing, skipping or caching issues, and the video quality is awesome. Did you miss Arrested Development when it was on the air, or maybe you just miss it in general? Not to fear, Hulu has the entire series. Ready to watch, for free. It is also the only place I know where you can still see the 3 part musical blog of Dr. Horrible. I shouldn't have to tell you how awesome that is.

Alright, interlude aside, how does it look for Oregon tomorrow? Well, I don't see a blow out, but I think if you played the game under these conditions 10 seperate times Oregon comes out on top 7 of them. This one may look like some old-school football. Lean on the defense and run the ball. With Oregon's somewhat green (thank god they played the backups in the first few games) QB's the goal should be to make it easy for them to succeed. And although BSU has good team speed, I don't think they will be able to completly stop the running game. I also think Oregon's defense is extremely good. Good enough to keep them in most games. Maybe not against USC in the Collesium, but good enough for just about anything else. Given that, and that BSU's QB is making his first ever college road start, I think the defense should have a pretty good game. I would be really suprised if BSU scored more than 24, and pretty suprised if they even break 20. If the Oregon O-line does it's job, and the recievers catch the balls that are thrown, I think Oregon will just about cover the spread. I am calling 28-17 Oregon. Not quite enough to cover the spread (11.5) but a winner if you took the under (o/u @55).

Go Ducks. (BTW, in 2 years Harper = very scary )

An Update! But not much of one.

This makes me feel like I wasted my time in highschool. Ok, they probably didn't do it in the back of class, but still...

I know I should drop a post about the Ducks, but I am too drained after yestday's game.  I don't even know what I would do if there was another season like Joey's with the 5 comebacks. I don't think my heart could take it.

As for what I have been up to, not much really. I built a new parking place in my back yard. Now I have a nice flat place to park my car, which is nice. I have been doing some yardwork and watching football. That is about it. Work is good, but not particularly exciting. 

I suppose that is it for now. I am going to go eat some cereal. 

The light always seems to change a bit at this time of year. Summer has clearly faded and autumn is here. Today was certainly a warm one in the valley, but it didn't have the teeth of a true summer day. It is my favorite season of the year and it is not really even close. The breeze turns a cooler, and the light turns a little softer then that of summer. It is less the changing leaves than the changing light and breeze that marks the demise of summer for me.

And of course, with fall comes football. Games at Autzen in the long late afternoon, the changing colors of the hillside in the distance. I know the U of O is best regarded in the spring, but I always preferred it in that sweet slice of season when the leaves were changing, but the real rains were still a few weeks off. And not to sound horribly chauvanistic but I love how women look in jeans and a sweatshirt. Simple, but kind of elegant as well.

That is all I have to say for now. I should have an actual update as to what I have been upto shortly, and maybe some thoughts on the Ducks.

Trial Time

So at least one reader has asked to be kept abreast of how my trials go etc. So, to the extent I am comfortable putting that type of information on the internet (and I know I have mentioned it in at least one other post) here is a report from my most recent trial.

I wasn't sure which, if any of the three trials I had scheduled would actually happen last week. It turned out to be the DUII. I won't say I was disappointed, I wanted to try this case. But there was another case set last week I also wanted to get my teeth into. That case has been re-set until September, so I tried the DUII instead.

To me this was a pretty clear-cut case, but most of the other people I have talked to seemed to think otherwise. Although part of that was the defense attorney. He comes with a reputation as a heck of DUII defense attorney (and he lived up to it). Anyway, the evidence was fairly clear cut from my seat: Some pretty bad weaving, observations from a state trooper that the defendant was under the influence of a narcotic analgesic. The trooper was trained through the DRE (drug recognition evaluator/expert) program, so his testimony was a bit better then a guess. There was also a video showing the defendant's condition (not great) and a urine test positive for a prescption narcotic analgesic. Well, there really weren't any suprises during the actual trial. The suprise was how long the jury took. They got the case at about 4:10 in the afternoon. I didn't get a verdict until almost 8:00 that night. But, I can't complain too much, I did get a guilty verdict.

That is about all there is really. As much as I love my job, it is never as exciting as it seems to sound to other people. Anyway, I am out for now, I need to listen to some Billie.

Some news, some links

Time to get you all caught up on some of my doings lately. As a couple of you know I took a good bit of time off last week, and did a little traveling around the state and caught up with some good friends.

On Friday 7/11, I hooked up for lunch with Eric in downtown Portland. I really think I have been in living in Astoria too long. I didn't have too much trouble driving around downtown, but I got confused trying to walk around. All those damn tall buildings look the same. It probably didn't help that the landmarks I was looking for weren't there anymore. Once I actually made it to the rendezvous point, it was a good time.

Then that night I met up with these two questionable characters for dinner. Also a great time. Good food, some pretty good beer, and we learned that I am horrible at Boom Blox. I am pretty sure an epileptic in the midst of a full seizure would be better.

After Portland I took off for Lincoln City to hang with P and J for a few days. That is about all the travel news. I have few other things to mention though.

Work: I was pretty excited for a couple of trials this week. Unfortunately, one of them has already been bumped, and there is a good chance my other one will as well. Suck.

Cool things:

http://www.drhorrible.com/ I know most of you read Penny Arcade, so you probably saw the link to this there. If not, I guess you suck. Seriously, what is wrong with you? It is a musical super-hero movie. Joss Whedon is involved, and NPH is the star. You can watch the trailer, but it isn't as awesome as what was up over the last weekend. So hopefully, you saw what it was they had up.

http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki If you were looking for a way to mess around with Axis and Allies, you could do a lot worse then this. The AI isn't great, but it isn't too bad. You can also set up email games, or online games. Not to shabby...

That is about all I have for now.

New Family Member

So Sam and I have added a new member to our family out here on the coast. A little over a week ago I was alerted to a new litter of kittens that had been born in the basement of a local landmark (the Flavel House). Since they would face grim chances otherwise, Sam and I decided to adopt one. We brought her home last Saturday after luring into our grasp with some tuna. She looks to be about 6-8 weeks old, and according to the vet is in perfect health. There are couple of pictures below. Oh, her name is Misha (Sam named her).

Evil

It wasn't my idea. I want that on the record at the start. But there is no denying it now. No stopping it. Evil has come to roost in my house again and I am powerless to expel it. It started when Blizzard announced Diablo III. I started to prepare myself. I knew that in 12-18 months I would be fighting that old addiction again. What I didn't expect, what I couldn't anticipate, was Sam diving into Diablo II. I though I had time to prepare, to fortify against the attack. I was wrong. The old pull is still strong. I find myself thinking about barbarian builds. I am saved only by the inability of this laptop to install the game. I have never been more thankful that my CD drive is finicky and rarely works.

Last Blazers Post for a While

Alright, I was sitting down to drop a short draft preview and I saw something so wrong, so incongruous with my world view I had to mention it here. I just saw Bill O'Reilly, avowed conservative arguing for more regulation of a certain business. I'm still not sure what to say.

Anyway, draft day is tomorrow, and the 3rd annual pritch-slapping of the NBA has already begun. In case you haven't heard, the Blazers bought the 27th pick from New Orleans for cash consideration. This is the same kind of move that netted Portland the rights to supposed sensation Rudy Fernandez. I have a had few comments asking what I would like to see Portland do, and what I think is likely. Well, for all my thoughts are worth, here you go:

I still see Pritchard trying to move the 13th pick. I really don't see there being a player available that will be ready to step in and contribute in the way Portland really needs. Moreover, given the working plan (AKA the Cap-Space for 2009-10 Plan), Portland likely needs to move one or more of Frye, J Jack, and Webster. (For more detail see this site.) Based on that I think Pritchard is most likely to either trade up from 13, or trade for a player that fits Portland's needs.

What I would like to see: Of the three players mentioned I would prefer to see them keep Webster. I think at worst he is a legit 3-point threat that can open the floor a-la James Jones or Kyle Korver. If he continues to develop to his true potential, his ceiling is much much higher. That isn't to say I don't like Jack or Frye, I just think Webster is the more rare of the commodities. I am not as convinced as some that SF is a big need for Portland. I think Outlaw and Webster both have big potential at the 3. I am much more convinced that we need an improvement at the point. So, I guess I'm looking for Pritchard to try and pick up a quality point, but one that is comfortable without the ball. A good shooter, and a good defender with a good handle under pressure.

Other then that, given Pritchard's general MO of stocking talent, I expect to see a lot of BPA tommorrow. (And at least 2 more trades... but I am not plugged in enough to really speculate with who/for who.) I do like Heinrich a lot, but I am not a fan of contract, and that rumor seems to have died out.