Archive: September 2005
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Tuesday - September 27, 2005
High school football + Campus Watch #30
So, yeah. Rita completely avoided us. No wind. No rain. No nuthin'. Which is just fine by me. She does seem to have left us a souvenir, though. A wee little bit of extreme heat. We hit 108 on Sunday. The hottest day of 2005 in Austin. I noticed the little doo-hickey in the menu bar on my computer hit 107 yesterday at about 4:30 or so. It dropped a whole degree to 106 by the time I left the office a bit before 6. I went to the McNeil/Leander football game after work and enjoyed the announcement made at 7:50 or so: they'd been informed that the temperature had, indeed, just then dropped below 100. Ugh. That's just too damn hot. In September! We're still in for another day or two of triple-digit heat. Thanks, Rita. Not so good doing bidness with you. Yes, this bidness is much preferred to that done with the likes of Beaumont and Port Arthur. But, still. The heat! Ack. I'm ready for a break.
The game was pretty good, by the way. Leander is the #1 ranked team in Region 15, Class 5A; McNeil is #7. We imagined that Leander would have a fairly easy time of things even though both teams had 3-0 records in non-regional action going into the game. Not so much. McNeil took the opening kick-off right down the field and scored. And, they seemed to run away with the game. They built up a 28-7 lead mostly because Leander started throwing one interception after another. Not sure if it was poor throwing decisions on the part of the Leander quarterback or great reads on the part of the McNeil defense. At any rate, Leander threw at least 4 interceptions (maybe 5) in the middle part of the game. So they went to their ground game. Which, frankly, seems to be rather nonexistent. In the 4th (after getting down by those 21 points), they started throwing again. They threw a bunch of quick 6- or 7-yard passes that the receiver would then turn into 10- or 15-yard gains. McNeil seemed completely unable to stop the onslaught. Leander scored 3 unanswered touchdowns in the final 8 minutes or so of the fourth quarter sending things into overtime. At which point (10:30 at night by now...on a Monday night!), we decided it was time to high-tail it out of Dodge. We listened to the end of the game on the radio (!) and weren't at all surprised by the final outcome. Leander had all the momentum going their way by that point and the McNeil defense seemed rather tired. However, McNeil put up more of a fight than we expected. Leander got the ball first in overtime and scored a TD fairly quickly. McNeil managed to put something together and sent the game into a second overtime. McNeil went first this time and only managed a field goal. Leander finished things off rather quickly on their possession, scoring a TD on the first or second play. Too bad. We had no stakes in the game but were kinda rooting for McNeil since they were the underdog. Which, as I announced when we sat down, was no doubt a bad thing for McNeil. It almost always happens that we sit on the losing side. Almost always. It's so sad. It just doesn't seem fair for a team to be doomed at the outset by the simple fact that we've decided to go to a game. Poor fellas.
. . . .
And, from yesterday's Campus Watch crime report:
Criminal Mischief, 2 counts / Evading / Resisting Arrest / Attempted Escape from Custody (University Police Building)
A UT student walked through a parking lot located on the east side of the building. The student returned a short time later carrying a rock. The student threw the rock at the left side of a parked patrol vehicle two times, causing the left front window of the vehicle to break. The student fled on foot toward Robert Dedman and entered an awaiting Subaru that was being driven by another UT student. Officers were able to stop the vehicle a short distance later. After being stopped and ordered to exit the vehicle, the student who had thrown the rock at the police vehicle fled on foot again. Once that student was stopped, he resisted arrest by kicking at officers. Before being placed in a patrol vehicle, the student attempted to escape by breaking free from an officer and running a short distance. Occurred on 9-25-05 at 10:15 PM.
This report is awfully puzzling, doncha think? What in the world were those students up to? Why do such a thing? Very very odd.
Monday - September 26, 2005
Global Warming hypothesis
From a comment left by some guy named John on a post on Eric Berger's SciGuy blog (hosted by the Houston Chronicle):
Well, one topic that should add to the debate on hurricanes being caused by fossil fuel burning (via global warming) is that the hurricanes now are all aiming at the refineries. So obviously nature is just taking things into its own hands...
I think we should build a refinery in Nevada and see if it gets hit by a hurricane. Then we would know for sure.
Tee hee.
Friday - September 23, 2005
Hurricane Rita + juvenile anonymity
Batten down the hatches. Or don't. On Wednesday morning, things were not looking very good for Bastrop...so far as Hurricane Rita was concerned. The infamous "they" were predicting that the eye would pass right over Bastrop. And, that meant those of us here in Austin would be getting sustained winds of up to 70 mph. I made plans with Jennie to drive out to Bastrop and get the pick-up out from under all those pine trees that would be itching to fall in such a wind. But, by yesterday, the story had changed. "They" were now saying that things would pass far to the east of us. Our chances of rain dropped all the way down to 20% for tomorrow. With an occasional gust of wind falling in the 20-25 mph range. Traffic coming into the city was pretty bad. My friend Mojdeh's uncle and family left Houston at about 9 pm on Wednesday and didn't get to Austin 'til after 9am Thursday. That's normally a 3-hour drive for them. Yikes! Jennie did not relish the idea of getting out in that traffic so we abandoned the "pick-up rescue" plan.
I really enjoyed the first paragraph in an article in the Houston Chronicle about the evacuation:
Hurricane Rita lumbered toward Texas on Thursday at a sluggish 9 mph. Thousands of Houston-area residents fleeing its approach envied its speed.
Ha!
. . . .
And, in somewhat spooky news, Katie knows one of the girls mentioned in this article. Yikes. I find it hard to believe that the names of 12- and 13-year-old defendants were released so casually. Aren't there laws against that? I went looking around the web and found their names in articles (virtually all of them some version of an AP story based on the article linked here) in newspapers published all around the country.
Monday - September 12, 2005
Happy Birthday
Happy birthday, Mom!!!
Friday - September 2, 2005
Sports psychology
A funny (or, is it sad?) opinion column by Dinah Miller: My Sox-obsessed husband.