I am sitting here watching the Alamo Bowl. What lousy officiating. This is the second time that Michigan has had to take a time out to get a replay review. This is silly. Even if the call is right, they should not have to waste a time out.

[added note: if you see the game with 3:45 to go in the 4th, read Lloyd Carr’s lips when he says: “no time outs, this is b**l s**t”. Check me see if I am not right. I wish that football coaches didn’t have to swear all the time. Wouldn’t “gosh darn it” do the job.]

[36 seconds to go, ESPN Announcer “this is one of the worst officiated games I have ever seen”. It isn’t just me. Time for big officials for big games … there aren’t that many games, why use small college officials? Of course Michigan did have opportunities that they missed, but they had a 12th man on the other team. They still need to take some of the responsibility for the apparent loss.]

[Michigan had Cal/Stanford going with the hook and ladder. Nebraska had too many men on the field. Lousy, lousy ref’ing. Amazing, the entire Nebraska team is on the field and no penalty. That would have given them one more play to get it in the end zone. Screwed, screwed, screwed. Dear San Antonio, TX, I don’t think I will be visiting anytime soon if you cannot organize a better officiating crew than that*. And, I am using my Discover Card. Forget Mastercard. This loss, pricelessly sad. Congratulation to Nebraska. It isn’t their fault and the officials could have just as easily favored them. It wasn’t that they were biased, they were just out of their league.]

*see comment below, I originally said Austin … which is flat out wrong and as the commentor points out, San Antonio is a great city and really had nothing to do with the bowl game officiating and everything to do with the hospitality – added next day.

[Oh and I forgot the 4th down on the next to last possession. The defender clearly hooked and pulled Manninghams catching arm. No call. Sad, sad officiating … it isn’t the loss that gets me … it is the way it happened.]

[update: and the comments … not even leaving your email address or homepage address … are you real people 🙂
I said congratulations to Nebraska, I said it could just as easily have gone against Nebraska — so I don’t agree that I am whining as indicated in one of the first two comments — but when the play is live, and Michael Hart looks up and sees the entire Nebraska team in front of him. My point isn’t that I am upset about the loss, I am upset that such a rookie group of officials are visited on a “major” bowl — and granted this wasn’t a major bowl, who are we kidding, except that every bowl (except maybe the motor city bowl *grin*) is major to the teams involved in it.]

Lets go with those xxx domains. And maybe an xax domain for artistic nudity, and ggg for the really good stuff … Unless you prohibit xxx content on .com sites, the presence of xxx won’t really help in our opinion.

This is a funny photo gallery with vintage Santa photographs. In this one, Santa looks like he might have had a few too many egg nogs before taking the stage. These are funny shots of kids who would rather not tell Santa what they want for Christmas. As a parent, I cannot tell you what possesses us to put the kids on Santa’s lap when they don’t want to be there, but trust me we are possessed to do so.

The Massachusetts state chief information officer has resigned in the wake of his push for open source document standards in Massachusetts according to C-Net. The article makes it sound as though significant pressure was assert both on him and on his family as a result of his push for this standard. Amazing … what people will do for MicroSoft I guess. Who is putting pressure on him anyway?

In fairness, his decision brought him a lot of scrutiny in other areas, including an investigation into his travel documentation. In the end, he just found it not worth it probably when he lacked support from top administation who decided that Microsoft’s XML format might be sufficient. Whatever the reasons, he certainly got people talking, thinking and discussing the issues.

I read the most recent Microsoft Press Release: Xbox 360 Powers All-New Nissan URGE Concept Car. Now I have to apologize to Microsoft because I am thinking it means what it says … that a car is ACTUALLY powered by the 360 … so I am thinking blue screen as you merge onto a busy highway. The Release doesn’t however (fortunately?) mean what it says. What it means is that the 360 is installed in the car and when parked you can use the vehicles controls (steering, brake, gas) to control the game console as you race through the game “Project Gotham Racing® 3”. I guess that is a neat enough concept (although I cannot imagine it being a good value). The problem however is that you wind up playing it on a 7″ LCD screen. Nothing like taking away the realism. If you want to have it real, then pop up the front hood and display a wide screen tv in front of the driver! Now that would be gaming of the arcade variety. Anyway, this will give whole new meaning to running to the corner store …

On New Years Eve this year, an extra second will be added to the year. What will you do with yours? I think it is amazing that the calendar, and modern clock are as precise as they are. As amazing as technology is, the wisdom of our ancestors continues to amaze me.

This is a great tutorial on how to build a Firefox Extension. I am tempted to try one myself!