Gary
3/31/04
Last full day of the Minnesota Visitation! First off was an early morning gardening project: Grandma and Marsha built a low retaining wall against the west side of the garage with some blocks they got yesterday at Menards. In the afternoon we all went to Eyes of the World, then next door to Open Harvest, and then across town to Sugar Plum for more candy. At 4, Sam and Anna and I went to pick up Lindsey and Olivia, and our next stop was Toys R Us. Back to Grandma's for some Valentino's pizza; and then TV and Facts in Five in the evening. Thanks for driving down here, you guys -- safe trip back and let's do it again soon!

Yeah, those three were the bottom choices??? Something verrrry fishy here. PenBoy is too dumb to get it, but it was written all over John Steven's face: "Why those three and not me?" Anyway, Amanda: no, I didn't get your posting. I checked about 9 am, and again at 10 pm, and saw nothing from you except this note. --Gary

AAAaaaaaaggghhh! A whole week....! I managed to fix mine, by the way; turned out to be just a couple of dumb mistakes I was making. Windows XP is now up and running on my system. Looks good! --Gary

My computer has been more or less useless for the past three days. Started off innocently enough: I had been wanting to upgrade to Windows XP but was put off by the price -- something less than $200 most places. Then on Monday I had the sudden inspiration to call the computer shop here on the campus to see if they had a price break for staff. And they did. I asked how much, and he said $4.99. I said, "Like, four dollars and ninety-nine cents 499??" Yup. So I got it. So the price was right, but installing it has been unpleasant. The whole first night was one long frustrating affair, which turned out to be a bad CD! So I exchanged it the next day, and installed XP that night. But now 1) Windows doesn't recognize my video card or my monitor, so the display is pretty crappy; 2) Windows doesn't recognize my microphone input; 3) when downloading the XP updates from the Microsoft site(!) I somehow caught the MSBlaster virus, which now every time my virus checker cleans it out it magically re-appears (8 or 9 times so far!). It's still not running, and unless I am guided by the computer gods tonight and manage to fix everything I'll have to take it to the shop....

Anyway, see y'all tomorrow! :-) --Gary

Anyone who does not yet own the classic computer game "Rollercoaster Tycoon," your moment has arrived: The game is included free in boxes of "Golden Graham" cereal right now.

Not sure what the release date is, but the movie "Troy" is coming out soon (stars Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, and Sean Bean). Here's the website where you can watch the very cool trailer.

The three best performances: LaToya by far, then Amy, and then Fantasia.

I want Pencil Boy and Matt "Hair Club For Men" Rogers to go far, far away and never ever do anything relating to music again. But that probably won't happen.

Dang! I've got a meeting at 9:30, couldn't get on the road til 11 or so. Would you mind waiting dinner til, say, 9 pm...? This has really bummed me out -- feels like I slept through Christmas or something. I'm going to have to find an Irish restaurant tonight.... --Gary

I can't believe I missed CB&C night! I'm sure we discussed this and agreed to have it Wednesday night, not Tuesday. I mean, the countdown thing for a week has been pointing to Wednesday night -- all day today it said "tomorrow"!! Note that nobody called me until after dinner (which for me was some wilted leftover salad, a bowl of split pea soup, and a black cherry cola). I wuz robbed....! --Gary

Over the noon hour it was snowing heavily with big flakes, but it all melted as soon as it touched the ground -- no build-up at all. Now just getting the occasional flake or two. --Gary

I would love to place a chocolate bunny order with you, how do I do it?

Anna, why does Pete need a chaperone? And will this trip cut into your Lincoln time?

Well, so much for my front page! :-) I would've sworn you guys would get a snowday today... --Gary

Also, tonight "American Idol" starts at 7 and goes for two hours -- which means (not counting the 1 hour and 40 minutes of commercials) 20 minutes of actual show time!

The Sioux City webcam has been down all day I think, and now it is showing the inside of a stadium.

I looked for another SC cam for a possible look at the snow, but couldn't find any. --Gary

Wowza! Big storm! Not a flake here: just on-and-off sleety rain. Weather.com reports that in Sioux City "18 inches of new snow has fallen... With another 3 to 6 inches of new snow expected. Travel is discouraged across the I-29 corridor from Sioux City to Elk Point with numerous cars in the ditch." Stay inside, y'all! --Gary

Yeah, on the consumer end all it has been is higher bills and crappy service. By the way, my email seems to be working now, so everybody feel free to send in newsletter items, etc. --Gary

P.S. Just discovered my email isn't working either, so if you send in a newsletter item, it may be a while before I can access it and add it to this page....

The quick and easy way would simply be for each of us to post our predictions after Tuesday's show and before Wednesday's show. FWIW, I pre-picked three out of last night's four; but Pencil Boy was totally not in my cards. By the way, he did only get 22% of the votes phoned in, which means the voting must have been pretty spread out. Conceivably he won by only a few percentage points. ...Which makes me wonder what kind of "security" measures they have in place? I presume you can call in as often as you want; so what prevents some demented Pencil Boy fan from calling in over and over, all day long? --Gary

The judges had to know in advance who got picked by the voters, didn't they? Otherwise there could be an awkward moment if they chose someone who would later be "America's choice." The whole thing smelled kinda funny to me. Any selection process which chose that geek over the rightful winner(s) is very suspect -- just like the Florida election results. --Gary

That's a great idea for out-of-town teams who couldn't bring along their usual fans. ...Wonder if that idea would fly for Big Red games....? Probably not... --Gary

Sponsoring an out-of-town team; what a cool idea! --Gary

One more little wrinkle about Martha Stewart. I heard that this entire stock deal of hers was for a total of $51,000. She committed four felonies trying to prevent losing 51k.... Now, Martha is a billionaire. My calculator just showed me that if she put one billion dollars in a box (a box tastefully appliqued with dried flowers) under her bed -- i.e., forget about interest -- she could have spent $51,000 every day for the next 54 years before the box was empty. Sheesh!

Ouch! He's the Anti-Jared! --Gary

On Martha Stewart: I was wrong in my note below. I have since heard that the maximum sentence per count is five years, so if she were to get the maximum (which she won't) it would be 20 years in prison and a one million dollar fine. The legal experts I heard on CNN just now are saying she will very likely get some jail time; but it will be more like 12-18 months. They also said the length of the sentence is very dependent on how much responsibility you take for what you did, or how repentent you are. Which would explain, they said, why the words "I know I did nothing wrong!" suddenly disappeared from Martha's website yesterday. :-)

Funny you should ask! See the reviews page. --Gary

That was the way I heard it: For each count the maximum penalty is two (or three?) years and $250,000. I was amazed she got convicted at all; now I'll be amazed if she pays a fraction of that penalty. --Gary

Crime doesn't pay, Sam! They got her. It's the pen, the pokey, the hoosegow, the slammer, the big house, the Graybar Hotel. But not to worry: The maximum sentence she can get for this crime is 10 years in jail and a $1 million fine.... --Gary

Well, I just combed back through the old newsletters and couldn't find it anywhere. I could have sworn John sent in a note to the newsletter about it... Maybe it was an email to everyone? I don't think so. Anyway, it was many months ago so I'm sure the sign-up phase --unfortunately! -- is long over. --Gary

I was going to look this up, but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's on some previous month's newsletter here. I think John sent it in (correct me if I'm wrong). Back then a class action lawsuit had just been settled that declared the music CD industry had been systematically overcharging people for CDs for years. The settlement was, anyone who had purchased any music CD between (I'm making these numbers up) 1990 and 1998 was entitled to a share. And anyone who filled out the form on their website would get a share -- no proof of purchase necessary. I really didn't expect anything to happen [see my rebate experience below!], but I was wrong! --Gary

65% Donna
61% Gary
57% John
56% Amanda
53% Grandma
50% Marsha
50% Sean
49% Ryan
etc.

when really they should be like this:

56% Donna/Gary
51% John
50% Sean
49% Amanda/Marsha
47% Grandma
44% Zachary
etc.

The percentages are somewhat lower than they were, and the ranking has changed a little. Note the tie for first place (Donna and I have both made 83 correct predictions out of 148 total tries) and a tie for fourth place (Amanda and Marsha have each made 72 correct predictions out of 148 tries). Sean's "average" of 50% is based on this year only (this is the first year he played!).

All the Oscar standings have been re-computed, so take a look if you want. Yeah, I know, it's not a big deal. Unless we were playing this for money!

On another subject, it has been really cold here the past couple of days. The temps have been in the upper 30s, but it feels much colder. Kind of like the cold in San Francisco, which prompted the most famous quote Mark Twain never said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." But! In spite of the cold, for the past two mornings I have been awakened before the alarm went off by birds singing outside my window. Spring might be happening...?

Get Better Tristen!

Wish you guys could be here for Spring Break too!

I agree, though I did like the fact that, out of all the people who have auditioned and are trying out every week, he has been offered a recording contract! And when he was asked what kind of career he wants to move into, he said, "Well, if my recording career doesn't work out..." :-) For something that could have been highly embarrassing (remember that Star Wars kid who had to change schools, etc?), this has been really positive for him. --Gary

P.S. Get well everybody. Take drugs!