Here are some observations I made:

• Jordan Kent looked amazing; he made a lot of really good catches way down the field.
• Butler dropped quite a few passes
• Aaron Curry blew past Justin Forsett twice in a row in 1-on-1 drills
• Hasselbeck looked to be having troubles throwing deep balls; they tended to float in the air a lot and receivers were slowing down to wait for them to come back down
• Hasselbeck’s first pass in the scrimmage got picked by Josh Wilson and it looked like it would have gone back for a TD
• Mike Teel was overthrowing receivers badly. He’s still a bit rough to be sending out there.
• Deon Grant went down during the scrimmage and had a trainer looking at his thighs
• Seneca looked solid, maybe held onto the ball too long in some cases
• Our O-Line was getting owned badly by blitzes. Anytime we did a secondary blitz, there was no answer and it led to a sack

And here are some pictures. You can see the amount of rain coming down in a lot of them.

I just discovered this site today. It does a great job of keeping track of your favorite bands and when they’re coming to town. Previously I tried to use ticketmaster for this, but that really only works for bands that play in venues like the Showbox or larger. Setup of my account was a breeze: it takes your iTunes export and grabs all your bands from that. You can filter those bands by how many songs you have of theirs and then pick individually.Then you can pick how often you want the site to email you about new shows.

It also has connections to Pandora and lastfm, so you can have your account auto-update as your tastes change.

One note is that I found the site a little slow to navigate, but for my purposes, I’ll be more relying on the email than the site itself.

In case you haven’t heard, there was a national election in Iran on Friday and Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a landslide right after the polls closed. Then people started noticing that the results were announced before it was even possible to count all the votes. The people there have been protesting on the streets since, while the opposition leader that ran against Ahmadinejad is under house arrest. The Iranian government has been attempting to stop all news reports and images from coming out of the country, but in today’s world, that’s a tall order. Videos have made their way to the internet that shows just how big the protests are:

It will be interesting to see if this is the start of real change in Iran away from theocracy or if this is another Tienamen Square where the government just cracks down ever worse afterwards.

Here are the pictures in a gallery:

Current inhabitants:

• 8 neon tetras
• 3 pygmy corydoras catfish
• 1 honey gourami
• 1-2 amano shrimp
• A bazillion pond snails

Current plants:

• Java fern
• Anubias nana
• Dwarf hairgrass
• Amazon sword
• Cryptocoryne wendtii
• Dwarf babytears
• Pygmy chain sword
• Elodea
• Amazon frogbit
• Water wisteria
• Micro sword
• Rotala indica

A while ago my Netflix account was switched over to the new Silverlight player instead of the Windows Media Player version that worked great before. In a word, it sucks. The quality is a lot blockier than before; there is a crapload of screen tearing, and it doesn’t stop your screensaver/monitor power saver from turning on.

Fortunately, the last one is correctable. I was perusing the Netflix forum when I found this app. It acts as an entry into Internet Explorer and turns off the screensaver for you. Now if I could just find one that forces vsync to turn on for the Silverlight player, I’d be set.

http://netflix.timbot.net/Publish.htm

Currently in Mexico City, 60 people have died from this new strain of swine flu. About 8% of people that have been infected there have died. This isn’t in some backwoods part of Mexico with crap healthcare.  This was in Mexico City. For comparison, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that shortened the average lifespan of the US citizen by 10 years had a mortality rate of 2.5%. In the US, 8 people have been infected with swine flu; 7 have recovered; 1 is too early to tell. This may be that the medical care is better in the US, but it could also be an entirely different strain. If it is a different strain, then this number could have no bearing on the Mexican version.

The Mexican cases have been resistant to shotgun-blast type vaccines like Tamiflu and it takes a while to manufacture a targeted vaccine, so it looks like it’s already developed immunity to general flu vaccines. Flu pandemics have a habit of targeting the healthiest people too.  During the Spanish Flu pandemic, healthy people in their 20s died when their immune systems went into overdrive, speeding up the virus’s course. Pneumonia was also a very common cause of death with people infected with the virus. In Mexico today, the group that is showing the highest rate of infection is people aged 25-45.

I wouldn’t suggest taping up your home or wearing a medical mask when shopping at the mall, but keep a close eye on the spread of the virus. Don’t travel to any of the affected areas in Mexico or the US.  If you come down with flu symptoms, do NOT go to work.

Here’s my college report on Avian Flu for some light reading: Avian Flu Report

And an excerpt from my report:

The H5N1 subtype of avian influenza is
particularly dangerous due to its ability to
change more rapidly than other strains. This
characteristic is due to its capability of easily
infecting other animals besides birds. When the
virus infects other animals, they could be
carrying other viruses that would not be present
in birds. One of the animals that can pass
influenza easily to humans is pigs. After the
initial outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1918, the
virus infected the pig population and now the
versions of the flu that infect pigs can be easily
transmitted to humans. Since modern pig flu
viruses can easily infect humans, a pig infected
with two strains could create a strain capable of
conducting human-to-human infection

“Leading scientist Stephen Hawking is “very ill” in hospital, his employer Cambridge University has said.”

If Hawking’s ALS has finally caught up with him, then this could be a sad moment for science. His contributions to physics and astronomy, as well as his perseverence in battling the odds have made him a cultural icon. Even my parents would know who he is. The part of his life that impresses me the most is his sense of humor even when he’s almost entirely paralyzed. He took time out to guest star on TV shows and write a book that introduced relativistic principles to normal people (I highly suggest reading A Brief History of Time. It was one of the reasons I got into physics in highschool)

Omidreza Mirsayafi

I asked: When will we understand the meaning of freedom?
I answered: When our wisdom can be delivered from ignorance, selfishness and foolishness.

-Mirsayafi

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12116017

An Iranian blogger who posted “insults against Iranian leaders” died in prison, after being administered tranquilizers and never being taken to a hospital.  It’s stories like these that make me sad for those countries that don’t have the freedoms that we all take for granted here in America.  At the same time, it’s uplifting to see the rest of the Iranian blogs rally around his death.  It’s one of those moments where you wonder at what point will the people of this country show their leaders that this oppression can’t go on any longer.  Hopefully soon.

Digg just did a great interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and my respect-o-meter for Trent has gone up after this.  For how big of a celebrity he is, he seems aware of the world that is changing around him.  It’s nice to know that some bands out there are embracing the technological revolution rather than attempt to fight the tide. It’s also interesting to hear an insider’s account of how the music industry operates.

Maybe I’ll check out NIN next time they’re in town.

I’d say I was surprised, but this is from the creators of the berries and cream commercial…