Archive for December, 2008

The secret life of a space shuttle

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

I’ve mentioned the Big Picture blog before, but last Monday’s post warrants another mention. The pictures document a complete prep/launch/land cycle for the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Looking at all the pictures and reading the captions takes a few minutes. If you don’t have a few minutes, at least look at this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one.

Currently, the plan is to retire the space shuttles in 2010. Orion isn’t scheduled to be ready until 2014. However, there are various proposals out there to extend the life of the space shuttle program and/or speed up the development of Orion.

No punting and onside kicks

Monday, December 29th, 2008

The Arkansas 5A state champion football team didn’t punt and used onside kicks 75% of the time. The coach claims his madness is backed up by statistics. Interesting stuff.

I could have been a football coach in another life. I find all the scheming fascinating. Unfortunately it didn’t work out in this life because high school coaches don’t make enough and college and pro coaches have to be married to their jobs.

Our Christmas

Monday, December 29th, 2008

The Pharr family had an enjoyable Christmas despite some sickness. Including the weekend before Christmas, Christmas Day, and the weekend after, we attended seven family Christmas functions and missed another due to a conflict. It was good to see everyone.

We stayed in Oxford Christmas Eve night so the boys could open their presents here. We got Luke a tricycle and an “alphabet train,” and a few smaller things. Staying true to my last minute reputation, I stayed up until nearly 2am putting toys together. The look on Luke’s face when he saw everything was well worth it though. Of course I captured it on video, which I may try to post one of these days. He hasn’t quite figured out the tricycle, but he’s getting there.

Shortly after he finished trying out all his gifts, Luke started feeling bad. A fever, sore throat, cough, and runny nose ensued. The fever finally abated Sunday morning and this evening he was mostly back to his old self. Of course, now Liam has it, though thankfully it hasn’t hit him nearly as hard as it did Luke. I’ve got a sore throat and some congestion, but nothing too bad.

Unfortunately, Luke had to miss a couple of Christmas gatherings because he was sick. Luckily, Cassie’s mom was able to keep him, so the rest of us were able to go.

In addition to what we got him for Christmas, Luke received an art easel, his first Lego set (Duplo-sized), a play kitchen, a set of Ikea table and chairs for his room, and a kid-friendly MP3 player. We’re hoping the kitchen will give him something to do while we cook. He loves to play with pots, pans, and utensils and always wants to “help” when we’re cooking. Obviously I’m excited about the Duplo blocks.

I got some fun “toys” for Christmas too, which I’ll be posting about soon.

The 29th Annual Lafayette County Bowl Pick

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Two years ago I participated in the Lafayette County Bowl Pick. I didn’t last year, but I’m back in it again this year. To play, you pay $20 and pick a winner for each of the 34 bowl games. The score of the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma serves as the tie breaker. The winner gets 80% of the pot, second place gets 15%, and third place gets 5%. There were 576 entrants this year, so that means the winner will get $9,216, second place $1,728, and third place $576. Yes, I realize I’m not likely to win, but it’s fun, and it makes watching even the mediocre bowl games more interesting.

My research primarily consisted of reading some bowl picks on ESPN.com and looking at schedules. I spent a total of an hour and a half making my picks, so I’m not going to be able to claim much skill in the case that I do well.

So far I’ve picked 8 of the 11 bowl games correctly, putting me in top 54 or the top 9%. No one has picked all 11 correctly, only 1 person has picked 10 correctly, and only 8 people have picked 9 correctly, so making these picks is a little harder than you might think.

A couple of my picks that went the wrong way have been very close. Troy lost to Southern Miss in overtime by having a relatively short field goal blocked in the New Orleans Bowl. North Carolina lost 30-31 to West Virginia in the Meineke Bowl.

Because someone will ask, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I did pick Texas Tech to beat Ole Miss in the Cotton Bowl. I’ll be cheering for Ole Miss, but the reality of the situation is that we’re unlikely to win. It could happen, but the odds are against it.

As I mentioned, the score of the championship game serves as the tiebreaker, and I picked Florida to beat Oklahoma 34-27. It could really go either way, but I picked Florida to win because I want them to win. I noticed that some people played twice, turning in identical sheets with the exception of the championship game pick and score. That’s a good strategy, but I’m too cheap.

I’ll post a couple of updates as the bowl season progresses.

Oxford gets a second theater, for the second time

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

According to Friday’s Oxford Eagle, the former Screen Works theater on Sisk Avenue will be reopened as “The Amp” by a new management company. Unlike Screen Works, which competed directly with the Malco, The Amp will show second-run and independent films. And yes, they’ve already applied for their liquor license. I’m assuming they will serve food like Screen Works, not just nachos and hot dogs like most theaters. They plan on opening soon, possibly as early as the end of the month. While the Mrs. and I don’t get many chances to go to the theater these days, it’ll be nice to have another option.

In other Oxford news, we’re getting a Chick-fil-A on West Jackson. Presumably it’ll be open by the time the students return in the fall. Also, the Country Club of Oxford/Grand Oaks is being foreclosed on. Be at the courthouse steps on December 30th at 11am. You might get a good deal.

Make Magazine subscription?

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

Would anyone care for a free subscription to Make Magazine? It’s time for me to renew, and they’re letting me give a free subscription to a friend. Send me an email with your mailing address if you’re interested. I’ll post a comment when the subscription’s been taken.

Comment feed

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

My blog doesn’t get a ton of comments, but the few that get posted tend to be interesting. If you’re looking for an easy way to see all the comments, subscribe to this RSS feed.

If you’re still not using a feed reader, it’s time you started. I recommend Google Reader. The BBC has a good page explaining RSS.

Middle Eastern Geography

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008

The other day I ran up on this map of the Middle East. You have to drag the name of the country onto its place on the map. I did okay on my first try, but not as well as I would have hoped. Mauritania? Isn’t that an island? Or is that Mauritius? Mali? Isn’t that somewhere in Africa? Kyrgyzstan? Forget about it.

Of course, now I know where all of them are. How did you do? Let me know in the comments.

Ole Miss going to the Cotton Bowl

Monday, December 8th, 2008

As I predicted, Ole Miss will be going to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. There was some hope we would go to the Capital One Bowl, which is a slightly better bowl (and easier this year), but I always thought it was unfounded optimism. Our opponent will be No. 8 Texas Tech, who was, at one time, No. 2 in the country and thought to be headed for the national championship game. They will certainly be the favorite, but I think we have a good shot at an upset. The team seems to be very confident and that counts for a lot. Despite not playing this week, Ole Miss moved up two spots in the AP poll to No. 20, and moved into the BCS poll at No. 25.

No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Florida played for the SEC championship this past Saturday in Atlanta. Florida beat them 31-20. Oklahoma beat Missouri 62-21 in the Big 12 championship. Florida and Oklahoma will now face each other in Miami for the national championship. I’ll be pulling for Florida, but it should be a good game. I think the BCS guys got it right by picking Florida and Oklahoma, even though Texas beat Oklahoma and has the same record as them. But, we’ll never really know for sure. Too bad we don’t have a playoff.

Incidentally, some guys at ESPN put some thought into how this season would end up if college football had an eight team playoff to decide the national champion. It sounds good to me. Also, here’s a list of all bowl games.

Tommy Tuberville, a former Ole Miss coach, resigned from Auburn last week. Something’s a little fishy though, as the school will be paying him his $5 million buyout, even though he wasn’t “fired.” Auburn’s athletic director said it was “the right thing to do.” Really? You couldn’t find anything better to do with $5 million? This has led some to speculate that Tuberville was actually fired. His mom says he was. If he was, Auburn made a dumb move. Tuberville is a good coach. Houston Nutt doesn’t care. He and his assistant coaches got a raise out of the deal.

Football news should be slow for a few weeks until some decent bowls get going. Go ahead, celebrate, James.

Luke and Liam update

Monday, December 8th, 2008

I’ve been meaning to post a “Luke and Liam update” for a while. I haven’t posted anything in nearly a month and a half. I’m sure I’ll forget something, so you can expect another one soon.

Liam will be 4 months-old on the 19th. He’s getting quite big. He goes back to the doctor for a checkup next month, and I’m eager to see how his weight and length compare to Luke at that age. He’s doing a good job of holding his head up, but he’s not quite ready to sit up yet. He spends most of his time in his bouncer or his swing. He loves to smile and squeal, particularly when you talk to him up close. Thankfully, he’s been getting up just once during the night lately, though he occasionally gets up twice.

He’s still having some spit up issues. I got spit up on twice while I was at home for lunch today. We’ve tried changing his formula to Nutramigen (a.k.a. “the expensive stuff”) with no luck. Today we started trying some medicine that his pediatrician gave us. Hopefully it will do the trick. It’s obviously not effecting his health though, as he’s getting chubby.

Luke turned 18 months-old on the first. He’s getting into everything. He’s doing lots of climbing. It’s not too terribly uncommon to turn your back for a second and turn around to find him on top of the kitchen table. Doors are no longer a problem for him. Light switches are no problem, though they do require “tippy toes.” He’s found the power button on my computer, and likes to exercise it. Strangely though, it scares him when the computer actually powers off and things get quiet.

Until about a month ago, Luke was still getting 8 oz. of whole milk 3 times a day; once in the morning, once after his nap, and again before going to sleep. We kept talking about cutting him back, but never did. About a month ago he got a stomach virus of some sort, and we switched him to Pedialyte for a few days. When he got better, he never really showed a big interest in getting his bottle at his usual times, so Cassie took to opportunity to cut him off. He occasionally fusses when Liam gets a bottle, but it’s pretty rare. For a few weeks, you could tell he was getting a little skinnier. Slowly but surely he’s developed a healthy appetite for a lot of things he didn’t eat before. I guess he was always too full of milk to get too adventurous. Now he eats pretty much continuously, and has gotten his little pudge back.

Luke has recently taken up playing the harmonica. I used it to distract him one night when he was fussy and he’s been playing it ever since. It took him a total of about five minutes to figure out how to work it. Sometimes it’s hard to get away from him.

We went to the Oxford Christmas parade last Monday night. We got a parking spot at Abner’s around 4:50pm. The parade didn’t start until 7pm, but we wanted to be sure we had a spot near the street so Cassie and Liam could watch from the car. In the meantime, we walked up to Square Books to buy a Christmas present and then down the hill to Newk’s for supper. Luke and I stood out at the street for the parade. He thoroughly enjoyed it. It was in the high 30’s, but we bundled him up good and it didn’t seem to bother him.

Cassie’s dad is a supervisor back in Tishomingo County, and he had a float in the Tishomingo city parade this Saturday. Luke rode on the float with Cassie’s mom, and Cassie, Liam, and I watched from the street. I’ll post some pictures that I took when I get a chance.