Weekend Eye Candy - StormWatch Edition

Nothing I know of is as fun as watching the local newsmedia freak out every time it rains. You'd think it was acid falling from the sky based on the breathless, panicked reports the guys in the field provide. The rest of the country can only roll their eyes.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Simple. As I write this, it's raining like hell outside - first time in as long as I can remember. While the news broadcasts are all a-twitter with news of the impending doom from above, I'm reminded of a different way that rain has been portrayed on screen - by Gene Kelley via "Dancing In The Rain".

Of course, Gene wouldn't exactly make it as Eye Candy. Fortunately, I have an appropriate substitute. All I know about her is that her name is Lisa, and she likes to dance in the rain. And since I like Lisa, that's all it takes ...

I'll take one moment to be serious. Most of us laugh at the way the rain is covered, and are pleased to see a little of the wet stuff falling from the sky, since it's nothing than a minor nuisance. But for those living in the burn areas of SoCal, where the vegetation has been burned away and there's nothing to hold up the hillsides, this kind of rain is pretty scary. There's been reports of some flooding, but no mudslides. Let's hope it stays that way ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 12:31 PM PST [link]

Your Tax Dollars At Work ... But Not For You

As a loyal American, I understand that taxes are a necessary evil ... the fuel that powers the beast that is the government, which is working to make my life better. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Far too often, a combination of career politicians worried more about their jobs and political gadflies worried more about their egos forget that in the end, they all work for me.

This tends to lead to some of the most asinine decisions you can imagine coming out of the government - the kind of decisions that would get any businessman fired. Here's another great example: converting existing carpool lanes to toll road.

Toll roads are nothing new to SoCal - they've existed in Riverside and Orange Counties for 20 years. Now LA County politicos - facing a mandate to decrease traffic on overclogged local freeways - want to use the toll road model as a "solution".

"Orange County has them and so does San Diego County, but we've never had toll roads," Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Marc Littman said. "This is another option for reducing congestion, improving mobility and generating additional revenues that we could use to improve public transit."

As if. Here's the problem with that theory: the money collected doesn't end up with the public - it ends up lining the pocket of the companies that are inevitably hired to oversee the toll roads. Much like the red-light camera debacle, only a small fraction of the revenue will end up available for the rumored "improved public transit".

Back when I was in college at UC Riverside, the 91 Freeway had a big wide dirt and grass median between the opposing lanes of traffic. On more than one occasion, that strip of earth saved my ass when I fell asleep during a late night run for home. Not long after, the median was replaced by toll lanes - run by a contractor, naturally. Did it improve traffic? Of course not. All it did was create additional capacity that allowed additional development at the far end of the freeway. More houses ... more people ... more traffic. Look at the 241 that cuts from the 91 south - through some of the most ecologically fragile lands in SoCal. The same thing is happening: more lanes means more access to build more houses to bring in more people.

It's the same bottom line we keep facing - but refuse to truly face. There are too many goddamn people here. We complain about the air quality, but won't limit the number of houses that can be built - and the number of people who can live here. We complain about the illegal immigrants, but we keep creating more and more menial jobs that only a desperate immigrant would take. We complain about traffic, but we won't limit the number of cars - we just keep coming up with dumbass solutions like this.

If you think that the problems of society today will be solved by politicians, you're dreaming - or running for office.

Posted by MarlinNut @ 07:25 AM PST [link]

As I Ever Was ...

I'm reminded of a line in a song by Toby Keith that goes like this:

I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

It's a line that's hard to sing, but easy to understand, particularly for those of us with a few years behind us.

There was a point in time when I could go all day and all night and not give rest a second thought. Those days are long behind me, but I can rise to the occasion - occasionally. Take Tuesday night. I got a call from a friend who needed help preparing a second hard drive for her laptop. It was 1:30AM by the time I drove her home, but she's a special friend who needed my help. I was as good once as I ever was.

What got me thinking of all of this was the recent effort to upgrade the forums here at SCMO. Over the life of the site, we've gone through several major refit periods. In each case, it meant a lot of time spent hacking code and making everything work. A decade ago, the thought of spending a couple of weeks up to my elbow in lines of code was exciting; now it's a drag - necessary, but a drag.

For a couple of weeks, I spent several hours a night preparing the old forums for conversion and adjusting the new code to make it more "SCMO-like". Thanks to Red Bull - something we didn't have the last time I had to do this - I got through it and now we have our newly-improved forums. I was as good once as I ever was.

Here's hoping it's a while before we have to go through that again ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 04:03 PM PST [link]

RIP Dr. Cade

Dr. J. Robert Cade died today in Jacksonville, FL at the age of 80. Never heard of him? Let me ask you this - what did you drink the last time you exercised? If it was Gatorade, you owe thanks to the late Dr. Cade.

Cade was a researcher at the University of Florida in the Sixties when he was asked a simple question by former Gators football coach Dwayne Douglas.

He asked, "Doctor, why don't football players wee-wee after a game?"

"That question changed our lives," Cade said.

Cade's researchers determined a football player could lose as much as 18 pounds -- 90 to 95 percent of it water -- during the three hours it takes to play a game. Players sweated away sodium and chloride and lost plasma volume and blood volume.

Using their research -- and about $43 in supplies -- they concocted a brew for players to drink while playing football. The first batch was not exactly a hit.

"It sort of tasted like toilet bowl cleaner," said Dana Shires, one of the researchers.

"I guzzled it and I vomited," Cade said.

The researchers added some sugar and some lemon juice to improve the taste. It was first tested on freshmen because coach Ray Graves didn't want to hurt the varsity team. Eventually, however, the use of the sports beverage spread to the Gators, who enjoyed a winning record and were known as a "second-half team" by outlasting opponents.

After the Gators beat Georgia Tech 27-12 in the Orange Bowl in 1967, Tech coach Bobby Dodd told reporters his team lost because, "`We didn't have Gatorade ... that made the difference."

The rest, as they say, is history.

Posted by MarlinNut @ 08:17 PM PST [link]

Upgrade Success!

Well, we survived the upgrade process, and the forums are now back up and running. From what I hear from the early users, it's pretty painless for them as well - and that was the goal. The URLs have been changed throughout the site, so if you hit the Marlin Club, Trip Reporter, or War Room link on the navbar to the left, you'll get the right forum. Hitting "Forums Home" will take you to the top level of the forums, what we used to call the "Offshore Fishing Forum". That was part of what bit the dust during the upgrade, along with the whole color scheme for the OFF. Everything is now integrated into the lovely teal of SCMO.

Some of the highlights of the upgrade:

- The program running the forums is now using a database instead of the old text files. That means that response in general is a lot faster - particularly if you're doing a search. Searches that used to take 30-40 seconds now take 2-3. A lot of good comes from the database, including the responsibity for backup transferring from me to the webserver. Happy about that, so long as they do their job ...

- We eliminated the "MC Classics" forum, primarily because the search engine makes finding old threads so much easier now. Also, having the duplicate threads in the MC Classics forum led to duplicate search results, which always bothered me.

- Two old features have returned. Back in the day, you could rate the topics to show those that you felt were valuable. We've restored this feature, so users will now be able to determine for themselves which threads are truly "classic". Also, users can once again subscribe to individual threads, so that when someone posts a reply they'll get an email notification. Restoring both of these features is a direct result of moving to the database-driven system, since the data will no longer clog up my webserver.

- Speaking of returns, we also rolled out the new "Marlin Club Archive". Back in the early days of the MC (pre-2001), we were using an old forum program that wasn't compatible with its successor. At that time, we weren't smart enough to preserve the old program - and it's valuable threads - and they were lost to history. Fortunately, through several different sources we were able to stitch together the files from several moments in time of the old MC, and have added them to the mix. The Marlin Club Archive will let you go back in time and read the questions and answers that were present on the board during 4 different periods between November of 1996 and June of 2000. Pretty interesting read ... we've all come a long, long way. You can reach the MC Archive from any page in the Marlin Club, or you can just cheat and go straight there.

- While most of the changes were to the forums, we also made some tweaks to the front page of the site. SCMO has always been like one of those houses with a really great front entrance, except that everyone uses the side door - in our case, the Marlin Club - to enter. So sometimes, I don't give the front door the attention it deserves. We freshened up the look, pulled out a couple of things that weren't really useful anymore (like the scrolling status that never changed and the screaming reel that tripped up most folks' security programs), and reorganized. Most importantly, we gave people a reason to use the front door again - a listing of the most recent topics from both the Marlin Club and Trip Reporter forums. Maybe folks will come in the right way once again - and remember to wipe your feet!

I still have a couple more behind-the-scenes tweaks to make to the site over the winter, but this is probably the only one that will impact the users so much. That is, unless I get a feather up my ass to make more changes ... and you never know ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 11:17 AM PST [link]

And Away We Go - Part IV

OK, first the good news. The data conversion was successful last night, and it looks like there are no major data issues to contend with. That, frankly, was my biggest worry - you haven't seen pissed off until you see a Marlin Club regular who can't find his favorite old thread.

Now comes the "fun" part - verification. I'll be spending most of the day going through the new threads, making sure nothing's broken that I didn't expect. I can already see there was some duplication of old threads, but that's easier to deal with than missing ones. I also need to polish everything and make sure all the new links work before unleashing it on the rest of the world. And, of course, I need to put together a user primer on the the things each returning poster needs to do the first time they log in.

All in all, though, things are good. The risky part is behind us, and we're sprinting towards the finish line. Could be up and running by this evening, although I may wait until tomorrow just to be prudent.

UPDATE - 8:40PM: OK, we're done! I've gone through the forums and the threads, and cleaned out all the problems. I could open things back up tonight, but I'm beat and really want a chance to look at it through rested eyes. So plan on the new forums being online around noon PST tomorrow - and a couple of other neat new things as well ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 09:25 AM PST [link]

And Away We Go - Part III

Well, the last of the turkey and gravy is behind us - finally. I swear, I've had every kind of turkey product imaginable short of turkey popsicles in the last two days. Progress on the upgrade has been slow, in part because of the holiday festivities and the obligatory recovery time, but also because of lots of unforeseen tasks. I've been having to hand-edit a lot more files than I had planned, primarily to allow us to restore the "Rate a topic" feature. Unlike the old system, where topics went into an "archive mode" after a certain time, all the topics can remain live in our new forums. That means there's no real need for a "MC Classics" forum, but it also means we need a way to identify the "classic" threads - hence the return of topic rating. Of course, this version of the program uses a different rating system than the old one did - naturally - so I have to go into the files for every thread that ever got a rating vote and remove the data ... by hand. Pain in the ass, as you might imagine. Good news is that I've finished all the forums save the Marlin Club, and I expect to have that done in the next few hours. After that, we try the data conversion - the key to our success - so if you want to say a prayer, this would be the time!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 11:21 PM PST [link]

And Away We Go - Part II

Believe it or not, I'm still backing up files. Long, slow process. Fortunately, there's football and turkey and beer to get me through the boredom. Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 01:48 PM PST [link]

And Away We Go!

OK, the great forum upgrade project has started in earnest. At 6PM, we took the old forums offline, and we're currently making a backup copy ... just in case. You might recall that was this very process of backing up the current forum program that drove the need to upgrade - it took three days last time. But it has only been a few weeks since the last backup, and there aren't nearly as many files that have changed. I'll be surprised ... and pissed ... if it takes more than a couple of hours.

UPDATE - 7:49PM: So much for optimism ... there are over 5,000 files that need backing up! Gonna be a long night ...

UPDATE - 3:08AM: Make that a really long night - just checked ... it's only about halfway through the backup process ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 06:15 PM PST [link]

A Heapin' Helpin' Of Holiday Eye Candy

We're headed into a holiday weekend here at the Home Office, and that means no postings (other than the updates on the upgrade, of course!) That also means you have 4 full days to stare at the same eye candy. That makes the challenge of picking just the right girl for such an important mission a very difficult task.

Fortunately, I don't have to go looking for just one girl, because they've all come to me. May I present the Victoria's Secret models, deplaning earlier this month at LAX. They're in town to hype the upcoming Victoria's Secret Lingerie Show, which has quickly become one of the largest webcast events of the year. And you can see why ...

I could list off all the girls in the photo, but where's the fun in that? So I'll leave it to you, our sharp-eyed readers, to take your best shot ad ID'ing the ladies. Just click on the image to see in full-size, and post your results!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 02:57 PM PST [link]

Happy Thanksgiving, You Turkey ... :-)

It's the Thanksgiving Weekend here in the States, an opportunity to take a break and (hopefully) pause to give thanks for the many blessings we all have in our lives. Here at the Home Office, it's going to be a working weekend as we roll out a lot of changes to the site - but more on that in a later post. For now, let's talk turkey ...

One of the lesser known facts about my life is that I'm a frustrated radio wannabe. Back in '80-'81, I did a two-year stint on the air at the campus radio station KUCR, followed by a 3-month internship at KCAL in the Inland Empire ("96-7 K-CAL FM ... Redlands, Riverside, Saaaaaan Bernadino ... ) . Ah, the memories.

It was my time at KCAL, and meeting the folks working there, that convinced me that the DJ life was probably not for me. The staff was a combination of young folks on the way up (or hoping to be - and included a young Cynthia Fox) and grizzled vets of the LA Radio scene on that long slide downward. If you remember Dr. Johnny Fever from Cinncinnatti's fictional WKRP, then you know what I'm talking about.

Actually, it was an item over at LARadio.com that got me thinking of the past. "WKRP in Cincinnati" was in many ways a spot-on parody of radio in the Seventies, and there were many memorable moments (I particularly recall the way they handled the real-life tragedy of fans getting trampled to death at a Cincinnati Who concert during the show's run). LARadio reminds us, though, of the famous Thanksgiving 1978 episode where the crew at the Mighty KRP learned a valuable lesson about everyone's favorite Thanksgiving fowl:

In it, news director Les Nessman, played by Richard Sanders, is on the air describing WKRP's publicity stunt - a helicopter is flying above Cincinnati, towing a banner that says "Happy Thanksgiving From WKRP." A flock of turkeys is dropped from the 'copter. Of course turkeys can't fly, and a panicky Nessman wails, "Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!" Station manager Mr. Carlson brushes the incident off by explaining, "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

The pained look on Carlson's face as he delivered that last line to Andy Travers was priceless.

May your blessings continue to be many!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 08:41 AM PST [link]

I Got Your Sports Rant Right Here ...

Took a bit of time away from the site upgrade process to take in a little sportage ...

- After watching the Patriots disassemble the Bills yesterday, two things are abundantly clear: only an act of God can keep them from the first perfect season in the NFL since 1972, and their coach Bill Belichick is the most hated man in the league. These guys have become the modern day Raiders, without all the a-hole players - just an a-hole coach. Never mind the surly look and the silly hoodie and all - this guy is out to stick it to the league. Never much of a people person, ever since the whole video spying thing it's been his mission to flip the bird to the rest of the NFL. How else can you explain going for it on fourth down - twice - when you're already up by 30? It's a shame - a team of great talents will be remembered for their dick of a coach.

- If it's possible to feel sorry for a guy who's gonna make $27 million for each of the next 10 years, it's A-Rod. He clearly wanted to remain a Yankee, but when uber-agent Scott Boras laid down the gauntlet by declaring their intention to opt out of the last three years of their contract, Rodriguez had no choice to follow. Imagine his shock when he found out that the Yankees wouldn't talk to him afterwards. In the end, though, he did the right thing - swallowed his pride, cut his agent out of the process, and got a deal done that would allow him to remain with the Yankees. Of course, it helps when you have friends like Warren Buffett to turn to for advice. Man, I'm running in the wrong crowd ...

- When you were doing your pre-season picks of must-watch games, I'm gonna bet that Kansas-Missouri wasn't on the list. And yet, there they are - numbers 2 and 4 in the BCS standing, and facing each other this weekend in KC. From what I hear, this is a bitter rivalry under normal circumstances - after all, there's a Kansas City, MO and an Kansas City, KS - but with a potential trip to the National Championship Game on the line it's supercharged. And I'll bet you can't even name the two schools nicknames (BTW - Jayhawks and Tigers). Must-see TV indeed.

- For the first time since it all came apart for him, Falcons QB Mike Vick made a good decision. Already under house arrest and awaiting a December 10 formal sentencing hearing, he opted to start serving his time today. What the heck - all he was gonna do was sit around the house thinking, "I'm going to jail ... I'm going to jail ... I'm going to jail ..." Think I'd have at least waited until after the Thanksgiving turkey, though ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 09:33 PM PST [link]

Weekend Eye Candy - Kickin' My Ass Edition

I mentioned on Wednesday about being owned by a workout DVD. I'm confidant that I'll get through to the end eventually, but I'm not gonna say it will be in this calendar year. If nothing else, though, the ride will be worth it if it helps me get in shape.

I thought the least I could do was give over this weekend's Eye Candy slot to the woman who is bringing me such pain - Jillian Michaels ... trainer to the stars and the person who's DVDs are hopefully going to help pull this wreck of a body back together. Well, the DVDs aren't going to do the work - I have to do that - but she provides the encouragement. If you've seen her on "The Biggest Loser", then you already know that she can be persuasive, and that's certainly the case on these workouts - she pushes you pretty good ... and I'm only on the beginner discs!

Anyway, when you hear me whine about my workouts - and you will - now you know who is to blame. Of course, if you see me in person and I'm looking much thinner, you'll also know who to thank.

Oh, and for what it's worth ... she doesn't look like that during the workouts. After all, the idea is to concentrate on your own body, not your trainers ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 06:09 AM PST [link]

Yeah, I'm Shocked ...

Remember Kyla Ebbert? She was the San Diego girl who was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight for wearing clothes that were deemend "too sexy". Now she's ended up where every girl with a big rack and a small bank account does - Playboy Magazine. My favorite part of the story? The one-time Hooters waitress, who was paid "less than six figures" for the layout, wants to be a lawyer - and doesn't see how this should hurt her chances.

"This was beautiful and classy. I don't see why it would affect a professional position," she said. "I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Must be a bitch trying to chance an ambulance in a miniskirt and stiletto heels ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 06:01 AM PST [link]

Trading Spaces Fan? Got Good News And Bad ...

I'll admit it - I'm addicted to home improvement shows. With as many projects as I have going at any one time here at the Home Office, I'm always looking for inspiration - especially on the cheap.

That's why I was an early fan of Trading Spaces, the British import that stormed the airwaves back in 2000. Before TS, all there really was in the home improvement genre was Bob Vila and This Old House, and let's face it - not a lot of appeal there for anyone but the hard cores. Then along comes Trading Spaces and their secret weapon - the perky Paige Davis. A stage actress and dancer by training, Paige didn't know which end of the hammer was which - which was half the fun! She was the glue that kept the show going, and it rocketed to the top of the cable ratings, leading literally dozens of shows that owe their existence to its success.

Along the way, though, Paige hit a bit of a bump in the road. Back in 2005, she got the boot from TS. At the time, it was announced that the show simply wanted to "go in a new direction" and would become hostless. But we all know what really happened. Pictures came out of Paige doing an impromptu striptease on stage at a charity benefit for the theater, and the folks at TLC panicked. They couldn't risk their perky host being seen in this way (never mind that she'd starred in the stage version of the raunchy musical "Chicago" ...) Paige was shown the door and the show went promptly in the toilet.

So once again, TLC is in a quandry ... do we cancel TS or simply revamp once again. Apparently, they've opted to return to the past, as it was announced today that Davis would return once again as the host of Trading Spaces, ending her 2-year exile. But fans looking for a return to the happy little show of the past are in for a surprise. Along with the return of Davis, it was also announced that production would be transferred to a new company - one known for producing some of the nastiest reality shows on TV. This quote should tell you all you need to know:

Trading Spaces' core concept -- two teams swapping homes and performing single-room makeovers on a $1,000 budget -- will remain the same. What will change is the types of teams that will be doing the swapping.

"The big difference will be in the casting," Smith, citing "a divorced couple" or "dueling mothers-in-law" as potential swap examples, told Variety. "People want to be more vested in the people they're seeing. The couples may not be next-door neighbors all the time. You might have a little more conflict and drama than you had before."

Among the other shows produced by A. Smith & Co. are Hell's Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, Paradise Hotel, Forever Eden, The Swan, and Skating with Celebrities - all on Fox. Should be an ... interesting ... ride ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 10:26 PM PST [link]

A Great Day For Celebrity Justice

I swear, some days this thing just writes itself ...

- Lindsay Lohan has owed LA County a couple of jail days for a couple of months stemming from the multiple DUIs she stumbled into before going in to her extended rehab in Utah. This morning, without telling anyone, she checked herself at the Lynwood Sherriff's facility (otherwise known as the Paris Hilton ... I just kill myself ... ) where she remained in custody for ... wait for it ... 84 minutes. No word yet on just why the quick release or how many of the two days it counts for. Man, I'll bet the press is pissed!

- Barry Bonds ... he of the "untainted" home run record ... finally got bitch-slapped by the Grand Jury that has been investigating whether he perjured himself by declaring no knowledge of steroids. They've only been meeting for what - 18 months? 2 years? - and finally dropped down an indictment. His Punkinheadedness is staring at 30 years in the slam if convicted. Not coincidentally, Greg Anderson, Bonds' trainer and the guy BB claims didn't shoot him in the ass with the clear ... or is the cream ... was released today after serving nearly a year in prison for refusing to roll over on Bonds. Loyalty is good, but what do you think is the likelihood Bonds would return the favor. You bet your ass ...

- And then there's the Juice. Despite the best efforts of his legal team (just who's paying for them, anyway ... the Goldman Trust?), the Vegas judge overseeing his preliminary hearing decided there's sufficient evidence that he and his two buddies committed kidnapping and robbery in their effort to retrieve some items Orenthal claims had been stolen from him years earlier. He's staring down the barrel at a possible life sentence for the kidnapping charge, and somehow, I don't think the juries are going to be quite so sympathetic this time.

More to follow, you can be sure ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 09:52 PM PST [link]

Sounded Like A Good Idea At The Time ...

I've spent most of my adult life wrestling with weight and fitness. I've never been much of an athlete, but have always been a world-class eater - two things that will bite you in the ass as you get older. And as I've gotten older, there's been more ass to get bit in. Periodically, I might get momentarily motivated - or embarrased - and try some short-term fix (remember the Tour de Stance and my flirtation with NutriSystem?). Ultimately, though, they never led to success.

Ask any recovering addict and they'll tell you about their moment of clarity - that point where they were finally able to see themselves for who and what they were, free of any pretense or filters. I'm a drunk ... I'm a junkie ... whatever the problem, the path to recovery requires you face reality.

Back in August, through a series of circumstances I'm not ready to go into here, I found myself at that moment. I was 48 years old, shaped like a pear, and weighed 272 pounds. In my moment of clarity several things became immediately evident to me:

- Life is a game.
- You never know when you'll need to be put into that game
- I was in no shape to compete in that game.

It wasn't dramatic, but it was humbling. More important, the moment managed to cut through all the crap in my life and let me recognize the way out. Many times, I'd tried to buy my way to health. Bottom line, though, is that there is no pill, no book, no diet plan, no supplement that can do the job for you. This is one of those things where you gotta just sack up and do what you gotta do - or die. Period.

So I made some changes. I pulled the bike out of the rafters (where, BTW, it had hung since the end of the TdS two years ago) and started riding. I put my second mountain bike on a stationary trainer and ride it twice a week as well (and mounted a MacMini over the handlebars so I can surf the web while I pedal - hey, once a geek ...). I started walking along the beach twice a week. Little steps in the right direction.

On the food front, I cut out fast food - a major sacrifice, I thought at the time - and force myself to either cook something healthy or eat something prepackaged - and preportioned. I developed a heck of a fondness for the salads they make at Trader Joes ... yum!

Over the first 6 weeks, I lost 30 pounds. Now, I let myself take pride in that accomplishment, but never forgot that it's just a drop in the bucket compared to where I need to be. That point was driven home about a month ago when I realized I was plateaued at 240. That was the real moment of truth. It's easy to sacrifice when you see tangible results, but how you perform in the absence of positive reinforcement is the real mark of success.

I'll admit - it was a tough time. It was harder to eat what I should instead of what I wanted, and not as easy to head out the door to exercise - especially when I lost my walking partner to her law studies. Then I lost a week of exercise during the fires when it was counterproductive. With all the distractions, though, I didn't gain any weight - but I didn't lose any, either.

Which brings us to now. I knew I needed to "kick it up a notch", as Emeril would say, but wasn't sure how. My law student friend has been seeing a personal trainer and loves it - and, as someone who can see the results, I can tell you it loves her, too. But between the price and the whole "personal" part, I just wasn't ready for that. Then it dawned on me that I could compromise - and it wouldn't cost a cent.

Back during my "trying to buy the cure" phase, NBC first ran the show "Biggest Loser". Despite the depressing title, it was actually a very uplifting show where teams of contestants work to lose weight. It was easy to see myself in some of them, and to take comfort in seeing the results - hey, if they could do it, I could! One of the trainers, Jillian Michaels, had a series of workouts on DVD, which I bought - and promptly stuffed in a drawer.

In the drawer no more. Monday, I dusted off the "Beginner's Workout - Frontside" and popped it into the DVD player. Hmm ... circuit training. Six circuits made up of three exercises each - two strength and one cardio. Three sets of each exercise per circuit ran 43 minutes. Heck, I could do this, I thought.

As if.

Sometimes, it takes more than good intentions. I made it through the first circuit and thought I was gonna puke. Halfway through the second, heart racing in a most unhealthy fashion, I waved the white flag.

OK, maybe not the start I wanted. But it's a start. Later tonight, I'll try again, and if I make it to the end of the second circuit, it's victory. A little victory, but victory nonetheless.

Posted by MarlinNut @ 06:08 PM PST [link]

Paris The Pachyderm Protector?

Remember back when Paris Hilton did her time in the slam? After getting out, she blanketed the media outlets with interviews where she said she'd found God and would dedicate herself to humanitarian work. Well, I can't speak for the Big Man, but apparently Paris has found her calling - drunken elephants. In Tokyo to whore ... er, hype ... something, she made statements about her desire to help elephants in Northern India who break into the native's stills and swill up the swill.

"The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them."

Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in the state of Meghalaya were electrocuted after drinking the potent brew and then uprooting an electricity pole.

"There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn't chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad," Hilton was quoted as saying.

This is funny on so many levels that I'm not sure where to start.

UPDATE: Big surprise - Hilton's people are claiming that she never made the comments. They probably did the damage control because of the wonderfully positive press it's been getting (I'm one of the nicer reviewers she'd had). Frankly, I knew it was false - way too many facts in that little speech of hers ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 08:47 PM PST [link]

Beam Me Up!

LA is famous for not having much in the way of iconic buildings - and regularly plowing under those few we do have - so it's good to be able to announce the reopening of a local landmark.

The LAX Theme Building was designed by the Disney folks to embody the new jet age at the start of the Sixties. Over the years, the airport has changed, as has the contents of the building itself. Most recently home of the Encounter Restaurant, the building showed its age in a spectacular fashion when a 1,000-lb chunk fell off back in March. For once, though, rather than simply knock it down, it was decided to renovate the structure - a process that is ongoing. But in a sign that the project is nearing completion, today marks the reopening of Encounter. Once again, LAX visitors can enjoy the best airport view there is while sipping a martini and staring at the lava lamps. And they don't take themselves too seriously, either ...

Please Note The Following: The League of Intergalactic Deep Space Council's Policies and Procedures cordially request that you please refrain from the splitting of Atoms, Appetizers, Entrees or Dessert Dishes.

Any Spacecrafts with an Interstellar Crew of Six or More shall have an Automatic Docking Fee of 18%.

I'll have to admit that for all the times I've been to LAX and driven past the base of the Theme Building, I've never been inside. Think I'll have to change that ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 08:43 AM PST [link]

Weekend Eye Candy - Overseas Edition

Here in America, we like to think that we've invented everything that's important and those we didn't invent, we perfected. Sometimes, we're right, but sometimes, we're spectacularly wrong.

I'm referring to, of course, the glamour model. There was a time when we had cornered the market on pin-up girls. Just ask anyone who served in WWII, and they'll tell you about the girl whose picture they had with them. 9 out of 10 will tell you it was a pinup.

Somewhere along the way, though, America got lost. Our little girls started to grow up believing they had to make something of themselves, or at least try to. The would-be pinups became actresses, or singers, or actress/singers ... or waitresses. No longer could someone make a living just for how they looked.

Not so in England, however. From Jordan to Katie to Keeley, the glamour model is alive and well across the pond. Thanks to a large number of publications that run pinup photos - including the Sun and their infamous Page Three Girls (thank you, Rupert Murdoch!) - you can maintain a fine lifestyle doing nothing more than posing seductively.

Never one to make a point without proof, we bring you Gemma Atkinson. Gemma has dabbled in acting and singing - and, of course, reality TV - but here she is doing what she does best: posing and pouting.

Hail, Brittania, indeed!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 02:34 PM PST [link]

No Word On If It Hit A Black Reidee ... :-)

Every fisherman has run across the occasional land bird that's blown offshore and is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to land on your boat and recharge. Most of us have not, however, come across the occasional land ... pig. But that's what a fishing boat found as they headed into Kahana Bay in Hawaii ...

"We just hooked up with a fish. As soon as we got it off, I looked over and Aaron was, I thought he was yelling 'fish, fish!' When I looked to my right, it was 'pig, pig!' There was a pig just swimming straight out to sea," fisherman Tyson Pualoa said.

"It looked like it was tired, like it was swimming all night or something. It was pretty much fatigued, ready to go down. We just threw a lasso over his head and yanked him on the boat," fisherman Lenny Mercurio said.

I'm happy to report the crew practiced "catch and release", letting the pig go into a nearby forest.

Gotta be some kind of good karma going on there ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 12:47 PM PST [link]

Stilettos + Steel = Surprise!

What with the Home Office being right in Hollywood's backyard, we tend to get and ear - and eye - full of celebrities on a regular basis. We understand that their job is to project an image for the public, and to assume that the public persona we see represents how those individuals really are is folly.

But every once in a while, a celebrity pops up who seems to be exactly what they seem to be. We first met Jessica Simpson a few years back when she and then-husband Nick Lachey starred in their own MTV reality show. From the start, we knew that Jess wasn't a bright bulb (remember when she thought Chicken of the Sea really was chicken?), but you couldn't help but wonder how much of it was an act.

Time has demonstrated that she really isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Despite the efforts of her manager-father, she just wasn't sharp enough to capitalize on the "fame" that her 15 minutes brought her. Now she's reduced to showing up in the celebrity blogs only when she does something dumb - like this: walking on a steel grate in stiletto heels. Clearly from the look on her face, she didn't realize what was coming, but can you say the same thing about those around her? I think not. Her friends and handlers had a pretty good idea what would happen when they said. "This way, Jess - right across the grate".

Thank God she has the body, 'cuz she'll never make it on the brain ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 07:59 PM PST [link]

Upgrade Update

Here at the Home Office, our tech staff is busy preparing for the big software upgrade we talked about on Monday. In fact, some decisions are starting to crystallize, and I wanted to share them with you.

First, and this is probably the most important to the folks reading this blog, is that we've decided to stick with the current blogging software package (Greymatter) for the time being. WordPress and some of the PHP-based alternatives we'd been looking are great, but the amount of work required to try and make them work as smoothly within the framework of our existing site was just more than anyone was willing to take on. We may make the change down the line once the other projects are complete, but there's no hurry.

We are, however, going ahead full speed ahead with the biggest project - the upgrade to the Offshore Fishing Forum. The new forum is online in a testing mode, and seems to be working fine. We'll be tweaking it a bit over the next few weeks to get it looking just the way we want, and I estimate the cutover date between the two forums will probably be right around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Related to that is our other big project - recreating some of our old forums from days gone by. Back before we were using the current software, there was a whole different Marlin Club board - one that was left behind during the upgrade, since there was no way to convert the data to the new format (not an issue this time, BTW). At the time, we weren't smart enough to archive an old copy, and it was lost to history. Fortunately, the folks at the Internet WayBack Machine are smarter than I am, and have archives portions of it. I'm going through the files now, and it's pretty interesting to see the ways things have changes both here at SCMO and in the larger fishing community over the last decade. I don't think we'll be able to recover the entire forum, but I think we'll have enough to make it a very interesting read!

More as it becomes available ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 05:58 PM PST [link]

Britney Gets Owned By ... The Eagles!

Good news has been few and far between for Britney Spears lately, what with losing the kids and running over the photog's foot and having to pay her ex's legal fees. The one bright spot on the Spears Horizon has been the impending release of her new album. While more a tribute to the producers twiddling the knobs than to Britney herself, the critics have given it grudginly decent reviews. Powered by those reviews, it appeared that her new album would top the Billboard Hot 200 Charts when it was released this week.

Yes, but this is the human train wreck we're talking about here - good things tend to avoid her, and such is the case once again. Also releasing a new album this week are rock legends Eagles, whose Long Road To Eden is their first full disc of new studio tracks since I was in college - the first time. However, the album is only available online or from WalMart, and was thus ineligible for the charts - until Billboard changed the rules today. The result? Brit takes second to a bunch of old farts.

Early SoundScan numbers have the Eagles taking the top perch on The Billboard 200 with 711,000 copies sold, with most sales moved by Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. For now, the only other U.S. outlets carrying "Eden" are walmart.com, where both physical copies and downloads are sold, and the Eagles' own Web site.

Britney Spears' new Jive album, "Blackout," which would have been No. 1 had the Eagles' data not been reported, will open at No. 2 with first-week sales of 290,000 copies.

The girl just can't catch a break. For what it's worth, I'm one of those 711,000 owners of "Eden" - and it's a great album. More than I'll ever be able to say about "Blackout", I suspect ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 05:57 PM PST [link]

Enquiring Minds Want To Know ...

While it feels sometimes like I'm the only one who reads these entries, I know better. How? Simple - I have a statistics program that tells all. For example,I had a visitor earlier this morning to the MB from Tehran, Iran. I expect to get one from the CIA later today ... :-)

Seriously, I can see how many visitors we get, and where in the world they come from. What pages they viewed, where they went to next - everything you could possibly want to know. So I can see from the numbers that every week, the MB is getting more and more visitors.

So why are we getting fewer and fewer comments? Part of what makes any blog interesting are the comments posted against the entries - some agreeing, some disagreeing. Otherwise, it's just me rambling on. Maybe that's the problem ... maybe as we get more and more visitors, I'm posting less and less interesting entries and no one wants to comment. Perhaps. I'll keep doing my part and try to be more interesting, but you gotta do your part too and comment!

Posted by MarlinNut @ 09:49 AM PST [link]

Changes A'Comin' to SCMO ...

Long-time visitors to this site know that it's a one-man show - the only thing standing between SCMO and internet oblivion are me, a Macintosh and a couple of cans of Red Bull. That said, it's always been important to me that the site be as professional as possible, and like the Great and Powerful Oz I spend a lot of time making sure you can never see the little man behind the curtain.

Three times in our storied history, the site has gone through significant upgrades. The first time was back in '96, when I decided what was at that point a school project was going live beyond my educational needs. The second was in 1997 when we went big time and became marlinnut.com, and the last was in 2002, when we rolled out the site you see today. Periodic upgrades and new features have been added over the years - like this blog - but the code driving the site is now 5 years old.

It might not seem like it, but 5 years is a couple of generations in Internet years. Much of the technology that was cool and cutting edge in '02 is old and creaky in '07. Every winter, I contemplate the need to upgrade and evaluate the benefit. For the last couple of years, I've been able to talk myself out of it. But not this time.

Part of my job as diligent webmaster is to maintain a disaster recovery system - copies of critical files that can be used to recreate the site should the doody smack the blades. MarlinBlog readers will recall an incident last year that drove home the need for just such a plan. If your site is made up of mostly static or unchanging pages, it's no big deal - you have the copies on your local hard drive anyway. But if you have a dynamic site like SCMO, where there are new MarlinClub postings constantly being added and other interactive features being utilized, you need to regularly back up those new files from the server, creating a local copy.

I did just that last week, when I decided to back up the files that make the Offshore Fishing Forum tick. It'd been a couple of months since I'd done it - a serious breach of webmaster protocol - so I expected that there'd be a few new files on the server. A few - right. Try over 15,000 thousand. It took a full three days to create a full backup - and that was all the incentive I needed to look to upgrade.

Most of our interactive features here at SCMO - the OFF, the MB, OGRRS, etc - use programs written in PERL. It's an easy language to learn, and lets me modify existing programs to work seamlessly with others here at SCMO and to maintain a consistent look and feel to the site. The down side, though, is that most PERL scripts save their data in the form of text files on the server. For example, when you post a message over at the Marlin Club, that message is saved as a file. There's another file that saves the information about who posted it ... another about the forum it's posted in ... another with configuration settings ... and on and on. For a medium-sized forum like ours, the technology isn't overwhelmed, but its close. As you increase the traffic and number of users, you risk data collision - something a system like ours doesn't handle well at all. That's why higher traffic sites like Allcoast and Bloody Decks have moved away from this method to ones that use a database back end to manage their forums. Databases handle multiple users seamlessly with no risk of data collision - and no loss of data. What's more, all you have to do is back up the database regularly - no more thousands of files.

What's that all mean, you ask? Easy - we're getting out of the stone age. In upcoming weeks, you'll see new versions of both the Offshore Fishing Forum and the MarlinBlog that will take advantage of database-based systems.

Now, I know many of our users fear change, and I'm sympathetic to that. For our forums, I've opted to go with the latest version of the same software that currently runs our forums - DCForum. It's database-driven, but continues to function in a way that will be familiar to our current visitors. There's a downside to that decision, in that the software is no longer being developed, so there won't be any upgrades to it in the future. But I'm pretty sure this is our last round of upgrades anyway ...

The other item to change will likely be at the MarlinBlog itself. I'll admit I absolutely love the Greymatter software that runs the MB. It's very easy to customize, I love the layout, and it has a great grass-roots group of folks supporting it for the future. But like the old version of DCForum, it uses text files to store information, and that means the whole backup issue once again. So I'm looking at WordPress, a database-driven blogging package, as a possible replacement. One thing that makes WP appealing is that it has a utility that will convert all the existing MB posts made with Greymatter over to the WP format - no loss of data. But formatting is a bitch, and integrating it into the site will be a major challenge.

None of the changes will happen overnight, and everyone will get fair warning. Just wanted to pass along the latest and get everyone looking forward to the future. More as it becomes available ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 04:04 PM PST [link]

Is It Monday Already? Must Be Time To Rant

Seasons ending as others start ... no better time to be a hard-core sports fan!

- Seldom do the big games live up to the hype, but yesterday's Colts-Patriots game certainly did. A grueling defensive battle early ... mid-game corrections ... crucial mistakes ... a valiant comeback. All you could have wanted, and no one walks away a loser ... but one team takes a loss. Two things are apparent from this game ... the Colts are a lot closer to the Patriots as a team than most of the pundits thought, and there's nothing standing between New England and a perfect season. They overcame both a sub-par performance by Tom Brady and a stingy Colts defense to pull out a victory that seemed impossible with only half the final quarter remaining. But that's what championship teams do, and there's no doubt this is the championship team. It's just a matter of time.

- Those who opted to pass on the Vikings-Chargers game - understandable considering the matchup - missed out on not 1 but 2 NFL record-setting performances. Adrian Peterson, obviously fully recovered from the injuries that dogged him at Oklahoma, blasted for a single game record 296 yards to eclipse Jamal Lewis' previous record by a yard. He did it with an amazing ease, too - straight at and past the defense. Not a lot of side to side here; he was all north and south. As amazing as Peterson's performance was, my favorite moment came at the end of the first half. The Vikings tried a 57-yard field goal with seconds remaining, but it was short of the mark. Antonio Cromartie, waiting at the back of the end zone, caught the ball over his shoulder on the fly - with no more than the width of a shoe between himself and the back of the end zone - and returned it for what goes in the book at a 109-yard touchdown, tying the NFL record. Those of us who saw it will always know that it was really 109.9, though ...

- Don't think it's a big deal that Joe Torre is taking over as manager of the Dodgers? The Blue Crew has had a lot of press conferences out at the Ravine, every one of them in the Stadium Club. But the media crush for Torre's introduction was so great that it was moved to centerfield to accommodate all the cameras. Now Torre can't pitch, hit or catch, and admits he doesn't even know his players yet. But the cachet he brings is undeniable, and having Don Mattingly and Larry Bowa along as coaches won't hurt. This doubtless won't be a long reign - I'm guessing no more than 3 seasons - but look for Torre and the Dodgers to groom someone to take over the reigns while re-establishing the prestige that has been too long gone from the Dodgers.

- Wow. I knew that Notre Dame was bad, but losing to Navy - a team that hadn't beaten them since the early '60s? Makes you wonder just how long Charlie Weis will keep his job - notice how no one's calling him an offensive genius any more (especially with the way the Pats are clicking without him)? But then, how bad do you have to feel if you'e UCLA ... the one team the Irish managed to beat ... Ouch!

- The baseball owners are meeting this week, and there is significant talk of instituting some kind of instant replay to "assist" the umpires. This is always a topic of discussion, but it took on greater meaning when the Rockies beat the Padres in their 1-game playoff on what proved to be a bad call by the home plate umpire. Call me old school, but I'd rather have the occasional bad call than have cameras looking over the umpires' shoulder constantly and the disruption of the game flow by replay reviews. Unlike other sports, baseball umpires are full-time employees, so baseball should instead look at training and grading to insure they have the best possible calls. Baseball has always been different than other sports - no clock, for example. This is one more case where they should follow their own path rather than the herd.

Posted by MarlinNut @ 03:13 PM PST [link]

Weekend Cat Eye Candy

Frankly, I'm disappointed.

Normally, Halloween means lots of costumes and, Hollywood being Hollywood, lots of pictures of actresses in sexy costumes. This year, for some reason, the number was way down. Now, there are a lot who are pregnant or in rehab or otherwise occupied, but c'mon - there should still be lots to choose from.

Alas, that's not the case, and this is the best we could come up with. Somewhere under all the makeup is model Heidi Klum, who hosts her own Halloween party each year. OK, so maybe not the sexiest costume ever, but props for all the extra effort (notice the wiskers and cateye contacts).

Hey, just be glad I didn't use a picture of Britney Spears and her costume. She didn't know it, but she dressed as a Human Train Wreck ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 02:45 PM PST [link]

The Juice Gets Owned

Let's play pretend for a second. Let's say you're an FBI field agent and someone comes to you with a wild story - one that just couldn't be true, could it? According to this guy, O J Simpson - America's Favorite Shoulda-Be Felon - is planning a sting to get back some sports memorabilia he believed to be stolen from him. And it gets better - the Juice wants to televise the whole thing!

You're the FBI agent, and you know what Simpson is planning is probably illegal. You also know that he skipped on a double murder charge, and this could serve as the justice so many feel he deserves. What do you do?

Well, if you're the LA FBI agent who was notified of the pending sting three weeks before it happens, apparently you do nothing.

Dealer Thomas Riccio told FBI agents August 21 that Simpson wanted to televise the operation as he confronted a collector who was peddling thousands of pieces of Simpson's memorabilia.

"I went along with O.J.'s plan," Riccio told the AP on Friday. "It was a self-organized sting operation. Except for the final result, with him bringing people who had guns. I knew nothing about that."

The documents said Riccio described Beardsley as a fanatic and said Riccio contacted Simpson about the items. Simpson said his belongings were stolen from his Florida house by his former agent, Mike Gilbert, and others who had worked for him.

"Riccio and Simpson want to do a television broadcast confronting Beardsley regarding the items that were stolen," one report said. "Simpson wanted Riccio's assistance in setting up the operation and helping obtain interviews for Simpson through various media outlets after the fact."

What a tool ... or fool ...

Folks who have been disgusted by Simpson and his cavalier lifestyle have hoped he'd find a way to step on his own dick, and it appears he has. All of his co-conspirators have rolled over and are helping the feds, and the feds let him have just enough rope to hang himself.

And there's no Johnnie Cochran to bail him out this time ...

Posted by MarlinNut @ 02:39 PM PST [link]