Two defeats in soccer

We had losses in both soccer games for the first time this season. After our 2-0 defeat this morning in the cold and rain to the second place team, I was surprised we didn't get rained out in the second game. Unfortunately, we lost that one 4-0, with 2 cheapo goals among the 4. Not a good day.

Rainy Day Soccer

It rarely rains in Temecula and I can't remember much rain at all during September in years past. It's raining today though, and our 8 AM game was played mostly in the rain and cold. It was less than 60 degrees during the game. The slick ball didn't help as many of the kicks didn't go far and there were some balls slipping through the goalie's hands. We suffered our first loss, 2-0. The game was close, with no score at halftime. The other team came through with a couple of goals in the 3rd quarter. One seemed to be helped by the wet ball and on the other one, it looked to me like an offsides call was missed. We didn't have many shots, and the other team played well. They will now move into first and we should drop down to 4th or so. It's a 10 game season and we'll be in the playoffs at the end, I'm confident.

Some politicians are criminals

It seems like these guys who live in one town and claim to live in another town are everywhere in the Bay Area. If you really live in Oakland, why not say so? It's hard to find a place to live in Berkeley, but if you don't live there, you shouldn't pretend that you do. What's the problem with moving to the city you represent?

(09-21) 14:32 PDT OAKLAND - Berkeley rent board member Chris Kavanagh was hauled out of an Oakland coffee shop in handcuffs today and charged with fraud and perjury for allegedly claiming a false residence in Berkeley to hold office there.

Kavanagh, 49, was booked into the North County Jail in downtown Oakland on $100,000 bail, while Oakland police and Alameda County district attorney's investigators armed with a search warrant rummaged through his rented Rockridge cottage in search of evidence.

Alexa rating - how does that work?

While my Google page rank for my other weblog has stayed at 3, my Alexa rating has gone from 300,000 to 1,700,000. That's the wrong direction! I don't really understand the value of the Alexa rating at all. It seems to be pretty arbitrary or at least very misleading.

Barry Bonds moving on

It can't be any surprise that the Giants aren't going to sign Barry Bonds for next year. He broke the home run record while the team went down the drain, so they need to make changes. Barry would make a great DH in Yankee stadium, but since he lives in SoCal, maybe the Angels would like to have him. I don't know what other options he might have -- Detroit with Jim Leland. Probably not the Oakland A's.

Soccer photos using Polaroid theme

I set up a couple of galleries with the Polaroid theme (here and here). They look pretty good and it was easy to do. I'd like to customize it a little bit more but haven't had time to do that yet. A kitchen table background would be a nice change, I think, and I'd like to use a different font. I've changed the font but still looking for a formica desktop/wallpaper to use.

Fun photo gallery

The Polaroid Gallery is a nice looking, interactive Flash photo gallery. It's pretty easy to set up and fun to use, although you'll need to have your own server and edit the xml file to make it work. It puts your images into a Polaroid looking frame and spreads them out on a wood-like background, as if they were laying on a table. You can move them around and click through them. Developed by Christopher Einarsrud, you can find it here.

Slideshow Pro gallery working

I finally got Slideshow Pro working properly. There are still a few things to work out, but overall, I was able to create a gallery and add 4 albums. Just in time for the update to the software which will change how it works quite a bit, but at least I won't be lost completely. There seems to be a little more control over things available in the update. That's a good thing. They are also switching to a more secure installation where you can only use the application on one server. That's enough for me, and if I was able to find someone who wanted me to set one up for them, $25 for the software isn't too much.

Who would pretend to be a priest?

Priests in the Catholic church have gotten their share of bad publicity in the past few years. They've earned most, if not all of it with various scandals. However, I guess being a priest is still impressive enough to some people that it will get you into a Notre Dame football game for free. Where did he get the uniform?

Hard drive power supply just quits

I had a nice hard drive case I bought a couple of years ago -- it holds two drives and was very quiet. It was so quiet that I didn't notice that it wasn't even running any longer. Either the power supply just quit or maybe the power cable went bad, but either way it's not working and one of the drives had most of my music on it and the other one had quite a few pictures. Time for another case.

PhotoReviewer 2.1

I took about 550 pictures yesterday. Many of them weren't good for technical reasons -- out of focus, missing heads, nothing interesting in the shot, etc. Loading all those bad images into either iPhoto or Lightroom is time consuming and slows down the whole process of working with the good shots. PhotoReviewer 2.1 is an application which is designed to solve that problem. I like the way it works -- you can either use the Veto or Approve method to rate all the images, or you can set up specific folders and send images to those folders. The second method is an easy way to pick and organize the images you want to keep at the same time. I hadn't tried the application until today because I figured being able to rate the images in the photo organizing application would be good enough, but as I'm accumulating more images, the amount of space taken up by bad ones becomes an issue. And if I move up to a 12 megapixel camera, those bad shots will take up even more space.

Disappearing referee

During one of our soccer games yesterday a weird thing happened. At halftime the head referee left the field and went somewhere. And she didn't come back when the game should have resumed. No one knew where she was, so after waiting about 10 minutes, they moved one of the side judges to referee and got another side judge and started the game. A few minutes later the referee came back and she took over at the start of the last period.

Alpha 700 shots

There's more images and discussion about the new Alpha 700 at the PhotoClub Alpha site. A detailed discussion of the hardware is included, along with close up shots. I like the lens discussion, which also is in-depth. More images to come.

Lifeknot - Why not?

LifeKnot is a social networking site based around common activities. If you are looking for a companion for your next hike or ski trip or whatever you like to do, check it out. Browse activity profiles at Lifeknot.com and you may find a friend or someone special.

Rick Ankiel story

I was thinking last night that the Rick Ankiel story has to be one of the most unbelievable comebacks in sports. The guy went from a pitcher who couldn't deal with the pressure to a slugger who is just hitting the ball like crazy. Unfortunately, it seems like HGH may have played a part in his quick transformation. Since it wasn't outlawed by baseball when he got it and there is probably no proof he used it, I don't think anything will happen. I'd like to get more information about how long the impact of taking things like HGH and steroids last. Do they wear off after a year or is it just a matter of building up your body more quickly during that time and then keeping that? It does seem like some guys are smaller, like Sammy Sosa and Pudge Rodriguez, but who knows?

Apparently Ankiel says it was all prescribed stuff from a doctor. Time will tell.

Traffic hasn't changed

I was away from work for 5 weeks, but going back gave me a rude reminder of how little I enjoy the commute. The last 3-4 miles to work are just brutal and then those same 3-4 miles are much worse when I leave for home. The freeway construction doesn't seem to make much progress and there are more and more cars and trucks clogging the road. I'll bet that once the construction is done, the road will be similar to the way it is now -- very very slow during commute times. I need to negotiate for more telecommuting time with my new boss.

Sweating while you work

It's 100 degrees outside today. No sign of thunderstorms or much in the way of clouds. Very uncomfortable. Inside, people have the lights off to stay cooler, but since the hallways are not air conditioned, it's very warm moving from A to B. Even the bathrooms don't have A/C. Not a relaxing environment.

Sphere links

I added the Sphere plugin to my other weblog since they have one for self-hosted Wordpress sites. It creates a list of other blogs and sites which may be relevant to an individual blog post on your site. It doesn't take up much real estate and everything is automated, but I'll have to see how useful the links are. It seems geared towards politics since they give you an option to include liberal only or conservative only links as well as all kinds.

What is Sphere?

Sphere has something to do with the blogger links available now on CNN.com. I signed up for their free widget and got an email back saying they were so busy it might take a few weeks for them to get back to me. A few weeks? Sounds like they need more employees. I'm still not sure what they do other than "connecting mainstream and social media," which sounds like a good thing.

109 degrees

The high today in Temecula was 109, which is probably as hot as it's been during the eight years I've lived here, although there may have been a few 110 degree days at one point. Either way, it was very hot and it's still 94 degrees about 90 minutes after the sun went down. It feels like Palm Springs, but it must have been even hotter there today. Looks like it's going to be a long, hot Labor Day weekend with most of the daylight hours spent inside.

I went for a walk today at around 9 AM and it was almost unbearable. Not sure I'll be trying that tomorrow.