About Me

Superpower Rankings and a Life Update

by

Can someone take over the Consensus Power Rankings for me? Not right away, maybe next year. I still like the concept and value the Consensus Rankings far more than any individual ranking when making out my picks of the week, but it’s so time-consuming. Ideally, looking at and plugging in a ranking for a team doesn’t take much time, but with nine rankings and 32 teams, I’m looking at nearly 300 rankings I have to add in, and some rankings are easier to do than others. Then I hand-reorder the rankings, and then comes the really long part: the little blurbs I stick next to each team. Those really take time.

Starting next week, I will probably move all the Power Rankings into an Excel file and just do the rankings on there from now on, unless someone else volunteers to take over by next Wednesday. And I’ll probably ditch this experiment next year.

That I spend so much time on the consensus power rankings is a problem, considering I am back to being a college student. And especially since I’m in one class where three is the norm. Last week, after an incident that happened the Thursday before, I was removed from one of the two classes I started the year in. I spent the weekend fretting that I might be kicked out of school entirely. I wrote the following during that time:

I don’t like the direction my life is heading, and I don’t know what I can do to
stop it. I’m about to be kicked out of school, but that’s only going to solve
the problem for them, not for me. This path has the chance to end with me in
jail. I could move on to another college, but without some changes the same
thing is probably going to happen. Especially since Mom says I would have to get
a job and basically have no fun whatsoever between school and work. And I don’t
have much of a work ethic, which might be an even bigger problem than the
behavior stuff. I would like to write a lot, I’d like to write a novel about
what I have to go through, but I started thinking about it as a seinor in high
school and I’ve barely made it out of the first chapter. I could enter the
working world but I could get kicked out there too. And there’s the work ethic
too. I could become a nonworking househusband but I’d be wasting my talents, I’m
too timid to meet any girls, and that would end badly too.

The things I spend my time working on are so trivial that I’m not sure I would want them even as jobs. That’s the real reason I want to unload the Superpower Rankings: I’m not even enjoying them. It’s too much work.

With the Patriots’ demolition of the Cowboys, only the true diehards who keep saying “I won’t drop the defending SB champs from until they lose” (namely, Fox) keep the Patriots from being a unanimous No. 1. In other news, I think we need to call an intervention on Yahoo’s Charles Robinson, and gently let him know that the team he keeps ranking at #14 is 0-3 in their last 3 and their two wins came on last-second field goals against teams he ranks 26th and 28th. And the Eagles are 2-0 in games where the home team wears bad throwbacks. I’m picking Jacksonville over Indianapolis to win the Lineal Title as my upset special only because I wasn’t moved to pick any other real blockbuster upsets.

Da Blog in LA

by

Tomorrow, I’ll be flying to Los Angeles for a week and a half with my dad. I hope to post regular blog posts about my experience there under the label “Da Blog in LA”. I’ll probably be bored out of my skull there, but what the hey.

Meanwhile, if you want my NFL picks every week, they should be available here every early Tuesday morning. Please keep in mind at all times that I know nothing about football.

All the college football lineal titleholders have retained so far, with only BYU still playing.

Remember what I said about posting on the Project again?

by

I’m still waiting for the person I’ve already lined up and my own pace has dramatically slowed. I’m still taking anyone who wants to contribute to the Project by writing up their favorite films. A link to my e-mail is available from my profile; link on the right side. A firm list of taken films won’t be available until I’m back from LA. Feel free to provide your own suggestions if you want to contribute.

Changes to Da Blog that also affect Da Web Site (and other musings)

by

Very few people who visit Da Blog appear to be going from there to my web site. In a related story, my sidebar has become rather cluttered.

Therefore, I’ve added a link to the web site to the right side and booted Da Counter to the bottom, since it’s the element of Da Blog you’re probably least interested in.

Have you noticed that I have a lot of rather short posts? And that I tend to talk a lot about Da Blog and my web site, and not about actual, substantial things? Seriously, Technorati says my most common tags are “blog news” and “web site news” followed by “my comments on the news”. Just shows how much I need you to help give Da Blog direction.

Of course, in a sense you could say I need direction.

This summer, for me, has become dominated by the Greatest Movies Project. I’ve been writing 1-2 entries a day and goofing off the rest of the day. I’ve gotten a bit better at writing entries on movies I haven’t seen as I’ve gone along. As I write this I have about 28 entries written, two more written in incomplete form, and some ideas on entries I haven’t written. Six or seven of the entries are, in my opinion, rather great – up to about one-fourth from about one-eighth a few days ago. Most of the entries are from 1953 and earlier; the rest pretty much is composed of films at the very beginning of the list. At a rate of two a day, I could finish in 36 days by myself. That would get me a ways into September, and I could probably start posting entries before I’d completely finished. I’d probably rather get them done a little quicker, though. I have one person lined up to help write entries but I’m still open to any other movie fans who want to lend their expertise. I may post a list of off-limits films later this week.

In early September I’ll be taking a trip to Los Angeles to visit my dad. At the pace I’m on, I would hit 50 entries right as the trip started. I’m hoping to hit 50 before then and 100 by the end of the trip. Then when I came back, most of the work would involve formatting it for the site.

I’ll have more on things I’m looking for when I post on the Project again later this week.

Some recent events – and what they mean for YOU

by

I recently had a minor adventure to get a cell phone and get it working.

Yesterday I went to an AT&T store and got a cell phone. It worked fine in the store and when I got home I was quick to try out all the features.

Well, the problem was, when I tried to make a call, it told me I could make “emergency calls only”. I had done nothing to wreck it and nothing I tried fixed it. So today it was back to the AT&T store (I went to one fairly near where I live but got referred to the one I originally went to), got a part changed, and now my phone is making calls.

And the end result is… my web site is now up.

The URL is morganwick.freehostia.com, for those who want to look at it. Yes, I did end up picking FreeHostia over other options including ZendURL.

The hosting poll is over; the project poll is ongoing, though it probably won’t be for long. As you can see, there’s not much on the site right now. Tomorrow, or perhaps later tonight, I’ll try to get something more substantial on there. A while back, in the late 90’s, I fiddled around a lot with HTML and I think I got fairly good at it, but you know what they say about how fast technology knowledge obsoletes, and now I’m completely lost with this newfangled CSS stuff. (I could create web pages with Microsoft Word, but I’d like to get some hot CSS action in to give all or most of my web pages a consistent look. Word would become nearly irrelevant at that point because it probably wouldn’t be able to figure out that I’m going to be shoehorning some prefab CSS in there.)

Also, I still need your input to help build The Best Web Site On The Internet. The generic topic poll will be going up soon. I may decide to stick with Bravenet for it, or I may decide to go someplace else. The 100 Greatest Movies project will probably be one of the first things put up, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be the first. Also, expect some various football-related things to go up over the course of the next month, mostly focused on Da Blog.

As always, if you have suggestions, vote or reply to this post!

I’m sickened by the incessant coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting story…

by

…but not because of the story itself.

Why is it that every time we have a story like this, we have to have non-stop 24/7 coverage of it? Why is it that news sources that have nothing to do with general news are covering it (and not even with a related angle)? Does it really matter, at least the way most news sources are covering it, to anyone outside the general Blacksburg area? Does it really deserve more than a single news story on a standard newscast and then move on? Could it be that, on some level, despite all we say about how “sickening” and “tragic” the story is, we actually enjoy listening to stories about it, that we take some sort of perverse pleasure in letting it distract us from our lives? Could it be that, on some level, we actually want to hear about tragedy? The ancient Greeks did spend much of their free time watching tragedies played out on the stage, and we do seem to value tragic plays and movies more than comedies!

On the other hand, we’re already getting plenty of people moaning about not being able to comprehend “what could drive someone to do something like this.” Would someone do me a favor and try to find out what would drive someone to do something like this? Because I have a feeling it would lead to some disconcerting conclusions about society, ourselves, American culture, the assumptions we make about people, and even the core of human nature.

Sigh… this never ends

by

99% of the time, I’m a – well, not nice guy, but certainly not an absolutely terrible one. 99% of the time, I go on with life just fine, doing work and my own things, and don’t really cross other people the way they sometimes cross me.

The remaining 1% of the time, though, seems to completely overwhelm the remaining 99%.

What is going on here? If college expects everyone to act absolutely perfect all the time, how is it even possible for anyone to leave high school not perfect? If high school and lower levels aren’t to make people perfect, and can easily shepherd imperfect people along past it, shouldn’t college recognize that and not assume that everyone is going to act perfect all the time?

Not as though either level should be in the business of teaching social mores, but if there are going to be people who are coming in without the requisite social mores then, at some level, there needs to be a class in social mores. If school is going to teach those things instead of academic topics, they should at least be upfront about it.

And if Asperger’s syndrome numbers are really on the rise, not just a result of better diagnoses (and maybe even if it is, since that would mean millions of people have been treated inappropiately to their reality), you need to be ready. Everyone needs to be ready.

What were my parents thinking when they didn’t indoctrinate me? Or brainwash me as the case may be? Never assume anyone is going to take the burden off your shoulders, or that anything is going to happen “naturally”.

Sometimes I’ll act out how I feel about certain people’s idiocy. But if it’s that extreme you’ve embarrassed yourself already. The chances aren’t any worse than it otherwise would, it just might have a little more punch.

I’m done ranting, but believe me, you haven’t heard the last of me…

Update on the below "Update"

by

I never did get around to writing up any sort of defense. I’m going to be leaving the Seattle University residence halls over the weekend and will likely not really bother much with Da Blog until the summer, because of restrictions on my Internet access.

About the only thing I’m certain to take on for Da Blog is a project that I’ll provide more details on before too long.

Update on my current situation

by

I’ve gotten into big trouble, which could be an understatement. I may be forced to move out of on-campus housing soon. I intend to write up an impassioned defense over the weekend and intend to post it on Da Blog after presenting it on Monday.

If I do get kicked out, it may hamper my ability to work on Da Blog at all.

Although the poll got more responses in one week than comments have produced over the entire time I’ve solicited for them to pick a blog topic or project to post, it still seemed pretty pathetic. In any event, right now I’m not really in the mood for trying to focus on Da Blog, so I won’t be putting up a more serious poll or really paying close attention to what people are saying until this blows over, whatever outcome it may have.