soapbox

I am told that Philly is due to get hit with 8-14 inches of snow this evening/tomorrow morning, with the Upper Valley getting almost that much tomorrow. In honor of the frozen stuff, I give you two Alexander Ovechkin vids:

This is the kind of thing where YouTube quality sucks… seriously, check it out on NHL.com or something. What’s really amazing about this one is not the goal (though that’s pretty sweet) but the way Alex goes from skating forwards to backwards to frontwards at full speed. Seriously, many a figure skater would wipe out trying that.

Secondly, a great hockey smile, and a great reason for smiling:

I saw this in a facebook sidebar ad, check it out:

I’m pretty sure that (a) I’m not going to jump through the dubious hoops at chooseyourcolor.com and (b) that it’s a spray-on recolorized Mac, not one with Orange anodization, but still pretty fun given that K still has an Orange clamshell iBook running around.

It’s almost a shame that I don’t use Verizon. Apparently, AT&T is rolling out something similar in the coming months though too.

So, what is this gadget? It’s not an amplifier or a rebroadcast system. It’s actually a miniature cell tower that sits on your shelf and uses your broadband connection to form a small low-power cell network. So, once people get them and figure out how to hack them, it means you could create your own cell service for your house.

Verizon Wireless Network Extender.

As  public service I thought it important to post this little doozy: 10 minutes of daily boob observing prolongs male’s life expectancy by 5 years.  So this means that characters on the O.C. will live way longer than shlubs from Minnetonka, or do they have to be real?  Tough questions demand tough answers.

So, the Apple keynote, while introducing slick new versions of iWork and iLife, and announcing the tiered pricing and DRM-free iTunes songs, featured no Steve, and was a disappointment to many – including AAPL stockholders.

Long-time Apple fans, however, should not have been surprised when the “one more thing” was announced the next day: the MacBook Wheel!  Combining the best features of their award-winning iPod line with the ease of use and stability of Mac OSX, this is an impressive of innovation and engineering.  Just watch the movie: Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop. Pretty slick!

This, of course, is where AAS meetings get interesting.

Andrea and I gathered together a random group of people, including one girl who I’m pretty sure was the tallest woman at the conference. (Note: still not taller than me, although astronomers have a very very strange height distribution. It’s like being in the Netherlands.) Dinner was tasty, but nothing to write much about, just a faux-Irish American place. My general plan was to create some new friends so I’d have someone to talk to at the party rather than being bored and alone.

Then Andrea bailed on me.

And the tall girl asked if they were going to card at the door since she was only 20. (Note: YIKES!)

So, that left two people from UC Davis and one of my friends from NMSU that I was going to meet up with.

Yadda yadda yadda, people going to hotels to change, things taking longer than expected, we get to the party… the drink special is a Galileo and seems to have no redeeming characteristics other than being strong. I decide to start my drinking slightly later. Since we were late, that puts me a good three drinks behind everyone else.

The good stuff starts below.
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Just a quick shout out to MBH and his Penn State Nittany Lions. PSU is currently ranked #2 in the country behind Alabama in the Harris and Coaches polls, and #3 in the BCS and AP. With any luck they’ll be headed to the national title game since Alabama (still to play LSU, Auburn and the SEC championship game) and Texas Tech (still to play OU and the Big 12 title game) are sure to lose at least one before the season comes to an end.

Take that Bowden. Joe Paterno is 81 years old and still kicking ass.