Don't Back Down

A couple of weeks ago, Keyshawn Johnson did his second round of broadcasting for the NFL draft, and I mentioned just how bad it was. To be fair, it was a bit better than it was last year. For someone who appears to totally lack the ability to shut his mouth, when the cameras are on and rolling for hour after hour of incessant coverage, Keyshawn totally clams up. It's like he just becomes a different person.

What's even more amazing to watch is that he is totally and utterly upstaged by Mel Kiper, Jr. of all people. Now this is no slight against Mel Kiper, Jr., mind you, but for the last thirty or so years, he has done next to nothing except pick apart the draft. He barely goes outside. Understandably, on draft day, he is surely an imposing force. But for Keyshawn Johnson to be intimdiated by a guy like Mel Kiper? That's almost impossible to fathom. Yet he is. Last year, perhaps - it was his first year at the desk. But it happened again. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he didn't make it back for a third year. Regardless, this year Keyshawn decided if he couldn't out-talk Kiper, he'd out-dress him. It apparently worked.

Read "Keyshawn Wins Best-Dressed Award (Really)" »

Of course, now that I mentioned that we hadn't been to see a show for a while, we see a couple of them in a relatively short period of time. After Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz left us feeling less wicked and more blah, we decided we needed something a little more peppy. A few years back - in fact, just after I moved to Charlotte - I had gone uptown to see the traveling version of Schoolhouse Rock Live!. It just so happens that Denise had asked me about it, since she noticed that it was being put on by the Children's Theatre, so we decided to go see it.

There is a bit of a disconnect here. Though the Children's Theatre did the show, and though it was hosted at the Imaginon uptown (a nice venue), we actually went for the 21-and-up event (their first), because it was the only weekend event that still had tickets available. So we saw the adult version put on by the Children's Theatre. Really it just mean one reference to a quaalude and some beer and wine served at the show. Other than that it wasn't too bad, and I have to assume that everything else was pretty much the same. The show itself wasn't as good as I remember the Off-Broadway cast, but it was still quite enjoyable.

Read "Schoolhouse Rock Live!" »

Back in December, I put together a script for converting RightFields data to CustomFields. This was mostly for me, but I had a few people request this sort of thing, and I had grown tired of doing it by hand, since I'm inherently lazy. There were two problems with this script. The first was that it didn't do data stored in custom SQL datasources. Unfortunately it was just too hard to figure out. That's not to say that I couldn't make it work, but I wasn't able to do it in an automated fashion.

The second problem was that it left out a few people who had some data that they might want: Namely those with data stored in file fields (usually a file name, such as that you might use for an image). These fields can be somewhat complex, but if it's just a name, then it's not typically a problem in converting the data. So it may be okay to convert it. Still, you should probably be aware that a one-to-one conversion of this sort does have some potential pitfalls. The most common was that CustomFields doesn't have an upload option, but you also can't do things like extra file path information. So if you decide you want to convert the filename, you should be aware of these potential downfalls. It's better than nothing, however.

Read "Converting RightFields to CustomFields, Now with SQL Goodness!" »

After the my seventh seizure, I was pretty sure I was going to have to have another MRI. As luck would have it, I didn't. Just an ambulatory EEG. Despite the name, an ambulance is not involved - this is a process where you get a whole bunch of wires glued to your head, then run down to a control box that you get to carry around for a while. In my case, about eighteen hours. Supposedly this tells them something about what's happening inside. We'll have to wait and see about that part of it.

The last time that I had one of these procedures done, I had my head wrapped so tightly I thought I'd pass out. I swear that the person doing the wrapping was a sadist. Maybe the Marquis de Sade himself. But this time, there was no wrapping a tall - just a plethora of wires glued onto my noggin. So I left the office with a bunch of wires trailing down my back, wrapped in gauze. It's like an odd sort of pony tail, I guess. Actually it wasn't too bad, except for the looks I got on the way out of the building and on the ride home.

Read "I Survived Another Ambulatory EEG" »