Vols start out at number 3

"It's is football time in Tennessee!!" Well, almost. Next Saturday marks the Vol's first game. Coming back this year are all of the Vol's powerhouse defensive players who were out due to injuries last year. So many key players out last year devastated the Vols, but with all TN's talent back they are starting the season with an impressive ranking of third in the nation. This is the best starting position I can remember the Vols having. Lets just hope they can prove themselves worthy of it. TN being in the SEC, the toughest conference in college football, have a tough road ahead.

Survivor Guatemala & Science Channel

Survivor Guatemala starts in about three weeks. I don’t know why I watch these shows. The "bad guys" usually end up winning. Big Brother 6 is a total disaster this year.

I have been watching enough of the Science Channel and National Geographic Channel lately to become an expert in evolution, dinosaurs, and our solar system. The only thing that bugs me about the Science Channel is they don’t tell you on their documentaries what is theory and what is fact. They seem to pass everything off as fact if the majority of the scientific community believes something may have happened. Well, it doesn’t work that way. There is a huge difference in what they know for sure and speculation.

Big Brother 6 is ruined

Jen was the first member of the jury in the Big Brother 6 house. It is official, there is no way anyone good can win Big Brother this year. The self proclaimed evil team "Friendship" aka Nerd Herd has the overwhelming majority in the jury. This means only Beau, Maggie, Ivette, or April has a chance to win the grand prize. The only way this outcome can be different is for all of them to be voted out before the final two, which seems highly unlikely since one of them will have to go every week except 1 for the rest of the show. Considering they are also the majority of the in the house right now winning HOH every week is also in their favor. The odds of a non-Nerd Herd winning BB6 are almost non-existent.

Why do I watch this show? It never turns out well.


BTW Ivette could very well be the most annoying player in Big Brother history.

Overzealous Big Brother Fans

A guy named Jay started a website called Team Kaysar to raise $2,000,000 for Kaysar, Howie, Rachel, and Janelle (that is $500,000 a piece) assuming neither of them win. If one of them happens to win, the money will be split three ways instead of four. The website is less than two days old and it has already made nearly $3,000 in donations. Of coarse at this rate he will not come close to the 2 million goal, but will manage to raise quite a bit of money. I think it is a great gesture but I will not be putting any of my money in the pot. Don't get me wrong, I hate team "Friendship" as much as every other Big Brother viewer, but keep in mind (assuming this is legit) half of everything you give is going to the government anyway. On top of that, I have a feeling I need the money more, or as much as they do. I think America should send me donations. I am sure I can loose at Big Brother just as well as they can. :)

More From Windows Vista Beta 1

Below is another screenshot of Windows Vista Beta 1. This screenshot is not from my computer, but it was taken by a friend of mine. My graphics card is too weak right now to support Avalon which is what the new Windows uses for a lot of it’s graphic effects. You will see in this screenshot (unlike mine) the window backgrounds are transparent. Very cool.

Click on the image to see a larger size

Big Brother Poll fixed?

Bad news for Kaysar

Big Brother has named their latest poll "America’s Choice", but is it? There is evidence that CBS has already made up it's mind who will come back into the house.

Quote from Reality TV Magazine

"The radio buttons for Ashlea, Kaysar, and Michael are blocked out so that fans cannot vote for them. What is unusual is that Eric’s radio button is not blocked out, even though he left the house before Kaysar."

My wife told me when she visited the site to vote Eric’s image was not even grayed out while the other three evicted houseguests where. It appears this has caused a lot of commotion and these "errors" have now been fixed.

However, there is a new "bug" that (at the time of this writing) is still there. If you vote for Kaysar then hit back on your browser to revote the option defaults to Eric. This only started happening a few days ago.

Despite the fact that another CBS Big Brother poll indicates Kasar is the most liked houseguest with 87% and Eric is the most disliked with 29% (Love'em or Leave'em results) Eric would still walk though that door.

Will it truly be America’s choice? I guess we will see depending on if America’s clear favorite really walks though the door.

Big Brother Poll

I have seen several blogs wonder if the Big Brother Poll is tracking votes or does it count every single vote you cast over and over. There is only two ways CBS can track votes.

The first is to track voting using cookies. A Cookie is just a value in a text file a website puts on your computer. When you vote the CBS website will add a cookie file to your computer with a particular value. The next time you go to that poll the website will simply look to see if that cookie exists. If it does exist, it will not count any new votes. If Big Brother is secretly filtering online votes they could be using cookies to do it. However, it is easy to simply delete your cookies and vote again. You can do this though your browser options.

The second way to track people who have already voted is by IP address. This means they record your IP address in their server. When you vote it compares your IP to make sure it doesn't already exist in their database. If it does already exist it will ignore your vote. Unfortunately for broadband users (cable and DSL) there is no way to get a new IP address because you have a consistent IP provided for you by your ISP. However, if you have dial-up you will get a new IP address within a certain range every time you connect to the internet depending on what server you connect to. You only have to hope another user from the same ISP has not already voted with that IP address. If you have dial-up you can log on, vote, delete cookies, log-off, and do it all over again.

There is no indication that Big Brother is limiting votes at all. If they are not limiting votes, why would anyone pay 50 cents to text in a vote? I guess we will never know. Just to be sure, I will keep voting and deleting cookies.

Big Brother: Vote Kaysar

Big Brother announced a twist in the game tonight. We get to vote an evicted houseguest back into the Big Brother house.

I am calling all bloggers to unite and encourage everyone to vote Kaysar back into the house.

click the image to go to the Big Brother poll


If you would like to add this 'Vote Kaysar' link and image to your weblog copy and paste the following code.

<a href="http://www.cbs.com/primetime/bigbrother6/_polls/amc_poll.shtml">
<img src="http://www.geocities.com/interblogging/archive/vote_kaysar.gif" alt="Vote Kaysar" />
</a>

Screenshots: Windows Vista Beta 1

The Beta 1 is very similar so far to Windows XP in appearance and usability. However I understand that the Beta will not be as visually impressive as the final release, or even Beta 2. Screenshots are taken using the standard Windows Vista Beta 1 theme Aero. I expect the look of Windows Vista will improve drastically as new versions are released and graphic card makes have a wider range of suitable video card drivers. It looks like Beta 1 has been stripped of its bells and whistles.

Click to enlarge

Standard Desktop after clicking on Start then All Programs


New Windows Explorer


The new version of Internet Explorer (IE7). Finally it has tabbed browsing, but I am still not sure if it is standard compliant.

Windows Vista Beta

Unless you have been living under a rock you know that Microsoft has been making a new version of Windows. Previously it was known as code name ‘Longhorn’, but has recently been officially named Windows Vista.



Last night I downloaded the new Windows Vista Beta 1. It was 9 hour download. It should have been faster, but the MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) server was only transferring at a rate of 70-80 kbs. I would have thought they would have faster servers.

When the massive 2.5G ISO file was completed I burn the image to DVD. Now all I have to do it install it, too bad I am at work right now. When I get it installed I will be sure to upload some screenshots.

Big Brother 6: Who has to go

The Big Brother 6 house is divided (as it usually is this late in the game) into two groups. I don’t really care which group wins because there are people on both sides I want off. Here is the breakdown in the order I want them to go the most.

Ivette has the worse attitude in the Big Brother house hands down, far and away. If you disagree with her she will say any non-rational, idiotic thing she can think of. How dare you disagree with me. You must not have any respect for woman. She actually said something like this to Kaiser while he was only trying to keep peace between her and Michael.

Most of my animosity towards her is probably because of her affiliation with Eric. My animosity was amplified when she luckily won last weeks HOH. What drives me nuts about players like her are unfortunately weak players tend to do well in these types of games. I am expecting her to go far, but not on her own accord. She will be dragged along just as she has done this far.