Introducing Kyle Ryan

I went to the courthouse today and changed my last name to Ryan. Making me Kyle Thomas Ryan. I think changing the name legally was the easy part, not looking forward to updating everything else, like drivers license, social security card, passport, credit cards, phone, electic service.....

Feels good to drop that Edbauer albatross. It's the most annoying name to have to explain to someone over the phone.

"What's your last name?"

"Edbauer."

"Bauer?"

"No it's one word Edbauer kinda like the store Eddie Bauer without the die in it"

"Can you spell it please?"

"E-D-B-A-"

"E-D-D"

"No. E as in edward, D as in david, B as in bobby, a as in apple, U-E-R"

"Oh, like Eddie Bauer! are you related?"

"No."

Sweet! Kerry is going to win!

Thanks to the Green Bay Packers, Kerry is going to win the presidential election. Since 1936, the winnner of the last Washington Redskin's home game before the presidential election has predicted the winner.

Lunar Eclipse Tomorrow

If you are out and about tomorrow night you might check out the lunar eclipse. There won't be another for 2 years. Prime viewing time here in Austin will be around 10.

Only in Texas

Judge throws party to hand down life term

Export ASP.NET DataGrid to Excel

Here's another site for josh
Export ASP.NET DataGrid to Excel.

No more football for Kyle

Saturday morning I met up with Bryan and his friends to play flag football. I was excited about it, going so far as to buy a pair of cleats so that I could showcase my skills. My first offensive drive I made a sweet catch reaching across my body for a 30 yard gain. On my second defensive drive I was playing exclusively on the line as a pass rusher.

On the second defensive drive my cleats got caught on someone's shoe laces twisting my ankle and I felt it pop. I tried walking it off and hung in for couple more plays before deciding that the pain in my ankle wasn't going to get any better, in fact it was getting worse. After 4 to 5 hours of icing the ankle, I was still in excruciating pain walking around the apartment.

I decided to go to the emergency room, to convince myself that it was just a sprain, and everything would be fine in a couple days. I went to South Austin Hospital over on Ben White and 1st. Unfortunately, they're doing a lot of construction and parking is two blocks away from the entrance. Fortunately, I found a short term parking spot right in front of the main entrance. I limp into the hospital every step more painful than the last. The nurse at the front desk asks if I want to use a wheel chair. My initial reaction is to shrug off the offer and tough it out, after all it's just a sprain right? Fortunately, she convinces me to take the wheel chair offer. Little did I realize that the front entrance is at the opposite end of the hospital from the emergency room.

Anyway, X-Rays were taken of my right ankle and I have a fractured talus, which is right above the bone that make up your heel. The fracture is nondisplaced so it shouldn't require surgery. However, I do have this big ass boot that I need to wear. Also, the emergency room doctor recommended that I see an orthopedist this week.

I should have known better. Seems like every time I play football I end up with some sort of injury, like a strained knee, twisted ankle even broken hand. I figured, hell it's just flag football what could possibly happen? Well now I know. So that's it, no more football for me unless it's on my XBox.

More programming sites

A great guide on how to write unmaintainable code http://mindprod.com/unmain.html. I like the idea of using a baby book for ideas on variable names.

Here's a great resource from Microsoft on their recommended design patterns for .NET. I imagine that Josh is the only person I know who might be interested in this.

Sending Email Unsing .NET

Here's a great site on using smtpmail in C# http://www.systemwebmail.com/default.aspx. I came across it while looking for a way to authenticate the smtp connection to a mail server, but there's a ton of other useful info specific to System.Web.Mail.

Anyone want a gmail account

Looks like I can invite 6 friends to get a free gmail account with 1 gig of space. If you're interested let me know and I'll send you an invite.

Maybe Dampier is OK

I'm starting to warm up to the idea of Dampier and the new Mavericks team. If Dampier has Avery Johnson's stamp of approval then the guy's alright with me. Still I think their success will come down to whether Nelson can coach a legit center who plays in the low post. I'm not sure that he can.

Bill Simmons "The Sports Guy" to the rescue.

It's been two months since the NBA finals finished and it's two months before next season starts. Trying times for a rabid basketball fan. After barely getting by on scraps of NBA news (like trade rumors and box scores from the olympics) the sports guy comes through with some methodone for the NBA addict, four days and 59 hours of NBA classics, including 27 hours of the Basketball Jesus himself.

I'm sure I'll watch a couple hours throughout the weekend, but I have a tough time getting into replays of games. Even taping a game, then watching it later, when I have no idea what the outcome was, doesn't have the same magic as watching the game live.

What are the Mavericks Doing?

Looks like the Dallas Mavericks are poised to trade Christian Laetner, Eduardo Najera and a first round pick for Erick (not a typo) Dampier, Dan Dickau and Evan Eschmeyer. At first glance it seems like a good deal for Dallas except fot getting Even Eschmeyer back, that guy is completely worthless. How do you end up with this guy, not once but twice? It's not like they loved his skills the first time around.

I must admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for the Gonzaga alum, which doesn't mean necessarily that I think he can play in the NBA. Dampier is obviously the jewel of the trade for Dallas. He has legitimate size for a center, will bang underneath and grab rebounds. However, I tend to agree with the sports writers who think his 12 point 12 rebounds per game last year was directly related to this being a contract summer for him. His stats tend to show marked improvement before he's due to sign a new contract.

This trade seems like a desperation move on Dallas' part to placate the reporters and sports talk show hosts, who keep pointing to the lack of a legitimate center as blocking the Mavericks from greater success in the playoffs. This past offseason they've aquired 5 new centers (Booth, DJ, Dampier, Evan, and the next big white stiff Podkolzin). None of them are particularly skilled players. I don't see Don Nelson utilizing any of the centers they've assembled effectively. His tendency is to prefer playing 5 smaller skilled players than a traditional NBA starting 5. Which makes me think that Dampier essentially takes Fortson's spot on the bench this year.

I have trouble believing that Dallas will make the playoffs this year. They've lost Nash, Jamison, Walker and Najera while picking up Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse and Erick Dampier. While I like Terry and think that he will be a better perimeter defender than Nash was, I can't picture the Terry and Nowitzki pick-and-roll being anywere near close to the pick and roll perfection Nash and Nowitzki had going. Jamison settled in great a sixth man last year even winning the sixth man award. No way in hell do I see Stackhouse being happy with a bench role. I predict him to have received the locker room cancer award by the end of year.

At least they still have Marquis Daniels, Josh Howard, Dirk and Finley. And I do like the additions of Jason Terry and Devon Harris. With any luck they will still be fun to watch.

REAL Ultimate Power!!! - The Book

I was cleaning up my bookmarks and decided to check out this old favorite The Official Ninja Webpage: REAL Ultimate Power!!!!. Looks like Robert Hamburger, the creater of REAL Ultimate Power, has written a book on Ninjas. The comments about the book on Amazon are hilarious.

Here's a little sample:

Better than the Bible, August 18, 2004

If Jesus read this before the last supper, he would have flipped out, flew across the table and chopped off Judas' head! That would be sweet. I could be in the sequal to The Passion. And by sweet, of course, I mean totally awesome.

I Almost Saw a Pit Tonight

I went to room 710 tonight for a potluck of metal. Today the potluck turned up blood of the patriots. This was pretty much a stereotypical death metal band, with the thoaty devil like vocals. You had the typical Austinites getting into it and showing the old devil horns hand signal. At one point they started a mock mosh circle pit, which I must admit was fun to see. But it never amounted to anything. Which made me think that I haven't really seen/been in a pit in Austin besides one for some ska band with a drunk Josh.

It seems weird to me that in my younger punk days a pit was pretty much a natural thing. We would get so worked by the music that we were compelled to pogo around and slam into our best friend or whoever else was around.

What ever happened to moshing? Is it that the bands I chose to see nowadays don't lend themselves to it? It not cool any more and thought of as a joke like raising your lighter in the air or flashing the "metal" hand signal?

Lame first post

Seems like everyone has a blog, so I figured that I may as well have one too. After looking around at different blogging software that stored the posts in the local file system or a user managed database, I decided to try out blogger. Thinking that the odds on losing all my posts would be less likely, since I won't be jacking with the database. Also, changing blog software would require differently formatted posts, requiring either a data conversion, or losing everything created with the old blog software.