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Archives:
2004 Entries Part 1
2003 Entries Part 2
2003 Entries Part 1
2002 Entries
Other people of note:
Craig
Dwight
Greg
Mark
James
Joe
| It's Not Me, It's Him, Right... | |||||||||||||||
| The random musings of Riverview High School's second-most famous non-football-coach alumnus, Mike Burger... (No longer most famous, not at least until I get on Oprah -- I'll get the log started.) | |||||||||||||||
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8 December 2005 Again, Sometimes I Wish I Could Shut My Brain Off... My father turns 64 today. I turned 36 recently. We are at a rare moment in time when both our ages are perfect squares. The last time this happened was the two days in 1978 when I turned 9 and he was still 36. This will not happen again until 6 December 2138, when I turn 169 but my Dad will still be 196. The next time it will last most of a year is 2165-2166, when on 8 December 2165 my Dad will be 224 while I take my turn at 196. After that, it will never happen again. Although this story gets stranger and stranger to most people, I actually took a class from Dr. Mirecki when he spent one year at Michigan. I am not surprised by any of this. Cue Mel Allen. This week in the ABA:
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2 December 2005 New ABA Playoff Qualification Scheme... Apparently, the last two teams remaining in the league will make the playoffs:
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21 November 2005 Sometimes I wish I could shut my brain off... You can't spell  without  .ABA News (They report, I deride): | |||||||||||||||
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9 November 2005 Detroit: Not only do the dead vote, they also swing campaigns... Wow. After 20 years of Coleman Young and now probably 40 of Kwame Kilpatrick, I'll just have to quote journalist extrordinaire Kent Brockman - "I've said it before and I'll say it again, democracy just doesn't work." Why couldn't Rosa Parks have held on two more weeks? The only good thing that could come out of this election would be the end of exit polling. Channel 4's poll had Kwame losing by 12 points. He won by 6. Remember, you can't spell margin of error without the word error. | |||||||||||||||
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3 November 2005 Reading is fundamental... Apparently, former Red Wings/Canadiens coach Jacques Demers is functionally illiterate. While coaching in the NHL without being able to read is one thing, I do know that his first job out of high school was driving a truck for Coca-Cola. Being able to navigate maps, read intineraries and know what customer ordered what without being able to read is much more fascinating. | |||||||||||||||
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31 October 2005 It's happened already... A cancelled game A homeless team From ESPN.COM (31-Oct-2005): Not that the Trojans were ever worried, but the computers agree with the human polls again: USC's back on top in the BCS Standings, supplanting Texas. Actually, it was the movement in the human factors of the poll (USC went up by 0.0007 points in the Harris and 0.0036 in the USA Today polls, counteracting Texas' losses of 0.0050 and 0.0051 in the same polls) that caused USC to go back up to #1. The computer components stayed the same -- 1.000 for Texas and 0.940 for USC. As much as people complain about the "BCS Computers", the thing is still 2/3 human derived. | |||||||||||||||
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28 October 2005 Paging Rumeal Robinson... Rob, a long time reader and lover of the ABA content, wants to know whatever happened to Rumeal Robinson? After drifting away from the NBA in the mid-90s and the CBA in the late 90s, I have been able to find he's been going down the international basketball food chain, from Italy to Croatia to Venezuela to Mexico and did play for Fuerza Regia Monterrey in 2004? Anybody else know? Apparently this was neat to everybody except me, so by popular demand I'll point it out. If you go to the Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club web page, the counter indicating that Flash is loading goes from right to left. In this week's installment of ABA hilarity, I should point out that if you try to get online tickets, you may be confused because the team's schedules are not in date order. They're in opponent order. And, according to their disclaimer, "Some games might be subject to change because of weather, travel factors. And any changes will be made good for other games." Travel factors? Like a bounced check to the Motel 6? Also, our founding father Joe Newman wishes to apologize for his backhanded slap at the NBA last week. He then bashes them again in the next sentence. | |||||||||||||||
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21 October 2005 Trophy #4...  And, who knows, this may be coming to a console near you. chutzpah (HOOT-spuh) 1. Yiddish term for courage bordering on arrogance, roughly equivalent to “nerve” (in the slang sense): “It took a lot of chutzpah to make such a controversial statement.” 2. this. So a league team from Israel defeated an NBA team. Big freaking deal. These isn't a team straight off the kibbutz. This is the best team in European basketball the last three years. This team would be competitive in the CBA or the NBDL, leagues the ABA is way behind in talent. | |||||||||||||||
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7 October 2005 Puffery on the hardcourt... People who know me well know I like minor league sports. The minorer the better. One league that is particularly great in this respect is the revived ABA. Oh, it has nothing to do with the famous ABA of the 1970s, they apparently got the name for a few bucks and are running it into the ground. Just reading their news pages brings minutes of hilarity:
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29 September 2005 A slight overstatement...  All I was doing was trying to configure an ODBC Data Source in Excel. Katrina was catastrophic. This was a minor annoyance and five minutes on Google. | |||||||||||||||
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22 September 2005 Things overheard... I think I would prefer him hitting one off the centerfield wall than taking a walk right now. -- Darrin Jackson (paraphrased from a 20 September broacast), musing on what he wanted the Cleveland hitter to do for the top of the 9th. Darrin broadcasts for Chicago. He would have preferred the opposition leadoff batter reach 2nd than 1st. Okay. Snippets from a loud one-way conversation between a person near me on a cell phone: "Why are you still dating that jackass. . .You're more attracted to him, but I'm a better fit." I'm no love expert here, but in order to woo someone who obviously has an attachment to someone else, you:
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8 September 2005 What a Long Strange Addendum It Is... I realized I left out a big rant about the game in Chico. I'll put it here: There was not one moment at the Chico game that wasn't sold for some plug. Even foul balls hit in to the stands were sponsored ("that ball courtesy of 103.5 the Blaze"). One problem was that every foul ball was brought to you by 103.5 the Blaze. Ad messages don't work when you hear them 25 times in a two hour span. Secondly, 103.5 the Blaze, now my least favorite radio station, was sponsoring "So You Want to Be a Country Star". It was the finals, and during inning breaks they had one last chance to perform (they also did before the game). Ballots were passed out and collected during the game. The results were tallied, and announced, in the middle of the 7th inning. So, instead of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, which I believe is required by federal law, we get a long delay, and then we get the winner. The winner begins to give a speech, thanking everybody, before she finally catches the glance of the umpire, who could have cut a diamond with the laser like fire in his eyes. Every other sport has some sort of sanction for not getting the game moving, such as a penalty or a techical foul. Baseball is purely binary, we'll either wait or we'll forfeit. And wait had about five seconds left. So what do you win as Chico's own "So You Want to Be a Country Star", let alone all the media recognition for winning a radio contest in the 196th largest market?
So let me get this straight. At a Casino that's an hour away from everything. Opening for SheDaisy. | |||||||||||||||
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5 September 2005 What a Long Strange Trip It Was... Read about it here. To answer the question ahead of time, I used my passport. | |||||||||||||||
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10 August 2005 Goodbye Father Alex... This is only going to mean something to the occasional MMB reader, but Father Alex passed away Monday at the age of 91. I always found it neat that he was able to combine a Michigan band uniform and a clerical collar. If I can find a picture I'll put it up. | |||||||||||||||
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1 August 2005 Self-Promotion... The entry form for the Sixth Alison LaPlaca Open is up (The Alison LaPlaca Open). Since our defending champ only wins in odd-numbered years, you have a chance for 2006. I have been banned. Banned in Trenton, Michigan apparently. I've only kept up with one person from high school, his name is Matt, and we share Michigan Football tickets. He, like everyone else I come into contact with, is a lawyer, and works hard to keep his name in circulation to keep business brisk. One of the things he did was to play in a several-times-a-year charity trivia tournament in Trenton, MI. Matt didn't do so well, and it was not making him happy. So he asked me one day for help. I said sure, but I also said if you're going to do things, you might as well do them right. So I brought along Kevin, Craig and Geoff. And we had a decent but not spectacular record:
Basically we've been told not to come back. Apparently we won by too much in the last one. Let's be fair here. One of the categories was flags (1/8th of the questions). We had Craig. Another of the categories was corporate logos. We had Craig. Another of the categories was crossword puzzle clues. We had me. So, they don't want our money? Money that is going to a school for the blind? Fine. Try and get the trophy back. You can have it when you pry it from my cold, dead . . . er, uh, Matt will get it back to you when he can. | |||||||||||||||
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13 July 2005 Sadly, no Junior Jumble...
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27 June 2005 Richard Whiteley 1943-2005...  The host of the U.K.'s best game show (in my opinion) died over the weekend. Richard Whiteley, who hosted the show Countdown since 1982 would be a rough U.S. equivalent to Pat Sajak -- someone who hosted a simple word game really popular with very old people for 20+ years. He also was the local news anchor for Yorkshire since the 70s. Known for garish ties and constant puns, he said that when he dies the obituary would read "FERRET MAN DIES", a reference to an infamous blooper from a news report when he was bitten by a ferret (one of the papers in Yorkshire obliged his request). He had gone in for heart surgery on Thursday, and since he would have been out for a while, the show had lined up guest hosts including Tim Rice and Stephen Fry.
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21 June 2005 Did you actually watch the movie first... So I was spending some quality time Saturday afternoon in the Kroger's bottle return area. I look around waiting my turn to use the lovely machines when I saw product on a forklift ready to go out to the main part of the store: Old Yeller Dog Food. Yep, when you care enough to make your dog's last meal their best. On this note, we can now have poll #3: | |||||||||||||||
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9 June 2005 The champions and best...  One, one championship, ah, ah, ah. | |||||||||||||||
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2 June 2005 Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious... At least one TV station has realized they've gone too far. | |||||||||||||||
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23 May 2005 Emerging from the cult... I have spent the last two weekends attending the NCAA Women's Water Polo Championships, a Michigan baseball game and playing in the band for the women's softball team. Last weekend was the Big Ten championships, which had a fun incident before it started because the Northwestern coach wanted us banned from the venue, because we were "an unfair advantage." Odd, I thought it was the hitting, pitching and defensive abilities of the players that determined those things. If you're interested in contacting the Northwestern coach to let your feelings known, her name is Kate Drohan and can be contacted at the Northwestern Athletic Department at 847-491-4650. This week, it was Seton Hall who decided to be a crybaby, this time literally. And what triggered this? One of our band members said "strike her out." Yep, we wanted our team to do well, and one of the ways you do that is by having your pitcher strike out the batter. However, the Seton Hall fan in question said we were exhibiting poor sportsmanship because "we were hoping somebody would do bad." Excuse me? This is sports, specifically softball, a sport that feature binary results. For somebody to be successful, somebody else has to be unsuccessful. Should we have said "ground out to third"? Later on, after the game was over and Michigan was on the unfair end of a 5-0 victory because they did such cruel things like striking out Pirate batters 9 times, not allowing a Pirate runner to reach second base and hitting two home runs, a Seton Hall fan stared at me nodding his head like I had just peed on his leg as I was walking to my car. Another fan (or maybe the same one) approached two trumpet players and told them to get a life. Hmm, let's see, we traveled maybe at most 5 miles to a game while you traveled 700, yet we're the ones that need to get a life? What do they teach at Seton Hall? I only know one prominent alumnus of the institution -- Dick Vitale (who is presently at his summer home in Tampa, Florida after spending the winter at his home in Mike Krzyzewski's rectal area) -- and I don't think he would mind the phrase "strike her out" or be upset that there is a band at a collegiate sporting event. And now, my thought for the day. There are lots of collegiate sports whose fan base is pretty much the parents of the players and the odd fan who is really into the cult of water polo (stop looking at me). I saw that in the Water Polo matches. And probably at Northwestern and Seton Hall, softball may be that way as well. Northwestern's best attendance this year was around 400, and Seton Hall's around 100, while Michigan had 1,900 for a doubleheader against Michigan State. However, if you want to play in the big time, you have to realize that there may be people there who aren't related to the players and are there to actually enjoy some combination of the allure of the sport and the institution they root for. And in turn, byproducts of said increase in attendance may be passionate fans. And bands. | |||||||||||||||
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2 May 2005 Fortunately, there are Olympic medalists everywhere...  Sources close to It's Not Me, It's Him, Right inform me that the picture featured on Friday of me with H. Ross Perot may not feature an Olympic medalist, but rather her sister. Since I can pretty much have my picture taken with Olympic medalists on demand, here's a picture of me, the rest of the Softball Band, and Michael Phelps. He's the fourth from the left on the top, wondering what he got himself into. This was shortly after his apperance as celebrity whacker.
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29 April 2005 Stupid mooching war widows...  Pursuant to It's Not Me, It's Him, Right's policy of opposing viewpoints, we have an opposing viewpoint. Walt would like to clear up a few things. Since I don't have a head shot of him, this group photo from 1993 will have to suffice. How many other group photos have a two-time Presidential candidate, an Olympic medalist and your three-time TRASH national champion captain? Walt is just behind H. Ross Perot's right shoulder (I'm behind the left shoulder). The 'H' I believe stands for Helen.Your reaction illuminates two common misconceptions about global warming:
Thanks Walt. That's why I'm the blogger and you're the science talking guy. I would also like to mention that the Colorado Rockies had a doubleheader snowed out. On the 28th of April. Keep trying, Walt! | |||||||||||||||
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25 April 2005 A multimedia extravaganza... I have known Walt now for 17 years. Walt has a doctorate (oooh!) in Aerospace Engineering, so he truly is a rocket scientist. Since we don't use rockets as much as we use to, Walt switched over to climate, where he studies ice and its relation to global warming. If a news story trickles to the mainstream media about global warming, Walt was probably involved somehow. He knows a lot about the subject, much more than I ever will. All I see is the empirical data in front of me, like the data I collected on 24 April 2005:
The Michigan baseball team played their first ever home night game on Friday. The primary reason the lights were installed is because you cannot host the Big 10 tournament without lights, and since the team has been getting better, there's no better time than the present. Although the team is not doing as well as hoped during Big 10 play this year, a near-record crowd came out to see the first game. And the Alumni Band, of which I am a proud member, was brought in. Since we didn't think to have Take Me Out to the Ball Game ready, we played this instead. The crowd still sung along, although with the announcers talking over it, it will be hard to hear. And I have to thank ESPN for proving to the nation that I am capabale of doing something heretofore undocumented. Watch this video for the proof.
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12 April 2005 The parking was efficient, too efficient... A few pictures from the Frozen Four | |||||||||||||||
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5 April 2005 What an age we live in... | |||||||||||||||
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15 March 2005 I was really, really thirsty... Purim is next Thursday. I found this out from a co-worker's Dukes of Hazzard calendar. You can't make this stuff up. Here's my water bill:
So, for 87 days, I apparently used just 500 cubic feet of water and get my meter read. Then, since they need an estimate for the last three days, their expert water usage modeling system system comes up with 10,000 cubic feet for 3 days. 500 cubic feet of water is 3,740 gallons. Apparently I can get by using about 43 gallons a day then over one wild weekend I used 74,800 gallons of water, enough to fill my house if you include the basement. Fortunately, the Ann Arbor Water Utilities Department realized their model needs a tweak or two and will be sending me a new bill. | |||||||||||||||
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7 March 2005 Stealing an idea from Television Without Pity... | |||||||||||||||
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28 February 2005 Bummers plus one irony...
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27 January 2005 Could somebody please call NIST for me... In my never-ending quest to leave my mark on this earth somehow, I will now move on to see if I can get a new SI unit. For those who are not measurement-inclined, there are seven SI units, considered mutually independent, that pretty much can be used to measure anything. They are the meter (length), kilogram (mass), second (time), ampere (electric current), kelvin (tempreature), mole (amount of substance) and candela (luminosity). Those may work great in the lab, but they don't lend themselves to real-life applications. So, I present to the world, the Pinky. The Pinky was observed during a snowstorm that most of the country experienced last week. My part-time dog, Pinky, loves snow. Loves to dig her nose in it, run around in it, and would make walks much more longer than necessary. However, when the snow reached a certain level, the thrill seemed to be gone, and her time outside was as efficient as possible. So, I had to figure out at what point is the snow too high for canine enjoyment, hence the pinky, which is defined as the height between the ground and her body. For example (you can click the images for larger ones):
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27 December 2004 My 15 seconds of fame... The Game Show Round made it's first ever national TV appearance last night with a 10 second shot during a special on the TV Guide Channel. Yes, the TV Guide Channel now has programming, as their new goal is to no longer provide listings, but instead try to out-E! E!. The special was on game show winners, which featured a tour of the Kevin Olmstead Estates and a brief demonstration on how we "trained" Kevin. In order to keep the clearances way, way down, we only showed a brief Millionaire segment. The special is hosted by Mark's favorite camera whore, Kimberly Caldwell. If you wish to see this special, you can check the TV Guide Channel for listings. Oh, wait. You really can't, because they're phasing out listings and may have already done that on your system. All times Eastern:
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17 December 2004 I know this is the wrong audience, but... Does anybody have a copy of Destiny's Child's latest album, Destiny Favored? I ask because there is a sample of the Michigan Marching Band on it. I wonder if credit has been given, or monies need to be obtained. If it's the latter, they won't need to do any fundraising for awhile. A passing that doesn't really mean much to you unless you're a band geek, but Frederick Fennell died at the age of 90. My high school adopted one of his marches for our school's fight song. Also, he once wrote a letter to the Michigan Marching Band complaining that the drummers should be singing The Victors while they are playing it. (Insert OnStar guy voice here) The following conversation is true. It took place between me and a security guard at Detroit Edison on December 16, 2004: Me: I'm here for the Henry Burger Training Center dedication ceremony. I'm his son. Guard: OK. What's your first name? Me: Michael Guard: OK. What's your last name? Me: Burger Guard: Can you spell that please? So, longtime Washington Nationals fans, what is your most enduring memory in the storied history of the franchise? What will you be able to remember fifty years from now? Actually, this is not the first time Washington has been jilted. The Padres were pretty much D.C. bound for the 1974 season, so much that Topps issued Washington baseball cards. The only thing that stopped the move was the inability to break the lease. Ray Kroc of McDonald's fame ended up buying the franchise, and famously apologized to the fans over the public address system after his first home game as owner for his team's terrible play. | |||||||||||||||
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7 December 2004 Strangely, gum and nuts don't taste so good anymore... As I try to cheer myself up from after becoming demographically undesirable, I offer The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time. | |||||||||||||||
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12 November 2004 Separated at birth...   One of them is not a good drummer. One of them was the head of the PLO. Can you tell the difference? Or, if need the game show perspective. Nobody asked for this. For more information, Click here. Yes, this is the town I grew up in. Please note this was not the first place you could get it. You used to have to go to the grill at the bowling alley. So the hometown has made both 20/20 (in 1992) and FARK. Which is more prestigious? | |||||||||||||||
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26 October 2004 They're not going to hire you... So Ron Zook gets fired, he of the infamous fireronzook.com web page. And mentioned to get the job is swashbuckling coach Rick Neuheisel. And can you believe somebody already has firerickneuheisel.com up? Some people have no life whatsoever. On a more whimsical football note, CFL officials screwed up royally that cost a team a game. Note that the play involved cannot happen in American football, but it would be much more fun if it could. | |||||||||||||||
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22 October 2004 You know, we have jobs... The average time for a regular-season major league inning in the 2004 regular season: 19 minutes, 2 seconds The average time for a regular-season major league inning in the 2004 ALCS: 22 minutes, 52 seconds That may not seem like much, a mere 3 minutes and 50 seconds, but add that up over a nine inning game and thats 34 1/2 minutes. Minutes I could be doing something else. Minutes that Tim McCarver could be rendered silent. So what is causing this?
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19 October 2004 Let the criminal record begin...  I've joined a gang. I've also updated my home page, mainly because I accidentally wiped it out a month ago. Nothing really of note there except in the game show part, where I put up some links to either my pages or other peoples pages. | |||||||||||||||
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13 October 2004 Fill in the blanks... A very underrated humorist in this country is Seattle radio host Dave Ross. He does commentaries on CBS Radio, even while he is currently running for Congress (don't ask me how on that one). A segment he does occasionally is called "Fill in the Blank", and I found five on the web. As much as I don't like to discuss politics here, and I'm a little bit to the right and he's a little bit to the left, he's pretty darn funny: The less said about this weekend the better, but I would like to give out a blanket statement to our fine readers. When you are out of college, you are out of college. You can not live those days again. If you didn't live those days the way you wanted to, there's nothing you can do to change it, unless you actually go back to school again. Trying to do it is just pathetic. I realize there may be a hint of irony or hypocriticism because of my involvement with quiz bowl, but remember I'm mostly on the facilitating end, not the playing end. I can't be 20 again and nor do I want to. | |||||||||||||||
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28 September 2004 Soy el umbrío delgado verdado... We had issues with an artist at work last week which at one point "the Latin Eminem" was said. I couldn't get this out of my head. They haven't corrected it yet, so check out the tentative 2005 Tigers schedule. Euclid now owns a team. Next, Cooch asked what a just 5s and 10s Interstate Map would look like. Don't forget to tip your cartographer. Finally, I finally broke the Level 7 barrier on Q*Bert's Qubes. I know this means nothing to nobody, but it's taken two months for me to finally do it. | |||||||||||||||
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8 September 2004 I Need Help... Another Photoshop Challenge from Dave Thorsley. Can you guess it? Saw this on a car. Yet another reason to move to Montana. Driving to work last week, the van in front of me stopped. Both the driver and passenger then left the van and traded positions. This would not be of note except the fact the two participants were Asian. | |||||||||||||||
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23 August 2004 Just the 3% of Us... Another fine teacher has left the field to sell real estate. Except this time, the teacher was fictional but the actor was real. (courtesty defamer.com) If you need more Bill Kirchenbauer unintended hilarity, this time missing the obvious as a parent, type "baldguy96 africa telephone" into Google. Trip report! Trip report! Although I will admit ahead of time it's not the best, since I wasn't going out of my way for the weird on this one. | |||||||||||||||
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5 August 2004 Attitude of the year (medical division)... Even though you known him for 34 years, he continues to amaze you. My father found out yesterday that he will have his prostate removed since he likely has prostate cancer. When I asked him about it, his quote "I knew I was going to get it, so I'm actually relieved. At least I'll get it done and over with." Simply amazing. Since he will make the third generation in a row (and there was probably more, since nobody really knew what it was in generations before), my screening is in two weeks. And, since he doesn't like it, and I'm not much of a fan either, please don't tell me your sorry or give me your sympathies. It's assumed, since nobody really roots for anybody to have cancer. I don't really have the time nor the skills to particpate in the numerous Photoshop contents, but I was given an idea by Dave Thorsley. Seemed pretty easy, so I gave it a shot. The theme was unlikely places to see a mascot. | |||||||||||||||
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6 July 2004 ... I'm so glad to be at work so I can relax. This holiday weekend was supposed to be fix a whole bunch of things at the homestead, namely to panel the basement and weed the back yard. The latter went real well, my mother and I removed so much jungle (17 lawn bags worth) that Sting was organizing a protest. However, the basement didn't go so well. One problem is that my father was having diabetic troubles and couldn't do much. Second, the posts put up to attach wall by whoever originally put the wall up was made with really bad wood. It got to the point I was drilling the hole before I put the nail in. Thirteen of the twenty-two panels are now up. I've hired someone to put up the other nine and my dad and I will concentrate on molding. So for those of you keeping score at home, changes in the homestead since the September 2002 purchase:
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