Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Ok, the pain is subsiding and I'm finally able to collect my thoughts over the past weekend.

Haven't written about sports much here, mainly because I know I'll get ripped on from certain people who see sports as the biggest waste of time, energy and money. I have many interests and many of you only know one side of me. So, first.. I'm going to defend myself:

To the intellectiuals who read this: To me, athletic contests are very symbolic of the epic stuggles evident in every level of our lives. Sure, many seemingly pointless events add up to mean big things in the scope of a game, a season, or even larger scale. Its a release of aggression, and an escape from the mundane everyday events. No, it doesn't consume my life, but I definately follow my teams, even more so when they are doing very well.

To the artistic and creative: There's a tremendous amount of imagery and style. There's pagentry all through College Sports. Sure College Band music is geeky, but it also unites a mass of people and draws them together and sets mood and adds to the drama. Yes. Drama. There's is suspense in a close game, which definately rivals some of the best written scripts in existance.

>To the technical: There are TONS of things to get excited about from a technical perspective. From the architecture of the huge stadiums to the booming sound systems. From fireworks and huge Hi Definition Scoreboards to On screen enhancements like the "First-and-10" marker. And the physics of hitting a Baseball or throwing a ball through a hoop from 20 feet away.

To the political: hmmm.. well.. There's the underdog factor! (And yes, all my political friends by definition are underdogs!) Being lucky enough to not live in one of the 'Big' sports markets that have domitiated recently like Boston and New York, or going to a Big Ten School that hasn't done much of anything for the 10 or 15 years before I went. The Underdog is definately how I would describe 'my' teams.

Underdogs... until this year, that is. You see, I went to the University of Illinois and was lucky enough to see the basketball team win unexpectedly. Every year since then, Illinois put out a 'decent' team and was competitive, but this year... this year they stuck gold!

Going into this weekend, Illinois has been the unanimous number one team in the nation. That may not sound like it means much, but when there's 120 or so teams all trying get there and some REAL perenial powerhouses out there that's impressive for us. Add in that we have held that for about 2 months now and that we won every single one of our first 29 games, and you have an unbelieveable season in the making.

Trust me when I say this stuff doesn't happen often, and it was happening to my school! I even saw some of those guys when they were freshmen. As Seniors now, its my last connection to the team and how far they came.

But regardless... the point of all this is... we were playing our last game of the season this past weekend. One game away from perfection. All Illinois had to do was go into Columbus, OH and beat Ohio State. Lowly Ohio State that isn't even allowed to play in the postseason due to recruiting violations.

And yes, you guessed it (or heard alreadY)... Illinois lost. By one point. On a shot with 5 seconds left after leading the entire game. The pain and disappointment was unbelieveable. It took a while for the shock to wear off, but now that the dust has cleared, I realize its OK. I mean, sure to win every game would have been a dream, but every now and then, each and everyone of us needs a wake up call in some form or another. Some reminder that we aren't perfect and we can't be complacent.

And, I'd much rather have the let down come during the regular season, then during the Big Ten Tournament or the NCAA Tournament.

I'm used to this feeling of disappointment when it comes to all of my sports teams, but never have they been so close to something only to lose it. Now I guess I can truly empathize with all those silly Cub fans that had their heart ripped out in those 2003 Playoffs.

At least they had Mr. Bartman as a scapegoat.

So, I have been working late lately and have mostly been on the 6:19PM train out of the city. (More clues for you stalkers out there!). Well, Monday I get to the train just to see it pulling out of the station. That's just fantastic!

Which isn't the worst thing in the world, I get to spend some quality time with Wil Wheaton's Just a Geek.

Also, once the train pulls up, I get a prime seat by myself next to the window. And since it was a holiday the train was mostly empty. So, I get to spread out a bit and get comfortable.

About 15 minutes into the ride, I get one of those familiar announcements about how the train is going to be 10 minutes late... this time just because of some other train's problems. Yay, more quality Wil time.

At one of the first stops, this woman and little girl get on and I notice that there aren't many open seats for them, so I move over so that there's room. The woman has the little girl sit next to me, and she sits in the seat in front of me. This is quite possbily the cutest little girl in recent memory, and she was obviously cold and waiting outside for a while.

The woman, probably her grandmother, asked her if she wanted to take her hat and gloves off. She just shook her head no, all the while her gaze fixed on me, and this HUGE grin on her face.

I'm not sure if it was me, or the comforting picture of Wil Wheaton on his book that she liked, but once the other person in the seat in front of me got up to leave, the woman asked the little girl to come sit with her, and she didn't want to! She wanted to sit next to me!

Finally, she coaxes her up a seat, and before long, the seat in front of them opens up, so they flip the seat around, so it would allow up to 4 people to sit 'together'. The little girl sits facing backward... staring at me with that same huge grin on her face. And this time, she couldn't see the book, so I'm pretty certain its me.

Now, all the while, all I could manage to do is look back at her and smile, or make little subtle faces. I suddenly had this fear of saying something and making the woman think I was some creepy old guy. So.. I just sat there and made faces and enjoyed the innocence of this little girl.

Once we finally made it back to my stop, I to get off the train, and she watched me walk all the way up to the doors, and I'd duck back out of view and back into view and I could hear her laughing from all the way across the train. She even watched me from her window waving at me. And smiling.

So... an innocent 40 minutes or so, without a single word exchanged.

Sure its pointless... but isn't everything here?

So, I've worked in downtown Chicago for just about 2 and a half years now, and the daily commute has become quite routine. The hour or so gives me time to read, think, get some work done on my laptop (or just getting it to work... wiped away my second to last installation of Windows... yay Linux!), or just catching up on sleep.

The delays aren't really all that unexpected either. They have an automated recording to let ya know how far behind the train is running and tonight it seems as if the Conductors or Enginneers or whoever the heck runs the trains wanted to have a little bit of fun.

Out of nowhere, the first message comes across the speakers, "Due to scheduled construction, this train will arrive at its final destination... 6... minutes late. We apologize for any inconvenience."

It was the same polite woman's voice as the regular messages, but I've never heard them in that format before. And this seemed odd because we were moving pretty well, and maybe the problem was on the track ahead of us.. I shrugged, and went back to reading a new live journal I stumbled across today at work.

Then, moments later, "This train is currently running approximately... 6... minutes late due to... a marathon... Metra apologizes for any inconvenience." You see, they can substitute the time and the reason into the standard message, but it seemed kinda crazy that there would be a Marathon in suburban Chicago on a cold and rainy early day in early March.

This drew chuckles from a couple people, but most ignored it. I finished up reading the journal and dove into Wil Wheaton's Dancing Barefoot. (A great read! I'm amazed at how fantastic his writing is, but that's for another post!)

A few minutes later, "This train is currently running approximately... 4... minutes late due to... a holiday parade... Metra apologizes for any inconvenience." By now, its painfully obvious that someone is just looking for the less used delay reasons. We are all very used to hearing about 'switch problems' or 'waiting on other trains'.

A few minutes later the boisterous conductor comes in and he's talking to someone on his radio, 'Sure! Why not! Play another one!' and he wanders through the train.

As the train nears my stop, I'm graced with yet another announcement: "This train is currently running approximately... 3... minutes late due to... a hazardous material condition... Metra apologizes for any inconvenience."

Now, I wanna know how many other recordings there are. I wonder if there is a 'Terrorist Attack' one.. Or a 'Tornado' one.

Thank god she made it out alive! I was soooo worried about her well being!

Seriously though, I don't see what the big deal is. Why the hell do I care that she's out of prison? And does Fox News really need to be going on and on about how's she's 'paid her debt to society' and how difficult it must be to endure such hardship.

But, at least her and Kobe are both ok in the street cred department now, which is good.

In another move to decimate any type of grassroots movement, the Federal Election Commission is planning on extending its authority to the Internet. Apparently, they feel that any type of promotion of ideas needs to be regulated.

Slashdot has the story and numerous fantastic comments. I shudder to think what sort of fines they could assess some poor blogger who happens to link to a candidate without filling out the proper forms. This is all in the early stages, and might not happen at all, but just the fact that they are thinking about it scares the hell out me. A government that controls what can be said will control the ideas of the people. And somehow, you can still hear people claim that we live in a 'free country'.

How the hell did we get here, and where did we hide that pesky First Amendment.

Ok, just a quick follow up to the Paris Hilton Sidekick hacking thing... (I'm not obsessed... really! I just want to keep putting Paris Pictures up on my blog.. yeah! that's it).

Previously, I speculated that a T-Mobile employee could have gained access. It's been speculated that the T-Mobile website was hacked by way of some poorly written software and unpactched servers.

However, it seems that it may have been much much easier then that.

From Brian McWilliams's post at O'Reilly:

Like many online service providers, T-Mobile.com requires users to answer a "secret question" if they forget their passwords. For Hilton's account, the secret question was "What is your favorite pet's name?" By correctly providing the answer, any internet user could change Hilton's password and freely access her account.

Talk about weak passwords! And, apparently she knew for some time that someone had access and didn't bother to try to get her account name changed or anything. Again, I can't tell if she just really IS that stupid, or if she just wants to do anything to get the media attention.