Legendary rock guitarist, Pete Townshend, was arrested (and eventually released) on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children. I won’t get fooled again into trusting another rock star. Geez, who’s next?

In Africa, opponents of a Malawi politician spread rumors that he was a vampire. In response to the rumors, an angry mob hunted him down and almost stoned him to death. You just can’t make this stuff up.

We celebrated the birthday of our friend Steve Thompson yesterday in grand style. Eric Thrasher took Steve, Melissa, and I to a restaurant named Indigo. The food was excellent and the atmosphere was lively. After dinner, we then all shared a bottle of tawny port into the wee hours of the morning. Perfecto.

1. Where are you right now?
Sitting in my living room.

2. What time is it?
11:48PM.

3. What are you wearing?
Gray t-shirt and underwear.

4. Any people or animals around you? Describe them.
Melissa is sleeping in the bedroom, and my cat is sleeping there too. I am alone in this room.

5. What are your plans for the weekend?
I’ll try and forget about these lame ass questions–this has to be the worst Friday Five ever. I have school tomorrow and tomorrow night we are going out for Steve Thompson’s birthday.

Some golfers go their whole lives without hitting a hole-in-one. This old guy hit two in a row–on consecutive holes. Incredible.

Interesting article on how companies trying to shut down parody sites made their situations much worse.

Ok, so Metallica and the record industry managed to close down Napster. Then Kazaa and the other copycats stepped in to fill the void (see earlier blog entry).

Now, there are high-quality music stream rippers that can automatically record and name songs in MP3 format (see story). You can easily fire up the software, tune into an Internet radio station of your favorite genre, and walk away. In hours you’ll have new gigabytes of songs and you don’t even have to search for them.

All you need to get started on this, apart from the obvious hard drive space, is a copy of Winamp and the Streamripper plug-in–that’s it. Check out the story and the program if you have the time.

Kobe Bryant made it rain tonight–rain three-pointers that is. In a victory over the Seattle Supersonics, Kobe made nine straight from three-point range. He went on to break the NBA single game record with twelve from downtown and finished the night with 45 points.

The Lakers could be back on track, since they didn’t suck tonight. If they win three in a row, I may actually be able to wear my jersey again in public. However, if they miss the playoffs, I will hold a ceremony in the back yard and burn it. That’s a promise.

I waited to upgrade to Windows XP Professional until a few days ago. Yes, I know it was released over a year ago. I wasn’t sure that it was that much better than Win2K so I waited as long as possible.

After a few days I can say that it is better than Win2K Pro by a huge order of magnitude. It is much more stable and no hung processes thus far. In Win2K Pro I had to kill Outlook regularly with the Task Manager just to clear it from memory. Also, aesthetically, the screen fonts are rendered much nicer.

I know most of you have been running it for a year or so now–I don’t wanna hear the “I told you so’s.” I am glad I changed over, but ask me again next week.

Well, let’s just say that something did happen, but I can’t really talk about it. Drop me an email, give me call at home or on my cell and I’ll be happy to fill you in. I hope everyone is having a terrific New Year!

It’s anybody’s guess what will happen this year. However, MSNBC polls readers annually on the country’s financial outlook and compares the results from the previous year. If you have some time, take the poll.

I’ve been so damn busy with school I haven’t had time to squeeze out a daily nugget (I still have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old). This lack of production is just unacceptable. If I keep this up I may have to start calling this thing the “weekly” nugget or the “monthly” nugget.

Never! I didn’t choose blogging, blogging chose me. I am gonna try and represent daily even if only five people actually read this. Bustin’ nugs on the dizzle for shizzle–word.

“Today is my eleventy-first birthday…a very curious number and a very respectable age for a Hobbit.”
–Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Today would be J.R.R. Tolkien’s 111th birthday. This is the same birthday that Bilbo Baggins celebrates at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Parties are planned all over the world to toast Professor Tolkien’s birthday. These toasts will be recorded into a documentary to honor the event sponsored by the Tolkien Society. As a side note, numerologists should note that this “curious” birthday comes on a very interesting date–01/02/03.

I tried as hard as I could and just couldn’t squeeze out a nugget–pardon the pun. A news nugget that is. Not much going on in my personal life except for school–a lot of essays.

In the news today, the President threatened Saddam, again. The Dow shot up, but it historically does that on the second of the year. That’s not much news. I don’t expect Amazon to be trading north of $300 because of it. Just another day–hope everyone had a good one.

Damn, it’s hard to believe that it’s 2003. I can still remember Return of the Jedi being released in 1983. The Eurythmics had “Sweet Dreams” on the radio and Cyndi Lauper, Culture Club, and Madonna were all the rage–it sure doesn’t seem like that was 20 years ago.

Happy New Year to all–good luck in all of your endeavors this year!!!