We lost the last game of the season yesterday 0-3.  Guess 2-lots isn't too bad of a record for the season.

Well, the second game I missed, the team lost by one point apparently (not sure what the actual score).

The game we had this Sunday (I finally played again) we won 3-1.  Yay!

Saw this article about dropload.com and figured I'd share it.  It's a very useful site that will let you drop up to 100MB worth of data (whatever you want) for someone to pick it up.  Seemed pretty cool.  It'll only keep it for 7 days, so that way there isn't too much stuff lingering around.  I just thought it was a cool concept and would be a great utility to keep handy.

That and it has an amusingly catchy name.

So now for the amusing part of our trip...  on Thursday, we decided to go to the National Shrimp Festival and see what all the fuss was about.  They provided public transportation for $1pp, so we figured we should take them up on it.  This one was on the way out from the shrimp festival and continued to take us farther away.  We figured they'd eventaully have to go back, so we'd just ride it.  Several miles later we were in front of the Flora-Bama bar, which is just about as far away as we needed to go to get to the shrimp festival but in the dead opposite direction. 

So we dropped off whoever it was that needed to go there and the driver was attempting to turn left to go back the way we came from.  This is a two-lane road and carries a considerable amount of traffic for its size, and we're in a bus.  Great.

The driver pulled across one of the lanes (or at least that's how it appeared to us from inside the bus) when it was clear and waited for the other direction to clear so we could finally go.  About the time the other direction was clear and the driver started to inch forward more, we heard tires squealing.  Apparently the driver wasn't completely across the lane and traffic was planning on continuing around the bus until they inched forward and traffic couldn't get by (for sure) anymore. 

So the end result was that while on vacation, I was in a bus wreck with an Isuzu pickup truck:

Everyone on the bus was fine and the Isuzu driver seemed to be ok other than he'll probably have a nice, large, circular bruise on his chest (no airbags).  They sent another bus out to pick up the passengers and while still on our way to the Shrimp Festival, we heard our original driver on the radio more or less saying that the bus was "a little ugly, but it drives pretty good".  Which isn't too bad since I'm pretty sure that poor Isuzu truck was totaled.

So I finally got around to pulling our pictures off of the camera from the second half of our trip to Orange Beach.  Had a few interesting ones.

For one, we did take the cats down with us this week and they both made themselves at home in the condo.  Fitting to their individual personalities, each one took to their new environment in a different way:

We strolled on the beach quite a bit and saw a surprising number of sea shells in the water:

We saw quite a few sunsets and it was clear enough to see the moon when it was out:

By the way, this picture of the moon was taken by Laura.  She did not use a tripod or anything.  I'm not quite sure how she stood so still, but this is an incredible shot for someone to just be "messing with the settings, trying to get it to do right".  Way to go Laura.

I reported a while ago that there was a new traffic light that'll help out traffic going to/from our neighborhood.  It is finally up and operational (it was hanging there for at least a month doing nothing).  At the moment it's too sensitive (changes almost immediately when a car pulls up) so it causes a traffic jam in the afternoon when it should wait a bunch a few people up then let them through, but I won't complain too much.

I thought this was really interesting...  I got a postcard in the mail that tells me that DirecTV will be replacing their music channels with XM Satellite Radio.  I'd been wanting XM radio but didn't want to have to buy a special receiver (and have yet another remote) just to hear it at home.  I also disagree with having to either carry your receiver from car to house or to pay for two subscriptions.  Maybe this will prompt me to actually pay for one for my next car.

Link.

Apparently the Dinosaurs (that's the name of my team - and yes, our uniforms are Barney purple) did ok this past weekend without me, but still lost 3-4.  Maybe we can pull off another win this season.  I will miss the next game, but should be there for the next two.

So we made it to Orange Beach in one piece...  and were greeted by swarms of Dragonflies.  Here's one taking a break on our deck:

There were at times swarms of them all over the place, and then at other times, none to be seen.  Very strange.

I did have had a few good chances to play with camera settings, etc, while I was down there.  Here is the moon on Saturday night.  The other light spots are (I assume) fishing ships that were a considerable distance away.  The moon looked cool since it kept getting shrouded in clouds.  In this picture it is just about to pass below the horizon:

Here is Orange Beach during the daytime (morning):

And here are a couple sunset pics:

I really like that you can see the moon in the second one.

Laura gets to stay down there all week, but I have to go to work this week.  Bummer.

So Laura and I packed up the cats and headed off to Orange Beach on Saturday.  And when I say packed up, I mean we caught them, rammed a pill down their throats (they loved that part), and when they got groggy, we made them ride in the car for almost 5 hours.  Funny thing about a high cat...  you can tell instantly that they're on something.  I bet this would be a very different world if it worked that way on humans.  Cats look a bit like they're cross-eyed:

You can't tell as much on George since the little eye cover that makes him look cross-eyed is white (so it just looks like the white of his eye in this picture).  You can definately tell that Laura is on something though...  You can see it better on Bella:

They're both back to normal now, but it was amusing but sad all at the same time.  Thanks to drugs though, we made it through the trip without too much trauma.

Seemed like a couple hundred.  I'm assuming these were going to Katrina relief since they were headed south:

Interestingly, they were just long enough that you couldn't put two on a flatbed railcar together.  That made this train incredibly long.

I don't normally write too many serious things on here, but this is one that I think might become a huge issue in the future.  Microsoft is apparently trying to patent the FAT filesystem.  That might not mean a whole lot to the non-computer folks that read this, but that should be a huge deal to the rest of us.  This is along the lines of someone patenting paper.  The FAT filesystem has been around as long as Microsoft DOS has.  The first IBM PC was released in 1981 and DOS was around then.  FAT pretty much defines how files are stored on floppy discs, zip disks, hard disks (until recently), and most importantly flash memory. 

I'm not sure what Microsoft plans on doing with this patent once it is approved, but if they decide to enforce it, it could be huge.  Just thinking about stuff I have in my house that uses the FAT filesystem...  MP3 player, digital camera, camera phone, computers, etc.  I think the kicker for me is that my TV will take a flash card and display the pictures on it.  If Microsoft decides to start charging royalties for this patent, someone might have to pay a little bit more for their TV just because it can read the FAT filesystem.  I seriously doubt there is a way to enforce this retroactively, but this could be huge in the future. 

George is ready for Christmas.  How about you?

So the other day I was getting ready to work and had the feeling that someone was watching me:

So where did Bella's head go?

Guess this is her way of saying she needs sunglasses.

We lost our soccer game this past sunday 0-10 or so.  We lost count at around 8.

I think I will be unable to go to the next two.