Happy Halloween!!!

Studio 60

I like the new TV show "Studio 60". I Think it is one of the best shows on TV this season. Unfortunately, most viewers and some critics don't agree. The show has not done well in the ratings and has lost viewers instead of gaining new viewers.

I have always enjoyed the writing of Aaron Sorkin, especially the "West Wing". I just hope this show can be "saved", so I can enjoy his writing for a few more seasons.

I do agree with some of the "changes" suggested in both of these articles on "Studio 60" and what needs to be done to make the show have a continued life. ...Read a USAToday article... and ...Read another opinion from Slate...

A Few Thoughts Today

Just a few thoughts. First, I am glad that neither New York baseball team made it to the World Series this year, after all that talk about a "subway series" in September.

Second, I can't beleive all those stories about my favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney, regarding his divorce with second wife, Heather Mills. Drinking and drugs, maybe. But not the physical abuse - just don't beleive that.

And thirdly, I can't beleive that a lot of schools are prohibiting kids from playing tag during recess anymore. What are they suspose to do during recess - take a smoke break? What is the world coming to?

Frese Nike's Coach of Year

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Maryland's national champion women's basketball coach Brenda Frese was recently named Nike's Coach of the Year, the corporation recently announced. As part of the award, Nike will make a donation of $10,000 to the Jimmy V Foundation on behalf of Frese.

Frese was presented with the honor last weekend in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Nike Coaches Clinic, Oct. 6-8, 2006. Frese led the Maryland Terrapins to the program's first-ever national championship in 2006 in just her fourth season at the helm in College Park. The Terps, who had no seniors in the starting lineup, defeated Duke, 78-75, in overtime in Boston to claim the title. Along the way, the team defeated two No. 1 seeds, including North Carolina, who had been the consensus favorite to win the crown, and the Blue Devils. Maryland ended the season with a 34-4 record, the most wins in school history.

Frese has been regarded one of the profession's top recruiting coaches, signing four-straight top 10 classes, including the No. 2 and No. 4 classes in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Six former high school All-Americans are currently on the 2006-07 roster. Among those All-Americans are three-time All-ACC performer Shay Doron, All-American Crystal Langhorne and ACC Rookie of the Year Marissa Coleman.

The Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research was founded by the late Jim Valvano and ESPN in 1993. The foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to saving lives by helping to fund a cure for cancer.

Maryland returns its top eight scorers from last season's championship squad, as well as 98 percent of the offense and 95 percent of its rebounding. The team officially started the basketball season with Maryland Madness on Friday, Oct. 13. Maryland plays its only exhibition game of the season on Thursday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. against LTL All-Stars. The Terps then open the regular season at Middle Tennessee State on Friday, Nov. 10, before returning to College Park for the home opener on Sunday, Nov. 12 at 2 p.m. against George Mason.

Air Force Memorial

The dedication of the nation's newest memorial, the U.S. Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va., will begin the service's 60th Anniversary Commemoration, "From Heritage to Horizons - Commemorating 60 Years of Air & Space Power," on Oct. 14.

The Memorial, composed of three bold and graceful spires soaring skyward to a height of 270 feet, will be dedicated and given to the nation by the Air Force Memorial Foundation at an official ceremony Oct. 14 at 1:30 p.m. on the 3-acre promontory adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery and a short walk from the Pentagon.

The Memorial honors the millions of men and women who have served in the U.S. Air Force and its predecessor organizations, including the U.S. Signal Corps, the Army Air Corps and the Army Air Forces. It pays tribute to the dedication, sacrifice and contributions of those who pioneered the skies, those who shape the air, space and cyberspace victories of today, and those who will continue to do so in the future. ...Go here for more on the memorial...

100 Fearless Forecasts

PC World lists "100 Fearless Forecasts". I picked my "Top 10" from their list of 100. These are the 10 things I look forward to.

Superfast Boot-Ups Adding flash memory to the motherboard could lead to PCs that boot up and load applications more quickly. We expect to see systems with such technology in 2007.

The Day That Gigabytes Become Passé In 2007 you'll be able to buy 1 Tera-byte hard disk drives says Bill Healy of Hitachi. Drives will grow to 2 terabytes by the end of 2009, and to an immense 8 terabytes by the end of 2013.

Memory That Doesn't Forget Your existing PC memory gets amnesia when the system power goes off, but NRAM (nanotube nonvolatile RAM) remembers everything, and is as fast as modern memory. With NRAM, your PC could turn on and off immediately, dispensing with all of its tedious booting up and shutting down.

50-Terabyte DVDs Researchers at Harvard Medical School have produced a prototype of a light-sensitive coating that they believe will eventually store up to 50 terabytes on a DVD-size disc. NEC, which has been codeveloping the technology, hopes to have a USB thumb-drive version a year from now, and a DVD-size disc a year after that.

Quad-Core Processors Dual-core processors have given PCs a big speed boost, but the advances won't stop there. Quad-core systems from Intel will arrive before the end of the year, and AMD's quad-core chips will hit the market in mid-2007.

An Entire MP3 Collection on a Flash Player The capacity of MP3 players that use flash memory keeps on growing: Apple and Sandisk now have 8MB models. We're looking forward to a small flash MP3 player with enough capacity to hold an entire music collection. About 30MB, say, would do nicely

TVs Out of Thin Air The Helio display can create a TV out of nowhere, projecting an image onto a curtain of compressed air. Right now it is prohibitively expensive (around $20,000), but the price will fall as the technology matures.

WiMax in the Wild The wireless technology WiMax has been "coming soon" for some time, but it looks like it's finally here: Sprint is using it as the basis for the Fourth Generation Wireless data network(4G). Let's hope the other cell phone networks follow Sprint's lead and roll out similar services.

Fiber Everywhere Fiber-optic broadband service is currently available in 17 states, providing up to 50-megabits-per-second downloads and 5-mbps uploads to the lucky few subscribers who happen to have access. But companies such as Verizon are continuing to pull more and more fiber, and the latest equipment could enable even faster access. How does 200 mbps down/20 mbps up sound to you?

Thousands of Photos on One Memory Card New technologies (such as the experimental atomic force probe tip technology that companies like Nanochip are working on) can store tens of gigabits on a single chip. It's a few years away from being ready, but one day your digital camera's memory card could hold thousands of images, not hundreds. ...Read the entire list of 100 here...

New Washington Baseball Park

Well, at least the construction of the new Washington DC baseball park is officially under way in southwest Washington D.C.

Still can't tell it is going to be a baseball stadium, but we will keep checking on the development over the next two years it is going to take to build it.

Washington Nationals Tribute

Well the Washington Nationals baseball season is over and I didn't post one thing about the team this entire season. Maybe it is because the team just never jelled this year or "made a run" like last year's team did. The team strated bad anf finished bad. There were some outstanding stretches of games along the way and some great player stories. I would be remiss, if I did not acknowledge the great year Alfonso Soriano had. The guy came here as an All-Star second baseman but was "forced" to play left field against his wish.

So what did he do? He became a good left fielder and an All-Star at that position, also. He had 22 outfield assists which were the most in the entire Major League. He also became only the fourth player in the history of Major League baseball to hit at least 40 home runs(he actually had 46) and have at least 40 stolen bases(41). Soriano also became the first player to ever have more than 40 home runs, 40 stolen bases and 40 doubles in a single season. Since Soriano is a free agent this may have been his only year with Washington - but what a year it was!!! I just hope we can find the money to sign him for next year.

The other player that had a remarkable season was "rookie of the year candidate" Ryan Zimmerman. All he did was hit .286, hit 20 home runs, and drive in 110 runs. This is a great seson for anyone, but for a 20 year "rookie" it was amazing. He had several "walk-off" game winning hits, and he led the Major Leagues in total game winning hits. Zimmerman was also an outstanding third baseman, and he made some unbeleivable plays during the season, drawing comparisons to Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, who many consider the best ever to play thrid base.

And last, it would not be right if I didn't give a big "hat off" to manager Frank Robinson. At 70, Frank still had "fire in his eyes" and got the best out of this team. The team was picked to finish last, as it did, but the team never gave up and played good and exciting baseball most of the two seasons he managed the Washington Nationals. He never had a "level playing field" to play on, and it is a shame he won't get a chance to manage the team next year when the team will have a full year with "real" ownership and a "real" budget. I hope the team keeps him in some capacity next year. Good luck Frank Robinson and thanks!!!