Congratulations to the DU Pioneers for their second consecutive NCAA Hockey championship. After March Madness runs its course, I usually transfer my sports attention to hockey. And with the NHL and the NHLPA at an impass, the frozen four is the last oasis before a long, dry march.
Unfortunately, the frozen four went by in a flash. Winning the Stanley Cup requires 16 wins across 4 best of 7 series. And the frozen four only whets my appetite.
I’m converting from CVS to Subversion for my version control needs. I haven’t experienced any serious issues with CVS, but I felt that I needed to investigate the Subversion repositories included as part of my TextDrive hosting plan. And now it’s time to switch.
From my perspective, there is no reason not to switch. Subversion provides:
And if you would like to get started with a book, I recommend Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion. It’s a blend of simple and smart that just feels right.
After a gentle nudge from Bruce Perens, my ruby html sanitize function is available under an MIT license. This version is substantially the same as originally posted in Sanitize HTML in Ruby. The function has been added to my subversion repository, renamed from sanitize_html to sanitize (html implied by the directory structure) and hr has been added as a tag that does not require closing.
Well, it looks like the A’s have locked up team leadership for the foreseeable future - Beane, Crowley get shares of the team. With an $180 million purchase price, the gifts of a tad less than 5% to Beane and a tad less than that to Crowley figure to be in the $17 million ballpark. Beane and Crowley better start saving for a whopper of a 2005 tax bill.
A lot of college basketball games are won at the half. I have no idea just what is said or done, but one team will start the second half with a big push and then pull through to a win.
Stanford won three games in the NCAA women’s tournament just that way. A tight game at the half, a big push coming out of the half and a finishing drive for the win.
Stanford lost to Michigan State that way as well. Tied at the half, Michigan State came out with an 8-0 run and built the lead to 13 with 11:09 to play. Stanford would subsequently pull back into a tie three times, but would never break into the lead.
That was remarkably easy. If you keep good records, live a simple life, and have broadband; then you definitely need to check out these Free 1040 Filing options. I went with TurboTax® and was pleasantly pleased with how easy it was.
Most of the providers hope to make money from optional 1040 services or from State tax preparation. Since Connecticut WebFile is free [and I’m a cheapskate], I elected to re-enter my information rather than pay TurboTax® to complete my state tax forms.
I should have had more faith. I should have learned something from the Pac-10’s 5-0 record in the first round of the tournament and from USC’s 61-59 loss to 1-seed Michigan State in the second round. But I needed to see more.
Last night I saw more. UConn put the defensive hammer down in the 1st half and took a 33-27 lead into the locker room. But Stanford came out in the 2nd half and ground out a tough win.
This is the game that I’ve been anticipating/dreading since the brackets were announced - Stanford v Connecticut. Stanford is 28-2 for the year and #1 in the polls. But after facing relatively weak regular season competition, I just don’t know if Stanford is prepared for a down and dirty fight. And given their #2 tournament seeding, I’m not the only one with doubts.
Tonight we find out for sure.
28 Mar: Stanford 76 - UConn 59, now we know.
My contribution to tomorrow’s holiday meal is dessert - apple pie and blueberry pie. They say that cooking is an art, but baking is a science. Perhaps that’s the underlying reason for my baking success.
That, quality ingredients and some good old fashioned elbow grease. I’ve had pretty good luck with the frozen wild organic blueberries from the local Trader Joe’s. While I was there, I picked up some organic granny smith apples to mix with some empire apples from the local supermarket. Good ingredients, but nothing hard to get.
What really makes my pies stand out are the crusts. I make my crusts from scratch - nothing but flour, butter, shortening, salt, and water mixed with a fork and a bowl. It’s a bit of work, but you realize that it’s worthwhile with the first bite.
Al Abut plans to learn the Ruby programming language over the course of 3 weeks. I seem to have jumped the gun by a bit, but I’ll be following along with his progress.
The plan is to follow the course of Sams Teach Yourself Ruby in 21 Days. But being the cheapskate that I am, I’ll catch the daily objectives from Abut’s weblog and work from my 2nd edition PickAxe book.