I never had any interest in seeing the movie Stop-Loss.  I didn’t know what stop-loss meant and I wasn’t interested in finding out until I came across a newspaper article in the Ogden Standard Examiner a few weeks ago.  The article was about a serviceman who was in Iraq and his experiences.  To summarize in the best way I can remember, the serviceman was in a vehicle driving along with some others and they hit a mine.  The blast knocked him out and he had been hurt so badly that he was flown to a hospital in Germany.  While he was there he found out that one of his eardrums had been blown out and that he had some brain damage.  The doctor told him that he was not to be around any loud noises and that he was not going back to Iraq.

Days or weeks later another military doctor came to see him and signed him off to return to the fight.  He can’t hear out of one ear, he is brain damaged, and they are forcing him to go back into the war.  I thought this was horrible, but the article just got worse.  He was supposed to be done with his tour in August, but because he got hurt and had to have months of rehabilitation the government is sending him back, brain damaged and all, to make up for the time he was in the hospital.  Stop-loss is the most ridiculous policy I have ever heard of.  This is just one straw in the bale of corruption that our government lives by everyday.

As predicted a big snow storm has hit most of Northern Utah. Lots of road closures and accidents. There are also reports of power outages, ski resort and school closures. Radio is probably the best option to get the latest news. The Utah Commuter Link page is slow and probably getting a lot of hits too.

The storm warning is until 6pm, so evening commute is going to be interesting. I am in Jeremy Ranch, and pretty much stuck in the office till they can clear the roads. Earlier I heard that I-80, Parley’s Canyon, was closed in both directions, so I am not sure if it has been reopened.

From other blogs:

• Didn’t get very far – we’re snowed in

Photo by Seekhay

Yes, Jan 14, 2008 has been declared a holiday for both the public and private sectors in Dubai, on behalf of U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to the city. My initial reaction to the news was, wow! this place has so much respect for President Bush, that they even declared a national holiday on behalf of his visit. Let’s hope Al Qaeda does not think too much about this.

But in reality, Dubai is a traffic mess, and a road system incapable of functioning under the levels of closures required during a U.S. President’s visit to a city in the Middle East. Even, Sheikh Zayed road, the main artery of the city, is being shut down; that is major and is enough to bring Dubai to a stand still. So, it’s not surprising that they had to declare a holiday, to keep cars off the streets.

This is still kind of ironic as Dubai is supposed to be this place at the forefront of building an amazing city of the future; yet, all it takes is a visit from a “not so popular on this side of the world leader of the free world“ to bring it to a grinding halt!

Photos: BBC, Streetsblog

Even though cricket is known as the gentleman’s game, there are enough controversies in cricket to prove otherwise. Form match fixing to sledging, there are plenty of examples of cricket not being as clean as it is made out to be. But it’s also a game where great players have set extraordinary examples of sportsmanship, the famous of which being when Courtney Walsh gave Salim Jaffer a second chance.

Today’s Australian victory against India in the second test at Sydney has taken cricket to a new low. Here a few thing I noticed and my thoughts:

Umpiring
First thing which stood out was how horrible umpiring has gotten in cricket. There are umpiring errors in any sport, but from Tennis to cricket, technology is used to not only minimize umpiring errors, but also to improve the accuracy of umpiring. But, cricket seems to have a very vague protocol for the use of technology in terms of the third umpire. It has come to a point where an umpire asks a fielder if they caught the ball, that’s like asking a thief if he robbed! Why the BCCI does not take a stronger stance against this is baffling?! The whole Test Match was lost because of this.

Sportsmanship
The second thing which stood out was the lack of sportsmanship. Now, my initial reaction was to blame Australia for bad sportsmanship, but then given some thought, it occurred to me that good sportsmanship is no easy feat. It’s a rarity in any sport, because good sportsmanship can get in the way of victory, which is the only goal in any sport.

Australia’s hunger for success is a stronger force than the desire of other teams to deny them that success
BBC Sport’s Oliver Brett

Even though India came out looking the better team in terms of playing with the spirit of the game, Australia came out looking the smarter team. However bad it might look, the Australian’s took advantage of the flaws in the game to carve themselves a nice record setting victory. Australia also played to win, while India played to draw, that kind of attitude difference can impact gameplay tremendously. One plays aggressively while the other plays passively. In this case, aggression won.

Sledging and Racism
The verbal exchange between Andrew Symonds of Australia and Harbhajan Singh of India, resulted in the Australian team lodging a complaint of racism against Harbhajan Singh. Well, the verdict is out, Harbhajan Singh is banned for 3 tests for calling Andrew Symonds a “Monkey”. Evolutionarily speaking, what’s wrong with one monkey calling another monkey, “monkey”?! Now, what I am interested in is what did Andrew Symond’s say to provoke such a reaction from Harbhajan Singh?

Joking aside, sledging and racist comments are seriously out of control in cricket and I am sure far worse things than calling someone a monkey is said on the field. It is time cricket introduced on field penalties, like having players sit out in a penalty box for smaller incidents, and expelled from the match for more serious incidents. Unless there are more immediate in match penalties, sledging is both going to go on, and get worse.

In the end, the rivalry between Australia and India is growing, and probably will soon trump the India-Pakistan rivalry. This is good for cricket, and like the test match in Sydney, it makes for entertaining cricket, and can only make it more popular.

It has been about a year since I initially moved over my sites from Eleven2 to MediaTemple. That change was made mostly due to a major crash at Eleven2 and the hype surrounding MediaTemple’s grid sever. Around the same time I got a DreamHost account as well, to take advantage of their referral program, disk space, and to host subversion.

The past year with MediaTemple was kind of bumpy in the beginning, with all the issues they had with the grid server. Even though most of the grid server issues have been resolved over the past year, it still felt like I was not getting what was promised, and the price felt steep too. So, yesterday when I got the automatic renewal email, renewing the grid server account for another year for $160 (that’s minus $40 which was given back for the grid server failure), I decided it was time to move on.
(more…)