Happy B-Day Mom and Dad....yes their bday both falls on the same day. My homeboy Dali's bday is today too and a crew is doing a big dinner in the chi in honor.

Random tip of the day -- If you purchase a CD that says anywhere on it "Hottest Hits of..", "MTV Presents" or "Thats what I call music" it might be time to starting listening to some new music.

Random thought of the day -- Why do people make New Year's resolutions to go to the gym in January, knowing that they will quit in February? Personally, I would opt to start in April or May, so you at least get in some kind of shape for the summer. I guess people just like saying DAMN, I looked sick in mid-Feb when it was 20 degrees out.

RIP to our fallen countrymen...

Here is a link to someone's all-time favorite Simpson's episodes in order.

Christian

Deacs move to 14-2....Can we get some respect? Seriously. Bracketology on espn puts us as an eight seed, and our ranking of 18 is ridiculous. Is this some kind of sick joke? I can't find the dang link, but I read it earlier in the evening.

Why did I miss most of the speech? Why else, was in the gym working out. The EDT training I mentioned an earlier post has begun and I need to get to the gym late, so I don’t have to deal with a crowd. The workouts have been great except I went a little too light on the weights to start. This is easily correctable, but is frustrating when you are finishing your 9th set and doing almost as many reps as set one. I also owe everyone an update on my training partner and the huge improvements he has made since training diesel style. I’ll have that and some quotes in the near future. In the meantime I am off to bed.

Daily Pundit offered this analysis of the speech.

The best part was this offering...

It is instructive that the first part was primarily on domestic issues, and he pretty much flung his agenda in the teeth of the Democrats. Bigger tax cuts, faster tax cuts, for (note this) "those who pay taxes." In other words, no "payola tax payout" for non-taxpayers.

Missed Bush's speech for the most part, but did catch the part where he spoke of banning cloning. Didn't agree with this point, but I;ll have to read the transcript to see what else was going on.

Couldn't stop laughing today when I ran into this parody blog. There is some amazing stuff in that rivals the onion.

France Warns Iraq Against Acting Alone
(2003-01-26) -- French Foreign Minister Dominique deVillepin today warned Iraq not to act alone in creating weapons of mass destruction.

"Unilateralism is bad," said Mr. deVillepin. "We urge Iraq to work in a multilateral way, through the U.N. perhaps, to manufacture, deploy and conceal weapons of mass destruction."

"I have spoken with German officials," he added. "To prevent the horrors of unilateral action we are prepared to work with Saddam Hussein to organize...how do you say in English? A coalition of the killing...or is it coalition of the shilling...well, you know what I mean."

Here is the link on the retailers plan to sell mp3s story.

$.99 a song and $9.99 seems a bit steep, but I guess we will see things shake out.

Where were the Raiders? Dang I wish the Steelers would have had a chance to play the Bucs. We would have done them in like we did earlier in the season. Ohh well...there is all was next year.

Wired piece on why killing Kazaa is going to be tough. Record companies are planning their own legal mp3 site according, I saw on Drudge.

On October 2, 2001, the weight of the global entertainment industry came crashing down on Niklas Zennström, cofounder of Kazaa, the wildly popular file-sharing service. That was the day every major American music label and movie studio filed suit against his company. Their goal was to shutter the service and shut down the tens of millions of people sharing billions of copyrighted music, video, and software files. Only problem: Stopping Napster, which indexed songs on its servers, was easy - the recording industry took the company to court for copyright infringement, and a judge pulled the plug. With Kazaa, users trade files through thousands of anonymous "supernodes." There is no plug to pull.

Nor, as attorneys would soon discover, was there even a single outfit to shut down. That's because on a January morning three months after the suit was filed, Amsterdam-based Kazaa.com went dark and Zennström vanished. Days later, the company was reborn with a structure as decentralized as Kazaa's peer-to-peer service itself. Zennström, a Swedish citizen, transferred control of the software's code to Blastoise, a strangely crafted company with operations off the coast of Britain - on a remote island renowned as a tax haven - and in Estonia, a notorious safe harbor for intellectual property pirates. And that was just the start.

Ownership of the Kazaa interface went to Sharman Networks, a business formed days earlier in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, another tax haven. Sharman, which runs its servers in Denmark, obtained a license for Zennström's technology, FastTrack. The Kazaa.com domain, on the other hand, was registered to an Australian firm called LEF Interactive - for the French revolutionary slogan, liberté, égalité, fraternité.

Confused? So were the copyright cops. "It's hard to know which one to sue," complains Michael Speck, an investigator with the Australian Record Industry Association. Hollywood lawyers figured the best way to bring Kazaa to justice was to squeeze Sharman. Trouble was, Sharman, which operates out of Sydney, had no employees. All its workers, including CEO Nikki Hemming, are contracted through LEF.

Yalepundit offers some statistics on grade inflation that is currently infiltrating Brown.

Best album of 2003 should drop soon.... A must purchase for anyone who likes hiphop, or enjoys good music. Check out this review of the album. These guys are also from NC, so all of my Carolina friends need to give them some support.

Speaking of Carolina, the beloved Wake Forest Demon Deacons have moved to 13-2 after dispatching of the Seminoles today. Granted the loss to UVA was tough to stomach, but once Justin Gray gets back things will fall into place. Go Deacs….

Starting a new workout this week. Escalating Desity Training is the latest meal on the table, following in the footsteps of my brother and Kozy, who both had success with this method. Meltdown training was a resounding success, but after three weeks of hell (yes MD training is hell), I’m flipping the script and doing EDT. Meltdown is the single best means to use if getting ripped is your goal, but with winter in full effect, it is time to bulk up a little bit. I’ll let you know how things proceed. Check out this article if you want to check out some gym hysterics.

Highlights include....

2) It's all you, man!
If I lift most of the weight while spotting you, will you do the same for me? And do you think that girl over there is watching us?

3) I don't want to get too big.
I'm a total newbie who has no idea what it actually takes to get "too" big.

4) My new year's resolution is to lose a little weight.
You won't see me here after February.

5) I'm thinking of buying a Bowflex.
I could use a new coat rack.

6) I'm thinking of getting that gastric bypass surgery to lose weight.
I don't have enough discipline to become anorexic on my own, so I was thinking of having it surgically induced.

11) We offer personalized training for a small fee.
For a huge wad of cash, one of the college kids who works here will lead you around to different machines following the exact same program we put everyone else on. As a bonus, he will talk about his annoying roommate and what he watched on TV last night. Sometimes he will offer professional fitness tips like "good job" and "now let's do this machine."