The Superbowl is in a few days. New York vs Baltimore, both good defensive teams. Probably not going to be one of the most watched Superbowls in memory as defensive games are not as exciting to most people and two Eastern teams don't help either. Although I do like Baltimore's defense and wild card mystique, I can't root for them due to the way they got to the big game. A couple of cheap shots to take out the starting quarterbacks of the Titans and Raiders doesn't make for a team I can feel good about. One can say that every team plays dirty (and the Raiders certainly have a reputation for it, although not as much in recent times), but that doesn't excuse the action...

I wrote the above paragraph before watching the Superbowl. Now that I've seen it I can say that it was a fine game. Only at the end did Baltimore blow out the New York. In the SuperBowl and the last two Baltimore games, I can see where each of the teams could have beaten the Ravens by not turning the ball over and not making special teams and defensive mistakes. The Giants turned over the ball like five times, gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown and also gave up an 80+ yard pass play for a touchdown. Really, New York could have won by executing better, even if Baltimore played as well as it did...

I've been reading "Crusade", which is a book about the Persian Gulf War, written by a journalist. It's a relatively good look at the events that transpired, from the beginning of the air war to the end of the ground campaign. It's more of a military history book rather than a study in strategy and tactics. I'm sure there were a lot of conflicting reports and the author had to make some decisions about what to trust and what not to trust, but it seems to be a relatively accurate book, written a bit after the war ended and the dust settled...

At this point I need to slow down and find time to catch up on my life. I've been working 10-14 hour days for the last couple of weeks and I'm not getting any journal writing or anything else done. One alternative is to cut back on my Star Trek campaign. Possibly end it after this season or at least go to a biweekly schedule. That would help since the prep time can be used for other things. The other thing is to not go to gaming the weeks I'm not running. That would give me another whole day to do things. I don't know, it seems like I'm going to break if yet another annoying thing happens...

Next week, as I write this, there is a training class that I have to help teach. It's only going to be an hour or two for me, with material that I still have to read up on, in front of a couple dozen consultants and support people, and it'll be taped. Geez, I hope I don't do something stupid in front of the class. I hate people who just show a slide and then read what's on the slide. What's the point of that? They're having developers do the initial training so that we can answer any questions that pop up. This is sort of a beta class and our comments and suggestions will be incorporated into the final class offered by Oracle University...

Here's an interesting piece of news. Juno, who originally provided free email for non-Internet users and expanded to provide free Internet access, now is going to require users to keep their computer online (or allow their computers to dial-in automatically) so that they can be used for distributed processing. The SETI at Home project is the most famous example of distributed processing to personal computers. Juno will sell their user's spare CPU cycles to raise revenue.

Admittedly, it's an original idea. I doubt anyone will like it. I know that the SETI software is processor hungry and really slows down a machine when it's running. And even if it's set to run after 15 minutes of inactivity (much like a screensaver), it's annoying because it takes a few seconds to kill it. Juno is currently up there for an ISP, with 4 million users. I wonder how many they'll have after they implement this plan. Not that there are all that many other free ISPs around in any case.