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November 30, 1998
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
News Links
External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
November 30, 1998
We've got a serious bout of Oregon-style weather going on down here in the Bay Area. Not only did it rain all night, but the winds are moving stuff around as well. According to the paper, wind and rain will continue through today and on through the next several days, though it should lighten up a bit as we go along.
November 28, 1998
Big soccer day as the St. Francis Varsity squads taken on their respective alumni. The after game BBQ was also a great time, though for whatever reason we had tons of leftovers. Since nobody want the food, I stocked up, and I dare say that Erin and I will eat like royalty (well, royalty that chows down on BBQ food) for at least a few days.
I followed the Alumni game with my weekly trip to Santa Clara for an hour or two of recreation-level kick around soccer. We're not good, but I end up getting a fair amount of exercise. And best of all, it's a lot of fun.
November 27, 1998
We traveled to Oakdale for Thanksgiving with Erin's relations, a 2 hour trip to a nice family gathering. Watched the Steelers game and other various football games, chatted with various relatives, ate really yummy food, and had a good time. The trip was cut a little short this year since Erin's cheerleading moderator duties required her to take the team to Friday night's football playoff game, but it's hard to complain about things which are out of our control. Next year, we'll stay longer.
November 25, 1998
Last night's Felicity was actually quite interesting for us Macintosh fans. Noel's girlfriend comes to town and, in the midst of their relationship discussions, tells Noel that she's bought a new computer. "One of those new iMacs?" he asks earnestly, professing his love for the machine. "No, a PC," she responds, "I got a really good deal. It's even cable modem ready."
Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this relationship is over. (And what's the deal with "cable modem ready"? That mean it comes with an ethernet card?) Noel is rightly aghast. "You mean you're no longer a Mac person?" he says disbelievingly.
Hey, Noel, buddy, trust me here: Better to find this out now.
[In case anyone's keeping tabs, this week Felicity betrayed Noel's girlfriend. I've not seen any previews, but my bet is that she betrays Noel within the next three episodes. Any takers?]
St. Francis Boys' Varsity Soccer beats Pioneer.
November 24, 1998
A hearty "hi-ho" and "happy birthday" to my brother Bret who, because he doesn't have web access, will probably never read this. Oh well. Hope it's a good one anyway, bro.
November 22, 1998
Cold and flu season has jumped down upon Erin and me these last few days, leaving us both congested, tired, and lethargic. I'm going to miss today's big Steeler game with Jacksonville just so I can get more sleep, and if that's not a sign that I'm really feeling wiped out, I don't know what is. Erin, unfortunately, has tons of grading to do since we're at the end of a grading period. For my part, I'll be recording grades and entering them into the computer later tonight.
November 21, 1998
The St. Francis Boys' Soccer Team's had reasonably good WCAL Jamboree results. The best news of all—since I pretty much consider this pre-season jamboree a waste of time—is that nobody got hurt. Runner-up in the good news category is that our defense didn't allow any goals.
November 19, 1998
St. Francis Boys' Soccer Team's beats Watsonville.
In the e-mail bin today was notification that my brother Bret will final join the digital age and buy a computer. It is, unfortunately, a PC, but it only cost him $10, so I figure he didn't get ripped off too badly. And in theory there will be some things like e-mail from home, word process, web surf, etc. that he will be able to do without too many problems (excluding the Windows nightmares we all know are headed his way eventually). Yes, I'm prepared to say that for $10, even the lousiest 486 might be worth it. You probably couldn't push me to $20, though.
Special thanks to my friend Dave for the rousing 1 v 1 QuakeWorld matchup last night. We spent about an hour and half with a wide variety of server and modem problems, and still had a stone cold gas. Such is the power of QuakeWorld.
November 18, 1998
So I'm going to 'fess up now and admit that I've been watching the WB's latest teen drama called Felicity. It's well-acted, and a reasonable approximation of college life, though with considerably more angst than I remember. The actors, like on all these teen dramas, are young pretty boys and girls with enough talent to pull off what's being attempted. Some weeks that's a lot, others not so much.
This week's episode was essentially an hour-long public service announcement about date rape, a serious subject that at least the show handled with good care and tact. Well, except for the obligatory 800 number that popped up at the end. That was both a little over the top and too self-congratulatory.
Despite all the seriousness, don't think for a minute that Felicity failed to get in her once-a-week betrayal. Is this girl capable of keeping a confidence? Lordy, if loose lips sink ships we can only be thankful that Felicity wasn't around circa World War II or our navy never would've made a come back from Pearl Harbor.
Of course, Felicity's problem here is simply a manifestation of the greater difficulty faced by the screenwriters and the show in general, which is to say that nobody here seems to have much of a moral center. Despite dealing weekly with moral issues of varying degrees of seriousness, we're subject to an awful lot of "the ends justify the means" reasoning. (Thankful this week's episode did not fall wholly into this category.) Indeed much of the show revolves around the characters being flummoxed when confronted by situations which call for moral decision-making. I'm sorry to say that most of the time, the characters choose poorly. Maybe that's why I'll be tuning in next week.
St. Francis Boys' Varsity Soccer held their first scrimmage of the season.
MacAdvocacy has some interesting news on the iMac in addition to word of Microsoft's latest courtroom loss.
November 16, 1998
Erin and I took in the St. Francis High School production of Thorton Wilder's Our Town on Saturday night. The drama was well-acted and, despite some inconsistent lighting, highly enjoyable.
Wilder's work is simplistic study of a small town in the early 1900s. It uses minimal props and the "slice of everyday life" scenes carry added weight since we're looking at so little of these folks' life experience.
Wilder's arguable conclusions about death, afterlife, and humanity come to the forefront in the third act. There's moving stuff here—particularly for a high school drama—but I found myself annoyed by Wilder's conception of an afterlife, and ultimately, about the nature of life in general. His idea that we don't make the most of every moment is certainly true, but then (1) there are too many moments in a life time to fulfill the potentiality of each moment and (2) not all moments are of equal weigh (at least subjectively). (A childbirth, for example, carries far more weigh than doing the dishes.) Perhaps I'm picking nits, but I wish Wilder's play had a little more depth in this regard.
My free preview of Adobe PageMill 3.0 expired yesterday, which led to a bit of a delay in updating the site. At this point I think I'll be going with GoLive's CyberStudio 3.1 as my HTML editor of choice, even though it's 3x more expensive. It's more than 3x more powerful, so I think that makes it worthwhile. Expect to see some new stuff on the site in terms of the navigation system and in terms of coverage by the end of the year.
November 14, 1998
A hearty Davison Club House "Welcome Aboard" to Josh Allen (of Fireland fame). Josh is the latest individual to take the plunge and join the messages, chats, etc. at the Club House.
There's a new bit in Sports/SF about the Lancer football WCAL title chase.
November 12, 1998
A calendar feature has been added to the Davison On-line Club House, something which members might want to check out to see if there's any personal advantages. I'll probably put up stuff like vacations and soccer games, which should be helpful for those who want to keep tabs on my busy life. (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) Remember, if you've not yet joined, e-mail me, and I'll send you an invitation.
Had a player break his wrist at soccer practice yesterday. Injuries are fairly common in soccer, but serious ones are pretty rare. This was just a fluke play where the ball was kicked into his hand. He's doing fine, but it'll keep him out of action for awhile.
Hi-de-ho to my QuakeWorld adventuring friend Dave! We scraped together enough time to battle the forces of darkness (meaning the other team) last night, and learned lots about version 2.3 of QuakeWorld's extra commands and functions. There's a lot of stuff to set up, but in the end, I think it's one of the most fun games I've played.
November 11, 1998
No soccer practice yesterday, though Coach Sal and I met to discuss soccer-related issues. Our first game is a week away, and then life gets very exciting indeed, with up to three games a week through the rest of the season. (The exception here would be Christmas break.) That's a lot of soccer, and my own opinion is that psychological breaks from the game will be important to build into the season.
The team itself looks very good. The technical skill of most of the players is very high, and if the tactical understanding can catch up, we should have a very good season.
November 9, 1998
I'm toying with the idea of reworking Davison On-line using GoLive's CyberStudio 3.11, a professional-level HTML editor. I could easily add a lot of features to the web site, and, if I'm willing to use frames, I could even make site navigation easier than it currently is.
I should mention that the other half of this is (1) my desire to automate updating of the site via AppleScript and (2) to pare back slightly my coverage. From reader feedback, I'm quite aware that the News section here is the runaway popularity winner among the various sections, so it's not going anywhere, but does, for example, anyone read Sports? I mean, I love writing about the Pittsburgh Steelers and all, but if nobody out there cares, then I'll can the section and save us all some time. Expect to see an on-line survey asking questions like these soon. And trust me, your input counts!
I've updated MacAdvocacy with some comments on a MacOS 8.5 controversy and on reports that G3 upgrade cards might not be fully stable.
November 8, 1998
I've completed my initial testing of ICQ, and I hereby pronounce it not ready for prime time. While it promises a host of really cool features, it delivers on virtually none of them, and I'm sorry to say that, at least on the Macintosh 1.55 version of things, it's buggy as well. The ICQ Macintosh message boards themselves are littered with one complaint after another about how ICQ fails to deliver. My own experience of the last few days validates these complaints. I may give ICQ another shot after the next version comes out (whenever that is) but otherwise it's just a waste of hard drive space and Internet bandwidth.
I'm more impressed by Hotline, but since I have no files for users to download Hotline falls into the category of "cool but not useful." It would also be helpful, I think, if I had a static IP address so that I could run Hotline all the time. But right now it appears Hotline is not the net solution I'm looking for.
Interestingly, I've come across a potential solution (thanks to chess nemesis Al Starfy) in the way of Excite's PAL and community boards. PAL is essentially AOL's Instant Messenger done right. That means it doesn't crash my machine or result in other Internet weirdness. It also offers a "Conference" feature which I'm eager to try out since it appears to offer a viable chatting solution for 68k-based Mac owners.
As for the Excite communities, I've started Davison On-line Club House II, a replacement to the Yahoo! Club House. The Excite-based Club House allows members to upload pictures, links, messages; to calendar events; to maintain a contact list; and more. I've not been able to test the chat features here, but if it works reasonably well, the new Club House appears to blow Yahoo! away. Yes, you'll all by receiving invites soon.