We found out last night that the paper that Ron, Lucas, and I submitted to a workshop of the CASES conference in San Jose was accepted. That means that while the rest of you freeze your asses off in the drizzly rain at the end of October, I'll be in sunny Mid-Cal telling a roomful of crazy CS people about my research. That means that like Ms. Rowling and like Rachel, but unlike my Mom the English professor, I will be a published writer.

Hopefully I will also be a signed recording artist. Well, that's stretching it a bit, but expect the Music page to get some new material sometime soon thanks to this baby:

And finally, a discussion in my Advanced User Interfaces class tonight is worth mentioning. Dr. Kimura lugged in a gigantic ancient Macintosh to demonstrate a program he developed in the early 80's. He also told us about his Apple Laserwriter printer that he has been using for years and years. So many years, in fact, that when he ran out of ink for it neither Apple nor Canon made anything that fit it anymore. So someone in class suggested that he go on eBay and try to bid on some ancient ink cartridges. We're thinking he may actually do this.

Ron taught an entire class today behind a table which had a sign taped to it. The sign read "Ignore This Man". Apparently someone from an earlier class (or possibly the professor himself) put it up, but it was quite amusing to not mention it until the end of class. Scott Friedman took a picture of it on his camera phone. If I can get a hold of it I'll post it here.

I was thoroughly stomped by Lucas' apparently more football-ly knowledged girlfriend in the NFL picks this week. As ashamed as I am, I'm not nearly as ashamed as Lucas should be. To add insult to injury, she also did much better than him in our fantasy football league last year.

I've posted previously about my bad luck at gambling. I've even gone as far as to say that to call it "gambling" would be a misnomer, since that would imply that there is some iota of a chance of me winning. No longer. Last night myself, my girlfriend, and 4 of my friends attended Harrah's Casino, and all 6 of us walked away winners. I lit up the blackjack table for a $50 gain, which included reeling off a string of winning 10 hands in a row.

Because of this, I've decided to halt this whole frustrating job search thing and concentrate on a career as a professional blackjack player. I figure as long as I never lose, I can just work a few hours a week and make more than enough money to live on.

And the best part is that feeling of invincibility you get when you're on a winning streak, or that thrill of victory when you walk out of the casino with some of their money rather than losing a lot of your own. You just don't get that when programming.

So if you don't see me in class for the rest of the semester, I'll be chilling out at home working on my card-counting strategies. If you should happen to see me under the bright lights with a cowboy hat on and a pile of chips in front of me, admire my skills but don't distract me. I'll be hard at work.

As Nathan pointed out, I did attend the career fair yesterday. On Tuesday, I attended a seminar at WashU career services where they said to research the companies attending and focus on a few you really want to talk to, then spend most of your time there. I researched on my favorite encyclopedia: the internet, and found 7 companies that had open entry-level positions in software development somewhere in the country. Armed with this knowledge, I was prepared.

Unfortunately most of the companies were not prepared. UPS, for example, has programmer openings in my former hometown of Roswell, Georgia. When I asked the rep about this, he stared at me quizzically and said "oh, we're only here recruiting for package handlers at the Earth City plant". Citadel, a financial corporation, also has entry-level programming positions, but they informed me that they "only hire business majors from WashU", and that they get their tech people from other schools. The reps therefore knew nothing about any of their technical openings.

By far the worst, though, was Accenture, a consulting company with many positions listed on their line job database as "Entry-Level Programmer I" all over the country. When I asked the recruiter about this, he stared at me and said "I don't know anything about our tech. positions, I only know about our consultant positions. You want to be a consultant, not a programmer." Then he spent 15-20 minutes telling me what a great job a consultant is. Which is all well and good, but I specifically told him I was interested in software development.

So my preparedness, rather than giving me a leg up on the competition, made me completely frustrated. I will, however, give props to the two companies that did have their shit together, so to speak: Cerner and General Mills. Cerner actually knew my name and remembered who I was, which is a good sign. General Mills has programmer openings and is starting a .NET initiative. So you get rewarded with a favorable writeup in the Festival, while the other companies, for their lack of preparation and competance, get big frowny faces. Boo.

It seems Lucas, frustrated by the Packers general suckiness, is allowing his girlfriend to make his picks for him. Perhaps this will help him catch up a little. And before I forget, if you're going to write things in your blog like "Not to be outdone by Chris"perhaps you should ensure that you are indeed not outdone by me (as well as Lucas) once again. Here are this week's selections, with shorter writeups since I've already written enough in this post:

AZ at STL: Arizona can't win 2 games in a row with their craptacular lineup of has beens and never will be's, which is lucky for arrogant Mike Martz. STL

SF at MIN: At home, against a shoddy opponent, with a few injuries, this one has all the makings of a trap game for the Vikings. Since I have a lead, I'll go out on a limb and make this my upset special. SF

TEN at PIT: The battle of the 90-year-old running backs. Tennessee is the most unpredictable team in the league, so I'll go with all those Steelers WRs in this one. PIT

NE at WAS: Oh my poor Patriots. Pretty soon they'll need to start some of their offensive players on defense. I think Antowain Smith might be a better defensive tackle than running back. WAS

JAX at HOU: This is a tough one. It's never a good idea to pick a rookie QB in his first start, but David Carr is banged up. JAX

PHI at BUF: The Eagles might climb back into it eventually, but not here. They don't have the defense to harass Bledsoe like the Dolphins did last week. BUF

CIN at CLE: I keep picking the Bengals to get their first win, and they keep losing. Once again, here goes: the Bengals finally get on the board this week. CIN

KC at BAL: Priest Holmes vs. Ray Lewis, Jamal Lewis vs. ...nobody. Let's see how the Chiefs do when tested. KC anyway

SD at OAK: The Chargers are starting to look like one of those "this team will win one game this season, which will it be?" teams. Again, I'm going to say not this one. OAK

DAL at NYJ: And speaking of bad teams, you have the New York Jets, Bill Parcells' old team. I still think they'll win this week though. I just have this feeling. NYJ

ATL at CAR: No Michael Vick means no problem defeating the Falcons. CAR

DET at DEN: No, Jake Plummer is not as good as he looked last week. DEN

IND at NO: The Colts are not a 4-0 team, and New Orleans has got to start winning one of these days. NO

GB at CHI: Well Lucas, at least you get to watch your crappy Packers play on MNF this week. And they should look great playing the Bears. GB

I haven't posted much this week due to me being busy finishing up a programming project and preparing for the career fair (motto: "We're here, but we're not hiring!") tomorrow.

In my absence, Nathan (motto: "My posting frequency puts the rest of you to shame") has once again brought up the subject of whether our Computer Science department should be teaching us more concrete skills, such as fixing computers, compiling in Unix and Linux, and l33t haxoring. This was, in fact, also the subject of a heated discussion at the ACM fireside chat a few semesters back.

The consensus in the department was that they prefer the "teach a man to fish" approach rather than the "give a man a fish" one, that by teaching the concepts of how programming languages work, for example, we can then go off and quickly learn any programming language we need to know. This is, in fact, mostly true, as all object-oriented languages are pretty much the same.

I would like to contend, however, that it's both possible and desirable to teach both theory and practice, just not in the same class. CS342 is an unholy amalgamation of design patterns, C++, and Unix, and the result is that students don't really learn any of these things well. But both design patterns and C++ (and unfortunately Unix as well) are skills that any good student with a CS degree should know.

Therefore, I present for you the curriculum of The University of Chris Hill Festival (motto: "Tearing down the ivory tower and putting up a big top"):

100 Level
Introductory classes offered in a variety of major OO languages such as Java, C++, and Visual Basic. All students must take one of the three, and may take as many as they like but only one counts towards concentration requirements.

Tools and Environments class teaches students the basics of Unix, Linux, and Windows (all you Apple hippies can go smoke some pot), as well as the important tools of each (Emacs and make, for example) and how they relate to their GUI-fied Windows equivalents (for example, building Java programs in both JBuilder on Windows and Emacs+jikes in Linux/Unix). Required.

200-Level
All the basic theory courses like algorithms and data structures, etc. that we have now. Required.

300-Level
Design Patterns. Students use their OO language of choice to write programs using design patterns. Rather than being force-fed a new language, students will gain a better understanding of patterns by learning them in the environment they are most familiar with. Required.

Scripting languages. Students learn not only crazy Gawk but also useful things like shell scripting, Perl, and if they're very brave: Javascript (motto: "Java in name, unstable in performance"). Not required, but counts towards credit.

Assembly/hardware language and concepts. What WashU calls "CS306". Not required, but counts towards credit.

400-Level
Advanced theory courses such as Advanced Algorithms, compilers, etc. Students must take at least 2 of these.

Advanced programming courses (multithreading and realtime programming in Java, for example). Student must take at least 1 of these.

Design Project. Either on a small team or individually, propose and create one semester-long large scale programming project. Should take a few weeks on design (using appropriate patterns), then spend the rest of the time implementing in the language of their choice. Should be a large-enough scale project that it incorporates advanced topics. Can be done in the language of choice. This is CS456 without all the unnecessary documentation time and with more concentration on implementation. Required for graduation.

You'll notice that my curriculum is heavy programming, as that is my main interest. It's my school, and I can do whatever I want with it.

Others have been posting geekily lately, so in order to maintain my status as a CS Tool I should probably make my own.

Awhile ago, I posted about crazy Don Knuth, the famous and quite eccentric CS celebrity. Well crazy Don is at it again.

For some reason, Mr. Knuth and his wife decided to, on a recent trip to Ohio, take a photograph of every diamond-shaped street sign they saw. They also measured the GPS coordinates of each sign and, so that others could be enlightened by this information, posted the results on his website.

Now go, and be dazzled by "Condo Entrance", "Deer Xing", and "Slow Hill" in all their glory.

As you can see from the Pseudo-Real-Time Scoreboard™, I am currently building a commanding lead over Lucas in the picks. Without further ado, here goes this week:

NYJ at NE: The Pats may have won last week, but by no means are they out of the woods yet. They still have no running game, and now their linebackers are going down with injuries one after another. Still, the Jets have looked bad and have a few major injuries themselves. NE

KC at HOU: The injury bug is already starting to bite Priest Holmes, which doesn't come as much of a surprise. He's an amazing player, but they've also got quite a passing game in KC. My advice: less hard runs by the Priest and more Trent Green to Tony Gonzalez connections. Note, my advice may or may not be based on the fact that Green and Gonzalez are both on my fantasy football team. KC

TB at ATL: To beat the Bucs, you have to run straight at them and contain their sorry offense. The Falcons have no wrecking ball to send through the middle at Warren Sapp, and their defense is rarely up to the task of stopping anything. TB

PIT at CIN: Pittsburgh isn't this good, they can't keep winning. They have no running game, and the Bengals are about due to get their first win for Marvin Lewis...Upset Special! CIN

MIN at DET: Minnesota is my chic NFC Championship pick right now, as they look to chug ahead behind their x-factor, the unstoppable Moe Williams. When Priest goes down, Moe will pick up the reins as the NFLs best do-everything back. MIN

NO at TEN: Yuck, two teams I always love to pick against. New Orleans has the better RB, Tennessee has home field advantage. When a dome team plays at a grass team's stadium, always pick the grass team, even if it is the Titans. TEN

JAX at IND: Boy the Colts sure did look good last week beating the Titans, and the Jaguars are probably worse. IND

STL at SEA: This game will feature about 120 passes and maybe 10 runs between the two teams. Should be fun to watch. And is the arrogant Mike Martz finally going humble on us and starting Marc Bulger? STL

NYG at WAS: Everyone is picking Washington in this game because they are 2-0 and because the Giants have had trouble stopping the pass. I beg to differ. NYG

GB at AZ: The Cardinals will go 1-15 this season, the question is who will they beat? Certainly not the Packers, even in the heat of Sun Devil Stadium. GB

BAL at SD: The Chargers aren't even bothering with the good start this year, they've gone straight to the losing. In this battle of two teams with bad QBs and all-world running backs, the nod goes to the team with a defense. BAL

CLE at SF: Boy the Niners laid an egg last week. The Rams tried in every way possible to allow them to win the game, but they just wouldn't do it. The Browns have been horrid, though, and now they're without Dennis Northcutt. SF

BUF at MIA: This is my mini-upset-special, since everyone thinks Buffalo will go 16-0 or something just because they beat the demoralized Pats and the craptacular Jaguars. Never pick against the Dolphins in September (and forget about that game against Houston two weeks ago). MIA

OAK at DEN: The Raiders look...old, while the Broncos look...like they still have Jake Plummer starting at QB. Neither is a good sign. DEN

As most of you know, today was National Talk Like a Pirate Day. This is all well and good, I've always said we could use a few more "ahoy!"s and "me hearty!"s around campus. However, this is not a flimsy excuse for someone to dress up as a pirate, complete with fabric eye patch, as was someone sitting outside of Graham Chapel today.

Some of you may recall that we've had a bit of a squirrel problem here at Apartment 12. Unfortunately, today we were once again hit by the decaying rodent curse, as there was a dead and frosty squirrel (sorry, no pictures this time) right on the stoop outside the back door of our building. There must be something in the water around here that's responsible for this mass (2) squirrel kill-off. And if so, I bet it's dangerous to humans also. Perhaps it might make us physically ill? Quick, who do I sue...

For those of you waiting with baited breath to hear about my health situation, I'm feeling quite a bit better today. Not 100%, but much closer to it than I was, say, yesterday, when I laid in bed and read a book from 7 at night until I went to sleep.

And finally, to get revenge on Nathan for posting the We Like Tha Moon Flash Travesty, I present A Treatise on Badgers and Their Interactions With Mushrooms and Snakes in Their Natural Habitats. I find it oddly mesmerizing.

I was going to post earlier while under the influence of dramamine and therefore half-asleep, but I elected against it. My ramblings are crazy enough without being drugged up.

Today I got to pay another fun visit to health services, where they pulled a CSI and said "Give me your DNA!" Actually they never said that, but they did poke me with needles and steal some of my blood, either so they can run some bacterial tests or so they could clone me, one or the other.

The worst part about my recent strange undiagnosed illness is that it is threatening my consecutive classes attended streak. I haven't missed a class since sophomore year when I had mono, and even then I only missed 1 to attend a doctor's appointment, despite it feeling like I had a tennis ball shoved down my throat.

Tonight at 7 all that could change. I've already completed and turned in this week's Advanced User Interfaces homework, and my stomach is starting to protest as the dramamine begins to wear off. It's not looking good for Advanced UI tonight.

Everyone else already posted about the RIAA's latest revenue stream (suing their customers), so it's time for me to add my two cents.

I went on KaZaa last night to look for some songs by rather mainstream bands that I like that are only available on imports or as b-sides on singles. I have no problem purchasing a CD for 12 bucks, but I do have a problem paying $30 for a Japanese version of an album that has 1 extra song or paying $5 for a single with one new song on it. As a result of the latest legal wranglings, songs like these and other rarer songs are no longer available on KaZaa, but all the album songs and popular singles that are actually cutting into profits are still there ad nauseam.

So basically the RIAA has succeeded in making it harder to find rare and unreleased songs, seemingly a legitimate use of file sharing, while not having any effect on the rampant "stealing" of popular music. As perhaps the only person who actually uses file sharing as a "try before you buy" medium, it's rather annoying.

There is someone tooling around campus (literally) with a license plate that says "Jedi". It's about time to end this vanity plate fixation that Missourians have, as most of them are unaware of how to pick one that doesn't make them look ridiculous. "Meowth", for example, is not a good license plate. I suggest that we start charging extra for vanity plates, perhaps a $25 flat fee plus an extra $25 if you want something nerdy on yours. That will hopefully put an end to this nonsense.

Now for week 2 of the NFL picks.

SF at STL: First Kurt was fine, then Kurt had a concussion, now Kurt says he didn't have a concussion. What's next, Brenda gives Kurt a concussion? Those crazy Rams. The Greatest Show on Turf has become Days of Our Lives. Look for the Rams to have no problem with the Niners, starting up a good old-fashioned QB controversy. STL

HOU at NO: The Texans embarassed the Dolphins last week, while the Saints got embarassed themselves by an overrated Seahawks team. The universe returns to normalcy this week. NO

MIA at NYJ: When will the Dolphins learn that they will never contend for anything as long as Jay Fiedler is their quarterback? For that matter, why are the "nickelback" and "dimeback" both defensive players while the "quarterback" is an offensive player? Old man Vinny is going to be flat on his back by the end of this one. MIA

BUF at JAX: It's too early to say whether the Bills are for real, all they did was beat a Patriots team that had no chance of winning. The Jaguars pulled a major choke job last week, though, something they look to do often this season. BUF

CLE at BAL: Both of these teams stunk up the joint last week, but only one of them is not starting a rookie QB. With that said, if Baltimore's defense rebounds, they won't have to do much on offense to win. BAL

WAS at ATL: I entertained thoughts of picking the Skins to start 2-0, but then I realized how ridiculous that would be. The Falcons may not be an All-Star team right now, but at least they have a coach who knows what he's doing. ATL

DET at GB: The Packers are certainly in trouble without any of their wideouts and that horrid defense they have. The Lions looked good last week, but any team looks good against the Cardinals. The Packers may be at home, but oh that defense... Upset Special! DET

TEN at IND: Again, I cannot pick the Titans to win. Their style of play is boring, their head coach has a mullet, their quarterback is walking around on my grandfather's legs at this point, and Eddie George needs to retire. They may win, but I hate this team. IND

PIT at KC: The Chiefs' defense isn't as good as it looked last week against a terrible Chargers team (wasn't David Boston supposed to help them?), but it's still good. And Priest Holmes is like Tecmo Bowl Bo Jackson: unstoppable. KC

CAR at TB: I almost made this my upset special, but then I saw that Lucas already did, so to spite him I picked against his favorite team as my upset special. The Panthers have problems on offense, while the Bucs have just slightly fewer problems on offense, their biggest being Warren Sapp. TB

SEA at AZ: Last year, the Seahawks made the Cardinals look good. This season, it's the other way around. Overrated they may be, but they're going up against All-Overrated-Team MVP Anquan Boldin. SEA

DEN at SD: Jake Plummer or Drew Brees? Aging Rod Smith or seemingly-aging David Boston? Portis or Ladanian? At least that last one might be a decent matchup. DEN

NE at PHI: Neither of these teams scored last week. I figured the Pats would suck after their franchise's second-dumbest move since letting Curtis Martin go, but the Eagles? Lucas forgot to actually pick a team here, but I figure he's going the same way that I am. PHI

CIN at OAK: It's a new era for the Bengals! Well, actually it's not, but at least they're sort of trying. Oakland is just collectively waiting until they die. But still, it's the Bengals... OAK

CHI at MIN: Ouch, having to sit through a whole Bears game has become a painful form of torture. They have the most boring offense in the league, completely bereft of any playmakers. You can bet ESPN will give Brian Urlacher lots of face time. MIN

DAL at NYG: Again Lucas forgot to pick a team for this game. But since the Cowboys have about as much a chance of winning as Bill Parcells does of wearing shorts that fit him, I'm guessing he also is picking the Giants. Is there any amount of money that would get Parcells on an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Because if so I would be more than happy to pony it up. NYG

My bill at Schnucks for probably 2 weeks' worth of groceries (I bring my lunch to work and rarely eat dinner out except on weekends): $55

Bill of the girl in front of me in line who had 2 cases of beer and 2 bottles of hard liquor: $92.01

Somehow I think I'll get more use out of mine.

In our rebounding economy, there are plenty of great jobs for self-starting, tech-minded individuals looking to dive headfirst into a rewarding career. At WashU Career Services (Motto: "Bringing the Same 5 Companies to Campus Every Year"), there is a whole list of companies looking to hire entry-level techies to stare at screens for 9 hours a day.

You could, for example, be a Desktop Install Engineer, a dynamic, exciting career installing Windows XP on old workstations. Or how about a Lotus Notes Administrator? Or my personal favorite: Help Desk Worker at Family Dollar.

Here are some tips to help you land your dream job:

-Aim Low. Sure you may want to be a Program Manager at Microsoft, but a quick browse through Monster or HotJobs shows that you have better odds of being Assistant to the Entry Level Web Developer at FlyByNight.com. Don't worry if the company has no real business plan; your paychecks may bounce, but the experience you gain browsing the web will be invaluable to achieving your career goals.

-Network. Many people hire a headhunter to help them find a job, but while they are professionals, they really have no incentive to quickly get you hired. Your parents, on the other hand, are highly motivated to get you out of their basement and into the real world so they can stop doing your laundry and paying for your internet connection so you can play Starcraft. Your Dad has a job, get him to weasel your way into an interview. This works even better if your parents own their own business. If so, there's no reason to even go to college!

-Relocate. Many companies are looking offshore for cheap labor, so get a head start on your competition and move to India. Now is as good a time as ever to find out if it's true what they say about the Ganges...

With these 3 simple tips, you could be beginning your own low-level, menial techie job today!

...that is me with the lead over Lucas in the NFL picks. You can now keep up with us in pseudo-real-time using the NFL picks scoreboard on the sidebar.

In other sidebar news, the Festival would like to welcome Nathan to the fold. But we regret to report that, due to lack of updates, Kill9 has been removed.

% kill -9 | Land of Wind and Ghosts

I forgot to mention that during said Weblog Party Episode II, Charlie and I were the undisputed champions of Monkey Tennis. Unfortunately, Charlie is leaving us soon, so our reign of terror will come to an end, but at least, unlike Kurt Warner, we went out on top and did not flame out into a fumbling mess.

Yesterday was not a good day for a fan of Boston sports teams. Rather than describe every gory detail myself, I'll just point you in the direction of my favorite sportswriter, Bill Simmons, and his diary of black Sunday.

The evening proved to be much more enjoyable, however, with Weblog Party Episode II. We finally got to meet the elusive (insomuch as we'd never met him in real life) Nathan and he got to see that, as shown in our websites, we are all geeky and crazy (or both).

Much thanks to Ron for providing us with healthy nourishment (read: pizza) and to Debaliviere for fixing our appliances in time for the event, as well as making it virtually 3 solid weeks without a functioning parking gate. There's no dead squirrel stuck in it this time, guys, just get the thing fixed.

I finally broke down and went to health services this morning, which all of you familiar with my dislike of doctors (not personally, just the fact that they often want to jab sharp things into my arm) know is my absolute last resort.

My stomach has been bothering me for the past couple of weeks. Usually it just sits there, rumbling uncomfortably, and this I can stand. However, occasionally it erupts into an unbearable wave of nausea which is only silenced by sleeping. I have no other symptoms, so first I just paid a visit to the always-cheap and always-friendly Dr. Internet, who never wants to jab sharp things in my arm. He suggested that I eat smaller and more frequent meals, which I tried but doesn't seem to be working.

Dr. Internet also had a flowchart to help me try and diagnose my own illness by answering a series of questions. It was like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book: Is it Painful to Urinate? If Yes, turn to page 10, if No, turn to page 14. Unfortunately it ended the way most of my CYOA books ended: You die.

No, no, it actually ended with "we don't know what's wrong with you, go see a doctor", which was what I was trying to avoid doing in the first place. This is how I ended up in Health Services this morning, finally getting some return on my $250 student health investment. After 30 minutes in the waiting room, during which they occasionally summoned me to the desk to verify that I was still a student. The whole "graduate school" thing seemed confusing to them.

Them: "So you filled out a health survey?"
Me: "Yes, back when I was a freshman."
Them: "But you graduated right?"
Me: "Yes, but I still go here, I'm getting a Master's Degree."
Them: "Fill out this same health survey again."

But finally I was able to see a doctor. I must've been her biggest challenge of the day, since she had to immediately rule out uberdiagnoses 1 (mono, which I had sophomore year) and 2 (pregnancy). She didn't even ask me if I smoked; apparently she deduced from the fact that I did not smell like a tavern that the answer would be no.

So after a few minutes of looking in my ears and throat, feeling my lymph nodes, listening to my stomach, and taking my blood pressure, she said those magic words: "I'm not going to recommend any blood work unless it doesn't go away by next week". Instead, I walked out of the office with no holes in my arms and with a prescription for Zantac 150 (take that, Zantac 75) and super ultra-drowsy dramamine ("don't drive after taking this").

Unfortunately, though, I can't eat any spicy foods, which are the staple of my diet, for the next few days. That won't stop me from Sundays NFL kickoff barbecue though...

Let's say you're a graduate student in Computer Science at Washington University (which shouldn't be too much of a stretch for most of you reading this), and you have a choice between two classes:

Class A: No midterm. No final. A few small programming assignments. 1 Reasonably-priced textbook. Class meets from 4-5:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the same time as your Monday-Wednesday class.

Class B: Midterm. Final. Large final project that "if it crashes during the demo, you fail the class". No textbook. Class meets from 7-8:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Which class do you take? If you're crazy like me, you opt for choice B, choosing to save the 40 bucks on the textbook and do more interesting programming assignments in exchange for your free time. I will certainly regret this in, say, November, when it is 10 degrees outside, frozen dead squirrels are jamming the parking gate shut, and I have to drive through ice and swirling snow in order to make it to lecture every Tuesday and Thursday.

Or I'll just skip class, sip hot chocolate, and do my programming assignment.

And now, even though Lucas has not been brave enough to accept my challenge, week 1 of the NFL picks:

NYJ at WAS: The season kicks off with the most boring of possible matchups: the 2003 New York Jets vs. the 2002 New York Jets sans decent quarterback or stable running game. Go with the coach who is normal or the coach who is nuts? Go with the running back who is old and good or the four running backs who are young and crappy? Go with the quarterback who is 40 or the quarterback in his 20's who can't hold onto the ball? NYJ

JAX at CAR: Another snoozer, does anybody besides Lucas' girlfriend care who wins this game? There's not even an interesting subplot like in the previous game, such as will Danny Wuerffel make an appearance even though he's not on the team anymore? If there's one immutable law in football, it's that Fred Taylor will get hurt at some point during the year. I predict it will happen now. CAR

AZ at DET: Yuck! This game will draw 10 fans, unless they are giving away Marty Mornhinweg bobbleheads or something like that. Gotta go with the home crappy team over the visiting crappy team. DET

MIN at GB: Finally a game that doesn't make me cry. Normally the Pack at home is an automatic pick, but it's too early for their coldness to be a factor. Plus the Vikings have x-factor Moe Williams, my favorite non-Patriots NFL player. MIN

BAL at PIT: Pittsburgh's defense took a hit when Joey Porter got shot the other day, but it won't take much to stop a rookie QB who had one good year in college. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, and this blind squirrel got luck and found his directly before the NFL draft. PIT

NE at BUF: Normally the Pats are a given against their former leader, the statuesque Drew Bledsoe. However, I think the sudden cutting of Lawyer Milloy has sent the Pats into a state of shock that they won't be able to recover from in time for this game. Mark my words, Bill Belichick, this crazy boneheaded move will cost your team the Super Bowl. BUF

DEN at CIN: This year is, as is seemingly every year, Cincy's year to break free from an endless cycle of horrible play and actually improve. Not yet. DEN

IND at CLE: If you took the best players from each of these teams' defensive units and combined them, you still wouldn't have an NFL defense. I don't know what the line is on this game, but take the over. CLE

SD at KC: The Chargers always start well, and the Chiefs (and my fantasy team) might be without Tony Gonzalez (although weepy Dick Vermeil will wait until 10 minutes before the game to announce this). I'll make this an upset special. SD

HOU at MIA: A corollary to the 1st Immutable Law of Football ("Fred Taylor wilst always finish the season injured") is thus: "The Dolphins will start every year 4- or 5-0, play reasonably well over the next few games, then crash and burn when the weather dost turn cold". MIA

STL at NYG: The Giants always play the Rams tough. Plus Mike Martz is crazy. NYG

ATL at DAL: Bill Parcells! Parcells Parcells Parcells! Bill Bill! Parcells! ATL

CHI at SF: I don't want to pick either of these teams, but the Bears have Kordell Stewart, and Jeff Garcia's back hasn't forced him into using a cane on the field just yet. SF

NO at SEA: A notoriously fast-starting team against a notoriously slow-starting team. I'll take the Saints until the games start to count. NO

OAK at TEN: Once again, fast start at slow start. Age won't catch up to the Raiders just yet, and if I've said it once I've said it a thousand times: The Titans are so overrated. OAK

TB at PHI: Philly didn't exactly look dominating in the preseason, and who will be running the ball? The guy who didn't practice at all, the guy who sat out all of last year with an injury, or the fast and frail guy who might break if he plays more than 3 snaps? TB