The softball playoffs start this week, and I'll put our schedule on the left as soon as I get home tonight. Our first game is this Thursday at 8:00 PM, and we keep playing every Thursday as long as we keep winning.

And whoever took the over on Ken Griffey Jr.'s injury prospects has already lost, as Griffey strained his calf in a spring training game yesterday. According to ESPN, the injury is "not too serious", but they seem to be conveniently forgetting his history of hamstring tweaks that last for two months.

We (especially us Engineers) love to laugh at the prognostications of so-called "futurists" from back in the day. Their wild tales of flying cars, meals in pill form, and daily shuttles to the moon never came to be, and that age doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.

But in between fits of laughter, modern-day scientists and futurists make predictions about our future that may turn out to be equally outlandish. What if nanotechnology doesn't prove feasible in the next 20 years? What if our refrigerators don't get hooked up to the internet so we can order new groceries?

I'd be interested to hear you guys' thoughts on which of the things we take for granted as "only a few years away" won't ever pan out (at least not anytime soon).

For the third year in a row (and my final year), I get to spend all day tomorrow interviewing pre-freshman and then dispense scholarships with an iron fist. I also get to reap the benefits of a number of free meals as well as add to my Spaghetti Factory glassware collection. As usual, all the kids are smarter than me, which gets more and more depressing the older I get. It promises to be an enjoyable weekend, moreso if I didn't have to be on campus at 8 AM tomorrow morning.

Last night the softball team dodged the raindrops to win our final regular season game 14-4 or something like that. We faced a much tougher opponent than we had previously this season, but made quick work of them anyway. The playoffs start sometime; I'll try and get a schedule up here as soon as I find out what it is.

The graphics on CNN for computer-related articles have always amused me (so much that I believe I've posted about this in the past, although I can't find it in my archives). They all try to sum up the article by artistically smashing together as many technology-related graphical buzzwords (buzzimages?) as they can. For an article on online music piracy, for example, you'd expect to see a monitor, the string "http://www", a keyboard, some random binary (0's and 1's), a compact disc, and a musical note, all blurred together with Photoshop.

I expect this kind of thing from CNN, which has to throw together graphics like this for many stories per day, but I've come to expect a little better from Microsoft (yes yes, you can leave a comment about how I shouldn't expect better from Microsoft along with your favorite pro-Linux joke).

Hanging around the CS department (and above my desk) are posters advertising the Imagine Cup, a worldwide Microsoft-sponsored programming, graphics, and film contest. On the posters are edgy, inspirational phrases like "Change the world one solution at a time" (they even include an inspirational corporate buzzword) as well as an artistically-blurred amalgamation of CS buzzimages. On my poster alone I count the following:

-long lines of binary code
-incorrect XML code
-mathematical equations (of the 'y=x-1' variety)
-DNA sequences
-simplistic binary logic statements (of the 'X1 OR X2' variety)
-graphs (both of the planar and graph theory varieties)

And of course edgy, anime-style lines inspiring me to take action and change the world by writing the greatest Crazy Eights game that ever was.

Now back to editing my thesis.

If you haven't already noticed, I've taken down the Links page from my top bar and put up a Software page. On it you can find software I've written for school or for fun.

I've also been doing some recording recently and may put up some new songs (or new recordings of old songs) on the Music page. Stay tuned for updates.

Those of you who went with my "St. Joe's losing in the first round" pick and put money on it either through your paid office pool or a sports book at Vegas were rewarded with a hefty victory as St. Joe's lost by....what's that?....St. Joe's won?....They won by over 25 points?....Well at least you learned a valuable lesson: gambling never pays off unless you cheat.

In other news, the CS department softball team won regular season game #2 last night by a score of 21-1. The slaughter rule was invoked after 3+ innings, and we seem to have shaken off the rust in time for the playoffs, which start in two weeks. I hope we play a more competitive team next week though, as we need to be challenged before the games start counting.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, or as I like to call it "Pointless Drinking Holiday #3" (the first two being New Year's and Mardi Gras). One good thing about this year's edition of St. Patty's Day is that it coincides with the beginning of the NCAA tournament and a time often called "March Madness" despite the fact that it lasts into April.

March Madness is a great time of year for everyone to pay their $5 "sports knowledge tax" to the person in their office who knows the most about college basketball. But for those of you who want to win back some of your losses from the past 10 years, I'll offer my tried-and-true, guaranteed-to-win strategy:

When picking winners, as when picking stocks, always be a contrarian.

If everyone is picking Stanford to win it all, pick Duke. If everyone is picking an all-ACC final four, pick only one or two ACC teams to win. In March, everyone suddenly becomes a college basketball expert even though they don't pay attention the rest of the year, so you should go against conventional wisdom as often as possible. Also, it's very unlikely you will win your pool as it stands, but you're even less likely to win if you make the same picks as everybody else. Go crazy, pick some wild upsets, and you'll even crash and burn or you'll win. Remember, there is no second place. Which brings me to this year's top-secret super pick:

Liberty(16) over St. Joe's(1) in the first round.

Yeah yeah, "a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 seed in the history of the NCAA tournament" everyone says. Which makes it a cinch that if it happens this year and you'll pick it, you have the inside shot at the pot over everyone who had St. Joe's going to the elite 8. Plus, St. Joe's has no size. No matter who they put on the floor, they are a team of Chris Hill's: erratic jump shooters who will score points when they are hot but who have nowhere to turn when they are cold since they can't get inside or make layups. A wise man once said: "If you live by the jump shot, you'll die by the jump shot" and St. Joe's will die early in a shocker to everyone except you. Money in the bank.

It may not look it outside, but spring is definitely here, as is evidenced by the annual story on ESPN.com about Ken Griffey Jr.'s quixotic attempt to be a major league baseball player again. As usual, the story is rife with lines like "if he can only stay healthy..." and "if his hamstring holds up...", the odds of which are very very small. I'd put the over/under on weeks before his first injury at 3. Anyone want to take the over?

Besides Ken Griffey Jr., there are a number of other former stars looking to start over again in the spring. Look on any roster and you're bound to find one or two guys whose names sound familiar but haven't played since 1999. Or Garth Brooks. The Cardinals' contribution is former outfielder Ray Lankford, who is battling for the left field job with...Greg Vaughn.

Speaking of Mr. Vaughn, his former team the Brewers is 11-2 in spring training, much to the delight of Lucas. This could finally be the year that their starting rotation of "Ben Sheets and 4 other guys" get offensive help from "Geoff Jenkins and a bunch of scrubs like Craig Counsell" and take the division. Or not.

One of my friends had her hubcaps stolen over spring break, which is a new low even for this city. What does one do with stolen hubcaps? They don't drive the car or play music or hold anything up, and they weren't decorative or custom. They were just Toyota Corolla hubcaps.

There's an inherent risk involved with stealing things, especially when the things are in plain view on a street that is patrolled all night by (albeit WUPD) police officers. If you're hotwiring a car, there's a chance that if people aren't looking very closely they won't realize what you're doing. You may be the owner of the car taking a little bit longer to start it than usual. When you're stealing hubcaps, though, there's no alibi. If anyone sees you, they will immediately realize what you're doing, since there is no good reason for anyone to pry off their hubcap unless their tire is flat. So stealing hubcaps is riskier than stealing the car itself, and with much much less of a reward.

James Bond doesn't seem like a very good secret agent. I mean it's usually not a good idea to go around telling the bad guys your name, and it's not exactly keeping a low profile to play high-staked baccarat and sleep with the villains' mistresses. If Bond were a real secret agent and every KGB agent and wacky supervillain knew so much about him that they knew how he liked his martinis prepared, he wouldn't last too long in Her Majesty's secret service.

I checked out the show that David mentioned yesterday, Cracking Up, and it's quite funny. The best part about it is that it's not another forensics show, a genre that has been beat to death lately. CSI may be entertaining, with its zings and quips, but CSI: Miami is a long step down and CSI: New York promises to be unnecessary. Miami is so predictable and formulaic that I've summed up every episode here:

9:00 - 9:05: Attractive people are making out in a park/having sex/dancing at a club when they stumble upon a corpse. CSI rushes to the scene in their garish silver Hummer. Lead CSI Horatio Kane, known as "H" for some reason, takes off his sunglasses (which are on even if it's nighttime) and makes a bad pun or other zinger about the victim like "looks like he left the party early."

9:05 - 9:10: Credits and commercial break.

9:10 - 9:20: CSI agents with nicknames like "Speed" and "Trace" gather evidence while "H" finds somebody to identify the victim, or "vic". Somewhere in here we meet the person who ends up being the killer, although we won't know it until the end. Usually this person is a bank manager, nightclub owner, or wealthy socialite. We also meet the most obvious suspect, usually someone who was with the victim until they died, has blood all over their clothes, has the murder weapon in their pocket, and wanted the "vic" dead for some reason. This person never turns out to be the actual murderer, leading us to believe that in real life, criminals do not actually commit crimes.

9:20 - 9:25: The medical examiner does an autopsy while cooing and talking to the corpse. If it's a female corpse, the ME will call her "sweetie" or "baby", but if it's a male corpse she won't use any kind words, presumably because the male victims deserved it. This is where we also see an unnecessarily gruesome graphic showing a bullet puncturing internal organs and blood spewing everywhere. Right before the break, we find out that the victim was involved with drugs, presumably because everyone in Miami is.

9:25 - 9:28: Commercial break.

9:28 - 9:40: "H" continues to interview suspects while his team keeps looking at evidence. The blonde-haired weapons expert will, in her southern accent, explain that the gun they found on the criminal they interviewed at the beginning did not fire the bullet that killed the victim because of bullet striations. "H" follows up on the drug plotline by interviewing a bunch of lowlifes, all of whom not only have a motive but have no alibi and are uncooperative. There is no evidence linking them with the crime, but "H" strongarms them into giving evidence by threatening to get a warrant and talking to them in a stern voice and saying "Give me your DNA!".

9:40 - 9:43 Commercial break.

9:43 - 9:52 One of the agents uncovers a random clue that lets the lowlifes off the hook. Sometimes this comes in the form of a grainy videotape, in which case the agent takes the tape to a generic lab tech with a 1-episode contract, and the tech uses the magic CSI computer to magnify and sharpen the image repeatedly until they are able to view the inside of a shopping bag from an ATM security camera 2 miles away that pointed in the opposite direction. Still, they often can only see a couple of partial letters on an envelope, in which case they run the pattern through their super pattern-matching database and in a matter of seconds they identify that the postmark on the envelope was from the banker/club owner/socialite's address. They bring in the suspect, who almost always brings along a high-powered but ineffective lawyer who allows his client to admit he committed the crime.

9:52 - 9:54 Commercial break.

9:54 - 9:59 "H" hits on his dead brother's ex-wife, the only actual police officer who is ever involved in investigating the crime, then reflects on the case by visiting the "vic"'s family or gravesite. He then puts his sunglasses back on and stares off into the distance with a grave look on his face.

9:59 - 10:00 Next week on an all-new CSI: Miami, rinse and repeat...

I'll be in Kansas City for the next few days looking for apartments. I still have nowhere to live here between May 1 and May 21, but at least I'll have someplace to live after that. So my yuppification begins this weekend, as I pick out an apartment with a garage, balcony, and complimentary massage therapist on staff.

There are many nerdy things in the world, from programming to anime to fanfiction to dressing up like large furry animals and having sex. There is one thing though that tops everything else in terms of sheer nerdiness. That one thing is (drum roll please....)

Monty Python.

If I could go back in time and stop any one thing from happening, I would stop Monty Python and the Holy Grail from being made. Thanks to this movie, it is impossible to be a nerdy computer science major without being subjected to hordes of people quoting the movie in bad British accents.

There is one particular skit that rises above all else, that as soon as a line of it is uttered by a co-worker you should run in the opposite direction as fast as you can before someone else chimes in, and that is the knights who say ni.

Nothing else screams "I am a complete tool" and transforms CS majors into giggling schoolgirls like saying "Ni! Ni!" and then doing that dumb line about the shrubbery. This is more offensive than wearing those t-shirts that say "bow before me, for I am root" or this one featuring our favorite spokespenguin. No one can just say "ni", they have to screech it like a 10-year-old girl at a Clay Aiken concert, and then from all corners of the room other folks will chime in random (usually incorrect) quotes, each trying to outdo the other in terms of how bad their accent can be.

And the thing is, the skit isn't even funny. Our world would not be any less full or magnificent if this movie were never made, and I hereby insist that some rich inventor (possibly Dean Kamen) devote billions of dollars in research funds towards time travel with the specific goal of making everyone's office a "ni" free zone. Productivity would triple, and soon we'd be a nation of flying cars and housecleaning robots like we were supposed to be ten years ago. It's the only thing holding our culture back from being an Atlantis-like utopia with no poverty, hunger, or FOX reality shows.

It's the week before spring break, and that means midterm exams for everybody. Luckily I only have one midterm, but unluckily it's in class about theoretical handwaving as opposed to the class about writing programs that make cool pictures. So I've been studying my handwaving technique today in preparation, including my favorites: proof by strong statement, proof by repetition, and proof by writing "Q.E.D." at the end of a nonsensical paragraph.

My main issue with proofs is that, to quote Homer Simpson, you can "use them to prove anything that's even remotely true". It's easy to put a lot of mathematical-looking statements in there and hope that your reader gets lost on the way to stating your conclusion. Drop in enough Sigmas, Unions, and random Greek letters, and either I'll lose track of what you're saying or I'll fall asleep. A sufficiently long mathematical proof could convince me that 1 + 1 is 73, Shakespeare was actually a collection of 100 processors in parallel running a distributive writing algorithm, or St. Louis has a tropical climate.

And often we're asked to prove things that seem obvious. Think about how you would write a proof that 2 + 2 = 4, for example. The correct answer is: "it just is, dammit!", but I have a feeling that if I wrote this on my test, then I would get to see the proof that 100 - 20 = 80 (each problem is worth 20 points).

I much prefer reasoning things out in an English paragraph. Then it's easy to see when someone makes a wild leap of logic, so you know if their proof is sound or not. If you said, for instance, "Jared weighed 350 pounds, then Jared started eating Subway sandwiches and exercising every day, after one year Jared weighed 200 pounds, therefore Subway sandwiches are a great way for everyone to lose weight", it's easy to see the problems:

-Not only did Jared start eating Subway, but he also stopped eating other junk foods. Maybe this had something to do with his weight loss.
-Jared also started exercising. Maybe this had something to do with his weight loss.
-"Jared" cannot be extrapolated into "everyone". For some people, eating Subway sandwiches every day would probably cause them to gain weight.
-Sandwiches made the way that Jared ate them (without cheese or any of the tasty breads) don't taste very good.

Q.E.D.