All I Want For Christmas

...is the next Harry Potter book. In the mean time I will accept the newest HP movie. In this time of national tension due to the current war I wonder when we will call upon Dumbledore's Army to clean up the mess that we've made.

What am I Doing Here???

I'm in the office and for the second straight day our e-mail and voicemail are out. What does that mean for me? Almost guaranteed silence. I will be unable to do much of anything along with most everybody in the office, and yet here we all are. The company is outsourcing IT and I don't know that the executives realized the extent of the problems that they would face once they made the announcement. I can almost guarantee that a large portion of the numerous systems outages are due to internal sabotage, but oh well. You reap what you sew. If the employees liked and respected the company then they probably wouldn't act out like this.

Hot Stove League

Well, it's that most entertaining time of the year for youth soccer once again. That's right it's the time in the off season when players and coaches have to register for the Spring soccer season. So what does that mean to friendly Coach Dagromm??? Recruiting!!!! Time to trim the fat and add some muscle to our team. This is when I get to have my kid go to school analyze some prospects and then sell them on how great it would be to join our championship caliber team and our winning tradition. This also the time when I get to tell players from last season how much I hope their back, or how great I think they would be in something like ballet or gymnastics. You know something that doesn't involve a ball or the need to kick it. This is when I contact players from teams past to see how their doing ('cause you know I care. Right) and if they'd like to sign up for the new soccer year with Old Coach Dags!!! This is when I try to lure away the players from other teams to form my ubersquad that will totally dominate other teams and give me a sense of self worth. I've already got half of my team back from last season, just 24 hours into registration time, but I'm worried that I might be losing one of my best players. My daughter keeps telling me that this girl isn't going to play this season. So you know whose house I'll be visiting pretty soon!!!

A Shout Out to Becks

"Somewhere, Bo Schembechler is smiling.'' -- ABC's Brent Musburger, after Michigan scored on its first possession against Ohio State.

Exactly what is Brent Musburger implying? He obviously knows that Becks isn't missing or anything. He is in fact deceased. But I guess Brent feels that his final destination is in question. Way to not so subtly say, "Burn in hell Bo Schembechler".
Well I'm not standing for it. I'm writing my congressman today to have Brent Musburger removed from office.

Two Things I Would Recommend

Akeelah and the Bee
I rented this movie and watched it with the kids this weekend. It was the best movie I've seen in a while and the kids immediately wanted to start studying for the spelling bee afterwards. I thought the kids were very impressive actors and I can't wait to see them in other things as they get older. Laurence Fishburne played the mentor/coach/teacher which is the type of character that he plays best. In "What Ever Happened to Bobby Fisher" and "The Matrix" he shows that he would probably be able to teach anybody anything. A really nice movie and I'd definately point anyone towards it.

Jonah Hex
I recently picked up some back issues of the latest Jonah Hex series and have enjoyed all of them. They capture the western feel very well without coming across pretentiously, and the art and writing are very well done. Add to it cool cover art and the fact that the stories are self contained, and you've got yourself a winner.

I haven't been away that long from the blog, but I had written a nice long post a couple of days ago and when I went to add a picture Blogger dropped me. So the great work of literature that I had so lovingly crafted was lost to the world forever. I could try to recreate it, but I'm too pissed.

A Brush With Greatness

I just want to kick a shout out to Cyberman for his recent dialogue with Cowboys all-time great Drew Bledsoe.

My Idea For Voting Reform

Before I get started on this let me say that I'm not arguing that I think this will ever happen, but I do think it's an interesting idea. It occurs to me that many Americans have a general dissatisfaction with the election process that we currently employ. From the candidates, to the negative campaigning, to the lack of information available about the people that we are voting on. So my idea is that at the beginning of the campaign each candidate that has been selected to be on the ballot is sequestered into a room where they take a 200 question (random number I just picked) profile quiz in regards to where they stand on different policies, current issues, and hypothetical situations. The on election day voters go in and take a similar, but shorter quiz (25 questions) and their vote is then automatically cast to the candidate that is most reflective of their beliefs on the issues. I realize that there would have to be some weighting of different categories and in fact that would probably be part of the quiz. So instead of voting for a candidate or party, people would vote their beliefs on issues and if the best candidate for them happened to be from another party then that person would get their vote. This would also cause a change in campaign ads and funding as it no longer becomes necessary to spout rhetoric and defame opposing candidates, instead candidates would be forced to push issues and ideas. I'm not saying this process doesn't have bugs in it, or would be universally lauded, but no process ever is. I do think though that it takes a lot of the animosity out of politics and elections and really puts the onus back on the American people to think about what they are doing when casting their votes.

Just When You Think You Know Somebody

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/07/pot.burgers.ap/index.html

It almost makes me change my stance.

Costumes and Halloween Fun!!!

Just an update to let you know how The House of Dagromm celebrated Halloween this year. First, my wife and I sent our kids out with some neighborhood friends to go Trick or Treating. It was a year for combo costumes as the boy decided to be an "off the shelf" Cyborg/Alien and the girl got her wish to be a Vampire Rock Star. I blame these costume choices on things like Yu-Gi-Oh which has monsters with confusing over explained names like The Blue Eyes White Dragon. My wife and I stayed behind to pass out treats and put up some hastily thrown together decorations. I set out the electric jack-o-lantern (thanks mom), put the glow in the dark skull in the window, and put about 1/5 of the fake cobwebs that we bought up around the door with some plastic spiders. I also put out the electronic talking tombstone that we bought. Unfortunately that purchase wasn't that well thought out, as it's motion activated and almost the entire area around our front door is paved driveway. If I put it in the yard then nobody would ever activate it and if I put it in the driveway then it becomes unfortunately so unconvincing as to be stupid. So instead I stuffed it into the holly bushes so that it wasn't seen much, but was at least activated once in a while. Then my wife and I waited for trick or treaters. She wore our sons grim reaper mask and shroud from last year and I controlled the lights. When people came to our door, I would flick off the porch lights and we live on a very dark street and turn on s strobe light that was inside the house. Then I would slowly open the door and my wife would walk down the front hall towards them as a flickering vision of death. It was pretty fun to see the reaction although it took a few times to get it right. She didn't have her contacts in the first time and I don't think it was too scary as death walked into door frames and stumbled around trying to find the candy that was obviously set right behind her. We got a couple of oohs and aahs as well as a few shrieks, but everybody appeared to appreciate the effort.

After our kids finally made it back home we ate a late dinner and watched Monster House on DVD. It's a cute movie that's appropriately dark and has what I think is the right level of scariness for kids 7 and up. Unfortunately my daughter is 6 and needed to sleep with her big brother last night. Oh well, everybody is groggy today and we all agreed to get to bed early tonight. We'll see if that sticks.