UT Spring Game

For the first time ever, I attended a spring scrimmage game. The UT Orange & White Game (brought to you by a bunch of sponsors I can’t remember) was on Saturday, and about 29,000 Big Orange faithful (i.e. nutcases) were on hand to watch the new offense and the much-anticipated defense. A few thoughts:

The secondary is going to be good. Scary good.

We have a feature receiver. Gerald Jones. He shoulda probably started last year.

The Single Wing is back.

Yep. The Single Wing is going to be back in the UT offense for the first time since the General himself. It won’t be the mainstay but, if the scrimmage is any indication, it will be used for probably 5ish plays a game. I’m very excited about this. I saw my first live Single Wing play ever on Saturday; it was good for a TD pass of about 20-30 yards. (Granted, it was the 1st team offense and the 2nd team defense, but it looked very crisp.)

Now bring back the Wedge and I’ll really have something to get excited about.

Been a long time, eh?

Turns out, it’s been busy in K’ville. Things have a way of taking more time than promised. While a good friend reminded me to post once in a blue moon, I really don’t know what to say next.

The spring is utterly beautiful in Knoxville. For example, you don’t see too many of these in the high plains:

But the next week projects to be a real blitz. Once I get a chance, I’ll have to sit down and reorder my thoughts. Sitting down to write this made me realize how frazzled I am at the moment; I need to catch my breath.

Inhale…and exhale…

No, I’m not talking about things Clinton didn’t claim to do.

Busy is a funny thing. Every time there seems to be alleviation to business, it always finds a way to creep back in. I backed off one class (from 4 to 3) and had a head start in the thesis going into this semester, but it’s as busy as ever. The thesis is likely to be done in a few weeks, so I should enjoy a couple months of relative normalcy for a change. Fortunately, things will necessarily simplify.

The LSAT was on Saturday, and I will always be amazed at the ability of people to amplify problems simply by myopically focusing on them. It’s not that I don’t understand the condition; I’m quite guilty of it myself on many occasions. It’s that we always seem to do it, even when we know better. I took the Friday before the LSAT off, enjoying some time to relax and do nothing. I got to bed much earlier than normal; my sleep cycle didn’t allow me to actually sleep for a couple of hours, but it was quiet and relaxed nonetheless. In the morning, I was awake, aware, and pretty fresh. Perfect for about 210 solid minutes of intense puzzle-solving with only a 10-minute break serving as a foot race to the undersized restroom facilities.

Most other test-takers had the obligatory bags under their eyes before they started; I hate to think of how they felt afterward. A few students were repeat performances, and all repeaters that I encountered said that the stress was the biggest reason they tanked it the first time. While catastrophes didn’t strike in the room I was in, the “veterans” had plenty of stories of test-takers in earlier tests who threw up, broke down, left the room, burst into tears, and other variations on a theme.

The student I have the most sorrow for (that I know of) is the one who left another room looking like he hadn’t slept in two days. He politely asked an administrator if it was possible to just shred his test; when told no, he asked if she knew which section was the experimental section (the one that doesn’t actually count, but is used for evaluating potential questions). The poor guy probably lost a week of his life in study and lack of sleep, only to have to repeat the process if he still wants to go to law school. If he doesn’t get over this, he’ll repeat the process at the end of every semester and at the bar, and turn a fantastic opportunity to develop critical thought into a 3-year torture chamber.

The student I have the most respect for (that I know of) is the girl who walked out and announced to the world, “Well, I know that I can get into A law school!” It was probably not the performance she hoped for, but her perspective on the situation was better than most. She recognized the territory and was ready to accept plan B (or C, or whatever) if need be. She has far more potential for a long and fulfilling career, if only for her ability to keep her head on straight.

My approach: I knew what the questions would be like, and I knew about where I stood in terms of ability. I also knew that scoring well is actually not hard if you step back from the test a bit. For example, analyzing every question would require about a 1.3 minute/question pace at the slowest. Most people cannot analyze that quickly over 3.5 hours of testing. To compensate, most applicants rush the questions, and end up with a median accuracy of nearly 55%.

Instead, if you took a 2-minute pace, you’d only get to about 3/4 of the questions, but most people could maintain a 80-90% accuracy rate at that pace. At worst, that equates to 60% accuracy, which is noticeably better. Factor in that randomly guessing at the other quarter would garner you about 5 more correct responses, and you’re at 65%, which is equivalent to raising your score by 8-10 points by answering fewer questions. If the goal is Yale (without the “dearest Daddy alum” connection), you have to shoot for the moon. But if the goal is anything below the national level, then why not relax a bit, pace it out, and go for the maximum right rather than the maximum completed? Partly, our education system does not train people to approach problems in this manner; I found the idea hard to swallow, even in the one section I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish with accuracy (there were several Games questions that required a lot of trial-and-error analysis, and the time just wasn’t there to go through it all). Still, I skipped the time-consuming questions, took a breath, and finished the rest. Then I eliminated as best as I could and made a guess of the remainders. 2 minutes were left to ensure that I had filled in the bubble sheet correctly, and I could relax.

As far as law school goes, I have learned one thing. I would love law school. The coursework would be much like a game to me, albeit a very time-consuming game. Then again, school has always been amenable to me. If somebody would pay me to attend school for a living, I’d find it a tempting offer. More importantly, I don’t yet know about whether I could be content practicing law. I feel I may figure it out soon enough. To be honest, I think I would enjoy law or engineering well enough, provided that I end up in a good working environment. We’d love to get back into the Rockies, and we’re going to make every effort to get back there when we’re out of school. It’s home, and we miss family and friends. Following God’s direction is more important, and we’re willing to live elsewhere if need be, but we’d love to end up there.

OTHER NEWS
Downsides to living in a large city: paying both city AND county property taxes. Additionally, the city decided to randomly re-appraise our house for an extra 20k so they could get another $250 out of us. Fortunately, the reappraisal is not valid by statue (there was a formal appraisal only a year ago when we bought the house, and that stands for 5 years); unfortunately, I have to go through the process of challenging the appraisal, and I could really use the time more constructively.

Other downsides: getting city taxes, county taxes, two car license renewals, and auto insurance all in a 3-month span. That’s what savings are for!

Thesis update: I’m almost to the last revision, which will put the completion about a month ahead of schedule. Hopefully, I’ll get the defense knocked out this month and be able to turn it in sometime in November. Then I can enjoy the end of the semester with only coursework and some light project assistance to justify my assistantship.

Home update: We had planned on resuming painting this weekend if we could, but it won’t work out. The wife has too much work due next week, so the time is needed. However, fall break is Thursday and Friday next week. Sounds good to me! I’m hoping to start – and finish – the stairwell that weekend. If so, the worst of the house painting will be over.

That’s a reasonable update for now.

Bumper Sticker

While I still cannot understand why somebody would put a bumper sticker on a car, I saw one that was pretty funny:

WANTED
$10,000 REWARD
Schroedinger’s Cat
DEAD AND ALIVE

About 0.001% of this planet will laugh until they cry over that one.

Thoughts on the upcoming season

…of football!

1) It’ll be nice to have something on besides baseball. As in, a sport.

2) Why does the media insists on completely misunderstanding the preseason? I saw two articles this week; one noted that the Colts have won almost no preseason games during the last few years while the Lions have won a lot, the other noted that the Broncos have a presesason record in the .700 to .800 ballpark under Shanahan. Umm… irrelevant. The only truly relevant section of the preseason is the portion where 1st-team O’s and D’s are playing (usually just the first couple of series each way). After that, everything is talent evaluation. Some people might get the Mike Bell bump during preseason, but even that is not the focus for the person trying to figure out their team’s chances. Look again at the Colts, Lions, and Broncos, and see how the 1st teams actually look.

3) Still, the preseason is better than baseball.

4) Speaking of the Broncos, I see projections for them ranging from 4 wins to 14 wins. Obviously, the extrema are mostly made of superfans and superhaters. A lot of the lowe range is interestingly made up of nervous fans who are bracing for the worst (lowered expectations are harder to disappoint). My take: I think they’ll bag 10 wins and a wild card with second in the division. If the Chargers don’t work out under their new coach (read: implode), then the Broncos have a shot at first. This is a little more optimistic than most, but I think it’s pretty valid at this point:
+ The offensive line is healthy again, and further recovered from talent loss during the last few years.
+ The defensive secondary is frightening. Bly’s tendency to gamble shouldn’t be too harmful since he’ll be lined up against #2 and #3 receivers.
+ The receivers are actually doing rather well in preseason. During the 1st game, and during the Cowboys scrimmages, blogs of fans of the other teams are indicating surprise at Denver’s success in passing. That’s probably a more fair evaluation than any Denver blog due to detachment.
+ Cutler is a fast learner. During his games last season, he actually showed statistically significant consistent improvement from game to game. With an entire offseason to prepare, he should be in better shape.
+ The schedule is easy. Seriously. 4-2 in the division is most likely, and 5-1 is the second most likely figure. They tangle with the NFC North, which should be 3-1 (2-2 second most likely). The Bears will likely slide back a bit, and the Packers will move up a bit (and probably take the division unless Favre’s age finally kills things). Other than that, it’s Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Jax, Tennessee, Houston, and Indianapolis. In that mix, I’d bet on 3-3 with 4-2 second most likely. That sums up to about 10-6, give or take 2.
+ I think that Travis Henry will actually work out ok for this year, though I had serious doubts earlier. He’s getting older for a RB, but he’s still healthy. He fits a 1-cut scheme very well, which is why Denver got him.

5) I’m leery of the special teams of Denver. Last year, they weren’t so good.

6) On to college football. Tennessee is a huge question mark in the SEC East. Nobody knows how good the receivers will be. The running game should be good, even without Coker (suspended indefinitely, rumored to be for codeine abuse). The defense is stout, and special teams are ok. (Quick word on special teams: if you don’t hear anything about them during the camps, they’re ok.) UT is usually placed 2nd or 3rd in the East, behind Florida and Georgia. Given that they play Florida away and Georgia at home, that sounds fair.
Tennessee’s schedule is a killer. @ Cal, home for Southern Miss, @ Florida, home for Arkansas State before a bye week. The home games are easy, but those road trips are killers. 4-0 at this point would start national title rumors. 3-1 would be good especially if Florida is one of the 3). 2-2 is bad news. In my opinion, the home date against Arkansas is the most worrisome. McFadden killed them last year, and a loss at home would be judged rather poorly. There’s more downside to a loss here than against Florida or Georgia.

7) Completely blind, uneducated guess on the Super Bowl teams (just for the heck of it): New England and Philadelphia. Honestly, Philly’s probably the only NFC team who could beat the AFC this year.

8 ) Ditto for College National Title Game (whatever it’s called this year): USC and Michigan. USC should cakewalk the PAC-10, and Michigan looks better than last year’s edition on paper. The Big-12 is too weak to send someone (though OU is most likely), and the SEC tends to beat themselves up too badly. I don’t buy the Big East quite yet, though they’re close. The ACC has problems, and won’t make it. That basically leaves a Big 10 team, and Michigan will probably make their occasional appearance to save Carr’s job. I think I’ll tune that one out if it happens.

9) Player to watch: Michael Oher, left tackle of Ole Miss. Seriously. The kid has a chance to be the best LT prospect in NFL history, and this is his third year. Michael Lewis’s book “The Blind Side” gives a great account of a kid who should never have had a chance. I managed to see him on TV last year; he never looked like he was trying, and nobody ever came close to the QB from his side. You can’t ask for more.

10) 2008 pre-preview. Wyoming plays at Tennessee in ‘08. For homecoming. It’s pretty close to election time, too. If Thompson has the Republican ticket, watch out for very irrelevant analogies between the game and the White House. Other than that, it could be more interesting than it sounds. Ainge will be gone in ‘08, and Joe Glenn seems to be having a ball in Laramie. If UW can improve over the next couple of seasons, they might catch Tennessee on a down cycle and make a game of it. Knowing UW’s luck, that means that they’ll hold it close through the first half and get killed in the third quarter to lose the game.

11) The NFL is flirting with disaster. The sheer number of people who can’t get the NFL network may figure out that they can live quite well without NFL games every week. If that begins to set in, the NFL might lose a lot of TV revenue. It’d be better for them to sacrifice some short-term profit to keep their fans happy and rabid in the long run.

12) To the one who finds this relevant: find a way to get down here November 10th for the Tennessee-Arkansas game, and I’ll find a ticket for you. With luck, my thesis will be defended and turned in, and I’ll have a lot of time on my hands.

Textbook typ

The title on the front of a graduate-level nuclear engineering textbook at the UT bookstore:

RADIOACTIVE WASTE TECHNOLOGY

The title of the same book, as read on its spine:

RADIOACTIVE WASTED TECHNOLOGY

I think I’ll leave it at that.

Bumper Sticker FTW

On a truly “trail-ready” Jeep parked in the Home Depot parking lot today…

GOD MADE ASPHALT SO YUPPIES COULD GO FOURWHEELING

That’s about right.

Hard to get into Law School?

I swung by the Law Records Office on campus today to ask about registering for an Intellectual Property course in the fall. The procedure?

Tell the secretary my student ID number so she can sign me in.

Wow. Everybody else fools around with that whole “take the LAST and apply” thing. Next stop, Med School!

/humor

Pet Responsibility

Knoxville has some pretty tight pet laws; I am about to make full use of them. When we moved into our house last year, there was a mother cat who had been abandoned by her former owners (they had just moved out a month prior). She had three kittens that she was raising underneath her former owners’ former house. The two females were taken in by our uphill neighbors, and the male was taken in by a neighbor who came in a couple weeks after us. The mommy was taken by a friend of somebody on the street to be a barnyard cat. Here, the story goes south.

The owners of the two female cats were not able to afford the spaying initially, and they managed to get outside during their first heat cycles. (It wouldn’t have been hard to do, considering the neighbors. I love ‘em, but…) Given the 3 or 4 stray toms in the neighborhood, they didn’t stand a chance. The first had 3 kittens, and the second had 2 that survived. They’re still trying to get rid of kittens (though the mommies are now spayed; we found a low-cost spay service just south of town).

The owner of the male cat absolutely refuses to get him neutered. She lives vicariously through his glandular habits, and he is a likely father of at least one set of kittens mentioned above. Having had to chase him off of our porch while he surveys the night life has caused him to develop a deep fear of us (YES!!!). He won’t come within 2 property lengths of us and stays off our property now, which is a relief.

To add to the story, another female wandered in the area, and was taken in by an across-the-street neighbor. She didn’t bother seeing if the cat was spayed, and the cat went into heat in about two weeks. While this cat has been growing kittens, the neighbor has increased her pack of dogs from 2 to 4, and her boyfriend has started living with her (he is allergic to cats). The last dog, an English bulldog of all things, hates cats. So, this pregnant kitty has been outside for nearly the whole pregnancy. We’ve been explaining to this lady how dangerous this is for the cat and kittens. (Toms will kill kittens if given a chance; the female cats usually band together to protect the broods, but this female has no allies and there are those 3 or 4 toms running wild.) She finally got the picture, and has finally arranged a place for the cat to go – her son’s wife’s mom wants the cat and will manage the care of the kittens.

Even more: a couple of weeks ago, there was a stray kitten that wandered onto our street. She was about 3 months old, flea-infested, and in heat. My cat-loving sister was in town, so we pooled together to take the kitten into a shelter and had her fixed, de-flead, and so on. The problem is that the mommy is still out there somewhere and is probably still fertile.

In short, there are about a dozen cats running loose on a street of 8 houses (and less than a block in length). I’ve been patient, as we’ve been trying to get our neighbors to take proper care of their cats, but that’s over.

Once the pregnant one is off our street and in a safe home, I’m calling animal control. Given the stringent laws in Knoxville, they will drag through the neighborhood and pick up any cat (and dog) that is not properly licensed and registered with the city. Additionally, they will pick up any animal that is not vaccinated for rabies and will pick up any animal that is not properly contained (i.e. fenced or leashed for dogs, licensed for cats). We will warn the neighbors with the two female cats at the beginning of the story; they are the most responsible and are actually taking proper care of their animals. They’re also moving in February, so I can be patient.

Moral: Spay, neuter, immunize, register, and contain your pets. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t have the pet in the first place. If you refuse to do that (and aren’t a registered breeder), you should seriously question your fitness for pet ownership. To close the story, consider that there are 8 houses on the street. Ours is the only one without at least one cat or dog (due to our status as students, we can’t properly care for pets right now). One is currently empty, though there are people moving in at the end of the month, and they have one dog (obviously an indoor floor rug). That leaves 6 houses; note that I’ve only mentioned 3. The other three are responsible with their animals, and we’ve never had a problem. Hmm…

ADDENDUM: A friend kindly pointed out that many non-breeders in fact do responsibly care for and control unsterilized cats and dogs. I readily admit that possibility, and that the above was written while I was in a rather bad mood. However, I stand firm on the notion that far too many people have far too little control over their animals.

Retreat!!! (???)

The House Vote on retreating from Iraq raised my eyebrows a bit today. The fact that 219 of 231 Democrats voted for it doesn’t surprise me (though it still saddens me). The fact that 191 of 201 Republicans voted against it doesn’t surprise me either. However, there were two teensy-weensy facts about it that caught my attention.

First, Cubin (R-Wy) decided to abstain. I don’t know if she was absent or actively sat on her thumbs, but she stayed off the record. I’ll keep the door open for the possibility that she had a family emergency or other worthy engagement that kept her from voting, but it would have been nice to have my former Representative voice an opinion on behalf of Wyoming.

Second, Duncan Jr. (R-Tn) decided to vote in favor. He has solid reasoning for wishing we had not gotten involved (mostly regarding dishonesty about our intentions), but this is a curious move. Late last year, he had sent a mailer that had very explicitly stated his logic on the Iraq situation. Summary: he didn’t like it at all, but he wouldn’t want to do anything to cause further harm to the troops or the country and would act on the present situation. It was a rather honorable dissension that the Democrats could have really learned from. I would really like to know why he voted for withdrawal, though. It seems to me that the greater risk of harm to the country comes from losing Iraq. I’ll give that he has better information than I do, but it’s really puzzling.

So, out of 10 Republicans not voting against it, I’m directly tied to two: one of four supporters, and one of six abstainers. Just my luck.

One final note: earlier this week, reports suggest that the Army is having trouble recruiting again. Do you possibly think that Congressional actions like this have any effect on the strength of our armed forces? If Congress wants to play games, I’ll bring my Parcheesi board over. It’s about their speed.