Umm.... Wow! Yesterday was interesting. Never riding Greyhound again. I also got to see downtown Waco. More later...

Does anybody know how to play Clue?

Candidate for office in Sweden running on porn platform. Got this link from the Shacknews.com.

You know a lot of people boost traffic to their sites by posting random photographs of unclothed women. My question is why? I've considered it, but the people who come for the nudity don't stay or visit more than once. I suppose you'd attract attention from search engines too; but again, it strikes me as cheating.
One thing I learned from another blogger (I forget which or I'd link him) is that adding more links attracts traffic - legitimate traffic. A node in a network is only as valuable as what can be reached from it, so the more connected a node is the better. Google exploits this principle by ranking sites based on its connections to other sites. Google rewards linking. Sites that are dead ends, that don't link you anywhere, don't get many hits. Unless, of course, they have some other value, like lots of pictures of undressed women.
I wanted to stay PG-13 so I added more links.

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but Ihavedevelopedthemostannoyinghabitofrunningmywordstogether.

Another link from the Escribitionist. Curious readers may also note another link from the 17th that I didn't include. I must say that it is the sickest thing I have seen in some time and is only funny if you have ovaries. Or not. Men may laugh too I suppose, if their women will let them.

The next dance craze from Europe? Some people still haven't learned the Macarena. I scored this link from the Escribitionist.

George W. is related to Lady Di and Churchill! Who would have thought it? Linked from msn.com. (Like Msn needs me to link to them!)

Geometry and basketball. Link from Sportsbabel.

Bob Hayes is dead. :(

This is why inspections in Iraq will never work. Got the link from VodkaPundit.

The strange and sordid tale of Aileen Wuornos. I ran into this link while surfing Norah's BlogJam. Aileen's execution for the murder of her first victim is coming any day.

Mickey Kaus thinks that Arnold Schwarzenegger is running for governor of California.

Snow White learns kung fu! I got this link courtesy of Shacknews.com.

Wild and crazy Zero Gravity technology discussion.

Another one of those pics. Although I could swear that the picture is actually of Avril Lavigne. Just the way the eyes look at you, you know?

I feel much better today. My voice is almost all the way back, well I am not going to be joining any singing contests soon so it doesn't matter. I am not working today though. Listenting to Bic Runga's Sway. Beautiful song, and great for singing when your voice isn't that strong. It's written to be crooned not belted.

Did I say I was addicted to Hot or Not.com? Pictures like this one are why. Girls slay me.

Self portraits in the digital age.

Never ever do business deals with Nigerians.. I say that and I am Nigerian. The problem is that Nigeria is populated by very educated thieves. Nigerians are also very well traveled so Nigerian con artists and criminals dot the globe.
My family recently experienced this when somebody intercepted a letter from my mother to my aunt. The con artist amended the letter to include a request for several hundred dollars to be delivered to a man who would arrive at an airport shortly, to repay a debt on my mother's behalf. My aunt was instructed to keep the matter secret. The ruse was only caught when my father called my aunt and handed the telephone over to my mother. My aunt immediately mentioned the money and my mother denied having sent her such a letter. My aunt read the letter to her and my mother was shocked to see how her letter had been repurposed.
The moral of the story is that you should never trust communications from Nigeria.

If you're a comic book fan and a blogger than you should bookmark Die Puny Humans! now.

If you're a sports nut and a blogger than you should bookmark SportsBabel now.

Sick behavior by a weblogger

I just did a quick bit of ego-surfing and I was surprised by the result of putting my name in Google. This site does not come up once but a number of posts made to game programming lists do. Here are the links if anyone cares:

• GameProgrammer.Com Mailing List (by thread)
  ... Adrian Brown. No Subject, peter.bedford: RE:, Idahosa Edokpayi. No
  Subject, Martin Olsson; No Subject, Bobby: Re:, Derold; RE:, Idahosa ...
  www.gameprogrammer.com/archive/html/thrd2.html - 25k
  
  
• GameProgrammer.Com Mailing List (by thread)
  ... list, Tom Webb. hope u can help me!!!!! Nigel Freedom: RE:
  hope u can help me!!!!! Idahosa Edokpayi: RE: hope u can ...
  www.gameprogrammer.com/archive/html/thrd35.html - 28k -
  
  
• Yahoo! Groups : opengl-gamedev-l Messages :12747-12776 of 20967
  ... Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Tue 2/1/2000. 12757, Re: Change display mode on
  the fly, notnot@x... Tue 2/1/2000. 12758, Re: Where is the open source
  ? ...
  groups.yahoo.com/group/opengl-gamedev-l/messages/12747 - 21k
  
  
• Yahoo! Groups : opengl-gamedev-l Messages :12777-12807 of 20967.
  .. Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Wed 2/2/2000. 12791, Re: Where is the open source
  ? Idahosa I. Edokpayi, Wed 2/2/2000. 12792, Re: I am a beginner. ...
  groups.yahoo.com/group/opengl-gamedev-l/messages/12777 - 21k
  
  
• : By Date
  ... Ratcliff; Re: Sample Implementation Source Code and Console Targets Neal Tringham;
  RE: Sample Implementation Source Code and Console Targets Idahosa I. Edokpayi; ...
  apollo.iwt.uni-bielefeld.de/~ml_robot/ OpenGL-02-2000/date.html - 81k
  
  
• : By Thread
  ... Re: GLTrace 2 Keith Harrison. RE: GLTrace 2 Chris Jurney. Re: OpenGL window requirements
  Neal Tringham; re: OpenGL window requirements Idahosa I. Edokpayi; Re: math ...
  apollo.iwt.uni-bielefeld.de/~ml_robot/OpenGL-02-2000/ - 87k
  
  
• Geocrawler.com - gdalgorithms-list - 2002/3
  ... Mail archive - 2002-03. Thread/Subject, Author, Date/Time. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 03/30/2002
  23:01:02. ... Maltez, 03/25/2002 16:16:10. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 03/25/2002 08:47:57. ...
  www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/4856/2002/3/0/ - 30k
  
  
• Geocrawler.com - gdalgorithms-list - 2001/9
  ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 09/30/2001 17:37:45. ... Ken M, 09/30/2001 17:21:03. ... Jon
  Watte, 09/30/2001 17:17:27. ... Idahosa Edokpayi, 09/30/2001 08:02:11. ...
  www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/4856/2001/9/0/ - 30k
  
  
• The Blast Soccer Team
  ... Nosa's trading card photo. Top row from the left: Idahosa Edokpayi -assistant
  coach (that's me!) , Tim McCarty - coach, Devin Dickinson - defender, Scott ...
  www.utdallas.edu/~ninja/photos/blast_soccer_team.htm - 3k
  
  
• Personal Home Pages (at UEL)
  ... E Sogunwa. Noel East. Irene Ebong. Brian Eccleston. Aloysius Edoh. Uwa Edokpayi.
  John ... Oluwabunmi Onadosu Dagunduro. Evelyn Onyango. Uche Onyemenem. Oretta Gayle. Idahosa ...
  homepages.uel.ac.uk/ - 68k - 18 Sep 2002 -
  
  
• Biniunitedatl.com
  ... USA, Inc PO Box 434 Atlanta, GA 30301. MEMBERS. Mr. & Mrs. Sam Idahosa ... Relations)
  Mr. & Mrs. Gabriel Ogbomo Mr. & Mrs. Dickson Aikhionbare Mr. Joseph Edokpayi Mr ...
  www.biniunitedatl.com/html/members.htm - 4k
  
  
• Gmane -- GNU Mail To News And Back Again
  ... Joe Collins. 01.08. Re: [GD-General] Pong ball mechanics. Javier Arevalo.
  31.07. [GD-General] Pong ball mechanics. Idahosa IO Edokpayi. Back to Top.
  news.gmane.org/ thread.php?group=gmane.games.devel.general - 4k
  

It is interesting that my old personal homepage does not come up but a link to apage about my soccer team does. Weird

I now have some measure of understanding for people who conduct their lives by telephone. I used to conduct mine by email, but now that I am a substitute teacher, my wireless telephone is glued to my hand as soon as I walk in the door. I sleep with it under my pillow practically, which is the reason I get so little sleep. And when you expect a call and it doesn't come that is one of the worst feelings in the world. Trying to call somebody and not knowing why they don't answer drives me crazy; people very seldom answer when I call. I always feel like people are trying to avoid me, like I am annoying them. I know in my head it's not true but I can't help wondering.
On a happier note, I am feeling better. I'll go to work tomorrow if I can find any. Or I might not... I don't know, still waiting on that phone call.
I watched Fast Lane tonight and I was impressed. My Dad watched with me and he didn't like the sex, drugs, violence, and rock'n roll theme but I enjoyed it. I had been anticipating this show for some time and promised myself I'd watch the first episode. Now I have to find someone to tape it for me. :- (

With luck I should be able to pick up a chick who can afford my airfare back to Dallas.

Where is all the good stuff on the web? I feel as if I should be doing something useful, but I can't muster the energy and focus to do so, so I surf the web instead. Lately my surfing has been a depressingly small circle and I need more entertaining sites to spice up my web crawling.

Just discovered that Dallas had on of the most unfavorable (at least to my way of thinking) male-to-female ratios in the country. If it wasn't for the fact that guys from all over swear up and down that Texas women simply look better, I'd be packing my bags now.
While I am thinking along these lines, I wanted to say maybe I should be examined by a doctor. I was just reading something about the biochemistry of love, and I'd like some heartless-rake elixir. Being chemically hardwired to favor being a nice guy is boring.

Crystal's picture is staring me in the face again...weird, but not unwelcome.Fortunately, it's not one of those pictures in which the subject appears to be looking you directly in the eye. Crystal seems to be looking right through me but not at me. Otherwise, I'd never look away.

One of the fringe benefits of having an unpronouncable name becomes apparent when screening calls. People who can't pronounce your name don't warrant a returned call.
I am doing nothing tomorrow... so no suprise at school.

I finally met the class that likes to go to lunch twice. I didn't let them of course.
I feel really weak; my body aches, and my throat feels as if it had been given a vigorous rubbing with sandpaper. Is it flu season already?

Umm... no surprise today, maybe tomorrow.
The voice is all right so far, I scored some cough drops on the way to school. I feel better after eating some lunch. I want to take a nap though.
I had another kid get up and dance today. When I accused the kids of disrespect they claimed innocence. "If we was disrespecting you, we wouldn't do the classwork. We would just look at you crazy when you told us to do something."

I was just thinking about freak dancing again, and really it is simulated sex. Discovering freak dancing was a revelation for me; the idea that a woman - possibly multiple women - would willingly pretend to have sex with you in public, even when fully clothed, was mind-blowing. So it was immediately obvious that students freak-dancing was a bad thing; no one should be allowed to have that much fun in school, and certainly not a teacher!

I have a surprise for tomorrow's blog. Regular readers will be rewarded. :P Not that I have any regular readers. The thing I just realized, is that even though I only have each class for 90 minutes, I spend the entire 90 minutes falling in love with each group and I want the whole world to do the same. Even the kids who give me problems touch me.

A heart-warming story about the demolition of high-rise public housing in Chicago.

Has anybody in their life had occassion to get up and freak-dance other students in class or watch someone else do it? I did today, during a "sheltered" English class. "Sheltered" is a term used in the DISD for a class consisting of kids who all speak the same language, in my case Spanish, and aren't quite ready for full-contact English classes yet. The kids told me that it was an ESL class, but I have learned something - the first rule of substituting is to never ask the kids anything since they will lie. The kids can't be trusted. The kids pull something new on me every day and each class has its own special trick. They usually get away with it too! I usually don't know I have been fooled till after they leave.
I am wondering how I will teach tomorrow with no voice. Somehow it seems wrong for a substitute to call in sick. More echinacea and sleep.
Kids always surprise me with their boldness. Today the kids wanted me to teach them how to dance. I have been known to freak-dance before, but somehow, freak-dancing students seemed to fall under the heading of

Things Not To Do.

Kind of like sleeping with students.

As rowdy as the kids are, I realized I don't really feel threatened at all. No disaffected white loners with firebombs and shutguns in Dallas public schools, Columbine would never happen in a Dallas school, especiall because we have metal detectors. On the other hand, I could certainly get shot in the parking lot coming to or leaving school. :P

Blogging between periods at Justin F. Kimball High. I suppose I should be glad that when teaching in the 'Cliff and the Grove(Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove, neighborhoods in South Dallas for those not in the know) I should be grateful I am teaching students in AP classes. As rowdy as AP classes are, I am very frightened by the prospects of teaching really bad kids.
I am feeling slightly under the weather, but I can't afford to be ill. Time for the echinacea.
Before I go, I want to throw in some comments about Bush's Iraq policy. In a word, brilliant - Bush has pushed the Democrats in America into an unfavorable position before the election and forced the UN to accept war in Iraq or face irrelevancy. He challenged the UN to enforce the terms of its own treaty or watch as the US does it for them. Democrats are forced to acquiesce or go against public opinion and they also are distracted from the domestic agenda where they are at an advantage. Bush not only saves face but comes out looking like a commanding leader despite the internal strife in his administration.

Teaching at Kimball high tomorrow... I am not sure if that's Oak Cliff, but it is definitely South Dallas. I need money for gas now!

Cowboys 21, Titans 13. :)
Quincy Carter carried the offense today, a huge improvement over last week.The defense was a disruptive force and produced a touchdown. The Cowboys could actually be very good this year, the first week's embarassment notwithstanding. The only disappointment, was the run-blocking. Pass protection was very good but the Titans dominated the offensive line in running situation. Larry Allen's health had a lot to do with that.
I need to learn Spanish, just had to reject two jobs that required Spanish. I can muddle through a conversationin Spanish thanks to two semesters in college, but I am not confident eough in what I know to risk it.

Titans 10, Cowboys 7...
Q's play is much improved from last week, when he was the lowest rated passer in the league. The offensive line is frightful though. The defense, as always has been solid, if not stellar. I am happy so far. :)
Sunday is a day of worship for me, church and Cowboys. :)

Went to a Dallas Burn soccer game with my brother tonight and scored a free "game-worn" jersey, i.e. it has been used by an exceedingly sweaty and anonymous soccer player. The jersey is wrinkled but doesn't smell. The number is eleven so the player was most likely a midfielder or perhaps a forward. Everybody advised that I dry clean the jersey before I frame it; I'll dry clean it, but I intend to wear it. The jersey has the greatest value to me when worn - no one is going to pay money for a jersey stained with sweat from an obscure soccer player in Dallas. It'll be my good luck charm. I had a blast and we went to the Old Mill Inn after the game for the "Group Leader" dinner. (Thank you Roger Allen!) The perks included were meeting the players, a coupon for a free drink, and entry in the raffle for Dallas Burn goodies (how I got the jersey). Notice that dinner is not listed anywhere as a perk of the "Group Leader" dinner. We discovered this after attempting to order the most expensive meals on the menu. Fortunately, the Old Mill was operating on a restricted menu that omitted all of the expensive items.
The only downside to the evening was that I was not in the company of a woman. I love my brother dearly, and I enjoy his company more than any other single person I have ever met in my entire life, but everywhere I go I feel like something is missing. When I lie on the couch watching television, my chest aches to feel the weight of someone leaning against it, and my arms encircle air as if to hold someone that should be there. I feel like a hollow man.