It's weird, just a little over a month ago, I was walking around Stroudsburg, PA canvassing for the Obama campaign on election day, trying to get people out to vote. Even though the people on my list were supposed to be Democratic voters (who had missed voting in a recent election), there was still a sense of a split among the people who answered the door.  Some were genuinely excited at the prospect of their country, which had seemed like it was slipping away into some distant memory, becoming alive again with possibility.  There was true excitement on some of those porches, and they were feeling the same thing I was.  Maybe, just maybe, this country that I love was no longer morphing into something unrecognizable - but instead was getting that spark back, the spark that makes people in other countries jealous.  The idea that anything is possible, because we are America, and America can do anything.

But that was just me and the people I talked with that had been pre-selected because they were likely to vote Democratic.  There was another group of people that were angry and scared.  It wasn't just that they preferred the policies of McCain/Palin, but that they hated what Obama was, what the stood for, and most of all - what he might be. 

I am a Democrat who supported Obama, but I do not think he is our savior.  A lot of people saw him as a vessel into which they could pour their hopes and dreams.  I saw him as someone who is smart and competent, mostly because he ran one of the smartest, most competent campaigns this country has ever seen.  I was glad to be a part of it, if only for a few days.  As much as I liked Obama, I never feared Sen. McCain the way these people did (though I did fear Gov. Palin that way, only because she was the embodiment of everything that was wrong with President Bush and the last 8 years of "feeling the truth at you". ) Their fear of Obama was visceral, like he was sent here to destroy everything they love.

Why this long intro?  Because things seem to have changed now that he's gone a month without blowing up the White House in a terrorist jihad, converting our children to Islam, outlawing privately held property or simply walking to the podium and yelling, "Where the white women at?".  CNN released a new poll showing Obama's approval rating rising steadily, even though he's still over a month away from taking office:

"An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent -- that's the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst.

But that's not interesting enough for a blog post, is it?  No.

While I am very interested in politics, I don't like writing about it.  The funny part of this poll was President Bush's approval rating: 28 percent.  Which means two things.  First, Obama has a 50 point lead on Still-President Bush (seriously, how much longer do we have to wait before this guy leaves?  I mean, we know he's going to throw out some horrible pardons for the felons in his administration around Christmas when no one is paying attention, but after that - couldn't he just leave?).  Second, check out Bill Schneider's full quote from CNN:

"An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent -- that's the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster," said Bill Schneider, CNN's senior political analyst. "To many Americans, the Bush administration was a national disaster."

We must not forget this.  After time, people will try to build up Bush's legacy, saying that he had vision, leadershipand other nonsense.  We must remember that this is and will not be true.  His administration was a disaster, and we're ready to roll up our sleeves and fix the place up again.  Heck, I volunteered for a campaign, something I've never before done in my life. It's going to get better, and I'm willing to work and sacrifice to make it so. And so are legions of other Americans.  We're ready to get started, and we're so excited that even though we know times are going to be bad, 79 percent of us think that, in the end, we're going to be okay.

I had high hopes for last week.  It started off with me officially becoming an old man, celebrating my 30th birthday.  It ended with me laid up in bed for the better part of 4 days with a nasty cold.  Good times.

On the plus side, I had more satisfying nose-blowing experiences in the last 48 hours than I've had in my entire life.  It was great.  I'm a weirdo in that I really enjoy some parts of being sick.

• The disappearance, if only for a day or two, of that nagging voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I have to do work at all times or else I'm going to die unfulfilled, having accomplished nothing.  The nagging really gets annoying, and being able to watch movies guilt-free is a liberating experience (This weekend, it was Shoot 'Em Up, The Bourne Trilogy, Tropic Thunder, The Illusionist, et al.).  On the other hand, that voice is probably the only thing that keeps me from being a homeless, unemployed deadbeat.  Oh, wait, I already am. So I guess it serves no purpose.  Awesome.
• I like how boogers smell.
• The sheer joy of reaching near-incinerating temperatures under my blankets.  When I don't care about sweating (being a disgusting, mucus-leaking mess causes one to lose the drive for hygiene), I can cover myself in a ton of blankets and crank up the temperature under the covers into at least the 90s, if not triple digits.  I bake and love every minute of it.  No electric blanket or anything - just pure body heat.
• And the peak of this recent bout with infection: successful nose-blowing - 
  • In order for blowing your nose to be successful, there has a partial or complete blockage (and complete blockages almost never successfully expelled in one shot).  The best situation is for there to be a small bubble in one nostril that inflates and deflates with every breath.  If you breathe lightly, it doesn't come out - but it does rise and fall.  When you feel that - it's game on.
  • All it takes is a tissue, folded over once - since the force behind the coming blow will be strong enough to rip through one layer. Then a deep breath, a finger closing the other nostril to increase the blowing speed (I'm a righty snot catcher, so its index finger to cover left nostril, or thumb for the right) - and the explosion.  If executed properly, you will feel the partial blockage in the back of your nose completely come free, immediately followed by the most satisfying thump in your tissue. The thump really hits home because it works both in the awesome sound it makes and the small tap I feel through the tissues in the palm of my hand.
  • From then on out, its just all glory.  Switch to two hands to use the outside edges of the tissue to wipe any side splatter off the outside of the nose.  Then pull it away and separate the now folded and stuck together halves to see the product of your efforts.  Yes, I made that, and then I shot it out of my nose, thank you very much.

So, anyhow.  Frustration-wise, my PhpBB Joomla Comments plugin 95% works, but it's going to require a large rewrite because of naming collisions with certain functions in Joomla and PhpBB (relating to dealing with UTF).  So the one thing I thought was almost done is now a week or two off.  On top of that, the really cool feature for this site I was excited about was going to be the addition of an XML-RPC capability, which would allow me to update the site from outside the browser.  That way, I could throw together outlines of posts I wanted to write into a desktop app and work on them as I pleased before publishing them. Joomla has a nasty habit of letting me type 90% of a post and then having me time-out of my session in the admin, causing it to lose almost all of my work.

Unfortunately, that too became a frustration. The plugin, the Movable Type XML-RPC API - is stripping out all brackets, which renders writing HTML impossible.  I contacted the author of the plugin, but as you can see, his native language is Japanese.  This makes communicating a little cumbersome. 

However, I guess in my "emphasize-the-negative, forget-the- positive over 5 year near-depression" I did manage to accomplish something pretty damn big as my cold was beginning to sweep me to the bed - Preppermint was finally migrated to IIS7 and .NET 3.5 after a six-month struggle. When I finally beat the stumbling block that had held us up for so long, the solution was so stupid it almost removed any joy I got from the situation - but I did manage to hit Deirdre up for a "And! that! is! how! it's! done!" Danny McBride high-five session (I tried to find the clip of that from "Hot Rod" but couldn't.  Interwebs, you have failed me.).  I'll explain what all of that means later, but basically it means big changes for Preppermint in the very near future.  So, there was that.  I also built Rock a radio studio in his house, which was pretty cool.

As you can see, when I do sit down to write something it tends to be long because I can't type as fast as I can think, so my mind races ahead and starts making connections to things that I will have to write about as well, before I'm even done typing my last thought. I'm not a particularly slow typer, it's just that I make mistakes too frequently, so I end up having to go back to fix them before I can continue, and my mind wanders. The result is choppy half-work, like this.

Wait, where was I?...

Oh, yes.  As I get back into the groove of writing again on a regular basis, I promise you the posts will be less choppy and more coherent (but will still contain the same amount of parenthetical asides - although I may adopt the footnotes method of Dream Loom). I'd say something about frequency too here, but I think it's better that I prove it before I promise it. I also promise a post about why I hate "Benny and the Jets", a topic that has bugged me a great deal for the past few months.

Finally, I also want to say that the microphones, stands and cords arrived, meaning that I now have all the equipment necessary for podcasts to begin.  I want to get them started before Christmas, but between the template for the site, the comments plugin and Preppermint, I may hold off a couple more weeks.  But I will begin gathering drops, looping beds and writing and producing promos.  I want the podcast to be technically well done, so there's still some research about the mp4 container format, xml feeds and itunes submission to be done.  Rest assured - now that I've spent money on the equipment, this thing is happening for sure.

As a sometime game charter for Football Outsiders, I get to submit a few words at the NFL mid-season about whatever is on my mind, relating to the games I've watched. Since I'm a huge Giants fan, I wrote about the Giants big off-season decision at running back - do they keep Brandon Jacobs or Derrick Ward? It is unlikely that they'll keep both because neither would want to return to split time with the other when they could be a feature back elsewhere. On top of that, the cap cost of retaining both is also too much to take.

The obvious choice is Jacobs, but being a generally disagreeable contrarian, I wrote about 10 paragraphs explaining why Ward would be the better choice. Basically it comes down to the fact that Jacobs can't catch, Ward isn't as big of a drop off from Jacobs as people think, Ahmad Bradshaw is a similar RB to Jacobs despite the nearly 100 lb. weight difference, and Jacobs will be able to command much more money on the open market. It sounds ridiculous, but I actually think I'm right.

Well, the internet has registered it's disapproval. In the Football Outsiders: Gamer Charters Speak comments, it hasn't been that bad. People disagree, and some actually think there's possibly something to the idea - but generally, it's a site where people saying things that sound ridiculous at first are taken seriously. Conventional wisdom has been proven wrong so often by the site that anything is given a fair shake. It has dominated the sparse comments - getting 9 of the 12 comments despite there being around 10 people contributing.

But over on my other time-waster, Big Blue Interactive - my thoughts have been declared a complete and total fail. Complete with FAIL blog pics. The funny thing is that I didn't even start the discussion. Be the time I realized the cloumn had been posted, there were already 20 comments at BBI telling me what an idiot I was.

Mostly they were of these strains:

1. I HEART JACOBZ!!!! YOU THE SUX0R!!! - Enough said.
2. Jacobs is a singular talent, and you don't let that get away. - This is probably the best argument for Jacobs there is. There has never been a player of Jacobs' size and speed in the NFL. That being said, Jacobs and Ward are both a product of this amazing offensive line. Jacobs cannot evade backfield penetration. If a run-blitz is not picked up, Jacobs is toast. That may be why we see FB Madison Hedgecock in with Jacobs so often, but mostly see Ward in on his own.
3. Ward isn't that good, he's just a product of the Offensive line and Jacobs wearing the opposing defense down. - Ward would probably be easier to replace - but I think people really fail to consider just how good Ward is. He's a good receiver, a very good blocker and a very good runner. His vision and decision-making at the line are top-notch. Watch Ward run - there's no hesitation. He just finds the hole and accelerates through it. He may not hit people as hard as Jacobs, but he's as effective as a runner and a much better receiver. The DVOA backs me up here.
4. Why are you saying Jacobs sucks? - I'm not. I want both of them back. You're an idiot.
5. What about Danny Ware replacing Ward? - That's a damn good point. If Ware can do it, that may tip the scales back in favor of Jacobs.

My main argument is that Ward + Bradshaw can replace 90% of Ward + Jacobs (loss of intimidation is the missing 10%). Jacobs + Bradshaw only fills 70% of what Ward + Jacobs can do (who would be the 3rd down back in that duo? Bradshaw is likely too small to reliably block on blitzing downs and Jacobs can't catch). Throw in that Ward is likely going to be cheaper and you see what I was thinking.

However, if Danny Ware can be that 3rd down back (and Ware looked good enough to get me excited in the preseason, but I didn't see enough to plan around him next year), then that pushes the Jacobs + Bradshaw + Ware equation to around 90%, and then I see the point in re-signing the once in a lifetime Jacobs.

On a personal note, I was surprised by how I reacted to the comments. I figured that I was writing a minority position, but in my narcissistic mind I thought that people would just tip their cap and say, "You've made a compelling argument, Chris Boylan. Well done. With reason and logic like that, I now offer you any of the women in our village."

Instead, I felt stupid and mortified. Was I delusional? Does Ward actually suck?

After an hour or two, my mind went back to normal and I began agreeing with myself. (I rock!) Mostly, I'm angry that I don't have this site finished in any way to capitalize on my quick brush with non-fame. The phpBB comments thing is harder than I thought. I've written the plugin to link to exisiting comment threads, but I can't get new articles to auto-create new threads. So that's going to be tomorrow's plan.

If you are returning to this site after a long absence, you may be confused by the new look.  If you are merely arriving for the first time, you may be confused because this site is pointless and confusing.

Either way, I've spent a bit of the last week overhauling ChrisBoylan.com.  Normally, I'd do the work in secret, and only reveal it when it was done, but I decided against this because I wouldn't be able to prove I was actually doing anything.  On top of that, the half-finished, haphazard nature of the site that is seen by the public embarrasses me - which is a great motivator. 

In the meantime, you can check out a few things that have long been neglected - but now are implemented.  For instance, for the first time in two years the infamous Chris Boylan Forum has returned. If you enjoy reading posts from over two years ago, check it out. Also, hidden in the blog section are posts from my first blog - I've imported the over 100 posts into Joomla, returning a huge chunk of old content to the web.

So, still on the todo list:

• Create a new design for the site
• Get comments working (this requires me to write a plugin to connect phpBB- the forum - and Joomla)
• Add "The Compendium" (details to follow).
• Add 3-plus years of pictures
• Get bloggifyin'
• Get podcastin'

So, back to the salt mines. 

P.S. Note on the forums: if you had an old account from before, you'll have to reset your password when you login.  If you don't have the email address anymore or have other problems, just contact me.

Well, that's not completely true.  I didn't see him get hit by the car, I merely saw a line of cars slamming on their brakes and a guy lying in the middle of Route 22, legs in the fast lane and torso in the middle lane.  It happened as Deirdre and I were coming home from seeing the very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

It was around 10:30 PM, so it was dark out, and we were turning off of 22.  For those that don't know, Rt. 22 is a bit of a death trap, one of those old highways where people are pulling out of parking lots into traffic zipping by at 55 MPH.  There are really no acceleration lanes, you simply must get up to 55 before the car behind you slams into you - it's a good plan.

There is a 3-foot tall cement divider between the 3 lanes going in each direction, and apparently this guy was crossing all six lanes by running, hopping and running some more.  However, he failed to account for the fact that there is no shoulder between the fast lane and the cement divider on each side, so as soon as you commit to the crossing, you better make it.