So I've been in Richmond, VA, this past weekend for the Colonial Conference Men's Basketball Championships. #3 Drexel surprised everyone last night by knocking off #2 VA Commonwealth in the semis. Tonight we take on defending champ and #1 seed U of North Carolina-Wilmington. Game is 7pm Eastern on ESPN2.

If you watch - I'm in the Drexel Pep Band - playing the lead trumpet part. If they show us, I'm the guy in the middle of 5 trumpeters. Several band members are contemplating face paint for the game (especially since we havent done anything like that in my 5 years here!).

You might be asking where's my connection coming from? Answer - Wardriving in Richmond. Well, not quite. Someone's laptop has found a connection from a nearby office building. So we've wardrived from the hotel room!

Concern whether shorthand writing used online is in the news again. A British 13-year old girl submitted an essay to her teacher entirely in online shorthands and acronyms. Can't until Google comes up with a translator for this "language."

Update: Rejected. Though I didnt really expect it to be posted anyway.

Unfortunately, it was posted only within the section page, and not the front page. But, Cliff, I gotta hand it to ya on this one. This took a lot of effort and probably a lot of thought on your part and that of the submitter, whomever it is.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/26/0447219

Currently, only some /. users seem to be able to see a story on the front page:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/24/2218224&mode=nested&tid=193&threshold=-1

It's not visible to logged out users (though people can post as AC), and it cant be found in any section pages. It seems to be only visible with the preference "Collapse Stories" set. Very strange.

When I log into a unix box, any new files I create are set to rw-r--r-- permissions, which i can change to rw-rw-r-- by using umask in my .bashrc file.

The group assigned to that created file is the same as my username, and I'm the only user in that group. I'd like to have the default group to be something else, as right now I have to constantly do chgrp's on new files, a real pain, especially when I forget to do so and lock my co-workers out of files.

How do I change the default working group assigned to a file when I create it? I'd prefer something that can be done at logon, as I noticed 'newgrp' launches a new shell, meaning I cant put it in .bashrc (causes infinite loop). Suggestions?

Yet more legal funnies:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/02/06/a.plus.ap/index.html

Basically, an 11th grader (who's at the top of his class already) isnt settling for just an A, he wants the A+. The class was a work-experience class. He worked at his mother's law firm as a paralegal.

McDonald's is once again on the hotseat - this time for selling an "improperly prepared", get ready for it, bagel. The guy claims it caused tooth damage and ruined his marriage.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/weird_news/5084293.htm

There's an article on the front page about a new desktop linux consortium, linking to a cnet article. The end of the article lists stock quotes for several companies, Sun Microsystems included.

It's down to 3.10/share. Has it really gotten that bad for them?

Original: [mp3]
Fly Eagles fly, on the road to victory.
Fight Eagles fight, score a touchdown 1-2-3.
Hit 'em low,
Hit 'em high,
And we'll watch our Eagles fly.
Fly Eagles fly on the road to victory.
E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!

This week's Drexel newspaper:
Die Eagles die, on the road to agony.
Fright Eagles fright, score a touchdown one, then flee.
Get hit low,
get hit high,
and watch our Eagles cry.
Die Eagles die, on the road to agony!
C-H-O-K-E-R-S CHOKERS!

Bought a Snapple as part of lunch today. I'm sure many of you have seen these "Real Facts" under the lid.

Todays fact: "The average smell weighs 760 nanograms"

My question: How does one weigh smell?

Is it me, or has slashdot been unusually slow lately? Did they downsize their serverfarm for some reason?

The NFL Refs, after screwing up last Sunday, have instuted some changes to (hopefully) improve things. They have said there are more changes possibly coming.

ESPN reveals those changes not yet made public: http://espn.go.com/page2/s/sportoon/030109.html

Did anyone watch the movie tonight on CBS "Crooked E"?

I'd like to be the first to point out the gross error in the scene where Cruver was exiting the parking garage looking at each "Enron is..." sign, the reflection off the windshield of his car was reflecting the wrong way.

Experts often say that no matter how much computing technology gets thrown at it, security will still come down to a human, such as easy passwords, etc.

I was watching something about engineering disasters on the history channel when a choice quote was made by a structural engineer describing the collapse of the Hartford Civic Arena in the 1970s. "No matter how much a computer is used, a human is still the one who has to use it." The building was one of the first to be constructed with the aid of an early CAD system. But the transfer of the computations and design plans onto paper for the contracter didnt go smoothly, which introduced the set of errors that allowed the collapse of the building.

My dad caught a short blurb in the local (NJ) newspaper about car accident deaths during 2002 within the state. It seems that the number of people who were killed while wearing their seatbelts was zero. Quote from some high-ranking official: "We needn't unbuckle a corpse." Unfortunately, the blurb is not on the newspaper's website, else I'd link to it.