Monday, November 07, 2005

A blah Monday

So, like many of you I awoke this morning to read one of the most interesting stories of the year involving two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders. Here are my quick thoughts on the subject. 1) This either says something about our society or my lifestyle but I read a story like that and it doesn’t even phase me anymore. Seriously, I don’t know if it is possible to shock me. 2) What magazine is leading for the first pictorial of the two girls? We’re talking Maxim at a minimum here. This could be the ultimate “famous for committing a crime and ruining your career” moment. 3) You know what the most amazing thing about that story is? The fact that the only reason that anyone knows about the story is because the two women are Carolina Panthers cheerleaders. Not members of the team, not involved with anyone from the team, just cheerleaders. That apparently gives you just enough quasi-celebrity that when you make the police blotter, you will be remembered. Of course, I’m not sure that this is how all of us would like to obtain our fifteen minutes of fame.

Sadly, I think that may have been the best topic I had to write about today. It’s Monday and I am still trying to catch up on all of the errands that I failed to run over the weekend. You know, like going grocery shopping because you have absolutely no food left in your apartment. That point when you look in your fridge and go “I’ve got beer and hot dog buns and that’s about it. I don’t even have hot dogs. Why can’t they make those in equal numbers anyway?” Yeah, that’s pretty much the level of excitement in my life right about now.

However, all of my time traveling did allow me to finish Jonathan Carroll’s latest novel “Glass Soup”. In which you discover that God is a large polar bear named Bob. I think that comes up in chapter five. You know, in all of my theological studies I’ve never had that theory explained to me but hey, you learn something new every day. This isn’t the book of his to start out with (especially since it is the follow up to White Apples) but as a fan I enjoyed it. It is a really out there book, the polar bear is just the beginning, and I was impressed at just how creative the story was. There was nothing formulaic about it. In fact, it confused you by being so non-linear at times. But sometimes it is nice to read something that isn’t straightforward.

More interesting material tomorrow. Consider this the prelude to the anniversary.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is the follow-up story of the year...

Cheerleaders fiasco drowns official site
Brad Thomas - Scout.com
November 7, 2005 at 3:12pm ET

The Panthers whipped the Buccaneers yesterday, but surfing the web, you'd hardly know it. All a fan can find on the internet is talk about the two Panthers cheerleaders who were allegedly having sex in a Tampa club's bathroom stall the night before.

But what is worse, is that you can't get online to Panthers.com to get anything related to the game. It's crashed, and been replaced by a Panthers.com graphic for the time being. No quotes, no notes, no stats and no video highlights.

According to IT Professional Donavon Yelton, "A "hit" in web terms is the loading of a piece of data on a website. This might be a html or a javascript application. There can be several "hits" per page load, depending on how complex the website is. The more power you have behind your webserver (CPUs, memory, etc.) and the more load-balancing techniques used (co-location) will affect how many "hits" your website(s) can handle each second."

"Webservers are usually "load-tested" to see what capacity they can handle, but when something abnormal happens that drives traffic up well beyond capacity then the webserver is brought to it's knees and usually will not let anyone on," explained Yelton.

In other words, too many people trying to connect at one time. Sex scandals involving cheerleaders can do that to a site.

One panthers source confirmed that the domain had over 40 million hits this morning alone.

"It simply can't handle the extra traffic," Yelton said of the servers handling Panthers.com.

There is no word on when Panthers.com will be back online and fully functional.
__________________________

your reward for reading this far...

mugshots and video of the girls leaving jail here

Anonymous said...

Does the concept of Baby Pac-MAn bother anyone else? I mean Pac-Man was the father and Ms. Pac-Man was the mother. No, it wasn't Mrs. Pac-Man it was just Ms. Pac-Man. Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man could very well have been related, even [shudder] brother and sister.

Anonymous said...

Baby Pac-Man was a bastard and possibly inbred.