The way football was meant to be watched

I am lucky; I know it. I have a home theater room, complete with a 100+ inch screen and a steal-of-a Mitsubishi 720p projector. So I have been waiting with great anticipation for the start of the 2008 NFL season. And its been worth the wait. Watching the Bears-Colts game in the HT room , and its a truly amazing experience. The HD image coming off of Dish network is crisp. And the action.... the action is breathtaking. 106 inches of pure football joy.

And it doesn't hurt that Da Bears are actually beating Peyton. Even if its just by 2 points. :--)

The real show is tomorrow night, with the Broncos on Monday Night Football.

Benny Golson saxes nostalgic -- chicagotribune.com

Benny Golson saxes nostalgic -- chicagotribune.com

Hurricane Gustav was providing badly needed moisture to Chicago, but after a big dinner at "Heaven on Seven," Pakky and I decided it was necessary to walk to the Jazz Showcase, instead of taking a cab. 13 blocks later, and basically completely drenched, we arrived at the historic club, now in new diggs in the old Dearborne Station (Adam's Rib's anyone?).

We were early. But there on the stage was a jazz legend, Benny Golson, sitting, and chatting with his piano player. Slowly people began to trickle in, and around 8pm the show began. For the next hour and a half, Benny provided us with an incredible experience. He played classic jazz pieces from his 55 year+ repertoire, and told stories to provide context for each song. My favorite was his story of his teenage years with John Coltrane.

The Chicago Tribune ran a review of the evening's show - which captured the magic of it perfectly. It was a night I will not soon forget. Whisper not.

Canopy Show Information

Canopy Show Information

I can't wait for this concert. Monte Montgomery is an amazing guitarist, and I think seeing him live in concert will be incredible.

Michael Gizzi - Home Page

Michael Gizzi - Home Page

Well, the blog is way out of date, but I am going to try to do a better job with it now that things are settling down. I started with the new website; my ISU site is up and running; the stuff for my classes this fall still needs some work, but that is ok... one step at a time!

Playing with Linux

My computing world has been flipped on its head. At school, I finally had Novell installed on my pc, but ended up having to reinstall the OS to do it; in doing so, they reimaged the HD, and left 35GB unpartitioned. I used this space for a linux install. I put Fedora Core 5 on it. Then got intrigued by it, and repartitioned a HD at home on my AMD 64 machine, and put the same on it. But I had some problems with Fedora, and decided to try out openSUSE, which was recommended by one of the guys on Satelliteuys.

So, I put that on; a very different interface compared with Fedora; but some of it is frustrating. It does not provide 3D acceleration for the video card (which is serious B.S., since its a 256MB NVidia GeoForce 5200 card); and seems to be unable to install codecs for some mpegs.

But since installing Linux seems to be pretty easy, I decided to install Ubuntu, and see how it compares.

What I am reading now

A week ago I came across a sale in amazon.com for Robertson Davies' Fifth Business; one of my favorite books. I don't know why I bought it - since I already own a tattered copy, but it was just $1.99. So... I bought it. And in the little spare time I have had lately, I started re-reading. What a great novel. Robertson Davies is one of the greatest writers in the English language in the 20th Century.

Davies was a Canadian professor of Literature and Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. While you can find his novels at any Borders or Barnes & Noble, Davies remains largely unknown in the U.S. What a shame. The Deptford Trilogy -- Fifth Business is the opening chapter in three separate, but related books that take involve the fictional town of Deptford, Ontario.

Read it. Now spoliers -- just start with the question "who killed Boy Staunton?" You won't regret it.

Northern Exposure vs. Men in Trees

Full disclosure: I posted this as a reply in a SatelliteGuys thread, but felt like including it here...

Ok, I knew when Men in Trees started that in many ways it was a copy of Northern Exposure; transplanted New Yorker (woman this time instead of the very young Rob Morrow, with way too much hair); eccentric characters; focus each day on the radio station; but after watching the first week and half of UHDs airing of Northern Exposure, the comparisons are even stronger...

for example, Maurice "adopts" Chris; whereas Patrick in Trees is the son of the black bush pilot Buzz. Chris in NE is the radio guy; Patrick in Trees is the radio guy

Its kind of like reading Terry Brook's Shannara series (the original trilogy) as a kid, AND ONLY LATER discovering the magic of Lord of the Rings, and realizing how much Brooks drew from Tolkien. It doesn't make the Sword of Shannara any less magical for me; if anything it pays respect to the master (Tolkien, not Sauron).

Along the same lines, I still like the new Men in Trees, even though Ann Heche certainly is not Janine Turner. If it draws from the best of Northern Exposure, all the better. Heck, its been 11 years since Northern Exposure went off the air.

Starting the New Year

Well, I started this blog to replace the blog on SatelliteGuys, which went away when the upgraded the vBulletin software, but I have not had a lot of time to work on it. I guess it is time to start writing. Today's brain activity has been focused on my research with the meth task force. While there are serious things to do, right now, I am trying to figure out what to call the new domain name for the project's website. I already have professorgizzi.org for classes; but I want something interesting and relevant. The problem....

I cannot think of a stinking thing. The grant is called Regional Meth Research Project; but that does not a good domain name make.

Brain must think, brain must think... AND tweaker.com is out of the question; along with methhead.org...