Best day ever!
The Best Deal Ever?
Yes, this article was heavily influenced by Free Spirits, this week’s entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series. If you like basketball at all, I suggest you check the film out!
Do you remember polyester clothes from the 1960s and 1970s? Sure, those old double-knit suits and slacks seem ugly and obnoxious now, but they seemed like miracles back in the day. Polyester clothes promised to last forever, and required very little care from their owners. Housewives all across America envisioned a future without ironing, and to them it seemed awesome. And for that you can thank (or blame) two brothers: Ozzie and Daniel Silna.
The Silnas had a textile business, and were among the first to figure out how to make fabric from polyester. Although polyester brought the Silna brothers a modest fortune, the two had a dream, a dream of owning an NBA basketball team. In 1974, the brothers unsuccessfully tried to buy the Detroit Pistons. When the deal fell through, they went back to the drawing board.
Just as the NFL had to deal with an upstart rival in the AFL, so too did the NBA have an upstart of its own: the American Basketball Association, or the ABA. Just like the AFL, the ABA had players with big personalities, colorful uniforms, and increased offense via the three-point line. Also like the AFL, many ABA teams tried bizarre halftime shows – like alligator wrestling – to draw spectators.
However, one thing AFL teams had that most ABA teams lacked was profits. The ABA and its teams constantly lost money, and this can be seen in the insanely complex history of some teams. The New Orleans Buccaneers, for example, played under that name from 1967 to 1970, when they changed their name to the Louisiana Buccaneers in an attempt to expand their fandom statewide. The trick didn’t work, so the team moved to Memphis, where they were known as the Memphis Pros (1970-1972), the Memphis Tams (1972-1974) and the Memphis Sounds (1974-1975). But the team still failed to make a profit, so they moved to Baltimore, where they were known as the Baltimore Hustlers… until they changed their name yet again to the Baltimore Claws before folding in late 1975. So in an 8 year span, the team either moved or changed its name 7 times.
SIMON’S PICKS – WEEK 5
Hey, everybodee! It’s Chloee. My brudder has the hangovers today – too many Dark an’ Stromees for Monday Nite Football – so Chloee will be doin’ the picks this week. Brudder went 9-5 last week, makin’ him 50-27 for the yeer. Let’s see if Lil’ Chloee can do better! hehehehe!!
Chicago and New York Giants: So, the reeson brudder is hungover iz because hee was watching the Jets beat his favorite Durty Burds last night. Was tense game, no? Now, normally Chloee would think that a giant could beat up a bear pretty easily. Although bears are pretty bad-ass, giants are… well, GIANT! But Chloee thinks NEW YORK Giants don’t stand chance against Chicago Bears. Take da Bears to win!
Cincinnati at Buffalo: Man, ain’t no way no buffalo could beat a tiger! To tiger, buffalo just giant meal on hooves, enuf to feed entire tiger familee! Take the Bengals to beat the crap outta the Bills dis week!
Detroit at Cleveland: What is “Brown”, anyway? You no see teams called the Blues or Yellows, do you? Normally, Chloee would think that a lion would beat up on whatevur a “Brown” is, but Chloee notice that Cleveland team also has some kind of pixy or elf as logo. She thinks that Browns will use some kinda elfin magik on Lions and spook ’em this week, even with second string qyoo-bee.
Oakland at Kansas City: Pirates versus Indians? Chloee loves pirates, and normally think they’d kick almost anybodee’s ass. But pirates are best in coastal areas. Me thinks that when pirates go way inland, they not play so good against Indians in good defensive posture. So Chloee sez to that the Chiefs will win this one!
Carolina and Minnesota: Panthers against Vikings? Yeah, you’d think that my slinkee black cousins could beat up on some honkee dudes from Norway. But Chloee thinks the only thing more badass than pirates are vikings. Man, you mess with Vikings, you end up in a wurld of hurt! So take the Vikings to win this one!
North Carolina
North Carolina
SIMON’S PICKS – WEEK 5
Hey, y’all! Simon here! Well, the Football Feline went 10-5 last week, which is pretty good, and sets me up at 41-22 on the season so far. The Simon can make ONE rock-solid prediction this weekend: the Steelers WILL NOT lose… it’s their bye week! Hehehehe… sorry, Daddy!
Buffalo at Cleveland: Well, isn’t this surprising… The CLEVELAND BROWNS are tied for first in the AFC North! And how’s this… even though the Steelers are 0-4, they’re only 2 games out of first place! What a world! What’s Simon been telling you about the Bills, huh? Better than you thought, huh? Too bad they’re going to lose this weekend. Take the Browns to win on Thursday night, honey!
New Orleans at Chicago: The Aints aren’t nearly as good on the road as they are at home, and this one won’t be a runaway win for them… But I think ol’ Drew Brees and that handsome Marques Colston will come away with the win for the Saints!
New England at Cincinnati: HEEEEYYYY TOOOOOMMM! YOO-HOOOOO! SIMON’S LOOKING FOR YOOOOOUU! And Tom Terrific will be looking for a win against my kitty cousins… and he’ll get it, too. This may be one of the least overall talented New England teams in recent history… but all they do is win, baby! Take the Patriots to handle the Bungles easily!
Detroit at Green Bay: [insert joke about Calvin Johnson’s massive johnson here]. The Motor City KItties want to sneak a win at Lambeau. Ain’t gonna happen. Take the Packers to go, Pack, go this weekend!
Kansas City at Tennessee: Barbeque City versus Music City? Girl, you know Simon’s all about some tasty treats! Take the Chiefs to cook the Titans low and slow for 3-4 hours this Sunday afternoon! And then drench ’em in sauce!
Quote of the Day
“I am not turning down the money! I’m turning down you! You get it?! I want nothing to do with you! Ever since I met you, everything I ever cared about is gone! Ruined, turned to shit, dead, ever since I hooked up with the great Heisenberg! I have never been more alone! I have NOTHING! NO ONE! ALL RIGHT, IT’S ALL GONE, GET IT? No, no, no, why…why would you get it? What do you even care, as long as you get what you want, right? You don’t give a shit about me! You said I was no good. I’m nothing! Why would you want me, huh? You said my meth is inferior, right? Right? Hey! You said my cook was GARBAGE! Hey, screw you, man! Screw you!”
– Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman
Breaking Bad, “One Minute”
SIMON’S PICKS – WEEK 4
Hey, y’all! Simon here! OK, so I had a rought week last week, only going 8-8. I’m still 31-17 for the season, so let’s see if the Football Feline can do better this week! Enjoy the sweaty mens, girls!
San Francisco at St. Louis: My handsome mens from San Francisco will bounce back this week, easily defeating a subpar Rams team. Take the 49ers to win this one easily, girls!
Baltimore at Buffalo: Those cute lil’ mens on the Bills are having a much better season than Simon thought they would… but they’re gonna have a tough time against Joe “I’m Elite!” Flaccid. Take the Ravens to win this one, but not in a blowout. hehehe… “blowout”: that’s dirty!
Cincinnati at Cleveland: Gross. Take the Bengals to not bungle this one, though.
Chicago at Detroit: My MAIN MAN Calvin Johnson [insert “Johnson” joke here] is putting up crazy numbers here lately… but I’m afraid it won’t be enough to win this one. My OTHER Main Main, Julius Peppers (and how cool of a name is THAT?) will feast this week, ladies! Take Da Bears to win this one easily!
New York Giants at Kansas City: It wasn’t until I watched the Carolina Kitties game last Sunday that I realized how TRULY AWFUL the Giants’ O-line is! I mean, Pittsburgh’s o-line is like, Hall of Fame quality in comparison! And Kansas City is for real, people… so take the Chiefs to win this one, big time!
Pittsburgh at Minnesota: Sigh. Take the Vikings. Better yet, just read a book or go out to brunch when this game is on.
Editing Firefox Bookmarks
I’ve been using Firefox full-time since 2003 or 2004, and have amassed a pretty large collection of bookmarks. I’m also one of those guys who regularly has 150+ tabs open across 3-4 Firefox windows.
Of course, when you have that many tabs open for a week, Firefox tends to hog up a TON of RAM. So what I sometimes do is bookmark all the tabs in one (or more) window(s) by clicking a tab, choosing “Bookmark All Tabs” and saving the folder as “2012.09.17a” (or whatever the date is; the letter is if I have more than one window to save). I save this in a bookmarks sub-folder called “Sessions”.
An odd thing happened recently: I was using Firefox with 100+ tabs open (like you do) when the Firefox window suddenly “blinked”, as if Windows was having trouble redrawing the window. I didn’t think much of it until a few minutes later, when I noticed that a giant chunk of my bookmarks were missing! There hadn’t been any kind of error message or notification; the stuff was just gone. I bookmarked three of my four open windows in my “Session” sub-folder, then exported the remaining bookmarks to an HTML file, and restarted Firefox… and my bookmarks were still missing.
Getting most of my missing bookmarks back was easy. Firefox keeps backups of your bookmarks, so all I had to do was open the bookmarks manager and choose “Import and Backup” > Restore and choose the day before:
But the previous day’s backup did not include the session windows I’d just bookmarked. I checked History > Recently Closed Windows, but the windows I’d bookmarked only a few minutes before weren’t there, only a couple of windows I remembered closing a few days before.
The bookmarks for those three windows were “trapped” in the BOOKMARKS.HTML file I’d saved before I started all this. How could I get them back?
Well, I could always open a new Firefox window, open the BOOKMARKS.HTML file with that, and manually re-open each tab. But that seemed like a huge pain in the ass: I’d bookmarked three windows with 120+ tabs. Manually clicking each link in the BOOKMARKS.HTML file and saving it all over again seemed laborious.
I could have also manually edited the BOOKMARKS.HTML file in a text editor. But when I opened the file in Notepad++, I found that it’s not exactly human-friendly:
So… what to do?
In a flash of inspiration I thought of it: Internet Explorer! I opened a Windows Explorer window and created a folder on my desktop named “Temp Faves”. I then went to the favorites folder in my profile (c:\users\&username&\Favorites) and moved the few IE bookmarks I have to the temp folder on my desktop. I then had IE import the bookmarks from the BOOKMARKS.HTML. Going back to the Windows Explorer window, I deleted all the new “Favorites” except for the “session folders” I’d saved just before this whole mess started. I then went back to Firefox’s bookmarks manager and told it to “Import Data from Another Browser”, choosing only to import my IE favorites. Firefox imported them into a folder called “Favorites from Internet Explorer” (or something like that). I then used Firefox’s bookmark manager to move those sub-folders to their rightful place in the “Sessions” folder of my bookmarks. I then deleted the “Favorites from Internet Explorer” folder… and BOOM! In the most roundabout of ways, I was back where I had been before!
SIMON’S PICKS – WEEK 3
Hey, y’all! The Simon went 11-5 last week, for a total of 23-9 for the year. The Simon needs to get BETTER, not worse! I’ll stop staring at the handsome mens and pay attention to the GAMES this week. Let’s see if I can do better!
Kansas City at Philadelphia: The Walrus™ comes home to Philly this week, against Chip Kelly and that AWFUL Michael Vick (solidarity, doggie friends!). This could end up being a really good game, y’all! Kansas City will BRING IT against their coach’s old team, but I think the Eagles will squeak out a win here.
Green Bay at Cincinnati: It’s the Cheeseheads versus the Chiliheads! The Krappy Kitties are looking pretty good this year, but I think their luck will run out on them this week, when that SEXY MAN Aaron Rodgers comes to town. Girl, that man could DISCOUNT DOUBLECHECK me all night long! Take the Packers to win this one!
St. Louis at Dallas: Oh, Tony Romo… you’re the opposite of fabulous! But you and your Cowboy mens are gonna win this week!
San Diego at Tennessee: Tennessee beat (what’s turned out to be a not very good) Pittsburgh team, then took the Texans to the limit. Maybe they’re better than people give them credit for? In any case, I think the TItans will win this one at home. The Chargers look better than I expected them to (“Yoo-Hooo! Antonio Gates! Simon’s lookin’ for yoooooouu!”) but they just don’t play as well on the east coast as they do on the left coast.
Cleveland at Minnesota: The Factory of Sadness takes a road trip this week, but the result is the same: the Vikings win.
Tampa Bay at New England: And, like lambs to the slaughter, the Buccaneers take the field. This probably won’t be the beatdown it could have been in years past, but Tom Terrific will get it going well enough to beat these jokers. Patriots win!
SIMON’S PICKS – WEEK 2
Hey, y’all! Simon here! Wow… was Week 1 WILD or what? My handsome Texan mens came back to win a thriller, and there were FOUR safeties this week (and only 13 all year year!) That’s CRAZY! The Simon went 12-4 last week, as always let’s see if the Football Feline can do even better!
New York Jets at New England: Well, that HANDSOME Geno Smith was able to pull out a win against the Pretty Pirates last week, but he’s going to be in for a TREAT this week. Tom Terrific is pretty solid at home, and even pulled out a win against a rejuvenated Bills last week. My gut says that Tom will lead the Patriots to another win this week! Because he’s too beautiful not to!
St. Louis at Atlanta: What did The Simon tell you about Atlanta not being able to win in New Orleans? That’s OK, honey: my MAIN MAIN Matty Ice will get his mojo back this week, when the DUUUURTY BIRDS play the Rams at home. Take the Falcons to win this one, baby!
Carolina at Buffalo: Poor Cam! So, so handsome… such a bad team! Now the Carolina Kitties looked pretty good on defense last week, but The Simon is pretty sure that those mens from New York will be able to win this one. I’m going with the Bills! But come home soon, Cam… We miss you!
Minnesota at Chicago: Ooooo! The Purple People Eaters versus the Monsters of the Midway! The Simon TREMBLES with excitement! I say go with Da Bears at home this week!
Washington at Green Bay: The Iggles shut the ‘Skins DOWN for the first two and half quarters on Monday night. Let’s hope the Packers’ DC was watching the game… ‘cos I’m going with the Packers in this game!