This may well be the only post you will ever see on this site on the topic of sports. Well, I take that back, I did make a prediction about the FSU vs. Miami game which I went to a couple of months ago, but this will probably be the only post entirely about sports. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports, but there are plenty of people who know much more about the topic than I will ever know, and frankly I don’t care that much to learn more. However, I must comment on an incredible game the other night on Monday Night Football between the Arizona Cardinals and the undefeated Chicago Bears. If you didn’t see this game, you really missed out, it was quite entertaining. Go check out any of the sports sites for a synopsis of the game, but basically Arizona had the game won in the fourth quarter with 3:30 to go, a 23-10 lead, and the ball. Immediately after the announcer stated that if the Cardinals somehow manage to lose this game they should lock up the doors of the stadium and shut down the franchise, Arizona fumbles the ball and Chicago runs the ball back for a touchdown. Then Chicago runs back the punt to lead 24-23, and then Arizona misses a field goal from their clutch kicker. It was crazy, insane, unbelivable, and the only thing that could make the game any better is…..yes, you guessed it…Charles Barkley. Throughout the entire second quarter, Charles Barkley was a commentator in the football game. Has Charles ever played football professionally? no. Does Charles know anything about commentating football? no. Does anyone care that Charles has no idea what he is saying about football? absolutely not! I don’t care if Charles Barkley is commentating a water polo match, I want to listen! Barkley as a commentator is just brilliant, and the reason is because he is so incredibly honest, and he really just doesn’t care. All of the other commentators actually have to worry about keeping their jobs and feeding their families. Barkley doesn’t need this job, he just does it for fun, and thats why he is so enjoyable to listen to. So I for one am in complete support of MNF hiring Barkley as a full time commentator/analysist.

It’s been 3 weeks since I got my shiny new macbook in the mail. Even though I’m in a financial crisis as a result of buying the computer, I can’t say that I regret it. Like I mentioned before, I have been a mac fan for a few years now, one of the few mac fans that didn’t actually own a mac. So now that I finally have a mac, I can honestly say that I love macs even more. wow, that sounds really confusing when you read it back..oh well. I have found a few new programs for the mac that are absolutely amazing. The kind of programs that make you wonder why no one can ever write something so simple and applicable on the windows platform. The first is quicksilver. I had heard about this app before buying my macbook, but I had never used it. Quicksilver is basically an application launcher and real time search app. It indexes your entire computer, similar to spotlight, but it is much more intuitive and powerful than spotlight. For instance, instead of simply launching iTunes, it can actually browse your library right from the onscreen pop-up interface. You can also assign global triggers for any key combination that can control a variety of programs without having the programs focused. For example, I have assigned a trigger to skip to my next iTunes track, previous track, and play/pause. This is very useful, rather than having to maximize iTunes and change the track while you are in another program. To top it all off, the interface of quicksilver is absolutely beautiful, complete with smooth fading and slick graphics. Why can’t you do anything like this on the Windows platform??? The next app I discovered is Omni Outliner, which is bundled with OSX Tiger. This is an amazing program for taking notes in class. It is so much faster and smaller than using cumborsome Microsoft Word. It allows you to create a parent-child system of note taking, with incredible customizable features such as moving text around within the notes, coloring any notes, and creating infinite levels of hierarchy. It is really an amazing alternative to Word, which is outdated and incredibly slow because it isn’t written for the Intel based macs. Any student or professional should really check it out.

I’m sitting in Panera Bread right now writing this blog entry. There is a girl on the other side of the restaurant that is playing World of Warcraft on a small HP laptop. She has the complete getup, complete with the over the head earphones and the boom mic. I was sitting behind her while waiting for my food, watching her fly through the virtual world on the back of some sort of flying horse. I don’t want to seem sterotypical, but I found this interesting because she doesn’t quite fit the mold of the normal WoW gamer. I would have expected to find a geeky male huddled over the screen, barking orders into his microphone. It’s a rainy day here in SO ILL, it has been raining since early this morning, and it isn’t supposed to stop until after midnight. I am heading down to Cobden, Illinois tonight to attend a town meeting for my documentary project. I have scanned a few images, so check back to the photo side of the site tomorrow for some new pics. For all of you who are in the know….be warned, CWS has begun to take hold in Southern Illinois. It won’t be long until it reaches you as well.

Today is a good day in the life of johndcorson.com. I finally got a new host for the site. My old host (catalog.com) was having some speed problems and also going through new ownership, which was very confusing to say the least. I have switched my hosting company to siteground, which offers much more space at a cheaper price. After migrating all of my databases and code, the site seems to be much faster than before. I am going to wait a bit longer on my recommendation of siteground as a hosting provider until some time goes by. But so far, they have been great. I was able to get the domain propagated in less than 12 hours and had everything up and running about 12 hours from when I signed up….not bad at all!! I also have 40 GB of space on their servers, compared to 500 MB that I had on catalog.com, and i am able to create as many mySQL databases as I want, which makes the site run faster when I have 3 seperate portions of the site. So, it is a good day, and hopefully you will be able to notice the differences in the speed of the site.

In the interest of coming clean and clearing my conscience, I must update my readers on a particular topic that has been written about in length over the course of the past few months. For those of you who read my blog often, you are no doubt familiar with my consistent bickering with Mediacom, my local internet provider. My internet service over the past year here in Carbondale has been nothing short of pathetic, with weekly outages and slow speeds becoming the norm. A couple of weeks ago one of these fateful outages occurred at a very inopportune time, when Florida State was playing Troy in Tallahassee. The game was not televised, and the internet was my only source of play by play information on the game. After throwing the cable modem around the room a couple of times, I decided to plug the modem into my television cable outlet, which is in the other room of the house. After doing this, the internet began to work immediately, and at a very fast speed. I kept the modem plugged in for the remainder of the game and called Mediacom to come check out the problem. Well, it seems as though the problem was not Mediacom after all, but the wiring in my house. So, I would like to retract my slandering of Mediacom as having bad internet service. However, I am not retracting my claim that interacting with Mediacom’s customer service department is quite possibly the most frustrating experience I have ever had. No, placing a customer on hold for 40 minutes is not a normal operating procedure for a national, multi-million dollar business. You cannot expect to provide customer service to a large customer base when you employ two people in your customer service department. Throughout the course of this ordeal, I have hatched a few ingenious plans to counteract the treatment I have received from Mediacom, which range from organizing a formal picket of their local offices to blowing up their local offices with some sort of homemade incendiary device. However, because of the new information I have learned in regard to this conundrum, I must formally retract my threats to picket and blow up the local offices of Mediacom. So, if you are a local law enforcement agency hot on my trail, please cease and desist your investigation and focus your attention to more prevalent matters that demand your attention.

I had a great time at the Sufjan Stevens concert last weekend in St. Louis. I’m not going to give a full review of the show because I think Chase has done a much better job than I could ever do in his blog. But I will give my basic thoughts on the show and the experience. As expected, the show took attracted a very interesting crowd. It was your basic indie type crowd, complete with the people who know how to dress with style, and the people who think they know how to dress with style. Like the girl that wears the high boots that just aren’t quite working for her. But, nonetheless, it was a pretty amazing show. The show was opened by a girl that sings in Sufjan’s band/ensemble/orchestra/songbirds. From the first note that came out of her mouth, I knew that this girl had an incredible voice. Apparently she is classically trained in voice, and it definitely showed. The only thing that bothered me was that she was acting very strange. The kind of strange where people just say weird things to look strange. I just can’t figure these type of people out. I mean are they really that strange or are they just putting on an act for everyone? What is the thought process that is going on in her head when she says obscure things? I wonder if she is thinking…hmmm that sounds really strange..yeh..that will freak them out. It’s kinda like how Dave Matthews acts really strange when he is on stage. I don’t think he is really that strange in person, judging from many of the interviews and other footage I have seen of him. Granted, Dave is a pretty strange guy, but I think he still puts on a little show when he gets on stage. Sufjan seems to do the same thing when he is on stage. I have no problem with people being weird, but I think I do have a problem with people being weird just for the sake of being weird, or to make them more popular or “mysterious.”

Regardless of how weird or strange Sufjan was on Sunday night, his performance was nothing short of incredible. While I was listening to his ensemble perfrom intricate, technical passages of music, I found myself wondering if I was at a pop/band concert or a performance of the N.Y. Philharmonic. After seeing Sufjan perform, I think of him as more of a composer/songwriter than anything else. This is the true strength and genius of Sufjan Stevens. Yes, his voice is very good, the kind of voice that makes you want to just sit back and revel in its smoothness, but the true genius of Sufjan is what lies behind the voice, the lyrics and the music. His melodies are complex, yet simple enough to recall without listening. His lyrics are incredibly honest, and perhaps this is one of greatest traits, he sings about life, about his weanesses, his feelings, and his beliefs. Songs like John Wayne Gacy, Jr., Casmir Pulaski Day, and The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades are incredibly honest, almost to the point of being juvenile or childish. But just when you begin to pass him off as being childish or juvenile, you realize the beauty and genius of his composition, and the simplicity that creates complexity. Highlights of the night for me were definetely an acoustic version of John Wayne Gacy, Jr., The Dress Looks Nice on You, and The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades. Sufjan will never be a major touring act, but I believe he is on his way to becoming one of the most important artists of our generation.

Check out tao photography for some pictures from the show.