Welcome to BigFlax.com!
October 30, 2002
The top nine remained the same, but there were major shakeups
in the rest of this week's Top 20 poll.
Four newcomers in one week, with one debuting at #14; a jump from #20 to #12... that's
what happens when nine of the eleven teams ranked between #10 and #20 lose.
Incidentally, yes, I know it's late, and I also know I have not exactly
been flooding you with updates. But I've been busy. I predict this will last
for much of the rest of the quarter. Sorry.
Also incidentally, how the fuck is Friday November 1?
And am I the only one who hates the end of Daylight Savings Time? Okay, the extra
hour of sleep Sunday morning was nice (particularly after a long day of Wildcat and
related affairs), but I'm sorry, coming back from class in the dark is so not cool.
And I don't mean my six to nine lab, either.
October 27, 2002
Wildcat Invitational yesterday. 22 teams came, a team
from Mississippi won, and the whole thing ran 100% on time. That was the
most incredible part. 11 rooms and they all ran on time, and in fact ahead of
schedule at times. "On time" is not a phrase you often hear associated
with quiz bowl.
It being homecoming, we got to hear about the football team getting
killed, but more importantly had cameos from various quiz bowl-related NUers past - Tyler
was of course there (reading the whole day), but also Dan, Rob, Andy Alderman, and TRASH
guy James Quintong. Unfortunately we didn't think to ask Dan if we could borrow his
parents' credit card for dinner.
Things we learned:
1) Loyola is awesome. They sent four moderators, which
was outstanding. Then they went to Las Palmas with us and hung out for hours
afterwards, confirming their status as one of the few quiz bowl teams you'd actually want
to see outside of a tournament setting.
2) More people read this site than I thought, or at least read more of
it than I thought.
October 21, 2002
New Top 20 Poll up. Poll of the Week (now hideously outdated) will be changed sometime tomorrow (today), hopefully.
October 19, 2002
Rudnik was predictably thrilled to make the page. Meanwhile, we had a quiz bowl tournament today at U of C. We didn't do all that well, though I did okay personally (even more boring version of that ici) and mined some quotes out of it. Also new regular quotes as well, and this week's NFL Picks.
October 17, 2002
stated question: "are there any optimists in the house?"
majority answer: "2 big ten wins"
answer to stated question: "apparently so."
Verbatim from an e-mail that Rudnik sent me this morning. Technically the question was "Are the optimists in the house?", but I guess he was close enough. At any rate, I'm not convinced that beating Indiana and Illinois is a lot to ask, though actually Indiana hasn't looked that bad, come to think of it. Illinois continues to look pretty awful, though... just like in 2000, when Kittner was injured. It's pretty amazing to think he was the sole person responsible for their 10-2 season last year. I doubt we'll beat them 61-23 this year, but one never knows. If we can't beat Indiana, perhaps we can beat Purdue? Note that all three of those games are at home... somehow I don't think road games at Iowa and Penn State are happening.
October 15, 2002
New Poll of the Week. Are the optimists in the house?
October 14, 2002
New Top 20 Poll
up. Miami's still #1, but they've got some competition all of a sudden. It
would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the field goal gods didn't
hate Florida State so much... but oh well.
My sister actually left me voice mail from yesterday's Ben Folds
concert in New Jersey. Naturally it was pretty hard to hear, but the second message
had the intro to "Rockin' the Suburbs" on it. Nice. On one of them,
she said to me, "Be jealous," and believe me, I am. On the other hand,
when I first told her that Ben was touring with just his piano on this particular tour,
she was worried that it wouldn't be rockin'. I assured her it would - now I get to
say "I told you so."
October 14, 2002
Happy 16th birthday to my sister. It's early in the day
(yeah, I'd call 2 am "early in the day"), but I might as well do it now so I'm
not forced to update later.
More games tonight. Drew and I played six games of Yahtzee, in
which space I managed to roll six Yahtzees, probably as many as I'd rolled in the entire
rest of my life combined. Twice I pulled off two in one game, which pretty much
guarantees winning. In our last game, Drew actually threw two himself - then I threw
one and got the upper section bonus, and so despite a 100 point bonus for the second
Yahtzee he only won by 26. Tense. I love tension in dice games like Yahtzee
and backgammon (we also had some backgammon tension when Drew only needed to bear two guys
and I had five, and then I got double sixes, thus bearing four, but he was able to bear
both of his on his next turn); it makes me feel like less of a loser.
It's 35 degrees outside. Holy fucking shit. Anyway, I
mentioned it was two am, so I guess I will be updating later in the day anyway, since the
poll is sure as hell not getting up tonight. Hey, I wonder who'll be number one.
(P.S. No, you're not actually old, though you are old compared
to me. Anyway, don't take this as indication that I want whatever that thing was.)
October 11, 2002
Took Ric to the airport today - a trip out to Midway isn't as
bad as you'd think, though it is pretty long. Thus I now have his car at my disposal
for tonight or tomorrow's grocery run, plus tomorrow night's trip to the Olive Garden, not
to mention my trip to the video store to pick up the movie I missed as a result of
accidentally sleeping through class last Tuesday. At least that's something that's
easily viewed outside of class.
Also, as Matt Pearl's away message has been gleefully proclaiming for
the last week, it's his birthday today. Guess which one.
In one week, it's the first quiz bowl tournament of the year,
Deep Bench at Chicago. As good a time as any to find out our account is 344 dollars
in the hole, don't you think?
Speaking of quiz bowl, more or less, I seem to recall it's Leah's
birthday today, and based on recent IMs I think she'll lay the smackdown if I don't
mention it. I'll remedy this mild extortion by pointing out that she's 23. You
are old.
October 8, 2002
Did anyone see the Twins-Angels game tonight? Was
seeing Carl Pohlad and Bud Selig sitting together not really unnerving/infuriating?
Was anyone else reminded of Major League? Think about it... if the Twins
had finished last this year, Selig and Pohlad could have been like "See, they can't
compete, we should have contracted them." Instead, they're three wins from the
World Series, and Selig and Pohlad just look like greedy idiots.
Meanwhile, my NUTV finally works, thanks to ResCon Eugene, who ended up
deducing that the VPN client was to blame. Fuck you, Cisco Systems.
October 8, 2002
NUTV continues to not work on my computer. If the next
option is reinstalling Windows - as has been suggested - fuck it. I'd rather leave
it running in the background and suffer a few crashes than have to deal with that.
NU Dave, after two-plus years of trying, finally got a quote. Way to go.
October 7, 2002
New Poll of the Week. Continue to eat it, Yankee fans.
October 6, 2002
New Top 20 poll up.
October 6, 2002
You know, I haven't mocked the Yankees on here yet, but rest
assured it's only because I've been busy. So how does it feel, Yankee fans?
You like being humiliating losers for a change? How about seeing that vaunted
pitching staff - which Joe Torre, foolishly, called the best he'd had in New York - giving
up 31 runs in four games and a .376 batting average, a playoff series record? How
about the fact that they're only getting older? Oh, Steinbrenner can spend more
money - and I have no doubt that he will - but I don't know who's out there for him to get
right now.
How about Joe Torre saying that the Yankees were still the better team?
He wrote it off as pride, but I suspect that, much like the Raiders and Steelers
last year, the Yankees are foolish enough to believe it. Hey, Yankees, do you
realize you only won four more games than the Angels this season? Do you further
realize that while you were beating up on the Devil Rays and Orioles, the Angels were
staring down the A's and Mariners? Hell, Texas would probably finish third in the AL
East - you'd be lucky to finish third in the West.
And how does it feel, Jason Giambi? You said "If you can't
beat 'em, join 'em," and now you're out. Of course, the A's might be out too in
a couple hours, but don't you think they could beat the Twins if you hadn't jumped ship?
This ought to confirm to all baseball players that the pussy way out is not the way
to go. And how about "potential AL MVP" Alfonso Soriano? Sure, we're
not supposed to include the playoffs, but how about a .118 batting average (2-for-17, with
4 strikeouts) and a Buckneresque error in Game Four? Giambi, who hit .357 in the
series, is more deserving, except of course he shouldn't get it either.
So, eat it, Yankees, and eat it, Yankee fans. I hope you enjoy
sitting at home in October watching what will actually be a fun ALCS for once.
October 3, 2002
Quick birthday shout-out for Hiznarc.
October 1, 2002
If the Yankees keep up the bullshit winning, I might have to
stop rooting for the Twins. See, while I like the Twins, I just get this sickening
feeling that the Yankees would take them apart in five games tops. I have nothing
against the A's really, but I'd say I'm rooting for the Twins primarily. Wouldn't
Twins-Angels be the mother of all ALCSes? I think it would. But I fear that
Twins-Yankees would just not be good, and so I'm forced to root for A's-Yankees assuming
the Yankees win... and given that they're already up 1-0 and Anaheim's best pitcher is out
of the equation until at least Game Four, that doesn't seem like a bad bet.
To quote my dad, who ironically is now contributing to this site's
profanity, "Fuck the fucking Yankees."
On to other topics. Did you read the Daily on Monday? If not, you missed the motherlode of suite comedy - as Rich and Marc inexplicably managed to get suite inside jokes printed in the Daily in an article on Sbarro. The full article is here, but relevant excerpts are below.
Before the new restaurant opened for lunch Sunday, one student said
he was longing to dig into a piece of Sbarro pizza.
"I'm just sad the super-secret pizza party isn't starting right
now," said Rich Ramberg, a Music junior, as Sbarro employees laid out eight different
types of pizza behind a glass sneeze guard.
Ramberg said he was familiar with the pizza because he often would eat
lunch during high school at one of Sbarro's shopping mall locations.
"It's a better alternative than the pizza Norris used to have,
which kind of sucked," he said.
Marc Hogan, who was eating lunch with Ramberg on Sunday, said he would
eat at Sbarro as often as his wallet would allow.
"This is the best pizza ever," said Hogan, a Medill senior.
"And I've had a lot of pizza."
October 1, 2002
An interesting site is www.archive.org,
which contains back pages for a number of sites. I went through to see what they
could turn up on BigFlax.com. While they didn't have anything before late '99,
unfortunately, I thought you might "enjoy" a look at how massively lame
BigFlax.com was back in the day.
The October
2000 page is archived on this site already, of course, but the one I saved only show
you the updates, and not what the rest of the page looked like (note how few buttons are
at the top, for example). Then, to really hop into the DeLorean, check out
the March 2000 and October 1999 pages. It's
the site as you would have seen it if you'd come here three years ago - before daily
updates, before buttons, and back when nobody read the site. (Note that about three
people are voting in those polls I'm running.) Some images will not appear because I
no longer have them on the site; deal with it.
There's more! View last month's updates.
Thanks to Tabnet for the domain name and my parents for paying it off.
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© 2002 Barren Malt Fox Productions
This page last updated: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 06:52:50 AM