Riot MB

First, my deepest apologies to Green Bay Packer fans everywhere. Now, on to my rant.

I’ve absolutely had it up to HERE with the whole Brett Favre thing. For crying out loud, people, since when is it news when somebody doesn’t do anything?! Brett throws a couple of passes to some high school kids, and we see the video 612 times. He gets off his chartered jet, and we cut into live programming for a live shot at the airport. He sends a text message to a reporter, and everybody quotes it. I’ve even seen the computer generated Number Four in a variety of other teams’ colors.

Can he still play? Sure he can, and at a higher level than a lot of other NFL starting quarterbacks. But should he? No. The league doesn’t need him nearly as much as he needs the league. And I applaud the Packers for sticking to their guns and moving on.

Oh, I know all the stories: Favre battled back from addiction issues, played an outrageous game immediately after the death of his father, and so on. But I also know what a selfish and self-centered guy he can be. I lost all respect for him a couple of years ago after I heard him refuse to help the back-up quarterbacks on his team because “it’s not my job. Let ‘em talk to the coaches.” What are you afraid of, Brett?

Brett Favre made his decision back in March to retire, and now, he should just shut up, go away, and let the Packers get ready for the upcoming season. Aaron Rodgers is going to have a hard enough time stepping into those shoes as it is. If Favre cared at all about the Packers (rather than only himself), he would be currying favor with the fans to get behind the new guy. But I guess that’s not his job, either.

When I saw this email, I was thinking, when is Microsoft going to learn that Firefox is 10,000 times better than IE. But when I saw the video, I was getting interested in the software. Though they have come up with 5-6 innovations that are not present in your opera or firefox browser, they are thinking that Search suggestions feature is something new. Too bad that they haven’t used firefox before.

However, let me come to the point. Lets look at the innovations.

1. Accelerators – Nope, its not what you think. This is not browser accelerator. This is a feature where in you can make use of pre-defined services that lets you save 90% of your time. Let me give you the example which was given by microsoft. You want to go to a hotel, you don’t know its complete name. But you do know that it ends with ‘DOOR’. So you type in ‘Door’ in the address bar and you get some results.  Say for eg. Triple Door restaurant, 3rd Lane, Seattle.

Now then, you aren’t satisfied yet. You need to know the location. So you copy paste the address and put it in googlemaps or wikimapia etc., and locate the place. But in IE8 Beta 2, when you place your mouse pointer over the address you selected, you can see a small icon. When you place your pointer on it, you can see ‘Find it in local maps’. Select it and viola, without loading it in a new page, you are displayed with the exact location in a small box. Thats something cool!

Other features include ‘Web slices’, ‘Browse “inPrivate” feature’. If you want to know more, do take a look at this 100 MB video. Total running time is 20 min and I really liked every second of it.

EVEN as the international community continued to urge Islamabad to dismantle the terror network, the Pakistani government gave a clean chit to the ISI and refused to acknowledge that the Jamaatud-Dawa (JuD) was a front for the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).
President Asif Ali Zardari in an interview to Newsweek said that the Pakistani intelligence agency currently had no links with the LeT and that any linkages were a thing of the past. “We are talking about an age-old situation. This is something that happened in the old days when dictators used to run the country. Maybe before 9/11, that may have been a position. But since then, things have changed to a great extent,” Mr Zardari said in response to a question on whether the ISI had shared intelligence with Lashkar on Kashmir.
He further said that there is no evidence of interaction between the ISI and the LeT and denied that the ISI was behind the Kabul Indian embassy attack. “There is no supportive interaction with our intelligence agencies and the LeT,” said Mr Zardari. He denied an ISI role in the Kabul Indian embassy bombings and once again accused “non-state actors”. We had nothing to do with the Kabul bombing. Again, these are nonstate actors,” he said. Mr Zardari further professed helplessness in clamping down on banned outfits terror saying they “keep
re-emerging in different forms”.
India is convinced that the ISI is behind the Mumbai terror attacks and that the LeT could not have mounted such a sophisticated attack on its own. India is also convinced that the ISI gave intelligence and protection to the group to carry out the attacks. Similarly, American intelligence reports had pointed to the ISI hand in the Kabul Indian embassy bombings.
However, the Pakistani government continued on denial mode even on the terror credentials of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Further reinforcing the impression that Islamabad is not serious in its effort to clampdown on terror groups, Pakistani foreign minister Mehmood Shah Qureshi maintained that there was no evidence that the JuD was involved in terror activities.
“If there is evidence (of terror activities) we will take action,” he said about the Jamaat-Ud-Dawa, which the United Nations Security Council this week recognised as a front for the LeT, which is behind the Mumbai terror attacks.
“They’re running schools, hospitals, dispensaries… but if this organisation or elements in it are getting into a mode of violence,” then authorities will take action, Mr Qureshi was quoted as saying in Paris. Further, Pakistan Punjab Province inspector general of police (IGP) Shaukat Javed was quoted as saying that the JuD leaders, who had been put under house arrest, would be let off if there is no evidence of their involvement in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. He further said that the Punjab government had been asked to put seven main JuD leaders in preventive custody and that till now five had been detained.

You know the old but true saying: If you have the money, you don’t have the time, and if you have the time, you don’t have the money.

That’s been pretty much why BJ and I have not gone anywhere except camping at the lake for a vacation for several years. This entire summer has been tied up with summer school, and now, I’m looking ahead to the fall semester and the new job. But we’ve made a pact. Next summer, we’re definitely going to get away and travel to — somewhere.

The issue is where.

Both of us have so many places we would like to go, so narrowing the list to just one destination will be really hard. At first, we were looking into Orlando vacations; a good friend lives there, and neither of us has ever been to Disney World. But between BJ’s still-sore shoulder, my absolute dread of roller coasters in general, and the fact that neither of us is a big fan of high heat and humidity, I think we’re going to look elsewhere. That’s where you guys come in.

Can you help us out with a few suggestions? I’m open to flying, cruising, train rides, whatever. I would love to take a tour of Europe, but we won’t be able to save up THAT much moolah. So if you know of something off the beaten path that would be fun and affordable for a couple of broken down bodies for about a week, I’m all ears. Thanks!

Henson, who is starring with the actor in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, says Pitt spent quality time with each of his kids while shooting the film. She said Pitt would bring one child to work with him every day and dote on the kid in between takes. Pitt’s daughter, Shiloh, actually landed a brief cameo in the film during one of her days on the set.

Contactmusic.com quotes Henson as saying: “He had one kid every day. One on one. I think that’s incredible.” Aside from giving him the thumbs up as a doting dad, Henson praised him for being humble.

She said: “He’s just so regular and down to earth, you’d forget he’s on the set. He blends in, he’s just like that. He’s not like, ‘Hey I’m Brad Pitt!’ He’s incredible, a sweetheart.”