So, I’m sitting on the couch Saturday night, reading a bit after watching the first three rounds of the NFL Draft. Two hours later, I’m in the emergency room, trying to stay upright in an uncomfortable chair. Two hours after that, I’m lying in a hospital bed blissed out on morphine. So, did something horrible happen? Not exactly, and that is the magic of the kidney stone. While they can be serious, kidney stones are often small, harmless, almost completely benign…and yet, when you have one, you want to bash yourself in the head with a steel chair so you can have other pain to distract you. :| ...

I would like to point out at this time I am still in the running for head men’s basketball coach at NC State. With so many people withdrawing, I thought it my responsibility to let you know that there are some folks still willing to take the job. It’s a program with a lot of promise. I don’t understand why everyone is pulling out of the job. I can see the Wolfpack competing evenly with the top teams in the state, maybe even under their next coach. ;) ...

If you need to see these 102 movies to be movie-literate, I’ve still got a ways to go. Blatantly stealing from kottke.org, I’ll list the movies and mark the ones that I’ve seen with an *. :) \* 2001: A Space Odyssey The 400 Blows 8 1/2 \* Aguirre, the Wrath of God \* Alien All About Eve \* Annie Hall \* Apocalypse Now \* Bambi \* The Battleship Potemkin \* The Best Years of Our Lives \* The Big Red One The Bicycle Thief \* The Big Sleep \* Blade Runner Blowup \* Blue Velvet \* Bonnie and Clyde Breathless \* Bringing Up Baby Carrie \* Casablanca Un Chien Andalou Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis \* Chinatown \* Citizen Kane A Clockwork Orange \* The Crying Game \* The Day the Earth Stood Still Days of Heaven \* Dirty Harry The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie \* Do the Right Thing La Dolce Vita \* Double Indemnity \* Dr. Strangelove \* Duck Soup \* E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial Easy Rider \* The Empire Strikes Back The Exorcist \* Fargo Fight Club \* Frankenstein \* The General The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II \* Gone With the Wind GoodFellas The Graduate \* Halloween A Hard Day’s Night Intolerance It’s a Gift \* It’s a Wonderful Life \* Jaws The Lady Eve \* Lawrence of Arabia M \* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior \* The Maltese Falcon \* The Manchurian Candidate \* Metropolis \* Modern Times \* Monty Python and the Holy Grail Nashville \* The Night of the Hunter Night of the Living Dead \* North by Northwest \* Nosferatu On the Waterfront \* Once Upon a Time in the West Out of the Past Persona Pink Flamingos \* Psycho \* Pulp Fiction \* Rashomon \* Rear Window \* Rebel Without a Cause \* Red River Repulsion The Rules of the Game \* Scarface The Scarlet Empress Schindler’s List \* The Searchers \* The Seven Samurai \* Singin’ in the Rain \* Some Like It Hot A Star Is Born A Streetcar Named Desire Sunset Boulevard \* Taxi Driver \* The Third Man Tokyo Story \* Touch of Evil \* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Trouble in Paradise \* Vertigo \* West Side Story \* The Wild Bunch \* The Wizard of Oz ...

Sigh…They just don’t get it. You always sacrifice your work life first. ;) http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?videoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvp.video.google.com%2Fvideodownload%3Fversion%3D0%26secureurl%3DoQAAANi2KMARzGgBgaOY2ZBlLixt11aLUqB7DcJiCaXvSXTitmCKJhCHOkoA–uxFMmlJgvEd7WkZhDPyYfUf_1dFwbbwkiAFDHiNZ24xS6sMicPwizsIlq_ncAh1RtJtUup9cLHU6SfwJQsJerRrj2KptlJYI4smVot3B6FuB88PPAqkdSOH8H7SrMIIVuNZ9QABdSCtYh-BEQxzVw63bFrnE4mWb5owcc7M0AudIz5sWhi%26sigh%3DnQkEYH4zuCa6gLN-U-jA9iTf0K8%26begin%3D0%26len%3D232880%26docid%3D1329362959167995041&thumbnailUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer%3Fapp%3Dvss%26contentid%3D74c7bd18530bbdb5%26second%3D5%26itag%3Dw320%26urlcreated%3D1145934080%26sigh%3DtEArLZ839xsnOmp80jU6Tncbbe4&playerId=1329362959167995041 Courtesy of Google Video

Archaeologists in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, believe they have uncovered the first pyramid ever found in Europe. They think it may be a step pyramid higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Link courtesy of EdCone.com

I don’t understand this question… AJAX is shorthand for tools and design practices that allow the user to interact with the server without reloading an entire web page. A good example is the kind of interface provided in Gmail, where message information is loaded into the interface without needing to reload every element on the page. To say that AJAX increases server load would indicate that AJAX is creating some sort of server transaction that didn’t exist before. Let’s see, what is AJAX used for? A person clicks on a link…the browser requests information from the server…the server interprets the request, pulls the data, and sends it back…the browser interprets the code and displays it. ...

Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, reaches out and touches high-school students in North Carolina. No, not that way… Turns out a Rockingham County High School English class noticed the film The Tragedy of Macbeth was produced by Hefner back in 1971. They were watching the film on an old television set, so students joked that Hefner could buy them a new TV. The teacher wrote a letter to Hefner asking for a new TV. The letter signed by the students and sent to the Playboy Mansion and the Chicago headquarters. Two weeks later, a new 32-inch TV was on the way. ...

The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to officials in Raleigh, Clayton, Pittsboro, and Chatham County, NC, pointing out that official prayers at council meetings that refer to specific religions are a violation of the First Amendment. I like the ACLU for a lot of their work, but in this case I have to wonder what they’re thinking. Official prayers before governmental meetings have been a long tradition, and many bodies handle it by bringing in clergy from different religions. Those clergy then sometimes do a very generic prayer, or they might take the opportunity to “sell” their faith. (Of course, in some religious beliefs, it is hard to imagine how one would say a “neutral” prayer.) ...

Ah, Rasheed… :) (Number 19 of the NBA 101.)

There is a site called My Heritage that tries to match your face to celebrity faces using face-recogntion technology on a photo you upload. My number 1 face-match? Andre Agassi. Oh well, we were both born in 1970, so you figure the aging process might have worked similarly. (Except for the hair.) :) Top nine (they gave me nine): Agassi George Clooney (That’s flattering. Maybe the gray hair?) Bryan Adams (Yep, aging ’80s rocker.) Josh Jackson (Dawson’s Creek.) Carl Lewis (Huh?) Charlie Chaplin (I thought it was supposed to be face recognition, not height recognition.) Laurence Fishburne (I wish.) Gary Cooper (Ditto.) Justin Timberlake (One of these things is not like the other.) Link courtesy of Best Week Ever Blog ...