dsandler.org

Guess I picked an ideal day to be home sick:

Subject: Gas odor

A gas line has been broken in the new college construction area. The fire department has been called and is on the scene. In the meantime, the fresh air intake to Duncan Hall has been shut down. Environmental Health and Safety is monitoring the situation and advises that, despite the odor in the building, the gas concentration is lower inside than out. We expect that the leak will be capped soon, if it hasn’t already been, but I imagine that it will take some time for the gas to dissipate.

Houston Chronicle, Jan. 10, 2007: Rice extends Todd Graham’s contract through 2012.

Houston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 2007: Rice coach Graham heads back to Tulsa.

Elsewhere, the Chronicle bloggers are ruthless: “While Rice fans will always remember the magical ride to their first bowl appearance in 45 years, I’ll remember the luscious coachspeak Graham gave in a state-that-he-never-meant a few days ago, after he accepted a contract extension” … “Those football players at Rice learned an important lesson this week. They learned that college football isn’t really about the kids. Never has been. Never will be. College football is about the schools raking in millions and the coaches jumping at the next opportunity.” … “And just like that, Todd Graham is gone. We’ve been told that he will sign an 8-year deal worth $1.1 million per with Tulsa. He left for the money, plain and simple. Everything he said about Rice, its supporters, its players and its future was bologna. We can’t help but wonder where he stashed his Dale Lloyd pin.”

Here’s a snapshot, for posterity, of the GrahamFootball.com promo site that Rice Athletics put together.

Update 1/19: Chronicle: Rice hires Texas State’s David Bailiff.

Hi. It’s been a while. I beg your forgiveness.

I gave a slightly silly talk about the programming language Python to the Rice CS Club last Thursday. It was a pretty mixed audience (ranging from “I’m not sure what Python is” to “what do you think of the new 2.5 features?”) so I tailored the lecture to experienced programmers and scientists new to Python in particular. The slides, along with some links I promised to the attendees, are collected on my new python page.

While we’re on the topic: If you’re a parselmouth and build web applications for fun or profit, you should be aware that web.py version 0.2 came out last week. The tutorial has been updated to use all the schmancy new features, like the built-in template system (replacing Cheetah, which is a little heavyweight for the web.py approach, which is something along the lines of “the absolute least amount of code that still saves you a substantial amount of work”). I’m looking forward to using the 0.2 release to whip up a redesign of the Beer-Bike tee shirt database in time for the 50^th anniversary of the college system (and, hence, of Beer-Bike).

Diedrich Coffee, the OC-based retailer and wholesaler (known in Houston for its beautiful—now defunct—Westheimer location, which was actually owned by a local Houston franchisee since all Diedrich company-owned stores were sold to Starbucks a couple of months ago), has been selected to provide coffee for the new Fondren Library Pavilion. The Thresher editors are cautiously optimistic and hope the new caffeine stand differentiates itself from the ever-improving Coffeehouse with longer hours (possible) or food (unlikely).

In other news, Shipley’s coffee is still terrible—even worse than the (not dead, just) badly-burned coffee they make here in the departmental kitchen. Bleah.

…left behind by (presumably) Rice IT, as they’ve been running cable for the new campus networking project. Now, last week they left a nice note saying that they had been in the office, but nothing appeared to have changed. This week there was no note; instead, plaster dust everywhere, desks moved, chairs re-arranged, and, oh yeah, they rebooted my Mac for fun. (!)

The Big Damn Football Game got off to an awful start (so we heard on AM radio while waiting to park), but things quickly turned around, awakening the deepest and most secret hopes in all of us. By halftime, the packed stadium was exhilarating—like nothing I’d ever seen at a Rice football game. (Actually, the fact that Rice was ahead was like nothing I’d ever seen at a Rice football game.)

Things turned sour by the end, though; a couple of ugly changes of possession resulted in a loss of momentum, giving Houston a chance to get back into the game. By the end, a blocked extra point from the second quarter made all the difference. Houston, fourteen-point favorites, had just squeaked it out over a reborn Rice squad.

And yet, I can already see the headlines on the local Cougar-friendly rag:

Update 9/3: Here are the actual Houston Chronicle headlines this morning: Houston survives Rice outburst to win 31-30; Rice sees its upset hopes go slip-sliding away; 3-3-5 a hit for Owls.