Another sign that Summer is over

First sign – the kids went back to school.  Did you ever see the commercial for Staples where the Dad is flying around the store on a shopping cart while the song the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year plays?  Great commercial.

Second sign – we close the pool.  We got most of the heavy work done today; pulled the stairs out, cleaned it, added chemicals, drained it below the skimmer, and put the Winter cover on.  The rest can happen over time as we put away the deck furniture, pool toys, and take the pump and filter inside.  It was a great Summer and the kids probably swam an average of 4 days a week.  Just another reason I say they live like Rock Stars.

Good Thing I’m Not A Celebrity Judge

They sent Storm home?  See, the problem I have trying to judge these shows is that I base my guesses on what I consider talent.  I thought Storm outperformed Dilana by a ton last night, so I figured that between that fact and Dilana’s implosion that they would send Dilana home.  Wrong.  I never got many of the ones right with American Idol either.  Good thing I still have my day job.

The Implosion of Dilana

So, we’ve been watching Rockstar Supernova all season and felt that Dilana was pretty much going to cruise through this contest. She has a great stage presence, she looks great, and her voice is awesome. She’s done a good job staying out of the bottom 3 until lately, when the self destruction of Dilana began. Man, I don’t know what happened, but she has definitely become her own worst enemy. The more she speaks, the deeper the hole she digs. We get it, you screwed up when you trashed your friends a couple weeks ago. Move on already. Everyone else has, but she keeps dwelling on it – slowly imploding. It’s like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.

Storm is probably the smartest one there. Even when they were crushing her performances she kept her mouth shut and let her next performance do her talking. Same with the rest of them. Not Dilana. I think her actions will overshadow her talent and she could very well end up packing her bags at the elimination show tomorrow. Everyone else tore the roof off the place and I think she knows that her original was the weakest one performed. Between the original performance and the terrible job at the song writing workshop I think she has proven that if she is in the band someone else will definitely have to write the lyrics.

This one is really too close to call since everyone has a ton of talent. I don’t think Lucas fits the band’s style and his voice just doesn’t work for me. I think Magni can win this thing, but Tobi has been out-performing him the last few weeks. It’s like someone lit a fire under him. But you can’t count out Storm. She was excellent tonight and may be able to pull it off. For Dilana, I believe Wednesday could be the end of the road for her on this show. If she survives it will be because Lucas got sent home. Bottom 3: Dilana, Lucas, Magni. We’ll see what happens.

One of my favorite writers finally makes the move to a blog

One of my favorite writers, Robert X. Cringely, announced in his “I, Cringely” column today that he is going to move to a blog format.

Sometime in the next 30 days this column will morph overnight into a blog. I fought this for a long time but had to eventually bow to the inevitable. The attraction of a blog for readers will be the ease of commenting (that ease at present is, well, zero) and subscribing. So the whole exercise will become more interactive and I’ll have to do more work.

I think it’s a great idea and it will make it a little easier to communicate with him. Definitely one of my favorite reads each week.