But every time I think the Republicans have screwed it up, the Democrats have to go mess it up even more...
That was John Kerry the other day....not a smart thing to say (whether he misspoke or not) right before an election. He was the one that could've been our President. And don't think that our troops haven't heard the news over in Iraq. Check out their response...
For you non-Ags, tradition says that before an Aggie ring may be properly worn, it must be dropped into a pitcher of beer, which is promptly chugged to completion. At the end of the "chugging" the ring is caught by the ring dunker in his or her teeth, and may then be proudly worn as an Aggie ring.
The tradition has grown recently to include old Ags (the parents or even grandparents of current students), who come into town and re-dunk their rings with their students.
But recently, some Ags, I'll call them two-percenters, have decided they want to change tradition and dunk in something other than beer. They've decided that they can't handle beer, and would rather dunk in something like coke, water, or even milk. Others place their ring at the end of a few shots of liquor and "dunk" it that way.
This is where I must protest... Ring dunking isn't meant to be a fun, feel good, experience. It's meant to be an initiation or a rite of passage for the ring dunker. While you may get a little sick, it's certainly not because of the beer that you ingest. You will not be drinking anywhere near dangerous levels of alcohol by doing this. One pitcher is only 4 beers or less. The sickness comes from the sudden expansion of the stomach and the large amounts of liquid poured into it. This could happen with beer, water, coke or milk.
So please, take it upon yourself and encourage your friends to fill their pitchers full of a beer like Bud Light, or whatever is their alcoholic brew of preference, and dunk their ring the Aggie way. If done right, an Aggie can look back on his or her Aggie ring dunking experience with pride in knowing that he or she didn't wuss out or take the easy way out.
Either some guy is up there spying on us or we have a huge rat problem.
Justin and Chris Dancing
Justin and Chris Keep Dancing
Adam can Dance too
Such a pretty little outfit Adam
P.S. We are having a tailgate again this week at Spence Park. We are near our normal spot on the road on Houston Street, but we're about 4 or 5 spots down towards George Bush. Let me know if you have any problems finding it. We'll be out there all day Saturday and anyone is welcome to come out and join us.
I've never been so proud to be an Aggie, and so disappointed at the same time. This weekend was great. Friday through Saturday were pretty exciting here in Aggieland. We represented our university very well in the national spotlight, and I believe we impressed some people.
Visitors from Oklahoma were in awe of how loud Kyle Field was during the game. Chris's friend visiting from Norman, Oklahoma was heard saying, "It's official, you guys (the 12th Man) are louder during an extra point after we score than we are during an entire game in Norman".
The 12th Man did it's part. We did all that we could to put our team in a position to win at Kyle Field. I'm even hearing that we impressed some of the visiting recruits.
Our defense made the necessary adjustments at halftime and pretty much shut the OU offense down. I was proud of that. I was happy that Michael Goodson had his first career 100 yard game. He played well against the tough Sooner Defense. I was happy with the J-train, Jorvorskie Lane, and how he literally ran over much of the team who tried to bring him down any way possible.
But that is about where the list ends. I was not happy with our offensive line...or McGee's Happy feet. I'm not happy with whoever our offensive coordinator or quarterbacks' coach is. We have not been able to throw the ball down field at all this year. And, I'm not happy with Fran right now.
I don't really know how else to say it, but it's tough being an Aggie. We have the best fans, the best stadium, all of the money we need, the ability to bring in any coaches we want. We live in the best talent rich football state in the country. But we haven't won a national championship since 1939.
I'm not ready to write off our season yet. The Aggies have only lost twice by a total of 5 points. We could come out and beat Nebraska and t.u. and things may be different. I hope we're lucky enough to win one of them. I guess we'll just have to wait a few more weeks and see how it all turns out.
All you'd have to do is get a lead in the football game. Make sure your guys are very obviously offsides and almost already down covering the kick and you could do this all game long.
I've thought the NCAA was stupid all year long for making this rule change. I'm glad to see someone take advantage of it.
Many may not agree with some of his decisions, but he made them with everyone in our at Texas A&M in mind, and made them to the best of his ability.
He will do a great job as Secretary of Defense in Washington, and hopefully he'll return once his term is over and the job is finished.
Hey, at least basketball looks good this year.
I've thought about this for most of the season, and I've come to the decision that I want Fran to stay around for one more year. Here's my reasoning....
The Texas A&M Aggies are 8-3. We have 8 wins and 3 losses. This is a good (not great) record for any team. It should be considered an average season. Anything less is disappointing, anything more is exciting. To be at this point in Coach Fran's fourth year is realistic. He may not be Coach Gillispie, but he's making changes with this team and we're moving up towards the top of the Big 12. Let's look at recent history.
2003: 4-8 (Blown out most of the year including 77-0)
2004: 7-5 (Much improvement from 2003, we're getting better and staying in games that we should stay in)
2005: 5-6 (The year where everyone was injured and Reggie started to think about only himself, the players quit on Reggie until he got hurt. Once McGee came in, we saw some life from our team)
2006: 8-3
Oh, but this year our scheduling is horrible right? OK, forget the easy wins, and just look at the losses. See how they keep decreasing? We're moving up....but it takes time.
But not so fast my friend, let's not forget about our easy wins yet. Who exactly did we play in the non-conference that we're getting so much bad-mouthing for?
The Citadel W 35-3
Louisiana-Lafayette W 51-7 (LSU played them)
Army W 28-24 (The same Army team that beat Baylor)
Louisiana Tech W 45-14 (Nebraska and Clemson both played them)
Now let's take a look at some teams that aren't receiving crap for their schedules...
Beloved Texas played North Texas, Rice, and Sam Houston and got beat by their only challenge Ohio State.
Nebraska played Louisiana Tech, Nicholls State (who?), Troy State and lost to USC.
Oklahoma beat UAB, Washington, and Middle Tennessee State while losing to Oregon because of the horrible refs.
And let's not forget that we had scheduled Florida State before they backed out of the agreement.
Looks like we made the right choice. We came out with four wins, they only got three....
But back to Fran....
He's done a great job with a very young team. Do any of these names ring a bell?
Chevar Bryson (Freshman)
Matt Featherston (Freshman)
Mike Goodson (Freshman)
Kellen Heard (Freshman)
Jordan Peterson (Freshman)
Yemi Babalola (Sophomore)
Martellus Bennett (Sophomore)
Michael Bennett (Sophomore)
Arkeith Brown (Sophomore)
Pierre Brown (Sophomore)
Alton Dixon (Sophomore)
Amos Gbunblee (Sophomore)
Danny Gorrer (Sophomore)
Devin Gregg (Sophomore)
Jorvorskie Lane (Sophomore)
Kevin Matthews (Sophomore)
Stephen McGee (Sophomore)
Howard Morrow (Sophomore)
Cyril Obiozor (Sophomore)
Travis Schneider (Sophomore)
Michael Shumard (Sophomore)
These are all players in the two deep of our roster, all of which Coach Fran recruited and signed. The players in bold are starters.
Still not satisfied? Let's take a look at a hypothetical situation...
If you could choose anyone as our head coach right now, who would it be?
Mack Brown (lost to K-State this week), Bobby Bowden (5-5 this year), Larry Coker (5-5 this year), Steve Spurrier (5-5 this year), Pete Carrol and USC even lost to Arizona last week. If we could hire a Bob Stoops clone would we? All of these coaches have won national championships.
Let's imagine if we hired a Bob Stoops clone at Texas A&M. How many years would it take for him to beat the Bob Stoops currently at Oklahoma? Oklahoma has had a few conference and national championships recently, they have recruiting on their side and they have some studs playing on their team and on their two and even three deep as we have seen this year.
So how long would it take for the Bob Stoops of Texas A&M to overtake the Bob Stoops of Oklahoma? Maybe 5 or 6 years? And even after that, it would be evenly matched from there out (we'd lose every other year to Oklahoma).
In our fourth year, Fran lost to Stoops by one point....one point!!! He lost to Bill Callahan and Nebraska by the same amount. We lost to tech by four.
These coaches and teams are not going to get worse as we get better. It'll still be Bob Stoops, Mack Brown, and Bill Callahan on the sidelines against us. They will be tough opponents.
Let's not fire what could be our Bob Stoops clone in Coach Fran while we're still improving. Let him build his young team and compete for championships. If we start to level out (like we did with R.C. Slocum) or decline then we'll get rid of him. Until then....Let's have patience.
Gig'em and BTHO t.u.
Texas A&M basketball is suddenly in the national spotlight. Your number twelve ranked Aggies earned positive attention last March when they made a small run in the NCAA tournament. Last year’s team, which was a LSU three point shot from making a run into the sweet sixteen, returns four of five starters. The Aggies only loss is former walk-on turned scholarship player Chris Walker. He is replaced by 6 players who were a part of the best ever recruiting class for Texas A&M Basketball.
Coach Billy Gillispie deservingly gets most of the credit for turning this team around, but who are the guys that worked so hard on the court to get us to this point? Over the next few day’s I’ll publish two articles to introduce you to them. Here is your 2006-2007 Fightin’ Texas Aggie Basketball Team.
I think I've learned after nearly seventeen years of school that school just isn't for me. It's not that education or learning isn't for me...I try to get a lot of that every day. I read books, I pay attention to what's going on in the world, I work at learning a new skill frequently, I'm even responsible for the content on two or three decently visited web pages. It's not like I spend ALL of my time playing xbox. It's just that I hate the format of school...it's such a waste.
For example, I could turn any class that I've ever taken that covers an entire semester into 5, hour long discovery channel TV programs. Wouldn't that be so much more entertaining? I can see Justin the Civil Engineer rolling his eyes at me now, but I'm not talking about Engineering classes...some things you just have to sit through. I'm talking about history, economics, political science, web development and programming (minus the labs), biology, geology, etc.
I think this format would be better for everyone involved. Students could learn so much more in a shorter period of time. They would probably recall the information more efficiently too. Try to remember something that a prof said to you in one of your classes. Now try to remember something you saw on TV. Make sense?
Educators could focus on refining techniques or theories and researching new ideas instead of teaching the basics to a new grade of students year after year after year. These people could use their time more efficiently to make progress instead of repeating things.
We could also free up these educators to do other things. Imagine how many teachers would be able to take on other tasks. This alone would be progress for society as a whole.
Ehh....too complicated for you guys? It's OK, I have another plan, and I like to ramble a lot. How about this???
Instead of the current system where I sit in 5 or 6 different classes at different times of the week only to have times where I'm drowned with 3 tests in a day and times where I have nothing to do, why not change to a block format?
Here's how it would work. Every two weeks you sign up for a class. Each class is three hours long and meets at 9am each morning. Each session runs for two weeks with a test on each Friday. 15 hours of class per week gives a professor 30 total hours of teaching time (minus testing time). These classes rotate throughout the year, but there are classes running constantly year round.
If I decide that I need a break from school, I could take off for two weeks and come back refreshed and ready for another class. I'm pretty sure I could handle political science for two weeks. The way it is now, I have to deal with it for an entire semester.
Just a few thoughts....what do you think? Would either of my systems work?
I'm pretty happy with this feature....but let me know what you think.
I visit his site from time to time to see what's going on over there. You should too.
We bought a used Canon 20D with two lenses off of the internet. I was very happy with the quality of what we got. It all looks and acts like brand new stuff at a very discounted price. Hopefully you'll see some nice pics up here on the site pretty soon.
Now, about the motorcycle....I'll be selling it in about a year once I get finished with school. I don't think I'll have as much use for it once I get out in the real world, and I won't be saving $300/year on parking like I am now. So if you know of anyone that wants to buy a Yamaha V-Star in about a year, let me know.
I took the camera out to the soccer and basketball games last night and found out that I have a lot of learning to do before I can take the pictures that I'm wanting to take. I've already gotten much better, but I have a lot of room for improvement. I'll be trying to learn one new function on the camera every couple days until I know it all (I wish).
I'l keep you updated on our progress.
Speaking of this weekend. We leave tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, to Austin for the Aggie v. longhorn game. We're 13 point underdogs, but thats more points than we've given up in all of our losses all year....combined. We'll see how it goes.
Happy Thanksgiving and Beat The Hell Outta t.u.!
I've always been proud to be an Aggie. Today I'm in Austin proud not to be a sip.
First off, last night was pretty bad. I thought I was ready for the t-sips to be annoying at midnight yell, but chanting "Aggies f*** sheep" over and over again was a little much. Then I was told (by Austin residents remember) that Aggie women are transvestites.
Walking back from yell someone honked us the "hullabaloo"....none of us were wearing maroon, but we Whooped anyway. I wonder how they knew we were Aggies. We later decided that since we were all coupled up with our fiancee's and girlfriends that we had to be Aggies.
We woke up this morning and walked to the game. We didn't hear a ton of trash talk. Everyone was pretty friendly, but I guess it probably had a lot to do with the sips thinking they'd walk all over us.
The game itself was fun. Fran coached a good one, our defense played great, and my fiancee's brother-in-law had to watch his sips lose.
We were in a few camera shots during the game, I need to check the dvr when we get home to see if we made it on tv.
It wasn't until after the game that the trash talking started. Truckloads of frat guys would drive by yelling "Aggies are gay" (original right?). It was nice to be able to respond with "Scoreboard". We were treated right by the old sips who offered their congratulations, but the young ones were more like tech fans than horns. I'm glad I don't live in Austin.
Overall, it has been a great trip. A win is always nice, especially against t.u. I'm just proud that our university isn't full of these t.u. students and fans. We win and lose with class and I wouldn't want it any other way.
See you tomorrow in College Station for the basketball game.
Lane vs isu
Lane vs t.u.
