Fourth of July--2011

Mrs Blog and I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Fourth. Hope you're having a nice weekend.

One football story: there has been some talk on various message boards about Temple leaving the MAC for the Big East. The College Football Examiner takes a look at that.

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On a holiday-related note, the Wall Street Journal has a story about one of the families of a deployed soldier.

If you should see a World War II vet, make a point of shaking his hand, their numbers are dwindling. When I moved to Jaffrey in 2004 my next door neighbor was a WW II Navy vet. He was on the USS Chicago during the second of "Halsey's Typhoons". The storm ripped 120 feet of the bow off his ship. I was on a destroyer and spent some time in the North Atlantic, but I can't imagine a sea state that would rip a bow off a heavy cruiser. This WW II newsreel has film of the incident. My neighbor passed away a couple of years ago.

Sunday----May 29, 2011

Well, Memorial day weekend is  usually a slow couple of days for football news  and so it is this year. I hope to have another year of game programs scans up later this week. The football magazines should start showing up is a week or so. I'm sure there will be a lot of football stuff to talk about.

In the meantime, Mrs Blog and I wish everyone a safe and pleasant holiday weekend.

The Wall Street Journal has an essay by James Hornefischer about Memorial Day and World War II vets that is an excellent read.

So is his book "The last stand of the Tim Can Sailors" if you should be looking for something to read on a summer vacation.

Blog News--- Vacation Moves

Image by me of the Durango & Silverton narrow guage railroad. We are off (no comments), to the Cumbres & Toltec railroad in New Mexico. I'll keep the Blog going if I have an internet connection.

If not, I'll be back Wednesday.

Blog News

Blogger is having trouble with the comments count at the bottom of each blog post. Comments that I moderate approved appear in comments, but do not show in count.

Blogger help says they do not have a solution right now and they may not have one until at least next week.

So, if you make a comment you will have to try the post's comment section to see if it's there. You can't tell by the comment count.

Blog News

The UMass Football Blog will not publish tomorrow , Wednesday June 9th.

Blog News 10/06/09

UPDATE: Whoa! The Amish internet seems to be working. See everyone tomorrow morning.


Mrs Blog and I are now moving down to Bird-in-Hand. She will get to shop-till-she-drops for the next four days.

If I have a working Internet connection, I will keep the Blog going.

If not, I hope to see a lot of Minutemen fans at the Delaware game.

Go UMass!

Win a UMass Football Blog Hat

Here's the contest I talked about, but never ran last year.

I will give away this cool UMass Football Blog hat to the fan who e-mails me the closest prediction to the UMass-Kansas State score. It's free and I will pay the shipping cost. It's for fun only and your e-mail address and your name will be kept totally private. You don't have to send me your mailing address unless you win.


It's a high quality, never been worn hat that has "UMass football Blog" in Arial script block letters. The hat is maroon with white letters. It's one of three in existence. More hat pictures here.

Send me an email with your prediction. My e-mail address is available in the "About me" section of the blog.

Ties will be settled by date (earliest best). Any other needed decisions will be referred to Mrs. Blog for adjudication. Her decisions are unreviewable, unappealable and final. No e-mails after September 4th will be counted.

Blog News 07/12/09

Hi everyone. I've just been too busy to up date the blog. There is some news to talk about, but I'm planing on getting into that when I return on Monday morning.

Under the category "People---- idiots or what". Yesterday we drove down to the National Zoo in D.C. I-95 was eight lanes of solid fast traffic. Side of us was a young woman --- texting. No hands on the wheel and looking down, not at the traffic.

See you Sunday night or Monday morning.

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"Hello" from Baltimore. I do have an internet connection. A quick check shows no significant UMass football news, so I'll try to do a more detailed search tonight or tomorrow.

Should you ever visit Fort McHenry, try to time your visit for Noon. Mrs. Blog and I (plus about forty other people) got to take part in the raising of the BIG flag over the fort. It measures 42 by 30 feet. Two rangers supervised and everyone cheered when the Flag went up.

The small image is a file photo, because I could not take any images while holding the flag. The big image is by me.




Click on the image for a full-rez view. Gotta go. Mrs. Blog is yelling for me to stop playing on the computer. Going to the National Aquarium and other inner harbor stops.

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Mrs. Blog and I are off for a week to the Baltimore-Washington area for some R&R.

The place that we are staying is supposed to have wireless internet. If I have a working internet connection, I will try to update the Blog on a time available basis.

No posting at all means I do not have an internet connection and the Blog will return on 07/19 when we get back.

Blog News---- 04/23/09

Mrs. Blog and I will be up in Maine for a long weekend. I will not have an internet connection.

The UMass Football Blog will resume publishing Sunday night or Monday morning.

Blog News 02/01/09

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod

Please be advised my e-mail has changed as of this morning.

All of New Hampshire switches from Verizon DSL to Fairpoint. My e-mail also changed.

If anyone has me in their address books, my user name is the same, but the extension is :

@myfairpoint.net

I've updated the e-mail link in the "About me" section.

Blog News

The UMass Football Blog will not publish Monday and may not publish on Tuesday.

Everybody please whack the Delaware trolls for me while I'm away.

Woah! Heat! Lights! Internet!

About 9:00 pm last night, the return of power was announced by our cranky furnace almost having a cardiac arrest as it struggled with calls for heat from all three heating zones and our water heater.

Click on the images and Blogger displays a much larger view.

Blog News---- The Ice storm

Hi Everyone. Last Thursday night, Jaffery and New Hampshire were hit by the worst ice storm in Granite State history.

Mrs. Blog and I are OK, but we have no power or telephone connection. The police and New Hampshire Public Service say it may be another three days or more before we get power back.

Mrs. Blog and I are surviving using our camping lanterns and related gear. We're doing OK, but it was 45 degrees inside my house yesterday. This is the fourth day without power and we're getting into a routine.

I'm blogging this post from a public library in Massachusetts.

So, the Football Blog will resume as soon as I get power and internet connections back.

Go UMass!.

Veterans Day

Click on the image and Blogger displays a larger view. A US Navy image. Details here .

Today is Veterans Day. Please remember the people who have served our country and are still serving today.

Congress recently passed a law allowing veterans and military personnel not in uniform to salute the flag, although I probably would not do it unless I was covered and had something visible, like a veteran's hat, to identify me.

UMass Football Blog News

The UMass Football Blog will not publish Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and it might not appear on Thursday (we have an early flight home on that day).

I'm doing a two night observing run at Kitt Peak National Observatory's advanced observer program. I'm sure the National Optical Observatory has a wireless network, but I'll up all night both dates and I'll need some recovery time.

In the meantime, every think positive thoughts about beating the evil Delaware Hens on Saturday and I'll be seeing you guys soon.

Go UMass!

Sports Blogging

The Associated Press has been threating Bloggers with lawsuits for publishing a quote (some were as few as 17 words) and then including a link to the original article.

I guess I won't be linking to any AP sports news articles. Don't understand AP's thinking on this. Blogging is all about getting people to visit your site. If Bloggers are linking to AP news stories, then that would be a good thing for Associated Press. Right?

Now after an uproar by bloggers, AP has decided to charge bloggers $2.50/word to quote from one of their articles.

OTOH, Sporting News is offering a free daily digital sports newspaper.

UPDATE: It was a bad week for freedom of the internet. I just got an e-mail from Verizon (my ISP) saying it will block thousands of newsgroups. Most other ISP's are going even further. More details here .

Revised "small school" NFL draft picks

Josh Buchanan over at Daft Daddy has revised his list of "Top fifty small school NFL draft prospects". Scroll after the link to reach the list.

He has Sean Smalls as #20 and Ben Coblyn as #36, both have risen since he last published.

There has not been much UMass news on the wires the last couple of days and I have been too tired to produce any orginal content. It's been a busy couple of days on vacation. We're flying home this morning in a couple of hours.

There's some stuff coming up at the blog you'll like. We'll be doing a tour of the UMass field house and the first ever prize contest on the UMass football Blog will be coming up soon ----but you'll have to do some work to win the prize!

As soon as I recover from my vacation :)

Blog news from the road

Looks like I picked a good time to go on vacation. UMass football news continues to be light. While I'm on the road, I don't have access to the vast UMass Football blog archives, so we'll have to wait for some news for blogging material.

Some thoughts from Logan Utah:

• The local paper still has Alley-Oop in the comics section
• On our drive through Logan Canyon yesterday, we had some rain mixed with snow
• You know on many rural roads people hit deer-----well on this road to Bear Lake someone hit an elk...
• Football thought for the day----I-A opponent's Texas Tech QB Graham Harrell has passed for 10,260 yards and 86 TDs in the past two seasons.
  

We're off to Jackson Hole Wyoming. I'll check in from there. Go UMass!

Open comment thread day 06/06/08

Good Morning from beautiful Logan UT.

Doesn't seem to be much on the wires this morning, so why don't we go with an open comment thread. I'm getting excited about the coming season.

Mrs Blog and I are off to Logan's main post office to see if the hiking gear we mailed to ourselves made it...

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Blog publishing news

The Blog and Mrs. Blog are off on a 11 day trip out west.

I hope to "road blog" during our stay. Supposedly, internet connections are available where we are staying. However, I've learned in the past that having an internet connection and having an internet connection that works are two different things.

So, should the blog go silent, you know that I am without a connection and blog publishing will resume on June 17th.

Hopefully, all will go well and I'll be blogging from the great American West tomorrow morning.