Today is Philip Glass’ 70th birthday. There’s no truth to the rumor that he’ll celebrate it again tomorrow.
So, I’ve been having some trouble with some cracking around one of the hinges of my laptop (if you’re not going to follow the link, it’s a Dell Inspiron 1150, which I bought because it was the second-cheapest laptop Dell offered when I started law school). Well, some more plastic cracked, I tried a cheap-and-easy solution that didn’t work, and it turned out that I was going to have to get into the guts of the machine get at the hinge.
These are the steps you have to take to get to the hinge:
- Take out the battery.
- Take out the hard drive.
- Take out the CD drive. (I skipped this part, as it wasn’t entirely necessary)
- Remove the hinge cover.
- Take out the keyboard.
- Take out the “EMI Shield” (a thin piece of metal under the keyboard)
- Physically remove the display from the main part of the computer
- Remove the display bezel (the plastic around the display)
- Remove the display panel proper
- Remove the metal frame from the back of the top cover.
And then I get to do my repair (which involved a frantic search for a screw I thought I dropped).
The hinge on my laptop attaches to the display by the way of two screws that connect to a plate. The nuts on that tighten the screws are actually embedded in the plastic of the top cover, and it’s that plastic that had cracked and eventually failed, in large part because the screws had come undone. By some stroke of luck, while the plastic had failed, the nuts were still rattling around in there. So I re-attached the hinge, and then performed the above ten nine steps in reverse order (of course, the whole process did take all morning).
The miracle feat of engineering alluded to in the title is the fact that I managed to re-assemble it without
- losing any screws, or
- having any screws left over.
Not every Super Bowl MVP had the best stats in their game; in fact, quite a few of them were outplayed, either by their teammates or by someone on the other side of the ball. Some of the MVPs below were clearly not the best player on the field; others, while posting great numbers, had the benefit of great supporting performances by teammates:
MVP: Bart Starr, 16-23 for 250 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT
Couldabeen-MVP: Max McGee, 7 catches, 138 yards (19.7 yards/catch), 2 TD, one hangover
Super Bowl III
MVP: Joe Namath, 17-28, 206 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, one mouth that wouldn’t shut up
Couldabeen-MVP: Matt Snell, 30 rushes, 121 yards, 1 TD
Super Bowl XVI
MVP: Joe Montana, 14-22 for 157 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, first SB victory
Couldabeen-MVP: Ken Anderson, 25-34, 300 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, lost game
Couldabeen-MVP: Dan Butz, key defensive player on a four-down goal-line stand
MVP: Joe Montana, 24-35, 331 yards, 3 TD, 0 INT
Couldabeen-MVP: Roger Craig, 135 total yards, 3 TD
Super Bowl XXI
MVP: Doug Williams, 18-29, 340 yards, 4 TD, 1 INT, “How long have you been a black quarterback?”
Couldabeen-MVP: Timmy Smith, 22 rushes, 204 yards, 2 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Ricky Sanders, 9 catches, 193 yards (21.4 yards/catch), 2 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Entire Washington offense, 602 net total yards
Super Bowl XXIII
MVP: Jerry Rice, 11 catches, 215 yards (19.5 yards/catch), 1 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Joe Montana, 23-36, 357 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT, only Super Bowl MVP he didn’t win, and a much better performance than his first MVP
Couldabeen-MVP: Roger Craig, 172 total yards
Super Bowl XXIV
MVP: Joe Montana, 22-29, 297 yards, 5 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Jerry Rice, 7 catches, 148 yards (21.1 yards/catch), 3 TD, arguably a better game when he won the MVP
Super Bowl XXXVI
MVP: Tom Brady, 16-27, 145 yards, 1 TD, how many MVPs have less than half the passing yards of the opposing QB?
Couldabeen-MVP: Kurt Warner, 28-44, 365 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT
Super Bowl XXXIX
MVP: Deion Branch, 11 catches, 133 yards, 0 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Donavon McNabb, 30-51, 357 yards, 3 TD, 3 INT, lost the game
Super Bowl XL
MVP: Hines Ward, 5 catches, 125 yards (24.6 yards/catch), 1 TD
Couldabeen-MVP: Officials, two phantom calls against the Seahawks
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Apparently there’s a particular pattern used across multiple currencies that’s supposed to help thwart counterfeiting… It’s an interesting application of applied math.
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Judges (well, more likely their clerks) are now citing Wikipedia in their opinions. I’m not sure that’s such a good idea…
I’ve written about Ennio Morricone before, but I think that this profile in the Times is really worth a read. Even though he’s mostly known for his film scores, he’s really an old-school Italian composer, albeit one who’s staggering versatile.
My sister and I were watching For A Few Dollars More on TV once (one of the blessings of thousand-channel digital cable is that there’s always a Clint Eastwood movie playing somewhere), and she commented that the music sounded like Verdi was hired to write the score.
To be fair, composers have to solve many of the same problems when writing an opera and writing a film score (if you do it right): both opera and film scores require that the composer deal with leitmotifs and use music to underscore emotion and underscore character motivation (when you consider that, it’s not surprising at all that this scene is considered by many to be one of the all-time great screen kisses).
What this all boils down to is that the Maestro is giving his first American concert next week at Radio City Music Hall, which is, when you think about it, a rather appropriate venue.
(For those of you playing at home, I’m finally out of the “B”s and now I’m up to “Chewing Gum”)
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To honor the Year Of The Pig, the Chinese post office is releasing a set of scratch-and-sniff pork stamps.
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Google’s chief copyright counsel has just released a 7-volume, multi-thousand-page treatise on copyright.
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You have to see the picture of this beast.
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Paul Ford on whether or not you should go to law school.
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Maine opts-out of RealID.
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Let’s face it—34th St. is still kinda scummy.
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Yet another amazing touchscreen interface demo.
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Sometimes they write themselves….
In Gothamist’s coverage of the State of the Union address, they make the following observation:
…everything that came after was a bleak reminder of how President Bush has been disappointing on so many fronts.
Actually, I don’t think that George W. Bush has been disappointing at all. I thought his presidency was going to be a disaster, and he delivered. I thought the war in Iraq was going to be a disaster, and he delivered. I thought that he would cravenly manipulate intelligence for political ends, and he delivered. I thought he would be a pawn of big oil, and he was. I thought that he’d initiate massive giveaways to the rich, and he did. I thought that he was stubborn, inflexible, convinced of his own rightness, a bully, and a coward. And he’s proven that over and over again.
No, George W. Bush hasn’t been a disappointment at all—he’s done everything I thought he’d do!
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Great New Yorker article about Lorenzo Da Ponte.
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Nesson on hearsay in cyberspace.
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How to build an index fund that will outperform indexes.
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Buchwald’s final column.
