Richard Kral has a remarkable survival story, but I have to wonder if it wouldn't have been more efficient (not to mention safer) to eat the snow instead...

OMB is likely to be infrequently updated for the next six weeks or so, as I've sold out to the man taken a temporary job doing document review. My schedule has me working at least 12 hours a day, 6 days a week... so when I'm not at work, I'll probably be sleeping... more thoughts on my job coming soon...

Take a second and head over to Jason Christ Superstar to welcome him to the blogosphere.

Google has unveiled a new Google Video service that allows you to search for terms that have appeared in television broadcasts... at least to the extent that they show up in the closed captioning. We've all seen a bunch of priceless errors in closed captioning, so we'll see how effective the search engine is, but for now, I'm feeling wiser to know that doughnuts are featured so prominently in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the masked wrestling cartoon, "Mucha Lucha."

It's not just another case of the Mondays, according to the BBC...

Misery is expected to peak on Monday, as 24 January has been pinpointed as the worst day of the year. January has been long regarded as the darkest of months, but a formula from a part-time tutor at Cardiff University shows it gets even worse this Monday.

I suspect it'll be especially true in Pittsburgh...

Just when you thought Jesse Orosco would be the last active player from the 1986 World Series, here comes the Oil Can!

Jen pointed me in the direction of this educational website, which hosts some assorted geography games and quizzes. I think I ended up doing better on the difficult African nations quiz than most people would do on their US states. Mostly, I'm just bragging about being a nerd, but it's disappointing that more people don't know where stuff is - even in their own country!

Don't ask how, but this morning I stumbled across a site that tracks celebrity biorythms and allows you to compare yourself to the celebrities (and really any other person, if you hack the URL) for compatibility. From this I have learned that I am 87% compatible with Salma Hayek, 89% compatible with Natalie Portman and 93% compatible with Denise Richards, but only 40% compatible with Osama bin Laden. Sounds good to me!

Somewhere between when I moved out of my last apartment and when I moved down here to Gaithersburg, I managed to misplace my social security card. Right now, the missing card is potentially my biggest hurdle to finding employment because I'll need to fill out an I-9 form for any job for which I would be hired and I would need my social security card to prove that I am eligible to work in the US (no, I don't have a passport). So I went on over to the instructions for getting a replacement card at the socialsecurity.gov website, where I found the following interesting direction for maintaining the integrity of the SSN system:

NOTE: In order to enhance public service and strengthen the integrity of the Social Security Number, the Social Security Administration opened the Brooklyn (New York) Social Security Card Center on November 13, 2002. The center, located at 625 Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn NY, is the only location where residents of Brooklyn - both U.S. citizens and noncitizens - can apply for an original Social Security Number or for a replacement card.

Now I'm not at all familiar with the background of why there's a special treatment from Brooklynites and no one else (although I assume fraud has something to do with it), but it seems strange to me... If someone were willing to put in a fraudulent claim to a social security number, why wouldn't they also be willing to use a false address? Maybe make a trip up to Queens or something and say you're from there? It just seems very arbitrary and perhaps ineffective...

After watching so many playoff failures in the last decade, Steelers fans can be excused for expecting the Jets to walk out of Heinz Field with a win yesterday. For much of the game, it just felt like another one of those games. Heck, even memories of Francisco Cabrera, Steve Avery, David Volek, Tom Fitzgerald, and Dwayne Wade gave Pittsburgh sports fans reason for pessimism.

Even after Jeff Reed gave the Steelers a 20-17 overtime win against the Jets yesterday, I felt like they had actually lost. It just seemed that only and unbelieveable amount of luck kept the Steelers' season alive. Lefty Gomez once said "I'd rather be lucky than good." But in the locker room following the Steelers were probably thankful that they were both, because for all the pessimism that you heap on yesterday's game and for as unconvincing as the win felt, there were a lot of positives on the intellectual side that provide reason for optimism.

For one, the defense continued to play well, giving up only three points. Admittedly, they also surrendered two more field goal attempts, but all three times the Jets had scoring attempts against the D, they were relying upon field goals from 42+ yards. If the defense can keep this up, they'll be in good shape, since kicking field goals at Heinz Field is equal parts art and science and the difficulties opposing kickers have in Pittsburgh is perhaps the Steelers' greatest element of home-field advantage.

While the defense was strong, the running game was also excellent, racking up about 4.5 yards per carry, despite the Jets playing a 5-3 defense, stacking against the run. Duce Staley, relieving Jerome Bettis late in the game looked as good as he has all season.

Running and defense have been the Steelers' bread and butter all season... stereotypical "smashmouth football" (how 1990!)... time of possession... that's what they do, and that's what they need to excel at in order to continue to advance. Early in the game, however, the coaching staff seemed to get away from these fundamentals, perhaps because they wanted to do something different for the playoffs... throw a changeup at the Jets' preparation for the game. It's not unusual at all for teams to throw big new wrinkles at the opposition in the playoffs.

In the first half yesterday, the Jets outpossessed the Steelers by a whopping 8 minutes. By the time was over, the Steelers shoved the ball down the Jets' throat, won the time of possession battle and yes... they got lucky when Doug Brien couldn't convert on two field goal attempts. But let's not forget that they were good enough to outplay the Jets even when the scoreboard said otherwise and win the game even when they lost the turnover battle 3-1.

I think I've found the holy grail of geek-dom... and it's pretty cool...

I haven't piled on to anything that all the cool bloggers have been doing lately, so I'll join in this little game that Will Baude and others have been playing...

1. Open up the music player on your computer.
2. Set it to play your entire music collection.
3. Hit the "shuffle" command.
4. Tell us the title of the next ten songs that show up (with their musicians), no matter how embarrassing. ...

Embarrassing is entirely what I'm expecting... let's go to the list:

1. Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble - DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
2. Woo Hoo - The 5, 6, 7, 8's
3. No Good With Words - Drums and Tuba
4. Can't Truss It - Public Enemy
5. Earth Angel - The Penguins
6. Girl You Want - Devo (thanks Josh)
7. The Fever - Bruce Springsteen
8. Muddy - Ken Nordine
9. Mah Nah Mah Nah - Mahna McKay
10 . Can You Picture That - Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Band

*whew*... let's just say that could have been worse...

So awhile back, I got an email from a high school friend with instructions on how to get my name on a list for my high school's upcoming ten year reunion. Now I guess there isn't much of a commitment inherent in sending the organizers my contact information, but regardless I'm wondering whether or not I would want to be in attendance. You see, aside from the guy who forwarded me the information, I don't keep in touch with anyone from high school. In fact, I didn't really like many people at my school and there are a lot of people from my graduating class whom I'd rather not see again. There are some folks who occupy a sort of "middle ground" - people it might be interesting to see, but whom I wouldn't really miss if I didn't. But the overriding issue, I guess, is that high school didn't give me the warm fuzzies the first time around and I'm not really that interested in reminiscing about the old days. So... should I go?

From the department of "well duh!"

Dejan Kovacevic turned the tables on the readers in his first Pirates Q&A session as the team's beat writer for the Post-Gazette...

In covering the Penguins, too, I dealt with a deeply passionate and knowledgeable fan base, but it was one that does not touch this one from the anger aspect. Even though the Penguins had fallen pretty hard in the past three years, even though they had the NHL's worst record last season, even though their owner ordered them to have what was the league's lowest payroll, I did not sense anything approaching the outrage, distrust and hostility that seems to exist toward the Pirates. And this is coming from the people who clearly also count among their most loyal followers.

As regular readers have no doubt seen, I've scaled back the posting by quite a bit since I returned at the beginning of the year. There are a handful of reasons for this: I've been putting more time into my job search, writing takes me a long time (some fairly mundane-looking posts take upwards of an hour to compose), and I just don't want to spend quite as much time in front of the computer!

I've thought about going on hiatus, but although it may seem from time to time like I am, I probably won't... I don't want to quickly spew up a bunch of garbage off the top of my head, but I'd also like to continue to write (and have an audience... even if SiteMeter is flawed, my ego and I still like watching the hits come in!)... More likely, I'll try to post short stuff somewhat regularly... brief thoughts, excerpts from articles I see elsewhere (along with links)... I'd like to offer extended comments and elaborations on everything I post, but doing that simply takes too much time...

Just thought I'd keep my readers up to date on what's going on... oh, and I'm expecting my first (or second?) blog-grandchild shortly... Notice to be posted once he's up and running...

UPDATE: It seems I'm not the only one suffering from blogging fatigue...

All hail the US Postal Service! Or... well... I'm giving them the thumbs up for the way they have allocated ZIP codes. You see, as I was going over my resume this evening, I realized that in a fit of dyslexia, I had listed my ZIP code as 20897 instead of 20879. Lucky for me, as you can see from the maps, these two ZIP codes just happen to refer to areas that are just about adjacent so any foul-ups in addressing that my incorrect resume may have caused a) may not even be noticed and b) would hopefully not result in undelivered mail. Now the postal service probably didn't arrange their maps this way intentionally, but I'm still glad they did.

Right now I'm eating a turkey-ham sandwich. Note that this is not a sandwich made by putting some slices of turkey and some slices of ham between the bread, but rather it is a sandwich involving one type of meat: turkey-ham.

Prior to today's trip to the deli, I'd never actually heard of such thing, but when they were out of the ham that was on sale, I had to find another choice. I asked the gentleman working the counter what else was cheap... from a refrigerator on the far side of the deli (i.e.: not in the deli case for customer browsing), he brought me the turkey-ham. Now the stuff is really cheap and not in the front deli case. This makes me wonder: Is turkey-ham the hot dog of the deli counter? Do I really want to know what's going on here? If you've heard of such thing and it's not good, don't let me know...

My latest sojourn to Pittsburgh is over and I'll post a hodgepodge of things that struck me while I was away shortly, but first the Baseball Hall of Fame announces its newest inductees today and before the word comes down, I thought I'd make my selections from the 27 names on this year's ballot. So without further fanfare, here's my picks:

• Bert Blyleven - Sure, some of the counting numbers - especially the strikeouts are a bit gaudy because of Blyleven's longevity, but he wasn't just hanging on to his career to pile up numbers for more than a season or so. For a decade and a half, Blyleven was consistently among the league leaders in ERA and strikeouts. That's what I call greatness, and greatness is what the Hall of Fame is about.
  
• Wade Boggs - Admittedly, I didn't want to vote for Boggs. In my mind, I'd lumped him together with Tony Gwynn as an overrated singles hitter with a high but empty batting average. The Gwynn comparison isn't completely off - he's Boggs' second most similar player - but Boggs actually brought much more to the table than just singles. His career line is .328/.415/.443(BA/OBP/SLG). He drew a bunch of walks and during his Red Sox years knocked doubles around the park almost at will. The Hall has fewer third basemen than any other position and Bill James ranks Boggs as the fourth best third basemen in baseball history. He's gotta be in.
  
• Andre Dawson - He's admittedly a borderline candidate as he never had a great OBP. Nonetheless, I'm giving him the nod because he was a very good power hitter and before the Montreal astroturf destroyed his knees, he was a gold glove center fielder.
  
• Rich Gossage - At his peak, he must have been a sight to see. Eight seasons of 154 or better ERA+ numbers over a ten year period. To put it in present day terms, his career peak was about as good as Eric Gagne for almost three times as long as Gagne has been doing what he's been doing (as an aside: Eric Gagne has pitched exactly 82.3 innings each of the last three years... weird!)
  
• Ryne Sandberg - During his career, Sandberg looked a lot like a Hall of Famer. He set the record for most home runs by a second baseman while winning Gold Gloves and stealing 25-35 bases per year. His comeback may have been ill-advised, but even though it dropped his career rate stats, it doesn't take away what he did as the top second baseman between Joe Morgan and Craig Biggio. Bill James ranks Ryno 7th at his position.
  
• Bruce Sutter - Like Gossage, Sutter has a high 8 year peak and the distinction of being one of the first to define the modern role of a closer. Unlike Gossage, Sutter has little else. But back when closers started to become the new style, they were "firemen" more than "closers." Only twice during his peak did Sutter throw fewer than 99 innings. I'll give him my vote, however, because when I was a kid there were few players I feared more than Bruce Sutter. Maybe it was the beard, maybe it was that he'd always mow down the Pirates in critical situations. Whatever it was, I always thought he was great.
  
• Alan Trammell - Here's a guy who's always been overshadowed. Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith, the entire 1984 Tigers team. In 1987, Trammell was robbed of the MVP he clearly deserved. Trammell's candidacy is based more on a long period of being good than a short period of being brilliant, and I can see where people wouldn't want to vote him in. It would have been great to see him go into the Hall with Lou Whitaker, but Whitaker was completely hosed when he got less than five percent of the vote and was dropped from the ballot a few years back. Bill James ranks Trammell ninth among shortstops.
  

Based on who I've picked, you could also make arguments for Tommy John, Jim Rice and Lee Smith. I have changed my mind on these guys a few times, voting for them sometimes, not voting for them sometimes... this year, they're out. Over at Baseball Primer, publicly released votes from BBWAA voters have been posted and aggregated. With 48 votes in, it looks like there may be a big incoming class this year, as Gossage, Sandberg and Boggs are above the 75% threshhold and Sutter is one vote short. Watch for the announcement this afternoon...

UPDATE: It's Boggs and Sandberg