I’m sure nobody at NDSU is celebrating right now, but I remember after we played them tough there were some comments on their board that they needed more tough wins and some losses to make it interesting again, as the feeling inevitability had stated to become boring.

I watched the EWU-Idaho game. Lot of parity but Idaho pulled it out in the 4th quarter. Idaho maybe seemed better than previous years but their QB transfer from UConn is no gift. On the EWU side it was just normal EB3 but not as explosive offense of previous years. A one-trick pony mobile QB that Idaho adjusted to at halftime. I think they have young guys up front. Most amusing moment was when EWU missed a well aimed field goal attempt that hit the ceiling and bounced out of the uprights. Kicker threw a four alarm tantrum that it should count but they couldn’t review because none of the cameras had the top of the goalpost in frame.

no doubt. I’m hoping for a dual threat QB. Our blind spot has been eloquent passers that need a ton of time and space in the pocket to work their magic, a luxury that Midwest corn-fed teams won’t give you. Looks like some young talent coming in on the line. I had to read twice, there are two freshmen, one OL and one DL who are around 360. They got 100lbs on some guys. Those are big men.

Fan and athlete sportsmanship is kind of interesting how it ebbs and flows. Montana and Sac State have long proud histories of being low-brow. I've been up to Eastern for games (fog-out game 2005) and it used to be pleasant there with nice fans. Then they won a championship in 2010, painted the field red, and the athlete and fan behavior changed for the worse. There are few keyboard warrior Eagles fans that would do well to put the Natural Ice down and step away from the internet. Coincided with the Beau Baldwin years and has continued under Best. Not sure to what degree the fan culture is on the coach, but hopefully Cal Poly doesn't trend that way under Baldwin. I can remember in the Ellerson years, the Cal Poly stadium experience had kind of become a pit of frat boys throwing cans the way Hornet Stadium was in the mid-90s, but in the Walsh era became a more family friendly experience, at least from this visitor's perspective.

UCD has opened vaccines to all employees now, so presumably the coaches and staff have or shortly will have the ability to receive it. So a step in the right direction.

Yep, that's the season! The first time we played EWU, their athletic QB rolled us. But in the quarterfinal game, we had their number and then let a 4th quarter drive get away from us with a gassed defense. I of course hope we win out this year. Hard to say how anyone compares at this point some, so I'm not sure how well I could predict outcomes. Possibly the team I would most hope to beat is EWU because I really do not like Aaron Best & Co's attitude and lack of sportsmanship, but I will never overlook a win over Poly. Looks like all the games are noon or 1pm. Good for me watching in eastern time but it's a bummer to have nothing under the lights. March might be brisk, but mid-April in Davis can either be winter or summer weather.

By sitting out, this may be Northern Colorado's best season in FCS yet. At 0-0, I suppose that will put them at 50% for the first time.

I think what made 2018 feel so good was that aside from Jake, the team was primarily Gould recruits. It kind of proved that we had the talent all along and it was in fact a coaching issue that was now solved. We were quite likely one missed tackle away from going to Frisco, which stung even more when we played NDSU tough in 2019. But the rest of 2019 was so inconsistent. It might have been time for some fresh ideas on offense, so we shall see what Cody brings. As long as we break from the tradition of 32-second drives against teams with pass defense defined by 2 incomplete passes, a power run up the middle for 1 yard followed by a punt.

Perhaps the unanswered question is if the 2018 campaign was a flash-in-the-pan fluke or the new normal. 2019 was comparatively uninspired; was THAT a fluke or just regression to the mean? Turnover of key athletes and assistants is a routine test of an HC’s reinvention and pick ‘em skills. I’m not sure we will have a definitive verdict this year, because win, lose, or draw, 2020-21 will have an asterisk by it.

I’ve heard the national average rejection rate is around 30%, so if UCD health is inside 10%, that means some other hospitals must have a lot more refusals to pull that average up. I wonder if patients have the right to demand to only see providers who have been vaccinated or to know what percentage of staff have been vaccinated? I guess we don’t know for sure if the vaccines prevent transmission, but if we find out they do, I would certainly rather go to a well-vaccinated hospital than the alternative. Also, did anyone else find the nurse’s voice a little grating?

Is it most likely that a decision is made in the next few days and that's the guy, or we likely to see multiple guys get some reps this spring before settling on someone for the fall? Would we potentially see one person leading this spring and someone else for the fall if there is renewed competition over the summer? There is technical skill and then the intangible of personal leadership. I remember I think Biggs tried a co-quarterback thing at some point in the 90s and it didn't work very well.

I found a low resolution drawing and to me it looks like the hydrotherapy facility that has been mentioned. Looks like they dug a basement and are then building the pools into it so the deck is at ground level but they have an underground service corridor below the deck to get at the piping, which is likely extensive if these tubs are heavily jetted. I'm guessing the room with double doors is the mechanical room and the stairway highlighted actually goes down to the service basement. I circled what looks like stairs and possibly 2-story mechanical room in the photo.

Iron workers usually don't mess around. And at the hourly rate crane operators get, neither does the person paying them. This part always seems to go fast compared to the civil work or interior fit out. It usually feels like it takes longer to commission the fire alarm and HVAC systems than to build the building. Should be a nice facility.

I don't have strong feelings about either team. But I really don't care for Tom Brady or his egomaniac GOAT narrative, so I was half rooting for the Chiefs. KC had a bad night and I think the second string OL was a big part. They also got destroyed on holding calls at critical moments... some deserved, others maybe not so much. It was not a very fun game, because it was basically over at halftime. Nail-biters are more fun when you are at the pinnacle of the season. First Super Bowl with a female on the ref squad, really no reason more women shouldn't get involved with the NFL in ways that don't involve go-go boots.

The halftime show seemed to be pretty divisive this year, with a lot of love and hate online. I rate it middle of the road but definitely overhyped by the artist ahead of time. It wasn't my taste in music and I thought parts were too dark to really see the artist, but it was more entertaining than the bands that just stand there. Pregame, the ASL interpreter was the star of the show, but otherwise it was one of my least favorite renditions of the Star Spangled Banner. Ads were below average this year, but to be expected because some of the key advertisers took the year off, big budget ad productions were probably difficult this year, and advertisers seemed keen to avoid pushing the envelope into controversial waters.

Well, they wouldn't have been wrong! The part through the arboretum is more a dammed off retention pond than creek and the equestrian center used to wash their byproducts into the water, so it was pretty foul in the more stagnant spots. Over the past 5 years, they've been building a pump and filter system to clean up the water.

If DeLuca was a contender, should we be happy or not? I don’t know anything about him.

I spent a year living in a trendy 1905-era downtown apartment with no laundry hookups, so I had to use a laundromat. What a... cultural experience. But yeah, they were definitely washing more than clothes there.

I agree it's inhumane to put those with mental or other issues on the street (not that 1930s insane asylums worked either). I don't agree with the antifa theories. To some degree, homeless probably do follow resources, which I think makes the case to standardize services across communities to avoid pushing the problem around. I agree we have a housing problem due to a supply/demand mismatch, but I'm not sure I blame it specifically on illegal immigration. I blame it on a proliferation of stagnant low-wage jobs (which, in agriculture are often below legal pay and functionally can only be filled by undocumented workers), coupled with a refusal to build more housing stock. Some locales are out of finite land and water resources, but in others, people who bought high do not want the market to equalize because they will lose money if their property adjusts to its real value. If telework turns out to be here to stay, it may fundamentally change property values by allowing supply and demand forces to work more freely - though there will be a new set of winners and losers in that scenario.

yeah, you’re right in the current climate, I think because banks and corporations that play by federal rules can’t play. So it’s a cash-only industry of small businesses, which is attractive to organized crime the same way laundromats and bingo halls are. If this was just another product on the shelf at Walgreens, industrial agriculture conglomerates (a cartel in their own right) would exert a lot of pressure on the illegal model.

homelessness is an interesting paradox because is it the disease or the symptom of a different disease? Do you go for a curative or palliative treatment? The easy route is to push the problem around by having the police move people along. I grew up in a small county with an annual homeless budget of a few hundred dollars used to dole out one-way bus tickets to Fresno. I saw a story about Salt Lake City, that they took an approach 20 years ago to provide unconditional real housing (apartment beds not shelter beds). Most of the homeless at that time were mentally/physically disabled or addicts, so unemployable. They realized they couldn’t treat those root problems if those people didn’t have a reliable address and they dramatically cut homelessness. But then it came back 5 years ago, though a different group of people. These were working people who had never been homeless before. And they found that these people didn’t need services other than cheaper rent 6 months ago. But if these people stayed homeless more than a few months, they started to develop physical and mental problems that impacted employability. Growing income inequality with the people on the upside spiking real estate prices and then not wanting affordable housing in their neighborhood seems to be a big problem. UBI seems like a good tool for the kit.

You make some fair points on drugs, but maybe the best way to squeeze cartels is to legalize pot and let Phillip Morris grow it. As far as subsidizing people, I’d rather not have to, but it costs like $15k a year to get them in housing, $50-80k to put them in jail. It’s cheaper to let them hotbox an apartment.

From what I gather, we might see J&J vaccine hit pharmacies by March. While maybe not as effective as Pfizer and Moderna, perhaps the single dose and simpler handling will speed distribution. It uses an adenovirus (a common cold virus as carrier?) instead of mRNA. I believe it is similar to the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. I'm not sure I fully understand the mechanism, but maybe I don't need to.

I read the writer's bio... looks like she was previously with LA Times and until recently, the Sac Bee. It says NYT "correspondent", which I think is code for a freelance journalist paid per article rather than a staff reporter paid a salary. I think the business model for online news and increasingly print news is just that... the reporters are gig workers and the news organizations are little more than editors/curators that buy articles. I would imagine in the Bee's case that they do not pay journalism students much if anything. I think new entrants to the career do a lot of pro bono work up front to build their portfolio and resume. Bully for the UCD press office for getting a connected journalist to this story. I think it shows that UCD can attract national attention when it shares something widely applicable. Far too many of the stories that Davis pushes are niche vanity projects that interest narrow corners of academia and the social justice movement. Normally I see these kinds of headlines in the UCD news feed - "A multicultural exploration of the intersectionality of paint and canvas in relation to implied sexism of paintbrushes" - the kind of stuff that ain't going to make the NYT.

Several models of Fitbits are able to measure SpO2 levels. Fitbit has been moving more and more towards monitoring health metrics along with tracking activity levels — BlueGoldAg

Fitbit is now owned by Google, so they are into tracking any potentially saleable piece of information they can about you. They must have an advertising customer wanting to know your O2 levels :chin:

The campus has a no visitors policy for dorm areas and requires any visitor to campus to fill out a COVID questionnaire. Students and employees are mandated to participate in testing, visitors are encourage to test. I don't know how well they are enforcing the questionnaire on casual walkers or bikers through campus. What I get though from it though is that visitors without a compelling reason are just not wanted right now. Partly to prevent spread of disease, but also partly to enforce order around their public health efforts. The University has tools to discipline students and employees for breaking COVID policies. It's harder to discipline unaffiliated visitors for unwanted behavior that does not rise to the level of being illegal and warranting trespass from public property. I wouldn't bank on spectators, though if that becomes an option later in the season, maybe students and staff get first crack since they are already in the testing/surveillance bubble.

I hope there is a good online audio/video feed. I live far outside KHTK's terrestrial range. For streaming, regardless of provider, Aggie Stadium has far more technical problems than the other schools in Big Sky. Somebody should be checking the upload bandwidth of their modem.