Jared W. Smith

The last part of this AP article (via ESPN) is just shocking to me:

The fans turned on Carr and the Panthers quickly. After Carr’s third-down pass was batted down near the end zone, John Kasay kicked a 29-yard field goal to cut the halftime deficit to 10-6.

But not before fans started chanted “We want Moore.”

“It’s not like we were purposely trying to not score points,” Carr said. “They were chanting ‘More’ — that they wanted more points. And we were trying to give it to them.”

Moore, by the way, is Panthers third quarterback Matt Moore, an undrafted rookie. And yes, I want Moore too.

Anyone with any sense knows that it’s time to bench Carr, not just because he’s ineffective, but also out of concern for his own safety, because he is clearly delirious from all the hits he’s taken as a result of him holding the ball eight seconds in the pocket every friggin’ down. How can he possibly believe that the chant was anything but a call for the backup? I’d put him on IR at this point, I think — too many blows to the head. After the season’s over, I’d cut him. He is not part of the solution.

People will say the Panthers’ defense isn’t as good this year. Statistically, they’re not, but considering they’re always on the field, I can understand why they look worn, weary, and exhausted every game. They’re just not given an opportunity to stay off the field for any period of time, it’s as simple as that.

On an aside, keep Sean Taylor of the Redskins in your thoughts. He was shot at his house early Monday during an apparent burglary. His troubled past aside, this is a guy who’s been doing a remarkable job getting his life back on the right track — and he almost had it all taken away Monday morning in front of his girlfriend and daughter in his own home. He’s still in critical condition (he lost a lot of blood and apparently flatlined twice during surgery), but the fact that he’s made it this far is certainly reassuring.

UPDATE: Sadly, Taylor passed away early this morning. Very, very tragic…

I failed to mention that I also installed Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” (yes, the full, official name) on my work MacBook Pro this weekend. In addition to its reflective dock, transparent menu bar (why, God, why?), and impressive new Finder view, it’s got quite a sense of humor. Check out the icon for my Windows desktop machine as seen in the Finder:

The Windows 9x-era BSOD is a clever way to avoid having to license the Windows logo artwork. Also note the beige CRT (and yes, I own more of those than I care to admit, but the machine in question sports a Dell 20″ widescreen LCD, for the record ). A few years ago I would have been screaming about militant Apple elitism, but this is too funny to ignore (and to get mad at).

As for Leopard itself, it runs pretty well. There are a few bugs with AirPort that need to be squashed, though — I do like to be able to log on to my wireless network after I resume. The frame rate of the Dock could also use a little optimization, but it IS doing a lot more than it used to.

My favorite feature, though, is Spaces — yes, I have multiple desktops on the Mac now, as I would as if I were using pretty much any modern window manager on Linux. I love having the ability to shuffle applications around accordingly between the desktops. The only improvement I could possibly see with Spaces is perhaps better Expose integration, but I’m not going to complain too much. Leopard’s a good release, but it’s good advice to hang on for 10.5.1 (or 10.5.2 for that matter).

I’ve been trying to wait patiently for The New AT&T to release Windows Mobile 6 for the BlackJack. They’ve done so for the AT&T 8525, but have yet to do so for both the BlackJack and Treo 750. I think they’re close — the impending release of the BlackJack II is probably the holdup — but I couldn’t wait any longer.

Then, I found this thread on HowardForums — and jackpot. In about 20 minutes (5 of which were required to find my syncing cable), the ROM flash was complete. Before you knew it, the AT&T 3G startup screen appeared — and bam. Windows Mobile 6 on my BlackJack. And folks, it is sweet. read more »