Pat Foley is back next year as play-by-play announcer for the Blackhawks. And all is right in the world.

Now if they'd just hire the right head coach...

We'll see what happens in our little cheating debacle at Rancho Bernardo. For the sake of comparison, New Trier is giving The Chair™ to one of its seniors. They caught Jonah Greenthal red-handed looking at other students' ACT scores and transcripts, having broken into their system, back in February. They suspended him indefinitely, and now they've filed criminal charges. He was bound for my EE department downstate at U of I, we'll see if that still happens.

He's getting charged for looking. We'll see what they do here for actually changing records...

Nate was on the Today Show this morning in a four-minute interview with Matt Lauer. My MythTV box recorded it, I haven't had a chance to watch yet. It was part of a larger segment covering the bust at San Diego State yesterday. He's also supposed to appear on tonight's Inside Edition.

Channel 6 is hosting a PDF scan of the mug shot document the DA's office issued yesterday. Four arrested as up-chain marijuana suppliers are Poway HS grads. Linwood and Brandon Mackey ('02, '05), Stephen Crook ('02), and Gary Molenaar ('01). Linwood played baseball for us, pitching eight innings in relief his senior year. (full XETV story)

Nate was surprised by the guns found. Honestly, I'm not. Two of the defendants are some type of criminal justice majors. As for the rest, they're handling large amounts of cash. People like that have to worry about someone else trying to take it from them. Think about it: if you rob a drug dealer, he's not going to report it to the police, is he? Probably not, unless he wants to wind up greenlit on Fark.

The Union-Tribune has one story, and also an interview with Kim and Ray. There's also an earlier story with a few other details. The North County Times picked up the AP wire story.

KNSD coverage: Six frats suspended, DEA recording of a deal in progress, initial story. They also have three slide shows

KUSI coverage: Reactions, initial story, press conference details

CNN story, including some video. KFMB story

Current Music: Steve Earle - I Feel Alright

CNN and newspapers are now reporting 96 arrests at San Diego State University after a year-long undercover drug probe by the DEA and Cal State University police. This was not a casual collection of cases, this was a single, named investigation. CNN cites a press release stating that the investigation was triggered by the May 2007 overdose death of an SDSU student. That would be Jenny Poliakoff, a year ago today.

[Update 11:33am] Damon Mosler, head of the narcotics division of the SDCo. DA's office just said at a press conference that Jenny's supplier was a fellow sorority member who was arrested, charged, convicted, and is presently serving time.

[Update 11:45am] DA's press release

The top five photos in this gallery are the Will Rogers, on Belmont and Parkside, just west of Central. This was about half a mile from my grandmother's house (5400 block of W. Warwick,) where she took us kids to see movies. I saw most everything Disney released in the late 70s and early to mid 80s there. That theater had a balcony, which was perpetually closed, and it's my firm belief that this was the balcony pictured in the opening credits of WTTW-TV's Sneak Previews, the original Siskel and Ebert movie review show.

Page 3 ends with the first shot of the old Old Orchard theater on Skokie Boulevard in Skokie. Page 4 has a color exterior shot of the Edens I, and the lobby of the Edens II, and the lobby and interior of the Golf Mill in Niles.

Jason Kottke, mad proprieter of kottke.org, is nine months older than me. (And two days older than Jason Wessel, though unlike Wessel, appears to have been a grade ahead of me in school.) Says he about himself:

1973: I was born on September 27th at 4:44 am...or so they tell me. My parents named me after Jason of the Argonauts and Alexander the Great. Not exactly a humble beginning.

Yeah, that's where my folks got the name, too. Additional funny coincidence:

1976: My sister was born in August of this year.

So was the first of my sisters. However:

1977: Star Wars came out in May, but I don't think I went to see it.

I did see it, at the Edens I theater on Skokie Boulevard, which eventually bonded with Star Wars in my head not merely because it was one of the first movies I ever remember seeing in a theater, nor because it was probably the first one I saw after we moved to Northbrook that summer, but because the building's design bore similarities to Space Mountain, which I would be introduced to the next spring when we went to Disney World for the first time. (And where I was semi-permanently turned off to roller coasters, being dragged onto that pitch-black ride by my dad far earlier than I was ready for it.) (Oddly, it is actually my favorite roller coaster nowadays. Not that I'm willing to ride many. And most of them, I still shout a lot of obscenities during the big drops.)

Wow.

Um... just... wow.

This is the situation you train for, but never ever want to wind up in. What's impressive is that this guy kept his cool and waited as long as he did. Sometimes, you read stories like this, and the victim draws while he's still got a gun pointed at his face. This is a good way to get yourself killed. It takes much less time for the Bad Guy to compress his trigger than it does for you to draw, aim, and fire.

To read the description, this robber never took his weapon off a victim, and never took his eyes off the armed victim long enough for him to draw. When he finally took his shot, it was still a terribly risky situation. But he was finally in a position where he knew he did not have much time left, and took the best opportunity he was given--the brief moment the robber looked away into the alley. I would have been very tempted to turn and shoot on the move when the robber fired at the cashier's desk. At that moment, the safest assumption is, "He's just shot my co-worker, there's no reason I'm not going to be next." I'd rather take my chances than take an easy one in the back just standing there. That this guy waited it out is impressive, and may have been the better decision. It's also impressive that, once the robber was down and the police on their way, he consciously kept his finger indexed on his pistol's frame, and had the sense to remind his partner to do the same with his shotgun. This is exactly how you're supposed to think and act.

What amazes me is this asshole actually found an attorney to take up his civil case. That's just a fucking joke. I agree with the principle that everyone is entitled to the best possible legal defense. But to take up this plaintiff's case, you really have to be a special kind of asshole.

Unlike a similar incident seven years ago at Poway, Rancho Bernardo's administration is properly hanging their (now) eight students out to dry. The article includes a copy of a mass e-mail to RB staff about the state of the investigation.

I'm not convinced yet that this required any degree of technological skill. The data security practices I've seen in the district are downright laughable. This would not have been hard to do, for weeks or months on end, by simply taking advantage of those poor practices. Hackers or Wargames this probably ain't.

The funeral that Koelzer writes about is Charles Amaro's.

If this is anyone in Poway Unified's "worse [sic] technological nightmare", I gotta tell you, they aren't that imaginative. This is a paper cut compared to what someone could really do if they were determined.

At the bottom of the first page of the PDF, you'll see how one uninvolved student had known about it for a month, and didn't come forward. This is not surprising. These kids will always back each other up. They will not rat each other out. The lone possible exception to that is if there's a threat of violence involved. Aside from that, anyone who considers it will think twice, worried that the truth will come out (and given the underappreciation for information security in a school, it will) and they'll be branded a snitch.

It's also not at all shocking that all 8 perps at RB are AP students. I remember when I first moved to Poway, a car burglary ring had just been busted, consisting of PHS honor students.

Long-time WGN morning man Wally Phillips died a month ago at 82.

Crisis counselors are still treating the woman in Tinley Park. Steve also had some nice things to say, all of which are true.

If you have a character who is arrogant, smug, yet smooth and intelligent,

oh, and also a drunk

Robert Downey, Jr. is your man. Why you would even look at someone else if you can cast him, I do not understand. Looking at his personal history, and his work, there is no one more suitable.

I'm glad to hear he's sober these days, and I hope he can stay that way, because the dude can perform. So I'm looking forward to Iron Man this weekend.

Oh yeah, and Sam Jackson making a cameo as Nick-Fury-Re-Envisioned-As-Sam-Jackson from the Ultimate books. (Is there a SHIELD helicarrier named Shaft? There should be.)