Cue the trumpets and Chris Rock, for it’s the evening of the 77th Annual Academy Awards, live(ish) from Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. I haven’t watched the Oscars for a couple of years, but most of the good shows were pre-empted tonight, so I figured I’d start tuning in again.

Travis in Boston is blogging a play-by-play of the Oscars, so I’m not even going to try and match him. I do recommend checking out his site for a good recap of everything, including the stupid commercials between the awards. (What, are these ads we’re watching - the Super Bowl ad rejects?)

I am impressed by a few parts, and we’re only sixty minutes into the 50-hour show: Morgan Freeman won an Oscar, and it’s about time. Cate Blanchett is incredibly versatile, and they’re really aiming for a lot of tear jerking montages during this show. I need a new box of tissues. And some popcorn.

Completely off topic: The creator of the Somerville Gates, “Hargo”, is now reaching Christo fame and is donating his work to museums around the country. Apparently he registered over 2 million hits on his site and was forced to take it down after only a couple of days. Absolutely hysterical, and congratulations on a great art installation!

It’s on the Travel Channel almost every day.

You can practice it on TLC’s web site when you’re really, really bored.

The average jackpot in tournaments has grown tenfold in as many years, just due to the increase in popularity.

What is it? Well, it’s Texas Hold’em, of course. Perhaps the most fun of poker games (mainly because it’s more a community game than a looking-at-your-cards-and-weeping style game), Hold’em is pretty addictive when you’re actually playing. Like most games, it has its own lingo and the stats folks get a kick out of computing the odds of each hand, but it’s really not all that hard to learn.

Last weekend, Laura and I went to our friends Amanda and Jim’s house to play poker. (For background info, Jim is a numbers guy and loves to play for money, so we made him dumb it down for us and use fake cash, a.k.a. poker chips, instead!) It was such a blast and so addictive that I had to go out the next day and get a poker chip set of my own. And, in typical style, it’s not any ordinary poker chip set. Nay, this set comes in an aircraft-grade aluminum case lined with black padding and an eggshell lid. The chips are all 11.5g clay composite chips, which means absolutely nothing to me except that they feel cool and weigh 21 pounds in the case. Plus, I now have another excuse to have people over, which makes me happy.

I happened across a great way for kids to get involved in the Homeland Security Advisory System.

I also wanted to share [what I think is] a creative and freakin’ hysterical comic strip from today’s paper by the talented Bill Amend. Enjoy!

I just upgraded to the newest version of WordPress (v1.5 - which is incredible, by the way), and my old template files seem to have gone kaput. While I work on fixing them, enjoy this temporary black template for my site. Any ideas what that photograph is at the top? I have no clue. And I’m apparently not the only one who has had fun with the upgrade!

Update: It’s all fixed now! But, I think I’m getting the itch to do a redesign…

The news wires have been abuzz today with stories and reports of Carly Fiorina’s abrupt departure from technology behemoth Hewlett-Packard. She has been a high-profile CEO since her arrival in 1999, and was the chief architect of HP’s merger with Compaq in 2002. However, since that merger, Fiorina has been revered as an ineffective CEO, and HP’s internal financial analysts contend that Compaq’s addition to the HP business model has dragged profits down and prevented the company from being as nimble as the board of directors believes it should be. Such an accusation is interesting unto itself, as Ms. Fiorina delivered the keynote address by invitation at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in early January, an event that is recognized around the world as the showcase for new and cutting-edge technology innovations. (And I’m not the only one who thinks HP is well respected.)

The press release this morning stated

“The board of directors of Hewlett-Packard Company today announced that Carleton S. Fiorina has stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer, effective immediately. Robert P. Wayman, HP’s chief financial officer, has been named chief executive officer on an interim basis and appointed to the board of directors. Patricia C. Dunn, an HP director since 1998, has been named non-executive chairman of the board, also effective immediately.”

But the truth is, she didn’t “step down” as the press release casually states. The word from Wall Street is that she was forced to resign after a series of disagreements over objectives and strategies for making HP a better competitor in its core technology markets. Fiorina said in a statement this morning, “while I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP’s strategy, I respect their decision.” What is even more interesting is who is replacing her on an interim basis — Robert Wayman. Mr. Wayman is someone who has never liked Ms. Fiorina, and actually stepped down from the board in 2002, shortly after the Compaq deal was approved. Lo and behold, he is now the interim CEO, enabling HP to return to its old ways, and Fiorina is sent home with a $21 million severance package.

1564 - Christopher Marlowe, playwright (d. 1593)
1665 - Queen Anne I of the United Kingdom (d. 1714)
1748 - Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati (d. 1811)
1756 - Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States (d. 1836)
1895 - Babe Ruth, Baseball Hall of Famer (d. 1948)
1911 - Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States (d. 2004)
1912 - Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress (d. 1945)
1913 - Mary Leakey, anthropologist (d. 1996)
1914 - Thurl Ravenscroft, voice-over actor (”Tony the Tiger”)
1917 - Zsa Zsa Gabor, actress
1931 - Rip Torn, actor, director
1940 - Tom Brokaw, news anchorman
1945 - Bob Marley, Jamaican roots rock reggae singer and musician, (d. 1981)
1950 - Natalie Cole, singer
1951 - Princess Daphné of Belgium
1957 - Kathy Najimy, actress, comedian
1957 - Robert Townsend, comedian, actor, director, producer
1962 - Axl Rose, musician (”Guns N’Roses”)

And Massachusetts (my home state) became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1788. Thanks to Wikipedia for the dates and references.