As usual, For the Integrity of Soccer has a sobering, insightful, and depressing review of the quality of officiating in Major League Soccer. As an avid fan, the lack of improvement in this area has been stark in comparison to the progress the league has made on other fronts over the last decade.

The reason I have been mulling over the article is simply its age---it is now eight years old. I thought it might be useful to look at where we are now. In other words: In those eight years, how have we improved things? Here are the improvements; bite them, bullet-by-bullet:

A more eventful week than I would have preferred, as a fever forced me to leave work early on Tuesday. Bed rest and little else were the order of the day through Wednesday.

Yesterday, Pete called to let me know he finally got engaged to Melissa. Although hes had the ring for a few weeks now, apparently Melissa put together a romantic dinner at home on Halloween, which he "wasn't going to be able to top" so he opted for the nuclear option to trump her. Or something like that. Anyways, congrats you crazy kids - enjoy the thrilling ride that is wedding planning. Thank you for giving me an excuse to post this picture, from when you guys were in town last year.

{vspace="0" hspace="0" border="0" align="bottom"}\

Finally, over at her blog, Patty's keeping us updated on her EKG/heart situation, which so far has mostly resulted in trips to the doctor and having to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours. She'll be in NoVA this weekend, so I'm excited to see her this weekend. Its really weird not to have her nearby.\

Dad passed me along the link to the slashdot discussion of Microsoft's partnership with Novell.  (Usually, its me sending him the slashdot link). On the face of it, the major part of the announcement concerns patent rights MS holds - specifically that it will not assert them against open source developers. The Technology Liberation Front has a good overview of this angle.

What is Microsoft doing here? It's trying to put SuSE developers at ease that they won't be sued. So there's no need to obtain a license from Microsoft. Furthermore, there's no need for sublicensing - which is particularly important for the decentralized nature of open source development.