Troy Trojans Gameday Weather Outlook

Is it time to stick a fork in American Idol?

American Idol lost a long-time fixture of the show this week when Paula Abdul announced via Twitter (@PaulaAbdul) that she’s “decided not to return” to the talent show. Paula was a judge on the show since the beginning and without her the show will look a lot different.

Idol added fourth judge Kara DioGuardi (Bio) last season changing the makeup of the popular judge driven show.

I always enjoyed the fourth judge in the audition rounds, but things got crowded at the judges table last season as the competition drew to a close.

Is American Idol becoming stale?

Although it’s still a ratings powerhouse, the show has been declining in recent years. Here’s my idea on how to stay relevant and go out on top.

Step 1: Somehow get through this season. For Paula fans, Kara may be the one who drove their overly nice hero away. Keep Kara toned down so they will stick around. It’s too late to make any major changes now, but please once we get to the top 12 KEEP THE JUDGES BIAS OUT. It’s up to the fans and the fans have spoken against the heavy judges’ push for the last two seasons.

Step 2: This is it. This needs to be the final show in the current format. Yes it’s huge and yes people come out to audition, but this is season nine. Nine seasons of the same thing. A few additions, like instruments for contestants, have been good for the show.

Step 3: Season X: Greatest Hits. Let’s bring back those we remember, but didn’t make it. Obviously there is no need for someone like Chris Daughtry to come back. He’s already bigger than many season winners. During the summer when the crew is normally at full stadiums finding good talent and good tv for the show let the fans do Internet voting to see who should be a part of the Greatest Hits show. As the show gets fired up in January start off with 100 contestants and dwindle them down to make a top 12. This could be the second chance those former contestants need.

Step 4: Be innovative or exit gracefully. Ten is a nice number to end on if this is the end of the show. If the decision is made to come back for season eleven, come up with something truly new that will make us stick around for the season 20 Greatest Hits.

New Site Design

I have updated my blog with a new design – the Andreas04 theme for WordPress by Andreas Viklund. It’s a three-column silver and blue layout.

I haven’t been updating as much on the blog lately – that will probably change as we get closer to college football season.

I am also now using Windows Live Writer to update directly from my desktop without the need to go to my site. This has been a pretty cool tool.

The next changes I’m going to make are over on the side panels. The icons look like they need a makeover to bring them more up-to-date with the overall site design.

Who is your celebrity look alike?

Try it at www.myheritage.com for free.

Ubuntu Saved My Desktop

I have a Dell Dimension 4550. If you didn’t already know that’s a pretty old computer. I got the computer back in 2002 and it has been an awesome machine. I have made a few additions over the years. The upgrades include a web cam, USB hub, external hard drive, memory card reader and more memory.

Last week while I was burning some CD’s (with Windows – not even an external program) and moving huge files around, my hard drive began to freak out. After every CD finished burning my computer completely froze. The only way to get my computer back to life was to hold down the power button and restart. After doing this a few times, my hard drive really freaked out and I got the unmountable_boot_volume error message.

After several moves over the past nine years my Windows XP disks didn’t keep up with the computer. I tried a Windows boot disk and after nothing was working it appeared that my hard drive was shot. Diagnostics from the boot screen also led me to have no hope for ever getting past the blue screen.

Enter Ubuntu.

After trying all I knew to try with Windows I came to realize that everything that wasn’t saved to my external hard drive was now gone. At least I had my pictures and music saved there. Nine years of files though were now all gone.

I downloaded Ubuntu on Brandy’s laptop and made my install disk. After about a 30 minute setup, I have what is the fastest operating system I have every used. Even my Internet connection is faster. I pay for 3 Meg service and speedtest.net confirmed that I am getting around 5 Megs. I never got that with Windows.

Ubuntu saved my computer from the trash heap. I am probably going to buy a new computer in another couple of weeks and it will probably be Windows because of all the software I already have, but for now this desktop has new life.

Thank you Ubuntu.