More exciting St. Louis Soccer United News

Hello, Jim, you're probably the only one still reading.

I'd write about this myself, but the link is more interesting anyway. The top three soccer academies in the St. Louis area have combined under the St. Louis MLS team banner.

This is also good news for St. Louis University and Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville's soccer teams, because under NCAA rules the players could train with both their college and club teams.

Go Cougs

Back when I was in college, which still wasn't so long ago, we were required to take a COBOL programming class. This made no sense to anyone, because COBOL wasn't used anywhere. But it probably served as a nice primer for me, since I'm programming in a different dead language now, BASIC. Or Pick/BASIC.

As an aside: check out all the jobs on monster for PICK programmers!!!)

Today, as I was reading an article about the top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills, I came across this nugget:

...you can actually learn Cobol at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, which according to Mary Sumner, a professor there, still offers a Cobol course. "Two of the major employers in the area still use Cobol, and for many of their entry-level jobs, they want to see that on the transcript," she says. "Until that changes, we'd be doing the students a disservice by not offering it."

A disservice? A disservice is requiring a dead language when the world's going crazy over Java or ASP or god know what (I'm completely out of that loop), and not offering one Web based programming class at all. I've been fucking disserviced.

Anyway, I thought my friends Dave and Mark would enjoy the link... you guys had COBOL, right?

Here's another COBOL story. No SIUE in this one though.

Request to change nickname to "The John Cougars" was not approved

I thought I had heard rumblings, and now I know it to be true. Your Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Cougars are making the jump to D1 athletics. What does this mean to you, the SIUE grad?

1) When you tell people where you went to school, the first words out of their mouth may no longer be "Oh, the Salukis?"

2) You are no longer able to piggyback your hopes on SIUC's basketball team in the NCAA tournament. Here's how I usually convey that: "Well, I went to SIUE, which is the sister school, so I figure it's as close as I'm going to get, anyway..."

3) Bring back out that 1979 NCAA D1 Soccer champ banner, we're BACK. SLU is scared to death right now. I still love you, Brian McBride.

4) It's time to shell out some bucks for your Red and White (or silver? who knows) Cougar gear. So what if it looks just like Houston's stuff.

5) We still don't have a football team. But we do have a sweet background on our athletics page. That's the best our CMIS/IT guys can do? Where'd they go to school, SIUE?

In any case, I'm pretty excited by the whole thing. It took me a long time to show any sort of pride over where I went to school, but now I'm going whole hog. I can't wait for SIUE shower curtains and SIUE mudflaps and SIUE bbq grills... I want it all, everything that goes along with being a D1 school.

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While you're looking at stuff on the internet, check out Hoosier Beer Geek, where I've written a review of beer. Be sure to leave a comment about how it's the best review ever written... someone named anonymous already has... I wonder who that could be?

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I'm off to Vegas next week, so don't expect much from this space until I get back, when I'll have a shocking expose about the real truth behind the movie Showgirls.

maybe i'm out of the loop

Aaron Rakers* is a Padre now? Anyone back home have any news?

Oh.

Well, he's kinda a Padre. Non-Roster Invitee. Let's all hope this turns out well for him.

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*A guy that went to my high school. And college.