Jaz

Veteran Towson Catholic coach Mike Daniel is a tough man to please, which is probably one of the main reasons his top-ranked Owls are among the Baltimore area's boys basketball elite each season. Though Daniel was pleased with last night's 68-61 home victory over No. 3 McDonogh (15-5), the coach was not satisfied. Despite a 19-4 overall record with 16 wins in a row, Daniel continues to push his Owls. "I'm happy we got the win, because McDonogh is a good team that came in to show they belong at No. 3," Daniel said.

New pocket-size drive works well on the go, but is tough to connect I was excited when Iomega, the company famous for its monosyllabic hardware (Zip, Buz, Jaz, etc.), announced the Clik! drive ($250 for digital camera version). The idea was to have a 40MB disk -- the size of a matchbook -- that would work with cameras, palmtop PCs and other portable devices. The drive would fit in a pocket and could be used in the field without a computer. Later, you'd drop the drive into a cradle attached to your PC and the Clik!

Have baby hook, will travel -- and score points in bunches. That is Monica Johnson's motto at Lebanon Valley College this season as the former Randallstown standout attempts to speed up the team's rebuilding process. "My favorite shot is a left-handed baby hook," said Johnson, who can score with either hand. "I like power. Just take the ball in for a powerful layup. I like to show my presence from the beginning of the game." The 5-foot-10 junior power forward is 10th in the nation in Division III women's basketball scoring with a 21.5 average as well as ranking 38th in rebounding at 10.7.

INTO THE LIGHTGloria Estefan (Epic 46988)Gloria Estefan has never been known as one of pop music's deepest thinkers, having built her career around material that avoids issues deeper than dancing or romancing. But "Into the Light" is a very serious album, indeed. Obviously affected by last year's near-fatal bus accident, Estefan now addresses everything from faith to fatalism to family ties. Although that does lead her into some interesting new ground musically, like the gospel lite of "Coming Out of the Dark," Estefan's earnest, upbeat lyrics are long on cliche but short on inspiration.

HERE'S ONE more sign of the decline of Western civilization: stupid printer tricks.Once upon a time, we used our printers for real work: reports, business letters, spreadsheets, bar charts and the NCAA basketball tournament tree.Now, we're using perfectly respectable printers to churn out paper dolls, Christmas cards, tree ornaments, sun visors, ersatz stained glass window hangings and worst of all, silly T-shirts.If you haven't noticed, the T-shirt problem has reached critical mass. In fact, Canon Computer Systems says it's selling a million sheets of T-shirt transfer paper a month.

Emil "Zim" Zemarel, whose big-band music was part of Baltimore's cultural, social and political life for more than 40 years, died Christmas Eve at Stella Mans Hospice of heart and kidney failure. A longtime resident of Riderwood, he was 82, said family members. Mr. Zemarel was well-known for his swing orchestra, the Zim Zemarel Big Band, which played at functions big and small across the metro area and beyond: weddings, sporting events, and political functions, including presidential inaugurations.

You're certain that your computer's hard drive will never go bad. You're never going to do something so idiotic as accidentally erasing a batch of your most critical data files. You fear no virus.Until it happens to you.Weeks, months or even years of data lost in an instant. And you never bothered to back up your work because you thought it was too much trouble, or you'd rather spend your computing dollars on something that's more "fun."Welcome to the club. Many computer users -- particularly those who bought their first machines in the past couple of years -- have given little thought to making backups.

EEK. Just two days left. Time running out. No time to think, let alone shop. Need clever, foolproof gift for computer user, minimum hassle. Not software; too confusing, too common. Something solid, like hardware. Aim car toward computer store, dash in, hand column to clerk and point at budget category.Alternative plan: Loved one spends too much time on computer anyway. Do not encourage with computer gift.Less than $10:A can of compressed air for cleaning out the dust bunnies inside a computer case.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks were mixed yesterday, as falling bond yields offset concern that slumping economies in Asia will mean lower-than-expected U.S. corporate profits.Computer shares declined for the 11th time in 12 days, led by Intel Corp. and Dell Computer Corp.The Dow Jones industrial average gained 22.42 to 8,922.37; the Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 0.16 to 1,090.98; and the Nasdaq composite index tumbled 32.05 to 1,746.82, led by Intel, down $3.4375 to $68.Among other broad market indexes, the Russell 2,000 index of small capitalization stocks slid 5.45 to 451.17; the Wilshire 5,000 index lost 34.28 to 10,279.

National high school rankings suggest that Baltimore has turned back the clock to when it was a basketball wasteland. No one in the USA Today Top 25. Again. It's a turnaround from the days when Dunbar High went anywhere, beat everyone and won mythical national titles, but those rankings can be deceptive. College recruiters keep returning to a town that has figured prominently in the past three NCAA champions, because there's plenty more where Juan Dixon, Carmelo Anthony and Josh Boone came from.