A top Virginia Tech official warned her son about the first shootings of last year’s massacre before the university issued any general alert. That was one of several new or changing bits of information about the April 16, 2007, shootings that families of the dead learned yesterday in their first group meeting with top Tech officials.

Poor tackling by the Hokies helped sustain both of East Carolina’s second-half offensive drives in the Pirates’ 27-22 upset win over No. 17 Tech Saturday at Bank of America Stadium.

Last year, the sports staff at the News & Advance dabbled a bit in the blog, using a wonderful template provided by the fine people at Wordpress. That was before the redesign of our Web site. With the site overhauled, we were able to move the blog to the N&A site, so you can read entries as you surf through the stories on our site. Seems much more user friendly, no?