1-Year Lockdown

Embrace the Shame

We were humiliated this weekend in the annual ICRT charity golf tournament. Our foursome shot a 90 in a Texas Scramble (best ball) tournament. I don't even know how that was possible.

That's right. 17 over.

Most of us figure we could shoot in the 90s alone on a good day. I mean, we trailed the field by 10 strokes. I guess our problem was that we didn't have any "A" players. At least we won a dozen balls each for being last.

The iGallop

This year's must-have fitness item for Christmas - the iGallop. I don't know how to describe this thing, other than you must see the commercial. Fitness device or sex toy?

Yeah

I just stayed up to watch the US lose to Ghana. Pretty sad. At least I couldn't watch it live, because everyone else in the bar wanted to watch Italy v. Czech Rep. That shows you the wisdom of the mob. In fact, I think Malcolm Gladwell spent a chapter on that in "Tipping Point." I'd also like to point out that you can't just "Czech" like every other republic in the world, because is doesn't work on its own. I think they should change the name to Czechia, Czechidonia, or Czechland to make it easier on everyone.

However, I did get credit for being the only one in the bar to know why Serbia and Montenegro was abbreviated SCG. It's Srpska zemlja Crna Gora if you care. But if you don't, here is a great debunking of the da Vinci Code attributed to the late Sam Kinison.

The guy never had a wife. Because no wife would buy The Resurrection story in a hundred f***ing years. The disciples will, the believers will:but no wife would buy this f***ing story. Good luck! Good luck with this story.                

First of all, Jesus leaves on Friday afternoon with 12 other guys. He's gone for three days. No message. No way to get in touch with his wife. Then he comes home Monday afternoon looking like sh*t, like he hasn't slept.

...anyway, you see where this is going.

World Cup

I am watching the World Cup. Not religiously, mind you. The first game starts at 9PM and the last at 3AM which pretty much put the USA vs. Italy game in rerun time for me.

I will point out that there are two World Cup blogs that surpass all others even if you don't care about soccer - like me. The first is Michael Davies on ESPN's Page 2. On the Australia/Brazil match:

Never in the history of humanity has so much yellow and green congregated in one location. The walk to the stadium made my eyes hurt, the Australian and Brazilian fans all dressed so brightly in the same colors, like a sea of sweaty, human, liquored-up corn on the cob.

The other is Simon Barnes with the Times of London online:

The opening ceremony is now without form and void. I have lost the plot entirely. Let's assume that a small boy had a dream about football and then world peace broke out. I look up: Claudia Schiffer seems to have won the World Cup and married Pele. Pele gets all the tough jobs.

Bowl Week

I still don't have AFN at home but we managed to get it in the office. Needless to say, you won't find me this week.

COLL FB   Live Event 
2006 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame vs Ohio State (Sun Devil Stadium, Tempe, AZ) 
ABC NY 
AFN|Sports: Tue 1/3/2006 0530
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COLL FB   Live Event 
2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl: West Virginia vs Georgia (Georgia Dome, Atlanta, GA) 
ABC NY 
AFN|Sports: Tue 1/3/2006 0930
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COLL FB   Tape Delayed Event 
2006 AT&T Cotton Bowl: Texas Tech vs Alabama (Cotton Bowl, Dallas, TX) 
FOX 
AFN|Sports: Tue 1/3/2006 1600
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COLL FB   Live Event 
2006 FedEx Orange Bowl: Penn State vs Florida State (Dolphins Stadium, Miami, FL) 
ABC NY 
AFN|Sports: Wed 1/4/2006 0900
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COLL FB   Live Event 
2006 Rose Bowl Presented by Citi: USC vs Texas (Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA) 
ABC NY 
AFN|prime Pacific: Thu 1/5/2006 0900
AFN|prime Atlantic: Thu 1/5/2006 0900
AFN|prime Korea: Thu 1/5/2006 0900
AFN|Sports: Thu 1/5/2006 0900

Alternative Sports

So I still can’t get AFRTS here and football season is approaching. I do however get S1, the South African version of ESPN. It's not The "Ocho", but it means I don’t have to watch that Taiwanese pitcher for the Yankees, because I can watch rugby instead.

I now know more about Tri-Nations rugby than cricket. Tonight I watched the Springboks stage a last minute win over the Wallabies. You are all saying, “so the &%!@ what?” But as a man stuck with only metric football for so long, it’s a big deal.

So Wrong

This speaks for itself.

Wasting Time

I’ve been wasting a lot of time ripping CDs lately. Usually, I wouldn’t say wasted, because I’m usually sitting around doing other things or pretending to do useful stuff while this is going on. Not that this is a simple matter for me – I care about the way my music sounds and I’m generally unimpressed with MP3s. MP3Pro, however, I find listenable. So I’ve been using Musicmatch with its MP3Pro encoder to rip CDs.

Non-MP3Pro enabled players and devices can play MP3Pro, but it doesn’t sound as good. So I’m sitting around, ripping MP3s, and shopping for parts for a media center PC. Since I’m downloading all my TV shows these days it just makes sense. I realize that I can get a 300GB drive for about $120. Doing some simple math, I find I can hold far more CDs than I own in full uncompressed quality on one drive.

So the ripping starts anew. At least once I have it done this time I don’t have to worry about a new format sounding better – well, so long as I’m not buying SACD or DVD-A recordings. Plus, I don’t have to worry about the sound quality under other players, only my network speed.