Mike’s Blog

I was listening to sports radio this morning and heard the host apologizing to the listeners for “The Big Bang Theory”, a new CBS comedy about two stereotypical nerd/geniuses who share an apartment across the hall from the building’s newest resident, a very attractive young woman. (The specific quote: “I owe you some digital recording space for that one”.) My wife didn’t care for the show either, but I sort of enjoyed it much like I did Beavis and Butthead - in other words, I know people who are exactly like the two main characters, so I got a kick out of it.

So I wondered: why do so many people despise something I sort of enjoyed? I quickly realized that this show really has a very limited target audience, and I just so happen to fall into it: nerds with a sense of humor. The average person doesn’t get the nerdy references (like the guy wearing the 42 hat), doesn’t identify with the two main characters, doesn’t understand at all why a reasonably hot girl would give two such dorks the time of day, and ultimately couldn’t care less about the show. The average nerd does get the references, but has no ability to laugh at himself or those who are like him - for that matter, no ability to laugh at anything  . Seriously - crack a joke, any joke, and a true nerd will point out the slightest error in spelling, grammar, or logic, thereby sucking all the fun out of it. I wonder if this is a defense mechanism developed after constantly being given wedgies by football players in high school. Anyway, I digress…

So in conclusion, a show that makes its tiny target audience only sort of chuckle is doomed from the get-go. I give it six weeks, and that’s a shame because comedies on broadcast networks are nearly extinct. Yeah, I know there’s plenty of comedy on cable, but the vast majority of those shows seem to be trying to out-shock and out-offend all the rest, and that gets old and juvenile (to me, anyway) in a hurry.

Make me laugh, dangit!

Why?  Because if 50 Cent is true to his word, the fact that Kanye’s latest album outsold his means Mr. Cent will never release another album again.  What could be better than that?

I don’t much care for rap, but I can at least tolerate Kanye West.  At least he seems to try to keep his songs fun.

Well, it’s official - the NHL has finally announced the outdoor game between the Sabres and Penguins on New Year’s Day.  For all Gary Bettman’s faults and missteps, he’s finally done something I can be happy about on a personal level.  This is gonna be insane and I can’t wait.

I didn’t have time to get my season predictions in before Week 1, so I’ll be cheating a bit - sort of - when I get around to it, hopefully before Sunday.  Cheating is OK though - just ask Bill Belichick.

I’m still pretty torn up about Kevin Everett.  I’m so glad he’s starting to regain some movement,  but he’s got such a long way to go that anything but cautious optimism is probably misguided.

The ability to moonwalk, apparently - at least as far as Madden ‘08 is concerned. The best part comes at the end of the video when Favre reacts. Great stuff, although those offended by the F-word should probably skip this.

After months of teasing, my Xbox 360 finally bit the dust this past weekend. It locked up 5 or 6 times on Friday night while trying to play All-Pro Football 2K8, not even letting me get past the first quarter. The lockups continued on Saturday, culminating with the dreaded Red Ring of Death on Sunday morning. Not a big deal, because I had the warranty from Gamestop - I didn’t have to ship out my console to Microsoft and wait weeks for its return. I detached the hard drive from my lifeless white box and headed off to replace it with a working one.

Except it wasn’t quite that simple. I brought the replacement 360 home and plugged it in, and it was DOA! Red ring of death right out of the box. I looked at the console manufacture date on the back, and it said October ‘05. Doubleyou-tee-eff. I know for a fact that particular Gamestop has sold out of 360’s at some point in the near past - how on earth does it end up with a 360 made before its release date? Microsoft, what are you doing sticking refurbished 360s in new boxes? To make matters worse, that was the store’s last 360 - and two other Gamestops that were called were out of stick as well. The gaming gods truly were frowning upon me.

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. A fourth Gamestop location was called, and not only did they have them in stock, but it just so happened to be one that was manufactured in July ‘07. Since it’s been produced after Microsoft finally acknowledged they had some design and reliability flaws, that means it should be more reliable and has a quieter DVD drive than the originals - and not only that, but it’s got an HDMI port too so I’m ready when the wife finally lets me get an HDTV. Huzzah!

I celebrated my return to gaming by thrashing maddhaze in Madden ‘08 last night. Now I’m looking for more victims.

My TV, Xbox 360, Wii, and computer are now hooked up at the new house, so I think this means we’ve officially moved in. We’ve got lots of boxes to unpack yet, but we’re taking it slow. Lots of work has already been done, including a new kitchen sink and a new vanity, medicine cabinet, sink, and shower surround in the bathroom. This means that we’ve been so busy we barely have time to breathe. And by “we”, I really mean “my brother”, who’s been hard at work doing all that for us.

In other news, I cleaned out my dresser tonight and discovered I had 50 T-shirts. Who in the hell needs 50 T-shirts? No wonder I couldn’t fit anything else in there.

Football season is around the corner, and that means it’s time for fantasy football drafts… first one is on Sunday, then the draft for my league is Tuesday, and finally the office league draft on Labor Day night. I can hardly wait.

I’ll put up pictures of the new house at some point… when it’s presentable enough to take pics of

I feel like I should be writing something more profound here, but all I can say is:  Thank you for your many contributions to the game of football.  You will be missed.

My condolences to the Walsh family.
ESPN - Former 49ers head coach Bill Walsh dies - NFL

When NFL players change teams, they often want to wear the numbers they’ve been using. The standard practice is for one player to pay money to the current owner of the number for its rights. As if it doesn’t already sound petty that multi-million dollar athletes extort money from one another for such a thing, there was actually a dispute over a number a couple years ago involving current Redskin Clinton Portis and former Redskin Ifeanyi Ohalete. Portis wanted Ohalete’s #26 and they agreed to a certain sum of money, but when Ohalete was cut by the Redskins, Portis stopped paying. (They eventually came to an agreement).

Ahman Green and Jason Simmons of the Houston Texans are apparently above such petty behavior. Green signed with Houston during the current offseason, but his #30 that he’d worn with the Packers for many seasons was already taken by Simmons. When he approached Simmons about a deal for the number, Simmons had a plan. Instead of accepting money, Simmons asked Green to make a $25,000 down payment on a home for a deserving single mom. A search was conducted, a single mother with a 7-year-old autistic son was chosen, and the checks (including a matching $25,000 from Texans owner Bob McNair, one of the classier owners in sports) were presented yesterday in an emotional ceremony.

In a sports world where athletes are routinely involved in criminal activities, such a story makes me happy to be an NFL fan. If only there were more players like Simmons, Green and Warrick Dunn of the Falcons (whose charity work Simmons’ idea just might have been inspired by).

This is pretty neat and I can’t believe I didn’t know about this.  Turns out that there’s a hotkey combo to select a specific tab in Firefox. This is really handy for me when using webapps like Meebo that I shuffle back and forth from.

Select Specific Tab with Keyboard Hotkey in Firefox :: the How-To Geek

“I was surprised to see that they were killing dogs by hanging them and one dog was killed by slamming it to the ground. Those are extremely violent methods of execution — they’re unnecessary and just sick.” - John Goodwin of the Humane Society on the allegations against Michael Vick and friends

The quote above is intended to illustrate exactly how serious this situation is. No, Mr. Clinton Portis, it’s not simply a bunch of guys who choose to have a little fun by getting their dogs together for a little playtime. These people are loathsome creatures who murder dogs for profit in vile and gruesome ways.

If Michael Vick is proven to be involved in this dogfighting ring, I hope he’s banned from the NFL for life. He won’t be, of course, but I’d be happy with a year’s suspension. Anything less indicates the NFL treats marquee players differently than the rank-and-file. Time to put your money where your mouth is, Roger.

The full story, including more of the grisly details is right here.

Briere rejects Sabres’ offer

I think what drives me nuts about this are the comments from seemingly ill-informed people such as “Buffalo was cheap last year thats why they are paying this year” and “Buffalo’s cheap ways are coming back to bite them in the slug!!!”

Point 1: In case you’ve forgotten, the NHL has a salary cap. Each team is not allowed to go over a predefined league limit for player payroll, meaning that you’ve got a lot of players to keep happy with only a finite amount of money. The Sabres just barely did that last year, managing to stay under the $44 million cap only with such actions as walking away from JP Dumont’s $2.9 million arbitration award, trading Marty Biron at the deadline to dump his $2 million salary, and demoting Drew Stafford to the minors for the final two games of the regular season. Can someone explain to me how spending every red penny on players that the league allows you to spend is considered “cheap”?

Point 2: This year, the Sabres are trying to resign Drury and perhaps Zubrus (although the latter is unlikely at this point), and will have to match whatever offer sheets come in for RFAs Thomas Vanek and Derek Roy. Plus, I’m sure they’d like to pick up a gritty winger or two. So… starting the negotiations by offering a guy what he wanted the prior year, knowing that you have a heap of other players to keep happy with a limited amount of spending ability, is being cheap?

Point 3: The salary cap is rising too quickly, from $39 million two years ago to $50.3 million this year. (Side note: I sure wish my own salary would increase by nearly a third over a two-year span.) The Sabres are attempting to keep up with this tidal wave of rising payroll while having revenue that is among the lowest in the league: average ticket prices are in the mid-$30 range, necessary because sellouts weren’t nearly as prevalent before last year, and because the economy in Buffalo is terrible.

But I suppose it’s just easier to assume the Sabres are just cheap. So forget everything I just said and cling to that mantra like a dog with a new chewtoy.

Flashback to May 19th, 2007: As the Ottawa Senators celebrated a series-clinching overtime goal right beneath me, my emotions got the best of me and I bitterly exclaimed: “Don’t worry Ottawa, you’ll blow it in the finals.”

I told you so.

Congrats to the Ducks on being the first California team, and the first team on the West Coast in over 80 years (no, Colorado doesn’t count) to win the Stanley Cup. The Ducks didn’t just win, they consistently manhandled the Sens. Ottawa won a lot of games in the playoffs by playing a physical style, but when they ran into a team that plays even more physical, they couldn’t hang. Ray Emery fell back down to earth and proved he’s a below-average goaltender who seems to let in at least one soft goal per game, and the rest of the Sens did nothing to shed their image as chokers. They were so rattled that they turned over the puck like it was a hot potato and resorted to a barrage of cheap shots, including Chris Neil’s attempt to behead Andy McDonald in Game 3 (which, mysteriously, went unpunished) and Daniel Alfredsson’s shooting of the puck at Scott Niedermayer in Game 4 as the period ended in a humiliating display of poor sportsmanship.

Can you tell I don’t like Ottawa very much? Heh.

This video is the sort of thing I’ll watch years from now when I’m having a bad day, and it will cheer me up instantly.

Yes, it’s true… my wife and I are expecting a baby at the end of November. Now that we’ve told most everyone in person, I figured it was time to announce it here.

It’s hard to know what to say about this, other than “wow”.  We’ve been planning this for quite some time, but it still seems hard to believe that it’s actually happening.  I just hope that I’ll be as good of a dad as my wife seems to think I’ll be.  At least I know we’ll have plenty of support, since we’ll be living very close to her parents soon.

It’s weird knowing that the entire focus of your life is about to change.  Yet, at the same time, it’s pretty darn cool.

Instead of “I haven’t”, using “I’ve not”.  For example: “I’ve not seen Spiderman 3 yet.”

I guess it’s still a technically correct thing to say, so I don’t know why this bugs me so much.  Maybe it’s because it makes me feel like the writer/speaker is trying to sound pretentious.

This very nicely sums up my feelings about nerds who whine and cry about every little “inaccuracy” in movies like the rest of the world is supposed to care. Just shut up and enjoy the movie!

I was especially amused to read this after the experience I went through with Dell back in January. I’ll sum up my post from the comment thread here:

I’m glad to see these crooks get slapped around a bit after the experience I had when I decided to order a new laptop back in January. I’m especially pleased that it’s happening in my home state.

I didn’t qualify for Dell’s “interest-free” line of credit. I’d love to know what one actually has to do to qualify for this mythical interest-free credit, because my credit score is outstanding - but that’s just a minor annoyance compared to what I went through to cancel the unwanted line of credit for which I *was* approved, the one that offered the low, low rate of 22.74% APR. (Yeah, can’t imagine why I didn’t want to keep that line of credit - what a deal.) It took three phone calls to finally get this done, including one with a liar who assured me that the account would never be activated because I didn’t make a purchase. (The card arrived in the mail a couple days after that conversation.)

Then they refused to send me confirmation that the account was closed because I didn’t accept the terms and conditions. So…. you won’t tell me you’ve closed an account unless I accept the terms, which would in fact mean I want the account open. Um, OK. My brain still hurts over that one. Anyway, once I started using initials such as “BBB” I got the confirmation letter I was looking for.

Buy a Dell if you must, but stay far, far away from their credit department unless you consider sanity to be overrated. Dell lost my business with this BS.

Oh, and I still don’t have a new laptop.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this situation. I wonder if I might potentially be involved in a settlement. I’d consider that a fair trade for the slight hit my credit score likely took as a result of this fiasco.

Since buying a new router the other day, I decided to muck around with streaming video from my PC to my Xbox 360. It used to be that you needed a PC running Windows Media Center for this, but as of last fall you could use a Windows XP-based PC with the right software - for example, Windows Media Player 11 or Microsoft’s Zune software. In theory, one could download various TV shows and video clips from the Internet and enjoy playback on a 360.

Except there’s a bit of a drawback: the 360 only understands the Windows Media Video (WMV) file format and codecs. Occasionally, I find myself needing to download a show from the Internet when my somewhat buggy DirecTV DVR messes up, and those aren’t WMV. Furthermore, video conversion is generally a pain.

Enter TVersity. It’s an Xbox 360-compatible media server with the ability to transcode video from almost any format to WMV on the fly. No need to pre-convert anything - I just call up a video via the 360, wait a few seconds, and bam, I’m sitting on my couch and enjoying it on my TV instead of trying to watch it while uncomfortably huddled around my computer monitor.

Combined with this handy DirecTV-Xbox 360 remote hack, watching video files just got a whole lot more painless for me. Huzzah!

On the eve of the NFL draft, I thought I’d offer my teams a little advice:

San Francisco: You need a wide receiver.  Desperately.  Oakland will probably take JaMarcus Russell, so trade up with Detroit to get Calvin Johnson with the #2 pick.  You have like 4 million picks in the fourth round - package one of them with the #11 overall pick and take advantage of the fact that Matt Millen is a moron.  Please, for the love of all that is holy, give Alex Smith someone to throw the ball to.

Buffalo: Marv, if you manage to pull off the Michael Turner trade, this is easy. His name is Patrick Willis.  If the Turner trade doesn’t happen, then I’m happy with Marshawn Lynch here. Not getting a linebacker or a running back at this spot is criminal.  Please don’t draft a thousand defensive backs like you did last year.

EASTERN CONFERENCE
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Buffalo (1) vs. New York Rangers (6)
Buffalo swept the season series with the Rangers, but the Rangers were a vastly different team when they last played on Dec. 1st. Many took the Islanders lightly, but they played the Sabres much tougher than most people expected - and the Sabres still won in five. The Rangers will offer more of a challenge, but the Sabres are up to it after acknowledging that they need to play better. The Rangers took advantage of an easy first-round matchup with the overrated Thrashers and wiped them out in four straight, but the train stops here. Sean Avery will not be able to throw Buffalo off its game as easily as he did with Kovalchuk, Hossa, and Kozlov, and the Rangers’ D is slow and exploitable. Sabres in 6.

New Jersey (2) vs. Ottawa (4)
Ottawa easily beat a young and shell-shocked Pittsburgh team, while New Jersey struggled a bit against the one-line Lightning. But now, the Devils and Senators enter a matchup in which the opposition has just as much depth and experience. As a Sabres fan, I hope these two teams beat the hell out of each other. Martin Brodeur will not be able to get away with mediocre play as he did in the first three games against Tampa. Ottawa in 7.

WESTERN CONFERENCE
=====================
Detroit (1) vs. San Jose (5)
Don’t look at the rankings here - the only reason Detroit finished a mere six points ahead of San Jose was because of the easy-pickings division they play in. Although Detroit overwhelmed Calgary, it took them six games to do so - and San Jose is far, far better than Calgary. San Jose beat Nashville in five games despite going only 2 for 30 on the powerplay, and if they get it on track in this series, Detroit is done. San Jose in 6.

Anaheim (2) vs. Vancouver (3)
Anaheim won the season series 3-1 and held Vancouver to an average of 2 goals per game. In its previous series against Dallas, Vancouver scored a mere 13 goals in 7 games - only eight of which came in the final six games. These are not auspicious numbers for the Canucks. Marty Turco was stellar in the first round, but let’s face it, the Canucks are extremely mediocre offensively - and now they get to face Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger. Does Roberto Luongo have four shutouts in him? He might need to for the Canucks to have a chance. Anaheim in 5.