UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Before we get started, a bit of seriousness (maybe…):

I am sitting here, broken-hearted, as I am typing up this blog entry. I must spill my guts and talk about an event that happened yesterday that left me dumbstruck and devastated. It hurt me so much that I had to stop what I was doing for a few minutes to let reality set in. I’m in so much pain that it may take me several days, or even weeks, to fully recover. I thought I would have you in my life, but fates intervened, and now you’re gone. My heart aches, my body hurts, and I gotta say, it really sucks. When it became official, and I knew that you and I were not to be, I felt like I got punched in the stomach and had my foot run over by a truck. Why, oh why, did you have to tease me like that? I wish you had never come into my life!

It’ll take some time, and maybe some beers, but eventually I’ll get over the fact that I will not get the Heat-Cavs first round playoff match that I had hoped for!

(All that above was for your Emmy consideration :P)

No thanks to the Bulls’ inability to beat the New Jersey Nets, the Heat get to play the Bulls in the first round, while the Cleveland Cavs draw an undermanned–a horrible understatement, by the way–Wizards team. The only way I’ll get my dream Heat-Cavs matchup is if they play each other in the Eastern Conference Finals, and I don’t want that, only because that means one of the two teams will make it to the NBA Finals. Yeah, I kinda don’t like either team.

There, I feel better already.

Some family-related quick-hitters (hence the title of this blog entry!):

- I swear my sister has some sort of karmic powers. If I do or say something negative to her, something will happen to me due to negative karma. Case in point: one time, she hit her elbow on one of our dining room chairs. I laughed hysterically, only to hit my elbow against a wall. Screw the “Jim Rome karma”; that has nothing on my sister’s karma.

- I must remind myself to not cook turkey burgers for my mom ever again. I undercooked her burger ever so slightly–we’re talking one nano-millimeter of pink in the patty–and she nearly flipped out. She proceeded to throw her patty back on the stove for a few minutes more. As if that wasn’t enough, she then filleted the patty (cutting it in half along the edge of the meat), and proceeded to nuke the two smaller patties into oblivion. The two halves were charred, and about as tasty as shoe leather!

Now I understand that most people don’t like their burgers undercooked, and ground meat should really be cooked thoroughly, to minimize the risk of illness; I like to slightly under cook my burgers, though, just leaving them barely pink inside the patty (~ medium well, I’d say). It keeps the burger juicy, and the patty gets warm enough to reduce the risk of getting sick. At the same time, I don’t have a problem with people ordering their burgers well done. But badly overcooking your hamburger? Beef jerky would think that my mom’s hamburger was too dry.

- I’ve lots to do this weekend with the family. There’s a birthday party on Saturday, featuring a BBQ. There’s a breakfast brunch on Sunday morning. To top it all off, there is my mom’s 60th birthday Sunday night. By Monday morning, I expect to be visiting Tarzana Medical Center, getting my stomach pumped.

Au revoir!

by Peter
5 Comments »

I had to make a second blog entry today, just to talk about anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson and his latest bout with foot-in-mouth disease.

Check out this story. Apparently Jack Thompson blames Bill Gates for the VaTech shootings, suggesting that Microsoft was the publisher of Counterstrike. As pointed out in the article, although it can be said that Microsoft published Counterstrike on the Xbox, the original developer of the game was Valve Software. Oops!

Maybe Thompson is suggesting that we sue Microsoft for providing an operating system to play Counterstrike on. And you know what? I agree with him. While we’re at it, let’s sue Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon.com, etc. for stocking these games on their shelves. Let’s sue Dell, HP, Compaq, and other computer manufacturers for providing the hardware to play such games. Why don’t we go all the way to oil companies, for selling fuel to allow me to go to the stores, or the car manufacturers themselves? Or why not Goodyear for providing me tires?

(Yeah, I can go on all night).

BTW, I am in pain after laughing uncontrollably at this guy’s spiel.

by Peter
No Comments »

- This story regarding NBA official Joey Crawford and Tim Duncan is just hilarious, and I’m not at all surprised to see Crawford suspended for the rest of the season. For one thing, Duncan is about the least temperamental player in the NBA. Second, so what if he was laughing on the bench? How do we know that he was directly laughing at a call made by Crawford? Refs need to learn that their job is simply to officiate a game, right down the middle, and to not allow their egos to come into play.

Then again, this is the NBA; NBA officials aren’t exactly the most unbiased referees in all of sports.

- Brian Urlacher got fined $100,000 for wearing a Vitamin Water cap at a press conference during the week of Super Bowl. For those of you that don’t know, the Super Bowl was in early February. Apparently, it is illegal to promote a product that isn’t a league-designated sponsor. This article sums up my opinion on the fines levied against Urlacher. Urlacher gets $100,000 for wearing a cap, but Terrible Owens gets only $35,000 for spitting on a guy? I don’t care that league rules mandate a $100,000 fine for a violation that occurs during Super Bowl week. IMO, the fine is about $90,000 too much. Never mind the fact that this is Brian Urlacher; how many negative headlines has this guy produced? None?

Ok, the rest of the blog will be sports-free, or double your money back!

- That pic of the VaTech gunman holding both guns might be one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.

- Did anyone catch Chris Matthews–host of MSNBC’s Hardball–interviewing anti-video game nutjob Jack Thompson? I can’t stand Thompson, so when I saw him appear on Hardball, I muted my TV. According to some discussion on AT, apparently Thompson (not surprisingly) blamed CounterStrike for the shooter’s rampage, only to have Matthews rip him a new one by pointing out that Thompson had absolutely no evidence to prove this. To further 0wn Thompson, Matthews interviewed a suitemate of the shooter’s, and the guy said that the shooter never played video games. Nice try, Mr. Thompson. Maybe you should try getting Pac-Man banned; that game encourages gluttony AND murder!

(Tangent: the idea of playing Pac-Man has be jonesing for some NES retro-gaming. If only I can find the driver for my Xbox to PC adapter!)

- Today’s eBay story: A year or two ago, I sold a copy of Quickbooks 200x (I forgot what version) to a lady in New York. Two weeks went by after the auction closed without hearing from the buyer. I fired off an email to her, saying that I was going to relist the auction. Right before I got around to relisting, the buyer emailed me, saying that she wanted to complete the transaction. She explained that she was vacationing on her houseboat, and that kept her away from her email. She sent me a PayPal payment, but she provided an unconfirmed shipping address.

(Tangent: in order to be “protected” by PayPal against fradulent payments [and yes, the quotes are necessary; anyone familiar with PayPal would understand why], an item must be sent to a “confirmed” address–the billing address of one credit card linked to the buyer’s PayPal address)

I refunded the payment and instructed the buyer on how to add a confirmed address to her PayPal account. She said she would do it right away. At this point, I should really have just told her to go find another seller.

A week elapsed, and I again had not heard anything from the buyer (what a surprise!), so I fired another email to her. I explained that I was going to file an Unpaid Item Dispute on this transaction, in an attempt to recoup my listing fees for the auction. I made one huge mistake, though; I filed the dispute as a mutual agreement to cancel the transaction. Had I claimed that the buyer failed to go through with the transaction, she would have been hit with an Unpaid Item strike, and I would have recouped my funds. I only filed the mutual agreement to be nice; it was an attempt to let her out of the transaction without penalty.

Minutes later (notice how quickly the buyer is able to respond to my emails, once I apply pressure to her!), she emailed me back, saying that she still wanted to go through with the transaction. Again, she explained that her time on her houseboat kept her away from a computer. She also cancelled my dispute, claiming that she did not agree to mutually cancel the transaction! That meant that I could not ever recoup my fees from the buyer, in case she did flake out again.

I fired off one last email, saying that I demanded a USPS Money Order, and she had three days to contact me with confirmation that the money order was sent. Of course, I never heard from the buyer again. I guess her houseboat sank or something…

Enjoy!

by Peter
2 Comments »

Every day, since the start of the Iron Man Blogging Competition, there has been a “Topic of the Day.” For whatever reason, I have not blogged about any of the TotDs, but today’s Topic was one that I couldn’t resist.

TotD: Strangest thing you bought on eBay? Strangest thing you’ve sold on eBay?

I’m gonna change up the TotD slightly, and talk about one item that took four attempts to sell on eBay. The story about this cursed cell phone can be read, in its entirely, at these two links:

The Cursed Cell Phone
The Cursed Cell Phone, part 2

(note: I wrote these back in 2003, not caring about grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc.)

The Cliffs’ Notes version of the story goes like this:

- I put my Samsung SGH-N625 cell phone on eBay, after upgrading my contract and getting a new phone. It sold, but the buyer NPBed (Non-Paying Bidder; in other words, he won my auction and never paid me for the item).
- I put my phone back up on eBay, and sold it again…or so I thought. The buyer this time NPBed as well.
- Third time’s the charm? Hell no. It turns out I was dealing with a would-be scammer.
- On the fourth attempt, I actually got payment and sent out the phone, Unfortunately, the buyer had trouble getting the phone to work. After my last email, I never did hear back from the guy; hopefully he finally got the phone to work for him.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, the beginning of my contract with Crapular…er…Cingular started like this (Alert! The link contains overly dramatic dialogue between myself and Cingular Customer Service Representatives! You have been warned.)

Cliffs:

- Cingular’s system overcharged me like crazy
- CSRs said they were not at fault
- Oh wait, I did get overcharged!
- I got credited $10/mo for three months for the inconvenience.

For some crazy reason, I stuck with Cingular until 2006. Only recently did I kick Cingular to the curb, switching to Sprint, and I have not looked back. Of course, it’s hard to beat Sprint’s SERO plan: $30/month, 500 minutes, and Vision (internet).

Actually, I do remember one really strange item I sold on eBay. A few years back, a bunch of people won free Cybikos (the classic edition, not the Xtreme one pictured). The toy intrigued me for all of five seconds, before I decided to sell it on eBay. At the time, most people were getting $20-25 for their Cybikos.

I threw it up on eBay, and it was bid up to around $15 with about five minutes to go in the auction. All of a sudden, the eBay snipers came out of the woodwork, and somehow, the auction ended at $41 + shipping!!! Needless to say, I was VERY happy with that result.

(Tangent: great…yet another stupid Mac v PC commercial just aired)

A couple quick sports-related thoughts:

- The Clippers actually beat the Suns! Too bad Dallas played only one starter–Jason Terry–and Golden State beat them. Now the Clips have to win their last game and have GS lose their last one to get into the playoffs.

- The Dodgers won again, but Jason Schmidt was placed on the DL. I would have wagered that Brad Penny would have been the first Dodger starting pitcher to hit the DL. Oh well.

By the way, I realize this blog entry makes seven entries in a row that were NOT sports-dominated! I have no idea what is going on!

Until next time, happy blogging!

by Peter
3 Comments »

Before I get started, it dawned upon me last night that “Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson” would have made an awesome title for yesterday’s blog entry! Oh well, opportunity lost!

Some quick-hitters:

- There’s nothing more bone-chilling than to turn on my radio, expecting to hear Jim Rome rant about something stupid, only to hear him talk about the shooting on the Virginia Tech campus. I can’t imagine how frightened the students on campus were, once word spread that the gunman was loose. Prayers go out to the victims and the families.

- Nice job, Clippers! All you had to do was beat the Kings to maintain control of your own destiny. Now, you have to beat the Suns, or pray that Golden State loses to Dallas and Portland (assuming you beat NOK).

- It took a while, but the Denver Nuggets look like a very scary team. I’m not saying that they will beat the Spurs in the playoffs, but the Spurs have to be sweating having to defend this team for 48 minutes per game.

- My Dodgers sit in first place at 9-3, and Brad Penny is 3-0. W00t! Of course, we’re still only a couple of weeks into the season.

As for the topic at hand:

So you can go ahead and add Target to the list of evil stores; stores guaranteed to lighten my wallet much more significantly than I expect. I dropped by earlier today, with the intention of buying five items: a pair of sandals, some Doritos, some cereal, dishwashing detergent, and a new pillow. I was thinking that the trip was going to run $25-30 at the most. Of course, I ended up spending closer to $50, but at least I did get everything on my shopping list. Damn Jalapeño Cheddar kettle-cooked potato chips and Raisin Bran Crunch!

It was amusing to push my two-and-a-half year old nephew around the store, though, listening to him mumble about every single item he saw. Now that I think about it, he was the one that picked the cereal for me. He was also the one that brought my attention to the kettle-cooked chips. Dammit, this is all his fault! Anyway, we were there for a good hour, and he was doing a lot of talking. Couple that with the fact that we were constantly on the move, and he quickly got worn out; he ended up falling asleep in the cart when we got to the registers. I guess I can add this to my list of effective strategies to wear out a kid to the point of exhaustion and sleepiness, which I dub my “rope-a-dope” technique

(Whew! Once again, twenty-five minutes to spare!)

by Peter
2 Comments »

let’s all go to the market
let’s all go to the market
and get my ankles snapped!

(Robert Frost, I am not. I am aware of that. Also, it’s a sure that bet, whenever I go to an Asian supermarket–99 Ranch, e.g.–I will get my ankles clipped by at least one shopping cart. It’s also 99% likely that that same person will blame me for getting hit, acts as if nothing happened, or laugh at me as s/he carts away).

So I was in Monterey Park for the weekend, and I dropped by 168 Supermarket (where the VONS used to be, near the corner of New and Valley). My mom told me that this place was pretty much like 99 Ranch; when I stepped in, I immediately thought the place was a better-lit, Asian Costco. I do not remember the old VONS being that huge!

So we started off in the produce section, and whoever designed the layout of said section needs to be fired. There are sections less than two cart lengths wide about the place, making navigation very difficult. I can’t count the times people stared at me, claiming I was blocking their way (look, if I could move out of the way, don’t you think I would?!?). One guy cracked me up, though; he was so completely frustrated with the situation that he started crashing into other people’s carts to get them out of his way. And no, I didn’t escape from the produce section unscathed.

The meat/dairy section (at the back of the store) was a lot more wide open. Now that I think about it, the guys responsible for the entire layout of the place should have been fired! The back of the store was a freeway, compared to the side streets of the produce section. The visit to that section of the store wasn’t nearly as bad as the trip down produce lane, if you don’t count the stock boy who leered at me while I was looking for a carton of eggs that didn’t have any broken ones in it.

A few other random thoughts about the grocery trip from hell:

1) I swear the guy standing around in the snack aisle smelled of either bad feet or good cheese.

2) I think 168 Supermarket has a rule stating that nobody in the supermarket is allowed to push the cart normally. I don’t recall the last time I saw that many people pulling their carts behind them or by their side. And yes, one idiot, who was pulling his cart behind him, nearly ran the left rear wheel of his cart over my foot. No, sir, that was not funny. I wonder what I could have gotten as compensation if he did run my foot over.

3) Maybe it was because I was shopping on a Sunday night, or maybe it was because I was shopping this Sunday night, but the cashiers at 168 Supermarket made the Post Office look efficient. Each register had about six or seven customers, and three entire registers were closed, out of 8-10. On top of that, two of them were express lanes.

Needless to say, the grocery trip was no fun at all. Something did happen after the trip, though, that was hilarious. Unfortunately, I can’t share that with you, lest the authorities come knocking on my door…

Some quick sports thoughts:

- That was an awesome ceremony offered to the memory of Jackie Robinson by the Dodgers, and the round of applause the fans gave to Vin Scully was just as cool. So what if we Dodger fans haven’t won a playoff series since 1988? As long as have Vin calling Dodger games, the Dodgers could lose 100 games ever year, and I’ll be somewhat OK with it. It’s a shame that I didn’t appreciate the times when all three major LA sports announcers–Vin Scully, Chick Hearn, and LA Kings’ announcer Bob Miller–were alive nearly as much as I should have.

It was also great to hear Mrs. Rachel Robinson give the speech during the ceremony, and to hear stories about her and her late husband during the second inning of the game, which aired on ESPN. I can’t imagine what they had to go through as Jackie tried crossing the color barrier into baseball. It’s thinking of events like this, and people like Jackie, that remind me that my life isn’t nearly as rough as I pretend it is.

To avoid getting all sentimental, I’ll leave my thoughts of the ceremony at that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ice down my injured ankle, courtesy of a cart that did make contact with my ankle.

(Whew! I got this entry in with 25 minutes to spare!)

by Peter
3 Comments »

(The following is a weak rant. Feel free to skip down to scroll down to the quick-hitters section).

Hey Neighbor,

Nobody, outside of your condo, wants to hear your loud Spanish music blaring through your Bose knock-offs. Trust me, nobody wants to hear that crap, especially not at 9AM on a Saturday morning. Even the neighborhood’s dogs agree with me; their barking along with the music is what finally got me out of bed. I don’t dare confront the guys, though, not with the crime rate in this complex up ten-fold in the past month or so.

(tangent: I am a chronic exaggerator. Trust me, not long ago, that was hard to admit. However, there have been weeks in this hell-hole/condominium complex where the cops have visited every day for a week. I know this because I have the luxury of residing in the condo right next to the front gate.)

In short, I hate this place, and I can’t wait for my lease to expire so that I can move out. Never mind the crap conditions inside my condo; the following events have happened in this complex since I moved in less than two years ago:

- An LCD monitor was left at my front door, and stolen, in a span of twenty-five minutes (the time elapsed between the delivery and the time I got home to find nothing on my doorstep). Granted, PC Connection was dumb enough to ship an LCD monitor–not double-boxed to hide the contents, by the way–without signature confirmation. I got PC Connection to ship me another one via UPS two-day.

- A broken tuba was boxed and left outside one person’s condo, to be picked up via Fedex. That was stolen too.

- A couple who were in the process of moving in left their barbecue grill by the stairs below their condo, unattended. According to a letter they posted around the complex, pleading for the return of the grill, they had left the grill by the stairs for a few minutes at the most.

- I’ve seen car registration stickers removed.

- My favorite one (and by favorite, I mean most ridiculous): someone here stole a wheelchair! How low, on the evolutionary ladder, do you have to be to steal someone’s wheelchair? The guy who stole a prosthetic limb a couple years back thinks that’s ridiculous.

Other than all of the above, this is a nice place to live.

One quick thought:

- I had mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry about how a “no contest” plea was equivalent to “no comment.” George Carlin, among others, once stated that “no comment” is, indeed, a comment. That got me thinking, “is it possible to have absolutely no comment?” For instance, let’s say you’re standing at a podium, getting interviewed by the press. Let’s say one interviewer asks you a question, and you choose to not respond. Could your lack of a response be treated as “no comment,” which would then be considered a comment? Instead of “no comment,” I think I will say “I have a comment, and it is nothing” from now on.

Oh joy! The music, which had been toned down for the last few minutes, is blaring again!

(If I feel up to it, I think I’ll make a second blog entry today, talking about the Lakers’ potential freefall right out of the playoff picture, as well as thoughts of baseball, nearly two weeks into the season. If not, I’ll save it for tomorrow.)

by Peter
2 Comments »

(disclaimer: I’m going for a third straight sports-free blog entry. I already feel faint. The worst part is, I have enough material to go another two or three sports-free entries!)

Quick hitters:

- Give me a turkey burger over a (beef) hamburger any day of the week. If ground turkey wasn’t so expensive ($2.29/lb at Costco for ~6 lbs of meat), I’d stop buying ground beef altogether and switch to ground turkey. Tacos with turkey meat, spaghetti with turkey meat sauce, turkey meat balls, etc…they all work for me! Plus, I like to believe that ground turkey is healthier for me than ground beef. About the only ground turkey recipe that doesn’t work quite well, in my culinary experience, is turkey meat loaf. The turkey meat just leaves the finished loaf too dry for my tastes; that’s where fresh, ~10-15% fat ground beef does the trick.

(Believe it or not, I have never tried grilling turkey burgers! If only I had some charcoal, I’d throw a couple turkey burgers on my Weber grill and go on a turkey burger bender.)

- I am impressed with Canon’s repair department. My sister’s Canon Powershot SD100 camera failed; it was a problem with the CCD, as detailed here. I called Canon’s repair center, and immediately got a UPS prepaid label to ship the camera to them. The repair took them only two days, and they shipped the camera back via Fedex 2-day delivery! On top of that, apparently Canon also thoroughly cleaned the camera, inside and out.

Now to the story I wanted to talk about today:

- A woman in Walnut, CA, Sarah Vasquez, and her mother are suing Best Buy, alleging that a Geek Squad technician, Hao Kuo Chi, recorded the woman showering using his cell phone. According to the lawsuit, Chi went to the bathroom and apparently planted his phone in a way such that he could get a shot of Vasquez showering. Eventually, Vasquez found the phone in her sister’s room, removed the chip (a microSD card, probably), and went to a Verizon store to view the video. The victim claims that Chi could be seen setting up the camera in the footage.

According to this link, Chi has plead no contest, and was sentenced to 72 hours of jail, three years of probation, as well as community service, “sexual impulse” classes, and he must stay away from the victim at all times. Here are my thoughts on this story:

1) I’m still trying to envision how the guy set up his cell phone to do this. Unless the phone was concealed in, say, a medicine cabinet, or hidden in a hamper, I think I would have noticed if someone left a cell phone in my bathroom (not that that would EVER happen :P).

2) The no contest plea leads me to believe that the claims against him are true. If he didn’t do it, the chip would have told the entire story. If Chi never appears on the alleged video, as the victim alleges, wouldn’t that provide some reasonable doubt to the story? As far as I’m concerned, if I were wrongfully accused, I would have screamed bloody murder and threatened the accusers with a defamation suit. One of two things must be true here: either the guy did it, or he didn’t but was absolutely certain that the evidence against him would lead to a conviction.

(The following paragraph contains an analogy to sports. You have been warned).

The no contest plea, in my eyes, is the equivalent of a baseball player having no comment when asked if he had ever taken steroids. If you didn’t cheat, never considered cheating, and don’t want to be grouped with people accused of being cheaters, wouldn’t you come out and say “hell no, I did NOT take steroids”? Instead, most athletes are going with a heavily-worded “no comment,” leaving the general public to believe the guy’s hiding something.

One thing is for sure; it’ll be interesting to see how much Best Buy offers the plaintiff in a settlement. I’m 99% sure that Best Buy will not want this case to go to trial.

Until next time!

by Peter
No Comments »

(All the taste of the regular UngsungBlog, but with zero sports! Yes, I’m going to attempt a second sports-free blog! This could get ugly…)

- I don’t think I got more than an hour of sleep, as I was suffering from a bad sore throat, pains in the stomach, and a bad cramp in my right leg. Worse, it was horribly windy last night–and it still is–with gusts of wind hitting my window all night. It was a rough night, to say the least, and it’s all my fault. This is what happens when one insults the Costco gods!!! I shall now say three “Hail Costco”s, and offer a cheese danish, a glass of Dole juice, and some Craisins to them.

(oooh…the winds seem to have died down, my leg no longer hurts, and my throat isn’t as irritated as it was a minute ago. I think the offering is working!)

- Oh no! Warren Buffett is now only the third-richest man in the world, after getting passed by Mexican “telecom titan” Carlos Slim Helú, $53.1 billion to $52.4 billion. Still #1 is Bill Gates, at $56.0 billion, but the article suggests that Mr. Helú could eventually pass him. Regarding Mr. Buffett: poor poor guy. What is he going to do, now that he is only the third richest guy in the world?

Speaking of which, my sister joked that Mr. Helú probably was really worth 53.1 billion pesos. Using XE.com’s currency converter, that comes out to about $4.8 billion USD; not a bad chunk of change still, wouldn’t you agree?

- Newsweek reported that a CBS producer was fired after an article appearing in Katie Couric’s “Notebook” was plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal. Couric will not be reprimanded in any way, due to the fact that she does not actually write these pieces herself. Disregarding the plagiarism for now, isn’t affixing your name to a piece that you have no real input in providing, at best, journalistic dishonesty? Nice job by CBS to call the plagiarism an “omission,” by the way, suggesting that they forgot to mention that the article was blatantly ripped. Whoops!

I wish I could ask the now unemployed producer if he really expected to get away with this. Let’s see, you read an article from the Wall Street Journal–a newspaper with slightly more readers than one of those cheesy magazines you can find at the supermarket for free–and you decided to rip the article nearly word-for-word for use on a video segment associated with the CBS Evening News–a news show that has slightly more viewers than a City Council meeting on the Public Access channel? Talk about committing career suicide.

(By the way, did you know that Amazon.com keeps a complete order history of every order you’ve placed at Amazon.com? My oldest account has order details from orders placed in 2000!)

- Finally, even though more women use the internet than men, men are more likely to watch internet videos than women. I can’t say that I’m surprised by either figure, especially the latter. My favorite quote from the article:

“Men are more visual than women, who tend to communicate in writing and or in words,” said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst with eMarketer and the author of the report.

Right…men watch more videos online than women do, because women prefer writing. I’m sure the availability of online porn, webcam girls on Youtube, and the like, have absolutely no correlation to the figures cited in the article. Never mind sports sites, like ESPN, that offer sports clips for those who don’t get enough sports highlights from hours of SportsCenter and ESPNews.

(Crap…does the sentence above count as talking about sports? Did I fail to avoid talking about sports for a second consecutive blog entry? I’d argue that I wasn’t talking about a specific sports topic, so that should count!)

That’s all for now! Happy blogging!

by Peter
2 Comments »

It seems that, lately, I have been talking way too much about sports, and not nearly enough about non-sports related topics. So, I guarantee this blog entry to be 100% Sports free, or your money back!

(I’m doing this for my fellow IMBCers. Let’s hope I make it to the end of this entry without passing out!)

Some quick hitters:

- I hate Costco. I hate it not because of their nice prices for bulk goods. I hate it not because I could spend hours in the store and not be bored. No, I hate Costco because my wallet always ends up much lighter than anticipated. Sure, I can blame myself and my lack of willpower, but it is my right as an American to put the blame on someone else, isn’t it? Hey, if that horizontally-challenged guy (I can’t call him a “fattie,” without risking a libel suit) in New York can sue McDonalds for clogging his arteries, I can blame Costco for tempting me to spend money!

- I’m big on good customer service, and Fergus from the Macy’s in Northridge gets two thumbs up. He helped us out for a good hour, looking for stuff to buy on my sister’s friend’s bridal registry list. I wish I could ship a video of his act to the Best Buys and Circuit Cities in the San Gabriel Valley on customer service training.

- Did you see the act by Larry Birkhead during his press conference, after the courts announced that he was the provider of the sperm that brought baby Dannielynn into the world (video can be seen here)? Tom Cruise bouncing all over Oprah’s sofas thought Birkhead needed to calm down. Of course, who can blame the guy for going James Cameron after the court’s announcement became official? After all, he could potentially get a cut of the over $500 million estate that Smith’s deceased ATM…er…husband owned, which is still in limbo (unless you actually believe he cares about the kid, and only the kid). I’m surprised he didn’t scream “I’m king of the world!” instead of “I told you so!”

(wow…this is hard…must…not…talk…about…sports)

- Two planes were held up from landing for 18 minutes, while a third, carrying lung transplants, could not take off, because an airport’s air traffic controller was taking a bathroom break. I’ll reiterate what the article stated: why was there only one air traffic controller on duty? What if the guy had a serious case of indigestion and had to stay in the bathroom for a longer period of time? Worse yet, what if the guy was somehow incapacitated? Thank goodness nothing serious happened, and it sounded like the controller was responsible enough to wait for a low-traffic period to take his break. Then again, maybe the guy could have gone crazy NASA woman and worn adult diapers until a second air traffic controller came on duty. Eighteen minute bathroom break, eh? It’s a good thing he didn’t eat at Taco Bell prior to his shift.

After the hour and a half Macy’s Death March–a Jon Pinette reference, by the way; if you haven’t seen any of his stand up routines, I recommend you do!–and the wallet-lightening trip to Costco, I’m beat. I did it, though; I avoided talking about sports for an entire blog entry!

by Peter
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