UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

- Quick thought: does it count as “found money” (you know, like when you find $20 in your jeans pocket right before doing the laundry) when you receive a rebate check for an item you purchased, but you completely forgot that you filed in the first place?

I think so. I just “found” a $10 rebate check today! W00t!

- Don’t you hate it when you spend hours trying to get something to work, and then you realize that you’re not going to get anywhere close to a full return on investment once the darn thing works?

Yeah, me too.

I’ve been trying to get this K-World PVR-TV2800U working on any of my four computers. I got this thing working before, about a year ago, but that was on a laptop that I no longer own.

(Tangent: Why am I doing this? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure. In fact, I forgot I had this thing until I dug it out of my junk computer part drawer. I guess I couldn’t resist the challenge…)

To put it bluntly, getting this thing to work was an absolute nightmare. First of all, the K-World drivers are known to be awful; they crash a lot, and that’s assuming you can even get the drivers properly installed. Even with the drivers installed, it seems that there’s a good chance that the hardware won’t even start up properly (which is exactly what happened to me).

I used four different versions of the driver for this piece of crap…er…hardware: the version included with the item (it took me a while just to locate the CD), and three others I found online. I tried all four versions, even uninstalling and rebooting before I installed a new version, and I got nowhere!

Several HOURS later (5,000 points to me for being stubborn enough to stick to the project), I ran into some trouble with an installation step; at this point, I had no idea which version of the driver I was using. I was forced to reboot, and somehow, someway, the darn thing worked!

(Of course, right?)

Several hours invested, and I’m not 100% sure why I wanted to install this piece of garbage in the first place. All I know for sure is that I’m never going to get enough utility out of the device to warrant investing as much time as I did trying to get it to work.

- (thanks Krunk) Here’s a list of seven “nasty” grammatical errors that commonly befall bloggers.

(This is actually the second list; the first list can be found here.)

The errors:

- Loose v. Lose: I can’t stand it when people screw this up!
- Me, Myself, and I (using I instead of me): Guilty. I’ve done this on occasion.
- Different than vs. Different from: Ditto.
- Improper Use of the Apostrophe: Jim Lampley, guest hosting on The Jim Rome Show, said it best, in regards to the misuse of apostrophes. Paraphrasing, he said that if the misuse of apostrophes might as well lead to anarchy and the total destruction of society.

(Yeah, a bit of a stretch there…)

- Parallelism (verb forms/tenses): Guilty. All the freaking time, at that.
- i.e. v e.g.: Guilty, though I try to minimize my errors using these terms simply by not using them whenever I can.
- Could of, would of, should of: I cannot believe people actually make this mistake! These errors rile me up more than the rest of the list combined!!!

In poker, when you go hand after hand without getting much, you’re considered card-dead. I guess you can say I’m word-dead.

Until next time.

by Peter
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- Citibank notified me, about a month ago, that they were upgrading my existing Citibank Dividend Platinum Select (1% cash back, 2% at supermarkets, drugstores, gas stations, convenience stores, and utilities including cable) to a Citi Dividend World MasterCard (same as above, but with Retail Purchase Protection, Extended Warranty, and Price Protection). To do this, they had to close my existing account and issue a new card, with a new account number.

That was all fine and dandy, but they closed my account on the same day that my cell phone bill was to be auto-paid! Fortunately, I found that out early enough in the day to make a payment with another credit card.

Worse, Citi told me that I would get a new card within two weeks of the closure of the old account. Two weeks passed, and I got a package in the mail from Citibank. It was my “welcome kit,” containing a ton of documentation, but no credit card! It turns out, the welcome kit said that I would be getting my card in another week or so! Of course, I find this out one day before my cable bill was to be auto-paid.

Thanks, Citibank.

- So the NBA Draft was held yesterday, and there are some clear winners, as well as clear losers. Since I’m in a bit of a food coma–Korean BBQ, again–here are my quick thoughts about the draft results.

• Even though I predicted it a couple of days ago, I was a bit surprised that Atlanta took Horford and Law at #3 and #11, respectively. That being said, I don’t blame Atlanta for not trading these two picks for Amare Stoudemire, as rumored. I’d take my chances with Horford, who should be a double-double machine, and Law, who should be the Hawks’ starting PG for years to come.
• Boston, what were you thinking? You’d rather have a 32-year-old, injury prone shooting guard (even if it IS Ray Allen) than the #5 pick (Brewer? Noah? Yi?)? Yeah, you got Seattle to take Wally off your hands, but you also threw in Delonte West?!? At least you guys also got Glen Davis, right?
• I like the Zach Randolph trade…for Portland. They needed to clear the logjam up front, they got rid of a locker room cancer in the process, and they got Channing Frye as well! Yeah, they had to take on Steve “Chemistry Killer” Francis as well, but they could just buy out his deal. Meanwhile, I thought Isiah was done taking on bad contracts and poisonous (to a team’s chemistry) players.
• The Jason Richardson to Charlotte deal is great for Golden State. I thought it was terrible at first, but the more I thought about it, the more impressed I was by the deal. They get an interesting prospect in Brandan Wright, they no longer have to (over)pay for Jason Richardson, and they get a $10 million trade exception! Could a KG-to-GS deal be in the works? Not likely, but one can dream, right? Meanwhile, at least Charlotte now has a big time player on their roster otherwise filled with young players.
• I can’t believe the Clippers got Al Thornton. I can’t believe Julian Wright fell all the way to New Orleans.
• I can’t believe Aaron Afflalo actually got drafted in the first round. Same with Alando Tucker.
• I can’t believe Gabe Pruitt, Marcus Williams, Nick Fazekas, and Glen Davis dropped into the second round. I also can’t believe some GM didn’t pick Josh McRoberts in the first round.

Of course, the really BIG draft story is the Los Angeles Lakers! They got a superstar guard in the making, a superstar Chinese player, and Gasol!

(OK, so that superstar guard in the making is years away from doing anything, AND he can’t shoot. In addition, the Chinese player is NOT Yi, and the Gasol is Pau’s younger, fatter brother, Marc.)

How has Kobe not issued a YouTube-exclusive video, totally trashing the entire Laker organization? Why didn’t the Lakers take a flyer on Jason Smith in the first round? How about Chris Richard out of Florida instead of Sun Yue? And Marc Gasol? They might as well have gone for Aaron Gray.

The Lakers better hurry and trade Kobe, or they’re only going to get 30 cents on the dollar in any Kobe trade.

More draft thoughts to come later, as they come to me. Damn food coma.

That’s all for today.

by Peter
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