UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

One quick-hitter:

- FOOTBALL!!!  FOOTBALL!!! OMGWTF!!! FOOTBALL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111

(I’m sorta a football fan; can’t you tell?)

- Some quick Barry Bonds thoughts:

•  I forgot where I heard it from (ESPN, maybe?), but the most telling aspect of Bonds’ HR pursuit might be the fact that it was not a very memorable moment, to some people (myself included).  I mean, when Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games played record, I remember how awesome of a moment that is.  When I first heard that Bonds finally broke Hank Aaron’s HR record, I don’t remember reacting at all.
• Have you noticed how quickly the focus moved from Bonds to A-Rod as being the next guy to break the record?  Is that not another telling sign that the record breaker isn’t all that significant, except for all the wrong reasons?
• Like I said in an earlier blog entry, it’s Bonds record until he’s stripped of it, or until it’s broken.

It was real nice to see Aaron pre-record a video tribute to Bonds, though, even if the allegations that he was paid or “influenced” to do it are true.

- So I’ve been debating, back and forth, for the last few days on whether or not do build a budget AMD system, or if I should just splurge and build a powerful Intel system.  With the Newegg/PayPal $20 off $100 coupon floating about, I gotta figure out what to buy soon.  Low-end AMD X2 CPU with some micro-ATX board and a SATA HDD for ~ $200?  Or, should I go for a decent Core2Duo (E4400), a midrange mobo, a decent graphics card, and a SATA HDD for closer to $400?

(Well, it seems that the “midrange” mobo is now out of stock.  Drat!)

So…who wants to spend my money?!?

- Speaking of shopping for parts, one of the ways to determine whether or not a part is worth buying is the customer reviews on that product.  Unfortunately, you’re at the mercy of any perceived bias for/against a particular part/brand/model.  Actually, that’s not the worst part about customer reviews.  I REALLY can’t stand it when a customer review

1. discusses an aspect of a product that is either optional or not explicitly supported by the product (i.e. overclocking)
2. insists that a product doesn’t compare to an obviously superior product (i.e. my cheapy HP Celeron-D laptop with 512MB of RAM is so slow compared to my friend’s Lenovo Core2Duo laptop with 2GB of RAM)
3. treats the product review as their own blog, complete with missing punctuation, no capitalization, grammatical errors, and terrible run-on sentences.

I bring this up because I saw a review on some cookware at Macy’s, and it had eight total reviews.  Seven reviews had five-star reviews, and the eighth?

“worst ever set of pots & pans. very difficult to clean.
i had farberware for over 20 years & decided to treat myself because of missing pieces over the years
but i am so disappointed in my purchase i wish i never gave my farberware away.” 

So your high quality Farberware (my parents have some that they’ve owned for years; I can personally vouch that they are very good products) pots and pans worked better than this discounted cookware?  What a surprise!  Krunk told me that he’s also bent that his Honda Civic isn’t as impressive as a BMW M3.

(By the way, I’ll ignore the lack of capitalization :P)

Happy blogging!

by Peter
No Comments »

So I must be insane.  I’m considering opening a Bank of America checking account.

(I can’t stand my current bank, Netbank, and I don’t exactly mind a free $100.  Then again, I will have to deal with Bank of America.)

By the way, prayers go out to the family of Hal Fishman, who died yesterday (Tuesday) of colon cancer.

- So powdered donuts are evil, and they seriously are like crack!  Damn you Krunk *shakes fist*

I saw the same damn box Krunk probably saw at Safeway, and I couldn’t resist either.  My sister, who insists that she isn’t a fan of sweets,  obviously didn’t heed her own advice as she downed several donuts, before realizing what she had done

And yes, I think they need to make powdered choco-donuts.

- So I had a mad craving for some enchiladas today (yeah, I wasn’t planning on eating donuts for dinner, although…).  I remember seeing a recipe on Amy’s blog for them, and I thought I’d try it out.

The rice was a bit overcooked, and the enchiladas were a bit dry, but I’m almost certain that this was user error and not a fault of the recipe.  Besides, any Mexican food that is too try can be topped with copious amounts of guacamole and sour cream, right?  Even though the food wasn’t perfect, it didn’t stop me from eating way too much, as usual.

Damn, I could go for another plate right about now.

(Don’t worry, Hank!  One day, I swear I will try one of your recipes out!)

- In this television era of dumb reality shows and bad game shows, what took so long for television producers to come up with  singing game shows like The Singing Bee or Don’t Forget The Lyrics?  Doesn’t everybody like to sing, even if they royally suck at singing, or if they don’t know the words (check and check)?  Seriously, stupid game show ideas like The Chair and The Chamber came about years before a game show where regular people had to sing song lyrics?  No producer, in years past, said to himself, “Hey, let’s start a game show where people have to sing song lyrics to popular songs.  Certainly we can find an out-of-work boy band-er to host it!”?

By the way, I wouldn’t mind going to a taping of The Singing Bee; it seems like everyone in the audience has so much fun!

And for the record, I stink at both games.  Most of the songs I know are from the 80s, so if a recent song shows up, I would just quit on the spot

Oh yeah, I also heard that Barry Bonds finally broke Hank Aaron’s record.  Yawn.

Happy blogging!

by Peter
1 Comment »

- Man, was it HOT in Monterey Park this past weekend!

I probably got a total of five hours of sleep in the two days, due to the immense heat.

*hugs my Honeywell Tower fan*

- To the moron constantly calling my temporary AT&T cell phone (ten calls in three days), leave me the hell alone, please.

- So my cousin visited my parents’ house yesterday, and she brought a gigantic plate of food: fried Lobster in a spicy sauce, with fried noodles. That was damn good, and I couldn’t eating too much food.

I should mention that her husband owns a Chinese restaurant, and I don’t mean some $4.99 doggie-bag takeout on-the-corner grease-fest that is, apparently, typical “Chinese” food. I’m talking a high-class, banquet-style, commonly-used-for-weddings Chinese restaurant.

I’m such a sucker for lobster or crab. Now if only the dish had some scallops and shrimp.

Speaking of food and Monterey Park, I had a couple cans of Coke Zero over the weekend. Yuck! Damn MexiCoke! I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy regular Coke or Coke Zero again! Methinks I need to take a trip to Costco to get some MexiCoke.

- According to Google Analytics, no one had visited my site in the past three days. That broke my heart *cry*. What was strange, though, was that Google Adsense registered about 20-30 pageviews/day. So what caused the discrepancy?

My stupidity! When I switched to Wordpress, I completely forgot to re-copy the Google Adsense code somewhere onto my blog. Now, all is well again.

Speaking of Google Analytics, here’s some fun data of my visitors over the last 30 days (27 or so, actually, since I have no data for the days in which I didn’t restore the Google Analytics code):

• Krunk and I pretty much agreed that 1024×768 was still the most common screen resolution used; over the last 30 days, nearly 1/4 of my visitors were using that resolution. We both figured that 1280×1024 made sense at #2, but 1680×1050 (WSXGA+) was actually #2, at 22%! Third was 1440×900, which is my screen resolution. 1280×1024 was fourth, and nobody visited my site using 640×480
• I expected Firefox visits to outnumber Internet Exploder visits, but I didn’t expect only 44% of my visitors to use FF, versus 36% for IE. I would have expected the gap to be much larger.
• Visitors that use Windows outnumbered Mac-based visitors by nearly an 8:1 margin. Not at all surprising, IMO.
• Now here’s the stat that I’m very happy with. For the longest time, referrals from three sites–the IMBC site, Hank’s blog, and Blogger–made up nearly 90% of my visitors. Two recent blog entries, mentioned here, have now shifted the demographics of my referrals; now, about 35% of my visitors come from the three sites mentioned above. Google referrals, on the other hand, account for nearly 40% of my visitors over the last 30 days. Now I gotta figure out another topic to blog about that will generate even more traffic to my site.

- Finally, Barry Bonds finally tied Hank Aaron’s home run record, hitting #755 against Clay Hensley on Saturday. My thoughts on the record-tying blast:

Yes, I found it amusing that Clay Hensley once tested positive for using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs).

Yes, watching baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s reaction to the home run was absolutely amusing.

Yes, I wasn’t surprised to see Bonds not play on Sunday. Now, he gets to hit the record-breaking homer against a horrible Washington Nationals team, in the comfort of San Francisco.

So, what are my feelings about Bonds and the record? Well, just by looking at the guy, comparing him to images of himself as a skinny kid playing in Pittsburgh, and noting the fact that he got much better and stronger in the tail end of his career, I can’t help but suspect that he is taking some sort of PEDs. However, in the absence of concrete evidence, I can’t deny Bonds as the rightful record holder–that is, once he breaks the record. If people are going to assume Bonds is guilty because of his incredible achievements during his 40s, shouldn’t they also suspect Lance Armstrong is guilty of cheating for winning seven Tours-de-France after recovering from near-fatal cancer?

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not comparing Armstrong to Bonds. I understand that there is lots of support and respect for Armstrong because of his foundation, and the fact that he’s not a jerk like Bonds is perceived to be, but is it that far-fetched to assume that Armstrong may have cheated as well? Of course, in the absence of a smoking syringe, Armstrong is still a hero and a seven-time champion, and I’m going to acknowledge Bonds as the record-holder (once he gets it) until there is proof that his numbers were “enhanced.”

And yes, that pains me to say, being a Dodger fan.

If anything, I hope that Bonds’ chase for the home run record serves to further magnify Hank Aaron’s accomplishments, and that true baseball fans really appreciate what Aaron did for the sport (if they don’t already). Besides, Bonds’ record will go down in about ten years, when A-Rod will be going for HR #800.

Happy blogging!

by Peter
4 Comments »

One quick-hitter:

- I am owning Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s on NORMAL mode!

(Hey, a couple days ago, I wouldn’t touch normal mode with a ten foot pole!)

One of these days, I’ll be able to beat Expert! Either that, or I’ll just move on to the next game on my gaming queue

- So I was playing around with Simpsonize Me (as seen recently on Hank’s blog) with a few pictures that I happened to have handy.

I started with a couple Jessica Alba pics from pics.bbzzdd.com and had some fun with that. Then I tried “Simpsonizing” a picture of my sister. I tried five or six times, and every time, the site said that it was “too busy” to process. Just for fun, I tried another Jessica Alba pic, and the system took it just fine.

I’m not saying a damn thing.

- So apparently Fedex delivery guys don’t care to knock on my door any more. I had two deliveries made today, one by Fedex Express, and one by Ground. Both times, the packages were just left at my front door, without even so much as a knock! The only way I found out is when I checked the status of each package, and saw the “Left at Front Door” message.

Good thing that 1) the items were just a pair of old cell phones and a wireless PCI network adapter and 2) the items didn’t grow legs and walk off on their own, if you know what I mean.

- Speaking of cell phones, I got my Sony Ericsson cell phones today, and I must say…they are absolute garbage. I don’t think I could ever go back to a non-flip phone, after using my Sanyo Katana for as long as I have. Then again, $10 for a refurbed phone, no activation, free second day shipping, and $10 of free airtime isn’t half bad. Too bad it cost me $1.40 (4 min @ $0.10 + $1 daily access rate) just to play around with setting up the voicemail on the phone.

(I had to set up the voicemail, because some freaking 818 phone number kept calling me. I was forced to turn off the phone, something that I hardly ever do with my regular cell phone.)

Well, at least I now have a “cheap” way to call my sister, should the need arise.

By the way, at $.10/min + $1/day, or $.25/min, who really uses these Pay-as-you-Go phones? I can only think of three groups of people:

1. Those who very sparingly use their cell phones.
2. Those who use their phones way too much, and are thus restricted to a pay-as-you-go phone to control their spending
3. Those trying to stay off “the system.”

And yes, I realize I’m a total geek for now possessing three cell phones

- I also picked up this Honeywell Tower fan, which was ~ $15 after taxes and a $10 rebate. Stupid me placed the order on the first day of the sale, and I forgot all about it until nearly two weeks later, when I happened to be in the area. Thanks to Sprint PCS Vision, I was able to pull the order # from my Hotmail inbox, and I was able to pick up the item. I’m very impressed by the fan; it’s nice and quiet, and actually pushes quite a bit of air. It’s a huge upgrade from my jet engine of a fan (similar to this one) that has three speed settings: fast, really fast, and category five. Even the “slowest” setting is unbearably loud, making TV watching with that fan on in the same room nearly impossible. For you computer geeks out there, that jet engine of a fan is the equivalent of an 80mm Sunon fan that spins at nearly 8,000rpm, easily drowning out any other sound your computer makes, and even some of the sounds coming out of your speakers.

Speaking of fans, it’s HOT here in MPK, and I can’t sleep. This may jeopardize the plans for Dim Sum tomorrow!

Happy blogging!

by Peter
2 Comments »

- So importing my blog entries from Blogger was quick and simple. Unfortunately, I ran into a couple of problems. First, Wordpress tagged all the Blogger entries with the “Sports” category. Second, the naming convention of each blog entry changed (instead of /yr/mo/xxxxxxx.html, it got changed to /yr/mo/dy/yyyyyyy.html). Of course, that means that people who linked to my Blogger entries will either to fix their links, or, as Krunk suggested, I’ll have to enter a few “redirects” into my .htaccess file.

I thought about doing that, and then I decided to look through my Google Analytics history to see what were the most popular pages on my site all time. The first one isn’t really surprising; apparently lots of people don’t know where the scroll lock key is on their Logitech MX3200 keyboard. The other two were quite interesting:

• Apparently, lots of people were interested in getting information about the Citibank Dividend World Mastercard. I also got quite a few visits, courtesy of mikesmullin.com (the link is now broken, due to the Blogger import, but I added a line to my .htaccess file to point to the correct page).
• Much more amusing, though, was seeing a bunch of keyword hits to my site consisting of some form of “dangers of a laser printer.” Now, don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing amusing about the fact “that some laser printers emit large amounts of tiny particles, which may increase the risk of cancer and heart disease.” What I do find comical is the fact that people who were obviously looking for information regarding article above ended up on my site, reading (hopefully!) about how dangerous refilling a toner cartridge is. Of course, the dangers were exacerbated by the fact that I’m a total klutz.

For now, I’ve since repaired a few links, and re-categorized the last three weeks or so of blog entries. UngsungBlog 2.0beta is still a work in progress, after all.

- Other quick baseball trade thoughts:

• Eric Gagne was traded to Boston for a package including Boston starter Kason Gabbard. I’m not sure why Boston was interested in Gagne, but I can understand why they traded away a starter, with the return of Curt Schilling impending. I’m thinking this was a keep-away deal, because there were rumors that the Yankees were involved.
• The Cleveland Indians reacquired Kenny Lofton from Texas, and I love this deal for Cleveland. They get a veteran OF to play LF, and speed and a veteran bat at the top of the lineup. And all it cost Cleveland was a catching prospect.
• And the winner of worst deal of the trade deadline absolutely has to go to Pittsburgh’s acquisition of pitcher Matt Morris from the Giants. First of all, San Francisco was practically trying to get rid of the guy, apparently offering to pay teams to take him off their hands. Instead, Pittsburgh swooped in, offered to pick up Morris’ entire salary, and threw in two players (one to be named later)! That’s like spotting an ad on Craiglist, seeing a guy trying to sell his car below cost–he’s moving overseas, maybe–and offering him MSRP + $1,000 for his troubles.

As badly as the Dodgers have been playing recently, at least they’re not the Pirates.

by Peter
4 Comments »

- So I’m sitting here, having returned from my trip to the post office, with a Slurpee in hand (Coca-Cola, of course). I’m down to the last six ounces or so, and I realized that the Law of Diminishing Returns really applies to Slurpees!

(Tangent: The Law of Diminishing Returns, as it applies to food or drinks, probably applies to anything. There are some foodstuffs, though, that the Law REALLY applies to.)

I was craving one so badly this morning, that the first few ounces rivaled that of a chilled MexiCoke! Then I started downing the Slurpee like crazy, and that’s when I hit a wall; the Slurpee was only OK at that point. Now, with only a few ounces to go, I feel sick. I’m probably just going to toss what I have left.

Ugh…damn Law of Diminishing Returns. Of course, this won’t stop me from craving a Slurpee a couple days from now, and repeating the process over again.

(BTW, I don’t need any Econ majors to tell me that I’m misapplying the Law. Go away.)

- Thanks to a BargainShare member, I found yet another FW Cash Back/eBates/BigCrumbs-type site: DealKing.com.

(Let me know if you are interested in signing up for any of those sites, if you don’t already have an account, so I can refer you :)).

Anyway, there is an awesome deal on AT&T prepaid phones via DealKing. They have a (refurbed) Sony Ericsson J220a phone for $9.99, which includes $10 of airtime (10c/min with a $1/day access fee, or 25c/min). Also, mobile to mobile minutes are FREE; whether or not that incurs the $1/day access fee, for those of you that picked that plan, I’m not sure. The best part of the deal is that DealKing pays you $20 upon activating the phone! Best of all, you can do this twice, and possibly earn $40 cash back from DealKing, and have two phones! Activation is waived, and there is no obligation to remain a customer after the $10 in airtime is used up.

eBay value on the phone is about $10, but I’m probably going to give these phones away to my siblings to leave in their car, for the sole purpose of using it to dial 911 if the need arises.

- The baseball trade deadline came and went a couple days ago, and here are my quick thoughts on some of the trades that went through:

• Mark Teixeira and Octavio Dotel go to Atlanta, for a number of prospects (including touted prospect Jarrod Saltalamacchia to Texas). Great deal to Atlanta, even considering the short-term costs. Of course, this probably spells the end of Andruw Jones’ stay in Atlanta; I don’t see how the team could afford him next year. Dotel’s a nice bullpen arm, though an injury risk, and I think Atlanta really needed a starter. Then again, the market on starters was very thin (as you’ll see later), so I think Atlanta did well to help themselves at the deadline. It didn’t hurt that Teixeira hit a homer in his first game as a Brave. It would not surprise me if Atlanta topped the Mets and Phillies to win the NL East. Texas did well, getting five prospects, and the Royals had to trade Dotel; they weren’t going to offer him an extension upwards of $6 million/yr.
• The Dodgers swapped Wilson Betemit, who’s been reduced to a platoon 3B/power hitter off the bench, for Yankees’ reliever Scott Proctor. No, it doesn’t bother me that Betemit hit a homer today against the ChiSox; the Dodgers had enough guys hitting in the low .200s, and I’m glad they got rid of one. Scott Proctor’s a nice arm, one that the Dodgers’ bullpen really needed, but he’s been overworked badly in recent years (135 appearances in this season and last combined). However, pitching in a pitcher’s park in the National League, and being option #3 (behind Saito and Broxton) can’t hurt. I’d expect him to fill in for Broxton or Saito on occasion as well. Good move by the Dodgers; I’d rather have Proctor than Dotel. The best thing about this deal is that we didn’t have to give up any of our key prospects to make the deal happen. Had we traded for Teixeira, for instance, we would probably have had to give up James Loney, Andre Either, and a pitcher. Interesting move by the Yankees, though; they need all the bullpen help they could get, so they traded away one of their reliable arms? I get that Joba Chamberlain is major league ready, but do you really want to depend on the kid in a pennant chase, in the Bronx?

There are a couple more deals I want to get to, and I’ll go over those another time.

Happy blogging!

by Peter
No Comments »

- Well, it took a while, but the UngsungBlog switch to Wordpress is nearly complete, and it somehow took me five times longer than it should have to do!

(There’s a 99.9% chance that the delay was caused by a PEBDAC. For those of you that don’t know, PEBDAC stands for Probable Error Between Desk And Chair.)

All I have to do now is find a good template, categorize the rest of my posts imported from Blogger, and restore my Adsense banners.

- Thanks Krunk for telling me about Amazon.com’s Affiliate Program. If I can get just one person to buy through my Affiliate account, signing up will be totally worth it!

- So I’m really happy that Bonds hasn’t homered yet against the Dodgers. Unfortunately, he gets to face Brett Tomko tomorrow.

- I know this was announced a couple of days ago, but here are my thoughts on the Kevin Garnett to Boston trade. For the few NBA fans out there who haven’t yet heard of this deal, here are the particulars:

Boston sent the Minnesota Timberwolves forwards Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes and Gerald Green, guard Sebastian Telfair and center Theo Ratliff, two first-round draft picks [one of which was their own, initially traded away in the Ricky Davis for Wally Szczerbiak and Mark Blount deal] and cash considerations.

I’ll start with the Wolves. It appears that all they’re getting is Al Jefferson, a budding power forward in a conference full of them, cap relief in the form of Theo Ratliff’s contract, the right to no longer have to pay KG, a draft pick that they traded away, and a draft pick in 2009. Talk about getting 30 cents on the dollar. They were willing to take Jefferson, four scrubs, and two picks potentially in the late teens/early twenties, but they wouldn’t take a similar package and the #5 pick from this past draft? That makes zero sense to me. One has to wonder if KG privately pressured Minnesota to make a deal after the NBA draft.

As far as Boston is concerned, they now have three legitimate All-Stars in Pierce, Allen, and now KG. Too bad all of them are probably on the downside of their career. They also are in absolute salary cap hell, owing the three $56 million next year. Still, considering that KG hasn’t played with two guys of the caliber of Pierce and Allen–no, Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell aren’t equivalent to those two, no matter how good that Wolves team really was that year–and considering that the East is as weak as ever, one has to like Boston’s chances of winning the East, right?

Not in this blogger’s opinion. Even if the three stars should make it through the season uninjured, the team is now woefully short at PG, C, and bench.

(I just read over at Hoopshype.com–an excellent site, btw–that the Celtics signed veteran guard Eddie House to a one-year deal. Yawn.)

They have second-year Rajon Rondo (and now House) at PG, and Kendrick Perkins at C. Yeah, they have Tony Allen coming back from injury, and yeah, they have Brian Scalabrine (hahaha), but not much else. It sounds like the Big Three are going to have to play nearly 40 minutes a game each. If that happens, you can forget about any one of the three making it through the entire season without injury.

Boston should be a lot of fun to watch, and I hope I get to see them play several times this year. They have no reason to not make the playoffs, even with a crap surrounding cast, but I can’t put this Boston team above Detroit, Cleveland, or Chicago. It really wouldn’t surprise me if Boston gets a four or five seed, though. I don’t see Boston winning the East this year, though. However, another year of meshing together, with another year of seasoning for Rondo, and who knows what will happen?

By the way, what’s with the sudden about-face by KG about wanting to play in Boston. Not only does he now embrace Boston, he was even willing to sign a “discounted” extension (three years and nearly $60 million). You can’t tell me that the addition of Ray Allen changed KG’s mind that much!

Oh, and has anyone heard from Kobe Bryant yet?

- I am officially addicted to rebates. I did a deal, so complex, that I spent four hours yesterday filing rebates, and that wasn’t enough time to finish!

I am now well over $1,000 in rebates owed

Happy blogging!

by Peter
2 Comments »