UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Quick-hitters:

- I just made myself a tuna fish sandwich, and I can’t believe I forgot to add chopped tomato!

Argh!

(Much more on sandwiches later.)

- Current rebate-o-meter:  $1600 and rising.

Quite possibly for the first time in my life, I am actually up-to-date with my filing of rebates!

- You can add the latest round of douche-baggy WalMart commercials to the ever growing list of commercials that I could live without.

- Some interesting news on the rebate front:

1) I made mention recently that I got my $25 rebate—issued by Fry’s—for an American Telecom Systems phone that I bought months ago:

(Speaking of Fry’s, I got my $25 rebate check for the ATS phone rebate I was being scammed out of. Now if only they would stop using DHL…)

Interestingly enough, I got an email from AmericanTelecomServices@cs.rebatestatus.com with the subject “Your rebate from American Telecom Services, Inc.” on Wednesday.  Strange…I was almost certain that rebate-zone.com was the company that handled ATS rebates, and a quick check of my rebate PDFs showed that I was correct.

Nevertheless, I clicked the link in the email, and here’s the status of the rebate:

Promotion	5103B $25 @ Frys Tranship H715260
Rebate Number	104945
Submission ID	[deleted]
Status	We have received your submission and it is being processed.

I’ll be interested to see if I actually receive a check.  Of course, once I receive it, I will tear it up.

2) Speaking of rebatestatus.com, if only I could get them to respond to the bulls**t rejection of my Acronis True Image Home rebate for $20.  Missing UPC?  You mean the one I taped to the rebate form itself?

Apparently they have no interest in responding to any of my emails—three sent to them in two weeks.

Stay tuned…

3) Finally, D-Day for my XG/MGE rebate fiasco is Friday.  I’m not holding my breath…

- I haven’t done one of these in a LONG time:  a UBMe (#5, aka “Mind Your Own Business”)!

You’re sitting at a Subway (the restaurant, not the mode of transport) with your iPod earbuds ons, listening to your favorite podcast.  You’re minding your own business in the NE corner of the store, facing the middle of the store—the door is in the SE corner—snacking on a Subway Club on Honey Oat bread.

(Tangent:  I ordered a Subway Melt, dammit!)

(Tangent #2:  Yes, I looked very douche-baggy, with the iPod on hand.  Now I see why people buy iPods :P)

Despite the maxed-out volume on the iPod—between the blaring music and the loud workers, it was hard to listen to the podcast without being distracted—you were able to hear the chime on the door as a female customer walked in.  You glance over quickly, and went back to your sandwich and Harvest Cheddar Sun Chips.

The woman spends about five minutes before deciding on what she wants, and then she proceeds with her order.  While this is going on, you’re trying to listen intently to the podcast (again, over the loud music and the chatty workers).

The woman finishes up her to-go order, and apparently you make eye contact with her for about one nanomillisecond too long (maybe two milliseconds total), because the woman decides to walk up to you and blurt (paraphrasing) “You know…[sitting there with your headphones on] is rude!”

UBMe!  W T F? Is there anything worth saying to the woman?  Or do you completely ignore her, adding to your douche-baggy appearance, like I actually did?

I would have thrown a chip at her, but Sun Chips are so damn good!

- And finally, I think I unlocked the secret to making an amazing sandwich.  No, it’s not slices of fresh tomato.  No, even though toasting the bread is a good idea, it doesn’t make a sandwich awesome.  Miracle whip?  Tangy goodness, but nope.  Spicy brown mustard is nice, but not the secret.  Cheese?  Swiss cheese is good, but nope.

What makes a sandwich go from good to awesomely good?

A third slice of bread.

There is something about adding a third slice of bread to a sandwich that makes it so much better!  I suppose it might be because I have an excuse to add extra toppings and condiments on my sandwich.  Maybe it’s because the third slice of bread adds a layer of, um, structural integrity to the sandwich.  Whatever the reason is, I now have an excuse to eat the end pieces of the every loaf of bread I buy!

(Tangent:  My family seems to have an aversion to the end pieces of a loaf.   Every time a new loaf is opened, the first slice that is picked out is almost always the second slice of bread.  I guess the end pieces are too “crusty” for our liking.)

Damn…I wonder how good a tuna fish sandwich using three slices of bread would be?

I’ll report on that next time

by Peter
3 Comments »

Quick-hitters:

- Hey KFC…any time now, you can stop airing those stupid commercials advertising your “sauceless” hot wings. I don’t know what bugs me more: the annoying as hell actors, or the fact that the hot wing has been sold at KFC for years.

I almost miss the “I’m lovin’ it!” McDonald’s commercials.

(Almost.)

- Since when have Twizzlers tasted so good? I bought a pair of bags from—where else?—CVS on Saturday (they were BOGO and I had a $2 ECB I needed to spend anyway), and my sister and I have already polished off one bag.

I can’t wait for the day after Easter, when stores start clearancing their Easter candy :P.

- So I had a hankering for some meat loaf over the weekend. While running errands, which included Costco (evil!!!) and CVS, I got what I needed to make the loaf on Sunday. A non-health emergency forced me to wait until Monday to cook, but I didn’t mind.

(Adding half a bulb of garlic to a 2lb meat loaf isn’t too much, is it?)

I served the meat loaf with the usual fare: mashed potatoes, gravy, and a boatload of steamed veggies. Methinks I will be making another loaf later this week.

I would have enjoyed my meal a lot more if not for…

- …the fact that I discovered a series of cracks in my living room wall a few days ago, as well as a leaky bathroom faucet, prompting me to give my landlord a ring. Unfortunately for me, I had to move the computer desk and bookshelf blocking the cracks, and now my file server is out of commission for the time being.

Worse, my LCD HDTV was also sitting there, and that is also out of commission for the time being. Unfortunately, I have no space anywhere else in the house to put the TV and computer, until the repair job dries and is painted over.

A week without ESPN HD???? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Well, at least the repair guy did a nice job patching the cracks, and I was able to vacuum the area behind the computer/TV desk. And it was kinda fun to cook a whole dinner while sidestepping repair men as they went back and forth through my house.

- So after the Bruins got away with another victory—and the “win” against Cal might have been even more ridiculous than the one against Stanford—I have to say that I can see the Bruins not making it out of the Sweet 16 this year.

(Tangent: As bad as the Josh Shipp miracle-that-shouldn’t-have-counted shot was, the non-call on Russell Westbrook on Cal’s Ryan Anderson was even more egregious. Cal needed to call in CSI to fingerprint the back of Anderson’s jersey. That’s as close to a legal mugging as I’ve ever seen.)

Sure, the Bruins probably locked up a #1 seed. And yeah, they’ll probably play in the West. Still, I can easily see the Bruins not making a third straight Final Four, for the following reasons:

1) The Bruins can’t seem to stop anybody in the paint. I thought Kevin Love was supposed to give the Bruins an interior presence, but for some reason, guards have been able to penetrate the Bruins D with ease lately. Good passing bigs (the Lopez brothers of Stanford, e.g.) seem to be giving the Bruins fits as well.

2) The Bruins can’t shoot. Josh Shipp better find his shooting stroke, or the Bruins are toast. He’s been looking good lately, but who knows what will happen in the tourney? Ben Howland’s a great coach, but he really needed to give some PT to other players to find a capable zone-buster (the role Michael Roll was supposed to fill this year). The boys from Cameroon have proven to be less than capable shooters, and they can’t be depended upon offensively.

3) Darren Collison is going to have an off-night. Collison is a great shooter, and an even better distributor, and sometimes his shots aren’t going to fall. On those nights, who is going to pick up the slack? Love? Not if the opposition is playing zone. And as nice as Westbrook has been this season, I cringe when he tries to go one-on-all for consecutive possessions.

4) Depth, or lack thereof. Seven deep? I really worry about fatigue.

Speaking of depth, I can see four members of the starting lineup (Shipp excluded) leaving at the end of the year, along with the graduation of Lorenzo Mata-Real. How the heck are we going to replace all that in one season?

Anyway, I can’t wait for the tourney to start!

Until next time.

by Peter
2 Comments »

Whoops!

Quick-hitters:

- Did anyone hear that Brett Favre retired a couple of days ago?

But seriously, if he was so certain that retirement was the correct decision, then what was with all the crying? If you’re absolutely sure that decision A is the right decision, then what is there to be saddened about?

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,427.00. Current unfiled rebate-o-meter: $125.

Current Wii-o-meter: 2 going on 0.

(Don’t ask.)

- D-Day for the XG/MGE Scammers is eight days. Anyone wanna bet on whether or not I’ll get my money? I’ll offer the following odds:

I’ll receive some money, but they will make an error in the amount of the checks, and I’ll have to wait another nine months to get the rest of my money +800 -100

Yes, I’ll receive both checks, and they will be mailed out on the 14th +300

They’ll claim to have sent out the checks on the 14th, and then claim that they’re not responsible for lost or misdirected mail when I never see the checks -150 -1000000

I’ll get a letter in the mail, saying that I did not include the receipt with either of my submissions -200

I’ll marry a supermodel before I see a cent from these guys -500

(As you can see, I had to make a couple of changes to the odds…for obvious reasons :P)

- Speaking of rebates, despite my issues with MyRebateOnline.com, I bought a pair of Kaspersky software titles with rebates going to them. Knowing that I had Fry’s on my side in case these guys try to scam me again, I completed each rebate, using copious amounts of highlighter, circles, tape, and labeling (HERE IS THE UPC!!!!, e.g.), checked, double-checked, checked again, and double-checked again the submissions, and mailed them off.

To my surprise, I got four emails from MyRebateOnline.com yesterday, and all four rebates were valid!

(Speaking of Fry’s, I got my $25 rebate check for the ATS phone rebate I was being scammed out of. Now if only they would stop using DHL…)

In other rebate news, Parago rejected two out of four rebate submissions last week.

- What a brutal game between Stanford and UCLA (and if by brutal, I mean awesome). Too bad it wasa marred by quite the controversial call.

Here are my quick thoughts on the game:

1) Did somebody forget to set UCLA’s alarm clock before the game? Why did it take so long for the Bruins to get into the game? There are slow starts, and then there is the start that the Bruins had tonight.

2) For the first 35 minutes of the game, it seemed that Stanford was getting every break. Was it just me, or did virtually every loose ball bounce Stanford’s way? Fortunately, the Bruins got some breaks late, including Russell Westbrook’s brick of a FT that somehow rolled in, as well as the entry pass into Love in OT that bounced right to Westbrook. Of course, there also was…

3) that horrible end-of-regulation foul call against Stanford. Look, I understand that games are rarely, if ever, decided on a singular play, but Stanford absolutely got jobbed there. The block was absolutely clean, and if there was any bodily contact between Darren Collison and Cardinal Lawrence Hill, it was too little to warrant a foul call, especially considering the circumstances of the game!

4) That being said, with the win, UCLA probably guaranteed themselves a #1 seed, likely in the West. Stanford, assuming they win their next game (@USC), and go deep in the Pac-10 tourney, will probably secure a #3 seed.

I can’t wait for March Madness.

(Not-really-a-tangent: Somebody please remind me not to ever read the ESPN “Conversations” [fan comments] ever again. That way, I can avoid losing brain cells from reading gems like this:

has a stanford fan this is tough to swallow i just looked at the replay hill got all ball and the ref called he got arm if anything he got a bit of body if stanford is at home there is no way that is called stanford got completly jobbed if stanford beats usc they better be a 2 seed and still be ranked in the top 10 UCLA WON THE CONFRENCE BECAUSE THE REFS GAVE IT TO THEM IF STANFORD PLAYS LIKE THAT IN THE NCAA TOURNAMENT SWEET 16 MINNIUIM HOPEFULLY Stanford gets 1 more crack at ucla in the pac 10 final in the confrence tourney

I didn’t know manufacturers made 28-key (all letters + space bar + caps lock) keyboards.

Until next time.

by Peter
3 Comments »