UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

Quick-hitters:

- Is it just me, or are those Mac v PC commercials getting exponentially stupider?

Actually, I’m almost certain it’s not just me.

(You can tack on that stupid Mentos commercial, where the guy chews a piece of Mentos gum, and a girl comes up to him and drinks out of his mouth, as if he were a water dispenser. Yeah, because THAT makes me want to buy Mentos gum.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,244! And half of that is currently unfiled rebates!

Time to go on a shopping spree

- Quick NBA playoff thoughts:

1) David West is completely unguardable. The Spurs might win Game Six, but I don’t see any way the Spurs are going to beat the Hornets in Game Seven.

(Well, I can see one way: if Chandler and West aren’t 100% for the next two games, the Spurs have a shot.)

2) Orlando had two shots to win a game against the Chauncey Billups-less Pistons, and they couldn’t win one (and one was at home, no less!). Maybe Pat Riley will take over the Magic midway through next season.

Detroit’s gonna get a ton of rest, but I think that the Cavs-Celtics winner will be the Eastern Conference representative in the NBA Finals.

- Time for part 2 of my covert ops mission.

So after a bit of begging on the Slickdeals forum, I got an invite to purchase a Fonera from fon.com. I used this guide to assist me in hacking the Fonera.

(Tangent: Dammit! I didn’t realize that all the steps were compiled on to one web page! I had to print out four different web pages! Bah!)

As soon as I got the Fonera, I found that it came DOA! Argh. I contacted Fon CS, and they quickly sent me out another Fonera, which came in working condition. I decided to wait until the next time I was going to visit my parents to hack the Fonera. A week or so later (whenever I actually got around to visiting the parents again :P), I began preparation for the installation. I made sure to bring home the LF-B10, the Fonera, a spare router, and all cables that I needed.

Sure enough, I managed to forget a couple things! I decided to go ahead and hack the Fonera anyway, just to make sure that the Fonera would work as a wireless bridge. Unfortunately for me, I made the stupid decision of trying this at midnight.

(You see, the router and DSL modem are in my sister’s room, and she’s asleep early, meaning I would have to be hacking the Fonera pretty much in the dark. Browse through the fonera hacking guide, and you could see how I could easily make a mistake.)

I started out by plugging in my spare router, and connecting my laptop and Fonera to it via Ethernet cables. I got to step 4 of the first part of the tutorial, but could not get the Fonera firmware to downgrade to 0.7.1 r1. For the life of me, I could not figure out what the hell went wrong.

(If you haven’t figured it out by now, apparently I missed a key part of the tutorial: the hack requires the router to actually be connected to the internet! Fifty bazillion stupid points for that one.)

I grabbed my laptop, the Fonera, and the Ethernet cables, and hooked them all up to my main router, and began the process again. When I got back to step 4, I held down the reset button on the Fonera, and logged in to it (http://192.168.1.1), and was dismayed to see the wrong firmware version (0.7.0 r2, I believe)!

I looked over the guide, re-checked everything, and after two or three additional tries, I finally got the correct firmware version! W00t! I went ahead with the next step, hit submit, and was indeed redirected back to the Fonera.

I got to step 7, enabled SSH permanently, and began the process to enable Redboot (part 2). I got to step 10, and attempted to reconnect to the Fonera via SSH. That’s when I got a “Network refused” error. Grrrrrr. Immediately I thought that step 7 didn’t take, so I attempted to re-open SSH permanently again, starting from step 5. I ran the script again, and it appeared that the Fonera threw up all over itself. I got a ton of “invalid blah blah blah” errors, and I started pulling out my hair.

Unsure of what happened, I decided to start all over from the beginning. When I got to step 5 again, the Fonera threw up all over itself once again. Worse, I noticed that the firmware on the Fonera was 0.7.0 r2 again!

On a whim, I attempted to SSH into the Fonera again, and it worked! I entered the command to open SSH permanently again, and then I proceeded with step 10. I was hesitant to do this, though, as I couldn’t get the Fonera to downgrade to the “correct” firmware (0.7.1 r1, as directed in the guide).

Step 10 went to completion, and I attempted to access Redboot. For some reason, it was not working, and I immediately thought I bricked the Fonera. That’s when I read the instructions carefully, especially the blurb before step 11:

Make sure the Fonera is powered off. You also need to make sure you have a wired connection to the Fonera and an IP address in the 192.168.1.x range.

Again, it was late and dark. Never again will I hack anything late at night, I told myself. You will see later on, though, that I did not adhere to this

At first, I could not get into Redboot. It took me fifteen minutes to realize where I screwed up this time: step 12 says to ” Open putty and enter in “192.168.1.254″ for the IP address and “9000″ as the port number.” It says nothing about changing the connection type to Telnet (as the image states)!

I finally managed to get into Redboot, and prepared for the flashing process. I will neither confirm nor deny that I said a non-denominational prayer or ten at this point.

Each step, from 15-18, took me a while, because I was carefully typing in each character, triple-checking to make sure that I didn’t make a typo. It was eventually brought to my attention (from another guide I was reading) that I could paste commands into PuTTy simply by right-clicking! Bah!

According to the tutorial, step 19 was supposed to take about 10-20 minutes. I got really worried when that step only took about six minutes; I was almost certain that something went wrong at this point. Step 21 also took only a few minutes, and the final step only took a few moments. When step 22 finished, I could not bear to look at my screen as I rebooted the Fonera.

Once the reboot completed, I peered over at my screen, and was dismayed to not see the “dd-wrt” network available. I cilcked “refresh network list,” scrolled down the list S L O W L Y, and almost paraded around the room when the dd-wrt network finally appeared!

Much thanks to Krunk for assisting me throughout the hacking process, as well as setting up the hacked Fonera as a client bridge.

Part 3, including more hacking, to come another time!

Tags: david west, fonera, lf-b10, linksys, locationfree, mac commercial, mentos, nba playoffs, sony, spurs, wrt54gs by Peter
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(Note: This was supposed to be posted last night. As usual, I misremembered.)

Happy Mother’s Day!

I’ll hold off continuing my story from last night as I recap Mother’s Day weekend.

Quick-hitters:

- Don’t you hate it when you need a critical piece of data or an application to do something, and the site hosting said file just happens to be down?

That happened to me TWICE this past weekend. I’ll recap what happened in a later blog entry.

- More stupid commercials that have caught my eye lately:

• The DQ commercial where the little girl gets a boy to buy her a sundae: “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
• ALL the McDonald’s commercials advertising their new Chicken sandwiches, especially the one with the guy screaming words to ever-changing backgrounds. I might have had a seizure after watching the commercial once.

- Super quick thoughts on the latest in the NBA playoffs:

1) You don’t understand how tempted I am to complain about the horrible officiating in Game Four. You don’t know just how badly I wanted to throw something through my TV after every ticky-tack call went against LA. I spent several minutes explaining that “it’s hard to beat the Jazz when you’re playing 8-on-5.”

It took a while, but the rational side of me realized how the Lakers blew a golden opportunity to end the series, for all intents and purposes. Naturally, the Kobe injury hurt their chances badly, but so did horrible FT shooting (14-25?), terrible 3pt shooting (9-26), little help from role players (APBs are out for V-Rad and Farmar), and just awful shot selection in the fourth quarter and OT. I saw glimpses of 1998 Kobe, jacking up those terrible shots in OT.

And yeah, the bad officiating didn’t help either :P.

I fully expect the Lakers to play well in Game Five, and take a 3-2 lead back to Utah, where I expect the refs the Jazz to force a Game Seven. Anyone wanna put money on that?

2) As much as I dislike LeBron James, that insane dunk he threw down on Boston late in Game Four of Boston-Cleveland was SICK.

- Mother’s Day weekend unofficially started on Friday, when my sister (the one that doesn’t have karmic powers) swung by, and we headed out for some Korean BBQ.  Note to self:  stop ordering the beef brisket; beef brisket is OK in pho, but not particularly good with Korean BBQ.

The bulgogi was quite good, and they offered Jumuluck (sp?) (unmarinated sirloin).  Good stuff, but some of the sirloin pieces were pretty fatty.  Also, for some reason, the waitress would, every now and then, meander towards our table and start flipping the meat around on the grill.  I was tempted to ask her to stop.

(I have a system in place when I go to a Korean BBQ restaurant :P).

After dinner, we swung by Ross; it was already 9:15, so we knew we only had a few minutes to shop, which (we hoped) would minimize the amount of wallet-damage we would do.

(Tangent:  Ross is quickly shooting up the list of evil stores, along with Trader Joe’s, Target, and Costco.  I’ve been to Ross four times in the past few weeks, and even though I’ve been returning some of the stuff I purchased, I still end up buying something else and paying the difference out of pocket.

(Sub-tangent:  Sooner or later, I’ll have to organize all my Lists :P))

I spent five minutes going through the Men’s Activewear section, and grabbed a two-piece sweatsuit marked down to $15 from $50 and a $70 Nike Fit Dry long-sleeve collared shirt marked down to $15.  The sweatsuit was woefully small, which got me thinking that the suit might have been a women’s suit, misplaced and mislabeled.  The Nike shirt, unfortunately, fit perfectly, and now I’m stuck with 2 very nice shirts (remember this?).  Oh what to do…

On Saturday, the family gathered to go to Olive Garden to celebrate an early Mother’s Day.  We arrived at the restaurant at 1pm, and there was a huge wait.  This is what happens when you don’t make a reservation on a big holiday weekend, and only figure out where to go eat two hours before leaving the house.

We found out that Olive Garden was still doing their soup and salad lunch special, and I was contemplating between that and the “Tour of Italy”:  lasagna, fettuccine alfredo, and a chicken parmigiana.  Somehow, I managed to finish the entire plate, and it didn’t dawn upon me that I did so when someone (I forget who) asked me how I managed to polish off the plate.  I felt it immediately afterwards, though :P.

My dad roasted a chicken for dinner in his Ronco Rotisserie (yep, we actually have one!), and the rest of the night was spent playing poker with my two sisters.  All I have to say about our poker game is this:  who calls two raises, including an all-in, with seven-five of hearts?????????

Grrrrrrr…

Sunday was spent on my covert ops mission, so I’ll save that for when I get to that point in my story.  I will mention this:  we got even more tasty food on Sunday!  My mom and aunt prepared spring rolls (not the fried type, but more like this).  I could eat this stuff every day for the rest of my life if I had to.

Until next time!

Tags: jazz, korean bbq, lakers, lebron, mother's day, olive garden, ross, stupid commercials by Peter
3 Comments »

Today’s blog topic will cover one REALLY long topic, so expect it to be split up into at least two parts.

Blog-related quick-hitters:

- As a fan of The Office, I am appalled at myself for the fact that I have yet to watch last Thursday’s episode!

I am ashamed of myself, and I don’t even have a good reason for not watching it yet! Well, unless you consider Spurs-Hornets, Korean BBQ, Olive Garden, Mother’s Day Weekend, etc., to be “good” reasons.

(Office fans may start booing me.)

- For a similar reason, I did not watch Game 3 of Lakers-Jazz. I was 99% sure that the Lakers were going to lose that game, not that that is a good reason to skip it, right?

(Laker fans may start booing me.)

Non-blog-related quick-hitters:

- File this under the fall-out-of-your-chair-laughing department:

So my sister (the one that doesn’t have karmic powers) visited us on Friday, and after settling in, she asked if she could grab some MP3s off my computer and upload them onto her iPod. I said sure, and went to go look for the USB cable.

After a few minutes, I couldn’t find it, but my sister spotted the wall charger…except that it didn’t register with her that she was using the wall charger. This conversation (slightly exaggerated) followed:

Me: You know you’re plugging your iPod into the wall charger, right?

Her: (blankly) OK. Is that not going to work?

Me: Not unless the data can transfer from the computer’s power supply, through the surge protector, and through the charger!

Eventually, she blamed lack of sleep and hyperglycemia—she bought an iced coffee from McDonald’s that was supposed to be sugar free vanilla, but was not—for the mistake. Uh-huh.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,350. I better start spending some money; I gotta do my part to stimulate the economy!

(Tangent: I won’t be getting a stimulus check until mid-June! Booooooooooo.)

Current toothpaste-o-meter: a whole hell of a lot. Same with deodorant. I’m going to start selling this stuff to my neighbors real soon.

I better move on before I get too inundated with material. On with the topic at hand!

- A few months back, Staples had a great deal on the Sony LocationFree Base Station LF-B10 (think “SlingBox Lite”). I bought one as soon as it was for sale, thinking that I was going to hook up the device to my own cable box and use it whenever I was out of town.

It took me a day or so to realize how dumb of an idea this was. The only times I’m out of town are when I go to Monterey Park, or the much less frequent trips up to Sacto. If I’m in Monterey Park, there are three TVs to choose from that all have cable boxes. If I’m in Sacto, I’ll need a high speed connection to use the LF-B10 anyway.

I then decided that I would hook up the LF-B10 to my sister’s cable box. That’s when I discovered that the LF-B10 had an Ethernet port, making use of the device pretty complicated; I’d have to run about 50′ of Ethernet cable from my home router to the LF-B10. Compounding the problem was the fact that her TV is used frequently.

(Background: The LF-B10 works by connecting directly to your cable box via a composite cable. From a remote computer, you can log in to the LF-B10 and view the device’s live video stream, and you can even change the channel on the cable box using the included IR adapter that affixes to the front of the cable box. Of course, if somebody should change the channel on the cable box while you’re accessing it remotely, you’re stuck watching what they switch to, unless you cruelly change the channel back :P).

So I determined that installing the LF-B10 on my sister’s cable box was a terrible idea, due to all the “traffic.” That’s when I decided to hook it up to my mom’s cable box, which is HARDLY used.

(She has a $1,000—at the time of purchase—Samsung LCD HDTV that she hardly uses, either, in the sense that 99% of her TV-watching is of SD broadcasts or DVDs. Sad, huh?)

Unfortunately, it would have taken a lot of Ethernet cabling to hook up the LF-B10 to the home router. That’s when I got the great idea to purchase an Ethernet to wireless adapter. The idea was quickly sunk, though, until I heard of the Fonera.

Now, I knew that DD-WRT capable routers could be used as wireless bridges (Ethernet to wireless adapters), but I wasn’t going to fork up ~ $50 for a Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL just for this ability. $15 and a bit (or so I thought) of elbow grease for the same functionality? Why not?

If only it were that simple…

(Part 2 to come later!)

Tags: ddwrt, fonera, fontenna, la fon, lf-b10, linksys, putty, redboot, sony locationfree, ssh, tftp, The Office, vxworks killer, wrt54gs by Peter
6 Comments »

Sorry, no Office review tonight! I really didn’t expect the Spurs-Hornets game to be THAT entertaining!

Quick-hitters:

- Does anybody own a Treo 700 series, specifically the 755p? My sister’s 755p is in a never-ending reboot loop, no matter how many times I soft- or hard-reset the damn thing. What the hell is causing this, and how the hell do you fix it?

The last I heard, she took the PDA to the Sprint store. Hopefully Sprint stores are not as clueless as their phone reps can be.

- Best Buy sent me this email earlier today:

Dear Peter,

In an ongoing effort to improve our services, we’d like to hear about your experience of having BestBuy.com products shipped. Please click the button below to fill out a brief survey about your recent purchase on 05/01/2008, including [items purchased]. It should only take a few minutes.

Thanks for helping BestBuy.com serve you better!

Usually, I have zero desire to fill out these surveys. However, in this case, I have less than zero desire to fill out this survey. You see, this order is currently on backorder!

Nice job, Best Buy!

- I get a balance transfer (BT) offer from either Chase or Citibank (boooooooo!) practically every day.

(Who doesn’t?)

Normally, these checks find their way immediately into my shredder. Most of the time, I get BT checks on my lowest-limit credit cards—$1,200 and $2,000—or on my primary credit card. If I’m going to take out a BT, I’m not going to “waste” my time on a small balance like $1,000, nor am I going to take out a big BT on a credit card that I use everyday. (Why? So I can pay 12% on my purchase balance?)

Today, though, I found a very interesting offer in the mail from Chase on my second-highest limit card, on which I already have a low-interest (3.99% for life) BT. I’ve received BT checks on this account before, but usually the offers range from weak—4.99% for life—to pathetic—1.9% for six months, and then the purchase APR applies. However, I got two different offers today:

• 0% until 2/09 (yawn)
• 2.99% fixed for life

2.99% for life? Considering that the existing BT on the card is at 3.99%, it would be reasonable to expect future offers to have a higher interest rate, especially when you consider that payments apply to balances with lower interest rates first.

I wonder what my credit score is if I’m being offered a 2.99% balance transfer rate. I know people with good-to-excellent credit card scores that are offered 3.99% rates for life.

- (from Consumerist…just spotted a minute or so ago, that is) I normally don’t shop at Walgreens, usually because CVS deal hunting takes up most of my time as it is :P. However, if one of my local Walgreens pulled crap like this, I’d boycott all the Walgreens in the area for sure.

Cliffs: woman falls into diabetic coma near the checkout register, two nurses and an officer nearby administer OJ and sugar, someone pulls a glucometer off the shelf, woman is rushed to hospital, manager runs out in a hissy fit and demands that somebody pay for all the items.

Seriously? Mr. Manager got pissed off over the loss of an EIGHTEEN DOLLAR GLUCOMETER, as well as some OJ and sugar? From the way he acted (according to the nurse and officer), they used his Gluco-tech 5000 series Professional Blood Glucose counter (accurate to 0.0001%!), went to the appliance section, grabbed a high-end juicer, stole an orange that the manager was saving for a snack, juiced the orange, and gave the patient the juice.

Walgreens’ statement was priceless:

“We’re sorry for the misunderstanding. The store manager didn’t arrive on the sales floor until after the paramedics have left, so he didn’t realize a medical emergency had taken place.”

So the two frantic nurses, the officer, the missing glucometer, and the sirens in the distance, not to mention the obvious commotion in the store, weren’t enough of a clue that a medical emergency had taken place? Not to mention, I think a “misunderstanding” is a slight understatement. At least Walgreens was nice enough to offer a refund on the glucometer…

Question: if the store manager insisted that the accounts of the nurse and officer were wrong, why did he not attempt to explain what really happened?

I hate to imagine what would have happened if the woman had bled on the carpet. Would the manager have demanded compensation for the carpet shampooer he would have needed to clean up the stains?

- Quickly…

It’s about time the Spurs’ Big 3 finally showed up for a game in this series. For three quarters, it sure looked like the Hornets were well on their way to a monumental sweep. I still think the Hornets will win this series, and I like their chances in Game 4. Manu’s got a bum ankle, and Duncan hasn’t been nearly as effective as he has in years past. If the Hornets find a way to slow down Tony Parker, the Spurs are cooked.

For the first time all series, we saw the fluidity that the Spurs offense possesses at times: quick passes down low to Duncan, forcing the double team, followed by several passes to open shooters or cutters. And was that a Michael Finley sighting?

For years, the Spurs were called “boring” and “unwatchable,” but I became a passive fan of the team.

(I know, I know. BLASPHEMY! And BLAS-for-you! BLAS-for everybody in the world…)

I just loved how professional the team was—a Robert Horry hip check notwithstanding—and I became quickly impressed by how easily they were able to reload their teams to contend for championships each year. Of course, it helps to be able to build around a cornerstone like Duncan. As far as their boring offense is concerned, sure, running their offense through Duncan could be considered boring, but it was damn effective, was it not? And now that Tony Parker has flipped the switch and is utterly dominating games with his speed and ridiculous finishing ability, how can anyone call this team “boring” any more? Who wouldn’t like Parker v. Paul to go a full seven games?

As far as the other game tonight is concerned, how about them Cavs and the greatest player in the history of the NBA? Is it bad Cavs offense, or excellent Celtics defense? I refuse to say a little of both, and I’m giving credit where credit is due: to the Celtics’ defense. I know that the C’s had a highly rated defense, but after watching bits and pieces of these two games against the Cavs, I know see why. It’s not that LeBron’s settling for jumpers; it’s that LeBron has no choice but to take jumpers!

Should the Cavs lose this series (I actually had them winning in six, and would now like a mulligan :P), we can’t pin this one on LeBron. Cavs fans can start blaming the Celtics’ D, and I hope this doesn’t cost Cavs’ coach Mike Brown his job.

Until next time!

Tags: balance transfer, best buy, cavs, celtics, chase, chris paul, hornets, reboot loop, sprint, spurs, survey, tony parker, treo 755p by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!! Eddie Izzard is going to be at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood from Thursday to Saturday, Aug 7-9!

MUST…GET…TIX!

The new show is called “Stripped,” for the record.

- I made some instant udon noodles for dinner tonight, and the cooking instructions said to boil 19 1/2 fl oz. of water (17.5 fl oz. if I chose to cook the noodles in the microwave).

19.5 fl oz? They couldn’t round it up to 2 1/2 cups? Too bad I don’t have a graduated cylinder. And what’s with directing me to cook the noodles for 5 minutes? Four minutes and 48 seconds would have been perfect.

- I forgot to mention one incident that happened during the Mets-Dodgers game last night. A woman wearing a Mets jersey was leaving the stadium, but not before getting into a mini-argument with a bunch of Dodger fans sitting a few rows in front of us. As soon as that happened, a bunch of Dodger fans started mercilessly booing her.

She turned around, and started speaking what could barely be considered English. I was able to make out something about “you” (Dodger fans, presumably) winning twice in “like a hundred years” while “we” (Mets fans) have won “so many” times.

If memory serves me correctly, the Los Angeles Dodgers have won two championships in their non-Brooklyn existence, and the Mets have won exactly twice as well. Now, if the woman is going to bandwagon and include the Yankees into that discussion, then I guess she has a point. Then again, including Yankees’ championships as a Mets fan is like being a Clipper fan celebrating Lakers’ championships.

I couldn’t help but join in on the heckling, shouting “Remember September of last year?” (in reference to the Mets’ late season collapse last year that cost them the NL East).

- I never did get around to commenting about the disputed shot in the third quarter of Game 2 between Orlando and Detroit, so I’ll let the guys over at Imaginary Hardwood explain why the disputed shot—a terrible mistake by the refs and clock operator, for the record—wasn’t the only reason for Orlando’s 2-0 deficit.

I’ll add this to the discussion, though: why couldn’t the refs start the entire play over again? Reset the clock, and make Detroit bring the ball back up court? What is wrong with that? And I don’t want to hear the nonsense that the refs “knew” that 4.6 seconds (or whatever it was) elapsed from inbounds to shot, thus allowing the basket to stand. Yeah, I’m so sure the refs knew that 4.6, and not 4.5 or 4.7 seconds, ran off the clock. I would have respected their opinion, as wrong as it ended up being, if they had said that five seconds ran off the clock.

ESPN’s TMQ has ranted about tenths of seconds often, and I wholeheartedly agree. Sure, without tenths of seconds, Laker fans might not have Derek Fisher’s “0.4″ shot, but with the proposal I will offer below, he might have had “more” time to take that shot.

I propose that the NBA should get rid of the clock readings of tenths of seconds. If they insist on having fractions of seconds, why not use half-seconds instead?

(Try this exercise: randomly start and stop a stopwatch, and guess how much time elapsed for five trials of varying durations, to the nearest tenth. Now, repeat the trial, and see how many you can get to the nearest half-second. I tried it just right now, and scored 1/5 on the first test; 3/5 on the second test. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that one is probably going to score better on the second test.)

Wouldn’t identifying “five and a half seconds” make a lot more sense than trying to determine if 5.3 or 5.4 seconds ran off the clock instead?

- Despite getting out to a big double-digit lead early, and keeping it for most of the game, I still saw a lot of chinks in the Lakers’ armor after their Game 2 win over Utah. Deron Williams was an absolute beast in the third quarter, and Paul Millsap might be the key to Utah evening the series in the next two games. I could’ve sworn that every basket Millsap scored was an and-1. If Carlos Boozer and Andrei Kirilenko were able to give the Jazz anything decent in the first two games, this series could easily be 1-1 or 2-0, Utah.

Fisher was huge, Gasol was solid—and I think the Lakers need to establish him more often—and Odom was great. Even still, the third-quarter stretch where both teams were scoring on practically every possession has to be worrisome to the Lakers; you better believe that the Jazz will get stops in Utah. I don’t expect the Lakers to shoot 57% in either Games 3 or 4.

I missed most of the bore-fest that was Detroit-Orlando, but hopefully Chauncey Billups is able to play Game 4. If he’s not, Detroit is going to be in for one heck of a series.

Until next time!

Tags: detroit pistons, disputed 3 pointer, dodgers, Game 2, half-seconds, imaginary hardwood, lakers, mets, mets fan, orlando magic, udon, utah by Peter
1 Comment »

Quick-hitters:

- Cavs v. Celtics thoughts: I missed the game completely (more on that later), but I was astonished to find that “King” James only went 2-for-18. As soon as I heard that, I assumed that he had to have been fouled several times w/o getting calls.

Apparently that was not the case. “King” James will have to wait another game to earn his moniker.

- I picked myself up a Linksys WRT54GS from Staples for ~ $5 after some FAR items and a $20/100 coupon. Now I gotta decide whether or not I want to hack and flash it with some third party firmware, or just use the stock firmware.

One key deciding point: this router is for use at my parents’ place, not here. I’ll probably just leave it as-is :P.

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1450. I got a ton of rebates in the past week or so—about $300 worth of Symantec Rebate debit cards alone!

I know have over $400 in unspent Amazon.com gift certificates.

(Every time I receive a Symantec Rebate debit card, I immediately convert it to an Amazon.com GC, which I add to my Amazon.com buyer account.)

- Sprint’s customer service is awesome. Don’t believe me? Read on!

Back in January, I extended my contract in exchange for a 10% discount on service. The Sprint rep I spoke to told me that I would see the 10% discount on my account effective within the next two statements.

In April, the 10% still didn’t show up, so I called Sprint, and the rep I spoke to assured me that the 10% would show up on the next statement.

Fast forward to yesterday, and the 10% was still nowhere to be found. I called Sprint again, and here is our conversation (paraphrased):

Me: My 10% discount still hasn’t shown up on my account!

CS: Ok…well…it’s there, and I can’t do anything about it. It will probably show up next month.

Me: Probably? And what if it doesn’t show up next month?

CS: (laughs) Then you can call back and yell at me.

I love Sprint.

- So I swung by Ross today with my sister to return a shirt I bought over the weekend.

That’s when I found a really nice golf polo (Adidas ClimaCool something or another) for $20, marked down from $70. I couldn’t resist, though I’d say it’s 50-50 that I return the shirt sometime in the next week or so.

Anyway, when I got to the checkout line—single line, but multiple registers—I noticed three people in line, followed by a little gap, followed by a shopping cart full of stuff. I looked at the cart, wondered if it actually belonged to somebody, and before I could make up my mind, the owner of the cart came up to it—she had been looking through a rack of clothes near the line—nudged it forward, and gave me a death stare, as if to say “Yes, this is my cart, and yes, I’m in line, a$$hole.”

So I stood behind the lady’s cart, and she went back to her shopping. The line moved some more, and I just stood behind her cart, like an idiot. A guy was behind me, wondering what the hell the idiot in front of him (me) was doing just standing there, and the gap between the cart and the person in front widened. I seriously contemplated just shoving the cart out of the way, but the woman came back, nudged her cart forward again, and walked off.

I told myself, “If I’m the next person in line, and the woman doesn’t return, I’m cutting in line no matter what.” Unfortunately, the woman came back right when one of the cashiers shouted “next in line!”

One other bit of shopping cart ridiculousness: later, when another cashier called for the next person in line, two older ladies went to the register. One of the cashiers asked the trailing lady, “Were you in line?” The lady responded, “Of course! I was with this woman (pointing to her friend) all the time!”

That’s fine and dandy…HAD THE TWO WOMEN COMBINED THEIR PURCHASES AS A SINGLE TRANSACTION! But nope, the second woman waited for her friend to finish checking out, and then started emptying her cart in front of the register, expecting the cashier to start checking her out! And yes, the cashier reluctantly started scanning the second woman’s stuff.

Oh how I hate stupid people.

- Fifteen dollar ($50 retail) box seats. Chicken nachos, Dodger Dogs, and peanuts. Not-so-obnoxious fans (and if they were obnoxious, it was in a funny way). Blake DeWitt hitting his second career HR in inside-the-park fashion. A couple of B-level celebrity sightings (twice!). What could have ruined tonight’s Mets-Dodgers game?

Answer: the possible existence of an even more powerful, faster-acting Ung-hex!

The Dodgers were up, 5-4, in the bottom of the ninth inning, with two outs: a long fly out to center by Moises Alou, and a hard ground out by Carlos Delgado on a great play by 1B James Loney. The crowd stood up, and my sister and I joined them. That’s when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, my sister putting her backpack on. I immediately told her, “Take that off!” She didn’t listen.

Single by Angel Pagan.

I told her again to take off the backpack. Instead, she handed me my sweater.

Single by Brian Schneider.

I grabbed her backpack, and slammed it on her empty seat. I tossed my sweater on the seat as well.

Strike three, looking, to Luis Castillo.

As we celebrated, I told my sister, “You lucked out. If I hadn’t removed your backpack, we would have lost!” She denied the existence of her own Ung-hex, but who could deny it after what happened above? Never has my Ung-hex worked THAT quickly, and THAT effectively.

The seats themselves were pretty decent—aisle 44, next to the right field foul pole, and row T, just underneath the overhang of the Loge section—and thank goodness that there were no really obnoxious fans near us. The concession stands were a heck of a lot nicer than in other sections, and there was a much larger variety of restaurants. Also, the bathrooms were really nice! Instead of a trough, there were actually urinals :P. Also, while there were paper towel dispensers, the bathrooms also had Dyson Airblades! Awesome!

The game was excellent, although it was clear that Dodgers’ pitcher Hideki Kuroda was going to have a rough game. Thank goodness for the play of one Blake DeWitt (who?): 3-4, 4 RBI (2-run single with the bases loaded, and what proved to be a game-winning inside-the-park home run that had the home crowd demanding a curtain call with a “We want Blake!” chant.

(Who needs Andy LaRoche? Nomar who? BLAKE DE-WITT! BLAKE DE-WITT!!!)

As for the celebrity sightings, it was nothing much to write home about. Once we found our seats, we immediately got up and visited the concession stands. A few seconds into our walk, and I noticed three men walking the opposite way. I caught a glance of one of them, and thought he looked familiar. My sister immediately chased me down, and exclaimed some gibberish that I don’t quite recall.

(She LOVES the show.)

Turns out that Detective Don Flack (Eddie Cahill) and CSI Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) were the two celebs she spotted. On the way out of the stadium, we spotted them near the Field level exit (I was 99.999% positive that that was them, and my sister confirmed it, muttering “OMG OMG that’s them!”). I quickly told her that I would walk past them, and then bend over and tie my shoelaces, to give her an opportunity to go bother them.

She chickened out. By the time she gathered herself to do something, they walked away.

(If this is how we act in front of B-level celebs, what would have happened if we saw Gary Sinise?)

Until next time!

Tags: blake dewitt, box seats, carmine giovinazzo, cavs, celtics, checkout, csi new york, customer service, Dodger Stadium, dodgers, eddie cahill, firmware, inside-the-park home run, mets, rebates, ross, shopping cart, sprint, wrt54gs by Peter
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Long post today, so let’s get right to it.

- I decided that it was time to update my wardrobe (read: buy new clothes). On Saturday, armed with a pair of coupons—30% off at Foot Locker and 20% off at Macy’s—my sister and I went to Westfield Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks.

After a quick browse through Macy’s, our first stop was Foot Locker. After about five minutes of browsing, and thirty seconds of trying out one pair of shoes, I decided on the Nike Air Max Tailwind 2008. I just loved how the shoes looked, and the fact that they were comfortable as hell was all the convincing I needed. I wasn’t really looking for a pair of running shoes; I really wanted just a pair of cross-trainers or something similar.

The re-visit to Macy’s was fruitless, so on Sunday, we swung by Ross. Normally, Ross has quite a few sections for me to browse through, so much so that I get sick and tired of looking after several racks’ worth of clothes, and just give up. The Ross I visited, however, had only one small section of athletic shirts, so I was able to finish shopping in a few minutes. I scored a couple Reebok PlayDry shirts, as well as a really ugly (but really nice!) T for $4.

We had to go on a food run, so we went to 99 Ranch, Costco, and JONS Supermarket for a ton of food. I had a hankering for some salsa—it might have been influenced by Cinco de Mayo—so I mixed up a quick tomato salsa (chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, chopped cilantro, chopped roasted Jalapeño peppers, fresh lime juice, and Pico de Gallo seasoning).

While at Costco, I couldn’t resist one of their take-n-bake pizzas; I forget what it’s called, but it has fresh tomato, basil, and globs of mozzarella cheese on it. That was seriously the best take-n-bake pizza I’ve ever had.

Sunday night, I decided to bake some chicken coated with seasoned flour (AP flour, kosher salt, and some Mrs. Dash). After 50 minutes in a 400 degree oven, the chicken came out super-juicy, although the skin was a bit bland. I should probably have coated the chicken in egg first, before applying the flour, but I was lazy :P.

I also bought some frozen Buffalo Wings from Costco; that will probably be my dinner, along with the leftover pizza. Damn…now I’m super hungry again.

- So after watching the MVP do what MVPs do, I gotta say that the Lakers are in serious trouble despite pulling out a Game 1 victory. Certainly the rest helped, coupled with the fact that the Jazz played two tough playoff games in 48 hours, but clearly there was some rust to knock off as well.

At least, Laker fans better hope it was rust, and not a thorough domination by the Jazz on the offensive glass. Twenty-five offensive rebounds??? Plus-seventeen in total rebounds? Was that Memhet Okur or a in-his-prime Dennis Rodman crashing the glass? With Games 3 and 4—and the Jazz’s 37-4 home record—looming, the Lakers better shore up the defensive glass, or the series could easily end in six games.

It’s a good thing that the Lakers have the MVP, who apparently owns an annual pass to the free throw line. I’m actually surprised that Kobe missed two freebies! Anyway, the Lakers better hope for better rebounding, better shot selection, and more solid defense on Utah’s two stars. I have a feeling that Deron Williams will not shoot 5-for-18 in Game 2, and Boozer likely will not commit seven turnovers again.

Something tells me that Utah will pull out Game 2, win Game 3 handily, and lose Game 4 in a nailbiter. If all that happens, I don’t expect a home team to lose again, and the Lakers will win the series in seven games. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Jazz win in six.

One other NBA thought: the hard foul that Hawks’ F Marvin Williams committed on Celtics’ G Rajon Rondo was an extremely harsh foul, and it did warrant a Flagrant-2. However, I did not think Williams intended on injuring Rondo at all. What Williams did was extremely dangerous, but Jeff Van Gundy hit it right on the head: 1) it looked like Williams tried to grab Rondo, but Rondo was already airborne, and an attempted grab ended up being a near-clothesline; and 2) if Williams really had a play on the ball—one criterion required to deem a foul a flagrant-1 at worst—why didn’t he attempt to go for a block instead? Was the play dirty? Yeah. Was it with intent to injure? I don’t believe so.

Until next time!

Tags: baked chicken, clothes, costco, flagrant foul, foot locker, jazz, kobe bryant, lakers, macys, marvin williams, mvp, nike air max tailwind 2008, pizza, rajon rondo, rebounds, ross, salsa by Peter
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Argh! I thought I just had a headache, but I guess I am full-blown sick! Sore throat, runny nose…good thing I still have two bags of cough drops from CVS (free after ECBs, naturally).

- It’s time…for some Dodgers love.

(I swear I’m not a bandwagon-er, even though it may appear that way because this is the first real Dodgers blog entry I’ve made this year.)

Rafael Furcal has to be the early favorite for NL MVP, right? No, I’m not saying this as a homer. I’m not saying this after watching Furcal tattoo a three-run, game-breaking HR against Colorado. And I’m not saying this as a fan of the guy himself. I’m saying this based on his stats YTD:

(as of 5/1/08) .370/.457/.580. 28 R, 44 H, 12 2B, 2 3B, 3 HR, 11 RBI, 18 BB. Second in NL in AVG, fourth in steals (7), top ten in OPS (1.036), and first in runs. Never mind all the SportsCenter-caliber plays he makes at shortstop. Is it no coincidence that his play is a key reason for the Dodgers’ six game winning streak?

Reports say that Furcal is open to offers for a contract extension mid-season. Can you blame the Dodgers for trying to re-sign him? Think he’ll take a three-year extension worth $48 million? Yeah, I know…$16 million for a SS who will be 34 at the end of the contract? I could think of bigger wastes of money.

(Tangent: I actually took a few minutes to decide which player I would associate with the word “wastes” above. It should really only have taken a few seconds; Schmidt has been injured, while Jones couldn’t get a hit if he were swinging a tennis racket.)

(Tangent #2: Did I just Ung-hex the Dodgers? It’s now Dodgers 7, Rockies 6. Whoops!)

- Raise your hand if you had the Atlanta-Boston series going more than five games.

If your hand is raised, you’re a Hawks fan (do those exist?), a damn liar, stoned out of your mind, or you own a time machine, went to the future, and saw Atlanta winning Game Six at home on May 2, 2008.

(Tangent: Why is it that, during the “NBA Cares” mini-commercials that air during the playoffs, do we hardly see the superstar players participating? ESPN just aired one such commercial, and Kyle Korver (!!!) was the guest. Was Deron Williams busy that night? Was Carlos Boozer having dinner with family that day?

I kid, of course. What the NBA has done for New Orleans is, in a word, remarkable.)

As I was watching the fourth quarter of the Celtics-Hawks game, one thought came to mind: “THIS team won only 35 games in the regular season?” People slammed the Hawks for taking Al Horford over Mike Conley, Jr., but Horford’s been real strong in this series. Naturally, I gotta ask: What if the Hawks had drafted Chris Paul? And why did I continue to see Ray Allen on Joe Johnson? Is Doc trying to get himself run out of town?

(Off-topic: Andruw Jones just doubled??? The world is going to end! His batting average probably just increased ten points with that one hit.)

Do the Hawks have a chance in hell of upsetting Boston in Game Seven? Why not? Do I think they’ll win? Of course not.

By the way, T-Mac is having a hell of a first half against Utah—10-16, 28/7/3—and I’d love to see Houston force a Game Seven against Utah. It’s gonna be hard to do so, though, sans Rafer Alston. Had he been healthy for the whole series, would this game be an elimination game for Utah? Also, LeBron went LeBron, manned up, and ousted Washington with a triple-double. I dare the Boston-Atlanta winner to start trashing LeBron.

(OT: It appears that the Ung-hex has been averted, thanks to a bases-clearing double by Matt Kemp. Whew.)

More playoff thoughts next time, but until then, let me wrap up with this:

- So as you loyal UngsungBlog readers—all none of you—know, my sister has karmic powers. Evidently, either I have yet to learn to stop picking on her, or I like letting karma kick me in the ass.

Well, as we were preparing to head back to MPK last Friday, my sister remarked that she was expecting a phone call from someone, but her phone wasn’t not in her possession. Standing right in front of our sofa, I asked where her phone was, and she explained that she had left it in her car.

I jokingly exclaimed that leaving her phone in her car was “foolish,” and immediately turned around to get something. That’s when I discovered that my sister had left my poker chip set besides the sofa, hidden under a blanket which hung over the sofa.

How did I know the poker chip set was there? Well, one nano-mill-second after I insulted my sister and turned around, my right foot Vanderjerked the hidden poker chip set.

(Vanderjerk, v., to kick something hard, either accidentally or not at all straight, named after former Indianapolis Colts idiot kicker Mike Vanderjagt: My nephew spilled his juice all over our carpet, so I disciplined him by Vanderjerking him in the butt.)

I screamed out in pain, bent over, and was immediately half-crying and half-laughing; crying because it hurt like a mother, and laughing because what happened was so ridiculous. My sister got a good laugh for about five minutes, and I thought it was a bit funny for a few seconds. Too bad my foot hurt for a good day or two.

Will I learn my lesson? Maybe when the Clippers win an NBA title.

One last parting thought: what the hell happened in the third quarter? I guess the Lakers better prepare for a Game One on Sunday.

Tags: april, atlanta hawks, boston celtics, houston rockets, karmic powers, lebron james, mvp, nl, rafael furcal, sister by Peter
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No quick-hitters, as I still have a headache. Let’s get to it:

- Tonight’s Office started out pretty slowly, but when it got going, it really got going! Tonight, we got the prototypical “storyline” episode; tonight’s episode wasn’t over-the-top funny, but it served its purpose to further a number of existing storylines, and may possibly lay the framework for future episodes. Look what we discovered from tonight’s episode alone!

(BTW, I loved the whole opening scene. Would it have been too rated-R for someone to suggest that Michael put an impression of something else into the cement? Why did Oscar waste his time trying to convince Michael that an impression of his face didn’t seem safe?) And why didn’t Michael’s head get kinda stuck in the cement? That would have been hilarious, in a morbid way…

We know Ryan has issues with Jim for Jim’s interaction with David Wallace, and now we know that Toby hates Jim for his relationship with Pam. Is Jim’s job possibly at risk? Perhaps Jim will be demoted, and Dwight will be promoted to the real #2 and not the #2 in his mind only. Or perhaps Jim will get fed up with the negativity towards him, and he has to choose between keeping his position with the company and staying close to his girlfriend. We’ve got Dwight already against Jim, and now Ryan and Toby…Andy, logically, has to be next to attack Jim, right, perhaps with a little prodding from Angela?

By the way, Toby, what happened to going to Costa Rica? Couldn’t afford the plane ticket? And Pam’s blind as a bat sans corrective lenses, eh? You just knew there were going to be some inappropriate comments made to Pam by the men of the Office (namely, Kevin and Creed). As far as the main storyline of the episode is concerned…

Also, did anyone notice that, on the company hierarchy chart that Dwight has—why he has one is a completely different story—Dwight’s name is just slightly above Jim’s?

EDIT: If you look carefully at the office hierarchy, you’ll see the following (I nearly spit water all over my laptop when I first noticed this):

• Above Dwight’s name are the words “Original Assistant Regional Manager.” Over Jim’s name are the words “Assistant Regional Manager.”
• Creed’s name (Creed Bratton) is in quotes.
• All the females in the office have the female symbol next to their names. Next to Oscar’s name is two male symbols. Next to each female is a moon symbol (quarter moon, half moon, etc.), presumably to indicate their “time” of the month. Phyllis’ and Meredith’s symbols are crossed out, for obvious reasons.
• The members of the Party Planning Committee are indicated in purple.
• Toby’s name has the Star of David next to it. Kevin’s name has a shamrock next to it.
• Next to Andy’s name is a Chess pawn is the image of a college graduate (did nobody else in the office graduate college?). Next to Darryl and Stanley’s names are a symbol that I can’t quite make out, but I presume they are an indication that these two are black. EDIT: Krunk said the image appears to be a fist. A sign of “Black Power,” perhaps?
• Devon (the guy who got fired in Halloween) has his name crossed out.

Speaking of Andy, who didn’t see Dwight doing something with Andy’s car to upset him? I gotta take down a transcript of what Dwight did to persuade Andy to sell his car for cheap, and try that out at a used car dealership

Finally! Someone grew a pair and called Michael out! Too bad it was Stanley; I would have loved to see a partially-drunk Meredith do it instead. Then again, it was awesome to see Stanley finally get more than a couple lines in an episode, and the tension between the two of them was great. It came as a pleasant surprise to me that Michael finally figured out that he was the authority figure of the office, and expected Stanley to treat him with some respect. And I loved the end of the episode, where Phyllis called Michael’s “summer Christmas” plan the worst thing she’s ever heard of, only to have Michael clear the room of everyone but himself and her.

If only I didn’t have to endure Michael butchering the series of jokes in the final talking head segment.

Favorite moments (coming soon…):

• Oscar: “Michael…that doesn’t seem…safe (rolls eyes, as if to remind himself who he’s talking to)”
• Pam: “Yeah…I slept over at a friend’s house, and…I forgot my contact lens solution, so I had to wear my backup glasses. Shut up!” (No comment.)
• Michael: “Pam, those make you look so ugly. In order to get hotter, you take the glasses off. You’re moving in the wrong direction.”
• Jim’s second fake proposal. Much funnier than the first one.
• Jim’s one-up on Andy’s idea for a new outgoing voicemail message. That had a bit of Dwight in it.
• Andy: “You meet a lot of ladies driving an Xterra, because…you pull up to a stop light, and look over, and there’s an Xterra next to you, they’re always driven by chicks. So there’s your ice breaker.” OK…
• Michael: “What’s the pink?” Dwight: “Menstrual cycles.” (see above)
• Kevin: “All the girlfriends that I’ve ever had have worn glasses. It’s kinda a turn on for me…like librarians…could you just say ‘These are due back Thursday’?” Creeeeeeeeeeepy…
• Creed: “I’d like to put the piano in front of Pam, without her glasses, and see what happens. I’d also like to see her topless.” LOL!
• Michael: “I would have never thought that gangs would be tickling each other.”
• Michael: “It’s the only possible solution I have left.” Toby: “Well, you can actually fire him.” Michael: “Ok…I’ve had enough of you.” Poor Toby
• Stanley: “Are you serious?” Michael: “I am serious…we are all serious. You are fired like a heart attack.” I swear I knew Michael was going to screw up this line!
• Michael: “Why don’t they just make the plane out of the airline food?” See above.

- Raise your hand if you were surprised that the B(S)CS rejected a plan to have a four-team playoff to crown an NCAA football champion every year. Apparently, not determining a champion on the field, according to these clowns, is the best way to determine a champion. Using arbitrary computer numbers and “try to be as unbiased as possible” football writers, these clowns would like us to believe, is the best way to determine a champion. According to Big 12 commish Dan Beebe,

“Even though we could construct barriers at this time, we felt like … there could be easily an errosion of that; more pressure to add more teams with an ability to get to the national championship game as we went over time. The system is under a lot of scrutiny that can result in pressure to add games. Our league is not favorable to a playoff system as a whole, and viewed this as the first step in that direction.”

Let me summarize: a four-team, plus-one playoff system would shaft team #5. If the playoffs were expanded to eight, team #9 would get shafted. Also, the B(S)CS would also like us fans to understand that adding additional games adds additional stress onto the students, both physically and academically. However, nobody seems to complain when NCAA basketball players have to spend up to three weeks outside of the classroom. The B(S)CS believes that players already play too many games; I didn’t hear anyone complaining when teams started adding a 12th game to their schedules.

I love this quote:

“We have decided that because we feel at this time the BCS is in an unprecedented state of health, we feel it’s never been healthier during its first decade, we have made a decision to move forward in the next cycle with the current format,” ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford said.

By “unprecedented state of health,” these people are referring to their bank accounts, if that wasn’t painfully clear. I say, if we’re going to use an arbitrary system of picking the two teams to play in the National Championship game, we should be allowed to vote American Idol style.

Vote 1-800-BCS-0001 for USC, or text message BCS01 for USC! Standard text messaging rates apply!

American Idol-style voting can’t be any worse than what we currently have, right?

Tags: bcs, bs, did i stutter, hierarchy, office, playoff, review, screenshot by Peter
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