UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

I don’t have much to blog about, but despite that, I’m going go blog anyway.  So here goes.

(I actually do have something I could blog about, but it’s going to take me a while to arrange all my thoughts on that subject, so I’ll hold it off a bit longer.)

Quick-hitters, a somewhat super-sized edition:

- Lack of sleep = bad.

Lack of sleep + red eyes every morning = really bad.

Lack of sleep + red eyes + a screwed-up sleep cycle = insanely bad.

Speaking of lack of sleep…

- I’ve gotten back to the habit of a cup of coffee or two daily.  Normally, when I brew coffee with my Vietnamese coffee press, I don’t bother replacing the metal lid after pouring the water into the press.

A couple days ago, on a whim, I decided to try brewing the coffee with the lid on.  Wow…what a difference!

(You would think that this is common sense; without the lid, steam can easily escape, rapidly cooling off the water being used to brew the coffee.  Have you forgotten that I am an idiot?)

- Shot-Online update:  my primary character, fdsfdsg, is a level 25 amateur, and I really have to get rid of this driver I’m using (power +5 is nice, but not at the expense of minus-2 points of impact).

I also had two of the worst rounds of my life (yes, even worse than when I was a beginner):  +6 in nine holes on Alfheim (the beginner course), and +8 on six holes on NamChoc CC.

Gosh I suck.

- I filed nine rebates with Parago over the last few days.  Five approvals, four rejections.

AKA par for the course.

Speaking of rebates…

- Current rebate-o-meter:  $1,400.  However, I have about $300 in rebates that have yet to be filed, and they must be postmarked by TOMORROW.  Oops!

- In the pantheon of douchebag-y commercials, I think McDonald’s might finally be topped by another superpower retailer:  Wal-freaking-mart.

(LOL.  Just as I finished that sentence above, a McDonald’s commercial aired.  I may have to reconsider my stance.)

Case in point:  that stupid commercial with the mom, the kid strapped to her, and the little girl causing general mayhem, including spilling something on her shirt.  Am I the only one that wishes he were in that commercial, so I could trip the kid?

Yes, I have problems.

Do you know why I can’t stand Wal-Mart?  Do you need to ask?  Wal-Mart commercials annoy me so much that they have influenced me to introduce a new category of blog topics:  [bad] commercials!

(As an aside, while Googling another commercial I can’t stand—that Secret one where the girl has her hands raised throughout it—I stumbled upon this site:  CommercialsIHate.com.  Awesome site!)

OMFG!  Another WalMart commercial just aired!  AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

That’s it for today.

Tags: bad commercials, coffee, lack of sleep, parago, shot-online, walmart by Peter
No Comments »

Quick-hitters:

- I just noticed that my blog lists blog categories under “Tags:” at the end of each blog entry, rather than the tags themselves.

I’ve since fixed this, but knowing me, I probably screwed up somewhere.  If anyone sees a problem with the “Tags:” entry in the future, please let me know!

- Current rebate-o-meter:  $1,550 (not counting the two orders I placed in the last hour or so and, obviously, have yet to even consider filing :P).

No changes to my toothpaste-o-meter, but I did pick up six additional bottles of mouthwash.

- Lamar Odom just earned his entire year’s salary tonight.  Too bad it was all for naught.  The Lakers’ bigs finally started running hard in that first quarter.  Where was this during the first three games of the series?  And did someone inject something into Trevor Ariza?

(Random thought:  That crossover that Luke Walton pulled off early in the second quarter might have been the whitest crossover ever :P)

Naturally, Boston was going to make their run in the second quarter, but that three-point play by Fisher was absolutely huge.  And did I read that wrong, or did Kobe really not have a FG in the first half?

Then the third quarter happened, and with that, the series is now over.

(David Stern probably is not a happy camper.  Certainly he wanted this series to go seven.  Well, perhaps he could still do something about it… :P)

There’s just something about the third quarter that just absolutely energizes the Celtics.  21-3 to end the quarter?  +16 for the entire quarter?  That might have been even more impressive than the Lakers winning the first quarter by a record-setting 21 points!  Most importantly, Pierce got rolling, and that’s when I knew the Lakers were in huge trouble.

Championship teams play through adversity.  Boston clutched up.  The Lakers wilted.  Ray Allen gets to the basket untouched?  And why the hell did the Lakers inbound the ball???  And those are the reasons why Boston is going to win the NBA Championship in five or six games.

Worst of all, now I’m going to have to hear how the Lakers choked away a 24-point lead for years to come, especially from the Boston myopians.

(Thanks, Jeff Van Gundy, for the hex, when you declared the series tied 2-2 early in the game :P)

Congrats, Celtics!  You deserved it!

One parting thought:  this series reminds me a bunch of the 2004 Finals, minus the team bickering.  I argued that Detroit actually won that series 5-0, and one could argue that Boston is up 4-0 in this series right now.

Let’s hope the aftermath of the Finals does not include another Kobe Bryant meltdown.

Tags: Blog, boston celtics, categories, lamar odom, los angeles lakers, tags, trevor ariza, wordpress by Peter
No 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 »

Boy has it been hot here lately!

Quick-hitters:

- I sent XG/MGE this short but sweet email back on the first of the month:

Am I wasting my time by inquiring about the latest status of my rebates?

Should I be surprised that I have yet to receive a reply from these clowns?

- Current rebate-o-meter: $1,900 (- $40, but +$200 or so after this past weekend, not counting my Rite Aid/Walgreen’s rebates).

- Today, I am introducing a new “feature” to the UngsungBlog: the “toothpaste-o-meter.” What better way to show my loyal readers how much time I waste going to stores to get money-making toothpaste than with a running total of the number of unused or barely-used tubes of toothpaste?

Current toothpaste-o-meter: 25 (16 unopened—twelve Colgates!—two unused w/o boxes, four used once, and currently three in rotation).

I spotted a preview of May’s CVS Monthly ECB catalog, and noticed that they are going to have Aquafresh Extreme Clean toothpaste free after ECBs all next month, and it’s limit three per customer!

At this rate, I’ll have enough toothpaste to brush each of my teeth individually, twice a day, for the rest of the year

- Damn you, Los Angeles Times newspaper dispenser! My Sunday LA Daily News didn’t contain some coupons that were supposed to be in the inserts, so I grabbed a stack of quarters and ran to the nearest Times dispenser. I shoved in six quarters, pulled the door, and heard my quarters fall right into the change slot. Well, five of them, at least.

Slightly frustrated, I shoved in six quarters again, pulled the door again, and only a single quarter fell through the change slot. And no, I did not get my paper.

Later in the day, I went to Rite Aid, bought an LA Times, and found the coupon I was looking for. Three bucks spent for four bucks worth of coupons…what a deal!

- On Tuesday, my sister handed me a $25 American Express Gift Cheque (yes, I spelt that correctly), saying that I could go ahead and use it if I wanted to.

(Yeah, like I’m going to pass up free money.)

Intrigued—I had never seen an AmEx gift cheque, much less actually used one—I went to AmEx’s web site to research these things, and couldn’t believe what I saw!

A shipping fee will be added to your Order Total based on the shipping method you choose.

There is a $2.50 fee per Gift Cheque, which is subject to change. This amount will be added to your Order Total.

S&H appears to be $5.95 for standard mail. So let me get this straight. If, for whatever reason, I wanted to buy a single $25 gift cheque (tangent: I might flip if I have to type “cheque” one more time), it would cost me $25 + $8.45 in fees???

I know what you’re thinking: these things are probably meant for companies buying several of these gift checks at a time. I suppose that’s a valid point, except

In an effort to protect our customers against unauthorized transactions, Gift Cheques purchases are limited to $1,000 every 14 calendar days.

Forty $25 gift checks, at $2.50 per check, equals $105.95 in fees!

I suppose these checks are better than GCs because of the fact that they could be easily replaced if they were lost or stolen, plus they could be used at multiple stores, but is that “convenience” really worth 10% in fees?

I’m sleepy.

Tags: amex, check, gift cheque, la times, newspaper by Peter
1 Comment »

So I just got around to updating WordPress to version 2.5. Let’s hope I didn’t foul things up.

(I agree with Krunk…there needs to be an easier way to update WP. It didn’t help that WSFTP kept throwing up left and right. I had to create folders remotely first, before I could upload the new WP files. And don’t tell me that there is a setting in WSFTP that allows a user to transfer non-empty folders; I am fully aware of that, and never had a problem with the transfer of non-empty folders until today.)

Anyway…

Quick-hitters:

- Oh no! Between my sister and me, we have over $30 in ECBs expiring on the 17th, and there is absolutely nothing worth buying t his week or next! What to do???

- Somebody help me. I have Hunter’s song (from The Office) stuck in my head!

You took me by the hand

Made me a man

That one night

You made everything alright!

Argh!

Again, a one topic blog!

- So I’ve been a Vonage customer for about eight months now, and how can I put this nicely? The service stinks!

Well, at least I figured the service was garbage. I was able to make outgoing calls at a 20% success rate—one in five!—and incoming calls were a crapshoot at best (so much so that I started forwarding calls from my Vonage line to my cell phone.) I figured the problem had to lie either with Vonage, or perhaps Time Warner was messing up my phone connection. All I knew was that I was paying $24.99, and then $14.99, a month for a virtually useless phone line.

(Remember: I had a one year commitment, which was necessary to claim the $300 Circuit City card, as well as the $175 rebate on the Linksys PAP2 Phone Adapter.)

Recently, the Vonage line got so bad that I would get nothing but a busy signal, no matter what number I called. I decided that enough was enough, and began troubleshooting. I logged in to my Vonage account, and under Features…Bandwidth Saver, I lowered the sound quality to the lowest setting. That didn’t seem to do a damn thing.

I decided to log in to the PAP2 to see if there was some setting that I could fiddle with to fix things. I had to log in to my WRT54G router to pull the PAP2’s IP, and that’s when I decided that I would assign a static IP to the PAP2.

(Tangent: For some reason, I’ve never had luck with port forwarding and DHCP. For example, my secondary computer would always pull an IP of 192.168.1.110, but uTorrent would often report that the ports I left open for that computer were not so. it was only when I manually assigned the IP of 192.168.1.110 did port forwarding work properly.)

I logged in to the router, and saw only a couple of pages, one of which was asking for WAN info. Thinking that it wanted my IP info, I didn’t bother with that page, and looked through the other pages for anything to tweak. I found nothing, and that’s when I decided to read the manual (!!!).

(Manuals? What do we do with manuals? We throw them out the window! After all, I have techno-joy! ;-).)

I found that the DHCP could be disabled via the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu, which could be accessed by dialing **** on a phone connected to the PAP2. I dialed ****, entered the command to disable DHCP, and heard a broken “Invalid Command.” I tried again, and got the same broken message.

I hung up the phone, and noticed the “Phone 1″ light on my PAP2 shut off. I turned the phone back on, and heard something along the lines of “This line is not set up for Vonage use.” ARGH!

I accessed the IVR again, checked the status of DHCP, and found that it was, indeed, disabled. OK…I then proceeded to manually enter the IP, subnet mask, and gateway. I hung up the phone, picked it back up, and heard another error message: something along the lines of “Your adapter cannot register with Vonage’s services”.

It turned out that the PAP2’s IVR was about as good as most companies’ IVRs; in other words, they all stink. Too bad I couldn’t scream “OH MY F***** G*D” at the PAP2 :P. It took me seven or eight tries to correctly input all my information.

While browsing through the manual, I figured out that I wasn’t forwarding my ports correctly. Apparently, there are four port ranges that need to be forwarded: More importantly, I was supposed to use UDP and not TCP:

Set up port forwarding on your router. You must specify that four port ranges be forwarded to the IP address of the Phone Adapter. These four port ranges are as follows: 5060-5061 (UDP), 53-53 (UDP), 69-69 (UDP), and 10000-20000 (UDP).

After forwarding all ranges to the new IP of the PAP2, and changing the protocol to UDP, I picked up my phone, and immediately heard a dial tone! I placed a call—FYI, I had been using WaMu’s customer service # as a test call throughout—and immediately heard the WaMu recording! Finally!

The moral of the story? Don’t throw your manuals out of the window…unless you can find PDF copies :P. Let’s just hope that the service continues to work well.

Until next time!

Tags: office, pap2, vonage, wordpress by Peter
4 Comments »

Quick-hitters:

- Actual conversation between myself and my mother, over the weekend:

Her:  When are you going to go to [place] to visit [unnamed individual]?

Me:  Not sure.

Her:  Let’s go there next year.

(Note #1:  Read this.

Note #2:   I don’t recall inviting my mom to come with me!  Besides, who the heck travels with their mother???)

Me:  Sure, you can go.  By the way, [unnamed individual] told me to tell you to bring your frying pan if you’re going to stay with him.

Her:  *SMACK*

- New TV, or new laptop?  New laptop, or new TV?

That is the question.  I probably “need” a new TV more than a new laptop, but I wouldn’t mind a new laptop with a much better processor than the Pentium Dual-Crap that’s sitting in my laptop right now.

Maybe I should just steal my sister’s new Vostro.

- In an UngsungBlog first, Amy requested an Ung-hex on someone (typos corrected):

even if you don’t participate you should make a fantasy, bracket thingy for the IMBC‘ers.  place that ung-hex early!

Hmmm…I don’t think I’ve ever Ung-hexed an entire group, save one.  I should check the IMBC rules to see if acts of paranormal intervention are not allowed.

In any case, here goes:

I would imagine that Hank has to be favored to win again this year.  If not Hank, I’ll predict that someone that participated last year—Amy excepted—will win this year.   After that, I’ll pick “the field”—any one of the newbie participants—and Amy has to be the long shot to win.

(Happy, Amy?

And Hank, please don’t hurt me if you go 120 days straight, only to lose because of a bad internet connection :P)

- As the title states, there may be hope yet with regards to my XGBox/MGE rebate fiasco.  A few days ago, I mentioned that an individual from a forum I frequent got this response from XG/MGE:

Both of the checks have gotten printed. We will get them mailed by next week. Thanks for waiting.

Well, this individual reported to me today that he received his checks!  Does this mean XGBox actually intends on cutting checks to people that they owe?  Or do they only plan on paying a select few at a time?

I’m still betting that XG/MGE will send me my checks after 9/1/08, if they ever get around to doing so.

- Quickly, here are my Elite Eight thoughts:

1) If I were allowed to re-do my Bracket, I’d use a Magic Marker to write UNC as the champs.  They look almost unbeatable, and if Tyler Hansborough is going to sink outside jumpers like that, then other teams don’t stand a chance.

Don’t bother asking if this is another attempted Ung-hex.

2) Memphis looked absolutely dominant against Texas; I’d like to see how they are going to handle one Kevin Love, however.  Still, I suppose we can all stop the “Memphis is overrated b/c of their weak conference” talk now.

Hey Knicks’ fans!   How would Derrick Rose look in your uniform?

3) No thanks to an unnamed individual (no, not the same one mentioned earlier), I missed the entire first half of the Davidson-Kansas game.  Watching the second half of the game, I knew I missed a gem.  Curry took some really poor shots down the stretch, but I was really surprised that he didn’t take the final shot.  If you’re going to pass the ball for a game winning trey, why not attempt to drive and kick?  Kudos to Kansas’ D, though, and I’m sure they can’t wait to face former Kansas coach, Roy Williams.

And finally,

4) what the heck took so long for the Bruins to finally play a complete NCAA tourney game???  You had a feeling that Xavier was in trouble as soon as Westbrook made the game-opening steal and dunk.  More importantly, Luc Richard finally played a solid game.  I still have my concerns about Josh Shipp, Collison or Westbrook possibly disappearing, the total lack of a bench—James Keefe can’t possibly have another double-double in him, can he?—and Kevin Love falling in love with the three.

By the way, for those that think that this Final Four won’t be that exciting because all #1 seeds advanced, I wholeheartedly disagree.  I get it that people watch the NCAA tourney for the unexpected; they love teams like Davidson or George Mason of a couple years back.  We want to see #1s get toppled, and we want to see double-digit seeds live dream seasons, because the alternative is expected, and almost boring.  If all the favorites advance, that would be comparable to the NBA playoffs, where the best-of-seven format makes having the better team more likely to advance in the tournament.

However, isn’t the fact that this is the first time ever that all #1s made it to the Final Four unexpected in its own way?   When filling out your bracket, how many times do you hear “Never pick all #1s; that has never happened before!”?

(Tangent:  My sister, who still creamed me in the UngsungBlog Bracket Challenge, chose to listen to me, and crossed Kansas out of the Final Four.  Whoops.)

Besides, wouldn’t a Final Four full of #1 seeds mean that we fans will be treated to three titanic match ups between NCAA basketball powerhouses?  Don’t you want a huge dose of star power in the biggest games of the year?  As great as a Davidson v Memphis/UCLA championship match might sound, don’t you think a UNC-UCLA championship match wouldn’t be a huge draw?

Then again, if four mid-majors were in the Final Four, I’d still watch it.

by Peter
5 Comments »

No quick hitters tonight. My head hurts.

- So I think it’s about time that I change the subtitle of my blog, which currently reads

(Fantasy) sports talk, technology, product reviews, random thoughts, and whatever else I feel like talking about.

seeing as how I haven’t talked about fantasy sports since the NFL regular season ended. Not to mention, I haven’t done a product review in forever!

It’s about time to bust out some working drafts for a new UngsungBlog subtitle. How about this?

Sports talk, customer service rants, technology , food, random thoughts, and the occasional intelligent thought.

Or maybe I should shorten the subtitle:

Sports talk, customer service rants, and more!

Or how about one of these two?

A journey of amazing experiences.

A blog by Peter.

- So as a part of my sister’s full-body nutritional makeover, her nutritionist suggested drinking a ton of water per day.

My sister hates drinking water.

Knowing this, I suggested that she pick up some Crystal Light, and her nutritionist concurred. I was aware that Amazon.com had a $25 off $59 coupon good on certain grocery items (still good until March 31; code BIGBRAND). With that, we picked up the following:

1. Crystal Light Lemonade 3-pack, 8.7oz (makes 32 qts per box)
2. Crystal Light Iced Tea 3-pack, 3.80z (32 qts per box)
3. Crystal Light Green Tea Raspberry 4-pack, 1.8oz (10 qts per canister)

Note: each item comes with a number of pre-packaged tub of drink mix; each tub makes two quarts.

I know that sugar substitutes are generally sweeter than sugar—Equal (aspartame) and Splenda sure taste sweeter than sugar, IMO—but yikes! Crystal Light is ridiculously sweet! Even though the recipe calls for two quarts of water for one tub of powder, I found myself being able to add an extra quart of water without losing a significant amount of flavor or sweetness! This was true about all three flavors, by the way. At five calories a serving (3.33… per serving further diluted), I might start drinking this stuff instead of sodas or juice!

I’m not giving up my Mexicoke, though…no way in hell THAT’S happening!

- I’m still recovering from the coma I fell under after watching the Friday night games. I thought Michigan State was supposed to push Memphis, and I thought Villanova was going to be at least somewhat competitive against Kansas.

Oh well…I got to watch the Lakers get destroyed by the Memphis freaking Grizzlies.

(And I stand by what I said yesterday :P)

More Sweet Sixteen thoughts:

1) At least I picked the right region when I made my bold Carmelo Anthony comparison a few days ago. Stephen Curry is officially a monster, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he led Davidson over #1 seed Kansas in the Elite Eight. One hundred and three points in three tourney games? And it wasn’t like he did this against Cal State Fullerton, Cal State LA, PCC, ELAC, DeVry, etc.; he did this against Gonzaga, Kansas State, and sleeper Final Four pick Wisconsin!

Curry might win Most Outstanding Player of the tourney, based on his first three games alone.

2) UNC looked real dominant against WSU, and Texas looked strong in crushing Stanford. Kansas looked good as well, but I just don’t see them getting past UNC in one half of the Final Four.

(Yeah, I’m giving Louisville about a 1% chance to beat UNC, despite how well they looked, in stretches, against Tennessee.)

I still don’t think Memphis is going to get past Texas in the Elite Eight. And as far as the remaining Elite Eight matchup is concerned…

3) UCLA really needs to stop giving their fans heart attacks. You guys had a 21 point first half lead, and were an in-and-out, wide open triple away from having the lead get brought down to one??? I sincerely hope John Wooden was not watching the game.

The Bruins are (deservedly so!) getting killed by the media for being freaking luckboxes and near choke artists, and they deserve all the smack they’re getting. I’ve got a strong feeling that UCLA is going to get blitzed by Xavier tomorrow.

(And if you think this is an attempt at an Ung-hex, you’re absolutely right.)

Xavier is going to combine A&M and WKU’s game plans against the Bruins: they’ll spread the floor with their bigs, attack the guards with the dribble, and front Love at all times. Only this time, I expect the plan to be executed for an entire forty minutes, and I fully expect it to work. Hopefully UCLA can answer the bell and attack with the same intensity as they did down the stretch against A&M, except for the full 40 minutes. Otherwise, that bus trip back to LA should be a VERY quiet one.

Until next time!

by Peter
1 Comment »

Short blog entry today…here goes!

Quick-hitters:

- I put up my sister’s old laptop on Craigslist a few hours ago.

Anyone wanna bet on the over/under for the number of 419 scams I get between today and the end of the week?

I’ll set the O/U at 5.5, and I’ll gladly take the over.

- Current rebate-o-meter:  ~ $1550, including the $38 I’m still being scammed out of by XGBox/MGE.

Why I still count those rebates as pending, when it’s obvious that they are scamming me, is beyond me.

- I am happy to announce that I am no longer a Woot! virgin!

Over the weekend, I placed my first ever order at Woot.com, if you can believe that.  I picked up a Soyo Bluetooth headset + Bluetooth adapter for $15 shipped.  My sister needed a BT headset anyway—her Motorola HS820 is still acting up—and I always wanted a Bluetooth adapter.

- The UngsungBlog hit a pair of milestones recently!

My blog entry on March 20 was my 250th entry ever!  W00t!

Also, yesterday, Akismet caught its 1,000th spammy comment!  One thousand spam comments?  Does this mean my blog has finally “made it”?

Coincidentally, yesterday was the exact day that my 1&1 hosting account was renewed.  Let’s go for 3,000 spammy comments by this time next year!

- I made a huge batch of tuna fish salad today (the recipe can be found here), and it took a higher power to keep me from plowing through an entire box of Wheat Thins with the salad.

(And yes, Hank, I threw chopped Roma tomatoes in to the salad, and it was awesome.)

If I weren’t already stuffed, I would make myself a tuna salad sandwich with a third slice of bread.  I think I’ll just enjoy my chilled bottle of Mexicoke instead.

(A tuna salad melt sounds awfully good, though!)

- While watching the Lakers-Warriors game (gee, Lakers, that was an awesome last 90 seconds of regulation!), I determined that high definition TV is just not that enjoyable on a 32″ TV.

Methinks I need a bigger TV.  Where the hell is that damn IRS rebate?

(I might be the only person I know that might actually plan on spending that rebate check; everyone I’ve asked so far plans on depositing the rebate check in his bank account, or using it to pay off credit card bills.)

I’d love to get a 42″ LCD HDTV, but 37″ is probably all I can afford right now.  I’m wondering…is the 5″ increase really worth spending more money on?  I still have a $300 Circuit City GC burning a hole in my pocket, and I’d like to spend it sometime soon.  Maybe I should just pick up a cheap 37″ LCD (Olevia?) the next time one goes on sale there.

Then again, with March Madness ending soon, I’ll only have the NBA Finals to look forward to in HD.  And when the hell is The Office coming back?

Until next time!

by Peter
5 Comments »

Quick-hitters:

- For the love of spammy blogs! Right after I logged into Wordpress to compose this blog entry, I scrolled down a bit to the spam section under “Latest Activity” and noticed that the number of spam comments increased drastically from the last time I checked it!

(Every now and then, I like to check out the spammy comments, just to see how ridiculous they look.)

I went to the Comments section, and there were TWENTY comments awaiting moderation! Every single one of them were pushing some sort of drug, in that completely incoherent babble you might have seen before.

Does this mean my blog has “made it?”

- Call me a homer. Call me biased. Call me bitter over the fact that UCLA lost to freaking Washington. Call me whatever you want, but that inbounds “pass” that was thrown off Alfred Aboya’s face was bush league at best. How the refs didn’t call a technical foul on Washington’s Tim Morris on that play is totally incomprehensible.

If you’re going to throw the ball off the defender, throw it off his leg!

- I heard about the Florida Panthers’ Richard Zednik’s freak injury last night, but only this morning did I finally see a replay of how the injury occurred. Calling it a “freak” injury is quite the understatement; that was awfully scary stuff!

I’m glad to hear that he is now in stable condition in a Buffalo hospital.

- Back in January, I whined about $38 in rebates that I have been owed since May:

I’m still waiting on 2 $19 rebates [being handled by MGE Company] for a supposedly FAR CPU heatsink/fan from back in May [from parent company XG]. I’ve emailed these clowns several times, and have heard nothing but “please allow x weeks for processing.” The latest reply, which came on 12/17, said to allow an extra month for processing. I’m about ready to go down the state AG/BBB route.

This past Friday, I sent these clowns yet another email, asking about the status of my rebate. Should I have been shocked that they requested even more time for the processing of my rebates? Clearly XGBox/MGE Company hired a bunch of monkeys to process their rebates.

I filed my BBB/state Attorney General claims yesterday.

Here is a PDF of the email exchange between myself and these clowns. Enjoy!

- Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is a funny guy. At least, he better have been trying to be funny when he unleashed this criticism of the Lakers’ acquisition of Pau Gasol for a sack of potatoes:

“What they did in Memphis is beyond comprehension,” Popovich told SI.com. “There should be a trade committee that can scratch all trades that make no sense. I just wish I had been on a trade committee that oversees NBA trades. I would have voted no to the LA trade.”

Gregg “I won four championships because I shelved David Robinson early to earn ping-pong balls towards winning the 1997 NBA Lottery so that I can draft Tim Duncan” Popovich, please quit your whining. As J.A. Adande said a few days ago on Around The Horn, nobody whined when the Lakers traded Shaq for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, and Brian Grant (anyone who argues that that was NOT an unfair trade is, at the very least, smoking something awfully strong). I’ll take Adande’s point one step further: I didn’t hear Popovich complain when the Lakers traded Caron Butler for Kwame freaking Brown! Where was he when the T-Wolves traded away KG for Al Jefferson and junk?

(Might the fact that KG was shipped out of the Western Conference, and a Western Conference power got Gasol for absolutely nothing?)

Poor Popovich. He must be steaming now that the Lakers added Gasol, the Suns added Shaq, and all he was able to add was Damon Stoudamire. Can you blame him? His core players—Timmy, Tony Parker-Longoria, Bruce “Clutch n’ Grab” Bowen, Billy Ocean, Will Smith, etc.—are getting way up there in years! Maybe Popovich is seeing his dynasty crumbling all around him.

As a non-”Spurs in the Finals” fan, I sure hope so.

Until next time!

by Peter
3 Comments »

Lots of stuff happened this past weekend, but I have a few other things I want to talk about first.

I’ll try to keep this entry as short as possible.

Quick-hitters:

- On Friday night, my meteorologist of choice—in other words, the the weatherperson I happened to be watching at the time—said that warm weather was “coming.”

She didn’t mention that Saturday was going to be 10-20 degrees hotter than Friday.

(It’s not as if I didn’t appreciate the warmer weather.  I just like my temperature changes to be gradual, not immediate.)

- Happy (way overdue, I know) Chinese New Year!

- One more issue I have with my DIY iPod mini project:  it seems to be leaking juice at an abnormally high rate.  I had the iPod locked and sitting in my pocket all day on Saturday, and when I got home that night, the battery meter appeared to decrease by 2-3 “ticks.”  Hopefully, I was just imagining things, or the problem goes away after a few recharging cycles.

- While cleaning up my desk on Friday night—that was seriously long overdue—I heard a loud *POP* (think glass shattering) followed by a sizzling sound coming from the kitchen.  I ran there, thinking I had left the stove on, but I found nothing out of the ordinary.  Strange, I thought to myself, as I walked back into my office.

About an hour later, I went back into the kitchen to grab a drink, and I happened to glance at a set of AAA batteries that were sitting on my kitchen counter.  For reasons unknown to me, I decided to inspect the batteries, and when I picked them up, I noticed a tiny brown puddle where the batteries used to be.

Apparently, one or more of the batteries popped and leaked acid, while sitting on my kitchen counter.

I’ve seen batteries leak acid before, but usually this occurs inside a device, and I’ve never had quality (Duracell, in this case) batteries leak acid before.

- Yet another update regarding my ZoneAlarm rebate fiasco:  a check for $40 from Fry’s Corporate Office showed up in my mailbox on Saturday!  Thanks Fry’s!

I’ll be especially happy if the $25 for my American Telecom Systems phone shows up in the next couple of weeks.

- So awhile back, I mentioned that my credit score took a murderous fall, and it was partly due to Citibank no longer reporting the credit limit on two of my cards, totaling over $15,000 in “lost” credit:

According to my credit report, Citibank only is reporting the limit on one of my cards, and the limit on that card [(a Diamond Preferred Rewards card)] is a paltry $1,000.  So, I have devised a plan:  I’m going to re-allocate most of my total Citibank credit limit on to this one card, and hope that Citibank reports the new limit to the three bureaus.

One thing I forgot to mention about that incident was the fact that, months prior, I had shoved most of the credit limit from the card that now has a $1,000 limit on to the PremierPass card.  I don’t recall exactly why I did this; I might have taken out a balance transfer.  Anyway, my lazy ass decided that now was the time to call Citibank and request a reallocation of credit.  Unfortunately for me, the rep I spoke to could not help me out.

The rep explained that even though my PremierPass card has a $16,000 limit on it, the line of credit is what’s called a “revolving” line of credit aka a “no pre-set spending limit.”   She then explained that the Diamond Preferred Rewards card had a fixed line of credit, and since the two lines of credit were different, I could not reallocate any part of my credit from one card to the other.

Fan-freaking-tastic!

After the thorough explanation, the rep then tried to sell me a personal loan (it might have been called a personal line of credit; I honestly don’t remember) at a fixed rate of 9.9%.  I quickly refused, and the rep continued to push the loan on me.  I explained that I had no need for a personal loan, and the rep all but insisted that I was passing up on the opportunity of a lifetime.

(It’s not as if I was going to tell the rep “If I needed a loan, I’d take out a 0% balance transfer, not a 10% personal loan!”  Maybe I should have said that…)

This wasn’t the first time Citibank tried to sell me this personal loan; I miss the days where they would just try to sell me their Credit Protector service.

- On the heels of the latest Citibank saga, I think it’s about time for me to update “The List:”

1) Bank of F’n America (still in a class by itself)

2) AllRebates/Ohana Companies (and yet I still insist on doing business with them; at least I now know that I have backing from Fry’s)

3) Citibank (thank you, Citibank)

4) Time Warner

5) (tie) Parago/USPS/Buy.com

Yes, CompUSA has been removed from the list, due to their closing.

by Peter
3 Comments »