UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

My sister’s computer build has gone from a horrible time to a full-fledged disaster (and it’s still going on).  Brett Favre is really ticking me off.  The pet peeve I referenced last time still beckons to be talked about.  The Elton Brand-Los Angeles Clippers saga is getting interesting.

All that being said, I am a lazy bastard after all, so I will blog about one single topic:  this weekend’s July B-Days BBQ.

Quick-hitters:

- Oh dear.  It appears that that stupid KFC commercial where the blonde ditz declaring that “anything is possible” in this “whole new wing world” is airing again.

So apparently the brass at KFC not only thought the commercial was good enough to air it once…but they thought it was good enough to air it AGAIN???

Yikes.

- Speaking of stupid commercials, have you seen the T-Mobile one where Brett Favre makes a cameo?

Absolutely disgusting.  Seriously.

- Current rebate-o-meter:  $1,199.  I can’t wait for the 2009 software to come out!

- (The following story is about *a* computer build, but not *the* build referenced at the beginning of this blog entry.)

So six months ago, I got a CPU/mobo combo (some junky ECS board + a Pentium Dual Core 915 @ 2.8GHz) from Krunk in exchange for a super-duper pricey, 23K gold-painted 6′ HDMI cable (no, not really).  Three months later, with the parts still sitting in their original boxes, I acquired a 500GB SATA hard drive (for reasons which are not important *whistles*).

This past weekend, I finally got around to hooking up the parts, though I did have to buy a new motherboard; Krunk warned me that the mobo’s onboard LAN port was busted, and I feared that that was going to be the beginning of a disastrous build.

I bought a cheapy ECS board (GF7050VT-M) on eBay for ~ $35 shipped, thinking that I was going to get 25% back via M$’ Live Search cashback (and for the record, I have not yet been able to claim my cash back, but that’s a story for another day).  The seller shipped my purchase almost immediately, and because he was located in SoCal, I got my package in two days.

(insert rant)

The motherboard was shipped, IN ITS ORIGINAL BOX, with nothing more than a USPS Priority Mail Tyvek envelope wrapped around it!!!  Who the hell thinks that the original box that a mobo is shipped in is sufficient packaging for something as delicate as a motherboard???

(end rant)

Fortunately, the board is working fine, and my system build went without a hitch.  I know have 300GB of free space to use for, um, data backup.

If only my sister’s computer build went that well…

- On Saturday, my aunt decided that she wanted to BBQ to celebrate the birthday of her sister (my other aunt on my mom’s side) and another individual who shall remain nameless.

We decided to go to Almansor Park for the festivities, and even though it was really warm that afternoon, it got chilly quickly, so much so that it became a chore to keep the charcoal hot enough to thoroughly cook all the food.  We had to go through two bags of charcoal and tons of lighter fluid, but eventually everything got cooked.

Food, you say?  Kebabs (New York steak, mushrooms, and bell peppers), chicken wings, ribs, potato salad, salad, celery and carrot sticks, some other stuff that I don’t remember, and of course, a birthday cake.

(In fact, when the birthday cake was ready to go and Happy Birthday was sung, I found out that a third person had a mid-July birthday:  “cousin” Darren :P.  Three birthdays, one BBQ…talk about saving money!)

EDIT:  I forgot to mention…during the day, I was forced into several hours of touch football and my best James Loney impersonation as a first baseman.  Boy am I sore today!

Until next time!

Tags: 500gb, annoying, bad shipping, bbq, birthday, combo, commercial, cpu, Food, kfc, motherboard, sata, seagate, steak by Peter
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Sorry for not blogging in so long!

Quick-hitters:

- What is it about potato salad that makes it so ridiculously addictive?

(For the record, my potato salad is simple: diced potatoes, sliced olives, chopped hard boiled eggs, finely chopped celery, mayo, vinegar, and pepper to taste.)

If preparing the salad wasn’t such a PITA, I wouldn’t have a problem eating this stuff often.

- Somebody please remind me never again to wait until near the end of the (typical) 30-day postmark deadline to file my rebates!

I was filing four rebates on purchases that, so I thought, were made on 6/11, meaning the claims must be filed by 7/11. Eventually, I realized that 6/11 was the shipping date, not the order date. The actual order date was 6/9!

Whew.

- Speaking of rebates, my current rebate-o-meter reads $1550, and that’s not counting the several orders I made recently.

My toothpaste-o-meter dropped by one, because cousin David was only willing to take one box off of my hands.

- So I missed most of the Nadal v. Federer classic (and I don’t get ESPN Classic, so I couldn’t watch the replay), but if the last few games were any indication of how great the matchup was, I will have to petition NBC to sell the match on iTunes. His streak of five straight Wimbledon titles was gone in a flash, and after dismal showings (dismal by Federer’s standards, that is) in the Aussie and French Opens, Pete Sampras’ Grand Slam titles record of 14 (Federer’s two back) is starting to look somewhat out of reach.

(By the way, I thought it was really compelling to see Federer’s reaction to his loss, when he was interviewed by John McEnroe. His delcaration that the loss “[hurt],” followed by his near breakdown, was almost humanizing, because we’ve never seen Federer in this position: losing a Grand Slam final not on clay.)

More importantly, have we witnessed a changing of the guard? Nadal suddenly has five Grand Slams, and he has proven that he can win on a surface other than clay. Would it be out of the question for him, currently 22, to have ten Grand Slams by 25? Nadal is a ridiculous athlete; did you see how many shots he made that he had no business getting to? There’s no reason why his game can’t translate on to the hard courts? He might be the man to win the season Grand Slam, if anybody.

I can’t wait for the US Open.

- Friday the Fourth was spent at two locales: an annual Fourth of July BBQ (thanks Aaron!), followed by the fireworks show at the Valley Cultural Center in Woodland Hills.

As we headed out to the BBQ, the weather was awful: it was warm and sticky. Fortunately, the sun was shining brightly when we got there, and thank goodness it was a dry heat. It was hot enough, though, for me to go through three sodas, and (by my count) seven bottles of water.

We brought that addictive potato salad, and for lunch, I had a Hebrew National hot dog, a hamburger, half of a giant Hot Link, an Omaha steak hot dog, guac and salsa with tortilla chips, various fruit, and some awesome spinach dip.

Naturally, I regretted eating all that. That didn’t stop me from chasing all that with a hamburger at 2:30, when Aaron fired up the grill a second time.

My sister and I spent most of the day taking up two seats at a table, and people constantly shuffled in and out of the other two seats. Without going in to too much detail about the individuals sitting in other seats, let me just say that older people are awesome to hang around with :P.

We were about to leave at six, when Aaron fired up the grill for a seventh (?) time. I managed to choke down another two burgers, an Omaha Steak hot dog, and about two servings of insanely awesome baked beans.

I had to be carted out of the party.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 3.5 hot dogs/sausages, four hamburgers, five or six sides, three sodas, seven bottles of water, and a stomach ache when all was said and done.

(And if you think what I ate was ridiculous, apparently all I downed was par for the course!)

After food, we swung by the Valley Cultural Center to watch the fireworks show. Barnes Park’s fireworks show, that was not. The fireworks show ran along with music played by the Los Angeles Pierce Symphonic Winds, which was pretty awesome. It would have been cooler if we heard much of the music, though; we were too far back to hear more than the booms from the fireworks.

All in all, a good start to the weekend.

Part 2 next time, and maybe a serious rant on my part.

Tags: barbeque, bbq, deadline, fireworks, Food, fourth of july, grand slam, los angeles pierce symphonic winds, postmark, potato salad, rafael nadal, rebate, roger federer, valley cultural center, wimbledon by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- I just realized that my blog could be abbreviated as USB!

(Yes, that probably amused only me.)

I should hire someone to spoof a USB icon for my blog

- You know you order too much stuff on Amazon.com when, browsing your recently placed orders, you have to think about why you ordered a particular item…or five.

That being said, I think this Delta Seven-Spray Hand Shower is a huge necessity, don’t you agree?

- So you might recall that, not long ago, I bought a bunch of “marginally healthy” snacks from Amazon.com.

Save the dark chocolate pretzels, we haven’t come close to polishing off everything. The yogurt snacks are just way too freaking sweet. Well, I think I’ve finally found a way to use up my yogurt raisins: healthy cereal topping!

Yogurt raisins + Total = pretty darn good. I wonder what adding crushed yogurt pretzels might do to a bowl of otherwise bland cereal…

- We had to celebrate Father’s Day on Saturday, because my dad had to attend a wedding the next day.

(Who the hell schedules a wedding on Father’s Day???)

He wanted steak, and I wanted to BBQ, so naturally we came to a good compromise:  grilled steak!  My sister then decided that it would be a good idea to go shopping at 168 Supermarket.

THIS 168 Supermarket.

Two highlights of the trip to 168 Supermarket:

1) While going through the still-narrow-as-hell produce aisles, some stupid woman decided to situate herself right in the middle of the aisle down which I was traveling.  I pushed my cart right in front of her—she was facing the West of the store, while my cart pointed North—and waited for her to move ever so slightly.

She did move, if by “move” I mean she bent forward a nano-millimeter.  I decided that there was enough room between her back and the display of whatever produce was there, so I eased my way through the gap.

(Could I have said “excuse me?”  Sure, but I didn’t want the death stare :P)

A couple minutes later, I noticed her loudly talking to another customer (no longer where she initially blocked my path), and for some reason, they were pointing and staring in my direction!  Seconds later, they both walked over to the produce display that the woman was looking through earlier.

Of course, for all I know, they might have actually been cursing me off.

2) Five minutes later (yes, that quickly), we had already finished our shopping, so we headed down one aisle towards the checkout.  That’s when some woman blitzed right past us on our right, but not before leaning her shoulder to nudge my sister out of the way.

If not for the bright pink sweater she was wearing…or the fact that she was 5′1″, or the fact that she was not exactly in tip-top shape, I would have thought that LaDainian Tomlinson ran right past us.

- Steaks were tasty, as well as the grilled veggies—three different bell peppers, tomatoes, and Italian squash—and the potato salad was quite good too.  Well, two of the steaks were quite good.  The rest of the steaks were dry as hell, which is what happens when you attempt to cook steaks to well done on a BBQ grill.

After 25 minutes, I pulled the other steaks off the grill, and they were still slightly—and I mean slightly pink.  Apparently, they were still too pink for the rest of my family to eat, and my dad and oldest sister MICROWAVED their pieces.

(Note to self:  it takes at least 20-25 minutes to get a well done 1″ New York strip, or twice as long as a medium rare steak would take.)

Seriously, how could anyone eat a well done steak?  You’d have to pour on copious amounts of A-1 sauce just to be allowed to call your steak “dry.”  A well done steak on a BBQ?  That’s Death Valley in terms of dryness.  Beef jerky has more juice in it than a well done steak.

- Raise your hand if you saw the epic sporting event of this past weekend?

No, I’m not talking about the Lakers’ near-second monumental collapse, of which I only saw a small fraction.  I’m talking about the US Open of golf!

(Yes, I watch golf too!  And for the scope of this discussion, let’s not debate over whether or not golf is a sport.)

Who didn’t think that Tiger was going to nail that final putt on 18?  Sure, the ball might have rolled around the cup slightly before dropping in, but the ball certainly knew better!  And what a setup we have for tomorrow’s 18-hole tiebreaker:  Tiger and his balky, surgically repaired knee, versus Rocco Mediate.

(Who?  The 158th player in the world, with five CAREER wins—Tiger has 13 MAJOR wins, by comparison—and by the way, a great guy, based on the post-round interviews he gave.)

Tiger has to be the overwhelming favorite, despite the wounded knee, but don’t tell me that Mediate doesn’t deserve to get into the playoffs.  He played a hell of a round, and had at least two shots at putting some distance between himself and Woods.  Do you think Mediate is kicking himself over that missed short putt on (I believe it was) 13?

I think Tiger will win, but I doubt he’ll crush Rocco.

Until next time!

Tags: 168 supermarket, amazon.com, bbq, cereal, new york strip, potato salad, rocco mediate, shower head, snacks, tiger woods, us open, well done, yogurt raisins by Peter
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I didn’t watch much of the Detroit-Boston game, partially because I watched the Dodgers choke away another lead against the Cubs, and partially because the game kinda bored me to tears :P.

Quick-hitters:

- Oh dear…for the fifth time today, I’ve seen that stupid McDonald’s commercial that insists on telling me what the ingredients are in their new Southern Chicken Sandiwch…in Spanish.

Pan. Pepinillo. Pollo. Phuck off.

(Yeah, I’ve got issues.)

McDonalds needs to take note of the latest DQ commercial, where the dad refuses to share his ice cream with his kid until the kid repeats a really long word (EDIT: antidisestablishmentarianism), which the kid does. Now THAT’s funny.

- Backache update: it was really stiff this morning, but loosened up dramatically as the day went on.

I’m guessing that the 8 Tylenol I’ve popped throughout the day helped, though it might be time for me to think about buying a new mattress…

The real crappy thing about the backache is that I haven’t been able to lift weights lately. Argh…

- So Bobby Petrino couldn’t find a better way to resign from the Atlanta Falcons, eh? I heard this story on The Jim Rome Show earlier today, and Petrino’s quote, if accurate, is borderline stupid:

When asked if he could have handled it any differently, he said, ‘Not that I know of. Because of the timing of it and both sides of the fence, that is kind of how it worked out. It was a situation where you have no other choice.’

Pardon me for being repetitive (as in, repeating what Rome said), but you couldn’t find a better way to resign than leaving non-personalized cards in each player’s locker? You had no other choice but to quit on your team without even a face-to-face talk with them? And timing??? There were four games left in the season! You couldn’t stick around that much longer?

(Obviously not, as he was in Arkansas doing their team cheer not long after “resigning.”)

Idiot.

- Speaking of idiots, when will Joakim Noah figure things out? Days after being arrested for marijuana possession and having an open container of alcohol, he then proceeded to commit a pair of traffic violations on the University of Florida campus. Well done, genius. Why not go for the trifecta and commit petty theft? I don’t know about most people, but if I get busted once for something, I’m going to make damn sure that I don’t get busted doing something else for, at the very least, the foreseeable future!

I love this quote by Noah’s father:

“I don’t understand all that fuss for just drinking a beer on the street,” Yannick Noah said Tuesday at the French Open.

All that fuss? It’s freaking illegal! Maybe if your son didn’t commit a crime, there wouldn’t be any fuss!

Idiots.

- Let’s lay off the idiots for a while and talk about my Memorial Day weekend.

The short-short-short version: CVS, food, food, and lots of food.

Yep, I spent an hour or two of the weekend at CVS. Hey, I couldn’t resist more free stuff, including Sobe Life Water bottles for better than free after rebate!

(Off topic note to self: Never, ever, buy MetRX protein bars again, even if they’re better than free after rebate! When I chew on a “Chocolate Roasted Peanut” bar, I expect the filling to be of a different color than the chocolate coating.)

I also hit up another Ross, and to my amazement, I found a sweater I had returned a few weeks ago. I checked the tag, and noticed that the sweater was marked for clearance at $9.99, or half what I originally paid for it! Naturally, I re-purchased it :P.

As far as food is concerned, I think I ingested 10,000 calories on Sunday. For lunch, my dad made some steamed pork dish that was awesome. My mom, not to be outdone, made this crepe dish filled with ground chicken, chopped long beans, bean sprouts, and shredded coconut. I wish I knew how to make that.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, my mom and aunt decided that they wanted to BBQ that night. They bought several New York Steaks, which they were going to cube and use for kebabs. I managed to snag two steaks (one for me, one for my sister), seasoned them with kosher salt and black pepper, sprinkled them with some melted butter, and grilled them to medium rare. Damn…I’m not sure why I never thought of using butter on my grilled steaks before! I’ve always done so when I pan-fry a steak, but now I know how well butter works on a BBQ’ed steak!

The kebabs were made with cubed steaks marinated in Korean BBQ marinade (why???), and arranged with mushrooms, green and red bell pepper, tomatoes, and Italian squash. Have I ever mentioned how BBQing makes veggies so damn tasty? As if that wasn’t enough, we also had chicken wings and drumettes, marinated in the same Korean BBQ marinade.

We also had grilled pineapple, which was amazing, and I think I ate the equivalent of half a pineapple. I couldn’t resist! Between the pineapple, the three or twenty kebabs I managed to inhale, the few chicken wings that happened to find its way onto my plate, and the steak, dinner had to be somewhere around 5,000 calories :P.

If the weather permits, I might BBQ again this weekend.

Tags: atlanta falcons, backache, bbq, bobby petrino, chicken wings, idiots, joakim noah, kebabs, marijuana, memorial day, new york steak by Peter
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