First Time Published

OK, so it's not the cover of National Geographic, but I was proud of it anyway. Check it out, if you want.

Hopefully we'll see some more dunking like the above over a team wearing orange tomorrow. Expect a post about the Texas game after it happens. I'll keep this post brief. I think it's a 50/50 chance, but if we play to our potential we'll win, no matter what Texas does.

I know this blog has been taking on a rather "Crimson and Blue" motif lately, but I promise not to talk all basketball. That being said, most of the reader comments come in response to my basketball ramblings, so maybe I'll just give the people what they want.

Edit: We did NOT "play to our potential" considering Brandon rush made only one basket, and we sucked on 3's. Letting Texas hit over half of their shots, letting them outrebound us, and having no transition game didn't help either.

BUT, it's not the end of the world. We get another crack at them in the Big 12 tourney, and I hope this loss motivated them. We'll see what happens.

Shameless Product Placement

It isn't often that I am so blown away by a product that I put it in my blog.

Ok, that's a lie. I do it all the time. But my Treo Palm Wireless Headset is truly a great product. It works remarkably well, the battery lasts a long time, and it's incredibly convenient. It even takes the same charger as my phone. It's definitely one of my favorite gadgets, even though Hillary calls it my "bionic ear".

I wouldn't expect anyone to get too excited about what I've said so far, but there's more. This particular device has survived a challenge I didn't believe possible for a mere mortal gadget.

I ran it through the washer. AND the dryer. When I discovered it, I almost threw it in the garbage immediately. I was dejected to say the least. However, I attempted to charge it, more out of curiousity than anything else. Lo and behold, the power light turned on. My curiousity piqued, I had a difficult time waiting for it to finish the charging cycle. After an hour or so on the charger, I turned it on and dialed my voicemail. It worked like a champ. I felt like David Horowitz. Is Palm secretly owned by Timex or something?

Any self-respecting technology company can make a product that works well, though it happens much less frequently than it should. However, a product that works well despite being flat-out abused is rare.

Kudos to you, Palm.

Speaking of which...

I'm amazed these aren't more popular. People really should have one of these in their cars. If nothing else, it would be a huge relief knowing that you're driving on a .04 BAC rather than, "Well, I think I'm probably OK." Especially if you happen to get lit up by law enforcement. You could make much more informed decisions about when it was and wasn't OK to drive.

I like how the manufacturer suggests buying them in bulk and selling them if you're a bar operator. Nice. Gotta love capitalism.

Edit: OK, so the electrical engineer claims these things don't work. Considering I've never been able to understand any type of math past Trig, I'll defer to his judgment.

Too Drunk to Drive

I'm going to buck the trend here and post a flattering picture of Eddie Sutton. It always cracks me up how the media will find the worst possible picture of a person, and run it with a scandal story. Take Quin Snyder for example. Sorry, couldn't resist.

But anyway, pegging a .22 on the BAC is a pretty big deal. .08 is arguably a fairly low standard for some people. It's pretty much a fact that when people are experienced drinkers (or even alcoholics) they can function better at higher BAC levels than people who don't normally drink. That being said, .22 is pretty high. Add that to the fact that Coach Sutton was likely taking prescription pain medication for his medical problems and it gets a lot worse.

Pain killers almost always exaggerate the effects of alcohol, sometimes exponentially. There was no excuse for the man to be driving in that condition.

I like Eddie Sutton. I always have. He's definitely my favorite Big 12 coach outside of Bill Self. But what really sucks about this situation is that it couldn't have come at a worse time for him. A horrible season culminating in a DUI scandal is not the way that this coach's career should have ended.

The blame rightly falls at his feet, at least for the DUI. But I do think the way he apologized, took responsibility, and committed to treatment of his problems is a great example for people to follow. It's really tough to say you were wrong, apologize, and ask forgiveness for anyone, much less someone in the spotlight as much as Eddie Sutton.

You can respect someone for what they do to get to the good times in life, but you learn as much, if not more about them by how they handle the tough times in life. I wish him good luck.

New Deal

No, not that one. I ended up getting into a pretty good computer deal at Office Depot. There might be some problems with it, but I think it will work out. Basically, here's what I got:

Pretty solid Compaq Desktop Tower
17" CRT Monitor
Basic HP Printer
Basic Epson Printer/Scanner/Copier*
(Also, it should have included a Basic Canon Printer)

And, as free bonuses:

Mini Fridge
2 Travel Coffee Mugs (Sounds cheesy, but we use them daily)
Basic, cheap MP3 Player
iPod Docking Station with Speakers

The asterix (and the potential problem) is because they may not have the Epson available.

It comes to $745 after tax, with free delivery.
$400 in rebates, brings it down to $345. After I sell the crap I don't want on eBay, I'll end up spending about $50, and have a solid desktop computer, a mini fridge, and the mugs. I might take the mini fridge to work or give it to my brother. I might sell him the desktop as well for a couple hundred bucks.

And the interesting thing is that this isn't related to FatWallet. It's SlickDeals, this time.

Attention College Basketball Pollsters...

Here's some interesting information:

1. Texas 7-1 19-3
2. Kansas 6-2 15-6
3. Colorado 5-3 15-4
3. Oklahoma 5-3 14-5
3. Nebraska 5-3 15-6
4. Iowa State 4-4 14-7
4. Texas Tech 4-4 12-10
5. Kansas State 3-5 12-7
5. Oklahoma State 3-5 13-9
6. Texas A&M 3-6 13-7
7. Missouri 3-6 10-10
8. Baylor 1-7 1-7

Now someone please explain to me how we can be ahead of Colorado and Oklahoma in the league standings after beating both of them head to head, and not have a ranking while they hold on to theirs? Seriously. It's a freaking conspiracy.

On the plus side, Wichita State is finally getting some respect. They got a good mention on ESPN the other day, and picked up 6 votes in the ESPN poll. Not there yet, but it will be nice to see them in the NCAA tournament if they keep it up.

Good work guys. And good luck to Jim Wooldridge.

"An insurance plan that protects against robot attacks?"

I'm continually amazed by the power of the internet. I was trying to explain an old Saturday Night Live skit to a friend the other night, and couldn't do it. It's tough to explain to someone why something is funny, unless the person has actually seen it. So I turned to my friend Google, and typed "Sam Waterston Robot Insurance Saturday Night Live" into the box. Sure enough, I found transcripts and everything, which I expected. But what's more, I actually found several places that had the skit available in video format on their site. It's pretty amazing that you can type in some keywords about a minute long clip from a TV broadcast from ten years ago, and get multiple places that have the clip preserved in its entirety.

I've heard a lot of buzz about "On-Demand" services, where you can start a movie through your cable box immediately. That's pretty impressive, but the fact that you can find the "Old Glory Insurance" skit in about 10 seconds is even more impressive. I think it's only a matter of time before all broadcasts are archived on the internet. Currently, if you missed a TV show, and forgot to TIVO it, you can download it from a number of places. Obviously there are legal issues surrounding that kind of conduct, but with iTunes now adding television content, it's moving toward legality and public acceptance. Not very long ago, if you really wanted to see a particular music video, you had to watch MTV and wait for it to come on. You'd be waiting a LONG time nowadays, because MTV has pretty much bailed out of the music video business. Luckily, you can now get them for a couple bucks, to watch on your computer, or even your iPod, whenever you want.

Eventually, the bandwidth concerns with downloading full fledged content will be alleviated to the point where we think of downloading a movie the same way we do downloading a song. Quick, easy, and cheap...and with more and more legal avenues to do so. Gotta love progress, despite what Andy Rooney says.

Scout has a new favorite treat

Yes. We left a half-full bag of Hershey's Kisses on the floor yesterday, inside Hillary's school bag. She bought them as treats for her kids at school, but Scout couldn't stand to see all that chocolate wasted on human children. While we were at the store, he managed to eat every single chocolate left in the bag. He didn't bother to unwrap them first, either. Foil and all, he swallowed dozens of Hershey's Kisses.

I was pretty worried at first, because I heard that chocolate can be really bad for dogs, because of the theobromine in it, which apparently dogs can't metabolize. I looked it up on Google, and the first result seemed to say that we should immediately panic, light our pants on fire, and run screaming into the night. The second link was a bit more reasonable, and said that milk chocolate isn't nearly as harmful to dogs as darker types of chocolate, such as baker's chocolate.

I ended up calling my vet, and she said that the smaller the dog, and the darker the chocolate, the worse it is. Scout is huge, and the Kisses are Milk Chocolate, so she said he should be fine. He's been ok so far. His ears did perk up when he heard me eating some Hershey's Kisses tonight though. Apparently he hasn't learned his lesson.

But he probably will when the foil works its way out.

Things are looking better in Lawrence

I'm listening to Bill Self right now on the radio, talking about how KU is turning it up. I'm pretty impressed.

We're now in second place in the Big 12. That's good. Of course, we could be #1 if we wouldn't have lost to K-State and Mizzou, but then again, that's kind of a BS way to look at it. I think we're doing much better, and I'm glad to see it. I was a little worried about putting too many guys in the rotation, but it appears to be working out as they get used to things.

I do hope Brandon Rush stays around for at least one more season. I'm not naive enough to think that he will stay four years, or even that he should. He needs to hit the NBA at some point, but man, I hope he sticks around long enough for us to make a tournament run, which will be at least one more season after this one.

We've got a lot of games ahead of us, so it's not time to celebrate, but I like to see us win games like this, even if it is against a tired Texas Tech team.

My New Laptop

I'm picking this guy up from CompUSA for $1499 after I worked out a deal with a manager. It retails for $1999, but I had a creative purchase plan that allowed me to get it for $300 below cost. Win/Win situation for me and the manager. I just have to wait until CompUSA gets them in stock, which will hopefully be sometime before February is over. Hopefully someone figures out how to dual-boot Windows on these guys in the meantime.

The real beauty is that I'm paying for it entirely with giftcards that I got for free from the AOL/CompUSA debacle on Black Friday, and will have about $1200 of the gift cards refunded to me in cash at a 1/1 cash/credit ratio. Then I get to sell my 12" Powerbook, and keep whatever I get from it. Basically, I'm getting paid to get a brand-new, top of the line laptop. Gotta love it.

I almost forgot. I plan on claiming both laptops as business expenses for my eBay operations. I'll have to look into whether I can claim the full amount, the depreciation, or both, but in any case it should work out well.

Mistrials and tribulations...

This was an unusual one. Today was supposed to be my first jury trial that I was handling myself, but it ended in a mistrial. We had jury selection, everything was going smoothly, we took a break, but right before opening statements a big issue came up. Our officer, the first and only witness for the State, was the best man for one of the jurors, and it never came out during jury selection.

The judge felt he had no choice but to declare a mistrial, and reset the case for March, when we'll do the whole thing over again. I'll have to skip class if I want to do it, but I should be able to swing it.

On another note, our office purchased one of the new iMacs for video purposes, so we wouldn't have to farm out our redaction work before trial. I spent a significant amount of time today trying to get it to do what we wanted to do. iMovie doesn't allow you to import directly from DVD discs, even unprotected ones, which was a big surprise to me. I used a third party program called HandBrake, which appears to work, albeit very slowly. It's not intended for Intel based Macs, and has to run in an emulated mode, but I just noticed they have a beta version which might do the trick. I'll check that out tomorrow.

I really need to make sure this setup will work. I pushed for it with a couple of attorneys in the office, and while they probably have some credibility to burn, I'm in a different situation being an intern. I'll probably go in tomorrow and try to get it going. Hopefully it will work better than it has been.

Early to bed tonight, I think. I'm pretty beat after today.

Edit: It works like a champ. So does the printer we picked up. I think it will be a good deal for the office.

Must See TV

I'm not a TV guy. Used to be, I would just as soon have the thing off than watch pretty much anything. I still don't watch that much, so most of my assessment of quality comes from a general vibe and what I catch here and there, so I might not really know what I'm talking about, but I think the consensus is that TV is pretty good right now. I must say, if you told me three years ago that TV was going to reach a pinnacle in 2005-2006, I wouldn't have believed you. Back then we were stuck in reality TV hell. Every network had 5 new reality shows a season, and they left as quickly as they came.

re·al·i·ty
n. pl. re·al·i·ties

1. The quality or state of being actual or true.

(dictionary.com)

I think that most reality shows are more surreal than real. What's realistic about eating live goldfish, and bungee jumping from helicopters on Fear Factor? And how many people pick their wife from 20 random women all competing to marry some guy they've never met a la The Bachelor? Whenever someone would come up with a new bad idea, someone else would rush to rip it off, and release an even crappier knockoff before the original idea even aired. Wife Swap and Trading Spouses are two prime examples. I knew a backlash was coming, but I wouldn't have thought it would get us where we are today.

Right now, on TV in America, we have some of the most well done programs ever in the history of broadcasting. Maybe not all of them are classics, but the production values and acting are very good, and several are very unique, as well.

Here's a rundown:
Boston Legal (My personal favorite. Shatner and Spader are flawless in that show.)
Lost (really should have gotten on this boat from the beginning.)
Desperate Housewives (I thought I would hate it, but I actually like it)
Gray's Anatomy (Same thing.)
Commander in Chief (Even though I hate it, many people like it)
House
24
Law and Order (times 3 or 4, however many shows they have)
CSI (times 3)
Scrubs
The Office
Etc.,
There are a ton of shows that are just starting that I can't think of off the top of my head, to boot. And this is just on the Networks. There are probably more quality hour-long dramas than at any other point in television history. It seems like the production values have really started going up, too. The sets look very realistic. Nothing seems as cheezy as it once did.

And when you start getting into cable channels, and the Sopranos, Entourage, Nip/Tuck, the quality is there when it seems like it just wasn't in the past. I think that must be the reason TV in general is doing so well. Competition from the cable channels meant that the networks had to finally come up with something good for people to watch. Capitalism wins once again. Here's hoping the movie studios have the same thing happen to them.

Not much to take pictures of lately, so I went to my backyard...

...and found this. It's far from fine art, but it's interesting to me. Sure looks a lot more interesting in the photo than it did on the ground.

I guess it's encouraging. I don't have to live in Scotland to take interesting photos. (Check it out. The whole site is worthwhile.) I'm sure some better terrain would help though. Not very many castles in Kansas.

Jury Trial, continued.

A couple of posts down I mentioned I was having my first jury trial on January 17th. As it turns out, it's not going to happen. Witness unavailability is the official reason. However, this does have a silver lining to it. Last summer in my previous internship I was supposed to have a DUI jury trial, but it ended up going to someone else at the last minute. I've always regretted not being able to do that trail.

Because the one scheduled for Tuesday has to be continued, I'm now on deck with a trial on Wednesday, and sure enough, it's a DUI refusal. It's a much more difficult case to win than the one I was originally scheduled to do, but I'm up for the challenge. I'm in this internship to learn, and I'd rather lose a tough case than win an extremely easy one.

I've been told by several attorneys that do DUI cases that cases where the defendant refuses to take the breath test are very difficult to win at jury trial, unless there is something strong showing that the defendant was not safe to drive the vehicle. I'll give it a shot, and we'll see how it works out.

I think I'm prepared for the attorney. I get along really well with her, and I don't think she'll pull any dirty tricks. I should be ready for her after yesterday. An attorney was ripping me in court about how I didn't know what I was talking about, I'm an intern that needs to figure out how things are done, etc. As it turns out, I was right, the judge agreed, and it worked out just fine.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Another cool item.

You gotta check out this keyboard. If you notice in the pic, that's not paint. It's a tiny, backlit OLED display inside each key. It is programmable, so if you want to change the keyboard into Cyrillic (Russian) characters, it will display those characters. If you want it to display the functions in any program, such as Photoshop or a video game, it will display an icon for that program. It is a REALLY good idea. If it's less than $200, and gets some solid reviews, I *might* pick one up, even though I already have a very good keyboard/mouse setup. I'd really rather wait until they release a newer revision and the price drops a bit. Gotta love progress.