Author: Kent

Sunday morning picks

Please note that my picks are who’s going to win, not who is going to cover the spread. The lines are just there to help us get a feel for how the teams match up. My picks are in bold.

  • Arizona at Dallas (-9.5) – Nine and a half? Sounds about right to me. Julius is out again this week, but does Arizona even have a running back? I’m still pissed that my fantasy sleeper pick JJ Arrington was a total bust. Go Boys.
  • Chicago at Detroit (-3) – Battle of the bads. There’s so much wasted talent on the Lions, and only a little wasted talent on the Bears, since they actually use Thomas Jones. I’d like to say that Jeff Garcia will lead the team to 8-8 but not get them into the playoffs, but 8-8 is dominant in the NFC North. I’m taking the Lions.
  • Cleveland at Houston (-1.5) – This will be the best game of the week. You have to be real bad to only get 1.5 at home over Cleveland. Houston goes 0-8 this week.
  • Green Bay at Cincinnati (-10) – Carson Palmer is good. The Packers are not. I picked the Bengals to win last week at Pittsburgh, and they let me down. Maybe I should become a Bengals fan when the Saints move out of New Orleans. They have a history of of hey-we’re-almost-not-crappy-this-year too.
  • Jacksonville (-4.5) at St. Louis – I still think Dave overrates the Jags, but they can beat St. Louis. Heck, the Rams needed help from the referees to beat the Saints.
  • Minnesota at Carolina (-7.5) – The Vikes will do better than they have done now that Burleson is back, but it won’t be enough. They don’t have enough defense to stop Steve Smith. Also, the over/under in this game is 45. The over is my lock of the week.
  • Oakland (-1) at Tennessee – Lamont finally had his big game last week. He will have another this week.
  • Washington at N.Y. Giants (-1.5) – Big game for the NFC East. Eli is good, but Washington, as a team, is better. Plaxico is a wuss.
  • Kansas City at San Diego (-6) – Think the Chiefs can stop LaDainian like the Eagles did last week? Me either.

I have to do two picks for the next game.

  • Heart pick: Miami at New Orleans (-2.5) – Nick Saban returns to Tiger Stadium and gets booed. The Saints are determined to beat the refs and play solid, penalty-free, turnover-free football and blow the Dolphins out.
  • Head pick: Miami at New Orleans (-2.5) – see the my comments above on the line in the Cleveland/Houston game.

Stupid Saints.

  • Philadelphia at Denver (-3.5) – Denver is good. With no running game in Philly, the Denver defense will shutdown TO. This will be the best game of the week (besides the Browns/Texans game, of course).
  • Tampa Bay (-11) at San Francisco – Here’s my upset pick of the week. Tampa Bay is overrated. I don’t think the football genes run in the Simms family like they do in the Manning family. Will the 49ers beat the line? No. Will they win? Yes.
  • Buffalo at New England (-9) – The Bills are getting better since Holcomb came in, but this is New England they are playing.

NASA (especially for Koster)

NASA's money well spent This post is dedicated to Mr. Koster, with whom I had a long conversation not too long ago about NASA’s use of its resources. He felt that federal money spent by NASA was being wasted. I disagreed. NASA’s exploration is necessary for the advancement of science and knowledge in America, I argued.

And now I have proof. NASA has developed a skin for robots that will “enable robots to sense their environment and react to it,” just like humans do. That’s pretty neat. They built a robot to demonstrate how the skin works. That’s pretty neat, too.

But the proof that NASA is spending its money wisely lies in the fact that they chose to make this video of a ballerina dancing with the space robot:
NASA’s dancing space ballerina

Here’s the link to the actual story on NASA’s website:
Goddard Technologist Proposes Sensitive Skin Covering for Robots

While the skin is really cool, the person who came up with the shape of the demonstration robot is brilliant.

NASA is necessary, Koster. Quod erat demonstrandum.

World of Warcraft

Warning: Dork alert. Be advised.

I’ve been secretly following the development of the new expansion to World of Warcraft. While it’s true that I haven’t really missed the game since I quit several months ago (about 1 week after reaching level 60), I was afraid that the expansion would be neat enough to suck me back in. I’ve always enjoyed the cartoony style of WoW as well as levels 1-20, and thought that maybe the expansion would be more of that, with two new races and all.

But one of the new races is called the Blood Elf. It looks like the regular old Night Elf that has been in the game already. Except its red. Oooh boy. Since the other race hasn’t been released yet, I’m holding on to hope that its the Pandaren.

And then, I read this on the expansion website:

An increase in the level cap to 70

And I totally lost all interest in WoW. Not even drunk panda samarai could get me to go back. I wish game designers would learn to add more to the lower levels, rather than make the highest level harder to get too. I quit one week after my character hit the level cap. There was nothing to do. Why would I have any interest in leveling ten more times to be left with nothing to do?

Sony h.earâ„¢ Stereo Headphones MDR-J10/BLUE

Sony MDRJ10 EarbudsWhat a piece of junk. This is the second pair of these Sony earbuds that has broken on me, and I am forced to use those branding white iPod earbuds. I hate wearing those, its like wearing a badge that says, “Look at me, I’m hip! I’m on the bandwagon, hooray!” They also say, in large letters, “Hi, if you want to rob me, it will be worth your time.”

So I replaced the white earbuds with normal black earbuds. Well, blue earbuds to be exact.

And this morning they broke. The wire to the left bud snapped. It didn’t come out at a soldered joint, it just snapped right in the middle of the wire. There was no bend or crease, or point of wear where it broke. It just broke – right in the middle – just like the last pair I of these Sony earbuds I owned. I guess you get what you pay for, and these were only $10.

On a superstitious note, the last time my earbuds busted was just before Leslie got a job. Maybe this is some kind of omen.

Technorati Tags

This is mainly a test post to see how the Technorati tagging feature I just added is working.

What is Technorati?

from the Technorati: About Us page:

Technorati is a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere – the world of weblogs.

Technorati displays what’s important in the blogosphere – which bloggers are commanding attention, what ideas are rising in prominence, and the speed at which these conversations are taking place. Technorati makes it possible for you to find out what people on the Internet are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics, or other areas of interest – all in real-time. All this activity is monitored and indexed within minutes of posting. Technorati provides a live view of the global conversation of the web.

I’m using Bunny’s Technorati Tags plugin to display the tags. If you authors want to add tags, there’s a new text box on the “Post an article” page.

Wiliam Shatner’s Has Been

I was running late this morning and in a crabby mood because I had nothing to wear.

As I set out walking to work, I hit the Shuffle Songs button on the iPod. The first song that came on was Nelly’s Ride Wit Me, which I promptly skipped. The first song off William Shatner’s newest album Has Been was next. And it immediately brightened my day.

Continue reading Wiliam Shatner’s Has Been

My 100th Post

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to stay interested in posting to this blog format for any length of time. But this post marks my 100th post.

Each and every post has been pure quality, too.

Yeah right.

In honor of the 100th post, here is this little annoying thing that is going around, which assigns a monetary value to your site, based on the links and references to it, indexed by Technorati:


My blog is worth $1,693.62.
How much is your blog worth?

Spam!

Hopefully this will help solve the spam problem I was having awhile back.

The Spam Karma 2 plugin is now installed. I’ve turned off the registration requirement for comments, so comment away and let me see what happens.

Spam Karma 2 (SK2) is an anti-spam plugin for the WordPress blogging platform. It is meant to stop all forms of automated Blog spam effortlessly, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible to regular commenters. Spam Karma 2 is the proud successor to Spam Karma, with whom it shares most of the development ideas, but absolutely none of the code.

No mention

I’ve been reading ESPN and Sports Illustrated online today to try and find some more information about the call that ended the Saints’ chances for a win yesterday afternoon.

This is what it gets on ESPN:

Mike Furrey’s 67-yard interception return with 1:55 to go wrapped it up for the Rams (3-4), who are 1-1 in the last two games, both without Martz.

The Saints wanted to challenge the interception return but couldn’t because they were out of timeouts; although the play ended with 1:55 left, it began with 2:10 to go and the NFL only takes over after the two-minute warning. Tight end Ernie Conwell claimed he had been down before losing the ball.
“I would bet — well, I’m not a betting man — but I feel 99.9 percent confident that I had possession of the ball and that I was down by contact,” Conwell said. “I went over to the official and told him I had possession, that you guys have got to review that.”
Referee Mike Carey said the crew saw a “bobbling pass reception with no control. While the ball was still loose, it was taken away by the Rams for a touchdown.”

Sports Illustrated ran the exact same AP story.

Where’s the opinions here? Why is there not more criticism of the NFL for an obviously botched call that cost one of the teams the game? Oh that’s right. The Saints’ tenure as “America’s Team” is over. Remember Be a Saint? But not after they lose that “home game” to the Giants.

Chris Behrman did mildy criticize the NFL on the call on SportsCenter, but that was about it. The Saints, much like the Bengals, are expected to lose. It’s not worth making a big deal over. They would have lost anyway. Right?

Welcome to another week of Saints fans asking themselves if a Patriots, Steelers, Falcons, or Eagles tight end would have been down by contact.


Eli

What would the refs call if this guy had thrown that pass?