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.

We’re all going to the zoo tomorrow

Assuming the Great British Weather doesn’t decide to throw down the rain all day, we’ve decided to all go to the zoo tomorrow. We’ve recently bought a new car, one of these (not brand new, I’m not made of money! It’s 4 years old) and haven’t had an opportunity to load up for a family day out yet. Anyhow, I thought I’d do a little scouting around and see which zoo we might go to, and how much it’s gonna be to get in.

Looks like it’s going to be around 40 quid for all of us (2 adults, 2 kids) to get in. Throw in some food, drinks, couple of toys for the kids at the gift shop and it’ll probably be around 60 quid all told. That’s not counting petrol (gas for you American speakers) – nearest zoo is about 40 miles away, which is probably about another tenner. Reckon on about 70-80 quid for a day out at the zoo.

This country sucks. Sooooo damned expensive.

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?

NFL Notes

So you don’t believe in the Jags? Jacksonville (4-2) owns Quality wins over of the Bengals, Seahawks and at Pittsburgh, with their losses coming to Denver and Indy. They boast a top-five defense, which held mighty Peyton Manning to only 175 yards. Also, go ahead and count on the them being in the playoffs: They don’t play another team that currently has a winning record.

I do belive in the Panthers and Bucs. Both were accidentally left off my top 10 and both are better than the Bengals and Chargers. Dallas’s division is too tough, though. Bledsoe is destined to get hurt. That said, how many good running backs did Parcells acquire?

New Top 10 NFL Teams
1. Colts
2. Steelers
3. Falcons
4. Broncos
5. Patriots
6. Eagles
7. Panthers
8. Jaguars
9. Giants
10. Bucs
Knocking on the door: Chargers, Bengals, Chiefs and Bears

AFC Playoff Teams
North: Pittsburgh
South: Indianapolis
West: Denver
East: Patriots
Wild Cards: Jacksonville, Cincinnatti

NFC Playoffs
North: Bears
South: Falcons
West: Seattle
East: Philly
Wild Cards: Panthers, Giants

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.

Adios, San Antonio

WASHINGTON – The Washington Post reports the NFL will consider relocating the Saints to Los Angeles if New Orleans is unable to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

The newspaper cites three sources familiar with the league’s deliberation on the matter.

The Saints have been based in San Antonio since they were forced out of the Crescent City by the damaging August hurricane.

But the sources say the league has no interest in the Texas city as a permanent home for the club.

Los Angeles is the second-largest television market in the country and has been without an NFL team since the Raiders moved back to Oakland after the 1994 season.