2007 has sure started out strange.

-I went to Utah for a "vacation"!
-238 lines of chat on Gmail with Lee Elle.
-The blog picked up the most traffic since I threw on the first tracker (which was mid. Aug)
- I added 3 more trackers because I like adding crap to the blog.
- Went to Chef's Table in Orem. Chef's Table's lunch kicks butt. First place I've ever been where they pull out the chair for you to sit. I wonder if they have one of those people in the bathroom that hand you a towel to wipe your hands... I didn't go in the bathroom.
- The guy at Jiffy Lube on Bulldog in Provo tried to rape me and say I need a new battery.

So yeah, as you can see in the previous couple of posts. I went to Utah. The mini SD card in my phone died in Utah. Sad.

238 lines, thats good for 3rd most this month. She doesn't even have Internet access at home. That much chatting is a huge surprise. Not as big of a surprise as the 665 lines in one sitting with Irene, mind you. I don't even think were 665 WORDS in our conversations on dates...(not because there was smoochy smoochy).

I keep adding crap to the blog, more and more people look at it. Funny how that works, especially since there is mostly fluff on here. I mean who needs 4 trackers on a blog that calls 136 unique visitors a month a lot?

Yeah, Chef's Table. The snobbish desire to eat a good meal every once in a while has continued into the new year.

"Your battery can't hold a charge, We have a battery for $60." Um, no thanks. I paid for my oil change, went to Sears who said that it was perfectly fine for being a 3-year old battery. Screw you, Mister Jiffy Lube.



stolen from http://www.fotocommunity.com/pc/pc/cat/2646/display/7811376 It is a pretty sweet site.

Explanation to...the previous couple of posts

so there have been some questions to who this Rachel chick is. In a nutshell, keeping with the baseball/dating analogy. I struck out. Not one of those "good" strikeouts where it's a "12-pitch" strikeout. It was one of those 3-pitch strikeouts, the kind where the bench has a good laugh, "because the 3rd pitch was no where near the strike zone kinda" strike out.

If you want a bigger nutshell.

She was a girl i met in '05 and started joking around with. The problem is (at least what I think, since someone said there was no problem on multiple occasions) the joke got out of hand (Which is ok because there are a handful of things that are worse that the problem could have been).

Boy meets girl. Girl doesn't hate boy's mixture of randomness and crappy ideas. boy starts liking girl. silly boy.

Now I'm not claiming to be a victim here, of course i put my foot in my mouth on multiple occasions and eventually there was a tad-bit of truth mixed in with the joking. which is where the joking probably went overboard (which also happened in the Pigman papers incident of 04).

So yeah thats what happened in a bigger nut shell. Its no big deal. I build relationships with people in odd-numbered years then cut them down a tad bit in even-numbered years. All I wanted was a "this is where you f-ed up this friendship, but thanks for the handful of good times" statement and to avoid some unnecessary back-biting.

Oh and thats not the reason I went to Utah. I went to go tubing in AF canyon, because that bowl is sweet.

Super 24

So Super Asian is back and blogging with a vengeance.

I watched 24 s06e06 last night. It was ok. It's hard for me to get into shows when I'm jumping in mid series or mid season. In this case I'm doing both. It was ok, but I'm not really dying to see next week's episode.

http://www.paulsadowski.com/BirthDay.asp

If you ever wanted to find out about everything you could about your b-day thats a neat lil site.

Bruce has told me twice he really wished that I moved in and Jake moved out. He must really appreciate my coolness... or really hate Jake. I'd like to think it's the first.

There was some dreaming last night, it jumped around a lot and I don't remember much. There was some smoochy with some unidentifiable person. I also lost a tooth, that kinda freaked me out and woke me up. It's nice to be leaving utah back to the warm confines of the pacific time zone. It was nice to see some people, but I'm excited to leave the yawn fest that usually occurs out here.

The KU tour is coming to a close.

"borrowed" from http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnwhite/366649244/
and I'm going to use every tag on this post.

KU= Kirk's Utah...

So as another excited tour adventure comes dwindling down it's time to report to the three people that read this blog.

Friday night was a Cary Judd/Isaac Hayden show. It was the best show I've seen Cary ever put on. Isaac wasn't as entertaining. It was a very mellow set that he played.

Saturday we were suppose to go sledding. That didn't go down. Due to BYU's very middle school-eseque drama. Saturday was a bit more uneventful.

Sunday was better. there was a little bit of face time with people I haven't seen in a while.

I don't really have any pictures from this lil tour, probably because I was in Utah for 4.5 years and haven't come across anything picture worthy. Thats a lie, there was one thing picture worthy but I didn't have a camera on me and the cell phone is having issues (I was at Tod's playing with my phone and it kinda had a mild heart attack and died, the verizon people were like, your mini sd card is acting up...bah)

Today was spent eating with Larrie at the blue plate diner and checking out the Art Access Gallery in Salt Lake. I thought it would have been bigger but it was free. The Salt lake japantown exhbit only conisted of a few things. I hoped it would have been bigger and had a couple drawings or something of Japantown. The diner was nice (nice food-wise, its a bit run-down, but i'm fine with that) and cheap. I also dropped by Xango and harrassed some old co-workers for a little bit. Good ole Crystal, Jessica and Regan. They're nice gals.

there was a brief detour. well it was going to be brief.

I stopped by and said hi to rachel. becuase I have this idea that she's not so fond of ole kaakun. i just wanted to find out what i did to deserve this pent-up hatred. well i didn't find out b/c someone has taken a pretty firm stance that i haven't done anything wrong. my guess is there is something (maybe it's small, maybe not). but someone rather keep the friendship the way it is than let me fix the problem. I guess saying "when you ____________ it f-ing pisses me off" is hard to do. Eh i don't really have a problem with it. but then again. i'm kind of a jerk.

Dreams: I was on a boat taking some math class. We were taking a test. The student body rised up and we sank the ship in the harbor. I had to jump off into shallow water and swim to safety.

um ok

So according to the weather channel. It's 7 degrees outside. 7. If i came out here to ski or snowboard or something. 7 degrees might be worth it. 7 degrees.

I haven't been in Provo for 24-hours yet and I was already told to shut up by a girl.

Bruce, Greg and I went to TGI Friday's for dinner. We wanted to give the three-course meal a twirl.

Well it made the stomach twirl. I was sitting there, "man we fry everything in this country".

So when the waitress came by for the desert order. I was like, "I want the Oreo cake thing. Since everything else was fried, can you fry that too?"

Her reply, "hahaha(she didn't laugh she just said ha ha ha), shut up".

Now I was taking back a little by this. Some thats earning probably like $3 an hour and working for tips. Tells me to shut up?!?!?! yeah. it's not like i was bringing it up all night. It was just one statement.

I took the high road though and still gave her 15% though.

yeah... I've seen a handful of people here already. James, Greg, Bruce, Jake, Matt, Chas, Tod. I've also seen Emily, Amanda, Jamie and Bridget.

Bridget was like: does rach know you're in town?

K:I think.

B: I'll let her know she'd be excited to see you.

K: Eh probably not.

Oh and I've come back to realize timp gateway's carpet is just deplorable. yes, carpet cleaning has made me a flooring snob.

Touring

So Brand New started their Europe tour today in France. I'd give a body part to be the merch guy on the tour. I never really had a desire to see Europe, but it would be fun, maybe. Maybe I'd miss my kidney more in the long run.

I am currently in Utah. I don't know why I came to Utah. It's cold and i'm only like six miles into the state. It's only going to get colder. There should be pictures later.

I'm hanging out with Kevin in St. George, by hanging out I mean blogging while he talks to his female friend. Yeah touring Utah is/was a great idea.

It's only 41 degrees outside... I'm going to die in Provo.
Saint George, UT Weather


So I've decided that women are a lot like baseball catchers. Every pitcher wants a good catcher. A catcher calls for the pitch. If the pitcher doesn't like it. He can shake it off. But sometimes the catcher can be persistent and insist on that particular pitch.

So catchers call the baseball game most of the time. Women call most of the shots in life.

Baseball teams hope for a five-tool player. Guys hope for a well rounded girl.

The tools
1. Can hit for power= physical looks. The home run stands out the most as a baseball stat. Physical looks are what people notice first (usually). Finding a catcher that can hit 40 home runs in a year is hard. Finding a ridiculously hot girl is hard.

2. Fielding Ability= Personality
Catcher is an important defensive position. Personality is important (to some at least).

3. Hit for contact=character
I think a significant other should make you want to be a better person sometimes. A hitter is a decent contact hitter if he has a batting average of about .300. Thats only three hits every 10 at bats people. If she doesn't make you a better person 30% of the time. Well she's probably dragging you down.

4. Speed= Sense of humor
People are born fast. People are born with a sense of humor. It is rare to find fast catchers. It is rare to find girls with a sense of humor. When is the last time you heard a female comedian that was funny?

5. Arm strength= low maintenance
If a girl can be cute with little or no make-up that is a lot nicer than a girl that needs a lot of make up to be hot (in my mind at least). I don't know what that has to do with arm strength. oh well.

I don't think there has been a five-tool catcher. I don't think there is a perfect girl.
You just have to find a girl that is adequate, can squat for long periods and can call a good game. Then once they hit their mid 30's its time to look for a new younger catcher (I'm kidding... maybe, maybe not). Guys are so the pitcher. Starting pitchers work once every five days. Bullpen pitchers maybe throw 10-15 pitches and call it a day. The rest of the time they sit there and relax. How sweet of a life is that?

The A's traded Kirk!?!?

So the A's re-signed Kirk to a one-year deal, $1.2 mil (or so) then flipped him over to the Reds a week later.

It was nice having Kirk as a back-up 5th starter/bullpen guy. We took the Astros to town on this trade(giving up ole Chad Harville haha).

In his three years he put up ok numbers; 19 Wins, 17 losses, started 48 of his 70 appearences and put up a WHIP of 1.53 and ERA of 4.42.

By comparison to Boston's Joel (new overpaid mop up guy) Pineiro's last three years; 21 Wins, 35 loses, starting 76 of 91 apperances and putting up a WHIP of 1.49 and ERA 5.60. Kirk was a year younger and a deal and a half. All we got was a AA bullpen pitcher. Sad but the A's do have a bunch of back-up 5th starter/bullpen guys and Kirk was one of the more expensive of the bunch. So the trade isn't the biggest surprise. Best of luck to you Kirk.

geez and bah

look at that kid. geez.

I've been sitting on that for a while. It was taking earlier this month.

So two more months and its spring. Spring in Las Vegas is like 100 degrees... bah.
Why did I move here? oh yeah, living here, the coast is only four hours away. Woot.
If all goes right, I'll be seeing the Colorado Avs @ LA Kings game on 2/24 (and sitting on the beach on 2/25 before driving back to vegas).

woot hockey. even if it's crappy Southern CA hockey.

I'm waiting for 'Little Miss Sunshine' to make it into the previously viewed box at Hollywood Video. But they keep getting awards or getting nominated and so people keep renting it. bah.
I want to see what the other 3 endings were. I know I could just rent it, but why rent it when there will be some copies in the box in a few weeks.

I'm also waiting for Alkaline Trio's 1.30.07 release to be leaked on to bittorrent. I'm curious what it'll be like.

There is a lot of waiting. bah.

Bacon and home

So I was flipping through photos on fotocommunity and saw this picture of Big Sur and it reminded me of the greatness of my home. That's a sweet picture of a sweet coast and by far probably the best drive in the United States of America.

Well 11 hours or so and the bacon didn't do anything to me (so far). Maybe it made me tired. I took like a 4-hour nap and slept through all of the AFC championship game except the Brady interception at the end of the game.

The NHL all star game is this week and the sharks have been doing alright.
Oct 9-4
Nov 10-3
Dec 7-7
Jan 6-2

So hopefully after the break, they'll play more like they did in Nov and not so much like they did in Dec. Some reason they always lose to teams that are a lot worse than them. But beat teams that are as good or better than them (very much like the A's...).

So while we were working Saturday, Dave and John were singing show tunes from Wicked. It's been stuck in my head all day and subsequently, has been in heavy rotation on the ole I-tunes.

There was an idea to see it in Seattle in Sept. But yeah that didn't go down. Oh well.

I'm also planning on checking out 'Memories of Japantown' in Salt Lake City while up there. http://www.accessart.org/gcurrent.html

Along with the Cary Judd/Isaac Hayden show Friday in Provo.

I dunno

The problem with eating out and going places is that you forget whats in your fridge. While frying up some eggs, I noticed I still had some bacon left. It didn't look too hot, I think it was from last month. It didn't smell bad. There were only four pieces left and I just downed my XanGo for the day. The Xanthones would combat anything that would make me sick, right? Worse case scenario is that I have a long drawn out experience in the bathroom in about 24 hours. So I fried it up extra crispy. We'll see what happens.

I'm thinking about checking out the Sundance film festival this Friday. I never did it while in Utah and this appears to be the last week. We'll see.

BYU's Filters Aren't Going to Like This- A look back into the history of kaakun.blogspot.com

3.27.06- "Blocked.com" post

Alisa and Ellie point out that BYU isn't too happy about something on the ole blog. Maybe others pointed it out too, but I just don't remember anyone else mentioning the "block".

1.15.07 "CD Vegas Tour" post

I finally try out the video function on my digital camera and post it online via youtube.

So I didn't want to fill out all the crap that youtube wants. So I did the bare minimum. I put "Be" in all the fields. Got the code to embed the video on the blog and left it at that.

Well my software engineer pointed out a little blunder on my part. The picture on the left is all the "related videos" to my little pointless video. Um yeah. I don't think any of those are videos of fountains of water.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm55dLRGCS4&eurl=

Thats the url for the video on youtube's site.

It's funny how my first venture on a website always gets slapped with a "R" rating.

I've hit the big time!!!

So after breathing all the crap in the air down here, I've developed some sort of super power. I shoot fireworks out of my hands. Very much like the worthless X-men character, Jubilee.

I got a fancy new house.





Its a very "Parade of homes"/'MTV cribs' worthy house. It has a theater room with 9 leather recliners and a small kitchen. The chandelier is pretty sweet when its night time and the 30-foot ceilings make the rooms feel nice and open. My stair cases has more carpet on it than my last three apartments combined and the pool has a kiddie pool and a hot tub. And there is a "mist" setting, so the slutty girls in my entourage can emerge from the pool in a misty glory.

The sweet part is that behind the house is a golf course. There is a sweet par-3 and short par-4 right on the other side of yard. Its pretty. Sure I'm working as a side show freak. But when you can pay for half of a 3 million dollar home in cash. Life ain't so bad.

Alrighty. So I'm lying. You can see the light fixture in the top picture when the picture isn't on a cell phone. I don't have some gay mutant power. The house isn't mine. It's some empty nester who we cleaned today(and by not getting their ok to post these pictures, I'm probably breaking like half a dozen laws or so). But it was a sweet house. Sure 30-foot ceilings are a bit much and I'm sure the utility bills are the same as a 3rd world country's GDP. But it reminded me of my times in Utah and playing roller hockey at that mansion in Alpine and how going on the parade of homes was a good, "hey you're never going to be able to afford a house half this price."

Sherwood.

4.20.2007- In the venue
Salt Lake City, UT

So I kinda miss that gay little venue (they used to be called Bricks, like other clubs they had dances when they didn't have shows, they had a homosexual night so all the homosexuals could meet each other while out clubbin)that lost its roof to that freak Salt Lake tornado. Its also funny, the fact that it took like four years to put some sort of roof on that building (they had a tarp on there for a good long time).

I like Sherwood. "Sing, But Keep Going" is easily one of my top 10 cds I own. It's upbeat. It's not hard, so everyone can enjoy it. It's fun. They're a good band to listen to while driving along the coast. I might just go to So. Cal and see them. I don't know. But I never saw them live. I must remedy that. So I guess the Brand New show will not be the last "big" show I see.

Give 'Never Ready' a spin on their website. It's a nifty song.

I think it's funny that MSNBC had Carmen Rasmusen comment on Paula Abdul's drunken interviews...Would anyone know who she was if they didn't say "former contestant"? I remember how my old roommate came home from a football game and said Carmen sat on his foot and subsequently showed off the butt floss.

So this article

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1635
talks about blogging and why do people do it.

Bloggers, quite frankly, are the ultimate attention whore. They'll happily write about awkward, personal things that they probably would never tell you in person because hey, what do they care, they're hiding behind a computer, privacy be damned! Likewise, want to spy on that person you despise so much? Read his or her blog! It's like hiding in the trees with a pair of binoculars. Creepy.

So why do I blog? To rant my frustrations, ideas, complaints, etc. Do I care if people read it. Not really. I'm usually not forcing anyone to read it. It gave me something to do at work when I was sitting at Xango in front of a computer for 42 hours a week. When you only have to work at work for like 8 hours a week. There is a lot of free time.

It also serves as a way to always have access to some "bookmarked" links.

I do put a lot of crap on here, and it does turn into a personal diary at times and dabble sometimes as a link whore. But I really don't care if my blog is the most read blog or the 5335232 read blog on the World Wide Web. I disabled the "add your blog to our listings". So unless you got my link via e-mail or googled LG VX8300. You're not looking at my useless blog. If you think I'm lying, feel free to blog your feelings.

Example. So today I was about to leave and my boss asked if I have a moment. Well moment in her terms was 2-hours long! Now if you're talking about something important or even something I've never heard before. Sure that might be ok. But when you're sitting in there listening to the same spill as you heard last time. It gets old. When you're about to leave at 3:30pm and you're happy because you worked til 2:30 am that morning and was back at work at 7:30 am.

I didn't learn anything new, except that I have tremendous will power by not standing up and back handing her and cussing her a new one.

Unfortunately I am the one getting ripped a new one. very much like so.


It's amazing how my bosses seem to just get worse and worse at each job.

The CD Vegas tour

So this was what I call the "CD Vegas Tour" (hey content that wasn't stolen!). I just went with the flow. I pointed where things were, added what little tidbits I know about Vegas and provided a floor for Chris and David to crash on. There was a lot of wandering around on the CD Tour (but thats ok, b/c i'm fine with wandering). The CD tour consists of; a Lance Burton magic show, we ate breakfast at the South Point cafe, ate dinner at hooters, checked out a the Bellagio fountains, the conservatory, Bodies at the Tropicana, Lunch at the Bellagio buffet and wandered around in a bunch of stores around the strip. It was a fun little weekend. Total cost of weekend was probably in the ballpark of $200.

The top picture was us trying out Coke's soda from around the world thingie. Obviously the picture-taker sucks, it's a bit blurry. Or else my Panasonic didn't like us... either way. The other pictures are the fancy Lance Burton theater stage, a picture of bodies I snapped with the phone while we were waiting for David to finish up. Then the conservatory. The last picture is the Wynn's waterfall. You can see ice next to the falls in the shade, it's kinda neat.

So, I tested out the video-taking ability of the camera. If you want to check out the video, you can d/l it and use some of the bandwidth I pay for, because I don't really use it.

http://www.kaakun.com/b.mov



Just right click and select "Save as..." and that should work.

EDIT: My buddy compressed it... so now we can eat up youtube's bandwidth. instead of mine.

The CD Vegas tour.

Lost

'Lost' Planning End Date.

"It's time for us now to find an endpoint for the show," said executive producer Carlton Cuse. "JK Rowling announced there were seven books in the Harry Potter series and it gives fans [a framework for understanding the arc of the show]. 'The X-Files' was a cautionary tale for us. It was a great show that ran two seasons too long. 'Lost' has a short-half life."

"None of us want to be doing the stalling show," added executive producer Damon Lindelof. "We don't want them to be building sandcastles next week."

Well I think 'Lost' is a stalling show and ran two seasons too long. Funny how they are trying to decide how long the series should be when they need to take a hiatus to decide how to continue the current season. At least there would be some closure if they had a sandcastle building contest. Locke could judge the castles and there would be a winner. They could celebrate and dance and drink coconut milk and eat food rations that get dropped from the sky once a TV season.

I stole this picture from the World Wide Web. I thought it looked cool. My blog is nothing but copyright infringement.


All the credit goes to this guy.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/19163916/

Keeping with the soccer theme

and the "borrowed" content.



So these were the top 10 goals of the San Jose ... I mean Houston Dynamo... Who would have thought a mexican mayor would have let our soccer team move away.

sad.

Stolen from Atheletics' Nation

One of the things I look forward to every spring is the A's commercials. They are always pretty amusing and advertise a great product.

Oaklandfan40 has some ideas for commercials, this was the best.

3. Golden Thieves

We are in Eric Chavez's house. He and his wife are in bed. The sound of a window breaking is heard from downstairs that wakes his wife. She tugs him awake and tells him someone's downstairs. He grabs his bat and slowly makes his way downstairs where two men are dressed all in black, putting his Gold Gloves in a black duffel bag.
Chavez turns on the lights and lowers the bat.
Chavez: Guys, I told you, you'll get your own soon.
The two men, Mark Ellis and Mark Kotsay, turn to each other and then to Eric, shrugging their shoulders. They walk towards him, handing him the bag.
Both: Sorry, sorry.
As they leave, Ellis says to Kotsay: Wanna try Ichiro's?

Cut to tag line:

That's some funny stuff.

Now Kotsay might not make the most amazing plays in center field in the MLB. but he plays a damn good centerfield. As my dad and I were leaving one game two years ago, I overheard someone say, "Man, the A's centerfielder catches everything." And it's true, you can usually count on Mark to run down a good percentage of flyballs with relative ease.

Now Mark Ellis was just jew'd out of a gold glove last year. If someone sets a new league record for fielding percentage as a 2nd baseman, he deserves a good glove. Just my two cents.

Sad

I took a typing test and ended up with 58.6 WPM. The 2nd to last typing test I took was two years ago and I was at like 65 WPM. I'm getting slow in my old age apparently.

I also took a Basic Microsoft Excel 2000 test. I missed two questions... very disappointing.

Oh how the mighthy have fallen

So David Beckham has to resort to playing in the MLS. Now there are talented players playing over here. But how many of those talented players went to Europe, rode the pine then came back to the states? I'm looking at you Landon Donovan, traitor!!!

This is good for MLS though (Even though Beckham will be getting 50 mil a year, the rest of the league as a whole only got paid $28 mil last year, according to reports on the Internet). When Real Madrid played in Salt Lake the camera bulbs flashed like mad when ever Beckham came close to a sideline. There will be like 2,352,523 more women attending L.A. Galaxy games now. It also is good for Landon, look at who's crossing the ball to you. A declining David Beckham. Two players that failed to produce for their country at the world cup now can terrorizing MLS goalkeepers.

In the dreams dept I was playing some all-star game. Well it felt like a NHL game at first. but if it was, then the NHL had fallen on hard times. There were fans to cheer us on. But we didn't have matching jerseys and the game was quite disorganized. It was nice to be playing hockey though.

I was also working some job that helped famous people out. Like moving their crap. So I was in some famous person's entourage or something, that part of the dream is a bit hazy.

Hm

So Elisha Cuthbert has a hockey stick. It looks like she's going to hit that guy over the head. That is funny. Funny Canadian. It is nice when a girl can ice skate though. From the other pictures in the series... It looks like Elisha is struggling. Oh well.

Johnathon Cheechoo and Joe Thornton were voted in by the fans to starts this year's all-star game. Congrats and an early congrats to Patrick Marleau when he gets added to the mix at the end of the week.

A big congrats to Cal Ripken Jr and Town Gwynn for getting voted into the Hall of Fame. I always thought it was neat that both of them played for just one team for their whole careers.

Congrats Urban Meyer (61-12 as a head coach)

Well another bowl season is over. How’d the conferences do?

B. East 2-0 (1.000)
MWC 3-1 (.750)
WAC 3-1 (.750)
ACC 4-3 (.571)
PAC-10 3-3 (.500)
SEC 2-2 (.500)
S. Belt 1-1 (.500)
Big 10 3-4 (.429)
Big 12 3-5 (.375)
MAC 1-3 (.250)
C-USA 1-4 (.200)
Independent 0-2 (.000)

Now that’s a lot of meaningless playoff games. People want a tournament, this is what I’d do. Keep the computers. The top 20 teams earn a bowl game.

The top 8 teams duke it out in the Cotton, Chick-Fil-A and Capital One bowls and in either the Orange, Sugar or Rose bowl.

The Orange, Sugar and Rose bowls alternate which one has to be a quarter-final game while the other two host the “semi-final” games.

This year’s playoff bracket would have a two-SEC teams, three-BIG 10 teams, a Big East team, a WAC team and a PAC-10 team.

The other 12 teams could duke it out in the “meaningless” million dollar pay out games in TX (Sun bowl, 1.9 million dollar payout), FL (Gator, 2.5 mil), AZ (Fiesta, 17 mil), CA (Holiday, 2.13 mil), TN (Liberty, 1.7 mil) or LA (Independence, 1.1 mil).

The conference break down of those games would be; 3-SEC, 2-Big 12, Independent, 2-Big East, 2-ACC, PAC-10, MWC.
No one would even notice that the MAC, C-USA and Sun Belt conferences got hosed.
It does change up a little.

Under my proposed system, last year these conferences would have been represented like so.

For the top 8 tourney.

2-PAC-10, ACC, 2-Big 10, Independent, Big 12, SEC,

For the meaningless million dollar payout game.

4-SEC, ACC, 2-Big East, MWC, Big 12, Pac 10, 2-Big 10,

Once again the MAC, C-USA and Sun Belt conferences are sitting at home, but the WAC joins them watching football and ringing in the new year at home.

The bowl record for the "stay at home" conferences in 05.

C-USA 3-3
S. Belt 0-1
MAC 1-1
WAC 1-2

See they don't win games and if they do its because they're playing each other in games no one watches anyways.

If that’s not good enough, they should do this. You play a game, if you win you play next week. If you don’t thank you for coming, but it didn’t work out, back to class with you. By the end of September you’d only have 16 colleges planning on playing football next week. The other 113 schools’ athletes are all in school, doing school work. No more football distractions, no more schools paying for costly travel. It’s a great idea I think.

Obviously neither idea is going to be done. Look at how much money is thrown around for football. It's crazy.

Work

I was working with David G. yesterday and he brought his camera along to take pictures. He has some friends that take pictures of various things in Vegas and post them online. It's interesting.

Las Vegas Daily Photo

Joel Pineiro

The Boston Red Sox signed Joel Pinero to a one-year $4 million contract.

Joel and his career 4.48 ERA (which isn't too bad, spread out over a seven-year career). BUT his ERA for 2006 was 6.36! The last time his season ERA was lower than his current career ERA was in 2003.

He was so bad that the last place Mariners pulled him from the starting rotation in August and he worked out of the bullpen (He did start four games those last two months).

The funny thing is that the Red Sox think he can be their closer.

Pineiro could assume closer role

He does have some ok career stats as a reliever (70 IP, 3.21 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 7.97 K/9 IN) But the majority of those innings were pitched in 2000-2002.

His stats against the other four AL East teams last year.
23.2 IP, 4.95 ERA, 1.78 WHIP, 6.46 K/9 IN)

He has to be glad to get out of the AL West, because...well look.
54.1 IP, 8.45 ERA, 1.93 WHIP, 4.31K/9 IN)

Best case scenario as a closer, he is a below average closer. (These are the average stats for an American League closer last year, 2.71 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 9.04 K/IN). Being a below league-average closer doesn't fly too well in Boston, I'm sure. So he seems destined to be a 4 million dollar mop-up guy.

Randy Booth from The Red Sox's SportsNation Blog fan forum is looking past the less than stellar stats though.

"However, I'm optimistic about Pineiro. I don't think he'll be our closer coming out of spring training, but I think he'll earn a spot in the bullpen. He could be a nice mop-up pitcher, a spot starter, or a 6th or 7th inning kind of guy."

It'll be a shame that Joel can't pitch against the A's as much. He did a great job for getting the team's moral up.

Happy New Year

Baby's first Christmas.
Doing my last touristy thing in CA for 2006- Walking a dog in San Francisco Park.
Then started out 2007 right, at the beach.

So I've come to the conclusion that I've spent more time the past year (not living in CA), at the beach then I usually spent at the beach when I lived in CA. I went to the beach in June, July, Sept, Nov and then Jan. Crazy.

Dreams #11
This was one of those dreams where you wake up and you're not quite sure if you lived it and dreamed it. Now these are kind of neat dreams, except for the fact that your mind is going at 90 mph and so when you wake up, you're not so refreshed.

Rachel and I were on some crazy like "tour the houses of witches in the county or something" tour. Well it started out all fine and dandy and amusing. Then the "witches" or whatever got exponentially more creepy as the tour went on. They'd like sprinkle stuff on you as you walk by and finally we weren't feeling too hot. There are only so many times you can get strange things dusted on you til the concoction on the top of your head isn't so fun. We decide that we've had enough and head for home. I stop somewhere on the way back then decide to whip the car onto some type of spinning wheel or something. Well getting spun around when you're not feeling to hot isn't a good thing. She gets angry and starts yelling, I get angry and yell and then there is crying on one end, then I wake up, sit up and go wow that was...different. lay down then the alarm goes off.

Oh and FOX.com says this is the last season of the OC. Which is good because, honestly they were going to send characters all over the US for college. How would you follow them? Plus besides the witty banter between Peter Gallagher and Adam Brody there really wasn't anything special about the OC.

I got the days off to go to UT this month. SO I'm off to UT (for an extended weekend) who'd ever think I'd look forward to going to UT?!?!?!