Sports update:

I was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin so it pains me to see the Packers doing so badly. (My Grandparents have season tickets and they live 3 blocks from the stadium) But on the awesome and cool side of things, if the Packers had not had so many injuries the running back Sam (Samkon) Gado would not have been able to play. I don't want to be one of those people who act like person X has been their best buddy since kindergarten so I won't. Sam went to the same high school and was in the youth group at the same time as me, granted I am a couple of years older than him. The success that he has had could not have happened to a better guy. I hope that he continues to improve and that the Packers will be able to sign him and improve overall when the draft comes around.

The last couple of weeks in the NFL have been more entertaining, mainly because College Football has had a break. I always enjoy the predicting and analysis of the playoff run. This year I hope that the Colts win it all, I would like for them to be able to go undefeated but that is not important in the long run. I guess Colts vs. Seahawks would be an interesting SuperBowl but is seems very foreign to me.

College football season is great. The BCS sucks. I was praying in the last weeks of the season that SoCal or Texas or even better, both would lose. But alas the both won out, even though there were, in my opinion, some really bad missed holding calls on some of Reggie Bush's “unbelievable” runs. I hope that the Texas/SoCal game is the ugliest game of all time, 4-5 turnovers each team and a 12-10 final score. I think that the BCS is going to go to a 4-team playoff in a couple of years with the 4 plus 1 formula. Personally I think the season should be cut back the 11 games having only one bye week, then have conference championships, then a 12-team playoff. (Notre Dame would be forced to join the Big 10/11) How many people would love to see Miami/Auburn and Georgia/VT? Can LSU @ the 12 seed run the table? I think that anyone of those teams could win the championship. I am just glad that my team the first USC (University of South Carolina) got to go to a bowl game even if it is the Independence Bowl. Hopefully we can win that game and get some good recruits.

On the fun stuff, The World Cup draw was done on Friday. The US got into a group with the Czech Republic, Italy and Ghana. This group is definitely going to be called the "Group of Death". I think this is a great opportunity to show off to the world how much the we care about Soccer as a Nation. I am looking forward to watching those games even those it is going to be hard to watch the up coming world cup (while I am at work) than it was to watch the one in 2002(while I should have slept). I always love the World Cup experience. I have been trying to watch and keep up with European soccer more, the Champions league final last may, was one of the awesomest game I have ever seen. I hope I will be able to watch some more this coming spring.

The other day I saw some kind of advertisement or something to do with the Olympics, which had totally slipped my mind. I am very grateful for the Olympics because it will help to make up for the void that is Winter/Spring sports in the US. i.e. NBA sucks. The Olympics will end right before March Madness and hopefully as I said above European football with carry me through to the end of May. And then the World Cup starts. This should be a great year in sports.

Well this is going to be my first diatribe. I wanted to mention this before but I did not have solid ground for my critic. My beef is with the word, Podcast as the New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player". I know it does not have to be but in most cases to my understanding a "Podcast" is an mp3. I just don't understand and it is pissing me off with all this, download my Podcast crap. It’s just an mp3. I have no desire what so every listening to Brian Williams NBC news Podcast, some stuff kind of appeals to me Ronald Moore's Podcasts, but those have content that I can't get anywhere else and it is not a live event or summary of one. But I am a person that cannot watch taped sporting events so that might explain some stuff. I like listening to mp3s of songs and even books on mp3. The productization of the word just pisses me off.

Number 2

Well there is a myriad of topics that I could talk about. I am a big fan of Slashdot. It is a pretty good site for people seeking the inner nerd. The articles are very informative but the posters (not necessarily the editors) are very opinionated, so don't be surprised about anything. There was a recent article that was about creating your own MMORPG. My wife and I enjoy playing WoW and I played a little Ultima Online back in college. Some of the ideas and other mmorgps that are in the article are very interesting. I have always what to make a game in the genre of FF/Crono trigger, Sega games: Warsong = Langrisser (japan), Shining Force, Dark Wizard(Sega CD) Later on UO, Warcraft II and as off late WoW. My entire life I have made up all sorts of stuff. I really enjoy creating things, I like to build/design PCBs, programming, even gardening and cooking are inventing to me. The central theme to my mmorpg would be interaction of thousands of items to create anything (stick + vines + stone = crude hammer/bludgeon) thus altering the world and your character. Since playing WoW I like some ideas i.e. mining nodes but I would make the contents of the node larger and more variable. I am a very big thinker but I never seem to get things rolling but I guess every nerd out there runs into the same problem now and then. I may go into more detail later. Not that anyone reads this but I was thinking of starting a Sourceforge project let me know if you want to help.