A PLAN for replacing the BCS

When I recently wrote about BCS-Gate, I was really just venting my anger at the ridiculous monopolist weasels that run the BCS, rather than providing solutions. But Dan Wetzel over at Yahoo Sports has done a little better, not only presenting a plan for a college football playoff system (which has been done before), but also providing great answers to many of the bogus BCS arguments against a playoff system. Hopefully this will get us one step closer to the demise of the ridiculous farce known as the BCS.

Project Implicit Results

I took Harvard's Project Implicit test, which is supposed to measure your religious biases, and the results are below. Interestingly, the results are what I might have guessed beforehand, but after taking the test I would have been pretty sure that I did not betray any bias towards anything. So I guess that means the test was able to burrow into my subconscious and get at my true feelings. Or maybe it just assumed that's what I would think as a WASM ("White Anglo Saxon Mormon").

Click on the image to see a larger version:

Under Armour Review

I've been meaning to buy some Under Armour for a while, and I finally got around to it last week. I checked it out at the mall first, and thought "Ouch, $65 for an under shirt!" Then I looked online, and really didn't find anything too much cheaper. I ended up getting this long sleeve shirt on ebay for $49 including shipping.

What's so great about Under Armour? It's supposed to be "sweat-shedding performance apparel" that will "wick" perspiration away from the skin to an outer layer where it will evaporate.

The reason I wanted to try Under Armour is for playing ultimate in the cold. Usually when it's cold out I wear a cotton T-shirt and a sweat shirt over that. It keeps me warm, but then I get sweaty, and then the sweat gets cold, and then I don't want to move because movement causes the cold sweaty shirt to come into contact with my back. Cold. Sweaty. Uncomfortable. I hope that was a graphic enough description for you. Anyway, it's a little hard to play ultimate without moving, so I wanted to see if Under Armour would solve all my cold sweatiness problems.

When I was at the mall looking at expensive Under Armour I also bought a Reebok T-shirt labeled "Play Dry". It looked like something similar to Under Armour and it only cost $10 so I figured why not give it a try. It was made out of 100% polyester, but it felt kind of like cotton, which was interesting. But the "Play Dry" should have been "Play Dry as long as you don't sweat at all". That thing absorbed sweat worse than a cotton T-shirt. No wicking. Completely useless. But it only cost $10 so oh well, add it to the collection.

Anyway, back to the Under Armour. I just got it in the mail a few days ago, and tonight was the first night it was cold enough to try it out. 50 degrees. Yes that's cold here in Phoenix. I was kind of excited to try it out. We played for about an hour and fifteen minutes, so enough time to be a good test, and the Under Armour definitely came through! It didn't magically "wick" ALL the sweat away, it still got damp, but somehow it never got cold damp. I'm not really certain if it worked because it was wicking sweat away. It may have helped that it fit a little more snugly than most of my T-shirts. But anyway, it worked, I'm sold.

The Under Armour is made of 95% polyester and 5% elastane, aka spandex. So I guess the magic is in the elastane. Or possibly the way the fabric is put together, who knows. I don't know why it works, and I don't really understand their weird commercials, but I do recommend the Under Armour product.

Cubs Win... Holy Cow!

I spent a few days in Chicago last week. Even though I'm from Missouri, it was only my second time being in Chicago. It's about a seven hour drive from where I'm from in Missouri.

My first visit was at Christmas a few years ago, when my family went to see Les Mis. The main thing I remembered from that visit was that Chicago parking is really expensive.



I was with my friend Jeff, and he pointed out that you can't go to Chicago without going to Wrigley, so we got tickets for the Cubs game on Friday afternoon, versus the Mets. I like the Cubs, and hate the Mets, so it was a good game to watch, even though both teams have struggled this season.

We took the subway to Wrigley, and meandered around outside for a while. I bought a $5 hat from a street vendor. Of course we took obligatory pictures by the iconic red sign, and by the Harry Carey statue.



We asked some parking attendants where a good place to eat was, and they sent us to Wrigleyville Dogs. The food was OK. A good adjective for the service would be "disgruntled". They did more barking than speaking. I asked for a cup of water. The cash register dude claimed that they only had bottled water, and they couldn't provide a cup of water because they didn't have a sink! Right... Jeff tried the Wrigleyville dog. He thought it was good but the actual frank was too small. I haven't eaten a hot dog in 15 years or so. I wasn't about to start wolfing down sodium nitrates at this point, so I got a Gyro plate. It was OK.



We went and got our seats about 15 minutes before game time. It was cool to see the other Wrigley icons -- the ivy, the rooftop bleachers, etc.



We had good seats, on the 1st base side about 30 rows up. Jeff went to the gift shop, and I sat down and studied the ticket "guards" who were checking the tickets of people with seats down closer to the field. The guard closest to us didn't seem to be checking tickets very frequently, so we decided to make a break for it, like in that Seinfeld routine ("There must be some mistake -- oh, I see, our seats are BAD, these seats are GOOD, that's the mistake.") .



We strolled right by the guard and sat in a completely empty row about 15 rows up from 1st base. The row slowly filled up over the next half hour, but we didn't get bumped until about the 7th inning, and then we only had to move over about 6 seats. So our crazy lawless gamble paid off.

I've always assumed that Cubs fans would be easy going, accepting of their team's perpetual incompetence, but I was in for a surprise. The fans were really into the game, even though their team is out of contention. They were most energetic in yelling at their own players. They were continuously berating Milton Bradley and Alfonso Soriano for their lazy/lousy fielding. When MB finally caught a routine fly ball, they all gave him a big jeer/cheer, and he bowed to the crowd.

It was a great game to watch. There was some action early, then it was tied 1-1 for a lot of the game. Then the Mets went up 2-1, I believe in the top of the 8th. In the bottom of the 8th, Soriano got up to bat. The fans were riding him big time for his poor fielding. I read later that he's playing injured, but I think the reason they were so mad at him had more to do with his contract and the whole season, rather than this one game. But he got up with 2 men on, and atoned for his poor fielding by cranking a 3 run homer to put the Cubs up 5-2, and they held on for the win. Holy Cow!

Speaking of Cubs fans, I'm putting out an ABP for Tyler Mollick -- where is that guy? Doesn't appear to be on Facebook... let me know if you've got the scoop.

Your firearms are useless against them!

I noticed what looked like water damage on the ceiling in one of my rental houses. There was a strip about 4 feet long, in the seam between 2 sheets of drywall.



There is a bathroom on the floor above, but I couldn't see anything that might be leaking upstairs, so I had my handyman Nick cut open the ceiling. He called me up, and said "Uhhh... it's not water." It was some sort of waxy substance, and it seemed to be coming from the plumbing up above, so we thought maybe it was from a melted wax ring from a toilet. But when Nick opened the ceiling a little more, we realized that there was way too much of it to be from a wax ring. I called my old roommate's dad who has a lot of remodeling experience and asked him what the mysterious substance might be. He said he couldn't think of anything related to plumbing, but asked if it might be HONEY...

Nick went up in the attic, and sure enough... "BEES! Bees Everywhere! They’re huge! They’re ripping my flesh off!" Just kidding, there weren't any bees. But there was an abandoned beehive that had melted and created a big mess. The beeswax and/or honey had dripped down to the floor below and caused the drywall damage.

We had to replace a big chunk of the ceiling. New adventures every day in real estate!

Angel's Landing

On my recent trip to Zion National Park, one of the hikes I went on was Angel's Landing. This was actually the 3rd or 4th time I've done that hike. I love it because it has great views all the way up, and the best view at the end. Also because it is somewhat strenuous and mildly dangerous, so you feel like you've accomplished something when you make it to the top.

Check out the footage below to get a feel for the hike:

Almost To The Top



At The Top

Still Shot At The Top

See more pics from the trip here.

Short and Sweet Voice Mail Greeting (Sprint)

When I posted a while back about 10 annoyances, number 3 on the list was:

When I'm trying to leave a voice mail and I have to sit through a long obnoxious automated message, such as "The caller you are attempting to reach is not available. At the tone I will take your message, or press 5 to page this person. Press 6 to leave a call back number. When you are finished with your message, if you are satisfied with your message, press pound, or hang up to deliver the mesage, or press star for more options. [PAUSE...] [PAUSE...] [CALLER COMMITTING SUICIDE...] BEEEEEP!"

I discovered, in my voice mail (which is provided by Sprint), how to eliminate the long automated greeting. Here is how to do it:

1. Call into your voice mail
   
2. Main Menu
   
3. Press 3: Change Personal Options
   
4. Press 2: Greetings
   
5. Press 1: Change Main Greeting
   
6. Press 3: Add or remove caller instructions that are played after your greeting
   
7. Press 2: Do not want these instructions played
   

That's it! Together we can make the world less annoying one voice mail greeting at a time! :)

Remote Control Your PC... For FREE!

I've tried out GoToMyPC a few times over the years, and I always thought it was very cool, but I never needed it enough to pay $20 per month.

I recently came across a provider of a similar technology called LogMeIn, and this one has a free version! It seems to work just as well as GoToMyPC. Check it out!

Semi Annual

Semiannual, last I heard, mean's every 6 months. There's nothing in the definition that would make it acceptable to mean "once a year, but 6 months after the other one that we refer to as annual". But yet that's exactly what the church uses it to mean in reference to general conference!

Can someone explain how they can get away with this? Do they think their tax exempt status makes them dictionary exempt as well?? I think I was confused by this for about the first 25 years of my life. (Me: "Wait, wasn't the last one the 160th??") I'm still outraged by it. I'm tempted to boycott conference or start a Facebook group demanding that the naming convention be changed.

Aside from that, conference was really good.

Tax Credit of $8,000 for First Time Home Buyers

If you are considering buying a new home, you should be aware of this $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.

Letting Go

I've been carrying the same wallet for about 10 or 15 years that my brother Matthew bought me for Christmas many moons ago. It's gotten so ragged that I have tenants who don't even pay their rent who have offered to buy me a new one. I've put it off for a long time, but tonight I finally broke down and bought a new one.


The little one in the middle came as an added bonus, I guess for when I want to travel light. Here's the open look:


You can't even tell from the pictures how ragged the old one is. But I did get a nice shot of the lint build up:


That 20-10-29 number you see on there? I'm not really sure what that is. Probably the combination to a gym locker at some point...

However, I'm not really sold on this new one. Having those slots for credit cards makes it look like a girl's wallet. And when I put all the cards in it got kind of fat like George Costanza's wallet.


I didn't even put in all the cards I had in the old one -- I had a credit card that I don't use, a Cold Stone gift card with 97 cents on it that I've been carrying around forever, and an old BYU ID.


That white line? Yep, my social security number was printed right on the front. Maybe identity theft didn't exist back in the 90s.

The Limits of Exhaustion

I ended up pulling an "all nighter" accidentally last night. It really was an accident -- I went to bed at a normal time, but because I had slept in till noon on Monday I couldn't go to sleep. The reason I slept so late on Monday was that I had been sick on Sunday, and apparently a combination of a generic Day-quil knock off during the day and Nyquil at night make me sleep for 15+ hours.

So anyway, I got up at noon, I went to bed at midnight, and I couldn't sleep. I got up, did some work for a couple hours, and tried again. Still no good. I didn't want to take more Nyquil and risk sleeping for another 15 hours so I got up and started reading a John Grisham book (that I ended up with because my roommate's girlfriend was going to donate it to charity but it got left on our kitchen table instead... but I digress from my perfectly streamlined story...). And then of course I just kept reading until I finished. (I have a little problem with "moderation" sometimes... good thing I don't drink... or play Word Twist on Facebook...)

I don't remember how many all nighters I pulled in college, I know there were quite a few. But I always got to sleep the next day as soon as I could. This time I started getting phone calls around 8 AM, and I thought, "What the Heck? I'll just see how long I last." So I went to work (meaning I commuted to my home office 20 feet away) and acted like it was a normal day.

About 3 in the afternoon it started really hitting me. By about 4 PM (hour 28) I crashed. I got up at 8 PM (and of course had 6 voice mails...can't you people leave me alone while I'm doing SCIENCE?).

So I guess 28 hours is my reasonable limit. (I could have pushed it further if really necessary but I wouldn't have been at all effective.) Which leads me to wonder about this policy of having doctors work 36 hour shifts in hospitals. How safe can that really be? How many patients have been killed or harmed because the doctor hadn't slept and didn't know what he/she was doing?

I think Barak should look into this... but hopefully he'll worry about more important things first -- instituting PLAYOFFS IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL!