I'm more online. That's a thing now.

So I'm on Twitter now. I still have absolutely no interest in creating a Facebook account, so I might as well do this Twitter thing. I found myself following multiple people/organizations on Twitter, so I figured it would be easier to just make an account and follow them so I can track everything at once. This is mostly regarding sports, particularly the Memphis Grizzlies and Tigers. But it also allows me to enter Turbine's Twitter LotRO contests, and gives me a link when commenting on Casual Stroll to Mordor articles, so I made my Twitter account LotRO-centric. My name on there is Maladhros, my main character's name.

So, whatever. Follow me at twitter.com/Maladhros. Or don't. I don't have any followers, which is fine. I just want to reply to people and track tweets. I hate that I just wrote that, but really, you kinda have to these days. I have a basic (meaning slow) data plan for my cell phone now, and that's where Twitter really shines when I'm trying to keep up with what's going on, particularly when I'm at work.

In other me-centric news, I went the whole weekend without logging into LotRO. I wanted a break from the complexity of all those characters with all that stuff to do with all those people in my new kinship, so I re-downloaded Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on Steam and spent my spare weekend time shootin' at crap instead of swingin' axes at crap. Really felt a need to get back to my FPS roots. And I was busy this weekend. Mowed the front yard, did an epic amount of laundry, went shopping like three times. Watched The Matrix. So it was easier to just jump into an FPS and kill dudes for a few minutes. LotRO is fantastic, but you have to set aside more than just a couple minutes here and there to play it.

That's really one of my only major criticisms... Well done, Turbine.

LeBron James says "ME!" really, really loudly.

I hope the Miami Heat miss the playoffs for the next decade or so. And I hope they win an NBA Championship exactly one year after James, Wade, Bosh, and Riley retire.

See, I have nothing against the Heat or their fans. I just really, really hate it when a bunch of players individually decide to join up on some random franchise solely to win a title or three. It's the absolute antithesis of team sports. They don't give a good goddamn about the Miami Heat any more than Bosh gives a shit about Canada. If Memphis had better winter weather and a larger television audience (and tons of salary cap space) they would have signed here. It would have had nothing to do with the Grizzlies, it would only be about where these three egos could go to win themselves some rings. The team doesn't matter.

It's the same reason I was sickened when Malone and Payton took, on their scale, pennies to play with Bryant and O'Neal in Los Angeles a few years ago. They weren't just bandwagon-jumping, they were influencing the balance of the league for self-advancement. Karma caught up with them by pointing a sniper rifle at Malone's knee during the playoffs, and the league was turned right-side up. I was thrilled.

Now it's happening again, only worse. These aren't aging stars trying to add a championship to their already-Hall of Fame legacies. It's three superstars in their prime, aided by a prima donna GM/coach, forming a Velvet Revolver-esque supergroup just to fuck with everyone else in the league. Well, fuck you, too.

Dynasties aren't supposed to be born this way. The New York Yankees way. That's fucked up. It's why everyone is screaming for MLB to do something, anything, to restore parity before baseball turns into the NHL, which, slowly but surely, it is. Dynasties are traditionally born of franchises with passionate fans who build teams the right way for years and years. They recruit players who want to be great and who believe in A. the team, and B. the franchise. Players who want to contribute to the legacy of, say, the Celtics, the 49'ers, the Packers, whoever.

Evidently that's not how it works anymore. Now, we have players who believe most of all in the overwhelming need to advance themselves and their individual agendas. Players who buy hour-long infomercials on ESPN to showcase... what, exactly? Themselves? Yes. Themselves. "Look at me! I'm going to win a championship! What? Oh, in Miami. Why, does that matter?"

O.J. to Marc.

This is the greatest pass since the invention of handing things to people.

Marc is the Gasol we've been looking for.

Yes, that was a Star Wars reference. Anyway, Marc Gasol has come to play this season. If I hadn't seen him in person, not once, but twice this year, I wouldn't believe it. But the big fat kid from Lausanne has officially arrived in the NBA. Last season, he put on a great show (for a rookie), and impressed a lot of people (for a rookie). But that was then. This is now, and he has spent the entire season serving notice to the rest of the league that he is here to fuck your shit up.

Offensively, he's looked like Pau from his All-Star year; turn-and-guns, fade-aways, lefty hooks, fast break slams, the whole range. Defensively, he's doing this:

I spent hours of my life -- hours that I will never get back -- defending Pau Gasol. I never understood why I had to defend him, but I did. He's clearly the best player this franchise has ever had, and he always covered his shortcomings by being, I don't know, the best player the franchise has ever had. And now his trade to the Lakers has given us what may well turn out to be something even better: a little brother that may turn out to be the best role player in franchise history.

Yes, Marc has the ability to surpass Shane Battier in that category. You have NO IDEA how hard it was for me to write that. Shane is my favorite player ever. He's a great guy who knows his role and plays it to perfection. He's all heart and hustle, and a natural leader. He's great with fans and the media. And he wins.

You know who else fits that description? Marc Gasol. What's more, he's putting up nearly Pau-like numbers offensively while being vastly superior defensively. If the offense didn't include shot-happy players like Rudy, O.J., and Randolph, and if the Griz weren't "coached" by a hack like Hollins, Marc could easily be averaging 20+ points per game. He's that good right now.

I'm not saying Marc is "the answer" (Get it? Because A.I. was a disaster? OK, it wasn't funny). But he's a fundamental piece to a winning team, and the Griz need to recognize that any effort to build this team into something special must include Marc as the focal point. I hope someone in Heisley's ear figures that out.

The Forum experience.

I've been a die hard Grizzlies fan since they moved here in 2001, but I've never been able to get out to the Pyramid or the Forum to see them live until this season. The lovely Jenny, love of my life, being her usual super awesome self, got me my first ever Griz tickets to their win over their former Canadian sister team, the Toronto Raptors, back on October 30th. She got me some excellent seats: top row of the lower bowl, right behind the Grizzlies bench.

The Griz absolutely schooled the Raps that night. It was perfect for my first game. I went with my dad, who like me has always rooted for the Griz but hadn't seen them in person. He raised me to love basketball. I grew up rooting for the Keith Lee-era Memphis State Tigers. He's worked at the U of M since before I was born. I went to grammar school at Campus School, an excellent "optional program" Memphis City school right on campus (hence the name). Dad put up a basketball hoop in the backyard, and I played every day for ten years. It was a sad day when I outgrew my '85 Tigers Final Four tee shirt.

Anyway, I loved the Forum. It's a beautiful facility inside and out. I've been to the Pyramid for dozens of Tiger basketball games as a member of the U of M band, and the Forum blows it away in every category but one: it's not a giant fucking pyramid sitting right by the bridge from Arkansas. For all its problems, you cannot deny that the Pyramid is striking from the outside, and it makes our skyline, sitting up on the bluff over the river, look damned impressive.

Otherwise, the Forum puts the Pyramid to shame. It fits organically into Beale Street. The concourses are open and airy, with Memphis-centric artwork everywhere you look. Near the escalators to the terrace level, for example, you'll find a gorgeous five-by-fifteen-foot hand-made ceramic tile mosaic mural of Memphis basketball that has to be seen to be believed. Concession stands are creatively named, and the food is uniformly fantastic. It's clean, tasteful, and heavily staffed by competent, helpful, friendly people. Whimsical touches are everywhere, from funny restroom signs to a double row of kiosks where you can play Memphis-themed video games like a FedEx version of Pac Man.

Tonight I attended my second Griz game in as many months, which makes me a very happy boy. My mom was my hook-up this time, having somehow stumbled upon a great promotional deal. Two tickets for the price of one, and that one heavily discounted. I got two seats on the front row of the terrace (top level) just right of center court for twenty bucks. It was very nearly the view you get on TV, only in person, and infinitely more awesome.

Again, I went with my dad. I came prepared this time, gear-wise. I wore my Shane Battier '01 throwback jersey again, but I made Dad wear my current-era Griz hoodie. You gotta represent, right? Interestingly enough, I've now been to two Griz games without seeing a single throwback jersey other than the one I was wearing. Where's the love, Memphis? We went to the playoffs for the first time in the Vancouver colours! Don't tell me you don't remember the '04 campaign, because I'll know you're lying.

Anyway, we lost the game tonight. The Bucks came in wounded, with two of their best players, Michael Redd and Andrew Bogut, out with injuries. I say "two of" and not "two best" because rookie Brandon Jennings is the real damn deal. I posted this to 3 Shades of Blue:

Just home from the Forum. A depressing end to an entertaining game. For whatever reason (iffy coaching, lack of a capable point guard, perhaps) the gameplan was scrapped and the team relied on jump shots for most of the fourth, despite fifty (FIFTY!) paint points.

Aside from that, Brandon Jennings nailed the coffin shut. That kid is terrifying to watch if you're on the opposing side. He's so quick it's just... unnatural. Every time he touches the ball you just cringe. Conley, Mayo, and Williams took turns trying to stop him in the fourth, and they all got torched repeatedly. The Bucks may have won the draft lottery after all.

That's really all I want to get into in terms of tonight's game, other than this: the Griz put on a great show, and I witnessed some truly memorable plays. My favorite was O.J. Mayo's steal and dunk when the game was all but lost in the final moments, but a close second was Marc Gasol's two monster rejections. Here's one of them:

So thanks to Jenny, my mom, the Grizzlies staff, and the Grizzlies players. It was awesome to finally see my favorite team in person after eight years of TV. Dad thanks you, too.

Geek gear incoming.

I ordered one of these tonight:

It's a Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870 1GB video card. It's a ridiculous beast of a card that grossly outclasses everything else in my PC. And I don't care. I want it.

I'm slowly rebuilding my once mighty PC into a modern gaming rig. When I put it together in early 2006, it wasn't a world-conquering monster, but it was still pretty menacing, and would beat the hell out of just about any game I wanted to play. But over time the upgrades slowed down and finally stopped. I haven't been able to play any new games that I actually want in nearly two years (aside from Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Call of Duty 4, due to their versatile game engines). I've filled the time with older games that I can run well, but that will only take you so far.

So in the last few months I started upgrading again. I bought a new case, a monolithic all-aluminum Rocketfish based on this Lian Li box. Then last week I installed a new 36" rounded EIDE cable for my hard drives (due to the size of the new case and for better cooling) and a very decent Apevia 680W power supply, which jumped from $80 when I bought it to $110 today, so I got lucky there. Now I'm adding a mid-to-high-range vidcard for an absurdly reasonable $150.

That leaves the RAM, which is still just 1GB PC3200, and my processor, a single-core AMD64 4000+. Both are still very usable, and I can upgrade them. The socket 939 is old, but can take a dual-core CPU. But the new vidcard will be downward-compated (so to speak) since I don't have PCI-e 2.0. So the next step really should be to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM all at once. That can't happen right now, or even in the foreseeable future.

That's why I bought the 4870. It will run anything I throw at it, and should make up for the CPU and RAM for a while. It opens up two to three years worth of games to me (Bioshock, Saint's Row 2, CoD: World at War, Oblivion, Fallout 3), and will make many of the games I already have much, much more enjoyable (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., CoD 4, Ghost Recon: AW, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and more).

Oh, and I bought a Shane Battier Grizzlies replica jersey, the old 2001-2003 style. I've wanted one for eight years. It's in pristine condition and I paid less than four bucks for it. I'm wearing it right now. Pics will follow, because I think of all the stuff I bought today, this one makes me the happiest.

A Message for Michael Heisley

An open letter to the national sports media.

We exist.

The Memphis Grizzlies have always been short-sticked when it comes to coverage on the national level. When Portland won the draft lottery two seasons ago, the national story was, "Poor Boston, they didn't get the first pick," despite the fact that the Griz actually had the worst record that year, and therefore the highest odds (1 in 4) of getting that pick. This year, Rudy Gay was overlooked for the NBA's Most Improved Player award, despite having not only the highest increase in scoring of any player, but also having more impact on his team than any other player in the running (in averaging over 20 ppg, he matched a feat unheard of in Griz country since Sharif Abdur-Rahim did it back in Vancouver).


Just last night my dad called me because he had found an unlabeled VHS tape that had an old Griz game on it, a blowout win over Houston from 2004. Turns out it was the tape I used to record random Griz games on, and after the Houston game, the end of a double-overtime win at Cleveland came on. I remembered that game, because the SportsCenter highlights mentioned several times how LeBron James, then a rookie, had a career high 33 points -- despite the fact that Pau Gasol also had a career high that night: 39. And he won the game, on the road. That little nugget of sports trivia went unmentioned.

The ongoing excuse for how little attention the Grizzlies recieve on the national level has been that we're a small market team. "Only a few small market teams really make it big," they tell us. "You can't expect to be the San Antonio Spurs overnight." "Go fuck yourself," is my response, because we're not that small a market after all.

According to this Infoplease.com study of the most populous U.S. cities, Memphis is the 12th most populous city in the country with an NBA team. That's 12th out of 30. In what way does that make us "small?" We have more citizens than Boston, for Christ's sake. Not to mention Seattle, Atlanta, D.C., New Orleans, Miami, Oakland, and yes, Cleveland, plus ten other cities.

So where's the respect? I remember wondering about this frequently back when that Houston game was recorded. We won fifty games that year, but were rarely mentioned on ESPN. Granted, Hubie got his well-deserved Coach of the Year trophy, and Jerry West won Executive of the Year. But those are awarded after the season is over, and aren't exactly the best way to gain out-of-town fans.


As far as I can tell, the only way to get national attention to this city is for the Griz to make at least one deep playoff run despite a low seeding, and probably two. That, or trade up for Beasley in this year's draft lottery. The latter would be easier, but I don't expect it to happen.

Then again, is that so bad? Lack of national attention to how great the Griz were in '03-'04 allowed them to sneak up on teams all year; they beat the defending Eastern Conference Champion Nets by 47 points, the highest margin of victory by any team in any game all season (it was on that same VHS, and ended with the Stro Show's thunderous alley-oop dunk that is still remembered in Memphis with the same reverence as CDR's posterizing of Kevin Love). The answer is, yes, it is bad. Higher awareness of a team leads to more season ticket sales, more jersey and other merchandise sales, and, most importantly, higher advertising revenue, which a team in Memphis needs, given the terrible state of the NBA's profit-sharing model.

So my message to the national sports media outlets is, hey, we exist! And if you pay attention, we actually have a pretty entertaing team!

Stern has some 'splaining to do.

This news went live as I was listening to Verno's show this afternoon, but I didn't get around to looking into it until just now. Apparently Tim Donaghy is attempting to lessen his sentence by spreading the blame around the league. Yes, we all saw this coming, but the story is almost too "what I've been saying for years" to be true:

Without identifying anyone or naming teams, Tim Donaghy also claimed the NBA routinely encouraged refs to ring up bogus fouls to manipulate results but discouraged them from calling technical fouls on star players to keep them in games and protect ticket sales and television ratings.

Okay, that one's too easy. If that kind of thing hasn't been going on for years, what league have I been watching all this time? It gets better, though:

"If the NBA wanted a team to succeed, league officials would inform referees that opposing players were getting away with violations," the letter said. "Referees then would call fouls on certain players, frequently resulting in victory for the opposing team."

Oh, this is just too good. Just seeing those words in print is a small market team fan's wet dream.

Look, I love basketball, and in particular I love the NBA. I want all these allegations to be definitively, beyond-all-doubt proven false and laid to rest forever. But I'm not that naive. I'm sorry, but I'm just not stupid enough to pretend that NBA officiating is not only bad and getting worse (thank you, Stu Jackson), but that it's pretty clearly agenda-driven.

Is Tim Donaghy the first ref to step out of David Stern's shadow and tell the truth, or is he just flailing wildly to get out of jail? We may never know the answer to that, but to quote Jack Donaghy: "My cousin Tim fixes NBA games..."

Turning point.

My life, reloaded.
by AC - permalink

So in the last week, my entire life has been turned upside down. Ok, that's a little dramatic. Let's say I've found new meaning, after finding a long lost love, and I've never been so hopeful that things are going to be very good soon. Not right away, and there's some hard work ahead of us, but I'm up for it. In fact I can't wait. It's too soon to go into details, but I'm happy. Anxious, nervous, but happy. Look for a massive post on this soon, which nobody will read.

Seems like everyone I know is sick, so I'm sort of hiding out in my bedroom today. Watching a live stream of the Griz game (via Channelsurfing.net), babbling on IM, etc. God the Griz are down 20 in the 4th. This is ridiculous. They've already beaten Houston this year, and they don't even have McGrady tonight. The defense is nonexistent, and there's still no explanation for it. They're making Scola look like a fucking All Star, and they shut him down completely in the first game. Warrick and Stoudamire need to be traded now, they're killing the offensive flow. Bah. Whatever.

So the Christmas season came and went, it was marginally less annoying than usual. In fact Christmas day itself, despite a grating, endless family get-together, was the best I've had in years uncounted, thanks to Jen. I get the feeling a lot of posts are going to be ending like that soon.

UPDATE, 1AM: Forgot to mention, I haven't updated in a while because this blog was flagged by a Blogger robot as being a potential spam blog, locking me out. It took a week for it to be cleared again. WTF is that about? And why is it impossible to contact Blogger directly by email? Look into it, they have no contact information anywhere. All you can do is post to the Blogger support Google group and hope someone answers. That sucks, Blogger-owning Google overlords. Fix it.

Where am I?

Oh, right, I still have stuff to do.
by AC - permalink

Sometimes it's nice to just sleep all damn day. I topped several consecutive late, late nights working on stuff for finals week and getting almost no sleep with a badly-timed late night out. Sort of sleepwalking right now, but I'm wrapping up my XHTML final project; after tomorrow I'll be done for the semester. Anyway, I went out to see Annie in the karaoke finals at what I'll politely not call a redneck bar. It was worth it though, both for her "giant parrot singing Tracy Chapman" act and for some girl named Michelle's bluesy take on Purple Rain.

Afterwards I headed home because I was exhausted, but then I caught myself copping out on some potential fun, said "Fuck it" out loud in the general direction of my windshield, and headed to Newby's for open-mic night, where my friends in Falling for Grey were playing. They were fantastic, btw. By 2am it had started to rain and I was nearly unconscious after basically not sleeping for 48 hours, so I decided to book and came on home, and promptly passed out for too many hours to count.

Just before heading out though, I watched the Griz get their brains beat out by Detroit. It was relatively close at the end, but it just felt like the Pistons were toying with them. I don't know what's going on with this team's defense. I mean how can it be getting worse? This is one of the most nauseating box scores I've ever seen. Two steals? Fourteen fewer assists on just four fewer made baskets? And why did Mike Miller take four shots in 39 minutes? I watched the game, and I still have no idea.

At one point Warrick was isolated and actually passed the ball to Lowry, who gave it right back! No! Okay, it was the right play, as Hak's man shifted to help on Kyle. The problem is, Hak made the shot. Positive reinforcement of bad habits is not good. But whatever. I'm still finding it worth the pain to watch Rudy Gay. I love the fact that you can see him flip a switch in his head every night when he decides to just take over, and then he actually does it. Jacob Riis agrees with me:

The rap on Gay coming out of college and on into his rookie season was that he wasn’t assertive. Well, that’s not the player we’re seeing on the floor right now. We’re seeing someone who really wants to try to take over games and take the big shots and someone who’s ability to create good shots all over the floor continues to develop and impress.

I'm not so crazy about the fact that Rudy has to keep flipping that switch back on again during a game. Why is it going off in the first place? But overall the signs are all positive with this kid.

Well, that was interesting.

We now returned to our regularly scheduled drudgery.
by AC - permalink

After a hectic, exhausting, and fast weekend, my short film is done. Not by choice, there are still several things I'd like to tweak, but there's just no time. It should be turned in tomorrow morning (God I hope it is) and it's just out of my hands now. From script to completion in 48 hours. Hell of a timetable for an utter n00b. I started setting up at 9:30am Saturday, we started filming around 11:30, and we were wrapped by 4:30. Byerly and I got the editing and post done tonight in around four hours. All that's left to do is show up for the fest on the 15th.

So now it's back to schoolwork, and for the first time since I've been back I'm way, way behind now. I may well end up missing my class tomorrow afternoon so I can focus on the huge amount of PERL and HTML I haven't gotten done yet for Tuesday and the paper I'm supposed to have been writing for my regional geo course. All we're doing tomorrow is introing PowerPoint, so I might actually go in and just sit there writing code. The instructor knows pretty clearly that I'm probably more qualified to teach this course than she is, and she lets me do whatever I want in class. Never thought I'd say something like that.

Last night the Griz beat the holy hell out of the Wolves, so naturally it wasn't televised. This is becoming a recurring theme and it's really damn annoying. Still, they've won three of four, and Darko's back in the lineup. The best news about this game is that it was a game they really were expected to win -- which can be dangerous for a young team -- and not only did they take it seriously, they ratcheted up their level of play quarter after quarter until they finally sent in the subs with nearly a 40-point lead in the fourth. They've put a shellacking on a few lesser teams this year, and coupled with very close losses to powerhouses like San Antonio, Dallas, and New Orleans, and a victory over Houston, I think they're still deceptive at 6-10. This season should hit a noticeable upswing by the new year.

Changes coming. Maybe.

Also, I'm really busy.
by AC - permalink

I'd apologize for the lack of updates, but nobody reads this anyway. I'm thinking hard about archiving a number of posts and relaunching the blog with a new, ground-up redesign. I'm kickin' ass and takin' names (yes, literally) in my HTML course, and I think it's giving me an undeserved confidence in all things Web. My average is currently something like 99.6, and that's only because I keep passing on simple extra credit opportunities. The overall average from all four courses I'm taking is in the 97-98 range, but it's only because I'm doing virtually nothing else but schoolwork.

Real Life (read: having a life) is also eating up my free time, but in a good way. Saturday night I went with my friend Monica to the Memphis MeDiA Co-op to see the premier of a local indie film called omg/HaHaHa that she and her daughter had bit parts in. The film was fucking unbelievable. Director Morgan Fox, who's a really sweet guy, btw, addressed the unexpectedly large crowd before it started, and extended an open invitation to play Pac-Man on the big screen before the event started. Don't even try to rank that on the Midtown-o-meter, it'll just break. The movie itself was indescribable, so I won't try to describe it. But it was touching, and sad, and hilarious, and real, and thoughtful, and joyous, and beautiful, and experimental in any number of ingenious ways. He's working on getting a limited run at the Studio on the Square, and I can't wait to see it again (and again, and again...).

An extended trailer, more of a mini-cut, really, of Morgan's new documentary, This is What Love in Action Looks Like, ran before omg, and unbelievably, it looks even better. The trailer alone choked me up, it's just (and I'm going to do this again, but shorter) illuminating, and uplifting, and heartbreaking, and will definitely demand attention, just as omg will when it hits the festivals. More of Morgan's films and those he supports can be found at the sawed-off collaboratory pictures MySpace page.

To make the weekend even more surreal, I was back in Cooper-Young the very next afternoon to visit my grandma with my dad. Prowling exactly the same streets just hours after watching such a moving film all about the dynamic between parents and children for such a reason was... interesting, to say the least. I think I'm still processing it.

This seems weird and wrong, but I'm going to go ahead and move on to basketball now (that was my half-assed segue, and I'm not apologizing for it). The Grizzlies had a ridiculous night against the Rockets this evening. Darko went off (20 and 6), Lowry out-rebounded Yao, and Pau stepped up and clinched it with four straight freebies in the final minute. Miller had another solid all-around game after his slow start, and Rudy is proving to me that he's determined to bring something really special to the floor every night this season. His game is improved in every possible facet over last year, and his confidence is off the charts. This kid could be really, really good. My 6pm class ran long, so I missed most of the first half, but it was still a great way to wrap up a long, exhausting day.

Sometimes a loss is still a win.

Yes, I'm still a homer.
by AC - permalink

The new-look Griz lost their season opener Wednesday night, and I haven't been more encouraged by a loss since they were robbed in Detroit a few years ago during the Hubie era. They played their asses off, and could easily have beaten the defending champion Spurs were it not for some new team chemistry-caused turnovers, questionable time out management, and bad officiating down the stretch. I don't really blame the refs for the latter, as the Spurs are notorious for browbeating ref crews into giving them calls, and Wednesday night it was no different. The San Antonio Floppers Spurs left the Forum with a win, but the Griz earned a highly documented moral victory, taking an elite team to the wire. Not bad for the team with last season's fewest wins.

Darko was awesome. Rudy was solid. Lowry was fearless. Pau, Damon, and Miller showed why they deserve their new Team Captain badges. It was a terrific game, and the first thought I had when it was over was that if these guys play this hard this season, they're going to win a lot of games. This is a heavily-overhauled team, and the lineups that played Wednesday have really never played together before other than in practices. As the season progresses, they will only get better. If they started the season by nearly beating an elite, Western Conference powerhouse, they may be a lot better than even the most optimistic of us thought they could be.

Moving on, I have a lot of work to do this weekend. I tried to get way ahead in my web programming course by finishing my second test a week early, but I ran into a couple of doc-level sub-classes I've never heard of before. I'm positive we never went over this in class, and I can't even find anything similar on the web. I wanted to get this thing done because I have a huge amount of PERL to write, and it's incredibly time-consuming. I should probably be working on it now, but I'm just too tired. The only reason I'm up so late is I'm waiting to see a friend on channel 5 at 4am. She sent out a text message reminding me of it, and I made a mental note to TiVo it. Then I made another mental note to buy a TiVo, but I never got around to it.

I guess I'll fill the time with some gaming. Taking the advice of Koroush Ghazi of TweakGuides.com, I decided to move my cache file (virtual memory) to my secondary hard drive and increase it from 1.5GB to 2.5GB, and it seems to be working. I haven't run any really system-taxing games yet, but Unreal Tournament 2004 ECE and Call of Duty 2 (in DX7 mode) have been flying along without any hitches. I'm going to jump back into Far Cry and Half-Life 2 to see if there's any difference there.

Van Gundy can eat it.

Ping-pong balls are overrated.
by AC - permalink

Tonight the hometown Griz played probably the best game I've seen them play all year, gutting out a win in Los Angeles over the Lakers, effectively containing and frustrating the hell out of Kobe Bryant in the process. The Griz outscored LA by 17 in the second and third quarters and held off a charge in the closing seconds, finalizing the win via a beautiful Pau-on-Kobe block as time expired. Memphis walked into the gym without Mike Miller, their second-leading scorer at over 18 a game, starting point Damon Stoudamire, and backup point Chucky Atkins, and somehow still managed to put together a smart, cohesive, intelligent game both offensively and on the defensive end.

Junior Harrington, who played all 48 minutes, and rookie Tarence Kinsey had career nights, and along with Rudy Gay and Pau Gasol they flat-out embarrassed the Lakers tonight. I watch every televised Griz game I can -- I have since they moved to Memphis in 2001 -- and the reason I'm mentioning this one is because of what angry dwarf Jeff Van Gundy said recently. Apparently he thinks it'd be a swell idea if all 30 NBA teams got an equal shot at the draft lottery. Not for some noble, even remotely thought-out reason, but because he thinks this will discourage teams from throwing games in an effort to finish the season with the league's worst record, which would give you a one-in-four shot at the top draft pick. Yeah, he's kind of a dumbass.

I'm not going into all the reasons why making only the 14 teams who missed the playoffs eligible for the lottery, or how much of an asshole this comment makes a guy who has inherited as a coach two number one picks over the course of his career (Yao Ming and Patrick Ewing). I just want to point out that the Griz are currently in the unfortunate position of being in a race for that number one draft position with Boston, Charlotte, and Atlanta. And tonight an undermanned Memphis team fought and clawed their way to an upset win on the road over the heavily favored Lakers, starring a a guy named Bryant who's averaged more than 50 points the last five games, including a 60-point game against the Grizzlies a week ago.

Hey Jeff, guess what? NBA teams don't tank games on purpose. It just doesn't happen. And by insinuating that it does you've managed to make yourself look like a jackass on a monumental level: either you're trying to shame the league into giving you a draft pick now that you're finally back with a playoff-caliber team, or you yourself are willing to roll over and die to move up in the draft -- which probably means you've done it in the past.

Memphis made the playoffs for three straight years, and off the top of my head I know that they won 50, 45, and 49 games, one of the best records in the NBA over that span. This is not a franchise willing to tank games for any reason. There's speculation that Van Gundy's comments were directed specifically at the Celtics, who have won more championships (16) than any other team. Really, dude, isn't it enough that you're tiny and bald? Do you really want to be known as a dumbass and a hypocrite, too?

Email post

...On the worst PC ever.
by AC - permalink

Imagine an old Celeron-based business PC with 64MB RAM running Win 98 for three straight years without a reformat, or even a disk defrag. If you're picturing random BSOD's and constant VM swapping, you're on the right track. Also, the C key barely works. In any case, I installed Firefox 1.5 last week, and the entire staff here switched over completely without any input from me at all.

By the way, I'm mail-posting because blogger.com is one of the very few sites blocked by this network. The list of things you can't do in a post-by-mail is short, but why hyperlinks have to be auto-created out of complete URLs I don't know. So I probably won't be linking anywhere tonight.

For some reason I thought Gmail had gone public, but I guess not. I generally use Thunderbird, but I'm composing with the webmail client and I just noticed a little box telling me I have a hundred Gmail invites. But doesn't everybody already have an account by now? Anyway, if anybody wants one, post a comment with your email address.

Just tried to switch tabs and got an instant reboot instead. Lovely.

Slashdot.org and CNet mention a guy named Myk Melez who's put a tab UI into Thunderbird nightlies. It's an interesting idea that I'm sure has been kicked around at Mozilla before. If he writes a tabbed, "single-window mode" extension for Tbird 1.5 I'd like to try it, but I'm not into the bleeding edge, latest trunk stuff.

Oh, and a security flaw in Fx 1.5 was made public today. Mozilla.org generally has patches available for current Fx branches within 72 hours, but in the meantime you can protect yourself by disabling the history.dat file. No, I don't know how to do that either.

I'm officially through hearing about how the NBA's Eastern Conference has caught up to the West this season. In Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday's games, the East lost 10 of the 12 inter-conference games, and the Atlantic division is still waiting for a team to break .500. That's quality basketball. Every time you hear a talking hairdo on ESPN or TNT ranting about how far the West has fallen, keep in mind that he's only talking about the former elites and the overrated (LA Lakers, Houston, Sacramento, Seattle). The West is still strong, but it will take some time for everyone to realize that the West's top teams are now - in addition to San Antonio and Dallas - from places like Memphis, Oakland, Phoenix, and LA. No, the other LA.

Update 10:00am: Doing a little formatting at home, but I'm not touching the content. Time for bed.

SeaMonkey has a face.

Brine shrimp are neat.
by AC - permalink

The SeaMonkey logo design contest announced at the end of July has finally ended. The new logo and artwork is now official, and it looks pretty good. Now we just need a solid browser to back it up. The early SeaMonkey alpha I tested was an improvement on the Mozilla Suite it was based on, but still too bulky and too buggy. The most confusing and frustrating aspect of MozSuite for me was the fact that it was extensible, but had no extension UI. It was easy enough to install an extension, but a pain in the ass to uninstall one that no longer works with an updated build of the browser. I hope the SM developers can do something about that.

I installed Firefox 1.5 on an old Celeron-based computer at work a few days ago. Friday night I went in for a few hours and found my boss using it, and repeatedly wondering out loud how it could be so much faster than IE6. I'll let him digest it for a while before showing him how to use Adblock and Tab Mix Plus.

PCWorld.com tagged Mozilla Firefox the Product of the Year in their list of the 100 Best Products of 2005, just ahead of Gmail and Mac OS X Tiger. Thunderbird ranked 28th, behind Sony's PSP (19th) but ahead of Photoshop CS2 (32nd), iTunes (34th), and Half-Life 2 (38th). Opera 8 shows up 88th, which seems a little low to me. It falls behind Trillian at 61st and the Mac Mini (75th), which was pretty much a flop.

And on a final, selfish note, the Memphis Grizzlies, after three straight 20+ point wins, suddenly have the third-best record in the NBA, thanks to the league's best defense (86.2 ppg allowed) and what might be the best backcourt around. Only Detroit and San Antonio, last year's NBA championship finalists, have a better record after the first full month of the season. And nobody's talking about Memphis. Anywhere. This happened two years ago, when the Griz snuck up on teams all year and walked away with fifty wins and a playoff berth. Well, they aren't paying attention this season, either, and this team is better than the 2004 squad. If one or two execution/coaching issues I've noticed get cleared up, and barring significant injuries, Memphis could, potentially, have one of the league's elite teams this year. We'll see.

Sports Junkie update Vol. I

Nerds can be addicted to ESPNews, too.
by AC - permalink

I really hope that nobody anywhere is surprised that Terrell Owens has been suspended for the rest of the season by Eagles coach Andy Reid. You just can't present yourself as a leading candidate for Douchebag of the Year and expect nobody to notice, T.O. Just ask Kevin Federline.

Staying with football, I'm bound by law as a Tennessee native to hate the Colts, which is a shame as they're clearly the best team the NFL has seen is a good three or four years. Then again, jumping on the Indy bandwagon now would be like deciding to be a Bulls fan the year Jordan came back home from Birmingham. You might as well make a cardboard "Poser" sign and staple it to your forehead. Which actually would be a lot less painful than being a Titans fan this season.

Fortunately, we still have the Grizzlies. A lot of people got swept up by teams like the Clippers, Suns, Warriors, and Rockets, and conveniently missed the fact that the Griz made offseason moves that could easily put them into the Western Conference elite. Add to that a bigger, stronger, and more focused Pau Gasol, who is averaging 26 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 blocks so far, and you have a sleeper team who will quietly pound out wins to the All Star break, then cruise into the playoffs. I watched them do just that two seasons ago, and it's going to happen again. And this year the uniforms are way sweeter.