0 comments Tuesday, November 27, 2007

John Folmer, the football committee chairman for the Sun Bowl, said Monday night that the Sun Bowl had decided to invite South Florida ahead of UC, even though the Bearcats beat the Bulls during the regular season.

"They may have lost to Cincinnati, but at the end of the day we thought USF would do a better job," he said.

I don't exacly understand his reasoning. The Bearcats certainly play a more "exciting" brand of football with our spread offense and the nations leading turnover-creating defense.

Here are some other "reasons" why we aren't going to the Sun Bowl:
The Sun Bowl expects to get Oregon State as the representative from the Pac-10. UC has already beaten Oregon State this season and bowl officials do not like to have rematches. - I can buy this one.

Folmer said the decision was based on USF being the higher-ranked team in the BCS standings. Both teams finished 9-3, but the Bulls are No. 21 with UC at No. 23 in the BCS standings. UC was ranked No. 20 in the Associated Press poll, USF No. 25. - How they are ranked higher in the BCS, I don't know. Is it the win over Auburn?

Regardless of all of the politics involved, I love Brian Kelly's response: "We'll be happy to play anywhere, anytime, anyplace." Please don't leave us Coach Kelly!!!

3 comments Wednesday, November 21, 2007


At the tail end of ESPN.com's current headline article there is a nice mention of UC and the Holy Grail of pizza sauce:

"When hungry in Cincinnati, The Dash recommends a slice of LaRosa's Pizza (40). The local favorite can be found about everywhere, and Cincinnatians will rhapsodize about the sauce. You won't find a leafy idyllic look on campus at the University of Cincinnati, but The Dash is impressed by the modernization efforts around the school's very cool, middle-of-campus football facility, Nippert Stadium."

Granted, I am a little biased, but having played in quite a few stadiums across country, Nippert truly is a one-of-a-kind experience. No other stadium that I have been to is dropped smack-dab in the middle of campus (literally 50 feet away from the student union, the College of Engineering, and other Univerisity buildings) like The Nipp.

As for LaRosa's Pizza comment, I totally agree. We now buy the sauce in six pound bags every time we go down to Cincy to use on our homemade pizzas. No store-bought sauce compares and we are too lazy to try making our own. But, really, could we come up with a sauce better than LaRosa's? I can't imagine it possible.

Speaking of pizza, can anyone name the pizza chain that this post's title came from?

2 comments Monday, November 19, 2007

Obligatory Fanboy Declaration: Amazon is staple in my household. Almost all gift purchases, especially Christmas gifts, are purchased there. The prices rock, delivery is usually free, and they have everything. If you ask me, and some have, Amazon.com represents the Mecca of modern commerce.


On to my gushing, geeky gizmo gawking...

Kindle, Amazon's first tangible product, appears to be the revolutionary leap into ebooks that so many geekified readers yearned for. For the past few years, I stumbled through the bleeding edge of ebook reader technology (PDAs, phones, computers, BlackBerries. You name it, I have tried it.). If they pull it off as well as the demo makes us believe, I could be in heaven.

Being a not-so-small guy, I am a sucker for hardcover copies of books. They tend to be more durable, substatial to hold, and just a whole lot cooler (if you ask me). However, if a simple 10.3 ounces can hold up to 200 books, I will gladly stop lugging around my shoebox sized hardcover novels. No longer would I be restricted to whatever book is in my backpack. If a different genre/story grabs my fancy for the available free time I have at that moment, I can jump right into it regardless of where I am. This is the coup de grĂ¢ce for me. Put my entire library in the palm of my hand using a retina-friendly screen, and I am a disciple.

Does paying $2 to read a blog feed seem outlandish to me? Yes.
Is it an entirely unproven technology? Yes.
Will version 2.0 will be more refined, easier to use, etc.? Yes.
Am I am jumping on the Kindle bandwagon solely based on Amazon's marketing? Yes.

Do I still want one in the worst way? Hell yes!

0 comments Tuesday, November 06, 2007

This week, I am in Las Vegas for DevConnections 2007. Throughout the years, movies have shaped my "vision" of what Las Vegas would be like. Oddly enough, it is quite different than what I expected, in a good way. Here are a few of my observations from the last couple of days...
  • This is the land of bad hair, unproportionally large breasts,
    and extremely uncomfortable-looking heels
    • My personal favorite bad hair was a parted comb-over. It took me a while to figure out what exactly was going on up there, but I decided that it was really a comb-together from each side of the classic horseshoe that is subsequently parted right down the middle. Quite odd.
    • As for the other categories, I will leave my favorites off this website.
  • Developers will shamelessly wear swag, no matter how bad it fits.
    • I witnessed some very ugly hats handed out by vendors just plopped on top of a classic long-haired developer rat's nest.
    • Throw in some XL shirts handed out by vendors worn by fellows needing at least XXL. And no, I was not one of them. I know better.
  • Gathering autographs from "high-ranking" Microsoft employees is a very weird behavior to me. I guess it just proves that fan boys exist everywhere.
  • Older casinos smell bad, kind of like nicotine-smoked death
  • The older the casino, the older the waitresses
  • The city is much cleaner than I imagined, and prostitution seems to be much more
    "behind the scenes" than movies portray.
  • Favorite hotel/casinos so far (in no particular order)
  • This is the first developer conference I have been to with booth babes. I am not complaining, but it was odd to see.
  • I don't think English is the primary language in this city
  • Coffee must be the new crack
    • Developers lined up 20/30 deep for free coffee
    • Maybe it is the booth babes LiveOffice must have paid thousands for to pass out the coffee, but the lines were crazy.
  • All establishments do an amazing job of making sure you have no real clue what time it is, and not just in the casinos. Even the shopping areas adjacent to the casinos are poorly lit. Overall, it is too dark and gloomy for me. I know I like to work with the lights off, but I don’t like to shop with no real light. Bellagio seemed to be the only one who used skylights to light the pathways between areas. Too bad it is outlandishly expensive.
  • Where do all of these people get all of their money? It's just crazy the kind of cash some people throw around. I understand, and buy into, the "you can't win big, if you don't bet big", but it seems out of control here. I guess that is why the casinos are so big…
  • The Latin Grammys are here at the Mandalay Bay on Thursday night. Sadly, my wife informed me that JLo is pregnant so her dress will be of the "flowing" type and not her normal style. Just my luck. At least there is Shakira...
  • I love OneNote. No more scribbling on a notepad just to wonder what I meant to write a few weeks later. And it's searchable too.
  • Sunday afternoons in a big sports book are quite enjoyable. Tons of big screens and lots of people cheering any big play in any game. Proposition bets will do that to you. Poor Dad lost two of them on the Monday night game.