Wednesday, February 28, 2007

OUCH.

No, seriously - OUCH.

No matter how bad your day has been, you're having a better day than Shaun Livingston did Sunday. Squeamish viewers, this is not the YouTube you're looking for.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Men's BBall: Big Ten Champions!

The "Thad Five" (and the rest of the bball Buckeyes, of course) scored a tough win today at home against the Wisconsin Badgers to lock up the outright regular season Big Ten title for the second year in a row today. It was a seriously tight game, coming down to the last minute with Ron Lewis scoring an awesome flyover block to stop Wisconsin's last minute game-winning shot.

One more regular season game to go (at Michigan), but the outright title is secured, as is (most likely) the #1 NCAA tournament seed in the Midwest... so a little bit of celebration (and some net-cutting) is well earned.

It's been a heck of a fun season to watch - and it's not even March yet!

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Speechless

I... yeah... just watch.


Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Meltdown, The Showdown,, The Good TV

For the 2nd day in a row the weather's been decently above freezing, which means all the snow is melting away. Nowhere near all gone yet, but it's going fast, and it's made things wet and nasty. Personally, as long as the roads are relatively clear and safe, I'd rather it stay nice and white off the road - a nice coating of snow just makes Winter feel like... well Winter. Though I have to admit it sure is nice to open the door & let the dogs out without feeling like I need to put on a coat.

Good news in the College BBall world tonight, as Michigan State upset Wisconsin (who was either #1 or #2 depending on which poll you look at). This leaves OSU a half-game ahead in the conference standings, with the opportunity to pull a full game ahead assuming we can get the job done against Penn State tomorrow night. It also both adds and subtracts a little sizzle from the big Wisconsin-OSU rematch coming up this weekend... on one hand, though the polls won't refresh before then, it's not really #1 vs. #2 anymore... but on the other hand, Wisconsin will be looking to get out some frustrations. OSU will still be looking for payback for the loss in Madison. Should be a good time - hopefully the team stays focused and plays strong!


Drew Nietzel, SUPER SPARTY!

In unrelated news, it's worth mentioning that Heroes is f-ing AWESOME. Not that it ever fell all that far, but this week's episode has flung it right back into position as possibly the best show currently on television. I mean seriously, that ROCKS. And next week's episode looks really promising. At the same time 24 remains excellent as well. The formula/repetitive nature of things is beginning to bog things down a bit, but the surprise reveal/appearance at the end of this week's ep is more than enough to leave me wanting more. And of course, there's LOST - which before the midseason extended hiatus had been on quite the slide in my opinion - just treading water/churning gears without moving forward at all - no character development, no mystery progress, no nothing. Just a little soap opera-action. Since the return, both episodes have been MUCH better, with this past week's Desmond-centric episode REALLY getting things back to what I love about the show. A lot of fun stuff there, and yes, still more mysteries introduced, but enough of a teaser-answer there and some really intriguing new questions.

Oh, and finally - in a bit of good news, they finally put the remainder of Day Break on the ABC web site. Go watch it while you still can!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Holy Crap x2! A second OSU Snow Day!

I guess when hell's already frozen over, it doesn't take as much to stay that way - and since my theory was disproven, there's no need to keep up any pretenses - OSU is closed again today - ALL DAY TODAY!

Snow Day!

2-14-2007

Ohio State Columbus campus remains closed today

Classes are cancelled on Ohio State's Columbus campus on Wednesday (2/14).

College and administrative units are also closed.

The Ohio State University Medical Center and other essential services (such as police, residence halls) will remain open.

This message applies to the Columbus campus only. Decisions relating to regional campuses will be based on local conditions.

more

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Holy Crap! OSU Snow Day

Sadly, my theory that each OSU President only cancels classes once during their tenure has been disproven -- President Holbrook cancelled classes at OSU main campus today beginning at 1:30pm !

And even better - we got to leave, as apparently we're not considered essential staff in this case. Woohoo!!

Check it out.

Snowmageddon, Rock Star, V-Day

Believe it or not, I've actually got a ton of stuff to blog about - but a combination of lots of being busy and increased laziness (due to lots of being busy) have just let it pile up. I'll hit on a couple things here, but will hopefully have more for later too.

It's nasty as heck outside today, as we're currently in the middle of the worst winter storm of the season here in C-town. Snow and yuck started around 4 or 5 this morning and is supposed to continue through tomorrow -- including a possible shift to "wintry mix" for awhile - AKA ice and sludge, then back to snow. The roads were a complete mess coming in (due to the timing of when things began, they hadn't gotten a chance to clear at all), and are only getting worse.

At least the view is purty, right?

In other news, Rock Star: Supernova (the band made by the show, that had to add the "Rock Star" bit thanks to the other band that had the name first) has so far fared about as well as I expected -- for many of the reasons I outlined in my Why Rock Star: Supernova Fails blog from last year.

This interview with Gilby Clarke touches briefly on the show in general, including how it quickly spun into "Tommy Lee's new band":

antiMUSIC: Did the TV show end up being different once it got going from what you were presented?

Gilby: Oh, it was definitely different from what I was presented. When I sat down in those meetings I was under the understanding that it really was, you know, a new band between myself, Tommy and Jason, you know. And it certainly was represented more like Tommy Lee's new band. I definitely didn't sign up for that. You know, I respect Tommy, as a guy in the band, of course, but I was kinda disappointed with the way they were advertising that. But you know, we got the right winner in the end. There's definitely a lot of things I don't agree about with television, you know. Television is editing and all kinds of things. I think most people who went to the tapings of show but then saw the show actually on TV, saw two different shows, but I'm sure, you know, look this is my first shot at doing something on television. And I definitely learned a little bit from doing it.


While this New York Post article does a great job of highlighting the problems as far as what went wrong. I don't fully agree with all his suggestions for what to avoid doing wrong next time, but he definitely makes some good points.

Cheers! Maybe I can drink the total lameness away!

Finally, in other news, it is of course Valentine's Day tomorrow. Amy & I already had our nice dinner out, when we went to M last Wednesday. It was phenomenal, and I had the best sushi roll I've ever had there - the Surf-and-Turf Roll - a jumbo tempura prawn rolled inside-out with cream cheese, scallions and a bit of daikon, with filet mignon beef carpaccio layered across the outside/top. It was AWESOME. Extremely decadent, but wow it was good. The rest of the meal was excellent as well - I love that place. Tomorrow we've got our Broadway Series tickets (convenient timing, not planned), to see All Shook Up. Yeah... I don't know about all that. We'll see I guess. Hoorah for Elvis.

For those last-minute planners out there, if you're still looking for somewhere to take your sweetie out for dinner tomorrow night, LOOK NO FURTHER - White Castle has your back. Make your Valentine's Day STEAMY! Yes, seriously.

Make your Valentine’s day STEAMY! Take your Valentine to White Castle on Wednesday, February 14 between 5 and 8 p.m. and enjoy hostess seating, candlelit dining and your own server. Reservations are required, so check the list below for participating Castles near you!

Special this year, you can also treat your honey to a romantic White Castle dinner in your home! Cupid’s Crave Kits include eight cheeseburgers, one sack of fries, two regular soft drinks, coupons and keepsake items to heat up your homespun romance. Now, ain’t that sweet?

For more information or to make a Cupid’s Crave Kit reservation, call the phone number listed for the your city of choice below.*

* Cupid’s Crave Kits are not available at all locations. Reservations are required.

Is that not 8 trillion kinds of AWESOME?

You know it is.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Holy Ridiculous Freezeosity

So it's around 11 degrees outside at the moment -- up from a whopping 1 degree this morning (pre-windchill!!). It's so cold most of the area schools are canceled today. I'd say I wished OSU was closed as well, but since we're considered a critical service, we'd still have to be at work anyway, so OSU might as well be open. It's so cold out that the car (which was in the parking garage all day) radio display was noticeably slow in refreshing when changing stations/volume/etc.

Not that I would've minded a day off today - even though it wasn't a late game, it'd still be nice to have a day off to relax and recover after the Super Bowl. Not as bad as working the day after Christmas (by a longshot), but hey, I wouldn't be upset if this guy gets his wish. (He actually got on the radio at least twice last week in Columbus, and I'm sure he got other gigs elsewhere too - hope those web page ads pay well).

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I did watch the whole game. My parents came over, we cooked up some "football snacks" (fondue, lit'l smokies in BBQ sauce, meats, cheeses, etc. - tasty!), and just hung out. I'm surprised no one I know had (or at least invited me to) a Super Bowl party, but I guess I could've taken the initiative there too, and I know a lot of folks were just done with football for the year after the National Championship traveshamockery. The ads were pretty disappointing overall - not really bad, but nothing really GREAT either. I guess the Blockbuster ad with the mouse was probably my favorite, and the Budweiser Rock-Paper-Scissors thing. The halftime show wasn't bad either - I thought Prince did a good enough job. Very showy, especially for the rain. My big complaint there is I really didn't like his "All Along The Watchtower"... that just sounded bad.

And now enters the long drought that is known as the football off-season. At least Buckeye Basketball is doing well this year, picking up a big win at MSU Saturday. Mike Conley Jr. is just scary-good. And of course that Oden guy makes a few plays here and there too. The Cavs...well they're not BAD, but they've stumbled quite a bit from having a East-leading record a month or so ago. Hopefully they turn things back around firm-back-up on the winning ways.

Not much else going on at the moment... have to take Amy's car into the shop AGAIN today, as the ABS warning light is on, and this is a bad time of year for her ABS to not be working properly. Hopefully it's a warranty-covered fix... but it'd be even better if our cars would just WORK...