November 19, 2009
God damn, Outlook.

God damn, Outlook.

Brandon Jennings already has a nickname, one he had tattooed across his back when he was in 12th grade at Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va. That nickname is “Young Money,” and it is apt.

Milwaukee Bucks rookie Brandon Jennings is taking the league by storm

Thank God for a new sports nickname that isn’t just a play on the dude’s name (e.g., D-Wade, King James, A.I., A-Rod).

“Young Money” is an excellent nickname, one that I hope catches on quickly.

November 18, 2009

Google’s paying for my wifi on my Virgin America flight! I’m online at 10,000 feet.

My paper on sustainable micro-blogging robots is going to kick so much ass.
PHD Comics: Buzzwords

My paper on sustainable micro-blogging robots is going to kick so much ass.

PHD Comics: Buzzwords

November 17, 2009
I’m not one to be big-headed or anything like that, but we don’t belong on the same field as those guys. We have way more athletes than those guys, and we’re more fundamentally sound than those guys. We’re better than those guys. … when we go out and play our game, they can’t compete with us, and it showed today.

Cal linebacker Worrell Williams (via unnamedplayer)

rajiv: Worrell will be eating crow on Saturday if Stanford wins against California, especially if it’s as convincingly as Cal won in the game Worrell was referencing.  Of course, that would pretty strange, since he plays for the California Redwoods, of the UFL.

Shouldn’t locker room motivational material at least come from current opponents?  Do you think the Cal defense will be fired up to stick it to Mark Bradford because he once talked about “getting this axe back at Stanford University where it belongs”?  Probably not, since Bradford is currently one of Williams’ teammates on the Redwoods.

November 16, 2009

About right. Could be higher.

11/21/09      California OFF +7

19:35 ET      Stanford      OFF -7

unnamedplayer:

Also, Cal, this makes you Michigan State.

Not that you won’t be favored, but you might want to save that shit for after the victory.  When your rival has six of the last seven, they’re still your rival.  Even if you beat some other team at home a couple times.
And are you really going to try to claim spiritual inheritance from the famous coach of the state school whose colors are blue and maize gold?  Jim burned that bridge the first chance he got.

unnamedplayer:

Also, Cal, this makes you Michigan State.

Not that you won’t be favored, but you might want to save that shit for after the victory.  When your rival has six of the last seven, they’re still your rival.  Even if you beat some other team at home a couple times.

And are you really going to try to claim spiritual inheritance from the famous coach of the state school whose colors are blue and maize gold?  Jim burned that bridge the first chance he got.

November 15, 2009
unnamedplayer:

Stanford and USC are among the top trending topics.  Going for two may be classless, but it’s good publicity.

rajiv: I am very much not OK with what’s happening in Pac-10 / Bay Area football these days, but I love Footbaugh’s decision to go for two.  I’m of the Woody Hayes school of thought when playing a hated opponent:
When asked why he went for two despite a 36-point lead against Michigan, Hayes quipped, “Because I couldn’t go for three.”

unnamedplayer:

Stanford and USC are among the top trending topics.  Going for two may be classless, but it’s good publicity.

rajiv: I am very much not OK with what’s happening in Pac-10 / Bay Area football these days, but I love Footbaugh’s decision to go for two.  I’m of the Woody Hayes school of thought when playing a hated opponent:

When asked why he went for two despite a 36-point lead against Michigan, Hayes quipped, “Because I couldn’t go for three.”
Think of a cellphone network as one giant airplane that costs tens of billions of dollars to build. The cellphone companies don’t really know how much it costs to handle a call to Aunt Suzy in Syracuse, any more than an airline can calculate a specific cost for Seat 12B.

One of the several great lines in a pretty interesting NYT piece about the madness of the American cell phone market.

Looking for a Method in Cellphone Price Madness - NYTimes.com

A couple other highlights:

  • “On average, [Americans] effectively spend about 5 cents per minute of talk time and about a penny a text message, lower than anywhere else in the developed world.”
  • “[C]arriers put great stock in a measure called average revenue per user, or ARPU (pronounced “ARE-poo.”)”  As though we didn’t already know that cell phone companies treat their customer like shit.
  • “In the first half of this year, the average wireless customer sent 518 texts a month and made 220 phone calls, according to CTIA figures. (That average, of course, is driven up by the furious texting of teenagers.)”  The use of the adjective “furious” to mean “done often, with fervor” is only ever used to describe things teenagers do with their hands that embarrasses adults.
  • “Sprint, at No. 3, has been losing customers for several years.”  I still love my Sprint Employee Referral Offer plan: about $36, including taxes and fees, for 450 minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited data.