football’s back! the first week of college football is usually kind of weird. i am really excited that the season has started, but all the games are generally pretty crappy. so i end up watching about 15 minutes of various, mostly uninteresting games. luckily bama signed up to play clemson in a big time neutral site game. also my previous post was wrong, i was able to go to a bar and watch the game via gameplan. the bama game was good, nice win for the good guys.

the presidential race is getting interesting. i thought picking a woman was pretty shrewd on mccain’s part, but picking this woman in particular seems pretty dumb. palin is extremely conservative: anti-abortion, creationalist, pro drilling, etc. she is also being investigated for some dubious abuse of power type practices in her time as mayor/governor. not exactly what the republicans need right now.
it’s also interesting to contrast how the candidates picked the VP. obama picked a guy that will help him govern more than politic. biden can be a loose cannon sometimes and it’s quite possible that he could commit a gaffe down the home stretch. but if obama wins, his foreign policy expertise will be valuable to the administration. if mccain wins, i expect palin to be marginalized. she is clearly a publicity stunt. mccain only met her once before offering her the VP; my guess is he intentionally picked a lightweight who he could railroad.
all in all mccain has actually hung on longer than i thought. a lot of stuff seems to bounce off of him: the situation with his first wife, his flip on energy and taxes, lobbyist advisors, etc. i am looking forward to see how the obama campaign tries to put him away. i think having palin one 72 year old heartbeat away from the presidency can’t hurt.

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i have been going to physical therapy regularly for my ankle. it’s gotten much better, but it’s still visibly swollen. The other day I asked my therapist when the swelling would go away completely. he said, “maybe never. my ankles are different sizes.” i must have had a shocked look on my face, b/c his next couple appeasing comments lead me to believe most people have the same reaction. after time to contemplate, like most people i realized that a slightly swollen ankle will have zero impact on my day to day life, but i find that initial reaction interesting. why the strong feelings? I guess part of it lies in the fact that symmetry plays a large role in perceived attractiveness. it may be partly due to this being a reminder of one’s own mortality. would such a reaction be less likely in a senior citizen? who knows.

on an unrelated note: the other day while i was zoning out at work again, i took a second to really listen to the sounds of the office at work. i have a cubicle so usually there are murmurs of conversation, papers ruffling, and people typing. I found the noise to be actually quite chaotic. the random typing punctuated by especially hard space bar clicks (many eclipse users) was actually quite disturbing. I actually couldn’t work until I managed to ignore the noise as usual (similar to how when thinking about breathing it suddenly becomes a manual process).

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first an update. Nhi and I settled on a date and location for the wedding, 6/14/2009 at casa real in pleasanton. kind of in the boondocks (sorry pleasantonians) but it was one of the nicest sites we visited.

now on to important matters. when i first heard alabama was playing clemson in a nationally televised opener i was excited. good non-conference opponent and a game on tv is great for me. but today i saw it was an “ABC primetime” game which is great, but in small letters i see “or california vs michigan st.”. ugh. the worst thing you can get is a regional network game. unlike regional cable games, they are not available on pay per view. you are pretty much screwed. then i see there is this espn360 icon next to it. i never really knew was espn 360 was before today. i vaguely remember a bunch of crappy promos done on previous games where they would have uniformly terrible alternate commentators working the game for online content. apparently now the site has been relaunched in a pretty nefarious manner. instead of being a subscriber content model, they have instead signed exclusivity contracts with ISPs! basically if you have verizon or yahoo dsl you get espn360 content for free. if you don’t, you can’t get it. at all. imagine the crazy decision matrix people will have to go through if this kind of thing becomes popular. espn on verizon, hbo on comcast, nbc on yahoo, etc. i don’t think this will happen, but yet another reason to hate espn just for trying. others valid reasons: over-enthusiastic anchors, bill walton in general, the budweiser hot seat, the old spice play of the day, and the popo’s chicken and wings blooper.

so in general, i must root for espn360 to die a horrible death. but in the meantime, i need to see the bama game. obviously some people in my huge readership must use verizon broadband. if you do and will let me borrow your email and password for 4 hours, i would be grateful.

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first, let me note that i have lost the #1 google search spot for Kireet. It was inevitable due to my lack of posting. As Nhi taunted me, “It’s not enough to attain, you must maintain!”
as i’ve gotten older, i’ve found the olympics less and less interesting for a number of reasons. first, i know nothing about most of the sports. I have never swam a lap in an olympic sized pool, thrown a discus, etc. Thus, it’s hard for me to relate to the sports I’m watching. Personally, I only enjoy watching sports that I play or used to play quite regularly. second, there’s a reason this stuff is only on TV every 4 years or so. Strip away the nationalistic fervor and it’s just not that interesting. synchronized diving? i’m sure it’s difficult, but give me a break. NBC’s coverage has also really annoyed me. The ratio of commercial time is incredibly high. I watched a little beach volleyball tonight (yes, really). This seems like a pretty continous sport with few breaks. However, NBC returned from commercial at 9:10. They promptly managed to go to commercial at 9:15. Adding insult to injury, they returned to coverage during a timeout and had to put in filler content. really aggravating.
Also, I am a little fatigued with all the “human drama” as well. I think most people are tired of seeing Michael Phelps everywhere, but I am even sick of his mom. Why is she still crying at every medal ceremony? guy has won 11 medals. i’ll give you 3, maybe 4 but after that you really should keep it to enthused cheering.

At this point, the only thing I am interested in is the basketball games, which happen to come on at 7AM here. somehow fitting.

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