Havasimy

For the past week, I've actually been successful at getting to bed relatively early the night before a workday and have been managing to get into work at 7:00 or 7:30 instead of 8:30 or 9:00. Therefore no long stories today.

This weekend, I drove back to Pittsburgh, my first trip with the Mustang. It was great. The Taurus was always great on the long drive. The main difference, besides better interior items in the Mustang, was it went up mountains a whole lot better.

Just got done watching "24" Definitely my favorite show currently on, and one of my favorite shows ever. And next week is a two-hour-long show! And, if the previews are correct, Elisha Cuthbert will be back.

The surprise character of this season, though, is President Logan. And I was actually surprised that the actor who played him as never played President Richard Nixon on tv or in movies. I mean, there's more of a resemblence between those two than between Nixon and any other actor. But, interesting enough, he has played Arlen Specter. Arlen Specter?

For those of you that watch Grey's Anatomy, the writers for the show have a blog.

I only glanced over it, but the writer makes a good defense for the event that happened to end the show last sunday as well as comments on the fate of the character played by him.

Two Netflix-related news items:
First, I always suspected this to be true despite me never seeing any evidence of it. I even suggested this to Tiff three years ago. Well, actually, I never thought much about them intentionally delaying shipping to the busy customers, but I always mentioned that they probably give cd preference to those who keep a dvd for an entire month over someone who watches and returns a movie the next day.

Second, I actually read another article that was longer and more detailed but I didn't save the link, so this is the best I could find. Basically, postal workers would take Netflix dvds home. Some would keep them, outright stealing them. Others would watch them, then reseal and put them back in the mail. And if they return them, it would be hard to detect, especially if they "borrow" them on the return-to-netflix trip. Let's face it. You can tell when Netflix sends them and when you get them, but unless you remember when you stuck the dvd in the mail and then look at the return date, you might not notice an extra day or two stuck on the trip. This might even have happened to me. It always seemed that when I stuck DVDs in one particular mailbox back in Pittsburgh, it took longer to return that if I put it in any other mailbox.

My poor car.


This picture was taken on Sunday. Actually, considering how everybody was talking about how record breaking the snowfall was, I'm surprised how uncovered my car was. I took it for a drive on Tuesday. I had a little trouble getting it into and out of my parking space, but otherwise the streets were clear enough for me not to have any problems driving.

Tuesday I went out DVD shopping. I've cut back heavily on my movie buying since Christmas and now the Suncoast at the two malls I shop at have since closed down or are in the process of closing down. Coincidence?

Anyway, today I looked at getting tickets to the Pitt basketball game next week. Sold out. I also looked at tickets for when the Penguins play the Flyers in Philly in April. Could only get single seats via Ticketmaster. I don't think I want to go to a Pens/Flyers game in Philly alone. I'd already talked to some guys at work about possibly going. I figure, if I'm going to a game here, I'm taking some friendly Flyers fans (is that a oxymoron?) along for protection.

Crap. There's a basketball game on instead of Veronica Mars. That's one thing about Pittsburgh. They don't have an NBA team fighting the NHL team for air time on the local sports channel. Here, when they both have games at the same time, one of them gets pushed to UPN which means that on Wednesdays, a delayed Veronica.

TV Guide online says it's going to air at 10pm after the game. I hope so. I only have one vcr set up and there's something I already plan on taping sunday night, so I don't want to have to tape that re-airing.

Okay, I tried putting up an entry earlier in the week and blogger was down for maintenance. It was 10pm EST. You'd think that would be a time that they would want the site up, if at all possible. Makes you wonder if there was a major problem or someone just wasn't thinking. I've seen the behind the scenes workings of a dot-com and the aim was for 99+% uptime so any maintenance would be done such that the site might be slowed down, but it would be running.

I put the EZPass thingy on the Mustang. It doesn't look right. I might make use of the velcro and remove it when I'm not taking the turnpike or crossing one of the bridges.

No more football for the year (unless I end up watching the Pro Bowl). Just wanted to comment briefly on the bad calls that happened during the Super Bowl.
- The touchdown called back for offensive pass interference: it technically was pass interference but it wasn't blatant. It did, however, right in front of the ref. It the same with following the speed limit when driving in front of a cop. You've got to be extra careful. Also, Plexico used to try and get away with the pushoff. Sometimes he got caught and sometimes he didn't. So I can imagine how Seattle fans felt. Let's just say that if the penalty had not been called, alot of Steelers fans would have been saying that it was a missed call, but I think I would have just said that they got away with one and moved on. I don't get too upset either way on the borderline call.
- The Big Ben touchdown: the right response came back from the replay review. It was inconclusive. You couldn't see the whole ball but part of his hand did just barely break the plane but you couldn't tell if any of the ball did. As for the initial call, I would not have a problem with it if the ref came up immediately for a touchdown. In a situation like that where it's a matter of the ball breaking the plane and then being pushed back, the ref should know immediately whether or not it's a touchdown. The ref seemed to change his mind. If the ref didn't explicitly see the ball break the plane and then get pushed out, he made the wrong call.
We'll never know how this affected the game, though. They might have made it on 4th down. It might not have had an affect.
- The Hasselback tackle: I remember a similar call going against the Steelers in a game during the regular season. I don't remember which, but I heard one person say that it was against Jeff Hartings in the Indianapolis game. So it's being called consistantly. Putting that aside, Although he was tackling one guy, he went low on a blocker in the process. Even if he wasn't intending to do it and even though he missed, he still did it. Also, what happened if he hadn't made the tackle, he still forced the blocker to change his path via a illegal method, making it easier for someone else behind him to make the tackle.
- The pass to the 1 yard line being called back for a hold. The cameras always concentrate on the ball. I didn't see any hold, at least nothing worse than on any other play, but you only see the pair of players in question for a limited window. The hold could have happened after the cameras went off of them. Who knows.

People haven't mention the play early where the Seahawk caught the ball, took a few steps, got hit, fumbled, but the play was whistled incomplete before the Steelers could pounce on the ball, so it couldn't be reviewed.

The Steelers lost SBXXX despite outplaying the favorite Cowboys. Nowadays, most people only remember that the Cowboys won and the Steelers lost. Seattle didn't even really outplay the Steelers, atleast not by much. If I can live with the Steelers loss in SBXXX the Seahawk fans can live with the results of SBXL. In the long run, the only thing that will matter will be who ended up with the ring.

Rumor has it there's some big football game on today, but I can't seem to find anything about it in the media. I flipped through all the ESPN channels and there's nothing.

But seriously, I'm feeling really laid back about the Super Bowl. People who know I'm a Steelers fan or just people who see my Steelers jacket or ballcap ask me if I'm excited about the game. I am but I don't have a real high energy about it. Maybe it's not being in Pittsburgh or maybe it's the knowledge that if I get really up for it and they lose, I'm not getting any work done this week. (Although, I have a class at work three days next week, so I won't be getting much done anyway.) I think once I get to the bar and around friends and other Steelers fans, I'll get more excited.

ESPN has a feature that allows you to see all the articles about any team from local newspapers. You check on Steelers articles and, although I haven't counted, it must be at least a hundred each day. I actually tried to read every single one. It's amazing. You have reporters from at least 40 cities writing articles with all the same info. Any other day of the year, it'd be just the Associated Press reporter writing one article and having it published in every newspaper. But not for this game. Because then there'd be 40+ reporters with no reason to be paid to go to the Super Bowl.

The Steelers make it to the Super Bowl. I get a Mustang. All in the same week. I just knew things were going too well and things would have to balance out. Yep. Tomorrow I get to have a root canal! Yea me.

Oh well, as long as the Steelers win and no other "balancing out" happens, I can live with the root canal.