The Mavericks got off to a slow start in game 2, much like game 1… but this time, no one was able to slow up Parker or cool down the Spurs shooting.

The Mavericks couldn’t figure out how to guard Parker, who worked off the pick and roll all night and was slashing, driving, and shooting at will.  He finished with 38 points — 10 more than Josh Howard and Dirk Nowitzki combined.  And when the Mavericks did collapse on him, he found the open shooter. The Mavs were consistently slow to rotate to Finley, Bonner, and Bowen.

It was the worst of both worlds: the Mavs would either step up and help on Parker too late, or they would be late to rotate to the open shooters.  The result?  The Spurs shot 53% for the night — and that includes a brief cold streak that allowed the Mavericks to crawl back into the game before slamming the door with an 11-0 run.

Defensively, the Spurs went back to their old their game of getting physical and pushing Dirk outside of his comfort zone.  The Spurs fronted him and brought help from over the top to keep the lob pass out.  It worked well — Dirk was clearly frustrated.

Also of disturbing note was the Spurs consistently outhustling the Mavs.  The Spurs seemed to get to every loose ball, and outrebounded the Mavs 44-28.  -16 on the boards isn’t going to get it done against anyone, especially a Spurs team that couldn’t miss in the first half.

JJ Barea also returned to earth, scoring only 5 points in 23 minutes — and he didn’t bother Parker one bit.  But then again, neither did Jason Kidd, Antoine Wright, or Jason Terry, who all took turns getting abused.

The Mavs luckily have two days off before their next game.  San Antonio made their adjustments and bounced back; the Mavs need to match.  All the optimism that filled the air after game 1 has been sapped.

It’s one thing to lose; it’s another to be blown out in every single facet of the game.

But, you have to hand it to ABC for managing to mismanage the number of plotlines differently in each show.

Grey’s Anatomy has too many plotlines that it tries to use in every single episode.  It makes the episodes have little cohesiveness and instead turns them into a big mush of different topics. In last week’s (“Testing, 1-2-3″) episode alone:

… Meredith is stressed because her dad hit her after blaming her for killing his new wife, which was untimely not just because her funeral is on the day of the important intern exams but because Meredith was starting to like the spunky gal who was determined to make Meredith a part of her family, which Meredith sorely needed after the death of her mother, who happened to date the chief of medicine.  When Richard tries to console Meredith, she snaps that he is not her father — an interesting response to your boss trying to be nice, who is having his own post-separation hard times, which are exacerbated by his wife (who happens to have gotten pregnant) showing up at the hospital.  But Meredith tries to suck it up and take her exams, but doesn’t write anything on her paper.  George tries to help, but he’s up to his own ears in his own doo-doo because he has to sort out his feelings for Izzy, who he slept with, despite his being married to a woman he just discovered he doesn’t love.  His solution is to move to a lesser hospital, which pisses off Bailey because she’s put a lot of work into his development, but to move hospitals he has to pass his intern exams which the interns are studying for while also preparing for Christina’s wedding which is… tomorrow!  Who would schedule a wedding for the day after the biggest test of their life is beyond me, but they did, and Christina isn’t being the proper bride — she’s more interested in her career.  So Burke is stressed out while he has to tend to the medical drama of the day — a bunch of climbers coming in off a mountain, one of whom happens to have a pickaxe stuck in his head, while the climbers argue about whether or not they should have rescued him.  Alex, of course, has better things to worry about — namely, the identity of the Jane Doe from about 90 episodes ago, who announces she has in fact recovered her memory but doesn’t want to go back to her boring life as a housewife.  Meanwhile, Addison still can’t get pregnant, because she is barren, and thus everyone around her is having babies, including the gay bar owners who are trying to adopt a baby.

That’s a lot of topics for one hour. And I’m sure I forgot some.

Lost, meanwhile, also has a million topics — but gives each topic an entire episode.  This makes each one really developed, but you can go 8 episodes before finding out something basic, such as what the hell Locke is doing or what the freaking numbers mean.  (Remember the numbers?  They’ve been almost abandoned lately.  The numbers were great — was there anything creepier than them opening the hatch and finding the numbers on the inside?)

Find a happy medium, ABC — have a few, well developed plotlines, then move on to the next.  These aren’t soap operas — but they’re getting close.

Memo to AT&T and Cingular: make up your minds.

Once upon a time, I was an SBC Wireless customer.  They turned into Cingular and wasn’t providing very good service, so I switched to AT&T Wireless.  I liked AT&T Wireless.  They were good to me.  Of course, it cost some to switch over and start over, but whatever.  It was worth it.

Much to my chagrin, though, Cingular bought out AT&T Wireless, so I was back on Cingular.  Sort of.  My bills were sent from Cingular, and I gave Cingular money, but I was still categorized as an AT&T Wireless customer.  Whatever — it was all semantics.

Until I upgraded my phone — at which point I had to switch officially from AT&T Wireless to Cingular.  Huh?  I was already on Cingular, I explained to them.  They said no, I was officially on AT&T Wireless still, and it would cost a nominal $15 fee to switch to Cingular.  This made no sense, but arguing got me nowhere, so I paid the $15.

And now Cingular announces they’ve merged with… AT&T!  Seriously, people.  Figure it out.  If they try to charge me to switch to AT&T from Cingular, then I’m switching to Verizon or something.

Way to alienate customers, guys!  And they probably wonder why people hate the utility companies.

I left my cell phone in my car.

And it’s driving me crazy.

I would just go down to get it, but it’s a bit of a walk to where I parked.  That, and I’m curious to see how long I’m willing to go before giving in.  My goal is to make it to lunch, when I’d be walking around anyway, but we’ll see.  I’m going to have trouble making lunch plans without the phone, so it could go either way.

Every minute or so, I notice something feels off.  I feel around in my pants (no, not like that) and think to myself, “Something’s missing!” (no, not like that!)  I then realize it’s my phone, remember that I left it in my car, and get back to adjusting my hair, messing with a whisker I missed while shaving, or whatever other fidgety thing I’m doing.  A minute will pass, and we’ll repeat the process.

I’m about a block away from my phone — which is as far from my phone as I’ve been in a while.  I wonder if it misses me as much as I miss it.

I keep wondering, am I missing text messages?  Phone calls?  No one calls me this early, but maybe today is the day someone does.  It’s lonely without my phone.

You can probably tell that this isn’t the most well-formed or coherent of posts.  This is because:

1) It’s early. 2) I’m distracted by not having my cell phone.

It’s amazing how attached you can become to technology.  If someone had told me 10 years ago I’d have a phone that was my personal secretary — taking messages, keeping my schedule, keeping my to-do lists — that I would be lost without, I’d have called them crazy.

Me, I chose boxers, for the most part.  I’ll sometimes do boxer briefs, or even briefs, for athletic activity — but even then I often don’t bother and just hope for the best while playing basketball in boxers.

I’m happy with my choice.  Which brings me to ladies.

Ladies have underwear choices too, but their choices are granny panties, thongs, and standard panties.  At least, I think those are the choices; I’m no expert.  And I’m at work right now so I’m not going to load Victoria’s Secret for reference purposes.

All of their choices are form fitting, though, which I’m cool with.  But it’s bantied about as common knowledge that women will often wear a boyfriend’s boxers and tshirt to sleep in, because it’s more comfortable.  So that brings me to my question: why don’t women wear boxers?

I realize that anatomically, men and women are different.  I realize that one reason men wear boxers is medical — it’s better for the troops to have their barracks a bit away from the warm body.  And I realize women can have chafing issues — or so commercials for personal daily lubricants have told me.

But I’m still not totally clear on why boxers aren’t a choice in women’s everyday underwear decision-making.  Yes, their clothes are more form fitting, leaving more visible panty lines, or boxer lines.  But women don’t always wear form fitting clothes.  But they do remain committed to the panty.

Is there some medical reason here that I’m just not aware of, as an ignorant male?  Is it a tradition thing?  For my money, if women want to wear boxers, society shouldn’t tell them no.

But not only that, it looks like you sometimes are looking for something that you just won’t find good information on at this site.  Really, you won’t find much good information here regardless, but that’s neither here nor there.  At any rate, I kind of feel guilty when people end up here when they’re looking for something else.  So I will try to right the wrong by taking some of this week’s search queries and trying to point you in the right direction.

• “maverick roller coaster” — During the Mavericks 2005 playoff run (which ended in the second round against Phoenix), I was frustrated by their up and down performance. I try to stay pretty well connected to the Mavericks, and I haven’t heard anything about there being the potential for an actual roller coaster ride. But the fact that 9 people Googled for this (or one person Googled 9 times) leads me to believe that there’s a definite market demand for a Mavericks roller coaster ride at Six Flags or Disneyland or something.  I can picture it now — you ride around in a little car named JET, and exit from Dirk Nowitzki’s tongue-extended mouth. And why stop at a roller coaster?  There could be an entire Mavericks amusement park.  We could have a house of horrors, featuring NBA referees and Shaquille O’Neal shooting free throws.  Maybe even show video of Avery Johnson racking Josh Howard on a loop.  There could be a big tower shaped like Shawn Bradley that you parachute down from.  A big bouncy tent shaped like Erick Dampier, just because.  I know I’d visit.
• “paul mokeski” — Paul Mokeski has been popular this week.   I mentioned his scouting the Phoenix Suns in passing during a post about the Mavericks/Suns series this year.  I did a little research about Mr. Mokeski on Wikipedia, which reports that Bill Simmons, ESPN.com Page 2 columnist, sometimes refers to him as the least athletic man to ever play in the NBA.  Bill Simmons has one of the most-read articles in the world, I’ve concluded, since almost every male I know reads him — even non-sports fans.  I’ll theorize that his name is surfacing as people research the Bill Simmons name-drop.
• “stitches in tongue” – Last year, I reported that I had bitten off a chunk of my tongue while playing basketball.  Not good times.  This is one of the more popular google search queries for my site — I’m the #3 site on Google when you search for “stitches in tongue”!  I’m going to put that on my resume, for sure. At any rate, I suspect a lot of people that are visiting are either 1) weird or 2) dealing with a similar injury.  If you have a similar injury, I recommend seeing a doctor if you think it’s serious.  That sucker bled a lot, and swallowing blood is never a good thing.  It also made eating difficult, and the next day it hurt so much it was radiating pain into my head.  I ended up not needing stitches, and the tongue healed remarkably quickly and fully — I was back to normal in a week (with a weirdly shaped tongue).  Today, there’s no sign of me ever having had bitten some of it off.  Good work, tongue!  But still, see a doctor.  You might need stitches or some medication, especially if it becomes infected or something.  Why take a chance? Colgate has some good information on tongue injuries if you do have such a thing happen. But I recommend avoiding tongue injuries.
• “nba finals rigged” — I think there’s a trend — a lot of my popular hits are coming from basketball-related searches.  At any rate, I’ve thought about this a lot.  And I do not think the NBA Finals were rigged.  I just think the referees were pitiful.  Not dishonest, but pitiful. The theory that the Finals were rigged isn’t an unheard of one, though. Here’s one that talks about the Finals being rigged both from fan and player perspectives.

I hope this helps some of you.  It probably won’t, but you can’t say I didn’t try.  Let me know if you’d like to become a regular feature.  And also, I do plan on doing another Q&AK Questions and Answers session — so send me questions or post them here, if you have any.  Unless you’re already an oracle of knowledge yourself, in which case say so here or in email so I can ask you questions.  Specifically about women — they confuse me.

On day one of training, they taught us about positioning, went over some rules that were a little tricky, ran some drills with us.

At the end, they sat us down and said if you forget everything else, remember these two things:

1) Don’t let a game get so out of hand kids are getting hurt. 2) Don’t decide a game at the free throw line unless the player gets absolutely mugged — no one wants to see you, the ref, decide the game. Let the players decide it.

It’s one of the most basic tenets of officiating, and not a very difficult one. I’m not that bright, but I had a pretty good grasp on it as a youngster.

Now, I realize that this isn’t YMCA basketball — it’s the NBA. And NBA officials are under a lot more pressure.

But dealing with pressure is part of the job of being an NBA official.

When a player is doubleteamed and out of control, you don’t bail him out by calling a foul, even when he is fouled.

You ESPECIALLY don’t when that player is touch fouled.

You REALLY ESPECIALLY don’t when that player isn’t even touched.

You REALLY REALLY ESPECIALLY don’t with 2 seconds left. In overtime.

You REALLY REALLY ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY don’t in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

But the Joey Crawford, Bennett Salvatore, and Joe Derosa crew decided from the tip they were going to decide this game. And they did, giving Wade the call with 2 seconds left.

Dwayne Wade personally shot the same number of free throws as the Mavericks. And Miami shot 17 in the 3rd quarter alone, to Dallas’ 0.

Some of those free throws can be attributed to Hack-A-Shaq. That’s fine. But the referees called touched fouls on guys guarding Dwayne Wade all night, and let Shaquille O’Neal throw elbows as much as he wanted, and when guarding Dirk at the 3 point line nearly pushes him out of bounds without getting fouls called.

Call me a Dallas homer, call me a whiner. That’s fine. But look at the replay of the Dwayne Wade drive with 2 seconds left in overtime, and tell me the officials didn’t determine the outcome of the game.

Now, the Mavericks did their share of blowing things. The game never should have come down to an official’s call — Josh Howard had a great game but missed two free throws, Dirk missed another key free throw, etc. They missed some chances. And Josh Howard’s calling of a timeout between free throws was yet another disaster (even though there are different stories on that — Howard says he made the signal for a timeout, looking at his coach, to confirm that’s what he wanted, but never said anything — and Joey Crawford says he asked for it twice). They could have won despite the officials.

But it’s hard to play 8-5.

• It’s kind of weird to be watching a game on a Jumbotron with 12,000 Mavericks fans — but it’s kind of fun.  It’s hard to catch the commentary, but I think at this point we can all predict what Hubie Brown and Mike Breen are going to say before they say it — so it’s all good.
• From the second I stepped out on the court before the game, I could tell it was going to be a different sort of night.  Before games, we often go out on the court with what we call “the backpack” — one of the guys puts on a backpack with a basketball hoop on it, and we toss a small ball into the crowd which the crowd then tries to toss into the hoop.  It’s a rather mundane activity, if you ask me, but it helps kids pass the time.  Normally at games, a few people will make some noise wanting the ball — smatterings of yells from here and there.  When we bring out the tshirt sling before games, we get more of a response, but still not the all-out noise we hear during games.  But during the watch party, the crowd was going absolutely bonkers over this little game of miniature basketball.  Entire sections were screaming, begging for the ball.  It was quite the surprise, honestly — it’s supposed to be more of a time-pass crowd-interaction-activity for kids than an all out crowd-pumping up activity.  But I enjoyed the change.
• The in-game tshirt sling during one of the commercials was way intense — people were going nuts for tshirts.  And later in the game, I had to deliver a few ballcaps to some guys that participated in one of our skits — and when I entered the crowd I nearly got mauled by people trying to get the hats.  It was pretty hardcore.
• As we all know, it was a close game.  The floor director at the watching party started out the game pretty laid back, relaxed, doing a lot of stuff from the comfort of a seat.  But as the game got more tense, he took his usual spot on the stairs near the tunnel, barking out instructions and treating it more and more like a real game (I personally got yelled at when I messed something up).  The crowd was intense and really into it — when we brought out the flags, they were as loud as any regular-season crowd (not quite as loud as a playoff crowd, but the building wasn’t full, either).
• I thoroughly enjoyed the different crowd atmosphere — it was almost all younger people (14-30 range) that can’t normally pony up the thousands of dollars to get good seats at the NBA Finals.  They were there to party, and party they did.  They were loud, enthusiastic, and loved the Mavs.  It was great to see.
• And not only did they love the Mavs, they loved the Hoop Troop — a section of guys started a Hoop Troop chant.  They probably just wanted tshirts, but I dug it anyway!
• On another note, I once again had to play the role of heartbreaker.  I brought a couple of girls down from the stands for a skit, where they met my fellow Hoop Troop member Charlie.  After the skit, one pointed out that Charlie was “really cute.”  She looked really disappointed when I pointed out that he was getting married in about a week.  (Good luck, Charlie!)
• The big downside of the evening was the game itself — it ended in disappointment.  The Mavericks blew a 12-point 4th quarter lead and fell to the Heat, bringing the series to 2-1.  On the one hand, I was looking forward to a sweep, but this is probably mroe realistic.  The Heat won by 2 points after Shaq and Udonis Haslem hit their free throws (a rarity), Gary Payton hit a clutch jumper with the shot clock running out (a rarity at this stage of his career), and Dirk missing a big free throw (yet another true rarity).  Dwayne Wade went nuts and scored 40+ points, and Shaq looked the best he did in the series.  The stars aligned right for the Heat.  But despite all that, the Mavericks still nearly pulled out the game.  Had they not had several dud offensive posessions in a row where they waited too far into the shot clock to start their offense, forcing them into bad shots, they probably would have been able to pull out the win.  But that having been said, it’s not a given that the Mavericks will win game 4 — they need to get their focus back and really take it to the Heat.  The Mavericks have put together several good quarters, against the Heat, but have yet to be really stellar for an extended stretch.  They need to really bring out their best games and close the series out.
• I think I’ve said this before, but the Heat PA announcer is really, really annoying.  I’m glad he was usually drowned out by the din of the American Airlines Center watching party.
• Of course, many would argue that the Mavericks were bound to lose after the city-wide jinx that was inadvertently applied.  After the Mavericks went up 2-0, the stories across the papers and the news was information about the parade being planned.  Come on, people!  Everyone knows talking about the parade before the championship is won is a jinx.  Of course, I participated in the parade talk… my bad.

I use Akismet for spam filtering, and for the most part, it does a great job. Except it hates me.

Before I installed Akismet, I was dealing with literally hundreds of spam comments per day. Now, sometimes one comment slips through here and there, but no big deal. And from looking at the archive of comments it has deleted, I don’t think it’s deleting other people’s comments. Just mine.

Akismet claims to be smart, and then you unflag comments as spam and undelete them, it’ll learn from its mistakes. Which appears to be true — some comments it used to let through its filters it now correctly catches. But once again, I’ve told it literally a dozen times now that I am in fact not spamming my own blog, but it’s not listening.

My only theory is that perhaps my own blog is angry at me for some reason. Blog, if you are angry, I apologize. I know, I know, how can I be truly sorry if I don’t know what I did? Just trust me, blog. I am sorry. Please stop blocking my comments and making me go in and force them to be unblocked. It makes me feel like I don’t trust you, and like you don’t trust me. Let’s be friends again.

I’ve been at every playoff home game for the Mavericks, and the crowds have been great — making my job that much easier at games.  The only challenge is the crowd comes out with such a fury that there’s a second half lull during the 3rd quarter while everyone re-energizes for 4th quarter craziness.

And the Spurs series was filled with craziness.  In game 7 alone, in no particular order, a clutch Dirk Nowitzki and-one drive to the basket to sent the game to overtime (secured by an arguably even more clutch blocked shot on Tim Duncan’s putback attempt that would have ended the series at the buzzer), the referees once again participated in what I lovingly refer to as “creative officiating,” Devin Harris managed to get called for a foul on an inbound play where he bumped a Spur — an action that happens on every NBA inbounds play in every game but never gets called except in Mavs vs. Spurs in overtime, DeSagana Diop broke his nose and shrugged it off to emerge as a hero with stellar fresh-legged defense on a tiring Tim Duncan, and the Mavericks finished with an 8 point win.

And that was just the final 5:something minutes. 

It felt great celebrating that win, but there’s a real window of opportunity here for a championship — and the real celebrating won’t happen unless that’s accomplished.  San Antonio was playing after a championship year, with aging veteran role players, when they’re known for not repeating; Phoenix has missed Amare Stoudamire (a real stud) all season after a severe knee injury; Houston battled with a weak supporting cast and injuries to Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming; and Detroit looks vulnerable after struggling to dispatch LeBron James and Cleveland and losing to Miami in Game 1.

Windows of opportunity wherein all the pieces seem to fall together rarely happen — and I really hope it ends up with a Mavericks championship.

The Suns might be weakened without Amare, but they’re still a very strong and formidable team.  They beat the Mavericks quite handily in last year’s playoffs, and although they are without Stoudamire, they still present unique challenges.  When they start stroking three-pointers, look out.  Raja Bell, Tim Thomas and Steve Nash are sharpshooters from the outside with Shawn Marion (no outside shooting slouch, despite his bizarre shooting technique) cleaning up the boards and getting putbacks while Boris Diaw slashes to the lane.  They spread the floor like no one else and can rack up the points.

The Mavericks can still be successful against them, though.  They need to really attack the outside shooters and rotate quickly, forcing the shooters to put up either bad shots or get funneled into the interior defense.  Devin Harris will need to step his game back up — after a couple of masterful performances against San Antonio, he struggled at the end of the series.  He’ll be a key in this series, as well as Josh Howard continuing to step up.  Howard gets off to fast starts but has a tendency to get in foul trouble and fade toward the end of games — he’ll need to be on his game for all 48 minutes in the Phoenix series.  Luckily, Phoenix is the league-worst at drawing fouls — they shot an NBA fewest free throws this season.

And of course, the big German will have to continue to be a hero.  But he’s shown that’s something he can do with regularity — and his reaminers doubters are few.

I know I believe he and the Mavericks can win it all this year.  Go Mavericks!

Obviously, however, I was just confused.  Because I have very suddenly seen the light: interior decorating is fun.

I was considering the purchase of some new furniture, so like any blue-blooded American that loves his Swedish particleboard, I wandered over to IKEA’s website.  I intended to browse the options they had for bed frames for a few minutes.  I ended up spending hours on the site, studying design themes and contemplating the intricacies of light in more detail than I had since my OpenGL graphic rendering class in college.

Over the course of a few hours, I went from your typical boy who considers good decorating merely remembering to put the dishes in the dishwasher instead of on the floor next to the TV to being a man who sees the value of matching furniture and proper light flow through a room.  I got so excited about decorating that I started considering what steps one might have to take to become an interior designer.  (In all fairness, I also wanted to become a detective after watching Law and Order, a fighter pilor after watching Top Gun, and a phantasm hunter after watching Ghostbusters — but that’s not the point.)

Interior design is probably a bit of an expensive hobby, but the principles between interior design and web design are similar.  And web design is something quite a bit more feasible to me.  In fact, IKEA’s site is an example of good design — heck, it’s so good it made me want to be an interior designer.

It’s well organized and easy to find what kind of item you’re looking for without feeling overwhelmed.  The site is simple but effective — not overblown with oversized graphics.  And my personal favorite feature — “Select your style.”  Each room of the house has a small mini-site, where they show a picture of a room designed with a certain theme in mind.  Click on the picture, and it loads up the items they used to create the room.

I’m probably not switching careers any time soon, but let me know if you want an amateur interior designer to redo your house!  I’ll work with any budget!

Valentine’s day is pretty annoying when you’re single, but can be kind of fun if you’re not.  But unlike April Fools Day, it’s not maliciously annoying — no one is going out of their way to be a pest.  People are all lovey, but they’re not doing it to make other people feel bad; rather, they’re just doing their thing and minding their own business.  I’m cool with that.

April Fools Day is another story.  Now, don’t get me wrong — I’m a big fan of a good prank.  A well executed prank is a beautiful thing — even on April Fools Day.  I used to write for a popular gaming site called the Gaming Intelligence Agency (GIA), and it was well known for having intricate and well-planned April Fools Day pranks.  Of course, I was always the wet blanket on staff against posting anything that was purposely untrue was a bad idea. (My argument was that we wanted to be taken seriously, and “serious” sites like CNN.com, ESPN.com, etc. don’t partake in the shenanigans.)  But at least the pranks were well executed.  Every year, dozens of sites proclaim on April Fools Day that they’re shutting down.  Ha ha!  The GIA proclaimed that on April Fools Day, but actually did shut down.  And didn’t come back up the next day, or the next week.  I think that’s pretty good comedy.

My problem is with all the sites that waste my time and everyone else’s time with a haphazard and uninteresting “prank” posts, such as “hey!  we’re closing down!” or “Look, the moon is made of cheese!”  I’m going to put a rough guestimate of about 98% of English sites (most Asian countries are sane and don’t participate in the tomfoolery) having lame April Fools jokes.  If you’re not going to do something creative with your prank, then please don’t bother.  And if your prank is just annoying and not entertaining, don’t bother.  Thanks.

That came out a bit harsher than I planned.  I think I have some pent up rage on the subject, or something.

• I have this burning desire to go to a McDonald’s drive-in and in my best Bono impression, order a “Sundae, Bloody Sundae.”
• Driving in to work today, I saw a man in a BMW playing the harmonica while driving on US75.
• I can’t stand Barry Bonds.
• I’m rooting for George Mason to go all the way, no matter how badly they messed up my bracket.
• The Mavericks need to get all their players healthy.
• Google Finance is awesome.  If only it could help SYMC get back to what I paid for it.
• I hate feeling like I’m being left out — and I have a feeling the MySpace train has passed me by.  I’m on Facebook!  How many social network websites to have to be on?
• I’m addicted to Linez.
• Whoa.  That’s a lot of video games.

TiVo pros and cons:

• Pro: From all accounts I’ve heard, a better service — season pass, name based searching, programming your TiVo from online.  The latter sounds really handy — I can tell my TiVo from work to record something I forgot to program, and it will.
• Pro: Export to computer with TiVo to Go.  This is a huge plus — 40gigs or 80gigs of recording space will fly by quickly.  It’d be great to be able to export to my computer and burn it to DVD.
• Pro: Install it myself.  I don’t have to wait for the wacky schedules of anyone but my own.
• Con: Install it myself.  I already did it once, and it was a pain in the toosh.  Installing again (I had to return my unit) is not that appealing.
• Con: More expensive.  $200ish receiver, dealing with rebates, and $12.95 per month vs. $50 install and $5.98 per month.
• Con: Single tuner.  One show at a time.

Dish Network DVR pros and cons:

• Pro: The Dish people said I’d get a 625 model receiver.  100 gigs and two tuners, so you can record one show while watching another.  Very nice. 
• Pro: Cheaper.  $50 install and $5.98 per month.
• Pro: Fewer boxes.  It’s not a huge deal, but the DVR and Dish Network receiver are in one unit — saving some space.
• Pro: Someone else can worry about the installation.
• Con: The interface isn’t as good, from what I’ve heard.  I like nice interfaces.
• Con: A big negative — transfering files from the DVR to PC for DVD burning is a pain.
• Con: Reading reports on the web of lots of hardware failures.  Seems the consensus is the TiVo unit is a better manufactured unit.

Right now, I lean toward Dish.  What would you do?

It’s not so much that the new Geico campaign is bad, but more that their previous campaign was really good.  Why move away from it?

The old campaign, featuring someone delivering really bad news but capping it by exclaiming that he/she saved money by switching to Geico, was funny and easily memorable.  The tagline “but I saved money by switching to Geico!” was entering the realm of standard pop culture vernacular.  People were saying it left and right, raising Geico awareness (heck, I switched to Geico) and getting people to the web site for a free insurance quote.

Not only that, the commercials were surely cheap to make, as far as production.  No special effects, no fancy scenes — just some people in a common, everyday setting, like a doctor’s office.  The new gecko is entirely computer rendered — and that costs significantly more than a few struggling actors on a makeshift set.

I can understand the argument that Geico wanted to avoid the commercials becoming stale, but I think the campaign was far from reaching that stage.  There were plenty of more creative and funny scenarios a good writer could have come up with.

The way I see it, a company went from a successful campaign that’s all over pop culture to a new one that’s far less creative, less memorable, and more expensive.  Change isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Change has to have strong backing reasons and strong execution to be effective.  If you have a good thing going, why change it?  Stick to it until it starts to show more signs of leaking water before trying to move in a new direction.  Businesses too often make changes for the sake of making changes — which often moves them further from success than they were previously.

• Aaron Karo — He’s probably a prime example of the chauvanistic pig of the 2000s, but he cracks me up anyway.  He considers himself a typical drunken frat boy, which isn’t usually where I go for my comedy, but his style works.  The link there goes straight to his column — fair warning, if you go to just the domain name, you’ll get the entire site, which is a big nasty flash mess.
• Penny Arcade — Gabe and Tycho have been giving me hearty, nerdy guffaws for ages now.  A lot of their humor is videogame related, so if that’s not you’re not a full-fledged geek, some of the humor here might fly over your head.  But their non-videogame gems are worth sifting through the nerdery, if nerdery isn’t your thing.
• Dave Barry’s columns — Dave Barry has retired from writing a weekly newspaper column, but newcomers to his comedy will find plenty of gold on Miami Herald’s site.  They reprint a classic column weekly — often so timeless that the fact it was written in the 80s isn’t noticable.  Dave also has a blog where he posts silly links and has occasional witty commentary or a picture of a giant walrus penis bone.
• Dilbert — Everyone knows Dilbert.  He’s an office cubicle nerd from the weird mind of Scott Adams (who also has a blog).  Dilbert and Wally rarely fail to crack me up.  Pure gold for cubicle dwellers.
• Foxtrot — Another syndicated comic that has its fair share of geek humor.  Geek humor is starting to be a trend here… should I worry?
• Maddox — Maddox thinks quite highly of himself and usually hilarious, if vulgar, rude, and offensive material doesn’t offend you.  He’s safe for work, as long as no one reads too closely what’s on your screen.

Share yours!  Please note if it’s not worksafe — I usually do my humor reading here in the cubicle.

I read that article a few times and here’s my layman’s synopsis, as I understand it: we can get to Mars in about as long as it takes to drive across the DFW metroplex during rush hour by spinning some sort of coil which alters gravity and gives you access to a couple more dimensions which causes you to enter hyperdrive and everything moves really fast, including Oprah and also light.

This makes absolutely no sense, but I’m excited about it anyway. I’m not particularly excited about getting to Mars in three hours; I think I’d get bored there pretty fast. I hear some parts of Mars don’t even have Starbucks yet. But I am excited about getting to work with a really fast commute. If they can get to Mars in three hours, I figure I can get to work in like, 1 second at the most, even if you get stuck behind the old person doing 30 in the left hyperdrive lane with their blinker on.

Of course, this is all theoretical, and the theory has a few sticking points. Like, the coil you’d have to spin is impossible to make with materials we have. And they’re not sure you’d really be able to access those other two dimensions because they’re not sure they actually exist.

That’s the difference between physicists and the rest of us. When I am faced with a problem, such as finding the quickest way to get from point A to point B, I try to solve the problem by avoiding traffic hotspots, driving faster, running a yellow light or two. A physicist, meanwhile, comes up with a solution wherein he invents a couple of theoretical dimensions, alters gravity, and goes into hyperdrive.

I like the way they think.

At any rate, I’ve decided to bring back Q&AK (Q&A, but my initials are AK, clever, eh? Don’t answer that.) one more time, on my latest web home. Of course, for this to be a fun bit, you, the valued and extremely attractive reader have to help. Ask me questions. Anything at all. I won’t promise I’ll answer all of the questions, but I’ll answers ones I feel like answering. So fire away either via email or in the comments section of this or any future Q&AK post.

I asked for some questions in a post a couple of weeks ago, and got a couple of nice responses. So, without further ado, here’s the first topic brought up by Quinn, who I have known personally for something like 20 years. That’s longer than some of you have probably been alive, and it makes me feel old.

“Would you rather: (1) punch Shaq in the nose w/ no ramifications; or (2) have a quiet, intimate dinner w/ Mike Mills?”

Today, this question is a no-brainer. I’d go with the nice dinner with Mike Mills, bassist, keyboardist, and backup vocalist of my favorite band, R.E.M. I’d probably even try to schmooze him into giving me some bass pointers. Or maybe he can teach me how to sing without making people leave the room — that’d be a nice skill to have.

As far as Shaq, to be completely honest, I’ve grown kind of fond of the big oaf as he’s aged. Now that he’s left the Lakers and doesn’t torment my beloved Mavericks very often, I’ve been able to see his good side. He’s a pretty funny interview, really does have good hands for a big man (I can appreciate this more having watched Shawn Bradley and Erick Dampier wander the paint over the past few years), and doesn’t take himself as seriously as other NBA superstars. He’s even interested in law enforcement as a second career — I respect that.

Not only that, what would violence solve? I doubt Shaq would even notice if I punched him in the face. He’d probably thank me for clearing his sinuses.

Well, I take that back. I don’t really want to punch Shaq in the nose, but if you changed the question to ask about Kobe Bryant or Karl Malone (the dirtiest player in NBA history, for my mone), I’d have to really stop and think. I was really pissed off when I woke up this morning and read about Kobe scoring 81 points last night. Kobe’s a big baby that’s completely full of himself and is interested only in his own personal success rather than team success — and it just puts me in a bad mood to read about hi success and people bowing at his feet. I cling to the hope that he’ll never win an NBA championship without Shaq at his side — I bet that eats him up when people bring it up. I take solace in the Lakers’ poor record this year, even though Kobe is scoring a ton of points. But it definitely becomes easier to score a ton of points when you take all of your team’s shots.

Even though I hate to admit it, 81 points is impressive, if for no other reason than the physical conditioning it must take. And I’m sure Toronto’s defense was focusing on him — making it that much harder to get the ball into position to score. Toronto’s defense isn’t anything to write home about, but they’re still an NBA team playing defense.

That having been said, I wouldn’t consider putting a single dollar on the Lakers beating anyone, let alone going anywhere in the playoffs. He’s just too much of a ball hog. Steve Kerr and John Paxson took big shots on Jordan’s teams, and Scottie Pippen was a great sidekick. I don’t think Kobe wants a sidekick, and I doubt he’d let anyone else have the big shot. He wants it all for himself. And let him have it — he can enjoy his early off-season all he wants. I hope.