Shouzer

I wish I was a hockey goalie.  That’d just be cool.  Cam Ward is my new hero.  22 years old and he won the Conn Smythe trophy, which is given to the MVP of the Stanely Cup finals.  That’s pretty sick.

In all honesty, I can’t say I was a huge fan of the Hurricanes before the NHL playoffs started.  I’d followed them a tad throughout the season.  They were generally my favorite team–I’ve had a Carolina hat for a couple years now.  It sucks during the season, though, because the NHL doesn’t have many games broadcast on national television.  Hopefully they’ll beef up the coverage next year so I can follow them better.

The finals really turned into a great series, though.  It looked like it might be over quick with Carolina jumping out to a 3-1 lead, but Edmonton made them work for it.  Game 7 was close all the way through, too.  The final score might have been 3-1, but you can’t really count an empty net goal the same as the others.

Now if only the Broncos could win the Super Bowl next year, I’d be set.

My newest theory is that if your name is spelled wrong–and, believe me, his name is spelled wrong–you gain these super human powers. I only have one test case, so it’s certainly possible that the theory is flawed. But until somebody proves me wrong, I’m going to count it as a law.

Anyway, in Wade’s case, his crazy superman powers are insane basketball skills. Who knows what it would be for me. From this point on, though, my name is spelled Jraed. Remember that.

Dwyane blew up at the end of the game last night. It was pretty damn cool to watch. He’s been on fire the last three games, and I hope it continues. At the end of overtime, he was covered by about six guys (which, the last time I checked, was against the rules), and he just drove through them and picked up a foul. He actually set the record for most free throws made in an NBA finals game. It was ridiculous all around.

Jason Terry played pretty well, too. It’s my opinion that if the Mavs would have given him the ball more, they would have won the game. Dirk also nailed a crazy shot with 10 seconds left in OT to force Wade’s insanity. Hopefully it continues to be a good serious. When it’s all over, though, I’d like to see the Heat holding the trophy.

[Edit:] Aha! I have a new theory. Perhaps Mr. Wade is the only one spelling his name correctly. Intriguing.

Story

The date has been set for the Simpson’s movie. It’s coming out July 27,2007. Are you excited? Because I know I am.

You may recall that we participated in a competition called PuzzleCrack last semester. It was a week-long ordeal with various puzzles every day of the week. The Saturday at the end of the week culminated with a big metapuzzle. Fun was had, and prizes were given away.

Well last Saturday was the first ever PuzzleCrunch, a smaller version of PuzzleCrack for the Spring semester which was hosted by Microsoft. Obviously we had to do it again. It was 6 hours long, running from 2pm to 8pm. There were 18 puzzles to solve during that time, and they involved going around to various parts of campus and finding clues.

We ended up getting 3rd of 40+ teams, so I was definitely happy with that. The top three teams go prizes. 1st place got an Xbox 360, two $100 Best Buy gift certificates, and other 360-related goodies. 2nd place got three $50 Best Buy gift certificates. 3rd place got three wireless keyboards and mice from Microsoft, which you can check out here. Plus, we got some shirts and hats. Everybody who went got some free shirts from Microsoft, pizza, soda, and candy. I certainly couldn’t complain.

In all, it was a lot of fun and a nice change of pace from the typical Saturday. I thought it was a little strange that our prizes were worth more than 2nd place, but I figure it’s probably because even if the keyboards/mice sell for $100, they’re probably not worth that much to Microsoft, who makes them. Still cool, though.

I got a 36/40 on my Psych exam. After the curve, that’s an even A, which I’m certainly perfectly happy with. The only grades I have in that class are three exams, so I was a little worried going into this. After all, if I had fucked it up, I more or less ruined my chances at getting a good grade for the semester. But I owned that shit, so there’s no reason to worry. Fo shizzle.

I came across a Firefox plugin a while back that seemed too good to be true, so I ignored it. Well, I mainly ignored it because it was still in its infancy, but the other way makes the story sound a little better, I suppose. What is life without embellishment?

Anyhow, I thought about it again the other day and decided to check it out. Well, imagine my surprise when it was at version 1.0.7, which is quite a bit more mature. So I gave it a try, and it’s amazing. The extension is called IE Tab, and what it does is let you open IE in a tab in Firefox. “Really?”, you say. Yes, really. All those pages that don’t load in Firefox or use Windows Media Player are no longer a problem. Right-click the page and select “View Page in IE Tab”, and it automagically reloads your current tab and renders it with IE.

Everybody should have this extension.  Hell, even Windows Update works from inside the tab.

I just got a great laugh from the Chuck Norris Facts website. I don’t know if it’s really as funny as I thought it was or if I was just in a laughing mood. Either is equally possible. Just remember…the chief export of Chuck Norris is pain.

Well, last Thursday I managed to put in an order for an Xbox 360 at circuitcity.com during the hour window or so while there were some in stock. That in itself was pretty cool, but I actually got the unit on Monday. I’ve got to say that so far I’ve been pretty damn impressed with it. The graphics are great, the controllers, remote, etc are great.

The biggest thing I like about it right off the bat, though, is the Live integration into everything. The dashboard is great this time around, and Live only makes it better. The other night I watched a movie on it, and during it a little notice popped up in the corner to tell me one of my friends got online. That was pretty cool. It’ll be great when there’s a few more games out for it, too.

I partook in my first day-after-thanksgiving shopping today, affectionately known as “Black Friday”, symbolizing the first day of the year in which retailers are said to get “in the black”. I’m sure you are as interested in reading of my experiences as I am in writing them, so I will spare you. I saw Quint at JCPenny around 5:15, and a Russell trio + Jordy at Staples around 5:30. Staples was without competition on their BF deals. I’ll let Jared edit with his deals, and here are mine:

Best Buy
Spinter Cell: Chaos Theory for Xbox
39.99 – 30.00 sale = 9.99

Kohl’s
Black & Decker Crush Master 450 watt blender
Reg. 34.99; 17.64 – 2.65 Early Bird Special = 14.99

Staples
Wireless Intellimouse Explorer x 2
49.98 – 35.00 instant savings = 29.88

PNY 512mb Attache Flash Drive
54.98 – 35.00 instant savings – 10.00 easy rebate = 9.94

Staples Surge Strip
5.94 – 6.00 easy rebate = FREE

PNY 512mb PC3200 DDR400 Desktop RAM
89.98 – 30.00 instant savings – 20.00 easy rebate = 39.94

Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM internal hard drive
119.98 – 50.00 instant savings – 40.00 easy rebate = 29.94

Digital Research 16x double-layer dual-format internal DVD drive
89.98 – 50.00 instant savings – 20.00 easy rebate = 19.94

The last 3 items will be used for my Windows Media Center box that I plan to construct.

I went out to my car yesterday, and there was something on the windshield. My first thought was that I’d gotten a ticket for something ridiculous. Luckily, that wasn’t it. What it turned out to be was a piece of paper that said:

We <3 Your Car

“And would like you to debut it in the 2005 University of Illinois’ Homecoming Parade on Friday, October 21. You would drive a special guest through the parade route.”

Now the first thing is that I obviously don’t go out to my car very often. Like I said, this was yesterday so I was more than a couple week late. But the second is that they know a sweet car when they see one. It was pretty cool; it made me laugh.

I went up to Chicago this weekend for the Mazada Zoom Zoom driving experience. They set up what amounted to an autocross in this big parking lot, and they let you drive their cars for free. There were four events: an instructional course where a race car driver rode along with you in an RX-8, a precision driving event where you drove a MX5 miata around a tight course and tried to keep some golf balls in a bowl that was mounted on the hood, a match time event where you drove a 3 or a 6 and tried to match an exact time around a course, and a speed event where you tried to drive a MX5 as fast as you could around a course. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I would say my driving improved over the weekend.

We also stayed at one of my roommate’s sister’s house, and she had a halloween party on saturday night. Through some unfortunate circumstances, there were only 4 guests there, myself, her brother, one of our other roommates, and one of her friends. So the party kinda sucked. Basically, I just sat there and watched people get drunk.

Unfortunately, there were no good meals to report on. I’m actually a little perturbed about that fact. Seems like to me, if your going to be in Chicago, you should be able to find a good place to eat. Actually, there is a back story though. We got done with the driving at about 12:30 and set out in search of lunch. We decided to go downtown and look for a restaraunt, but the guy who was driving decided he couldn’t find any parking places close enough to anywhere he wanted to eat. We probably passed about 500 restaraunts and several dozen parking garages. I really don’t know what the deal was. We ended up driving back out towards where we were staying and eating at this place called Benigans. We got there around 3:30. So we effectively drove 3 hours to eat at a chain restaraunt. Well, if we hadn’t gone through downtown, the drive would have only been 1 hour, so you can adjust for that.

After all that complaining though, I really did have a good time.

Jordy just posted that Maddox is going to be coming out with a book next year. That’s pretty damn amazing, as far as I’m concerned. He posts some funny shit, and I’d suggest to anybody to go check out his site. One of my all-time favorites by him is called I am better than your kids. Haha, good stuff.

[Edit:] It looks like it was actually Eddie who posted it. I didn’t realize anybody but Jordy posted on the site. My bizzle.

MSN passes to Yahoo! Yahoo shoots! Rejected by Google!

So MSN and Yahoo want to team up and try take the world back from Google? Think again! Seriously, why try anymore? Vx (Google > x) (That means, basically, for all x, Google is greater than x… There’s the application of my schooling for you.)

For those of you who aren’t in the know, the general consensus is that the Broncos are the #2 best team in football right now. That’s money, baby. Gotta love you some Jake the Snake.

What sucks is that they’ve got a relatively tough schedule coming up. They’ve got Pats, Giants, and Eagles as their next three games. I don’t care what the Pats and Eagles have looked like lately, they’re damn good teams. And the Giants have no doubt been playing well this year.

Welp, I got a new HD. There was a deal on outpost.com that let me get a 200 gig Seagate for $50. That was pretty slick. There was really no way I could turn it down. So that brings my total in-computer space to 760 gigs, and puts me over the terrabyte mark for total space (250 gigs in the mythbox, 120 in the xbox, etc). When all is said and done I’ve got 1220 gigs. Haha, that’s ridiculous.

In other news, Tom Delay was indicted on charges of bribery and money laundering. House Majority Leader. Republican. From Texas. Hm…