Thomas L. Shaffer

If this commercial from 1985 doesn’t make you hop in your Yugo and pick up a King Cobra, heaven help you.

I’m sure you are sitting back asking yourself “How does Thomas handle watching sports on the left coast?” all the time. Well, I’ll tell you - I don’t. Working on 3 years out here and I still can’t figure it out. I miss games constantly. It’s not by choice either, I just can’t consistently get a day of sports in this state. I am slowing losing touch with the sporting world and I don’t believe it’s my fault. I think one of the biggest challenges I have being here is game selection.

The fact that the college sports out here (and I’m talking basketball here since it’s that time of year)are weak and boring, they (meaning those big wigs at the tv stations who chose programming) slam my tv with chumps and bums every day. I wish the studios would realize that “regional” does not equal quality or preference. But the sinister part is, they know it doesn’t. That’s why they have pay per sports, forcing us sports fans who want to catch a good round or two of peach basket games to pay out our noses. But are these paid events commercial free or feature decent broadcasters? Heck no, it’s just as much as the “free” games. I probably won’t even get the ACC Tournament because my channels will be filled with freaks and geeks trying to prove how much they don’t deserve to be in the NCAA tournament.

So yeah, I end up going to Target with the wife or taking our mutt to the park for some much needed excercise. I really have tried to get into left coast sports but it’s just not working. I’ve already talked about the college scene being weak. The Mariners are in the American League, I prefer the National. I hate the NBA, not to mention the Sonics will be gone soon enough (see you later Squatch). The only shining star is the Seahawks, but leaving at 9am to find parking for a 1pm game, having to miss the early games in order to find said parking, and the overall obnoxious and rude fans just makes the experience less than stellar.

So how does Thomas handle left coast sports? I wake up early, watch piss poor games, and rely on the internet and Sportscenter to stay on top of it all.  

I’m sure you are sitting back asking yourself “How does Thomas keep track of what the date is while at the office?” all the time. Well, I’ll tell you - I walk into the work kitchen. I can tell by the smell. Like today, I know it’s the last week of the month because it smells like an episode of Dirty Jobs in there today. Of course, I don’t get the satisfaction of cleaning out the sh*t like Mike Rowe does. The first of the week the kitchen actually smells clean since the custodial engineers come in and toss the fridge like a San Quentin cell block. I really am shocked people put their food in that germbox ever. It really is disgusting.

I’m sure my 4 U.S. fans and 38 Eastern Europe fans have many other questions. Feel free to leave a comment and maybe I’ll make a post.

SI.com - Fast and Furious
great article about the dribble drive motion offense being used by Memphis
The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List
instead of going to school and spending thousands, read these books instead.
Custom Sign Generator Widgets - Thousands Of Web 2.0 Image Generators
Hours of fun
Bar tricks & Magic Tricks on video !!
I love this site - great videos and tutorials on classic and new bar tricks
CCFSettlement.com
settlement offer for credit card transactions done overseas.
A Free and Simple Budget Planner ∞ Get Rich Slowly
Nice and neat budget planner

You know, I have come to grips with the reality that sports have been tainted for the past 10 years by steroids, HGH, and whatever other performance enhancing drugs there are. What kills me is that Congress is involved. What do they care that Barry Bonds reached the home run record by doping, or that Roger Clemens had a trainer stick a needle in his ass? Also, who outside of New England really cares about the Patriots recording practices? I don’t want sleazy politicians spoiling my sports entertainment. The Pats lost, Belichek is a punk and cheater, move on. So here are 11 (because it’s one louder) things I’d rather have Congress working on than steroids and sports.

1. Iraq: People dying or Barry Bond’s huge head. Let’s kick the patriotism up a notch.
2. Subprime fallout: Which is worse - 100’s of thousands losing their homes, or 1000 people getting buff.
3. Deficit: Unless you are going to take some sort of profit sharing from sports to offset our bills, start cutting the fat. 
4. Education: Our education system is pathetic. Why not work on finding ways to get better teachers, better salaries, and better programs instead of getting dispositions from Jose Canseco. 
5. Taxes: I don’t want my hard earned money spent on getting testimony from some roid raging personal trainer.
6. Immigration: Sure baseball welcomes illegals, but should the United States?
7. Airline Industry: How come it took me 33 hours to get from Raleigh to Seattle and I had to pay for it? Get these chumps under grand jury testimony.
8. The Real War on Drugs: Which is worse - having muscles or having no teeth? Tackle drugs like crack, coke and heroin. If Jason Giambi wants to have tiny balls and huge biceps,  best of luck to him. Last time I checked he’s not shooting people for $10 or stealing my car radio for a fix.
9. Permanent tax cuts: Supposedly I’m rich, according to the IRS. Middle class gets crushed in taxes. Don’t make us pay even more.
10. Budget: Look, I’d love to go out and buy fancy cars, clothes, and take vacations to exotic locations but I have limited funds and bills to pay. Cut out all the BS spending, get rid of these bloated programs that do nothing but suck money away from more important itmes (see #3,4, and 6), and find a way to turn us back into a economic powerhouse. 
11. Trades/Economy: Can you please work on solutions to get the US to actually produce something? I’d like to see this economy grow and actually have goods and products for other countries to buy from us.

This is just a very short list of things Congress needs to be working on instead of investigating sports. I’m tempted to write my representatives and senators and give them a piece of mind, that is if they are even in session right now. The only people that work less that the French are Congress.

it’s official, the writer’s strike is over.  According to the Wall Street Journal, an agreement was reached late Tuesday night by the Writers Guild of  America. Workers will be getting back to work as early as Wednesday, the first time since going on strike November 5 of last year. 

The biggest issues over this latest strike was around online and other new media payments to the writers. A deal was reached this past Friday, and on Monday many Guild members were already preparing to get back writing.

This is great news for us devoted television watchers, who are sick of reruns and very bad reality shows. Early winners seem  to be the Oscars which will be televised on Feb 24th and Saturday Night Live on Feb 23rd. Many shows will have new episodes as early as March.

Trying to get back to my daily links. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading lately.

• Online Savings Rates: Flexo at Consumerismcommentary.com keeps an updated list of the best online savings accounts.
• Microsoft Vista Tweaks: List of 5 programs that can help you get the most out of Microsoft Vista.
• We The Robots: My new favorite comic strip.
• Unclaimed Money: Now that gift cards are so popular, who benefits when they aren’t used?
• Flickr Download  Tool: get images from Flickr easily. Sorry Mac Fanboy, you got to use windows.
• Carolina Basketball Museum: Tar Heels get a museum highlighting their greatness over the past 50+ years. Can’t wait to visit.

TechCrunch reported today that the HD DVD format has gone the way of the BetaMax in favor of the Sony supported Bluray. PS3 sales soared to 1.3 million this holiday season, securing it’s position as an entertainment center (for those under a rock, PS3 has a built in Bluray player). Other big news leading to the death of HD DVD, more and more studios are switching over to the Sony format, most recently Warner Brothers. HD was supported by Toshiba and Microsoft, where the Xbox 360 had a HD DVD external player available for purchase. I will mark this as the second biggest blunder of the Xbox 360, the first being going to market with inferior parts.

So what does this mean for the industry and consumer? Not much financial loss really since the fight has only been 2 years long and is just starting to get purchasing power behind it. However, now that Sony will control what will most likely be the last hard copy of movies, they will have a monopoly on how the product will grow which, in my opinion, is always bad news. Not too long ago, Sony was the mastermind behind the CD copying DRM fiasco, which added spyware and other crippling software to your computer unknowingly to the user. Maybe Sony has learned from that, but I highly doubt it. Bluray also is more expensive, and I don’t expect Sony to have any relief in this area now that they competition is gone.

A few months ago, before I unfortunately created the 2.0 version of this blog, I posted about deciding between the two formats. Torn between my soft loyalty to the company that pays my salary, a higher priced format, and a studio war wagering good movies vs. good movie, I decided not to make a purchase. I was even tempted to buy a  HD DVD player this past holiday season which I’m glad I didn’t.

Of course, all of this won’t matter in 6-8 years, when there won’t be a need for DVDs as consumers will get all their multimedia online. This of course brings up another story of cable vs. satellite vs. phone company vs. others as to who will control media. I wrote a paper in school about this back in 2000, and it’s shocking to see how much of it is coming true. Very Big Brother like. Scary.

Here is a great video of Bill Gates and his last day at Microsoft. Lots of cameos from celebrities. Feel free to fast forward the first minute of junk in this clip.

Tonight is the big matchup between the Ohio State  Buckeyes and the LSU Tigers. Sheridan odds have the Tigers as a 3.5 point favorite and the over/under at 48. I’m going with LSU to whip up on the Buckeyes? Why you may ask - well, I just don’t like OSU. I also think that LSU’s offense has too many weapons and will pick apart OSU’s top ranked defense. I’ll also take the over, because when two “defensive” teams meet up, they almost always go over. The only chance OSU has to beating LSU on their 2nd home turf is by coming out scoring and finding a way to shutdown Dorsey. I see the Buckeyes fumbling a championship trophy yet again.

 Thomas’s prediction:

 LSU: 41-27

MVP Offense: Flynn, darkhorse being Hester

MVP Defense: Dorsey, darkhorse being Steltz