:: Random ::
Sunday, July 09, 2006
I have several thoughts about the soccer, or futbol as the rest of the world calls it. I respect the tremendous amount of interest people have in the game, but I just don’t get it.
The final game was on today, and I started watching around the start of the second half. The score was 1-1. I watched for about 5 minutes, then I realized I had forgotten about the Nascar race, and promptly switched back. It was an exciting race. During one of the cautions, I switched over to the World Cup, and the score was still 1-1. At some point, the second half ended, and the game went into overtime.
Fast-forward to the end of overtime, and the score is still 1-1. So what happens now? They don’t go into second overtime. No, the game is decided through penalty kicks. This is how the winner of the World Cup is determined. Whichever team kicks the most balls into the goal wins the world title, and almost $20 million in prize money.
Maybe i’m the only one feeling this way, but, I feel scammed. True, I don’t have anything invested in the game. I don’t watch it, and don’t really know anything about the teams/players/countries, but seeing it come down to this just seems wrong. After working so hard to get to this point, it only seems right to let the game continue on, and let the players battle it out on the field.
I understand fatigue sets in after running around 2+ hours, and players probably don’t have enough stamina or energy to keep going. But isn’t that part of the game and shouldn’t that also be a factor? Wouldn’t this determine who the better team is rather than a series of penalty kicks? It doesn’t seem like the proper way to end.
Someone help me understand.
Speaking of the proper way to end, I was fortunate enough to be watching at the moment where French captain Zinedine Zidane got into some trash talking with Italian Marco Materazzi. Zidaine didn’t like something Materazzi said, and he straight-up head-butted Materazzi in the chest, throwing him back. Zidaine, apparently considered to be one of the greats and playing his last game, was thrown out. Here’s the incident:
What the hell was that?! Great way to end your career Zidane.
Back to Nascar.
Awesome race today. With about 10 laps to go, Kenseth had about a 1 second lead over Jeff Gordon, but Gordon was closing fast. At 4 laps to go, Kenseth was in traffic behind the lapped car of Casey Mears, and Gordon was right behind Kenseth. Gordon was clearly faster, but Kenseth couldn’t go anywhere with Mears in the way, and slowed down enough to let Gordon make contact unintentionally, sending him spinning. Awesome! Kenseth didn’t wreck, but was now way behind in the pack.
Adding to his misfortunes, Kenseth ran out of fuel with about 2-3 laps remaining, and after the checkered flag, he got into it with another car and spun again, this time crashing into the wall. Crazy!
Jeff Gordon took the win, and all the Matt Kenseth and Dale Jr. fans in the stands, unhappy at seeing Gordon with another win, promptly threw watter bottles, beer bottles, and whatever else they could find onto the track. Show some respect ya morons!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Interesting new ad campaign by Sony promoting the PlayStation Portable, in White.
The billboard is part of Sony’s European ad campaign, and has no chance of appearing in politically correct United States.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
From Drudge:
In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin Doughnuts unless you have a slight indian accent. I’m not joking.”
Very smooth, Joe. I’m sure Fox News, specifically Sean Hannity of Hannity and Colmes, will have fun with this.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
In China!
With the need to fill the void created after Mao passed, the Chinese embraced Optimus Prime’s leadership values and his embodiment of good. His image can be seen everywhere over here, from truck doors to t-shirts and badges. The Transformers is free of the political undertones of other cartoons from that era, such as GI Joe, and lacks the sexually explicit nature of Jem and the Holograms so was an obvious choice for the Communist Party to adopt as suitable entertainment for the proletariat.
Holy crap that is awesome. W.O.W. If I ever go to China, Yunnan Province is the first place I am visiting.
Story and photos by a writer over at Karate Blog. Read the full story.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
It’s finally done....after months and months and countless hours of design, redesign, and refinement, The Dinoblog v2.0 is now live.
Still Wordpress powered, v2.0 is built on pure CSS (of course), and is mostly cross-browser compatible. Its been tested on Firefox 1.5 and IE6 on the PC, and Camino, Safari, and IE on the Mac. Everything appears to be in order, but the site looks tweaked in IE/Mac. I could spend additional hours trying to make it look good in IE, but why bother. Camino and Safari are far superior on the Mac. I have yet to test on IE7, so if anyone out there is viewing this on that browser and things don’t appear as they should, drop me a line. Feel free to report any other bugs or anomalies as well...any help is appreciated!
I’ve also updated my RSS feed to point to Feedburner, so if anyone is reading this blog through my old RSS feed, please update to the following: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDinoblog
While in the process of designing 2.0, I was already thinking ahead to 3.0. Initial plans are to port the blog over to Expression Engine. I’ve heard lots of good things about it, and I’ll soon be working on a new client site using Expression Engine. If everything goes well with that, i’ll probably put it to use here.
Hope everyone out there enjoys it!
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Excellent!
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Vincent appeared on the Today Show this morning, talking about the now infamous AOL call!
I continue to be fascinated by this story. He finally got a personal apology by AOL. But I wonder, would Vincent have received this apology from the VP of AOL Corporate Communications had this not become as popular as it did? Probably not. Its an obvious public relations move by them in light of all the publicity and I have a hard time believing in its sincerity. I doubt Vincent’s story, or that of hundreds of other people who have tried to cancel, will lead to any changes in the way AOL handles customer relations.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
This is amazing. Vincent Ferrari (awesome name!) was trying to cancel his AOL account after years of service. What should’ve been a simple process turned into harassment by the AOL rep he was speaking with. Read the story and listen to the phone call.
After posting this story a couple of days ago, it was picked up by Digg, Boing Boing, and several other high-traffic sites, and it ultimately got back to AOL, who promptly fired the bad account rep. Did AOL apologize to Vincent for the horrible treatment he received? No, he heard about it through someone trying to interview him about the incident.
I really don’t understand why people still use AOL.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
A man had great tickets for the World Cup Final. As he sits down, another man comes down and asks if anyone is sitting in the empty seat next to him.
“No,” he says. “The seat is empty.”
“This is incredible!” says the other man. “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the World Cup Final, the biggest sporting event in the world, and not use it?”
“Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. My wife was supposed to come with me, but she passed away. This is the first World Cup Final we haven’t been to together since we got married in 1966 in London.”
“Oh ... I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. But couldn’t you find someone else, a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?”
The man shakes his head. “No. They’re all at the funeral.”
A blog of all things moderately uninteresting and irrelevant, written by a genius web auteur living in Southern California. 
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