This is a great commercial. I couldn’t stop laughing at “Double Mutumbo” and who shows up after the Miami Heat guy says “South Beach is king!”

Maybe Sergio Ramos shouldn’t be allowed to hold trophies… He drops the Copa Del Rey underneath the parade bus.

I take the bus over to UW from Bellevue whenever I need to go to campus. It saves me money, gas, and car maintenance in the long run.

Whenever I’m on a bus, there’s feels like this unwritten and unspoken code for where to sit. If at all possible, unless they’re a friend of yours, create as much space between you and everyone on the bus. For example, you’re sitting alone on the bus and someone else comes on. That person can sit anywhere they want… Except for the spots adjacent to you. If a spot opens up on a crowded bus that creates space between you and the person next to you, take it immediately. Basically create space between you and the rest of the riders on the bus.

However, every so often, you get that one person that chooses to sit next to you, even though there’s a ton of other seats that would give the both of you a lot if space. As a result, you’re squeezed up against to the window, subtly holding your nose to not breathe in the the weird smell coming from their jacket. A spot opens up to create some space between you and them, yet they still choose to sit right next to you. You wait… And wait… And wait… Still not moving. Still taking in that smell from them. They finally get off on some stop and you can breathe a sigh of relief.

Today was one of those days… Not awkward at all.

Just reading the title of this article alone is pretty funny… Sarkozy admits French language a hoax after Wikileaks expose. Maybe he’ll talk about the number of French military victories in history as well.

Not gonna lie. You can utilize Google Translate for more than just translating… It can be a beatbox too. (Thanks again to jkottke).

Fantasy spots. Oh boy. One moment, you love it. The next moment, you hate it.

So if you have no idea what I’m talking about… The whole idea of fantasy sports is that you’re the owner of a team of a specific sport, whether it be basketball, soccer, football, baseball, or whatever else there is out there. Before a season starts (or very early in the season), you select players to “play” for your team. Over the course of the season, they accumulate stats for your team. Depending on the format, you may face off against other teams and the team with the most points or most categories won, wins that week. Or you could try to accumulate the most stats over the course of the entire season and try to finish as high as possible. Millions and millions of people all over the U.S. and the world participate in some sort of fantasy sports. Some do it for money, others do it for pride.

When I see myself playing it, I think “Geez, this is such a roller coaster ride… Ugh.”

Here’s what I mean: I run a fantasy football league with some friends of mine (and no, it’s not for money, but a lot of pride on the line). I drafted a team that I felt was pretty strong. It might have some trouble against a couple of teams, but should win the majority of the weeks playing.

In our league, the average score is roughly around 120 point per week. So when you score 130 or more, that means your team is pretty good and you should likely win… Except when your opponent scores 176 points, thus resulting in a loss for that week. Then I play another team, beat him handily, winning 166 to 111. So I’m thinking, “Man, my team is pretty ridiculous. How can I possibly not make the playoffs this season?”

That’s when the roller coaster ride begins.

One of the things about fantasy sports, especially football, is that it’s all about individual match-ups versus various defenses (or offenses). Regardless of how amazing that player might be… they still might have an off-week, which means bad news for you. What’s even more fun is if several players on your team have a off-week… on the same week. Take this for example:

The Strike Box Score
STARTERS
SLOT	PLAYER, TEAM POS	OPP	STATUS ET	PTS
QB	Troy Smith, SF QB	TB	» L 0-21	10.2
RB	Adrian Peterson, Min RB  Q	GB	» L 3-31	12.6
RB	Jahvid Best, Det RB  P	@Dal	» L 19-35	6.3
RB/WR	Wes Welker, NE WR	Ind	» W 31-28	16.8
WR	Hakeem Nicks*, NYG WR  K  O	@Phi	» L 17-27	12.5
WR	Brandon Lloyd, Den WR	@SD	» L 14-35	19.8
TE	Dustin Keller, NYJ TE	Hou	» W 30-27	2.7
D/ST	Lions D/ST, Det D/ST	@Dal	» L 19-35	2
K	Dan Carpenter, Mia K	Chi	» L 0-16	0

BENCH
SLOT	PLAYER, TEAM POS	OPP	STATUS ET	PTS
Bench	Matt Schaub, Hou QB  P	@NYJ	» L 27-30	18.9
Bench	Sam Bradford, StL QB  K	Atl	» L 17-34	24.8
Bench	Raiders D/ST, Oak D/ST	@Pit	» L 3-35	-0.1
Bench	Michael Bush, Oak RB	@Pit	» L 3-35	7.9
Bench	Joseph Addai*, Ind RB  O	@NE	» L 28-31	0

So sometimes, you make the wrong decision and pick the wrong guy to play (i.e. playing Troy Smith over Sam Bradford or Matt Schaub, as I probably should have played Bradford since he was also on fire). However, there’s other times where even if you play the best guy (Adrian Peterson) or have a couple of the best players of that position (Nicks and Lloyd), you still can’t score that many points. Typically, AP scores in the high 20s. That week… 12.6 points. Awe… some…

I scored a total of 82.9 points that week, which is well below that average that I spoke about earlier. In any case, that’s the frustration of fantasy sports. As much research as you try to put into it, it really comes down to whether or not the player performs, whether they get hurt or a bunch of other things that are completely out of your control. But it’s just this up and down ride that you go on when you play. And sometimes, you think you’re gonna win… And then on the Monday night game, someone decides to go bonkers and score 60+ points to come back from a 59 point deficit to win. All you can say to yourself is “That’s just my luck.” Or when you play a team with an inactive owner and you think you should win because it’s a bye week, only to lose? Yeah… That’s a great feeling.

Thankfully, the reason why I play isn’t because I want to win the league though. It’s simply to create a place to get friends and sports enthusiasts together to follow sports together. For us, it’s football and it’s a blast to go text each other, chat about games when meeting up with them and do some trash-talking here and there. It doesn’t matter about the age (one of our guys playing in the past two years is still in high school and been in playoff contention each year) and it doesn’t matter about how well you know the sport. You just play and have fun. That’s all there is to it.

But fantasy sports… If you haven’t played it before and ever decide to play, take these three pieces of advice:

• Just have fun.
• Be wary of the ups and downs of the game.
• If you play fantasy football, don’t draft Seattle Seahawks players. Ever. Even if you’re a fan. You’ll thank me later.

Thanks for reading.

Snow.

I absolutely dread it.

When someone says “I don’t mind having it for a few days,” they really mean, “Anything for more than a day and I’ll go insane.” I’m not one of those people. I’m more of the Pemco profile of freak-out-at-the-first-sight-of-a-snowflake person. Though, I wouldn’t freak out. I’d usually be bitter and annoyed.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s absolutely beautiful to see the sight outside your window of everything covered in white. But the moment you step outside of your house to pick up the mail, you’re freezing your butt off. Every step you take, your feet start getting colder and colder. Your hands start getting numb. You grab the mail and try to get back into the house as quickly as you can. You take off the five layers of wet clothes that you have on. You’re still freezing cold.

Try driving in it. I remember driving in it with a couple of friends of mine. We were heading out to go hang out somewhere and we got up to the top of this hill. Then we start skidding. Before we knew it, we bump into the sidewalk. All because of the snow. A couple of years ago, I tried to get out of my apartment in Seattle to go to a friend’s place. I tried to go up the hill out from my garage. Wheels blazing, rubber burning.

Moved a total of two feet after trying to get up for a good ten minutes. It’s worse than trying to get through downtown Seattle during rush hour.

Work doesn’t close when it’s snowing. Sometimes classes don’t either. Imagine having to have to drive through that with a bunch of people that don’t know how to drive in it. Talk about fun.

I’ve been hearing reports that there should be a considerable amount of snow in the upcoming months. Everyone seems excited. I’m definitely not (unless the City of Seattle decides to plow its streets and/or use salt instead of packing down the snow).

Sometimes I think God just wants to have some fun with us and see how we deal with something so beautiful as the snow.

That and see us throwing snowballs down each others’ throats. Now that I can support.

So for those of you that don’t know me personally, I’m very much a person that’s easily distracted by gadgets. Whether it be a phone, laptop, or something else, if it’s in front of me, I’m going to start playing with it.

My dad gave me a call a while back about his iPhone. He was asking about whether he should get the iPhone 4. Naturally I said to get the upgrade once all the bugs with regards to the antenna and dropped calls were fixed.

Then he said, “Alright. I’ll get it. Do you want my iPhone?” Sometimes I wish he didn’t ask me that question.

It was way too difficult to say no to the thought of having an iPhone regardless of it being an older model (3GS isn’t that old though). So I took it and I got a data plan for it. I think you all can see where I’m going with my distractibility and having a smartphone.

I have to admit though. It isn’t always too bad. It’s really useful to be able to email my advisor about trying to figure out my schedule got classes while on the bus or to be able to find the directions or reviews for a restaurant. It’s tempting sometimes to just have it replace my laptop to check my emails and other forms of productivity.

What it’s not good for is when you’re on a date and you want to check your email to see how classmates are dealing with a certain problem on the homework. Or people wanting to play games on your phone (rule of thumb: never get games on your iPhone). Or when you’re in a lecture and you’re checking your fantasy football team before your instructor calls on you asking for the output of a string in a finite state transducer. iPhones definitely have their cons.

Am I glad to have an iPhone? Yeah, it’s been a definitely good tool to have. But it can be quite a distraction too. Maybe in a few months after I write this, I’ll change my mind and get a phone that won’t be as distracting.

Nahhhhhh…

(Oh, I wrote this post on my iPhone.)

So the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show was complete after Sunday, showcasing a number of new technological gizmos and gadgets. However, I don’t think anything this year could match what was released last year. It was a little comedy skit featuring Bill Gates and his last day at Microsoft. It was pretty hilarious.

This was a while back, but this was a random conversation with a friend of mine about how he’d deal with a potential zombie attack:

(4:01:47 PM) Benji: I think it’d be kinda fun just to lay on a rooftop and snipe zombies walking around
(4:01:51 PM) Ed: lol
(4:02:06 PM) Ed: yeah…
(4:02:18 PM) Benji: just setup some claymores in the stairwell
(4:02:23 PM) Ed: haha
(4:02:37 PM) Benji: so if any zombies or other survivors try to sneak up on you then you know they are coming
(4:02:46 PM) Ed: obv obv
(4:03:01 PM) Benji: of course that doesnt really cover you if you have to eventually leave the building
(4:03:10 PM) Benji: but if you had a safehouse
(4:03:16 PM) Benji: on the top floor of a building
(4:03:22 PM) Benji: and maybe a garden on the roof
(4:03:24 PM) Ed: lol
(4:03:50 PM) Benji: if I ever become rich, oh man zombie fortified paradise on top of my building!
(4:04:26 PM) Benji: fucking zombies
(4:04:55 PM) Ed: lol
(4:05:32 PM) Benji: though that wouldn’t guard well against nucelar attacks…
(4:05:37 PM) Ed: yeah…
(4:05:45 PM) Ed: well, nothing would guard well against one
(4:05:53 PM) Benji: or nuclear for that matter
(4:06:04 PM) Benji: well you could have an underground bunker
(4:06:13 PM) Ed: yeah, but then you can’t run away from zombies
(4:06:18 PM) Benji: so that if you survived you would have somewhere to live
(4:06:21 PM) Benji: exactly
(4:06:22 PM) Ed: just cornered yourself
(4:06:29 PM) Benji: its quite a dilemma
(4:06:32 PM) Benji: OOH
(4:06:35 PM) Ed: and if you run out of resources, you’re screwed
(4:06:41 PM) Benji: you could have a building that starts in the ground
(4:06:53 PM) Benji: then after the nukes, it can raise into the air
(4:06:56 PM) Ed: lol
(4:07:02 PM) Benji: to guard against the nuclear zombies!
(4:07:06 PM) Ed: rofl
(4:07:15 PM) Ed: i’d rather just build a death star and not worry about any of that
(4:07:24 PM) Benji: and of course you’d have supplies that would last like 100 years minimum
(4:07:37 PM) Benji: bah, yeah but then you have to live in space
(4:07:45 PM) Ed: nah
(4:07:46 PM) Benji: and worry about those pesky rebels and ventilation shafts
(4:07:48 PM) Ed: you could come back when you needed
(4:08:05 PM) Benji: but then were would you stay when you come back?
(4:08:29 PM) Benji: and I guess the top of your building would need to be covered
(4:08:36 PM) Ed: lol
(4:08:39 PM) Benji: to guard against nuclear winter
(4:08:43 PM) Benji: and radiation proof
(4:08:45 PM) Ed: just bring a star destroyer
(4:08:59 PM) Benji: lol, and land it on the planet?
(4:09:06 PM) Ed: nah, it hovers
(4:09:08 PM) Benji: but then how do you guard against zombies?
(4:09:13 PM) Benji: ahh true
(4:09:16 PM) Ed: LASERS. DUH
(4:09:25 PM) Benji: psssh, lasers
(4:09:27 PM) Benji: weak
(4:09:30 PM) Ed: pfft
(4:09:36 PM) Ed: unlimited ammo ftw
(4:09:37 PM) Benji: its more fun to explode things than fry them
(4:10:16 PM) Benji: I’d probably have my building be a pyramid
(4:10:20 PM) Benji: that’d be sweet
(4:10:28 PM) Ed: like in stargate?
(4:10:36 PM) Benji: hell yes
(4:10:50 PM) Benji: it could be a star destroyer pyramid!
(4:11:26 PM) Ed: LOL
(4:12:03 PM) Benji: uber w00t
(4:12:09 PM) Ed: haha
(4:13:58 PM) Benji: I think with my luck, I’d end up getting eaten by zombies trying to get to my super secured anti-zombie pyramid star destroyer
(4:14:08 PM) Ed: yeah
(4:14:18 PM) Benji: fucking zombies
(4:14:22 PM) Ed: lol