ThatKidInTheCorner

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March 27, 2007

Hey There Sonics, Been A While

After a somewhat lengthy hiatus, I caught three games in five days at Key Arena

It's been a while (almost two months) since I've posted in re: the Sonics. Odd confluence of circumstances there. The last couple games I watched in February were just disheartening enough to convince me that the only possible topic for a post would be the official announcement of the Sonics' participation in the Greg Oden/ Kevin Durant sweepstakes. Then they went on the road for a bit, I didn't have many tickets, and, well, ThatKid went radio-silent on the Supes.

Then, amidst minimal fanfare, I attended a whopping three games in five days. Whilst I'm not entirely sure that much has changed from mid-February in terms of the team's prospects, I was at least treated to two semi-exciting NBA games over the past couple days. That is, the Sonics definitely aren't making the playoffs, but not by enough to actually have a legit shot at Oden or Durant, and so they look locked in for the number nine pick in the draft and second-straight meaningless final month of games.

Sigh.

On the bright side, the team will be in Key Arena for at least one more year, and has unveiled its plans for a proposed new arena in the Puget Sound area. They even have a spiffy new web site called Event Center Facts where you can learn The Facts about the new arena and how it won't actually cost any taxpayers any more money (except for the parts where it will).

My big takeaways from the last five days of professional basketball here in C@L:

The Hibachi isn't terrible, though I find his free-throw routine completely boring and infuriating: whilst I was a little late to the party on the Gilbert Arenas blog, I will currently count myself amongst the many recent converts to Hibachi-related enthusiasms. Arenas schtick hasn’t yet gotten old for me, and is a refreshing counterpoint to the pro-wrestling conspiracies that can plague the NBA (here I mean the free-throw thing with the Mavs and the Heat in last year’s Finals). In fact, instead of pro-wrestling conspiracies, Arenas infuses the Association with a bit of pro-wrestling bravado. And though he came up short the evening prior in Portland, Arenas had a huge game against the Supes. Good for him. My one nit on Arenas is the absurd free-throw routine. It’s a little too precious.

The most exciting fan contest of the year so far: after almost a full season at Key Arena, it takes a lot for the TV-timeout entertainments to engage me. So let me tip my cap to the guy who made the shot from half-court as his 60 seconds expired (in which he needed to make a layup, a free throw, a three-pointer and a half-court shot) last Wednesday to win the 50-inch plasma (and it was a Samsung – not even a cut-rate brand). That was an outstanding little sliver of entertainment – and the arena definitely responded, arguably with more vigor and gusto than had been elicited by the play of the Sonics that evening. No comment.

I guess Ray-Ray is going to shut it down for the season: with the Sonics careening toward the lottery, it looks like Ray Allen will be opting for ankle surgery and ending his season. I mean, we can’t really blame him too too much. Apparently the ankle’s been bothering him for a while, and there really isn’t a point for him to be thrashing it around out there. He’s done his duty. See you next fall, Ray.

Rashard is playing for money right now: the converse of Ray Allen shutting it down is that Rashard Lewis most definitely is not. In fact, with trade rumors swirling and phrases like “max contract” being bandied about, well, Rashard has something to play for. And play for he is! With the exception of the stinker against the Spurs (“Looks like Rashard had a big night last night…”), he was dominant against the Wizards and the Wolves. It’s just really hard to guard 6’10” dudes who have post moves and shoot the three. He’s going to make a lot of money this summer.

David Foster Wallace needs to write a fawning essay about Kevin Garnett: I think I may have mentioned this before, but Kevin Garnett is a completely underappreciated pro athlete. Beyond the obvious “he’s really good” parts and the fact that he’s surrounded by a cast of complete assclowns (I imagine that every time one of his teammates scores a basket or collects a rebound, Garnett must experience a moment of silent relief: “Whew, that’s one fewer thing I have to do tonight”), he’s just incredibly graceful to watch. I don’t mean to go all David-Foster-Wallace-On-Roger-Federer about him, but it’s pretty nifty. Anyhoo.

Key Arena Pub Crawl: Friday night was one of those nights where I treated the stadium like one big bar. Specifically, one big sports bar. This was due to the fact that I hadn't really seen enough college basketball last week, and wanted to catch at least the Friday Sweet 16 games. Thus, I spent the first qurter in my seat watching the Sonics lollygag around. For the second quarter, we rolled to the bar on the first level on the Queen Anne side and caught the two-A hoops. Halftime meant the compulsory jaunt to Seatle Sips. For the third quarter, we checked out the Fox HD lounge (my first time ever!), which was bouncing and filled with enthusiastic Oregon fans. And then we rolled back to our seats for the end of the game we had paid ($12.50 scalped!) to see. Whew. Usually you only pull a stunt like that at a baseball game!

The Storm Dance Team...umm, they're children: I guess it's just a, ahem, different market for the WNBA. That is, check out the Storm version of the dance team. I had no idea:

The Spurs are wildly better than the Sonics; it really isn't close: the Spurs wiped the floor with the Supes on Sunday, showing them how it's done to the tune of a 41-point win. That's 41 points ON THE SONICS' HOME FLOOR. Ugh. The most disheartening part was how well the Spurs actually played, especially on offense -- they just play so well. The ball. Just. Keeps. Moving. And then someone's open and they make a jumper. Also, Tim Duncan was completely toying with the succession of folks who attempted to defend him. But it isn't just talent that makes the Spurs better -- they actually have "a plan" on offense and play hard on defense. Turns out that makes a difference! Who knew!

Also, I’m in Japan now. More on that later in the week.

Sonics Attendance Record: 9-7 (still over .500!).

Posted by thatkid at 8:47 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2007

The Wow Is NOW, Mother******s!

That's right, I am now running Vista on my home PC -- and I live to tell about it

Against my better judgment and in the face of general skepticism from a number of folks, I went a little loony last night and installed Windows Vista on the new home computer. This had been the plan for a while (and by "a while" I mean since my old computer died and I came up with my "buy a new computer" plan), but I finally got my act together this week (and by "this week" I mean "Friday after work").

The good news is that Vista is now alive and running on my PC. Granted, I just bought this machine and it has healthy specs (dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, nifty graphics card), but still, I'm almost a little surprised. The bad news is that it wasn't exactly easy to get everything up and running. The install itself took a couple hours, but I expected that. I popped in the installation disc before heading out for the night and then was able to fiddle with the finishing touches hours later when I returned home.

(Cue snide comments about how I spend my Friday nights. Go on. Get it out. Yes. I hang out at home and install operating systems. Uh huh. It's a very glamorous life, I know.)

My issues with the installation:

1. The sound didn't work. Yeah, no sound is kind of a biggie. I needed to reinstall a sound driver from Realtek and then adjust the sound settings to make sure the signal was being piped through my fancy digital audio output. The driver thing was semi-tricky, but adjusting the settings was more a hassle than anything else (needed to burrow through some semi-unfamiliar menus to find it). Generally speaking, I was surprised that the digital output wasn't set as a default.

2. Once the sound was working, it had this stupid echo effect. So at first I thought that this was a setting on my receiver (I send the PC sound out to my receiver and get the nifty surround-sound action). I fiddled with that for a while. Then I burrowed into the Realtek settings and discovered that some sort of sound effect called "environment" was being applied to the sound output. I unchecked the box, and everything was cool. Still, I have zero idea why this would have been the default. Whatever.

3. Where are my DVDs? The default settings on Vista didn't recognize the DVDs that I had [clearing throat] backed up on my PC. A quick search got me the data I needed to get that sorted out, and it involved editing the registry. Dude. Standard users should NOT need to edit the freakin registry to find and watch their DVDs. Luckily I'm good like that. Also, I can understand the folks at the Soft tossing a bone to Hollywood to at least make the "stealing their valuable content" operation a few steps short of seamless. That's terribly polite of them.

4. Why won't my DVDs play? This was pretty easy to sort out. Another driver (which actually was right where I had left it on my desktop from my earlier installation of XP MCE). Can't complain too much on that one.

That was pretty much it. Admittedly, I haven't tried to get it to talk to the XBOX yet, but it looks like Foldershare is working, so that's a start. Also, I haven't tried to plug in an MP3 player or anything like that quite yet. So far so good.

As for the looming "so is it really worth it" question, I can attest that the media center stuff is definitely an upgrade and is actually pretty nifty. Check plus for that. And the Aero thingie for switching between programs (START+TAB instead of ALT+TAB) looks kind of cool. But I don't know if I'd be tripping over myself to upgrade unless you had a new computer with the necessary firepower. I'll check back in a few weeks from now if anything changes.

In closing, I shall now show you my wow:

There it was. My wow. Hope you enjoyed it.

Posted by thatkid at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2007

Gmail Gives You Wings?

This is definitely the first Google display ad I've ever seen; it must be some sort of mistake

Given the fact that the G-Unit is clocking along with a market cap in the rather exclusive neighborhood of $140 billion, with annual sales in the $12 billion range (and growing), and that those $12 billion (and thus, that $140 billion) are amassed in ten-cent increments that arrive only when people click on ads, you'd think that the folks at Google would be pretty talented at figuring out which sorts of ads are going to make people click.

Not that they have to worry about advertising, mind you. That they've built this juggernaut with little to no media spending says a lot about (a) how sweet their search engine is, (b) their genius in re: PR (in which they've achieved an Ipod-esque level of simpatico with the press and analyst community), and (c) the charm of their kooky name. Though we've never really seen an ad for Google, you'd be hard-pressed to find many folks here in the connected parts of the universe that don't know that the Google is good for looking for stuff on the Internets.

So you can imagine my surprise/ mild amusement when I opened up an article on Soccernet the other day and saw a 468x60 rotating .gif suggesting that I give Gmail a whirl because it was super good at keeping spam out of my inbox (I had heard this spam thing was a total pain in the behind):

Must be a Brit thing

A couple things here:

(1) I can confidently admit that I never expected to see my first Google ad (online or otherwise) on a random Soccernet article page;

(2) Of all the things that Google would be pushing with their first media campaign, I'm surprised it's something as banal as mail; I guess they need mail to pay the bills (more specifically: they need mail to get people to sign up for a Google account -- the better to increase their ad rates with exciting profile and behavioral targeting options!);

(3) This was actually a media buy for them -- not just a house ad on an AdSense placement (the referring URL was through Tribal Fusion). I wonder if it was maybe a UK-only thing that accidentally found me on Soccernet?

And now allow me to affix my snobby cap and critique the actual ad:

And no, it doesn't click through

Really?

That's it?

The pitch is around spam and how Gmail will apparently eradicate it and turn people who send spam (perhaps you might call them "spammers"?) into hobo/ homeless dudes on some to-be-determined future date. This we know from the little stick-figure cartoon men who populate the opening frame of the ad. So fine, Gmail does a bang-up job on spam. Great. I'm certainly much more intrigued by the style of the creative -- sort of like the minimalist cartoons in the "Red Bull Gives You Wings" ads but with a slightly different font and a hyperlink-themed splash of color at the end.

And to that I say: pretty lame

It's just that it's so pedestrian, and certainly doesn't live up to the pretty consistent pace of innovation that Google delivers with its actual products. It's like they bought a rejected New Yorker cartoon and slapped a logo on it. Ew. If your stuff is as cool as Google's, you deserve better ads than this (the status quo of no ads would be better than this). I hope this isn't permanent -- I was assuming that the G-Unit would have rolled with something a little cooler than this In the short-term, I'm willing to chalk it up to some sort of localized UK campaign or low-level pilot/ test.

(I'm sure they'll get it together by the time they starting buying media in the U.S.; no one has yet to accuse the G-Unit of being (a) stupid or (b) bad at marketing. At some point we'll all enjoy a nice chuckle about this.)

Posted by thatkid at 11:27 AM | Comments (2)

March 11, 2007

The Toothy Yogi Boxed the Bearclaw with a Spork

I really ought to take more photos of Scrabble boards

Whilst I'll admit to a long-term fascation with/ enthusiasm for Scrabble (tm), I haven't really played very often in recent years. I'll chalk that up mostly to (a) my ever-dwindling attention span having rendered me incapable of sitting still for an entire game, and (b) my free time being routinely consumed by things that flicker and blare (see also, (a)).

Anyhoo, some friends put a lovely dinner together last night and we cracked the Scrabble board post-meal. Good times ensued. What I learned:

(1) Not everyone is obsessed with strategy and placement at the expense of fun/ clever words. In fact, it's a lot more fun to play with people who don't obsess about strategy and placement. (Five triple word scores went unclaimed! I don't have enough exclamation points for that!!!!!!)

(2) Completed Scrabble boards make for excellent photos:

(3) I didn't think "lither" was a word, but I didn't get all bent out of shape about it. According to dictionary.com (accessed from my phone), it is.

(4) We got to "spork" as an addition to "pork" late in the game.

(4a) I was responsible for "pork," adding the "ork" to a p on the board; the irony is that this move left me with two letters: "ig." Wait for it. Yup. There it is:

(5) "Seafoams" started as "foam" which later became "seafoam" before succumbing to the final s. Turns out neither seafoam nor seafoams is a word. I was chill with it comma though.

(6) Tip of the cap on "bearclaw," "toothy," and "gutted." Those were nice ones.

(7) It's ridiculous that you can't actually play Scrabble (tm) when you visit scrabble.com; instead, they just try to sell you stuff. Yuck.

Posted by thatkid at 9:38 PM | Comments (0)

March 7, 2007

A Canticle For Michael Lewis

Looks like I'll need to find a Niners fan to take my midnight-green #32 Birds shirt

It wasn't supposed to end like this for Michael Lewis.

Or, more succinctly, when I bought my Michael Lewis #32 jersey a year and a half ago, I didn't expect that it would end like this: with Lewis removed from the starting lineup for most of the 2006 season and then signing a gigantic contract ($10 million guaranteed) with another team. Two years ago, he was coming off a Pro Bowl season for a Super Bowl team, and was one of the three defensive backs that the Eagles selected in the 2002 draft -- all of who seemed pretty set for stardom and/ or long careers in the Illadelph. The future looked bright for all three, even if Lewis was the only one who had yet to sign an extension.

So what happened?

Here's my theory (and note that I have no sources or data to validate more than 4 percent of this): I'm sure that the Eagles offered Lewis an extension during the 2004 season, when they were locking down Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown. I'm also sure that the Eagles had watched the tape on Michael Lewis, and had a pretty good sense for what his strengths and weaknesses were. I'm even more sure that they offered him a deal that he probably considered to be below maket value for a 25-year-old Pro Bowler. A crappy year for the team in 2005 -- in which Lewis was less than extraordinary -- followed by a disastrous first month to the 2006 season -- where it seemed like Lewis found himself costing the team a touchdown pretty much every week -- landed him on the bench by late October, replaced by undersized Sean Considine and consigned to playing as a small linebacker on passing downs. At that point, not even his mad Madden video game skillz (he was the 2005 Madden Bowl champ among NFL players) could save him -- this was going to be Michael Lewis's last season with the Birds. I even benched him myself -- refusing to wear my Michael Lewis shirt for the second half of the 2006 season. It just felt like the shirt had bad karma.

(Yes, I assign different levels of value and/ or value to my various Eagles garments. I am 30 years old. Yup.)

The funny thing about Michael Lewis is that he had essentially the same profile/ deficiencies as the other two high-profile strong safeties in the NFC East, Dallas' Roy Williams and Washington's Sean Taylor. Specifically, Michael Lewis was a big hitter who was great against the run and on the blitz, but could be a bit suspect in pass coverage. It was actually uncanny to have these three players in the same division.

It's also worth noting that the move to bench Lewis this season was probably not disconnected from his contract situation with the team. That is, when the Eagles aren't cool with someone's responses to their contract overtures, it will impact their role on the squad. Sure, they would never admit that, and Lewis's gaffes against Houston and Dallas (to name only a couple) this year were reason enough to question his starting role, but if he had signed his name to the line which is dotted, I bet things would have broken another way.

Theories in re: Evil Front Office motives aside, both Michael Lewis and the Eagles were pretty classy about an obviously awkward situation all year. Lewis never whinged to the press, and Andy Reid had nothing but good things to say about him, both as a player and as a locker room guy. So cheers to everyone on that one.

And, truth be told, this all really worked out for Michael Lewis. Sure, he didn't get an extension with the Birds, but he got to be a free agent during the first year that the new labor agreement kicked in and the contracts suddenly all got a little goofy. $10 million guaranteed for a guy who got benched last year is not so bad. So good for him.

As a fan, I'll miss having him on the Birds. For whatever reason, I've always been a fan of Michael Lewis, and, more generally, big-hitting Eagles strong safeties (see also my fascination in re: Andre Waters). There's just something about the guys who lay the big hits that appeals to me (go figure); even if they aren't the best or most effective player on the defense. It's a bummer to see him go, but I wish him well in San Francisco.

Go Birds (and I'm crossing my fingers for a Donte Stallworth signing by Friday of this week).

Posted by thatkid at 9:26 PM | Comments (4)