337 - let the madness begin!

well, after the first day of games my brackets are already busted! i need to change my strategy. instead of picking against teams i don't want to win, i should start picking teams i actually think will win. i filled out 6 different brackets this year and i have FIVE different champs: gonzaga(2), florida, indiana, villanova, and uconn. indiana survived another day with vaden drilling a 3 off a deflected pass with 3 seconds remaining. (however, my favorite part of the game was killingsworth missing a dunk! even i have a better vertical than him!) bring on the zags! in other upset news, the USA lost in the baseball classic. so much for it being our national pastime. maybe i should just move to the far east where they actually know how to play the game.

338 - finally

finally, my operation at the cook county warehouse is complete. all the voting machines are ready to go for tuesday and are being shipped out to suburban cook county. i also made the final purchases for my computer build, getting a dual core processor by amd and a wireless card (to steal wifi from the neighbors - is that bad?). now, all that's left to do is get my brackets ready!

339- pi day

today is pi day. you know, the notorious number that starts 3.141 and goes on forever and is used to calculate the area and diameter of circles, etc. so, naturally i think of my math teacher sister and twin leslie. it's about time she gets a mention in the blog since, after all, her countdown to 30 is the same as mine. leslie lives in boulder now and i went to visit her back in december. i always like to get out there once a year and go skiing. this year we went to a-basin and breckenridge. i tend to go exploring while on the mountain. i always think i know where i'm going, but usually end up in a bind. last year, i ended up losing my ski only to find it buried under six feet of snow. from there the trail took me down to the cross country track and i had to hike myself 20 back to the base. needless to say, this year was no difference. i ended up on an ungroomed blue and as i stopped to plan my way down, the snow gave way underneath me dropping me about 8 feet into the mountain creek (see picture)...that was the end of my day.

340 - case of the missing socks

lately, a lot of my socks have been ripping as i put them on in the morning. also, i seem to be doing laundry more often just so i have socks to wear. what happened to all my socks, i thought. today, i found the answer. chance came running out of the bedroom with this sock in his mouth. a little investigative work found that chance had been stockpiling my socks underneath the bed and the futon. i guess he thought that if i didn't have any socks to wear, i wouldn't be able to go to work and i'd have to spend more time with him at home.

341 - selection sunday

#6 seed seems about right for the hoosiers. the bad news: they play all the way in salt lake city (and that's the closest they'll play!). the good news: who is really scary in that bracket? sdsu? they've got one good player. gonzaga? they got two. ucla? can you say token west coast seed? even memphis is beatable. we'll see.

just for fun, join my free bracket : http://30countdown.mayhem.sportsline.com/e
the password to join is : nate30
(you will need to log in to sportsline first)

in other selections, we have a fantasy football alert! the edge goes to...arizona? could be a smart move. on the other hand, can he really make them a winner? what is randle el thinking? he went from being the #2 receiver on a super bowl champ to the redskins where he'll be a #3 behind moss and brandon lloyd. hell, moss may even be a better kick returner than him. why not come to chicago and be loved in his hometown doing the same thing he did for the champs?!? oh yeah, $$$$.

i finally caught some of the world baseball classic. i gotta say, i love it. well, except for the u.s.a paying off the umps. how else would you explain that blown call? i still think the u.s. would have pulled it out in the bottom of the ninth anyway. puerto rico routed the favored dominicans tonight. that game was pretty intense. it sounded like a playoff game as you watched it.