An imaginary conversation that may yet well have happened

"My Venetian Snares CD is scratched."

"How can you tell?"

Michigan to BCS Checklist -- Results

So, how'd the Wolverines fare at watching TV today?

• Houston vs. Southern Mississippi — SUCCESS! Houston battled back with an amazing last-minute drive to lose by only 21 points. Coach Sumlin's cottage has a leaky roof and the lawn smells like skunk pee.
• TCU vs. UNLV — FAILURE! Gary Patterson is a smart man, too smart to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a little house that he'll only get to use a month or two out of the year. UNLV is not very good.
• Kansas State vs. Iowa State — FAILURE! Iowa State came pretty close to pulling another upset. Oh, well.
• Georgia vs. LSU — SUCCESS! Georgia keep their position because they only got blown out in one half. But honestly... no.
• Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State — Success? Oklahoma lost by 34 points today to a team other than LSU. They might hold enough of a lead over Michigan in the computer rankings to stay in front, but I could see them potentially crashing hard enough in the polls that the computers wouldn't be able to save them. We won't know until tomorrow.
• Baylor vs. Texas — I'm gonna go ahead and call this one success even though Baylor is undoubtedly moving ahead of Michigan because I didn't want Texas to win it.
• BONUS ROUND: Clemson vs. Virginia Tech — Bonus potential failure! Clemson beat Virginia Tech even harder than Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma. I don't think Virginia Tech is going to fall past Michigan, but it is remotely possible for Clemson to jump into the Real BCS Teams Club.
• Wisconsin vs. Michigan State — I think they postponed this game.

Tallying things up, it looks like three teams (I assume that either Wisconsin or Michigan State will fall after the game is rescheduled) are likely to fall past Michigan and one will jump ahead of them. It is possible for one more team to slip ahead of them, but there is also an outside chance of another team sliding behind. My expectation, therefore, is that they will move to at least 14th, enough for Brady Hoke to get his next crate of pizzas delivered to Pasadena. This is a good thing because Michigan State is too good this year to deserve playing in the Insight Bowl should they lose to Wisconsin in the eventual Big Ten Championship Game, which I am sure they will be playing as soon as possible.

I am going to go be sad now.

Michigan to BCS Checklist

I think most everyone has agreed that if the University of Michigan is able to break into the top 14 of the BCS rankings, they will unquestionably be selected as an at-large competitor in a BCS bowl. However, up until today, it has not been certain whether they will be able to ascend two places in the rankings in order to do that.

Based on what I have seen from watching the Southern Miss.-Houston game so far, I'm starting to think Michigan find themselves in the top 12 tomorrow afternoon simply by not having a football game today in which to kill themselves. Therefore, I've prepared a checklist of things that can/will propel them upward today.

Before I begin, I would like to note that I am still a Michigan State fan; however, I am one of those weird fans who believes that it is good for Michigan to succeed as long as they don't take championships away from us and we crush them in our annual matchup. It boosts our computer rankings, you see (and brings millions of dollars in shared revenue into the Big Ten). I still experience some cognitive dissonance in saying positive things about that school off to the southeast, though, so my language in this post may be a little... more direct than usual.

• Houston is currently failing to execute to an even greater extent than Southern Miss., 42-21. This game has been fiercely compelling in the same way as a coal train running off the rails and crashing into a burning distillery. It was among the most certain games coming into the weekend, and it instead seems the rumors* that Kevin Sumlin had been tricked into buying a timeshare on Herpaderp Island may have been true after all. Anyway, if Houston continues to lose, this game will be a huge boon to the Home of the Hash Bash. Not only is it likely to rocket Houston's BCS rankings into the ground faster than Duck Dodgers with the silly thing in reverse, it has the potential to block any non-automatically-qualifying teams from getting a BCS bid if TCU fails to impress today. I know I said earlier in this post that Michigan will be the first at-large pick if they are available, and I still believe that, but this would buy them insurance.
• TCU is only up 7-3 on UNLV — which is an anagram for "LUVN" — which proves that I am still twelve years old emotionally. TCU has the MWC championship locked down, so they're the last team in position to grab the LOL Big East non-AQ bid. If it turns out that Gary Patterson is embroiled in the Herpaderp scandal, another spot may open up for Oklahoma/K-State/Boise.
• Speaking of K-State, they're only up by 4 on Iowa State at the half. Yes, that Iowa State.
• If Georgia wins puts up a good fight against LSU, they may not fall far enough in the polls for Michigan to jump them. If they come out of the game looking for a change of pants, they could be out of the way.
• I don't think Oklahoma will fall behind Michigan even if they lose today, but if they come out of Bedlam wishing they were wearing Georgia's pants instead...
• One of the Scramblin' Weasels' worries coming into today was that Baylor would very likely leapfrog them by defeating the University of Occasional Capitalization. If Baylor doesn't win... actually, I want Baylor to win this game, so let's hope the other stuff in those post also happens and it doesn't matter.
• Michigan is currently 16th in the BCS. Wisconsin is 15th. They only lead by .0226 points. GO STATE.

*I may have started these rumors just now.

Win or lose (MSU-UW 2011-12-03)

Win

Plane tickets to Pasadena.

Lose

No plane tickets to Pasadena.

Either Way

Go Green.

Last Week

I did not get a post up because I had family visiting and I physically went to the Northwestern game. It rained a lot.

If we had lost, I would have had to listen to this.

Extremely late suggestion for Big Ten division names

Punchy and Slappy.

Win or lose (MSU-IU 2011-11-19)

Win

Giordano's

Lose

Tony's

Either Way

Passing a spittoon back and forth does not make this a rivalry game.

Last Week

I am likely to miss the first fifteen minutes of the football game because I'll still be playing Lufia 2.

I somehow missed this when it started

George Lowe does voice-overs for Lego commercials now.

Hearing George Lowe without seeing Space Ghost is surprisingly frustrating.

Win or lose (MSU-Iowa 2011-11-12)

Win

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals

Lose

Mario is Missing!

Either Way

Only one of these games is getting a dust shield.

Last Week

The burrito was delicious.

Win or lose (MSU-UMinn 2011-11-05)

Win

Steak burrito from Chipotle.

Lose

Twelve White Castles.

Michigan State foots a good winball

Undoubtedly one of the best final plays that I will ever see.

Open letter that I know Mark Dantonio isn't going to read

...because, in truth, nobody reads my blog, even if it is one of the top Google hits for, "Get the Janus coin!"

Dear Coach,

I think it would be best if you had William Gholston sit out the Wisconsin game. I am willing to shrug off most of the personal fouls that were committed during yesterday's game because while they were unnecessary, they at least resembled things that one might expect to happen during a normal game of football. However, grabbing a player's facemask and twisting his helmet while he is at the bottom of a pile and cannot rotate his shoulders is never acceptable. People may say that this game will live with the players for the rest of their lives, but winning or losing a football game is meaningless compared with breaking one's neck.

I know that Will is part of a star defensive line and that his presence or absence could have a huge effect on the next game's outcome. I know that it will probably be the biggest game of MSU's regular season. That is exactly why I think it is so important for Will to sit it out, and to stay out for the whole game rather than coming back in after the half. If you are not willing to potentially sacrifice a game in the name of sportsmanship, then you value winning above sportsmanship, and your team will see that. I fear for the program's future if you tolerate such behavior.

Your defensive coordinator said that you don't want to hurt anybody. Prove it.

Yours,

Some Guy Who Writes a Blog That You Don't Read

I am claiming this somewhat offensive joke as my own

Tackle for loss, Colonel Britz.

On systems and the ways in which they are operated

I'm in the market for a new Windows machine right now, having retired my old one a couple months ago and feeling a PC-game-shaped hole in my heart. Also, I would like to have a media system in my living room that isn't preposterously loud and I'm not completely happy with the slate of multimedia software available for Linux. I was pricing components earlier this evening and saw that the first seven items in Amazon's list of things frequently purchased with Windows 7 Professional were the following:

• Parallels Desktop 6
• Parallels Desktop 7
• Office Home and Business 2010 (Windows)
• VMWare Fusion 3
• Office Professional 2010 (Windows)
• Office Home and Business 2010 (Mac)
• Windows 7 Ultimate... somehow

I saw these for Windows 7 Ultimate:

• Parallels Desktop 6
• Corsair AX1200 power supply
• Office Professional 2010 (Windows)
• Intel Core i7-2600K processor
• 3x4GB Corsair Dominator GT 2000 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• Cooler Master HAF X full tower case
• Asus P8 Z68-V PRO mainboard

It appears that the Ultimate edition appeals to a fairly specialized market.

...although, twenty bucks isn't that much of a premium when I'm already paying over two hundred, and the addition of Windows Service Technology for Unix might help me feel at home...

Also, in sports...

I am watching the NDSU/Minnesota game and it is also amazing and terrifying.

Minnesota, they... they were going to go for it on 4th & 3, but then there was a false start, so they were going for it on 4th & 8, but... but then NDSU intercepted the ball, and... and then one of Minnesota's players decided to grab the NDSU player who'd intercepted the ball by the jersey and fling him to the ground instead of doing anything resembling standard tackling technique and that caused the ball to fly out and be picked up by another NDSU player who continued running it back for a touchdown and when did we start letting Division III teams into the Big Ten oh no

Meanwhile, Indiana is down to North Texas 21-0. >_<

And now I am sick

I am both amazed and terrified every time I succeed in getting off the couch.

Why does my heart feel so bad?

Cholesterol.

FARTBOWL Special Update Post

Ohio State nearly lost to a MAC team today. Iowa lost to the bottom-tier Big XII team.

This will really sting when we barely beat Ohio State and lose to Iowa later in the season.

FARTBOWL

Okay, so I missed last week completely, but I'm gonna make up for that with one of those occasionally-updated posts about today's game.

• Steve Gardiner has some hair.
• Good. A defensive stop. Those make me happy.
• Also, we didn't blow our first offensive series. That also makes me happy.
• I have never seen an opposing player step in to intercept a punt after a fair catch has been called. I hope I never see it again. Anyway, thanks for the field position.
• I think Le'Veon Bell may have just literally punched his way to a first down.
• It's nice to see someone other than Cunningham occasionally getting a reception. Also, touchdown setup. Bell is displaying the same ability he showed early last year to find the holes opened up by the line and go through them.
• WOOOOOOOORRRRRRRTHY!
• I look away for a minute and Maxwell's in at quarterback. What's going on? :(
• Okay, Maxwell's not mobile enough to bring back the Drew Stanton Runs the Ball offense. Maybe that's a good thing.
• Conroy. :D
• Let's not pick up a bunch of holding penalties and fall apart when we get into the red zone, okay, guys?
• Five Hour Energy: it will ruin your marriage.
• The return near the end of the half may not have yielded a touchdown, but I argue that it may have been Keshawn Martin's best in that it was the most representative of his style: he slipped away from three tackles and at least threatened to change directions each time.
• I feel like I kept hearing about how great Dion Sims had the potential to be last year without ever seeing much of it. That was a pretty good catch.
• Even while wearing a baseball cap, Howard Schnellenberger has enough gravitas that he could probably put it in as right guard in a pinch.
• ...and then one of ESPN's talking heads opened their halftime coverage by saying that Missouri's, "deep freeze," where they called two timeouts before a kick at the end of regulation, "work[ed]"... not noticing that it was Missouri who was trying to kick the field goal at the end of the half, and apparently unaware that his network's own commentators expressed befuddlement during the game at the coach's decision to call those timeouts. I am increasingly convinced that Worldwide Pants Incorporated is the real worldwide leader in anything. Maybe it was supposed to be a sarcastic comment and the delivery was terrible?
• Lippett is in on offense! ...but Nichol is wide open. That pass seemed a little loftier than I'm used to. I wonder if Maxwell will be able to duplicate the rocket arm Cousins showed against Northwestern last year.
• Hill is in, we've been rotating Maxwell in and out, we're primarily calling running plays... I'd say we're in garbage time. It's good to be up 27-0 in the third quarter. This is what I was expecting from the Youngstown State game.
• I'm a big fan of going for it on fourth & short, especially when it doesn't matter.
• I'm a really big fan of going for it on fourth & short.
• KEVIN MUMA! :O
• Oh, right. ABC owns the cavemen now. I wish I hadn't been reminded of that.
• We very nearly allowed FAU to make a break into the endzone in the fourth quarter. Instead, we somehow provoked a fumble with an ankle tackle and ended up with a defensive touchdown. Interesting.
• Apparently, fumbling a kickoff out the back of the endzone is a touchback rather than a safety. Good to know.
• According to the commercial that I just watched, Cooper tires are made for people. That's an interesting image. This game is now so far out of hand that I'm paying more attention to the commercials. Maybe I should just flip over to the Iowa game...
• The second thing that I've learned today: Peter Badovinac is our third-string quarterback.
• ...and that closes one of the most convincing victories I've ever seen. Check out the box score. MSU led on first downs 29 to 1. They gained 864% more yards on offense (434-45). I think anyone who was concerned after the Youngstown State game (such as myself) should be feeling a lot better about MSU's chances this year.

It took me a little while to get my suspenders on for Howard Schnellenberger's final game against the Spartans because they're designed to button onto my tuxedo pants, but I was eventually able to jury-rig a solution with some paper clips.

Banana with rage

...is how I feel.

If you figure out what that means, let me know.

R.I.P. HAL 9000/Dinosaur

I ordered it in December 2000. It arrived in 2001. It was nearly top-of-the-line at the time. I wasn't willing to pay another $100 to get a 1 GHz processor, but I did pony up for the GeForce 2 Ultra. It could run any game at any resolution I wanted. I named it "HAL 9000" because that seemed like the most badass name that a computer could have.

Sometime around 2002 or 2003, I added more RAM. I was doing more programming than gaming by then, but the difference was still noticeable.

In Fall 2005, the main hard drive failed. I used the replacement as an excuse to install Windows XP rather than Windows Me. I can't remember if it was then or shortly thereafter, but somewhere around that time, I changed the name to "Dinosaur" in recognition of the machine's advanced age.

Near the end of 2007, possibly on the seventh anniversary of the machine's ordering, I replaced Windows XP with Ubuntu Linux.

In 2008, I bought a new laptop. I still kept the old machine around, but even web browsing had become a chore on it, so it fell out of use.

In 2009, I put Windows back on it so that I would have a native Windows environment available. I bought a wireless dongle and got a couple uses out of it. Most notably, I used it to register my cable modem with Comcast the following year when running the installer from a VM on my laptop turned out not to work.

Sometime in Summer or Fall 2010, the sound card failed. Changing PCI slots and removing the Ethernet card did not help. I don't know why I thought it might help, but I tried it anyway. Prior to that time, the only components that had failed were drives of various sorts. Perhaps it really is confirmation bias this time, but I still regard Dell as a company that has proven itself capable of building a reliable computer when it really wants to.

In 2011, after my most recent move, it began failing the POST. I still kept it around, thinking that I might eventually look up the POST beep codes and fix the problem. Given that the sound card was dead, the power supply jack was so loose that I could kill the power to the machine just by bumping the case, and the GPU fan was making clicking noises, though, I eventually realized that I would have to replace nearly everything. Thesues's ship would never be quite the same.

On Sunday, I took it and the monitor that I'd bought for it to Best Buy to be recycled. It was just a computer.

Happy birthday to me.

Post 128

Halfway to post 256!

It is hot out

It is hot out. It is so very hot out. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. Oh, dear.

Gotta play D

...when you can't put the ball in the net yourself.

Lame filler post

I knew it! It was confirmation bias all along!

I'm bored

This amuses me.

Well, it's almost midnight

Does the world end on Central Time, or did it already end on Eastern Time and I missed it? What effect does Daylight Savings Time have? I'm confused.

EDIT: Never mind, it ends at 6:00 PM Eastern Time, though I still can't tell if that's 10:00 PM or 11:00 PM UTC.

The weird thing is that someone bought an electronic billboard near the north end of the IL-53 expressway with a different design than the Camping ones that I've seen. This one just refers to, "Judgement Day," and says nothing about the Bible. It also has a picture of a scorpion in the corner for some reason. Since I'm too self-absorbed to watch the news, I hadn't heard about the Camping thing until earlier tonight, so the scorpion and other aspects of the design made me assume that someone was trying to market a publicity event or MMA match or rave or something in the area.

Actually, it'd be pretty funny if the whole thing really is a publicity event. "On Judgement Day only, buy audio books for the Old and New Testaments and get the apocrypha free!"

SECOND EDIT: Several other sites have informed me that the Rapture will occur at 6:00 PM, local time, in every time zone. That's awfully convenient for the people in the western hemisphere. They get a few extra hours to repent.

Unfortunately, I don't see anything on cnn.com about earthquakes in the Line Islands, so I guess I will have to get a haircut tomorrow.

There is no sleep

Chili takes a really long time to cook.

Happy Bomb20 Day!

This year, I think I'll let the man (circa 15 years ago) speak for himself:

------------------------------------------------

            KELLY BUNDY                 

         KELLYZ iN DA HOOD              

                                        

                                        

    THEY SAY iM A KELLY TO SOCiETY      

     BUT SOCiETY iS A KELLY TO ME!      

                                        

       THiS JOKES ON YOU AGAiN!         

              HA!HA!HA!                 

------------------------------------------------

Genius.

Rebuttal to xkcd #889

I've been a potato for years.

Good luck, reptile

You are the only snow salamander in the universe. You should listen to Aleksi Eeben's Various Secret Continents. The fact that salamanders are amphibians is immaterial.

Now is your chance.

Now is our chance.

Producer demanded more panflutes!

Open letter to AMC

Stop showing Exit Wounds.

I just installed the Ubuntu 11.04 beta

UNITY IS SCARY.

Think of the children?

I saw a commercial a few minutes ago for The King's Speech. The commercial first boasted of the film's many Academy Award nominations, which I expected. The commercial then stated that the film was, "now rated PG-13." From this, I assumed that the movie had been re-cut as a way to potentially achieve a wider audience, which a step over to Wikipedia supported. The commercial concluded by saying that because of the re-cut, the film could now enjoyed by, "the whole family."

I was not aware that PG-13 had become the standard rating for family pictures.

I am a Consumer Whore #3

I have developed a habit of taking ZonePerfect bars with me to work and occasionally snacking on them around the house. I'm not convinced that they really count as food, but they taste good enough to be eaten regularly, they have a long shelf life, and they don't make me feel as sick as vending machine candy. They're also probably a more nutritious snack than the salt & vinegar potato chips of which I just compulsively ate a handful while trying to finish this paragraph.

Around Christmas (note: I've been meaning to post this for about two and a half months now), I discovered that my latest box of substitute food contained a coupon for a dollar off "New" Cookie Dough ZonePerfect bars. I have long held the opinion that nutrition bars are always going to taste funny and that any attempt to change that will either fail or result in something that is no longer nutritious. Therefore, the idea of combining a nutrition bar with cookie dough seemed preposterous to me.

I am intrigued by the preposterous.

Grumble complain

I received a phone call earlier tonight informing me that the moon was at its closest proximity to the earth, an occurrence most people only have one or two opportunities to observe in their lifetimes.

It's very cloudy here.

Dick Vitale on Derrick Nix

"He likes to eat, baby."

From my notes #5

Earlier today, I posted a post in which I posted that it would hopefully be the last post in which I would post a collection of one-liners copied from a notebook. A few hours later, I found another collection of notebooks in one of my other moving boxes.

No, I still haven't unpacked most of my stuff. That should tell you how useful most of it is.

Anyway, here's the very last round of old lecture note snippets.

From my notes #4

As I noted in a recent post, I have a collection of old class notebooks dating back five years that I somehow still haven't thrown out. To encourage myself to get rid of them, I went through all of them and copied anything that was remotely funny into a text file. Here are the highlights (or, if you prefer, "highlights"):

Excuse me, I'd like to make a withdrawal

Due to the combination of moving and a blizzard, I was without home internet access on my PC for about a week. By the end of the first day, I realized that I was addicted to the internet. After the third day, wherein I found myself idly browsing sports blogs on my phone rather than, say, sleeping, I realized that the addiction was hopeless. Someone, being able to get on the internet while at work and at the Starbucks a thousand or so feet from my door and on my phone wasn't enough for me.

To combat my addiction, I am posting on my bl– ah, crap.

From my notes #3

I am moving in a week.

One of the things that I always notice when I move is that I am very bad at throwing things out. Many of the things that I find lying around my place are things that I never use and don't actually want to keep. However, for some reason, every time that I find something that I don't want, I put it in a box to be moved to my new place rather than simply throwing it out. My theory for why I do this is that I am dumb.

Among the things that I should probably stop moving with me is a collection of class notebooks going back to my senior year of undergrad. Upon (re-) discovering that collection, I read through the book for one class in which it had only taken me about two weeks to realize that the lecture was not helpful. Here are the highlights from those notes:

How cold is 0°F?

0°F is the temperature at which a saturated solution of ammonium chloride in water freezes. It is also cold enough to make me say, "BALLS," involuntarily.

Personal milestone

In 2010, my savings account earned enough interest that I have to pay taxes on it.

Life really does change when you move into the working world.

Catching up

I took this picture in September so that I could complain about the fact that it says, "PIN NUMBER," and I didn't get around to doing so until just now.

Tough road matchup

Things heard from the crowd as Michigan State played at Northwestern tonight:

• Go green!
• Go white!

I should probably start buying tickets to MSU-NU games since I'm in the area. I'll have to keep that in mind this fall.

Things that won't happen in 2011

I needed to cheer myself up after seeing the Big Ten go winless in its five (sigh) bowls today, so I wrote up a list of unfunny mock-predictions for next year.

Lets just get this out of the way and pretend it didn't happen.

1. Cyrus Kouandjio, a Rivals.com 5-star-rated offensive tackle, makes a surprise commitment to Michigan State, telling reporters, "I wanted to go someplace where I could play for four years."
2. Edwin Baker sets a school record in the Youngstown State game by gaining at least five yards on every play where he rushes up the middle.
3. In the Michigan-Michigan State game, Denard Robinson suffers a knee injury when he is sacked by William Gholston. Tate Forcier enters the game to replace him and takes two consecutive knees. He then leaves the game and announces that he is transferring to MIT.
4. In their game against Northwestern, Michigan State runs a trick play wherein Kirk Cousins hands the ball off to Keith Nichol, who throws a lateral pass to Keshawn Martin, who hands the ball off to Larry Caper on a reverse, who passes the ball to Cousins for a two-yard gain. When asked by reporters after the game, Dantonio says that the play is called, "I need to talk to those guys."
5. Mark Dantonio lures Charlie Weis away from the Florida offensive coordinator position at the last possible second. Michigan State uses their decided schematic advantage to upset Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship game. They fall to Stanford in the Rose Bowl, however, when Weis's insistence that the line judge slapped him draws an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and pushes the Spartans back too far for Dan Conroy to kick what would have been the game-winning field goal.
6. Michigan State fans look at the Rose Bowl loss and complain about how a really good coach would've won a bowl game by now.

2011 Capital One Bowl Recap

At the beginning of the Capital One Bowl today, I was so excited about the game that I decided to take notes on every play. I had no reason to be so enthusiastic.

It's taken me a few hours to convince myself to post this. Most of what I wrote provides no context and will likely not make sense even a few days after the game. Some of it is insulting, to both teams, and for that, I apologize. Watching football makes me emotional. For its potential value as a psychological study, however, here is a chronicle of one Michigan State fan's thoughts during today's game, fully unedited (except for grammar and spelling):

I am a Consumer Whore #2

Today was a big day for the Big Ten conference in football. It also turned out to be a terrible day, but I didn't know that when I woke up this morning. I only knew how great it would be if the conference won four games and proved that its teams deserved consideration among the country's frontrunners.

To get ready for the logjam of Big Ten games around noon, I wanted to do something that would show my unequivocal support for the conference, but I wasn't sure what I could do. For inspiration, I turned to my memory of the conference's own Big Ten Network and the way in which they covered games this season. It didn't take me long to realize that there was only one thing that I really could do, one thing that the Big Ten Network had endorsed above all else.

I made RO*TEL-and-Velveeta queso dip.

__sdfg's Chinese Feast

The thought that I'd be spending New Year's alone this year somehow reminded me of the scene in A Christmas Story where the family's planned Christmas dinner is ruined and they go to a Chinese restaurant. I therefore decided to pull some recipes from a Chinese cookbook and make something that would resemble a meal.

As you can tell from the above photo, I don't really know what I'm doing.

I considered applying the verde sauce to the rice, but elected not to.