Since my work is getting close to being done, I have a lot of stuff going on there - knowledge transfer, documentation, etc.

Not sure if I post much today … hope to post my NFL picks by tomorrow.

Saw the finale of Rockstar:INXS last night. I was a little disappointed though. The quality of the performances last night was a little off, but I guess the expectations were sky high, given that it was the grand finale.

As expected, Mig was the first to be let off. And I really thought JD got a better song to sing than Marty did.

Anyways, I guess INXS liked JD more than they did Marty because after the last two performances, there was little to choose between them.

Did they ask all three of them to prepare for the Easy Easy song, just in case? Because it seemed JD knew the song inside out!

Anyway, the bright side of the whole thing was one small note at the end by Brooke Burke - she said that if you want to be the next Rockstar, log on to rockstar.msn.com! Yay! Which means there will be another Rockstar:INXS season!

Countdown has started to the next season …

So Giants won and that put me at 7-8.

But what a second game we had! I was rooting for the Redskins and with 4 minutes to go at 13-0, I had lost all hope. And then the big 4th down pass to Moss happened. And suddenly, it seemed real!

But again Dallas was able to chew up some time off the clock and I lost hope. And then came the second booming pass and what an end to the game!

I loved it. Ended up again at 8-8.

Finally got to see the vh1 episode. Interesting how JD works. Wing It seems to be his motto. I tend to think that it could work sometimes, because you are not overthinking the song, but for a competitition, it may work against him.

So Mig and Marty both think that they are the competition for each other. Both of them have assumed that INXS will not pick JD because he is not consistent and is very unpredictable.

And if that is in fact the case, I think Marty will certainly walk away with the win.

Alright, so it is Tuesday today and can’t wait to see the finale.

BTW, why did they show the ‘Last Supper’ and show them move out of the mansion in the Sunday episode? Even if it was shot on Sunday, where are they going to stay on Sunday night and Monday night?

Unless of course the finale is not live but is shot on Sunday night. Is that true?

Here’s his take on why he switched to Firefox.

New England beats Carolina - WRONG (0-1)
Pittsburgh beats Houston - easy (1-1)
Tennessee beats Baltimore - Yes! Polamalu with 3 sacks! (2-1)
Jacksonville beats Indianapolis - Dang. Almost! (2-2)
Philadelphia beats San Francisco - sad, but pathetically true (2-3)
Detroit beats Chicago - wow, what a show by Chicago (2-4)
Cincinnati beats Minnesota - what a game by Carson Palmer! (3-4)
Buffalo beats Tampa Bay - damn you, Buffalo! (3-5)
St Louis beats Arizona - phew. (4-5)
Atlanta beats Seattle - WRONG! (4-6)
Green Bay beats Cleveland - yay! I am happy to be wrong here (4-7)
Jets beat Miami - cool. (5-7)
Denver beats San Diego - yes! (6-7)
Kansas City beats Oakland - yes! (7-7)
New Orleans beats Giants
Washington beats Dallas

So now, on to the Monday Night doubleheader.

Arkansas was the leading rushing team in the country coming in to the game. USC had played only one game - and that was against pass-happy Hawaii. So I was a little worried about how this game would end up.

After watching the first few minutes, I knew it was going to be ok. USC scored at will, and were truly enjoying the game - each one of the players.

Final score: USC 70, Arkansas 17.

A tough one against Oregon at Oregon coming up next week.

New England beats Carolina
Pittsburgh beats Houston (easiest to call?)
Tennessee beats Baltimore (upset?)
Jacksonville beats Indianapolis (UPSET)
Philadelphia beats San Francisco
Detroit beats Chicago
Cincinnati beats Minnesota
Buffalo beats Tampa Bay
St Louis beats Arizona
Atlanta beats Seattle
Green Bay beats Cleveland (I hope not, though)
Jets beat Miami
Denver beats San Diego
Kansas City beats Oakland
New Orleans beats Giants
Washington beats Dallas

Bring it on!

Even though I have not disallowed anonymous commenters, I would like to remind that I (usually) don’t and won’t respond to comments posted by people who don’t like to identify themselves.

It is usually very tempting to respond to some of those comments but I will resist.

And this is not meant in any arrogant way. I would just like to have any discussion with an identifiable person than ‘anonymous’. Hope you understand.

I normally don’t post about my work and stuff, but this one is big so I thought I’d make a note of it.

September 30th will be my last day at my current client. It has been a long long engagement - we’ve been at the company since 2000. I have seen 3 cycles of sales executives and 2 cycles of finance executives, besides a complete revamp of I.T.

I feel sad because I know this one is for real. We have been in and out of the client so every time we leave, we know that there is a good chance we will be brought back. But not this time. They have completely re-done their architecture (my thoughts on that cannot be put here - in short, it sucks) and they won’t need our services anymore. They would like to put our work to bed as soon as they can.

But I will miss the client. I will miss the people I have worked with (not too many remain now), and I will miss the moments we’ve had there - those long nights in deploying the first enterprise-wide solution, the rough times during the bust of 2001, the exciting times during the boom, free beer Fridays, and much much more.

But in a couple of weeks it will be time to really clean out. No more traces. I have left the building.

Suzie got a good song to sing but she was definitely sub par in her performance.

JD’s performance was superb and he is quickly becoming the favorite.

Mig’s performance was not sub par in terms of energy, but definitely not worth it.

In the end INXS has to decide what is best for the band. And it was probably the nervousness that Suzie showed during the interviewing that made them decide that she is probably not going to be able to cope with the pressures of being the lead vocal of a high profile, highly successfull band.

So it is down to the final 3 and it is going to be quite an exciting finish.

There’s already a mention of a Rockstar tour in fall. I would go for that one, if they sing covers and not originals. Will wait and watch.

Google has finally opened a blog search. Frankly, I don’t search too much for blogs, so it is not really a big deal for me. But I think everyone was waiting to see what google is doing in that field.

As for me, I am not happy because my blog has not been included in a lot of things that I normally post on. The only way I can see my own blog is if I search for the URL!

I can’t wait to see the ‘submit your blog’ page that they have promised.

It was an exciting game. I watched it in bits and I loved both the teams. Could not deicde who to root for, but I was supporting Atlanta. That Michael Vick is phenomenal!

So I was 8-8 for this week. On to week 2.

Yesterday’s Rockstar:INXS episode had what seemed pretty much like one-on-one interviews and I was not surprised that Suzie was so nervous. She has shown that sort of nervousness all through the competition and a one-on-one interview can shake a lot of people off.

Looks like INXS has concluded correctly that Marty is opinionated and JD can be a loose canon/game playing and Mig may be too mellow.

Songs for next session seem to be very interesting. Money, Come as you are, Paint it black, etc. I actually like JD’s Pretty Vegas a lot, so hopefully his set will be a good one.

I did not watch the match, but it looked like Agassi did stretch Federer by taking the second set and being 4-2 in the third. He really should have closed that set out. Things could have been different, but Federer switched gears and won that set and closed out the match in the 4th.

So Federer is now 71-3 in the year and 6-0 in Grand Slam finals and has some absurd 23 consecutive finals wins.

I think the game is getting a little boring now. Some people who have commented on my blog earlier (in relation to Formula 1 and Michael Schumacher’s dominance last year) will see that I am consistent in my arguments in that respect. I think Federer has no real challenge. A lot of times, I think that Federer probably gives up a few points to challenge himself and see if perhaps he can claw his way out of 0-40 or 2-5 or whatever.

Women’s tennis is getting competitive, so that’s a good thing.

I did not want to watch this movie. But I went because there was not much else to do.

It was a letdown because the story was predictable and there were only a few laughs. There were two songs though, that I liked. The title song and the other one with the ‘hmm hmm’.

That Smart car was good. Funky. Will like to drive it but probably not own it.

Saif was ok in his role. Preity overacted and underacted at different times. Surprisingly bad performance from her this time.

A waste of time and money in the end.

Rains on second and third day may cost Australia the Ashes. Though I will actually correct that and say that Australia has only themselves to blame. If they had played like they played in this test (so far at least), they would have had the Ashes in their pocket.

Sorry for the quick and abrupt post. Not much to write about besides the scary thought that England could actually win it!

I have always wanted to watch the classic, but never got around to watching it. Recently it came on amc and I had taped it. Started watching it this morning, but got distracted.

Looks interesting thus far, but the only problem is that amc has edited the language and there are ‘flipping’ and ‘fishing’ all over the place ;-)

Will complete it soon.

Let’s see how I did with my picks:

(New England beating Oakland - I will take that as 1-0 for me)

Washington beats Chicago
- Barely (2-0)
Denver beats Miami
- WRONG (2-1)
Carolina beats New Orleans
- Should have considered the ‘feel good’ factor with Katrina aftermath
- WRONG (2-2)
Jacksonville beats Seattle
- I predicted this upset here and feel proud about it (3-2)
Pittsburgh beats Tennessee
- Got that right (4-2)
Cincinnati beats Cleveland
- Good to see a good performance by Carson Palmer (5-2)
Buffalo beats Houston
- Destroyed them (6-2)
NY Jets beat Kansas City
- WRONG (6-3)
Minnesota beats Tampa Bay
- Dammit, WRONG (6-4)
San Diego beats Dallas
- Dammit, WRONG here too (6-5)
St Louis beats San Francisco
- Bittersweet, WRONG (6-6)
Arizona beats NY Giants
- WRONG (6-7)
Detroit beats Green Bay
- YES! (7-7)
Baltimore beats Indianapolis
- WRONG (7-8)
Atlanta beats Philadelphia
-

So if Atlanta can beat Philadelphia, I will be at .500. I think that’s not bad, but I don’t think it is good either. Should have got two things right - New Orleans and San Francisco getting sentimental wins (Herrion collapse).

I had no hope in the 49ers. I did not even watch the game or record it. But look what happened! We won!! How did that happen?

And apparently, it was the defense at the end of the game that pulled them out. Awesome.

But I would not talk much about the season yet. It was only one game (though it was an important conference game). But then again, a win is a win is a win.

I’ll take 1-0 without any hesitation, especially after a 2-14 season! :-)

Texas won against Ohio State. I kinda like that. I hate the Ohio State fan writers. The hype surrounding that team is unbelievable. Hope this loss is good enough to keep them out of the hunt through the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, Texas seems to prove again that they deserve to the ranked as high as they are. They have a lot of playmakers and even though I was not able to see the game, I hope I get to see some other game through the season because they really look powerful all around.

LSU came to ASU and beat them, though not convincingly. It was an escape.

Cal destroyed Washington after starting with an interception. I saw the early parts of the game and was bored - it was too dull. And later when I checked the score I could not believe it was such a blowout. Man, Tyrone Willingham better get this team together soon otherwise he may be on the way out from there too.

It was a “perfect” race as Kimi would later say, for McLaren Mercedes and Kimi himself. They were running 1-2 and stupid Pizzonia crashed into Juan Pablo and he crashed out of P-2 with only a few laps remaining.

But at least the end result was an ok one for Kimi. He was able to reduce the difference between him and Alonso to 25 points. It becomes more and more difficult, but there is still a mathematical possibility for Kimi to win it all.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed for that one.

Meanwhile, a sad end for Michael Schumacher - Sato crashed him. What was that Schumacher move after the crash? Did he go and actually slap Sato on the head? That would be wild!!

As I had expected, the women’s finals turned out to be a demolition. Just like the French Open where Justine Henin-Hardenne took only an hour to beat Pierce, Kim Clijsters capped her fantastic hardcourt year with the icing on the cake.

I actually came home and watched the taped version of the match but it ended up being too boring - skipped through it and only watched the ceremony. Kim really seems to be a nice lady and from what the commentators and Mary Pierce said, she is liked by everyone on the tour.

She totally deserved the championship and congratulations to her on winning it. Hope she is truly back. We need to see some non-Russian women battling at the top!

I will go back in time with my posts knowing fully well that I am writing about something that happened earlier.

Hewitt’s match with Federer was quite a good one, even though I felt it was going to end up with Federer getting one break in each of the 3 sets. Instead, Hewitt actually won a set and was throwing all that he had. But the problem for Hewitt was that he did not actually have a killer plan. He was keeping balls in play, but Federer is too good to let an opportunity pass easily. He was business-like and completed the formalities.

Whereas, Ginepri/Agassi match turned out to be more exciting than I thought it would be. Ginepri had nothing to lose and he knew that Agassi would be the sentimental favorite even though it was an all-American semi. Unlike the match against Blake, Agassi turned it up a notch (and Ginepri lost the plot a bit) in the fifth set and completed a well-deserved win that put him in the finals.

I don’t remember following the US Open so much in the past few years. Maybe it was a little more exciting this year in general, and I am glad that I did watch some of those matches.

Again a slow weekend for posting on the blog, because there was so much going on (on TV and otherwise) that I hardly got to the computer.

Stuff that I followed (or tried to):

1. US Open Men’s Semis
2. US Open Women’s finals
3. Belgian Formula1 GP
4. College football - mainly Texas/Ohio State, Cal and LSU/ASU games
5. NFL - 49ers game and others around the league
6. Watch The Breakfast Club (first time ever)
7. Ashes cricket
8. Social stuff

More on each later…