Saw parts of the first pre-season game yesterday between Denver and Washington. Can’t wait till it gets into full season.

Woo hoo! Happy days are here again! :-)

Well, well, well. After 5-6 more years of playing with team, Ganguly wants to be the coach of the Indian team.

Will he choose Zaheer as the physical trainer? ;-)

And Bhajji as the spinner’s coach.

And Nehra (or Srinath) as the bowling coach.

Sehwag as the batting coach.

More suggestions for his coaching staff?

If you are planning a vacation, I would strongly advise you to keep a day buffer after coming back from wherever you go. You need to recover from the vacation, or else, you will never be rested enough.

I realized that after 2 days of almost no sleep in Vegas. I was so tired at work yesterday. And on top of it, being a Monday, it was most hectic day of the week.

Maybe it’s me, but I really think vacations should be spent relaxing, doing nothing. Chilling.

So I treated my Vegas trip basically as a reunion of my MBA class. It was great to see them after a long time. Even though I reached at 1am on Friday night/Saturday morning, the guys were out, and I ended up playing some roulette and some slots and being down already.

Never gamble when you are tired. Never gamble when you lose beyond a certain amount. Obviously I am not going to write how much I lost on that one day - just believe me when I say it was not that much. ;-)

Went up to the room at around 3am, watched a little bit of SportsCenter when one of my roommates came up. We talked for a bit and went to sleep.

The next morning, I woke up at 7am! Yea, after sleeping at 4am, I was able to actually wake up at 7am. Actually, I was woken up by one of my other roommates, who lives on the East Coast and he wanted everyone to think it was 10am. In any case, I showered and was ready for coffee by about 10.30 am.

Went for buffet brunch at Alladin. I think they have the best spread in town. Awesome food, but just so much choice that you get tired eating in no time. I still stuffed myself beyond limit. Could not walk at the end of it all.

Somehow, we made our way out. Some of the gang was going to watch the Cirque Du Soleil show ‘O’ at the Bellagio. So they went to pick up the tickets, while some of us stayed back at Alladin, trying to play some roulette or blackjack. Made up some of the money in roulette. Still down on the trip’s gambling.

Then after a couple of hours of gambling, we went back to the room for a quick power nap. After all, Saturday night was the big dinner planned, and most likely there was going to some some sort of post-dinner activity. So we took a quick nap and started getting ready. We were meeting at the lobby at 5.45pm. We were going to eat at Roy’s, which is Hawaiian Fusion cuisine. I did not know what to expect - never had Hawaiian cuisine. As we walked in, I knew this was going to be a high price place.

There was nothing on the menu that was clearly vegetarian. My friend and I were the only ones vegetarian. Everything was focussed on sea food, and everyone on the table was salivating. The only thing we could get was vegetarian sushi. So we both got that. The dessert was rocking - Chocolate Souffle. Still remember the taste ;-)

After that, everyone went to ‘O’ and I stayed back at the Bellagio casino. Wandered for a bit, and found no place to sit in the lobby or anywhere else. Found some slot machines where I could sit, but I did not want to play. Finally, after getting bored for 30 minutes, I went to a roulette table. In 30 minutes I was down even more. I felt low because there was no real need for me to play at that time. And I lost all of it there.

Then I went across to another roulette table. It was not crowded, and there was this lady who was on a hot streak. She had made so much money, she was putting $50 on 10 numbers at once. And winning! The payouts for numbers are 35-1. So if she hit a number with $100, she made $3500 in one shot! What I decided to do was to follow her good luck. I kept playing on the columns in which she had the most bets. I kept winning too! OF course, my payouts were 3-1 and my bets were small, but hey, I made up ALL of my losses for the entire trip! In a cool 30 minutes. As soon as I hit my breakeven point, I cashed out and left.

It felt good to break even. I started walking aimlessly again. Still could not find a place to sit. One thing that amazes me about Vegas is no matter what time of the day it is outside, it is always 7pm inside. There was no place to walk in the casino because there were so many people. That lucky lady was still winning after I came back from my walk. The table had changed the minimum bets to $25, so I could not play anymore. But the crowd at the table had increased, probably to witness her luck playing out over and over again.

At around mid night, those guys came out of the show. We met up and they wanted to go for some post-dinner activities. Some of us opted out and went to Paris to sit and enjoy a coffee. We sat and caught up on some of our current lives. It was fun.

Finally, went back to the hotel Luxor at around 2.30 or so. We were 4 of us. They were playing some blackjack while I stuck to my lucky roulette. I made some more money. I was ahead. I was AHEAD! I made money in Vegas! Yay! I cashed out, still ahead.

But then, the Vegas luck caught up with me. I was tempted to play some blackjack since those guys were playing. I played and was up. Again. But only for a while. I lost some and some more and ended up walking up with some of the initial stuff still remaining. Cut short my losses and decided to hit the sack. After all, I had a plane to catch at 10am next morning.

So once again, slept at 4 and woke up at 7. Took the taxi to the airport with of the roommates and spent some time chatting with him at the airport and came back home. Not ahead of Vegas, but not a complete loser.

I loved this little vacation.

I wanted to simply write ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ and close out the entire Vegas story. But it would raise unnecessary questions about what exactly happened.

So even though what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, I will write a little more about my thoughts on the trip.

It’s been a while since I posted - over the wekeend, I went to Vegas, baby. And then it took me half of Sunday and all of yesterday to recover from the serious lack of sleep.

Watch out - bombardment of posts coming! :-)

Last night Kathleen Madigan was voted off Last Comic Standing. And Heffron made it!

That was really a shocker. The others were, I think, expected. Gary Gulman made it. More for looks than for his comedy, perhaps.

Alonzo Bodden made it. He is good. I think he may go all the way.

Jay London lost - he has great puns, but he is not really a great stand-up guy. He can be a great writer, if he wishes to.

Pascatelli lost, thankfully. She was quite annoying and I think she made it mostly for her looks.

The grand finale is next Tuesday - I will watch it if I can.

I tried the feature for the first time and I like it. I printed the boarding pass here at work! Coolness :-)

Gary Payton and Rick Fox were traded to the Celtics today. So pretty much the entire team that played last season is now gone.

Wonder what’s going to happen to them now.

But I wonder - are they making place for Peja?

Fingers crosssssssed.

Yup, tonight I fly to Vegas. It’s been a while. I will be staying at Luxor, with some friends from USC. Will be fun meeting up with them. Looking forward to it.

Not looking forward to missing my wife for the weekend - the good thing is that I come back pretty early on Sunday.

We went to a Warriors game last season. I had put my phone number down, apparently.

I got a recorded message from ‘my Derek Fisher’ asking me to ‘come and have a good time out’. Looks like the Warriors want to generate some early interest in their season.

How about Peja, Divac, Kobe on the same team?

I have not seen any such rumors, and I don’t even know if it is realistic, but one thing is for sure - the Lakers have a smoother road in their division now.

And the local Golden State Warriors may have a reason to be quite optimistic about the playoffs!

I know it will make it more like a discussion forum and less like a ‘true’ blog, but it will be cool to get an email when someone posts a comment on a post that you have commented on. No?

Say I visit someone else’s blog. I see a nice article that I would like to comment on. I put my comment, but then I even forget that I had posted a comment. If someone else responds to it, or just casually posts another comment, it would be cool to see what they have to say.

Of course, this applies only to NON-ANONYMOUS commenters ;-)

Check out The O.C. blog post at http://ocfan.blogspot.com/2004/08/oc-promo.html.

Click here for the promo itself.

Can’t wait! But Joey is also on Thursdays at 8. So it is going to be a tough call, to watch one and record the other.

Looks like that’s what the Williams team is going to look like. I will pass no comments yet. I am not too optimistic about Webber. Button has potential.

But the thing is who will represent BAR? I am not sure they will be the same next year. Button was carrying the team. No more.

Can’t wait till it becomes reality - The Wall on Broadway. Yay!

Thanks to ppov, I have another good link to direct you guys to: The Economic Times!

“The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country.”
- George W. Bush

“If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.”
- George W. Bush

“One word sums up probably the responsibility of any Governor, and that one word is ‘to be prepared’.”
- George W. Bush

“I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.”
- George W. Bush

“The future will be better tomorrow.”
- George W. Bush

“We’re going to have the best educated American people in the world.”
- George W. Bush

“I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.”
- George W. Bush

“We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.”
- George W. Bush

“Public speaking is very easy.”
- George W. Bush

“A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.”
- George W. Bush

“We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.”
- George W. Bush

“For NASA, space is still a high priority.”
- George W. Bush

“Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.”
- George W. Bush

“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”
- George W. Bush

“It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.”
- George W. Bush

I like the new team announced, though I am not sure why they picked Rohan only for the Holland games and the pre-ICC trophy games only. But anyway, at least he has a chance to play with the team.

Resting Zaheer was definitely a great idea, because there’s an uphill climb coming up with home test series vs RSA and Aus.

Dropping Patel and bringing in Dinesh Karthik is a good idea only if they are serious about making Dravid a true batsman and not wk/bat.

Let’s see what happens. I am not complaining about this team ;-)

Just read in Newsweek about Spiderman India. Then searched google and found this site. Pretty awesome, eh? Good twist of names :-)


Where’s the Prabhakar?

Just wondering - what can probably tire you more? One hour of basketball in the outdoors, or 40-45 minutes of squash in the indoors?

I don’t know about the former, but 45 minutes of intense squash is truly intense. Anyone with basketball experience?

So I grabbed a Snickers again.

I tried to stay away from caeffine. I survived 4 days, I think. And 6 if you can excuse one small glass of Coke.

But since yesterday I am back to my sorta normal intake - 4 double espresso’s a day.

Of course, this morning I had a sugar-free Red Bull.

I just found out what a consumer has to go through in today’s so-called competitive market.

I am a dish network subscriber. In my area, SBC, the phone company also provides dish network services, through SBC dish. It was a tie up announced a while ago, whereby SBC resells dish network services. I really thought it was a good idea for SBC to do it because then they may offer me some discounts if I sign up with them for other services.

Today, I called dish network to find out if I can get a dual-tuner DVR. Basically, it would enable me to see one program and record another at the same time. Or record two programs at the same time. I currently have a single-tuner DVR, which allows me to record only the live program that I see, and thus, I cannot change channels while a program is being recorded. I need this facility because the upcoming fall TV schedule may have some nights where I want to see two programs at the same time - for example, The O.C. and Joey are on Thursday nights at 8pm on Fox and NBC respectively.

So dish network told me they don’t have any dual tuner receiver they can lease to me. They don’t provide the 522 for existing customers, period. The 721 is available only through retailers and the last I checked, it was $550 or some such ridiculous amount.

So I thought, heck, let me just ditch dish (I am out of my yearly commitment with them) and go to SBC dish. And I called SBC dish. They do offer the 522 on a lease basis for $5/month. That is ok. But the shocker was that I have to disconnect dish for 180 days before they can sign me up. One hundred and eighty days? Six months? Are you kidding me? Are they crazy there? So they want me to try out the competition for 6 months and then go to SBC dish? Why? Because SBC dish has atrociously low prices? Because they have more features than anyone else in the market? Because they are the only ones in the market?

No. No. No. None of the above. Their prices are the same as dish network’s and are competitively pitted against Comcast, the cable provider and DirecTV the satellite competitor. They have no other ‘new’ features besides the damn dual-tuner DVR on lease. They are definitely not the only ones in the market.

Then why do they want such a stupid condition to be satisfied? What is the rationale?

One this is for sure - there was no competition created by SBC starting to resell dish network services. Absolutely not. In fact, I think it is a bad policy for dish to not have something that SBC provides. What is Echostar (parent of dish network) thinking?

The only reason I would stay with dish network is their exclusive rights to the Indian channels, and of course, cricket programming. We need competition. This is one monopoly that no one has bothered to look at. I know, the rates for carrying those channels and the potential audience that sees them may not be justified for DirecTV and such, but I think if it is an exclusive arrangement, someone needs to wake up and do their job and stop this nonsense.

Don’t matter how many times you’ve seen an episode, it still makes you laugh. The characters have been marvellously created.

Can’t wait for the DVD.