The boys are back! The season premiere was so-so, but it is good to see that the show is back and it is going to be an exciting season.

Ari is fantastic. That character has become quite famous, and Jeremy Piven is now known by name. Wasn’t he Harv in Cars?

I can’t believe this guy’s luck. Just when Jaffer scored a double to cement his place and questions started popping up about Sehwag’s role in the test team, he comes up with a brilliant (scoreboard-wise) century. His style of play (180 off 190?) made it possible for India to be at 360 at the end of day 1. And then, to continue the good luck, he comes and takes 3 wickets. Can Uthappa do that? :-)

Today’s play was rained out, but if there is one whole day’s play, it is still enough for India to get the remaining 9 wickets to score a thumping victory against a young West Indies team.

Let’s see how tomorrow shapes up.

I am not a big fan of Alonso, so what I am about to say may not make too much sense. I have started to get bored of the domination from Renault/Alonso this year. He is unstoppable. He has finished either 1 or 2 in all the races this year, isn’t it? The gap just keeps widening and it is a truly clinical performance from the driver and the team.

Meanwhile, Kimi finally had a decent result, but nothing compared to the pre-season expectations. Schumy came as close as he could to Alonso, and it is quite ironic that Alonso is doing to him what he did to several others in his past years as champion.

Can you believe Alonso is going to give all this up and go to McLaren?? I can see Ron Dennis drooling at every easy victory Alonso gets. I just don’t know who is going to make way for Fernando.

Kimi better tell us quickly where he is going to be next year, because I have written this one off …

After a bunch of errors by Nadal gave Federer the first set 6-1, things went completely against the run of play. Federer started making mistakes on some of his money shots and Nadal took great advantage of it and closed out the match without letting some flashes of brilliance from Federer come in the way of a second successive Championship.

There were two distinct moments of nervousness shown by Nadal … after all he is only 20 years old! The first set, with the anticipation and excitement of playing the #1 player with so much at stake. The second moment was when he had to close out the match and let it go to a tie break.

But other than those two moments, it was all Nadal.

I say Federer lost expectedly because I do feel that there is a mental block, and Nadal is just too good on clay. I say surprisingly because of the way he lost some key points in the second set. Pathetic.

Anyway, now on to Federer’s playground, Wimbledon. Can’t wait.

Just like many great players, Roger Federer has a switch which he can turn on to go that extra inch to get back in a game or to turn it up when needed.

I watched a little bit of his semifinal match against Nalbandian and realized that he was listless, almost disinterested in the first set which he lost and then went down 0-3 in the second. Then, all of a sudden, he flipped that switch and started making unbelievable shots, much to David’s dismay.

He convincingly won the second set and from the scores I see that he won the match when Nalbandian had to default because of some injury.

But it was amazing to see how quickly Federer went from a pathetic display of tennis to a champion’s display. Now that Nadal has crushed his Ljubicic and reached the finals, it will be damn interesting to see how the finals play out.

The football World Cup started today. I tried watching the Germany-Costa Rica match a little bit. Was bored to death.

Here’s what I saw:

Passing, passing, passing, out of bounds.
Passing, passing, passing, someone falls down, ball is kicked long and far away, and then again, passing, passing, passing, out of bounds.

What is it in this game that makes it so exciting and so widely watched? I just never got it.

I do not have World Cup fever.

Instead I will be focussing on the F1 British GP this weekend, the French Open men’s finals, the NBA Finals (anything is better!), maybe even some cricket :-)

I love bananas. People who know me, know it. But the problem is, it leaves a very bad breath afterwards and it is almost always necessary to go brush after eating bananas.

Which sucks, because that puts a speed bump in my plans.

Google has released an extension which potentially (have not tried it yet on multiple computers) lets me keep my bookmarks, saved password, cookies, session, etc. in sync.

It comes very close to realizing my wish for a web-based browser.

First of all, what is missing is “synchronizing” installed extensions, so if I am used to seeing Forecast Fox in the bottom right, I would be seeing it on any computer where I have Google Browser sync extension.

And secondly, of course, this technique makes it difficult to use public computers safely. What I was implying is we could all go to a particular website or a remote session, and access the same browser with same everything.

And to a minor extent, it only works with Firefox, but I am not complaining since I use the browser anyway.

Oh well, for now, I will take this :-)

After making a good recovery in the second innings, India had West Indies on the ropes (at least from the scorecard), and could not close the deal. The last wicket survived 19 balls and drew the first test.

I would say that at the end of the match, all honors were even and of course the momentum swung India’s way and the team will be happy going into the second test.

What is worrying me is the lack of productivity from Sehwag, and please don’t point me to the 4 wickets he has taken in this test!

And what was that with Lara and Dhoni? Who should trust whom? Lara wanted Dhoni to walk and Dhoni did not want to leave because he was not sure if the fielder touched the rope. But what the heck were the third umpires doing?? Why would they refer the decision back to the field umpires????? Once the field umpires ask the third umpire, they are already admitting that they have no clue about the fielder’s position. What is the basis for the third umpire to refer it back? Un-effing-believable.

Yes, had a brief moment of blog fatigue. It is unusual, when I work from home, I hardly ever find time to blog. But now I am in the office and found some time to post this entry!

Signed up for Google Spreadsheet this morning and already started sharing a couple of spreadsheets with the wife. I think it works quite alright as a ‘list’ program. I have not tried to push it to the limit. We are in the process of creating a few lists and we even did a ‘chat while you edit’ thingy earlier this afternoon and it worked quite well.

Have started listening to only Pink Floyd albums (they have pretty much the entire shabang) on Yahoo Music Unlimited and I thought I might as well use the subscription! :-) Wonderful - focussed on Delicate Sound of Thunder today. Will switch to Piper At The Gates of Dawn tomorrow.

Productivity therefore is at a high! :-)

Yay, the Detroit Pistons lost! And more yay - the Miami Heat won!

What a performance by Dwayne Wade. Being hospitalized the night before the most important game of his life so far, and playing with the after effects of a flu, and making those jumpers in the 2rd quarter to decidedly pull away from the Pistons is simply phenomenal.

I mean yes, Shaq had a wonderful game and so did Jason Williams and practically everyone in the Heat, but Wade’s performance was unbelievable.

Now he and the rest of the Heat can rest for a few days and gear up to face a tough opponent, but I doubt if either of Phoenix or Dallas will be as tough as Detroit was.

Let’s see how the Finals unfold …

I have noticed that Hubie Brown talks from Detroit’s perspective. Anything Miami makes an easy shot, he goes ‘That should not be allowed to happen … the defense needs to go here and do that’. Every time Detroit hits a good shot he goes ‘That is what they need to do’.

Come on now. Are you a Detroit radio station caller or ESPN’s NBA Eastern Conference Finals analyst? Drop the bias and be objective, Hubie. You are the reason I am tempted to mute the television while watching the game.

Sucks. Just like Joe Buck in baseball and football.

Happened to catch a little bit of the Spelling Bee competition on ESPN this afternoon and what I noticed was it is such an unfair game … one guy got Siphonapterlogy and later on, someone got Zebu.

Zebu??? Siphonapterology??? Come on. This game is not fair :-)

I am so glad that Last Comic Standing is back! I missed it and was sad that NBC gave it the cold shoulder the last time around. I think it had something to do with the controversy surrouding the celebirty judges and their say (or lack thereof) in the finalists.

Jay Mohr is apparently not going to be the host, which is sad because I liked him as a host. Oh well. Yes Dear’s Anthony Clark is going to be hosting it.

Can’t tell much in the initial rounds - too many people. But the good thing is that the jokes are quite funny in general. I have seen Gabriel Iglesias' show on Comedy Central and he is very good, but other than that, I have no particular favorites yet.

But looking forward to seeing the entire season!

Really, who believed that Miami would win game 5?

Certainly not me. So it was no surprise that the series goes back to Miami for Game 6.

It was such a boring race, except for the beginning where I found out that Michael Schumacher was in fact pushed all the way back to the last spot on the grid.

Kimi’s engine blowing up was basically the nail in the coffin and the fact that he was seen in the yacht minutes after his disqualification implied that he cared so little about it. So looks like he’s going to definitely go out and maybe Alonso and JPM will stay at McLaren next year?

Wow. What a long weekend. I don’t know what was the last time I watched so many movies in such a short time.

Friday night we watched Over The Hedge, which was quite alright. I guess I was tired and we went for a relatively late night show. Plus of course, it was not that funny.

Saturday night was The Da Vinci Code. I thought it was a superb movie, but the disclaimer here is that I did not read the book. The wife has read the book (maybe more than once!) and she said that the book is much better. What a surprise. If directors had a chance of making the entire book into a film, they would of course do it, but then it would be a 10-hour movie!! So I liked it because it saves me from reading the book, which I started at some point, but could not really get started with it. Anyway, I give it my two thumbs up.

Sunday in the daytime, we were relaxing and decided to watch The Jerk with Steve Martin, which we had recorded on our DVR. It was quite alright.

After that, we went to visit a cousin and watched 36 China Town with them and a few other friends. It was strictly ok. I think the movie was a little overrated because of the starcast and of course because it is from the Mukta Arts stable. It is avoidable, just like movie #1 in this list.

Then, this afternoon, we went for Fanaa and that is actually not such a bad movie. I would think it could have avoided pretty much all the songs, but other than that, quite a decent flick, but nothing extraordinary. Maybe not a must watch, but money not completely wasted.

Phew, and it is now Monday evening and time to start thinking of the bloody week ahead. At least I am local this week :-)

After that 17-match streak of successful chases ended, India lost another seemingly simple chase in the final one day match.

I would say India has reached a bit of a low (at least in the string of very recent series) and I hope it is a good wake up call for the team. Just like I think it was good (somewhat) for the USC Trojans to lose the Rose Bowl, I think the Indians needed to realize what it means to lose a match chasing, to lose a series and try to think of what to do in the future.

On to the test series. Much as I wanted SRT to play, I think it was a good decision to push the comeback by a series and ensure there is no relapse. Let’s hope the Indians buck up in the tests where they have been struggling somewhat recently.

Michael Schumacher stopping at the second-last corner was just enough for him to secure the pole position - even with that, Alonso ended up only 6/100ths behind!

The question is, did he do it purposely? Apparently, his action will be investigated. Let’s see what happens ….

Once again the batsmen failed. How long will we continue with Sehwag?? Just because he had a nice 90-odd and that being his only solid innings in a long time, we continue with him because he can explode at any time? I don’t think so.

And what is this with Dravid opening all the time? First it was him ‘keeping all the time because that was the “need within the team”. Now that he is the captain, he should realize someone else should be opening. But on the other hand, maybe it is not that weird - after all, Sehwag, Tendulkar and Ganguly are all non-openers! Maybe Dravid will fit the role.

Pathan is not having a good series at all. He is off his best by a lot and he better wake up and get used to the conditions because with Agarkar gone for the test series, he will be the senior bowler.

I guess a good thing to see was that Kaif may have hit some sort of form finally. About freaking time!

I guess they were really serious about this Click It Or Ticket enforcement campaign. The other day, I was going calmly along El Camino Real in Sunnyvale and I stopped behind an old lady in a big car when I see a cop on a motorbike come next to me, slow down and check me out through the tinted window!

At the time I thought it was really strange and creepy, but I saw him check out the old lady in front of me too, and then at some point I heard on the radio about this new campaign and realized it was not me or the lady, it was the campaign! :-)

Yes, Starbucks loves me. Why else would they come up with a drink which combines three things that I love the most - banana, coconut and coffee!

And top it off, since it is hot outside, it comes as a frappuccino, so it makes things just perfect.

Thank you, Starbucks.

I did not know that 1/4 cup of walnuts could provide me 5g of protein. Wonderful. That’s my new snack at the table! :-)

The Indian test team for the West Indies tour was announced yesterday and as usual I feel that the explanation provided was quite funny.

More here talks about Agarkar’s exclusion:

More defended Agarkar’s exclusion, based on his poor record in Tests but praised his performance in the three ODIs so far. " We saw the statistics and Agarkar has not been performing as a Test player", he said. “We also saw the situation on a green top in Karachi where three other fast bowlers were looked in before him. He is bowling well now [in ODIs] and we are happy for him."

On VRV Singh making his first Test tour, More said, “He has done very well in domestic cricket. He always had potential. He did well in the Abu Dhabi tournament but not in the final. We just can’t count out any player [based on one bad performance]. Somebody gets three ducks we can’t say he is a bad player. We always have to back them up as they have potential."

India has lost another one day international. It seems like they have become a little complacent, what with West Indies being so bad for such a long time. But I hope these losses work like the New Zealand trip worked for the team before the last World Cup - serve as motivation to do better.

I will save the nonsense analysis of the match because it was quite a pathetic performance, first with the bat and then with the ball.

Awaiting the series win.