This story is on the cover of today’s edition of USA Today. Must be so good to be just somehow connected with the USC football program and be on the sidelines and in practice with these celebrities popping in and out.

And here is the link to the gallery of stars stopping by.

I should not have talked about the Pac 10. Oregon put up an average performance, especially that interception at the end of the game.

The Ducks had the game in the pocket. One more safe play and at least they could have tied it up and sent the game to overtime.

Dang it. I really wanted them to beat the Sooners. Oh well.

Bangalore police seem to have some leads. I say just go through a swift trial and punish them in such a way that in the future, terrorists will be afraid to even plan such a thing.

I feel like writing so many words that I would not normally speak or write, and no, it is not because they are hard to understand, they are just inappropriate in public domain.

Anyway, hope to see some quick findings and arrests.

Putting an end to all rumors about him going to the NFL and destroying Paul Domowitch’s theory. I am glad at that!

No idea how much and for how long. Some sites are claiming it is a five year extension, which is huge!

In any case, I hope this provides a good boost to the team and the coaching staff, knowing that the big boss is going to be around for a while and is there for them.

Back to practice, guys! :-)

Pac 10 has started well in this year’s bowl season. 2 for 2.

Tomorrow is an interesting game with Oregon matching up aginst Oklahoma. It will be a good game to watch, what with AP being healthy and all.

Then there is ucla/Northwestern which I think will also be a good game to watch.

And of course, USC, the Pac 10 Champion will play Texas in the Rose Bowl.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. Bangalore is becoming the envy of a lot of foreign countries and is the source of the huge ascent that India has embarked upon in the past few years.

Of course, it has not been confirmed as a terrorist act yet, but then again, what exactly qualifies as a terrorist act? I would state that this is a terrorist attack and it should be taken seriously.

Sigh. I don’t know how these stupid organizations can be stopped. They are so decentralized that plugging a hole in one place will create 2 more elsewhere and make it a never-ending process.

Don’t count the New England Patriots out … or I should say, don’t forget the Pats yet. They are not having a stellar year, but they have won the division and could potentially get #3 seed in the AFC. Which means they will play at home in the wild card round, and which means they have a good chance of winning the game!

Corey Dillon’s absence was a big factor in their slump through the middle of the season and I think the Pats are going to cause a few upsets in the AFC. I am not sure if they will go all the way to the Super Bowl, especially given the Colts' emotional issues, but they will cause a few upsets for sure.

Can’t wait for the playoffs to start.

Some interesting shows starting on TV starting January. I am going to look out for:

Emily’s Reasons Why Not
Four Kings
And I know this one is not new, but am looking forward to Scrubs
Courting Alex
Love Monkey

I disregarded the nonsense that LSU has suddenly started spewing about them not being mentioned along with USC as being the National Champions two years back and that USC should not be considered going for 3-peat but maybe 2.5-peat or some such thing.

But then I read this article by Dan Wetzel, which does not seem to be sarcastic or humorous in any way. And I thought I should write my thoughts about it.

All I can say is, yes, BCS determines the National Champion, but AP also hands out the Paul Bear Bryant Trophy at the end of the year. The AP National Champion may not hoist the sad-looking crystal football but they are crowned National Champions if they finish #1 at the end of the year in the AP poll.

And USC is trying to make history in being the only team to win back-to-back-to-back AP National Championships. What is wrong with all media promoting that?

No one has said that they are going for the BCS National Championship 3-peat. No one has said that they did not agree with the BCS system before the season started. No one is saying that the BCS is flawless. No one is arguing with the facts about LSU being the BCS National Champion that year. But LSU did not finsih #1 in the final AP poll that year. Which is why everyone talked about Split National Champions.

So LSU fans, stop whining and concentrate on your Bowl Game. Keep winning and next year you may get a shot at the title. For this year, appreciate what Texas and USC have done - stay unbeaten through the year. Sit back and enjoy the game.

Oh, and win yours before anything else.

When it was important for him to play and make a statement (see Wasim Jaffer), Saurav Ganguly mysteriously dropped out of his commitment to Bengal in the Ranji Trophy.

The case of Ganguly gets more and more politically flavored and is making a huge mockery of the system at this point. The players (administration) need to understand that they are doing many things wrong in playing with Ganguly as the pawn in their own wars. They are setting a wrong example for the future where someone with enough political clout can apparently get into the team. They are creating sacrifical lambs out of players like Kaif and others waiting in line for a long long time.

Every time they drop Ganguly they have to justify the dropping with some sad reason and every time they bring him back, the reason for bringing him back is even more crappy. At the same time, they have to make up an excuse for dropping someone like Kaif when they bring Ganguly back and drop Kaif.

And then, they are playing with Kaif’s career too. He is constantly knocking on the door and because he keeps getting pulled in and out of the team, the pressure on him to perform at any given point keeps increasing, and that is not a good position to be in as a player outside looking in.

I hope this is the last of the pushing and pulling we have seen with Ganguly and hope form truly is used for future series selection. There are important series coming up in 2006 and there is no room for politics in this apparent ‘new’ team India.

Watched Superman in bits and pieces over the weekend. I did not remember any part of the movie from the first time I had seen it. I have Superman II taped and will be watching it soon.

Hope to catch all of them in the near future.

Wanted to go for Munich but because of timing issue, ended up going to The Family Stone earlier this evening. I must say, this was a pathetic movie, especially given the star cast. Everyone was underused and I can say for sure that Sarah Jessica Parker cannot act. I was never impressed with her acting in Sex and the City, and this movie proved that and I am not going to go for any of her films in the future.

Luke Wilson was wasted, and so were Rachel McAdams and Diane Keaton. I never considered Claire Danes as a good actress so I will not comment on her part.

I have seen a lot of bad movies (especially Hindi flicks with Salman Khan et al), but this one I did not expect to be do bad. The plot was flaky and there was absolutely no rhythm as the movie progressed. I wonder if some of the stars signed up for this movie just as a favor to the producer or the director.

I would highly recommend to save your money and not go for this movie.

Now I am seriously wondering if I should go for Rumor Has It or not ;-)

The wife of course wants me to go to Memoirs of a Geisha. I don’t want to admit it, but it may actually be a good movie. Will see it next weekend perhaps.

No, I am not a Christian. But I will still call this weekend that went by, the ‘Christmas weekend’ as opposed to the ‘Holiday weekend’. Much has been made of the usage of the word ‘Christmas’ in this politically correct world.

But as far as I am concerned, I had a holiday today because yesterday was Christmas, and it happened to be on a Sunday. And because of that, I got the Monday off. So for me, it is a Christmas holiday.

Of course, like all good weekends, time flew by very quickly. And it was quite a satisfying weekend too.

Firstly, the wife’s best friend came over with her husband from Sacramento and we spent some quality time with them, chatting about their past and talking about reality. Of course, we ended up having a lot of Indian food because they are deprived of quality Indian food there in Sacramento.

Then, we had a friend’s housewarming-cum-Christmas party to go to. It was great fun because pretty much everyone we expected to be there, was there. We played White Elephant, had good food, some shots, some dancing and best of all, ended the evening with chocolate fondue! The night ended at about 2am and it was worth it!

Today the wife and I met up with a cousin and had a good lunch. Watched a pathetic movie after that (more on The Family Stone in a different post) and here I am, ready to go back to work tomorrow. Want to get done with the next week quickly so that I get my real vacation after that. From next Friday on, I go on a 10 day vacation!

Cerebral Proclivity has an interesting post about fine performances portrayed in movies. Go ahead and suggest your own.

Of course at this point it has Bollywood and Hollywood. Certainly got me thinking about performances in films over the past so many years.

Every time I see the LeBrons ad, I feel like throwing the remote at the screen. I am pretty sure I am not the only one who feels that way.

Just thought I’d rant.

I was off F-1 news for a bit and here is what I caught yesterday. Not sure how ‘old’ the news are, but certainly big for 2007.

So next season is going to play out ok. But the 2007 season is going to have only one tire company and with Alonso joining McLaren and Kimi replacing Schumacher at Ferrari and many more downstream shakeups, it will be quite a fascinating season then!

It has already started getting empty around the office. Some people have taken off early for the holidays and here we are, still trying to get our stuff done.

But that’s ok - with lesser people, more work gets done on the backend. Yes, we don’t get to meet with the clients much, but hey, you get to do the real work sometimes ;-)

Looking forward to a 4-day weekend coming up soon!

Thanks to FreshBlog, ecmanaut and Reza, I was able to somehow get Firefox 1.5 working so that I get continue tagging my posts and post them to del.icio.us.

The only annoyance I have now is the tab after “Filed In”. Will get rid of it later.

Update: The above is not the only annoyance. I am having to enter information every time I try to post. Could be my Firefox settings, could be something else. Will work on it later.

Leinart appeared in a spot for ESPN … fortunately, it was not a big deal and he has been reinstated :-)

Today is my birthday. No big deal, actually. What I wanted to mention is that some nationalities have a different way of wishing. My developers wished me as ‘Congratulations on your birthday’ which seemed strange since I had never heard it before (last few years, they have emailed me, but I never got a chance to hear them say it).

Otherwise, just a normal day with normal duties … am at work and coincidentally the client had a Holiday lunch at a Mongolian BBQ nearby. It was quite a good lunch, though no one except my boss knew that it was my birthday. I had told him yesterday that I am not a big birthday guy and don’t like to really celebrate it much, so he did not bring it up with the group.

Anyway, back to work and off to Starbucks to get the afternoon boost.

We watched the new Kong flick over the weekend. I think it was quite good, but given the hype, it fell short of my expectations. The start was a little slow but once they got on the boat, it got entertaining.

The movie went too long in the middle with those insects and stuff, but in general, a very well made movie. The special effects were great, I really believed the insects, the dinosaurs and of course Kong.

Naomi Watts has done well, and so has Jack Black. Adrian Brody was wasted. What was the deal with the scary tribal crap at the beginning???

The wife had her birthday on Sunday. We went out with a cousin to San Francisco on Saturday night. It was a very good evening. Saturday started with King Kong in the afternoon. It was quite a long movie (3hr+) so by the time we got out, we did not have much to relax before heading out to San Francisco for the evening.

First, we popped a Korbel champagne bottle at home, and then went to get pizza at Pizza Orgasmica. We got nice seats, to sit on the floor and no one else around us. So we decided to just hang out at the pizza place. They had a full bar of course.

My cousin and I had a few round of drinks and of course we had a traditional round of shots for the table. I was surprised how easily I was able to handle the drinks given that I have not been drinking much of late. Not only was it enjoyable in the night, but the next morning also ended up being normal.

After ringing in her birthday and much later after that, we decided to head home. By the time we slept it was about 3 in the morning.

My non-material gift to the wife was a day of going shopping with her. No complaints, no whining, no pressure to get out of the stores. No cribbing at all. And it was quite sad that she was not able to find ANY of the things she was looking for. I ended up buying some of the things on my list!! Quite ironic.

But hey, the point was not who buys what, the point was spending quality time together and that is what we did.

Good weekend after all!

Saw some of the Atlanta/Chicago game and frankly, I like Vick and so I could not bear (no pun intended) seeing that game. Chicago is really too good on defense and they could actually cause some damage in the playoffs.

As for Atlanta, they had only themselves to blame. Now they have gone quite deep into a hole and they may not be able to get out of it …

This week I had to fly out on Monday so the weekend flew by really really quick. Of course, add to that the fact that it was the wife’s birthday on Sunday, and we celebrated it Saturday night (late into the night) and you have a recipe for a quick end to the weekend.

But hey, a real 3-day weekend coming up soon! Also, since we will be done on Thursday this week, I will get Fri-Mon off!

Yay!

So there was no groping and no slapping involved at Marquee.

Wow, he is already topping the tabloids! Is he sure he wants to go to the NFL and not to Hollywood??

Perhaps that’s why ESPN has a show called ESPN Hollywood!