31-28 at the end. What a game. Fortunate to get the ‘W’. Now, hopefully, after more learning, we will be ready for Cal. Luckily it is at home, so a slight edge. But the way USC has played all this season, it seems they wake up late. I hope they continue to learn and improve. Beat Cal!
I did see some improvements in the receivers. They were able to hold on to some tough balls. Especially Steve Smith.
The defense let a few fumbles get away, and that run at the end of the first half was a terrible missed tackle. Also, there were a lot of situations where a sack was coming and it did not materialize, in the first half.
They missed a tackle which allowed a TD with 00:00 remaining in the half! Stanford leads 28/17 at the half. It will need a great effort by USC to win this one.
They won the ICC Champions Trophy and I am really really happy for them. Since their dream team collapsed they’ve never really come back and become a world force, but hopefully this win will give them some confidence. I am also happy because they beat England in England :-)
Wow. Feels good to be back. Meet my wife. Thinking about it, we have spent more time away from each other, but for some reason this seemed longer. Maybe it was because we know that it is going to be for a long time.
Was planning to go to Tahoe for the weekend, but decided against it after realizing that it would be too hectic. Going to relax at home this weekend.
Another college football Saturday. A lot of the top 10 teams are on a bye week, but USC is playing Stanford. They have made a lot of mistakes, but more imporantly, the famed defense is being shredded by Stanford.
It is 14/10 against USC and I am afrid if this continues, it does not look good and it smells of an upset.
It was a nice evening, not too hot, not too cold. We went and saw one of the boats in the Maritime Museum (Star of India). Had dinner at TGI Friday’s.
Came back late, and went to sleep. Realized that we live quite some distance from downtown, like 20-25 minutes. But that’s alright. We don’t need to go there all the time.
Now, it is Thursday afternoon and only one more day left to get back home! :-)
Do you know what A9 is? It is a search engine project funded by Amazon.com. They just released a product which lets users save their searches and refer to them at any time. Basically, you search with you username/password entered in the toolbar or on the site, and then everything you do is recorded.
Privacy issues, anyone?
Remember when google said gmail is going to have text ads in the emails? Pretty much everyone and their families were complaining that it is privacy infringement and all that crap. No one realized that as soon as you sign up for free email, you are submitting yourselves to the email provider. Forget free, even paid email services have to archive all emails, just for backup and regulatory purposes. So there is nothing like truly private email. Yes, you can encrypt it so it may not be readable and all that, but the bottomline is that gmail is no different than yahoo emails, or hotmail and such.
And now that A9 is out and amazon.com has announced a 1.57% discount if someone searches through A9, I am not seeing a single person talking about privacy and all that.
Ponting loves the Indian bowlers and especially the slow bowlers, so it will be good to have him out. Of course, the last time around in India, he was made Bhajji’s puppy, but you know what, things have changed.
It’s been ok. I have been learning a lot. I like it here, in terms of the people and the project. But there is a whole new ‘getting used to’ to do. So it will be interesting.
Spent the evening alone yesterday, because the other person from my company had to go for dinner with a friend. We share a car, so I just stayed in the hotel. Had dinner at the restaurant there, and watched some TV. Slept while watching the TV.
And those who like arguing, please go to this guy’s blog, and make a good case for why we should not be killing chicken. His point is, we are a superior race than them, so we should be able to kill them when we want, how we want. That’s crap, if you ask me.
Got here late morning and checked-in before coming to the office. The hotel seems ok, haven’t checked the room, but I was told they are all nice.
Free breakfast (real one, not just croissants and OJ) is included, and so is one cocktail every evening. Though the latter, I am not going to be able to use. Not for now, at least :-)
We have cubes assigned, but we just hijacked a conference room and made it the project room. Feels good - spacious, and private. Met a few people I am going to be working with. Got some stuff installed that I will be working with. Got some manuals to read through. Exciting! :-P
Not sure what we’ll be doing in the evenings. Most people leave the office by 6pm. We are planning to be here only 4 days a week, so most likely, we will start early everyday. Let’s see how it goes.
After much discussion, we decided to watch the darn game between India and Pakistan. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have just taken the easy way out and slept through the night.
No. Not that easy. Kept alarm for 1am and went to the house where we planned to see the match, at 1.45am. And the damn rains in England made the start delayed by 15 minutes.
India went in with Rohan Gavaskar as the 7th batsman and Dravid keeping. Pakistan won the toss and fielded.
In no time, because of rank bad shots, India was 28-3! Ganguly was the one to be blamed the most, because of the pathetic shot he played. Crap. Absolutley crap. He should be disciplined, unless he gives an explanation. Sehwag needs to be dropped just because he’s been given too many chances. Laxman would also be dropped, but he was on the only one to middle the ball, but that is the case with him all the time. He never looks shady, but he gets out to a poor shot all the time. And quite early in his innings. That is unacceptable. He needs Sandy the psychologist quickly!
Kaif and Dravid set up a small partnership, but then Kaif left. And in three balls, the woefully out-of-form Yuvi left too. For a duck. Another person to be dropped - never mind the sensational catch he took at point later on.
Then Dravid and Rohan had another decent partnership before Rohan left. Three dismissals fishing outside the off stump (Kaif, Yuvi and Rohan). And Agarkar came to the crease.
And what a revelation! Agarkar smashed the ball around and had a good time and ultimately, made 200 possible. Just.
So Pakistan had a seemimgly easy task of making 201 to win. But nothing is simple in India/Pakistan games and this game was no different. Pathan struck twice in two overs and Pakistan was reeling. At the end of his spell, Pathan had 3 wickets for 11 runs in 7 overs. And India was right back in it.
The problem? The other end. There was just not enough backing up for Pathan and the most experienced pair of Inzamam and Youhana settled down and started collecting the runs in a professional manner. It feels funny to say that for Pakistan, but it was true. No undue risks, and keeping the run rate up with singles and twos.
And then, despite a mini-collapse, Pakistan, with Youhana leading the way, was never in doubt of the victory and got it.
So India is out and will be back home now. Time to start thinking about what went wrong and seriously trying to correct it. Also, we need to quickly get into the test match frame of mind, because Australia is going to give everything they have to win the series coming up.
I am going to go back to the ‘India is not consistent’ mentality that I had a year or so ago. We need Sachin Tendulkar back at 100% and some guys to return to form. Ganguly needs to be a little more scientific and a little less intuition-based. And of course, we need to perform 100% as a team.
Only then we can hope to make it 2-2 vs Australia.
I was glad to see that USC beat BYU, soundly on paper, at least. But looking at Leinart, it seems he was too tentative, almost as if he has a point to prove. What could it be? That he is a great QB? I think people acknowledge that. The media is crazy. They put so much pressure that for kids like him it becomes too tough to keep up the hype.
Anyway, the receivers are still a question mark. Once again, Reggie Bush was almost the one-man army for USC. Dwayne Jarrett is the biggest disappointment even though the ESPN guys seemed to think that it was a good game for him. I think he drops more than he catches. Of course, it could be nerves, but then, don’t start comparing him to Mike Williams yet. He was terrible, according to me. He is not dependable, as of yet.
The good thing at the end was Hershel Dennis was rock solid. He was running through the BYU defense like a hot knife through butter. Awesome to see that. I think he’ll be ready for Stanford next week.
The only thing that was good, and dependable, was the defense. Awesome plays, and the turnaround came through a great play on defense towards the end of the first half. Ultimately, it ended up being 2 TDs for USC, making the gap comfortable, but otherwise, I would say that defending the National Championship is going to be tough.
Good thing that LSU lost, but Georgia and Ohio State are probably the next teams to be hyped up as competition, besides the obvious Oklahoma.
On to conference play - Stanford, here we come :-)
Its huge. Especially since he has at least a couple of years left in him, provided the motivation is there. It is probably one of the main reasons why Giants fans go to the games.
Congratulations, Barry. Now take us to the playoffs :-)
Means: Please forgive me for whatever I may have said to you or thought about you, knowingly or unknowingly, which may have caused you hurt or harm.
From jcnc.org:
“Question-19: What is the significance of Paryushana?
Answer-19: Paryushana means to stay closer, to stay closer to the self - to our soul (Ätmä). Paryushana parva consists of eight (Shwetambar tradition) to ten days (Digambar tradition) . During that period, Jains practice various restraints like not eating (fasting) or eating only one meal a day and spend more time spiritually (like listening to Jain gurus, reading religious books, etc.). The last day of thie period is called Samvatsari (annual ceremony of atonement), when people undertake atonement of wrong activities during the previous 12 months. They admit their sins and pray for forgiveness (ksama). Admission of sins and praying for forgiveness are directed towards the spiritual teachers, family members, friends and others regardless of age or sex. Letters are written to the people they know and who were not approachable in person on the Samvatsari day acknowledging the wrong doings and seeking the forgiveness. The aspirant on his part gives forgiveness to all living beings and asks for the same favor from others. This is usually done through the Samvatsari Pratikraman (Pratikraman means to return from sins or faults) and raises the real spirit of universal friendship and goodwill: (Khämemi savvajive savve Jiva khamantu me ! Mitti me savvabhuesu veram majjha na kenai (It means - I forgive to all living beings; may all of them forgive me.I have a friendship with all living beings and hostility towards none). The pratyäkhyäna (renunciation of certain things) aspect is very elaborate during the Paryushana parva. The Samvatsari Pratikraman is considered a highly important practice during the Paryushana parva which is the most important Jain festival.”
Don’t know what lies in front of me. At least I know I won’t be here. I’ll never know if this was a good move or not. On paper it seems like it, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Jaguar has decided not to continue its participation in formula 1.
This is what happens when there is no regulation of budgets. It is a negative spiral down, unless you are lucky and you get a driver cheap, who happens to be a master and brings you up in the rankings.
That happended for Ferrari when Schuey decided to leave a strong team and join an average team for the challenge it posed to him as a driver. But like the Prost team a few years back, Jaguar did not find the magic, and has to give up.
I still think there should be a budget cap, or something similar so that there are more teams that participate. With a budget cap, there ia a good chance we’ll see good drivers driving so-so cars and that will really make the whole season interesting.
Otherwise, we’ll be left with 5-6 teams which can survive and the rest will self-destruct till their parent companies decide to pull out.
