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.

I thought this team is going to win the gold medal, but the way they lost to Italy, I am going to re-think.

For great election coverage, I highly recommend Comedy Central’s ‘Daily Show with Jon Stewart’. It is hilarious, and it does hit upon the relevant issues.

Strongly strongly recommend it.

Check it out - quite interesting: http://www.mattleinartblog.com

Check out the latest PwC Cricket Ratings. For ODI’s, Sachin is back at #1. Of course, Dravid holds on to #1 in tests.

The pride factor for Indians could be that we have someone at the top in both forms of the game.

The Trojans are 23-3 over the last two seasons, with two Pac-10 titles, a national title, two BCS bowl wins and a Heisman Trophy to their credit.

Beat that!