White Chocolate

No, not the food. Although I have some on my table at home right now, Cadbury, and man, that stuff is pretty good. So stop by if you want some.

I'm talking about Jason Williams, the once-flashy point guard whose passes and plays are ridiculous.

Jason Williams came into the league out of Florida University, was drafted by the Sacramento Kings, and instantly started crossing people over left and right, throwing three-quarter court alley-oops, three-quarter court bounce passes, the works.

He was fun to watch, and passing wise, fundamentally sound. He knew where everyone was on the court, and always found people perfectly in stride. He threw his passes exactly where the person would be with the correct speed, correct height, everything. Man, it was just pretty.

When he'd train in the offseason, before he's even take one shot, he would spend three hours just dribbling, throwing passes, and working on wrist strength. Three hours of handling practice to make sure that any pass, flashy or normal, got to the person at the perfect height, perfect time, right where they'd want it.

Two of his passes stand out to me in particular, one of which is in the clip, and one of which isn't. The one in the clip is the 3/4 court bounce pass, mainly because of its sheer difficulty, and his ability to do it in stride. The second one is just a simple bounce pass to a man coming around a screen. The pass is made before the guy even comes around, and it is made at a slow enough speed to allow him to come around, but quick enough for it not to be stolen. Right when the man comes off the screen, the ball is in his hands. This allows for the player to know that as soon as he passes the man, he can just set his feet because by the time he is set, the ball will be in his hands, just where he likes it.

The precision to make that happen is ridiculous, and his skill actually inspired me to become a better passer when I was younger. I still try to focus more on passing, getting the ball to the man at the right place, right time, above scoring.

He was never the best player on his team, never a great player, but his passing will be missed, maybe not by too many people, but definitely by me.

A Need for Originality

If I somehow ever decide to switch out of mechanical engineering and decide to become a 2nd or 3rd grade teacher, my school year will consist of lessons centered around kids learning to think for themselves and form their opinions.

Since there is a better chance I come to the conclusion that I can walk on the Cal basketball team, I will just have to post about it.

Sports, and public perception in general, has gone too much towards numbers and statistics, something that not only is annoying because there are many factors that are not taken into play, but is something that holds us back as a people (sounds weird, but I think that's the correct grammatical use . . .)

Many articles I have read by so-called experts on Yahoo and ESPN have told me nothing of real substance; they rehash information, pull up statistics as if they are everything (read: John Hollinger), and come to conclusions without looking at other factors such as personal situations, motivation, momentum, things that can truly sway teams.

Because of this, I feel that this generation, and in turn, the younger generation, no longer understands sports.

I am not going to go around and act like I understand sports, because I don't understand every facet; I don't understand all the plays, nickel and dime packages (which one is which . . .?), I don't keep up with fantasy production as much as I'd like to (1-2 in my league so far, I'll make a comeback). I do feel, however, that because my youth was filled with more playing sports than analyzing and looking up stats, that I look at teams and players differently, and analyze them based on what I used to feel going into different games with injuries to our best player, playing multiple times in a weekend, or coming off a big win as an underrated team.

I am not touting my method as the way to understand sports. I am saying that sports is to be enjoyed, and when analyzed, analyzed with an open mind and an individual opinion, something that definitely does not require numbers and statistics at all.

Everyone is listening and reading, which is fine, but most are quick to adopt the ideas of the authors of magazines and websites, and continue to tout them without much thought and questioning. A prime example of this, which continues to annoy me, is the knee injury that occurred to Paul Pierce during Game 1. For those of you who don't know, Pierce went down with what seemed like a severe knee injury in the middle of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, was even carted off in a wheel chair, but somehow came back to win the game for the Celtics.

Many fans were annoyed and thought Paul Pierce was faking, and continued to make a big fuss about it. I understood their initial anger, because, as I know myself, losing sucks, and people tend to become irrational after a loss. But after time passes, opinions can still be formed, and it was disappointing to find that this didn't happen readily for the Pierce situation. Let me ask those fans this: do they know Paul Pierce's history of injuries/returns? Have they ever had a knee injury? Do they understand Paul Pierce, where he came from, and the type of player he is? If they look that up, and dig deeper than what is at the surface, they will come to another conclusion.

I want to stress that there is no wrong way to look at sports; as long as you enjoy it, then sports has done its job from an entertainment standpoint. But if all you look at is the obvious, and what can be calculated, you're missing out on the greatest part of sports: the fact that its unpredictable.

Gotta Love that Zune

Third Microsoft commercial, aired yesterday on The Office. Makes more sense, and gets its point across well, I feel.

Yes, yes indeed, I am on a mission to convert the ignorant (read: iPod owners) to the light.

That's not the way to start if I'm trying to win people over, is it. Ok, let me start over. While I understand your choice of the iPod, and I do not deny it's success and great features, I strongly feel that Microsoft is making a case, slowly, that it is a player to take into serious consideration when purchasing your next music player, because you know you are going to get another one within the next 3 or 4 years.

Let us first discuss the reasons why you purchased the iPod:

• It used to be the best thing out there, the cool thing to purchase
  
• It had a circle wheel, and circles are cool
  
• It held all your music. ALL of it.
• iTunes was the best way to organize your music, and it was simple, user friendly
• The iPod led the revolution with new ideas, including the Nano, the Video, the Touch.

All understandable, and hell, if I had a couple hundred to throw around back then, who knows, I might not be writing this article and instead, editing a movie on my MacBook Air.

The truth is, however, that the Zune has slowly crept up and answered most of these questions. I'll employ the same bullet fashion to make it clear and concise:

• It is the best thing out there. Hands down
• It has a squircle. Take that circle.
• The Zune media player wipes the floor with iTunes
• You see the new Nano? Seem familiar? Yeah, it is exactly like the Zune 8/16 with the turn sideways to view movies design

Ok, I'll be serious now.

I will admit that the player is not as good as the iPod yet, at least for others. The iPod Touch is hands down, the best player on the market, and it's controls and funtion are great. I, however, am not trying to win you over now. Remember, I'm trying to win you within the next 3 years or so, and I have a $300 million advertising deal that I'll be employing, along with Seinfeld, to get to you. Within 3 years, I can see the Zune coming out with a touch based player, and unless iPod completely reinvents the game (which I'm not ruling out), the players will be identical, and you will be forced to choose between software, firmware, and purchasing to make your decision.

Let's look at firmware: its firmware is more intuitive than the iPod, but becasue the whole world was brought up on iPod's, this no longer matters. For me, however, the Zune made much more sense to me than going in a circle to go up, down, left and right. On top of that, it looks a lot better than iPod's, which is completely shocking, as apple is known for aesthetics as well as function. But no one in their right mind can deny that the Zune player has a much better format than that of the iPod's. Test one out when you're at Walmart/Best Buy, and you'll see what I mean.

Now, for the software. If you were to say that the zune firmware is prettier than the iPod by a factor, of say, 2, then the Zune software would be prettier than iTunes by a factor of 24.89, and no less. There is no way to put it in words, except that it just looks amazing, from how it organizes lists, all the options you have for picking how you want to view your titles, the fact that it finds all the album art quickly without you needing an account, the music player's album art mosaic with the new artist specific info. It's all around flat out amazing, so the next time you see me, remind me to show you. Or, if you are one of those free minded spirits, go ahead and download it yourself to check it out.

The final frontier is the purchasing. iTunes owns the market (literally and figuratively), and there's nothing that can be done about that for now. I have not even test driven it yet, to be honest. But Zune's purchasing is very intuitive, and plus, they have this functino called MixView, which according to gizmodo.com and engadget.com, is way better than genius bar, and available to everyone. It takes the artist/song that you have selected, and finds music and artists that have influenced and have been influenced by that artist, and provides their album art in a cool, mosaic style with different sizes that flat out looks nice.

Zune also has a social scene, much like facebook/myspace, in that you can get friends, have a profile, and share music with each other. In the Mixview, the top listeners to that artist are listed, and you can view their music from there.

Overall, the zune has much work to do to establish itself within the market. There is no doubt, however, that it has a secure hold on position number 2, and within 3 years or so, I can see it rivaling apple for its hold on mp3 players. Yeah, yeah, I know you guys are probably saying "that fool is crazy". But that's what I was saying back when Windows flat out owned the market and the new color iMac's had just come out. I don't need to elaborate for you to know where this one is going.

2 Posts in one day?! What can I say, I love my readers

YouTube C.O.T.D.

2nd Microsoft commercial with Seinfeld, pretty funny

S.O.T.D.

I ain't mad at cha - 2Pac
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• Hurricane Ike: a better name than Gustav. I wish the best of luck to whoever is down there and I hope they can make it through it safe and sound. On that note, why do rich people want to live in Miami, Florida, as well as other cities in Florida? Aren't there hurricanes all the time? I'm guessing the retired folks don't have fun rebuilding their houses, relocating, and stressing out about the weather. Also, that must be some expensive hurricane insurance.
• Sarah Pallin scares me. She is good looking enough to get votes from men who are voting for fun. I'm scared by how radical she is, and with John McCain turning 127 next month, she may end up being president relatively soon if McCain wins. On top of that, she has a better a better approval rating than both McCain and Obama. How scary is that.
  
• Shaq is finally going to retire in 735 days (or something like that)! It'll be interesting to see how he plays it out, if he has anything in the tank left. I feel he's just a washed up, out of shape, funny guy, and I can see him retiring earlier than that due to injury. Just don't tell him I said that.
• UFC/Mixed Martial Arts is kind of barbaric and scary.
  
• Another reminder: the third Eragon book is coming out this
  
• Prediction: Microsoft is slowly going to make some noise in the music business. The software (new update tomorrow) does everything that iTunes does, and does it better, except for one thing that I wish they would add: internet radio. Besides that, however, the software is much better than iTunes, much more interactive and better looking.
• As for the actual player, I feel it's more intuitive, the firmware looks better, and the player is actually pretty good.
  
• I have to admit, the microsoft commercials are kind of funny (link at the top)
• Weeds season 4 is the best season so far, and the finale is Monday night on Showtime. Don't miss it. Or watch it on the internet later like I'm going to.

Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Sorry people, I've just been caught up with the past couple weeks of school and what not.

Gotta talk about the Cal Bears football team first. We suffered our first defeat of the season, and fell to 2-1 (1-0 conference play). It was pretty depressing to watch, but I felt there were a lot more positives to take away than negatives, even though we lost:

• Bad: We lost
• Bad: I'm willing to bet Jahvid Best has cracked ribs. Getting the wind knocked out of you doesn't equate to you grabbing your chest every time you finish a run, barely being able to pick yourself off the ground, etc.
• Good: We have a bye week, allowing Jahvid to get some healing time
• Good: Our defense and offense sputtered. That's a good because it happened in non-conference play early on in the season. It also allows us to look at what we messed up on, how we got completely outplayed on the line, and fix it. The extra bye week will also help us to focus on these fixes during week one, without sacrificing time preparing for Colorado State
• Good: Our receivers finally got some catches and touchdowns, and got some confidence in themselves. That will be needed as we get closer to the Pac-10 schedule, which I remind you, restarts with a visiting (once) nationally ranked Arizona State.
  
• Good: We responded to playing from behind well for the first time. Obviously, not good enough, because we didn't come out with the win, but for as young a team as we were, I saw this as a lesson that we can take with us.
  

Also, whether you believe it or not, it helps in the rankings to lose earlier. If you go 10-0 and lose two of the last three games of the season, the polls will hate you, and your team will probably be ranked between #20 and #25, if that.

If, however, you start 1-2 to start the season, and win the rest of your games, your ranking will probably be somewhere between #10-20. The polls are more of a 'what have you done for me now'.

This loss may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and I'm confident we will learn from it.

You may think I'm too optimistic, but read over those bullets again; they all make logical sense. Then again, we could be 0-7, and I would refuse to admit that we suck. I'm going to keep drinking that koolaid, and you know what? It tastes really good. Want some?

Woah . . . Big Soccer News

A little late, but for those of you who don't know, Manchester City was bought by Al Fahim of Abu Dhabi Group.

That's not very important to most people, and it normally wouldn't be, except for the fact that they just got Robinho to transfer from Real Madrid to Manchester City for 32.5 million pounds. Robinho. That translates to $300,000 a week. That's ridiculous.

Oh it doesn't end there. These guys got money to throw around, and they're serious; they don't just want to compete in the Champions League, they want to win. And to win, they want to get Cristiano Ronaldo. Yeah, that Ronaldo. How much are they willing to pay for him? Real Madrid wanted to pay $160 million for him, but these heavy hitters want to throw $240 million at him. Would you say no to $80 million more?

This has to wait until January however, when the transfer window reopens, but when January comes, we'll see what happens to Ronaldo. This will be interesting . . .

Tuesday Afternoon Cornerback

MAN. It's been a busy week and I haven't had a chance to update the blog, so this post is going to be a random post about anything and everything, with a little bit of sports as well, just like tuesday morning quarterback does it for espn.

• Hurricane Gustav, let's start there. First of all, I wish nothing but the best for the people over there, I haven't read much about it, but you see pictures and hear news about it; it can't be anything to be happy about. I do wish, however, that the meteorologists would name it something else. For some reason, I can't take the name Gustav seriously. When the name comes to mind, I imagine The Count from sesame street saying it, which isn't what I should be imagining. I'm used to the usual hurricane names, which in their simplicity carry a sort of hustle-intimidation, and it actually makes me notice. Gustav isn't in that category.

• If you ever decide to design airplanes, don't come up with the idea of square windows. Your plane will fracture, break, and possibly explode. Seriously.

• If you do deltoids exercises, the one where you move your arm in the frontal plane (basically from your side out to the right), be careful, because you're putting about 269 pounds of force on your socket in the horizontal direction if you lift, get this, 13 pounds. Did I mention school started? Yeah my classes are finally getting semi interesting.

• For anyone who reads the Eragon series, the final book, Brisingr, comes out on 9/20, so go and cop that book. That's what authors should say. Rappers say it when their album comes out, so why not? Cop that book.

• Kevin Riley, the Cal quarterback threw the ball away! On a less important note, he played solid, won us the game, and officially won the starting job from Nate Longshore. Well not officially, but lets just say that the student section might be pissed if Longshore comes back in without good reason (Riley injury and nothing else). But anyways, Riley threw the ball away!

• How about them Bruins? UCLA beat 18th ranked Tennessee, from the oh-so-powerful SEC. That's two years in a row they have lost to Pac-10 teams. USC demolished Virginia. Cal beat Michigan State. Maybe the Pac-10 shouldn't be such an underrated conference. . . Oh well, I like hustling, so its all good with me.

• If you're tired of the same old music, Raphael Saadiq has an album coming out on 9/19. He's an R&B singer who came out with Get Involved a long time ago, but is a solid artist.

• For the Berkeley residents, there's a North Face outlet store on 6th and Gilman street. Great deals. I just assumed everyone knew but apparently not many people know about it. Get your stuff from there.

• Go on espn.go.com, search pontiac, and vote for Shane Vereen and Cal for the game changing performance!

• Football hasn't really started yet. This week was cupcake week for college football, and the nfl starts next weekend. More on that in a later post, there will be much to talk about, including my complete dependence on the Minnesota Vikings kicking butt in order for me to do well in my fantasy league.
  

• Rod Benson has moved to France! For those of you who don't know Boom Tho, look him up on toomuchrodbenson.com. But yeah, off to France to play pro-ball, best of luck to him, which I'm sure he will thank me for, seeing as he reads every word of my blog day in and day out.
  

• As an avid gatorade fan, I have determined that Lemon Lime is still the best flavor they have. Hands down.
  

• If you are looking for a comedy show to latch onto and don't know very many, watch 30 Rock and Big Bang Theory.
  

• Euro-soccer leagues have started up again, but seeing as I have basic cable, I can only comment on what you can read on websites. I find that yahoo sports does the best job of getting news to me that I actually care about soccer wise, espn is too messy.
  

I think it's as if the world wants everyone to get settled first before throwing all the sports, tv, and other junk at you. On that note, I'll get back to you guys when there's something interesting worth talking about.