Also
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Happy Christmas!
I only remember to check woot.com once every couple weeks or so. If you’re unaware, it’s a pretty cool site that sells one spiffy gadget per day. They sell the item til it sells out, and that’s it. Not really any frills to the process.
Anyway, I was reading their “What is woot?” page today. The wit and blatant “we do what we want” attitude is great. Check it out.
Here’s a snippet:
Why do you keep putting LAUNCH EVENT in all caps?
To fully convey its majesty.
This past weekend I went on my first ever snowmobiling trip. I went with the young men in my ward. There were three boys and three of us adults. One of the boys has a Grandpa with a cabin up past Brianhead resort here in Southern Utah. This wasn’t just your normal cabin in the woods. This was a three story, four bedroom, mini-mansion. I slept better there than I do in my own bed. The master bedroom had a king bed and a jetted jacuzzi tub. The other three bedrooms had queen beds. But enough about the cabin.
He also had three nice snowmobiles. I don’t know much about the specs on them, but the speedometers went up to 120 mph. I don’t know if they can go that fast, but they sure were powerful. The first time I set off on one, I almost fell off when I squeezed the throttle. When I pegged it down, the thing took off like a bat out of hell. I couldn’t believe how fast they went on the dry powdery snow that we get here in Utah.
There wasn’t much snow, only 1-3 feet, which I think was good. If there had been deeper snow, I’m sure we all would have gotten the snowmobiles stuck. After a bit of cruising around, we found a nice open meadow where we could have some fun. We ended up riding tandem, with the passenger standing, then at speeds of around 30 mph, jumping off into the fresh powder and sliding a good 15 feet. That was pretty fun. We did other things including high speed runs, the fastest I went was 50 mph, which felt pretty stinking fast on a snowmobile.
It was tricky getting the feel for the machines. The turning was delayed a bit and I found it pretty tricky to manipulate the weight of the snowmobiles. It was a fun trip for a weekend. I’m sure I won’t get real into snowmobiling, but they do make for a fun weekend in the snow.
Here is a rough screen capture off of ESPN Motion to illustrate a point I have tried to make for the past ten years or so.
Tonight in the New York vs. Milwaukee game, Quentin Richardson got called for a technical foul for hanging on the rim. Now, I always figured that rule existed to prevent players from hanging excessively on the rim in order to taunt or celebrate their move in excess. This particular pull on the rim was done solely for the safety of the player.
Short refs who could never dunk don’t understand the physics of dunking the ball. When you are moving full speed toward the hoop and dunk the ball with both hands, you have to hang on so you don’t run the risk of swinging up to the backboard and falling off right onto your head. The dunker’s natural survival instinct has them pull up on the rim. This is simple physics. If you shorten yourself by pulling up on the rim, it is easier to keep holding on and you have less weight swinging at a far distance from the rim.
What I’m getting at is that if Quentin didn’t pull up on the rim, he would have slipped off and probably broken his neck. In fact, if you saw the play, you’d have seen that he let go as soon as his momentum was slowed down to the point where it would be safe for him to come back down.
I specifically remember a similar play I had long ago in a city league basketball game. It was a fast break and I dunked with both hands at full speed. There is absolutely no other way to protect yourself on this dunk other than pulling up on the rim. I got hit with a T as well, horrible call by the ref.
Somebody needs to explain this to the referees. It’s a great and legal play to attack the hoop. Players shouldn’t be penalized for protecting themselves. Unless we get some former dunkers as refs, I assume this will haunt me til I die.
So now would be a good time to mention that I’m a die hard Portland Trail Blazer fan. Tonight they played the Phoenix Suns and lost with a score of 130 – 85. That’s a nice little 45 point loss…GO BLAZERS!
One fun fact is that this weekend they set the record for the youngest starting backcourt ever in NBA history. Telfair was 20 years, 178 days old and Martell Webster was 19 years exactly. LeBron James and Dujuan Wagner had the previous mark.
I grew up in Redmond, OR. That’s why I became a Blazer fan, and they had made the playoffs most of my life until a couple seasons ago. They are now seeing what life is like at the very bottom of the western conference. From the looks of things, they could be down there at least a few more years. Oh well.
I was looking for some Saturday Night Live skits on Google Video today and found a couple older ones that are just great.
The first is from what I consider the best SNL ever, when Jim Carrey hosted. I don’t know if he’s hosted multiple times, but this one was amazing. I believe it was also the very first sketch with the Night at the Roxbury guys. Anyway, this sketch has Will Farrell trying to relax in a hot tub. Jim Carrey shows up in lifeguard garb and takes over. He is completely obnoxious and awesome. My favorite line: “…next thing you know, a body goes under and there’s bloated carcass stuck in the filter!”
Next is a commercial for a car for crazy people. Also starring Will Farrell, this is one of my favorite commercials on SNL. The sink to wash your hands every five minutes and the total randomness of other things makes it wonderful.
Naps
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I love me some naps. I’ve never been a power napper. I think I’ve successfully had one or two power naps, where I just happened to wake up 10 minutes after going under and finding myself refreshed.
My usual nap is 2 hours in length. I’m a fan of sleep altogether, but the 2 hour nap is just wonderful. For instance, Sunday of this week was a good one. I came home from church, I was slightly chilly, so I got my king sized comforter and pillow, took them to my couch, put on my favorite hooded sweatshirt, got all cozied up, put the tube on football, and had a great nap.
Today was a bit different. I had tried to take a nap yesterday, only got about 45 minutes of sleep, and it didn’t do much for me. Tonight I laid down at about 7pm (I like naps any time of the day) and woke up about 3 hours later, only to go back to sleep for another hour. It’s now 1am and I’m feeling alright about going back to sleep. I just can’t get enough of the stuff.
