I had fun anyway…

So I played some ball tonight. Just a church ball game, but I felt good. I’m not in great shape so I was trying to conserve energy when I could. We lost, I’m not sure by how much. The score board wasn’t working right and they were putting a score up on a chalk board, but you had to be within 5 feet of that to see it because the writing was so small. I tried to be a good sport and give everyone their chance but in the end I guess the gunner in my may have taken over a little. I think as a team we scored in the neighborhood of 45-50-ish points. I didn’t count up the points for the whole team on the score sheet after the game, but I did of course count up my point total. I scored 28 points which included 66% shooting on 3 point shots.

I didn’t keep track of all my misses, but I do know that my field goal percentage was pretty high all around, made me wish I had the legs to push it every time down the court. And this was with the other team focused on my as their main target on defense for most of the game (yes I am impressed with myself, I would like to think all the time spent playing basketball to get as good as I could over the years wasn’t a total waste). It makes me want to get in shape, but not enough to get up in the morning and do anything about it…

I don’t know about those I played with on my team, but I know I had fun and that’s all I’ve ever played for.

Now here’s a little thing, I’m competitive. Not as much as I used to be. But I am and I know I don’t play with the greatest players on earth, but each time I step on a basketball court I believe (whether it’s true or not) that I am the best player on the court. Some nights that changes when I suck and I realize that I’m not that great. But I read a long time ago that athletes engaged in competition, especially elite athletes, have to believe they are better than those around them. Sports are psychological as much as they are physical. If you act like you are better than the person guarding you there is a chance they will read your body language and it will make them play differently. Now that doesn’t mean act like a but head, and really I play as clean as possible and try to be a good sport. There is a difference though in being a good guy and being a pushover. John Stockton was about my height and weighed a few pounds more than me for his whole NBA career, but still he was able to get to the likes of Charles Barkley. With Sir Charles complaining about him setting illegal picks that he couldn’t get through when the Round Mound of Rebound had more than 100 lbs and 5 inches on John. So those are things I have taken to heart, when you step on the court or where ever it is you may be act like you belong and you’re good at what you do. Also don’t let people push you around. You can be a good person, a good sport and have fun. You also may just score 28 point as an out of shape, under six foot white guy who still sometimes falls asleep dreaming about playing ball against the best in the world…

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Android fun

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So, I have been playing around with android on my HD2 for a while, but there were some issues that made it just a novelty and not something to do for any length of time, but now I have the right combination that makes Android something I can run all the time on my phone. I have been in android only for most of the week and out it is running a well as windows mobile does and I have the benefit of android market and a more customizable os which allows me to do things like blog posts from my phone (like this one).

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It’s Overrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Lat night the NBA season officially ended for the Utah Jazz, although it was really over when they beat the Nuggets and were destined to go against the Lakers. And even though I knew it was all over I still stubbornly held to my hope that something fantastic would happen, like Carlos Boozer getting taller, faster and having a heart.

Or the Jazz revealing that their efforts to clone Karl Malone and John Stockton were successful and the statues out front were actually incubators for these clones. While they make this announcement they show video of these NBA iron men in their cloned form breaking free their bronze prisons ready to take the floor to mop up the floor with the current version of the NBA that is not equipped to deal with the physical side of the game the bring and thus surrender to their superior will…

Or Kobe hits his head so hard he forgets where he is and starts launching shots at the wrong basket…

None of this happened and even though Deron Williams is as good as it gets for a point guard there is something missing around him. I would say that the Jazz I grew up watching that featured John and Karl would beat up on the Jazz team of today just because they always had a true 1-2 punch and whether it was Jeff Hornaceck or Jeff Malone there was alway a third option that was more reliable than any third option on the team now.

You see it may be a good thing that on any given night anyone on the team can step up and push the team over the top to a win, but that also means that on a given night you have no idea who to rely on, well unless that person’s name is Deron Williams, the only consistent threat on the team. And although Deron will have bad nights you can write those off as just that, a bad night. If Carlos Boozer or Paul Milsap has a quiet night that is just that it wasn’t his night to be on. This team needs at least 2 more players that has 72 consistently good nights a year and only 10 write-off nights. Maybe I am being hard on these guys, but that is my right as a fan since I don’t get paid millions to play basketball and I have played most of my life and understand the game well enough I know that if you really really really want to push things you can and become more consistant and that is lacking from this team. They may have bought into Jerry Sloans system and make the extra pass, but what happens when you do everything right and the guy with the best shot just misses?

All there is now is to see what happens in the off season. I don’t know what will happen. Most of me wants to see Carlos Boozer playing somewhere else and all of me does if they can use him to get better in some what, not that that is likely.

For the most part the season was about what I expected, a pretty good team that wasn’t able to get past the Lakers, and the  team as currently constituted probably won’t ever be able to do that, it needs more height and athleticisim, but what NBA team doesn’t want that?

Deron will be Deron, but until he gets a couple of other guys around him that are better second and third options than Carlos Boozer and Memo/Andrei/CJ/Wesley Mathews this team will be a second-round-and-out team. Deron by himself is good enough to get a team to be that but you get a true big man and some better shooters around him and this team could really be good…

Oh well it’s not in my hands I just have to watch and hope things go the right way.

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The Eight Dollar Fix

I have a monitor. I’ve had it for 3 years now I think. It’s a Sceptre X22WG-1080P. I’ve liked it, sometimes it seems a little bright, but I have noticed that with most LCD moitors when you’re sitting up close. Well a few months ago it started having problems. I would turn it on or bring my computer out of sleep mode and the monitor would flash on and seem to go off. After a few weeks I would have to turn it on and off several times. I think most recently I had to do it like 50 times before it would stay on. Well it turned out to be a problem resulting from backlight issues, because if I had light shining just right on the screen I could make out a fain image. So I did some digging online and found that there is an issue with capacitors going out that caused the backlight to flash on and then off. I really have no idea what a capacitor does but several people said they just popped the old ones off the board inside the monitor and soldiered new ones in. Well I own two soldering irons and thought it couldn’t hurt to try. So after getting a new 23″ monitor yesterday I pried the old one open and ran to Radio Shack and grabbed some capacitors and put them in and “Walla” (that’s for you Heather) it’s good as new.

So now I have 3855600 pixels of display area sitting on my desk.

Aleksia and Cooper think it’s magic that I can move a window from one monitor to the other and back.

But anyway I liked playing mr fix-it today and having the thing actually work when I was done, oh and the whole repair cost $8.00. Who knows how much it would have cost to have the manufacturer fix it, probably wouldn’t have been worth it.

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