C'mon, Pistons.

The last thing Detroit needs is another Red Wings. You went into the championships #1, come out #1 too. Please? Ben Wallace criticized the emphasis on offense that Saunders has brought to the club. This is probably because Big Ben is a powerhouse defender, and now feels like his skills aren't as useful in an offensive club. That couldn't be more wrong. The Pistons need Ben to continue to be a powerhouse defender. They need him to try to stop Shaq. Nobody actually can stop Shaq for any length of time, but Wallace could come close. Yet he didn't seem to be putting in enough of an effort until the third quarter. Of course, Detroit as a whole needs to play like they played that third quarter. Twelve points down, to four points up, back to twelve down. The third was the only quarter that they played Piston basketball. Frustrating. Oh well. See you tomorrow, boys.

Block Party!

Oh cripes. A political post. I'm not at all sure that this idea is new. I bet some political scientist has already come up with it and found great formulas to integrate it into his voting scheme. But since I haven't read about that guy yet, I'm goint to take credit for it. I'm starting a new political party. Right now. If you want to join, add a comment. You're in. I'll get you on the newsletter. When we get one. It's called the Block Party. We have no candidates. Correct. Nobody will ever run as the Block Party candidate or on the Block Party ticket. What we're trying to do is block a sweeping majority across all sections of the government by any other party. For example, right now, the Republican Party holds a majority in the House, Senate, and they hold the White House. Concievably, they could pass any bill they wanted, if they could simply work together. (They can't seem to yet, fortunately.) Don't get me wrong; I don't think the Republican Party is out to destroy America. They believe that everything they're doing is good, moral, and right. But I don't agree with everything they stand for. Likewise, I don't agree with everything the Democrats stand for either. I don't think anybody is completely left- or right-wing. But there sure are a lot of folks out there who vote straight ticket. They pick one party and go all the way with them, without getting to know all the candidates and what they really stand for. The Block Party is about educating voters about candidates. You need to know who you're voting for. If you end up voting straight ticket, do so because every candidate you vote for is truely your candidate and not simply the Party's with whom you tend to agree. Rule 1: If you know nothing about the candidates running for a seat, abstain. Rule 2: If no candidate running for a seat is your candidate, abstain, or write-in your choice. If the candidate you agree with runs with the party you don't, vote for him anyway. Rule 3: If the candidates seem to have no real, tangible differences, and you feel you could vote either way, then look at the rest of your ballot. Are you voting mostly for one party? Vote for the other party when it seems the options are equal. Our government is based on checks and balances. Avoiding party majorities across sections of government keeps those checks and balances intact. It even strengthens them. This is my philosophy; if both the Legislature and the Exectuive are at odds, then very little gets done. And the things that do get done tend to benefit the people more, simply because they were necessary to the point of the parties coming together. As a bonus, the less the government does, the less they're messing with me. Cool. Here's a great link to get you thinking about your candidates: Project Vote Smart. And don't forget to vote in November.

Drag 'n Drop Googley Goodness

Hey all. Got a pet project I'm gonna lay on 'ya. It's a Google Search builder. One of the fun things about Google is the interesting stuff you can find by just surfing and modifying your searches. But it's such a hassle typing all the time. You gotta put your hand on the mouse to click links anyway, right? So with this (very beta! so beta, it's alpha!) page, you can drag-and-drop words. The green box is words you're looking for, the red box is words you're ignoring. The orange box is a shelf to save interesting results in. Yellow words are draggable. Give it a shot. Click the "Semi-Live" to get a new page of results every time you drag a word around. One caveat: This does break the "back" button. It's all AJAX-y and cool, but I haven't given it any kind of memory yet. I'll get to it. Rock.

Myspace... Facebook... right.

I hear these things are totally sweet. They're cool or something. I don't get it. Call me old fashioned, but I just like finding people in the real world. Every one of my best friends I've met because I just happened to be somewhere (that's not my house) at the same time as somebody else. I guess I'm also a bit paranoid about putting too much personal info on the internet in one convenient location. Maybe I'm just jealous or something. Nowadays you can Google search for people with your interests. To me, it takes the fun out. There's nothing quite like talking to somebody you've never met, and finding out that you both like some random, short-lived scifi show. The fact is, at any given time, you've got at least three things in common with the person you're standing next to in the elevator. And one of those things is that neither of you will say 'hi' first. And what's with these minors drinking and then posting pictures of themselves drunk? You might think that you're lost in a sea of information, but it's amazing what a search box can find you. Anyway, I think I'm cool with not getting it. I don't, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

Fun with Adsense and Blogger

Hey all! Soooo.... I've set up this blog, right. It's right here. You're reading it. Good on ya. And Blogger makes it really easy to add Google Adsense to the blog. Real easy. 'Cuz Google owns Blogger. Cool beans. It's all good. But, you've got one spot (according to the Blogger Template tools) that those ads can go. I'm a rebel, so I manually re-placed the adds over in the Sidebar where they don't look like some crazy post where I when jumbo-doodle-cakes talkin' 'bout Pistons Collectible Gear in crazy link-type format. Fantastic. Then I went to change the color scheme of the Adsense. That's when it hit me. Boom. Jackhammer. You simply can't move the Adsense. We want it up top. That's it. So I re-moved it down to the side bar and figured I'd fix the colors in the code. If you're like me and you've moved your Adsense button, don't ever touch the Adsense tab in Template editor, or you'll find all your hard work undone. So I go to edit the colors. I do so. The Adsense code is nice in that it gives you helpful javascript variables that you can set to the appropriate color as you see fit. I did so. I preview'ed. Everything is cool. But when I go to re-publish my site, the colors won't stick. The Adsense is right where it's supposed to be. It looks OK. But it's stuck color-wise. Which is really odd, because it works in the Blogger Preview. But not fo-real I guess. Not cool, guys. Huh. UPDATE: Well, the colors updated between runs of Firefox. Which is interesting, because the first thing I tried was a reload, followed by a reload-frame, followed by a clear of the cache. Another interesting quirk: when I went to update this post, Firefox would routinely crash. I am now updating in Safari. Freaky. Huh again.

Pistons Rock.

Hey. So this is going to be one of those posts where I act like I know something about sports. I assure you, I don't. It's all a clever (or not so much...) ruse. The Pistons rock. They just do. And every time Shaq goes up against them, he gets frustrated. Case in point: 2004. LA Lakers. Goin' home. Could be due to bad team dynamics that year. Could have been Kobe's big head. Also could have been the Piston's stiffling defense that year. Case in point: 2005. Miami Heat. Lasted a bit longer - full seven games. And the Pistons did end up losing a tough 7 game series - but in the Finals, not in the Conferences. They lost game one agains the Heat this year. At home even - ouch. But they were coming off an unlikely (dare I say fluke?) 7-game against the Cavs. They came back strong to win Game 2 - although those last few minutes weren't the hottest in Piston history. Can they beat the Heat? Sure. But what do they need to do? 1. Get a lead early. Duh. No brainer. Getting the lead keeps them in the scoring mentality. When the Pistons get down, they start tightening the defense, which is a good thing, but it makes them conservative on the scoring end also. That's not Flip's game - it's Brown's, and it hurts them to play one coach's style under another coach. Flip's about scoring - get ahead and keep on getting ahead. 2. Think you're the underdog. The Pistons always play better when they think they're not getting any respect. It worked great in 2004 when nobody saw them coming. It worked well (although not as playoffs-finishing well) in 2005 when nobody thought they could do it again. But now they're considered a powerhouse team. They've got 64 wins this season to prove it (plus 9 in the playoffs so far). And somehow, unless the chips are down, they just don't seem to quite play Piston basketball. Hence games 6 and 7 of the Cleveland series. Hence Game 2 of this Miami series. Somehow, they have to convince themselves that winning against Miami isn't easy, simple, or likely, and that they are the underdog, not the Heat. 3. Go to Work. This one is simple. Show up and play like crazy. Go bananas. If everybody on the team played with the heart of Lindsay Hunter every game, they'd be absolutely unstoppable. That's all there is to it. (Have I mentioned that I think Lindsay is the reincarnation of Joe Dumars? I do. In fact, I'd believe that absolutely if it weren't for the fact that ol' Joe is still alive.) So there ya go. I'll see you at the sports bar.

Hey all.

Guess I got a blog. Looka me. Bloggin'.

Category