It's That Time Again...

Time to watch Don Knotts videos?

No, it's time for the sounds of sneakers squeaking on hardwood, of leather bouncing, of the groans of those forced to watch early-season zone defenses. In other words, it's time for COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON!!!!

Yes, I'm reasonably excited about it. Maybe it's because the Wahoos are not faring so well on the gridiron this year. Maybe it's because college hoops have been part of my life since I was a wee lad. Maybe it's because this means that there will be sporting events on pretty much every night!

Regardless of why I'm excited, I am. As a result of that excitement, I started looking at the ESPN Full Court schedule to see when they'd be showing my Hoosiers. To my delight, the answer is rather frequently. (Also somewhat frequently are the Hoosier games on ESPNU, a channel which approximately 14 people receive, which annoyed the ass out of me. But I'm not here to talk about how ESPN has become a company I hate for their practices in bilking the people who love sports for more and more money all the time by moving content people already watch from the channels everyone gets to channels they (ESPN) creates out of nowhere just to drive up demand and increase their revenue by claiming they have yet another channel with high-demand content that the cable companies almost have to buy from them. Case in point: no one carried ESPN2HD - probably because they hadn't even filled ESPNHD with HD content, so why bother with a second HD channel? - so ESPN decided to put the entire World Cup '06 on that channel. They're dicks. They are working hard at becoming the Best Buy of the TV world. But I digress.) Man, I wanted to get that Full Court goodness set up for my house since the coverage is supposed to start this Friday. However, given my past difficulties in getting Comcast to sell me the Full Court package, I figured there was no way they'd have it available at the beginning of the season.

For some reason, I browsed through my guide and saw that this Friday's games all showed up on the channels where the ESPN Pay Programming happens. "That's awesome!" I thought. "Surely, they wouldn't put that up there to taunt people who want to buy it. That must mean I can get that stuff!" Laughing about how I shouldn't be calling anyone Shirley, I called up my neighborhood Comcast office and had the following exchange:

Me: I'd like to buy the ESPN Full Court college basketball package.
Comcast guy: Basketball ... let's see here. You want the NBA Season Pass?
Me: [Incredulously, feeling major deja vu, not pointing out that it's the NBA League Pass] Umm, no. I was hoping for the college basketball package. ESPN Full Court.
Comcast guy: Oh. We don't have that available.
Me: [thinking, "Am I Sisyphus here?"] Well, the only reason that I called is that I looked in the guide on my cable box, and the games schedule for Friday night show up on those 700 - 706 channels where they're shown every year.
Comcast guy: Yeah, but maybe that was only in some areas ...
Me: Maybe ... But it showed up on my cable box in my living room.
Comcast guy: [Clearly not expecting that] Oh, well, the only basketball package I have in the system is the NBA one. Maybe the marketing guys haven't put it in there yet.
Me: I could see that, but I'm surprised that's the case. I mean, I'm surprised that I can't pay to watch something that actually shows up in the guide.
Comcast guy: Right. I'm just not sure what's going on. Maybe it's the sort of thing where it will be in the system before Friday but it's just not yet.
Me: [Thinking that this guy clearly didn't talk to me last year] I guessss ...
Comcast guy: Well, what I can do is take down your number, go talk to my marketing guys to see if they know anything about it, and give you a call back when I know something.
Me: So ... You're going to check things and ... then what happens?
Comcast guy: I'll call you back at your number after I talk to them.
Me: Oh, OK. When should I expect to hear back from you? [Thinking in terms of days]
Comcast guy: In about 10 minutes or so.
Me: [Surprised] Oh. OK. Great. I appreciate your help.

Well, it's already been a good hour, and I haven't heard from the Comcast guy. Whey they suck soooooo badly at this, I have no idea, but I expect I'll be calling them a few more times to get it right. Not Comcastic at all. Or maybe it is. Sigh.

Nonetheless, be happy. College hoops is nigh!

Chuckleicious

I'm coming to appreciate Deadspin more and more. They make me chuckle pretty much daily. Even their FAQ got me (#3). Throw in the fact that they're talking about sports, and what's not to love? This post's parenthetical in the penultimate paragraph (sorry for the alliteration) is the latest one to make me laugh out loud.

Leading Indicator

This past weekend I went to see my beloved Wahoos engage in gridiron battle with the Wolfpack of NC State. I was a bit trepidacious about the game, as the Wahoos have been bad this year, needing a missed extra point in OT to beat Wyoming and losing at home to Western Michigan, to name a couple of missteps. (I can't even go into giving away the game against the hated Terps.) On top of the general not-goodness of the Wahoo team, NC State had managed victories against once-mighty Florida State and never-shitty Boston College. None of those factors made me confident that UVA could pull out a victory, even though NC State's overall record wasn't that great. In retrospect, I should have been overtaken by a serene calm and supreme confidence once I got to my seat.


My seat happens to be near the visitors' section in the stadium, meaning that their cheerleaders are in front of me. Once I saw that crew, I should have known we were going to win. "How could you know from seeing the cheerleaders?" you might be asking. And it's a good question. Really, it's not the cheerleaders that should have foretold the downfall of the Wolfpack, but the mascot. Seriously, how can you possibly expect your team to win a tackle football game with the mascot pictured below on your sidelines? Shouldn't you just expect to lose that game?




Final score: Wahoos 14, Pearl and Dress-Wearing Girly "Wolfpack" 7

Question for the Day

I was listening to an appropriately geeky podcast on the way to work this morning, and the hosts were talking about a certain Russian website that sells very cheap MP3's. I'm not going to link to it or anything, but there are rumors that this particular website's existence is throwing up a significant roadblock to Russia's inclusion in the World Trade Organization. But that's really beside the point. What is the point is that one of the hosts was taking a look at the site in question and said, "They're featuring a fairly prominent picture of Meatloaf right now."

And I couldn't help but wonder: is it really possible to feature any type of picture of Meatloaf other than a prominent one?

Brain Power

No joking here, the brain is an incredible piece of equipment. Or organ. Whatever, it's a damned impressive thing, what with the way it recruits cells to do things that were broken via a stroke or traumatic brain injury or disease, or just the way it manages to keep us breathing and circulating blood all the time. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has his own example of just how impressive the brain can be. Check it out.

At the end, he asks people to comment with the happiest moments of their lives, which is very nice in a warm fuzzy sort of way. Interestingly, I have no idea what the happiest moment of my life is. That's not because my life is lacking in happiness. Far from it. It's just that I find I'm not good at picking out superlatives. It's hard to pick one "best" out of thousands of happy moments. Heck, I have a hard time calling to mind the moments that would even make the final cut. It's like my brain is giving me a busy signal when I try. But I'm thinking there are worse things one can spend his brain power on. So I'm going to think about that some this weekend. You have a good weekend, too.