2 posts tagged “basketball”
Me, upon seeing Duke win and therefore not completely screw up my bracket: That's how we do it! SUCK ON IT! (makes lewd gestures toward the television and punches couch)
John: Classy.
Me, still on entirely too much of an adrenaline high: You knew this when you married me! You knew that when it was March Madness time...
John: (interrupts) It's just madness time.
I have all sorts of stuff to talk about, but you won't get any of it tonight because I'm still cheering on West Virginia. Also, in case you were wondering, my championship game is Kansas vs. Texas, and Kansas will be coming home with a title this year.
The school quarter has ended, and now I have all the time in the world to write about the things I've been wanting to write about for weeks.
One Laptop Per Child
First, a new development in the One Laptop Per Child project: Pentagram, one of the world's most well-known design firms, is working on the interface. For anyone who's not aware, I'm a little bit obsessed with this project. The basis is this: many wonderful, intelligent people are working together to figure out how to make a laptop that costs $100, with the intent to give children in third world countries a laptop they can use for their education. And this isn't something that you can buy one or two of: the minimum order, if I remember correctly, will start at one million.
Some incredible engineering is going into this. Many of the countries these will be offered to don't have ample access to electricity, so the laptops must be hand-powered. Many of the children have never seen a computer, so it has to be user-friendly in ways we've never experienced before. And they have to be unbelievably reliable, because very few will know how to fix them.
Why is this important? After all, we're talking about supplying these to countries whose largest problems include food, adequate shelter, access to clean water, among other things. They also lack the quality of education afforded to children in more priveleged sections of the world. These children deserve more education than they're getting - and this is a cost-effective way to reach millions of them. It's still very much in development, but it's on its way. I've been following it almost since the beginning, and I'm very excited to see that Pentagram's working their magic on it.
College Basketball
I probably haven't spoken much about my completely unnatural love for sports here since the day after the last Mets game - perhaps I mentioned a football game or two, but nothing terribly significant. For my newer readers, and maybe some of the veterans, you should all know this: I really, really like sports. I don't like playing them, but I like watching them. I'm a couch coach: I scream at the TV, I question calls that the referees make, I wonder how someone could have possibly missed that shot. In my weaker moments, I remind players that all they need to do to earn their paychecks is throw a ball. The love for sports developed in more recent years, serving to freak my mother out seeing as I just couldn't have cared any less when I was growing up. MLB, NFL, NCAA - these are acronyms I know well.
This is one of the reasons I really love March. It's my favorite month by far: school ends and I have a spring break before I start my new job. My birthday is at the tail end of March. The weather is getting warmer, the trees start to get their leaves again, I can finally walk outside wearing a t-shirt and no jacket. It is also March Madness, the time when my best friend and I fill out our brackets and show our confidence that this is the year for Kansas to win it all. We set up our little pools and we bet for bragging rights and I always end up winning. (He will not believe that statement when he reads it, so here's what I have to say to that: they're archived online. Feel free to go back and check, Baby.)
The first round started on Thursday, so I've been glued to televisions everywhere I go for the past few days. I love it. We went bar-hopping for St. Patrick's Day and I scoped out the spot by the TV everywhere I could. My friends think I'm crazy, but I think that's their problem. Go Jayhawks!
Breaking in the Brand New Car
On Tuesday, all my classmates and I decided to go out to celebrate the end of the quarter. We're all over 21 now, with the exception of one student who left the end-of-quarter show anyway, so we were finally able to go to a bar. We went and had a great time, enjoying dollar draft night (you hear that, New Yorkers? A pint for ONE DOLLAR!), ordering appetizers, and generally enjoying our last night together before everyone goes off to their new jobs.
I left the bar around 10:30 to take a friend home. When we got to the car, he saw that my back passenger window had been broken and the bags in the backseat of my car had been stolen. The irony here is that I never leave anything visible in my car, but the trunk was completely packed with computer equipment so we couldn't fit any more in there. A laptop, multiple hard drives, and a lot of other things were stolen. It's pretty irritating. Luckily for me, it'll be covered by my insurance, but it doesn't make me terribly happy.
A plug for State Farm, though: less than 24 hours after it was broken into, my car was fixed and cleaned and they had brought me a rental car for the short period of time I was without mine. My insurance is a little expensive, but I can't praise their customer service enough.
Less than 400 miles on the brand new car. At least now it's lost a little bit of the scary brand-new car feel, since it's "broken-in". (This pun brought to you by the fact that I really just want to be laughing about the whole incident.)
Vacation Time
I simply couldn't be happier to be on vacation, however, I still feel pretty stressed. It takes a little while to get out of the mindset of waking up, then immediately starting work. I still feel pangs of guilt when I'm watching TV or out having a beer instead of doing homework, even though my projects are all finished and turned in.
To attempt to de-stress a little further, John and I are taking a weekend vacation. We've rented a cabin in Gatlinburg that's complete with a hot tub, fireplace and pool table. The weather is supposed to be sunny and 75 for the whole weekend. I couldn't be any more excited. We've both really needed a break, and somewhere away from the computers and cell phones is really the best choice for us. I start my new job on the 27th, the day before my birthday. John and I have a special exclusive event at Tiffany to go to that night, and I think we'll just be doing a low-key dinner after that. I'm all about the relaxation right now, people. Promise.
