Development Soup

Anyone who reads my journal knows that one in three of my entries is some sort of rant, usually regarding NBA officiating. I love the game of basketball. I love to play, love to watch and hopefully one day I will have the opportunity to coach on some level. My journal entries that pertain to basketball often contain criticism of the NBA and its officials. I understand that the speed and strength of atheletes at the NBA level makes officiating a real challenge, but it does not excuse the wide variance in the amount of contact required to draw a whistle. At the begining of the NBA season I was ready to suffer through another season of wild calls, flopping and overall inefficient refereeing. I must admit that I am somewhat stunned by the turn around from seasons past, at least in the games I have had the opportunity to watch. While there still are bad calls, and there always will be, the officials seem to have finally adopted the ‘let em play’ philosophy.

Here is a great example

Derek Fisher playing great off the ball defense on Ray Allen in the Lakers-Celtics game prevents Allen from getting set to attempt a game winning three point shot. The refs did not blow a whistle simply because Allen falls down (which I sure he would not have done if it were not an end of game situation)

I can recall countless times so far this season where players glare at the refs with that ‘gimme the call’ look on their faces. Instead of watching Lebron and Kobe run layup drills on the opposition (Kobe’s night at the Garden not withstanding), we are seeing defense cause missed shots and turnovers. Now I am not saying that everything is perfect in the NBA now, but the acceptable contact level has risen dramatically from years past. The bottom line is,  ‘Basketball is a contact sport.’ The level of contact is dictated by the level of competition. Its too easy for a guy 6-8, 260 (Sorry Lebron) to get to the hoop and score when a defender knows he gets a whistle if he plays tough D. The soft fouls in the NBA have made me crazy for many seasons past, but seem to be going the way of the 8-track this season.

I don’t know if David Stern reads my blog or not, but regardless of where the concept came from (me!) its obvious to me that NBA officials have made a huge leap forward in eliminating soft fouls. I think it has enhanced the integrity of NBA basketball exponentially.

If you know me at all, you know I am a staunch critic of the officiating in the NBA. In my opinion, its the most terribly inconstant and just plain ugly thing in all of professional sports. So here I am watching tonight’s Spurs and Hornets game where somehow they manage to call 4 offensive fouls in like 2 minutes. Granted Chris Paul did push off on Bowan the second time, the two calls on West were epically bad, and they occurred 30 seconds from each other. I think as a prerequisite for officiating in the NBA, all NBA refs should be required (at the beginning of their career) to do a season in the Big East. That’s right, start at the college level before all these players get there theater degrees so they can see what it actually takes to knock someone down. Then maybe they will be able to tell when someone is flopping. Image that. The NBA without flopping.

Recently I was given an invite to join google grand central which is a free answering service provided by the almighty indexers of all that is important, google.com. My first impression of Grand Central was pure awe. I was given a free number which could serve essentially as a main line for all the phone numbers by which I can be reached. Grand Central has a nifty web interface which allows you to check who has called, route certain calls to specific numbers and take messages. I do think the service is rather neat, but on second glance, I wonder if it serves any real purpose. After two weeks of using the service I have not checked in to play with it again. What I really wonder is who would I actually give this number to? Is there anyone I would like to go through yet another degree of separation before being able to reach me? In the end, If I was important enough to need something like Grand Central, I would be important enough to have a receptionist.

I would love to hear about anyone else’s impression of Google Grand Central

**WARNING** This is an absolute rant!

Ok so recently I went online to purchase textbooks for school. Going between the usual suspects , half.com and Amazon.com, I decided to purchase my books from Amazon. I am sure that many of you reading have used this site and found it as wonderful as I have for its ease of use, targeted suggestions and its generally smart usability.

So a day goes by and I look in my cart to see what has processed and what has not. Both sales are normal, the one from a third party, and the book from amazon. I assume that everything is fine and go about my business. After about a week the book from the 3rd party arrives. I found it odd, because most often amazon ships faster, but I am busy person, with work, and several night classes, the book will get here eventually I assume. After 3 more days (and one class session) I am a little worried. Where is this book from amazon?! I go online to my amazon account after class and find an estimated ship date of Feb. 9th.

What!!!!? I am enraged. I start pacing, worrying, raising my voice to the computer screen. I never thought for a second that this could be possible. Not that the book is back ordered, that is perfectly understandable, but that amazon never sent an email. With all the money invested in marketing, you would think that this simple logic would be in place.

Customer A orders a textbook
therefore likely a student
therefore likely needs the book pronto
book out of stock? -> send email notification.

I called customer service and spoke to a very nice yet rather vapid young lady who told me that I would need to check back to my account to find out that the book is back ordered. In the busy day to day this is just another thing I have to remember to do that should be done for me (in my opinion).

I don’t know if its a good thing or not, but shopping online, and the web in general has made us spoiled. It is almost too good, and when a stupid thing happens on a trusted site like amazon, I can’t take it!! It makes me throw hysterical fits and preach to my wonderful wife, who just wants to watch medium in peace.

Hello all, and thanks for checking out my first journal entry. I first must comment on the ease of setting up wordpress. I had heard good things about wordpress, and was eager to get it up and running on the server. I am truly amazed by how easy it was to set up. I wanted to write my blog system from scratch ( and nearly did) when I realized that I really wanted the ability for people out there to add comments about what I would be writing about. My system was written in php so adding this functionality would not be a huge technical leap. Then out of the blue, my boss asked me to evaluate wordpress. It must be fate, because I had it downloaded for no more than 2 minutes and it was up and running on my test server at work. With plenty of themes to chose from, and installation as easy as copying a directory, it really was a no-brainer for me. Looking forward to using this tool to create some helpful articles.