NBA Playoffs

THe playoffs have started and so far it has been one of the most exciting playoffs of recent memory. The opening round matchup between the phoneix suns and the san antonio spurs has lived up to the hype with the first game going into double overtime. Some surprises of the playoffs were the sixers besting the pistons in their opening game. Top perfomers were paul gasol who had a monster opening game for the lakers. Dwight Howard of the Magic has posted back to back 20 point and 20 rebound games, something unheard of espically in the playoffs. The performer of the playoffs so far has to be Chris Paul of the New Orleans Hornets. In his very first career playoff game he droped 32 points on a veteran Mavericks team. He only further backed up his impressive performance and MVP caliber season by putting up another 32 point game the other night.

NFL DRAFT

The NFL draft starts this weekend. THe draft class does not appear to be as strong this year as in years past. Once you pass the top 5 players the rest seem to be evenly matched whether you are looking at best available or best by position. Not only is the draft lacking that large exciting group of players, it is also without hte suspense of the selection of the top pick. On Tuesday the Maimi Dolphins signed Jake Long to a contract. This really kills the excitment and expectation of the top pick nad how the rest of the draft will follow.

NBA Playoffs

Its playoff time in the NBA. Again for like the 10th year in a row the west comes into the playoff with the more dominating side. They are lead by the Lakers and Hornets. THe East is again weak and the only really strong team appears to be the Celtics and the Pistons. The West has all 8 teams with at least 50 wins while the east only sports 4 or 5. The west will be the conference to watch this playoff season. If you have to watch the east wait until the conference semi finals and finals. The four dominating teams should be there, the celtics, pistons, cavs, and magic. The west will be amazing the suns and spurs will be the best opening round matchup. My finals is SUNS CELTICS with the celtics winning in 7

Basketball Hall of Fame

The other day the basketball hall of fame announced their picks for the class of 2008. Some of the more notiable inductees were Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Oligowan. These two players were two of the more dominating big men of their time and possibly ever in the NBA. Ewing was a big part of the Knicks success in the early 90's, while Hakeem did the same for the Rockets leading them to an NBA championship. Another selection was Dick Vitale. We all know who Dicky V is and I am so glad that he made it into the Hall. He is the voice of basketball from November until April. Not only is he a great contributor to the game, but he also does great work for the community and those who are in need.

Baseball Season

The season is offically underway. To me it looks as if its going to be a good year for baseball, with many of the divisons looking like they are going to be competitive. The AL east doesnt look like it will just be the red sox and the yankees chasing a division title. The rays and the blue jays are both fielding competitive teams that could challenge these two top tier teams. The AL central also looks like it is goin to come down to the wire. The indians are always a top team and the white sox look to be a part of the mix, along with the tigers once their offense gets geared up and going. In the NL central it looks like its anybodys game. The cubs, brewers, and cardnals all look to be after that division crown. The reds i dont think will be that bad either. I hesitate to put the pirates into this mix because, well they are the pirates and will probably tank it when the games start to get important. But overall it is shaping up to be an awesome season.

Pirates

The Baseball season offically started yesterday. The hometown team, the Pittsburgh Pirates, opened their season in Atlanta. And again the pirates gave the fans no reason to think that this season will in any way be any different than the previous 15 seasons. They blew a huge lead by making one of the stupidest plays a major leaguer could make. Its not even like they missed the fly, the two fielders just didnt know who was going to make the catch or where the ball was. It was a total lack of communication. Then with a 3 run lead in the 12th, the new manager left the same pitcher in who then gave up a home run, a double, and an RBI single to make the score 12-11. The pirates did win but its not looking good for this season, I'm goin to say that the pirates will be enjoying their 16th straight losing season.

Tiger Woods

Over the weekend there was an incident where Tiger Woods ended up swearing at a photographer who snapped a picture during his backswing. People were offended that Tiger used some foul language to yell at the guy. As a fellow curser I can say that while the language is not the best, it is still not the worst thing in the world. It was in the heat of the moment during a tournament in which Tiger was in the hunt for a win. People shouldnt be taking pictures of any golfer during their swing. And if you feel the need to take a picture walk away and use the zoom so the golfer wont be distracted. It happens all the time in any sport where foul language is used. Its not the best decision but it is what happens and we need to just accept it and move on.

Baseball Season

Its finally here. Baseball season has offically began with the Boston Red Sox and the Oakland Athletics playing a two game series in Japan. While I am excited about the start of the season I think its stupid that they have to start all the way in Japan. The first problem that I have with this is that due to the time difference the game starts at 6 am, which means that I am unable to watch them because it is humanly impossible to wake up that early. The second problem I have with this is that once they finish this short two game series they fly back to LA for more preseason games. Even though this current format is slightly messed up it is still great that baseball season is back. GO SOX!!!!

Upsets

So now that the tournament has started its time that everyone fills out a bracket. Everyone picks an upset, thats just one of the rules of filling out a bracket, like never put all 4 number 1's in the final four beccause that has never happened. There were some surpirsing upsets in the 1st round this year that I didnt even think could happen. San Diego over UCONN was a huge upset. There were very few people out there, I believe that called that one. And Western Kentucky over Drake was another one. There are, however, several upsets that people expected. Siena over Vanderbilt was one that people expected although I picked Vandy. And the Villanova over Clemson.

NCAA Tournament

Thank god its march again because this is with out a doubt the best time during the Sports year. No other event causes as many people to be so unproductive. Its a proven fact that during these best 3 weeks ever productivity in companys is cut in half. I love that I get so into my brackets that this is all i can think about for the next couple of weeks. I love hearing the inside info and breaking down my picks. Its an awesome time of the year for picks and non stop college basket ball. My final four: North Carolina, Kansas, Texas, and UCLA

Technology Getting Smaller

So I was looking on the internet at some new technology and I came across a few interesting articles. I was reading about the new blue tooth phones things and they said they are making them even smaller. So now I am wondering how much smaller is technology going to get before we stop. Those hand held computers we looked at in class were so small. I think technology has gotten small enough. Like i am a big guy and all these little devices are hard for me to use. Those crazy little computers that you cant even push the buttons. I think everything is small enough and like why make things smaller because they are so expensive and the smaller they are the more likely people are to lose them

TECH

SOmething crazy that is technology and fairly new I believe is blogging. Everybody has one it seems. Most of them are kinda weird and out there but just the fact that there are so many of them out there on the web is kind of amazing. Even sportstars are getting into it. Curt Schilling of the Boston Red Sox (Best Team Ever, Screw the Yankees) has his own blog where he discusses topics about the sport of baseball, politics, and will even offer his own interpretation of the game he just pitched. Blogging is definetly an amazing technological advance.

Tiger Woods

Over the weekend Tiger Woods won the match play event. This was his 2nd win this year in 2 tries. What was amazing about this win was that he came back from 3 strokes down with only 5 holes to play. People are saying that Tiger is now more dominate than ever and that he has a real shot at winning every tournament he enters this year. He reacently passed Arnold Palmer for 4th on the all time wins list. I feel that he will win every tournament this year as well as win all 4 majors. This would be an incredable feat, but Woods is an amazing athlete and he just seems to dominate any field that he enters.

Satellite Shootdown

Something cool that I just saw that has to do with technology is that the US is going to try and shoot down a spy satellite. I thought this is really cool, just because I always wondered what they did with that equipment once it was broken beyond repair or no longer needed. I always heard that NASA just left the out dated ones in space, but no one ever told me what they do if they start to fall to earth. Now I know that what they do is shoot them out of the sky. I only hope they have good aim and dont miss. I wonder if they do miss will they have enough time to re-aim and fire again or would the satellite impact the ground, and what kind of damage would it create if it did crash. I am sure though that the government is a good shot and will not miss.

College Basketball

The other day the Kentucky Wildcats played Vanderbilt in a college basketball game. The significane of this game was that Kentucky a perennial basketball powerhouse scored only 11 first half points. The team is in a tranisition phase after coach tubby smith left to coach in Minnesota, but coach Gillispie is not a new coach. This team is 6 and 3 in the SEC and apppears at this point to make the NCAA tournament which starts in a few weeks. Its just suprising to see this type of a team of such a high standard is only scoring 11 points in a 20 minute half.

Hockey

So how about that guy this weekend from the Flordia Panthers that got his neck slashed with a skate. That was about the strangest thing I have ever seen happen in hockey. The only thing in all of sports that might be stranger was when Randy Johnson hit a bird with a pitch. Basically what happened was this guys teammate fell over going after the puck and Zidnik was trailing the play and when his teammate was falling over his skate went up in the air and hit him right across the neck and cut his corated arterey. Lucky for him the training staff was very quick to act and helped him out right away and they were able to fix the artery and save his life. I do not think that there will be any measures to help prevent this from happening again just because this is such a rare occurance in hockey that it probably and hopefully wont happen again for a while.

New Apple Laptops

I just saw the commerical for the new apple laptops. This is the new computer that is super thin, and fits inside a basic folder. I think that this is a bad idea. The computers continue to get thinner and thinnner, and at the same time lighter and lighter. I feel that this could be a problem. The prolem is that the lighter and thinner they make these computers the more likely people are to break them. What they need to do is make a super heavy duty computer. One that like you could throw through a brick wall then run it over with a truck then open it and it still works fine. That way people do not have to worry about breaking their computer just by looking at it.

Football

Yesterday was the second time this year that the SRU football team had their 6am workouts. These work outs are when the entire team gathers in the field house at 6am to go through a series of running stations for an hour straight. This in my opinion might be the worst thing in the world. Not only do I absolutly hate running but 6am is not my time of choice to be sprinting around a gym. After these workouts I tend to be useless for the rest of the day. I just wish that these would be done like later in the day or preferablly not at all. But thats just wishful thinking.

New Technology

This post is about some new technology that I recently used and my reaction to it. The new technology that I was using was the new microsoft word 07. My reaction to it is that it might be the worst technology that I have ever used. Why did they have to change it. I finally understood hot to use the old version but now they changed it and I'm lost. I liked it so much better the old way when everything was sorted into different categories. The new version has everything under 4 different sections and thats too much information in one spot. So that is why I do not like the new version of word.

Nick Dice

My name is Nick Dice. I play Football at SRU. I used to play baseball in high school. I went to North Hills High school. I have two younger brothers