I’m done! On Thursday, my last application was due (and, yes, I did get it in on time). For the first time since the middle of September, I’m free!
« Archives in January, 2004
Super Bowl XXXVIII Prediction: Pats Over Cats
I’m a football addict. Someday, my poor wife will have to deal with losing me for, oh, a good 12 Sundays every autumn and winter.
It’s not that bad, though; I’m actually good at office football pools. I took my Wonderful Girlfriend out to a nice dinner after I won one a few weeks ago. If I can pick the scores weekly and win, or come close to it, every time, then I must be able to pick the Super Bowl winner, right? Right?
Usually I like the underdog. I think that comes from being a Broncos fan through the ’80s and most of the ’90s; all those lost Super Bowls will get to ya after a while. But, strangely, we seem to have *two* underdogs this year. Those scrappy Panthers are definitely underdogs. But so are those no-name Patriots. Both teams played well throughout the season, but they were expected to be knocked out by bigger teams like the Colts and Rams and Chiefs and Eagles. So there’s really no underdog to root for here.
Were I an NFL team owner, I’d want to own a team like with an offense like the Panthers’. I just love the 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust approach. But I also love the exotic and confusing blitzes the Pats run; that’s the kind of defense I’d love to see. Financially, I like the way the Patriots run their organization, spending on a few key leaders and bringing in role players elsewhere. It’s rare these days that a team can reach the Super Bowl without entering salary cap hell” but the boys from Foxboro have pulled it off. Sentimentally, thus, it’s a Patriots pick for me.
But how about the matchups? The Patriots’ offense should do tolerably well against the Panthers’ defense. The Cats are great at stopping teams, but the Pats just depend on quick four-yard slants that don’t give defenses time to react. The Panthers can force third and three or four, but the Patriots’ offense is built around working with that. When the Pats do get stopped, Vinatieri is a clutch kicker who can score from real distances.
On the other side of the field, I have serious worries about the Panthers’ offense. Delhomme has dealt well with the complex safety and corner blitzes you see a lot in the NFC, but those mostly come out of distinct formations while the Patriots use one formation for both cover and blitz plays, and throw a lot of delays in to mix things up. This kind of new approach is a good way to rattle an inexperienced quarterback, and Delhomme has thrown a fair number of interceptions. Kasay has better numbers during the year than Vinatieri but is not as proven a clutch performer and is in the twilight of his career, so the Panthers can’t rely on field goals to win it.
Thus the Patriots can score, if not a lot, and the Panthers will have a lot of trouble. Perhaps in the fourth quarter the smaller New England lines will tire out, but I believe the Patriots will have built up a substantial lead by then. While Carolina will mount a couple of good late-game drives, they’ll still lose. *Patriots 26, Panthers 20*.
We’ll see how I did tomorrow.
One Essay Or Many?
Many a business school applicant has been tempted to re-use one school’s essay in an application to another school. I know I sure was. I had to decide: would I?
New House: Kitchen
Okay, so I haven’t blogged in quite some time. I’m a bad boy. But I’ve “been busy”:http://wadearmstrong.com/archives/000365.html. So here, without further ado, is the kitchen. The part of the house I love and spend lots of time in. Mmmm, I’m hungry already.
There it is. It’s actually bigger than it seems — there’s plenty of room for two cutting boards and some veggies in the corner there.
Speaking of the corner, I keep a bunch of stuff there, in containers and lazy susans.
A double sink leaves plenty of room for a drying rack. And, if anybody ever accuses me of not admitting I’m wrong, it’s disproven here — several years, a former roommate wanted one of the rotating water filters that fit on the head of the faucet. I feared such a filter would be too bulky and lobbied for one that sat on the counter and attached to the faucet via a hose; it never worked right. This little filter is a dream and cheap too.
There’s room for a cart with microwave, toaster oven, Cuisinart and other equipment on it behind the fridge. Trash goes in the corner behind it. Above the cart is my spice rack, alphabetized, of course:
The oven is great, hot and accurate to within a few degrees of the selected temperature. The burners are not so wonderful; while they’re easily controllable and, thank goodness, gas at last, they’re not too hot. But what can you expect from a range that may be older than me? (Check out the hip Harvest Gold color!) Alongside is the equipment rack but the best part is the ultra-convenient knife rack below that.
So that’s my kitchen. Be nice to me and I’ll make you dinner!
Essays Everyday
So, no new posts for a while. There’s one simple reason for that — essay after essay. Two for Stanford, three for Marshall, three for Stern, five for Kenan-Flagler. On top of that, Additional Statements, various permutations of resumes and work descriptions, and lists of various accomplishments. That’s a lot of writing!
This Budget Should Be Terminated
Our new governor has “proposed a new budget”:http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-budget10jan10,1,6395213.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage. It’s a challenging budget, to meet the challengingly large deficit we seem to have run up. But it’s not a very good budget. If the state were a business (and, really, it is just a specific kind of business), it would be mortgaging long-term success to reach short-term profitability. Wall Street may like that, but it doesn’t benefit buy-and-hold investors or expensive-to-train employees.
Life Is Just Like The BCS
This weekend, college football crowned two national champions despite an elaborate system constructed to ensure there was just one. This system did not include a playoff, much to the ire of many fans and journalists. Playoffs sure are nice: they give every team a fair chance and experimentally test a range of possible outcomes. The result is an unambiguous winner — the champion will have beat everyone who beat everyone. But life rarely gives you (or, at least, me) the chance to experimentally test one outcome against another. Life usually demands big decisions with too little information — just like the BCS. So, can carrying out a little thought experiment on how to reform the BCS reveal some things about how to build models in real-life situations?
Mo Movies Mo Problems
2003 was hard for many sectors of the economy. Even movies were hit hard, suffering a “4% decrease in gross as compared with last year”:http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-munoz2jan02,2,1273815.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels. Why, in tough times like these, aren’t movies making money as the unemployed and underemployed escape their miserable lives through the fiction in the theater? Is it, maybe, because there are too many movies?
New Years’ Resolutions
Every year, at about the same time we drink to excess, it’s traditional that we make ill-kept resolutions about how we’ll behave better in the future. This isn’t, frankly, usually my kind of thing. But it’s been a turbulent year, and next year can hardly be worse, so it’s worth looking ahead to the future.
So, things I hereby resolve to:
# Exercise more often
# Take a Spanish conversation class
# Use my Sur La Table gift card for cooking classes
# Learn Python
# Start a wiki
# Blog more regularly
# Get it in writing beforehand
# _Doveryay, no proverya_
# Go to Europe
# Get friends together for drinks regularly
# Not speak ill of those who deserve it
# Network, network, network
Here’s to next year not being anything like last year!
Frittatas: Flat Italian Omelettes Of The Northern Veldt
Omelettes are tasty and fun but aren’t good to keep in the fridge and reheat. Quiches reheat well and can be filled with different yummy ingredients, but they’re a fair bit of work to make. The Italians got it just right — the “frittata”:http://eat.epicurious.com/dictionary/food/index.ssf?DEF_ID=1792 is easy-to-make and reheats well.
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