Checksum Arcanius

I think the name of that doomed city might be a good name for my Philosophy teacher. It rings of pomposity, and this is a man who likes to hear himself speak. Add on top of this that its a day class that has thrown a monkey wrench in my schedule, and its unfortunate that I may have to take this class to get my associate’s degree from BCC. And since I won’t know about my transfer credits for two months (got to love the efficiency of the system) I either have to dealy a quarter, or hedge my bets and just take this class. Still, I have yet to see a bookstore like short enough to justify standing in, so I am without the required text. Doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem, because, truly, this guy doesn’t stop talking except to wait to tell you how your comments are simply the mistakes of a beginning philosophy student. I guess not everything can be math and science, but you’d expect that a Philosophy of Science instructor might know enough about science to know that Coulomb’s law has nothing to do with magnetism. Well, at least he was aware of the name of the law, and was in the right ballpark. I guess I should count my blessings. Still, it feels like its gonna be a long quarter.

Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Seahawks lost to the St. Louis Rams, their 6th straight playoffs loss, tying an NFL record. It seems fitting that the play that sealed the fate was a dropped pass – not a perfect pass like so many of the drops have been, but definitely a catchable ball, especially for a reciever in the NFL.

Hey, at least with my low expectations I’m not all that disappointed at the loss.

And Mr. Torborg, I need you to contact me.

Well, Oklahoma got whipped again, this time by USC… on the other hand, a PAC-10 team won it, and I don’t mind USC, they seem classy enough for it to me. It is also nice to hear more and more people calling for a playoff, even if its just 4 or 8 teams.

I implemented Tim’s suggested tweaks to improve the look of the page in IE. I’m not sure how far down that road I want to go though. After all, when someone asks me why it looks a little funny, I can tell tehm that they are simply using the wrong browser, and set them straight. It just might be a great way to spead Firefox.

A nice little program I discovered at work, Tray It! lets you minimize any window to the system tray. Its free, small, unobstrusive, and in my case, ridiculously useful. There are a few programs that offer the same abilities, but some of them appear to be shareware or demoware… and if they’re as easy to use as Tray It! is (all you have to do is hold control while minimizing), then I would be surprised. Congrats to the Tray It! team for a job well done.

A long-promised, long-overdue event occured today: I finally updated the look of my site. It isn’t perfect – in IE, it has a few rendering glitches – but I don’t view it in IE very often, so I don’t care. If someone wants to help me out in this area, feel free. Otherwise it may be a while (just this update certainly took its time).

Let me know what you think. I like it myself. But then I suppose I wouldn’t have done it otherwise :-D.

The BCS (Bowl Champ Series) is NCAA college football’s way of deciding which team is the best in the nation. And this year, like every year before, it is screwed up.

Before the BCS existed, the national champion was decided by two polls – one of sportwriters by the Associated Press and one of the coaches, run by ESPN, I believe. It was a pretty terrible system, because with two polls, there could be – and often were – split national champions. The problem was compounded by the fact that the after-season bowl games took the conference champions from pre-defined conferences. For example, the Rose Bowl matches the Big 10 champion versus the Pac 10 champion, regardless if the two teams were any good (other than winning their own conference… which sometimes doesn’t mean much).

When the BCS was created, the public idea was to put the two best teams against each other, so that there wouldn’t be the issues. But privately, the idea was to enrich the six most powerful conferences at the expense of less established conferences by, for most intents and purposes, excluding schools not from the PAC 10, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, or Big East conferences. In fact, this was the first year that a school from another conference “crashed the party” – and it was Utah, from BYU’s Mountain West Conference.

Now, to its credit, the BCS does actually does tend to get the rankings right – or at least close to right, as I see it. For example, Utah is ranked 6th, behind the also undefeated USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn, as well as the two teams whose only losses are to USC or Oklahoma – Texas and Cal. So, that ranking makes sense from a logical point of view (although Utah ahead could also make sense), but what makes sports interesting is that it often defies logic – how else would the Red Sox beat the Yankees after being down 3-0 in the ACLS? How else would we cheer for our underdog team and, on a few sweet occasions, be right?

That is why the only way to really know who is the best is to have a playoff system, because no poll can take the place of a game played. And when there are six or seven undefeated teams in the fray, how can either winner of a national championship game truly be legitimate? There are a few dead weeks after the last games and the start of the bowls, and this would be a perfect time to have a few playoff bowls – even the top eight teams would make a winner a lot more legitimate, and only require a few more games. The championship game could be on New Year’s day again, as it should be, instead of a few days after, and the other major bowls could either line up beforehand for the eliminations, or take off the not-quite-champions to line up more interesting match-ups, or the conference-specific ones. Something like that.

But alas, the BCS is going to be around through at least 2010… Still, life is good when you get to see Texas take on and narrowly defeat Michigan in a thriller. But then Utah whips Pittsburg and you have to wonder, why weren’t they playing Auburn? My guess is that it’ll still be a while before there’s any playoff system, and until then, we’ll just have to wonder, what if…