The NCAA Basketball tournament starts in earnest tomorrow, so today’s the last chance to fill out your bracket and potentially win some stuff (and I’m always looking for more prizes to throw into the pot — if you have one you want to throw in, pop me a note below).
Category: Cool
Holy Crap: Oregon Made The NCAA Tournament
I didn’t think they’d do it, but they actually managed a 9 seed and will play Mississippi State in the first round of the South bracket of the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament. North Carolina (East), Memphis (South), UCLA (West) and Kansas (Midwest) took the #1 seeds.
Play Nearly 800 Old-School NES Games In Your Browser
If you’re an old school NES gamer like me, you’ll enjoy this site. The controls are a bit weird and they don’t have River City Ransom, one of my favorite old-school NES games, but it’s still a great way to kill off an entire week.
Join The UtterlyBoring.com NCAA Tournament Pick ’em (2008 Edition)
Selection Sunday is coming up on March 16 and then it’s time for offices all over the country to create office pools for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. And it’s time for the readers of this site to compete for bragging rights (and a few cool prizes) in the annual UtterlyBoring.com Tournament Pick ‘Em. Last years contest info was here with final results here with Scott’s Mad Dribblerz taking the top prizes.
Sign Up Info: While the field for the tournament hasn’t been set yet, you can still get signed up in the group and be notified when the field has been set and you can start making your picks (usually about an hour or so after the picks have been announced). Sign up here or if that link doesn’t work, go here, click on the “Join Group” link and use the following info:
Group ID#: 450
Password: utterlyboring
The group’s page is here, which I think you can only see if you sign up.
Prizes: First off, here are the prizes we have so far (and if any local business or individual wants to throw a prize into the pot — for first or last or anywhere in between — contact me and you’ll receive credit and a link here, if you’d like):
- First Place: Meals for two (breakfast, lunch, or dinner, as it’s all served all day), plus a copy of a couple books: Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook and John Daly’s My Life In And Out of The Rough (The Truth Behind the Bull**** You Think You Know About Me) from Lyle at Jake’s Diner here in Bend. Plus (added on 3/20): A XXXL (that’s extra-extra-extra-large) lightweight University of Oregon jacket, made by Nike. It’s a couple different shades of green with yellow trim. It’s got a small Oregon “O” and Nike swoosh on the front and it says “Oregon” across the back. It’s a nice little jacket, I think it’s used, but looks brand new, but it’s frickin’ huge — like tent huge. Thanks to Larry at Discover Sunriver for that.
- Second Place: A baseball cap, stickers, and a women’s fitted t-shirt (size large) from Paizano’s Pizza over in Baker City (plus a free Large Specialty Pizza if you live within driving distance).
- Last Place (Yes, you read that right, see below for rules): You get a t-shirt from the UtterlyBoring.com shop that you can show off to all your friends your inability to pick winners. Wear it with pride.
Rules:
- Only one bracket per-person this year. While there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 ways a bracket could be broken down, since we have a dead-last prize this year, it wouldn’t be fair to allow more than a bracket-per-person.
- The entire bracket must be filled out if you want to be eligible for the last-place prize.
- Prizes: Unless otherwise stated, prizes must be picked up from prize providers in person, and prize providers are not eligible to win the prizes they provide (and I’m taking myself out of the running for any and all of the prizes, if I win/lose). Prizes may be added anytime during the tournament, so be sure to sign up.
- Scoring: Since I agree with Scott, Yahoo! puts far too much points into the final rounds, so we’re customizing the default scoring a bit, using some of the numbers from the Fibonacci Sequence. So this is how Yahoo! scored it last year:
- Round 1: 1 pt
- Round 2: 2 pts
- Round 3: 4 pts
- Round 4: 8 pts
- Round 5: 16 pts
- Championship: 32 pts
…we’re going to do it this way this year:
- Round 1: 1 pt
- Round 2: 2 pts
- Round 3: 3 pts
- Round 4: 5 pts
- Round 5: 8 pts
- Championship: 13 pts
That should make for a tighter race this year.
- These rules are subject to change, I’m the final say on everything, UtterlyBoring.com cannot and will not be held liable for anything, nor can Yahoo Sports, prize providers, my family, hamster or anybody else. Do not taunt happy fun ball. Batteries not included. Not for off-road use.
May cause oily discharge. This is casual fun, folks — let’s keep it that way.
That’s all for now, so get yourself signed up and good luck!
Bend Blogger Meetup Followup
Amazingly enough, the local blogger meetup was a huge success. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and when I got there (late, like I said), I was floored by the sheer amount of people there. I was expecting a few, not the 30 or so that were there.
It just shows how much the blogging community in this area has really grown, and how being a blogger isn’t as crazy as it once was. “Blog” was a word that I could never use as people wouldn’t understand what the heck I was saying. Not any more.
Shannon’s posted a quick follow-up as well as a group picture on flickr (along with some other shots including a flattering shot of me and the not chubby mommy). I’ve added notes on the people I recognized that I know wouldn’t mind. That, and on my high-res, low size screen, it’s hard to recognize some of the faces. Anybody else, feel free to tag your name on that image.
Like Jen, I was happy to meet BORis and Sally (I apparently already knew BORis, just didn’t know that that person was responsible for that site). All in all, an entertaining time, the little bit I was there. Heck, I won a prize for having the best name tag (I won by default with my Sharpie and Duct Tape creation), so that was worth the trip right there.
Valentines For Geeks
If you’re looking for that perfect card for your special geek, here you go.
I Never Had Any Sons…
…so I never got to help anybody build a Pinewood Derby car like I built in Cub Scouts. But my older daughter is in a church group that is going to be having Pinewood Derby-esque car races, so now I can use the power of the ‘net to build stupidly fast cars. Holy crap is there a ton of information out there — there are some really serious dudes when it comes to this kind of stuff. Painting it like a school bus like I did in Cub Scouts (it nearly won) is looking more and more like a good idea.
Maddening Game For Evening
Just spin the circle. Sounds simple, right? Easier than it sounds.
I’d Never Have A Use For One
But I so totally want this used Canon Super Telephoto 1200mm lens that B&H is selling. Nevermind that’s nearly $100,000 and I don’t have a camera worth even mounting it on.
As for image quality, even wide open it’s quite lovely. Stopped down to f/8 and f/11 it’s actually quite remarkable. How remarkable? From midtown Manhattan we were able to read the street signs on the corner of JFK Boulevard East and 43rd St. in Weehawkin New Jersey when viewing image files at pixel resolution.