The Stanley Cup Finals have been amazing. I’m a die hard Penguins fan, but anyone who is a fan of hockey has to respect how the Red Wings are controlling the puck and defending against Crosby and Malkin. The Pens are going to have to have their best game if they want to compete, because the Wings aren’t giving them much to work with.

In other sports news, CCU got knocked out of the regionals this weekend. Another run ath the College World Series cut short. It’s a shame, because Coastal Carolina has an exceptional program and seems to come so close every year.

However, the big hit for the whole family, has been the Wii. This is the first thing that I have seen that has gotten four out of the five family members hooked on it. My Wife is the only one that has been able to maintain any sense level-headedness over the absolute need to play it. Of course, we just think she’s crazy!

Both Brian and Will are having a blast with bowling, boxing, and tennis on Wii Sports. They are also enjoying Super Mario Galaxy and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids(Don’t ask). Victoria has gotten to be quite good at bowling, and she and a few of her friends were absolutely hilarious the other night playing tennis.

And while I am interested in all of the games we have so far, I have spent the majority of my time on the Wii playing Tennis, baseball, bowling, and golf. It has seriously become something of a workout regimen for me. Now most of you that read this know me, and know that I am not the most active person in the world, but spending a few minutes boxing or playing tennis will seriously get your heart pumping.

Another nice thing about how Wii sports was designed, is that it does not care of you are young or old, tall or short – there is at least one sport that you can excel at. For instance, Will and Brian play against each other most of the time and while Brian dominates Will in Tennis and Baseball, he can never seem to get the better hand in boxing. In fact, it’s pretty funny watching both of them shadow-boxing with the television and tiny little Will delivering that knockout punch to his big brother! And while Victoria struggles with her swing-timing in baseball, her form in bowling – and the hook on her ball – is something to see…. And me? Well, it’s not quite fair, because I can play on it all night once everyone else goes to bed. I have reached the PRO level (at least 1000 skill points) on bowling, and tennis, and I am very close to reaching it in golf. However, I am not that great in baseball, and I just right-out suck at boxing.

To say that the Wii is getting a lot of play time is an understatement. It has built in Wi-Fi, so it connects to my wireless network and lets me browse the web, or connect to the Wii Virtual Console Channel and download all of those kewl old skool Nintendo games like Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. They also have some old Sega and Neo-Geo games, like Sonic2 or Street Fighter2. I can also turn it on and it will give me the latest weather forecast and a list of news headlines as well.

Downsides? Well, there are a couple… One thing is to take heed of all the warnings that come up on the screen about making sure that the players have enough empty space around them. More than once has someone got unintentionally whacked by the overzealous player. The other? Well, let’s just say that if you are out of shape, you really need to start off playing fairly conservatively. After the first night of playing, I could barely get around the next day.

Now if I could just get my hands on Guitar Hero 3, Tiger Woods ’08, and Zack & Wiki…

[tags]wii, games, fitness, sports[/tags]

Since 1970:
The Steelers have had 22 playoff appearances and won 5 Super Bowls(75, 76, 79, 80, 06).
The Pirates have had 9 postseason appearances and won 2 World Series(71, 79).
The Penguins had 21 playoff appearances and won 2 Stanley Cups(90-91, 91-92)

I am a die-hard Pittsburgh sports fan. I eagerly await the beginning of each season to see how my team is going to stack up against the rest of the league. That’s why the last couple of months have been very hard to swallow. With the possibility of the Penguins relocating to a new city, and the resignation of Bill Cowher as head coach of the Steelers, the sports landscape in Pittsburgh has changed dramatically. What I find even more disturbing is some of the negative comments from Pittsburgh natives I’ve seen floating around the internet about both stories(small example Here). Both Cowher and the Lemieux group have shown nothing but loyalty to their respective teams and their fans for years, and to have some of those same fans stab them in the back is appalling. It would seem that the very same “blue-collar” attitude of hard work and loyalty that the people of Pittsburgh have for so long identified themselves with no longer applies.

How sad…
[tags]Steelers, Penguins, Pirates, sports, Pittsburgh, sports_fans, Bill Cowher, Mario Lemieux[/tags]

1. Golfers are not athletes
2. Tiger wouldn’t be able to compete if he were involved in any other sport

For the sake of argument, Tiger plays in a non-team sport, so if he had concentrated on – let’s say – tennis when he was 3 years old, and was instilled with the same mental toughness that his parents did with golf, wouldn’t he be a most formidible opponent?
Let’s move this same theory to a team sport such as football. Let’s say Earl and Tida Woods decide that when their son, Tiger turns 3 years old, they will train him to be a football player instead of a golfer. What kind of quarterback do you think young Tiger would grow up to be? If the three of them dedicated his life to football the way they did golf, wouldn’t he have the mental focus, and toughness to read defenses quickly? Wouldn’t he still have the ability to be creative and make plays? And if he trained for football all those years the way he did golf, wouldn’t he have the physical body geared more toward that sport?

Now you know as well as I, that we will never really know what would/could have happened, But if I were to speculate, I think Tiger would have more than held his own in whatever position in whichever sport he(his parents) chose.

First, I read today that AMD has broken the 20% mark in market share. I’ve been a fan of AMD for quite a few years now, so it is a good thing to see them gaining a little ground and respectability in the general public and the business sector alike.

Also, I’ve been taking some free online courses from HP. Right now, I’m enrolled in the Linux 201 class and the PHP/Mysql class. We’ve gone through two lessons so far, and I’m fairly happy with what is being taught. The Linux 201 class is based on the Fedora Core distribution and even moreso using the gnome desktop environment. I use neither at home – I am a gentoo man with fluxbox as my window manager when I need one. However, The course outline says that they will begin concentrating on some command-line administration pretty soon. That’s the only reason I really signed up for the course – also to see where my skills are lacking as an administrator.

The PHP/MySQL class has been interesting and requires more time than I thought. I actually have to lay out the design of some faux property management website before we actually create it and then create a control panel for it. This class could end up being very helpful to me.

I’ve started an exercise program. Well – not really… I am just doing some calisthenics to keep my heart rate up and then some bench presses and resistance crunches on the Bowflex. No strict schedule or anything, but I’ve put in about an hour each night for the past 3 nights. You see, I noticed the other evening a new warning label on my cholesterol meds. The new prescription bottle says that I shouldn’t eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice at any time while on the meds. Intruiged, I did some web research and found out that there is some chemical found in grapefruit that reacts with the medicine. While researching, I also read many complaints from people regarding muscle loss. Some were claiming that it was pretty substantial. Well, for those of you that know me, know that I have kinda “let myself go” the past few years. The last thing I really need is to get bigger. I figure that the little bit that I’m doing now will help counteract what I could be losing due to the medication.

During my downtime, I like to browse the web and catch up on news(mostly technology) and sports, but about a month ago or so, I ran into a blog that has quickly turned into one of my new favorites. Again, those of you that know me, know that I worked in the service industry for about 10-12 years. I loved the restaurant business, and I took extreme pride in my job. The money was good as well… In fact, a couple of those years actually exceeded my sysadmin salary from last year. Anyway, waiterrant.net has been a good way for me to reminisce about both the good and bad things of my “previous life.” I thnk it’s a great read whether you’re familiar with restaurant life or not.

So the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl!!! I’m really excited!!! It’s a nice story that Jerome Bettis will get to play his final(reportedly) game in his hometown for the title. I’m sure emotions will be high, but I hope the Steelers don’t become overconfident. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Seahawks’ stats all year and they’ve been pretty impressive. This game is going to be much closer than most people think.

I also read that Mario’s calling it quits again. This time it looks as if it’s for good. I’m so sad about this. I had planned on going to Raleigh this year to see the Hurricanes-Pens matchup just to say that I got to see Mario play… and then they found out about his irregular heartbeat, and all my hopes were lost. Earlier in the month, Mario put the Pens up for sale, but wants to keep the team in Pittsburgh. I truly hope he can accomplish this task. I know the Pens haven’t been great the past few years, and I know that they are underachieving this year, but the Pens should never leave Pittsburgh. It just wouldn’t be the same.

A thought just came to me… How many cities have won at least 3 of the big 4 sports championships?
Here’s what I have: New York, Boston, LA, Chicago, Pittsburgh… Any others?

No parent should ever have to bury their child

I’ll be praying for you and your family, Mr Dungy.

My sympathies go out to Terry and Jen whose Volunteers lost to lowly Vandy.

I can only hope that my NFL teams win tomorrow….