Bent Forks and Broncos

Somewhere back when the first Bush was in office and for some reason I cared when the topic was brought up, I was in high school. (A brief aside: to say that I'm apathetic toward politics right now/ever misses the point. I'm doing my best not to derail this guided train of consciousness, but just got really close to verbally dumping my slightly unorthodox but completely reasonable views on government….and there's a lot there. Especially since completely reasonable view are never simple, complete, or reasonable). But back to what I didn't think was that awkward phase of my life called high school. Back to the parts that I still remember. And back to this class I had to take for the IB Diploma called Theory of Knowledge (TOK). Our teacher was one of the more normal teachers at the school who had the mundane task of teaching a class about thinking about thinking. Which is a pretty broad subject that spans everything from philosophy to politics to evolution to Donnie Darko ...

The Nuggets are awesome. Except when they lose to teams they shouldn't lose to. Like they did twice over the past week. Well, ok, they're still awesome then. One of my favorite espn columnists (Bill Simmons, a mixture of sports/humor/random pop culture references), said that lists where an easy cop out to writing a column. Although it might have been Matthew Berry, a fantasy football columnist, who once I stopped following him my grades went up and both of my fantasy teams got significantly better. Well, my fantasy teams got better because I grew out a disgustache. Berry had nothing to do with that. But the cop out was that writing a column about a list is an easy cop out of actually figuring out something good to write about. So I'm going down that path. Not because I don't have any ideas, but because I am actually so excited about this idea that I might actually write something that could blow your mind. Or introduce you to a few of my recent most favorite artists. Wi...

I've discovered that the past X posts have been super boring. As in, wow, the Nuggets are awesome and I completely agree my life falls apart for the evening whenever the Nuggets lose, but really ? So I've dedicated to this post to the song that perhaps least represents my life. But it's a great song. And even though I've never heard of Cage the Elephant and think their lead singer can't dance (or if he can, then their music video sucks or I'm the next MJ), I think Ain't No Rest for the Wicked is awesome. Shout out to Eddie for getting me completely hooked on this song. I was actually going to carry along with the previous nonchalantly boring set of posts until I realized that I should be better than that….or I think I should be better than that. Somewhere over the course of the past two months, I've discovered that my sibling, who I've got five years on, is actually a better writer than me. And by better writer than me, I mean his college essays are...

Nuggets are back! Yes, the Birdman’s aggravating antics, K-Mart’s giant lip tattoo, Melo’s explosive scoring, Lawson’s explosive speed, Nene’s ballet moves, Billups’s clutch shooting, Carter’s “why did he do that?” and “why is Karl keeping him in?” even though he’s actually a decent player, Afflalo’s upside, the Toaster Oven catching fire, and, of course, Karl’s classic smug smirk. I am so ready for this season. Campus closed at 2:00. If it’s still closed tomorrow, mountains here I come! I still need to get a new set of ski poles. Of course, the first day we go up, I get my poles out of the closet…and the right one’s bent. If Boulder Ski Deals didn’t close at 8, I wouldn’t look like a complete noob on the mountain tomorrow. I guess worse things could happen. At times, Computer Science is like running into a brick wall as hard as you can, brushing it off, looking at some greek instructions describing the holes in the wall, and then repeating. Well, ok, it’s not always like that. T...

So I was going to start with yesterday’s ski trip, but then decided that Windows 7 is currently a little more significant. Well, I actually decided that grocery stores no longer carrying coconut cream pie yoplait yogurt was more important, but I’d be hard-pressed to spend a paragraph on it. So, back to Windows 7…or, as I like to call it, what Vista Should Have Been (WVSHB, for short). I’ve got nothing but accolades for it. I feel 20 times more comfortable running millions of apps and find it significantly easier to run an app when I want to, starting it as fast as possible, and not worrying about clutter. The install process was also painless: I didn’t have to spend 40 minutes transferring my back up music and 1 hour transferring my documents and files back to my computer. At this point in time, the only negative thing about WVSHB is that it didn’t come 5 years earlier. I went skiing yesterday for the first time this season. Even though there were only two super packed open runs, hug...

Wow. Simply put, wow. I'm completely enthralled with the broncos. I'm only slightly less enthralled with their colors…but I do feel obligated to by some brown and mustard yellow stripped socks. I watche the Broncos/Patriots game with two Patriots fans and got unduly amounts of trash talk for being a Broncos fan who actually expected the Broncos to win. It was redeeming when the first time the the Broncos were leading the entire game was when the game was over and we had scored the game winning touchdown. Priceless…all my poor trash-talk/broncos defending saved by a coin flip. Rox are coming up in about half an hour…to say I'm excited would be like saying the pope is catholic. I'm watching Dexter right now. The first two shows of the episode were slightly disappointing but I'm starting to like it again. Somehow the best characters on the show are the badass cop who steals money from safes and the super old detective Deb was dating two seasons ago. I'm not a big T...

I'm not much of a cook. It's a function of little to no practice, I always find something I'd rather be doing, like homework *cough* *cough.* But every now and then, I buy some meat, some vegetables, and some other random ingredients. And in those rare occasions in which I actually get around to cooking before the meat actually goes bad, I concoct a pretty damn good meal. Half the time. Today, I made some awesome stir-fry. Mind-blowingly good. It was basically the greatest stir-fry I've ever made…except for the rice. I'm not sure what it is with rice, but I lack the ability to cook it. I follow the directions, dot the I's, cross the t's, boil the water, add the salt, let it sit, take the top off, etc. Whenever it comes to actually sampling it, something is always wrong. Most of the time, the ricI'vee is too hard, although its sometimes far too sticky. I just can't get it right. Rice is the foil to my cooking. It's the joker to my Batman. The Mega...

Wow, my last post was an amalgam of incoherent topics, misspellings, and slightly ironic commentary. Ok, on that last point, that's my personal opinion. But it's basically true, so deal with it. Unfortunately, class has not kicked my ass yet. I still have far too much time on my hands, letting me play soccer 3 days a week + various other intramurals on my 'off' nights. That being said, I think I destroyed the bone connecting my right toe to the rest of my foot, so I'll be gunning for max left foot utilization in our next few games. No, that doesn't mean we'll lose 0-5; it just means that when I miss the easy touch pass to you (5 feet away), it's because I'm becoming a better player, so a few weeks down the road I won't miss it. And I won't miss it because of all the practice I put in with my left foot; it will actually be because my right foot/toe will be fully healthy then. Approximately 24 hours ago (and by that I mean sometime on the 16 th...

I feel guilty stealing other blogs thunder, especially because there's zero chance they'd link to me (they're all nuggets all the time), but I'm stealing a link about the birdman for a reason that they completely missed. Basically the Birdman grew facial hair . Coming from somebody who lacks anything remotely close to this 'manly' ability of growing facial, its crazy. He looks completely different…and by different I guess I mean old *nostaligic twinge.* I mean, the Birdman's not young anymore, even though he has relatively few miles on his NBA odometer…so trying to see him look older just seems…odd. But hey, if it improves his game I'm all for it. Hey, at least it's not porn stache worth, like Colt McCoy's was. I got back from Pittsburgh this morning from my SEI CMMI training class. Super-informative. I feel like a process improvement junkie, it's almost addicting. It's also awesome: everything about it simply makes sense. I'm comp...

So I'm going to try to make this quick… Today was awesome. I stuffed myself at a lunch buffet at Beaujo's, played some ultimate for under an hour, ran a mile, had a no longer local friend contact me, and played racquetball. In the process, I discovered that: eating as much as you possibly can means you will be really tired at work for the entire afternoon, I'm really good at running in a straight line for quick bursts especially when there's a deep Frisbee/ball thrown my way (as a heads up, it's now known as plan one), I'm not nearly as fast as I thought as a I was, I'm a dick for not including one of my friends in fantasy football, and my hunches about a friend's racquetball skills were dead on. But he owes me beer, so its cool. The most interesting thing that happened was my mile time. I wasn't keeping exact time, but I did it in just under six minutes….while I have tendencies to have unrealistic expectations for myself, 6 minutes is a solid minute...

So I've got to do this quickly, before all of my motivation wanes into that nebulous area we all know as sleep. So, here it goes… I've discovered a fundamental truth about myself: I hate getting burned. I played a game of pick-up football today with a few of my old high school buddies and I got absolutely lit up. It sucked. What made it worse was that two days ago (Sunday), I played a similar game, and did amazing. Man, it was a downer. I mean I've got an excuse, but it just completely burned my desire to play pick-up football in the near reason. On Sunday, we were playing barefoot, and I could dance like a butterfly. I played in my indoor soccer shoes today, and at about the second cut, exactly at the point that I realized that the WR I was covering had decided to change directions for the third time, I decided to correct my wrong course of action. By slipping and eating it. Which, if the Q threw an accurate pass (about 1/3 of the time), resulted in an touchdown. Note that...

I've got the taste of black licorice on my tongue. Five point game. Melo just swatted Dirk. This Fourth quarter could be epic. 10:57: Melo's pulled two clean strips on Dirk. But he gets called for the foul. Not cool. 10:09: Great play by Wright. Way to draw contact and get three FTs….we've got a four point game. 9:33: Despite the fact that Melo's gotten called twice for fouls on Dirk, he has done a great job covering him. Dirk's had the ball swatted out of his hands every time. 7:59: Wow J.R. wow. Hits the ridiculous bank as the shot clock expires. Too bad its only a two. And Bass, taking the really dumb T. The refs are calling T's super often. This is really abnormal, and hurts the Nuggets much more than it hurts Dallas. Hey, we hit a FT! Melo hits the T. 7:08: New career playoff high for Melo! 36! Followed by Dirk hitting a great shot after JR poorly fouled him. 6:30: JR hits a crazy shot. 6:07: I have no idea how the Nuggets got that call. But I'll...

I'm falling a little behind… 10:00: Dirk looks unstoppable. Very scary. 9:15: I am really starting to like Dahntay Jones's energy is awesome. 8:32: 1-point game?!?! Denver what happened? The announcers just called Dallas resilient? You're better than that. Coach Sotola is telling you guys that that is simply unacceptable. Btw, the Angels & Demons/NBA playoffs dual commercials are not cutting it for me. Make them stop. Please. 7:37: Denver, 1-7, Dallas 6-8…and then Melo answers, twice in a row. 6:38: Good hard foul by Melo, preventing the easy basket. 6:09: Melo is starting to heat up! And Josh "on two bad ankles" Howard hits the two with an And-1 which he misses, but gets the Offensive rebound? And then gets fouled again? Ouch. That hurts. 5:58: 74-73 Nuggets. This game is really high scoring. The rhythm is infinitely better than Game 3, where fouls were getting called left right and center. Wait whats this? Terry's got 5 fouls! YES! This bodes very w...

Lets start the 2 nd Quarter. I love the Most Interesting Man in the world commercials: On the two party system, 'The after-party … is the one you want to attend.' Classy. Simple. Awesome, and now, back to the Nuggets… 12:00: 5/6 on three's; 34-23 Nuggets. And J. R. AGAIN! (for three). 11:15: Melo & Wright wrap each other up, minor skirmish. Melo, a technical…Dude. You're better than that. My buddy (and much more intelligent basketball commentator Kenji) brings up a very scary but good point: these Technical fouls are going to start hurting us if we keep moving deeper into the playoffs. K-Mart's had three or four, and Melo's had a couple also, we could be playing without them for a game or too if they keep that up. 11:15: I'm still really curious as to what happened to Karl's chin. I'm looking for a very interesting story here…Dirk takes a FT that doesn't count. Nice try slick. 11:07: Melo looks unstoppable. Another foul on Wright, Melo go...

Ok, so I've never done this before, but here's a running game blog. I haven't figured out how to do this automatically, so I'll be manually entering the time. One quarter at a time. 6:12 : Wow. The first few minutes had me super concerned, as Dallas went out on a quick, 4-0 run and the Nuggets looked superbad. 5:18 : Wtf? Jones just hit a long 2 followed by a rhythm Chauncey 3! 5:01 : Dirk's crazy good. I may hate him because he flops too much, but that was good (and a really bad foul by Nene). Too bad he missed the And-1. The Birdman's out? Stomach issues? This does not bode well for the Nuggets. 4:23: 21-14. Whew. Every time the Mavs score, the Nuggets respond. A 7, no 8 point lead? Looking good. But damn, Dirk is on fire. 3:41: Dirk looks good, the rest of the Mavs look very sluggish…and does Nene ever feel like hitting the offensive glass? Seriously, he just stands and watches far too much. 2:47: Chauncey looks 'smooth' according to the announcers...

I'm growing a little frustrated with everything I'm reading about the Game 3. Everybody is missing the crucial point. Melo hit the ridiculous three. Dallas fans can moan and groan all they want. There were 61 fouls called during the game, and Dallas had a +7 advantage in fouls called for them. Dirk clanked one off the rim with 32 seconds left. And Melo hit the ridiculous three. For the last 3 minutes of the fourth quarter, when Dallas had a consistent 1-3 point lead the entire time, I was waiting for the Nuggets to roll over and play dead. It seemed like the Nuggets would drive, work insanely hard, and then, if they were lucky, hit a basket. The Mavs, on the other hand would drive, dish, dish, dish, wide-open shot. Or, more often, dish, dish, dish, and then get fouled. The way fouls were getting called I thought the refs had the whistles stuck in their throats. And while there wasn't a particularly major advantage, as a Nuggets fan, I was very frustrated with every call. Wh...

I'm behind with everything. Senior Projects: we've got a presentation and the design expo on Thursday and Saturday, respectively. Unix Sysadmin: homework due on Tuesday. Engineering data analysis homework due on Tuesday and our semester project 1.5 weeks later. Schaub's Class: homework due in under a week. I should be freaking out right now. But I might have just gone to the best Nuggets game ever.

I buckled. I've now got a twitter account (the_real_sotola). It was basically completely spontaneous, and it gives me a chance to compare twitter to blogging. Currently twitter is winning. I actually know other people who tweet…and there's a slim chance they actually periodically check it out. Although, I did feel like a stalker when one of my friends' twitter account unexpectedly appeared (especially since I had no idea they even had an account). I think twitter's also helped me discover that I'm nowhere nearly as witty as I like to think. Of course, that just a matter of practice. I'm pretty sure that I'll practically be a twitter god within about a month. If there's a recommended amount of hours of sleep over 4 nights, I'm pretty sure 12 isn't it. That's why the blog has been strangely silent recently. I'm super psyched for the NBA playoffs (Go Nuggets!). I'm even more excited for our IM basketball team, that, with any luck, will w...

If there's such a thing as blogger's block, I've got it. I've been meaning to write ever since last Friday, but every time I started starting at the blank sheet in front of me, my mind wandered to the Nuggets, youtube, or, most recently fantasy baseball. I think evenings that involve Nuggets games end much better than evenings that don't. And evenings that involve going to Nuggets games…that's just taking it to the next level. I went to last Thursday's Jazz-Nuggets contest. I'm not sure whether it was the lower level seating for less than $20, the 2 people from Utah sitting to my left, or the fact that J. R. Smith could not miss in the first half, but the place was nuts. And I'm not evening mentioning the Birdman's season high 8 blocks. Needless to say, we won. While I had initially planned on posting a lot more, it's late and I don't want to fall asleep in classes that I care about tomorrow. I also don't want to fall asleep in classe...

Ok, so you meet this pretty sweet chick. Everything just kicks off perfectly—almost too good to be true. First couple dates: nothing like it. I mean they're not perfect, but you were batting .100 before then, so it's like hitting a home run. Your friends, they think your expectations are way too high: things can only go downhill from here they say. But you're only drooling at the thought of this getting better. And then it happens. You've had a few, and the next thing you know, you talking to this other chick who's been a good friend for quite a while. To you it's 99% innocent. But to Lady #1, it's over. You're the Denver Broncos. The past three seasons have indicated that Cutler will and can only get better. Her awesome roommates or the crazy spontaneity (that you love and hate), all of which you're friends have warned you about, are the sick Bronco's offensive line that pad Cutler's stats and the cross the body-cross-the-field throws that m...

I've been split between hopping on the blogging boat and tweeting. Blogger 1, Twitter 0. I've tried blogging before, using Xanga, but then I stopped about half a year later: I had run out of ideas. Actually, it was more like exhausting the scope of my very limited blogging ideas, which I basically drew from three sources; the Denver Post's sporting section, my friend's blogs, and random spur of the moment bouts of creativity. But as freshman year rolled, I stopped reading the newspaper (I was in the dorms), my comrades' blogging ways halted, and all of my second semester creative juices were spent trying to understand computers as components (pun intended). I'm wiser now. If nothing else, there's a bigger freshwater lake from which I'm going to fish my ideas from. I'm expanding the scope of this blog to include the ingenious ideas and crazy experiences of my actual life. On top of my crazy awesome ideas, I'm also going to blog about things that I...