“What player would be the most annoyed on Valentines Day?”

Game night with my friends led to the above question during a round of Imaginiff.  We’ve been trying to have a regular get-together and it usually revolves around some combination of Cranium, Taboo, and what other board games we can come up.  In Imaginiff, each player picks the player they think the question most corresponds to and if you have the same answer as the majority, you score a point.  4 “Shawns” and 3 “Christinas” later, the above question illustrated the commonly held belief that I’m not a romantic.

I made a comment to Christina that despite what everyone thinks, I am certainly one of the more considerate “significant others” out there.  She didn’t disagree but made the comment that I’m probably the least romantic person — not she has a problem with that — and am not one to, for example, give flowers unsolicited.  I reminded her that I had done that at least once but I just didn’t want to spoil her.  :)

I continued that I just don’t want to give a gift without a reason.  Christina pointedly told me that being romantic means doing EXACTLY THAT: Giving gifts for no reason.  To which I responded: Doing things without reason leads to anarchy.  

Oh, and I won the game of Imagiff.

My NCAA Dynasty moved on to Season 2 last night.  Using the NXE (yes, there will be a post about this later), we were able to use the new group chat feature and power through the offseason all at once.  8 of the 9 people in our league pulled a 3-hour administration session to allow us to get to next seasons games.  

The highlight of my offseason was wooing back the #2 QB in the nation from his soft-commit to Nebraska.  He’s now the 2nd string QB for my Fresno State team after I promised him the world, including “no redshirt”.  The level of detail in the recruiting and management is really quite amazing.  Regardless, Fresno State came out of the offseason with the 29th ranked class, best in the WAC.  Hawaii was the closest at 49 while the rest of the players were in the 70s or higher.

There’s definitely hope that I’ll have the ability to defend my title even though I was only picked to place 3rd in the preseason predictions;  Dan’s high-powered NMSU offense seduced the voters and garnered most of the preseason picks.

Other than a short run about a year ago, I haven’t played much poker at all in general since I went to the WSOP in 2006.  At the time, I transferred all of my winnings to a more cut-n-dry form of gambling, stock trading.   It seemed like a good idea at the time as I didn’t have the time or motivation to play much poker and investments have always intrigued me.  In another life, I think I would have liked to have been a stock broker.

I recently got around to watching the WSOP Main Event coverage on ESPN from this year which wrapped up about 2 weeks ago.  As always, that has stoked my interest in poker again.  In addition, most of you have probably noticed the economy is not doing so well.  My investments, funded w/ my poker winnings, have taken a hit along with everyone else.  Tell me again how online poker is gambling but stock trading is not?  Perhaps I should have stayed away from stock trading and focused on the less risky business found in gambling.

Speaking of Risky Business, I did indeed name this article such that I can have a reason to post possibly the best television ad ever: Risky Business.

Last night, VT put the season on the line and traveled to Miami for what I considered a must-win game.  As is much too common, VT dropped the ball (literally in Dyrell Roberts case) and let Miami steal a 17-14 win.  Several suspect penalty calls, numerous fortuitous “mistakes” by Miami that turned into game-savers, and most of all, the atrocious play-calling by the VT offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring, led to the loss.

The defenses for both teams were playing quite well in general.  Bud Foster dialed up a constant blitzing assault that worked pretty well in general.  Likewise, the Miami defense managed to lock down the VT running game completely.

For the most part, the quarterbacks played reasonably well even with the offensive line providing almost no protection.  Sean Glennon, who I have never been sold on, had a reasonable game with only one bone-headed mistake where he took a sack that pushed us out of field goal range.  Tyrod Taylor also played reasonably well and provided essentially the only offense we had in the second half.  Darren Evans was repeatedly stopped and our running game was virtually non-existent.  Boykins had a phenomenal catch while Roberts had the previously mentioned drop.

Despite having all the breaks go Miami’s way with the fumbles and penalties, Virginia Tech was still in a position to win the game.  Unfortunately, Stinespring was unable to come up with a gameplan and continued to make the wrong decision time and time again.  Miami’s defense was consistently able to stuff our inside running game but the few times we call an option or a designed QB run, we seem to be averaging 6-8 yards per play.  Obviously, we continued to attempt runs up the inside.  Brilliant!

The difference between Stinespring and good offensive coordinators becomes really apparent when you look at certain plays.  e.g. With our constant blitzing, Miami was able to able to capitalize by calling several screen passes… specifically designed to abuse the blitzes.  They did this with signficant success in the 3rd quarter.  Stinespring went the other way — With Miami completely shutting down our inside running game, Stinespring calls just that on a critical 3rd & 1.  Using Pickle, a guy who hadn’t touched the ball previously in the game.  Against a defense that has not let us run up the middle yet.  I guess his thinking is that they would never expect him to call a play they’ve been so successful at stopping… time and time again.  I think we all know how that play ended up.

I suppose my frustration is quite apparent.  VT has all the pieces but atrocious play-calling and gameplans are killing us.  How is that Beamer can’t see what every other Hokie fan can?  Something has to change and that something is Bryan Stinespring.

Over the past week, our WAC Dynasty has approached the end of the season.  My last two games were against San Jose State and Boise State, manned by Roy/Luke and Josh respectively.  I contemplated writing up recaps but other things kept me busy.  I only needed to win one of the games to lock up the WAC title and I wasted no time by defeating Luke 17-14 in my fourth straight 3 point win over human opponents.  I didn’t feel like I played well and Luke played quite well but I managed to squeeze out the win by holding on after jumping out to a 10-0 lead early.

I didn’t have a good feeling about my game with Josh and it was to prove true as he pummeled me 42-17.  My quarterback had 3 interceptions and seemed to be off the whole night.  Josh had the better team and he played them excellently and thoroughly dominated me on both sides of the ball.  It didn’t matter much in the standings as we were #1/2 in the conference and I’m destined for the Hawaii bowl as WAC #1 versus what is predicted to be a 7-5 team from Rice University.  The only fallout that might have occurred is that the #2 QB recruit in the nation, and the only 5 star recruit of note between the middle of the road WAC teams, has had my Fresno State as his #1 choice the whole season but soft-committed to his #2 choice Nebraska the week after the Fresno State/Boise State game.  The loss of the star recruit is a big blow to the Fresno State recruiting and worries me about next season.

More interestingly, the WAC Dynasty has started to accumulate more members.  A friend of Chris’s has decided to join as Idaho, our friend Murf is joining as Utah State, and Carl might even join as La Tech, filling out the WAC with all human competitors.  Next season looks to be a fun one!

I seem to have taken a momentary hiatus from blogging the past week.  Work has been insane and I’ve spent a significant amount of time wandering back and forth to my condo as I try and get it rented out to a new tenant.  That said, there really is only one true reason I haven’t been blogging: Gears of War 2.   I consider Gears of War to be the only reason why one should get an XBox 360 so I was obviously stoked when the sequel came out last Friday.   Christina has stepped up and accepted her widowed status once more as I spend way too much time delving into the game.

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One of the most popular things around the net these days is “personalized” web radio.  While the idea isn’t new, the latest crop of sites such as Pandora and Last.FM have supposedly greatly improved their “learning” systems.  You start out with your favorite band and it gradually plays music it thinks you’ll like.  As you listen to the music, you give it a thumbs up or down and as you listen.  Simple, free, and a pretty cool idea all around.  Eventually, you’ll be introduced to music you’ll like from artists you’re not familiar with.  Unfortunately, my experience hasn’t been nearly as rewarding.

I’ve been messing with Pandora for my iPhone.  What’s my favorite artist?  That’s easy: Dave Matthews Band.  First song, not surprisingly, was a DMB song.  No complaints here…  It’ll eventually start playing “new” stuff from artists I’ve never heard of soon enough.   Or so I thought.  In my few hours of Pandora usage, I’ve had exactly three artists played: Dave Matthews, John Mayer, and Jack Johnson.  That’s being generous though: It has easily been 80-90% Dave Matthews with only the odd John Mayer/Jack Johnson song thrown in.  While I’m not going to complain about getting to listen to DMB, it would be nice to discover other similar artists.  That is the point, right?

Update: As I wrote this blog post, Pandora’s ears must have been burning as they threw in a Red Hot Chili Peppers song to ruin my rant.

Today is the big day.  Either John McCain or Barack Obama (sorry 3rd parties) will become the next President of the United States.  As I said earlier, history will be made one way or another.

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Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut…

– Cady, Mean Girls

It seems to me that Halloween is less and less a holiday for kids.  While I personally am not the biggest fan of dressing up (probably due to my lack of creativity) it seems that Halloween parties for adults is a growing trend.  A trip to one of those temporary Halloween stores in the mall a few weeks ago seemed to reaffirm my impression.  A good 75% of the store was devoted to costumes for adults, with the vast majority of those being for girls looking to “slut” it up.  Not that I’m complaining…