2009 March Madness Bracket Predictions

Sports

2011 Update >> MARCH MADNESS BRACKET FACEBOOK APP
March Madness Bracket

let march madness begin! i’ve decided to try to pick the winners this year. to be honest i don’t watch college basketball… too many games. so, watch me pick perfect 🙂 nah i very seriously doubt it, especially after hearing that there is big prize money available for anybody that picks perfect. evidently there are even math wizards at universities like MIT trying to develop systems for picking perfect. it seems that buzzer beaters ruin any kind of mathematical logic. i’m personally not suprised; wasn’t it coach mack brown who said prior to the greatest college football national championship game EVER “we don’t have to be the best team ever, we just need to be the best team tonight”.. to paraphrase. so in my picks you might notice i’ve included a couple of upsets, however nothing drastic.. just a few buzzer beaters that i think could play out. i guess if i have any kind of luck, because no doubt that’s exactly what it’ll be, i might have to join one of the endless pool invites.

so here’s how i’m seeing it go down… sorry longhorns (prove me wrong please!) but i’m taking UNC all the way.

by the way, ticketcity has march madness tickets

below are my failed 2009 predictions..

2009 March Madness Bracket Predictions

GoldMoney, iPhone app and real gold make good combo

Apps, Business & Economy

i’ve been using GoldMoney.com to buy and hold gold and silver bullion for just a little while, but i really like the service they provide. i was so happy to learn that they had released an iphone app a few days ago.. and guess what.. the goldmoney iphone app is the first one i’ve actually paid for. yep, i have several apps loaded up on my iphone but all of them except the goldmoney app are freebies. it’s a nice app, although they need to keep adding features to it. i’d love to have the ability to get text msg alerts on price points as well as the ability to buy, sell and trade metals and currencies through the app itself. all in due time i hope.

Got Slingbox? iPhone app almost here

Apps, Movies, TV

i finally bought a slingbox. i ordered it from amazon at an insanely discounted price with free shipping. anyhow i set it up last night in 5 minutes and tested it at work today for just a couple of minutes and it was soooo clean. i’m looking forward to having access to the other information superhighway (my uverse cable account) every i go so long as i have internet access.

slingmedia said that they would release an official slingbox iphone app before the end of the quarter. so, any day now 🙂

Garmin Phone, Real iPhone Rival?

Technology

google android? no, garmin nuvifone. that’s right garmin, a long time maker of consumer gps products is near releasing their new smartphone, iphone contender called nuvifone. since the 2nd generation iphone was released with true gps capabilities i have been waiting for garmin to release an iphone app specifically to step up the value of the gps feature of the iphone. i guess my wait was in vain as it seems that garmin has chosen to put its efforts in competing head on with the iphone rather than settling for ‘the most useful iphone app ever’. i gotta say, it’s not gonna be an easy battle… the iphone is pretty slick with many many many features. but, i wish garmin the best of luck and i’ll be keeping an eye on their product line.

learn more about garmin phones (G60 & M20) at the official site.

Garmin nuvifone
Garmin Phone
nuviphone
Garmin GPS Phone
Garmin iPhone Rival - nuvifone

Flight of the Conchords Tickets

Funny, Music

who likes to rock the party? Flight of the Conchords tickets are on sale as the 2 piece band / comedy group tour the USA and hit Canada for some shows. most people have a love/hate take on FOTC. back in the day i hosted some of their songs and they nearly crashed my server. so far i’m ok with their second season series on HBO, but i hope it gets better.. there were some really good episodes from season 1. although, i much prefer their live version of The Humans are Dead over the pop video style they did on the show.

anyhow, if you’re interested in checking them out.. tickets are selling out fast. in fact when i tried buying tickets for their Austin show the ticket box office site was practically crashed too. but, you can find Flight of the Conchords tickets here if you can find them anywhere.

Trillion, it’s the new Billion

Business & Economy, Funny, Politics

have you noticed that the word “trillion” is well on it’s way to being the most used word in 2009? trillion, trillion, trillion. the word “billion” is getting tossed around a lot too lately, but poor measly “million” is slipping into the small time. i thought i was poor when a million bucks seemed like a lot of money 🙁

so here’s the clearest description i can really comprehend of how much a trillion dollars is:

if you spent one million dollars per day, it would take you over 2700 years to spend a trillion dollars.

iPhone glass repair in Austin Texas

Technology

so last week i shattered the glass on my iPhone 🙁 i was not happy. i knew it wasn’t going to be cheap to fix. i could’ve tried the many do it yourself (DIY) iPhone glass repairs available on YouTube and the various forums. i could’ve paid Apple $249 to refurbish it. ultimately i decided as much fun as it might be to crack open my iPhone myself and dink around with it, i really just wanted it back to working condition asap. so i started googling for ‘iPhone glass repair in Austin’ and ‘iPhone glass replacement in Austin’ and there were many unhelpful listings. i mean, there were a lot of iPhone repair listings, but they were all for companies that want you mail your iPhone to them. that is not what i wanted or needed. there was a paid ad for a company that i ended up going to.. All Wireless Repair. i wasn’t thrilled about their price, ended up costing $139 after tax, but i was extremely impressed with the turnaround time. it took less than 2 minutes. i didn’t have to worry about backing up my data and i barely had enough time to browse through the bass boat magazine they had in the lobby. anyhow, the guys working there were cool and if you’re in Austin and looking for iPhone glass repair i totally recommend them.

How to Profit & Prosper During a Recession or Depression

Business & Economy, Video

if you think the US economy is on the road to recovery anytime soon then this post isn’t for you.

for the rest of us, i want to recommend a couple of really good books. Peter Schiff, who was Ron Paul’s economic advisor during his Presidential campaign, was right about the credit, mortgage, currency crisis that we Americans finds ourselves in now. for the last several years he’s been very vocal about coming problems. he was ridiculed and belittled on national news programs that when watched in hindsight show just how right he was and just how wrong the other talking heads were.

here are the books i recommend:

The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets

Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse

i hope you can appreciate these books as much as me. i’ve also added some Peter Schiff videos so you can get an impression of the man.

here’s a video highlighting some of the ridicule and accuracy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1YhJRXqnXI

here’s a video highlighting some of his analogies (for those who just love analogies):

Yes You Can, Watch the Obama Inauguration on an iPhone or Hulu

Politics, Video

if you don’t have access to a tv, but you can get online (strange to think such a thing possible) you can watch Obama’s Inauguration at Hulu or here on my blog. you can watch the Obama inauguration on an iPhone (using a wifi connection) with the free iPhone app uStream from uStream.tv

history in the making

http://www.hulu.com/live/embed/kqDzjGqsvKQZKY1CUG_aDSkM_bxqboC5

Crayon Physics is a cool game

Apps, Fun, Video

i just recently discovered this really neat game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. the object of the game is super simple, you basically draw objects that move a ball over, under and around obstacles towards a star. i saw this video clip for it and had to download the demo version to check it out.. it’s incredibly addictive!

anyways, this is a great game for smaller kids (and big ones like me too). there’s also an iPhone version of the game. so, here’s a clip of it.. and don’t worry you don’t need a tablet or touch screen, a regular computer mouse works just fine.