Dryden Is Home

I was the only one...

...in my pool to pick Georgetown and Tennesee in my final four (and Memphis and UCLA). Still I'm ranking 12th out of 24, so my picks aren't as bad a some others, and not as good as some others...

Why?

My bracket!

Why did I pick Georgetown to go to the finals? (and lose to UCLA, if that's any consolation.)

Why?

Theme Songs

Apparently anyone can get a theme song...

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/extras/01_17_2008_super_chargers/

Florida Recap

I got back last night from my trip to Florida. I left last Tuesday morning from Ithaca, drove to Binghamton for a meeting and then to Blackstone, Massachusetts (near Providence, RI) to my sister's and then grandmother's house. Wednesday my sister dropped my grandmother (Baba or Babca) off at T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island (Providence Airport) and we traveled on an 8:30am flight to Fort Myers. It was probably about my 100th or 200th flight (who keeps track?) and it was my grandmother's first time on an airplane (she's 86!).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmakar/tags/floridatrip/

All kinds of pictures are on the flickr pages, here's a few notes (I hope to add more later):

• We watched movies just about every night: Pirates of the Carribean, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Incredibles and King Kong
• My dad and my mom's cousin Frank and I went to the Devil Rays / Orioles game Monday night in Tampa
• I went boating three times
• I went fishing two of those three times
• I caught six fish (and tossed them back)
• We went to a Ukrainian Bazaar, Polish Deli and European Deli
• We (mom, dad and me) played three complete rounds of Disc Golf (frisbee golf)
• I wrote a couple business proposals
• I took about 700MB of pictures with my camera
• My mom and grandmother made about 140 perogies!
• I attended a BNI meeting in Venice, Florida
• I went for a bike ride

We had a busy and restful week and I look forward to returning next winter!

Sick Super Sunday

I've been sick the last couple of days. I think it is the change in the weather that is doing it. One day it is 50, then 20, then 10, then 40, then 50, then repeat. I think my body doesn't know if it should keep me cool or warm me up. Eitherway I've had a bit of a sore throat since Thursday and somewhat of a running nose as well as a spot of congestion. For the last two nights I've downed a shot of single malt NyQuil and drifted off to sleep within 20 minutes. That stuff will bring down an insomniac.

What does this mean overall for my well being? Well, I've been tired a lot the last few days. I sleep in, but when I get up and start doing things I get exhausted and then hours go by and I don't get anything done. Yesterday I napped off and on for about 2 hours in the afternoon. I went to see a customer downtown after that, had some more tea (I've been brewing ginger root and lemon juice at home) and then raced home to prepare dinner for a potluck in Varna.

I probably stayed out way too late last night, getting home close to 1:15am, but I had little to drink and lots of good food to eat. I've been re-hydrating all day today, but still the throat is sore and the head is heavy and the sniffles are here. I'm going to a Super Bowl party in about an hour or so. I made some fried flautas with winter squash and brown sugar inside for dessert. The superbowl party is mexican themed (or mexican food themed).

Aside from hydrating myself I found that my house was hydrating itself too. The sump pump which has been running consistently since we installed it last January decided to stop running sometime yesterday afternoon. Result: this afternoon I went downstairs to find up to three inches of water in some parts of my basement. Entire cardboard boxes were soaked with water and it took me about an hour to push all the water to the sump pump whole (as soon as I touched it - it kicked on and ran for about 3 minutes). I now have more cleanup to do down there.

I also have lots of work things going on. I need to get some of my current customers to pay their invoices and I need to get some projects that are half done more to the "all done" stage so I can bill them. I have a number of leads, but since last week I've been procrastinating for some reason. Perhaps because I've been sick. I just sneezed a second ago and my throat is burning. I'm going to finish this tea and gargle some salt water and maybe take a nice warm bath before heading to the party. I hope I feel better soon.

Super Picks

At 6:18pm Sunday night the Seattle Seahawks play the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Seahawks will win.

Do you need me to say anything else?

Super Bowl Picks 2006

Friday afternoon I visited the lobby of Northeastern University's Blackman Auditorium and rubbed the nose of the Huskey for good luck. While I'm sure the only people that actually rub the nose are the high school kids on the NU college tour who are told that rubbing the nose will bring them good luck (in life, in their application process to NU, in high school, in this weekend football picks), I rubbed the nose anyway, since while on the road any luck is worth it.

That being said, my trip to Boston is going well and my picks for the Sunday games are:

Carolina will finally fall to a team - - Final Score: Seahawks 38, Carolina 24

And in the "I couldn't care less bowl" - Broncos lose to Pittsburgh and Crowder makes that angry face when they win and Bettis is going home to play in the Super Bowl for the first time in his last NFL game (like last years League Championship game was his 'last' game too and he cried about all of that with Hines Ward) and the game is at Bettis's home town Ford Field - - Final Score: Pittsburgh Steelers 24, Broncos 17

Let's see how lucky the husky makes me this week. Over all I believe I am 4-4 overall. Oop!

Week 2 of the Playoffs

sYou begged, you pleaded, you asked kindly, and here are my picks for week two.

Seattle 35, Washington 24 (Seattle covers the spread)

New England 28, Denver 24 (New England wins outright)

Indianapolis 41, Pittsburgh 17 (Indy more than covers the spread)

Carolina 17, Chicago 6 (Da Bears lose - hey you got the white sox, you want everything in one year? What you think you are New England or something? Dis guy Fox, he's a madman, don't cross him, you saw what he did when he played the giants (They used to be GIANTS, but not anymore) and Delhomme vs. da Bears, sorry Chicago, the party is over, go back to helping Dems get elected with people literally working the graveyard shift).

Peace Out!

(Last week I went 2-2 - woot!)

CU Hockey

Saturday afternoon and evening I had the honor of being a guest at a Cornell Alumni dinner, wine tasting and hockey game. The event was for CU alumni that still lived in the Ithaca area. The turnout was somewhere around 150 people I recall. The guest speaker at dinner was Larry Walker, this Larry Walker - not this one. Dr. Larry Walker discussed agricultural and biological engineering as it related to future energy solutions. The talk was a 50,000 foot overview of the subject and had just enough details, real to life stories, ideas the audience could relate to and humor to make the 25 minute talk educate us enough to become interested in something going on at Cornell. My pet hobby is gardening and agricultural studies as they relate to real world working solutions interest me. The copies of Industrial Biotechnology magazine (a quarterly co-edited by Dr. Walker) on our table had articles that from skimming were way over my head scientifically, but the output of using CU's vast research abilities to produce businesses and industries had me from the get go. Perhaps my friends at NWAEG can do a reading of Professor Walker's work and we can discuss it with him this semester.

After dinner Helena (CU alumni that I was a guest of) and I headed over to Lynah Rink to see the Red take on the Orange of R.I.T. When I was a student at Northeastern I watched a lot of hockey games at NU's Matthews Arena. We had a home and an away section, a band section, a student hardcore fan section and a few non-designated alumni areas. At Lynah the same sections were arranged but the rink was much smaller and closer knit. Throughout the game classic college hockey chants (sieve! sieve! sieve! after each goal) were mixed in with chants I think are Cornell only (though I haven't been to a college hockey game since 1999 or so) like after each goal following sieve with "It's all your fault" over and over and over. Of course from the begining I knew things with the Ivy fans would be different, as the R.I.T. starters were called out over the AP the hardcore fans were reading newspapers - as in we're not interested in your names. Then once the opponents skated the hardcore fans tossed the papers to the ice. After the Canadian anthem (four out of the six starters from Cornell were Canadian) the Star Spangeled Banner filled the rink. When the line, "And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air" was played all the hardcore fans as well as all of the alumni and anyone who had ever been to a game as a Cornell fan yelled out "RED!" (to go with the Cornell Red of course).

I spent some of the game trying out the quick photography ability of my camera. There is a setting that allows me to take rapid fire sucession of pictures and I zoomed in on action on the ice. I got about 380 pictures of action shots that filled up roughly half (454 MB) of my camera's 1 gig disk. Throughout all of the pictures I missed taking any of fights or of CU scoring and although the pictures are fun to look at and click through to see the stop motion, I probably won't ever publish them anywhere. Its amazing how well the camera takes pictures and that it can store 1+MB of information about 3 times each second.

Cornell won the game 3-1 scoring all three goals on powerplays. I ran into my roommate at the game, it was the first time we talked in 2006; I also ran into Avery and her roommate and friend Kevin; talked to my neighbors Kim and Jim cellphone to cellphone from four sections away; and talked with Wei from Dragon Boat Club who was just five rows in front of us. Seems like the whole town was there - at least everyone I know.

After the game we watched the Patriots game at D & M's house and watched the score go from 7-3 to 28-3 in just 30 minutes of game time. I'm looking forward to both Saturday's Pats Broncos game and the next CU Hockey game someone offers me a ticket to.

Going for 11-0

The NFL playoffs begin in roughly 2.5 hours and I haven't really thought about the other teams. All I know is that I would like the Patriots to win and win and win and finally win again in the next five weekends. I've been following the entire season because of my NFL fantasy league (of which I was the superbowl winner) and I would like to go 11-0 in the post season (11 games, pick the winner of each). Here is my selection for week one (Wild Card Weekend):

Tampa Bay (-2.5) over Washington, final score 31-28 Washington

Patriots (-7.5) over Jacksonville, final score 28-17 Pats

Giants (-2.5) over Carolina, final score 35-24 Giants

Pittsburgh (-3) over Cincinnati, final score 24-14 Pittsburgh

Go Pats!