Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
March Madness
Saturday
March 23, 2002
If any of you have my LouPickney@aol.com e-mail address saved in your address book, please replace it with LouPickney@hotmail.com -- my AOL access will disappear in a couple of weeks. Though I should still be on AOL IM... as LouPickney.
Kent State gave Indiana a run tonight... but the Hoosiers were just too deadly from the outside. Good try though by Kent State, they gave a valiant effort. Also, Oklahoma beat Missouri, keeping my finals prediction of OU over Maryland alive.
Right now I'm waiting for my friends Adam and Amanda from Orlando to get here. If tonight is anything close to as wild as last night was, it should be a great time. Empire set a new mark for craziness last night. It's probably not in my best interest to elaborate on here... but let's just say the $5 cover was worth every penny, and then some. Good times, for sure.
I have issues with Sony about my PlayStation 2. I paid $300 last May to buy the system, not to mention the nearly $100 for accessories (component cable, two controllers, memory card). That stuff gets expensive. Not to mention games at $50 a pop. Technology is costly.
In September, I discovered the dreaded "Disc Read Error" problem, where the PS2 will be very stubborn about loading certain games. Go to Yahoo or Google and do a search for PS2 Disc Read Error and you'll see hundreds and hundreds of posts on message boards about the problem. Sony's solution? It's for you to PAY them $120 for repair costs, and also pay the post office to mail them the PS2. All this for a widespread defect that the company is clearly trying to avoid taking any responsibility for. I plan on insisting that Sony pay for this repair themselves. I've taken good care of my PS2, and if Sony is willing to stand behind their product, they should have no problem doing this. Ugh.
Note -- Click here for how I ultimately fixed my PS2 in May 2002...
If you hate pop-up ads, you really need to download Pop-Up Stopper. Tell those internet advertisers to stick it. I think this will be most exciting at work, where our slow computers become even more bogged down than normal due to the pesky pop-ups. You try looking for background info on a story and deal with pop-ups causing everything to take forever.
I finally saw some of the Britney Spears special on HBO tonight. Wow, what a terrible show. You'd think they could correct some of that god-awful lip-synch mismatching in post-production. I turned back to the basketball game (still in commercials), if that tells you anything. I'm all about seeing a scantily-clad Britney Spears, but that over-produced but under-inspired production just didn't do it for me. Maybe if I had turned the volume down it would've helped. Maybe.
A couple of interesting movies (both from 1995) were on the premium channels, though: Heat and Strange Days. Heat is awesome (would you expect anything less from De Niro and Pacino???), and Strange Days is one of those really original concepts that's quite intriguing (James Cameron wrote the screenplay). It was tough choosing between Indiana/Kent State and the bank robbery shootout scene in Heat. A real "pick 'em" type deal.
Speaking of Heat, what a cast! Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Amy Brenneman... add that with Michael Mann's directing, and you've got one fine setup. Plus rock 'n roller Henry Rollins had a role in the movie. You can't go wrong with that.
My schedule is filling up quick. Next weekend it's the Bar Tampa party on Friday night, then my parents and little sister will be in town that next Tuesday and Wednesday. It's a quick turnaround, as I'll spend a three-day weekend in Mississippi for Super Bulldog Weekend. Then Smitty might be driving down here the following weekend. And Charlotte is still a possibility in late April. Oh, and meanwhile working a full-time job on the graveyard shift and working on a possible new business opportunity.... Who needs free time?
|
