Basketball Uniforms

Tonight, I watched Purdue beat Michigan State pretty handily, 72-54. The game also gave people their first chance to see the new uniforms in action that were unveiled yesterday. While I’m nowhere near the level of the Uni Watch blog, I’d have to say that the uniforms looked pretty good. They seem a lot whiter than the old uniforms (perhaps a bit less black trim), and featured a lot baggier shorts than what I’m used to seeing on them. (At times, the fabric seemed to flow together and look almost dress-like.)

I definitely look forward to seeing the black jerseys in action next week at Michigan. In the photos I’ve seen, they really stand out to the eye, especially between the lettering and the multi-colored collar. I also look forward to seeing what the gold jerseys look like when they get released; hopefully they look as awesome as the ones.

Snow and Tylenol… a not-so-nice mix

Last night, I checked the forecast and saw that we were supposed to be getting maybe an inch of snow. Let’s just say that the weathermen were off… by a lot. Between 7 and 8, the airport got 2 inches of snow, and we ended up with about 3.8″ in total, not to mention the blowing-and-drifting of the new snow / last week’s.

After struggling on the roads around the noon hour on my way to and from a lunch meetup with a friend, I got back to find an email from my boss telling it us was ok to leave early and/or work from home if you can. I decided it was a good thing to do so, especially if the blowing snow would cause any more issues. (Most of the interstates were closed this morning, and I-69 had multiple crashes involving multiple cars with multiple fatalities…) Surprisingly, my drive home was nice and easy, other than the bit of snow in the complex’s parking lot.

After working for a while, I started developing a pretty bad headache and a bit of a fever. I went searching through my bathroom and found a bottle of Tylenol. This is where the fun began… the bottle wasn’t all that difficult; just a twist lid with a arrow on the lid and one on the container. Allegedly, you match up the arrows and push up on the lid. However, this bottle refused to do it. I tried for a while in the aligned position, then tried twisting it all over the place, including putting it 180 degrees away from it. Nothing worked.

Then I looked at the bottle, saw the expiration date from last month, and said “Screw it.” The bottle is now sitting in the trash still not opened, and my headache has gotten a bit better without the help of Tylenol.

The 25 Secrets Meme

Over the past week or so, the 25 Secrets meme has been spreading through Facebook like wildfire. I’ve seen several them move through Facebook in the past few years, but never quite as much as this one. Basically, you’re supposed to list 25 secrets about yourself, then tag 25 other people to do it. I figured it would be worthwhile for me to re-post up on here, especially as a way of introducing myself more to you all. List after the jump.

Snow

I’ve realized from today and this winter in general that snow is a lot more annoying when you have to drive in it. I left work at 3:30 today from work so I could avoid driving in the heaviest amounts of snow, but it still took a bit more time than usual to drive home in the inch of snow that was out there. I drove it in a few times during high school, but they were few and far between for a variety of reasons. During college, I didn’t have my car with me on campus. Thus, it’s just been right now that I’ve had to deal with winter traffic and with Indianapolis drivers in that traffic. Admittedly, most Indianapolis drivers seemed to be used to driving in the snow and take things easy, but… there’s always the crazy drivers who try to push the envelope.

Tonight as I’m watching Purdue play up in Madison, it’s still snowing out there pretty hard. Predictions are ranging anywhere from 3 inches to 12 inches (depending on who you watch / listen to), and I’m not looking forward to trying to get out in the morning with my apartment complex’s slow plowing process. Fortunately I brought my laptop home with me tonight so that I could finish up things from coming home early. As a result, I think I suspect I might end up sticking around here tomorrow and working from home. We’ll see what happens, though.

Top 1000 Lists

The Guardian, a daily paper over in the UK, has been running a series of articles over the last few days developing their list of the top 1000 novels. They had done a earlier set of these before focusing on movies (and apparently music albums). I had seen it earlier and didn’t think a whole lot of it, but the series came up a lot today in my RSS feed perusals, both on SF Signal and Metafilter.

While these sort of lists are good benchmarks for readers in a particular area, I’m not sure how well the series works as a whole. During a good year while I’m out in the working world, I think I’m going to be lucky to finish 50 books. At that rate, I’d finish the whole list 20 years down the line, presuming I focused solely on that task. Admittedly, I’ve finished several of the books in the past (say 50 of them; the list isn’t complete yet and I haven’t read through most of the lists). My point still stands, though. It’s a list of books that you’d be lucky to finish unless it’s your job to read books. [I'd love to have that job, for what it's worth.]

This same concept also applies to other general 1000 ‘best-of’ lists. I don’t think someone’s really going to be able to see all 1001 things you must see before you die… unless you’re dedicated and have the time and money to do so. The list of albums and movies are a bit more achievable simply from the lesser amount of time required to listen and watch the works, but you still have to be willing to put in the time and effort to do so, and I’m not sure that many people have that ability.

All this being said, will I use this list as a reference? Sure, but I won’t use it as a guide for my reading selections for the moment. Down the line when I’m done with my award lists, if I’m looking for (say) a science fiction novel, I might use that list of best SF novels as a way of guiding my selections. The list as a whole, though, isn’t for me.

–Ryan