A sad day for the NBA and a newfound respect for Jim Gray

As an NBA fan, I was extremely dissapointed tonight to see the events (brawl) at the Pacers/Pistons game. Not only were the players fighting with each other, but the fans somehow became involved in the altercation. Having just seen the game footage on ESPN, I'm still kind of in shock and do not have a complete picture of what really happened.


I have never been a big Jim Gray fan back from the mid-late 90's when he always did the 'annoying' type of NBA interview when he worked for NBC; it seemed like he typically tried to start a controversy by goading/tricking a player into saying something stupid. Realizing it was his job to do so, didn't really give me a good feeling for him.


However, I just saw a, for me, very moving report from Mr. Gray. As he described the events (off camera as the game footage was on screen) of the brawl, I could sort of hear him choke up and he had to hold back some tears. When the camera cut back to him, you could tell he was on the verge of losing it. Normally, you don't see things like this from a reporter. I just wanted to note that, in the wake of this horrible display of sportsmanship, breaking of player/fan trust, and breach of security (where the HELL was security when fans started coming out onto the floor?), Jim Gray proved to me his value as a reporter, his obvious love of the game of basketball, and his 'realness' as a human being.

1. I hope the Detroit police comes down hard on the fans who were involved in this


2. I hope the NBA fines the players who were involved in this; fighting has no place in basketball


3. The management of "The Palace at Auburn Hills" tighten up their security and restructure the arena to prevent fans from having such easy access to players and the playing floor


4. The NBA officials are instructed by the league to start enforcing the rules of the game and put an end to the "Jungle Ball" that has plagued the NBA for the last 10-15 years (ironically started IMHO by the self-proclaimed 'Bad Boys' Pistons teams of the early 90's)

It seems like I want to write more, but I'm not sure what else to say. It's really sad that an event like this had to happen. I hope the people involved are all ok and that something like this NEVER happens again!!!!

Since I'm in a posting mood...

Wow, 2 blog entries in one day. Amazing!




Ok, the reason I'm even posting today is because of the SecretGeek and this blog entry. Jake saw this entry hanging on my cube wall and said I needed to send it out to our internal developer group. So, after that, I started catching up on the entries and ran across another interesting one to pass along...


How to be depressed and some common traps people (myself included) fall into from time to time. I have a special affinity/empathy for many of them...not telling which ones.


I have every intention of checking out the book, and add to my depressingly long list of books I mean to read but never find the time to read. :)

Mrs. Reporting Services (or is it really Miss?)

Well, I'm not sure why the specified gender was selected, but it is healthy for me to know that I'm not alone in discovering the 'features' of SQL Server Reporting Services.

You're a fickle mistress 'Miss SQL Reporting Services'!

When you're too lazy to type text data...

http://www.lipsum.com/

Maybe my cup was full? (part 2)

I've let this percolate a few days, so it's time to try to verbalize it... :)

In continuing the thread of jk: Maybe my cup was full?:

My expectation of this presentation was that the speaker would provide more answers than questions. I'm not a believer in hyped anything; I have no issue with having my thinking challenged. It seemed the presentation was slanted towards anti-hype/thought-provoking.

IMHO, it would have been nice to get that expectation set in the presentation summary beforehand. Then, I could have emptied my cup and actually gotten more value out of the 2 hour investment of my time. By not properly setting expectations, I feel a boundry of trust (ironically an SOA tenet!) was violated between the presenter and the audience.

Since I do believe in the "rule of 3" for many things, I'll try going one more time to see if the time spent attending is justified or not.

One soundbite from the presentation which I thought was good is:

"A design goal for SOA is to reduce dependencies". Nothing earth shattering, but noting goals and rationale for making decisions always rings true w/ me.

888 is the number of the day

no, not a telephone number...I passed the Microsoft 70-320 test (the web service/remoting/windows service one). Four down, one to go for MCSD.NET.

I took the test at Prometric over in Edina. Beautiful test area; earmuffs are provided, nice quiet area. I'll never test anyplace else again! :)

Maybe my cup was full?

A few of us attended the Minneapolis .Net User Group this evening for a presentation on Service Oriented (Architecture, Analysis, Design, etc...). I've been annoyed with the expectation of what I thought the presentation should be; a huge nirvana (not the word i'm looking for, but it'll do i guess) of new understanding, etc...

This was not the reality of the presentation; the speaker really just indicated that he didn't have all the answers yet either and really didn't provide anything definitive.

So, a few minutes ago, I remembered a Zen story about 'emptying your cup' to lose all expectations/preconceived notions so the mind is ready to accept new things. Maybe i should take the differing viewpoint and learn something from it or at least challenge my thinking? Maybe i'll wake up in the morning and think this post is absolute crap, but it's a starting point i guess...

It's a small, small world

The power of suggestion is an amazing thing. This morning as I was driving up US169, I saw a truck with "Miller Maintenance" on it. I thought, hmm, I graduated with a guy named Miller (Jim) who has a business like that who lives in Savage/Shakopee. I looked at the truck closer; it was purchased at John Wiese Ford in Sauk Centre, MN. Hmmmm, funny again. Since I hadn't seen Jim in over 11 years, I couldn't tell if he was the driver or not, and due to the high traffice volume I didn't dare look too close.

So, as Mork and I were eating at the Chanhassen Culver's, in walks Jim and a couple other Sauk Centre boys (Matt Bjork & Mitch Mayer) too.

The question is, if I had left home 1 minute earlier/later this morning, would I still have seen Jimmy et. all today?

At least the clock was not reading 9:11am or 9:11pm. That's a whole other Matrix moment for me....and blog post too...

Wanted: Foosball mentor

It’s obvious (to me at least) that I need some help. So, in an unprecedented move, I’m going to actually ask for help on something  albeit indirectly via a blog post!

I need to find a foosball mentor; plain and simple. If you know of someone (perhaps yourself) who can help me, please LMK. I don’t want to have to quit playing, but I just can’t take the constant a** whoopin’ that I get on a daily basis. My goal is not to be the best player, but to actually have a chance once in a while (or at least be reasonably competitive in a game).

JavaKid tells me there are web links on fooz. Maybe I’ll start there…

Who would make a better president - Bush or Tic-Tacs?

I do not endorse either major presidential candidate and will be EXTREMELY happy when the political ads will all be done for a few years. I only post this because I thought it was funny! :)

http://maddox.xmission.com/tictacs.html