Project Self: Something, Grabs a Hold of Me Tightly

I seem to have a penchant for meeting some interesting folks. Last night was no different. I'm rockin' it out in Greenville, SC. The Southland. Pretty terrain, pretty weather, and pretty girls. I was downtown, which I've talked about in old postings as being a pretty cool area. So, I hit up the Blue Ridge Brewing Company again, for some good beer made on the premises, as well as some tasty food. After that I hung out over at The Corner Pocket, a sports bar/pool hall, and just did some people watching and a little conversing with the natives.

After I wrapped up my evening, I headed over toward the sushi joint that stayed open until 2am, only to find that they were closed. On my way over, I started chatting w/ this old-timer named "Ice." He was a black dude with dreads. Ice said that he was fifty, but he face showed a few more years than that. He wasn't dressed particularly well, but not particularly shabbily. I guessed that he was homeless, since he was just hanging out there on the street by himself. Then again, so was I, so maybe there was something else to it. It turned out that I was right.

We chatted for a while. Ice wasn't the "typical" homeless person. He never asked me for any money. He never had a story for me that was supposed to make it seem like I'd be just helping a brother out. I walked by him, and asked him, in passing, "How's it going?" He answered me, and walked along to tell me about it. It turned out that this fella actually had two college degrees. One in theology and one in psychology. But one doesn't end up wandering the downtown streets at that hour, unless they get derailed. Or are getting a PhD in Marketing. Which could be construed by many as getting derailed.

It turned out that Ice did a score in the Pen. Which would make him the 2nd convicted felon that I've chatted with in the past year. But Ice was different from the fella that CJ and I dined with back in the spring. This guy still had a sharp mind. He would drift off into a mumble at times, but he could still dial it in for some legitimate thought. He seemed genuine, charming, and in his own unique way, proud. Not about the life that he has. And not about the life that he lost - he was genuinely sad when he talked about how he never saw his kids grow up. But in how he was. Ice could still quote scripture. He liked Romans 8:31. When I offered that I personally liked Psalm 23, he quoted that to me, too. Ice still had hope. I liked Ice pretty much instantly. Anyone who has the stones to just walk and chat with someone like he did gets a gold star in my book.

I don't know how Ice is going to turn out. He does some odd jobs here and there, when there's work to be done - a little roofing here, a little plumbing there, and some landscaping in between. He's got some people that take care of him, make sure that he cleans up, and make sure that he gets a hot meal every once in a while. Chatting with him, it sounds like his biggest problems were that he smokes and the drinks a little too much. Of course, that's reminiscent of roughly all of the folks back at school. But for someone who still has a sharp mind, to only be able to do odd labor is not a good sign. Eventually, all bodies give out, and for those who are living out in the conditions, those sands flow a little faster. I think that Ice could be a heck of a preacher. But then again, what do I know?

I gave Ice my card. Asked him to go to the library and have someone teach him how to sign up for a free e-mail address so that he'd drop me a note every couple weeks. Or to ask to borrow a cell phone to drop me a line sometime. I gave him the little cash that I had on me, and I made him promise to buy only food with it. I don't know if he will do any of those things. I may never hear from or see Ice again. I hope that I do.

I have all sorts of questions in my head. I wonder about the system. I understand the need for prisons. What do we do with people after they're done with their time? In the heart of the Bible Belt, seeing the disdain one the faces of the relatively privileged, who were almost exclusively white, when looking upon the poor black was interesting, though I'm not sure why. What should the government do? What should the church do? What should individuals do? I'm not sure, but I'd love to hear some of Ice's thoughts on the matter.

Merry Christmas, Ice.

-Chairman

The Best Laid Plans....

... of mice and men often go awry. For mice, sometimes, you get the cheese, and sometimes you get the trap. For men, sometimes, you're a rock star, and sometimes you're the dude who's cleaning up the beer bottles and condoms out of the hotel hot tub.

And on Friday, I sort of had my mop out.

My weekend was planned out pretty well. First, Fred was getting married up north on Saturday. So, I was planning on getting out to Chicago for that. And in a happy coincidence, my old buddy Pat has been writing for Second City, a comedy troupe/school up in Chicago, and has one of his shows playing right now: Brian and Patrick's Holiday Show II: Christmas is Ruined... Again. So, the plan was for me to wrap up my Proseminar presentation at 3, and just leave for Chicago right afterwards for JohnnyO's place. The idea is to get in there by 6, and head out to the show. And then probably hang out with Pat afterwards and catch a beer somewhere. Go back and crash, and then drive out to the suburbs for the wedding and reception on Saturday. Have a great time at the wedding, and then decide if I was going to stay up north or drive back after the reception.

Of course, none of this happened.

Neil St. is a fairly major road in Champaign. Two lanes going north, two lanes going in south, and a turn lane in the middle. I'm topping off my gas tank and filling up the air in my tires for my impending drive to Chicago. And I want to turn left onto Neil. So, just a little to the right, there's a stoplight, and southbound traffic is slowed up a little bit. In the near lane, there's a little more traffic, so a nice older gentleman decides to wave me through. No problem. I creep out into the first lane. I look left. I've got some time. I look to the right. No problem. So, I creep a little further out as I start my turn into the middle turn lane. Of course, as soon as I'm getting into the turn, I look up, just in time to see a little red Dodge Neon bearing down on me.

Basically, the only way that a driver, while going in a straight line, hits someone who's moving at less than 5mph is by zoning out. So, homeboy obviously wasn't paying a lot of attention. But, sure enough. My front left end hits his front left end. And legally, it's my fault. Oh well. That's what insurance is for. And I've been wanting to get a new car, anyway.

And really, my first thought was, "dammit." Then the crash happened. My next thought was, "that wasn't that bad." And after that, I just started laughing. I had been a little stressed out Thursday night and Friday morning getting stuff ready for my presentation and my trip up north. And my first thought was that it would be a lot more relaxing weekend just hanging out in Champaign, though I'd have to figure out what I wanted to do with the car and all that jazz.

I backed back into the gas station, and stepped out to take a look at my car. Things actually looked alright. I knew that I could still drive the car home, though the fender was done. I was still giggly when I walked out into the street to see how the guy was doing. He was looking a little annoyed, but I didn't really care. I was locked into my mood. So, I basically start joking around, knowing full well that if he was mad, I'd end up just laughing at him. I think that he saw that, and actually lightened up his mood. We ended up joking around while we waiting for the cops to show up. Turns out that he's a grad student in landscape architecture. I think that I'll end up Facebooking this guy.

So, really, no harm, no foul. I'll end up getting a nice check from the insurance company for my car. And hopefully, I'll be able to fix my car for less than that amount, which leaves me a little extra cash, which hopefully will cover my insurance increase next year. And I think that it's time to switch up cars. Unfortunately, I just put $300 into some new speakers and a new stereo. Oh well. I think that I'll just try to sell the car after it's repaired. Blue book is something like $2150. If I can get anything close to that, I'll be content.

The current plan is to look around for cars that would be relatively affordable and be a step up from the ol' Nissan Altima. Failing that, there's maroon, '99 Camry waiting for me down in Greenville, SC. So, I'll fly back on the 20th to see the folks. If I want to, I can drive the Camry back to Illinois. Otherwise, I'll just fly back on the 25th. Either way, it's cool. Get to see the folks. Have the option of getting a free car that's a step up from the Altima.

Well, we'll see what the story is.

-Chairman

Illini Musings

So our squad has been hit by the injury bug. What's great is that we've been competitive, despite not really having Jamar and Randle for much of the season. Add on Richie's affinity for beer causing him to still not be in rhythm, and you've got some definite chemistry issues. But you know what? Having a lead on Maryland with 8 minutes left to go, as well as playing Arizona tough the entire game were both eye-opening losses. In the good sort of way.

I like this team.

Whereas I thought that last year's squad never fully bloomed because it deferred to Dee, and sort of underachieved down the stretch, I think that this year's squad is going to overachieve a little bit. I actually think that we'll make a deeper run than we did last year. Here's my case.

We've got better point guard play this year. Dee was a shooting guard, really. Chester is the real deal at point. He plays D, he moves the rock, he penetrates when it's there, and he can shoot just fine. Plus, having Trent, our next White Hope, there as a backup point, and maybe even as a quick jolt of outside shooting is good. I think that he'll be a legitimate player that will complement Chester well. He won't be as good as all of the fans want him to be (or think he is), but he'll be alright.

We'll have more experience at the 2. While Dee was a shooting guard, he also wasn't. Richie has shown glimpses of a mid-range game which makes him a threat to score 17 night in and night out. Plus, Jamar will get back and contribute his offense (and his improving D, as well). And perhaps most importantly, Calvin is looking a little less lost out there. He'll still mystify me on the offensive end at times, but his effort has picked up on the defensive end. He's the one who has the pure athleticism to be very intriguing (at at times infuriating), though. He can make the little baseline J, which is a spot on the floor that you can get to consistently. That alone makes him good for 6 points a game. Add on an outside shot and a couple hustle buckets, and all of a sudden, seeing Calvin go for a dozen isn't that surprising. Plus, he has the capability of guarding bigger guys, much like Luther, and to a lesser extent Deron, did for us a couple years ago. If you want to run 3 guards, you have to have at least one guy like that. We can go for a few minutes at a time with Chester, and two of the Jamar/Richie/Trent trio, but that catches up to you. Doing that for too long, you just give up too much on the defensive end.

Watching our bigs play, I love how much Pruitt is demanding the ball this year. He's always known that he's stronger than most guys he's up against. Now he seems to believe that he's better. Which is huge. He's moving well on D, though the rotations aren't always there. And he's running th floor. He's a threat to go 18 and 10 every night. And oddly enough, so is Warren.

My man Warren has always been a bit of a savant. He knows how to score. The shot is sort of ugly. The shot selection is sort of ugly. But it's strangely effective. I don't even question it anymore. I just sort of chuckle. And defensively, he's always been a decent rebounder. But where he's improved leaps and bounds is with his overall awareness. He is much less lost on offense now that he's one of the primary options. His weakness was always not knowing where to go when he was away from the ball. Now, the ball screens and motion are going to his side. He's the one who's setting screens for the pick and roll or slipping screens for the quick fade. On defense, he's also a little better off. He's playing against a lot of 4's, whereas in the past he'd often come in at the 3. Against 4's, he's much more likely to go from block to block. In the past, he's be asked to defend on the perimeter a lot. And that's where he'd get lost in traffic or on back-cuts. I don't know if he's just improved his knowledge of the game, or if it's just situational, but I'm not yelling, "Warren!" nearly as much now.

An intriguing freshman is Carlwell. He's awfully light on his feet and runs well for a huge guy. He'll get stronger physically over the years (if he works like Pruitt has the last 2 years, watch out), but he has to be willing to do two things: The first is to assert himself in the low block - I think that he's used to guys just giving up position to him because he's so huge, but he doesn't fight for his spot on the block hard enough. I don't know what sort of moves he has there, but he should be big enough to make up for any deficiencies there. The other thing is to play defense with his feet, and not his hands, particularly away from the hoop. He likes to lean in with his arms on players, which makes him smaller and foul prone. I like his energy, though. I think that he'll be a player, as well.

edited, 12/05/06: Another freshman who may get some run in Richard Semrau. Now, I know that he's white. But he may still be an alright player. He's got the frame at 6'9", 230, but he could stand to add on 10 pounds, which he will over the next couple years. He's very active, is actually a pretty quick leaper, and plays with energy. I have no idea what his offensive game looks like, other than hustle points. I think that he'll eventually be a very good player (I can see him being darned good with Carlwell in 2 years). I don't see him playing a ton this year, unless Bruce gets away from the 3-guard offense a little more (which I'd actually be thrilled with - I'd say that running Randle at 3, Warren at the high post, and Pruitt at the low block is probably our best lineup, and likely how Bill Self envisioned using Warren and Randle, and that). And at this point, Marcus Arnold is almost an afterthought unless we're in deep foul trouble like we were against Arizona. He's just not quite big enough to handle the bigs, not quite quick enough to handle the wings, and not quite explosive enough to be a consistent offensive threat. And sadly, I think that I'll be saying the same things about Charles Jackson. I don't know. I wonder if he won't (or maybe shouldn't is the right word) go back to football, preferrably for the Illini, if all the hype was true.

But the biggest question that we've got is at the swingman. The only player that we have that really fits the profile is Randle. I think that he'll shoot much better this year than last year. I don't think that there's a mathematical alternative, actually. But he's the one guy that can shut down wing scorers for us. He's the one guy that I want consistently taking the ball to the hoop for us on offense. He's the one guy that makes us different from a good mid-major team. Those teams have good little guards and big guys who make themselves into players. They don't often get natural wing talents that are 6'7". Those guys go to the BCS schools. I like Randle's game. I think that he can do what the Pistons asked of Tayshaun Prince of a couple years ago when they were winning championships. Defense, rebounding, hustle points, and timely shooting. But what he really brings to us is an attitude change on perimeter defense. Without him there, we'll scrap with you, we'll work hard, we'll keep hanging on your hip, and we'll pester you. With him here, we've got swagger, we'll shut you down, and we'll take your lunch money.

So here's the prognosis for this team. We've just had a bump in the road, but we'll probably end up 12-3 in non-conference play. We've got a nice conference schedule, this year, as we only play Ohio St. and Wisconsin once, both at home. I think that 10-6 is a reasonable prediction, though really 13-3 isn't out of the question, if this team jells. Tough games look to be Ohio St., Wisconsin, at Indiana, at Michigan, at Michigan St., and at Iowa. But our last 9 games look pretty manageable. So, we'll be somewhere around 22-9 going into the Big Ten tourney. If we can get to the semis, we'll be 24-10, heading into the dance, probably good for a 6 or 7 seed. I think that this team will do well in the dance, and maybe even make a little noise. Let's just say that I wouldn't mind another shot at Arizona this March.

-Chairman

Project Self: Carrying Meaning

I've realized that my chosen career path allows me a privilege that many others do not have. I have the opportunity to do projects that really mean something to me. And in a typical academic career, the project that sets the tone for the first few years is the dissertation. Often the dissertation is the only work that ever gets published. And it is clearly the project on which you make a name for yourself. Underneath it all, I've held on to a need to do work that I think is socially relevant. After all, if I have the power to choose the theoretical basis as well as the context in which it is used, then I would be rather wasteful if I didn't find a way to do work that is socially relevant. As a result, for the last few months, I've been wrestling with what I wanted to do for my dissertation.

My research is on decision making and problem solving at the individual level. And what I'm interested in is how people get good at this, or, to put it another way, how expertise develops. There's a lot of research that tells about how people who have low functional literacy can't do things, but very little research tells us what these folks can do. And I believe that there is enough variance in the different domains of life such that there will be different paths in the development of expertise. I'm not sure, but my guess is that relatively little education is required to develop expertise in domains where experiential (as opposed to theoretical) learning is dominant.

I'm envisioning some cool studies where people try to solve puzzles with different types of learning as the variable. Instead of the typical surveys and questionnaires, we'll have actual behavioral observations. Now, the design of these studies is something that I haven't figured out, yet. So there's still work to be done.

Anyway, I believe that the current thought is that I'll have the front end of my dissertation taken care of, leading up to my proposal defense, by the end of the spring semester, ideally by April 15. Which puts me in a good position to have a reasonably relaxing summer, hopefully teach during one of the sessions, and design a few studies that I'll pretest on my students and have ready to roll in the fall. Of course, this also means that this summer, I'm sending out my packets and starting the whole interview process to get the ball rolling on getting a position locked up next fall so that I'll have a job the following fall. Strange, isn't it?

Anyway, the current plans are to knock out a bunch of small tasks tonight and tomorrow, to collect data this week and next week, and hopefully wrap up all of the data collection on a project. For break, all I'm planning on is chilling out as the only things that I'll be doing are watching sports, playing video games, honing my skills in the kitchen, buying some odds and ends for the apartment, hitting the gym, and starting up on the dissertation. I'll probably hit up Cincy to catch the Xavier-Illinois game w/ Mick, and I'll try to hit up St. Louis for the Braggin' Right game, if they ever let us know about tickets. But the work should be minimal, which I'm definitely looking forward to.

-Chairman

I'm Not Saying... I'm Just Saying

I'm not saying that I'm old. I'm just saying that I'm old.

So this Friday is my 10-year high school reunion. We'll let that sink in for all of you young whippersnappers out there. Ten years ago, I was in the middle of my first semester out here, trying to be an engineer, and trying to figure out how I could doctor my license to get into the bars. Flash forward ten years, and I'm in the middle of my 11th year here in Illinois, trying to be a professor, and trying to figure out what else there is to do in this town besides go to the bars.

Anyway, I'm taking what is probably my final road trip from Champaign out to Albany. There was a stretch there during my junior and senior years where I made this drive quite a bit. Thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break were all drives home. I knew which exits to hit, where to eat, and where to slow down to avoid the speed traps. And for likely one last time, I'm getting ready to use all of that knowledge to get through a 14-hour drive.

So, I want to wish a happy holiday to my millions of readers. I'll be back to the Cornfields soon. But for now, it's off to the Empire State.

-Chairman

Disappointments

So even though I love football season, I hate football season.

Flag football. Once again, I sucked in playoffs, and I cost my team a shot at the championship. Let's put it this way. I'm like Dan Marino - I'm old, I don't move all that fast, I have great stats (especially during the regular season), can single-handedly win games with my arm, and just can't quite get it done in the playoffs. We came out flat, never adjusted on defense, and had a crappy quarterback on offense. Lessons learned - must continue to have practice late in the season, must get teammates to show up early so I can get my timing, and I must adjust faster to different defenses. Right now, I don't know if I want to even try this again next year. It's sad. You figure that I've got a good winning percentage in flag football - something like .650 or .700. Which should be pretty good. But I just can't quite compete with all of the teams that have all of the ringers - guys who stopped playing to concentrate on school, the guys who used to play in undergrad and are now in grad school, the varsity athletes who all play together. I can put together some moments. But just not quite enough to take it over the top. Oh well. If I could only put my current football instincts and knowledge on my body from 4 years ago, I'd like my chances. But right now? You can't have some kid with bad knees, carrying 25 pounds too much, trying to do the things that he used to do.

And the sad part? This is for intramurals. I can't even begin to imagine what Brett Farve goes through in the offseason, coming off of a 4-win season and getting another year older.

Illini Football. We don't know how to win, yet. You can make a case that we should've won 4 (maybe 5) of the last 6 games, and could have won the other 1 or 2. But you see that talent only takes you so far. You have to know how to win. The good teams can get away with coming out a little flat - they don't give stuff away that ends up killing them. Us, we're not good enough to make mistakes, and we don't know how to keep up the intensity for all 4 quarters. I think that it'll come. It looks like Juice's fitness can improve a little bit. And I know that our receivers have to get better.

Anyway, I've been busy and in a bit of a funk of late, so nothing's been put up here. Hopefully, I'm no longer depressed about my intramural mortality, and I'll get my head on straight soon.

-Chairman

Running the Table

You know - it's hard to win 8 games in a row of anything. The odds are 256-1 that you are able to call a coin flip 8 times in a row. But, if I want to get my first flag football IM Champion t-shirt, I'm going to have to. Happily, we have had better than 50-50 odds in our first 4 games, so maybe I'm not using up all of my luck. I think that we'll have pretty good odds in our first game, but after that, we're looking at coin flips. So, I figure that we'll have a 1 in 8 chance in taking home the hardware.

My co-rec flag team, 13th Tribe, managed to win our division by going 4-0, and more or less creaming the opposition. We've outscored the opposition 99-24, and have let two games end with us having the ball deep in enemy territory. Tonight was our toughest game, against the other team that's going to make playoffs from our division. We won 13-9, letting the clock run out from their 6" line, instead of running up the score. Oh yeah. And we played with only 3 guys and 3 girls on the field, instead of the 4 guys and 4 girls that they had on the field at all times, and the 7 or so subs that they kept bringing in. We're pretty good.

Tonight, we won by making some big plays when we had to. We picked them 3 times (including one by yours truly, in a stunning upset - I don't get to catch the ball much), and played smart on offense. The trick to winning in flag football is to find good players to have on your team. And I've learned this trick well. Freddy has been pretty much awesome all year, catching deep balls, making tough catches for me, as well as playing standout D. My guy Aaron had a pretty amazing game tonight. He had a Pick-6, as well another pick which set us up with a short field for our other TD, which he also caught. I mean, let's put it this way. Lil' Mecozzi is my 3rd option on offense. But where we do better than other teams is with our girls. In particular, Lauren and Sherri have been making catches and playing good D for us. But all of the girls have been rock-solid, and everyone can catch.

Playoffs will be interesting. We have a bye week next week, so we'll have at least 9 days before we have our next game. Hopefully, we'll be able to get a practice in this week, and be sharp next week when playoffs start up. Maybe with a little practice, I can make those 8-1 odds go down to 7-1.

-Chairman

Stomach Punches

I think that I'm a bad person. As we've covered, generally, I root for the away team to win in some sort of "stomach punch" fashion that makes all of the home team's fans walk home in stunned silence, wondering if there is a sports God.

The exception is if I can have a more immediate effect. I was off watching the end of the game at the bar with a ton of Bears fans. So, normally, I would have been rooting for Rackers to shank the kick because you would have had all these Arizona fans walking home with victory snatched from them. But, since I had all of the Bears fans around me, I was rooting for the kick to hit, just so I could watch people go from elated to depressed in the span of 2 seconds. It's quite fun, actually.

Unfortunately, if there is a sports God, he seems to be going against me for now. Rackers missed the kick, and I had to watch Bears fans celebrate.

Flash forward to last night. Same story. Cards fans watching Game 7. Normally, I'd be rooting for something like Beltran getting a single, and driving in a run, only to have the would-be game-tying run thrown out at the plate, sending all of Shea home unhappy. But, since I had all of these idiot Cards fans around me, I was rooting for the anti-climactic loss. Something like Beltran getting a single to drive in 2, and have a tied game with runners on 1st and 3rd. Followed by a passed ball, or better yet, a balk. Unfortunately for me, he's caught looking at a so-so curveball.

Oh well.

I suppose that there are only so many Steve Bartman moments, where not only do the home fans get stunned, but you also get to watch the faces of a bunch of fans right around you turn into disgust.


-Chairman

Just Another Dropout

One thing I'm sick of is these damned kids dropping out of school. First, it was guys like Shaquille O'Neal, who dropped out of LSU after his junior year. And now, our very own U. of I. has it's latest dropout saga, in the form of Jawed Karim. All I know is that it's sad how these kids drop out of school.

But more to the point of this post is that I think that it's interesting how much of what you can achieve is the environment around you, and how you choose to embrace it. Some places just constantly get it right - Stanford, Cal, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton. These folks just manage to consistently do amazing things.

I have a hypothesis. They have smarter people than we do at Illinois. I'm not saying that we don't have individuals who are of the same caliber of those that are out at the elite institutions. And I'm not saying that out at Yale, you don't get douchebags. Unfortunately, we carry quite a bit of chaff, so that I would venture to say that the general populace out here is closer to what you would get at Western Illinois, than say out at MIT. And oddly enough, even Yale's douchebags seem to have some over-the-top appeal to them.

You look at student publications, and you just see the difference. Here at the U. of I., we claim that we're a top public university. And maybe we are. But when you look at things like the Daily Illini, The Orange and Blue Observer, and The Booze News, you just wonder how it compares to what you may get, say, out at Yale. And don't get me wrong, I think that it's quaint that the Observer raffled off an AK-47 a couple spring ago. But things like the Rumpus only happen when you get a bunch of talented people working together seamlessly. Things like The Booze News happen when you get monkeys, safety scissors, and crayons working together seamlessly with GemClear.

I don't know. I think that I get depressed when I see how much potential is squandered becaue of the environment. And then I get really depressed when I realize that I'm surrounded by people who are ostensibly in the 90th percentile, or higher, of the world at large. Is it bad that much of my immediate world makes me visibly cringe?

So what about the rest of the world? The rest of the world that is happy to attend some community college classes? The rest of the world that never has an education past the 9th grade? Or 4th grade? Or at all? I don't claim to know. But I will say that it's interesting that Jawed Karim didn't make his fortune until after he left for northern Cali.

-Chairman

Moment of Silence

...

Happy trails, Buck O'Neil. He was a solid Negro league baseball player, the first black coach in the majors, and a phenomenal ambassador of the game. It's a little sad that he hasn't been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, for what he's done for the history of the game, though not as a player.

I didn't have the chance to visit him and the Negro Leagues museum out in Kansas City before he passed away. I plan on rectifying that mistake soon (as well as getting to the bottom of the Gates vs. KC Masterpiece vs. Arthur Bryant's barbecue debate).

-Chairman

Karma

Well. TMQ would say that the football gods exacted revenge on us for trying to show up Michigan St. by trying to plant the flag on the S. Remember what I said last week? Just the opposite, this week. Having your stomach punched with a last second field goal at homecoming makes things rough. Oh well. Karma.

Juice still has a ton of potential. Looked soild with intermediate and deep ball (even had a couple drops, including a huge one to Cumberland that would have sealed the game). Again, the only critique is accuracy and touch in close. And our D has some bright spots, but needs more overall speed.

Oh well. This weekend, we have a bunch of folks here in town. Curran's staying here, but the list of cameo appearances includes the old volleyball crew featuring JohnnyO, Paddie, Sully, and even Crazy Carl who was the sponsor of my only visit to the Champaign County Jail. A Homecoming loss won't change our intentions for tonight.

Anyway, a little more work before everything starts off.

-Chairman

Juiced

There are few things that I enjoy watching more than a road team going in, and sending everyone in the stadium home upset. Ideally, it's on some sort of shaky call by a ref, some sort of (to borrow from Bill Simmons) "stomach punch" fashion, or a last second play. It's even more fun when the team going on the road is your team.

Illini 23. Michigan St. 20.

I was chatting with Rookie earlier in the week, and we decided that the Illini had a shot, if we didn't give away the game and actually made Michigan St. win the game. We talked about how fragile Drew Stanton's psyche is, and how if we could stop the run, Stanton probably couldn't win the game, after giving it away last week to Notre Dame. So, if we could run the ball, and keep our defense off of the field, and then force them to pass, then we'd have a shot.

Of course, neither of us really thought that we were going to win.

Suckers.

We ran the ball well. 252 yards well. Pierre Thomas went for 110. Juice kept the ball enough to make 103 yards (which is probably understated since in college, yards lost when you're sacked count against you). If we can control games by running - we just may make a run at that bowl game (though the Syracuse loss really makes it difficult). I can see us beating Indiana. Their coach has a brain tumor. And as previously discussed, Northwestern's coach died. And we should beat Ohio. They're not any good. So hypothetically, we're at 5 wins. We don't know how good Purdue or Penn St. really are. Maybe we can get one of those for a 6th win.

Regardless, our next great hope played a very nice game. Isiah "Juice" Williams went 9 for 16,
122 yards in the air, a TD and a pick 6. What was great was that he bounced back immediately after the pick 6 and led a drive that ended up with an Illini TD (on a sweet halfback option play). I like how poised he looks in the pocket. He's got the huge arm, that's a little scatter-shot right now. And so far, his touch is a little bit off (he only seems to have one setting - cannon). But, I like how he's not jittery in the pocket, looks to make the pass first, and has the run as a good option when everything breaks down.

One thing that's interesting for me is that when I watch football on TV, I can usually tell from the QB's footwork and release whether or not the pass will be accurate. One thing that I noted was that on a few passes, I thought that Juice was about to have a very nice completion (good movement in the pocket, set his feet well, and had a nice release), only to watch the ball sail (albeit very, very quickly) by the receiver. I don't know if that's good or bad - 18 year old QB's with pocket presence are good. But it's hard to teach accuracy. Hopefully, it's just a matter of experience.

I have a suspicion that we'll show some more good things this year. And next year may actually get us to a bowl game. But things could be awfully interesting in 2009. Maybe I'll just hang out here for an extra year to see if I'm right on that guess.

-Chairman

It's Not Checkers

So, on the New York Times' website, the front and center story is about chess players. Specifically chess players who may or may note be cheating by having outside assistance hidden away in their private bathrooms. Now, I think that the Chess Boxing folks have it right, and we should just have these geeks fight it out. But, I have to say that I admire what's going on. Basically, Player A is killing Player B, but Player A takes a lot of bathroom breaks (which I guess is allowed, since Chess is really boring and players take forever to move). So, Player B protests. Tournament officials decide to lock both private bathrooms, and say that any player can take as many breaks as they want, but need to have a tournament official accompany them into a shared bathroom. Player A thinks that this is bogus, so he forfeits a game in protest, since he was up by 2 games anyway. Controversy ensues.

Now, I can see why Player A isn't fond of this. While I happen to enjoy having people listen to me give birth to little brown children on the toilet, many people get nervous when there's someone else in the bathroom with them. And in fairness, most people think that Player B's protest is just gamesmanship, and not a legitimate gripe. So, Player A's response to just give away a point (and, I'm assuming, proceeding to beat the crap out of Player B anyway) is pretty awesome.

The reason that I'm writing about this is because I have to admit that I've pulled this sort of stunt before. Tennis match back in high school. I was up comfortable against a guy who wasn't very good, but was sort of a punk. I thought that he was cheating me by calling some of my good shots out, but I was in control of the match. So, he was serving, and I called one of his serves out, and he starts moaning about it. So, I give him a replay, proceed to catch his next serve (which was in) with my hand, throw it back to him, and give him the point. Let's just say that you're not supposed to be able to catch a first serve that a guy hits with your hand. It's pretty much me telling him that he hits like a girl, and that I didn't even need a racquet to return it. Then I smashed a couple shots to break his serve, and ended the match soon thereafter. In looking back, it's sort of funny, but it wasn't the most sporting thing in the world to do. So, if anyone from Colonie HS in Albany remembers getting beat by a big Asian dude who was a punk during the match, I'd like to apologize. Of course, if we would have gone to Tennis Boxing, I would have owned him. Tennis players are generally sissies.

-Chairman

Back At It

So, I just spent 5 days out in NYC. Got in on Wednesday afternoon, and naturally the first thing we do after dropping our stuff off at the hotel was to go run a few games down at the park. Get off the plane, and go play streetball. Because we're good like that. Me and the (not so) lil' bro ran a few games, first with halfcourt, and then a game of full. Played alright. Decent defense. A little offense, though I have to admit that I'm definitely not a streetballer. I'm running around looking for screens away from the ball and back-cuts. My teammates are just looking at me funny. So, a lot of my effectiveness (e.g., passing to cutters, screening for cutters) was out the window. However, I did have a couple muscle plays where I get a board down low, head fake, and then jump up for a little reverse layup taking the 4 or 5 hands on me up in the air. The next day, the muscles were sore, but the knees held up alright. Which is always a victory for me.

The rest of the NY trip was fun. Visited the Met, like I always do. At a lot of good Chinese food. The reason that I went was actually for my cousin's wedding. The rehearsal dinner was pretty awesome. You had a Chinese/Vietnamese wedding. So naturally, you have the rehearsal dinner at a Greek restaurant. So, we ate way too much hummus, pita, gyro, souvlaki, saganaki, and whatever else they brought to the table.

The next day, the wedding was fun, and the reception was amazing. A legit 10-course Chinese banquet. Every course was good. This was incredible food. They were able to take beef and broccoli and make it transcendent. We even had some Shark's Fin Soup, which allowed me to throw in another tasteless Steve Irwin joke.

Of course, the flight back was a different story. I had a flag football game at 9pm back on campus. So, I had a 4:20 flight out of LaGuardia, and a 6:35 flight from O'Hare that would put me in to Champaign at 7:25. Plenty of time to get back, get unpacked, changed, and out to the fields at 8:30 to loosen up. American Airlines didn't quite see it that way. First, the plane coming into LaGuardia was late, so we didn's get seated until like 4:40. Then, the crew botched the luggage. We saw them unloading the original luggage from the previous flight, and we see them load luggage, which was supposed to be ours. Then a few minutes later, they start unloading luggage, and then take it away and load up different luggage. Whoops.

We didn't leave the gate until 5:40, and didn't get in the air until 6:00. Not cool. I was real nervous about making the game. We needed all the guys we could get, plus I was running Q for us. Now, my flight from O'Hare was supposed to be 6:35. We certainly weren't going to make that, even getting the hour back going west. So I thought that I was screwed. We hit the ground at 6:50, and I hurry out the plane to check on flights down to Champaign. I saw a 7:20 flight that was boarding. So, I hustle down the H terminal and up the G terminal to make it to the gate in time to get that flight, which still had a few open seats. I hit the ground in Champaign at 8:10, and CJ picked me up at 8:20, to take me straight over to the football fields at 8:30. Now, you know where my priorities are.

Now, the flag football team that I'm playing for this year is a co-rec team. We had only had 2 practices, and neither of them were well attended. But, I had a good feeling. We had at least one guy who is a burner, and the girls seemed to be pretty athletic. I figured that with my experience back there, we'd be pretty good. I may revise this to say that we've got a shot at the title, if we can get another guy or two to play. Here's the story. We only had 3 guys show up. It's a 4 guy/4 girl league, so we played 8 on 7 the entire game. And we won 37-6. My favorite moment? I'm on defense (which is not a good thing), playing short zone. I drift back into coverage and the QB throws a duck. I see it wobble down toward me, and I decide that instead of drifting back to catch, I'd just jump up and knock it down, since it was 4th down. So, I jump, not quite as high as I figured, and a little earlier than I should have, and swing and completely miss the ball. But, I distracted the receiver behind me enough so that she dropped the pass, probably for fear of me landing on her and crushing her. Whoops. That's why you shouldn't let me play D.

Even without having practiced, and only having a few people with flag football experience, we actually looked pretty organized out there. Plus, we even managed to play defense with my slow ass out there. Of course, our two other guys were clearly the best athletes on the field, we probably had 4 girls more athletic than their best girl, and I'm still pretty decent back there at QB. Basically, we rolled. We punted once, but scored 4 TD's. Our other TD was a punt return in the first quarter, after we held them to 3 and out to start the game. I managed to throw two girl TD's to two different girls, and hit each of our guys for deep TD's, including a 66-yard play where my guy got behind the D, caught a throw that went just over the double coverage, and then just outran everyone for the last 20 yards. Now, this wasn't as cool as the 79-yarder to Randy back in the day, but this was a cool play, since it was the opening play of the 2nd half, and we were only up 16-6 at that point, and I had to talk my receiver into running the deep route, since he wasn't confident that our timing and accuracy was on for the deep ball. I guess that I can be pretty persuasive sometimes.

Overall, the legs felt good. I was able to push off and step into my throws, pain-free. I was able to roll out to both sides and outrun the defense (no sacks, if you can believe that). I even danced around a little bit, avoiding the pass rush. Not quite Ron Mexico-style, but maybe like Daunte Culpepper. Or Jared Lorenzen. Anyway, I was throwing a good ball - no picks, no balls that were close to being picked, and only one pass broken up by the defense. I made some throws in the pocked, and I made some designed throws on the run, as well as some off of the scramble. I had one throw slip out of my hand (that I think would have been big, since my receiver had already run by his man deep), and one throw that I just botched (to an open receiver in the endzone, no less). Other than that, I gave my receivers a good shot at catching the ball for just about all of the other throws. It felt darned good.

One thing that I find really interesting about me in co-rec football is that I'm not nervous at all. For men's games, I'm nervous and a little jittery because I know that everyone around me is depending on me and expects a lot. For co-rec, I'm doing as much teaching as anything else, since a lot of the girls that we get have never played before. So, I don't have time to be nervous, and whatever jitters may be there go away because I'm talking a lot. Or maybe, I just like having girls on the other team chase me around.

-Chairman

Back At It

So, I just spent 5 days out in NYC. Got in on Wednesday afternoon, and naturally the first thing we do after dropping our stuff off at the hotel was to go run a few games down at the park. Get off the plane, and go play streetball. Because we're good like that. Me and the (not so) lil' bro ran a few games, first with halfcourt, and then a game of full. Played alright. Decent defense. A little offense, though I have to admit that I'm definitely not a streetballer. I'm running around looking for screens away from the ball and back-cuts. My teammates are just looking at me funny. So, a lot of my effectiveness (e.g., passing to cutters, screening for cutters) was out the window. However, I did have a couple muscle plays where I get a board down low, head fake, and then jump up for a little reverse layup taking the 4 or 5 hands on me up in the air. The next day, the muscles were sore, but the knees held up alright. Which is always a victory for me.

The rest of the NY trip was fun. Visited the Met, like I always do. At a lot of good Chinese food. The reason that I went was actually for my cousin's wedding. The rehearsal dinner was pretty awesome. You had a Chinese/Vietnamese wedding. So naturally, you have the rehearsal dinner at a Greek restaurant. So, we ate way too much hummus, pita, gyro, souvlaki, saganaki, and whatever else they brought to the table.

The next day, the wedding was fun, and the reception was amazing. A legit 10-course Chinese banquet. Every course was good. This was incredible food. They were able to take beef and broccoli and make it transcendent. We even had some Shark's Fin Soup, which allowed me to throw in another tasteless Steve Irwin joke.

Of course, the flight back was a different story. I had a flag football game at 9pm back on campus. So, I had a 4:20 flight out of LaGuardia, and a 6:35 flight from O'Hare that would put me in to Champaign at 7:25. Plenty of time to get back, get unpacked, changed, and out to the fields at 8:30 to loosen up. American Airlines didn't quite see it that way. First, the plane coming into LaGuardia was late, so we didn's get seated until like 4:40. Then, the crew botched the luggage. We saw them unloading the original luggage from the previous flight, and we see them load luggage, which was supposed to be ours. Then a few minutes later, they start unloading luggage, and then take it away and load up different luggage. Whoops.

We didn't leave the gate until 5:40, and didn't get in the air until 6:00. Not cool. I was real nervous about making the game. We needed all the guys we could get, plus I was running Q for us. Now, my flight from O'Hare was supposed to be 6:35. We certainly weren't going to make that, even getting the hour back going west. So I thought that I was screwed. We hit the ground at 6:50, and I hurry out the plane to check on flights down to Champaign. I saw a 7:20 flight that was boarding. So, I hustle down the H terminal and up the G terminal to make it to the gate in time to get that flight, which still had a few open seats. I hit the ground in Champaign at 8:10, and CJ picked me up at 8:20, to take me straight over to the football fields at 8:30. Now, you know where my priorities are.

Now, the flag football team that I'm playing for this year is a co-rec team. We had only had 2 practices, and neither of them were well attended. But, I had a good feeling. We had at least one guy who is a burner, and the girls seemed to be pretty athletic. I figured that with my experience back there, we'd be pretty good. I may revise this to say that we've got a shot at the title, if we can get another guy or two to play. Here's the story. We only had 3 guys show up. It's a 4 guy/4 girl league, so we played 8 on 7 the entire game. And we won 37-6. My favorite moment? I'm on defense (which is not a good thing), playing short zone. I drift back into coverage and the QB throws a duck. I see it wobble down toward me, and I decide that instead of drifting back to catch, I'd just jump up and knock it down, since it was 4th down. So, I jump, not quite as high as I figured, and a little earlier than I should have, and swing and completely miss the ball. But, I distracted the receiver behind me enough so that she dropped the pass, probably for fear of me landing on her and crushing her. Whoops. That's why you shouldn't let me play D.

Even without having practiced, and only having a few people with flag football experience, we actually looked pretty organized out there. Plus, we even managed to play defense with my slow ass out there. Of course, our two other guys were clearly the best athletes on the field, we probably had 4 girls more athletic than their best girl, and I'm still pretty decent back there at QB. Basically, we rolled. We punted once, but scored 4 TD's. Our other TD was a punt return in the first quarter, after we held them to 3 and out to start the game. I managed to throw two girl TD's to two different girls, and hit each of our guys for deep TD's, including a 66-yard play where my guy got behind the D, caught a throw that went just over the double coverage, and then just outran everyone for the last 20 yards. Now, this wasn't as cool as the 79-yarder to Randy back in the day, but this was a cool play, since it was the opening play of the 2nd half, and we were only up 16-6 at that point, and I had to talk my receiver into running the deep route, since he wasn't confident that our timing and accuracy was on for the deep ball. I guess that I can be pretty persuasive sometimes.

Overall, the legs felt good. I was able to push off and step into my throws, pain-free. I was able to roll out to both sides and outrun the defense (no sacks, if you can believe that). I even danced around a little bit, avoiding the pass rush. Not quite Ron Mexico-style, but maybe like Daunte Culpepper. Or Jared Lorenzen. Anyway, I was throwing a good ball - no picks, no balls that were close to being picked, and only one pass broken up by the defense. I made some throws in the pocked, and I made some designed throws on the run, as well as some off of the scramble. I had one throw slip out of my hand (that I think would have been big, since my receiver had already run by his man deep), and one throw that I just botched (to an open receiver in the endzone, no less). Other than that, I gave my receivers a good shot at catching the ball for just about all of the other throws. It felt darned good.

One thing that I find really interesting about me in co-rec football is that I'm not nervous at all. For men's games, I'm nervous and a little jittery because I know that everyone around me is depending on me and expects a lot. For co-rec, I'm doing as much teaching as anything else, since a lot of the girls that we get have never played before. So, I don't have time to be nervous, and whatever jitters may be there go away because I'm talking a lot. Or maybe, I just like having girls on the other team chase me around.

-Chairman

The Diagnosis

Well, one thing that I finally figured out today at basketball was that I'm old. I need to get the knees loose before I can actually play. And once they're warmed up, they're okay. So, it was funny - I needed a few minutes on the exercise bike before we got going. I felt like TO out there. All I needed was a bicycle helmet and a Team Discovery jersey.

So, today's game was a lot like last week. Good play, overall. Very solid defense (against a pretty good player who played both inside and outside). Was able to move around. And I even hit a couple spot-up jumpers from the baseline, a couple long jumpers, and even one litle bank shot off the dribble. The downside - I've lost the pull-up. I need to get that back. The funny thing is that I was able to get open in the lane, from about 10 feet. And as I pulled up to shoot, I would get spooked by guys flying at me. Granted, they would fly into me some of the time, but that never used to really bother me. I think that I'm afraid that they're going to crash into my legs. I think that I can get over this in a couple weeks, though.

I was browsing through the Sports Guy's latest post. And I was reminded that Nick Curran was the name of the Michael Douglas character in Basic Instinct. That's hot. Also, Michael O'Donnell was the name of the alleged altar boy that was raped by a Catholic priest in Primal Fear. That's also hot. All I know is that if I ever write a movie, I'm writing all of your names in there as various seedy characters.

Actually, I've sort of done that already. In one of my journal submissions, we have a qualitative piece where we use interview transcripts from our research to tell a story (here, it's the retail shopping experience for low literate consumers). Now, we can't use the real names of our respondents. So, part of my job as the co-author is to clean up the interview transcripts, and to make up names. And that's where you fine folks come in. So people like George, Christian, and Michael have made it into my articles. And future articles will get more of you into the archives of academia. As functional illiterates. How awesome is that?

Now, I'm thinking that it's about time to jump ship on the ol' Reds. Now, a couple times earlier this season, they've swooned, but have bounced back. We'll see if they can do it one more time. They're on probation right now. Maybe things get better if Guardado comes back to close. If not, the Yanks are looking pretty darned good right now. If Mussina comes back healthy, and Unit keeps throwing like he has of late, this team should bring things home. They owned the Tigers, White Sox, and Twins in the second half. And they'll be too good for Oakland (though the A's are probably the 2nd best team in baseball right now).

To close - our Illini are 1-0, after owning... well, Eastern Illinois. I mean, they were ranked 16 in Division I-AA. But a W's a W. Only 5 more wins until bowl eligibility. Instinctively, I figured that we'd have 3 wins. But, if all the breaks fall our way, maybe we can sneak out a bowl bid. Hear me out. We got Eastern. Figure that we get Ohio, as well. We have Rutgers and Syracuse. If we can pull out both of these, we'll have 4 wins. I think that we can get Indiana for Homecoming. And if we don't get both of the Big East teams, maybe we can get a W when Purdue comes to town. Or maybe even at Michigan St. But the game that I figure that we can get Northwestern. Afterall, they've got a rookie coach, after Randy Walker died. I'd like to think that we have a shot against Northwestern, after their coach dies. Ideally, we beat them even with out their head coach dying (after all, it's friggin' Northwestern). But at this point, we take what we can get, right? So, if all the breaks go our way, we may be able to get that bowl game, after all.

Of ocurse, I'm calling the over-under at 3.5. I don't really like our schedule. We need to take a page out of Jim Boeheim's non-conference schedule. We need to get more of those directional MAC schools to come here. No more of these Big East teams that want home and homes. We need to bring in bad teams, pay them $500K, and send them home with a loss. If we set up our non-conference schedule right, we can get 4 W's before the Big Ten season starts, and then need to beat Indiana and Northwestern to get a bowl.

We'll see.

-Chairman

The Follow-Up

Hit the courts yesterday to ball with a bunch of guys from my previously mentioned flag football team. And for the first time in a while, I played ball. And I played pretty well. Good defense, decent rebounding, decent point skills and passing. The only thing that I sucked at? Shooting, oddly enough. It was funny - I had gotten used to being either a spot-up shooter or a post player for the past year and a half. And I was playing ball that was sort of loose, so I was running a lot of point. So, I didn't get any kick-out passes for jumpers. I was the one finding shooters. And if I wanted to score, it was going to be beating people off the dribble. So, I'd set up the little crossover dribble into a pull-up jumper. Only I hadn't shot a pull-up in a long time, so I looked like a special ed kid in gym class (and not the autistic kid that won an ESPY). That's alright. I moved well - the pull-up jumper will come back soon enough. But what was nice was that I was able to play some defense. I was actually tipping passes, making steals, and starting breaks. I guarded some big guys, and pretty much neutralized them.

Today, the legs are a little sore again. The knees are, too. But not in a crippling way that I've been used to. They're sore in a way that I'm used to them being the day after I play ball. This is good. I'll probably try to make it back to the courts some time in the middle of the week for another run.

Goals for next run? Improve defense. Get shooting under control. Dribble penetrate.

Should be obtainable.

Anyway, back to work... sort of.

-Chairman

Who's Marginal? This Guy!

So, I passed my summer paper. But how I passed it was fun. We're judged on 4 criteria. The first three are things like, can you do a good review of the existing literature, do you understand the theoretical issues in the domain, and have you demonstrated creativity in your paper. I passed those with pretty good comments. Now, the last criterion is whether we can effectively communicate our ideas in writing. My result? "Marginal Pass." The best part was the first comment - "Folksy writing style sometimes got in the way." How awesome is that? I'm folksy. I represent the people... if by people, you mean dim-witted mouth-breathers that enjoy Larry the Cable Guy. Git'er Done! That's how I roll. Actually, the critique is an interesting one. I write how I talk. Which is nice here, nice in presentations, but not as hot for journal submissions. I suppose that I'll have to clean up the writing when I start doing it for real. But I passed.

I'm ready to get moving on the dissertation now. This is going to be an interesting year. I'm working for two professors that I really like, my advisor, and a professor that I worked with during my first year. It should be an interesting experience, as I get to sort of see some more of the nuts and bolts that professors go through. I'm seeing how you run a conference from a behind the scenes perspective by communicating with article reviewers, authors, and session chairs. I'm also reviewing some articles for a conference, too. Scary though, isn't it? I'm going to critique the work of other people, and actually have it mean something. But I'm also doing a little web work for my professors' classes, and I'll be an administrator for a little research group of undergrads. It's interesting, and it'll be useful for when I grow up and get a job.

It feels good to have a new school start up. It's the start of number 11 for me out here. It's amazing. The incoming freshmen were in 2nd grade when I first started out here, many years ago. The fun part is that I was playing some volleyball with them last week. And I was actually playing well. I was moving well, passing great, setting alright, and actually hitting the ball well. Bombing it, as a matter of fact. The legs were sore afterwards, but the knees felt alright. Hopefully, they'll stay that way from here on out.

Recently, I've been feeling really good. I've been hitting the gym pretty good, doing some bike work and lifting. I'm actually dominating some of the ab machines in the gym. If I could lose 20 pounds, I bet that you'd actually find some nice looking muscles underneath. But, I've trimmed a couple pounds, too. The diet has been better - I'm getting more fruits and veggies mixed in there. And the big thing has been this mountain bike that I got. I got it fixed up pretty good (well, good enough so that the brakes work, and I won't die). And now, I'm riding around campus, instead of taking the bus or driving. It feels good, even though it's not a real cardio workout. Where it's more important for me is that it's an attitude about how I approach life. It's like I just tell myself that I'm going to be more active, and my body believes it. It's pretty cool.

I think that we'll also be getting some flag football teams together this year. A lot of the folks who played last year are also going to play this year. I think that we'll have a guy's team that's got a shot at doing alright in the playoffs in B. And I think that our co-rec team may be able to make the playoffs. A lot of it is going to be whether or not my legs hold up. If I'm able to get the legs underneath me and throw the ball for real, as well as make some things happen with my feet, then our offense will be solid. Plus, I'll have a better feel for the guys that I'll be throwing to, as well. Last year, we had some issues when we put our fastest guy out wide, only to discover that he didn't know how to catch the deep ball, and was better with plays where the ball was out in front of him (and not above him). Of course, my biggest asset as a QB is that I can throw the 40-40 ball (throw a ball 40 yards, 40 feet up in the air, and just let the receiver run underneath it). So, I'd be throwing good balls to the sideline, he'd be turning in toward the middle, wanting a post-type route. This year, we'll figure out who likes the deep ball, and who likes what routes a little earlier.

One thing that amuses me is that every once in a while, I'll run into some strangers who remember me playing QB against them. And it's always fun. Even the guys that beat us, seem to remember that we were a challenging team to play against because we were organized and had a good offense. And I've even had more than one team try to recruit me to play QB for their co-rec teams (admittedly, I'm a better co-rec QB than a men's QB, since speed isn't as big of an issue for co-rec, since guys can't run across the line of scrimmage, whereas in men's, the QB can just take off and outrun people, if they're fast enough). The other day, I just ran into a guy who played for the team that beat us to go to playoffs last year. It turns out that the two teams that beat us both made the final 8, with one of the teams losing in the finals. We played both squads tough, and were able to move the ball and score on them. They just made some plays that we couldn't match. I think that we'll get them this year.

Reds only 2 games out in the central, and still in the wild card lead, and it's the end of August. If we can survive this West Coast swing, I like our chances.

Anyway, it's time to turn it in.

-Chairman

Bells and Whistles

So, it looks like Blogger is catching up with some of the other sites and making it a little easier to change the look of your blog, add labels for your posts, and do other little fun things w/ the blog. So, naturally, I want to go back and add labels to all of my old posts. Plus, I just remembered that I had a website a little while ago that had some interesting stuff on there that I want to add to the blog archives. So, I think that I'll be playing around w/ some of the stuff before I actually sit down and write anything for real.

The one downer to the new Blogger editing features? You can't edit the raw code, yet, and they don't have an automatic feature that lets you edit the width of each element, so instead of the wide-screen version that I prefer (it lets you focus on developing the writing, whereas a narrow column sort os leads to a briefer version of the story), we've got the standard narrow field of text.

Hopefully, that will be fixed soon.

-Chairman

Hunt for Reds' October

So, I'm off at dinner the other night with the Rook and Scotty. Rook's a Cubs fan, while Scotty is a Cards fan. So, I go to Rook, "Rook - ask me who's going to win the NL Wild Card." He sees my grin, so he plays along. "Alright. Who's going to win the NL Wild Card?" Now they were both expecting me to say, "The Reds!" Of course, my response? Deadpan. "The Cardinals."

I don't know how true that is, but all I know is that we're in the middle of August and the Reds are still up a game for the Wild Card and only 1.5 games out, with the last three games against the Cards coming up these next couple days. If we can somehow pull this off and make the playoffs, it would be incredible. I have to say that if the Reds make the playoffs, I'll find a way to get to Cincy and watch some playoff baseball.

Right now, baseball season is good. In addition to the Reds, the Yanks are in first in the AL East. I would absolutely love to see a Reds-Yanks World Series. Not only would it feature my two favorite teams, it would also be a 30 year anniversary of when the Big Red Machine steamrolled the Yankees.

We've also got football season kicking off soon enough. Exciting times - I always love it when fall rolls around because it means that football will be back soon. And this year? Maybe the Bengals can put it together and make a deep run. And maybe the Illini can put it together and get that 3rd win this year. We'll see.

-Chairman

Nostalgia

So the other night, I was out with some friends, when the bars closed up. Everyone went their separate ways, and I decided to just walk around a bit, since it was a phenomenal night. It was one of those perfect nights, about 60 degrees, light breeze, clear sky, no humidity. And it hit me. I really wanted a gyro or a hot dog. Not just any gyro or hot dog. One of Taki's. It was a strange feeling that I had come over me. It doesn't hit me often, but every once in a while, I'll just have an old memory just come up out of nowhere. And this time, it was Taki.

Taki Iatropoulos was a friend of mine. This guy had lived, before he died. He moved to the U.S. from Greece to make his fortune. And along the way, he had all sorts of ups and downs in places ranging from New York City to Palm Beach to Carbondale to Champaign-Urbana. He wasn't the sort that people made heroes out of. And that was what I liked about him. He was just another guy. He cursed a little too much. He knew that he wasn't the best husband or father. He had been cheated by some people. And in the end, he did what he knew best - made tasty food, and added to his collection of memories.

What I saw was a guy who worked hard. He used to have this hot dog cart that he would set up on Green St. He'd be out there starting at 11am for the lunch crowd, and he'd be there until 3 am to sell to the kids coming out of the bars. And over the summer, he'd be out there 6 nights a week. In the winter, despite the freezing cold, it was the same story. It was during the summer of my junior year of undergrad when I became friends with Taki. That was a strange summer for me. I was down taking classes for the summer, but I didn't really know many people down here. So a lot of evenings, I would head down to Campustown, and just get a beer to do a little people watching, and then maybe grab a cigar and walk around, and do more people watching.

So, it was then that I discovered that there was a little hot dog cart where I could get a decent gyro or hot dog (complete with the grilled, red sauced onions like you get in NY) at 1 am after bars closed (this was back in the day, before the bars stayed open until 2). It was a slow night at the hot dog cart, so I just parked it out there and chatted with the guy who was running the cart. We discovered that we both had some roots back in NY. Myself up in Schenectady, Taki in the city. And we became friends by chatting about things out east.

I would drop by periodically during some of the slow times (like at 2 in the afternoon, between classes). At this point, he had rented the little kiosk on 4th and Green, so he could close up shop for a little bit and take a nap. But it also allowed him to bring some of his memories with him. Whenever I dropped in to chat with him, he'd always offer a soda, a shot of ouzo, or a cigarette. I'd generally accept the Diet Coke, but decline the ouzo and cigarette. And a couple times, he'd show me his album. All sorts of photos with famous people in his NY restaurant. Rockerfellers. Kennedys. I recall John Glenn. There were also menus and flyers of his restaurants in NY, and afterwards when things weren't so hot for Taki. And he told me some stories. His biggest regret was leaving NY. From what I recall, that Taki, at the urging of a friend, sold his place in NY to open up a place in Palm Beach, which pretty much tanked and ate up his life savings. After this, things were a struggle. But Taki persevered. Places opened up, made a little money, and then closed down. And he worked 15 hour days all throughout, trying to make do for his two daughters, Nicole and Eleni. I still remember having a conversation with him about faith, religion, and life. His thoughts were interesting. He hated the Church, was sort of weary of God, but was intent on taking his daughters back to Greece to be baptized. That was Taki. Somehow fate, for better or worse, brought him to Champaign-Urbana.

Eventually, he saved up a little money and was able to get out of the weather, and open up a restaurant, called Mykonos. The menu expanded a little bit. And now there were refills on the sodas. But if Taki was working the grill when I was there, there'd still be an offer of ouzo or a cigarette. And I think that I eventually took him up on the offer of ouzo, but only once. That was enough. Quite a few late nights were spent at Mykonos. I'd always bring friends out there after we had gone out. And every once in a while, I'd stop in during the day to chat. Taki coughed a little more than he used to, seemed more tired than I remembered, and would often be napping in a little closet during the day. I didn't know it at the time, but I should have. I wasn't really seeing life clearly then. I had ran into some tough times in my own life late in 2001. I didn't get out to Mykonos at all that fall. Taki passed away in early 2002. He had cancer, which eventually led to liver failure. I was sad that I never had a chance to say goodbye to my friend.

After a while, a new place popped up in Taki's old space. Cafe Luna, which I've written about. I'm normally one to try new places pretty quickly. But I held off. It took me almost 3 years to get over it and set foot in there.

It's still hard to get a good hot dog around here, particularly with those grilled onions with the red, sauce. And it's hard to see the old Mykonos, with the success that Cafe Luna has experienced. But every once in a while, it becomes easy to remember Taki. And it would be a shame if I didn't write some of the thoughts down, in case the memories become harder to see in the future.

-Chairman

Project Self: Monkeys Discovering Tools

Yep. It was funny, but the other day, I had one of those "aha!" moments where some insight kicks in. But, not really. Here's the backstory. I'm helping DE move into his new place across town. He had bought a couch and a queen-sized bed from one of the PhD students who was graduating and moving away. So, we got everything packed up and drove over to his place. The couch was a little heavy, but no problem getting it up to the third floor. Ditto for the mattress, since we could bend it around corners in the stairwell. Where I knew that we were going to have problems was with the box-spring. We tried a couple different ways, bending and rotating the box-spring about different orientations. Nothing worked. At one point, we had the thing wedged into the stairwell (which turns back 180 degrees halfway between floors) so well that I was convinced that we wouldn't be able to get it out. So, we joked about just leaving it there for the neighbors.

But, alas, that was not an option. So we kicked, pulled, and otherwise cajoled the box-spring out of the stairwell, and brought it back outside. Now, having felt how sturdy the box-spring was, I figured that we'd have to take it apart. Now, I didn't know how a box-spring was put together. After all, who really knows how this stuff works, until you have a good reason to? So, we got at it. We tore off the fabric on the bottom of the box-spring, seeing if it gave any structure to the box-spring. Nope. So, then we tried tearing off the fabric on top of the box-spring. Still no additional bend (though we did try to see if the springs would give enough in certain spots to let us turn the corner in the stairwell - no go). So, I look at what we had - a wooden frame that had a number of horizontal pieces where the spring attached, and then four cross-supports that ran the length of the bed. I decided that we would need to knock out the cross-supports, so then everything could just bend around the corners. I was hoping that we could get away with just 2 of the supports, the that wasn't happening.

Anyway, I'm outside of the apartment, hammering away at the wooden frame for a good 15 minutes. And of course, the neighbors have to come out to see what the story is, since it was like 7:30 in the evening. Normally, it would be cool to meet the neighbors. Only this time, they were an elderly couple. And, I kid you not, the husband was blind. See you later? Nevermind. Anyway, they were nice after we charmed them a bit. And we finally are able to get the box spring up to the third floor, albeit in one large piece, and 4 separate cross-supports. So, we lay the cross-supports on the bed frame, and then just put the remainder of the box spring on top. Slap on a bedskirt, put on the mattress, and no one is the wiser. Amazing.

The point of the story was to bring up an interesting point. Now, most problem solving researchers would assert that you can't solve a new problem until you have that serendipitous, "aha!" moment that is often called restructuring, where you see the problem in a new way, perhaps by relaxing problem constraints or just hitting a moment of insight. These folks would likely say that you can't ever learn to restructure, and that it just happens. But, for me this time, it was a little different. I've moved big objects around corners of stairwells before. And I had a general idea of how a box-spring worked. But, I had never tried to move a queen-sized box-spring into tight spaces before. So, it would seem to fit the story that I had my restructuring, and had a moment where I relaxed some problem constraints.

My moment was a little different. I didn't know how, but I had my engineering training tell me that if you take it back far enough, you can get to something more manageable. I had no idea what it was going to entail. And, really, it was a bit of a process. I just started taking stuff apart, deciding whether something that came off was needed or not, and repeated the process until it got to the point where we could get everything essential upstairs. Now, I had never done this before. I didn't know what a box-spring was made of. But I had a few things going for me. 1) I was confident that we were going to get this to work. 2) I knew that we could reverse-engineer, if needed, so breaking down to core components was okay. 3) We were only looking for functionality, not aesthetics.

Examining this problem, it seems that we had very few problem constraints, other than DE needed a bed to sleep on. I think that confidence in problem solving has to be beneficial (assuming that you have the ability to solve a problem - confidence w/out ability would seem to have disastrous consequences). And I think that the idea of breaking things down into core components (structural knowledge, is the term) is a powerful one. How much of physics at the macro level is described by a few core laws (i.e. first principles)? I think that if you can see what the first principles of a problem, then you are able to manipulate that problem much more easily.

So what does this have to do with anything? I don't think that society takes a first principles approach nearly enough. I think that a lot of people today live at a very surface level, dealing with immediate surroundings, using conveniently available measures, and otherwise not addressing truly core issues. I had a conversation with a friend last weekend about race. I'm not big on race. She was. Of course, she was white, and she was wanting to better understand the world around her, which is to be applauded. However, it's my position that race is surface knowledge (as opposed to structural knowledge). I don't think that it tells you much about an individual, once you get past the color of someone's skin. I think that it helps you find common ground or topics of conversation. But no more so than any number of things. I try to remind myself of what MLK had to say... not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. If I have to talk about race, I would prefer to have a conversation with someone about what their ethnicity means to them and how it has affected them (i.e. understanding their view of the construct, rather using a construct to define them).

Of course, this posting isn't about race. I think that the same critique applies to those who would simply try to justify a belief with a simply a quote from the Bible with no context (or even less valid grounds). The question of what is at the core of a belief system is a crucial one. Much more so than that is on the surface of that belief system. I have a hard time taking people seriously who have deeply ingrained beliefs on anything that are grounded on surface knowledge. And what's bothersome is that I've seen it from all sorts of people on all sorts of issues, including homosexuality, abortion, the Middle East, social justice, and wealth distribution. And this comes from all sorts of people with different backgrounds, careers, etc. I have a suspicion that many folks have discovered that it's easier (and often safer) to take something that you heard somewhere and just regurgitate it, whether or not it's insightful.

At the core of it, we're all just figuring out what it is that we want to do when we grow up. But I'm more interested about why we want to do what it is that we want to do and how we're going to do it.

-Chairman

In the Hands of the PhD Gods

Done. Paper submitted at 4:36pm on August 1st. Not spectacular, but not bad. The paper should pass, but it's not a slam dunk. We'll see if I have to re-write it. I really hope that I don't. But it's in the hands of the PhD Gods now.

We've had some interesting times here at TFS-2 the last couple weeks. Let's just say that someone's gotta be butter, cause they're on a roll, something fierce. We've also had some interesting philosophical discussions the last few days, between my paper writing sessions. I think that punishment for poor behavior is something that is missing in our society, and as such we allow for too much deviant behavior. Ask Nick the Dinosaur about his social predator-prey model. I'm not saying that we need to physically punish people for being dumb. But sometimes we're too ho-hum about people who are socially retarded. I like the idea.

I'm very much exhausted, and I'm going to sleep well tonight. Get up, hit the gym, pack up, and get up to Chicago. Need to be up there by 3:30 to help with some of the stuff for the reception. I think that Wednesday night may be a minor work night up in Chicago. Thursday, all day at the conference, and then Thursday night is a world of possibilities, as is the weekend.

Current thought - debating between actually going back to SC to see the folks or just chilling out in C-U for the 2 weeks before classes kick off. Wouldn't mind a road trip, but also wouldn't mind just hanging out, hitting the gym hard, getting ahead on some work, and getting rest before the school year kicks off. Besides, if I really want, I can just drive out to SC during the semester, since I've got a lot of flexibility in my schedule now.

Let's see. Reds aren't playing well, but are still only 3.5 back of the Cards in the NL Central, and a full game up on the D'Backs. If we make the playoffs, then I think that the Kearns/Lopez deal is worth it. Plus, the Yanks are percentage points ahead of the BoSox in the AL East, and the White Sox for the wild card. It loooks that I'll have a reasonable chance of watching my two teams in the playoffs.

It's bedtime. Maybe we'll find time to say something interesting in Chicago.

-Chairman

Weekend Update

I guess that my first thought this weekend is to not piss off the Zionists.

I don't know if it matters if Syria and Iran are pulling the strings in Lebanon. At some point, we just may see The Promised Land extending north into Lebanon, east into Syria, and further east into Iran. And they may not give it back this time. Which may not be all that bad. Maybe the Jews can make things run a little more smoothly out there.

I'm starting to wonder if genocide is really all that bad. I mean, it looks like Israel is saying, well, Lebanon, if you can't control your own house, then it's an unfortunate consequence that we'll have to bomb some of the friendlies, as well as the bad guys. And can you really blame the Jews? You gotta take care of yours before you worry about others, right? Maybe? Let's assume that Hezbollah has a "no surrender" policy. If you continue the logic onto the end, if the Lebanese don't actively separate themselves from Hezbollah, then you're going to get Lebanese genocide. I don't know if it would be "intentional" like the stuff you see in Rwanda, but it would be interesting.

Actually, I'm sort of curious to see an escalation. I know that it'll send gas prices higher, but it may be worth it for the show. I'm kind of curious to see this whole thing play out. Will all the Arabs band together? Or will there be a Shiite/Sunni falling out? Will it matter, with the Jews and their superior technology and willingness to use it? Where will the Israeli borders be in a year? And what sort of cool CNN videos will we get? Will the U.S. get involved? Could be interesting to watch.

Transitioning into baseball, the Reds are still hanging in there, 1.5 games up on the Dodgers in the wild card race, and 4 games back of the Cards in the NL Central. They just made a trade that has been skewered on ESPN.com's Page 2, and a few other outlets. But, I think that the trade gives us a better chance at the post-season this year, and a better chance to win in the playoffs. We needed more pitchers, and now our bullpen actually looks solid. Closer in the back end. And 3 reliable arms in Coffey, Weathers, and Majewski, plus a young guy with talent in Bray. The gamble has to be that our offense is good enough without Kearns and Lopez, and that we improve our defense and bullpen enough to make a difference. If we make the playoffs, I think that it's worth it (Kearns gets expensive after this year, as does Lopez, I think).

Does anyone really care about a horse with a bum leg?

Anyway, probably no posts until August. Need to churn out my summer paper. Doesn't have to be great. Just can't have it suck. I guess that I'm sort of shooting for a B-. I know. I'm inspirational. Of course, I may find something interesting enough to post on. And I'm not really big on working, so you never know.

But, summer plans do continue. I'll be up in Chicago for the 2nd through the 4th (and hopefully 5th and 6th). I've got a conference that Wednesday and Thursday, and hopefully goofing off with some of the old troops that weekend. After that, I figure that there'll be a trip back to SC to see the folks. I think that at some point, I'll put up another poll question regarding where I'm going to stop off to cause trouble on the drive home. I'm debating between Lexington, Knoxville, Nashville, or maybe something completely different. We'll see.

-Chairman

New Tech

Yep. I'm finally caught up with 1998 blog technology. To the right, I've added a poll. Periodically, I'll be adding some random questions for which I'm curious to see your thoughts. Should be a fun addition to the Board Room.

Here's to not working for real (again).

-Chairman

Doing it in the Field

So I just got off the phone with my advisor. I'm convinced that this guy is like the best advisor, ever. Not only do I not have any of the horror stories that you hear about (or see at times), but the guy is just upbeat about things, even when I botch things.

So yesterday, I found out from my advisor that I had screwed up my latest draft of a manuscript that we're working on. Basically, we were using "track changes" in Word, and I hadn't been accepting changes when I was working on parts. Basically, we never talked about it, so I figured that as I made adjustments, that he'd accept the changes. It never occured to me that since I was a co-author, that I also had the authority (and responsibility) to accept his changes, as well. So, I hadn't been doing that, and I got myself confused with our revisions. Basically, I ended up working on an old draft, which made him duplicate some work. I flew through the stages, going from depression, to acceptance, to anger very quickly, but my advisor was just so upbeat about it. He just said, "Here's the latest version. Incorporate what you put into the previous version, and we'll get it taken care of."

I mean, I was pissed off at myself, but during our conversation, my advisor put a lot of things in perspective for me. It doesn't really feel like you're doing a whole lot day-to-day (really, because I'm not, I think), but if you take a step back, it looks a lot nicer. At the start of the summer, we were 80% ready to go with a single journal submission. Currently, halfway through summer, we are 98% with the previous journal submission, about 80% with the latest one, plus we had presented our work at a good conference. This makes for a pretty productive summer, even though it feels like I haven't really done anything (which, I really haven't).

So, today, I get a call when I'm off at Panera getting some work in. He had just gotten off the phone with a gal from the Extension office. Basically, we were planning on introducing some new educational materials into their EFNEP curriculum, and then test the results of their old materials compared to our new materials. Somehow, this didn't work out well last fall, so we didn't end up getting the data that we wanted. So, we were going to set this up for this summer. But while we were reviewing their materials, we had noticed that there was a pretty big change in their materials from when we had first talked to them. Basically, they ended up incorporating a lot of our philosophies and suggestions into their materials. So, we can't really do what we were planning, since they had sort of stolen our punchline. But, really, as you take a step back, it just means that they took our advice, and just ran with it. Which is pretty awesome, really. This means that the work that I've been doing has been put into play at a statewide level by a program that probably serves 10,000 - 20,000 people at a given time. And what's nice is that we can just make our data look like a longitudinal study, where we compare the results from 2 years ago (when they were using old materials) to this coming year (which will use new materials that is modeled after what we had proposed). Same result, different way of telling the story. And more importantly, it gets our recent research actually out into the real world.

So, it's nice. It seems that this stuff that I do makes a difference, even if it's just a little bit at a time.

To close, I have an opinion question to throw out there. I think that the last two phone numbers that I've added to my phone are from vegetarians. Check that. Two of the last three. How long do you guys think that I could hang out with a vegetarian chick? Certain things I don't put up with. Like cats. But I've never really known any vegetarians, so I don't know what to think.

-Chairman

Interestingly Random Thoughts

So, while I was watching some World Cup soccer, I was listening to former player, turned broadcaster John Harkes do some color commentary. And all I could think was that, "Geez, this dude sounds like Mary Carillo." Of course, Mary Carillo is actually a good announcer for tennis and knows what she's doing. John Harkes sounded like a blithering idiot out there. But the tone and pitch of his voice sounded like Mary Carillo's. I'm not sure if it's more that John Harkes sounds like a girl, or Mary Carillo sounds like a dude, but either way, it definitely amused me for a while. More so than the actual soccer did, anyway.

Mary Carillo and John Harkes. One of them likes touching guys, and the other is a tennis announcer.
One of them looks how a man should look, and the other plays soccer.

And speaking of the World Cup, you know that there'll always be something interesting brewing when Germany and Italy get together. I don't know how much I like the chances of the French holding off the Axis without the help of the Brits and the Yanks, though. All I know is this - you'd have to be crazy to kidnap a Jewish soldier. I'm not really a pro-Jewish guy, but I love their efficiency. Let's just say that if we had the resolve of Israel, Iraq would have been taken care of in 2 months, with anyone who needed to be killed, killed. But you have to hand it to the Palestinians. Digging a 300 foot tunnel, under the fence, and then raiding army barracks? You couldn't write a better plot. But enough of the world. More about us.

But it'll be a strange 4th of July. Your sports viewing options will be watching a WWII re-enactment at the World Cup, watching a bunch of foreigners at Wimbeldon, or baseball. Ordinarily, one of the best story lines at Wimbeldon is the American playing on the 4th of July, often with the eyes of the nation on him/her. This is one of the best advertisements for tennis here in the U.S. Unfortunately, no Americans are left to watch. I think that unless Blake and Roddick figure out how to beat Nadal and Federer pretty darn quick, American men's tennis may be looking for a place next to soccer and hockey in the sports graveyard.

As far as baseball goes, I'm glad to see my Reds hanging in the NL Central race. Still only a game back of the floundering Cards, despite not playing great baseball. Plus, we're still running the wild card race. It would be quite an achievement for this club to make the playoffs with a young infield, no real masher at first base, and a suspect (but improving) pitching staff. This is shaping up to be an interesting July, August, and (hopefully) September and October.

-Chairman

The End is Near

It's interesting to realize that you're actually getting older, but one thing that sucks is that you have to see the sports heroes of your youth get older, too. My initial bouts of this came when I saw Barry Larkin play his last couple seasons with the Reds. I had seen Eric Davis' career end prematurely, but that came from cancer and his reckless playing style in center field. So that didn't really get me. But watching Barry Larkin was when I figured that life was changing. I saw Larkin his a ground ball deep into hole, and I just assumed that he'd run it out like he always does. Instead, he was just thrown out. And that was when I realized that things would be different.

Earlier today Andre Agassi made his last appearance on Centre Court in at Wimbledon. He lost in straight sets to one of the best young players in the world, Rafael Nadal. A quick aside on Nadal - look at his arms. He's pretty built for a tennis player, but if you look at his left arm, is sort of scary how much bigger it is than his right arm.

Rafael Nadal, with a freakishly large left arm. We'll let you add your own punchline.

Back in the day, you'd see the same thing with Pete Sampras. It's sort of funny. But, back to the point.

American men's tennis was dominant, starting back in 1989, when Michael Chang came out of nowhere to win the French Open, taking down Ivan Lendl and Stefan Edberg, two of the top 5 players of that time. In 1990, Pete Sampras came through with the U.S. Open, and Jim Courier was actually the dominant player in the world from 1991 to 1993, taking down 2 French and 2 Aussie Opens, and was #1 for most of 1992 and 1993. And of course, during all this, Andre Agassi was probably wasting some of his potential, and actually was the last of the U.S. group to win a slam, taking down Wimbeldon in 1992. These guys combined for 27 major championships in their careers. It was an exciting time for American tennis.

I was playing some tennis during this time. I did some of the group lessons, tennis camps, club leagues, and the school team. I wasn't a great player - I was reasonably skilled and pretty strong, but was never fit enough to play to my talent. I could have been a decent player, but I wasn't willing to work to get into shape and make it happen.

Really, before that, my favorite players were Boris Becker. Big serve, followed it up with the big net game. But as the new generation of Americans came through the ranks of pro tennis, I tried to model my game after theirs. The Jim Courier inside-out forehand. The Pete Sampras one-handed backhand. I tried to recover and move like Michael Chang. My serve was still Boris Becker, though. But oddly enough, I never really like Agassi when I was a player. One of my favorite moments was at Wimbledon in 1996 when Sampras beat Becker, who passed the keys to Centre Court to Sampras. Of the Americans, I think that my favorite player was Jim Courier. I was the most in awe of Pete Sampras, and I admired Michael Chang the most. Really, I was pretty neutral towards Andre during this time, though I did enjoy his gold medal in the '96 Olympics. Really, I think that I was too similar to Andre in the sense that neither of us worked at it hard enough. And familiary breeds contempt.

I didn't appreciate Agassi until career caught a second wind in 1998-99, when he won 3 out of 4 slams, with the only thing preventing the "Andre Slam" being Pete Sampras winning Wimbledon. He came back to the sport as an older player, but was in the best shape of his life. And he played like he meant it.

And really, this is what made me come to respect, and even like Andre. He came back, when his talent wasn't what carried him. It was his fitness and his willingness to work. And for me, I think that I admire hard work more than I admire talent (though, I think that if I were to look at myself, I probably end up relying on talent more than I do on my work ethic). But while Andre was working on his fitness, so was I.

After I put on my freshman 15... well, okay, 30, I decided to do somehting about it. I started working out, playing more sports, and getting myself into better shape. And over the next couple years, I was actually pretty athletic. And I understood what it took to make yourself fit, if you aren't blessed with it naturally. And I appreciated Andre Agassi more. But, eventually, time catches up with everyone. Andre slowed down, and even though his fitness was solid, his reaction time and his reflexes were just a step slower. But I'm hoping to mimc Agassi's rise from the ashes in 1998. He came off injury in 1997, at the age of 27, and was in the best shape of his life. I've mentioned my journey back from my knee issues over the last 2 years or so. I turn 28 next month. So, for the first time, I really want to be like Andre.

I don't know where American tennis goes from here. We have a couple top 10 guys. But Andy Roddick has hit a bit of a career slump over the last couple years, and had the misfortune of running into Roger Federer at his finest. James Blake has some game, but I don't know if he has a big enough weapon to really take on Federer or Nadal. I don't think that anyone else out there right now has the potential to win a major. Of course, I can't remember the last time I played tennis. So maybe it's not as important anymore.

-Chairman