USC

Nothing like a little bit of depression and a 6-pack of Molson Canadian on New Years Eve to make you want to change your life. One of my dreams was to go to the University of Southern California, the real USC. Given that the cost of an education there is very high (a private institution, USC estimated yearly costs in 1993 to be about $25,000) I didn't get to go when I graduated high school. I was accepted easily (ranked 25th in my graduating class) and gained early acceptance into the business school (my planned major was business administration), but didn't have any money. I was granted a regents (full) scholarship to any Arizona school, so I went to ASU and lost it in the first year since I had to keep my grades up and didn't when I was working full time. I continued on there with my employer paying for it for a while, then switched to the University of Phoenix (works for some, but I felt it was like going to school in a strip mall), but didn't finish there once I got laid off and haven't gone back since.
I've always promised myself that if I ever had the money to go to USC, which would probably only be by winning the lottery, I would. Now I've become so bored with life that I have to go. I can't wait for my 1 in 52,000,000 shot to get the money. Somehow, someway, I'll find the, what is now, $46,000 for a year to go and get a degree in mechanical engineering. I think one way would be if I could get .0003% of the people in this country to send me $1. That's $100,000 and would easily pay my way. So if anyone out there wants to help out, leave a comment and I'll get you an address.

NBC's playoff coverage

(For the regular readers of this site, um, that would be nobody, it may come as a shock that I've done two updates in one day, it's OK, I doubt it'll become common)

I was watching the NBC broadcast of the NFL Wild Card Playoff game between the Cowboys and the Seahawks earlier this evening and became seriously annoyed at the amount of commercial breaks. There was a break for every change in possession, score, and replay. Um, hello, I'd like to see the replays while the referee is looking at them. I think one sequence actually went like this:

Cowboys on 3rd and 8, pass play incomplete on sideline, needs review.
Commerical
Back from commercial, ref announces call stands
Punt
Commercial
Seahawks 1st & 10, 2nd & 8, 3rd & 4, 4th down Punt
Commercial
Dallas 1st & 10, fumble needs review
Commercial
Call overturned, 2nd & 10, Interception
Commercial
So on and so forth
Commercial

So you get the pattern here. There's no better way to break up the momentum of watching a football game by having to watch some stupid Nissan Frontier commercial again, or those four dweebs in the cell phone polos whining about Alltel. Regular season games are bad but this was ridiculous.

In the interest of fair reporting...

I'm a few weeks late on this, but in the interest of fair reporting, regarding my previous post (which was a couple months ago), the Coyotes have stopped using the pedophile song (Rock & Roll, Part II by Gary Glitter). For a while they were using a combination of Song 2 from Blur (the woo hoo song), and the old edited Werewolves of London from Warren Zevon. Lately they've been trying out what seems to be an orginal. Some kind of "whoa oh" type of song where the guitar soloist will repeat that phrase. It's not bad. Not as good as the NY Rangers original goal song, but it's a worthy effort.

Oh, and from a dry run for Opening night, a friend who works for the team asked a couple of us on our rec team to come in and help out. We got to skate on the ice, get the first look at the Pack girls (very hot, very young). And I met Howler. Ok, I don't hate him now, but he's still a silly cartoon dog running around the arena.