Stan Olson’s Blog

Thank goodness we have a great offense. Huh? What did he just say? Yeah, that’s right. :) Our defense playing short-handed had trouble stopping the Bucs in the 4th quarter. Rex Grossman showed up though and got us the necessary yardage in OT to get 2 FG opportunities. (the first one was missed) So with the win (and the Saints loss) the Bears clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs. w00t! :) Hopefully the defense can work out the kinks over the next 2 games.

Full story from ChicagoBears.com

Well the critics were silenced last night as Grossman broke out of his funk and looked like the guy we saw earlier in the season. He was overshadowed by the rookie Devin Hester who returned 2 kickoff returns for touchdowns. The guy is amazing and he’s only a rookie! No turnovers for the Bears and it definitely made a difference. With this win the Bears clinched a first-round bye in the playoffs and move their record to 11-2. Did anyone else notice that this was supposedly an away game, yet there seemed to be a lot more Bears fans there? (Soldier Field - South!) Another amazing performance on Monday night and more importantly another victory. :)

Full story from ChicagoBears.com

I bit the bullet and decided I wanted an iPod shuffle last night. Why? Well at first I stumbled across a great deal on a refurbished 1st gen 512mb shuffle for $19 + s/h from Outpost.com. Things were going well, order was confirmed, credit card was charged, and I got the confirmation email. About 20 minutes after I placed the order, I received a 2nd email stating the order had been canceled. (apparently they haven’t figured out real time inventory yet) This bummed me out as I was wanting to get this as an early birthday present for myself. I’ve been wanting some form of iPod that I could sync up with iTunes and put podcasts on. I didn’t want to spend hundreds on a Nano or Video iPod.

So this morning I get up early and head out the door about 30 minutes before my normal departure time. I figured I’d head to Wal-Mart and pick one up there since they’re $1 cheaper than everyone else. Well I got there and they were out of stock, at least on the floor. There were no employees around to look in the back, so I gave up and went to work. I should have expected this from Wal-Mart since there was no help to be found last year when my parents were shopping for an HDTV. Anywho…

I went to work and got online to see who else in town sold iPod’s. Good ol’ Circuit City had them and luckily my store was the only one in a 50 mile radius that had them in stock. So I ordered one online and scheduled an in-store pickup. During my lunch hour, I went and picked it up. Quick and easy, $79.99 plus tax and I was on my way.

The first thing I noticed is just how small it is. It measures about an inch high and just over 1.5 inches wide. The clip is pretty nifty, it will fit on just about anything. The dock hooks up to the USB port on your computer and has a headphone jack for the connector on the iPod. (I’m guessing there wasn’t room for a mini-USB port) Installation was automatic, Windows XP figured out that it was an iPod Shuffle and iTunes found it as well. I copied my podcasts over to it and it seems to do the job just fine. Who needs a display? Maybe for music it’d be nice, but for me I’m good without one. I’ve got my MyFi that plays my music and it has a nice display on it, so I don’t need one for my ‘podcast’ player. I’ve included a few pics I took on my horrible camera phone but I think you’ll get the idea. I’ll take some better ones later on.

So it took me until 2006, but I’m finally an iPod owner. Never thought that would happen, but it did. I can see this being a big Christmas hit and folks who are into the jogging/walking thing would enjoy this too. Now I just need more podcasts to listen to.

28-12. No, that’s not the score, that’s how many fouls each team had. 37-9. Again, not the score but the amount of free throws attempted by each team. I’ll give you one guess as to who had the higher numbers. Illinois played a great first half minus the last few minutes that Arizona was able to creep a little closer. The aggressiveness of each team picked up in the 2nd half with each team trading buckets for a stretch. The refs got whistle happy (a common theme these days) and Carter was forced to go to the bench early in the 2nd half with his 4th foul. Then Pruitt picked up #4 followed by McBride and Brock. Late in the 2nd half, the refs missed several fouls committed against the Illini and Coach Weber lost his cool. The refs of course had no problem blowing a whistle and giving him a technical foul. So in the end, the Illini lost 84-72. The lovely storyline was that Arizona overcame a 16 point deficit to win the game. Granted it wasn’t even close to the Illini’s 15 point comeback in the final 4 minutes of the game back in 2005. Positive factors included a great performance by Carter as well as the team looking really dominating in that first half. As we all know, you have to play 40 minutes of great basketball to win the game. Hopefully these guys will continue getting better while we await Randle and Smith’s return from the land of the injured.