It feels weird to blog about sports, since they’re not real critical to my life (although it’s a big part of my entertainment, it’s not like 10 years from now the fact Duke lost tonight will matter.) Interesting sidebar - I would have been deadlast in our office pool if Duke would have won. Last place gets their money back. But I’m going to finish the season second to last, which doesn’t get any recognition. Not even a ribbon.

What is pretty great is I bought 2005 NCAA Final Four basketball tickets for St. Louis next April. Okay, okay, I put in my entry in their lottery. I pay $4 just to play, and if I get in, I get to go to the Final Four next year. Woot. If I lose, they refund me the entire price, less the $4 charge. I think that’s retarded.

I missed the football spring scrimmage at Memorial Stadium this afternoon. Athletics had sent tickets, but I just didn’t realize it was this weekend, and missed it. In even better football news, I learned the Young Alumni program that gave us public season tickets at students prices is back this year - for UI graduates within the last 6 years. That drops the football season tickets from $207 down to $77. Rock.

Work has been busy. We’re gearing up for the Siebel Center Grand Opening in 4 weeks. I worked this week getting the information panel display system up and going. We’ll see if the info panels actually arrive and get installed in time. The department is getting a new website that’s database driven, and some of that information will power the info panels. Right now, we’re just focusing on the grand opening, but eventually that will be a permanent fixture for the facilities and personnel in the department. With my recent work on the blog, and the wiki, I think it’s interesting that the building is becoming just a big blog. Suck it out of a database, display it, etc. Show it a little different on a website, versus an info panel, versuses an RSS feed or listserv. It’s like Microsoft commercial where the third quarter numbers change, and so does the presentation, although we’re more concerned about hanging projector screens than cutting them down. There’s a ton of things to do before the opening.

I was also busy tracing networking troubles for one of our access switches last night. This came up around 4pm, I left and went to dinner, and then was back at work and in a conference call with technicians until 4am this morning. I saw the sun come up on my drive home, and then crashed until this afternoon. Like Albert Einstein kinda said, “Do not worry about your problems with the networking, I assure you mine are far greater.” Well, Foundry’s problems are greater than mine, but I share the brunt of it.

And tomorrow, I hope to wash my car and clean our the garage.