Mar
22
2008
After an injury to Pau in New Orleans and a rough start to the toughest road trip in 20 years the Lakers have got their groove back. LA have won their last three games, 2 of which were on the road against 2 of the top Western Conference teams and all of this without Pau, Bynum, Ariza and Mihm.
The first win came against Dallas on March 18th, a game in which the Lakers came out of the gates with a passion I have not seen in a long time. This enabled them to get ahead by as much as 25 points early in the 3rd quarter. Dallas however made a very admirable job getting back in the game. They were able to cut that 25 point lead to 2 and had a chance to win the game with a Dirk 3-pointer at the end but the shot did not fall. The final score was LA 102- 100.
The second win came against the hottest home team in the NBA the Utah Jazz. Utah had won 19 straight games prior to the game and was trying to set a franchise record of 20 games against LA. This would not materialized because LA had a purpose and that was to break the streak and redeem Fisher. In case you guys didn’t know, Fisher was a Jazz last year but went to LA because his daughter had a rare cancer disease and could get much better medical care in Los Angeles. The Jazz organization let him get off his contract for his family and Fisher signed with the Lakers. The Utah fans however believe that Fisher had “other” motives and booed him on his first return to Utah back in November. The Lakers took this personally and they came out with vengeance against the Jazz and led the whole game. They led by as much as 24 and never let Utah in the game. The final score was LA 106 Utah 95.
The third win came last night against the lowly Supersonics, a game in which LA was expected to win and won. Lakers dominated the entire game jumping to 10-0 start and never looked back. EIGHT Lakers were in double-figures and just out-played, out-thunk, out-maneuvered, out-everythingged the Sonics for complete ownage. I actually fell asleep during the 4th quarter knowing it was gonna be a W. The final score was LA 130 Seattle 105
The Lakers are now on top of the West again with a record of 48-21 a game ahead of both the Hornets and the Rockets. Pau is espected back as soon as tomorrow’s game against Golden State. Andrew should be back in 2 weeks, which means he’ll have about 6 games to play in the regular season before the playoffs start. Mihm and Ariza are also on their way back to the squad which means we are peaking at just the right time.
LA has 13 games left, 9 of which are gonna be home game. There’s gonna be tough games down the stretch starting with a back to back game against Golden State tomorrow and Monday. They play Dallas at home on April 4th and will finish the season against New Orleans on April 11th and a back to back game against the defending champs the Spurs on April 13th and 15th. It’s gonna be a very important stretch but if Bynum and Gasol come back and start gelling during the regular season we’re going to be unstoppable come playoff time.
(Image: ESPN.COM)
Mar
21
2008
This is a neat little trick that will help you open firefox without actually double clicking on its icon or running it from the stat menu. With this trick you can open firefox and a specific page or pages using a special RUN Command.
- First Go to your Run Command using your method. A couple of shortcuts are:
- Keyboard: Windows Key + R or Click Start then Run
- Then typ: run firefox + website address (example: firefox josephestrada.net) See screenshot:
- You can also open multiple websites to open tabbed sites by typing:
- firefox josephestrada.net google.com
- See screenshot:
I find this trick useful and just cool =)
Mar
20
2008
Basically that is what I feel like today at work. I’m going on vacation next week and everyone is just stumbling around trying to figure out how to cover what I do. I’m only going to be gone a week and they’re making me feel like I’m committing a sin by taking some time off. I deserve the time off I’ve earned the vacation time and I don’t think it’s fair that they are making me feel this way.
You wanna know what makes it worse? There’s 3 of us in my department and when my co-workers took some time off last year and earlier this year.. I covered their desks for over a month and didn’t give them a hard time about it. Didn’t get no help just covered the desks. And today, I just got a call from our HR and she said that she wanted me to train this other person to help “cover” my desk for one friggen week. I’m like , WTF?? When I was covering the other people I didn’t get any help.. And now that I’m gonna be on vaca for only a week I gotta train someone so they can get help?? Just just doesn’t seem right. =/
Well let me tell you.. this is making our
Decision alot easier!!
Mar
19
2008
So I was surfing the web a couple of days ago and found an interesting website, Blogrush.com. The website’s main purpose is to drive traffic to your blog by displaying a widget on your site that shows other blogs. In return, you get credits for each time the widget is displayed on your site. W ith each credit, your blog is displayed on other blogs throughout its network. Seems interesting enough so I joined, as you’ve probably noticed from the little blogrush widget on my sidebar.
I’ve been using the site for 2 days and so far my blog have been syndicated 300 times throughout the network. I was a bit surprised by that since my blog is just starting and I don’t think I get more than 100 uniques a day. But that is a good surprise. The reason for this is the fact that the site gives you bonus credits for traffic generated on your site. For example, in the 2 days this blog has only generated 74 unique visitors thus giving me 74 credits. But the site added an additioanl 328 bonus credits, which is a good thing.
In addition, the 300 times my blog has been shown, I was able to generate 3 clicks. That’s 3 more visitors my site would not have gotten if I didn’t join the site. I know it doesn’t sound like much to the “big” blogs out there.. But for me it’s something… the more visitors the betterSo if you haven’t checked it out yet.. give it a try.. you may actually like it.. Oh yeah if you decide to join..
Give me a little love by clicking on my referral link ..
if you don’t mind..
Mar
18
2008
I’ve recently stumbled upon Dooce.com which is a blog written by Heather B. Armstrong. She is a 30-something stay at home mom living in Salt Lake City. She is married with one daughter and has with two dogs.
Her blog (http://www.Dooce.com) has been running since 2001 and has won several awards throughout through the years in the blogosphere world. This year alone she swept through the 2008 Weblog awards (http://2008.bloggies.com) by winning the following awards:
Best American Weblog
Best Designed Weblog
Lifetime Achivement
Weblog of the year
I haven’t gone through each post she has written since she’s been around since 2001. But with the ones that I’ve read I’ve been impressed. Her writing is to the point and she holds nothing back. In fact when she first started her blog she was fired from her previous job. She was a web designed in Los Angeles at the time.
Her blog features a daily photoblog, a daily chuck photo blog, a daily style photoblog and a regularly updated blog.
The daily photoblog shows her life journey as she sees it posts anything from a icy winter day in salt lake to a book of disney books in her daughters collection.
The daily chuck photo blog is a daily updated photoblog of their 6 year old “supermutt” There’s some weird and interesting photos in this section of her website. Definitely worth the look. More recently however, the section has been run by her new puppy a an Australian Shepherd named Coco. So maybe she can re-name this section Daily Chuck & Coco or something like that.
The Daily style section showcases her sense of style as she photographs items they have collected throughout her life.
This blog is truly a work of art and anyone who is remotely interested in blogging, photography, family or in life should definitely give it a visit. In fact I think they already do.
My Rating: 4.5/5.0
Mar
17
2008
I haven’t heard of this film until last week when my wife asked me to find Juno’s OST. After finding and listening to the soundtrack I was really impressed and asked my wife what the movie was about. She gave me her summary from the advertisement she’s seen and we decided we were gonna watch it this weekend.
The film stars Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman as a couple that couldn’t conceive and was looking to adopting a baby. Ellen Page plays the pregnant teenager “Juno” who decided that she couldn’t abort the baby but also could not take care of it herself.
The story starts when Juno turns to the local Pennysaver in hopes of finding an advertisement that will solve all her problems. And low and behold she finds a real elegant photo of Jen and Jason and knew just from the photo alone that they were the ones that will be raising her child.
The film was well written and original. There were great lines in this film and Ellen played the teenage pregnant role part to a perfection. Jennifer played the desperate woman who needed to be mother part great as well. There was nothing predictable about this film as you were often left wondering how it would end. Would Ellen give the child to the couple or is she gonna feel connected to the child and decide to keep it herself?
She then realizes that she in love with the boy that got her pregnant to begin with who was played by Michael Cera (from Superbad). This of course causes more twists and turns to the plot. This makes Juno confused but yet through all these emotions she still manages to keep her composure and go on. Let me say that although it may sound like real stressful time for Juno she did not let it show. In fact she was the life of the film that gave it a comedic twist.
The ending was an unexpected one to say the least. I was really impressed with this whole film and will definitely recommend it to anybody out there but specially if you have a daughter, or a teenager at that. So go out and check this film out.. it’s definitely not a waste of time. I’ll give it a 4.5/5.0
Mar
16
2008
This is kind of a big deal.. we’re seriously thinking about moving back to Los Angeles. We’ve been in South Carolina for over 2 years and it just isn’t doing it for us. Both our jobs suck and although we’re making OK money right now we’re just barely keeping our head above water. That’s because we actually got a real mortgage here and our daughter is in a private school which is averaging around $800 to $1000 month. The public school system here is ranked one of the lowest in the nation and we just don’t want her to end up with a South Carolina education =/. I hope that statement isn’t too politically incorrect but people here are just SLOW. To add to this, we haven’t made a circle of close friends here just a bunch of acquaintances. So all in all we’re lonely and we don’t even hang around with my sister and her family. Since I haven’t mentioned it.. part of the reason we moved here was to be closer to my family when my mom passed in 2004. big success that’s been.
Enter California… we grew there, my wife’s entire family is there, my dad’s there, all of our friends are there and my wife’s company is pleading here to come back. It may seem like a no brainer I know but here’s the catch… If we move back to LA we’ll be renting, what probably will be a one bedroom apartment and well I’m sure everyone knows how much housing is in LA. Also I’ll have to look for a new job, don’t know how long that will take. We got no savings, just driving to LA alone will cost around $4-5K, then putting a deposit for the rental will be around $2-3K. So that’s going to be a big issue.
But… if we get some financial help from family.. it maybe doable, as that’s the main reason why we haven’t packed up and left yet. So we’ll play it by ear and see how it goes…. Honestly I WANT TO move back now.. I gave SC a try and really tried to make it work here but it seems like a lost cause. T
Mar
15
2008
If your computer is taking forever to power on or restart then you might have one too many programs that are set to run at startup automatically. This can hog up your memory and your PCs overall performance. A quick fix would be to disable the items you don’t need or at least do not need each and every time the computer is turned on.
- Click on Start
- Run
- Type: msconfig
- Enter
This will open the System Configuration Utility
- Select the Start Up tab
- The command column will show you the directory path of the item
- This should help you choose which items you want to disable
- Unselect the items you don’t want to run during startup
Tweaking the System Startup items will help you preserve memory for the apps that you really want to use them for. Freeing the memory will also keep your PC running happy and healthy.
Mar
14
2008
The Windows Quick Launch Toolbar is designed to help you launch applications, photos, folders, email or any other item in a very “quick” way. It’s a very useful tool and very easy to use. It amazes me that alot of Windows XP users do not utilize this feature. In my opinion its a necessity when using XP and is a real time saver.
If you don’t already see the Quick Launch Toolbar on your Taskbar then follow these directions:
Enabling Quick Launch Toolbar
- Right click on your Taskbar
- Highlight Tools
- Select Quick Launch
After selecting Quick Launch you should see new icons on your Taskbar. By default the Quick Launch Toolbar is only set to display 3 icons and the rest are hidden. You will need to tweek it to fit your style. Follow these directions on tweeking it to taste just the way you like.
Adjusting The Size
Place your mouse cursor over the dotted line- Your mouse cursor should turn into an arrow with two directions.
- Left click and drag to the right to expand the size
- Release the mouse when your desired size is reached. The result should be something like this:
Of course it will depend on how many items are already on your Quick Launch Toolbar.
Deleting Items
- Hover your mouse cursor over the icon you want to delete
- Right Click
- Highlight Delete and Left Click. See screenshot:
Adding Items
- To add items to your Quick Launch Toolbar
- You simply just select an Item
- Drag to the Toolbar.
- And Drop to where you want the item to be
Changing Description
Mar
12
2008
What is going on with Mr. Bryant this season? First gets his wish by getting some help with the Pau trade. Then his whole team starts to play like a real Laker team whom as we speak are sitting on top of the Western Conference. And throughout all this he’s been the catalyst leading the team and yet Kobe also leads the league in technical fouls. I love the man, I think he’s the greatest player in the league right now but come on. Every play he doesn’t get the call his way (whether correct or not) he barks at the ref like a hound dog and usually just doesn’t stop. It’s one thing to work the referees but another thing to just get under their skin. In the past he’s been known not to be shy but this season it’s been ridiculous. For a man that’s considered the number one candidate to be the MVP (He still gets my vote by the way) this just doesn’t add up.
In my humble opinion I think he needs to let it go.. If he doesn’t get his call on a play just let it go and play ball. To be honest he’s averaging over 10 free throws per game and I think he’s getting his fair share of calls. Not only that, he’s @ 13 technical fouls right now and a couple more techs and he’s going to be suspended for a game and we just can’t afford that. The west is so competitive right now, that one game can be a big difference in playoff rankings come April. With all that said, if the game is on the line and he knows the referees are ready to tea him up he’s capable of just letting it go. So for the love of God, Kobe just let it go and play your MVP level ball and the calls will come your way.
(Image: NBA.com)
