Go DEVILS!  8-0!  One more week undefeated as ASU takes down the Cal Bears 31-20.  The students go crazy and rush the field.  The packed house leaves happy.  Up next...Oregon at Autzen.  Bring it on!

I'm probably the last one to figure this out, but Craig's List actually works!  I've browsed the list many times in the past looking for values of certain cars, bikes, etc.  I've even contacted a few people about some of these items before, but I've never actually bought anything or sold anything on the list...until yesterday.

LA Fitness built a gym near my house last year, so since I joined, I quit using my weightlifting rack that I had in the garage.  I've been meaning to get rid of the giant beast, but procrastination was the word of the day.  I wanted to get a good picture of it before I posted it somewhere...so I waited.  Yesterday, though, I decided just to throw up an add for it on Phoenix's Craig's List using a drawing of the product I found on the web.  Within 4 hours of the posting, I had two people emailing me about it.  By the 5th hour I was handing out my address to two people, had third person that wanted to buy it the next day, and a fourth inquiring about it.  By the 6th hour, there was a guy at my house handing me cash and this behemoth was carried away.  Most importantly, it was carried away by someone other than me. 

What I can say, as someone who has done a little bit of "trading" on ebay, is that in our society that values instant gratification so highly, Craig's List delivers!

A youtube video for you Sun Devil fans.

Last night's long overdue loss by Southern Florida (which is in Tampa...not even near South Florida...go figure) leaves only 5 teams in major college football undefeated.  They include our beloved ASU Sun Devils, along with Ohio State, Boston College, Kansas, and (ahem) Hawaii.  Now, Hawaii plays in an awful conference and doesn't play anybody until they play Boise State and Washington (the last two games), so I wouldn't consider them a major player in the BCS (indeed, they are only ranked 18th in the BCS poll, which is great for Hawaii, but not great for a 7-0 team).  Even Boise State and Washington, while likely to beat Hawaii, are unranked teams.

That leaves 4 major undefeated teams with at least decent schedules.  That's pretty good company for ASU to be in as they rest through the bye week, and then start the most difficult part of their season.  Over the 4 weeks (well, 4 and a half...there is a Thanksgiving night game against USC) following the bye week, ASU will face three top 15 teams, two of which are ranked higher (Oregon and California), along with a USC team that is hungry to prove they belong at the top of the BCS standings.  A game against UCLA rounds out that 4 week stretch, and the Bruins are a dangerous team even though two terrible losses to bad teams have dropped them from national favor.  What a season for college football fans!  What a season for Sun Devil fans!  Long live college football.

ASU Fans, you need to get to Sun Devil Stadium next Saturday night, wear gold, and be loud!  Go Devils!

Sorry in advance for the geeky sports rant...but I can't hold it in any longer.

From this weeks AP poll.  Huh?

Okay, everyone knows that college football polls are a little looney, but lately, with every week bringing upset mayhem, the poll participants have completely lost their minds.  The only poll these days that makes any sense seems to me is the College Football News poll which is done editorially rather than by massive vote (it appears, anyway), and they justify the position, along with stating why the team should be higher, and why they should be lower.  They use common sense and analysis to make the picks about who is better than who right now.  Tonight, I'm not even going to touch what my friend Steve Roach, a huge BYU (Mountain West) fan, calls the football cartel (BCS)...I'll stick with the 'creative ranking' even in the major conferences when it comes to the polls, just to keep it interesting and more challenging. More...

I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago, but better late than never.  A few months ago, as part of my overall effort to get back into shape, I decided to sign up for the Kokopelli Triathlon in St. George, Utah.  I live in the Phoenix metro area, so its a good 7-8 hour drive to St. George.  My brother, Cory, convinced me to sign up for this one, as he was going to be doing this one as well.  Cory lives in Park City, UT.  The event was scheduled for Saturday, September 22, 2007.

I began training for my first full triathlon.  I was going to compete in the "Olympic" or "International" distance, which is a 1500 meter swim (about a mile), a 40 kilometer bike ride (about 25 miles), and a 10K run (about 6.2 miles).  I've competed in a triathlon before, but that was as a member of a team, so I only did the 40K bike.  This would be my first complete event.  My last tri was also over 7 years and many pounds ago.  My training was going well, except I didn't really have enough free time to train as much as I needed/wanted to, but finishing the event wouldn't be too hard, and as my first one getting back into shape, that was really my goal. More...

Snowball, a cockatoo, dances better than any bird I've seen.  This isn't your standard head bobbing, either.  Check it out.

I think this may be the original blog post.

I'm interested because of my own bird, Cosmo, who is a wild and crazy guy in his own way.  Cosmo is a caique, a species well known for its antics and athleticism.  Here is an old workout video from Cosmo to go along with the bird theme.

Well, I finally got around to updating my blog software to something a little more modern that .text .9.  I've been playing around a bit with BlogEngine.NET, and version 1.2 was just released, so I finally moved my production blog to this blog engine.  I also changed hosting providers because while GoDaddy is the hometown incumbent...they are just too restrictive, so I dumped them.

I also did some customizations to the Indigo theme that ships with BlogEngine.  It was a good start, but there were some things that I didn't like, so I changed them.  I wanted to get my hands dirty a bit with theme-ing and get under the covers of the software a bit, so it made sense.  I moved quite a bit around, added a top level nav system, and changed the way the admin links work (when your logged in as an admin) to make it all a bit cleaner.  I will likely eventually adapt a theme that I like better, but this should do for now.  If anyone wants my updated theme, I'd be glad to share it...just let me know via the contact page. 

So far I'm very impressed with the software.  It is fairly flexible, easily customized, and pretty feature rich.  The tag cloud is something that I didn't have with my last engine, and I like it quite a bit.  It even supports BlogML updates now, and in fact I used this feature to migrate my data (with a little tweaking).

Crystal and I just got back this past weekend from doing some diving in San Carlos, Mexico.  We went with Saguaro Diving and Sport on their last organized trip of the year to San Carlos.  While the bus ride was absolutely brutal (I'm not doing that again), we had a good time.  Eight hours on the uncomfortable bus seats down to San Carlos without stopping, and over 11 hours back with lots of border and drug checks, is enough to cure one of the need to ever see a bus again.

We went with our friends Melissa and Reed, and we had a great time diving and sleeping (a lot).  I've included a link to some pictures, mostly wet, from the trip. 

Highlights included seeing and swimming with lots of seals, a medium sized green sea turtle, many tropical fish on the rocky reefs, including Angels, Damsels, Butterfly Fish, Puffers, etc.  We also encountered many moray eels, and some very interesting invertebrates.  Clicking on the pictures below will take you to the full gallery.

The seals were fun to see, and pretty playful.  The water was warm (over 80 F).  The dive boat, while slow, was big and comfortable.  Hard to ask for much more.

Reed and I also had a very interesting night dive (unfortunately I didn't take my camera on that dive). More...

I've finally posted some of my Pics from Maui, including many diving shots.  Click the image below to go to this gallery.