In the last 6-8 years, which seemed to coincide with the explosion of internet all over, there has been a huge explosion of fantasy sports league all over. Oh yeah, if you thought I was going to write about the softcore smut magazine that used to exchange hands back in the college years, along with debonair, mast ram etc, you are mistaken. But I must say, those were really good times. Out of the house and away from your parents' supervision for the first time and entering adulthood, and in most cases, at a college in a faraway city, it was a free-for-all. But I digress.
Fantasy sports league was the brainchild of Wilfred Winkenbach, a part owner of Oakland Raiders Football team in 1962, where in people would "draft" players and call in before the week's games and submit the roster.. (History of FFB) Those were small times for fantasy leagues and pretty strenous considering the fact that you have to go through the stats of each and every player by poring through newspapers and reading up on injuries etc. It never became a huge thing. It was only amongst a few devoted sports fanatics. With the arrival of the information age, it became a lot more easy to take care of the rosters, injury reports etc... and now you have fantasy leagues in cricket, golf too, not to mention football, basketball, baseball and hockey!!! However, fantasy football (FFB) seems to be the king of all fantasy sports as a lot all the games are on sunday, so it becomes a lot easy to manage your team unlike baseball or basketball, where you need to worry about the rosters on a daily basis for a 6 month period...
This is my fourth season of FFB. In my second year, i was in to football, basketball and as well as baseball. As you can guess, whatever little work i used to be able to do, was NOT accomplished. Last year, I even was the commissioner of my league and in fact, won the whole thing. That's $140 of other people's money for few minutes of work a week. There is one real advantage to FFB if you're a sports/TV junkie. Usually, you root for your favorite/hometown team. But once you get involved with FFB, all allegiances are out the window. Every game on TV is of interest to you!! You get torn sometimes, between rooting for your favorite team and also for their opponents. Apparently, there are close to 15 million people playing fantasy football in the U.S. currently!! Explains all the ESPN commercials promoting the leagues they provide.
Anyway, this year I am part of 2 leagues, one with the fellow desis, run by shawn (ESPN), and the other by a former labmate, Jim (Yahoo). I got my first loss of the season in the ESPN league (2-1 so far) and first win in the Yahoo! league (1-2) last weekend. In fact, last weekend, except for the win in the Yahoo! league, was downright pathetic in terms of my favorite teams. Penn State Cricket Club, lost the semi-final match in the WMCB tournament very handily, Penn State lost to arch-rival Ohio State (Shut the f*** up already, Matt!!!!), Pittsburgh lost to Cincinnati, Yankees lost, India lost to Australia and failed to make it to the DLF Cup Final. It was an almost 0-fer weekend!! Goddamn it!!
On the bright side, I went to a Roger Waters (former front man of Pink Floyd, FYI Totti) concert in Virginia and it was absolutely stupendous. I had seen him perform once before in 1999, at Hershey, PA. This time I had equipped myself well to enhance the concert watching experience. I was in a really happy place! If you care to know the songs that were played, click here (Set list). Thanks to Rohan Samsi's unbelievable sense of direction/navigation, (I think, in his previous life, he must've been christopher columbus!!! Set sail for India, end up in the carribeans!) we missed the first three songs but since I had seen him perform before, It did not bother me as much as Batman. He was PISSED. Rohan, you owe him one!! (The Brunch doesn't count!!!).
Before I leave, here is a YouTube clip of "Best of Rambo Fights" set to the extremely cheesy 80's tune of "JukeBox hero" by "The Foreigner" to brighten up your otherwise boring life (you are reading my blog, aren't you?)... Its through the roof in terms of the unintentional comedy scale.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
At a loss for words......
I saw this image on BBC this morning. It made me wonder about the range of emotions she could be feeling...... She was passing by a hunger strike protest by the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Git 'R Done
Its been exactly a month since I last wrote a post. Finally, I have got some peace of mind and valuable R&R. I could not fall asleep and ended up reading some of the blogs and thought, maybe I should post a new one. Most of you who visit this space already know that I had my PhD comprehensive exam last week and I passed it. And to those who didn't know, pass along your congratulations. Your beer is in the mail!
I was happily working towards the thesis proposal document.. (read: procrastinating and writing a few lines a day). Every time I decided to write some more, I estimated how much time each section should take and no matter how I added things up, it did not sum to more than 24 hours of work. So, that is 2 days of hard labor and that's it. So, i would decide to postpone the inevitability and have some fun (and beers). Eventually, the deadline I had set myself to hand in the document to my committee was only 24 hours away by which time, I had given a rough draft to my advisor for preliminary evaluation. On that fateful day, my advisor dropped the bombshell that I needed to completely rework the proposal and change my research objectives etc. By this time, I wasn't even paying much attention to what he was saying.. I was trying to recover from the initial shock and tried to put an optimistic spin to it by telling my advisor, "Well! Its not the end of the world now, is it?". "Well, not exactly. But pretty close", he deadpanned.
After a brief discussion of how to structure the new proposal, I went into a prolonged funk while at the same time taking some damage control measures, such as informing the committee that I'm going to be a little late in giving them the document etc. By the end of the day, I had gone through some many ups and downs emotionally, I was completely worn out and mentally fatigued. Thanks to a few friends, i recovered emotionally but was looking at postponing the examination. (The Beatles were right!! I got by with a little help from my friends).
Next morning brought along with it a fresh set of ideas from all the parties involved and I went to work. My advisor - the champion that he is - totally came through by spending the weekend going through everything I was writing and making corrections as soon as I'd send them to him and by Monday morning, I was home free. (Dr. T is just a phenomenal person. You dream of having an advisor like him). By this time, I had pulled all-nighters 5 out of the 7 nights. I think I'd have easily qualified for a part in the "thriller" video even without all the make-up!!
Next came the part of making the presentation. During the dry-run, my labmates ripped it apart and only stopped short of making me drop my pants. However, they were so incredibly thorough in their critiques that, when I was done rewriting the talk, it was one of the best, coherent presentation I have ever made. The exam itself was a cake-walk.
As is our lab group tradition, we all went out and had a grand time getting intoxicated although I had to call it quits earlier than most of the rest - as by now, i had slept a grand total of 20 hours in 9 days.
I will never be able to forget all those who called me, emailed me, IM-ed me to pass along their good wishes before the exam. Thank you, Thank you. It was an incredible feeling to know that there were so many people around that cared for me. One thing I learned during this adventure - there is no amount of emotional letdown that couldn't be overcome by few hugs from your friends. Thanks Pfaff, Cliff and Jennie. Thanks Batman and Ajay for your help. Mattie, Markie, Lizzy and Mikey -- incredible inputs. Doctor Wizard Michal -- Thanks a lot DUDE! My labmates -- best colleagues one can ask for. Love you guys!
Now - on to actual thesis work. It seems the norm is, one can graduate within 6 to 12 months after the comprehensive exam. As you all know, my time-dimension is pretty warped. Let's see!
I was happily working towards the thesis proposal document.. (read: procrastinating and writing a few lines a day). Every time I decided to write some more, I estimated how much time each section should take and no matter how I added things up, it did not sum to more than 24 hours of work. So, that is 2 days of hard labor and that's it. So, i would decide to postpone the inevitability and have some fun (and beers). Eventually, the deadline I had set myself to hand in the document to my committee was only 24 hours away by which time, I had given a rough draft to my advisor for preliminary evaluation. On that fateful day, my advisor dropped the bombshell that I needed to completely rework the proposal and change my research objectives etc. By this time, I wasn't even paying much attention to what he was saying.. I was trying to recover from the initial shock and tried to put an optimistic spin to it by telling my advisor, "Well! Its not the end of the world now, is it?". "Well, not exactly. But pretty close", he deadpanned.
After a brief discussion of how to structure the new proposal, I went into a prolonged funk while at the same time taking some damage control measures, such as informing the committee that I'm going to be a little late in giving them the document etc. By the end of the day, I had gone through some many ups and downs emotionally, I was completely worn out and mentally fatigued. Thanks to a few friends, i recovered emotionally but was looking at postponing the examination. (The Beatles were right!! I got by with a little help from my friends).
Next morning brought along with it a fresh set of ideas from all the parties involved and I went to work. My advisor - the champion that he is - totally came through by spending the weekend going through everything I was writing and making corrections as soon as I'd send them to him and by Monday morning, I was home free. (Dr. T is just a phenomenal person. You dream of having an advisor like him). By this time, I had pulled all-nighters 5 out of the 7 nights. I think I'd have easily qualified for a part in the "thriller" video even without all the make-up!!
Next came the part of making the presentation. During the dry-run, my labmates ripped it apart and only stopped short of making me drop my pants. However, they were so incredibly thorough in their critiques that, when I was done rewriting the talk, it was one of the best, coherent presentation I have ever made. The exam itself was a cake-walk.
As is our lab group tradition, we all went out and had a grand time getting intoxicated although I had to call it quits earlier than most of the rest - as by now, i had slept a grand total of 20 hours in 9 days.
I will never be able to forget all those who called me, emailed me, IM-ed me to pass along their good wishes before the exam. Thank you, Thank you. It was an incredible feeling to know that there were so many people around that cared for me. One thing I learned during this adventure - there is no amount of emotional letdown that couldn't be overcome by few hugs from your friends. Thanks Pfaff, Cliff and Jennie. Thanks Batman and Ajay for your help. Mattie, Markie, Lizzy and Mikey -- incredible inputs. Doctor Wizard Michal -- Thanks a lot DUDE! My labmates -- best colleagues one can ask for. Love you guys!
Now - on to actual thesis work. It seems the norm is, one can graduate within 6 to 12 months after the comprehensive exam. As you all know, my time-dimension is pretty warped. Let's see!
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