While running this morning the news reported that more people watched the US and Italy World Cup game than Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, which could have been the last game if Carolina had won. The World Cup game did a 4.3 national rating on ABC while Game 6 did a 2.2 on NBC. I guess soccer is more popular than I had originally thought.

What’s funny is that I watched the soccer game but did not watch the hockey game later that night. As I mentioned yesterday we had a block party to attend on Saturday night. Luckily Edmonton went on to win that game and force a Game 7, which hopefully had better ratings than Game 6 (I couldn’t find the ratings yet). I know that I watched all of the game last night.

The Carolina Hurricanes went on to win a pretty exciting Game 7. It was a very physical game with lots of good shots and even better saves. Carolina’s rookie goalie, Cam Ward, went on to win the Conn Smythe Trophy and captain Rod Brind’Amour finally got to hold Lord Stanley’s Cup. Congrats Carolina!

Last night we made the scenic drive out to Shawnee, Kansas to our friends Joel and Amanda’s house. As I mentioned earlier Amanda’s birthday was over the weekend, and the girls had planned to get together this week for a “girls night.” I guess the crappy weather from the past couple of days spoiled their plans and they decided they were just going to hang out at their house. Well Joel found out about it and invited me over as well.

Anyway, Joel cooked up some food on the grill while we ate appetizers and had a few Corona’s. After stuffing ourselves we watched last night’s episode of American Idol. I don’t mention it very often but I haven’t missed a week of this show in quite some time. Imagine that, a live music freak such as myself watching a pop music competition. My one saving grace is that I don’t vote, I never have, and I never plan on doing so. I’m a sucker for entertaining television I guess, and besides how can you go wrong watching a crazy Paula Abdul.

The show’s theme was love songs but I think very few people actually loved the contestants’ performances, well besides Paula who was in tears at one point. A couple of the male performances were probably the best of the night but how could you not be a huge fan of Katharine McPhee, especially when her performance includes a wardrobe malfunction. Now that’s what Ed calls TV!

After work yesterday I played tennis with a couple of fellow coworkers. We did not play any matches since we are all at different skill levels, but it was fun to get out and just hit back and forth for awhile. We are hoping that this develops into a somewhat weekly outing and that more people coming along in the future. I know that I would benefit greatly from playing on a consistent basis. I know the fundamentals of the game and now I just need to get more practice.

From there I went home to eat dinner and watch TV with Kim for the rest of the night. Our DVR was quickly filling to capacity, so we attempted to free up some space. I think that we deleted enough shows to account for another day or two of recordings. Perhaps we’ll have another TV night ahead of us tonight. To those of you with DVR equipment, especially those from cable providers, how much space do you have? I believe that our ReplayTV has a capacity of around 40 hours of record time. I’m considering my other options as we move into our new house.

The pictures from our weekend in Utah are up! I sorted through the 100+ pictures and selected the best 48 to share with everyone. I hope you enjoy them. Utah is really a sight to see with your own eyes, it is very beautiful. In addition, I think that Utah has the best skiing/snowboarding mountains in the country. I think I can safely say that now after spending time in Colorado and on the east coast in Vermont. I hope to return sometime during the peak time of the season, to experience Utah at its best.

After getting the pictures online last night, we spent some time catching up on some TV shows. We watched an old episode of The Amazing Race in addition to the American Idol contestants butchering some Queen songs. If you are into the show, then check out DialIdol.com. I don’t use their application for voting, since I’ve never voted, but I find their predictions to be fairly accurate and interesting to read.

I just sat in an hour and a half long meeting about the sales system that my company now sells. Basically, salespeople at every local television station use this software (or something similar) to sell commercial breaks to potential advertisers. It then hit me that the revenue brought in from these commercials eventually is what makes up my paycheck, since the television stations are mostly the ones who buy our software.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, I don’t think I’ve watched a commercial in months! Ever since I bought a ReplayTV box a couple of years ago, we have only watched recorded TV shows. Even when we watch the news in the morning, we watch it delayed so we can start at the beginning, which we often miss by ten minutes or more. I know there are tons of people (myself included) who are in love with DVR technology, but I hope it doesn’t catch on too much, at least not until I find myself at another job.

College basketball is back on TV again tonight. Here are my picks for who I’d like to see win in this round:

• Duke over LSU – I picked Duke
• West Virginia over Texas – I picked WV
• Memphis over Bradley – I picked Memphis
• UCLA over Gonzaga – I picked Marquette, so I really don’t care
• Washington over Connecticut – I picked Washington
• Wichita State over George Mason – I picked Wichita State up to this point but unfortunately had Michigan State winning this game
• Villanova over Boston College – I picked Nova
• Georgetown over Florida – I didn’t pick Florida, so screw everyone who did

If all of these happen I could improve my position in all of my fantasy leagues, since I have the same picks in all of them. I am currently in 4th out of 16 in one, 4th out of 11 in another, and 20th out of 50 in the last.

Let’s not forget about Cincinnati, who has won two games in the NIT tournament and will be playing against South Carolina tonight in the quarterfinals. In other Bearcat related news, Bob Huggins will be following my lead and moving out to Kansas to become the coach of the Kansas State Wildcats. This could be the only time you’ll see me cheer for a team that wears purple!

For your sake, I hope that tonight is a little more exciting than last night. I am totally fine with lying on the couch and watching outdated coverage of the Olympics, but it doesn’t make for much to talk about:

me: Did you know that the US men’s hockey team lost to Slovakia?
edpaffjr.com reader: Again? They just played on Saturday.
me: Not again. I just got around to watching the game last night. I’m still three days behind…

The most productive thing I did last night, besides cooking dinner, was adding our pictures from Omaha to the site. This took all of ten minutes right before I headed to bed last night. Usually it wouldn’t even take that long, but I was trying to get a video added along with the pictures. I thought that I could do it, but I haven’t had any luck yet. It’s pretty dumb anyway, just some guy doing a Napoleon Dynamite dance in between periods.

Well I must have spoken too early about volleyball. I thought that we had a chance to at least be co-champions, but after last night I don’t know if it’s possible. Going in to the match, I thought we were pretty even with the opposition, but that was quickly proven untrue. They took a quick lead on us in the first game and never looked back. We tried a few other strategies against them, but I don’t think we ever had a lead in any of the three games. In the end, we lost all of the games to ‘Kinky Sets’ and they are now in first place, one game ahead of us. We are currently tied for second with two other teams. Hopefully we can redeem ourselves next week against the worst team in the league…

I have been trying to stay up to date with the Olympics, but have fallen a day or two behind. I setup the ReplayTV box to record every appearance on NBC that would not conflict with an already existing recording. I believe that right now I have nine hours saved that I have not watched. Of course it will take me much less time to watch all of that, with the skipping of commercials, any talk of Michelle Kwan, and sometimes figure skating in general. :) While browsing the web this morning for Olympics coverage I found a few interesting sites related to google maps or earth. First I found a mashup featuring daily schedules and results. I then found another mashup showing all of the Olympic venues. And finally a placemark file for google earth (the link works only if earth is installed) that again will show the venues. More on this at the Google Blog.

The results are in and we are back in first place in our volleyball league! The former champs, Kinky Sets, must have lost all three games two nights ago. So as long as we win one game against them next week, we should at least have a share in the championship. Well that also assumes that we sweep the team we play in the final week. This is very likely though, given that they’ve only won one game all session. I guess I shouldn’t count them out though, anything can happen.

Kim is back from Texas. She was pretty tired last night, so we just ate some dinner and then caught up on some TV. American Idol is back, and we had a couple weeks of try-outs to watch. I still think those are the most entertaining episodes that we’ll see all season. We also watched the first night of the Hollywood round, but nothing exciting happened there at all. I consider this the down point in the show, but luckily there is only one more night of Hollywood. Then the real show begins!

Last week it was a segway, this week I found out that a guy is attempting to walk across the US. This morning I was watching our usual morning program, the Today Show, and eating my standard breakfast of eggo waffles when I became distracted by this story. A 400+ pound man became tired of his overweight lifestyle and decided to start walking. He left Oceanside, CA on April 10th and started off walking around 10 miles a day. His pace was very quickly slowed because of various medical issues, but those seem to be taken care of. According to what they said in an interview this morning, he has lost over 50 pounds and is about half way across Arizona. He said that he thinks he can complete this journey to NYC around November or December of this year. If my numbers are correct, he would have to walk close to 15 miles a day to finish by the end of the year. Follow his story here (site is currently slow).