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This just posted on ESPN’s top 40 midseason minutes..

COACH WHO SHOULD TAKE THE BUS TO WORK THIS WEEK:

Virginia’s Pete Gillen (27) saw his Cavaliers give up 110 points at home in a 34-point loss to North Carolina, intensifying the calls for change in Charlottesville. At 1-7 in ACC play, Virginia is well on its way to a fourth straight losing league record.

STAT OF THE WEEK

Virginia’s defense (28) is on the verge of record-settingly bad. It has surrendered at least 79 points in every ACC game and is averaging giving up 84.6 in eight league games. Clemson set the record for most points allowed in a 16-game ACC season in 2002, at 85.4. Time to bend your knees and slap the floor, Cavaliers.

It was an interesting week for ACC basketball. After an impressive preconference performance, UVa proved it’s not yet ready to play with the big boys as it started out 0-4 in ACC play. Dropping an early loss to #4 Wake at home and then #9 Georgia Tech away was basically given.. but losing to Miami, a team expected to finish last in the ACC, at home is disappointing. 0-3 going into tonight’s game against the undefeated Duke BlueDevils, UVa played a scrappy game keeping it mildly close throughout the game (although never in the game did you feel the cavaliers had a shot at winning). So where exactly have the wahoos gone wrong yet again? Well, the reality of it is that we really didn’t play great teams preACC. We caught Arizona tired and offguard at home early in the season, barely beat a thought-to-be-good Northwestern away, put away a underachieving Richmond at home, barely slipped past unranked Auburn, and lost to Iowa State away. While this schedule is tougher than Gillen’s previous cupcake schedules, it still doesn’t stand up to our ACC foes. Now, its true Devin Smith and Jason Clark have been plagued with injuries, but that always seems to be the case. Yet again, I feel UVA has the talent to play, but is playing way under it’s potential. Can Gillen hang with the premiere ACC coaches? I don’t think so. UVA is now headed on a road game at Maryland, where we’ve lost 10 out of the past 11 games. Starting the ACC season 0-5? Sounds like a change might be needed..

In other news around the league, my top ranked Tarheels dropped a loss to instate top ranked Wake Forest at Wake. Unfortunatley, I wasn’t able to watch this game because I was traveling, but it seems to me that Wake brought their A game. They made 35 out of 35 free throws (an NCAA record), and played to win. I know UNC still has the talent to win it all, but we’ll see if they can pull it off.

NC State defeated #8 Georgia Tech at home tonight… ending it’s 4 game losing streak. Julius Hodge finally led his team to a quality win, as the wolfpack have been struggling this season.

So as I was watching Wisconsin vs Michigan State today, they said that Wisconsin currently holds the longest winning streak at home (at some 38 games or so). They put it up on a list of 10 other schools, and not one single ACC school was on the list. Which brings me to the point of why ACC is the best conference. It’s unheard of to go undefeated at home in one season, let alone any more than that. With so many powerhouse teams (Wake, GT, UNC, Duke) and plenty of scary threats (Maryland, NCState, maybe even Miami?) no game is a given. Watch, by the end of the season the top ACC team’s losses will be to other ACC teams. This is unlike a team like Illinois, who will more than likely breeze through their conference. As of right now, in my opinion, the ACC is the best conference in the country and will field the most teams in the Big Dance come March.. (but will UVA be there..? I don’t think so…)

IGN (www.ign.com) announced that Half Life 2 was their Game of the Year! Half Life 2, sequel to the still-played 1998 Half Life, lived up to and exceeded its expecations. The game had been delayed numerous times, but delivered well. I personally played it, and it took me about a week to beat. It was definitley one of the best games I’ve ever played through, as it offered a whole new type of interaction with the surrounding enviroments. The multiplayer is superb, as well. You can read the whole article here.

In other news, I read today on slashdot.org that Electronic Arts (EA) is considering creating The Sims: Reality TV show. For those of you who don’t know, The Sims is the most popular game to date, selling millions and millions of copies, that allows gamers to control and live the lives of their own “sims”. It’s the first true game to appeal to women (60% of gamers are girls), and is really addictive. The TV show, still in early talks, might allow online users to vote on the actions they’d like the reality TV family to perform. While this sounds like a horrible idea, I could actually see it catching on… we’ll see if it goes anywhere..

I just read an article telling some neat Google facts.. the entire article can be read here.. but some of the highlights:

• The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’
• The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
• The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

Ok, so before I left for Vail I noticed this page doesn’t look right in Internet Explorer – a minor problem considering 90% of internet users use that browser. But, that ties in well with what I’ve been meaning to post. If you haven’t heard about it, you should definitley download and use Mozilla Firefox.

Here are a few specs: It won PC World’s Internet Software Award (well over Internet Explorer (IE), Netscape, and others). It’s faster than IE. It’s MUCH safer than IE. It has a built in pop-up blocker. Using it, you don’t get near as many bloatware and spyware. It has tabbed browsing (you can open lots of page in one window, as opposed to opening lots of windows in your taskbar). It has a username/password log, which can automatically put your stored username and password into the browswer when you want it to (think students: you don’t have to type in your long ssn and password when logging into class sites). It has downloadable extensions, which other users create and allow for different functionality and looks. Out of 3350 people on download.com, only 5% gave it a thumbs down, while 95% gave it a thumbs up. It is THE new browser to use.

So simply said, download it, let me know what you think, and enjoy! Then, plus, my site will look good for you =)

Wow, what a trip! Vail is everything they say it to be, and more! Sprad, Baggio, Tstall, and I ventured out there last Saturday. We snowboarded for 5 amazing days. 4 days at Vail, and 1 at BeaverCreek (although we all decided Vail is clearly the best). Skiing out west is everything you can imagine. I always thought people were exagerrating when they said “The slopes are as wide as Wintergreen’s slopes are long” and “The blacks on the east coast are like greens over there”… well… that wasn’t an exagerration. It is simply amazing. Vail has over 5200 acres of skiiable terrain. It has 7 back bowls, while most resorts are lucky to have 1. We were blessed with over 2 feet of fresh powder while we were there, and we had great weather. To anyone who considers themselves a real skiier/snowboarder, but haven’t been out west, I definitley recommend sacking up and making a trip out of it soon. Because you really haven’t skiied until you’ve been out west.

I took a lot of movies on the trip, so I’ll be compiling a nice movie with cool effects and the such (and editing out the bad parts).. and sprad and tstall took tons of pictures that I’ll put up soon.. but for now, I prepare for a job interview Monday and heading back to Cville Monday afternoon..

I almost forgot about this one.. make sure to keep all those who died in the Tsunami in your thoughts and prayers. It’s truly, truly an amazing thing. Over 100,000 dead and counting, it’s just absolutley mind boggling.

Visit http://www.google.com/tsunami_relief.html for tips and information on how to help. Any and all donations will help the cause.

First off, Happy New Year! I’m a bit late on posting it, but hope everyone has gotten a great start to 2005. You have a new year to be good, lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, stop procrastinating, perform better at work/school, and all the other stereotypical/common New Year resolutions. I hope you stick to them!

First, and most notably, I changed the site up. I found a better blog package, WordPress, and felt in the long run it’d be better to update now. It has oogles of new and better features. Look around for a bit, you’ll notice them.

So where did I leave off? I’ll try to give a brief update, starting in chronological order. We had our large family Christmas on the 23rd. All the brothers, sisters, in-laws, boyfriends, and girlfriends (Ashley came). It was a bit hectic, but lots of fun. Ashley gave me a new Sony Digital Camcorder (awesome), which you’ll more than likely see videos on here in the near future. But it’s really a great gift – it fits in the palm of my hand, and I plan on using it all the time. It fits perfectly with my Christmas gift, an HP Laptop. You’re probably thinking, “wow, Ross, you didn’t have a laptop? (being as you’re such a nerd)”. Well, I finally have it. I’ve basically been setting it all up, “hacking the mainframe”, and playing on it all week. I spent Christmas night with Ashley and her fam, as I ate Christmas dinner over there. Her family got a new puppy, a Siberian Huski named Stoli. He’s absolutley adorable, and is only 8 weeks old now. Ashley, a cat lover turned dog lover, treats him as her baby.

UVA played in it’s bowl game, The MPC Computers Bowl in Boise, Idaho on December 27th. They lost in OT by a touchdown. The game was absolutley ridiculous, as UVA dominated in the first quarter and then decided to stop playing. To Fresno State’s credit, they played well. They definitley had more the home crowd, and played like they really wanted to win. In the paper before the game, I read an interesting quote by Al Groh. He was defending the MPC Computers Bowl. It read:

“I don’t know why people say this is a bad bowl to come to. Matt Schaub called and said that all the guys he knew that went to this bowl had an amazing time. The players get to go snowmobiling, snowtubing, hiking, and many more things they’ve never been able to do!

Well, UVA apparently spent too much time snowmobiling and checking out the “fun” state of Idaho instead of preparing for the bowl game. Somehow, miraculously even with the loss, we finished ranked #23 in the AP Poll. (Tyler, you owe me $20).

Sprad came into town on his birthday, December 29th. We spent a worthless two days of sleeping in late, being lazy, playing video games, and watching movies… and we loved every minute of it. He went out to Norfolk for New Year’s Eve, and I went to Ashley’s house to hang out with her family and friends.

Since the New Year, I’ve been working on converting old video tapes to DVD for my parents, planning Rush, watching all the college basketball games (UVA get smacked by Wake) and college football bowl games (the Orange Blowout), and anxiously awaiting my trip to Vail. I’m leaving for Vail Saturday morning at 6:40 AM, and couldn’t be more excited. Every person I talk to says Vail is the best place to ski, and in the past 2 days it’s gotten over 2 feet of snow!

Now that the site is set, everything’s good to go, expect more updates and random posts!