Oh my gosh, this thing ROCKS!!!

While many of us – and by “us” I mean the elite group of BlackBerry users – refer to our devices lovingly as “crackberries”… Carrie’s actually became one – quite literally.

It seems that after much abuse and several drops on the concrete (cough*bacherloretteparty*cough) it decided that the scroll button would no longer work – redering it all but useless!

Since I had been looking for just about any excuse to upgrade, this seemed like a perfect opportunity. So, I headed over to Cingular on Friday and picked up two brand-spankin’ new 8700c’s for us! Woohoo!!! (You didn’t think that I would let Carrie upgrade without me upgrading, did you?!?)

The new BlackBerry uses the “EDGE” network, which is mega-fast compared to the old one. The internet is MUCH faster (read: actually useable) and emails and other messages come and go very quickly. Sweet!

Oh – and today I ran across Google Mobile Maps – completely awesome! Google Maps for your phone! You can get directions, zoom in to street level, and even view satellite photos! Way cool!

Filed under: Personal
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Officiating is a tough business. Every year we go to “camps” where we try out in an attempt to get hired into a college conference. You don’t get a lot of feedback necessarily and if you don’t get hired you have to wait an entire year to make another attempt – it can be a trying process.

This makes the letter I received today all the more sweet. Carrie brought the envelope upstairs and exclaimed, “Brad – I have a letter from the Mid-Con conference!!!”

I quickly opened it up and didn’t need to read past the first word: CONGRATULATIONS!

I’m very excited to join the staff of another Division I conference. It’s especially nice because my good friend John Flores (aka “JFlo”) is part of the staff as well – let’s hope that we get a few games together!

If you are wondering what schools are part of the Mid-Con check out this map. Some of the ones that you have probably heard of are Oral Roberts, Centenary, and Valparaiso. I am definitely looking forward to the 2006–07 season!

Filed under: Officiating
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Well, I just have to scoop Carrie on this because she already went to bed without posting! The Houston Chronicle did an article on yoga: Bikram yoga classes offer options in the world of workout routines … first line of the article? “Call Carrie Colbert a convert.” – we debated tonight whether the author chose her simply for the alliteration factor! Good thing that they wrote this article months ago before she changed names!

The article goes on to talk about how she got into yoga, loves it, and so on… You’ll have to read the rest of the article to find out everything else (It’s also saved here for posterity, as the Chronicle will probably “archive” it in short order)

Our friend Madlenka allerted Carrie to the article today. I’m surprised that Carrie hadn’t seen it already since she normally reads the Chronicle daily (personally I prefer Fark and Digg but that is just me ). So, when Carrie texted me to tell me – yes, from yoga (after class, of course) – I had to find the article online for her.

Big props to Jen and Arnie Ballew for the article! They are successful entrepreneurs – well on their way to creating a thriving business. They are also great people, which should come as no surprise. Be sure to visit their site - bytw.com (Bikram Yoga – The Woodlands) and check them out… There is a new site in the works too and it rocks – hopefully coming soon (Jen gave me and Carrie a little preview of it one night – very cool!)

So, I guess that this means I need to get my happy butt to the yoga studio – now that my wife is a famous yogi and all!

Do they have BikramStalkers?

Filed under: Personal
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Wow — I got TWO comments from scrap-stalkers… My name of affection for all your scrappers out there that visit Carrie’s and my blog. Really – it is a name of affection! Well, except for the one that we had to get a restraining order against…

I am definitely losing the comment war – Carrie gives away a couple of me books and almost 250 comments! Whoa! The crazy/sad/scary thing is that she posted at 10pm and had like 20–30 comments 30 minutes later! Are you people just sitting around hitting F5? Of course, Ali posts a picture of strawberries and gets 30 comments! Strawberries!!! I think that Ali could post a photo of her thrown-up lunch and she would get dozens of comments… like, “Wow, Ali, I threw up the other day and it looked just like that!!!” LOL

A special thanks to the cleaning people this morning for ringing the door bell 18 times in 30 seconds when I didn’t respond immediately! Yes, I know you get up at 5am, but to me 9am is the “crack of nine” – so give me a minute to drag my sleepy butt out of bed! I did get up and have gotten a good deal of work done this morning, which is always a good thing!

I was chatting with Macey (Carrie’s younger sister – she’s 12) last night because she still hadn’t used her iTunes gift certificate that we got her for her birthday! She told her mom that she needed a credit card to set up an account, but she wouldn’t give it to her… Turns out that you don’t need one — nice try Macey! I helped her set up the account and she is now busy downloading songs. Here’s an excerpt of part of our conversation last night:

Macey: guess wut song im listn to

Me: I’m in luv with a stripper

Macey: lol – howd u no?

(Please excuse my attempts to use IM-speak like a 12–year-old… they have perfected it – I, however, have not…) I don’t know what is scarier – that she was listening to that song, or that I knew that was one of her current favorites!! Hey – I’m just the big-brother-in-law, what can I say?

Hey – at least I am not as bad of an influence as her big sister Kelli!! Carrie forward me this photo yesterday along with the following explanation of what was going on in the photo: “Jill, the coordinator, had seen the ballroom next to ours set up for the prom. She said, ‘I think their theme is ‘A Night in Paris’ or something.’ Kelli replied, ‘Isn’t that the name of the Paris Hilton **** video?!’”

Nice Kel! The shocked look on Carrie’s face is great and I particularly like the smirk on Macey’s face — trying to hide her laughter because she is not supposed to know what Kelli is talking about!!! LOL

You can always count on Kel to say whatever she thinks – one reason why we all love her so much!!

OK — that is enough randomness for the day… And if I do not get some comments I am posting photos of random fruit for the next week!!!

Filed under: Personal
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The House just passed a horrendous bill banning all sorts of online gambling, including online poker. The bill prohibits banks and credit card companies from processing any fund transfers related to gambling.

Regardless of some of the spin that you will hear, this is not about protecting families, or ensuring that the gambling sites adhere to rules and regulations. It is about one thing… Money. The government simply hasn’t figure out how they can benefit from online gambling yet.

Plenty of states allow lotteries, scratch off tickets, horse and dog racing, etc. since they have figured out how to tax it. But they haven’t figured out how to handle online gambling yet, so they want to simply ban it.

I’m not sure if this has any chance of passing the Senate or not, but I joined the Poker Player’s Alliance today anyway – a good use of $20 from my winnings last week!

I, for one, am sick of being babysat by my own government. Just tax me and regulate me as little as possible and get the hell out of my way. What is the different between sitting at my computer and playing poker versus sitting down in an actual casino that happens to be on tribal lands or other approved places that the government has decreed gambling is allowed? What about computer game tournaments like Halo where people play for money? Will those be outlawed too?

From a technology standpoint, I don’t think that “banning” is really possible anyway. How are they going to actually enforce that? For about $100 a year you can get an anonymizer service that encrypts and tunnels your network traffic. Neither your ISP nor the government would be able to tell whether this traffic was email, web browsing, or poker playing. (Side note: I may or may not have used such a service to get around corporate firewalls back when I worked for “the man”!) I shudder to think what kind of enforcement they envision in order to make sure that no one in America is playing online poker.

Filed under: Poker
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