Unbelievable!!!

Speaking of the tourney, I went ahead yesterday to set up our company's official NCAA® Tourney pool.

I used Bracket Manager over at CBS Sportsline. Really the whole process was just too easy, enabling my product manager to say, "even a monkey can do it." It makes me wonder...

Now from March 16 to April 3 I will be extremely busy with "work." Please do NOT bother me or IM me, unless it is an emergency. (Oh and if your brain magically turns off like mine during those dates, you can go here to recharge your brain for FREE!) Also if anyone is interested I am "working from home" Thurs. this week to watch the opening rounds of the tourney.

Bring on the Madness!

Oh and Sandy just started her new job at Guidant. Wish her luck! =)

We made it back from LA. While we did visit many places I mentioned, there were many more we didn't get a chance to visit. Here is a quick run down of the places we visited: Koreatown, 3RD Street Promenade, Westwood-UCLA, Hollywood Walk of Fame-Kodak Theater, drove through Sunset Blvd., ate at Roscoe's and La Creperie in Long Beach, Tustin/Irvine. Overall we logged 1,101 miles on our rental Impala in our 2 days/3 nights stay there. Fun but lots of driving.

Yay! UCLA will be going to the NCAA Tourney ranked number 2. If all goes well the Bruins may even go onto the 2nd round and play in Oakland. I might be able to see them locally, although I read that tickets are sold out. A quick search on Craigslist for tickets show tickets as high as $400 for two.

Wuboy, mongolian_deathworm, and jeeyoungi—all you guys excited? Let's hangout and watch Sat's game. (Will end up Tivoing Thurs. game due to smallgroup.) Who is doing the offical pool this year?

[03.23 Update] Uploaded flickr photoset of the trip. You can view them here.

The next few days starting tomorrow will see Sandy and myself embarking on a short trip down to LA LA Land. It has been awhile since I have been back to LA. Last night while playing around with a "note" widget in Quicken I briefly jotted down the plans for the trip. If all goes well, Sandy will see a side of LA that will be "all over the map." That is to say we will try to cram 8 years of hustling and flowing in LA to a couple of days.

First the practical matters of car rentals. I quickly fired up Firefox and after some multitabbing was able to side-by-side compare five different such rental places: Thrify, Budget, Hotwire, Fox rentals, Alamo. Fox had the cheapest deals so using that as a stepping ladder I went over to Priceline to use their "name your own price"™ system. After 5 minutes or so of "haggling" I got a full-size car for $15/day—from National. Needless to say I am very satisfied with the Priceline experience.

Fearing that the full-size may be some third world country car I called National in SJC airport to confirm that it wasn't. After some initial misunderstanding a voice off in the distant (really 10 miles away) told me that I had indeed garnered a full-size sedan—a good 'ole USA Chevy Impala. Can you picture it? Driving in LA LA with my Chevy Impala. Bom bom bom Bah Bah bom!

Did you guys watch the academy awards tonight? I was rooting for Ang Lee and he finally won. My fav Ang Lee films: The Ice Storm, Sense and Sensibility, Eat Drink Man Woman. He should have won for Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger but got snuffed by LOTR.

In honor of The Farm's tradition here are the 78th Oscar results from Yahoo.

Best Picture

Brokeback Mountain (41%)
Munich (14%)
Good Night, and Good Luck (13%)
Capote (5%)
Crash (28%)

Best Director

Bennett Miller Capote (3%)
Ang Lee Brokeback Mountain (38%)
Steven Spielberg Munich (19%)
Paul Haggis Crash (18%)
George Clooney Good Night, And Good Luck. (23%)

Best Original Screenplay

Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco Crash (38%)
George Clooney and Grant Heslov Good Night, And Good Luck. (34%)
Woody Allen Match Point (11%)
Noah Baumbach The Squid and the Whale (6%)
Stephen Gaghan Syriana (11%)