A Good Round Overall
I think that the first round of March Madness is some of the best basketball every year. Ok I admit I know nothing about basketball — hence this pool, so the bar is not high, but WHATEVS!
Check out the scores — I’ve added the President into our pool, by request, alas not by Obama:
Rankings:
mim, SpeK: 27
shio: 26
Yut, POTUS: 25
misa: 24
CT, Pol, Seth: 23
YuHK: 22
Lew: 21
That’s right, despite doubts (ahem, CT!) today was a perfectly lovely day! SpeK and I called every game but one today, so we are in the lead. I don’t know how I feel about this. SpeK is getting savvy or something! Gone are the days when she’d pick #13 Air Force or some such all the way!
Shio is in 2nd place, doing quite well right now. But we’re going to have to see what happens, because if you look at his bracket, he decided he hated #1 seeds. Underdogs all the way!
On the other end of the rankings, we have Lew. Doooooood, If I remember correctly, he generally does v. well in the first round. Oh well, it’s a NEW EXPERIENCE! Exciting, right?
Best Day Ever (for basketball)
Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I love how many upsets there were. Sixteen games were played, five double digit ranked teams are still left. (Complete non sequitur but that doesn’t sound right… double digitally ranked teams? Or switch it all around and just say five teams ranked in the double digits are still left?) And if you count nines beating eights as upsets (which they aren’t, really — it’s pretty much 50/50 at that point), then it’s seven upsets total! Holy cow!!!
I don’t even mind if it messes up my bracket, the upsets are too much fun. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to watch any of the work day games — when I saw the OT next to Villanova, wow. So yes, it was good. Annnnnd it gets better:
The Standings:
mim, SpeK, Yut: 12
CT, misa, Pol, shio: 11
Seth: 10
Lew, YuHK: 9
Hehehehehe, I am tied for first! Alas with Yut and SpeK, but whatevs, first is first! (Classy, ain’t I?)
It looks like we all chalked the 1, 2, and 3 teams, so GTown messed us all up, and the other ones we all got right. Seth is the only one who called Murray St. — dude, how?! He’s the best upset picker — I think a few years ago, he was the only one to pick Bucknell over Kansas! Hopefully, tomorrow will be another awesome day of upsets, except for Maryland and Cal. :)
The Entries
Here they are, the brackets:
Firstly, mine:
Maryland all the way! I didn’t pick ‘em in 2002 and I regretted it! Not this time!
CT: Kentucky — she didn’t discuss her strategy with me again this year, but she did specify that she’s going to win and she wants earrings.
Lew: also Kentucky! And he also claims to be the winner, although he didn’t specify a prize. I don’t know if this means something about Kentucky or what.
Polaris, who is entering for the first time ever and returned his bracket first, which just goes to show the amount of thought he put into it — fitting right in already. He picked Kansas. Edited to add, Pol was in such a hurry he didn’t even fill out everything. But no worries, I emailed him and got the infos.
Seth is back! And he picked Kansas vs. Baylor, more information coming. Edited to add: Seth says Kansas.
Shio is also back! He picked Ohio St.
Special K: West Virginia
Yut: also Kansas. The Ks are popular this year.
I will add more if I get any, I think there are 15 minutes left. Good luck everyone! Fear the turtle!
Edited: two more entries came in this morning, after I scheduled this post last night.
misa pondered all night and picked Kansas.
Yuhk picked Kentucky.
Kansas and Kentucky are popular this year!
Helpful
Thanks to the six of you who already submitted brackets. The rest of you, get moving!
And in case you need some help:
How cute is that?!
If this has clarified your thinking, you can submit (and I suppose resubmit) your bracket until 9:15am PST or 12:15 noon EST when the first game starts. I kept telling people the wrong thing this year — I got the time zones all confused. Ooooops, sorry everyone!
Also, check out the President’s bracket — he picked UNC last year, and they won. This year, it’s KU all the way.
Administrivia
So the Know-Nothing No Downside Not-Too-Much Upside March Madness Thingie is BACK, starting as of yesterday. In fact, it’s the Fifth Anniversary! Hopefully, you’ve all received your blank brackets, but if you haven’t, it’s cos I am disorganized, not cos I don’t want you to play! So mail me (mim at this domain) and I will send a blank bracket to you. Or you can just send me your picks, any way you choose; I don’t mind.
The scoring is: 1 pt for each first round game, 2 pts for each second round game, then 3, 4, 6, and finally 8 pts for the championship game. (Thanks to Todd cos the rules and the spreadsheet are his.)
The defending champion is YB who got a congratulatory text last year. Actually, that’s a pretty lame prize even considering the Not-Too-Much Upside part of the title. Maybe I’ll have to scrounge up a sticker and mail it to you. :p
Previous winners:
2008: ME! (Trip to Chicago, oh yes!)
2007: Yut (He got a kiss, a hearty handshake, *and* “Congratulations” from me.)
2006: Yut (A kiss and a hearty handshake)
2005: misa (Two bunny candles from the local farmer’s market)
You know you want a chance at the fabulous prizes!
Selection Sunday!
DOOOOOOD, it was Selection Sunday. As in the day that the tournament teams are picked! So you know what that means — it’s time to randomly pick winners, lots and lots of winners! Enough winners to beat the defending champion, YB!
So yeah, I’m sending out the brackets to everyone who has ever entered and their momma, so turn it in by Thursday morning like 8am EST, or 11am EST. Those are approximate times because I didn’t have a chance to check when the exact first game starts. I have been busy, so busy that I almost didn’t realize about today (and I don’t mean about Pi Day). But not too busy for the best yearly sports event that I can think of right now! :)
Rainy
So you know how I like to complain about rain and bad weather? And wet pants and wet socks and wet shoes and etcetcetc? So I bought myself a pair of clompy clown-shoe wellies and solved that. Except today I didn’t check the weather report — it was cloudy-ish but not cold and so I didn’t wear the wellies and now I am wet. It’s windy and the rain’s coming down so hard my feet and bottom of my pants are soaked through. Now what I need is magical weather predicting powers. A good plan, no? But for now, I’ve taken off my shoes and socks and hidden them under this desk. It’ll have to do, but I really wish I could take off my pants. Soooo badly.
An Explanation for the Previous
I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but I said something or other, and Yut called me a big nerd! To which I replied that I was not! (It was a v. mature conversation between two adults, I assure you.)
But he insisted that I was, anyone would agree! And I said, I don’t know dude, I mean, consider everyone we know! Lots of nerdy types, variously! I think I might be a v. minor nerd if that!
So I polled you guys. It’s a small sample size but , I think I was right! Leaf was the only vote for yes, everyone else basically said, ok, nerdy, but not a big nerd! So I win. And that’s what’s important.
A Poll: Am I a Big Nerd?
So what do y’all think? Am I a big nerd?
Please just answer in the comments.
Better Internets
For a couple of months now, we’ve struggled with our internet service. If I was browsing more media-heavy sites (just browsing!) or using Google Reader (guess it updates a lot) then Yut’s game would lag. Or video would stutter. So, for example I would have to schedule my photo uploads. All sorts of completely unacceptable behavior and compromises.
So we started to talk about upgrading our AT&T DSL service. They have tiers, $5 gets you slightly better service, you know how that goes. Well we had 3 mbps download and 512 kbps up, which is already the second best possible tier. So we could pay $35 for 6mbps down and 768kbps, which was somewhat tempting because there’d be no changes, the service would just get better. But Comcast (which we used to have years and years ago but canceled due to horrible-ness) has a promotion for $25 per month for something like 15? mbps down and 5? mbps up! I know, it’s at least five times better, for less! Geez, what was AT&T thinking. Although to be fair, AT&T does offer FiOS service with amazing speeds, but they only bundle it with TV service or whatever. (Again, what were they thinking?!)
So yeah, we switched. The customer service guy on the phone (because for some reason, trying to sign up online felt harder — I’m a troglodyte) was nice and efficient. And dude, the Comcast tech actually showed up on time for the appointment!!! So we are hopeful that they are going to be better than they were, service wise. So far, we love it, everything feels much nicer and there is no more internet hogging, or grumpy accusations thereof. :)
Hopefully this solves the problem, or else we might have to adopt Michael’s method: cable service for one, dsl for the other. And to think I used to make fun of him for it.
We canceled the DSL a few days after the cable service got working — can’t have downtime, y’know — and canceled our home phone service too. Too bad AT&T has crap cell service at home. Luckily Yut isn’t on AT&T as well.
