Travis

Travis' teacher told Allison when she picked him up from school today that Travis had his best day that he's ever had. I decided to take him out on a daddy-son night out to reward him for having such a good day at school. We went to Steak-n-Shake together. Travis requested that he listen to his favorite song on the way there, Weird Al's "The Saga Begins". It's the song that follows the tune of Don McLean's classic "American Pie" but instead follows the story line of Star Wars Episode I. Travis thinks it is so
funny when it says "Maybe Vader someday later now he's just a small fry."














Here is a hilarious YouTube video with Lego guys set to the tune of Weird Al's "The Saga Begins":

Oh Kinsey, Kinsey

Last week Allison and I went to lunch together with Kinsey (Travis was in school). On the way back to drop me off at the office, Kinsey fell asleep in the car. I looked back there and this is what I saw:



She apparently had taken her socks off of her feet, put them on her arms, and then fell asleep. Oh, and by the way, I took this photo with my new BlackBerry Curve that has a 2 Megapixel camera on it. I was quite impressed with the quality of the picture, considering it came from a phone. At the highest resolution it churns out 1600x1200 pictures. This one was resized to 480x360, so you can't get the full effect of the quality of it. Anyway...socks off to Kinsey for giving us another laugh.

Truck Commercial

Ok, this has got to be one of the worst truck commercials ever made. It will definitely make you laugh, though. What's even funnier is that another truck dealer nearby made it's own commercial making fun of it.
Bad commercial:


Commercial making fun of the bad commercial:

Mike Gundy Coors Light commercial

The Mike Gundy rant is old new now, but if you haven't read about it or watched his post game meltdown, you really should. Some guys made a fake Coors Light commercial that is absolutely hilarioius. It won't be funny unless you watch the actual Mike Gundy rant first. Here is the order to watch things in:
1. Read the article by Jenni Carlson of the Oklahoman:
http://newsok.com/article/3131543
2. Watch the post game meltdown by Mike Gundy

3. Watch the fake Coors Light commercial on Youtube:

Travis' rendition of The Eyes of Texas

Travis sang his rendition of "The Eyes of Texas" while riding in the car. We're still working on the few very minor pitch problems. He's really proud of himself, as are we of him...check it out:

More undefeates drop / BCS Mess

Four more undefeateds fell by the wayside this weekend, the biggest surprise being #1 USC to unranked Stanford. Wisconsin lost to then unranked Illinois, Kentucky lost to South Carolina and Purdue lost to Ohio State.

11 Undefeated Teams Left
#1 LSU
#2 California
#3 Ohio State
#4 Boston College
#5 South Florida
#11 Missouri
#13 Arizona State
#16 Hawaii
#17 Cincinnati
#20 Kansas
Unranked Connecticut (plays 5-1 Virginia this week)

As far as the Red River Shootout goes, even though Texas lost, they sure put up a good fight - a lot more than anyone expected them to. If it weren't for the two turnovers, I think Texas would have had a very good chance to pull out the victory. I also don't understand why Florida wasted almost 30 seconds at the end of the game by waiting until the play clock was almost down to zero, then calling a time out. That could have been the difference in giving them enough time to drive back down the field and try to answer LSU's late touchdown. I can't believe LSU was 5-5 on 4th down conversion towards the end of the game. That truly was a great game.

Personally, I hope there are no undefeated teams at the end of this year. It would be great to have 5-10 one loss teams. I think the BCS crap needs to stop and we need some sort of playoff system like every other college sport has. Even division II-A football has a playoff system! Why can't division I-A have one? I don't think it would take at all away from the regular season - it would be just as exciting. Can you imagine college football playoffs?

Crazy Upset Week 5 - Undefeateds diminishing

Wow, so many upsets this week. Who would have thought that both Texas and OU would have one loss going into the Red River Shootout? Many of the undefeateds fell Saturday including 7 of the top 13 teams: Oklahoma, Florida, West Virginia, Texas, Rutgers, Oregon & Clemson. I think it's time to start tracking the undefeateds. There are 15 undefeated Division 1-A teams left. I've listed them below, as well as the next four games for each of the top 10 undefeated teams:

Top Ten Undefeated Teams
#1 USC - Stanford,Arizona,@Notre Dame,@Oregon
#2 LSU - Florida,@Kentucky,Auburn,Alabama
#3 California - Oregon State,@UCLA,@Arizona State,Washington State
#4 Ohio State - @Purdue,Kent State,Michigan State,@Penn State,Wisconsin
#5 Wisconsin - @Illinois,@Penn State,Northern Illinois,Indiana
#6 Boston College - Bowling Green,@Notre Dame,@Virginia Tech,Florida State
#8 Kentucky - @South Carolina,LSU,Florida,Mississippi State
#9 South Florida - @Florida Atlantic,UCF,Rutgers,@Connecticut

#10-#25 Undefeated Teams:
#15 Hawaii
#17 Missouri
#19 Arizona State
#20 Purdue
#24 Cincinatti

Unranked Undefeateds:
Connecticut (they haven't played anyone yet - plays 4-1 Virginia this week)
Kansas (hasn't played anyone yet eithere - plays 3-1 Kansas State this weekend)

As far as the distribution of top 25 teams - I don't think I'm going to keep up with that each week. I may update that every few weeks. I'm more interested now in the undefeated teams left.

College Football Week 4

Well, the pie chart hasn't changed much this week. The Pac-10 basically stole one spot from the top 25 from the Big 12 with ASU's win and A&M's loss. SEC still dominates all conferences with 6 spots in the top 25. There are 23 Championship Division (previously called 1-A) teams that are undefeated. Each week several more will fall from the ranks. As we get down to more of a manageable number, I'll start tracking the undefeated teams as well. The next big benchmark of the season is the Texas OU game. I sure hope that Texas and OU don't look past Kansas State and Colorado to next week like I am. The Red River Shootout is the best when both teams go into it undefeated and ranked in the top 10. This week Texas gets Kansas State at home and Oklahoma has to go on the road to Colorado. All of the media is pretty much expecting OU to whoop up on Texas this year. I'd rather have it that way than the other way around. For the most part recently(except for Vince's title year run), Texas seems to perform better when the pressure is not on them (think of the Chris Simms era). I'd rather be the underdog going into the Red River Shootout than to be the favorite. OU sure has looked good so far this year, though. Texas hasn't looked as sharp, but that being said, Texas-OU is a rivalry game and as we all know, the better team on paper doesn't always win rivalry games. You can toss out the records and statistics when entering the Cotton Bowl this year on October 6. I also really hope that Texas wins since one of my friends attending OU will be staying with us that weekend while he goes to the game on Saturday. If Texas loses, then I'm never going to hear the end of it from him. That's all for now...oh, and here's the updated rankings by conference chart, even though it didn't change much:

Texas vs Rice game

Grandpa bought Travis and Aiden a ticket so they could go to the Texas Rice game this year (thanks, Dad!). We all had a lot of fun - here are some of the pictures from the game:

A school teacher Travis met in front of us on the escalators:








Check out John's eyes in this one:

Crazy Wreck

We left to go to Aiden's birthday party at CiCi's pizza to travel what normally takes 40 minutes in traffic on a Friday afternoon to get over to Mesquite. It ended up taking us 1.5 hours to get there! The Eastbound HOV lane on I-30 was backed up and the entire Westbound I-30 was closed. As we got closer to the disturbance, we saw two helicopters hovering/circling around I-30. It was a wreck unlike any other that I've seen. Below are some picture that Allison snapped while I was driving, as well as the news report from the wreck:

Gymnastics - Week 3

Allison and I had our third gymnastic lesson today. We are having a lot of much fun at the class. We took a few videos and I compiled them into a short clip...check it out:

College Football Week 3

So, what to think after week 3? I'm always interested in the different conferences and how they compare. Of course, it is still pretty early to get a big picture of how good each conference is this year. Take the Big East for example - they have more undefeated teams(5) than the Pac 10(4). One of them is Connecticut (3-0) who has beat the powerhouses of Duke, Maine & Temple. Enought said - it's too early to say much of anything. It will be interesting to see who emerges out of each conference, though. Of the Big 6 conferences, here are my top 2-3 teams from each conference:
Pac 10: USC, California, Oregon
Big 12: Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska
SEC: LSU, Florida
Big East: West Virginia, Rutgers, South Florida
Big 10: Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State
ACC: Boston College, Clemson, and who knows about the Coastal Division

I've updated my spreadsheet with the breakdown of top 25 teams per conference:


I think within the next few weeks it will become interesting to start tracking the undefeated teams. There are still too many to track. 21 of the top 25 are still undefeated, with other teams in the "Receiving Votes" that are undefeated as well. Let's give it a few more weeks and once we get into October and well into conference play that number will be dropping each week. How many undefeated teams will there be at the end of the season? I hope more than two, one, or none, since all three of those scenarios will create contraversy. As much as I'd like to see two undefeated teams matched up, all it will do is feed the BCS system praise that it does not need. College football needs a playoff, but that's another post for another time...

Grapevine Lake

A bunch of us from work rented a party barge on Grapevine Lake last night and went out on the lake for 3 hours. The weather was perfect and the water felt great. Here are a few pictures, as well as two video from it. Click on any of the pictures to be taken to the whole photo album:
Video of Ben doing a gainer:

Video of Siva dancing:

The party barge before launch:

Kumar and Janet:

Jason and Nikolay grilling it up:

Nirali and Roshni:

Upper deck on the barge:

Tejas and Siva:

Steve enjoying a brewsky:

Me doing a gainer:

Me spread eagle:

Nirali, Janet & Roshni


Me and Nikhil:

Sunset on Grapevine Lake:

Steve and Mirle:

Nikhil and Roshni:

Siva and Tejas:

Mirle chillin':

Texas vs TCU game

This was my first home game of the season (I was sick for Arkansas State and was unable to go to the 1st one). Before the game we went to Double Dave's and got some of their famous Pepperoni Rolls. Texas came out in the first half and their defense played well, holding TCU to 3 offensive points. Those three points were off of a turnover where TCU only went about 30 yards before kicking a field goal. TCU's other touchdown came off of an interception that Colt threw. We moved the ball, but gave up two turnovers and were plagued with penalties (3 offensive pass interference penalties in the 1st half against us!). I was a bit worried, being down 10-0 to a ranked team at half time. I figured as long as our defense played the same and our offensive didn't make mistakes that we would be ok in the 2nd half. Well, that's exactly what happened. Our defense once again held them to 3 points in the second half, and our offense lit up for 34 points, wrapping up the game with a final score of 34-13. We travel to Central Florida next week, then have Kansas State at home. If we can make it through those two games, then we will be undefeated going into Texas-OU. The Red River shootout is best when both teams go in undefeated. It looks like there is a good chance for that this year. Here are some pictures and a couple of videos from the game:
At Double Dave's:



Marinara is good, but ranch is better...

Walking to the stadium:

North End Zone under construction:

Sweet!

At the game:










The Tower lit up orange after victory!

The TCU equipment truck:

Video of Jamal Charles' 40 yard touchdown - sorry for the jiggle of the camera at the end - John got a little excited...heh heh

The Eyes of Texas after the game: