(Disclaimer: This story sounds so ridiculous, I’m not sure I believe it.)

Senate reviewing how college football picks No. 1

Things are going along so swimmingly, Congress has time to look into how the NCAA runs its postseason!

At least with the steroid hearings, they could pretend they were looking after kids’ health.

In the House, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, has sponsored legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a football game a “national championship” unless the game culminates from a playoff system.

So much for the GOP being against Big Government.

Another excuse to use the “chess” tag. Click for biggie size.

So over the weekend my main computer died. It was an eMachines comp which has actually served quite well for the last 3 years. I was trying to upgrade the graphics card, which required a power upgrade from a measly 300W.

What I didn’t know is that eMachines comps often require a proprietary power supply. To my sorrow, I only deduced this after buying one, returning and swapping for another one, having that not work and finally testing an old power supply I knew was problem-free.

By that time, the motherboard was fried, so I had little choice but to get a new motherboard and CPU. Having little time to do research, I took one of Fry’s mid-priced combo deals, one which included the odd triple-core processor Phenom X3. I’d probably have been better off with one of Intel’s dual-core offerings. (FYI, few programs today take advantage of more than two cores. Oddy, I actually have at least one.)

The final stroke was the RAM. After spending a bit trying to shove my original memory sticks in the new motherboard, it dawned on me to take a look at what types of memory I was dealing with. Sure enough, I was trying to shove DDR sticks into DDR2 slots.

After 4 trips to Fry’s, 3 to Best Buy, and 1 to a local shop, I finally had a working system again.

It was a very aggravating day.

[Interviewer]: Is it fair to say that Apple as a competitive threat now is at its highest point in the last 10 or 15 years?
[Corporate VP of Windows Consumer Product Marketing Brad Brooks]: What we want to define as a consumer experience is not nearly as limited as what Apple makes it out to be. We have a huge choice, a huge diversity, an ecosystem that can bring a range of choices, whether it be on cost, whether it be on technology, whether it be on the types of magical application experiences that you can only get when you use the Windows operating system. And it’s really a definition now between choosing something that is limited, and somebody chooses for you–basically the “i” way–or actually taking it to a much broader scope, which is “your” way, and defining it through Windows, and the experience that comes with the tens of thousands of partners that build applications, services, and content for the Windows platform every day.

I’m somewhere between feeling sorry for Brooks and rolling my eyes in anguish. You know this is the kind of stuff he has to say, but it’s tiring hearing people hammer their talking points without answering interviewers’ questions (see also: Biden-Palin debate).

(Source: Microsoft: Mac buyers pay Apple tax)

Lepers III tournament starts Oct 20! Sign-up by Oct 19 so Mr. E doesn’t get mad at you for being a late entry! Minimum $75 prize fund which might save you from bankruptcy!

Sign-up by leaving a comment with your FICS handle and recent rating with a chess federation (USCF, FIDE, etc.)

Yo. This is Mr. E, and this is Mr. E’s first post. Now I’m not so experienced with the blog thing, so cut me some slack.

I’m going to be talking about O.J. Simpson. I pity the tool. Not necessarily because he just got convicted of armed robbery. And not necessarily because he’s not going to be in the next Naked Gun sequel. It’s this:

His “Juiced” video. It’s like Candid Camera, except worse. He tried to Be Somebody, but just ended up being somebody’s tool.

Here’s O.J. in whiteface:

So. Don’t be like O.J.

Yes, yes, the Wilson Gambit. Er.

A handful of weekends ago, I made my return to Houston and for the first time, went to the Houston Chess Meetup advertised by Tacticus every so often. It was at a Chinese buffet this time around, which generously offered the use of a room. We could pay for one meal and sit on our tushies as long as we desired.

Arriving fashionably late, I discovered people played not only chess, but a variety of board games. In fact, most people played other games while Glenn waited for someone, anyone else who was there for the chess.

That person…was me (a few others did show up later). After eating, we got down to business. Glenn has one of those 5-min clocks and we played a ton of blitz that afternoon. The first few games I thought way too much in the opening, always getting in time trouble. Even after getting “in the groove”, I didn’t have much success, as might be expected when an Expert plays a Class C. It was something like +2 -7 =2 (includes one sympathy win where I was dominant but only had a few seconds left vs 2 minutes. Glenn still resigned.)

Before leaving, we got in one last game. Instead of my usual Pirc, went Center Counter…and, oh man, that match is seared within my memory forever. In fact, I can probably recreate the exact moves to the final game. With little variation it can be replayed here.

To let it be known, I’m not ashamed of losing. I am ashamed of losing like that.

If the trends noted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment continue, 117% of US adults could be overweight by 2075.

Sounds pretty stupid, right?

No worse than an actual Reuters article: All U.S. adults could be overweight in 40 years.*

Arrrrghhhhhhh.

Time-restricted right now. Will respond to your comments later. Meanwhile, an oldie but goodie:

The EU has cracked down on “misleading” airfares on websites, where an airfare was advertised but did not “clearly advertise the full prices and conditions of their flight offers”.

Certainly flyers should be able to clearly understand what they’re getting, but I hope the new ads don’t insulate travelers from knowing how much of what they pay actually goes to other entities.

But then the EU complains “the other main problem was the lack of available seats at the advertised fare, even when the advertised price was accurate.”

Yes. This is how it works. When airlines have sales A LIMITED NUMBER OF SEATS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE LOWER PRICE LEVELS; THIS IS HOW IT WORKS ALL THE TIME. It’s not a “problem”; the airlines are allowed to give a limited number of cheap seats on a first-come, first-serve basis. (If the fares are never available at all, that would be deceptive, but there’s not been a recent incident where this was actually the case.)

And I’m still annoyed about this one (which was Part 1), even though the airline I work for does not get close to Europe.

Apologies for: The two prior posts. They are probably admissible in a court of law as evidence I’m under the influence of drugs. Please note I did not authorize the hiring of Mr. E, and may put his continued employment up for a vote once we post the interview. Until then, I will permit his presence to satisfy the Mascot’s man-crush.

1,000 thanks to Joe Lee of ROTK for this find: “You know you start to wonder what the age of the biochem researchers demographic is when they start releasing ads like this.”: It’s called EpMotion

Dear Europe,

Your decision to incorporate airlines in your emissions trading scheme (ETS) is vaguely unrealistic. Please note oil is over $140/barrel. We at the airlines are currently trying every trick possible to use less fuel. We really, really want to cut emissions because it will help us not go bankrupt.

Now, if the goal of ETS is simply forcing airlines to either cut even more flights or go out of business…well, that would certainly reduce emissions, and I can’t fault its efficiency.

Source: EU in talks with Obama and McCain over aviation cap-and-trade deal