simplicity

A win is a win.

It doesn’t matter whether you get the win via the starters, the bench, or what it’s come down to at some points in these playoffs the refs. Last nights game again started off well for the starters, but it again felt like they expended all of their energy within the first 5 minutes. Knowing full well this was a must-win for Boston, everyone expected Paul Pierce to have a huge game. He started off the night really well, scoring the first 10 of Boston’s 16? points. But then it looked like he started to get tired. And by the half you could see that Kobe was starting to light it up and some unbelievable Laker shots were going in (Derek Fisher’s flop no-foul jumper). Going into the half, I think everyone was worried even with the C’s down just three. Personally, I thought they were very lucky being down just three. I was at the bar and the mood wasn’t that great, especially after the Sox blew it against Cleveland in the bottom of the ninth. Ugh!

However, the second-half, specifically the fourth-quarter the bench played unbelievable. They scored on nine straight possessions. “Big Baby” played with the same fire he’s played with all through the playoffs. The man, along with the bench, put in some quality minutes. Huge put backs, huge rebounds, huge points. The man is a human redbull.

Obviously I’m happy with the win, but I’m still not seeing the consistency in our offense from our starters. While that does scare me, I think I’d be more worried if I was a Lakers fan. Think about it this way, last night Kobe had what most would constitute his best game of the series and the C’s still won. To top it all off, the C’s starters, 4 out of the 5, have been stagnant in every game:

• Game one: No one showed up for the C’s
• Game two: Ray Allen/Rondo decide to outplay everyone on the floor
• Game three: KG has a stellar game, even with the loss
• Game four: Pierce, while not at his best, was clutch

At some point in this series you have to believe two of the big three or even dare I say all three of the big three are going to have a coming out party. That should frighten Laker fans, especially if Bynum can’t play more then 11 mins a game.

Boston needs to capitalize on this momentum. Game five is a must-win for Boston, no if-and-or-buts about it. You’re already in scary territory by needing to take one game in LA to finish out this series, but taking two is next to impossible. There are a lot statistics against a C’s championship in these playoffs:

• Phil Jackson is 47-0 in the playoffs when his team has won the first game of the series.
• Since 1985, when the 2-3-2 format was introduced the team that won game three won the the series: 100% of the time

So as you can see there’s a lot at stake.

Finally a little about the officiating last night. While there were missed calls both ways I personally thought this was the best officiated game of the series. Not saying it was great, but it was a little above sub-par. They let the players play and that’s all you can ask for.

The two things that have me worried are: Perk and Sheed are one T away from being suspended a game. That would be two huge losses for the C’s.

However, a win is a win…

I hate reflecting on a loss. I’m one of those fans that hates to go to ESPN.com or SI.com or any other major sports site after a playoff loss, it’s hard to swallow. And last night, last night was very difficult to swallow. Granted the game started off on the right foot w/ Garnett and Rondo leading the way but it seemed like Phil Jackson called the timeout perfectly after the C’s went on a 6 – 0 run. They never regained that aggressive mentality after that timeout until well into the second-half. It was one of those types of games that the C’s continue to have in each playoff series. They go down by double-digits only to come back but the come back falls short. The line they just couldn’t cross, it was if the there was something holding them back *cough*officiating*cough. Each time they bring it within two or four the refs call something or the offense just runs something downright awful.

The C’s had their chances to tie this game up, they just didn’t convert. While I’d love to blame the ref’s, who again have been just atrocious the blame has to be placed on the inconsistent C’s offense. Ray Allen went 0-13, however Doc continued to go to him at the end of the game. Why on earth would you go to someone whose been that cold at the end of the game? I understand how good he has been but you can’t try to get him going w/ 2 minutes left in the game and being down only four. Frustrating to watch him miss all those open looks. You can bet he won’t have a game like that for the rest of this series.

Being down four and with 40 seconds left you have to play defense, you can’t let Fisher drive and convert a three-point play. The C’s just self-destructed there. Speaking of Fisher, what’s with the crying at the end of the game dude. It’s game two grow some balls…

Anyways, here’s hoping the C’s come back with some fire in their eyes and take the next two. C’s can’t go back to LA down a game, they need to make it 3-2 before they leave this city.

Frustrating night all around…

Deece

Absolutely fantastic flick.  It’s 35 minutes, but well worth it.

Hulu – Lemonade – Watch the full feature film now..

I’m excited….

YouTube – Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps 2010 – Trailer 2.

Burn… That’s a burn Sarah Palin, a burn…

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

via Family Guy Actress Responds To Sarah Palins Criticism.

Boston is about to be pounded with about 6-10″ of snow.  Unlike last week where the weather psychics were premature in their declaration of 10-12″ I think they are being as conservative as possible in their prediction this week to avoid any costly backlash.  So while I hope they get this prediction wrong I don’t think that will happen.

However, even with it snowing like mad up here you can feel the slight breeze of Spring around the corner.  How?  Well pitchers and catchers report this week and that means baseball is *almost* around the corner.  While, I’m not convinced this Red Sox team will be as dominant as it could be because it’s missing a big bat in the middle of the line-up I’m trying to convince myself otherwise.  So here’s to Spring everyone, may it come sooner rather then later…

Looks like Twitter is back up. All of you people having withdrawals can now get back on the wagon.

Haven’t posted in awhile, unless you count the automated posts made every night, so I thought I’d take a few seconds to wish everyone and their families a Happy Holiday, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. I’m on vacation for the next 10 days, going to try to enjoy this free-time and try to be only slightly productive.

I’m pleased to announce that Power Hour Plus Power Tunes Plus 1.0 officially went live [iTunes link] on the App Store.

The application plain and simple let’s you play the popular Power Hour drinking game on your iPhone or iPod Touch using the music library on the respective device. Besides the ability to play a song every minute for a set amount of time, we’ve included some interesting functionality such as integrating with Facebook and keeping track of music statistics, which will come in handy in future versions.

More information regarding the various features and additional screen-shots can be found at the application Power Tunes Plus website.

The application took a few months longer to build then I originally anticipated, mainly because it was my first foray into iPhone development and Objective-C. Also, the first few betas of the 3.0 firmware were absolutely horrendous in their�support of the music library and the music player. Even the release version isn’t completely up to snuff, as there are still issues with keeping the screen active when you’re playing music and issues regarding performance when performing queries on the music library. With that in mind the application was completed from a technical perspective and a testing perspective in early June and submitted for review prior to the 3.0 firmware going live in mid-June. As has been the case with many of the other developers we ran into issues and had to go through two rejections and had to wait two months before the application finally got approved. Personally, I still don’t understand why the rejections occurred. The statement was that our application was encouraging excessive consumption of alcohol, this coming from a company that approved ’101Drinking Games’ and ‘iDrink’ along with plenty of other drinking applications. Encouraging alcohol consumption on the App Store should be the least of Apple’s worries, at the time of our first rejection Apple had a top 10 application supporting school shootings and had previously approved the now infamous ‘Baby Shaker’ app. As you can see I’m still a little temperamental over the whole situation. I’m hoping Apple really improves the review process and makes it far more transparent and helpful for all of the developers.

While I’m pleased with the final product, I believe there is more work that needs to be done. Because this was my first attempt at iPhone development and Objective-C I took some liberties and the code is… how you say not object-oriented, clean, or readable. As such I need to do some major clean-up in that department. There’s also a performance impact that I’ve just recently noticed with incredibly large music libraries. While I could say that this is probably the SDK, I can’t clearly confirm that until I do some further testing. Other than the previously mentioned issues and some minor bug fixes most of the development time going-forward will be spent on enhancements from a feature and UI perspective as well as on development for the Facebook application. I’m really confident that the new features we have planned will make this application more enjoyable from a social and party perspective.

We really hope you give the application a try. �Any questions, concerns, feedback, and or ideas are more then welcome � overthink.apps AT gmail