The fix is in

Well, in the absence of any real work to do, I thought I'd try to write something on this here blog. The last couple weeks have been an interesting fight to accomplish anything at work. One project ending and another one starting and ending in just over a week has made little time for the art of "not doing much at work".

So what to talk about? Same thing as any other day: choose something or a few things that are on my mind. First and foremost is the issue I discovered with my jump drive (the USB key flash drive thingy). When trying to back up a directory of source code/etc, it was taking a MEGA long time. 1300+ files totaling only 18 MB was taking a half an hour. It's a high-speed USB device, too, so it was even more surprising. Well, come to find out, it WORKS AS DESIGNED (via Windows, anyway, with the generic driver for USB flash drives). Apparently, each time a file is written, the whole file allocation table is rewritten, which causes a significant delay for EACH FILE. Once the files were written, I could copy them off in seconds flat, but MOVING them off (i.e. getting the information and then deleting -- causing an update to the FAT for each file) took another 20+ minutes. In testing previously, I've moved an 850 MB file to the drive, taking between 3 and 4 minutes. Moving these 1300 files totaling 17 MB to the drive took 30 minutes! To speed things up, the drive can be set to favor performance over quick removal, and then reformatted as NTFS instead of FAT. I tested it out. It seemed much quicker with a small test, but it's still much faster just to zip up the contents of whatever you're going to put on the drive and just write one file. Safer, too, as you can leave the default behavior to "quick removal" (is this the rhythm method?), thus never losing data if you don't use the "safely remove device" functionality in Winders.

The other thing that's been on my mind was the Super Bowl. The actual game, not the commercials. Actually, there wasn't much GOOD about that game. Rain all game long made for some non-spectacular play, and actually made the camera lens fog up and be covered in moisture. I'm not sure why (well, it probably has to do with the 50 minute drive to work, where I have alot of time), but I was actually thinking about this yesterday. I've been convinced for years that the NBA is fixed, at least to an extent. Between 1987 and 2005 (inclusive -- a 19 year stretch), there were only FIVE teams that won the NBA championship. Granted, among those teams were six of Jordan's Bulls, two of Magic's Lakers, and three of Kobe/Shaq's Lakers (and before that were some stacked teams including the Boston Celtics of the 80's). Even in 2006, when the Heat finally broke the spell, it was a team including SHAQ and a very up-and-coming Dwyane Wade (incidentally, until yesterday, I thought his first name was spelled phonetically, as in "Dwayne", never imagining the "y" came before the "a"). Miami recently has become the new Los Angeles (which, incidentally, had become the new Chicago in NBA terms, or the new New York in overall terms, years earlier), so it stands to reason that the NBA would have a vested interest in creating a championship team from that city. It would also explain why a reader wrote in to Bill Simmons a.k.a. the Sports Guy that he had farted twice during one game of the Finals last year and been called for two fouls on Dwyane ("y" before "a") Wade. A little lopsided officiating never hurt anyone. Well, unless you're a fan (or owner) of the Dallas Mavericks. Or the 2000 Trailblazers or 2002 (Sacramento) Kings. I could write novels on the "fixing" that's been going on in the NBA since the early 90's, if not earlier. But I digress.

Anyway, this DOES have to do with the Super Bowl. See, sports can be (and have been) fixed. Well, except boxing. From the Black Sox of the early 1900's to the Russian and French judges in recent Olympics, evidence of sports fixing is all-too-easy to find. So as my mind wandered on my drive yesterday, I got to thinking, "what if it was fixed?" Not the Super Bowl, necessarily, but the playoffs as a whole? In particular, New England. The way New England won the San Diego game, and the way they lost the Indianapolis game were both on the far end of dramatic, to say the least. I haven't put together quite yet why the fix would be in to keep the Patriots in the playoffs against San Diego, but I CAN see why they'd want to keep the Patriots OUT of the Super Bowl. The Pats have won 3 of the last 5 Super Bowls (prior to this year's). The fans are rampant everywhere. The sportswriters fellate Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and the team in general at break-neck pace. Having the Pats NOT take home the Lombardi won't affect merchandise sales or the popularity of the league in any way. But having a DIFFERENT team take home the trophy -- especially when one of the remaining teams is from a large market like Chicago -- would be a boon for sales and popularity. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who could see the dominance of the AFC -- any of the top teams in the AFC would have clobbered even the best representative from the NFC in the Super Bowl -- but there's always A CHANCE. But, by keeping the Pats out of the big game, you're guaranteed a team BESIDES them takes home the title this year.

Now that I've hopefully given a good motive for the NFL to boot the Pats from the playoffs, let me bring back the subject of HOW they lost. They jumped out to a quick, convincing lead on the Colts, and then, game still in hand late, neglected to grind the clock when given the chance. Now I may not like Belichick and his farm-boy fashion, but I have to give mad props to him as a coach. He comes up with game plans (and during game time, adjusts game plans) that wreak havoc on otherwise top-notch teams. Some people have said that this failure to grind the clock was just arrogance on his part. But what if he was actually TRYING TO LOSE? What if the fix was in, and Belichick was in on it/in charge of making it happen? It would also explain why he wasn't very cordial to Indy post-game (either that, or he's just an @$$). If I was forced to throw a game that I knew I could have handily won, and cost me another "notch in my headboard", I'd not be in a very good mood, either. In any case, a fix would explain not only the result of the game, but the way in which it went down. If I was the "losing" coach assigned with throwing the game, I'd flex my muscles early, so to speak, showing exactly how dominant I could be, before "blowing the game" in the waning minutes. Although I probably wouldn't wear a cutoff sweatshirt while doing so.

Anyway, food for thought.

Have a good humpday.