The SoapBoxers

If I had a million dollars, I’d be rich.

Well, that’s what Barenaked Ladies would have you believe. In actuality, a million bucks doesn’t stretch as far as it once did.

If you were indeed rich, how would you spend the money?

First, I’ll set down a few rules.

First, let’s assume that you have already donated a sizeable chunk to charities and taken care of your family.

Second, let’s make these without any thought as to what your spouse or kids would think of the decision.

Yes, this is a nice, breezy little “we can always dream” article.

Where to Live

I’d definitely want two homes. I’d want a summer home in the Florida Keys. I like the laid back atmosphere in the Keys, love being surrounded by water (which is odd, considering that I can’t swim), and most importantly, I intensely dislike cold weather. Lay under a palm tree reading a book and listening to Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, that’s the life.

Summers would be spent in the mountains of Colorado. Sadly, I’ve only been to the mountains once, but I absolutely love them. I’d spend lots of time hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and shooting the wildlife and scenery with my digital camera.

Oh, and Colorado has one distinct advantage over other locations – it also happens to be the home of my favorite baseball team. I’d plunk down the cash for season tickets right behind home plate. None of those fancy skyboxes for me – I want to be able to hear that batter arguing with the umpire.

The House

There is one aspect to my dream home that has never wavered over the years – the presence of a large library. When I say large, I mean something that would rival the libraries in some small towns. Not only do I love to read, but I’d happily lend tomes to visitors. The library would have a media center with a couple of high end Power Macs.

I’d definitely want to grounds to be landscaped with synthetic turf in order to minimize the maintenance. They make some very realistic synthetic turfs these days. Grass is overrated.

The rest of the details are relatively unimportant.

The Cars

Lamborgini? Porsche? Mercedes Benz? Nah, just keep a Ford Taurus in the garage and I’ll be happy. My first car was a Taurus (had 96,000 miles when I bought it), as is every car I have bought since.

Could I spend lots more on a fancier car? Sure. But I see a car as a way to get from point A to point B. If I’m going to waste a lot of money, it’s certain not going to be on a luxury car.

Hobbies

What would I do with my spare time? Well, as mentioned above, I would read, hike, watch baseball, and listen to Jimmy Buffett. But I’d do other things, too, right?

I’d definitely try to make the cut for Jeopardy. I don’t watch a lot of TV – and even fewer game shows – but Jeopardy has been a longtime favorite of mine. I wouldn’t necessarily have to win – competing would be enough fun.

On there is one other thing. I want to go into space. Not just as a tourist, mind you. I want to take a space walk – tethered to civilization by just a thing line. I can only imagine the thrill this must give astronauts. The only downside is that I’m not much of a handyman, and most spacewalks involve fixing some sort of equipment.

Maybe I could hold the ladder for the other guy.

What would you do if YOU were suddenly rich?

You might have missed the news with the hoopla of the NCAA tournament over the weekend, but the Minnesota Twins signed All Star catcher Joe Mauer to an 8 year, $184 million deal.  Obviously, $23 million per year is a lot of money for any player, but I think this deal makes a lot of sense for the Twins.  I’ll tell you why.

It prevents fan defection

The Twins have, historically, been a bit, er, frugal.  This in spite of the fact that former owner Carl Pohlad actually had more money than Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.  Steinbrenner ran the Yankees as a hobby and desired to have World Series championships.  Pohlad ran the Twins more like a business, actually paying attention to the bottom line.  In a smaller media market such as Minneapolis, this often meant having players like Johan Santana and Torii Hunter leave to pursue more money elsewhere.

Mauer has always been a special fan favorite for the Twins.  Mauer played his high school ball at Cretin-Durham Hall, right in the Twins cities.  In 2001, the Twins made him the first overall pick in the draft.  This wasn’t a slam dunk decision.  Many observers felt that USC pitcher Mark Prior was a much better gamble than a high school catcher, regardless of the numbers he put up in high school.  Looking back nine years later, the decision to pick Mauer was clearly the correct decision.

Mauer sets a good example on and off the field.  I am unaware of him ever being in any trouble off the field.  On the field, in his first 5 full seasons, he has won three batting titles, three gold gloves, and an MVP award – and has finished in the top 6 in the MVP voting on two other occasions.

In short, Mauer is bigger than hockey in Minnesota.  Well, maybe not.  Probably bigger than curling, though.  Losing Mauer would have been catastrophic for Twins fans, and they would have stayed away from games in droves.   This is a franchise that was once on the chopping block to be removed from baseball as part of contraction (the Expos-now-Nationals were the other team).

Keeps him away from the Yankees

The big fear, of course, was that the Yankees were going to come in and grab Mauer as a free agent.  This makes a lot of sense, with Yankee catcher Jorge Posada in the twilight of his career.  Brian Cashman would have loved the opportunity to add Mauer’s bat to the lineup.

This would have been a double whammy for the Twins.  Not only would it have been more difficult for the Twins to reach the post-season without Mauer, they’d be forced to play a Mauer-led Yankees team if they made it into the playoffs.

It’s actually not a bad deal, financially

You may look at Mauer’s numbers and say “meh, they’re pretty strong numbers, but he’s not exactly Albert Pujols.”

That’s quite true, but you need to look at the context of the numbers.  Mauer is a catcher – the most difficult position on the field.  It’s very rare to get elite offensive production out of a catcher.  Mauer is a best offensive catcher since Mike Piazza.  I hesitate to even make this comparison – not because of any shortcomings of Mauer, but shortcomings of Piazza.  Piazza was a very good hitter, but it’s very generous to refer to him as a catcher.  It’s an exaggeration to say that I’m a better defensive catcher than Piazza – but not by much.

Mauer is not a catcher in the mold of Piazza, though.  He is actually a good defensive catcher.  Finding a catcher who can combine good offensive and defensive skills is almost impossible –and you need to pay for it.  The drop-off between Mauer and the average MLB catcher is enormous.

Finally, the Twins are paying for some of Mauer’s peak years.  Players typically begin their prime years around age 27 and start to fade in their late 30s.  Mauer will be 28 next year when the contract starts in 2011 and 35 when the contract ends after the 2018 season.  Those are good years to pay for, although it wouldn’t be surprising to see Mauer enter a bit of a decline toward the end of the deal.  An 8 year contract that starts at age 28 is much better than an 8 year deal that starts at age 32.

What are your thoughts on the Mauer deal?  (Let’s try not to go down the “athletes are overpaid” route too much.  Elite performers in many fields are paid insane amounts of money.)

Store Update: We’ve been busy stocking the shelves at the Hyrax Publications store recently.  Last week was the release of Sell Yourself Short: A Guide to Short Story Writing (currently on sale for 99 cents!).  Today, we’re happy to announce the release of the audio version of The Cell Window.  The Cell Window is the tale of a professional voyeur.  The audio version is 48 minutes long and features the voice of Kosmo.  Note: Kosmo is not a professional audio book reader, so keep this in mind when setting your expectations.  The price is $3.99.

Want to read The Cell Window, but don’t like audio books?  You can buy the eBook featuring The Cell Window and eleven other stories in The Fiction of Kosmo, Volume 2 ($3.65).

Want it all, but don’t want to pay the a la carte prices?  The Annual Kosmo Pass (regularly $18, currently $9 + a bonus 2 months) will allow you to download all of Kosmo’s content for an entire year.  We plan to add 3-4 eBooks (10,000 – 20,000 words) per year and are planning to populate the audio book section to include nearly all of the fiction from the site. 

Not satisfied with your purchase? Please email Kosmo at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com and we’ll refund your money!

The big news over the weekend was Northern Iowa’s victory over top seeded Kansas.  Ali Farokhmanesh once again provided the key shot for UNI, hitting a dagger of a three pointer late in the game.  Ali had about 5 minutes to get set for the shot (look at the replay – he has time to get his feet perfectly set), so it’s hardly a surprised that he was able to knock down the shot.

Northern Iowa’s path to the Elite 8 got a bit smoother yesterday.  Michigan State beat Maryland to advance to the Sweet 16, but they lost star point guard Kalin Lucas to a torn Achilles tendon during the game.

After the game, The Soap Boxers got dozens of Google hits for our NCAA round 1 recap.  We had a brief blurb about Ali and his parents (Cindy Fredrick and Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh).  Interestingly, we weren’t getting hits on Ali’s name (as those were probably sucked up by the mainstream sports sites) but we did get hits on his parents’ names – particularly his dad’s.  I’m really not sure why people were searching on his dad’s name – but if some of you folks have become permanent members of The Soap Boxers community, welcome aboard!

In addition to Northern Iowa, several other teams swung by the shoe store and picked up a pair of Cinderella’s glass slippers.  We have a 12 seed (Cornell), an 11 (Washington), and a 10 (St. Mary’s) are still dancing.  In some years, the mere presence of two 6 seeds (Xavier and Tennessee) in the Sweet 16 would be cause for celebration; in a year with 4 teams at an 8 seed of higher, Xavier and Tennessee are simply afterthoughts.

How am I doing in my bracket?  I’m in last place in my pool … and I have a chance to win.  Although two of my Final Four teams have been bounced from the tournament (Kansas and my runner-up, Wisconsin), I’m one of two people who have Syracuse picked to win it all.  If that happens and a few other games break my way, I win.  I’m cautiously optimistic.

The women’s NCAA tournament also got under way this weekend.  There’s usually considerably less drama in the early rounds of the women’s tournament.  One reason for this is that many of the first and second round games are played on the campus of the top seed in that set of four teams – something the men’s tournament forbids.  This helps boost attendance for the women’s tournament, but makes it much more difficult for upsets to occur.

The state of Iowa had three teams in the women’s tournament.  Northern Iowa had punched their ticket by winning the Missouri Conference tournament and entered play on Sunday with a lackluster 17-15 record.  Not surprisingly, #1 seed Nebraska clobbered them 83-44 (although this game was NOT in Lincoln, but Minneapolis).

The University of Iowa was an 8 seed and beat 9 seed Rutgers on Saturday 70-63.  The interesting story in this game was that Rutgers’ coach, Hall of Famer C. Vivian Stringer, was formerly the coach of a very successful program at Iowa.  Stringer is originally from the East, and left Iowa shortly after the death of her husband.  She is still very much respected in Iowa.

My Iowa State Cyclones also had a first round game.  The 4^th seeded Cyclones won their game against Lehigh 79-42.  The best news to come out of the game for ISU was the return of Alison Lacey, who had missed 4 games because of pneumonia.

Notable first round upsets were 12 seed Wisconsin-Green Bay over 5 seed Virginia, 11 seed San Diego State over 6 seed Texas, 11 seed Arkansas-Little Rock over 6 seed Georgia Tech, and 10 seed Vermont over 7 seed Wisconsin.  Top ranked an undefeated Connecticut rolled in their game 95-39 over Southern University.

I am a Catholic, and I firmly believe that God created the heavens, the earth, and all the beasts upon the earth – including man.

I am firm believer in the theory of evolution, believing that man evolved from the single cell organisms that once inhabited the earth.

I firmly believe that these beliefs are not in conflict with each other.  I refer to myself alternately as a creationary evolutionist or an evolutionary creationist, depending on which term suits me at that particular moment.

We’ll tackle my belief in science first, since it is the less controversial.  Although evolution is a theory, and not proven fact, I believe that fossil evidence, coupled with other research, clearly shows that Darwin was on the right track when he wrote On the Origin of Species more than 150 years ago.

While the big bang theory does a nice job of explaining what happened during and after the birth of the universe, it begs the disturbing question: what happened BEFORE the big bang?  The theory that the universe expanded from a concentrated point is fine – but how exactly did that single point come to exist?

My personal theory is that God got the ball rolling and let the big bang take things from there.  Is this in conflict with the teachings of the bible?  Not necessarily.

First of all, it’s important to note that the bible of today is not the same as the original bible.  As any work is translated from one language to another, certain nuances are certain to be lost – or added – due to the differences in the languages themselves.

In additional to the fact that certain passage may have been translated inexactly due to differences in languages, there is evidence of several actual errors in the translation process, as a word in one language was mistaken for a word that was physical similar, but very different in meaning.  This wrong word was then translated into a word in the language the bible was being translated into, and the meaning was changed forever.  Some of these errors cause rather major shifts in meanings of certain passages of the bible.  That’s an entirely different can of worms that we could spend much more time on – but we’ll gloss over it today.

My most important reason for believing that evolution and creation are not in conflict is based on the way that Christ himself taught his followers.  He often used parables to explain concepts that would not be well received if told in plain language.

Should we then be surprised if the Old Testament also contains parables – parables that are not obvious to all readers?  If St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity to his followers, perhaps God inspired the writers of the Old Testament to use parables of their own.  Perhaps the seven days in Genesis are not to be taken literally, but instead to represent billions of years of evolution.

If God created a single celled organism and pushed it down the evolutionary path toward the eventual end result of man, could it not be said that God created man?  The concept of evolution may have been too advanced for the people of Old Testament times – simplifying into the parables of the seven days of creation may have simply been the easiest way to illustrate the point.

Is this heresy?  I don’t think so.  If we take the alternate view and suppose that the theory of evolution is completely wrong, where does this lead us?  Are we to believe that science has led us down the wrong path?  Are we to accept the advances that science has brought us in many other phases of life while ignoring the scientific evidence of evolution?

I believe that this would be pure folly.  I believe that God gave us science as a way to help us understand the world around us.  Instead of exposing us to the entire base of knowledge at once, he allowed this knowledge to evolve gradually, as scientists continue to make further advances.   Science is a gift, not a curse.

This week’s Fiction Friday comes to you a couple of days late.

Justin settled into his seat in the fourth row of the basketball arena. This was his favorite time of the year. The high school state basketball tournament was in town. It would be wall-to-wall basketball all week.

Justin wasn’t pulling for any particular team. He just enjoyed watching basketball, and you couldn’t argue with the value of tickets to the state tournament – you got a lot of bang for your buck.

Justin took long sip of his drink, and then turned to the man on his left. “Do you expect this to be a good game?” he asked.

“The line’s Harper by ten and a half,” came the curt reply.

“Line?” asked a confused Justin.

“Yeah, the line. You know, the point spread.”

“You can’t gamble on high school sports.”

The stranger laughed. “Certainly you can. You just have to work harder for the information.”

“What kind of information?”

“Well, you have all the basics, of course. The offensive sets and the defenses that each coach likes to run. The strengths and weaknesses of each player, injuries that might cause problems, that sort of thing. Any hack can cobble together that information. But if you’re going to make money betting on the kiddies, you need to take it to the next level.”

“And, what, exactly, is the next level?” asked Justin.

“Mostly, it’s the psychological state of these kids. They are so frail at this age. A girl breaks up with them, they go into a shooting funk. They get laid for the first time, maybe they go into a shooting funk after that – or maybe they go for forty points. Point is, the more you know about what’s bouncing around inside their heads, the more of an advantage you have against the hacks who are just using statistics and computer models. ELO-Chess models are so old fashioned.”

Justin was disturbed – and yet also intrigued. “And how, exactly, do you get this information?”

“Oh, that’s part’s the easiest thing in the world. You just scope out a spy in each school. The rumors bounce around a high school faster a virus. You find a kid who doesn’t have a lot of money and you slip him twenty bucks every once in a while. He spills his guts about everything that’s going on in the school.”

“I assume that you have a spy for this game?”

“Of course. A couple of them, actually. My kid on the Harper side is the student manager. Those kids make great spies. They can’t hack it as a player, so they sit on the bench and pretend they’re part of the team. Most of them have a lot of resentment toward the players.”

“Can you share your information on this game,” asked Justin “or is that privileged.”

“Hey, my bets are all down, so I’ll share. The best tidbit is about Turner, the point guard on Harper. It turns out that his girlfriend has been sleeping with several other players on the team. Suffice it to say that his passes might not be as crisp as you might otherwise expect. The spread might be Harper by ten and a half, but you’d be a fool to take Harper.”

The referee threw the ball into the air for the opening tip and Justin and his new acquaintance ceased their conversation.

Contrary to the expectations of the gambler, Turner was a one man highlight reel during the game. The point guard racked up thirty four points, twelve assists, and grabbed nine rebounds. Perhaps most impressive were the four shots blocked by the five foot five inch dynamo. It was, by all accounts, one of the most dominant performances in state tournament history.

At the far end of the bench, the student manager smiled externally and smiled a big belly laugh internally. After a season of taking money from the gambler, he had double crossed him. Turner and his girlfriend definitively had experienced an emotional week, but not for the reasons he had mentioned. Both students has been accepted into Stanford and would have the opportunity to stay together while also pursuing an education from a top school.  This lifted a huge weight from Turner’s shoulders and had allowed him to focus intently on the game.

Since the birth of my son at the tail end of last year, I have been recording lots of episodes of TruTV’s Forensic Files and watching them during nighttime feedings.  In the past three months, I have watched literally dozens of episodes.  During this time, I’m learned lots of lessons from some of the killers who are, well, not so smart.

Note: we don’t condone any sort of criminal activities.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice …

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t mess with success.  If something works the first time, you should try it again, right?  Not always.

A recurring theme are men who kill their wives.  Sometimes, after a suspicious – but apparently accidental – death, an anonymous caller will notify the police that the man’s first wife died in similar circumstances.  If the women died in car accidents, you can make the argument that it’s simply coincidence.  Car accidents are fairly common.

If the women both drowned in the bath tub, this is a bit harder to explain away as a coincidence.  This isn’t a particularly common way to die, so the odds of it happening to two of your spouses is pretty unlikely.

Moral of the story: mix it up a little bit.  If you’re going to kill multiple spouses, you need to use different methods.  Or, of course, you could simply refrain from killing people.

Failure to observer a proper mourning period

Everyone has a different length of time for mourning.  Some people never get over the death of a spouse.  Others are able to move past the tragedy and eventually find love again.

But if you return from Vegas with a new wife a couple of weeks after your first wife died, police are probably going to take a second look at you as a suspect.

In one particularly notable case, the husband and his fiancée actually sent out wedding invitations (just to HER family and friends, apparently) BEFORE the first wife was dead.  I guess this is somewhat understandable, since people need to be able to save the date on their calendar.

Moral: Thirty days hath September, April, June, and minimum mourning periods.

Gotta give them credit

Every once in a while, the cops are able to determined that a killer purchased poison (or other items involved in the crime) by examining credit card receipts.  Apparently, the term “paper trail” means nothing to these people.

Moral: Cash is king!

Not what it’s cracked up to be

When examining broken windows at a crime scene, the cops check to see if the window was broken from the outside or the inside.  If the window was broken from the outside, most of the glass will fall inward.  If it is broken from the inside, most of the glass will fall on the outside.

Since the vast majority of criminals break into houses rather than out of them,  when there are indications that a window was broken from the inside, it typically means that the scene was staged.

Moral: Take a moment and actually step through the crime scene, starting at the point of entry.  If you’re going to kill someone, you needn’t be lazy with the details.

I am able to get moderate reception in the radio at my desk and am able to tune into the NCAA basketball tournament.  I managed to listen to some chunks of the tournament during the day and caught some footage on CBS last night.

Early thoughts from the tournament:

Georgetown must be the most hated team in the tournament this year.  The Hoyas put some stress on the majority of brackets across the country.  There are a few happy people, though – those who picked Tennessee (or, um, Ohio) to push into the sweet 16.

Villanova nearly became the villain ‘o the brackets.  The Wildcats had their hands full with Robert Morris on Thursday.  Some analysts feel that there were several questionable fouls against Robert Morris in the game – and these calls were critical, as the game ended up being decided in overtime.

The tournament started out with a bang.  The initial three games were incredibly tight.  The first game to go final was #11 seed Old Dominion beating 6 seeded NotreDame 51-50.  This ended up being the blowout of the trio, with the next two games forcing overtime.  BYU escaped Billy Donovan’s 10 seeded Florida team in two overtimes, and 15 seed Robert Morris came up just short in overtime against #2 seed Villanova.

Upsets were the order of the day, including #10 Saint Marys, #11 Old Dominion, #13 Murray State, and #14 Ohio.  Only one #12 seed was in action (UTEP losing to Butler), so there’s still a good chance that a #12 will pick up a win (they usually do).

Only 5 of the 16 games were decided by 10 or more points.  Two of these were #1 vs. #16 mismatches, and one was actually #14 seed Ohio’s win against Georgetown.  Hopefully the rest of the weekend’s games will be just as good.

My favorite game of the day was #9 Northern Iowa’s 69-66 win over #8 seeded UNLV.  I grew up about 50 miles from the UNI campus, and I cheer for them any time they aren’t playing my Iowa State team.  UNI won the game on a long, long bomb by Ali Farokhmanesh.  Ali Farokhmanesh is the son of an Iranian immigrant, Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh.   Ali’s mother (Cindy Fredrick) is the head volleyball coach at Luther College after stints at Washington State University and the University of Iowa. Dr. Mashallah Farokhmanesh continues to serve as assistant coach to his wife, as he has throughout their coaching careers.

The conference that laid the biggest egg on day 1 was the Big East.  The conference, which at a hulking 16 teams, is indeed big, placed 8 teams into the conference, including 5 teams amongst the top 4 seeds (#1 Syracuse, #2s Villanova and West Virginia, #3s Pitt and Georgetown).   Big East teams were 1-3 on the day.  Georgetown, Notre Dame, Marquette were all upset.  Villanova’s escape against Robert Morris was the BEST showing for the conference.  Ack.

What are my upset specials for day 2?  #13 Siena over #4 Purdue (playing without star Robbie Hummel), #12 Cornell over #5 Temple (this game may be over by the time you read this), #12 Utah State over #5 Texas A&M, #11 Minnesota over #6 Pitt.  And my sweet surprises?  Siena and Murray State (yep, I had Racers in the Sweet 16 on my official bracket).

What are your favorite moments about the tournament so far?

First, I’d like to welcome the new readers who came here via The Digerati Life. Hang around for a while, explore the archives, and consider becoming a subscriber. We’ve been pretty sports-heavy in the last week – if you look through the archives, you’ll see that we’re usually a lot more eclectic.

Second, I am happy to announce the release of my new eBook – Selling Yourself Short – An Introduction to Short Story Writing. Selling Yourself Short is a 2500 word introduction to the process of short story writing – from creating your writing environment to developing the plot. In an effort to keep this handy guide affordable to all of our readers, the everyday price is just $1.49. However, for the next week, the price is just 99 cents. Don’t like it? There’s a money back guarantee! Buy it today at the Hyrax Publications store.

In 1981, buoyed by a court case against Topps, Fleer re-entered the baseball card market for the first time in two decades.  They were joined by newcomer Donruss.  Suddenly, consumers had a choice of which brand of baseball card to buy.

For several years, competition made the industry better.  Each company attempted to make their brand the most attractive.  By 1988, there were four mainstream brands, with Score also in the mix.  A pack of 15-16 cards (Score had 1 more card than everyone else) went for 50 cents.  It was a great time.  I spent much time trying to compile complete sets, or at least sets for my favorite team.

In the 1990s, the game began to change.  A new brand, Upper Deck, pushed the industry into the direction of premium brands in 1989 when they debuted with hologram-enhanced cards.  By the mid 1990s, each company had several brands, from high end to the base line.

I’ll admit that I took advantage of the situation.  Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of the flashy “insert” cards that had begun to drive the industry.  In 1993, by random chance, I had absurdly good luck getting redemption cards for Topps’ Black Gold sets in packs.  I was pulling these at a much higher rate than the published odds.

I took these cards (redeemable for either 11, 22, or 44 cards in the high end Black Gold set) and immediately traded them to my friend Justin – for unopened packs of Topps cards.  Within those unopened packs, I would routinely find another Black Gold winner, which would restart the cycle.  I completed two sets of 1993 Topps cards at almost no expense.

In the late 90s, the base set of cards began to become an afterthought as everyone chased after the rare cards that were randomly inserted.  Instead of cherishing a card of one of their heroes, people would be disappointed that they hadn’t pulled a card featuring someone’s autograph.  It had become a case of the tail wagging the dog.

In an effort to fulfill demand, the industry began to create ever increasing volumes of rare card.  Each specific example was quite limited – but there were hundreds, if not thousands, of different varieties of “limited” cards.  In some sets, nearly every pack had some sort of “rare” card.

Not surprisingly, the fact that each set contained more “special” cards allowed manufacturers to slowly raise the price of cards.  No longer could you spend 50 cents on a pack of 15 cards.  Now it was $2, $3, or even $5 for just a handful of cards.

That’s the point at which I bailed out of the card market.  It no longer made financial sense to put together complete sets.  With the base cards now just a necessary by-product of the specialty cards, the value dropped through the floor.  It was easier just to pick up a set the next year at a bargain basement price.

Years later, I still just buy a couple of packs of new cards a year.  When I buy cards, I buy things from other collectors or shops.  Sometimes these are newer cards of my favorite players, but more often, I buy cards from bygone eras.  Over the winter, I made a very pleasurable purchase, picking up a T-206 baseball card of Lefty Leifeld for $15.  For the same price as a few packs of 2010 cards, I could have a 100 year old card that was rare by chance of fate rather than by design of the manufacturer.

If the card manufacturers still consistently produced a base set of cards at a decent price, I would probably buy them and put together complete sets.  I always enjoyed the thrill of the hunt – trying vainly to find the last nine cards you needed to complete the entire 792 card Topps set.  Alas, the companies have lost their focus on what was their core product, and in the process, lost a lot of potential customers – people who were kids in the 80s and 90s and are now achieving financial success.

Editor’s note: make sure to enter The Soap Boxers’s NCAA pool (last chance, folks). Details can be found here.

Generally, I’m fairly up-to-speed on technology.  I’m not in the first batch of early adopters, but I’m generally not too far behind.  I really missed the boat on social media, though, dismissing it as irrelevant for years.  Eventually, I jumped headfirst into blogging.  I’m still not much of a Twitterer – my tweets are mostly notifications of new blog posts.  I’d love to tweet more, but Twitter seems to lose out in the time crunch.

I’m also a Facebook user.  A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from a longtime friend of mine (thanks for dragging me into Facebook, Amy …)  I’m not really a hardcore user, but I do spend time on Facebook when I get the chance.  How do I spend my Facebook time?

Mostly, I look for women who are interested in playing Scrabble®.  Why just women?  Am I using Facebook as some sort of dating service?  No, of course not.  That behavior would be really unacceptable for a married father of two.  However, a significant portion of male players on Facebook are indeed just looking for dirty talk in their Scrabble® games.  This seems quite odd to me – why not simply use the actual singles areas of Facebook?   In any case, this means that I often end up playing games against women.

Technically, I don’t play Scrabble®, but play Wordscraper instead.  Wordscraper is very similar – so similar that Hasbro sued the makers of Wordscraper.  Happily, an out of court settlement was reached, and Wordscraper remains alive.  There’s also an official Scrabble® game on Facebook, but I like Wordscraper better – the screens seems to render and refresh much more quickly.

How good am I?  Sadly, not particularly good.  I’d like to think that I know quite a lot of words, but my strategy doesn’t seem to be very good.  Part of this is probably the fact that I always try to open the board more, and part is just a deficiency of skill.  Who are the good players?  I’ve played a lot of games against Johnny Goodman, and he’s quite dominant.  Gabe Tyndal is really good too.  I haven’t played enough games against Gabe to determine is he’s at Johnny’s level or not.  My chiropractor, Doc Schroeder, is also really good – but a notch below Johnny (who, I repeat, is REALLY good).

Catching up with high school friends.  About half my high school class is on Facebook now.  That allows me to keep up on things that would otherwise elude me.  I’m also the creator of a Facebook group for my classmates.  I enjoy making people “officers” in the group and assigning them interesting roles.  Archduke (that’s me), Countess, Bloodletter, Stable Lad, Arrow Catcher, Ponzologist, we have them all.  I currently need to think up roles for a few more people.

Catching up on my favorite TV shows.  I am notoriously bad at keeping up with TV shows – TV just doesn’t rank as that high of a priority.  However, by becoming a Facebook “fan” of a show, I’m able to get alerts about the show.  Oh, hey, I should probably become a fan of NCIS 🙂

Ignoring people. Facebook has a built in chat feature.  Although I’m not as popular as some people, with 170 friends on Facebook, it was pretty common to have a half dozen people chatting with me at once.  That could be a real trick to juggle, especially as I was trying to do other things on Facebook.  I hated telling friends that I didn’t have time for them (seemed a bit rude), so I stay in “offline” mode 99% of the time.  (Hey, if you’re a Facebook friend of mine, send me a “message” – I do read the messages in my inbox and reply.)

The state of basketball in Iowa

The state of Iowa will be represented by just one team in the men’s NCAA tournament – Northern Iowa.  My Iowa State Cyclones faltered down the stretch after three point bomber Lucca Staiger left the program to return to play pro ball in his native Germany (yes, in mid-season).  My team to watch during the tournament will be Syracuse, featuring former Cyclone Wesley Johnson.

The University of Iowa fired their basketball coach on Monday.  Todd Lickliter, who was the NABC National Coach of the Year in his 2007 during his final year at Butler, was just 38-58 at Iowa, including 10-22 this season.  A rash of defections from the program and flagging attendance spelled the end for Lickliter.  The university exercised the$2.4 million buyout to sever the relationship with Lickliter.

Who will the new coach be?  Suggestions I have heard include Tennesee coach Bruce Pearl and Baylor coach Scott Drew (see my article about Drew from last year).  This makes no sense to me.  Why take a step down from a top program to take over rebuilding a program at Iowa?  While Iowa has a good basketball history (including one Final Four appearances), it’s hardly an elite history.  Add to that the fact that Steve Alford and now Lickliter are coaches who had significant success before Iowa and failed to win consistently with the Hawkeyes.  Alford left Iowa for New Mexico and promptly reeled off three straight winning seasons – his Lobo team is  3 seed in the NCAA tournament. 

Who, then, to coach the program?  If you don’t mind a coach with some baggage, how about Tim Floyd?  He’s a coach who has lived in the state before (he coached at Iowa State in the 90s) and he might be had for a bargain price as he seeks to creep out of the shadow of the O.J. Mayo scandal.

The University of Northern Iowa Panthers were the one team from the state to make the tournament.  If UNI can get past UNLV in the first round, they’d likely face the hated Kansas Jayhawks in the second round.  Although my team is Iowa State, not UNI, I’d cheer wildly for the Panthers to take down Kansas.

In the women’s tourney, Iowa State, Iowa, and UNI all made the tournament.  Iowa State is a 4 seed and will face Lehigh in the first round.  8 seed Iowa will face Rutgers, led by former Iowa coach (and Hall of Famer) C. Vivian Stringer.  The UNI team surged to an unexpected win in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. Their reward – to be fed to the 30-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers.

NCAA Tournament

I’ll spend just a bit of time on the NCAA tournament.  My tournament bracket features Syracuse over Wisconsin in the title game, with Kansas and Duke also making it into the Final Four.  The odds of me nailing these picks is about as good as me getting struck by lightning.  I enjoy watching college basketball, but I’m hardly an expert.

Baylor is a 3 seed – this is a great testament to coach Scott Drew.  As I mentioned in last year’s article about Drew, this is a guy who had a complete uphill climb when he took over the Baylor program after former coach Dave Bliss left in disgrace.

I have Minnesota picked to get to the Sweet 16 largely because of their romp against Purdue in the semifinals of the Big 10 tournament.  Yes, they got killed by Ohio State in the tournament championship,  Yes, Purdue was playing without star Robbie Hummel.  Still, a Purdue team without Hummel is still a solid team, and such a decisive win cannot be completely ignore.

As is my custom, I picked three 12 seeds to advance (Cornell, Utah State, UTEP).  The lowest seed I have picked to win are the 13 seed Murray State Racers.  I have Murray State picked to upend 4 seed Vanderbilt in the first round and the aforementioned 12 seed UTEP in the second round to advance into the sweet 16.

My heart goes out to fans of Mississippi State.  They had the SEC title game – and the accompanying automatic bid to the NCAA tournament – seemingly locked up.  Then Kentucky’s DeMarcus Cousins hit a last second shot to send the game into overtime, and Kentucky escaped with the overtime win – and Mississippi State was left out of the tournament.

I’ll start the rallying cry – reduce the tournament back down to 64 games.  While having 65 teams in the tournament allows an mediocre team from a power conference to slide into an 11 or 12 seed, it looks just plain stupid on the sheet.  64 is enough.  If a bubble team gets left off, too bad.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

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