Villanova beats Marquette

My Villanova Wildcats are playing really well right now – I hope they can continue it through the season and into the tournament.  Last night they beat Marquette which is particularly nice because my mom, dad, and one sister all went to Marquette as did a good friend of mine who calls me all the time to talk about hoops.

My buddy pointed me to a good VU Basketball Blog which I didn’t know about.  It is pretty good reading.  I have been relying on the VU Message Board which is all right but not great for VU hoops news.  The Rivals.com message forum format leaves a lot to be desired.

Villanova plays this Friday night at West Virginia.  This Friday night Big East game must be something new – Marquette played (and lost) to South Florida last Friday night.  It is on ESPN so I will get to see it.  I only got to see the second have last night as I was at a swim team meeting – yep, it is almost time for swim team to start again.

E4300 resolution?

I got word from our IT department last week that Dell is going to replace the motherboard in my E4300 sometime in the next couple weeks.  The rumored BIOS update that was supposed to be out on January 19th still hasn’t appeared.  The only thing that is making life with my E4300 palatable is that the connections problems seem to under control now that I reinstalled the Dell Connection manager software.  It still behaves oddly from time to time but at least it is mostly usable.

The one behavior which still drives me crazy is the unwillingness to turn off or go into Stand-By.  I can press the function key or use the Start Menu option but the computer simply remains powered on.  Sometimes it will go into Stand By only to turn itself right back on a minute to two later.  Very annoying when it happens while it is in my computer bag.

Finally got a round in!

The intersection of good weather and sufficient time in my schedule to get in a round of golf has been hard to come by.  We have some warmer than normal temperatures in the Raleigh area this week – it was almost 70 yesterday – and I was able to play yesterday.

I was supposed to play last Friday but the course was closed because it had been so cold all week that they didn’t want to take any chances.  I was bummed because I had rearranged my schedule so I could play.  Yesterday was nice but the wind really picked up after we had played 4-5 holes.  From that point on it was really windy.

I shot 96 which I wasn’t too unhappy with considering I hadn’t played since just before Christmas.  I hit the ball, particularly off the tee, really well.  My chipping really let me down, particularly on the back 9.  I just don’t have much confidence in my ability to execute a short (10-30 yards) wedge shot.  On the part 5 17th I hit a great tee shot followed by a very good 3 wood to leave myself 30 yards from the green for my third shot.  What do I do?  Duff the chip and hit it maybe 10 yards.  I do the same with my 4th shot.  I think get fairly close with my 5th and 2 putt for a double bogie.  30 yards from the green in two but take five more shots to get it in the hole.  I had a number of holes like that yesterday.

Still, it was good to get out and I am going to try and play again tomorrow although I may only be able to play nine holes due to my work schedule.  We’ll see.