It’s been almost a year since I upgraded Wordpress’ back-end.  I haven’t modified my custom theme since my blog uses the same theme as the rest of my site.  I’ll probably make a new theme this summer.

In the coming week I’ll do some short reviews of my recently-viewed Netflix movies.  Over the last few months I’ve seen 19 movies on DVD.  Some were repeats, some were inspired by Oscar nominations and some were older movies I found through Netflix’s suggestion service.

The fantasy baseball season began last week with a live draft through Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports site.  I think I ended up with a pretty solid team.  I consciously took some risks with younger players (James Shields, Evan Longoria, Jeff Francoeur) that have well-projected upsides combined with veteran keepers (Magglio Ordonez, Derrek Lee, Carlos Beltran).  I’ve also done a lot more research/fun reading over the past year on baseball statistics.  That includes reading some baseball analysis blogs: FJM, McCovey Chronicles and Sabernomics, reading Baseball Prospectus (subscriber for 1 year) and listening to ESPN podcasts.  I even did some analysis of the fantasy league I’m in with Helpdeskers using Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA statistics.  My pre-season team looks to be middle of the pack and Mahrens is my first week opponent.  My PECOTA analysis projects me to win 9-1, but you know statistics, “throw ‘em out the window” paraphrasing Joe Morgan.

Arsenal took a 1-0 lead against Chelsea with half an hour to.  And it’s a Sagna near-post header.  Almunia has been great in goal as well.  Chelsea responded in the 73′ with bullet from 15 yards by Drogba.  Drogba whipped in a second at the 80′ mark from 6 yards out.  It was a long free-kick pass and Drogba wasn’t even marked.  Arsenal end up losing and they drop to 3rd place in the table.  Manchester United beat Liverpool 3-0  earlier this morning, stretching their 1st place lead and Chelsea takes over 2nd.  The race to the finish should be quite intense.

The NCAA tournament has left my bracket in tatters. I knew Oregon probably wouldn’t win, but it was a homer pick.  My sleeper Final Four pick was Pittsburg (4) who didn’t even make the Sweet 16, losing to Michigan State last night.  Some of the Pac-10 games have been very watchable though, namely Stanford v Marquette and UCLA v Texas A & M.  Washington State blew Notre Dame out of the water, holding them to 41, even though most analysts predicted Notre Dame to win.  They had predicted Notre Dame would have a similarly stingy defense, but they must not have seen any Wazoo games this year.

Inspired by Marktopia, I’ve decided to list my iTunes artists. I didn’t go with the iPod since I’ve still got an old Nano. I shall be upgrading to an iPhone or an iPod touch this summer. The March 6 presentation really sold it for me with Exchange, Cisco IPSec VPN and SDK in the 2.0 Software Update due out in June. There’s the added excuse that I need to upgrade my iPod anyways, so why not go all the way.

Back to the list:

Air
Arcade Fire
Badly Drawn Boy
Barenaked Ladies
Beastie Boys
Beck
Bell Orchestre
Belle & Sebastian
Ben Folds
Bjork
The Black Keys
Bloc Party
Blur
Bright Eyes
Caribou
Christopher O’Riley
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Clash
Coldplay (insert Derek Jeter jokes here)
Cream
The Cure
Daft Punk
The Darkness
Dave Attell
David Bowie
David Cross
Death Cab for Cutie
The Decemberists
Dire Straits
ELO
Elton John
Explosions in the Sky
Final Fantasy
The Flaming Lips
Foo Fighters
Franz Ferdinand
George Harrison
Gorillaz
The Hives
Incubus
j.c. wilson (note the dots)
Jeff Buckley
Jeff Tweedy
Jim Gaffigan
John Williams
Journey
Katamari Damacy
The Killers
Lewis Black
Madvillain
Modest Mouse
My Bloody Valentine
My Morning Jacket
The National
OK Go
Panda Bear
Patti Smith
Pavement
Pixies
The Police
The Polyphonic Spree
The Postal Service
Public Enemy
R.E.M.
The Raconteurs
Radiohead
Rage Against the Machine
The Shins
Sigur Ros
The Smiths
Sonic Youth
Spoon
Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Sting
The Strokes
Sufjan Stevens
Supertramp
Talking Heads
Thom Yorke
Tom Petty
Traveling Wilburys
U2
Weezer
The White Stripes
Wilco
Wolf Parade