DaveBarousse.com

I ran across an article today on Yahoo! Sports and got a good laugh. It surfaced due to the LSU vs. Ohio State National Championship Game earlier this week.

Link: http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news?slug=ap-bcs-contentiousgames&prov=ap&type=lgns

Here is a little background info on why I enjoy this story so much. Eric Andolsek became a relative of mine by a marriage between one of my family members and one of his family members. Growing up, he was always a hero of mine, even though he was the biggest person I had ever seen. Eric was also one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet (off the field).

If you read the story all the way through, you’ll see some of the more interesting stuff at the end. After the Andolsek/Spielman coin toss scuffle, they were both drafted by the Detroit Lions after college and became best friends and roommates. Their friendship ended with Spielman giving the eulogy at Eric’s funeral. Eric was only 25 years old when he died.

Congrats to the LSU Tigers, the 2007 National Champions! What a fun and exciting season.

I am writing this roughly three hours prior to kickoff of the 2008 BCS National Championship game and I can hardly stand it anymore. It’s time to get this game started!

Luckily for LSU fans, the game was previously scheduled to be played in New Orleans before the teams were selected. This means that the game is taking place about an hour away from my home town. Unfortunately for me, I am not currently down there and am not able to partake in the game festivities. I wish I was in New Orleans today eating some great food and “Tigerbaiting” some Ohio State fans.

The Dome is going to be rocking tonight and hopefully the Tigers will be leaving with a victory and another BCS National Championship. It should be a great game. Geaux Tigers!

Update:

My Mom and her husband were lucky enough to get tickets to the big game tonight, so they have been having a great weekend down in New Orleans. I got a call from her this morning saying that they were riding around the French Quarter in a fire truck that is sort of a mascot for my step father’s family’s Ford Dealership. Later in the day, I found some images of their crew that some random person took in New Orleans and posted on the internet. Looks like they are having a great time.

According to my mom (who has been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans a ton and many LSU games), New Orleans is CRAZY right now. Man, I wish I was down there!

Update:

30 minutes until pre-game starts! Game time is near.

Update:

One more commercial break before kick off. I’m about to explode! LSU won the coin toss and will kick off.

Update:

Start of the 4th quarter and LSU is winning 31-17. Only a few minutes left and my voice is almost gone.

This will most likely be my last post for 2007 as I will be traveling the remainder of the year. I am really looking forward to 2008, especially the New Years day College Football Bowl Games leading up to the BCS National Championship game in which my LSU Tigers will be playing in. It should be a great start to what is already looking to be a very exciting new year. As for the rest of 2007, it should also be quite exciting.

My wife and I will be spending Christmas in Breckenridge, Colorado at Beaver Run. We will be meeting up with some of my wife’s family to do some snowboarding and other random snow activities. We will definitely be having a white Christmas this year. Unfortunately, we haven’t had much of the white stuff in Oregon yet this winter to get back on the boards before heading up to Colorado, but it shouldn’t be a problem. We missed opening day at our local mountain, but luckily for them, Dave and Tiffany took advantage. It looks like it was a great first day.

Once we get back from Colorado, we’ll have a little less than 12 hours to get ready for a total change of scenery as we’ll be heading down to Tampa, FL with Joe and Jessica for some business and pleasure. It should be a great trip and it will be nice to get some sun and hang out on the beach a little. I am really looking forward to going to Tampa for the first time and metting up with an old friend.

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you that I will not talk to until we get home from our travels. I hope you all have a great holiday season and new year. Geaux Tigers!

Until next year………

Random Access Memory (RAM) - The physical memory used to store data while a computer is operating.

Thanks to an awesome gift certificate given to me on my birthday by The Garstka’s and a memory sale at The Mac Store, I was able to add an extra 1 GB of RAM to my MacBook Pro for next to nothing.

Since adding the new memory, I have noticed a huge difference, especially when running Parallels. That makes me happy.

Finally, Michigan hired Rich Rodriguez as their next football coach. This should ultimately put to rest all of the speculation that Les Miles will be leaving LSU for Michigan after the National Championship game in January. At least I thought it would.

Even prior to Kirk Herbstreit’s sources telling him that Miles to Michigan was a done deal, the Mad Hatter said several times that he was not interested in the Michigan job and would be staying at LSU. Of course, that doesn’t mean much these days with football coaches leaving in the middle of the night to take a new job without even meeting with their teams to let them know. So it really wouldn’t have been a surprise to me if Miles did leave after saying he was going to stay. And it’s not like we haven’t had that happen before. Recall when Nick Saban left for the Miami Dolphins hiding behind the distractions of Christmas Day to make his announcement in Orlando, FL (not even in Baton Rouge) that he was leaving LSU.

I do think that Miles may still go to Michigan one day because eventually he will want to go back home. And I can’t imagine that Rodriguez will stay planted longer than a few years once a better offer comes around and he realizes that the spread offense doesn’t work well with big slow quarterbacks. I just hope that I do not have to hear any more about Miles going to Michigan any time soon, especially any more before the National Championship game.

From now until after January 7, 2008 all I want to hear about Miles is how he is preparing to hold up the Crystal Ball at the end of the game in front of Tiger Nation. It should sit nicely next to the 2003 BCS National Championship trophy.

My wife and I both reunited with old friends this week.

In my case, I have been knowing this particular friend for close to 20 years now and we sometimes lose touch for long periods of time. His parents lived in two different states, so when we were growing up, he was always going back and forth between his parent’s houses. After we finished high school and then college, we both moved away and haven’t done a very good job of staying in touch with each other.

One thing that I have always enjoyed about this friend is that even after not speaking to each other for long periods of time, once we do get back in touch with each other, we can pick up right where we left off. There is no weirdness or grudges, we just continue on as if we had been in touch the whole time.

With the technology available in communications today, there really is no reason to not stay in touch with your family and friends. Life is so much better when you surround yourself with great people that you enjoy. Plus, it is always great to reunite with old friends.

Homework:

Call,email or text at least 3 old friends or family members today. It only takes a second and you will make their day. Here is an example of a quick message you can send:

Hey [name],
I’m just writing to say hello. Hope all is well!

[your name]

As an added bonus, my friend is currently living in Tampa, FL and I am going there in two weeks, so we’ll get to hang out.

The dude is a triple threat!

He busts onto the scene doing the Robot and then mixes it all up. If you watch closely, I think there is a short type writer thrown in there. Then he drops it like it’s hot into a SPLIT for the grand finally! Oooooooh what what! I’m impressed.

After a long hiatus from the blog world, I have decided to start posting again. I’ve mostly used this blog for experimental purposes, but I would like to shift the focus to my personal life to highlight all of the fun stuff I’ve been doing. I really enjoy reading my friend’s blog post when they do fun stuff, so hopefully I can provide some of the same type of entertainment.

If you still have my feed in your feed reader, leave me a comment on this post to say “What up.” It will definitely be more motivating to post more often if I know I have a small audience. Word!

After another very exciting race, the indy 500 results are out and Dario Franchitti came out on top. Even though the race was cut 35 laps short of it’s traditional 200 laps, the competition was fierce and Franchitti emerged through fortunate pit strategy to beat Brisbane-born Kiwi racer Scott Dixon with Helio Castroneves third in the Team Penske Honda.

Click the following link to see additional 2007 Indianapolis 500 results.