Slackerdom, Netflix and college football

Well, I am officially a slacker today as I skipped running in the race and also the cyclocross bike race too. I just didn't want to get all my stuff together to wear and then have to drive all the way out to Dorsett when I was just out there last night. It is about a 45 minute trip with moderate traffic. The cyclocross races are actually kind of cool to watch and I may try my hand at them at some point in the future. I think I should try them when I don't have a major race coming up in a few weeks and there is no pressure. There is a huge platform you have to carry your bike up with about 8-10 steps up and then ride off the top of and the potential for injury looks high for those without any experience. Basically I just don't want to get injured with the honolulu marathon coming up in three weeks. The weather did improve today and it was probably mid 50's temperature wise during the afternoon when the sun was out, so, in that sense I am sorry I missed the race. I could have done the running race though but kind of felt like running more than 3 hard miles. As of this moment though I haven't done anything today to work out so I am officially a Sunday slacker.

In a related development, while I was out at the cyclocross race last night I met up with a woman who was selling a bike travel case and now have myself my very own piece of equipment to tow my bike anywhere in the world either on an airline or through UPS etc. Truly exciting huh? I started looking for them once I had booked my Ironman competition for next October in Florida and finally found one on Craiglist yesterday. The guy selling it called me and said his wife was going to be at the race so I met her there and bought it.

I checked out the New York Times website and read an interesting article about the Netflix service offer to pay 1 million dollars to anyone who can improve their movie recommendation service by at least 10%. Here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?scp=2&sq=netflix&st=cse

I remember when they announced this competition and thought it was a cool idea and cheap way for the company to outsource a key component of their R&D for little to no upfront cost with some free publicity. Basically a win-win for everyone and an astute move by the management. Then, I heard nothing about it for probably a year until I was perusing the New York Times today. I was a previous customer of Netflix but dropped it about 4-5 months ago after a month in which I just got too busy with my tivo shows to watch more than 2-3 discs over a 3-4 week period. I realized I could have bought the discs for the price of the monthly subscription so decided to drop it. However, I am still a big fan of the company and continue to think the best thing they had going for them was the software program that would take your viewing habits and movie ratings and then suggest other stuff to rent and this competition was about trying to improve that process. I was amazed at how Netflix could come up with movies I had never heard of to recommend that I ended up liking. Although it was not always successful, it probably approached 70% or so accuracy based on my likes/dislikes, though it may have helped that I reviewed and rated an inordinate amount of movies for them. Anyway, the article was quite lengthy but really fascinating for a movie aficionado like myself as it seems like a handful of movies are so polarizing that they will skew the results of the competition tremendously with people evidencing either a love or hate relationship to particular movies that is quite difficult to predict. This I found fascinating since one of the major movie stumbling blocks is Napolean Dynamite which if the programmers could figure out how to accurately predict, would itself lead them 15% of the way toward the prize. Apparently the programs these guys are developing find it difficult to predict who will love and who will hate this movie which is apparently the two most common reactions to Napolean. Really? Napolean Dynamite not something with a political slant like Rendition or Lions for Lambs? Here is a list of some other movie that the programmers have found difficult to predict: “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.” I haven't seen the Huckabees movie or Fahrenheit 9/11 but I doubt I would like either. The Life aquatic and Sideways were ok but not something I would watch again unless I was seriously bored. I enjoyed Kill Bill and Napolean Dynamite but the list seems odd to me and had me wondering what else was on the list of the 25 most polarizing movies on Netflix as referenced in the story. Any thoughts? I will try and ponder this and may come up with my own list before I go looking to track down the actual results from Netflix.

While at the race last night I was talking to a friend from the triathlon club and she mentioned the OU Texas Tech game and my thoughts immediately ran to Cara's friend Ashley and wondering if she was watching the game with Cara. I find Ashley's blog the best source of info on what my sister is up to on a regular basis and she and her husband both went to Texas Tech and are rapid fans of the Red Raiders having mentioned the team on occasion on her blog. Since both my sisters and I went to Mizzou I suppose you could say we were Mizzou fans if pressed, but I don't think any of us are "rabid" fans and I wonder if any of us actually went to a football game during college. I know I didn't and I think Emily mentioned a similar experience. Cara I don't recall specifically but she may have attended a game while at Florida State but Mizzou I don't know--maybe one or two. Still, it is nice to see our alma mater among the top 10 teams in the nation last season and again this year and I suspect if the football team was this good while we were in Columbia we all would have attended at least some of the games. Unfortunately the Red Raiders had a bad night and OU wound of winning pretty handily though it sounds like Cara, Ashley and their friends had a fun evening anyway per Ashley's latest blog post with a visit to the Cheesecake factory before the end of the game.