Politics.NET

The Washington Wizards are a bad team. That's a fact. The numbers bear it out. That's not even news. But what surprised me was a blog by the team's owner Ted Leonsis . Ted writes a blog called Ted's Take where he opines on a lot of things. I don't usually read it but I read what he wrote following the Wizards' loss to the Atlanta Hawks (the 4th loss to that team this season). He wrote: Another Winnable Game We just can’t close out tight games to get a win. That has been the biggest disappointment to me this season so far. We are simply losing too many winnable games.  We lost last night in over time – again – to the Hawks. You can read the rest yourself here .  But what struck me was the fact that Ted actually thinks the Wizards have anything resembling a "winnable game" on their schedule. For the non-sports fan, a "winnable game" is a game where one team is so much better than the other that the conclusion is forgone. For example, B...

When it comes to Costco vs BJ's, I have always thought they were about the same. And since I lived just 5 minutes away from a Costco at my old house, I've had a Costco membership for the past 7 years. But we moved recently , and Costco was no longer a hop, skip and jump away. In fact, it's about a 15 minutes drive away. So we decided to try BJ's after a couple of their coupons arrived in our mailbox. This is my review of the shopping experience at BJ's. Put simply, shopping at BJ's is chaotic, confusing and stress-inducing. Why? Let me list the ways: first you have to present your coupons to the cashier at checkout. Now if you've never shopped at Costco, you might wonder why is that a big deal. The big deal is that Costco doesn't do this! If an item has a coupon, the coupon is automatically applied at checkout. Apart from feeling that company is working with you to save money, that should also speed up the check out process. Especially when you conside...

These days, I think one has to really work hard to fall for phishing schemes that spoof legitimate websites. Especially if you use a good browser. In terms of content, this is one of the best I've seen and even it is exposed at least 2 times before anyone can fall for it: First by Microsoft Hotmail (yes I use hotmail) Second by Google Chrome (you should be using Chrome )

After several months of house hunting , we've finally found a house. However closing isn't for a few weeks from now. Which is great because it gives us more time to find a renter for our current house. But boy, does the process suck! A little known trick when renting or selling your house is that it must be staged for potential renters/buyers. That means all those things that makes your house your house... all the pictures, the paintings, the mementos...they all have to come down. Into boxes. Boxes that you stack up in the basement because there's nowhere else to put them. And that's not the worst of it. You have the daily showing appointments which can come any time * (especially on weekdays). So every morning, the entire house must be in "fighting form" i.e. all beds made well enough to make a drill master happy all towels hidden away in closets all counter tops, sinks and showers wiped clean of water with microfiber cloth all microfiber clothes stow...

A couple of times, people have accused me of writing really long blog posts. While I know that I have written some long ones , I think a blog ought to be more than a tweet or a facebook status update. This has been a problem for me because sometimes I want to write about a topic but I either can't quite write enough about it to justify making it a blog post or I just don't have the time to flesh out all my thoughts. So my blogger dashboard is littered with several unfinished blog posts that I started but didn't finished. For example, I had some really strong opinions on the Trayvon Martin case (back before Zimmerman was arrested). Mostly it was about how the case resonated with minority males (especially fathers) in a way in which non-minorities can't fathom. Not because they are insensitive but because they just can't do it. It's like expecting a 3rd world military dictator to understand the US Constitution. Oh yeah, where was I? Right, about writing really l...

A little over a year ago, I wrote about why I left Aquilent . Funny that I am now writing about why I left the federal govt (don't click that link!). Anyway, as before, I wrote the bulk of this post a few weeks ago. Enjoy! Shortly before thanksgiving 2010, I started looking a new job. For fun, I decided to try USAJobs just to see what kind of government jobs were out there. I say for fun because I really didn't have any burning desire to be a federal govt employee. I mean who wants to take the jokes (my favorite is why are govt employees not allowed to look out the window in the morning? Answer: Because they won't have anything to do all afternoon!) and the low pay. Anyway, I found one that looked promising, applied for it with no strong hopes of getting the job. As you can guess from the title of this post, I got an interview and got the job. I took the job because I was no longer interested in doing what I was at the time; the other company I applied to were draggi...

For the past couple of months we've been house hunting. We always knew this day was going to come even when we bought our house in 2005. However, we didn't figure on having twins, leaving us to have to accelerate our plans. So now we are in the market for a bigger house and have been looking and looking and looking with no success. Until you have kids and start planning for them to start school, you never really think of school quality. I mean everybody knows that PG County schools aren't the best but it's shocking how bad most of the schools are (especially middle and high schools). So we had to rule out PG county from the very start, leaving Howard and Montgomery countries. For example, it's common to see schools in those 2 counties to have a score of 10 out of 10 while 3 and 4 are the common scores for PG schools. Apart from the school issue, another trend I've noticed is that some people (a lot more than one would think) really don't put much effort in...

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