Fezmid

The problem is how do you know who you're supposed to pay and who you aren't? Many of the things they do are free - in fact, when have they been asked to do something specific ("have the owner call a driver to move the beds for you") and have to pay for it? I think the "70's show mom" had a good point: If he didn't ask to be paid, it's a good assumption that CBS paid them. That said, it would've been better to CONFIRM that, but in the heat of the moment I can see how that would be missed. I don't have a problem with it in this case either -- but I still have a problem with the "give all of your money to the orphanage" sign that they put on the table and that moved around all the time.

Trying to give it a chance? You're not a fan? I really like it (haven't seen the two part Halloween episode yet).

Friendly reminder.

Yes, I'm purely referring to stock price.

76.58 -42.26 (-35.56%) 8:53AM EDT That's the line of a classic over-reaction and I'd liken it to when BP had the oil spill in the Gulf and lost 50% of it's value practically overnight. But time will tell.

Classic over-reaction. Probably a good time to buy.

+1 RIP Pioneer Kuro Elite plasmas

Partially true, but not totally. Yes, you shouldn't use your debit card. While you're not liable for fraud with either a debit or credit card (except for the first $50 - which most banks ignore), the problem is that money is taken directly from your account and if you live paycheck to paycheck, even an honest mistake (like a vendor double billing you) could end up causing a chain reaction of negative issues (ie: failing to make your mortgage payment on time). It's always better to play with someone else's money (credit card) than your own, as long as you have the discipline to pay it off at the end of the month.

Aren't birthdays considered public record.....?

The first week always has issues because they let everyone with DirecTV access it for free. There's just too many users for the capacity they have, so it usually sucks. The only way it'll get better is if they don't let everyone have it for free during the first week.

This seemed like a good time to use my newly created NFL data warehouse to see what history tells us (473,000+ plays from 2000-2010 for the entire NFL). (see this thread for background: http://forums.twobil...ata-xml-format/ ) I ran the query to see how often a team runs vs. throws on 1st down, inside the 30 yard line, in a tie game, with 5 or less minutes left in the game. Turns out there have been 1,817 plays run in this situation. Of those plays, teams ran the ball 1,038 times, or 57.1% of the time. I then decided to look at how often teams go for a TD in that situation. Since 2006 (the time I have stats on whether the ball was thrown short or deep), there were 812 plays that fit the above specification, and only 47 of them were deep passes -- in other words, since 2006, teams have run a deep pass to the endzone only 5.8% of the time in that situation... And only 13 of those 47 passes ended up in a touchdown. So it looks like the NFL as a whole would prefer to run the ball or do short controlled passes to drain the clock in this type of situation. Doesn't make it right or wrong, just shows what the common logic is in that situation. (and it's easy to argue that the Giants wouldn't be expecting that type of play so it was a good call; I disagree, but it can go either way). EDIT: Hang on, looks like I forgot to filter on 4th quarter... Let me re-run the numbers... Ok, there were only 241 instances that fit the above, and of those 168 were runs (69.7%). Only 1 (since 2006) was a deep pass -- New England vs Indy in 2006, incomplete to Gaffney. PLAY_DESC YEAR WEEK AWAY HOME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (4:39) T.Brady pass incomplete deep right to J.Gaffney. 2006 20 NE IND What's weird is that Buffalo has faced this situation 11 times since 2000, has knelt the ball once and has only passed the ball twice. PLAY_DESC YEAR WEEK AWAY HOME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (:50) An.Smith up the middle to TEN 20 for no gain (J.Thornton). 2000 1 TEN BUF (:45) D.Flutie pass to S.Morris pushed ob at NYJ 19 for 9 yards (R.Mickens). 2000 9 NYJ BUF (:32) D.Flutie to NYJ 16 for -2 yards. QB kneels 2000 9 NYJ BUF (1:31) D.Bledsoe pass incomplete to E.Moulds. 2002 4 CHI BUF (4:49) T.Henry right guard to HOU 26 for 4 yards (J.Foreman, J.Sharper). 2002 6 BUF HOU (1:01) T.Henry right tackle for 26 yards, TOUCHDOWN. 2002 15 SD BUF (3:54) W.McGahee left end to CIN 14 for 3 yards (I.Ohalete). 2005 16 BUF CIN (2:00) W.McGahee left guard to CIN 5 for 2 yards (K.Kaesviharn; J.Thornton). 2005 16 BUF CIN (:10) J.Losman right guard to JAC 24 for no gain (M.Stroud). 2006 12 JAC BUF (1:54) A.Thomas right guard to MIA 25 for no gain (D.Pope). 2007 10 BUF MIA (:39) F.Jackson right tackle to NYJ 28 for -2 yards (S.Pouha, D.Harris). 2009 6 BUF NYJ 11 rows selected. Ok, enough of my database; I present my final project on Wednesday so I've been going a little stat crazy the past week or two.

You're assuming Freddy wouldn't be able to get a first?

Right, we should've scored a TD against the Patriots as well, huh?

He was actually in on at least a couple of plays yesterday...

Nothing for me to add, everyone beat me to it.

There's a difference between going for the FG and just slowing the game down. In the chat room, we were all saying the Bills needed to slow things down; it would've been a 44 yarder from that spot, well within FG range. Why go for the TD on the very next play? Do a short pass or a run to run some clock and force the Giants to use a timeout. Maybe do that twice. Scoring a TD with all that time left wasn't a good idea, IMHO, even if it was a score.

Personally, I LOVE Citibank. They recently changed their fees, so now you have to have an average balance of $10k/month so that kinda sucks but everyone's doing things like that. EFT between banks is a breeze, Billpay is awesome and free, and the service I've received is great. I haven't used their ATM card at all, and the only reason I still have a second bank is because there are no local branches here -- YMMV. Their Billpay service is wonderful and they guarantee the recipient will get paid or they go to bat for you. I had an issue a few years ago where I paid my homeowner's association with Billpay. I then received a letter from the HOA saying I was late and had to pay penalties, etc. I called them up, told them I paid it and the day it was deposited, but they insisted I didn't pay it and wouldn't help me out at all! So I went to the Citibank website, filled out a quick form explaining the situation, and within a couple of days Citibank had sent a nasty letter to the HOA (and sent me a copy as well), basically saying, "We paid this, it was deposited on this day, into this bank account, with this signature. You better mark his account as paid in full and remove any late fees or we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law." The next day I received a phone call from the HOA apologizing and telling me that they accidentally credited someone else's account with my payment. :angry: Who knows how long I would've had to fight that one on my own? Been a HUGE fan ever since.

If it's on the bill, can you ask them to remove it? When we were in London years ago, everyplace we went had a 10% tip added with the comment that if we didn't want to pay that part, they could remove it. That said, 25% seems ridiculous to me in 95% of the cases.

Here's a review I wrote of the new Sorcerer's Lair pinball table for Pinball FX2: http://www.neowin.net/news/review-sorcerers-lair-for-pinball-fx2-on-xbla And here's the giveaway: http://www.neowin.net/news/neowin-giveaway-sorcerers-lair-for-xbox-360 Follow the directions and you could win. Two winners, and so far only 35 entries via the forum and only about 15 entries via Twitter. Contest runs through Sunday night.

Initially that's how I wanted to get my data -- parse through the PBP logs of NFL.com. However what they publish on their site isn't in any sort of standard, so parsing would be very difficult and rife with errors. I have a decent data set now though -- can't wait to play with it.

Well, the NFL sent me a season of data in XML for the Panthers... Unfortunately they just sent it a couple of days ago so I didn't have time to use it in my project. The good news is that I used the data from ArmChairAnalysis.com and was able to get my data warehouse up and running with data from every game back to the year 2000! Now to come up with cool queries for it. For example, did you know that since 2000, the Bills have run the ball 55.28% of the time on the first play of a drive? However if you only take home games into account, that number rises to 58.09%, and is only 53.61% on the road. I guess I would've thought they'd run the ball more on the road to start a drive, but I guess not. I can't wait to play around with this data. I have 473,621 plays in this database across 2,921 games!

I snuck up behind the Eagles' DL and pinched his butt to make him jump. Anything to help the team win. I was so ninja-like though that I doubt you could see me on the TV.

That's what I said to a Vikes friend of mine. He countered that the Vikings bit on it in week 1 and lost because of it.

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Does that mean Urbik is playing?