New Phone

I got a new phone. If you knew me and have number, please txt or call me so I have your number still. If you don't want me to have your number, thats cool.

If you do not know me and want to know me?

6146782923

Yeah on.

More about the new Michigan

If you happened to read my earlier post you may have sensed that I am excited about the new Michigan. Here is some more of that excitement embodied in a blog post:

Michigan, along with some other select programs have a large base in the NFL. Sometimes those players in the NFL like to comeback to their schools to train as they compete with some of the best athletes in the world. Like perhaps, Miami, that has not been so with Michigan.

Until recently.

Espn posted a little article about my boy Barwis, the new strength and conditioning coach at Michigan. Here are some highlights of that article.

Barwis is amazing.
His workouts = pain.
People from all over the NFL and other colleges are coming to Ann Arbor for his workouts.

A cult like following is developing over Barwis, many people are in awe of him. He is a beast and can motivate even NFL athletes like Braylon Edwards to rent apartments in Ann Arbor to die slowly in his workouts. In fact, many graduates from West Virginia are also spending time in Ann Arbor. Espn even compares Ann Arbor to Miami, as in athletes from the NFL will come there over the summer to train. Not that Ann Arbor has nice beaches with scantily clad women.

In an interview, here and here some espn dude gets to bask in the rays of awesome that escape Barwis' grasp.

Mike talks about Michigan's old strength and conditioning program, which was pretty dated and consisted of buying 20 bow-flexes and putting the athletes on them. Meaning Michigan's old motto was, we will use our mountainous tradition, to recruit athletes, make them huge and slow, and try to beat you. (Which is pretty shocking considering how successful the program was)

Instead Barwis plans on doing the same, except the slow part, instead they will be scary fast. In the second interview Barwis talks of Freshman recruit who cut off 12% of his weight, probably fat. Put on 19 pounds of muscle and increased his bench 48%......scary.

Additionally Barwis plans to make even the big guys run, and run a lot. This is good, for Rich Rod's scheme which includes, running around a lot. This will mean complex and quick blocking schemes, with fast and strong blockers. (Michigan just received a a 270 pound lineman who ran the 115 hurdles faster than I did in high school, not an incredibly high bar, but still, dood, he a lineman).

I am most happy with what Barwis' workouts will do with Michigan's recruiting. Not that Michigan had problems recruiting great athletes. But if some kid comes to Ann Arbor considering Michigan as a possible school, then they see Steve Slaton or Braylon Edwards training there. And then during the NFL season they see Braylon embarrass Cincinnati's defense (another relatively easy task, but still). They may decide to go there.

Conversely, if some wuss sees Braylon getting destroyed by Barwis, he may stay away. Ahem**Zach Boren**Ahem.

Why Michigan will Dominate Again

In a year or two. In a year or two or so. Yeah, that should be in the title.

Today I wore a Michigan shirt to OSU to really no repercussions. Why? Because they are smug. Five to six years ago this would have been an anomaly. Why did OSU fans hate Michigan so much, even more so than can be found vice versa? Fear, as Yoda once showed us leads to hatred. But OSU just graduated a class who never witnessed their defeat in the Game, something that has never happened. There is not more fear.

Really, every Michigan fan would be silly to think that Ohio State is going to go away. Jim Tressel is a jerk. And their next recruiting class is looking to be pretty beastly, as if last year was no enough.

But it seems, by some sort of chance, that Michigan is transforming into the team that Ohio State will not be able to beat. Although we lost TP, there, are, more, where he came from.

If you know anything about college football you may be aware of Rich Rod's work. People think he specializes in the spread offense, more precisely he specializes in athletes. You see, at West Virginia, Rod never laid hands on a generally accepted 4 star recruit. Yet he made a team able to defeat the mighty, mighty Sooners.

How does he do this? His name is Mike Barwis, and he is replacing the ancient 30 year incumbent athletic trainer at Michigan. Barwis' method's are becoming legendary. And while I won't go into detail, I do know that his workouts scare away lazy, fat, off-season training skipping linemen. Mike Barwis is considered one of the best strength and conditioning coaches in the country. His goal? Whip the athletes that Michigan has recruited into stronger, better speed demons. And he has done this well. If he and Rich transformed a 3 star receiver into a 5 star quarterback at WVU, then imagine what they will be able to do with the much better athletes coming into Michigan. Already, last year Rich Rod has recruited double digit 4 star recruits.

Basically what I am saying is: If Rich can transform lead into gold, imagine what he can do with silver?

The Big Ten supposedly has problem with speed, especially that of the southern kind. But really it is only OSU that has the problem. While Michigan is 8-2 vs the SEC since 1991, OSU is 0-7. Now I do not exactly buy the whole southern speed thing advantage. Even though Harmon is a lot faster than Hart, it did not matter, Michigan was still able to smack around Florida with the same slow players that could not catch App State.

You know who did look fast last year, though? West Virginia, because of that dude, Mike Barwis, and now he is at Michigan. See where I am going? Already there have been stories from Michigan's line all the way to their receivers of the transformations their bodies are going through. Michigan's athletic department has completely revamped their facilities to Barwis' needs. And Rodriguez has already begun recruiting the guys for next year he will need to put some moves on the Big Ten.

Cannot wait.

WHYSOSERIOUS?

If you have see I Am Legend (good movie by the way), then you saw perhaps, to me, the best part of that film, the Dark Knight Trailer. The viral campaign that I had highlighted earlier has continued and things are just looking better and better. Here are a couple of websites, that show what's going on. Plus a nice trailer, and some very cool posters. If you will notice "A taste for the theatrical," is what then captain Gordon said Batman and the Joker have in common at the end of Batman Begins.

The trailer shown in the normal theaters was cool. However it is not as informative (or as spoilerific) as the one shown at Imax theaters during the initial premier. It can be found here.

Overall the movie is looking to turn out very good. Heath Ledger seems to be a very good Joker and he looks to capture his essence very well. I am extremely excited, in ways I never thought before possible, by this simple movie. Cannot wait till July of 2008 (which is the month I am no longer a teenager by the way).

The viral campaign and the trailer show a couple of things. First off Gotham is involved in a three or four way war. The freaks (represented by the Joker) vs. The Mob vs. Order (represented by Batman and the law). As mentioned at the end of the last movie and the beginning of the trailer, things have changed. The escalation has begun and as Batman uses fear to force order, Joker will use his twisted version of fear to force anarchy. In the trailer you see that Joker robs the mobs money. Also you can tell that Joker drives some kind of wedge between Gotham and Batman, I am really excited.

Also there is, an overlooked villain, two face, who I am not entirely sure will have a place in this movie. Harvey Dent is two face, a district Attorney who like Batman seeks to bring about order to Gotham. His mind however is ruined in his battle against the mob, and he becomes two face.

All in all, and very, very, very excited.

Google

Today was the day, nine years ago that Sergery Brin and Larry Page (Michigan Alumnus!!!!!) recieved a $100,000 check to start one of the most powerful internet companies, Google. Larry and Sergery invented a revolutionary way to search for information using backlinks, this checked the links that referenced to certain sites and ranked webpages in that manner.

The check was written by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and using this money they were able to raise $1 million to create Google inc. Now Google is a powerhouse on the internet and they keep other monsters like Microsoft and Yahoo on their heals. Chances are you use Google, a lot, and even if you do not, the websites you use, use Google. For example Multiply makes its money with the ads on the webpages brokered by Google. And Blogger is owned by Google, as is Youtube. Google is valued now at around $160 billion (wow and Yahoo could have bought it 7 years ago for a measly $2 billion) and is the best place to work supposedly.

Far way to go in less than 10 years, eh?

Interesting

If someone dropped a wallet full of $11 million and you spent it, then the owner found you, would you think it okay if they asked for their money back? Well this is the type of scenario that has occurred with Victor Oils and his girlfriend Gail Shields.

It seems old Victor had a situation where his bank, the Westpac Bank accidentally topped up his checking account with money from his business account. Well Victor kept on righting his checks, even though his account should have overdrawn.

Due to an error of the bank, over three years Victor was able to write checks, when in reality he had no money. At first he wrote small checks, but the story reports that he was able to write much larger checks with time.

Well Westpac Bank has taken Victor to court because this error may ruin their finances, because Victor has refused to pay the money back. Victor claims that it is not his fault the bank made the error. I am no fan of banks and their fees, but I definitely feels Victor is the wrong here, he should have obviously realized after 3 years that the money was not his.

What do you think?

BTW my phone will not work till late Thursday, so do not waste your txts, just e-mail me, sorry if you txted me today.

Frivolous
Frivolous lawsuits are an interesting thing. And they are very annoying. However, there is a point to them and a balance must be made.

Here is one outrageous example that I want to report on. You may have already heard of it.

Judge Pearson's only wanted to get his pants cleaned, however the Chung's neirghboorhood cleaners could not do even that. They lost the Judge's pants. Well thats not good, surely the cleaners will pay for the pants and the money Pearson paid for the cleaning. Well the good Judge sued. Perhaps the pants were armani, at most Pearson could desire 1 or 10 grand?

$54 million is how much Pearson sued for in the case, with no settlement or any other bargains. Before the the case had even been decided, the Chungs were devastated. To pay for the legal fees alone the Chungs would be ruined.

Fortunately for the Chungs, they had won the case, and they also later found the pants, unfortunately for the Chungs, this process alone cost them $100,000. Unfortunately for Pearsons, he may lose his job. And this is unfortunate for the Chungs because Pearson will probably not be able to help them with the legal fees.