Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Ha ha ha

By Brendan Loy

Ha ha ha ha ha.

R.I.P., Madeleine L'Engle

By Brendan Loy

Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and the rest of the Time Quartet, has died. She was 88. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

I read the books in middle school, but to be honest, I don't recall much about them -- though I do remember liking them. And I remember how one of them was centered around "mitochondria and farandolae." When I subsequently learned that there actually are such things as mitochondria, I was fascinated... and disappointed that farandolae are fictional. :)

22 games in 14 weeks: a college football odyssey

By Brendan Loy

Remember my post about the ultimate college football roadtrip, detailing my hypothetical four-month itinerary of cross-country stadium-hopping? Well, USC football blogger Jonathan Tu is living the dream:

[M]y current odyssey [is] a 14 week, 25 state (plus District of Columbia!), 22 game (or so) road trip that will take me to stadiums involving all six BCS conferences and a number of mid-majors ... I revel in thy jealousy.

Dude. Revel away. I'm so jealous.

Rocky Top, here I come

By Brendan Loy

My first official job perk here in Knoxville: I totally just scored free tickets to tomorrow's Tennessee-Southern Miss game from one of the judges! Nice!! (And yes, I have permission from my judge to blog this. :)

For the iPhone cheapskates

By Jay Johnson

As most of you should know by now, Steve Jobs announced the price reduction of the iPhone down to $399 earlier this week, and the elimination of the 4GB model.

Well, if you're a cheapy-cheap, and want the tech but don't need the storage, the Apple Store (at least the online variety) is offering the 4GB iPhone for $299.

Big Orange Nation

By Brendan Loy

There is an inordinate number of people in downtown Knoxville this afternoon wearing orange. You think maybe there's a home football game tomorrow or something? :)

Cincinnati crushes Oregon State

By Brendan Loy

D'oh! Bearcats 34, Beavers 3: "As great a day as it was for the Pac-10 when Cal beat Tennessee last Saturday, this one was a big black eye for the conference."

So... 'twas a bad Thursday for the Pac-10. But what will Saturday bring? Assuming Cal, Arizona State, Arizona and Washington State hold serve (against Colorado State, Colorado, Northern Arizona and San Diego State, respectively), the big games tomorrow for the Pac-10 are Boise State at Washington (a reasonably close loss by the Huskies would suffice, for conference-pride purposes), BYU at UCLA (though you'll forgive me if I don't start up a chorus of "Goooo Bruins, Beeeeat Mormons"), and of course, the big game in the Big House, Oregon at Michigan.

Will the Wolverines circle the wagons, come out of the tunnel angry and eager, and start their long, slow climb back to respectability after the Appy State debacle? Or will they pull a Michigan State, curl up into a ball after a demoralizing loss and watch their season die? The Ducks (and the Domers, who play 'em next) would love it if it's the latter. Vegas, however, thinks it will be the former. Personally, I think the Curse of Bo Schembechler might be the tiebreaker. The Wolverines are 0-3 since the legendary coach died on the eve of the Ohio State game last year.

USC, by the way, is idle this week. Notre Dame, which doesn't want to hear anything about "0-3" right now, travels to Happy Valley to face Penn State at 6:00 PM EDT tomorrow. GOOOO IRISH, BEEEEAT JOE PA!

Incidentally, here's a handy list of nationally televised games (though if people would stop pretending that games on ESPNU, ESPN360, "the mtn." and the Big Ten Network are "televised," that would be great).

I shot my husband...

By Jay Johnson

and now I get to be on TV with Oprah!

Apple offers $100 credit to early iPhone suckers buyers

By Brendan Loy

Apple's announcement yesterday that it would slash the price of iPhones from $599 to $399 less than ten weeks after the gadget's much-hyped debut stirred angry cries of protest from early adopters who shelled out the extra $200 to buy the "Jesus phone" when it first hit store shelves in July. Many of them felt used, disrespected and ripped off. That's not a surprise. This is:

[W]e have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store.

Kudos to Apple for doing right by its most loyal customers. It's certainly true, as Steve Jobs says, that "there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever" (having bought my current PowerBook just before the MacBook Pro's debut, I know all about that), but this was a rather extreme case of that phenomenon, and a case in which there were an awful lot of "someones," many of them fanatical Apple fans... precisely the people the company doesn't want to piss off too badly. I think this offer of $100 -- even though it's only half the price difference, and even though it's store credit, not a cash rebate -- will go a long way toward softening the blow. If the comments on Macworld are any indication, it looks like most people are pretty happy.