Ben’s Blog

This weekend Ole Miss won the SEC baseball tournament by winning four straight games against Arkansas, LSU, Alabama, and Vanderbilt. It’s the first time they’ve won the tournament in twenty-nine years. The beat their opponents by a combined score of 39 to 10. It’s an impressive feat, especially considering the strength of the conference this year. The Clarion-Ledger has a good article about it. It reads like it was written by the Ole Miss PR department. It’s hard not to be impressed. :)

Ole Miss also found out yesterday that they would be hosting a regional for the third year in a row. The Oxford regional will include Tulane, South Alabama, and Bethune-Cookman in addition to Ole Miss. It’s not a very impressive field. Tulane is the only team with an off chance of upsetting Ole Miss. It is baseball though, and anything could happen. If Ole Miss were to win its regional, they would meet the winner of the Nebraska regional. It includes Nebraska, Miami, San Francisco, and Manhattan. The entire bracket can be found here.

There are some interesting Ole Miss baseball-related videos on YouTube. The best one is of Arkansas’s catcher getting thrown out of the game a couple of weeks ago. It’s highly amusing. There’s also one of Zach Cozart hitting the game winning homerun against Memphis. There are some more, just search for them.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Tampa on business. I enjoyed myself and ate very well.

The first night we ate at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in downtown Tampa. I had the filet mignon. It was good, but not great. Given the price tag, I’ll probably never eat at another Ruth’s Chris without good reason. I’ve had better filet mignons for much less. The second night we ate at Island Way Grill. It’s a nice seafood restaurant owned by Buccaneers fullback Mike Alstott just off the coast of Clearwater on a small island. I had the Mahi Mahi, which was very good. I would definitely go back.

I took several pictures on our flight from Memphis to Tampa. I have posted the best ones on Flickr.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve got a few in the works, so stay tuned.

Tonight I was making an order through Amazon, and they offered me a free three-month trial of Amazon Prime. With Prime I get free two-day delivery and overnight delivery for only $3.99. Normally it’s $79 a year to enroll in Prime, and I’ll be “upgraded” for that price if I don’t cancel by the end of the trial. I’ve already put a reminder in my Treo. :) It will be very nice having Prime, but I don’t think it’s going to be worth $79 a year to me. Of course, Amazon is betting otherwise.

In the past, I’ve always waited until I had a least $25 worth of books before making an order (for the free shipping). If I needed something right away, I’d find another item to get the total up to $25. So, Amazon might actually lose money on me by giving me this trial. Doubtful, but possible.

After signing up for the Prime trial, I noticed something odd. If I had the books shipped to my apartment, the projected delivery date was three to four days further out than if I had them shipped to work. My apartment and work are in the same ZIP code, so I’d like to hear an explanation for that one.

Earlier this week, just about every media outlet covered a report that says the US has a high death rate among newborns. That seemed fishy to me, but I accepted it as the truth and went on with my day. Today I ran up on this. Someone has spent quite a bit of time debunking the report. Essentially, it comes down to a difference in how countries report births. As far as I’m concerned, the statistics are basically useless until all countries report births the same way.