Andy was a formidable opponent and alas took Cullen down in Round 1, but Cullen promises to bounce back next round with a new set of moves!

….you get moments like these!

This past fall season I have added a few shows to my short list of TV programs that I give my precious time to. Added to the list (“Grey’s Anatomy”, “The Office”, “24″, and “How I Met Your Mother“) was the TV Show “V” and “Flash Forward“. The main plotline according to Wikipedia is that Flashforward centers around A mysterious event causes nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future—a global “flashforward.

In the show after the flash forward happens, FBI Special Agent Mark Bedford helps institute a website called the “Mosaic” in which people can submit their vision to a conglomerative database and try to piece together what the day will be in six months. This is the symbol for the “Mosaic”:

Google recently after the horrific Earthquake that rocked the nation of Haiti set up a “Person Finder” very similar to what the “Mosaic” is in FlashForward. Google can do a lot of things, but it’s to see them put something I watched on TV into real life and in a real applicable use.

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(Note: If the widget above does not appear in this post, please click this link)

*As most of you know I work at a predominately African American elementary school where it is about a 70% African American staff. My heart goes out to a lot of the teachers at that school who recently found out that Mr. Thorton, the long time Willowridge High School band director was found unconscious at his home this afternoon and later pronounced dead. Corrie and I fortunately got to meet this great person, who by all accounts was a great person,and a very positive role model for the students at Willowridge High School. This death comes on the heels of Dr. George Edwards, the Prarie View A&M band director who directed the ‘Marching Storm Band’ for three decades passing away in May.

*I am starting my annual Bowl Pick’em this weekend in preparation for the bowl season. If you would like to participate please email me at portier.john (at) gmail dot com. All participants would have to do is pick the games and set a confidence level for the games by assigning it a point value from 1 to 32 with 32 being the highest point value. An example of this can be found at this link (here)from last years contest.

*Tiger Woods is terrible. But is it too soon for jokes? Apparently according to the long time reputable website (/sarcasm) TMZ.com just posted that a 4th girl has come forth. So he is +4 for the course on marital fidelity, I guess he doesn’t make the cut this weekend.

*It snowed at school today! When I got home from school we got Cullen bundled up and took him out on a tour around the yard. He enjoyed the mess out of it! We’ll post pictures up on CullenPortier.com today or tomorrow to let people see our little snow angel!

Baby Cullen was in Victoria this weekend with his Grandmothers (both the great and the regular) which left Corrie and I free to enjoy the weekend, we made it out to see 2 different movies. On Saturday night we saw “The Blind Side”

Is it Similar? Definately! The book, entitled “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game” was written to talk about the evolution of the “left tackle” position. The book also deals with the life of Michael Oher, a tall stocky kid form the bad side of Memphis. I had gotten the chance to listen to most of the book using my Audible.com account, and much to my pleasure the movie follows the book as closely as time would allow.

How is the Acting? I will be absolutely honest that I had reservations having Sandra Bullock play a southern woman with an accent, but she pulled it off convincingly. The man who played Micheal Oher, Quinton Aaron, played the role more than convincingly and should be up for some sort of acting award for his work.

What about the action/gore/language? It should noted here that there is a good 10-15 minutes of football action in the movie, however this is not about him Michael winning at a game, but rather winning in life. That being said, football actually takes a back seat to the main story which was the Tuohy family and their interactions with “Big Mike.” I do need to warn you that the first 2-3 minutes is Sandra Bullock explaining in her southern accent how Lawrence Taylor and Joe Theisman changed the Left Tackle position in football, and that scene ends with the famous play that broke Joe Theisman’s leg.

Does the movie deliver? Absolutely, I am still excited from seeing it. I also root for the underdog, and this movie delivered that, peppered in some football, and made you think.

We recieved this quote from a friend this week. I kind of take pride in it!

“i told her that you guys are my role model for being the ultimate laid-back new parents.”
Is that not cool or what?

I totally ripped this from a forum post on Texags.com. This is how I have felt after each game this season.

UNM: We have turned a corner!

USU: New Mexico was awful, we might still suck…

UAB: Last week was an anomaly, we are for real!

Arkie: We will be lucky to go to a bowl…

OSU: We stepped it up. Our team will be fired up from here on out!

KSU: Fire every TAMU staff and faculty member, give up accreditation, put Reveille to sleep, disband Corps, live out our days in the wilderness.

Tech: DO I SMELL A BIG 12 CHAMPIONSHIP!?!?

I can tell you this weekend was a pretty cool weekend. Let’s hit the highlights and low lights.

-Deleware State: I know that you can never predict what those wild hornets of Delaware St. are going to do, but today I believe they formally set a record of 2 losses in one day.  The second-tier program got paid $550,000 to forfeit a Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference game against North Carolina A&T to give Michigan a tuneup. Since they forfeit their game against A&T and lost against Michigan today by 57 points, I would most definately call that a historical moment in college football.

-Texas/OU or Notre Dame/USC - Today’s story lines billed these two games to be absolutely amazing. Texas/OU was defensively sloppy as well and both starting quarterbacks were knocked out early (one literally and one figuratively). USC/Notre Dame came down to a last play, which would normally be a great thing, but didn’t the media want USC to be beaten by Notre Dame so that Clausen could be vaulted to a Heisman candidate? Ah, I love it!

-CBS vs. NBC - The S.E.C.  is almost exclusively on CBS, where as NBC has Notre Dame. Considering that the #1 and #2  teams in the nation are from that conference, I’d say that CBS was the better conference.

-Arkansas vs.  Florida-This was by far one of the best games of the day. I enjoyed every minute of it. Arkansas or Florida could of won that, but it just came down to time and then a field goal. Great game!

-A&M loses to Kansas St. – I’m sure the games not even over as I type this but the score is 59-0 right now with 10:00 min left in third quarter.  I sat through 77-0 vs. OU in 2003 and now I’m having flashbacks.

I’m not a homer, but I find everything that Google does pretty much awesome. Their new projects and new services keep me on the edge of what the tech elite use and get me all gitty when I get “invited” to use them.  In my web browser I like to pull down the different services that I use and create a quick bookmark by using the image link of each website. In my Bing  section Google section of my quicklinks I have six main services of Google that I use religiously. Let me recap my love the different services.

#1 Google Reader- This is service that I use to take the RSS feeds from all of my friends blogs and websites that support RSS syndication. I don’t go to my friends websites anymore, and that’s not because I don’t like to, it’s because I get the text and photos that you post in your blog in my Google Reader.

#2 Gmail – Ah, that lovable Email service that I switched from in 2004, perhaps my longest commitment in this Google marriage. I have 3 E-mails that I use pretty regularly. One email is my primary email that everyone knows. The second gmail email is my geocaching name at gmail that I use for emailing other geocachers and getting geocaching updates. The third gmail is my original gmail account that I got back when Gmail was first made available to the public via “invite only.” Fun Fact #1 Did you know that Gmail stayed in Beta for nearly 5 years?

#3 Google Docs – Ever been some place and didn’t have a thumb drive or the ability to save something that you needed to write down really really quick? Google Docs is basically a web version of the Microsoft Office suite. It makes it easy for collaboration because I can allow people to edit my document and not have 30 different versions of a document floating between emails.  While I don’t use it that often, it’s great to have in the wing.

#4 Google Voice – This product is awesome! Google Voice is a phone number that you get that you can attach to another phone. The thing that makes this service so awesome is that I can start up a business and use my google voice number as my business number. When a customer calls me Google Voice will call my personal cell and will connect us, the whole time the customer not knowing my personal number. However the best part to me is say that I’m in a meeting and the customer calls my cell phone, I can set up my voicemail to have the customer leave a message. That message is then translated into text and sent to my cell  phone via email or text message, to which I have the option to respond via text as well. Now how I can use this service in our personal life, I ‘m still researching that. However, I did love it so much I paid $3.19 on Ebay for it only because Google is allowing you to have limited invites. I’m part of the cool club.

#5 Google Wave – Google Wave is the new service that Google is trying to push out. They have limited invites right now, but it was great to get to be a part of the “preview.” I did shamelessly try to buy an invite on Ebay. The best description of Google Wave that I have heard is from my friend Chris Beiting when we were talking on a “wave” the other day. He stated “it’s like gmail/wiki/im had a baby and this is it… it’s still wearing diapers.”

#6 Google Calendar- If you have a mac and use iCal, this is the same thing. However I do like having a “DayPlanner” on the net. It’s pretty cool because I have it synced to my ipod touch so that anytime I’m near a internet signal my google calendar will update the Ipod touch calendar. I love this.

That’s just 6 of the near 200 different Google products and services that this little small company  in Mountain View, California.

Welcome back to what has ultimately been week 4 of the college football season. I got sporadically sit down and watch alot of games today as we were in and out getting the final touches down on the baby room before baby Cullen arrives.

-UH beat Texas tech, does that make UH now own the best record in the big 12 south? How does Kevin Sumlin keep his job this year in Houston, he’s bound to land a top tier job this year right?

-Miami lost to Virginia Tech. This was not shocking to me as I thought that Miami’s wins against Florida State and Georgia Tech looked nice, but didn’t necessarily show defensive tenacity. They do however show great heaps of offensive ability from Jacory Harris.

-A&M beat UAB today. Not much of a surprise. I’m still thinking that they end up finishing the season 7-5 with losses to Texas, Texas Tech, Ok. St., Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

-The person who I don’t want to be today after all of college football is done is Tim Tebow. Sure he has a glamorous life as the star QB of the 2 time national champion Florida Gators. But aside from the delayed flight to Kentucky today because of flu symptoms, Tebow sustained a pretty serious concussion tonight. While I never wish ill will on him, I’m kind of hoping that it highlights other potential candidates for the heisman this year.

-Speaking of Heisman. It’s gotten more interesting. Before this weekend I would of said that it was Jevan Snead of Ole. Miss, Jahvid Best of California, Tim Tebow of FLorida and Colt McCoy of Texas were the leading candidates with some other candidates garnering a little more attention. However with Tebow hurt, Snead and Best suffering losses this week, it makes Colt McCoy seem like the front runner, not that a 56-7 drumming of UTEP doesn’t hurt to aide his case either.

-I heard Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon were sideline for the UH football game. Has Robertson Stadium:UH:LA Coliseum:USC?