Sporting News Today

The Sporting News recently launched a free daily online sports newspaper, Sporting News Today. It has the feel of an actual newspaper, is easy to navigate and covers every major sport. I love it and quickly added a tab to my Firefox start sequence just for Sporting News Today. Here are some points of interest from today's issue:

• How big the matchup between Blake Griffin Tyler Hansbrough is
• Possibilities for Kentucky's next basketball coach (of course)
• Sports owners on Forbe's list
• A profile of Cubs analyst, Bob Brenly
• 7 players sliding down the NFL draft boards
• Stories from the Sweet 16 games
• Previews for today's Elite 8 games
  
• "Inside Dish" notes from various leagues
  
• Brackets for the men's and women's NCAA tournament - in a format that's just like holding a piece of paper in front of your face
• Player interviews
  

You can get a free subscription here.
Then use this URL for daily reading. http://today.sportingnews.com/sportingnewstoday

My Top 10 Favorite Web Sites

10. www.gridirondigest.com - I lurk on the message boards of the Indiana high school football forum here.

9. www.slickdeals.net - I watch for good deals here.

8. www.facebook.com - It's fun to keep up with people. Since I type better than I talk, it suites me well as a form of communication.

7. www.oldgoldfreepress.com/forums - I lurk on the Purdue sports forums here too.

6. nikeplus.nike.com - I think this site is going to be a lot of fun this year.

5. www.cnn.com - I like to read the news.

4. www.msnbc.msn.com - I like to read the news here too. (I like plain msn.com too.)

3. www.wndu.com/weather - I like a lot of weather sites. This one has a great local radar and I like the 16 day forecast too.

2. www.espn.com - I especially like the SportsNation poll maps.

1. my.yahoo.com - I monitor incoming e-mail, browse news headlines, check sports scores, etc. here.

I Have Small Feet and Zappos.com is Amazing

The Culp side of my family is known for their height. (Their lack of it.) I definitely fit right in. The funny thing is, while I don't have much trouble finding clothes that fit me, (well my wife has become an expert at shortening pants) I do have trouble finding shoes that fit me. I carry my 5 foot, 4 inch frame around on size 6.5 feet. Shoe manufacturers must not make many shoes my size, because they are about impossible to find in stores.

I realize I have abnormally small feet. But, all those guys who have regular size feet HAVE to wear my size at some point on their journey toward having regular size feet. What do all those guys (mostly kids, I know) wear when they go through my size? Not kids sizes. They just do not fit. They are way too tight.

Since I have a hard time finding shoes that fit, I am just a little obsessive about finding shoes (that I like) that fit. I troll eBay for shoes quite a bit. . . buying and then selling when they don't work. Did I mention I like GOOD shoes? At cheap prices? That fit?

I've been trolling eBay for probably the past couple of years and skimming every shoe store I enter for a decent pair of shoes to wear to work in the warmer months. (I'm all set right now for winter with a pair of Merrell winter mocs, which actually fit me in a 7.5.)

With warmer weather approaching, I knew I needed to do something about shoes to wear to work this spring. Enter Zappos.com

Zappos has GOOD shoes. They don't tend to have cheap prices. They have shoes that fit me.

Zappos ships shoe orders for free. They also offer this great return policy in which you can return any shoes you order from them for a full refund and they pay the return shipping!

I ordered four pairs of shoes from them that I thought I might like for work.

• Order the shoes.
• Try them on.
• Keep the pair I like the best (if any.)
• Return the other three (or all four) pairs.
  
• It would be cheaper than driving to Elkhart.

Here are the shoes I ordered.

I think I figured out the "free return shipping" aspect of Zappos' business plan, because instead of keeping "the pair I like best," I ended up keeping three of the four pairs. They were nice shoes, they weren't cheap, but it was easy shopping and they fit!

The pair I did not keep were the Ecco shoes in the bottom picture. They were exorbitantly expensive and a little too big anyway.

I had no problem returning the Eccos to Zappos for a refund. I simply logged onto their site. Clicked that I wanted to return that pair and printed a prepaid UPS label. I boxed them up and Kristi dropped the box off at the UPS Store. About a week later Zappos refunded the full amount of the Ecco shoes to my credit card.

This next part of the story is so amazing that you may not even believe it. It is true. I ordered the shoes from Zappos on "2009-01-24 20:02:51."

That's SATURDAY night, January 24th at 10:02 PM with their standard free shipping.

The shoes were delivered on MONDAY, January 26th at 12:47 PM.

Amazing!

Indiana High School Football Schedules

Here's a link to one of my favorite football season web sites. The site lists every high school in the state of Indiana that has a football team. When a school is clicked, that school's schedule and scores are listed. Each team on the school's schedule is also clickable, so you can easily see how your team's opponents have faired, who they have played and how those teams have faired.

kids-in-mind.com

Mark Slabaugh recently did a post about what movies you allow yourself to see.  One site that I have found especially useful in determing the content of a movie before I (or my kids) see it is http://www.kids-in-mind.com/.  This site rates movies on a scale from 1 to 10 in each of three categories:  sex/nudity, violence/gore & profanity.  Beyond the numerical scale, the site also provides a highly detailed account of a given movie's content in each of the three categories.  It's a GREAT site.

Intrade.com

ABC News recently did a 20/20 story about a web site I track quite closely. The site is intrade.com, which is basically a futures market for current events. I do not have any money "invested" on this site, but the information is intriguing because it is a product of moves people are making with real money.

I just follow the site because I think it's interesting. I'm a current events and pop culture buff. So, I follow Intrade data to keep apprised of what is likely to happen in the future. I have been checking the site nearly daily for the last year, tracking the 2008 presidential election possibilities. I also recall using back in 2004 during the last election.

The American Idol futures have also been interesting to follow.

You can see the 20/20 story in the YouTube video.

Speed Test

My Internet speed test result:

Math Work Sheets

I'm at work on my lunch break, so I'll post something educational. Here's a great site from which math work sheets can be printed.

http://www.themathworksheetsite.com/

The site produces top quality pdf files that look like they could have come from a school workbook. The pages are also highly customizable.

For so many kids a little math review over the summer goes a long way in the fall.

Just Click the Big Red Bar

Anyone else think the "Big Red Bar" they always talk about on Newscenter 16 is a little hokie? I do. I am a little curious about what's behind that bar, but I refuse to click it.

Population Clock

I've seen population clocks on the Internet before. But this one is different. It goes beyond total world population by listing all sorts of factors effecting the human population. . . traffic accident injuries, new HIV contractions, war injuries, etc. The clock can be reset to reflect numbers so far this year, month, week, day or since the 'now' button has been pressed.

The numbers are interesting and amazing. Some are heartbreaking.

Since I started this blog post there have been. . .

• 15 suicides
• 123 new cancer cases
• 2,100 births
• 1,200 deaths
• 720 abortions