Volleyball replay and Networking

Well, I didn't really like today's assignment.

I don't often say that, but it was true.  Not a fun day at the office.

The Toreros hosted the Portland Pilots in a West Coast Conference volleyball match.  I was assigned to be the replay official for the match (today as well).

Got to the arena around an hour early.  Went and made sure that the equipment was working correctly.  At the time it did....I'll explain later.

First set, everything is going ok... then late in the set (22-13 San Diego), Portland thought the call of in was wrong.  The assistant coach went crazy thinking that it was out.  He damn near ran on to the court and said "You'll see in just a second that you were wrong!"  I really wanted to find an angle that proved the referee correct.  On the angle that I saw and showed to the down referee, it looked to me like the ball was out.  The down referee looked and said nothing to me (I have to fill in some paperwork on the screen when there is a review).  I wait to see what he signals and he signals that the ball was out (Gee, thanks for letting me know what was going on).

Second set, we had two reviews, one for each team.

For San Diego, they thought the ball was in.  The problem was that upon looking at the video, only one of the two angles that we were supposed to have at our disposal was working.  The one angle was skipping over the two to three frames that we needed for confirmation, so the call "stood" because it was inconclusive.

Portland had another review late in the set (I'm noticing a trend....).  It was another in/out call.  On the opposite side of the benches (and the table).  Looking at the video again it looked in to me.   However, the original call was out and that is what the referee confirmed.

In the fourth set (as it turned out the final set) San Diego on the bare eye looked like they just missed a pancake (slipping your hand under the ball and having it bonce off the hand).  That call was confirmed that it did hit the floor and not the hand.

The final set scores were: San Diego 3-1 (25-15, 28-30 (nothing like over points), 25-14, 25-14).

On Tuesday, I was invited by my friend Callan to join him as we went up to Burbank to meet up with Sean Pebbles.  If you don't know the name, you might know the position that he holds.  Public Address Announcer for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Sean is in SoCal doing something with Warner Bros.  He said that he could tell us, but then he'd have to kill us.  We kinda like living, so we just let it lie.  Really cool guy.  After we had dinner at BJ's Restaurant in Burbank.  After dinner, we went back to his hotel and talked for a bit.  He offered us drinks but I just took a water as I was driving (do your own thing, but if you drink and drive.... don't expect me to be at your funeral).  Hope to hook up with Sean again when his plans are to come back out to San Diego in August.

What a trip and HC the Patriot season could be in trouble

Well, yesterday was certainly interesting. If you read the previous post, you will see that I went to Bakersfield to surprise my friend Andy who was calling for a club up there. That is the cliff notes version of the story, here is the full story.

I got up and went and picked up Julie and then worked the Grossmont Vs. Cuesta Women's Volleyball match. I will be honest, I was expecting a 90 minute floor sweeping of Grossmont, I was wrong. The match lasted 2 hours and Grossmont lost in 5 games.

After the match, my mom, Julie and myself all got into the car and took off for Lakewood to meet up with the May's. Well, around 4:30 we leave Lakewood for Bako. Obviously LA is full of freeway's and since the May's live there, they know them better than I, but talk about the Magellan route of getting to Bako and the dance. We left Lakewood and took the 91 West to the 710 North. From the 710 we got onto the 5 (I'm in the chase vehicle and thinking, ok we are done.....WRONG!!!!!). Once on the 5 we got onto the 2 northbound until we reached the 210 West which took us back to the 5. We get to the 14 connector, there was a sign on the side saying that there was a brush fire on the 5 with 2 lanes closed. At this point Jesse calls me and asks, "do you want to take the 14?" to which I reply "I guess" not really knowing the route at that point. Well, this is when the adventure really begins. I never realized that you could go from Lakewood to Bakersfield via Mojave....yes Mojave and Lancaster. To which now that I know who was playing at Lancaster, I would have never gotten to Bakersfield, I would have bought a ticket for the LE Strom playing at Lancaster in the Southern Division of the California League playoffs. We eventually got into Mojave for a bathroom break. We then got onto the 58 West which took us right into Bako and only 9 blocks from the dance.

Once at the dance, I walk in with everyone else behind me, and standing right in front of me is my friend Andy, I say "Hey Andy", he turns to see who said it, and this blank confused look comes across his face as he says "what are you doing here?" To which I say "surprising you!"

After the dance, the entire crew drove a couple of blocks to an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Hop (you have to know me to understand that). We all had some fun while eating. After the meal, the May's left to go home. Julie, my mom and I however, went over to CSU-Bakersfield to check out the campus. Since that is where I'm transfering (if everything goes according to schedule) in a year and I had not been to the campus. I drove around getting the lay of the land and all. We got home eventually around 5am.

I woke up this morning about 12:30p and turned on the NFL to see Matt Casel as the QB for the NE Patriots. I had not seen the score, so I thought sweet, the Pats are WAY ahead of the Chiefs ....WRONG. It turns out like it is an ACL injury to the reigning MVP of the NFL. The injury happened when Tom Brady threw what looked like a deep ball when a Chiefs defender rolled into Tom's left leg. An MRI will be done on Monday to reveal how bad the injury turely is, some reports out of New England are saying that it might be season ending. One word on that: DAMN! or you could use SHIT, your choice.

Auto Club Speedway and the Boys

Well, I know it's Thursday night and I did it last Sunday, I should have written earlier. School remember....

So last Sunday, Matty, Phil, Stephen and myself all went to Auto Club Speedway for the Pepsi 500. We got up to Fontana and got our passes and found our way to the press box situated between the ESPN booth and race control. It would have been really cool to have watched the race from there.

From there we were kicked out, mainly because someone at the track didn't have a clue where we were supposed to be. So we eventually got to the correct press box above pit road, sounds better than what it actually was. From where I was sitting in the press box I was able to see about 5 seconds of racing every lap (the avg lap times were in the 39-46 sec range). The rest of the time I was either paying attention to the worlds longest fantasy football draft (another story altogether, look below) or cranking my head up and to the right so that I could watch the ESPN feed which was on HD, but also on a 7 second delay.

Now about the fantasy football draft.

The draft seemed pretty straight forward, 18 rounds for a 10 team league. So much for being a simple draft. There were a few rookies, usually no big deal. The big deal came when some of the owners where either not paying attentino to who had been drafted or just gave up only 5 rounds into the draft. The draft got underway as the National Anthem was being sung at the race. 4 hours later as the race was closing in on the checkers (finish), the draft was only in round 14. I finally gave up, and told everyone to just pick the best player available. A fantasy football draft, no matter how long it is should take more than 3 hours. Absolutely ridicioulous. I even asked for a clock to be put on the picks due to the talent pool being dwindeled down so far I was informed that they were going as fast as possible. That might be the truth, but when everything is looked at from a impartal viewpoint, after the 5th round, you should be able to make a pick (if you know who has been picked) within a minute at the most.

So this weekend, I'm going on yet another trip, I'm going up to "Don't forget the lyrics" in the mornign with my mom. Then on Saturday, after announcing the Cuesta Panthers Vs. Grossmont Women's Volleyball match, My mom, Julie (hopefully Mary) and myself all head up to Lakewood to meet up with the Mays and then to Bako to surprise a friend.