Basketball: Up close and personal

After watching the Huskies beat UCLA today at the Bank of America Arena I hope that, no matter how popular and successful the Huskies become, they keep this arena just the way it is today: small and fan-friendly. There’s something about watching a basketball game in tight quarters where you can hear the players jaw at each other and the refs. I like the near ear-splitting sounds the fans can generate is a smaller space. At today’s game I could even hear when certain fouls took place such as bodies colliding under the basket and hands slapping arms during shot attempts. The larger arena gain butts in seats but lose much of the excitement that’s generated by sitting close to the action. It’s hard to imagine that UCLA players weren’t distracted at least one or twice due to the noise and proximity of the wild Husky fans.

What’s your home and those around you worth? Zillow.com tells you

At a company meeting yesterday our CEO mentioned Zillow.com. This is the easiest way I’ve found to compare your home’s value with those in your neighborhood. I’ve tested a few addresses and found that value of our former homes in the Seattle area sound about right but those in Utah are 2 to 3 times as high as they should be. A few kinks to work out but very cool idea.

Link to Seattle Times article on Zillow.

Going NAS

I’ve been looking for a convenient way to share photos, files, and music between our computers at home and I finally stumbled upon a solution: Maxtor Shared Storage. It looks just like a normal external USB drive but connects to your network. It costs a bit more than a typical USB drive but, so far, the benefits are well worth the extra cost. I used to share out folders on my machine, but it would bog down my machine and I’d always seem to reboot at the worst time. It took a few minutes to setup folder permissions on the Maxtor but I can already see the benefits of having my own personal NAS. I believe this little device has become a mainstay on my network going forward.