I got around to watching a little NBA this weekend. I’m a Utah Jazz fan but they play hard, pass the ball around, dive after loose balls and set screens which means they are so very boring to watch.

But the Suns! Now there’s a team that’s entertaining! They remind me of the “Showtime” Laker squads of the 80’s. What can you say about Nash? Off the court he looks like an insurance salesman. But on the court he’s a cross between Magic and Stockton. If you’re an athletic big man wouldn’t you tell your agent to do whatever it takes including taking a pay cut to get on with the Suns? Garnett would average 50 with Nash feeding him for 20 alley-op dunks a game. How is the world did billionaire Mark Cuban ever let Nash go to the Suns just as he was hitting his prime?

Here’s a question: If you had to choose between Kobe, Arenas and Dirk to take the last shot of the game, who would it be? Kobe can take you inside or pull up from behind the arc. Arenas, in the last 30 days, has already hit two “Downtown Freddy Brown” buzzer beater threes. Both times he was celebrating before the ball went through the net. How’s that for confidence? And then there’s Dirk. Is there a sweeter looking shot in the game? His form is so sound, his touch so consistent that you forget he’s 7 FEET TALL! It seems unfair someone that size has such a gorgeous looking shot. Is there anyone better at the “quick two dribbles, pull up in the face of 3 defenders” shot in the league?

Kobe’s the most versatile and can get to the line. Arenas in on another level right now. But if I’m going to one person to hoist the last shot with the game on the line, I’m going with the big man.

At the other end of the spectrum is Wade with what has to be regarded as one of the ugliest but effective shots ever. It’s definitely in the same discussion as other ugly by effective shooters such as Kevin McHale, Michael Cooper, and Robert Parish. Shaq and Rodman also had stomach turning shots but they weren’t effective outside of 5 feet.

I feel bad for people who try to sell their beater car on Craigslist but possess an active honesty gene that gets in the way. After reading this ad I’m convinced of three things:

1. Given all the problems including the “tented” windows, mysterious leak originating from “somewhere” and driver’s seat that leans to one side, the owner of this car should pay someone to take it off his hands.

2. The $200 he’s asking for the car was determined by the insurance premium rather than on the value of the car.

3. Love the math here. 8 Passenger Van minus seat = 6 passenger van.

It’s ads like these that keep me coming back to Craigslist for some unintentional laughs.

You probably need to be a regular reader of Fark.com to get many of these these, but if you are you’re in for a treat. The theme for this contest is to Photoshop “Movie posters that Fark clichés could have improved”. One of the best contests in ages.

Link to list of Fark cliches

Dell has been taking a beating lately for it’s declining customer service. It used to be that Dell had some of the best customer support in the business. I remember when Consumer Reports along with most PC related magazines ranked it near the top with Apple for years and years.

So if you’re Dell how do you go about fixing some of these problems? Well, you can start a blog and start to interact with your customers more than you have in the past. One of the main categories on the Dell blog is Customer Experience. From what I can tell the blog is updated by people who do care about their customers and are willing to listen to feedback and criticism. That they allow comments is great.

One more thing you can do is make it easy for customers to contact you when you run into problems. It’s frustrating when a company makes it easy to contact sales but makes it impossible when you need assistance. So kudos to Dell for putting a big blue button on their homepage that says, “Unresolved Issues”. This is good but it could be better. Unless you read fine print you’ll click on the button and then on “Customer Support” or “Technical Support” areas which then present you with online form to fill out. I can’t stand these forms. When I need help I want it now and don’t want to wait a day or two for a generic response.

So if I click on the big blue button how many clicks does it take before I find a phone number to call? Four clicks was the best I could do. There are so many options that it’s easy to take off in the wrong direction. It appears someone at Dell suggested a big blue button would give the appearance that we care and they ran with it. It’s better than nothing but there’s a lot of room for improvement here.

One of my favorite activities to do is take one of the kids to Starbucks for hot chocolate. This past week I took my 4-year old son along. I opened the door for him and he ran straight to the counter and put his chin on it. At eye level was a cookie which he stood and stared at until I decided to get it for him. I ordered us both a hot chocolate and we sat down. His small legs dangled over the chair as he could barely see over the table. He couldn’t have been happier as he munched down his cookie. He reminded me several time that this was “his own” hot chocolate and I was reminded how many times Kim and I ask our three kids to share things. Getting your own drink, dessert, or hot chocolate is a big deal to them.

As we sat there at Starbucks enjoying our drink the song “Mad World” came over the speakers. I’ve liked that song for a while but it was a strange time to hear this song. I thought to myself, “No, being around an upbeat 4-year old makes the world feel far from mad”

Dave Winer links to Jeff Bezo’s Wish List which includes a Darth Vader Lamp among a few other interesting items. I wonder if anyone has come across Jeff’s list, felt sorry for him over the Amazon stock price, and decided to pick up the tab for say, the Hullabaloo game? Probably not.

If I were to interview for a job at Amazon I’d try to find out with whom and see if they have a “Wish List”. Could make for good small talk and would no doubt make the interview more interesting. “Hey, I saw you have the Golden Girls DVD set in your Wish List…..”

I started a new blog just over a week ago called BuzzTips. I wanted to see how the search engines had indexed my blog and see how easy that made it for people to get to my site by typing in ‘buzztips’. Here are a few impressions based solely on this one search:

Microsoft Live Search – Does a pretty good job, listing my blog as the third result. Also links back several times to this blog. Not too bad.

Google – Nails it on the first first result and hits my RSS feeds as the 2nd result. Google’s index also seems the most up-to-date.

Ask – Just terrible. Must have a very tiny index since it finds only 2 pages of results, none of which are my blog.

IceRocket – A mixed bag here. The web search does a great job at finding my blog, as good as Google. But their Blog search finds nothing under ‘buzztips’ where I’d expect to find it.

Doing this quick test reminds me why Google still dominates. Their results are presented quickly, neatly, and feel like they were gathered recently. It’s quite clear that Google’s competitors are happy with merely making their search a near carbon copy of Google’s. Google is setting the design for search for nearly everyone. Only Microsoft Live Search felt any different than the others which I see as a good thing.

What search engine do you use?

To celebrate the return of Jack Bauer, here are a few of my favorite 24 related links.

Dave Barry’s 24 Blog – Hilarious, frequently updated on the fly blog.

Day 6 Motivational Posters – New posters are up!.

Summaries from Season 5 – If you need to catch up before starting this season, this guy provides excellent summaries.

If you miss an episodes (maybe you have a cable company provide POS DVR?) my favorite place to grab them is at TorrentSpy.

Past seasons on DVD from Amazon – Season 1 is still my favorite followed closely by Season 2.

I can’t leave off the Fark.com 24 Discussion thread

Excellent article by Randall Stross describes a few of the ways Apple is locking down the iPhone much the same way they have done with the iPod. I’m not all that interested in the phone since it only works on Cingular’s network, although I do own an iPod. I don’t purchase music from iTunes because of DRM and the music just sounds terrible in AAC format. I’d much rather buy the CD and rip it using a higher quality bit rate.

One of my friends purchases his music from iTunes and then copies it to CD where he can rip it into the format of his choice. That seems like an awful convoluted way to get my music in the format I desire. I like the idea of having a backup CD in case my drive were to crash. I assume I can backup my iTunes folders but the manner and strange folder structure they use is far from being user friendly.

The iPod is a great device. Although I have yet to purchase any iTunes music I have purchased several audiobooks from the iTunes store. My rationale is that, unlike music, I listen to the books once rather than time after time. I don’t need to move the audio books around to my other devices nor do I care if they’re backed up. There doesn’t seem to be a “one size fits all” solution to this DRM mess. For now I’ll continue to purchase CDs and do the ripping myself.