October 9, 2007
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Whoops...
Two mistakes... First, I haven't updated in nearly two months.
Lots has happened in the meantime: Ramadan, the
Twenty20
World Cup of Cricket, and... well that's about it.Ramadan as you already should know is the month of fasting,
the holiest month of the year. By now I'm rather used to the lack of
eating, so that part is incidental--some of the other important things
to do for Ramadan are coming through. Particularly trying not to get
angry or all riled up about anything.Twenty20 Cricket
Oh, there was a second "whoops" in there. So... the first ever
World Cup for Twenty20 Cricket was in South Africa in September. Now,
Twenty20 is the newest form of the game, and is extremely fast-paced:
twenty overs an innings, one innings per team, and the entire game
lasts about 3-4 hours tops. You might think this encourages just going
out and blinding hitting for sixes all the time--although the teams
that took that strategy got knocked out.All in all it turned out to be one amazing
tournament, with so many close calls and games that
ran down to the wire. Best in form were the greatest sports rivals in
the world: India and Pakistan. Now, each has players I really like.
India has Yuvraj Singh, an amazing batsman, and Mahender Dhoni, a
brilliant captain. Pakistan has Mohammed Asif and Sohail Tanvir, both
really great bowlers. I slightly
sided with Pakistan since they had a few more players I liked, but the
best part was how damn close their matches
were.First, you had their one match during the group stage,
where it amazingly ended in a tie. A tie... In
Twenty20, though, it goes to a 'bowl-out' if that happens, and this is
such a new thing that it was even the referee's first time officiating
a bowl-out! Here's the final over:
(LINK)Although India won, these two giants had another chance to
square off in the final. And unlike the ODI World Cup earlier this
year, this was completely brilliant. Here's the
final over.
(LINK)Also, Bangladesh did well their first match by beating the
West Indies. Unfortunately the Tigers lost every other match. Hey, I
still hold out hope! It's a young squad (19 to 25!) so... give it a few
years' experience.Right, the 'Whoops'
Yeah I forgot about the 'whoops'. So, I gotta watch these
matches live. And so I got some high-res streaming video that I can
watch online. I get into work early during Ramadan, so I manage to
catch many of these while I'm at work. Well... one day we get an email
saying the following (some facts changed for anonymity):"Several comments have been sent to IT regarding
internet slowdown. It appears that the office is overusing its
bandwidth. The ISP provided a log listing web sites which used the most
bandwidth. Several of these were not business related. We would like to
ask you to please not use the Internet for streaming
video."....................................
....................................
.........................whoops.To be fair, I didn't realize we were on a shared DSL network.
And, many people in the office do watch streaming
video occasionally, including one other person who, like me, follows
cricket live (although not using as high-res feeds). Not to mention
that this wasn't a problem during the soccer World Cup when at least
5-10 people would be watching during a given game. So, while it's not
entirely my fault, a good portion of the blame is due to me.Like I said, "whoops".
But, here's the funny part: the log they
retrieved apparently was only a snapshot of usage at one time, a time
when I happened to be out of the office and hence
watching the game from home. So, two other people who were
not really the cause of that "internet slowdown" got
a little bit of the heat for it. I was going to keep
it under wraps but... once I heard that, I had to start telling folks
it was largely my bad.Although, this was before the final match of the Twenty20 World Cup.
...and we still watched the final match online.
Upcoming...
Lastly, I'm going to Nashville this Friday for Eid, to spend
it with my family. I'll post more stuff about all that once I get back
home on Wednesday. 'Til then. KF
