The Fed? Really?

I'm supposed to set up a preliminary phone interview with the Federal Reserve. Hopefully my lack of understanding of macroeconomics won't hurt me. Maybe my grandfather serving on the Fed in Houston forty years ago can help me overcome that deficiency.

I should be studying for my statistics test on Thursday. That's right, despite completing several statistics courses and earning a Masters degree, I still have to take tests, or at least a test. Hopefully I still know something. Maybe I'll do it tourettes style: tobit, logit, ordinary least squares, regression, SAS, Stata, Access, SQL, monte carlo sensitivity analysis, Bayes Theorem, r-squared. Awesome. Clearly that qualifies me to be a research analyst.

I expect to hear from Virginia soon. I wouldn't mind living on the Eastside for a few years. Somehow Mrs. LaBlog is okay with this idea despite Richmond being about 300 miles further from San Antonio than Madison is. It's also about twice as far from Fayetteville as Madison is.

When did the Pistons get bad?

How quickly can the media change fan perception of a franchise? It seems to have taken about nine games for sportscasters to decide that the leagues least penalized team is somehow the reincarnation of the Bad Boys era Pistons. Bruce Bowen is not particularly athletically gifted by NBA standards and he is really good at hiding fouls. Maybe he's dirty, but then so is every player in the defensive stopper role. Robert Horry commits a hard foul at the end of a game and gets a crazy ass two game suspension and suddenly he's further evidence of a dirty team. Watch the replay. Horry and Nash are essentially playing chicken with each other. Nash tried to accelerate between Horry and the sideline and Horry held his ground and tossed in a little forearm for added flavor. If people are just focusing on how hard Nash appeared to fall, may I suggest that they watch the result of nearly every Tony Parker drive. It's always the same thing... Parker accelerates, drives, gets contact and ends up knocked hard to the ground. In this series that has seldom resulted in fouls being called.