My friend, Garren Du, recently launched a new sports site in time for Super Bowl Madness.  Football Squares and Fan Site

Why use Rival Central for your Super Bowl Squares league?

• Create as many leagues as you want online and manage them from a single account.
• Invite league members to sign up and join your league by providing them with a League ID and League Password.
• Get your squares filled quickly, all through the internet.
• League members can log in, select and view all of their squares immediately and online.
• League Commissioners can lock the squares, assign squares to players that may not have internet access, and kick out deadbeat players.
• And the best part is - IT’S COMPLETELY FREE!

Rival Central will be your premier online sports gaming management tool. Expect player leagues to be ready in time for NCAA March Madness. More sports-related competitions will follow for popular college and professional sports. Rival Central is a competition oriented community Website. Services provided by Rival Central are for private amusement and entertainment purposes only.

Rival Central Online Sports Gaming Management

I just received this update from TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics) and thought I’d share - thankfully I don’t have any iPod accessories but sorry for those that may face this issue:

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Given everyone was off on New Years Day, Jamie and I decided to continue to be productive so in the morning we took a dip in the hot tub, had some lunch, and then proceeded to remove the old 70’s paneling that adorns most of the walls in the basement.

One of our goals was to knock down the wall between the family room and one of the bedrooms to make a larger living space area but I wasn’t sure whether I’d have to hire an engineer to help us design a beam to support the load.  Much to my pleasant surprise, I learned that the “make-shift” bedroom was not a load bearing wall and the original floorplan called for 2 2×10 headers with a beam between them that rests on top of the foundation wall.  I saw the beam after removing the paneling and then tested by removing the closet, then removing some studs and the entire wall was free standing!  See demo pics below:

Wood paneling and spare bedroom.  See removed panel exposed beam the covers the span.

We demoed the closet that was in the bedroom, and then I got the fun job of punching and kicking out the particle board.  Jamie got in on the “fun” to and man-handled the remaining sheet into submission.

Dust still settling as I knocked out the remaining studs for the wall.  The two rooms are now opened up.

As soon as I decide where to re-rout the electrical switch, I’ll knock out those remaining two studs on the right.  Now we just have to find a place to haul all the scrap material - I’ll be re-using some of the studs to build an in-wall entertainment unit at the far end.  I’m also installing the electrical components into the wall to the right so there will be access from under the stairs for wiring, etc.  Enjoy!

I had a couple days off and so did everyone else. Well that didn’t stop me from jailbreaking my iPod Touch, installing new apps and on the non-geeky side, ripping down paneling and knocking out a wall in my basement to make a large family room. We’ll ignore the latter project for now and I thought I’d share my discovery for opening up your iPod Touch to install at a minimum, the same apps that are included on the iPhone.

Screen Snaps of my iPod Touch (now multiple pages of apps):

Read below to find out how to install additional applications on your iPod Touch. No tech support offered but it does work, all the steps are included and some additional snapshots at the bottom of this post. I hope this helps!

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