Tonight (a couple of hours from now), my Binghamton Bearcats will be making their very first-ever NCAA appearance and I am very excited. The #15-seeded Bearcats will square off against #2-seeded Duke Blue Devils at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC. If you’re in the area and a current BU student or alumni, you’re invited to attend the pre-game “warm-up”. In addition, there is an alumni/friends meetup at BG McGee’s on 4701 High Point Road at 4pm before hand. Tip off is at 9:40 pm (EST) and there will be viewing parties held around the country, find the one nearest you here. For New Yorkers, The Hill on 416 3rd Ave. (between 29th and 30th streets) will be hosting a viewing party with “Pitchers and Buckets” specials all night. Let’s Go Bearcats!

If you know me, you know that I really love Starbucks! Not just for their coffee, but for the experience they provide. It’s a great place to study, meet for business or just hangout with friends. I frequently visit Starbucks and have been a rewards member since its inception, but thanks to my sister I am now a Starbucks Gold member. With SB Gold you are entitled to 10% off all purchases as well as insider promotions and surprise indulgences. This is awesome for anyone that is a frequent SB customer.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

Last week I posted my top ten gift ideas for geeks this holiday season and being a geek myself, I would be happy to get anyone of those items, but here’s a list of my top 8 10 “wants” this year.

1. Apple time capsule 500gb ($289)
2. Flip Video MinoHD ($210)
3. Casio W71-1V Sports Watch ($25)
4. Casio Databank Digital Watch ($29)
5. Ziotek USB Camera Lanyard Wrist Strap (less than $20)
6. Apple in-ear headphones ($79)
7. Canon G7 Conversion Lens Adapter ($22)
8. Opteka .45x HD² Wide Angle Lens ($38)
9. DiggNATION Men’s Tee Size S ($25)
10. The Totally Rad Show Held High T-Shirt Size S ($25)

When you are traveling never use Citibank services, they charge a foreign fee. What is a foreign fee? Well, it’s a BS charge for just being abroad. I understand if they charging a fee for debits in a foreign currency, but if you are in a foreign country making purchase in your local currency, you should not be subject to additional charges. For example if you are a US Citibank card holder in Hong Kong and you wish to make a purchase on the US Amazon.com site, you will be subject to the foreign fee even though the process is carried out in USD. This is ridiculous, HSBC and BOA does not charge a foreign fee why do you have to Citi?

How much of a geek are you? I scored a 42/50 and according to Gizmodo,

41-49: I wear Linux shirts, argue about the merits of AJAX on forums and build custom handheld retro gaming consoles for fun.

1. Install a hard drive in a laptop
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone
4. Jailbreak an iPhone
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken)
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor’s Wi-Fi
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories
18. Fix your parents’ computer over the phone without looking at a computer
19. Enter the Konami code
20. Comment on Gizmodo from your phone
21. Type quickly using T9 texting
22. Program a universal remote
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel
24. Hide porn from your significant other
25. Avoid DRM on everything
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry
31. Hackintosh your PC
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games
34. Get around web content filters on public computers
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password
36. Securely erase your data so it can’t be recovered
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network
38. Build a fighting robot
39. Write your own Firefox plugins
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS
41. Get something on the front page of Digg
42. Get through to executive customer service
43. Rip a CD to V0 quality MP3s
44. Rip a DVD to DivX
45. Build your own computer from parts
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS
50. Talk about things that aren’t tech related

Senator Obama just BarackRoll’d you (like a rickroll… only Presidential)

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 28 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

• There are 175,215 people in the U.S. with the first name Tommy.
• Tommy is statistically the 349th most popular first name.
• 97.39 percent of people with the first name Tommy are male
• Names similar to Tommy: Thomas
• There are 48,755 people in the U.S. with the last name Chen.
• Chen is statistically the 716th most popular last name.
• Famous people with the last name Chen: Joan Chen, Kaige Chen

Couldn’t really make out what the first one says so I did it twice :)

Start your own timeline at OurStory.com