Complete Fulfillment

I can't wait for this guy to join the Blazers next season. He is going to need some work but he is high energy. In the gold medal game last night he made some threes, some great passes, rebounded and this great dunk. He fouled out and Spain lost but you can tell that this guy will be an exciting add to an already great Blazers squad.

The Russian reaction is the best part.

Have you noticed that every swimming race in the China Olympics has been a world record? Some people might jump to the idea that all the swimmers are juiced. Given how many times that Michael Phelps was tested for drugs I find this highly unlikely - although it is just a matter of time until a French newspaper makes the claim.

Could there be something in the water? I'm not typically a conspiracy theorist but China is very motivated to show well in these games. Could they do something to the water that would allow the swimmers go faster? Could they reduce the friction or something? Just a random thought.

I opened the paper this morning to see that Brandon Roy was to have knee surgery this morning. It was a flash back to Oden last year. The good new is that he is going to be fine. He sure gets beat up but this is good news for the Blazers at this point. Here is some video of Pritchard talking about the procedure.

Kevin Pritchard on Brandon Roy's knee surgery

After the original Dream Team there the US went through a period of over confidence and eventually was not as dominant as they should have been, failing to win in the Greece Olympics. After the last embarrassment, it was great to see all of the great players who are now on the team. In watching the game today against China it was really amazing to realize the collection of players that was out there.

After the game there was an interview (click above for the video) with Lebron James who has seemed to become the vocal leader of the team. He was asked how this compared to the NBA finals or the NBA All-Star game. He said it was by far the biggest thing he had ever played in. Now it was estimated that 500 million Chinese watched the game and I would assume millions more around the world. It was said to be the most widely watched basketball game in the history of the sport.

It hit me as to the motivation of Lebron and possibly some of the other athletes. Lebron wants to be a global icon. He has made this claim in the past and it can be seen in his actions. Basketball is very much a global game and one of the largest passions of the Chinese people. Lebron would not have missed the chance to increase his global icon status on the largest stage on the planet.

Kobe has been said to be the best basketball player in the game and it shows the way he plays on this stage. Kobe wants to be famous but more than that he want to win and be one of the best players ever. If Lebron could ever get that killer instinct like Kobe or MJ there is no telling what he could do. Lebron becomes a free agent next summer and if he wanted to win he would consider Portland. With the players they have up and coming adding Lebron would be SCARY. But unfortunately Portland is not a big enough stage and the west coast is hard because of TV coverage. He will end up at the NY Knicks or the Brooklyn Nets. My bet is the Nets but we will see.

I have recently been using a tool called Evernote. At first I thought it was just another online tool but the more I use it the more I love it. It has four ways to get to it. I have a client installed on my PC, a client installed on my Mac, there is an iPhone application and a web tool.

It allows you to take notes in various notebooks - similar to OneNote - and it allows you tag those notes. You can also email those notes. Fairly basic features. The cool part to me is the iPhone app. It allows you to record voice memos, take pictures and make notes. All of these can be tagged and put into specific notebooks. All of this information syncs over the web and all of your clients can see the same thing. This gives me a way to compile data all in one place and see it where ever I am.

One of the other cool things is that it will index and search on text that is within pictures. This works fairly well but not perfectly. If it is typed it works pretty well and finds some hand written stuff.

This has become my main note taking tool in meetings and when a whiteboard is used I take a picture and sync it with Evernote. I also make notes to myself using the audio record function while I am in the car.

This is a beta and free right now. There is a premium version if you exceed their data limit each month which seems to be fairly large. I have not reached it. I would pay for the premium service at this point. They could take this to the next level by adding a task list and allowing you to share this with others. I would love to make this more GTD friendly. Still I am a big fan.