First things first. Today I turn 30. If you're reading this on RSS, click through and make a comment to wish me a happy birthday! (Pathetic, I know.)

After years of thinking I was the younger one at church, at work, or in some social settings, I've come to realize that it's no longer true. The baseball players I watch on TV rarely have birthdates before mine. Many of the elite Web pioneers are around my age, making me realize that I could be lagging in my career trends, and not exactly leading the pack.

But that's just part of my being ultra-competitive, and having highest expectations. Now, my next milestones start to look less like being a kid or a young adult, and more like numbers that represent different stages of life. 35. 40. 50.

While taking up space in the 25-29 age bracket, I got married, changed titles at the company three times, all without changing jobs, moved twice, and racked up almost 200,000 frequent flier miles. Just some things that come to mind. From 30-34, what will change? Will we move and get a new house? Will the family be expanded? What will business look like compared to how it is now? I don't have a crystal ball. But the stake is in the ground.

That's what 30 means to me. It's a signpost, marking one era of my life is now behind me, and we have to keep pushing forward, so when I do reach 35, 40, 50... I'll be pleased with what I accomplished.

TechMeme, Megite, TailRank and other sites aim to organize the hot topics of the day, through tallying those news stories and blog posts most frequently linked to in a given day. And for about 99% of the cases, the sites do very well, even if they do tend to tilt in favor of the A-Listers a bit, meaning that if TechCrunch and I were to both post an article at the same time on the same topic for example, TechCrunch would take prominence, due to popularity, not necessarily the quality of writing. (See example from Saturday)

Today, while browsing Megite, a technology news site that aims to tell visitors "What's Happening Right Now", I was surprised to see that HP had agreed to buy Compaq for $25 billion. That's a huge acquisition to be sure, but one that happened six years ago. Amusingly, the story was accompanied by a photo of long since deposed HP CEO Carly Fiorina. The big news came not because it was "happening right now", but instead because a pair of blogs had linked to the years-old story, from CNET's News.com, in the context of new coverage around the computer company.


Click the Above Picture to See Megite's Flashback

Essentially, if enough top ranked bloggers opt to link to a story, regardless of its age, it looks like they could propel it to the top of Megite and other sites like it. And that's broken.

TechMeme hasn't been as loose, but I've seen the occasional oddity.

For example, on March 23rd, I had written that "The Apple TV Debate Is Upside Down", and as part of that note, I had linked to a comment from Robert Scoble, who said "Apple TV Rocks". Not surprisingly, Scoble was carried by TechMeme, and I was a related story. (See the screen cap from Noon on March 23rd)

But I had also gained a lot of traffic from MacSurfer and MyAppleMenu, two Mac aficionado sites who had found my comments interesting. When I wrote a follow-on post, saying "Welcome MacSurfer, MyAppleMenu Readers", that post somehow supplanted the previous article's placement in TechMeme. Somehow, the page generator believed that the second post trumped the first. (See the screen cap from 3 pm on March 23rd)

In theory, after my first article had been linked, I could have changed its title to something profane, or its content to gobbledy-gook, after having gotten the TechMeme pickup. So long as I retained the same linkage from the first piece, whatever was presented on TechMeme was up to me.

The practice of having algorithms define what's hot and what's not, exemplified by sites like these, and Google News, is not yet perfect, and continues to be refined. I expect we haven't seen the last of the quirks as they continue to develop.

The A's, and much of Major League Baseball, had their first game on Monday, which just so happened to coincide with the last game of the college basketball season. Meanwhile, at the same time, the NBA and NHL seasons (clearly less important) are nearing their stretch drive for the playoffs. While continuing to ignore all the outlying sports (i.e. golf, tennis and all things racing, wrestling or winter), one could keep themselves quite busy by trying to stay on top of the sports world at large.

That's why I have a somewhat clear prioritization of my sports consumption, accounting for pure fanaticism of teams, importance of games, and the sports themselves.

1. The World Series (With A's participating)
Clearly the holy grail. My lifelong favorite team playing on the big stage.
1a and 1b would be other playoff games involving the Oakland A's.

2. NCAA basketball tournament (With Cal participating)
Again, the national stage, rooting for the blue and gold.
2a would be a bowl game with the Cal Bears football team.

3. Opening Day of baseball
This is exciting stuff. Kicking off the season knowing you can follow the teams day in and day out the rest of the way. Also, at this point, all teams have a chance to win it all.

4. The Super Bowl
I don't have a preferred football team, honestly. I rooted for the San Francisco 49ers as a kid, but that time is long gone. Still, the spectacle of the Super Bowl is unmatched.

5. The Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford)
It's a storied rivalry 100+ years in the making. Cal has the axe and intends to keep it.

6. NBA Playoffs (With the Sacramento Kings participating)
I can skip this process this year. The Kings are horrible. That will reduce conflict with baseball now, I guess.

7. The World Series (Any two teams)
Only if the Yankees are playing does it really diminish the game, but baseball's the best sport, and each game marks history.

8. Any Oakland A's game
I will watch any A's game, regardless of their record, over the playoffs of most leagues. Baseball and the A's are simply superior.

9. Any Cal football game
We've had season tickets for the last three years. The tradition. The band. Oski. Go Bears!

10. Select Olympic events
Track and Field events in the Olympics can be dramatic. Heck, even gymnastics can keep you riveted for every one-tenth of a point, or in rooting for the random Romanian to take a header off the beam. On the flip side, there are a ton of events that could go away and nobody would notice.

11. The NCAA tournament final
There's something exciting about the buildup of 65 teams fighting for a single championship, winner takes all.

12. Any Sacramento Kings NBA game
There's something wrong with me. For some reason, I still root for this team.

13. Any baseball game between any two clubs
I'd rather listen to the radio play by play of the Marlins vs. Phillies than watch the NHL ever, the NFL or NBA on most nights.

14. NFL Playoffs
The march down to the Super Bowl

15. Other
Insert here: The NBA Playoffs, random NFL Sunday contests, the occasional Cal basketball match, San Jose Sharks games in person.

So that's the priority list. If established, and acted upon correctly, if there are multiple games on at once, you know where you can find me. If it's A's baseball, I'll be there, with very few exceptions. But my loyalty to the Cal Golden Bears and Sacramento Kings isn't far behind.

That's why you can find me on almost any night on Athletics Nation, Sactown Royalty, or making my picks on BallHype. Spring and summer were made for sports, and the action is heating up.

Apple introduced new professional tower desktops this week, featuring quad-core Intel Xeon chips, which in their marketing world counts as eight cores, when you have dual chips thrown in. But while I'm not in the market to get a new computer, and if I were, it would be a laptop, it's always fun to jump into the Apple store and spec out a jaw-dropping rig.

For just under 20 thousand bucks, I could get a top of the line Power Mac "with everything on it", including 3 terabytes of storage, dual 30" flat panel HD displays, 16 gigabytes of RAM, two 16x CD and DVD burners, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the dual 3 gigahertz CPUs. Can't forget those.

The best part? Apple offers free shipping. That just might be worth it. Right?


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