Weekly Notes: September 27, 2007

I know it’s Thursday, but I thought I would change things up and do a regular notes post today, leaving football notes for tomorrow.  It’s also an appropriate change to make heading into basketball season, when I will need to listen to plenty of Thursday night games for Friday game reviews.  Let’s see how it works.

• Many an online music store, and many an audio device have been called iTunes/iPod killers.  Microsoft’s Zune and Creative’s Zen are able players, but they’re not iPods, and they haven’t really been threats.  This may soon change, not on the hardware front, but on the store front.  Amazon has now launched Amazon MP3, which sells DRM-free music at the same (or lower) price than iTunes.  They have major labels (EMI/Universal) involved, and significantly more DRM-free music than iTunes.  While people will still love their iPods, will they start buying music elsewhere, since it’s cheaper and has fewer strings attached?  As a non-iPod owner, I certainly will.
• Speaking of music, the Foo Fighters released their latest album on Tuesday, entitled Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. “The Pretender” has been stuck in my head for weeks, so I was pretty excited about it.  Right now, I’m quite impressed, so much so that it’s probably my most worthwhile music purchase since Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations last year.  I’ve mentioned before that my music-buying has slowed down considerably, though, as I have seemingly lost the taste for most new music.  I’m sure there’s good new music out there, but I haven’t bothered to find it.  Fortunately, the Foo Fighters are on my radar, and I didn’t miss this one.
• The Braves made things incredibly difficult by losing last night’s game to the Phillies, 5-2.  The most frustrating part of that loss to me was that I only watched part of it, and it happened to be the part where Tim Hudson failed to turn a double play, and then Chipper threw a ball into the stands, giving the Phillies a 3-run inning that turned out to be the difference.  The Mets’ magic number to eliminate the Braves is 1.  No pressure.
• Baseball Analysts’ All-NincompoOPS team should also interest Braves fans.  Scott Thorman is the first baseman on the 2007 squad.  Their comments:
  • “I hope none of you took Scott Thorman in your fantasy league. Heck, the guy didn’t show anything as a rookie last year and has never been all that great even in the minors. He turned 25 before spring training camp opened, has below-average power for a first baseman, and would rather take the bus than walk.”
• It’s really interesting to me when I see clever ESPN.com chat questions because of something posted on a blog like Fire Joe Morgan.  Ken Tremendous, who regularly review the JoeChats, has certain Morganisms that he picks on, such as Joe’s inability to spell the word ‘concentrate.’  For Joe, it’s ‘concetrate‘ without the ‘n,’ and in the most recent JoeChat, one person decided to slip ‘concetrate’ into a question, of course without Joe picking up on it at all.  The little things make life great sometimes.
• I can’t post today without mentioning that the season premiere of The Office is tonight.  The episode, entitled “Fun Run,” will air at 9 Eastern, and it will be an hour long.

The magic number for words before this post is over is now zero.