Editor's Note: In response to my good friend Kevin Fox, who shared on his blog today how the college selection process, aided by a youthful blunder on his part, helped launch his career. Unsurprisingly, I've got a similar story, and that makes it time to share.

In 1994, I was applying to colleges. The oldest in my family, I was the first to move on from high school, and beyond the occasional lecture from guidance counselors at school, I was pretty much finding my own way. My best friends and I essentially banded together, comparing SAT and ACT scores, and scoured the college ranking and comparison books, even mocking the terms "Selective" and "Highly Selective", used to separate the good schools from the great.

Money constraints and a non-perfect high school record wouldn't have led me too far out of state. My best friend and I eventually settled on UCLA as our dream school. He was going to major in Film Studies, and I had picked Communication Studies, as close as I could get to Journalism. I applied to UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Davis, as well as Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah, which would have pleased some of my friends at church, while keeping me intellectually bored, and, in the event of complete disaster, I even filled out a form for Chico State, playing the role of obvious safety school.

Between my friends and me, we thought we had the process nailed. I wrote the essay over and over and had it reviewed by my teachers, knowing I might be on the bubble. I packaged up the essay with all my materials and sent it in the mail on the first day possible to UCLA, Berkeley and Davis, along with $120, $40 for each of the three schools' admissions fee. For UCLA, I listed Communication Studies as my major, with Political Science as the alternate. Berkeley placed me with Mass Communications as my major and Political Science as the alternate. If I remember correctly, Davis was English.

Three weeks later, I got a thin envelope back from the UC Regents. Expecting some kind of confirmation, instead the letter included a $40 refund from UCLA - stating that Communication Studies was open only to junior transfers, making me as a freshman ineligible. As I had selected other UC campuses, and the Regents assumed each school of equal valor, they just sent me my $40 back, instead of what I thought was the more obvious move - moving my application forward with Political Science.

Needless to say, I was panicked, and nobody had any real good advice. I essentially reapplied to UCLA and sent back the same $40 admissions fee, with Political Science as my intended major this go around, but this time seeing the envelope leave my house near the end of the 30 day period, not the beginning. I'm pretty sure this didn't help, as open slots for the impacted schools became more scarce.

In the ensuing months of my senior year in high school, we all played the waiting game. BYU was the first to respond, and I got in. I didn't see that as a big deal, although many friends of mine from church had received rejection letters. Chico State let me in, to no surprise. But the big wins were to come in March, from the UCs, especially UCLA, as my best friend and I shared these aspirations of being roommates and challenging one another for four more years and as we started our careers.


Come early March, Davis led off with a big fat acceptance envelope. I remember marking off an X in the Yes column on an index card at home, with UCLA and Berkeley yet to respond. I was 3 for 3, with 2 to go. But the next day brought a big shock. Instead of the big envelope, a small one from UCLA came with the well known refrain, "We regret to inform you... blah blah blah... lots of applicants... don't let the door hit you on the way out... blah blah." I was stunned and felt hollow - faced with the concept of not being with my best friend, and facing a reality of having to pick between the nearby but non-thrilling UC Davis and the complete life change that would be shipping off to Provo to be a Cougar.

This being at the very beginning of the era of constant communication, I had my mom's cell phone, playing chauffeur for my younger siblings, so I couldn't call her, and when I called my best friend, I just started to tell him before the reception was so bad that hung up on me. I was devastated, and it's all I wanted the world to know - that my dream had been dashed. In the days afterward, as I saw other friends get their welcome notes into the Bruins fold, the school counselors would pause their congratulations, turn toward me with concerned faces, and ask, "Now, how are you doing..."

After the promised deadline for acceptance letters, I finally heard back from Cal. A big, fat, glorious acceptance envelope filled my mailbox in late March that changed everything. My mom, lacking irony, exclaimed, "That's like getting into Stanford!" when I proudly announced I had the opportunity to become a Golden Bear, ruling out the Aggies of Davis and putting BYU way back in second place. The acceptance letter from Cal put UCLA as less critical, and started me feeling like I had accomplished something. I wasn't going to be palled up with my best buddy, chasing our dreams, but instead got the opportunity to stake out my future on my own at an incredible school.

Attending Berkeley ended up being a godsend, placed remarkably close to Silicon Valley as the tech revolution expanded through the first dotcom boom, and placing me with startups before I even claimed my double major degree in Mass Communications and Political Science.

Had I attended UCLA, I could have transferred into Communications Studies my junior year. It's probable my best friend and I would have even more great stories to share beyond those we still dredge up from high school. But it's just as likely we'd have met fewer people because we were too comfortable and cliquey. It's especially likely that I'd have ended up well outside of tech, and the unique experience that is the Silicon Valley. Maybe I'd have ended up writing for the LA Times or joined MySpace or Mahalo - spending my unfair share of time on the Web in Southern California and not the Bay Area. But my mistake of entering a major unavailable to freshman entrants changed my life - pushing me in a direction I'm happy with and continue to be fulfilled by.

As Kevin writes in his own parallel story, the mistake in the short term may have been awkward and disappointing, but the long term benefits of this choice ended up probably being the best mistake I ever made. By the way, if you're not reading Kevin on his blog or on his Twitter stream, you should.

This last weekend marked the beginning of the college football season at universities across the country. My Cal Bears managed to wallop the visiting Maryland Terrapins by a 52-13 margin, avenging last year's ugly loss at College Park. As I couldn't watch the game, traveling to Southern California, I kept tabs, using my iPhone, by using ESPN's ScoreCenter, a low-frills app from the self-proclaimed "Worldwide Leader in Sports" designed to get me the data I want quickly - with a clear focus on real-time game results, instead the more fluffy features you can find with just about any sports media.


ESPN ScoreCenter on the iPhone: Scores from Any League
ESPN has a long history of experimenting with its Web site - being among the first to embrace Java in the mid-1990s, and streaming video earlier this decade. (See also: ESPN.com Launches New Beta Site, Reduces Ads, Integrates Video from December 2008) It has similarly moved its tech leadership to the mobile Web, with a dedicated site for old-school cell phones and the iPhone, including fun games, like ESPN Cameraman, and ScoreCenter - a cute play on its famous franchise, SportsCenter.

ScoreCenter, like the ESPN Web site, separates out the day's scores by sport. MLB is separate from the NBA, which is separate from College Football, the NFL and so on. But what displays on your iPhone is up to your own preferences. You pick the sports you want updates from, and you pick your favorite teams. You can even select which sports appear first when you open the application, and you never have to see updates from sports you don't care about. These selections are helpfully titled "mySports" and "myTeams", as part of the company's My ESPN push.


Drilling Down on Top Teams' Games on ScoreCenter
Sports already plays a big role on my iPhone. There are dedicated applications out there for MLB, NFL scores or College Football scores, each of which I've previously covered. And yes, you can get updates on sports news from many media apps. But ESPN's ScoreCenter gives me a customized cut of all the information, providing me the top level answer I need in terms of current scores from all my leagues, and with a few clicks, I can see the boxscores or even live gameday action. And for those of us raised on the ESPN franchise through TV, you should be happy to see they even have the familiar "Bottom Line" bringing headlines from around the sports world.


ScoreCenter, Customized For Me, Also Goes Deep Into Data
The app is a welcome alternative to other non-custom apps that give me way too much information about things I don't care about. With college football kicking off last weekend, I know I'll be checking in to ESPN's ScoreCenter to see what every team in the Pac-10 conference is doing, or browsing the Top 25, and getting updates on every game as they roll from East to West. The application, supported by ads, which display alongside the scores, is free. Find it here.

In my family, college wasn't so much an option, but an expectation. That was no surprise, given my dad had an M.D. and my mother got her doctorate in educational technology, alongside more than a decade's teaching experience at primary and secondary levels. In fact, my own decision, thus far, to not attend graduate school or get an MBA has been a greater source of internal debate. So when I saw at the end of last week that Daniel Brusilovsky, a 16-year-old friend of mine who operates the Teens In Tech service, which I advise for, was thinking of not going to college altogether, I considered him out of his mind.

Of course, mine was not the only opinion. With the very public examples of tech leaders such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and others who have not completed their degrees, it can be tempting for an aggressive entrepreneur to point their way for leadership. And yes, some college courses, like high school, seem to have almost no value for whatever you may eventually choose as your career. I personally know I derived as much benefit from working at the college newspaper as I believe I ever did from my college courses at UC Berkeley. But if I had tried to jump straight from high school to Silicon Valley, I would have been dead on arrival.

Rob Diana touched on some of these points this morning in his article on the reputation economy, but even if you're not a huge fan of FriendFeed, you should see the debate that has been raging the last few days, embedded here. Enjoy, and participate here or there. Up to you.

The saying is to "forgive and forget", but people aren't built that way. Once you feel you have been wronged, whether in a critical manner or one that is relatively trivial, it is practically impossible to erase the memory. But that doesn't mean you need to hold on to it - because for the most part, time does heal wounds, and the truth is, you never know the full story from the other person's perspective. Often, there will come a time when you will cross paths with that person again, and the next time, it just might be different.

Last month, I was asked by a well-known blogger if two of the public flare-ups we had on this site (with Mashable and Duncan Riley) had been for show, ostensibly for short-term traffic. I said that they were not contrived, but that we had come to terms quickly. Since the flare-ups, Mashable altered their editorial focuses, I've gotten to know some of the authors better, and others have moved on. Meanwhile, Duncan is a sharp guy who I often see on social networks, and bounce e-mails off of when we have ideas.

I was thinking of this again when I learned the news of Valleywag's changing of the guard today. As Owen Thomas departs, the void is set to be filled by Ryan Tate, previously the night editor at Gawker.

Eighteen months ago, I highlighted Ryan's launching of a new blog, called "The Hack", and at the time, I mentioned we had "occasionally clashed politically" more than a decade ago when we were both staff members at the Daily Californian student newspaper at UC Berkeley. He and I started working together back in 1996, both on the news authoring side, and the online publishing side. By the 1997-98 year, he was Editor In Chief at the newspaper, and by the 1998-99 year, I had moved on to work in the Silicon Valley (where I've been since).

Ryan and I had a lot of positive overlaps, as we collaborated on breaking news stories, longer investigate pieces, special sections and the online site's layout and focus. But of course, we bumped heads too. At the time, our clashes seemed critical, and now, they seem trivial. We both let those wounds heal and fade into the history, which is exactly what it was. And now, I am excited to see Ryan promoted to his new post, seeing it as another peer who emerged intact from the crucible which was the daily paper, where journalists and future bloggers were forged. One of these days, I should chase down all the names who were there when he and I shared spots on the editorial board, but they dot some of the top news media sources in the world.

I could have stayed ticked at Ryan, and he me. I could have turned my back on Duncan and Mashable too, but that's not fun, and it's not healthy. It's a small industry, and we're all working toward shared goals - to find interesting news quickly, and post with quality. Now, when the tendency is to get ticked, take things personally and go off on some rant, I know to hold my breath and pause. It's less exciting, and it doesn't get tons of traffic, but you won't see rants here, and I'm not carrying a grudge. You never know when you'll need these people again.

Congratulations, Ryan. I wish you well at your new post. But remember, if you come after me, I have 14 years of e-mail backed up. :)

It often feels like the world of sports was not very kind to us in 2007. The A's slogged their way to a less than .500 record and a lousy 3rd place finish in the AL West. The Sacramento Kings are pathetic (on most nights). (See: When Can I Celebrate Winning Again?)

And even when I bought tickets to the World Series and flew out to Colorado, the Boston Red Sox had to go out and louse things up by sweeping the hometown Rockies.

But none of that compares to the frustration I have with the Cal Bears. After a 5-0 start that saw the team ranked #2 nationally, the Bears' season has been a disaster, with week after week of disgusting loss after pathetic loss. With the amount of talent on the squad, plus what should be a near-elite coach in Jeff Tedford, the team dramatically underperformed down the stretch, culminating in tonight's stomach-turning 20-13 catastrophe on the Farm at Stanford, which saw the team give up the hallowed Axe for the first time in six years.

The loss, which I hate to admit I watched in its entirety, saw the Bears fall to 6-6, and likely has them going home without a bowl bid for the first time since Tedford took the helm. And even if they back in to some ridiculous, unimpressive, bowl, they don't deserve it, because they stink. They were barely fun to watch even when they were winning, and once they started losing, it was all I could do to simply stay loyal.

I don't really feel like recapping the game here. There are definitely other sources for that, although Sports Blogs Nation's "The Band Is Out on the Field" gave up on the team early, not even making an open thread for the Big Game. Suffice it to say that everything that had gone wrong up to this point was repeated in a microcosm for a painful sixty minutes of football. Injuries to key players. Dropped passes. Getting stuffed at the line. A gimpy, underpowered quarterback. Interceptions in the 4th quarter. No defense when we needed it. A painful, late, grasp at hope. And yes, yet another loss.

It's got me thinking I just might not re-up for season tickets next year. Yes, it's that bad.

In our tech-centered Web world, a hack is usually a bad thing - bringing up images of shadowed evil-doers aiming to break into computers or networks, looking to gain access to things not theirs, or instead, a hack is sometimes seen as a quick and dirty version or update to software - and not a good one at that. But in the world of media and reporting, a hack can instead mean "one who works hard at boring tasks" or "a mediocre and disdained writer" (Source: thefreedictionary.com).

My old editor in chief from days at the Daily Cal in Berkeley, Ryan Tate, has started up a new blog called "The Hack", self-described as "a journalist with delusions of computer science." While the blog's just getting off the ground, Ryan's already posted a few stories of note, including a get rich quick scheme building off my idea of converting .PST files to GMail-compatible mailboxes, a new killer feature for RSS feeds, and 7 suggestions to improve Google Docs.

While he and I overlapped terms at the Daily Cal, from 1996 to 1998, Ryan and I tag-teamed on some of the earliest editions of the newspaper's Web site, saw the paper and its reporters (including the two of us) repeatedly recognized in state-wide competitions, and occasionally clashed politically, as two aggressive, opinionated people working closely together will do. Now that time has healed those wounds, we're both vocally rooting each other on from the sidelines, and I hope this self-proclaimed "hack" keeps his blog on course.

Check it out at http://thehack.webmasher.com/.

This evening presented the last home game for Cal football of the season, against one of our most hated conference rivals, USC. What should have been one of the most hotly-anticipated games of the season was instead a battle of two lower-ranked Top 25 teams who had better days behind them. Sprinkle in a few sprinkles, and some more... and then some more... and we ended up having a soaking wet evening that wrapped up with Cal doing what it seems to always do in these big games. Losing.

Around 3, my wife and I put on our Cal gear, grabbed our tickets and headed to the car to make our way to Berkeley. It was misty in Sunnyvale, but not sprinkling all that much. The further north we drove, up 880, the more it started to rain, never letting up. As we walked to the game, after grabbing BART at the Ashby Station, our umbrellas were out, and we were debating if we should have donned our ponchos right away.

Getting into the stadium, we saw more than 70,000 fans in all colors of poncho - from the Red and Gold USC fans, to the blue and other colors of Cal fans. I reached into my bag only to realize we had two ponchos, but one white (for my wife) and one orange - a shade too close to red for my own good in a quite hostile crowd. So for the full game, as I jumped up and down and yelled from my seat, the rain poured down, dripping from the bill of my cap. My shoes had turned dark with precipitation, and as I would slap my hands to my saturated jeans, the would spray with water. My Cal jacket, hanging damply at my sides, could be wrung out at the elbows and wrists, not exactly keeping me dry.

But the game went on.

Cal scored first, going up 7-0, before letting the Trojans tie the game up 7-all at the end of the first quarter. A few frustrating drives later, it was 14-10 USC at the half, as the rain continued to fall, and many fans considered whether they should trust their better judgment, giving into the elements and going home. Many did.

And the rains kept coming.

The second half started with USC getting the ball, and driving down the field, stopping short of a touchdown, but putting 3 more points on the board, taking a 17-10 lead. Cal struck back with a touchdown of their own, making it 17-all to end the 3rd quarter.

But we were already gone.

While I was willing to play the part of a human puddle, my clothes stuck to my body and the slight wind keeping me all too cool while cheering on the Bears, the elements proved to be too much for my wife. Her jacket, covered by a poncho, with a sweatshirt and blanket besides couldn't overcome Mother Nature's assault, and we had already made our way back down to the BART station to return home. After two full years of A's season tickets, and at four of Cal football games, we had finally found one that saw us leave well before the game's conclusion.

But the game went on.

As we drove down 880 South, we hit the dashboard, frustrated, as we listened to USC's march down the field to gain the lead 24-17. We gnashed our teeth as Cal looked to come back, only to throw another interception, effectively giving up the game. We rolled our eyes as time expired, and the Bears were handed their 4th loss in 5 games, sending the rest of the valiant fans who had stayed behind home with feelings of frustration and emptiness, as another Saturday came and went without the Bears fulfilling their potential.

For our family, we're now at a crossroads. The A's season long behind us, lingering only as memory, the Cal home schedule complete, we're done for the year, barring a special one-off to see the Kings in Sacramento, the Sharks in San Jose, or maybe another 49ers game. But for now, we're on hold. We can put our ballcaps away, dry our clothes, and hope 2008 brings better news. 2007 left us with the occasional sparks of excitement, but far too much loss and frustration.

The rain didn't help.

The Associated Press recap of today's 31-28 loss for Cal against Oregon State carried a nice keyword: "Inexplicably", as in "With his receivers covered, Riley inexplicably tried to scramble for the score."

Among 64,000 fans this evening, we saw Cal charge back in the final minutes to give us hope for today's game after a full regulation of hope mixed with frustration, only to have it "inexplicably" torn away from us, as a freshman backup quarterback, starting his first NCAA game, snuffed out our chances for a national title in one simple misstep.

As I noted this morning, I feared Cal was in for a surprise. They'd ridden high, undefeated so far, to the #2 ranking in all the land. But I felt the emperor had no clothes. As elsewhere, number 1 LSU lost, the chance was there for the Bears to back into the #1 ranking, if they could just hold on and win at home against the Beavers. But they couldn't do it. They were trailing in the first quarter. They led by one point at the half, and fell behind quickly, again, in the 3rd quarter. After a brief 21-20 lead, they watched Oregon State put on 11 points, taking a 31-21 lead, helped along by two critical Cal fumbles, an interception, and a successful goal-line stand by the Beaver defense, which Cal could not match.

As time ran down on the clock, Cal charged back, making it 31-28 with less than three minutes to go. And we got the ball back! At our own 5 yard line, "The Drive" started, as redshirt freshman QB Kevin Riley powered the Bears down the field with the final minutes turning to the final seconds. The end zone was in sight, and if unsuccessful, we could always tack on an easy field goal to send the game to overtime. Right? Wrong. Riley "inexplicably" tried to run for it himself and was stopped well short, when an incomplete pass would have saved the game.

In the space of an afternoon, a story was lost. The hopes of the tens of thousands of us at Memorial Stadium, no doubt compounded by the hundreds of thousands of Cal fans outside the stadium, for the team to reach the #1 position in the country for the first time since our grandparents were roaming the campus, were dashed, "inexplicably", by a bonehead scramble from a poor kid who will likely be thinking of his alternatives for decades to come.

Now, instead of an undefeated team possibly in the BCS hunt for a national title, Cal is one of many 1-loss teams, and falls back into the Pac-10 race, headed for a showdown with USC in early November. While we will, for sure, be cheering our butts off for that game, we've "inexplicably" been forced to lower our hopes and face reality. This wasn't the year.

Cal, fresh off a bye week, and sporting a lofty #2 national ranking, is all set to take on the Oregon State Beavers this afternoon at 4 p.m. at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. The last time we saw the Bears, they had squeaked out a challenging victory against the Oregon Ducks, catapulting their #6 poll position to where they are today. Since then, many an upset has befallen the college football leaderboard, including an utter collapse by USC against Stanford. Now, the nation's eyes are on Cal, and whether their so-far undefeated season will take them to a national championship berth, or if it will become unraveled on the way.

Being an "Old Blue" Cal alum, we keep expecting this dream to come crashing down at any moment. I know Cal is a great football team. It has excellent speed, and some well-known individuals, starting with DeSean Jackson, supported by Justin Forsett, Nate Longshore and a host of leaders on defense. I've seen them consistently win. But just as I feared Cal was overrated at the #6 spot, my anxiety is increased as they've continued their ascent. When I see the play to play struggles or a soft quarter, it's all I can do but hold my head in my hands and hope that outside of the stadium, nobody else sees what I see - a spotty defense and an offense with big playmakers but inexact consistency.

Couple in my pessimism with news that Cal quarterback Longshore is still hobbling after an ankle injury at Oregon, meaning the backup quarterback might see play today, and my stomach starts to turn. Just when we were taking the world by storm, too!

The Beavers are not to be underestimated. In the last few years as a season ticket holder, they have surprised me with their offense, and they've taken some games from the Bears where they shouldn't have. They're no longer the Pac-10 basement dwellers of years gone by, but instead a formidable opponent not to be taken lightly. I hope Cal is ready, and doesn't expect to get a "W" simply because of the logos on their jerseys and what it says in the paper. After all, the game always starts out tied, 0-0.

In a few hours, we'll be in Berkeley, clad in the blue and gold, yelling our lungs out for our Cal Bears to put the pounding on the Beavers and keep progressing up that evolutionary ladder. We'll hope for the best, challenge on every play, and try to keep that little voice in our head quiet for just one more week.

You can follow along on Excuse Me For My Voice or The Band Is Out on the Field. Game time is 4 p.m.

On Friday, I mentioned that my wife and I had a big decision to make - go see the A's battle the Angels on Saturday (in turn missing the Cal game), or stay home and watch Cal take on Oregon on TV. We stayed home, and it turned out to be a great decision, as Cal won out a barn-burner against the Ducks by a 31-24 margin, and the A's continue to lose, falling 3-2 near the end of their miserable season.

Cal, going into the day ranked #6 overall, flew to Oregon, ranked #11, and in front of a national television audience on ABC/ESPN, the team battled and battled, falling behind early, and never giving up. Despite being down 10-3 at the half, they forced four turnovers, eventually winning after the Ducks fumbled the ball on the 1 yard line in the closing seconds of regulation, as it went into the end zone and out of bounds for a touchback, returning the ball to the hands of the Bears, who knelt down and took the win. (See: Excuse Me For My Voice for one rundown)

While we gnashed our teeth and feared the worst among other Cal fans at The Band Is Out on the Field, Cal's stars came through in the second half, with DeSean Jackson scoring two touchdowns and amassing more than 150 yards receiving, Justin Forsett ran for more than 100 yards, and the Bears are now among the nation's elite teams, sporting an unblemished 5-0 record, while the #3, #4, #5, #7, #11, and #13 teams all went down to defeat. This sets up a near-guaranteed rise for Cal in the polls, quite possibly as high as #3 overall when the new rankings appear over the weekend.

As for the A's, who we neglected today? Even though they appear to have given up on the last few games of the season, we'll head their way after church tomorrow to say goodbye for the last time this year. Hopefully, they can wrap up the home schedule with something new and different - a win.

You have to love situations like this. Kristine and I have tickets to see the A's wrap up their home schedule this season against the LA Angels this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But a high-profile, nationally-televised college football game between Cal and Oregon, two teams in the top half of the week's AP poll, is set to start at the same time as Saturday's contest, forcing us to decide: do we watch the A's finish up in person, or do we stay home and watch the big event on TV?

Tonight, the A's play at 7:05. We'll be there for sure, urged on by a fan-friendly fireworks show.

On Sunday, the A's play at 1:05. We'd have to rush over from church to make it, but we might, as it's the last of the season.

But Saturday! Oh what to do with Saturday? The A's game starts at 1:05 p.m., while the Cal Bears take on the Oregon Ducks at 12:30 p.m. on ABC. Even while in the car on the way to the A's game, I would be missing one of the biggest Cal games of the year, behind only Tennessee and USC.

You could say it's a win-win, but to any true sports fan, it's really a lose-lose. Stay home to watch Cal, and I miss a day in the sun with the A's, and tickets I already paid for. Go to the A's game, and I don't get to see the Bears get challenged, on what's been a strong 4-0 start with potential for momentum. And don't tell me to TiVo the Cal game for later watching. There's no way the A's won't show the Cal/Oregon highlights on the JumboTron Saturday, so I'm doomed.

Should be a tough call, all the way to kick-off... er... first pitch... no wait. Kick-off. I think.