GeekTonic

NCAA Basketball Tournament Bracket 2010 Excel Free Download

2010-03-14T18:23:00.001-05:00

For all of the HD sports I consume over the year, one of my very favorite sporting events is the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Even if you don't have a favorite team in the tournament this year, you can follow along by making your picks for the bracket. To help you along in that process, I've updated the excel spreadsheet I use each year (suitable for any Basketball Geek) that lets you select your picks from a drop-down and easily print & save your picks. It's free, easy and will soon be pre-filled with all of the teams in the 2010 NCAA Tournament bracket.

Get your download of the Excel March Madness 2010 Bracket here.

If you just want a web-printable bracket with the teams filled in and not a spreadsheet, there's plenty of choices for you including the following:

My favorite team (Missouri) will play the role of underdog regardless of how far they go, but MrsGeekTonic will be cheering for her #1 Kansas Jayhawks throughout the tournament. If you have a favorite team or matchup please share in the comments.

TV Premieres, Finales & Specials This Week 03/14/2010

2010-03-13T20:41:00.001-06:00

This week brings some newcomers to TV including the long awaited “The Pacific” on HBO, “Sons of Tucson” on Fox, the NCAA Basketball Tournament and the return from hiatus for FlashForward. Each week GeekTonic covers the TV scene with a complete listing of premieres, finales and specials for the week and this is a week with many premieres and a few gems.

Sons of Tucson Premieres on Fox Sunday

NOTE: All Times are Listed for EST

Sunday, March 14

NCAA Basketball Championship Selection Show (5pm on CBS – Available in HD) – Time to see what teams make the NCAA Division I tourney and which brackets they play in.

Ultimate Recipe Showdown (6pm on Food Network – Available in HD) – Season 3 premier

Minute to Win It (7pm on NBC) – A new gameshow on NBC hosted by Guy Fieri. Competitors race through 60-second games that pay a $1 million prize.

Sonny With a Chance (7pm on Disney) – Season 2 premiere

Ultimate Power Builders (8pm on Planet Green – Available in HD) – Season 1 finale

Sons of Tucson (9:30pm on Fox – Available in HD) – Series premiere for the new fox comedy. The plot is this: The Gunderson brothers hire a man (Tyler Labine) to pose as their father while their real dad is in prison.

The Celebrity Apprentice (8pm on NBC – Available in HD) – Season 9 begins with contestants Bill Goldberg, Curtis Stone, Bret Michaels, Carol Leifer, Sharon Osborne, Summer Sanders, Selita Ebanks, Darryl Strawberry, Holly Robinson Peete, Maria Kanellis, Michael Johnson, Rod Blagojevich, Cyndi Lauper and Sinbad. As we’ve seen many times before, the realityTV show is a popular way for has-beens or never-been stars to get attention again.

Hannah Montana (8:30pm on Disney) – Series finale

The Pacific (9pm on HBO – Available in HD) – The highly anticipated, 10-part WWII miniseries finally arrives on HBO. Think of this as the “Pacific” version of Band of Brothers. This is THE reason I subscribed to HBO recently and based on what I saw of “The Making of the Pacific” it shouldn’t disappoint.

America’s Worst Driver (9pm on Travel Channel – Available in HD) – Season premiere of the show that searches for America’s worst driver. That’s seriously the concept of this show.

Antonio Treatment (9pm on HGTV) – New series

Fatal Attraction (9pm on Animal Planet) – 3-part mini-series that looks at people who want to be around dangerous animals.

Monday, March 15

Zeke and Luther (6:30pm on Disney XD – Available in HD) – Season 2 premiere

Jessica Simpson’s The Price of Beauty (8pm on VH1) – Series premiere where we hear style tips.

Home Rules (9pm on HGTV – Available in HD) – New series where life coach and former WNBA player Fran Harris explores why a frazzled family is struggling to find harmony at home

Tuesday, March 16

NCAA Championship Basketball Tournament (CBS – Available in HD) - The tourney begins and runs through April 5th

Justified (9 pm on FX – Available in HD) – New series about U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a lawman enforcing his brand of justice to put a target on his back with criminals and puts him at odds with his bosses in the Marshal service.

Love Games: Bad Girls Need Love Too (10pm on Oxygen) – Another new realityTV show

Marriage Under Construction (10pm on HGTV – Available in HD) – New series where newlyweds, Natalie and Rod share the challenge of buying a house and making it a place to call home. With the help of up-and-coming designer the couple decorates and renovates their home.

Wednesday, March 17

Addicted (9pm on TLC – Available in HD) – A new 1-hour docu-series following the lives of individuals struggling with addiction as they work with interventionist

South Park (10pm on Comedy) – Season 14 premieres

Ugly Americans (9:30pm on Comedy) – A new animated series with New York overrun with zombies attempting to assimilate into society alongside humans

Scrubs (7pm on ABC – Available in HD) – Season 9 finale

Thursday, March 18

FlashForward (9pm on ABC – Available in HD) – One of my favorites returns from winter hiatus

My First Sale (7:30 pm on HGTV – Available in HD) - Series premiere

Selling New York (8pm on HGTV – Available in HD) - Series premiere

Tough as Nails (8:30pm on HGTV – Available in HD) – Series premiere

Archer (9pm on FX – Available in HD) – Season 1 finale

Saturday, March 20

Healing Hands (8pm on Hallmark) – A made-for-TV hallmark movie where an accident leaves a janitor (Eddie Cibrian) with the ability to heal others

If you follow GeekTonic for the TV Premieres and news, you’ll want to click here if you would like to get a regular e-mail for GeekTonic TV Premieres & News

How the SageTV Extender Practically Paid For Itself

2010-03-08T10:01:00.001-06:00

I was reading through the SageTV forums today and one particular post caught my eye. A long-time SageTV user starts off the forum post like this:

“How my HD100's have Practically Paid for themselves”

This is one of the key reasons extenders matter. It’s also one of the reasons I use extenders at most TV’s in my home instead of a dedicated HTPC for each TV. Lower power consumption, lower initial cost and ease of use all go into the equation as I explained when I made the case for extenders over computers.

Paul goes on to explain how the energy savings he has experienced by using two HD100 extenders (predecessor to the HD200) has been practically $175 per machine over the past two years. Here’s an excerpt from his forum post:

“I bought 2 HD100's back in February/March of 2008. I didn't get in on the first batch, but I did get in on the second. Last night I was wondering how much money I have saved in energy costs using them rather than a full PC.
I have a computer that used to be my main desktop rig that I built originally to be an HTPC, but then decided to instead make it my desktop. Specs as follows:

AMD Athlon X2 4850e

Gigabyte 780G MicroATX Motherboard

6GB of DDR2800 RAM (originally 2GB)

320GB SATA Hard Drive

DVDRW Optical Drive

AMD/ATI Radeon 4670 Video Card (replaced onboard video for better 1080i playback)

The system above draws about 130 Watt/hr when idle and around 170 Watt/hr at full load (roughly).

In comparison, the HD100 uses around 7-8 watt/hr at all times - even if we use the 130 Watt/hr idle draw, that means that the full HTPC is using 122 watt/hr more than the HD100. Using 8 cents a kw/hr that I pay here that works out to:

122 w/hr x 24 hours = 2928 (roughly 3 KW/hr per day then)

3 Kw/hr x .08 = $ 0.24 per day or 0.24 x 365 = $87.60 per year of savings.

Since the HD100's are now 2 years old, this means that I have seen an energy savings of about $175 each in the 2 years I have had them!! That makes their current net cost to me about $37 each ($200 for the unit + 12 for shipping - $175 in energy savings)!“

The SageTV HD Theater (HD200) uses a slightly higher 8 – 10 Watts compared to the 7-8 watts/hr of the older HD100. Either way, it’s a considerable amount of energy savings compared to a full-blown HTPC in multi-TV setups. Last year I began checking power usage of electronics in the house with a Kill-a-Watt and it’s definitely an eye opener. I’ll do another article to show off the results in my home.

P3 International P4460 Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor

Deal of the Day – Antec & Apex Computer Case $50 & 37

2010-03-08T09:32:00.001-06:00

During my research for two upcoming HTPC feature stories on building an HTPC and HTPC server I came across a couple of nice deals at Amazon (affiliate).

First up is the Apex MI-100 which is a Mini ITX, small form factor with 1 5.25 external drive bay, 1 external 3.5 drive bay and 1 interal 3.5 drive bay.

Next is the Antec 300 Case which would make a nice HTPC server case for $50. It has 3 5.25 external drive bays and 6 3.5 internal drive bays.

Antec Three Hundred Computer Case External 3 X 5.25; Internal 6 X 3.5 2*Usb2.0 $49.99 with free shipping!