This baseball junkie was in need of a fix. After all, it's still three weeks until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. So, we read about alumni day for Arizona State University baseball and were off to Packard stadium. Sunny skies, baseball...what else can a fan want?

ASU is ranked in the 20s this year according to the pre-season polls. It was our first trip to see the Sun Devil baseball team and we will be back for a "real game." The players signed autographs before the event, and featured here is JC transfer Brian Flores, projected to be a high draft pick in the next few years. There was a home run derby, and for the Sun Devils the contestants were Ike Davis and Brett Wallace--both projected to be high draft choices in '07 and '08. After the four players took their swings, out came recent ASU star Andre Ethier (in street clothes) to aim for the fences. We first met Ethier in Fall League '05 when he was with the Oakland A's. At the end of Spring Training, the A's traded him to the Dodgers for Milton Bradley (yes, the kook). In case you missed it, Ethier was a runner-up for NL Rookie of the Year.

Regarding the Sun Devils baseball team: we will be back and hope to see them in Omaha at the College World Series. We should be there.

You sure know which sports team rates here in Arizona: last year, the Phoenix Suns pre-season fan-fest had folks packed like sardines at Desert Ridge Marketplace while today, the Arizona Diamondbacks had only a small handful of fans at their autograph table inside Jillian's at Desert Ridge.

Featured here are firstbaseman-turned-broadcaster Mark Grace and Chris Young, the team's star outfielder of the future.

I have tried accessing the Internet on my mobile phone...honestly, all the mobile phones I have had over the years...and it's generally tough going. That's one of the reasons I really like the Nokia N800, a tablet multimedia computer/device that is easy to use and has a very intuitive interface.

I experimented by having it at my side for the Bears-Saints NFC Championship game. Leaving aside I bet $10 in Vegas for the Saints to win SB41, it was enjoying finding out some details on the players while the game was in play. It was sort of like a disconnected interactive TV application. More on that some other time.

The RSS reader on the Nokia N800 is great and I set up a number of feeds whose headlines come in on an hourly basis. Amazingly, the video and audio on the device works extremely well. My only minor issue (similar to the video iPod) is that there are some on-screen reading challenges for someone with progressive bifocals.