Phil T's Rants and Raves And Life in General

World Cup Final Pick

2010-07-11T14:37:00.000-04:00

Spain over Netherlands.

World Cup Picks - Semifinals

2010-07-06T11:07:00.002-04:00

Netherlands over Paraguay
Germany over Spain

Poem

2010-07-06T11:05:00.001-04:00

This poem struck home with me lately, especially the first two paragraphs. Enjoy.

If - by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

World Cup Quarterfinal Picks

2010-07-02T09:24:00.001-04:00

Brazil over Netherlands
Uruguay over Ghana
Argentina over Germany
Spain over Paraguay

World Cup Picks Day 18

2010-06-28T21:55:00.001-04:00

Paraguay over Japan
Spain over Portugal

World Cup Picks Days 15-17

2010-06-23T18:22:00.002-04:00

Improved to 17-20 overall, still some room for improvement though as the group stage finishes up soon.

Brazil-Portugal draw
Ivory Coast over North Korea
Spain over Chile
Switzerland over Honduras

Second Round:
United States over Ghana
Uruguay over South Korea
Germany over England
Argentina over Mexico

World Cup Picks Days 12 and 13

2010-06-21T18:25:00.002-04:00

Another rough week bringing tournament total to 12-17, France, Italy and Germany really let me down.
Just trying to get over 500 for the group stage now.

Mexico over Uruguay
South Africa over France
Argentina over Greece
South Korea over Nigeria
England over Slovenia
United States over Algeria
Germany over Ghana
Serbia over Australia

World Cup Picks Days 7-9

2010-06-16T16:39:00.002-04:00

Still not quite doing as well as I would have liked, the bad start killed me. Just 8-9 overall.

Argentina over South Korea
Nigeria-Greece - Draw
France over Mexico
Germany over Serbia
United State over Slovenia
England over Algeria
Ghana over Australia
Netherlands over Japan
Cameroon over Denmark

World Cup Day 5 and 6 Picks

2010-06-14T14:56:00.001-04:00

Turned things around after that rough start and I'm 5-5 overall now.

Slovakia over New Zealand
Ivory Coast vs Portugal - Draw
Brazil over North Korea
South Africa over Uruguay
Chile over Honduras
Spain over Switzerland

World Cup Day 3 and 4 Picks

2010-06-12T15:32:00.002-04:00

Ouch, 0-4 so far, maybe I better stick to American football.

Maybe I can right the ship the rest of the weekend.

Slovenia over Algeria
Germany over Australia
Ghana over Serbia
Netherlands over Denmark
Japan and Cameroon - Draw
Italy over Paraguay

World Cup Day 1 and 2 Picks

2010-06-11T09:04:00.001-04:00

South Africa over Mexico
France over Uruguay
Greece over South Korea
Nigeria-Argentina - Draw
England-United States - Draw

World Cup Preview

2010-06-11T09:03:00.001-04:00

Now for a few picks from a different type of football, soccer.

Overall, I'm not going out on a limb too much and think that Spain or Brazil is probably going to win the Cup. I'm leaning strongly toward Brazil, but you can't ignore how great Spain is offensively.

I'm going to post the two teams I think will advance out of each Group and then each day in the morning, I'll post my picks for each match that day.

Group A
France
Mexico

Group B
Argentina
Nigeria

Group C
England
United States

Group D
Germany
Ghana

Group E
Netherlands
Cameroon

Group F
Italy
Paraguay

Group G
Brazil
Ivory Coast

Group H
Spain
Chile

Food Network

2010-04-19T12:13:00.002-04:00

I've found myself only blogging to complain lately, so I thought for once I would throw in a positive take. Often on my lunch breaks, I sit in our firm's lunchroom and read for my MBA classes while others watch TV. One of the popular lunch time channels is the Food Network. I also watch the Food Network at home as well.
That said, I think the Food Network is one of the best managed and well produced cable networks there is. If you know me, you know I think highly of ESPN as well, but lately, ESPN is more about content that programming. Most of their original shows (aside from PTI) I don't really like and I can get all the information I need much quicker via ESPN.com than Sportscenter. And I would much prefer reading a couple people's opinion online about something than listening to multiple hosts argue at a near shouting level. The sporting events themselves are very well produced and they do a great job there, but aside from that, I'm not interested most of the time. All that to say, I see the same programming mistakes on most networks. Almost all of my news and sports information now from online sources because I don't like the format it's presented on TV anymore.

What separates the Food Network from the rest of the pack for me are several things. First of all, I think they do a great job of hiring and keeping talent. All of their hosts are personable and do a good job in front of the camera at communicating with the audience. It could be too that because of the nature of their shows, they have to, but still, I think they do a better job than HGTV, DIY, etc, which have shows of a similar format. I think the FN does a good job of presenting the content and getting their message across without undue repetition. Sometimes I feel like DIY or HGTV have about 15 minutes of content and stretch it into 30 minutes and it's just a ton of repetition.

One of the other aspects I really like about FN is originality. Not all the shows are simply cooking shows, they've been able to successfully crossover to reality shows (like the Next Food Network Star), competitions (like Chopped [one of my favorites, by the way] or FN Challenge), travel shows, and have been able to include the home viewer/local chefs in creative ways (such as Ultimate Recipe Showdown and Throwdown) without jeopardizing content. If the NFL Draft or Friday Night football with viewers able to text in comments that scroll across the screen is any indication of how ESPN and several other networks try to get viewer participation or extensive use of forums and comments on the bottom of online content, I'm not interested. I can't stand that.

I also like that there is a large degree of variability in each time slot. Obviously, a lot of the prime time programming is the same (as it should be) but at lunch time or afternoon, I may get 2-3 different hosts or show types in a week and I may get 10-15 over the course of a month. This means that if I go to lunch every day at 1 pm, I don't always watch Sandra Lee or Paula Dean, I have no idea what will be on. I think that variability in programming is great during the day, when your audience is also variable as well.

To summarize, better talent, better show ideas that take their central theme (food) and use if across various proven entertainment platforms, better produced shows, and variability in programming. I never would have thought that I would think of the Food Network so highly, but it happened. They won me over. On a separate note too, I enjoy how foodnetwork.com complements the network, but doesn't try to be something that it's not and doesn't expand or water down the network itself. Good job Food Network, keep up the good work.

Carstache

2010-04-15T16:50:00.001-04:00

This is a great concept. However, I think I'll wait until the Car-Mullet comes out.

http://www.carstache.com/

Retire Ronald McDonald?

2010-04-13T14:28:00.003-04:00

Corporate Accountability International is hosting a retirement party for Ronald McDonald and has started a campaign to put pressure on McDonalds to retire the icon.

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/30/group-tells-ronald-mcdonald-to-take-a-hike/?hpt=T2

They were successful back in the 90s of getting Camel to retire Joe Camel and are employing similar strategies with Ronald now. Joe Camel, which I never 100% agreed with, got kids to smoke and now Ronald is convincing kids to be obese. They blame Ronald for the increase in childhood obesity. Really? It's Ronald's fault? It's too bad all those kids don't have parents around to keep them from eating McDonalds every day. I can understand lobbying for McDonalds to add some healthier choices on the menu (which they have over the last couple years), but forcing them to retire Ronald McDonald just because kids these days have irresponsible parents that aren't making sure their kids are eating properly is absurd. Besides, smoking and hamburgers are two completely different things. I just think this is absolutely ridiculous.

But while we're here, why Ronald and not the Hamburgler? First of all, the Hamburgler steals hamburgers! He should have been prosecuted years ago and has been running around stealing hamburgers for way too long now. Or what about Mayor McCheese? His head is a cheeseburger! When I see a clown, I don't think of a cheeseburger, but when I see a cheeseburger, I think of a cheeseburger. Call me crazy. Or Grimace? He's actually fat, as opposed to Ronald who apparantly doesn't eat enough of his own product to be obese. Are other chains safe? What about cereals? They all have cartoon mascots. Is the Nestle Quik rabbit next? Tony the Tiger? Wendy? Jack in the Box?

Ridiculous.

It's all in a name, or is it?

2010-02-08T19:04:00.003-05:00

In one of my MBA classes, we did a case study on RadioShack. The basis of the case study was that the name "RadioShack" is dated and that modern consumers can't relate to the store's name. Thus, there has been big marketing push to rebrand themselves as "The Shack" and eventually, store fronts may even have "The Shack" signage and the radio term will be completely gone. However, in my dealingss with RadioShack last week, the problems are much, much deeper than the name. MBA students will also tell you that it is important to have a clear mission statement and business definition that defines who you are and what you do. This is clearly lacking at RadioShack. After calling all 4 store locations in my area, I was quite confused as to what they even sold. I was under the impression that I could get consumer electronics and hard to find electronic parts, adapters, etc. However, I couldn't even find a store associate on the phone who could tell me whether or not they sold a network card for a PC. In fact, at one store, the associate was so bad, he didn't even know what a PC was, much less a network card and began trying to sell me a cell phone. I asked him if there was anyone there who I could talk to instead who might know something about technology and he said no. Let me clarify, there is no one who works at that RadioShack who knows anything about technology. And he was right, I talked to his store manager and he was also clueless. Finally, I found someone at a different store who said that they did have a network card for a PC, so I proceeded further into asking about the card as I needed it to have a PCI-Express interface, because my PCI slot was already being used. She assured me that it was a PCI-Express. However, when I got to the store, it was USB. I've never actually had anyone confuse a USB interface with a PCI-Express one before. In short, I came away from my experience with RadioShack frustrated and bewildered. I will admit, the USB interface card did work out for me because there ended up being Debian Linux drivers for it and there were none for any Intel PCI-Express card that I found. However, the experience certainly solidified for me that RadioShack's problems are much more than their name and I'm no investor, but I'd steer clear of their stock if I were you because the future can't be bright. However, if you are in the market for a cell phone or maybe women's hats or dresses, they may be able to help you, actually, I'm not sure, I don't really know what they sell there and no one who works there can tell me.

Super Bowl Preview

2010-02-03T21:20:00.003-05:00

Well, my playoff picks were beyond subpar this year. Not sure how I missed that so badly, and how we had so few good games. Anyway, without further ado, my annual Super Bowl preview.

Offense and Quarterbacks:
We have an amazing matchup of quarterbacks this year. Both quarterbacks have the ability to read defenses and make adjustments well enough that we should have plenty of offense to watch.
As far as key players on offense go, I have to give the Saints the edge. Not that the Colts don't have manageable receivers (Peyton Manning can make anyone look good), but I give the Saints an edge on their explosiveness. They have the ability to go all the way on any reception and open field tackling by the Colts defense will be key in keeping them in check. I also feel like the Saints running backs fit better into their offensive game plan than the Colts do as Addai is more of a power back stuck in a spread offense and they lack that Pierre Thomas/Reggie Bush receiving threat out of the backfield.
From a pure quarterback standpoint though, I give the edge to Peyton over Drew because of his experience. The quarterback position is so important in the Super Bowl and should be weighted accordingly. I give the Colts the overall offensive edge.

Defense and Turnovers:
Both defenses face a huge challenge this week, especially the Colts who will be without Dwight Freeney. Dwight is a big loss and he could pressure Drew and hopefully force him to make a mistake or two. But it could be worse, they could have had losses in their secondary. Net-net, the defenses are about a wash. I have been able to find a few stats though that indicate an edge for the Saints. First of all, the Colts are ranked 30th in the league stopping opponents on 3rd or 4th down and 31st in forcing 3 and outs. This will give the Saints offense more opportunities and possibilities for big plays. Also, that could raise the time of possession for the Saints and lead to a more tired Colts defense that might make mistakes late in the game. The other things is turnovers. A turnover at the right time will change the course of the game. Just ask the Cardinals last year. The Saints are 2nd overall in forcing turnovers and the Colts are 18th. Based on those two stats, I'll give the edge to the Saints.

Coaches:
Jim Caldwell and Sean Payton. Payton has more NFL experience and comes from the Bill Parcells/Ray Rhodes coaching tree. Caldwell was a mediocre college coach until he came under the Dungy tree in the NFL. Caldwell is also in his first season as a head coach. I prefer Payton here as a pure coach, but Caldwell has a coach on the field in Manning. Still I give the edge to the Saints here.

Game Conditions:
Both teams play their home games in a dome, so if weather is a factor, then it will be for both teams. They are also both passing offenses and can be affected by the possible rainy forecast in the same manner, although I'd rather have Donald Brown and Joseph Addai in the rain than Reggie Bush and Pierre Thomas.
The Super Bowl is different too because the game is slower (longer commercial breaks and more game stoppages) and without the experience of managing a slower game, offenses can get out of sync from all the delays. Since Indianapolis has been here recently, they may handle it better.

Other Factors:
Another factor that could come into play is the "happy to be here" symptom. The Saints have never been to a Super Bowl. That could play out in one of two ways. It could be a motivating factor to finish the job and increase their level of play. Or, they could be contempt that they've reached their goal and not play up the challenge. We've all seen it play out either way. I don't see the Saints being contempt but they could get caught up in the whole playing for the entire city of New Orleans pressure and trying to hard to win that it hampers their play. The whole Hurricane Katrina, we need to win for this city, card could be too much for them to carry. The Colts want to win a Super Bowl, but the entire city of Indianapolis isn't at stake, their minds are not going to be as heavy and most of the players have been there before so they will play more relaxed and handle the pressure of the game better. Advantage Colts.

Overall Prediction:
Halftime Score - 14-17 Saints

Final score - 35-31 Colts

Dream Diminished

2010-02-02T23:03:00.003-05:00

Over the holiday season, one of my lifelong dreams was either diminished or possibly more easily achieved. But more easily achieved is not always a good thing, so I'm going with diminished. It used to be that back in the day, the good old days as they are oft called, you worked hard all your life to make a difference in this world. You serve, innovate, implement, and bust your tail to make the world a better place. And then, maybe, just maybe, you will be given the honor to have your face embolden on a US postal stamp. But now, with PictureItPostage, anyone can have their face on a stamp. You just download their software to your PC and order stamps all day with whatever picture you want on them. Stamp collectors must be going crazy, how are they going to collect one of each of all these stamps? Plus, their entire hobby has been diminished. Why should I bother trying to find some obscure Benjamin Franklin stamp? I'll just put Ben's picture into PictureItPostage and $18.45 later, I have 20 of them.
I've always wanted to achieve something that someday, people would deem me significant enough to remember by legacy by putting my face on a stamp. I just don't know that it's worth it now. Now, when my daughter is born, we'll be able to send out birth announcements with her on the stamp and her crowning achievement in life will have been a few dirty diapers and keeping me up at night. Well, that, and the fact that she's my daughter. So, Mother Teresa, Abe Lincoln, George Washington and on down the line, thanks, but you know, had you just been born much later on, you wouldn't have had to work so hard for the honor of having your mug plastered on a stamp.

Hormel Deli Ham

2010-02-01T21:57:00.001-05:00

I don’t understand Hormel's claims about their prepackaged deli ham. The packaging says in bold letters across the top “100% All Natural Ham” but then in small letters underneath, it says “Enhanced with up to 11% solution.” How can it be 100% ham then? Am I really eating 111% ham, I don’t think so. It’s more like I’m eating 89% ham that claims to be 100% ham. Is the solution all natural too, or is that part also a lie? I have a feeling I know what type of “all natural” solution pigs produce and it’s nothing that would “enhance” my ham. You know what 100% ham is? Slice off the butt of a pig, cook it and package it for me. That’s 100% ham. Anything else is just a lie. I realize 89% ham isn’t flying off the shelves like 100% ham is, but if the 100% is a lie, I’d rather them just say that it’s “ham.” Cause with the other blatant lies on the front of the packaging, I’m not even sure I can believe that part of it either.

Preparation

2009-11-24T13:14:00.001-05:00

For once, a serious post. Those of you who know me know that I have many goals for my life. One of them is quite shallow. That is, to attend the Super Bowl. It will likely never happen because I can't and will never be able to justify paying $6,000+/ticket on StubHub or any other ticket exchange unless I wind up filthy rich somehow. For me to go to the Super Bowl, I'll need to find face value tickets somewhere or be comped them. The point of this post though is that I sometimes have very vivid dreams that I do have Super Bowl tickets and it's the day of the game. In these dreams, I never make it to the game though I'm in the host city and near the stadium. I've had lost tickets, stolen tickets, been at the "complex" and unable to find correct stadium, etc. It has really gotten me to think. How often in our lives do we really want something badly and then not prepare for it? I think we halfheartedly expect it to happen on its own or to not at all for us and resign ourselves to that end. Obviously, in my example, there is not much preparation I can do in advance not knowing which Super Bowl I might go to and all the planning would need to be done once I acquired tickets. But I just wanted to put it out there in a broader sense as it's something I've been thinking about since Sunday. What are your goals in life and what are you doing to prepare yourself for them? Do you have a plan in place to see them through? I certainly don't, but I think it's about time I start putting something together.

Book Review "3 Nights in August"

2009-11-05T17:27:00.001-05:00

Quite a while back, a friend of mine, Craig T, posted a quote on his website from Charlie "Tremendous" Jones that said "You are the same today as you'll be in five years, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read." Just as it inspired Craig to read more, it has done the same for me. Especially since I don't like meeting new people, I figured I better pick up a book.

With Tony La Russa recently signing a contract extension and the Cardinals letting McRae go and hiring McGwire, I thought of a book I finished about 2 months ago called "3 Nights in August." It's by Buzz Bissinger, who also penned Friday Night Lights. In the epilogue, he explains that while he didn't intend for the book to be an answer to Moneyball, it turned out being considered that. The book is geared more toward hard core baseball fans, and La Russa and his staff (at the time of the book anyway) are certainly of the old baseball guard and not the Harvard MBA, number-crunching stat nerds that are praised in Moneyball. The book chronicles the Cardinals 2004 season through the window of a 3 game series. The book goes inning by inning, sometimes pitch by pitch through a 3 game series (in guess what month). Mixing that with La Russa's baseball stragedy, career experiences and life, and the season so far keep the book flowing and not feeling as if it's a book simply about a 3 game series. Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who is a baseball fan and particularly anyone who as read Moneyball, to see the other side of the story.

Also, another book to keep you going through the baseball offseason, I finished "The Long Journey" home this fall as well. It's the story of a minor league prospect during World War II. It's a good mix of baseball and history.

Grease-o-meter

2009-10-16T08:56:00.003-04:00

This article is a little old, but have you heard the latest fair food? Deep fried butter. Really? That doesn't even sound good. So, let's me get this straight, someone looked at a stick of butter and thought, we should fry that. Tastes great and will kill me, but hey, I bet roll it in batter and fry it in old grease. That just makes no sense.

Anyway, see the below article for all the other latest fair fare.

http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090901_wz_statefairfoods.13a95680b.html

Nobel prize

2009-10-15T16:18:00.001-04:00

Nobel prize

So Obama has won a Nobel peace prize? For what? He's been the president for 9 months! Shouldn't we give it a little time to see if his policies are actually successful? It's far too early to tell in my opinion. Besides, there were plenty of other deserving nominees this year. What about the guy who invented the snuggie? How come he gets shafted? It's a blanket with sleeves people! Genius. Now there's someone who has made the world a better place.

Merry Christmas

2009-10-15T16:12:00.001-04:00

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Think its too early to say it? Apparantly not. Visit your local Hobby Lobby or craft store and Christmas is in full swing. Heck, at Hobby Lobby this week, Christmas is already 30% off. At Kmart and Walmart, the gardening supplies are dwindling and Christmas items are starting to appear. At Kmart, its difficult to tell whether its Halloween or Christmastime, it all depends on which aisle your in. Christmas has been starting to come earlier every year and lately, its like Thanksgiving does exist anymore except to give us Black Friday. I don't care for Halloween, the best part of Halloween is November 1st and half priced candy sales, but still, its October for crying out loud. Labor day better be on the lookout next year, as Christmas season might take over September too!

SEC Preview

2009-09-01T19:25:00.003-04:00

My final conference preview has been posted on RedShirtFootball.com, the SEC. Enjoy, and remember to sign up at www.redshirtfootball.com/pickem to pick games against me this fall and play in any of our pools.

http://redshirtfootball.blogspot.com/2009/08/sec-preview.html

Football Pick'em

2009-08-26T22:34:00.002-04:00

Normally, I post my picks every week on this blog or my redshirtfootball.com one. However, this year, I'm giving you a chance to pick against me on redshirtfootball.com. That's right, I'll be running a couple pick'ems for college and NFL and selecting a few games each week for everyone to pick the winners of, either straight up or against the spread. I'm also going to try out a "point spread" game that Craig T told me about and that he has played in the past. You can sign up at the link below:

http://www.redshirtfootball.com/pickem/index.php

Big 12 Preview

2009-08-25T07:19:00.001-04:00

My Big 12 preview has been posted, and if nothing else, you need to read the Oklahoma Sooners bit and check out the pic of Sam Bradford I found.

http://redshirtfootball.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-12-preview.html

Woofy Treats

2009-08-13T22:13:00.005-04:00

The other day I was at the mall picking up a few things from Sears on my lunch break when I stumbled across vehicle in the below picture. The picture was taken on my camera phone, so it's pretty blurry, but basically, it's a trailer attached to a truck, selling "Frozen Woofys." I can't make this stuff up. That's right, it's an ice cream truck for dogs. And not just with any frozen confections for our dogs, organic treats. Organic. Wow. It would seem we feed better stuff to our dogs that we do ourselves. On the back of the truck, it was advertising that they come in two great flavors that dogs love. What are those, "cat" and "human ankle?" Perhaps, "dirty shoes" or "rotten trash?" Anyway, I thought the Doggy Bistro downtown was bad, frozen organic treats, now, we've really lost it. Leave your suggestion for possible flavors in the comments section.

Pac 10 Preview

2009-08-13T22:11:00.002-04:00

My Pac-10 preview has been posted on the RedShirtFootball blog. Enjoy.

http://redshirtfootball.blogspot.com/2009/08/pac-10-preview.html

You're getting WHAT done?

2009-08-10T22:05:00.007-04:00

Last weekend Jeni and I went to the new Academy Sports store in Greenville. They were still having their Grand Opening sale and lots going on to attract customers, from a giant pond outside with hundreds of pounds of catfish for people to catch, mini-golf course, the Clemson fishing team, Reebok, Bridgestone, etc, all on site.
In the golf section, I had a little explaining to do to Jeni for what I got done, as it sounds a little perverted. I got ball fitted. That's right, ball fitted. And it has nothing to do with what size jock strap one needs. It's very similar to being club fitted, except with golf balls instead of clubs. They have all this high tech machinary that takes several pictures as the ball leaves the tee and measures launch angle, back spin, side spin, etc. So, you pick out a club that's similar to yours and take a few swings. He asked me about the shaft on my current driver. In honesty, I won't shell out the dough for a flexible graphite composite whatever shaft, so instead of saying that, I just said that it was stiff. Hey, for my price range, stiff is all they make. So, I had to make do with a Callaway driver that sells for around $300, about what my entire set, plus bag and everything is worth. You first hit with a ball similar to one that you currently use and get measured and then since this was put on by Bridgestone, they pick out a Bridgestone ball that best fits your game, or in my case, lack therefore of. At one point he asked, "Have you had a chance to play much golf this year?" So, after I'd hit a few with the Top Flight, he suggested that I give up golf and try baseball. He hadn't seen me in the batting cages recently. The ball moves in baseball, I need a sport where the ball sits still for me to hit it. So after he picked out a ball for me to use that was 10 inches in diameter.... No, kidding, actually, he picked out a Bridgestone e6+ for me. It is designed to reduce side spin and back spin (both of which I'm really high on) because of it's anti spin inner cover. Surpringinsly, not the most expensive ball they make. After taking some swings with that, it reduced my backspin by 1300 rpm changed my side spin by a factor of 500 rpms. Anyway, golf is just a time killer til football season, which as of today, is only 22 days away and the season tickets came in the mail yesterday. Anyway, I highly recommend Academy Sports, it's like Sports Authority meets Bass Pro Shop and if you get a chance, you should get ball fitted. Just try not to laugh when they ask you how you like your shaft, stiff or flexible.

Big 10 Preview

2009-08-10T21:52:00.002-04:00

Below is the link to my Big 10 Preview.

http://redshirtfootball.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-ten-preview.html

Greenville Drive Home Run

2009-08-10T20:56:00.003-04:00

Jeni and I enjoying going down to Fluor Field in historic west end downtown Greenville every once in a while and take in a Greenville Drive baseball game. The Drive are a single A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. It's a nice stadium and they put on a good show for all the fans and the games are always pretty good. A couple weeks ago when we went I was fortunate enough to take the below picture that I really like. I'm sure all your photography majors and critics out there will find tons of fault with my picture taking ability, but I think it is a cool picture. This was actually a home run, so that ball you see streaking off the bat and into left center will eventually clear the fence and bring the Drive to within 3 runs of the lead. Someday I'll blog about how Major League Baseball is too controlling and dictated that Greenville name our team the Drive instead of what the fans wanted, which was a name honoring the baseball tradition of our town.

ACC Preview

2009-08-06T21:09:00.003-04:00

My ACC Preview has been posted on the Redshirt Football blog.

Issam, I think you will be quite pleased with my prediction.

ACC Preview

Big East Preview

2009-08-05T21:42:00.003-04:00

Over the next week, I'll be posting my college football conference previews with my predictions for how each BCS conference will shake out on the Red Shirt Football blog. Enjoy.

Big East Preview

Bad Soap and Jorts

2009-07-30T08:16:00.002-04:00

Two quick takes:

A couple weeks ago we were at Frankie's Fun Park, having guess what... fun. After washing my hands, I quickly noticed that they have very badly scented hand soap. I can't stand bad soap because as soon as you wash your hands with it, you can't get the smell off for at least 10 washs with good soap. Good soap scent has left your hands by the time you walk out of the restroom, like it's supposed to. Frustrating.

Also, my step-sister Allison, who loves to be mentioned or referenced in the blog, pointed out some guy wearing jean shorts. My wife informs me that these are actually called 'jorts.' These were real ones too, as in, they used to be jeans and then got cut off to be shorts. I think he was just trying to bring them back into style. All I have to say is, if you are trying to bringing anything back in style, you need to do it one at a time. Meaning: the mullet, top gun sunglasses, and handlebar stach are a bit much altogether. Just bring them back into style one at a time, otherwise, you might want to drive around in a dolrean telling everyone you just arrived from 1986.

Produce and Fireworks

2009-07-27T21:58:00.003-04:00

On my way back from Charlotte on Saturday morning, I stopped and picked up some locally grown peaches. I find it interesting that every peach stand also doubles as a fireworks stand. All the roadside produce stands up by TR towards Asheville that I could think of also double as fireworks stands. So my question is, what is it about fresh produce that makes people want to blow stuff up? I guess there is just something about a fresh picked peach that makes people what to shoot copious amounts of gunpowder, sulphur and cheap packaging into the atmosphere. In reality, they are both seasonal items so I can see economically that it makes sense as you can get more sales volume, prolong your sales timeline and you are hedging your bets against a drought or bad growing season with the fireworks. So I understand having two different seasonal items in the same store/stand. But how about a non-seasonal item? Or something other than fireworks? I guess it's just easy, someone did it and make a decent living so now everyone is doing it. To me, fireworks are risky. Fire risk and safety considerations aside, I would think that fireworks sales are just as unpredictable and fickle as peach sales. If it were me, I'd want at least one of my stand/store offerings to be a stable business that had a certain amount of guaranteed cash flow. So, maybe there is something about produce that makes people want to buy/shoot off fireworks after all.

MJ

2009-07-26T22:45:00.002-04:00

I have asked many people over the last couple weeks, "How's life been for you post-Micheal Jackson?" Based on what I've seen from the news, people are generally having a hard time with it, some have even said that their daily lives are not the same. However, that has not been the case with anyone I've talked to. Everyone I've talked to said, "What about the last 20 years?". Apparently, death was the best career move that Micheal could have made. All the sudden, Michael is the king of pop again, he's getting all types of credit for changing not only the music industry, but also paving the way for Obama and Tiger Woods. Really? Shouldn't we also say he paved the way for Hillary Clinton and Mia Hamm then? This is the same guy that morphed from a black man to a white woman in front of our eyes and then molested boys at his "ranch"* and now in death, he's "the greatest entertainer to live." I think its interesting how the media choses to villify some celebrities even in their death, but praise others. And for the most part, America follows their lead like little sheep. Sad. And I think that it was Sharpton that was making a big deal that MJ broke the color barrier on MTV. Really? How long from the time MTV first went on the air until the color barrier was broken, 10 mins? 20? Maybe an hour at best. Let's not put him in the same category as Jackie Robinson or some of the black musicians who faced real color issues in the 50's and 60's.
The good news is that the media are almost done covering this story as our 24/7 coverage has dwindled down to a few stories here and there now.

*side note: if anyone invites your kid over to their "ranch" and there are no cattle or horses on the "ranch", be wary.

Computer Abuse doesn't pay

2009-07-17T00:01:00.005-04:00

Last media post of the week, I promise. This video starts out like some others I've seen, but you have to stick around until the end, it's worth it. I am known at work for tossing a mouse or two in frustration and taking out my struggles on my equipment. Now though, I'll be sure to make sure there is not an All Spark around before I do (my fellow Transformers fans will get understand referance). So remember, next time, think before you abuse.

Comments on Websites, part 2

2009-07-15T01:50:00.009-04:00

I've previously discussed on this blog that I don't like how every major site now has a comments section on the bottom of every article. I was listening to the ESPN Bill Simmons podcast the other day with Chuck Klostermann and they brought up an excellent point on this topic and worded it way better than me. Basically, it's that major sites are tailoring their content towards those who are posting. For example, the latest article on a scandal or SEC football article will stir thousands of comments and debate amongst the posters, but the well-written, well-researched article that adds something meaningful to the conversation has 3 comments on it. Obviously, it's clear then where they are going to focus their attention at. And I agree with Chuck, that as sites begin to tailor and be persuaded by the comments of their readers, it reduces the quality of the content. I've attached a segment of the podcast so you can hear what I'm talking about. Also, another side note, if I don't like all these idiots commenting on websites, you can only imagine how I feel about it during the MLB All-Star game coverage, the NFL draft and now Thursday night college football coverage. Grrrr..

Click here to listen

E-Z Rentacar or E-Z Ripoff?

2009-07-14T21:33:00.005-04:00

Those of you who know me know that I'm a cheapskate and am all about saving every penny that I can. A cheapskate and a pack rat. That said, I'm normally the type of guy why would use a company like E-Z Rent-a-car. However, over the holiday weekend, they were the last online company to still have cars at the airport, they knew it and raised their prices. Having studied economics (both macro and micro), I understand supply and demand and would not have been too upset had they raised their prices with supply dwindling. Even doubling their prices, I can understand that. Maybe even tripling. But multiplying them by 7! That is an outrage! That is price gouging, which I thought was illegal, but apparently not in every state. Unbelievable. In fact, no one that I told the rate they were trying to charge actually believed me that they had set their rate that high. In fact, it was so high, that for only an additional $25, I could have gotten a limo service instead. I obviously ended up not getting a car from E-Z Rent-a-car and now never will. That's right, because of this absurd attempt at price gouging, you'll never see me in a car from E-Z. So, how much were they trying to charge? 100/day? Nope. Would have considered it. $150/day. Not even close. $275/day the first time I looked! And it increased to $284/day over the next 12 hours. And that was for an economy car! I'm inserting a screenshot just because I know you would never believe me otherwise. I want to know who is renting an SUV for $500/day. For the prices they were trying to charge, I was strongly considering buying a car and then selling it 5 days later. I figure there is no way I'm taking a loss of more than $100/day on the buy/sell deal. Ridiculous.

That said, I did pay a doubled price from Enterprise and although I was relatively pleased with the rental itself, I have to say "We'll pick you up" is a complete marketing lie. On the commercials, they show them driving through the countryside to pick someone up, nope. Not true. And whereas I expected there to be a relatively tight pickup range, the range is actually only "10" miles. But not really. The range is also territorial and they will not cross into the range of another Enterprise. So, for example, in a Downtown area where there are 3-4 Enterprise locations, the effective range is more like 4-5 miles before they are into the next Enterprise range. And they won't pick you up at the airport, so you are flying into somewhere and need a car, hope you like riding in a taxi.

Wal-Mart Saftey

2009-07-13T21:02:00.003-04:00

I saw this sign in my local Wal-Mart the other day and had to take a picture of it to share.
Not only is safety spelled hilariously wrong, but the wording of the sentence makes it quite comical. The saftey preposition should precede the instruction to not sit or stand on the shelf. So, next time you are in Wal-Mart, be careful and watch your step, it's for your saftey.

Mt Evans Pics

2009-07-09T23:53:00.002-04:00

As promised, a couple pics from the Mt Evans drive. More vacation pics and rants/raves upcoming.

Click on the picture for more pictures.

Do not disturb?

2009-07-09T22:45:00.001-04:00

Do not disturb?

Who is putting out the do not disturb sign at hotels and then complaining that their room is not getting clean? Who are you? Why are you doing this to us? You have ruined 'do not disturb' for the rest of us. Now, thanks to you, we get disturbed. That's right, the last couple hotels I stayed at have policies against using the do not disturb sign for prolonged periods. The most recent made the sign only in effect for day 1, after that, they are cleaning your room anyway. 2 hotels ago, the housekeeping knocked on my door every day and made me sign a piece of paper saying I had my do not disturb sign out and didn't want my room clean. In other words, I had to be disturbed in order to confirm that I didn't want to be disturbed, in two languages. Funny, I thought that was what the sign was for. Maybe instead of a sign, I need some type of banner. A "seriously, disturb at your own risk" banner. A lot of the time, its because I'm travelling and working late for work, and I want to sleep in instead of being woken up to sign my name confirming that I don't want to be woken up. Maybe someday some when we all have personal droids, this won't be an issue as my droid can stand guard and sign my name for me, but until then, I'm very displeased in those of you who have ruined the do not disturb sign. So long sleeping in at the hotel.

Mt Evans

2009-07-08T21:20:00.001-04:00

Mt Evans

Enough time has passed that I can now talk about what happened on Monday. Monday, I had the most harrowing drive of my life.
Jeni and I were in Colorado and decided to drive to the top of Mt Evans, the highest paved road in America. Its supposed to be a very scenic drive, lots of wildlife, breathtaking views, etc. Well, it was breathtaking alright, as in unable to breathe. We were cruising right along, not a worry in the world, and then we got above the tree line. Not only was there a couple thousand feet cliff off the side of the road, there was no guard rails either. I know guards rails are a kinda false sense of security, but still, sure would have been nice to have. I'm not normally scared of heights, but I have to say that my blood was pumping pretty good the whole way and I almost turned back several times. One of the scariest things was getting glimpes of the road ahead and knowing that what you see someone else doing in a couple thousand feet is going to be you next. All in all, I wouldn't recommend the drive for anyone weak of heart or even marginally afraid of heights. It certainly did a number on my nerves and kept me awake and on edge well into the night. I will post a few pictures from the drive up tomorrow as well as some more thoughts and ramblings from the trip.

Bulletproof Canoes

2009-07-05T16:53:00.001-04:00

Bulletproof Canoes

One of my Spring semester classes was on innovation and technology. One of the things we talked about briefly one week was a new woven fabric that is practically bulletproof. My first thought was to make police uniforms, hunting gear, and/or military uniforms out of it. Maybe some suits for the secret service, FBI agents, and the President to wear. Nope. The first application chosen was canoe lining. I didn't realize there was such a gunshot wound risk while canoeing. I was never a big fan of being in a canoe just because of the sheer effort involved in paddling, but now that I know I also need a bulletproof canoe you can definitely count me out. Paddling and dodging bullets? No thanks, I'll pass.
After testing the fabric on canoes, they've found that its very shock absorbing and are taking their product to race cars next. So, I guess it will still be a few years before you can get your bulletproof sweater to wear around town or to West Virginian family gatherings.

Happy 4th of July

2009-07-04T18:26:00.001-04:00

Happy 4th of July

Happy Fourth everyone. Celebrate our freedom by doing some American today, like blowing up large amounts of paper, sulphur and gunpowder or grilling some hamburgers. Jeni and I will be celebrating by horseback riding through some great American countryside and of course, watching some fireworks. Go America!

Josh Womack

2009-07-02T21:38:00.002-04:00

I think this guy is amazing. I won't tell you what happens whenever I try this except to say that there are jammed fingers and bruised wrists involved. And had there been anything breakable around, it would not have been pretty.

The governor

2009-06-30T21:19:00.001-04:00

The governor

I've been asked to comment on our poor, misguided governorr, Mark Sanford. I do have to say, the episode has left me quite speechless. My comment is ... <Blank stare>. I can say that I will never think of "hiking the appalachain trail" the same again. The phrase has a whole new meaning, and is not quite the marketing that the appalachain trail was looking for I'm sure. The sad part of the whole ordeal is that this is all about 7-8 years early for Mark. Supposedly, he was in line to be a republican presidential candidate after Obama is done. If this comes out after he's President, it's no big deal, just ask Clinton. But beforehand, he might have to kiss that nomination goodbye.

Speaking of Obama, didn't he campaign that he was going to reduce government spending? Has he done anything aside from spending money since being in office? I know there a lot of criticism that Bush was always going over budget and increasing the deficit, as for Obama, I don't think it counts as staying within budget if you just print the money you need to make up the difference.

Newest member of the family

2009-06-27T09:02:00.005-04:00

Jeni and I just found out about a week ago that we were expecting. However, it's not what you think. We were checking out a cypress tree in our back yard, debating how much to cut it back, when we found several robin eggs in a nest. So, we didn't cut the tree back and were expecting a couple robins in the near future. This week, Jeni went out to check out how the little eggs were doing and she had the rare opportunity to actually see an egg hatch. Not only that, we managed to get it on film for the entire world to see. Enjoy.

Belmont Availability

2009-05-19T08:50:00.002-04:00

Has any horse been dissed as much as Mine That Bird? Now comes reports that not only did Calvin Borel decide to run another horse in the Preakness, but his jockey in the Preakness 'has other plans' and won't ride him in the Belmont. So, I'm officially volunteering to ride Mine that Bird in the Belmont. I won't take a salary or anything, I just want 15% of the winnings and 5% of the stud fees earned over the next 10 years. Not too much to ask, I don't think. At least I'm willing to ride him, no one else seems to be. Do these jockey's know that Mine that Bird won the Derby and came in second in the Preakness? Had it not been for that "lady of the night" Rachel Alexandra ruining everything, we'd have ourselves a Triple Crown contender. In fact, it should be illegal to run a horse in the Preakness that didn't even run in the Derby. Where are Pat Day and Gary Stevens at? This type of nonsense would never happen if they were still riding. I know my last post was about how baseball lacked integrity and I'm pretty sure that horse racing is by no means even close to being better than baseball in that area, but come on. In this economy you gotta at least try to get fans interested.
Anyway, regardless, just wanted to put it out there, I'm available to ride Mine That Bird in the Belmont since no one else apparantly is willing to ride a Derby winner in a Triple Crown race that he's likely to win.

Steroids / Baseball Integrity

2009-05-17T09:34:00.002-04:00

With Manny Ramirez recently getting a 50 game suspension for using a banned substance, the talk has been stirred up again about how substance abuse and steroids ruins the integrity of the game. The obvious answer is yes, of course it does. However, this is baseball we are talking about. There is no other major league sport that I can think of that has less integrity that baseball over the course of it's history. This is a sport where not just one player has been banned for life for betting on the game and point shaving, but an entire team was convicted of it (the 1919 "Black" sox). We are currently in the steroid era, but we've certainly had other dubious era's in baseball. Corked bats, spit balls. Teams have staff who are specifically assigned to spy on the opposing manager and try to steal their signs and crack them.
Cheating has always been a part of baseball and it always will be. With all this cheating ingrained into the history of the game, I just can't see how steroids violates the integrity of the game. It merely confirms that it is still a game without integrity. So next time another player gets a case of the mascot head and gets sat down for steroids and has their "legacy" ruined, don't think of it as destroying the integrity of the game, think of it as them continuing the cheating subculture that has plagued this game throughout its history.

When Pigs ....

2009-03-26T00:35:00.004-04:00

Race? On a recent trip to Texas, I saw the back of a semi truck that I couldn't help but find a bit odd. The back door was not closed all the way, and it clearly stated on the door why. Because there were racing pigs inside. My first thought was, you can race pigs? And my second was, I've got to find my camera because no one is going to believe this.

So, unbeknownst to me, you can race pigs. Immediately, several comical pictures came to mind as to what a racing pig may look like. In my mind, they have numbers tattoed on the side of them and are covered with decals. Then, the practical start coming, do the pigs know they are racing? What do they get if they win, the chance to avoid becoming bacon for another day? What is a pig's motivation to race? How in the world do you train a pig to race? Is there mud and slop across the finish line and at the starting line it's clean and sterile? Are there professional pig trainers like in horse racing? Is this legal? Can I bet on it? How do I know which pig to bet on, are there odds like in horse racing? I guess being new to the 'sport', I just have a lot of unanswered questions, but I have to say, racing pigs sounds a whole lot better to me than flying pigs.
What an amazing revelation, racing pigs, now if I can only find where these happen at. I've created a mockup below of what a race pig looks like in my mind. Enjoy.

Typesetting

2009-03-24T23:14:00.002-04:00

So, I just learned that there is an ongoing debate out there as to whether there should be one or two periods after the end of a sentence. I had no clue. All through school, we were drilled that there should be two spaces after a sentence. Now, I'm hearing that for professional letters, memos, acedemic papers, etc, you only need one. You should only use two spaces if you need an additional pause for affect, email, personal correspondance or if you are publishing a work of fiction. The two space rule is left over from typewriter with monospaced typsets, today's word processors have proportionally spaced fonts which make the text easier to read with just the one space. In fact, some people consider the extra space "distracting and unattractive". To me, it's absurd that this argument even exists. Does it really matter? Do people really shutter when they see two spaces at the end of a sentence? If so, they shouldn't read this blog because I feel like it looks better that way and plan to continue to use it in this context. And all my papers for school will continue to have two spaces to make them a few lines longer. ;) One wonders that if the great minds of this world worried about things other than how many spaces are at the end of a sentence what a difference we could make. Hey, starving kid in Africa, one space or two?

Comments on websites

2009-03-23T08:38:00.003-04:00

Almost every major website now has a comments section where you can make comments on the article or post that you just read. It's really getting on my nerves. Why? Because all it does is highlight how immature and stupid we are as a society. It's all drivel. That's what discussion boards are full, I don't need a discussion board for every ESPN article. And I'm not saying that everyone is stupid, there are a ton of smart people out there. Plenty of smart people are reading these articles (I am afterall ;)), but they aren't the ones commenting. I think in the hundreds of comments I've read over the years, maybe one or two have added to the conversation positively. Most of the time its just people pointing out to the whole Internet how stupid they are, trying to cause an argument or putting down the author. Mostly, it's just idiocracy. If you read comments on CNN, you know exactly why the economy is bad. No one commenting on CNN has any idea about what they've just read. None of the people commenting on the article are intelligent enough to read, comprehend and come up with their own opinions about the article. And none of the commenters have the educational background to know what parts of the article are media fluff and scare tactics. So, I know that the big sites can't moderate every comment, there are just too many comments coming in to filter it. My suggestion is to just cut it out. We don't need it. Some of you are thinking, if the comments bother Phil so much, why doesn't he just stop reading them? Well, he can't. It's like a train wreck. It's like I read an article and I just have to browse over a couple to see what people are saying about it. And it always surprises me how incomprehensible they become with each passing day. So anyway, that's what I hate about the Internet lately, comments on web articles. Vent complete.

Can fantasy hockey save the NHL?

2009-03-14T09:16:00.002-04:00

Those of you who know me may be shocked to learn that I have a fantasy hockey team. Because I'm not really a hockey fan, at all. I know next to nothing about hockey actually. However, 3 years ago I played and won a Yahoo! public league. So, I'm playing in a Yahoo! public league again, I just like to feel like a winner every once in a while and I enjoy beating up on Canadians and yankees. So, fantasy football has not only helped out the NFL, it's changed NFL broadcasting to be more fantasy focused. It gave people a reason to start caring about baseball again after the steroids scandal. It's given basketball new life after no one could relate to any of the players in the 90s and given people a reason to follow the NBA again.
So, can fantasy hockey 1) bring fans back to hockey after the horrible season long strike and subsequent difficulty in getting TV deals to broadcast games by adding fantasy broadcastability, 2) add new fans that are following teams and players because of their fantasy team and therefore may buy the occasional ticket to a game or watch a game on TV, and 3) create an Internet following in order to generate revenue from online ad sales.
The answer, I think, is no. There are two main reasons and one minor reason. The first main one is that no one's name is pronounceable. I have a team and I can pronounce maybe 3 players out of 18 on the team. Because of that, it's difficult to feel attached to any of your players. In fact, I know Roberto Lungo is on my team and Chris Mason is on my team. I have the number one player in the league and I don't even know his name. Evan? Anyway. Thats an issue and it's probably not fixable unless you give everyone nicknames or make all star players change their name (which would be for their own good anyway, might help them earn a few extra promotional dollars). Another major issue that also may be unsolvable is the lack of stats. Out of the 20-25 players who get significant playing time each game, only half of those or less are going to put up a decent amount of goals, assists, or shots on goal. So, the other categories are Power Play Points and Penalty Minutes. Not much, so they have this contrived +/- category. If you are on the ice when your team scores, you get +1, if you are on the ice with the oppostion scores its -1 point for you. Ok, that's fine, that way defenders can earn stats of some kind other than penalty minutes, I get that. But we are stat hungry fans lately and unless they can contrive a couple more things, I don't see it taking off.
The other minor thing is something that the GMs recently met about and that's fighting. I know it sells tickets and that its an integral part of the game. But I also think that it takes away from the integrity of the sport as well. What if after a hard pass interference play in the NFL, the players could just fight it out and the penalty is that both players have to stand on the sidelines for 5 minutes and the teams play down a man during that time? You wouldn't take football as seriously, would you? I just think that it takes away from the sport aspect of it and adds a street and barbaric aspect and keeps it from gaining mass spectator appeal. We simply can't relate as fans to being able to fight as part of your job or sport. In the long run, I don't think you can rely on only a portion of your sport to be popular and maintain growth and fandom, i.e wrecks in racing, fighting in hockey, etc. You need for people to be intrigued by the sport itself. So, maybe you need to tweak some rules to make the sport as a whole entertaining and leave the fighting to boxers.
So, there, I provided no answers, but concluded that fantasy hockey alone can't save the NHL and the obstacles that stand in the way of hockey becoming a major sport may be unsolvable.

Super Bowl Preview

2009-01-31T17:58:00.003-05:00

Time once again for me to try my hand at predicting the Super Bowl. Since my playoff picks were not too accurate this year, I need to try and redeem myself here.

Underdog factor
This year, both teams have a little bit of it actually as not many people expected either of these teams to be in it. However, you'd have to say that the Cardinals play that role best. They've never been in the Super Bowl and they've been the underdog according to Vegas every week throughout the playoffs. They haven't gotten any respect from any one in the media until the NFC Championship game. I think they have a slight "something to prove" edge here and it should carry them throughout the 1st half.

2 Week Layoff
The advantage here is almost always to defense. Which is a big reason why defenses play such a crucial role in championship games. Offenses often get out of sync and nothing like a week off and a few thousand interviews to get QBs and their WRs out of rhythm. Plus, as much as I often think playoff experience is overrated, the Steelers have been to the Super Bowl and know how to prepare despite the media distractions. Advantage Steelers.

Quarterback Play
How well your quarterback plays makes a big difference in the web and flow of a game like this, that is dramatically slower than a normal football game and is a game that can really play with your head. Both quarterbacks are good leaders and both have been to the Super Bowl before and won it. I think the Steelers though have an advantage here though because I feel like they can pressure Warner more than the Cards can pressure Roethlisberger and make Warner make mistakes. Advantage Steelers.

Those are my 3 keys to the game, and the team that does the best at each of them will be the winner. I think the 1st half will be low scoring with the Cardinals taking a slight advantage into the locker room, probably 14-10 or maybe 10-7. I feel like the Steelers make their move in the 3rd quarter and don't look back although I expect the Cardinals to keep up for a little while.
Final Score: 34-24. And take the over 46.5.
Troy Polamalu is your MVP.

NFL Playoff Picks

2009-01-02T19:17:00.003-05:00

Since 2001 when I missed just 1 game, I've been trying to pick the winners of every NFL playoff game prior to the playoffs starting. Just picking the winners straight up, not against the spread. My career record is really good, but still, I'd like to go undefeated one year. Without further ado, here goes:

Wild card games:
Colts over Chargers. Tough one to pick as I like to pick hot teams coming into the playoffs and both of these teams qualify. But LT and Gates are both banged up slightly and Indianapolis is the better team despite having to travel across the country.

Ravens over Dolphins. The toughest opening round game to pick for me. Joe Flacco on the road or Chad Pennington at home. I do think it will be a low scoring game with lots of defense. The Dolphins showed me something last week by taking it to the Jets in a must win game, but I think the Raven defense will be too much for them and the Ravens do just enough to win.

Falcons over Cardinals. The Falcons are hot right now and the Cardinals are cold. They can't even sell the game out to lift the blackout. If this game were on the East Coast, it would be a blowout (in favor of whoever were playing the Cardinals) but at home I think they keep it close. I hate picking rookie QBs in the playoffs, but here, I just don't see the Cardinals finding a way to win.

Eagles over Vikings . This game will be decided by turnovers. Both teams were impressive in the final week of the season, but you have to look at more than just that. With Westbrook healthy and the defense causing more takeaways the last couple weeks, I like the Eagles to win. But if the Vikes hang onto the ball and the Eagles make some mistakes, then it wouldn't surprise me to see Minnesota pull this one out.

Division Round:
Titans over Ravens - This should be a great game to watch. Overall, I think the Titans just have too much talent overall and I don't think Joe Flacco has two playoff upsets in him, not yet. He needs some more experience because we start picking him to lead a team deep into the playoffs. The Titan defense will be ready for this game.

Colts over Steelers - Home Field advantage is a big help here and will help make an exciting game and the Steelers are playing great football right now. However, Indianapolis is the hotter team right now, will have the momentum coming off their Wild Card win and have the playoff experience to make a run.

Panthers over Falcons - Again, on the road, I'm not sure Carolina pulls out the win, but they play very well at home and experience will be the key here.

Giants over Eagles - I just don't the Eagles having enough to stop the Giants. They are a team that want to return the Super Bowl very badly and have played with that intensity all season. Even with the Plaxico distraction, they should get through this game handily.

Conference Championships
Titans over Colts - I think. Another tough game for me to decide. I like the Colts playoff experience, and they should be able to slow down the Titans running game, still, I'm just not sure they have enough defensively to win the game. Should be a shootout.

Panthers over Giants - In a major upset, the Panthers go up to New York and surprise the Giants by 1) catching them off guard and 2) simply wanting it more. Without the deep threat of Plaxico, the Carolina D can hunker down and slow down the New York offense. Should be one of the better playoff games though.

Super Bowl.
Titans over Panthers - How about this AFC over NFC. I'ver considered the Colts making it here, the Titans, and the Steelers. All three would ruin the Panthers day again and once again send them home from a Super Bowl without the Lombardi trophy. I just think the AFC is better this year and will win whichever team makes it here.

Fried Foods and Riding a Bike

2008-11-28T09:14:00.002-05:00

Recently, I had one of my theories broken. That theory was, if you fried it, I'd eat it. Lots of foods I'll eat fried, but not any other way. For example, pumpkin blossoms, zucchini, squash, etc. And until recently, I hadn't had a fried food I didn't like. That all changed when I bit into what I thought was a fried potato wedge that turned out to be fried pear wedges. That's right, fried pears. And they were not good. I can't really describe the taste, other than to say that it was chewy and thick. It didn't soften up nearly as much as other fried foods. Yuck. There goes that theory.
On the other hand, I proved another oldie but a goodie. I rode a bike for the first time in nearly 15 years and remarkably (despite feeling really weird when I first got on) I still did know how to ride. So things that you don't forget how to do, really is "like riding a bike." However, what I did forget about riding a bike were two things. One, how the gears worked. I never knew whether I wanted to downshift or upshift and I always seemed to go the wrong way with it. I guess this is one of the problems with always being lazy and driving an automatic. Two, how physically exhausting it is, especially over hilly terrain. Several times, I just had to get off the bike and walk it up the hill. We only rode for like 30 minutes, but I felt like I'd just toured France. And in hindsight, riding in jeans and a sweater were probably not the best ideas, but I did sweat off those 5 extra pounds I'd been wanting to lose.
I'm so glad we invented cars, riding a bike is too much work!

Vacation Day 5: Hollywood

2008-11-28T08:22:00.007-05:00

Finally, the long awaited final vacation day post. Honestly, there wasn't too much to blog about on the last day. We drove into LA and I 'had the privilege' of driving on the 405 for the second time in my life and was reminded once again that LA traffic sucks. From what Jeni could see of it when her eyes were closed (out of fear, not sleep), she thought it was pretty bad too. We visited the Getty Center briefly and then did some window shopping on Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. Then, walked down Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame. Then, we cruised over to Burbank to attend the taping of a TV Show. We saw them film an episode of "The New Adventures of Old Christine." It was pretty cool to watch a show being filmed, much more interesting than I thought it would be and WB did a good job at trying to entertain the audience during all the downtime. We even got a free snack out of it. If you are going to be in Hollywood, check out www.tvtickets.com, you can get tickets for free and with the exception of game shows, there's no waiting in line for 4 hours and hoping to get in. Jeni was ecstatic that we actually sat beside Julia Louis-Dreyfus' son and his friend and she came over and talked to him at one point, so she was within a couple feet of it. Jeni just sat there speechless and staring, just like she did when Wanda Sikes came over a little while later. Overall, it was a pretty good time.
Day 6, we just cruised around San Diego that morning and then caught a flight back to South Carolina and while the vacation was fun and a good break, it sure is good to be back.
As with the other days, click on the picture below for more pictures from this day.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T08:18:00.003-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Hope you all had a wonderful day, enjoying one of my favorite holidays as it features the 3 F's prominently. Food, Football, and Family. I don't like how it's now the forgotten holiday with Christmas starting as soon as Halloween is over and leaving Thanksgiving as a prep day for Black Friday. I urge all you readers to stay strong and remember Thanksgiving, don't start celebrating Christmas until after.

Vacation: Day 4 Legoland

2008-11-01T10:03:00.004-04:00

Day 4 was another long one. We spent the night in Carlsbad, CA so we'd be closer to Legoland and the Wild Animal Park. We started out in the Wild Animal Park since it opened earlier. My immediate thought upon getting there was that "oh no, this map was drawn my the same guy who did the San Diego Zoo map". An hour later, yes, it obviously was as we came across our first illogical section of the map and become completely turned around.
Around that time, we found out Tommy Bowden had been fired as my cell began going off like crazy, so I had to spend a few minutes texting and replying to some emails as the new era of Clemson football began.
Not much to say about the Wild Animal Park as we were basically Zoo'd out after being at the San Diego Zoo the day before. So, at lunch time, we headed over to LegoLand. I realized the night before that I'd wanted to go to LegoLand for probably 20 years. And whereas I hadn't lost any sleep over it, I was glad to finally be on the cusp of walking through those golden Lego gates.
Even though we were too old for almost half the rides, it was still pretty amazing. There were Lego's everywhere. Everything was made out of them. They had replicas of entire cities (Vegas, NYC, DC, etc) all made out of Lego with moving parts. The buildings in downtown NYC were 7-8 feet tall. The race cars on Daytona Motor Speedway raced around the track. There were life-size statues of people. All kinds of cool stuff, all in amazing detail. At the end of the faux factory tour that told about how they create Legos's, there was this giant room with Lego's of every size, shape and color. You could make whatever you wanted and then buy it, and as it turns out, there are a lot of lego's per ounce thankfully and I didn't gasp at the price too badly when they ran mine up.
Aside from all that fun, I got to have a torta to eat for the second straight day (one of the joys of being so close to Mexico).
I also came up with a new theory about restaurants. People like Jeni and I (and probably all my readers) need to stick to restaurants with just a first name in the title as opposed to someone's full name. For example, we walked away from the "Anthony James Grill" and had a great dinner at "Tommy's". Skip the "Rick Erwins" and "Sam Snead's" of the world and stick with the "Mac's Drive-In" and "Bucky's type of joint. You'll won't leave hungry and poor like you will at those other guys.
As before, below is a picture from that day, click on it for more.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T21:52:00.003-04:00

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween.

Our little angel and devil wish you Happy Halloween as well.

Vacation: Day 3

2008-10-31T11:18:00.001-04:00

On day 3, we visited the famous San Diego Zoo and Balboa Park area. We also shopped until we dropped (literally) at Seaport Village.
The San Diego Zoo was very, very large. What bothered me about it was that the map was obviously not drawn by a engineer. I'm normally very good at finding myself on the map and navigating around. But not this map, this map showed roads connecting that ended up running parallel to each other. We didn't stick around for any of the shows, however, I did get Jeni to ride in the sky tram from one end of the park to the other. It was one of those things that sounded like a better idea on the ground than up in the air.
Practically all of the San Diego museums are located in Balboa Park, including the Zoo on one end of it. So we walked around in it some (as if we hadn't walked enough) and saw the San Diego Model Railroad Musuem and the Museum of Photographic Arts. The Photographic Arts museum was not much. In fact, we took more pictures on our trip that what were in the musuem if that gives you any idea how small the 'museum' was. However, at the Model Railroad museum, I found the job I would like to retire into. I can imagine that model train derailment is a lot less stressful than a server crash, and I would gladly walk around pressing green buttons to keep the trains running and talking to tourists about the terrain they are viewing.
We then went to Seaport Village, which for all my South Carolina readers, is the 'Broadway at the Beach' of San Diego. Picked up a couple souveniers and shopped until we could no longer consider taking another step.
Below is a picture of the zoo, like the last post, click on the picture for more photos from that day.

Mad Skill

2008-10-27T09:16:00.003-04:00

This amazes me. I'm not convinced he's actually playing that, but if he is, that's pretty amazing. I love a good wock and woll beat.

Vacation: Days 1 and 2

2008-10-24T08:37:00.010-04:00

This year for our big vacation, Jeni and I chose sunny San Diego, with a day trip planned to LA.

The first day was mostly a travel day stopped by the WallyWorld and pick up some essentials and get our bearings. We went downtown and shopped around in their historic gas lamp district. We were not that impressed. It was basically just block after block of restaurants, which is fine, we just weren't hungry.

The second day we started out by going down to Little Italy for their Saturday Farmers Market and to explore the Little Italy area. It was pretty cool. We ate at a restaurant called Filippe's Pizza Grotto. Great food, the smell of various, fresh cheeses in the air, abysmal service. They did however have ample wait staff, too many wait staff in wait. It was great opportunity for me to teach Jeni some of what I've been learning in my MBA classes as we discussed the Principle of Diminishing Returns and as she had to go ask our waitress if she was ever going to wait on us. She said no, but that's a different story.
We were then supposed to go snorkeling (something neither of us had ever done) in the La Jolla Cove and caves, but when we got there, they said there was a small craft alert and it was too windy and zero visibility underwater. So, no snorkeling for us. We instead watched a little football back at the hotel and went up to the top of Mount Soledad. It was a really neat view from up there as you could see all of metro San Diego. The unique thing about Mount Soledad is that it's a war memorial, but not just to those to died in battle, in honors those who came back as well.

Then off to Sunset Cliffs for, what else, the sunset. It was just like you see in the movies, with the ocean ending at a wall of rock and cliff.

A couple more quick notes and some pics and I'll continue describing the rest of the vacation in the next couple days.

-I really like Charger and Padre gear. I'm not really a fan of either team, but I don't have anything against either one and I thought they do a do job at being creative with their logo and having a couple different color schemes for each team that mix things up a bit.

-The city was laid out very well. Despite how spread out everything was and how open the area felt, it still didn't take long to get anywhere and the drivers are much better than drivers in other comparatively sized cities. They change lanes a lot, but it's manageable.

Below is a picture from Sunset Cliffs. Click on the picture for more pics from days 1 and 2.

World Series Prediction

2008-10-22T21:47:00.002-04:00

Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 6.

Here's why:
-They finished their series later, seems to be an advantage lately.
-Evan Longoria : Although the odds of Evan being a Devil Ray in two years is about the same as the odds of me playing for the Rays in two years.
-The underdog effect, everyone counting them out should motivate them even more.
-I like the way Tampa plays, reminds me of the Marlins teams that won.

When I'm president: DVR for the radio

2008-10-07T23:25:00.003-04:00

We are approaching our 1 year anniversary of having DVR (Tivo as it's sometimes called). I have to say, it's certainly changed my outlook on TV. I find it difficult to watch live TV now, if Jeni and I catch ourselves doing it, we will even go so far as to pause it and talk about our days for bit so that we are behind enough to skip the commercials. Watching commercials at this point seems so ... 2007. I even find that I have trouble paying full attention when watching TV at someone else's house where I can rewind on demand, which brings me to my main point. I've probably always had this problem and DVR has just spoiled me into noticing it. But I seriously need DVR for my car radio. I'm driving along and get to thinking about other things (like paying attention to the road) and totally miss something someone says. And there's no going back. I almost always have to go to espn.com when I get to work or when I get home to get the other half of the story that I missed. When is this being invented?

When I'm president... I promise to invest some of your tax dollars into researching and developing DVR for the radio. It's 2008, it should be possible. I'm sure it will stimulate the economy just as much as the bailout plan. Trust me, I took an economics class in high school.

ECU/BYU's BCS Chances and Return of the Picks

2008-09-20T00:14:00.001-04:00

This has been posted on my Redshirt Football blog.

Read the post here.

New Blog

2008-09-11T10:51:00.004-04:00

Alright, I'm branching out. Not only will I be trying to post a lot more on the Red Shirt Football blog this season (I have a stragedy at least so I think that might help me), I've started another blog as well. I've been thinking about it a while and bought the domain almost a year ago and didn't do anything with it. Well, it's time. http://www.notgoinggreen.com. There is barely anything there right now, but add it to the list of blogs you check and I'll be posting there as I have time. Basically, I'll just be finding examples (humourous when possible) of companies and consumers not going green.

Season tickets and re-zoning

2008-08-24T11:12:00.000-04:00

My season tickets to see the Tigers play came this week. One of my favorite days of the year. As soon as the seal on the envelope is broken, I just like to take a big whiff of the season ticket goodness. Football season for the tigers is a mere 6 days 10 hours away, and I'm stoked.

Also, on Monday, Jeni and I did something a little different. We went to a public zoning hearing. There is about 40 acres near our house zoned single family dwelling and they want to make it "planned development." I thought initially that it would be very townhall meeting-ish and a bunch of angry townsfolk would irrationally and unintelligently oppose new development. It wasn't quite like that. The developer or developer representative and all those in favor get 10 mins to make their case and then the opposition gets 10 mins to make their case. And then they ask for all those in favor to stand and be counted and then all those against to stand to be counted. As someone who was the self proclaimed King of Sim City and invested hours in city planning across Sim City, Sim City 2000, Sim City 3000, and Sim City 4, I found the process and plans presented intriguing. As Sim City mayor/dictator, I could rezone at will, and I wonder just how much City Counsel takes into account the thoughts of those presenting or if its all just show. After all, there were 6 hearings on the docket that night, the most people present who disagreed with any on them was about 10. And none of the arguments against were very good. The same 3 things were cited in oppostion of each of the properties: increased traffic, noise pollution, and light pollution. My complaint (which I chickened out and didn't voice) was that the plans for the development near us looked like a 5th grader did them. Seriously, crayon was involved. I'm not against development in that location, I just want it done a little more formally and professionally. As fas as the 3 standard complaints everyone brings up, first of all, there is a huge misnomer as to what a traffic study consists of. People complained that obviously one wasn't done or they'd have noticed the deterioting bridge 1 mile away or the fact that it sometimes takes 5 mins to pull out of their subdivision or the that people drive recklessly around there. I got news for them, none of those are in a traffic study. Its simply a average number of cars per day and an average speed. (Crash analysis and sight distance are the only other two things possibly considered). Road conditions and turn out time are not considered. And should we really slow economic progress so people can get out of their subdivision quicker? Shouldn't we consider ourselves blessed to be in an area that the economy isn't plummeting in and that new businesses do want to come? Same with noise and light pollution. I'm sorry, but I'm all for a strengthing the economy in our area (esp during a recession) and if you don't like it, move outside the city. Don't help the recession along by stifling growth. Anyway, all that to say, if there is a zone hearing about a property that concerns/interests you, you should check it out. I know in our case at least, it was good to hear the developers side of the case. Often, the angry mob is all you hear.

Youngins at concerts

2008-08-07T16:34:00.004-04:00

One more post about being old and then I'll stop. I don't want this to turn into "Phil T grows old".
So I went to a concert last night, one of the good things about being old is that you can sit in the back (or balcony in this instance) and take it all in and no one thinks anything of it. In fact, it's expected. Afterall, wouldn't want to break a hip in the mosh pit. And my feet don't hurt when I get home.
Why does it take so long to get the sound right in monitors at concerts? I've never figured that out, surely a band that tours constantly should have it down by now. Or better yet, don't we have a better, more technological way of doing that by now?
Anyway, I digress, the band that opened, they have really grown up. I've seen them maybe 4-5 times over the years opening for larger bands. They are from Greenville, I think the first time I saw them play, their moms had to bring them to the show. Anyway, you how on bands websites where its says who they've opened for, if their sites has one of those, I was at that show. It's been odd seeing them 'grow up' over the last couple years. I don't think they got much better though.
The main band is one of the few bands who I've followed not only their entire career, but who I've been a fan of for over a decade now. There are only a handful of bands whose style is such that I've remained a fan for that long. However, they are a few years older than me (maybe 1-2) and it's weird because the lead singer I've seen gradually go bald. They come into town about every 2 years and every time there is less and less up top and last night, the amount of facial exceeded the amount of hair on his head. Reminded me of this article about how guys view their age that my stepmom forwarded me the other day: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25847518/from/ET/
Anyway, if you like heavy rock and don't mind balding lead singers, check out Spoken. I love those guys.

Adding Character and Cavities

2008-08-04T19:17:00.002-04:00

I'm glad that August is finally here. For one, because that means football season is almost upon us and for two, because July was a tough month for me to maintain my 'young adult' image. For months, my sister-in-law Allison has been giving me a hard time about how old I am and how I'm no longer a young adult. That I'm an old man. Well, this month I not only had my 10 year high school reunion, but also my first cavity and first gray hair. My wife says the gray hair 'adds character', but I'm not too sure about that. I'm tempted to pull it, but I'm afraid that 3 more will grow back in its place and before you know it, I'll have a gray spike. I'm sure that can disagree with her much after this month. The cavity, luckily was not painful. But apparantly, I'm going to have to start brushing my teeth now, all that bad diet and lazy hygiene finally caught up with me. If you are in the Greenville area and want a pain-free filling, Dr. Ben Daniel is your man. Didn't feel a thing, not even afterwards. As for the gray hair, well, you can't really even see it once it's covered in hair gel and spiked up with all the others. For now, I might just have to live with it. And maybe not...
"Jeni, have you seen my Sharpie?"

To Deal or Not to Deal... that is the question

2008-07-24T13:15:00.001-04:00

During a recent conversation it was brought up that the 'other blogger' on here doesn't appreciate the "Deal of the Day" posts that I do & maybe I should do my own blog after all. I think if I had my own blog that I wouldn't be as consistent with posting as I am on this blog, since this one isn't really my "responsiblity" (yes there is a prize if I use so many quote marks per post) :) Anyway - I need to know from you - do you use the Deal of the Day? Do you find it to be beneficial? Do you think I should limit it to like the Deal of the Week or do I just need to pull up my boot straps & get my own blog? Let me know how you feel about it, because I love deals & I like to share good finds but if no one is using them, then I'm just wasting my time & annoying the 'other blogger'.

A Post of a Post

2008-07-18T08:00:00.000-04:00

A good friend of ours has a blog & he had a very insightful post the other day. Check it out here.

Happy Friday!

Riding Sparkles on the trail

2008-07-17T13:15:00.000-04:00

Over the holiday weekend Phil & I had the opportunity to go horseback riding at Jerry Cooper's Ranch - Black Horse Run. Let me just tell you it was a pleasure to meet this man. He was kind & gentle with the animals. He made sure that both Phil & I felt comfortable on the horses before taking us out on the trail. The ranch is not that far off of Fairview Road but on the trail you feel like you are so much further out from the city. There are beautiful trees & a lake as far as you can see.

During our trail ride Jerry told us about a previous ride where he had seen a baby black bear run across the trail. You could tell that he just loved doing what he does. We had such a wonderful time & plan to make it back out to Jerry's ranch in the near future. His prices are also quite reasonable. For both of us to ride for an hour it was $75 and the more people that go, the lower the prices are. So if anyone is interested in a group ride (..lifers?) let us know & we'll go enjoy some time together at Black Horse Run.

Jerry Cooper - #864-505-7920

A Princess Party

2008-07-16T13:00:00.000-04:00

Back in the day I don't remember having themed birthday parties. Maybe it was because we were in the lower-middle class, maybe it was because I wasn't allowed to watch very much TV so I wouldn't have even be able to know what "theme" I wanted or maybe it was because my parents didn't love me enough, yeah I'm sure that's it. Really though I do have very fond memories of my birthdays growing up. Every year my mom would bake peanut butter cookies & put the number of M&M's on the cookies of how old I would be, sometimes she even let me put the M&M's on there myself. Then I was allowed to invite as many friends as I was old. Just thinking about those times brings a cheerful tear to my eye.

My beautiful niece KDP recently celebrated her fourth birthday that was a "Princess" theme. I wonder if she'll remember that all the princesses (including Ariel) were present on her cake or that she got a TON of presents.... Or will she remember all of the family members that were there & that come to all her birthdays, driving over 3 hours to get there just to share in the celebration? Will she remember years from now how much her parents loved her & that they did everything they could to make her birthdays special? I sure hope so. Happy Birthday Princess, you are truly loved.

Deal of the Day

2008-07-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

Another one from Papa John's.
Get an XL pizza with up to three toppings for $15.99. Use the promo code 71508T. May I suggest mushrooms, pepperoni & ital. sausage as your three toppings? Yum! :)

All Star Games

2008-07-15T15:29:00.000-04:00

(cross posted on Red Shirt Football blog)

With the MLB All Star game today, it got me thinking about how little I care for the All Star games. And I think that's true for most people these days. Maybe not, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like they don't matter nearly as much as they used to. I feel like even as a kid, back then the build up was bigger and they were more anticipated then they are now. I have a couple reasons for why I think the importance and significance of the all star games (for all sports, not just baseball) is down. The first is just access to games. 15 years ago, heck, 10 years ago, not every game was on TV. Not every game was streamed live on the Internet. The guy that sits in front of me in class watches the gamecast for every Braves game during class. We have Baseball Tonight, Sportscenter, Inside the NBA, a dozen NFL and NCAAF telecasts. We are surrounded by sports coverage now. I think that takes away from it some because we are exposed to both leagues and all teams now. Back in the day, you got coverage of your local and sometimes regional teams, but beyond that, you didn't get to see the everyone play. So, the All Star game was a big deal. 20 years ago, if you were a Red Sox fan, that was probably the first TV coverage you caught of any NL players that year. Another factor is interleague play. We are seeing AL teams, AFC teams, Western conf teams, play against the the NL, NFC, Eastern conf. So, it isn't as special. Also, I don't think the conferences mean as much as they used to. Some of this probably goes back to the vast amount of sports coverage we get now. Divisions still matter, but outside of your division, I just don't feel like AFC vs. NFC, etc doesn't have as much weight to it. Again, these are just ramblings and I'm probably off in left field here. But, I can tell you one guy who won't be watching the All Star game tonight and won't regret my decision at all. I just don't have the motivation to watch a meaningless game whose stats don't even help me out fantasy-wise. Maybe that's how we can get people to watch it: 1) fantasy all star challenge? or 2) legalized gambling on all star games. The game doesn't count anyway, why can't we gamble on it?

MuteMath

2008-07-15T13:15:00.000-04:00

We saw MuteMath at the Tabernacle last fall & they yet again topped their previous show. We didn't tape any of it, but someone else was able to get some shots. Check them out. New album is coming soon (can't wait!!)

Deal of the Day

2008-07-15T13:14:00.001-04:00

The Discovery online store is having their Semi-Annual DVD Sale: Up to 75% Off+ Free Shipping Offer! If you spend $75 or more you will get free shipping. Be sure to check it out they have stuff on there that's not "educational" as well. It's not to early to be thinking about Christmas presents! ;)

Deal of the Day

2008-07-14T13:15:00.001-04:00

Here's another one for today - Redbox is already such a good deal for a little over a $1 for movie after tax for rentals, now it's even better. Free Rental Monday - use code 83CB4K at your local redbox & get a movie to watch tonight FREE.

Deal of the Day

2008-07-14T08:05:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday!
Pet Food Direct is having a sale. You'll be able to save an additional 5% when you use coupon code INSTANT5

Deal of the Day

2008-07-11T13:15:00.001-04:00

I really like Ten Thousand Villages. They work with over 100 artisan groups in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to bring you fair trade jewelry, home decor, gifts and more. Fair trade enables artisans to earn a fair wage and provides the opportunity for a better quality of life..

Their Greenville location on Augusta Road is having a sale:
World Caravan Sale
Lewis Plaza Sizzling Sidewalk Sale

Begins tomorrow -- July 12
Continues through Saturday, July 19

Many selected gifts, home decor, jewelry
and more on sale!!

Be sure to check it out & if you can't make the sale, Visit during regular store hours Monday - Saturday 10:00 - 5:30. They still have great things for reasonable prices.

Deal of the Day

2008-07-11T08:05:00.001-04:00

Today at Chick-fil-A they are giving away free food if you come dressed like a cow. Apparently it's "Cow Appreciation Day". Check it out here & if you all do dress up, or have your kids dress up I expect pictures. :)

What's that noise?

2008-07-11T08:05:00.000-04:00

Oh, it's just my head pounding. So, we've had an ongoing issue with our cat, Dirty Sox crying/meowing to wake us up in the morning. She actually didn't start with the crying, she first messed with the blinds in the bedroom. We thought we had won. Since she figured out that she couldn't get up on the windowsill, she stands at the end or side of our bed & just cries. We tried calling her up on the bed & petting her, which worked, until about an hour later, wash, rinse & repeat. We tried carrying her out from our room & putting her in the guest bedroom. Which worked, but prevented Austin from being able to get in there & use the litter box. We tried earlier this week taking her out & putting her in the guest bathroom. She HATED that & cried the whole time & pawed at the door. We tried just simply closing our door & they BOTH sat outside of it & cried. So yesterday, exhausted & at the point of giving up, I turned to my friend. The two most common pieces of advice were to use a squirt bottle & to simply ignore the cat because any response from the owner is a response, so the cat will keep on keeping on. Phil & I are against the water bottle because I think it's mean & DS is skittish anyhow & we fear that would prevent her from wanting to come into the bedroom at all. This morning was day one of Mission: Ignore DS. It went okay. She started crying/meowing at about 5:30 & kept on doing it on & off until the alarm went off. She also managed to knock down one of the monkeys & started messing with the blinds because she was so determined to get attention. Day One: Us - 1 DS -0... I think.....

Deal of the Day

2008-07-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! We had a wonderful day off of work, more about that soon. But now - the Deal of the Day - CVS Photos - Add 50 4x6 prints in your cart, enter promo code 50get20 and pay for only 30 prints . And right now all prints are only .15/ea. so go & get those holiday photos uploaded!

Deal of the Day

2008-07-03T17:35:00.000-04:00

Having a bunch of folks over this holiday weekend? Order your pizza online from Papa John's & use coupon code 70308A and get FREE Cheesesticks when you buy a large pizza with three or more toppings at regular menu price. Hope everyone has a safe & fun holiday weekend!

I love me some sales

2008-07-01T08:05:00.000-04:00

Shortly after I moved to the south I heard about this great store (Kohl's) that was having a HUGE sale & it was over at midnight that night. Well I LOVE deals so I was all excited to head over there. If memory serves, I cancelled the plans that I had just to go to this sale. It was a "grand opening" sale for a store that had already been opened but they had a store opening in another state, so hey, let's all celebrate. I went to the sale, found some great deals & was all proud of myself for my pickings only to notice that the next week they were having another sale that ends at midnight & hurry in these prices won't last long. This is not to say that I don't like Kohl's, because I do & you CAN find good deals there but if you miss one sale, don't fret they'll be sure to run another one in prob. less than 7 days.

Deal of the Day

2008-07-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

Kohl's is having a sale (as always) & shipping is only .99 (if you read the fine print this seems to be per item not total shipping costs - BUT still less than gas these days) So if you are only buying a few things this may not be the deal for you but once you buy up to 5 things the shipping starts going below .99/item.

Deal of the Day

2008-06-30T13:45:00.000-04:00

I don't promise to be consistent with these but I keep up on a lot of deals & thought I would share with our lovely readers from time to time. So today's deal:

Carabella's is having a sale & to add to the excitement, use coupon code C384 & get 30% off of already low-priced items.

This had me rolling

2008-06-27T13:54:00.000-04:00

This made my day. Hope you all have a wonderful & safe weekend.

Tales from the trip

2008-06-24T08:10:00.000-04:00

Savannah- Glad we went it was good to get away but there were some disappointments. Here come the negativity: ;)

the "dueling" piano bar we went to check out was a step below upstairs @ Wild Wings including a "divorce party" like a bachelorette party but she was wearing a black veil & the group were all wearing black. I'm not making this up. The pianos didn't duel so much as take turns playing different songs.

Hotel room - we only had to pay for one night because we had free night points stocked up from Wyndham Rewards fka TripRewards. First room had ants crawling all over the air conditioner. Second room was perfect

Eating in Savannah was difficult for every meal. The advertised restaurants in town were mostly overpriced & had long waits due to the holiday weekend. Our eating schedule was totally off beginning the day we arrived in Savannah having us eating lunch between 2 & 3 and dinner as late as 9 one night.

Southern hospitality at all places that we went to (exception being Paula Dean's) was lacking BIG TIME. Including the visitor's center. They had pamphlets on a tack board that you had to ask for & one was called "Park Smart". So we asked the guy behind the counter for one & he says ,"I'll tell you how to park smart, it's free after 5 downtown". We were kind of taken aback & didn't get the pamphlet. We got back to the car & were discussing & decided to go back & park because HELLO where do we park BEFORE 5pm?

Tybee Beach was great. We went & toured a lighthouse (yes i went up the stairs but not out on the ledge) and just chilled at the beach for a few hours. We had planned to go to a highly advertised restaurant.. our lack of planning got us again. we went, just beating the dinner crowd (actually were there by 6) sat down & realized ummm we don't like seafood. LOL. We already knew that but they had no FRIED seafood. That is the only kind I will eat. Takes that whole fish taste out of eating fish. :) So we left & went to a restaurant back near the beach that had no wait time & had fried seafood. It was a good meal & we were able to sit & watch the traffic leaving the beach rather than being stuck in it.

Working Hard for The Money

2008-06-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

I had another one of my hair-brained schemes the other day. I'm always looking for ways to bring in more money & save it up. I 'm a big saver & tend to spend more on loved ones then myself. So since we've had the recent car purchase & with Phil going back to school, I thought it was valid to want to pull in some extra cash. There is a publication that gets delivered in our neighborhood. We'll call it the Neighborhood News. In the NN I saw an ad that you could get extra money to deliver the NN & to email if you were interested. I emailed them right up & didn't hear anything. Figured they filled up fast since it was summertime & there were prob. a lot of college kids home for the summer until I got a phone call 2 weeks ago. Those of you locals know that 2 weeks ago we had record highs in temp on the weekend. The lady called & said that someone had cancelled their route & they needed to have the NN distributed by Tuesday & she told me how much it was & that it was only 400 houses & was I interested? Well of course I was! :) We were having a lazy Saturday so we were able to meet her in town to get the NN that was already supposed to be stuffed in the bags that you hang on the doors. - only to later find out that she lived in my neighborhood & I could have walked to her house to get them-
Well when we met she noticed that there were not in fact stuffed so she told me how much more I would get for stuffing them. Then she told me that the neighborhood had to be done by Tuesday (it was about 4PM on Saturday). Then I realized that 400 houses, is well FOUR HUNDRED houses. I will just come right out and tell you I am NOT directionally savy in any sense. The way the neighborhood was laid out practically every street was connected to the next so it would be hard to just stay on one side of the street without missing houses. We had plans with our Lifegroup for Sunday night, Phil had school on Monday & I didn't want to hand them out last minute. Now you are prob. wondering why does it matter if phil had school on Monday? Well I roped him in to help me with MY project because of the amount of houses & because it was so freaking hot. So we traveled out to the neighborhood, and for 3 straight hours on Saturday night in the heat we handed out the NN on all the doors. It wouldn't have taken nearly that long if you didn't have to actually walk up to every door of all 400 houses, which I knew I would have to do, but didn't realize how much time that would add. We ran out of daylight on Saturday & finished up the last 100 or so homes on Sunday after church, again in the blistering heat. I swear I sweated off at least 4 pounds that weekend, but never fear I ate plenty of Salsarita's with the Lifers that night. I am going to continue to try & hand out the NN as new routes become available, but I told the lady in charge that I think I would prefer to do smaller neighborhoods. (You know that way I don't have to rope my wonderful husband - who by the way has been roped into plenty of other 'I'm in over my head' projects that I decide to take on without ever complaining.)

New Car

2008-06-16T21:51:00.004-04:00

Well, I finally did it. I broke down and bought a new car. I'd been looking for one since February, I've driven tons of different makes and models, visited umpteen different car lots across several cities. I hate car dealerships. I hate car shopping. Even when I would find a model I liked, I had trouble finding a car dealer I could haggle with to get the price down to what I wanted to pay for it. Things with my car got worse and it began overheating and needed some work done. At least it has been paid off since March. Anyway, that escalated our search considerably and right as we were at our wits end, we came across our dream car at our dream price. It's great. I love the car. It drives amazing, has a 3.2L VTEC V6, so she has tons of horsepower when needed. It's sporty, but it also has a lot of luxury, which I require in my cars. So, what did I buy. A 2005 Acura TL.

Blind Cat

2008-06-10T21:31:00.002-04:00

Jeni and I woke up refreshed Sunday morning after the best night of sleep we'd had in almost a month. Why? Because we finally outsmarted our cat, Dirty Sox. It took us a couple weeks, but we did it. See, Dirty had gotten into this nasty little habit of messing with the blinds in our room starting around 5:45-6:00 am time period. After she'd woke us up playing with the blinds, she'd start crying. We tried petting her and giving her attention. Didn't work. We tried messing with the blinds when she sleep. Backfired. She started coming in earlier. We tried locking her in her room when she played with them. (Have you ever tried to wrangle a cat into a room at 5 in the morning? I don't advise it) Somehow she kept managing to get out. She must have some Macgyver in her. So, we tried closing our door. No blinds, but now we had two cats ramming themselves into our door trying to get in and/or crying relentlessly all night. We put doublesided tape on the window sill. Turns out, she likes the flavor of tape. So, we took every stuffed monkey we had, and lined them up on the window sill. There was no where for her to jump up there. And it worked. She still stared right up at one of them and 'gave it the business' as I like to say, basically meowed at it as loud as she could. But that little stuffed monkey stood strong. He wasn't intimidated. So, the monkeys have a new home for a few weeks, retraining the cat not to get up there. Back to sleeping in as late as possible for us! It feels good to win.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning .....

2008-06-07T10:09:00.006-04:00

.... to eat at Paula Dean's restaurant. Very early. Jeni and I visited Savannah over Memorial Day weekend, more on that trip later. One of the things we wanted to do while there was to eat at Paula's restaurant, The Lady and Sons. Jeni is a big fan of Paula and I like to eat Southern cooking, so it was a win-win, we thought. (We've also listened to her autobiography book on CD on a trip, so we felt connected to her). However, they don't take reservations in advance. Every morning at 9:30 am, the hostess comes out to her stand and starts taking names and giving out times for that day. We thought we'd saunter up there around 2 or so and be able to get a dinner slot. Not so. Booked for the day. The hostess said we should come back the next morning [pause] between 7:30 and 8 and get in line if we expected a reservation. [insert Phil jaw drop here] So, the next morning, we got there about 7:40. The line was already well formed. In fact, at 7:40, we were 64th in line. No, I didn't count, the guy behind me did. By 9:30 when the hostess did come out, the line wrapped halfway around the block, crossed the street and wrapped 3/4 the way around the next block. When I say 3/4 the block, I mean, 3 of the 4 sides of the block were all line. We did get to eat there, however, we needed an early time because we wanted to go to the beach that day, So, at 10:10 when we were given our 11:00 time and had to be back there at 10:45 again for opening bell and to get in another shorter line of all the 11:00 times, we didn't have much time to go and do anything. I can tell you that by 10:50, all the times for the day were gone and hundreds of people were then turned away. [As a brief aside, people are stupid. Like I said, this is a LONG line, and yet, I can't tell you how many people just walked up to the front of it and asked if this was the line to get reservations. Um, no, it's that really short line 3 blocks away. It isn't the long line that starts in front of the restaurant at the hostess stand, that wouldn't make any sense. Then, after the hostess is there, countless people just walk right up to her and ask for a time. Can they not see the line of people? In fact, this is such a problem, that they actually have two hostess. One to take peoples names from the line and one to stand there and turn the idiots who can't see the line away and tell them how a line works.] So anyway, as I'm sure you are all wondering, yes, the food was great. The fried chicken on the buffet was piled high and was delicious. Probably the best restaurant fried chicken I've ever had (still can't beat Grandma's), and everything on the buffet was excellent. Neither of us were fans of the hoe cakes though (cornbread pancakes). The biggest letdown factor for us is that hardly any restaurant could live up to the essential 3.5 hour wait we had. We are glad we went, but be prepared to wait if you go. Below is a picture the line with Jeni asleep in it soon after we got there. And also a picture of fried chicken on the buffet.

7-Foot Optimus Prime

2008-05-30T12:55:00.003-04:00

Anyone have an old clunker car sitting around that no longer runs? Need something to do with it because your HOA things that cars up on blocks in the front yard is not advisable? I ran across the article below where someone contrusted a 7 ft tall Optimus Prime from old car parts. I think he has too much time on his hands.

http://gizmodo.com/391603/7+foot-optimus-prime-constructed-from-old-car-parts

Update on Time

2008-05-30T12:50:00.001-04:00

It appears as if everyone who commented agrees that to push something back would be to make it later in the day, and to move it up would make it earlier. Which means....Phil was right. But I prefer sleeping on the bed over the couch, so we will leave it at that.

P.S. Pass the Prozac

2008-05-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

I thought that this movie would be about a woman dealing with the death of her husband & rediscovering herself. The previews made me think that it was full of laughs & good times. Hilary Swank has done it again (remember Million Dollar Baby?). I should have bought stock in Kleenex before watching this one. There was hardly any funny scenes & they were immediately followed by depressing scenes. At the end, which at some points felt like it was NEVER going to end, I just felt frozen in the sadness of it all. Rating = 3. Only because the idea of the movie w/ the letters is creative & not something I've seen before. Luckily we got this from Redbox & only paid $1.06 but I still feel like I had my evening stolen.

Unprepared and safe flying

2008-05-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

Unprepared and safe flying

I've been flying a lot lately for work and have a couple observations.

First of all, they are now charging you to check more than one bag. I don't have a problem with this except that a) they are not prepared to implement it and b) the way its being implemented doesn't make sense.
If you are going to charge me, fine, charge me. But to be honest, it was a very cumbersome process and the ticket counter attendant tried to talk me out of it. She had to go to the back to get forms (not sure why they aren't stored at the counter) and then they don't have credit card machines. At two airports now this is the case. That was the first time I've seen someone whip out that slide imprint device in years. Its seriously a manual process and not a automatic swipe machine. Every store and restaraunt in America has these now and they can't get 4-5 for each airport? Its not like a deployment that large hasn't been done before.
What's more is that you can avoid the charge by carrying the bag on and gate checking it. Only difference is that you have to carry the bag through the airport instead of them. I mean, don't they know its all going in the same plane? Its the same weight, just changes how it gets to the plane and they are taking some there anyway, right? Plus, now I gotta carry all my crap through security and lug it around the airport for an hour? Crazy.

My second point is that people keep telling me to "have a safe flight." I got news for them, I don't have much control over it. I'm just sitting there. Really. I understand 'drive safe', etc. I'm an active part of that process. But there just isn't much I can do on the plane to safen my flight at all. Or, is that my free ticket to drug the screaming kid next to me? After all, he could be distracting the pilot or pushing the otherwise normal people on board dangerously closing to the insanity tipping point. None of us want that. Is that my excuse to need more than 3.5 ounces of shampoo? What if there is a hair emergency on the plane? That wouldn't be safe for anyone. I guess that means I can't punch out annoying business guy or talking too loud asian guy if I'm "flying safe.". Maybe I'm supposed to remind the pilot? Its just people trying to be polite, I know, but they could say something that makes a little more sense.