Top 20 World Series

ESPN just ran the a show about the 20 best World Series ever. The Braves were on the list twice :(

#20 - F Mark Wohlers and throwing Leyritz (f him to) a slider instead of a 101 mph fastball. Also Bobby, come on Klesko hits the most HR on the team but ends up with 11 AB, wtf.

#4 - Liebrandt vs. Kirby, yeah we knew how that would end before it even happened. Kirby hit like .800 vs. lefties. Jack Morris was a stud in game 7, not that Smoltz was bad that day either.

Back!

Well I'm back in the eastern part of the US and back at work. The past three weeks have been brutal in terms of working in the office and then traveling to Anaheim for Anime Expo. I actually leave a week from today for another trip to the west coast, first Anaheim for a few days with the family and then San Diego Comic-Con. Our office shifted some duties around and I now handle all shows for our office. That is about 12 to 14 shows a year. Normally not a huge deal but in July/August there is seven of them, lots of fun.

Well I might expand on what has been happening later on but now back to work :)

We'll miss you Robert

Earlier this week Robert Morea passed away. Robert was a friend of mine from Atlanta. Most of the readers probably recognize his name. He was also TCG player who played every Decipher game save probably MegaMan or BeyBlade. Even after Will and I worked at Decipher he still believed game company employees were celebrities. He thought Mike Reyonlds was incredible ("he worked on Middle Earth then on LOTR TCG and now on .hack//ENEMY, of course I'm going to play it"). He really though Chuck Kallenbach was another god's gift to TCGs ("yeah I'm going to play BSG, Chuck designed it!").

I wrote about Robert and the great times had by all playing LOTR TCG when it first started on my other blog. I really don't want to go through everything and post it again, I just wanted everyone to know that he left us.

Julie, Emily, and I will miss you Robert.

Say it isn't so

I understand sports are a business, hell my company holds a license with all four major sports leagues. I'm a huge baseball and football fan and I've seen some decisions that made the fans upset but were mainly because the teams are a business first. Losing John Smoltz would be high on the list of things that make me upset. I didn't like losing Glavine or Maddux or Dale Murphy for that matter. Please stay with us Smoltzie.

Florida, boy I don't know

Some girl lived in Florida her whole life but now her father lives somewhere else. Now the University of Flordia wants her to pay out of state tuition. You know that is neither here nor there really. They have published guidelines on who is a resident and who isn't and in most cases it matters where the money is coming from, I understand that. My problem is this quote:

• The state's comparatively low in-state tuition rates and scholarship opportunities for Floridians constitute a significant taxpayer burden that lawmakers hope to keep at bay, said Sara Hamon, an expert on residency issues with the state Department of Education.

If Florida has cheaper in-state tuition rates and better scholarship opportunities guess what that means dumb shit, more kids in Florida can go to college. This from someone in the Department of Education. There are enough people in government to worry about who is going to pay for this and how to raise what taxes. What I want from anyone who works in Department of Education is figuring out how to get more kids to go to school and it sounds like that have. Let someone else worry about paying for it, lord knows there are enough of them in government.

Some days I feel like Randal

"This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."

With me it isn't the customers, I love the end user in my business. It is the other people in the chain to get my product to the end users hands. I hate bitching about work but it is nice to get it in type and let it out. They just hurt me on the inside, so painful. I've worked with some great partners but mainly they are not so great. Okay now back to the good stuff of the job.

Hopefully see some of you guys at shows this summer.

Art or Science

To make the color white (or black) do you combine all colors or remove all colors? An artist (well maybe before everything being digital) will tell you one thing and a scientist will tell you the other answer. Not really sure what tells you about the person but it is fun to ask.

WTF!!

I want him to be healthy for mulitple reasons, mainly just because I don't want people to be hurt. But come on idiot, wear a helmet. Not just for the sake of the defending Super Bowl Champs but for the sake of not being a complete idiot. This will probably get a Darwin tag on fark.

14 and Done

It appears that 14 in a row (well 3 in a row, a year off, then 11 in a row) seems to be enough divisions. Sure more World Series (one is still more than the Mets have won) titles would have been nice but it was a great run. Saw some great players, 2 MVPs, 1 1/2 ROY (Nomo wasn't a rookie), 6 Cy Youngs, 2 Hall of Famers, and 3 almost HOF guys.

Done!

I shattered my tooth leaving about 1/3 of it. Last week the pain was insane, worse than when I broke my arm. When I broke my arm it was pretty bad, it was even a case study in how I was able to break it but not break my elbow. Anyways my tooth hurt. For me to actually go to the denist is pretty impressive, I have some irrational fear about them, I could go into it but it is irrational so I don't really understand it. Anyways the denist says its broken and needs to be removed. They give me some medicine and send me on my way. They did set me up with an appointment to have it removed three weeks later. Three weeks, what the hell, I've got pliers and a bottle of vodka, lets do it now. I was able to find a doctor to remove it this week. It was also an oral surgeon and they said it was probably good that I was having them do it. Where the tooth is located the roots could create a hole in the sinus which would be bad and require follow up surgery. With an oral surgeon they can check for holes and fix them during the removal since they would knock me out.

About 9:30 this morning they removed it. Just like that last time I went under I don't remember about 2 or 3 minutes before I was unconscious. There is no hole in the sinus which is good because apparently that hurts and requires a longer recovery time. I haven't eaten since last night at 11:00pm and yet I don't have much desire to now, unless you ask my stomach. Drugs are helping and I should be much better in 24~36 hours or so they say.

Normally I just write fluff about Star Wars or baseball or football but I figured I would give everyone an update.

Not much better

There isn't much better than spending time with the little one. She is an absolute delight to be around, Pretty Bird and I like most parents are blessed. Tonight was a pretty laid back night. Pretty Bird had to work so we just hung around. I'm not the most active person in the world plus I'm on some pretty good pain medicine so it was fun to lounge around. She's been on a Star Wars kick since I got Knights of the Old Republic two weeks ago, more on that later. Anyways so we played Star Wars Legos, another great game for about an hour or so. Then she wanted to watch a movie and picked a Star Wars movie, my little Jedi, couldn't ask for me. She picked Jedi because it was part six.

Now this is a funny story. Revenge of the Sith has been on HBO, JDub, Pretty Bird, the little one, and I watched the last 30 minutes on Saturday night. Well not quite the last 20 minutes, from the Mace vs. Emporer fight until after Obi Wan kicks Anakins ass. The little one knows EP3 is the last one, she went and saw it with us last year. She also knows that six is bigger than three and she knows that Anakin becomes Vader in EP3 yet Vader dies in Jedi. We've had about three or four conversations since Saturday with her trying to figure all of that out. Basically it boils down to a six year old doesn't understand prequels.

She's never really watched Jedi, she wanted to see the Ewoks previously so we've skipped to those parts. It was a great time to watch it with her tonight. When Jedi came out until I was about 12 or 13 Jedi was my favorite. It was great to see her like things I liked and make some great comments.

"Daddy, I think that is Princess Leia...or maybe Luke...either way he is tricking Jabba" - speaking about Boushh.

"Chewbacca loves Han Solo daddy, he isn't going to let them hurt him"

"Wookies are very strong, stronger than Batman"

"Jedi's are better than aliens"

"Yoda is the strongest Jedi, too bad he is old"

"Yoda sounds like Miss Piggy"

"That music means the bad guys are coming"

There were a few more. It was a great night.

More Than Meets The Eye

Something that probably only Girard, Triple G, and I will rush out to buy.

Transformers The Movie Special Edition

Hardest Part of the Day

As far back as I could remember I viewed getting up as the hardest part of the day, at least as far back as high school. Now with my back/neck a little hurt, for whatever reason, making sleep a tad bit more difficult, 5:30am is really early. I don't leave the house until 6:30/6:40 so I don't have to get up until 6ish. I did learn a long time ago however that a relaxed Trevor is a happy Trevor. Taking my time getting ready, eating breakfast, watching SportsCenter, all makes my day go much better. I even have time to do a little morning workout once I decide to start working out. I'm not in good shape, well round is a shape, so it will happen eventually. Now onto other random thoughts.

• Closed Interstates Suck. This is the third time I've been on an interstate somewhere I wasn't from. Once on vacation and twice for work. I was staying about 30 minutes outside of Boston this past weekend, left an hour before I had to be at the convention. Well 4 hours later I got to the show. It just isn't a lot of fun to have a sense of being lost on some sideroad because the main road is closed. The F150 truck ahead of me was my new buddy, where he went I went. Good thing he wanted back on the interstate as well.
• X-Men 3 was Blah. I enjoyed it, I will watch it again, and probably own it. I think I will probably watch it more than X-Men 1. It wasn't very good however. I isn't the first bad movie that I like and probably won't be the last. Also depsite saying it was the last official team X-Men (Wolverine and Magneto solo projects aside) movie I think $120,000,000 in 4 days will change that.
• Stupid Mets won't lose. Maybe they don't go away this year. I think the Braves could make a run at the division or even the wild card. With that bullpen however I don't the Braves chances in the playoffs, ick.
• My little one has finished her first year of school. Does that mean I'm now an adult or was that a few years ago. Hopefully that doesn't mean I have to stop playing games at work.

Trips Get Expensive

I've found the each of the trips I take for work over the last 12 months or so cost me some money, about $10 to $20 each. I've been traveling for work for over three years now but it has only been the last year that I spend this $10 to $20. It was last May that I got my iPod. I got Pretty Bird her's the previous November for her birthday and we both loved it. The trips cost me this before I leave, usually the night before. I spend this money at iTunes picking up some new songs or albums (yes Mark you can call them albums). I usually start out just wanting to shake things up and create some new playlists and I end up picking up some new music. It is so easy and allows me to get a nice variety to listen to on the next day's flight. Neither of us purchased much music past high school or college, hell I was just a radio guy from 1997 until last year. We probably bought maybe 20 albums between '97 and last year. So the 200 album/2500 song collection we had was mainly from our high school/college years. Since she got her iPod we've probably added another 20 albums or so. It was fun to 'rediscover' buying music again.

If you don't have an iPod yet, well what are you waiting for?

Summer Sucks

Actually I really like summer, I guess it goes back to being a kid and getting summers off. As a comic book collector and TCG player/fan it means summer convention season which I love. Hell my job pays for me to go to mulitple conventions which is even better. Nothing beats free San Diego Comic-Con, well except maybe a free SDCC where I could actually see some of the show. What sucks about the summer is my companies absurd summer hours. Our normal week is 8:00am to 5:00pm (used to be 8:30am to 5:30pm), five 9 hour days. That is a typical office type job, covers your hour lunch and gets the company 40 hours out of you.

For summer hours we have four 10 hour days and one four hour day. We work Monday through Thursday, 7:00am to 5:00pm and Friday 7:00am to 11:00am. Summers hours are the week before Memorial Day (now) until the week before Labor Day. As nice as it is to get off at 11:00am on Friday's that isn't going to happen very often. Of the Friday's I worked last year during summer hours I probably left on time less than 25% of them. We are 'encouraged' to stay later on Fridays, some people like to work as late as 2:00pm or 3:00pm on a regular basis. That brings me to my next problem, I travel a lot. Last year of the 15 potential half Fridays I was on the road for 9 of them. This year is slightly better in terms of being able to enjoy a half Friday, I'm only traveling for 7 of them.

I think even if I enjoyed all of the potential benefits of this policy it still wouldn't be my favorite idea. I think 7:00am is just too early to be at work is all. Today I was here before Yahoo updated the previous days Fantasy scores, before the building was open (I got to use my electric pass card for the first time), and was at Chik-Fil-A before they were open. How did I manage high school at the 7:20 start time, oh yeah I slept a lot during class. Well off to my daily nap :)

Amazed

I'm constantly amazed by things, all sorts of things. I think the world is full of wonders and oddities that make it interesting. I love to find these and they usually amaze me. They aren't always great things, sometimes annoying things, but anyways. The current thing that amazes me is how simliar my issues with IT departments are, no matter the scope of the job or the size of the company. The IT solutions at all seven companies (General Cinema, Taco Bell, Toys R Us, NetMarket, Stacey's Greenhouses, Decipher, and RC2) I've been employeed by have all been crap in one way or another. IT should provide, within cost and reason, tools to help the employees to their jobs. Not create things which force employees to spend time doing instead of their jobs.

Currently I want to be able to easily update from the road pictures and event write ups. I also would like a website design to allow such things to easily be displayed. I have neither. RC2 actually has a decent web team but since I'm in Charlotte and they are in Chicago I'm sure there is a little out of sight out of mind. Our website is actually one of the better ones in the TCG industry, it just doesn't do exactly what I want it to do.

But hey, I'm a smart guy (at least my mom told me that once), I can figure it out. So guess what, I'm just going to use Blogger! A free service that does exactly what I want and I can avoid stressing out about it and arguing why it is a good idea. So in case you want to visit and see the coolness that is Fullmetal Alchemist TCG events (really, it isn't that cool but I have a good time) check out my other blog. fmatcg.blogspot.com

That brings me to another thing that amazes me in the not good way. Why can I find a free solution for an IT problem that is better than the one that my company is no doubt paying a lot for. We have email issues, big graphic attachments, a redundant server set up to avoid losing emails, not enough space. When our local email server gets full the redundant system just stops sending us email and keeps it in Chicago. This problem happens about once every six weeks so now we're supposed to keep our inbox down to 20 megs. I get 6 gigs of email space from google for free and I have an expensive thing at work that I have to keep under 20 megs. Amazing.

Randomness

I don't really have a single topic to post about yet I want to keep in the habit of making a post on a regular basis. I guess I could talk about baseball again but what fun is that.

- I calculated that since I've moved to Charlotte, the last week of February 2005, I've staying in a hotel room over 80 nights. That just seems awful high. In addition there are four or five weekends staying at the guest room at my parents house. That is a whole lot of me not sleeping in my bed and I really like my bed.

- I recently had a trip to California and Arizona. I had to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles at 6am and the rental car place in SF is a good 10 minutes from the airport. I do get to skip most of the lines but I still wanted to give myself a good 70-90 minutes to get everything worked out so I left the hotel at around 4:15 or so. Since I left so early I didn't bother to check my bill before I left and bam, a mistake. I was charged for a movie. I call the hotel and they inform me that the movie was on for less than 90 seconds at like 3am. Normally they ignore movie charges of under 5 minutes but since it was an 'adult' movie or so I was informed they always charge. Now I'm not against adult movies, I just typically don't want to spend $12.95 for them at 3am on an expense account. For me to be up at 3am west coast after flying from the east coast at 7am would have meant that I was up for 23 hours. After flying 5 hours, driving around crazy San Francisco, and only eating one real meal all day I don't even want to have sex with my lovely wife much less watch random porn movie. The Hilton Garden Inn eventually saw it my way.

- As much as I don't like Barry Bonds I dislike Joe Morgan talking about him even more. See I gotcha, you thought I wasn't going to talk about baseball. I watched about 20 minutes of last night's Phillies/Giants game and Morgan wouldn't shut up about Bonds. Bonds this, Bonds that, how great he is, how he is probably #2 on the list of great players behind Willie Mays, on and on. Joe Morgan is an idiot. This is the guy who said he respects Alfonso Soriano for finally moving from second to left field. Um, hello, for 10 million a year if Frank wants Soriano to wash his car the first words out of his mouth should be "How many coats of wax". There now I ripped three baseball (ex)players I can't stand all at once. Suck it Joe Morgan.

- How does 'greatest baseball player ever' not begin and end with Babe Ruth? He won 20 games in a year as a pitcher and was the greatest power hitter of all time. Again, suck it Joe Morgan.

- Free Comic Book Day was a great time. The local store here puts on a great show. There is my next blog topic and I was looking for one. See this steam of consciousness thing really works.

- Back to Bonds. Just sign the guys baseball, I mean come on. I know if I was this guy I would tell Bonds and his ESPN show to suck it.

I'm sure I have more random thoughts and I will probably share them as time goes on.

Its Lima Time!

Now if only we can convince the Mets to start Jose Lima every time we play them we might have a chance to win the division. There is still hope but I really believe the Braves aren't very good and the Mets are a top 10 team in the Majors.

Awful

The Braves are just awful this year. I know I shouldn't be suprised or shocked, they didn't upgrade a team that started a ton of rookies last year. I know I shouldn't complain, they have won 14 years in a row. None of that makes it any easier. They just stink. I will still watch, I will still root for them, and hope, I just think it might be a long summer. I do know in Atlanta they are probably wondering when the Dawgs and the Michael Vick Experience start.

Another Easter picture

This is another picture from our trip to Grammy's house for Easter. We spent the week previous in Florida visiting other family and of course Disney World! This is Grammy and the Little One spending time right after the outside Easter Egg hunt is finished. The Little One had never done an outside Easter Egg hunt and boy did she love it. She does love visiting Grammy and Papa though. They don't know the word no and the house is full of puppies! Good times were had by all.