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A Collaborative Austin Texas / Florida Blog Currently Featuring Tommybear and: |
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July 2008 Archives |
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06/04/2008
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Like it or not, even though you can't spell Buttafuoco, you know who Amy Fisher is. For those of you not around in the 90s, she was Joey B's young, 16 year old mistress. They called her the "Long Island Lolita." One day Amy was so frustrated that Joey wouldn't leave his wife that she showed up on Joey's front door and shot Ms B in the face. Ms B got a nasty scar to show for it but survived.
You would think that if you committed such a crime you would stay out of the public eye forever, change your name, and go about your life. I guess for some people notoriety, any notoriety, is very exciting and they'll do their best to keep it going. Unfortunately Amy Fisher can't act, isn't very attractive, and has no talent so she put out a sex tape. I've seen this sex tape and it isn't very good at all. She's with one pretty old dude on the tape which I assume is her husband or something.
I found this one clip on YouTube of HowardTV (Stern's tv show) where he's interviewing Amy Fisher and he has Ms B's daughter on the line. Fisher is clearly nervous and says she not does want to talk to Ms B's daughter. She obviously doesn't want to relive her crime but isn't that why she's infamous? Shouldn't she milk that?
Howard puts the daughter on anyway and Ms B's daughter delivers a masterful barb.
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Let's say I moved to a state where there wasn't any Big 12 presence. Let's say I move to Chicago. It would never occur to me to look for some UT Alumni club or some Big 12 social gathering. And yet, my friend Todd constantly gets together with other Wisconsin people here in Austin in organized activities. I thought perhaps it was just some small get togethers that maybe his friends put together but last week they all went to a Big 10 celebration at the Round Rock Express Minor League Baseball Game. Weird right? They had an area where they tailgated and then they watched the game.
There was a lot of different Big 10 contingent at the game all wearing their jerseys or hats from Ohio State, Iowa, a bunch of Michigan, Wisconsin, and some Purdue. It was a very strange sight to me when 99% of the time when I'm walking around Austin I see nothing but Longhorn burnt orange. There must have been at least 50 Big 10 fans all jumbled up in one section.
I wonder if there are big pockets of Longhorns all over the country. I know plenty of one offs but I wonder if groups of them ever get together outside the great state of Texas.
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I've decided to stop trying to "hypermile." You know, by doing things like not accelerating very much and using my cruise control in heavy traffic. What's the fun of having an 8 cylinder car if you don't give it a little gas once in a while and zip by some old granny?
Besides, the Associated Press says: "Prices are at their lowest level since May 16 and are an average of 11.7 cents less per gallon than two weeks ago." - Associated Press.
Just last Saturday I saw one station selling gas for 3.79 and the national average is less today than it was then! 3.79? Pfft. So it's up .79 from a year ago. Big deal. Hopefully the country can stay stable long enough to maintain this trend.
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I listen to Sirius radio exclusively in the car and on the drive to work I'm usually listening to Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio or Howard Stern.
Today I decide to go to Colin's webpage to see what his web presence is like and I come across a link of his that says Colin's College Football Locks of the Year. How in the world can someone have locks of the year when not a single down has been played?
One of the locks he has is Missouri at Texas and he writes this: Missouri at Texas Huge trap game for Texas. Texas is coming off their big game with Oklahoma. Missouri faces a non-rival the week before and totally zones in on Texas. Missouri beats Texas handily in Austin.
I guess according to Cowherd there will be no VY-like undefeated season again. It's funny that in my life time I used to be ok with Texas having 10 win seasons but ever since I've witnessed the glory of an undefeated season and a national championship, everything else is a little bit disappointing. I guess that's why I'll always like pro football a little more than college football. You can lose games early or in the middle of the season, finish strong, slide in the playoffs, and still win the Superbowl. With college football, if Texas stumbles against Florida Atlantic or Rice, the season is pretty much ruined. I wonder if only hardcore Michigan fans could stomach them the first few weeks after they were beaten by Appalachian state.
I know that makes me a bit of a fair weather fan but I say blame VY. |
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The 2008 World Series of poker is going on right now and is about to show on ESPN so it made me ponder the poker days of old.
Texas Hold Em is still played quite a bit these days but I can remember a time when it was white hot. Right after the movie Rounders came out everyone wanted to play poker or learn how to play poker. There was this great mystique to it for all casino outsiders. What the movie Rounders did was make people believe that being an elite Texas Hold Em player was like being an elite athlete. That luck had nothing to do with it. In Rounders Matt Damon said, "It's still gambling to you isn't it? If it is then why do the same 6 people keep making it to the final table at the World Series of Poker." That's not a direct quote but that's the gist
There are a couple of reasons why the same people made it to the final table at the World Series of Poker at that time but it wasn't quite because of the elite athlete theory. Back then, not many people in the general population played anything but 5 card draw at home. Once people were exposed to Texas hold em via the internet and via whatever books or software was available, the gap got smaller and smaller. I myself bought some gay hold em training software and a book. I wanted to see if I could become that elite athlete too. The second reason is the entry fee for the WSOP was $10,000. There just wasn't many people out there who knew how to play poker AND able to blow 10 grand. The internet changed that too because now Poker Web sites hosted tournaments with thousands of people and you could actually win the entry fee to the WSOP by entering a "satellite tournament" for amounts as low as $20. Sometimes even less.
The poker purist still didn't believe that someone could play for 6 months on the internet and play on the same table as a "pro." That was until Chris Moneymaker came on the scene. Moneymaker (he says it's his real last name) won one of those online qualifiers with an entry fee of $39. In 2003, there were 839 entrants in the World Series of Poker and Moneymaker beat them all.
In 2004 the number of entrants exploded to 2576 because everyone thought if Moneymaker could do it, they could do it too. If Moneymaker can sit down with the "professional" Sam Farha at the final table and bluff him all in when he's holding rags then it's basically just millions of dollars up for grabs. Moneymaker won 2.8 million. It turns out that it's basically true, almost anyone can win. You don't have to be the Michael Jordan of poker to win millions of dollars.
Don't get wrong. You have to be a good poker player to even have a chance. It's not like playing roulette. You have to have the skills to maximize your odds. You still have to play the right strategy at the right time on the right people but every once in a while, it really is sheer luck. You'll even hear the term "coin-flip" on ESPN when both players go all in and one player holds a small pocket pair to another players two over cards. It's almost a 50/50 probability on who will win when you don't know what other cards have been dealt. Every once in a while, you just have to have the cards. You can only bluff so many times.
In the following years the number of entrants were 5619, 8773, and then back down to 6358 and 6844 this year. A major reason the numbers went down was because internet poker has essentially been banned from the US. I I blame George Bush. The poker sites I belong to no longer allowed American players.
I wish I could play online poker again but it's really difficult to finance it now. The major financial Paypal like liaisons no longer touch US citizens with a 10 foot pole.
I've heard of other people being able to finance their poker accounts but it just seems to risky. Am I actually committing a crime if I play poker now? Can I risk giving my bank information to some institution I've never heard of? Would I actually create a new bank account just to play poker?
Oh yeah, the second bitch of the whole gambling ban is that I also can't bet on sports gambling through the internet. Damn you George Bush. |
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This is probably way too busy for a t-shirt. Maybe just a simple design with tommybear.com on the back. Back to the drawing board.
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With preseason football coming up next month, the airwaves are starting to be jammed with football analysis.
Here are the pro football stories that I've heard about so far.
1. Brett Favre wants to come out of retirement but Green Bay isn't giving him many options except go to training camp and play backup to Aaron Rodgers. They won't release him and may not trade him.
2. Jeremy Shockey has been traded to New Orleans and will now be catching passes from Drew Brees instead of Eli Manning. He's been quoted as crying for having to go to a luxury booth instead of allowing him to stand on crutches on the sideline during the playoffs but the team doctor said it wasn't healthy for him to crutch around on his injury. I think I'd be whiney baby too if my team won a Superbowl without me and I thought I was such a crucial component.
3. Jason Taylor basically loss favor with Bill Parcells because he was on Dancing With the Stars. I think BP thought it showed a lack of dedication and focus because BP thinks all you should be thinking about as an NFL player is the upcoming season. Jason Taylor was traded to the Washington Redskins. Sucks for Cowboy fans like me.
4. I heard the NFC East (Cowboy country) might be the best conference in the league. I heard one poll still had the Cowboys winning that division over the defending champs. Strahan isn't coming back is he?
5. Chad Johnson still demands to be traded but plans to show up to camp sandbagging with an injured ankle.
Did I get any of these stories wrong? I didn't recheck my facts. |
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5-2. Not too Shabby.
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This is a follow up to my identify theft story. I find it ironic (it probably isn't ironic) that when I bought my car I blogged about how good my credit was and jokingly pleaded to the world to not steal my identity. Of course not even three months go by that someone ended up cloning my debit card and using ibigmpasas. So when I told you about that particular story, it sounded like an ok if not happy ending. The bank guy had told me they're blocking those charges and sending me a new cc. Well the very next morning, I log in to my bank account and see about $398 dollars in gas charges.
So the fraud guy from the day before told me there were a bunch (like 10) various transaction attempts for $1 and were blocked anyway. For some reason, he didn't see the $398 which happened at about the same time. Was there some issue with the timing? Did the transactions already go through a split second after he looked everything up?
Once again I had to endure those feelings of being violated all over again for the second straight day. I had to talk to several different people and swear over the phone and in writing that I did not buy $400 worth of gas in one hour even though I already told some Bank of America rep the day before to block those charges as it was happening.
The worst part about all this is I still have no idea how my debit card number was released in to the world. I don't know if it was from a retail store, a restaurant, a bar, someone going through my wallet, or the internet. I've been trying to do everything on my non debit credit card even though I got a new debit card but since I hold a little bit of a balance on that card, I don't think I'm keeping track of my spending very well and therefore that revolving balance is slowly swelling.
I finally broke down and used my debit card at HEB the other day for $3 in sausages. I don't think the security leak happened at HEB... |
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Baseball fans are so fickle. A hometown player that was getting a standing ovation a couple months earlier will sometimes get booed in the middle of a 1-for-20 slump. If he has a couple sub-par months, fans might even be calling for his head, wanting the team to cut or trade him.
This seems to happen much more in baseball than it does in football or basketball. Why? I guess it’s because most of the success in those sports is linked to pure athleticism, hustle, and desire.
In baseball, it’s the specific skill of hitting a ball with a bat. The ball could be going anywhere between 65-100 mph. It could be sinking, curving, cutting, knuckling, or going straight. The hitter must recognize all of this in less than two-tenths of a second and decide if he is going to swing. Sometimes players in the middle of a hot streak will say they are seeing the ball really well. Players in a slump, not so well. This must be part of the reason for the streakiness of baseball compared to other sports.
Sure, you can have an off-night shooting the basketball. But you can always help your team in other ways, like setting more screens or passing the ball. But there’s no passing the ball when it’s your turn in the batting order.
I get really upset when fans don’t realize the ups and downs and start booing their own players when they are in an extended slump. Is that really going to help them turn it around? The one that’s been irritating me this year is the Brewers fans’ treatment of Rickie Weeks.
Weeks is considered by the organization to be one of the core young players that the team will build around. However, his below average first half of the season has some fans booing him, and some calling for the team to trade him away or play someone else at second base.
Let’s look back and see what Weeks is capable of: He is the NCAA all-time leader in career batting average. He was the first-round draft pick (second overall) of the Brewers in 2003. He had such impressive numbers in the minors that he was called up to be an everyday major league starter at age 22. In 2007, he was second on the team in on-base percentage (OBP), trailing only MVP candidate Prince Fielder. In the second half of last season, his OBP was an incredible .422, one of the best marks in the majors.
This season, his OBP has dropped to .320, and although he leads the team in runs scored, he is catching a lot of heat from the fans. Well my message to the fans is to relax. Rickie Weeks will be a stud hitter. He has shown that he can do it in the past, and he will do it again in the future. You just have to remember there are ups and downs. He will be back to 2007 form, and it will be sooner rather than later.
Beyond the ups and downs, there is another thing to remember: The prime years for a hitter typically occur between the ages of 27 and 30. Although this is his fourth season in the bigs, Rickie Weeks is still only 25.
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Here's a completely bizarre concept to me that I only heard about a few weeks ago, The "Dark" restaurant. These are restaurants that are pitch black or have extremely low mood lighting so that you employ senses other than sight while you're eating to perhaps amplify those senses.
This sounds like an extremely claustrophobic environment that I wouldn't enjoy at all. I, like most people, must see what I'm eating. I want to see the color and the shape and the presentation and to make sure I'm not eating doodoo on a plate. How can you even use a fork in these dark restaurants? You're liable to miss sticking that piece of steak with your fork and stabbing that fork right in your eye.
Here's more on the subject:
waiters lead patrons to their tables by using night vision goggles |
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One of the channels I listen to on my Sirius radio is RAW DOG. This is "uncensored comedy." There are other comedy channels on Sirius including Blue Collar Comedy, the Foxx Hole (created by Jamie Fox), and just nice family comedy (think Bill Cosby.)
Raw Dog and the other comedy channels are constantly playing excerpts from people's standup acts. It's never the entire routine. Right before I got to work today, they played some Dane Cook bits. Everyone knows who Dane Cook is by now. You might have even see my blog from last year where I mention his movie Employee of the Month was really bad and one of his standup bits was really stupid.
Today, I have to admit, I laughed at loud at his bits. There I was at a stop light between Sixth and Lamar and I'm the guy laughing out loud in his car like a weirdo. I found the exact bits on Youtube:
operation / monopoly
don't tickle me
public restrooms
kool aid |
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I know there's no S at the end of Michael. Actually Mandy had to let me know that for the first time last month.
A couple of strange events led Mandy and I to Dallas last weekend to see the incomparable George Michael.
1. Carrie Underwood, of American Idol fame, sang Praying For Time during an "Idol Gives Back" episode. This was the first time Mandy had heard of the song and she really liked Underwood's version. I tell her, "If you liked that, you would love George Michael's version." I put the GM version and other GM songs on her Ipod and she indeed likes it very much.
2. Mandy likes the GM version so much that she looks up various GM things on the internet for fun and finds out that he is actually currently on tour and will be in Dallas, Texas in like 3 months. She asks me if I want to go. I like GM and it's months and months away so sure, why not?
3. Interestingly enough, the American Idol finale's final performance is none other than George Michaels. Mandy finds his voice a bit weak. I thought he did way too many runs but was still good.
The GM tickets were 150 dollars a piece. I know. It's a bit pricey but how many times in your life are you going to see GM in concert. It could possibly be his last tour, right?
Three months fly by and before you know it, it's GM in concert time. I really didn't know what to expect. We leave town Sunday morning and head towards Dallas to a Doubletree Hotel I booked. That hotel caught my eye on Travelocity because they serve you cookies during check in and I always knew it to be a generally nice hotel when I used to travel a lot. It was also only two miles away from the American Airlines center.
I hadn't really thought about it, but for some reason it didn't occur to me that about 70% of the audience might have been gay men. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The other percentage were couples like Mandy and I and older women who loved him back in the 80s.
I grew up in Fort Worth. Not Dallas. My parents spend a lot of time in Dallas. I, by no means, am a big city boy. Austin, Texas is tiny in my book compared to city's like Dallas and Houston. You learn about the 3 major highways in this town and you're good to go. The Dallas Metroplex is big, sprawling, and urban. I've never liked it. If not for the Garmin Navigator I can say with almost %100 accuracy that we would have gotten lost.
After we check in to the hotel we decide to get dinner somewhere downtown close to the stadium. It costs us $10 dollars to park. Maybe there was cheaper parking somewhere but we didn't have time to look around. We go to a Hoffbrau (I don't know if it's like the Austin one). I get a ribeye and Mandy gets a filet. Mandy's filet is really mushy and my ribeye is really tough. The salad was just some wilted lettuce and a small stack of diced tomatoes. My mashed potatoes were really gooey. The whole meal was gross and pretty expensive.
The parking lot across from the American Airlines center was $20. I guess maybe there's better parking somewhere but the area near the stadium was starting to get very busy and congested. I figure we might as well just pay and get back to our car safely and quickly when the concert is over.
We get to our seats at about 7:30. Our ticket says show starts at 8pm prompt and we know there isn't an opening act. That bastard doesn't start until 9 pm. The crowd by that time has gotten quite restless and a little obnoxious.
I might have vaguely known that GM had a career outside of his Wham/Faith days but I figured the bulk of his songs would be songs that I knew. I recognized maybe less than half the songs he performed which included Everything She Wants, Faith, Freedom, Kissing a Fool, Careless Whisper, Father Figure, One More Try, and his cover of the First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. The other songs were crazy, techno dance songs that I didn't really care for. It's usually hard to enjoy a brand new song without a little exposure to it and I'm not really into techno at all.
The entire stage was like a huge electronic billboard so the light show was very cool. Even the part of the stage that he stood upon had animated images on it. His encore finale was "Freedom." I like this song plenty but about a quarter of the way through, we look at the packed stadium and decide that this is probably the best time to get out of there to beat the rush.
Even though I didn't love the techno stuff, the whole road trip was fun and I did like hearing the songs I was familiar with. His voices sounded phenomenal. After the concert, Mandy and I bought some wine singles, fritos, and bean dip and had a "picnic" on the hotel bed while buying a hotel pay per view movie ($14.99). It wasn't a porno, it was the movie 21 with Kevin Spacey. We both don't know what happens at the end because we both fell asleep.
Oh yeah, about 10 minutes before we're ready to check out in the morning the power to the entire hotel goes out and we have to walk down 10 flights of stairs. I guess we're lucky we weren't in the elevator when the power went out. I hadn't thought of that...
This is how close we were. No real cameras allowed. |
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If you haven't noticed, I have a short
attention span and I get bored very easily. That's why I play on 3
pool teams. I also bike and run on the weekends. I try to mix it up.
I'm trying to find time to box but been too lazy to make time. I'm a
Jack of all trades, master of none.
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The week started off a little rough with
my first workout. After being sick the week before, and having
recovery week before that, I really had a hard time with muscle
soreness. All in all, it worked out well on both chest and arm days.
On Saturday I picked up a couple of WAKA kickballs from Academy and
met Todd out on the little league fields by his house. Fortunately,
enough people showed to easily put a couple of teams together, and
we played for about 4 hours. I got plenty of exercise, despite the
beer. Our goal is to do this every couple of weeks so we actually
get outside and be active. We'll see how long that lasts.
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My absolute, favorite show on television is Judge Judy. I have the DVR set to record her every day; two episodes every weekday from 4 to 5 P.M. I can easily say that I could not have gotten where I am as a single father without her. My divorce instantly shot me into a world I knew nothing about. There are rules, both moral and legal, that must be abided by to maintain a functional co-parenting life. I am only being honest when I admit that in the beginning, I thought I had a right as a parent to know the goings on in my ex wife’s life (and for the record, I hate putting “ex” in front of anything and I hate the term “ex wife”. Going forward I will always refer to her as Sheneedsmenomo). For the safety of my daughter, I believed I needed to know where she was, whom she was with, and if she was napping enough. Now don’t get me wrong, not only am I human but I’m also a guy so I’m sure Freud would have diagnosed me with “social-life envy” since she seemed to have one and I didn’t. I don’t deny there were some ulterior motives at work but there was a sincere part of me that worried about my child. I’ll just sum up this rant by saying divorce sucks. The best way to avoid it is to stay single.
While I’ve always been a fan of Judge Judy, I never really paid attention quite like I do now. Her show consists of an endless parade of jilted lovers who want something that the other person took from them. 80% of her show usually resolves whether the money was a gift or a loan. However, there are those few cases where people who have joint custody of their children argue about financial responsibilities with regard to children. I’ve crafted a list of the lessons I’ve learned while watching these people totally humiliate themselves on television:
Okay, the last one was a stretch and really doesn’t apply to me. I probably won’t make any more babies because I’m age-disabled. Not that I can’t procreate, it’s just that I don’t want to pay for college when I’m closing in on 60. My point in all of this is I pay attention to the show more now because I can see myself within some of these people. I’ve had the same thoughts and impulses they describe while testifying. When Judge Judy throws down her justice, I find myself nodding my head and thinking to myself that she nailed it. I judge the litigants like I’m something better (it’s the same high I get while watching The Real World on MTV) than them when I know deep down that I’m the same. So while they stand before her, it’s really me standing there. I have, at times, deserved her chastising and watching her is like getting guidance from a parent. It has been a cleansing experience.
So thank you Judge Judy from the bottom of my heart. Thanks to you, I am inches away from having a healthy co-parenting relationship with Sheneedsmenomo. I have not fully reached the pinnacle yet because I’m human and I will still make mistakes. I am making less and less of them with each passing day. I am better at holding back and censoring myself so as not to ask questions that could be perceived as being nosey. I think before I talk by closing my eyes and seeing that sexy vixen in her black robe, sitting on high, and judging me as the naughty boy I am. Giving me that intoxicating authority and beating me senselessly with those piercing, brown eyes. Sizing me up with those sleek, thin lips while I wonder what she could possibly be wearing underneath that robe. TAKE ME JUDGE JUDY! TAKE ME NOW! I NEED DISCIPLINE! YES! DISCIPLINE! HURT ME!
Did I mention that my little brother was on Judge Joe Brown?
I guess that story is for another day. |
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Why don’t more people drink non-alcoholic beer? I’m not talking about going out to the pub and ordering up a round of O’Douls. I mean when you’re sitting around at home or working out in the yard. You might ask: Why not just drink a real beer? Well, maybe you don’t want to get buzzed up because you need to do something productive after. And sometimes drinking just one or two beers can make you tired.
So why not NA beer? You have to drink something, right? Water is the easy choice, but most people want something more refreshing, something that has some taste. Soda is the most popular choice, but everyone knows how bad it is for you.
If it’s a regular soda, it is loaded with sugar. If it’s a diet soda, it is loaded with a sugar substitute, which has been shown in recent studies to be as bad for you as sugar. In either case, the acids in the soda are terrible for your teeth. My teeth look bad enough without being rotted away by citric acid.
Why drink soda anyway? I would guess because it’s refreshing and it tastes good. But NA beer meets those requirements, too. And it’s a lot better for you. Let’s compare a 12 oz. can of Coke to a 12 oz. can of O’Douls:
Coca-Cola 146 calories 41 grams of carbs O’Douls 70 calories 13 grams of carbs
It’s no comparison. Coke has twice as many calories and three times as many carbs. And don’t forget about the acids to rot away your teeth.
So next time you go to the store to buy some soda, think about picking up some NA beer instead. My favorite is Kaliber, by the makers of Guiness. |
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A few years back, there was a baseball slugger that was tearing up the major leagues. In a five-year span from 1999-2003, he averaged 36 HR and 112 RBI per season. His trade value was so high that he commanded six players in a 2003 off-season deal. After the 2004 season, he became a free agent and signed a four-year, $50 million contract.
He is currently in the last year of his big contract. However, he is no longer playing for the team that signed him. In fact, he is currently not playing for any team. He was cut yesterday by the Seattle Mariners. His production had fallen so far that he was no longer even worth a spot on their 25-man roster.
He is Richie Sexson, a 6’-8” first baseman who had his best years with the Milwaukee Brewers from 2000-2003. He was a two-time all-star who twice hit 45 HR in a season. In 2003, he also played in every inning of all 162 games for the Brew Crew.
No one could have foreseen this dropoff in production, not even the Brewers’ Doug Melvin, considered one of the best general managers in the game. After the 2003 season, Melvin had a decision to make about fan favorite Sexson, who was going to be a free agent at the end of the 2004 season. He could do one of the following three things with his best hitter: A. Keep Sexson for the 2004 season, then lose him to free agency. B. Keep Sexson for the next several seasons by signing him to a long-term contract. C. Trade Sexson for a player or players that the team will be able to keep after the 2004 season.
The Brewers did not have enough money to give Sexson a long-term contract, so option B was out. Melvin decided to maximize his trade value by dealing Sexson in the off-season. The deal that Melvin worked out with the Arizona Diamondbacks turned out to be one of the most lopsided trades in recent history.
The Brewers received six players, most of who played on the team for at least two years. Some of these players were traded for others who are still on the team. As a result of the trade, the Brewers have seen eleven players contribute at the major league level, and four players are still in the Brewers system. In only three seasons were any of these players paid more than the league average. The Diamondbacks, on the other hand, had Sexson on their team for one injury-plagued season before losing him to free agency and the Seattle Mariners.
Let’s look further into the trade between the Brewers and Diamondbacks. There are a lot of statistics used to compare players in baseball, but to analyze this trade, I will use “win shares”. Win shares is a metric invented by Bill James that considers all statistics and assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. A win share is equivalent to one-third of a team win. If Richie Sexson had a win share rating of 30 for the 2003 season, that means he was single-handedly responsible for 10 of the team’s wins.
The Brewers received six players in the trade, and an additional five players were acquired as a direct result of trading some of the originals. Here are the win share totals from each of these players’ service time with the Brewers: Lyle Overbay (39), Chris Capuano (34), Craig Counsell (10), Junior Spivey (7), Chad Moeller (5), Jorge de la Rosa (0), Dave Bush (20), Gabe Gross (17), Tony Graffanino (11), Tomo Ohka (9), Zach Jackson (1). That is a total of 153 win shares.
Now let’s look at Sexson’s win share totals after he was traded by the Brewers: 2004 (4), 2005 (27), 2006 (20), 2007 (7), 2008 (2). That is a total of 60 win shares. Even if the Brewers had the money and decided to sign Sexson to a long-term deal, they still would have come out 93 win shares lower than they did. The Seattle Mariners did pay the money, and they received two good seasons and two not-so-good seasons.
But the big loser was the Arizona Diamondbacks. Of course they could not have predicted that someone who played 162 games the year before would be injured for most of the season. But it is always a gamble to trade away six players for the hope of one good season, and that gamble resulted in a win share deficit of 153-4 for the Diamondbacks.
Congratulations to Doug Melvin on the best trade of the decade. |
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I love watching this so much. He's such a dbag. It's old but funny
dance remix |
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I'm not sure but I know that girl on the right doesn't look like Courtney Cox.
Oh never mind. The real Ben Stiller showed up later.
Does this man still look like Jake Gyllenhall? Sort of, I guess.
My fade was super tight that night. |
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If you read two blogs down you'll see that Ward is on the short wagon. Since he bowls on my team and bowling is a big "beer league," I thought it was weird that he was empty handed. We had to remedy the situation.
Ward's not happy about his Douly.
Disguising his non alcoholic beer with a well placed label.
Ward's Sober Score. Not bad! We still lost 2-5 |
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As many of you Tommybear readers know, when I got my wallet stolen almost 5 years ago, I made it a top priority to keep an eye on my credit reports to prevent identity theft. After all, I had everything in my wallet including my driver's license, my social security card, and multiple credit cards. I know it's stupid to keep my social security card in my wallet, don't remind me. I have yet to replace it. I also have a subscription to Equifax.com and always makes sure I turn on all alerts for online accounts.
Nothing has ever happened... unit now. I don't believe what happens next is related to my stolen wallet. Today I get an automated call from Bank of America with a phone number and a code. It says it wants to verify irregular activity with my debit card. I log on to my BOA account via the web and the activity looks completely normal, yet busy. I had my a bunch of food stuff go through my card, rent, car payment, and ATM transactions. Nothing unusual. I just figured BOA was being overly cautious.
I call the automated number and it's kind of weird because the "robot" is trying to pronounce things. It even tried to say my name: "We have a call for Tommy B Do." It pronounced my last name like doodoo which is completely common so I wasn't mad at the robot. Then it said it wanted to verify some transactions. When it pronounced the first thing I wasn't sure if I was hearing what I thought I heard. I thought the robot said Diamond Shamrock, one dollar, on 7/8/2008. I thought for sure that I didn't hear it right because I didn't see any transactions for 7/8 online. I also didn't use my debit card at all today because I had basically just gotten to work when I received the message. The robot then told me to push 1 if it was a valid transaction or 2 if it wasn't or I wasn't sure. I pushed 2 thinking I could hear some more but instead the robot transferred me to someone in the fraud department. At this point, I'm a little embarrassed because I thought I just misheard the robot and it was probably a valid transaction.
The fraud guy comes on and tells me he wants to validate some transactions. He tells me there had been an attempt to use my card at a Diamond Shamrock about 20 minutes ago. Now I KNOW that I wasn't at a Diamond Shamrock 20 minutes ago because I was sitting in a meeting. The fraud guy then tells me someone tried to use it seven times in a row at the same Diamond Shamrock and then several more times at a Chevron. The guy then giggles and says, "Boy someone really needed gas." He also tells me that the charges were rejected because the person tried to use it somewhere that was "out of my area." That area was, Lampasas, Texas. He tells me he's also from Texas and has never heard of Lampasas. The fraud guy was from Brownsville. I've heard of Lampasas but I don't know where it is. I just looked it up and it's near Copperas Cove. Now that's weird, I'm sure I've used my debit card in Dallas before and Dallas seems further away. Most gas pumps validate your zip code when you try to use you credit card. I wonder if they had that information as well.
The really scary part is I have my debit card on me right this second and have used the same debit card for at least a couple of years. It's so ratty from age and use that I thought about just getting a fresh one. This means that somehow the thieves lifted my account number and imprinted a credit card. I'm always making fun of Mandy for checking our restaurant receipts and making sure the credit card number is blacked out. You wouldn't believe how many restaurants print the whole thing instead of x'ing them out. What happened to the good old days where people used to mug you for your actual credit card and then try to use it at the nearest Target?
Luckily none of those gas transactions went through. The charge was a dollar because the pump was trying to send though a test transaction to make sure the card was legit before it let the thief get a drop of gas. I just pulled a fresh credit report and everything looks ok for now. I feel so violated... |
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While the decision seems to be unpopular
among my friends, I am not going to drink for 3 weeks starting
today. I'm getting tired of always using it as an excuse as to why
I'm not in the shape I want to be in. I'm tired of always feeling
tired. I hate waking up and dragging myself through the work day
because I had a few too many the night before. I'm tired of making
idiotic decisions. I'm tired of spending a ton of money and not
having anything to show for it except a hangover. There are plenty
of reasons I'm doing this. |
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We live in the age of Floyd Landis, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Marion Jones. Other than Marion Jones, these athletes will "deny till they die." This means they're going to lie about never using performance enhancing drugs until they themselves are a distant memory. Marion Jones vehemently denied using steroids for the 7 years after she won 5 gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and then confessed to it in October of 2007. She used to give interview after interview acting mad as hell whenever the topic came up and now she's in jail for lying to federal agents.
Nobody's madder than Roger Clemens. We used to think that his longevity just stemmed from working really hard. Now we "know" that it was from using HGH. I know there isn't any scientific proof but he was caught in so many contradictions during his congressional hearings that I've made up my mind that he's guilty.
That brings me Dara Torres. This past week she set the an American record in the 50 m freestyle. She's 41 and is qualified for the Olympics games. 41 and setting records in swiming? That doesn't sound right. A couple of years ago people would just say things like, "she's such an inspiration" or "she must work so hard." These days, a lot of people will automatically say, "she's probably not clean."
How is she able to achieve such a feat at 41 when people less than half her age can not? This isn't a "smart" sport like tennis, boxing, or MMA where you can out think your opponents to victory like George Foreman and Randy Couture. This is swimming. A sport of pure strength, technique, and endurance. Could she possibly be working harder than everyone else? Even if it were possible for her to be working any harder than all the swimmers in the history of the game, how could her 41 year old body absorb all this work? How could her genetics at 41 be better than everyone else's?
The most likely answer is that it isn't. She may say, "'I Want To Show People I'm Clean'" but the problem is today's class of cheaters have created steroids and performing enhancing drugs that are undetectable to current tests. Bonds, Clemens, and Jones never tested positive for anything. Landis was accused of having an unnatural source of testosterone in his body but he claims it's natural.
It would be a shame if Torres is completely clean and is actually doing it with good ole American grit and determination. But I'll never know...
Sorry but I had to squeeze in my latest Photoshopped picture of birds. It's kind of busy...
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by Tommybear
by Chris Ward
by Darin Southard
