December ramblings

Who makes phone calls from a bathroom stall? I mean, what kind of person is sitting on a toilet, in a smelly office bathroom and thinks to them self "hey, now is the perfect time to make a phone call"? Someone in my office, that's who. I mean, couldn't the call wait 5 minutes? It's disgusting. Sometime I wish I could just unleash the most gawd awful sound from the adjacent stall while he's on the phone. Then maybe the person on the other end of the line would think to themselves "did this guy just crap himself?". That would make me happy.

Are the Sox getting Teixeira or not getting Teixeira? This offseason stuff kills me. I just want to know already. Who's taking over catching duties? I'm still surprised Veritek didn't accept arbitration. He would have gotten $10 mil for the season. Is anybody else going to give 'Tek that kind of cash? Way to screw him over Boras.

Friggin' salt truck drivers. I hate you. Don't you realize that if you drive too closely to another car, you will be in effect keying them? Keying people's cars is vandalism and illegal. I hate you salt truck drivers.

Is it possible to develop Alzheimer's at 28 years of age? I seriously cannot remember a thing. Is that normal? During a recent business trip, I checked my room about 297 times before leaving, yet still managed to leave behind my toothbrush and toothpaste. I often forget to feed my fish (yet they live forever somehow), I forget to watch my tv shows (thank god for DVDR) and I can't remember someone's birthday if my life depended on it. I can't imagine what I'll be like in 20-30 years.

I think I've developed a solid fantasy basketball game plan. No, it's nothing revolutionary or enlightening. It's more common sense, which I failed to use in previous fantasy seasons. Basically, you DON'T want to fill your bench with the "best available" guys available on the WW. Those are the guys who are not good enough to start on anybody else's team, which means they will most likely bring down your FG%, FT% and increase your turnovers. Instead, you want to fill your bench with backup players with high shooting percentages. You can play them anytime your starters have the day off and they won't hurt your team. They don't get as much playing time, which means they won't give you as many points/rebounds/assists, but you get that stuff from your starting lineup. Trust me, taking the top point getting from the WW is not always a good idea. Just remember Ben Wallace and you'll know what I mean.

More updates

As of last night (well, this morning actually) Obama is our new President. Honestly, I didn't hate McCain (like I hated dubya), but I just can't see myself ever voting Republican. Anybody who lets religion dictate most of their views, should not be running this country. Whatever happened to separation of church and state? Granted, McCain was less right-winged than most Republicans, but I still sided with Obama on most of the issues. I'm quite happy to see him win by such a landslide. I'd truly like to see an atheist (or agnostic) President some day, but the God fearing people of America would not let that happen. For now, I'm happy the country is turning blue.

New albums just coming out from Keane & Snow Patrol, but they don't seem to have quite the same feel as their previous albums. I enjoyed Coldplay's newest "Viva La Vida" that came out earlier this year, but honestly I think my favorite of the year has been Elbow's "Seldom Seen Kid".

The new Indiana Jones movie was a let down. Ironman was a semi-let down because it was hyped wayyyy too much. The Happening was a let down (but who didn't see that coming?). I think I've probably seen 3 movies that I've really liked all year. Let's see if I can name a few. "No Country for Old Men" was awesome. Surprisingly, I loved "There Will Be Blood" even though it was like 24 hours long. The newest Batman "The Dark Knight" was quite entertaining along with "Cloverfield" even though most people hated it. I think I just named 1 movie from 2008 and the others were 2007, but oh well. I guess I don't watch as many movies as I used to. I'm looking forward to seeing "Burn After Reading".

The State of Ryan's Nation 08

Well, I almost made it an entire year without posting. I'm not really sure what to post about because so much can happen in a year. I guess I'll try to do a brief overview of some stuff.

The WOW addiction is over. I miss playing it, but it got so boring and repetitive that it wasn't much fun any more. I started playing a new game (Warhammer), but it's nowhere near as addictive. I'm lucky if I play once a week.

The Brew Crew softball team had a tough season. We lost some players, but still managed to finish in the middle of the pack. Hopefully next year our experience will carry us a little further.

The Sox just lost to the Rays in the ALCS. Truthfully, the Sox had no business taking that series to 7 games. Papi, Beckett, Lowell, Lowery were all hurt and Veritek was so bad I prayed Cora would pitch hit for him every time. The 7 run comeback game was amazing and so much fun to watch, but this Rays team is really good. I'll root for them to beat Philly in the World Series.

New shows I'm watching:
1) True Blood - Strangely addictive show about Vampires mainstreaming into society. An interesting concept that has me completely hooked.
2) The Life and Times of Tim - The most hilarious show I've seen in a long time.
3) The Wire - A truly great show. It's actually no longer on the air, but I've bought the first 4 seasons and watched them all within a couple months. One more season to go.
4) Fringe - New show from J.J.Abrams. Very Sci-Fi and far fetched, but I keep watching.

Still watching: It's Always Sunny, Entourage, Heroes, The Office.

Reading: Nothing at the moment. Been watching lots of TV and almost done with Season 6 of 24.

I've been running like crazy lately. I'm really trying to get my 5k time down and I've lost about 25-30 lbs along the way. I'm currently running slightly above an 8 min mile pace and my goal is to get under that. Gonna be tough with winter on the way.

That's it for now. I'll post again with some other stuff from this last year.

Damn you World of Warcraft!

First off, lets rewind to 1989. Remember when Baseball Stars came out on Nintendo? They had the brilliant idea of keeping stats and gave us the ability to save the game. I believe this was the first Nintendo game that allowed you to do this. By saving the game, you could record your progress so you didn't feel like you were starting from scratch every time you played. You always were accomplishing something (winning money for your team, signing free agents, increasing player abilities). Every time you played, you got better. Because of this, it was the most addictive Nintendo game I ever played. I always wanted to play more to make my team better.

Side Note: Remember stacking your team so heavily that everybody was batting over .700 and hitting homeruns every other at bat? That was awesome.

Now back to present time. Pretty much every video game available allows you to save your game. World of Warcraft (WOW) has taken the whole "saved progress" phenomenon to a new level. Of course it's hard to compare this to Baseball Stars since WOW is not a sports game, however it runs on the same principles. Build your character up and stack him with the best gear and weapons you can find. Also, you are not only working to increase the character's experience level, but also his class level and profession level. You don't need to know what that means, I'm just trying to show that there is so much content and so many ways to make your character more powerful.... and every time you play you get better. Just like Baseball Stars, yet so much worse.

With BStars, you could build a team in a few minutes, start making some decent money in a few hours, and could have a pretty stacked team in a few days... maybe a week. With Warcraft, you can spend weeks or even months just trying to upgrade one piece of equipment (BTW, you wear 14-15 pieces of armor and have 1-3 weapons)... and you are playing against tens of thousands of other people at the same time. It's hard to even fathom how much time people waste playing this game.

What's crazy to me is that there are certain aspects of the game that require the cooperation of 25 to 40 different people at the same time, and will take multiple hours to complete (6 hours or more in some cases). That means you pretty much have to dedicate an entire day to playing the game without much of a break (don't worry, I don't do this kind of stuff... yet). You also need to be really good at playing your character because any mistake you make in the game can cause the death of many people. These instances require huge guilds that will only let you join them if you meet their strict guild standards. These are the hardcore guys, AKA the guys who will always be better than you.

Since I have OCD when it comes to video games, I hate it when people are better than me. So I keep playing to get better. Unfortunately I've been playing the game for more than 6 months now.... and I suck! Seriously, I'm terrible. A couple of months is not enough time to learn all the ropes and become competitive (like baseball stars). Becoming really good at this game could take years. This reality is slowly starting to sink in and it's depressing.

Fortunately I've made a bunch of friends in the game and it really increases the enjoyment level. It's becoming less and less about having the best character, best gear, and best strategies and more about hanging out with some cool new friends. The game is both exciting and a huge waste of time... and 100% hands down the most addictive game I've ever played.

Where did September and October go?

This has definitely been my longest time between posts. I'm blaming it mostly on my new World of Warcraft addiction (which deserves a post all on it's own). That stupid game is ruining me. Anyway, I just wanted to post an update on all things me. Here we go.

Favorite new Album: Spoon "GaGaGaGaGa". This album is awesome. I started liking Spoon when "Gimmie Fiction" came out (their 4th or 5th album I believe), but wasn't really hooked. This new album (ga...) is my new obsession. Spoon is such a unique band, it's nice to have something different to listen to.

Favorite new Movie: Superbad. This movie was hilarious. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD. I even named one of my fantasy football teams McLovin. Sounds like a sexy hamburger.

Fantasy News: Speaking of fantasy football. I decided to concentrate on 1 team this year. Of course my friends created 2 leagues so I had to join them both. To fix this dilemma, I made one team of entirely Patriots players (excluding Moss cause some jackass picked him in the third round). Anyway, my Pats team (aka McLovin), is currently 4-4 and has been in the top 3 teams in scoring the last 4 weeks! How awesome is that? That tells you how good the Patriots are this year. Even without their top receiver, I'm still topping the scoreboard in my fantasy league by only starting Pats players. It's awesome. I even beat the jerk to stole Moss from me on draft day. It was sweet revenge.

Good Books: I read a couple of books by Chuck Palahniuk recently (Fight Club, Survivor & Lullaby). They were all really unique, quite morbid and very fascinating. I think I need to move on to another genre for a little while before I decide to go out and shoot somebody.

Awesome Prediction: I was 100% right about Roger Clemens this year. Not that it was a tough prediction or anything, but it made me happy to see him struggle so much. I don't know what the Yankees were thinking when they offered him such a ridiculous contract. He's so old! On the other hand, I did like the cell phone commercial that he did. That was kind of funny.

Baseball news: Speaking of baseball, the Sox won the world series! This needs it's own post.

Basketball news: I've decided to join a basketball league here at work. Yeah, I'm starting to get older, and trips to the gym normally require a 2-day recovery period for me, but I think it will be fun. I get winded pretty quickly so hopefully I can get in the games, run around for a few minutes, then grab a sub before I pass out.

I guess that's it for now. Hopefully I'll post again soon.

It's a sad day for baseball...

... actually it's a sad day for all of sports. One of the most amazing records in sports history has been broken by a cheater. How this was allowed to happen, I have no idea. Of course anybody who follows sports knows what I'm talking about. Ok, Bonds was never convicted of anything so how can we prove that he was a cheater? Well, first of all.... he admitted he used steriods. That's kind of a big piece of evidence.

Yeah, he said he didn't know he was using steriods, basically blaming his weight training coach of juicing him without his consent... which is soooo bullshit. The two guys were friends. I mean, his trainer is currently sitting in jail because he refused to testify against Bonds. Does that sound like someone who would try to destroy Bonds' career by slipping him illegal drugs? Nope. Sounds like a friend. There is absolutely no way in hell Bonds didn't know he was using steriods.

Yup, I read "Game of Shadows" so maybe I'm a little biased. I don't know how much information in that book was factual. I do know that it contained Grand Jury testimony and that Bonds 100% admitted to using steriods. The story itself was very convincing. Bonds being pissed that McGwire (a white man... who was probably using steriods too) got all the attention for breaking the single season home run record, while Bonds who was a far superior baseball player hardly got noticed. After that year, you can see Bond's stats started climbing ridiculously high. Hmmmm, I wonder why that was happening?

Well, I like to keep my posts short, but I could go on and on about this. Everyone already knows the story anyway and I've got nothing new to say. I'm just depressed that a liar and cheater is now the new home run champion. I found some comfort in the fact that A-Rod will probably pass Bonds fairly easily... then I remembered that A-Rod is also a liar and a cheater. Now I'm just depressed.

My new man-crush

So it's now past the All-Star break and I can finally watch the Redsox again. Wait, let me back up a minute...

To start the season, Cablevision (my cable/internet company based in NY) had contract issues with Major League Baseball and Direct TV. They decided to screw their customers and not offer the MLB package for the beginning of the season. This means I don't get to watch my beloved Redsox.

Apparently 2 months after opening day, Cablevision realized they were making a mistake. They settled their contract issues and started offering the MLB package again... AT FULL PRICE!

WTF? They made me miss 2 full months of the season, then they expect me to shell out full price? I don't think so.

So after the All-Star break, the price of the MLB package drops (not by a lot, but enough), so I finally caved and picked it up.

I hate Cablevision and always will. As soon as Verizon FiOS is available in my neighborhood, I'm signing up.

So enough venting and on to more important things. This year I've decided that Dustin Pedroia is my new favorite player. I picked him up for my fantasy baseball team as a backup 2nd basemen (we've got 14 teams so there were not a lot of options). Once Pedroia caught fire, he's helped my team rocket into first place. After reading some threads on the SOSH website, I found out that since May 3rd, Pedroia has swung at 139 pitches and missed 4."

That's amazing! Seriously, that's absolutely ridiculous.

I'm a big fan of players with fantastic plate discipline. I also like scrappy players who play hard everyday, dive for balls they can't reach and always run out infield grounders. I want the players I root for to love the game instead of just seeing how inflated they can make their paychecks. Those are the real baseball players. Pedroia is still very young, but he seems to fall into that category. I can't wait to start watching on a nightly basis. Go Sox!