Monday, September 27, 2004

Still kickin'

Well, I'm in California right now. Lot's of things to tell, but I'll be damned if I spend much time on a computer while I'm in California. Anyway, just needed to mention my near death experiences.

My co-worker (we will call him Brian... because it's his name) almost got me killed 4 times. All four times were in the car and included him driving 90 mph down the San Diego Highway while talking on the phone. The kid just cannot drive and I'm lucky to be alive.

Also, two nights hanging out on Venice Beach, then driving through Englewood and Compton at midnight, and staying in Long Beach for a week, I'm suprised I haven't gotten shot yet.

In case anyone is wondering, I'm up near Santa Barbara now so I should be ok for the rest of the trip. I'll tell more when I get back to New Jersey... where I feel more safe.

Sunday, September 19, 2004

I'm still alive

Well, yesterday's Sox/Yanks game was terrible. The Sox just plain sucked. Somehow Leiber had a no-hitter going into the sixth inning. Jon Leiber! It was crazy.

I also had an unusual experience sitting in the crowd. During the game, I actually had 2 chants directed at me. The first was the "asshole" chant. This started everytime someone wearing Red Sox clothing walked through the bleachers. The whole bleacher section would stand up and point at the Sox fan and chant "asshole, asshole, asshole" until the guy sat down. Of course I had to use the restroom half way through the game, so I got one of these chants started because of my Red Sox hat. I noticed today while watching the game on tv that you can actually hear the crowd chanting this multiple times thoughout the game. Nice New York, very nice.

The second chant was while the song YMCA was playing between the 6th and the 7th inning. Yankee fans (being the clever individuals that they are) instead of chanting Y-M-C-A, they would chant Y-R-U-Gay. Of course since I was the only Sox fan in the area, everyone was pointing at me during the chant.

So sweet, I got called and asshole and gay while watching the game. I stood up and waved my hat around hoping to get on tv, but it didn't work. It just made people mad.

I can't wait for the Sox to beat the Yanks in the playoffs. All the times the Yankee fans chanted "1918" or "Boston sucks" will be shoved back in their faces. They just can't believe that the Sox can beat them. So I can't wait. This weekend really made me hate Yankee fans much more than I already did.

There was one high point for me during the game. After Leiber gave up a hommer to Ortiz, lots of the Yanks fans started leaving. So the crowd was lessened and not quite as crazy. In the 9th inning when the Sox decided to start hitting the ball, there were enough Sox fans in the stadium to start at "Lets-go-Red-Sox" chant. It was awesome. There weren't enough Yankee fans left at the stadium to drown it out. Just proves my point that Red Sox fans are more loyal than Yankee fans.

side note: after Jorge Posada hit his "I can't believe that went over the fence" homerun today, the crowd called for him to come out and tip his hat. Posada stayed in the dugout. What is wrong with Yankee players? Do they realize they are paid to entertain us? If we want you to come out and take a bow, then you get your ass out there and take a bow. Posada is now my least favorite Yankee because he is a jerk and disrespectful. I don't see how New Yorkers can keep rooting for these guys?

Friday, September 17, 2004

I don't have a gambling problem... yet

Well, I said a while ago that I was going to post all of my gambling in order to keep myself from developing a gambling problem. I've stopped playing online poker because I broke even and didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. So now I've moved on to sports bets. I started slow last week. I only put money on one game (Minnesota (-7) over Dallas) and ended up winning. So this week I'm stepping it up a bit. Here are my picks for the weekend:

Friday
Red Sox (+140) over the Yankees

Sunday
Chicago Bears (+8.5) over Green Bay Packers
Clevenland Browns (+4.5) over Dallas Cowboys
Seattle Seahawks (-2.5) over Tampa Bay Bucks
Denver Broncos (-3) over Jacksonville Jaguars
NY Giants and Washington Redskins (under 40.5)
Parley of the week: Jets (-3), Lions (-3), Steelers (+3.5)

I understand that some of these are not the safest bets, but we'll see what happens on Sunday. I had to put money on the Sox game too because the Yankees are actually favored to win. The Sox players may not admit it, but they've been looking forward to this series for weeks. Arroyo is pitching tonight and has been great lately. Of course the Yanks have their hottest pitcher (Hernandez) on the mound, but I think the Sox are going to rock him. Also, I'm probably going to put money on tomorrow's Sox game (which I will be attending) .

I'm heading to California on Monday, so this could possibly be my last post until I return in October.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

QOTW #8

This week's quote comes from Bill Simmons, who is talking about last weeks Pats/Colts game. Check out his link for Sport's Guy's World in my right column.

"After the Colts self-destructed-again-against the Patriots last week, Mike Vanderjagt said, 'They're clearly not a better team than us.'

Well, I'm glad that's settled. Too bad we don't score football games like ice skating or gymnastics -- just some judges voting on the best performance. Because that's the only way the Colts could actually beat the Patriots right now. It certainly can't happen on the field, not even with the referees allowing less contact than at a ninth-grade prom."

I hate Barry Bonds

I'm watching the Sox last night on ESPN2 and they decided to switch over to Barry Bonds everytime he had an At Bat. This seemed ridiculous to me. I mean, who tunes in to a Red Sox game to find out if Barry hit his 700th HR or not. Definitely not me. There were even some critical moments during the Sox game that they just cut out and went to watch Bonds. It was very frustrating.

However, it was great to see Bonds get thrown out at first base from right field. Why was this not the topic of conversation? It was ten times more entertaining than watching a home run. There really aren't too many things more embarassing in baseball than getting gunned down by an outfielder to rob you of a single. Especially since Bonds is not a slow runner. This means that he just decided not to hustle to first, which a sin among baseball players. If I was his coach, I would have benched him the rest of the game. It makes me mad that none of the announcers mention this stuff.

Does it make me a bad person if I'm rooting for Bonds to have a career ending injury? Yes, it probably does. A loss of a limb perhaps would be sufficient. I could care less if he passes Ruth in homeruns, but he doesn't deserve to pass Aaron. Bonds is either the greatest baseball player ever, or he's a great player who takes steriods so that he can break all these records. I go with the latter.

I also need to meantion that the Sox sold out every home game this year. Every one! They are only the third team ever to do this (nope, the Yankees are not one of those teams). Even though Fenway only holds 32,000 people, according to Steve Phillips (ESPN2 announcer), no other team this year has sold at least 32,000 tickets to every home game. So what I'm saying is that Boston fans are more loyal than any other fans.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

So much drama in the LBC

Went camping last weekend. It was my first experience with camping in New Jersey. It's definitely different than camping in Maine. For example, in Maine you will never have a campsite next to a group of guys who blast Limp Bizkit and hard core rap all night, but apparently this is a common occurance in NJ.

Anyway, it was still a good time. We hiked up to the Delaware Water Gap. It was quite an amazing sight. Probably one of the few beautiful places in Jersey. On the trip, I started thinking... what's the difference between going hiking and going for a walk? Maybe guys needed a different name for it because "going for a walk" sounds too wussy. Maybe we should call it "Extreme Walking" instead of "Hiking" and we could turn it into a competition. We could show it on the X-Games and people would to flips and tricks off rocks and trees. Ok, I just realized that I'm being stupid.

So the NFL season began. My fantasy team won it's first game. The Patriots and the Lions (my 2 favorite teams) both won their first games. Dallas lost, making me 1 and 0 in football gambling this year. Overall a great football weekend.

So I'm preparing to go to California on Monday. It should be a fun trip because I know at least 4 other people going with me. Of course I will be attending the ION conference, which I'm sure will bore me half to death, but I'm not complaining. My brother reminded me that Snoop Dogg raps about Long Beach City.

"With so much drama in the LBC,
It's kind of hard being Snoop D-O double G."

Sweet, so I'm going to Long Beach City. A place with lots of drama and Snoop Dogg has a hard time being himself. What does that mean? Does this mean I'm going to get shot? I guess I'll have to work on flashing my Bloods and Crypts gang signs before I go.

The Sport's Guy wrote a column this week about the show Entourage. I think it is a decent explaintion of why Entourage is a good show. The actors may not be great, or even that good, but the show still works.

I haven't done any CD reviews in a while, but I plan on doing a 2 part review on Howie Day sometime this week. Maybe today, so keep checking Ryno's World for updates.

Ok, nobody bought my Wilco tickets that I put on Ebay. I was even selling them under the ticket price. This is a sold out show! You would think that there would be 2 more people who want to go. Oh well, I'm now on a mission to find someone to go with me.

Well, I guess I should get back to work.

Friday, September 10, 2004

The village idiot

Well, I'm officially an idiot. When I noticed that Wilco was coming to New York in October I immediately made plans to buy tickets as soon as possible. So the day they went on sale, I was sitting at my desk clicking away trying to get the best seats. Why does this make me an idiot? Well, I seem to have forgotten that none of my friends down here are Wilco fans. So being the idiot that I am, I bought two tickets hoping I could find someone to go. Well, to find someone to drive an hour into NYC in the middle of the week for an 8:00 show is practically impossible for anyone who's not a die-hard Wilco fan.

So today I put the tickets up for sale on Ebay. I'm sure I'll lose money since there are like 10,000 Wilco tickets on there, but maybe I'll get some of my money back. So if there are any Wilco fans in the NYC area reading this, check out my Wilco Tickets auction before it goes up for bid at 5:30 tonight. The seats are decent, and the show is sold out (Oct 5th Radio City Music Hall), so bid fast!

Ok, I am now going to go crawl into a corner and cry.

No resting your eyes

Ok, since there have been a bunch of sporting events taking place at 9:00 pm or later this last week, I've been having trouble staying up to watch. So it made me think about when is it ok to fall asleep during a game. So here is my criteria for when it's not ok to miss a game because you're tired.

1. If any records are in jeopardy of being broken. Exceptions for dumb records like if Rodney Harrison has a chance to break the record for most fines received in one NFL season (actually, now that I think about it, this is a pretty good record to witness, bad example).

2. If you have money riding on the game. No exceptions.

3. Playoff games unless you could care less about the teams playing, or if the game is out of reach.
-out of reach means... Baseball: last inning down by 5 runs or down 10 at any point, Football: last quarter down by 25 points, Basketball: last quarter down 20 points, Hockey: last period down by 1 goal... ok, maybe 2.

4. Rivalry games. These are always the best, especially when the Yankees lose. Don't fall asleep or you may miss a bench clearing brawl.

5. Your starting quarterback/pitcher for your fantasy league is playing.

If none of these factors are in place, then it's ok to go to bed during the game. Saying you need to wake up early is not a valid excuse to break these rules. I think it's practically expected for you to show up late to work the day after a great game.

Speaking of fantasy football. My team got off to a great start last night. I have Brady at QB (over 300 yards, 3 TDs), plus Graham at tightend who caught a TD pass, and Teddy Bruschi who caught an interception! In just one game, I sky-rocketed into the points lead!

(Sorry if this is boring, but fantasy sports kick ass. Soon I'll be posting the results of the 3 baseball leagues I was in this year, and how badly I failed)

Random Note: Ever been eating cheez-it's while drinking Guiness? It's amazing. Somehow the two compliment each other perfectly. People need to know about these things.

Thursday, September 09, 2004

AdSense? More like no sense

Well, I just got rejected from the AdSense program. This program would have allowed me to place advertisements on my site, mainly benefitting blogspot.com. Why did they reject me? Here is an exact quote from the email they sent:

"We don't allow websites with excessive profanity or potentially offensive content to participate in Google AdSense."

Come on. You've got to be kidding me. Excessive profanity? One time, about a month ago I used the phrase "Shit out of luck". I may have said "hell" once. Is that really why I got rejected? Or is my site offensive? I think my site would only be offensive to Yankee fans... and people living in New Jersey... and Republicans.... Ok, I guess that is a lot of people.

So just to see what was going on, I decided to check out the site requirements for this program. Here are some of the things that cannot be included on any site for it to have Google ads:

--Excessive profanity (hmmmm, maybe it's because I have "damn" in the title)
--Hate, violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organizations (I guess the Yankees are considered an organization so they've got me here too)
--Gambling or casino-related content (yup, I posted my gambling winnings)
--Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others (have I talked about downloading MP3's yet?)

Ok, so I can see why I got rejected. So screw them. I don't want their ads on my site anyway. I'd rather be able to say whatever I want and not worry about being kicked out of their program.

The only thing I don't understand is that Google doesn't care what I write about in my emails, but they will still put ads in those. I could be ten times more profane or offensive in an email. So why do they care about what I say on my site? I see some contradictions going on.

Hmmm, I've still got 6 Gmail invitations to give away.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

QOTW #7

My quotes this week are taken from an article I read on ESPN.com written by Jayson Stark, which I believe explains the whole Devil Rays / Yankees forfeit fiasco. I'm only posting a portion of it so I'll post the link at the end in case you want to read the whole story.

"We'd do it again tomorrow," said Rick Vaughn, the Devil Rays' vice president of public relations. "There's no way we wanted to come up during that storm." Even the Yankees admit that Devil Rays GM Chuck LaMar talked to Yankees GM Brian Cashman as early as Friday and told them just that. They even relayed that message to MLB.

"Let me tell you about our day," Vaughn replied. "We got to the park at 7:30 in the morning, because the bus was supposed to leave at 8. And we were ready to go. But the airport in Sarasota was closed.

"So then we tried to fly out of Fort Myers. But there were tornado warnings along I-75. And Chuck said, 'I'm not going to jeopardize these players' safety by trying to drive 2½ hours (to Fort Myers) in this weather.'

"Finally, around 11:30, we heard that the Tampa airport would be open around noon. ... But the bridge was flooded, and they only had one lane open, and it took us an hour just to get across the bridge. So there was no way we could leave Tampa until 3 o'clock.

"We left Tampa at 3 and played a game -- in New York -- at 7." Vaughn said. "I never heard of anybody doing that. But we did it. We walked in, put our uniforms on, went out, stretched and started the game."

Here's the whole story: Selig and Co. blew it

I've got great news

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico!

Ok, I know that's quickly becoming an extremely lame joke, but I can't help it. Geico is great. They just started offering insurance in New Jersey so I called them up right away. In case you didn't know, New Jersey has the worse car insurance policies on the planet. Places like Geico and Progressive wouldn't touch Jersey with a 100 ft pole. Maybe it's because Jersey has the worst drivers in the country (see my post on Bad Drivers). Previously I had one of the cheapest full coverage insurance policies in all of NJ. Everybody was amazed at how little I was paying, but now I'm saving almost 800 bucks more a year with Geico.

Sorry, I just had to get that out there.

I should let everybody know that I applied to get advertisements on my blog. Am I selling out? No, not enough people visit my site for me to get paid anyway. It's more of a thank you to blogspot.com. They offer this great service and ask nothing in return. It's the least I can do for them.

Some guy in my office keeps calling me Brian. It's very annoying. I've corrected him many times already. Maybe I should start calling him dumbass. Maybe then he would remember my name.

(this guy is actually 100 times smarter than me. I'm just too insignificant for him to remember my name. It would still be fun to call him dumbass though)

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Fullerton family weekend

Lots of stuff happened this weekend. Here's my recap:

My parents and my brother came to NJ to visit. Lots of eating involved. I feel like I gained about 10 pounds. Don Pepe's Steakhouse is still the best restaurant that I've eaten at in New Jersey.

Went to my first Wine Festival at Waterloo Village. It was definitely a fun time. If you like wine, then these are a great experience. It's too bad I'm going to miss the beer festival on the 18th. Well, I guess I can't complain since I'll be watching the Sox destroy the Yankees... and I'll probably have a beer in my hand anyway.

Saw The Producers on Broadway. It was pretty funny and entertaining. The actors were fantastic, but I still think I enjoyed Rent more.

The funniest moment of the weekend was when I heard that Kevin Brown broke his hand by punching a wall. That's 3 weeks that the Yanks are going to be without their best starter. Nice going Brown, you guys are just asking for second place.

My favorite paragraph in the NY Times today:
"For the third day in a row, the Yankees (85-52) succeeded in not losing ground to the Boston Red Sox."
It's funny how the Times tries to make this look like a good thing. They "succeeded" in not losing. It's like they are saying "Hey look, we didn't suck for 3 days in a row!" Congratulations Yankees, you haven't completely blown your enormous 10 and 1/2 game lead, yet.

Thursday, September 02, 2004

To pass the time

Work has been extra boring today so I'm just writing to pass the time. I found out today that part of my travelling got cancelled so I can now go to the Sox/Yanks game that I have tickets to. I couldn't be happier since the game has a chance to be very exciting and important. I've also got tickets to see the Angels play the Mariners while I'm in California. It will bring my total Major League stadiums that I've been to up to 6. I guess I've got a long way to go before I get to all of them. So far I've been to:

Fenway Park (Red Sox)
Yankee Stadium (Yankees)
Camden Yards (Orioles)
Olympic Stadium (Expos)
Veteran's Stadium (Phillies)
Angel Stadium (Angels) - Pending

I just got a couple of Gmail invites to give away, so if anyone is interested then post a comment and I'll send one your way. Priority goes to Red Sox fans.

I have started my first fad in the office. Wireless headphones. I bought mine a while ago since my headphone chord wasn't long enough. Now there are three people with wireless headphones. Since they all operate in the same frequency bandwidth, I can listen any of their music that I want to. It's like having our own FM radio stations. I named my station WRYAN, it rocks. (yes, I realize this makes me a dork)

My buddy Roger is going to frame his Yankee ticket from Tuesday night along with a picture of the scoreboard showing the 22-0 score. He's then putting it up for bid on Ebay. It will be interesting to see how much people will pay for that. I'm thinking of doing the same thing, but keeping it for myself.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Simply amazing

Before I begin, I just need to clear up one thing. I am not an Ashlee Simpson fan. I am a Wilco fan, a Red Sox fan, an ice-cream sandwich fan, but not an Ashlee Simpson fan. It's a mild curiosity at best. Ok, now on to the good stuff.

Last night's game was simply amazing. Not only did I witness the Yankees worst loss ever, the most runs ever given up at Yankee Stadium, and a tie for the worst shutout in Major League history, but also the Sox are now only 3.5 games back. Here's my recap of the night.

Pregame: Got to the parking lot at 4:30 for some tailgating. Somebody brought a funnel, I could already see this was going to be a good night.

1st inning: Vazquez gives up a bases loaded triple to Travis Hafner. Jake Westbrook pitches a 1-2-3 inning. Things are looking good.

2nd inning: Vazquez is gone after 1 out and replaced by Tanyon Sturtz. Yanks give up 3 more runs. Westbrook pitches another 1-2-3 inning.

3rd inning: Yanks give up 3 more runs. My buddy Tyler and I begin talking about this being the first game ever where a team scores 3 runs in every inning, which also spawns our first prediction of a score of 27 to 0. Westbrook has another 1-2-3 inning.

4th inning: The Indians don't score, me and Tyler are sad. Yanks get their first hit, me and Tyler are more sad.

5th inning: Indians score 6. Tyler and I think an average of 3 runs per inning is still possible so again we predict 27 to 0.

Between innings: $4.50 for a hot dog!!! (I ate 2)

6th inning: This was a sold out game, by now 9/10ths of the stadium is empty. The remaining 1/10th is filled with Yankee fans who are now cheering for the Indians. This was incredible. I was laying out between 3 rows of seats and counted 12 empty rows in front of me.

7th inning: My friend gets his signs confiscated. I didn't understand this. What happened to the first amendment. He had signs that said "Kerry is a Red Sox fan, vote Bush" and "Jenna Bush, will you marry me?". Although I wasn't a fan of the signs, I still thought it wrong for them to be taken away... who am I kidding, this was another high point of the night for me.

8th inning: I convince everybody to stay for the last inning. This is me, "There won't be any traffic, there's nobody left."

9th inning: Gerut and Martinez (both on my fantasy baseball team) both nail 3-run homers. Omar Vizquel misses his chance to break the AL record of 6 hits in 9 innings (went 6 for 7, not a bad night). Game ends at 22 to 0, not too far off from our 27 to 0 prediction.

Overall this was a great game to watch. I got to witness a piece of Yankee history at their lowest point ever. I couldn't have been happier. Plus there was no traffic driving home. Got to love baseball.

(yes, I realize that it's sad that I have 3 Indians' players on my fantasy baseball team)