13 Mar, 2018

Blocked

By |2018-03-13T14:17:46-04:00March 13th, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

Rnningfool.com has been blocked by Google. I have an inkling what the issue was and have since removed the post which took the entire site down. Sitelock is trying to sell me on $140 a month and I’m not doing that. I paid $100 for a yearly subscription for a web firewall and this is what it feels like to get really scammed. I’ll report back but there’s no sense posting on the site if no one can read it. Creating a new site may be my only option. Doesn’t seem fair.

9 Mar, 2018

The State of Affairs

By |2018-03-09T01:00:09-05:00March 9th, 2018|Off Topic|2 Comments

Sam and I haven’t actually ironed out any details and I think the storm is brewing. I don’t think I will ever see Rnningfool.com die as I have a many year attachment. I only feel that my time is better spent on a collaborative effort. I think Sam must agree because he was the one who introduced the idea. I didn’t think about it much and want to run with it.

Coordinating the website will take a bit more effort because we are going to have to be on the same page with regard to content. I see it as a debate like issue on certain topics. Some current events. Some philosophical. Some sports. Typical everyday thoughts. What I’d like to see happen is that more people get involved. Start small and try to bring in more thoughts all the time. That means that we are going to need some people who make comments. You know who you are. You’re called lurkers. Not the Starcraft character who was known for hiding. I would never force anyone to comment. That’s not the game. It’s if you see a point that you may feel strongly about or can add a viewpoint, take the 30 seconds and comment. It helps tremendously.

I finished Altered Carbon and this would be a point of discussion that I’d bring forth as an idea. The show takes place 300 years in the future and the wealthy don’t die. They become “godlike”. What this means is they have “stacks” which are their (I have no idea how to describe this) lives. You can transfer your stack to different “sleeves” and essentially live forever. They put people on “ice” which is where the story begins with an “envoy” being brought back to solve a murder mystery. I liked it and don’t think many people will watch it.

That being said, the idea of a future is a great topic. What to actually do with these ideas…I don’t know. I try to visualize how I see it happening and it’s not so easy. The idea is that it’s not being done for money. It’s being done for truth. I relate to Catcher in the Rye and the term “phonies” used a lot. I’d like to think that what we would deliver would be as real as it gets. People in today’s age are abusing this notion. You don’t know what’s real or fake any more. I believe 95% is bullshit. That’s why this site could succeed. We want nothing. In return, we’ll deliver whatever facts we can bring to the table. I see Crypto being entertaining. I use Labs for insider info that has to be valuable to some people. It can become a a SITE and not just a blog. Picking the title would be done carefully.

Is it possible we lose an entire fan base going this direction? If you’re already reading this and I stop posting on it, are you seriously telling me that you wouldn’t read what is going to be better information on a different site? I’d like to hear any downside I may be missing. I have no problem with the way I’ve been handling the blog since it started but it’s time for a change.

8 Mar, 2018

Blog Brother Part 2

By |2018-03-08T16:03:00-05:00March 8th, 2018|Off Topic|1 Comment

Read Sam’s Take

Why would a well established blog like myself join forces with a blog with the name Bansheemann7? The owner would have had to have had a stroke to make a decision like this. That, however, is not the case.

What I learned in life is that 2 is stronger than 1. Do I find many flaws with Sam’s blog? F5’ing the front page. Lack of attractive side bar. Probably hasn’t even looked at the customization of the theme since inception. These details are all parts of blogging that I probably look at with a tad more frequency than he does and we can make some joint decisions with the idea that they’ll come to fruition.

Sam is worried about a strain on the relationship…I’m none too concerned. I don’t think I care enough about it to ever be a strain. Now if he starts shit talking my work or gets a big head if the blog explodes, you never know. I don’t think it’ll matter.

What will the website become? This is where I get a little excited. I have no idea. I’ve been maintaining an individual blog for years on years and nothing ever came of it. The vision was cloudy. Will a new duo have different results? I think so. We’ll have to hash out the details if we want to keep both personal blogs and start a brand new site or sort of merge all the posts which I don’t think will go over too well.

I like the idea of being more topic oriented and less personal oriented. We could even pick topics and both give points like Around the Horn. I honestly don’t know. It’s smart to keep it fresh though and I think it also gives us the ability to grow whereas this is too individualized. I’m sure if anyone wanted to participate, we’d be open.

These are my initial thoughts.

2 missed birthdays to the Sheee (3/4) and J-Smash (3/6) over the last few days. Apology for not knowing, but I don’t know if this will change much moving forward, so don’t get your hopes up. If i’m a bad person for not knowing the day you were born, egg on me. My priorities lie in other areas of life that have nothing to do with birthdays. If I was sitting home all day eating bon bon’s and watching soap operas, I’m sure you’d get a card from me.

7 Mar, 2018

My Life Would Be Radically Different Without

By |2018-03-07T09:43:41-05:00March 7th, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

Spotify – Just a reminder that the SPOT initial public offering will take place later this month. I read its gross margin went from 17% to 24% in the 4th quarter of last year vs 2016. Netflix has a 34%. Private equity firms value Spotify at 19 billion, roughly 19x last years gross profit. The equivalent using Netflix is 30x which shows some room for growth. The big question mark is how can it grow being under the control of the “big 3” – Sony, Universal, and Warner which account for 87% of the music on Spotify’s playlist. You’ll notice that Netflix has started to produce its own content which inevitably gives it more control and the ability to turn higher profits. How can Spotify move from under the record companies thumb? That we will have to wait and see.

How does Spotify intervene in my life? Virtually everyday I use it. That was pretty much my basis behind this post and what’s important. I’m not alone as subscriber growth went from 30 million to 70 million in a mere year. So not only is subscriber, recurring, revenue a factor, Spotify can make money getting involved in the sale of show tickets, promotion from artists for their own material, and *gasp* advertising. I will be purchasing some SPOT.

Samsung Galaxy 8 – What do I not use my phone for? Writing long emails. Researching. Creating DraftKing lineups. For most other activities such as email, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and golf updates, I use my phone. I’ll even watch Netflix on my phone while I have a sporting game in the background. The sound is better on this device than my Kindle Fire which has 3x the screen. The 8 isn’t that much different than the 6, but the bottom line is that I’m satisfied. I didn’t have a battery issue one time in Europe. It lasted at least 16 hours and probably would have gone for 30. The GPS is rock solid on Google Maps. All in all, well worth the money.

I’m going to take a moment and respond to everyone who reads this and says, “buy an Iphone”. I’ve wrote many posts about this, but there is one key reason why I don’t like Apple, and it has virtually nothing to do with the actual device. Apple uses iOS. iOS is, to my understanding, a closed source operating system. When you do Apple, you are using all material produced by Apple developers specifically for Apple products. Android is open source and that’s my general life philosophy. It’d be like the USA saying that they don’t accept any material from anyone outside of the USA. This isn’t a great analogy because I’m sure there are millions of developers in other countries, but just go with it. Steve Jobs would argue that having complete control over what goes on your device is incredibly important for safety and quality reasons. To say I know better than Steve Jobs is idiotic. To me though, Apple products seem more dictatorial, loyalty induced / brainwashed, than Android and Google which give me the feeling of open thinking. Like I wrote, it has nothing to do with the product, strictly the mind set.

Pilot G-2 – One of the funniest parts of my life is when I write something down and Sam says, “here’s the first thing you’re doing wrong, you’re writing it down instead of typing it.” I still use a pen everyday of my life and I like this one specifically. First off, it’s cheap. You can buy 20 of them for 10 bucks at Sam’s club. Maybe cheaper. The ink doesn’t smear. This is the most important part of a pen. When the ink comes off, how long does it take to dry? They seem to last a long time as I lose them far more than I throw them out. The clicker works great and I don’t find myself inking myself when the pen is in my pocket. Finally, the grip on it is comfortable and the point is sharp for consistent writing. I’ve used the cheap Bic’s and gel pens and this is by far the best.

6 Mar, 2018

Dance Monkey Dance

By |2018-03-06T22:23:59-05:00March 6th, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

After falling asleep from being too tired, and watching a few too many episodes of Altered Carbon, I decided to take an IQ test online because they were doing it on the Howard Stern show.

I stumbled across this test. It takes about 15 minutes to complete. Here was my result:

I could really use some affirmation that everyone doesn’t get this score.

Have I ever thought of myself as brilliant? No. Flat out. No. No fucking chance.

I never tested into enrichment. My SAT scores were 1,150 or so out of 1,600. I got into one honors history class and literally would cheat on every exam by copying off of Jane Bloomgarden. I was by far the dumbest kid in the class. Even in college I didn’t earn great marks. 3. something GPA. So when I saw this random internet test describing my intelligence as “brilliant”, I knew it had to be wrong.

It begs the question though, what is intelligence? It’s quite possible on questions I didn’t know what the answer was, and I either put “I don’t know” or I guessed correctly, it would up my results. I also think I answered the questions quickly which I know helps on these types of tests. Nevertheless, being able to do identify some patterns in numbers and letters is hardly a useful skill. Show me how to sell a product or give a speech in front of a thousand people and you have my attention. Telling me what number comes next is bush league.

I will complete this post by saying that I’m far more intelligent now than I’ve been at any point in my life. I spend more time reading for leisure and learning skills that I actually want to learn whereas in formal education it was info that I never cared for. Can that actually make me smarter? I don’t know. You tell me.

4 Mar, 2018

EuroTrip Recap

By |2018-03-04T10:31:21-05:00March 4th, 2018|Off Topic|1 Comment

Summing up 8 days into one post is not easy. Jeff and I traveled to Europe for a trade show in Germany on 2/20 and returned from London on 2/28. It was a jam packed 8 days that I’ll sum up as best I can with my thoughts and experiences.

Cologne, Germany

Our flight was at 5:45pm and landed in Frankfurt the next day at around 9am. I watched Dunkirk which I’d recommend and Suburbicon which wasn’t so hot. We arrived safely and had to catch a train from Frankfurt to Cologne. What was a little bit odd is that our bags didn’t go to baggage claim, but rather to another destination in the train terminal. It took us a little bit to figure that out as we stupidly sat at baggage claim for about 15 minutes. The train to Cologne was easy because we had reserved seats on an ICE train. These trains make Amtrak look silly.

In Cologne we checked in the Maritim hotel and went straight to the trade show. After the show we napped for an hour or two after being awake for nearly 30 hours. After a short nap, we went to eat at a very traditional German restaurant. We walked in and I used my “mein Deutsche ist schlecht” to which he replied with something that sound like German for “practice”. Being ever so quick on my feet, I replied with “Zwei”. He sat us immediately next to a group of two people so we became a table of 4. I ordered the Sauerbraten because it was the only dish I could read in German. Jeff got some chicken. A tradition in Cologne is the beer served everywhere is Kolsch. They come to your table with these 6oz beers of Kolsch that cost about 2 Euro and don’t stop bringing them until you put a coaster over top of your beer. We didn’t really know this exactly and drank about 10 Kolsch’s that night.

The next day was more of the same with the trade show and we went bar hopping at night to about 4 places. Being a Thursday night, the city wasn’t jumping, but still fun.

The next day we got up early and went to a train station to buy tickets to Amsterdam. We bought tickets that had about 4 transfers which was a mistake. We had to go to the help desk and get new tickets on an ICE train. The total cost for the two of us was about 150 Euro. We arrived at the train with no problem and headed north west.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam Canal

I’ve been to Amsterdam before so I sort of knew the lay of the land. We were feeling pretty good and decided to do some bar hopping. Our first bar charged us 35 Euro for 4 drinks of Barvaria beer which was a bit of a rip off. Our spending money wasn’t going to last at that rate. Nevertheless we probably went to about 15 bars and cafes that night just experiencing Amsterdam. It was by far the most debauchery that took place on our trip. Some highlights included an Argentinan Steakhouse, the house cat, some bizarre UFC kick boxing at a cafe, and the worst slice of pizza I’ve ever eaten. This is also a city where it feels like you are going to get hit by a bike or motorist at all times.

Everyone rides a bike.

We were both pretty baked on Saturday morning but got up and tried to do the best that we could. We vistited the Rijksmuseum and tried to do the Vincent Van Gogh museum but the line was too long. We ended up finding an English Pub and watched the Ireland-Wales Rugby game. We had booked a canal tour ahead of time and did that afterwards. It was ok because we drank about 4 Heineken’s each but still sightly overrated. That night was finished with another pet in a bar 9see below). If we would have went too hard this night, the trip could have taken a wrong turn.

We headed to the train station again the next morning and bought tickets to head to Brussels. I think total cost was around $150 Euro for the both of us. We caught the ICE train without any issue.

Brussels, Belgium

We incorrectly spent most of our time in the 1st class train unbeknownst to us. It probably should have been knownst because it was pretty nice and comfortable. After being sent back to second class, we got to Brussels. Our hotel was on the smaller side but still nice conditions. It wasn’t ready when we arrived at 12 and we had to put our bags there because we had a beer tour scheduled at 2pm. We ate some crepes and found an English pub to watch a few minutes of Spurs before meeting up with the group.

Our tour guide was a Frenchmen who was noticeably French. There were 7 of us and we visited 4 authentic Belgium bars and sampled 2 beers at each spot. Belgium definitely has a different feel to it. After the tour we checked into our hotel and freshened up before touring Belgium. We hadn’t purchased our train tickets to London yet and we hit a little surprise. To get to London was going to cost us 224 Euro…each. We hadn’t expected this much money for a train to Brussels but considering it is on the EuroRail going under the English Channel, we should have. Since our flight was out of Heathrow, there wasn’t much we could do but suck it up and pay it.

After having dinner at a Belgium Cafe, we took some amazing pictures of the city square and Jeff had a waffle. We also went to a Brew Dog Brewery where we incredibly met a human from Philadelphia at the bar. We were both pretty tired at this point and called it a night.

The EuroRail had an actual security check point that we got through and made it to London.

London, England

I was excited to get to London but we were down to our last 400 bucks or so which I knew wasn’t going to last. We exchanged a 80 Euro at a rip off exchange in the train station in order to get some pounds. Our cabbie took us to the Royal Horseguards which I picked because it was a 5 star hotel. It was in the middle of essentially everything.

We converted the rest of our money to Pounds at a better exchange and that left us with about 350 and the cab driver told us the taxi to Heathrow will cost about 60-80. Great.

In London we did as many of the sight seeing things we could. We saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Soho district, the British Museum, the Shard, and Jack the Ripper’s museum. London has too much to offer and 2 days obviously wasn’t enough to take it all in. We probably stopped at about 20 pubs along the way and it’s very similar to here. When people speak the same language as you, you tend not to feel like an outsider.

We closed the trip with some high end whiskey drinks in our hotel and were ready to fly home. We woke up at 5:30am on Wednesday and got our expensive cab to Heathrow. We ended up the trip with all of  our money spent and I even had to dig into my pocket a bit to complete it.  It had snowed in London but it wasn’t enough for any cancellations and we got back safely. It was a long journey and I think we were both pretty exhausted and glad to be back. I slept from 6pm to 4am to give you an idea when we got back.

 

Final Thoughts

If you’ve read this far, thanks. I know not everyone has the opportunity to travel like this so I like to give my exact thoughts on my experience. Here are a few of the observations I have:

  • Strongest mouthwash on the planet

    Most people speak English in Europe. Although I definitely felt out of place in certain spots ordering or talking in English knowing it’s not the primary language, it’s not hard to get by.

  • Traveling in Europe isn’t that bad. We had to catch multiple trains and make many destinations and with the help of a GPS, it’s not something to fear. To get to 4 cities, we spent about 12 hours on a train which is considerable when we were only there for 8 days.
  • As an American, you don’t have the sense that Europe thinks all that much about us. Americans are very American. What I mean by that is we don’t think that much about Europe either. Gaining a perspective of how Europeans think and live helps mold a better shape into being a human being.
  • The tipping process is an American thought. We were tipping after beers and food and people looked at us with incredulous responses. I left a 5 Euro tip on a 32 dollar order for some beers and the bartender thought I had two heads. You just don’t do it like we do here. I also noticed that there were very rarely bar seats at English pubs and you ordered from the bar even if you were sitting down.
  • Traveling like this was a bit excessive. For 8 days, I’d say 3 cities should have been the max. Adding the 4th made it feel like there was too much time spent traveling by train. Extending the stay and not feeling rushed in each city may have been more enjoyable. That being said, I don’t think cramming as much as you can into these trips is bad practice. We may have only spent 1 day in Brussels, and it made travelling a pain, but I’m glad I saw it.

That’s about it. There’s no better way to spend money or time in my estimation. Having traveling experience in different cultures is what life is about. It definitely cost a lot of money (about 3k+ each), but I enjoyed it more than some of the travels I’ve done on my own. Having a second person removes the feeling of feeling isolated. Hope you enjoyed the read.

 

3 Mar, 2018

What Type of Man Are You?

By |2018-03-03T11:18:52-05:00March 3rd, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

I had run up my Bovada blackjack account to $400. Drunk ideas sometimes pay off.

This morning i started playing 3 hands of $25 and then they have this “re-bet x2” button. Obviously I had to give it a try. So I resulted with turning my $400 into $100. It wasn’t my money anyway.

There was a hand that got me thinking. I had:

I thought to myself, “would I rather have a 16?” I quickly came to, Yes! I swear, the very next hand I had a 16 against a 10 and I hit it like you 100% have to. 10. Bust. I guess the 17 was better.

For this post I could look at the numbers, but I’d rather not. Off the top of my head I’d say a hard 17 wins more often than a 16. What annoys me is that I’m not a “soft” 17 guy. Soft 17’s are the best way to die. Convert this idea to life and you can see what type of person you are.

17’s are what it takes to go through life and advance, but never make a tough decision. It’s existing. You know you’re pretty much cooked.

I’m a 16 guy. 21’s are rarely dealt out in life. You always have to work for it. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

What I like about the 16 is that you have that chance at hitting 21. It doesn’t matter if you spike that 10 every now and then. That 10 is what you’re expecting and you STILL know that survival doesn’t reward the babies. Hitting that 5 is equivalent to Louis winning WGC Mexico. It’s losing $1,000 to Sam on the Sixers becoming a good team. It’s what makes like fun. If you stay on that 17 (and I swear to god I would rather hit it), you should just succumb to life and throw in the towel.

This is survival of the fittest out here. Thinking about it any other way is not going to result in solutions.

2 Mar, 2018

Low Spots

By |2018-03-02T12:14:35-05:00March 2nd, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

I’m back from Europe and will have a detailed write up shortly. Hopefully over the weekend. Jeff and I had a tremendous time with plenty of stories, so I want to take my time and make sure I archive it accurately and to the best of my ability instead of a trash piece.

On another note, while I haven’t posted in two weeks, I should produce some material. Here’s an article shared on Reddit about Hi-Spots in Manayunk closing.

You can see my comment was down voted to hell. Being downvoted, I pretty much know that I’m not a sheeple. You have to be a fucking moron to downvote this comment. It’s the herd mentality and not an educated opinion. The thought, “this great spot in Manayunk is being closed down” is not what happened to Hi-Spots. Let me elaborate:

Pros

  • Hi-Spots best attribute was that it was BYOB. This is literally the ONLY thing it had going for it.

Cons

  • The men’s room smelled like piss
  • In order to save money, the alley wouldn’t use lane conditioner on their lanes
  • The scoring system was computerized, yes, but it had to be installed in 1980
  • The lanes would malfunction on the regular and their employee, Steve, was 80 and would have to walk down the lane at a snails pace and fix the issues. Making a man work like that for $10 an hour should have been unfair business practice
  • The house balls were sadder than sad

The #1 comment was “Shit…places like this are vanishing forever. Sucks”

I’d suggest reading the article because it gives a sense of Hi-Spots and how the 8-10 lane alleys are shutting down in favor of “boutique” alleys. A quote from the owner, “We paid it off in 10 years,” he proudly shared. “I never made a dime here. Never got paid.”

The tone I started with this post changed a little after reading the article, but I still maintain that Hi-Spots didn’t live up to its potential. This location is great and this place of business could have succeeded if it tried harder. Hi-Spots sold for $700k which is a good amount of money. For some reason, it irks me that this place didn’t do better. I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but I know that when my comment gets downvoted, people just don’t understand.

 

16 Feb, 2018

Smitty Wins Rough and Rowdy vs $2 Chef

By |2018-02-16T22:45:13-05:00February 16th, 2018|Off Topic|1 Comment

Philly represents. The line started with Chef at -150, it moved to -120, and I don’t know what it finished at but let’s call it even money. I put multiple tweets out there asking if anyone wants to bet $100 and I’ll take Smitty.

The fight was so-so. Smitty was clearly the better athlete and knocked Chef down in the 2nd round. It was much the deciding factor in the fight. Chef had a few shots but I didn’t think he had the edge at any point.

The highlight of the match was Smitty sitting next to Dave Portnoy, the founder, and ripping into him saying, “I wanted to fight you.” “You doubted me.” “You never compliment me.” Smitty won the fight, then destroyed Dave verbally. Such a beast.

You should want to be from Philadelphia at this time. Eagles win the Superbowl. Sixers are rising. Smitty one upped El Pres and that will never go away.

16 Feb, 2018

Can Tiger Make A Comeback?

By |2018-02-16T22:14:11-05:00February 16th, 2018|Off Topic|0 Comments

Let’s all agree that TWTR is worth a buy right now. The last 3 blogs I wrote have started with an embed and if the person is trustworthy and educated, they can be quoted directly.


This is some serious working out. Justin Thomas is 24. At 25, Tiger had 5 majors already. In 2 more years he’d have 8. This is an absolute machine working out combined with an extremely gifted hand-eye coordination winning tournaments.


Rory played with Tiger today and shot -2 under. He currently sits in 15th place. Rory is the real deal. He hasn’t won a title since 2016 (Matt Kutcher hasn’t won since 2014) but he’s still world class. He won the FedEx cup in 2016 with shots like this. Watch it if you’ve never seen it. He’s 3 back on hole 16. I already told you he won.

So when Rory talks, you should listen. We know that golf is a hard game and you don’t come back to be the very best all of a sudden. It takes work to get there. With Tiger’s preexisting work ethic.I don’t doubt for a second that Tiger is dedicated at age 42.

Here were Tiger’s thoughts.

He shot a 76 and finished 4 strokes off the cut line. He can’t drive. He hit 5 of 14 fairways and 9 of 18 greens in regulation. Buying into the Tiger hype at this point would not be wise.

However, he’s 2nd on the list behind Jack Nicklaus, 14 to 18. Jack won his last major when he was 46. I’m going to say right now that Tiger will win 1 more major. I don’t think it’ll be this year. In 2019, I’m saying he’ll be in contention. 2020 he’ll win. If I had to bet the under, I would.

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