My Life – Page 69 – We Don't Walk Slow

All Aboard

The Shee and I went golfing yesterday at Pennsauken Country Club. He had off and I left work at about 2:45 to get a round in. We usually don’t cross the bridge to NJ to play these courses so it was a first time for both of us. The rate was 43 dollars which was excessive for a 3:30 tee time on a weekday but w/o a cart was only 25. The course was less then 6,000 yards and relatively short. I would say the condition was one notch above terrible. I really can’t recommend this course to anyone and wouldn’t mind never playing it again. It’s one of those courses that brings you down to its level. I think on one hole I hit from a brown piece sod, mud, a pine cone, and then rock hard dirt. It doesn’t bother me if the course has thick rough as long as it’s grass but I mind hitting out of these other conditions that just make for awkward golf. I finished 96 but even that score is illegitimate because I had two holes where I couldn’t put 2 drives in play and instead of hitting 5 from the tee box, I dropped hitting 5 where my 2nd drive went out. Even with the below average course, the Shee and I had a pretty good time and I’ll try to incorporate some afternoon rounds more often.

If you follow my blog closely you’ll know I said to buy the stock MOBI. I got in at 7 bucks, it ran to 22 dollars, and now is back down to $13.50. The stock is a real roller coaster and I wish I would have jumped off at the 22. Instead I’ve been swinging around a thousands of dollars a day because it’s been dropping 20+% for the last 2 days. At only a 2k investment I’m certainly getting plenty of action. I can also no longer recommend this stock as people are claiming the accounting is funky. They have a conference call today to explain what is going on so hopefully that is some good news. When stocks start swinging like this you wonder what you have gotten yourself into.

In the biggest news of this post, Sirius (another stock I own, has risen above 2) changed their entire music lineup. They think they are doing something great by re-organizing the channels but it is really just complicating my life. Alt-Nation is 36 not 47, the 20 on 20 is now 3 which doesn’t even make sense. This has a major impact on my life and now I’m in the music abyss swapping from station to station hoping to find a good song. I feel like just telling people we are swapping wouldn’t be as good as somehow creating an option of staying with the old lineup.

In less exciting news and I’m not sure why I always have to comment on my breakfast habits, I can’t figure out why I can’t get a fresh bagel each morning. Sometimes its stale and sometimes it’s perfectly fresh. I just want to express my opinion on the importance of quality control and how stale bagels shouldn’t be served to customers. I think I may be doing a disservice to the establishment by not bringing this to managements attention. People and companies constantly benefit from feedback (the way this blog would…) and I feel like I should help. As a customer, I’d also give this one guy, whose name wouldn’t fit in the remaining space, a raise because he is the best employee by far. This should also be noted to management and I’m considering giving him a nice tip to support his good customer service.

By Tom Stortz|2011-05-04T08:34:21-04:00May 4th, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

Birthday

The birthday of this blog is May 2nd, 2009. I sort of stumbled on this fact at 11:37 on May 2nd but still I’m writing this entry at the last minute. I want to post a picture of stats of the site and the journey that it’s been. Click on it to see a clearer picture.

Nearly 20,000 visitors over a 2 year period isn’t too shabby. You can see I virtually got no traffic for the first year and half and then I hit a spike, and now I’m dwindling back down to just the people who like to read this blog. I’m sure I’ve developed a couple of occasional readers here and there to go along with my loyal following of lurkers. I still haven’t broke through to the big time but you can see that my posts per month have been dramatically increasing and I hope that I at least provide some form of entertainment. It’s still difficult to drag comments from the shadows but it’s something I will continue to work on in the future. Hopefully this next year will be better than the last and this trend will continue. Any thoughts on which posts you like to read or what you find interesting is always appreciated. I will try to cater to the audiences needs because that’s really who I’m writing for.

Jkash made mention that he liked my older “journal” posts (from the vault) because that was a more honest me then me knowingly creating content for readers. I’m pretty much an open book with this blog and don’t hide very much so I like to think that my honesty is something that you can continue to count on. If people can’t believe what you write or say, you really have no integrity. I just wanted to write this post to give you an idea of what I’m looking at and why I continue to keep this site for nothing other then personal reasons. Thank you all for reading.

By Tom Stortz|2011-05-02T23:46:36-04:00May 2nd, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

Nothing Doing

I titled this post nothing doing because I’ve heard the phrase before and it just means doing nothing but sounds funnier. I spent this weekend sober and had a relatively good time. I was awake at 8am yesterday morning and today I was up at 9, had breakfast, and am now writing an entry. I plan to go to the range, go to the gym, and play a round of golf all in a single day. It’s a much appreciated day compared to waking up at noon feeling like death. I did do a couple of things over this lazy weekend though that were of some entertainment.

Friday night no one was around and I sat home and watched Million Dollar Baby which I thought was a pretty good movie. I feel like Clint Eastwood grimaces too often but the ending almost brought a tear to my eye. On Saturday we had a softball game at 11am and I went to the batting cages earlier just to make sure I could hit because I haven’t played since last summer. Coming off of a broken ankle I wasn’t even sure I could run properly but we had exactly 10 and I pretty much had to play.

Our usual pitcher, Gusto, was buying a car?! and Bake was the fill in for pitcher. The game started off with us looking like a little league team in the field. Missed tags, dropping the ball on a force, and other little errors which cost us 3 runs. We then scored 2 in the 1st with Bake hitting a perfect hooking triple down the right field line. The inning ended abruptly with Kope pulling a Gusto and leaving first base before contact was made by the batter. They scored another run in the second on some more sloppy play by us. The next inning I got on with a single, Christine behind me flied out and then Chuck D blasted a 2 run shot over the right fielders head to even the game. The play at the plate was way closer then it should have been due to a winded Chuck D running the bases. Some baseball was played until the 4th inning where Tim, in front of Jess Holland, walked, which loaded the bases for me. Big players make big hits and I hit a pop up to right field and was casually jogging down the first base line. Little did I know that I’ve been hitting the gym and the ball carried over the right fielders head and I got on my horse to hit my first career grand slam. Even running on a broken ankle I had the wheels to touch em all. That opened the game 9-6 and built us a cushion where we didn’t look back. We tacked on some more runs here and there and finished winning 13-8. Brian made a ridiculous catch in left center for the final out which could have been trouble. Bake’s pitching was a bit suspect and he walked a few more batters then I’m sure he would have liked but we came away with the victory on a brisk spring day. And Bake if you read this, keep me batting in between girls because the fielders play me like a schlub which can only help my stats.

After that I helped JKash move his stuff out of his apt in Manayunk into a storage unit in Montgomeryville. JKash and I get along pretty well and the move went off without a hitch aside from the one incident where we were moving his dresser. He was like “tilt it back so the drawers don’t come out.” No problem. Then he was like let’s put it on it’s back. So I’m like “uhhh, which is the back and as I was thinking about that the dresser tilted forward and the drawers fell out. He was acting quietly upset but the dresser is a 40 dollar POS from Ikea and I probably did him a favor ruining the drawers. In a non-gay way I really do like Jkash and we have a good friendship. I also like Amber, his gf, who makes me feel funnier then Seinfeld because she laughs at anything even remotely funny. After that I went home and took a sleep for a little while. I woke up and didn’t feel like going out so I watched deliverance which was a 4 star movie but I think should have been 1 star. I am writing up an entry on my other page. So it was a pretty uneventful weekend and I should have a golf update later today. Also on a Jess Baker suggestion, I will be posting player spotlights on these pages on the future so keep a look out and let me know if you like them.

By Tom Stortz|2011-05-01T10:15:07-04:00May 1st, 2011|My Life|1 Comment

Reality Check

With 10 comments on the quiz post it appears pretty obvious what I should make all my posts about. Unfortunately it’s not my material and therefore, doesn’t really have any original substance. It makes sense though that keeping people on the site by making them think is a smart way of generating traffic. I think the real issue with quizzes is that anyone can just google the answers if they want. Obviously this wouldn’t give you the special feeling inside of actually getting it all by your self but I’m sure some people prefer the glory then the satisfaction. I haven’t been updating on the blog traffic much but that’s mainly because it has been horrific. My traffic has fallen off a cliff and I don’t have any answer. I guess my Suri Cruise traffic is no longer but I picked up a dozen people for Amanda Bynes which is really peculiar. I have come to the realization that I can’t control traffic and pursing the goal of increasing traffic isn’t so easy and should probably come naturally.

I went on a sales trip today to visit some customers in the Wilmington, De area and came away with one fact through observation. Two franchises are everywhere in this PA and DE area. Wawa and Dunkin Donuts are taking over the world. Wawa has near 600 stores now and did over 4 billion dollars in revenue and is ranked around 50th in worlds biggest private companies. There are 6,700 Dunkin Donuts throughout the US which should also turn some heads. It’s so bizarre too because I am an avid shopper at both. The best buisiness idea that came from the sales trip is to combine the Wawa and Dunkin Donuts for an ultimate experience.

Sorry for the short post but I’m tired from the day. I will post something tomorrow morning even if it’s something as silly as a quiz.

By Tom Stortz|2016-11-01T23:41:03-04:00April 28th, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

Tooter McGavin

Ck4, the Shee and I played golf yesterday at Pinecrest in Lansdale and the Shee came up with the clever name of Tooter McGavin because he points out that I like to make sure everyone is aware when I hit a good drive or make a nice shot. Basically, tooting my own horn. For my first real round I played pretty well shooting a 92 at a reasonably nice course. I think I had about 8 pars so that should show that I had quite a few doubles and triples that with some better course management, can hopefully become bogeys. My ugly sand game cost me a few strokes. Also on the back nine my driver got out of control which obviously hurt a bit but I made up for that with my iron play which was the best I ever hit the ball contact and accuracy wise. I thought the round was absolutely perfect though because we went off at 1:30 and finished at 5:00 pm. This paragraph wouldn’t be complete without me mentioning CK4 driving the par 4, 8th green and still only getting a par.

The rest of my weekend was pretty normal. I worked out both days which is something that I don’t usually do. Jeff and I went to Harrah’s on Friday night to play poker and after 8 hours I was up 80 bucks or so and then ended up doubling some guy up for 300 with a read that I thought was dead on but proved to be costly. That put me down 220 on the session for my first ever losing session at Harrah’s. I had brunch with my family, Brookes and the Schmidt’s on Sunday which went well. My only complaint was the Scoogi’s brunch tends to pack em in like sardines which made for a lot of pulling your chair in to let people scoot by. The food was decent though and the conversation didn’t find too many awkward pauses.

I really have no religious beliefs so Easter brunch is really just Sunday brunch for me. Last week we were watching a documentary on lions and it showed a pride of lions feeding on a wildebeast. The wildebeast was alive as the lions bit and tore at its flesh and Gusto asked the question how can there be a god to let this happen this way? I sort of agreed because being eaten alive is such a nasty, harsh feeling that if God really did exist he has a sick and twisted mentality for how the life cycle should take place. This also got me thinking of how everything started if there was no supreme being and I can’t even come up with a theory. The big bang is nice and all but what was before the big bang? Just nothingness? Just saying the big bang starts everything doesn’t really make sense to me. There are just a lot of questions when I consider this topic. It also sort of makes me feel pretty little and irrelevant when you think of how much time has gone by in the universe.

I want to take this paragraph real quick to point out that when I recommended MOBI at 8 dollars or so, it is up to 16+. Just to keep a track record, I also think that ENTR (Entropic) is going to jump tomorrow. It is opening at 8.35 today and earnings are tomorrow. I’m reading the annual report right now and I really think that this company will continue moving up. A good way to describe what they do is “multi room dvr.” Meaning you can stop the programming in one room and watch it in another. They have deals with all the major TV providers and even though the stock has gone from $2.00 to $13.00 back to $8.35, I think this stock will get back to the 13 dollar level. I’m specifically considering an option purchase today to go with the volatility of earnings tomorrow.

Life is good though and my ankle has almost gotten fully healed. I ran another 3 miles yesterday and felt ok. I noticed it a bit on the golf course as well but nothing to bothersome. I think that this will be a pretty good week and I’m looking forward to some nicer weather. I didn’t get a chance to watch Game of Thrones and Treme last night on HBO so I will do that tonight to kill some time. Game of Thrones has held my interest through one episode and I anticipate good things. Treme was pretty average for season 1 but David Simon created the Wire and it’s hard to imagine him making a bad show. Should be a good week though and I will keep this blog updated.

By Tom Stortz|2011-04-25T08:37:48-04:00April 25th, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

“Good Friday”

I thought that last two posts I wrote were pretty good so it pains me to bury them under this mediocre post but I’ve just been firing them out today. Today is Good Friday and I was cracking up when people on the work phone would say “have a Good Friday” and I’d respond with “yeah today has been a pretty good Friday hasn’t it.” If you couldn’t tell I really have no religious beliefs and will share a religious post in the near future but not now.

Something hilarious that happened to me was that I bought my Broad Street Run admittance back in January and since I broke may ankle 6 weeks ago, I am unable to run it. So instead of getting burned with the bib number, I put a listing on Craigs list that I have a bib I’m looking to sell. Well if I knew that this was a golden opportunity to meet girls, I would have bought 5 bibs. I wrote on my listing that I’m looking for someone who is healthy to take my spot because it’s a risk to just sell someone your bib because if something happens to the person and it’s not the person on the bib, then I could technically get banned for life from the race. So I’ve been getting emails from girls who are like 24/f, I’m interested in buying your bib. Not only do I get to meet random girls but then I get to impress them by giving them my bib which is in the first corral. I wish I would have been more prepared because I pretty much just sold it to the first person I thought would be interested. So now I have a face to face with a 24 year old from Villanova to exchange tickets.

Softball tomorrow alongside with golf at some other time should make for a activity filled weekend. I will keep the readers updated as the weekend progresses.

By Tom Stortz|2011-04-22T15:14:40-04:00April 22nd, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

My facebook friends

I’ve had facebook for more than 5 years now and started at the end of my college career. I want to point out that this is my benchmark for the amount of friends I have and if you joined facebook while you were in high school, your numbers are going to be HUGELY inflated. If At this point, facebook is so established that new friends aren’t happening as often as they were when it was in its infancy. In a way this is sad because I pretty much have maxed out my friend list. Maybe I’ll meet some new people on weekends but then we are only talking about adding a person or two at a time. The amount of friends you have is a good indicator of your personality. Let’s FACE it, the more people you know and the more extroverted your personality, the more friends you’ll have. The less friends you have the more you either say fuck facebook or you just don’t get along with people. Let’s break it down.

<100 friends – You don’t feel the need for any inclusion in society. Basically you are secure with yourself, probably an introvert, and don’t care what people think about you. Or you just are a late comer to facebook and fell through the cracks of the normal process of accumulating friends. Most likely though the people on your list are really people you know and probably stay in contact with. I would however say that people with less then 100 friends are not fitting in to society in “normal” terms but that’s not saying “normal” is right. Just by existing in society for the last 5+ years you would have come in contact with more than 100 potential people through going to parties or events to lead you to have more than 100 friends. Obviously if joined facebook in your 30’s+, this is harder to do. If you have less then 100 you must be giving off a vibe that says, you don’t want to be my friend.

100-500 friends – I think if you joined facebook while you were experiencing college, you’ll have somewhere in this category of friends. It’s hard to not meet a ton of people in college and the usual procedure is to make them your facebook friend. I’ve been out of college for 5 years now and the adding of friends is no where near where it was back then. I think this amount means you probably have added a decent amount of people you know and also a fair share of people who you come into contact every so often. Basically you probably only come into close contact with 100 or so but you have met extra people through your travels. I think your list of friends is predominantly 1/3 people you know, 1/3 people you knew, and 1/3 people you probably don’t want to know.

500-1000 – At this number you are actively seeking facebook friends. That guy on the couch at the party just became your friend. The girl in your Econ class that sits 4 rows back is your friend. Most people you come into contact with, you want them as your facebook friend. It is a measure of how popular you are and having as many facebook friends as possible proves that. I honestly think it’s hard to have more than 30-50 close friends and at this level you have to hardly know some of the people on your friend list. I would never defriend anyone (every now and then) but you could probably X people off and never think twice about the decision because they mean nothing to you. I will add though that some people are genuinely likable and accumulate a mass amount of friends who they are actually friendly with. Just because I hate everyone, and this is how I perceive people with huge friends lists, doesn’t make it wrong. Jealous maybe?

1000+ – You are either a really hot girl who everyone wants to be your friend or you are a social butterfly who has this NEED for acceptance and friend information. Let’s face it, if you are a hot girl, guys are going to friend you even if they just say hello to you at a party. Everyone wants a shot at getting laid by a hot chick and hot girls should just be nice by accepting any friend request seems perfectly reasonable. The other side is the gossip people who just love knowing everyone so they just friend any breathing being just to get the scoop. Having a news feed of constantly updated with information thrills people and is actually desired by some. At this point, 1000 people is just so far from my realm of understanding that I can’t even comment on that amount. This must just be more of a milestone then something of any meaning.

I just checked and I have 353 friends. Obviously as I’m writing this I made sure that I put myself in the category I assume is exactly where you want to be. I feel like I have a good network of close friends, some random friends from college who I won’t ever see again, and some girls who I creepily facebook stalk. I could easily delete 100 without noticing they are gone. I don’t use facebook chat and other then posting this blog URL, I really don’t have much use for facebook. Yes I find it a good time waster and if I had more friends, I’d just waste more time reading random profiles and browsing pictures of people I’ll never see.

The real reason of this post though is that facebook is maturing and my addition of friends is stopping. The realization of this and how facebook has 600 million users should be staggering to all. I have about 20 people in my phone who I contact on a week to week but I have 350 friends. I’m in no way social but I think that just having access to 350 people’s lives means something. It keeps you in touch with reality by seeing how other people are living their lives. Oh John Doe just got married, Jane just had a baby, Nance is throwing a party… Facebook really is a great social tool and it’s not surprising that it has become as big as it has become. It offers connection and communication globally and that is truly awesome. I would love to have a greater network on facebook but it won’t really change my life any at this point. However, if you aren’t my friend and you read my blog, make me your friend because anyone who reads my blog is a friend of mine. I also want to say that if you have any additions or edits to my categories, I think my readers should have a say in updating these categories.

By Tom Stortz|2011-05-24T23:35:58-04:00April 22nd, 2011|My Brain, My Life|0 Comments

Back to form

I was able to run 3 miles today but I literally have a top speed that I cannot go past. Basically I can put pressure on my ankle but not enough to really generate any significant speed. I think that’s a start though and something to be happy about. I’m probably going to make an attempt to play softball on Saturday and most likely will just sit at first base which I honestly dread. I use the same mitt I had back when I played in 7th grade so combining the fact it fit my hand when I was 12 and we now are using a softball = not the best situation for catching balls at first. I’ll make do though.

What I haven’t been doing lately is writing down my ideas throughout the day of different blog topics and when it comes down to writing, I just don’t have anything to write about. Generally this happens when I back burner the blog for other things in my life and I will start paying more attention. My readership has been way down compared to previous highs and that tends to lower my motivation for making quality entries. Problem is I just haven’t been doing very many good activities. The Shee said my life was too routine and I do understand where he is coming from. Basically this is close to the 600th post spanning nearly 2 years of blog posts. My life isn’t exciting to fill all of those posts with interesting ideas. The most exciting thing in my life was taking some French businessmen who came to see our company to John’s Roast Pork for a cheese steak. Aside from that it’s your routine work, working out, sleep, repeat. I’ve really noticed I got out of shape from 5 or 6 weeks of not being able to exercise. I ballooned up to 180 with a loss of strength in every machine. This will probably take me a few more weeks to get back to my normal body. I also am selling my Broad St ticket if anyone has an interest being Tom Stortz for a day.

By Tom Stortz|2011-04-21T23:05:04-04:00April 21st, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

Untitled

I’m aware I haven’t put up a post in a while and I assure you that there is nothing wrong. I know there are plenty of people who probably check this website on a daily basis and after you check it for a few days and there is nothing new, well you decide it’s better to just not check it so often. I don’t blame you. I will write that I intend to start putting my usual effort to this site in the next few days but this is just sort of a dry spell. I actually tried writing a few posts yesterday and I wasn’t coming up with anything that I thought was worth sharing so if it’s not going to be an entertaining read, I just muck it. Consider this post my interim post of what I hope to call a better period of time of posting. I will hopefully be back in true form sooner rather then later.

By Tom Stortz|2011-04-20T22:18:46-04:00April 20th, 2011|My Life|1 Comment

Retail Shopping is dead

Sorry for not posting in a few days. I know I spoil people when I start averaging two entries a day and then all of a sudden go a day or two with no posts and people begin wondering what’s going on. Everything is perfectly fine, I just haven’t been doing a whole lot. I won 115 bucks playing poker at Harrah’s Chester on Tuesday night. The game is relatively easy and little to no risk as I’m rarely ever getting a lot of chips in when luck plays a role. Players bet sizing is atrocious and calling stations are the norm. I went to the dr today to get my ankle checked and he said that there is still some swelling but it’s healing perfectly. Basically he left it up to me and my common sense on how to proceed which is a bit scary.

The reason I titled this post was because I went “shopping” and couldn’t find anything to buy anywhere. Everything I saw I would just think to myself, “I can find that online for cheaper.” Stores like Macy’s and Bloomingdales are cooked. They can’t expect people to buy a regular polo shirt for 75 dollars. It’s just absurd. Evan said he thought the same thing about Best Buy, where I also went, and their CD selection has gotten laughable. Dvd’s are a thing of the past and I also think the store is in big trouble. I’m a customer who has money and is looking to spend it and just couldn’t find anything I liked. I was going to buy a pair of shoes but they didn’t have my size so I was just like I’ll buy them online. That’s about it from me today. Jc’s birthday is today so we are going out for dinner.

By Tom Stortz|2011-04-14T16:56:10-04:00April 14th, 2011|My Life|0 Comments

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