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5 Apr, 2011

Bball Vids

By |2016-10-28T15:58:09-04:00April 5th, 2011|My Life|1 Comment

I have a few more that if these are really that well received you can comment and tell me to post the others that aren’t as good as these. CK4, you’ll be happy to know that I only have one of yours but have at least 4 others in the archive. Enjoy.

Let’s lead with the highlight of the footage. I’ve watched this video a dozen times and still can’t decide if it’s a walk or not but it’s good to see someone on our team do something impressive.

Jess Baker’s commentary makes this clip. DRAINO!

I think this clip was pretty funny with Bake holding form like it was supposed to go in.

This was actually does go in.

Ck4, I’ve got about 3 of these similar “you shooting” videos but unfortunately the end result never changes… Cavity Kashub for 3! (root canals)

Mark Zumoff’s job will not be threatened by me.

Sorry Evan, Jka$h felt the wrath last week, this week you get the honor.

I didn’t forget any words in the title, the to is for Turnover, nice finish by Jeff though.

4 Apr, 2011

Late Night Quick Post

By |2011-04-04T23:51:13-04:00April 4th, 2011|My Brain, Sports|2 Comments

So I’ve been posting lots of material lately and JKa$h is quick to point out that most of it sucks. I obviously don’t completely agree but I posed the question would you rather read more shitty material or less good material. Now in the back of my mind I’m praying that he picks the more shitty material because if he says less good material that could become problematic. I never know if what I’m posting is going to be well received or completely overlooked. I wrote 1000 words on one of the most recent posts and I just assume people read every word which is probably so far off base. I can’t tell if people actually read what’s on the site and since the feedback is little I have no idea if people enjoy reading it. I assume it’s just one of those things that “it’s a free website” and I will read whatever I feel like reading and move on.

JKa$h was also quick to point out that I need to do a better job marketing my blog and I do agree with him to a degree. If I was really serious about succeeding in the blogging world I’d be posting the link on facebook and probably tweeting my brains out. Personally this would make me feel like a sell out but there’s no doubt selling out can produce results. Smashed also suggested a rnningfool.com bumper sticker or better yet the letters going across my windshield. I’m still considering.

Tonight was the playoff basketball game which I set the line at 19.5 and Team Baker did not cover the spread. I obtained tons of footage from the game and will go through it tomorrow and start posting some vids on my blog. They kept the game close in the first half with a 10 point deficit at halftime but then one of their guys got hot and opened the half with 4 straight 3’s to sort of put the game out of reach. Jess Baker, Marisa, JKa$h, Sharon and myself were the loyal spectators to watch the team sink in the playoffs.

4 Apr, 2011

People Helping People

By |2011-04-04T17:23:39-04:00April 4th, 2011|My Life|1 Comment

I use the people helping people line a fair amount so just get used to it. My mood tends to shift from time to time on how generous I want to be with people. My good moods tend to lead to me being nice and pleasant and bad moves to flipping people off and telling them to go jump in a lake. Here are a few examples of situations I come across.

We received an email from one of my dad’s friends saying that he can save us money by switching us to a different energy provider and not paying Peco direct. Basically you maintain providers, he makes money by signing you up for a new company’s billing plan and everything else stays the same. Now this would be helping someone out by putting money into their pocket by just switching to a 3rd party energy provider. You know what I said? Absolutely not. I’d rather pay Peco the extra money than give the salesman a commission. Why? Because 9 times out of 10, if the situation were reversed, I ask myself would this person do this for me? The majority of people in life are acquaintances and not your friends. People who actually care about you are different then people who only like you because you are giving them money. I tend to relate this to why all the bartenders seem to like me.

So I just gave an example of why I don’t like helping weasels, do I like to help people who may legitimately need help like beggars and homeless? My sympathy tends to run light for people on the street. Why am I so cold hearted? The people who you give money to don’t appreciate you, they just appreciate the money. They probably wouldn’t remember you the next day. JC gave me a good story of him giving a guy who sells newpapers on the street a 10 dollar bill. His reasoning was that the guy is trying the best he can to EARN a living and JC is fortunate enough to help him out. This stuck with me because I too tend to side with a guy who is really giving it his all and just can’t seem to get ahead, compared to a bum looking to score some drugs. Now maybe the newpaper guy uses all his money on drugs but at least I see some effort and work ethic. There is no such thing as a free lunch and I believe you should have to work for things to appreciate them.

So I don’t like helping weasels or the homeless, what about charity’s? You know that the money is being used for a good cause (at least you hope) and you should feel good knowing that you are positively affecting other people’s lives. On celebrity apprentice last night they had wealthy people donating $100,000 to these charity’s per item auctioned. I think that’s fantastic. If I had 10 million dollars in the bank I’d be inclined to give away large chunks of money too. Newsflash, most of the people on Earth are barely scraping by, how can you expect people to donate money when they can’t afford their next meal? And this is supposed to be one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, I can’t imagine other places quality of life. To be honest, I’ve given small sums of money to charity but until I become independently wealthy, I have a hard time giving others my money over #1.

I’ve made posts on tipping before but I have noticed it has become a part of my life to overtip. I’m talking insane amounts of tipping. Scenario 1, you open a bar tab and have 10 beers at 2 dollars each. It’s 20 dollars and you leave a generous tip of 5 dollars. Scenario 2, You get 10 beers and tip 1 dollar each time the bartender gives you a beer. Both standard scenarios. If you forget to tip the bartender ONE time in scenario 2, they’ll remember it forever. I tip poker dealers, delivery men, taxi drivers, you name it I tip them. Worst thing is I over tip everyone because I think they’ll like me more. It’s in my blood to appease people and not have people think of me as a nit. It’s fucking insane to think a big tip to a taxi driver is smart. You’ll never see them again in your life! I swear if you added up all the money I tipped and gave it to a charity, I’d need my own fund raising software to keep track of it. Do I get any credit though for my generosity? No, it’s probably the reverse because I used my blog to tell people how generous I am that now they probably think I’m even more of a douchebag.

Am I wrong to think that most people don’t share my views? Are there way more caring people out there than I give credit to? My underlying feeling is that I probably even overestimate the amount of good hearted people. I just get the feeling that everyone has their own agenda and it usually involves benefiting themselves instead of benefiting you. The world will run you over if you let it.

A final story to finish off this long winded post. After I uploaded all this basketball video and sent it to my email address, I over shot my 150mb of data by 100 mb. CK4 says to call up and not pay the 20 dollars in surcharge use. I’ve given it some thought and would rather just pay the 20 dollars. I signed a contract, I went over my limit according to the terms of service and now I’m going to pay the penalty because it’s the right thing to do. To quote CK4 after telling a car salesmen why he bought from another dealership: “By now you are probably staring at your computer monitor with a dumbfounded facial expression. To answer the question that you have had since doubling clicking on this email: the reason that I took my time to write this email is simply put:
Because it is the right thing to do.
Full letter here for those amused and missed it previously.

Could I bitch and moan and threaten to leave Verizon and get my 20 dollars? Most likely, but then I ask myself how I would like it if customers started calling me and demanding refunds because they dropped a tool off the roof and it broke. It’s not my fault you broke the tool and are demanding another one the same way it isn’t Verizon’s fault I went over my data plan. If the charge was 2,000 dollars I’d probably feel differently but I will pay the money because I’m not a swindler. Ck4 said I should have negotiated some Mad River tickets better, instead of paying 10 dollars I could have haggled it to 8 or something. In my opinion, what CK4 doesn’t get is that in an effort to save 10 dollars, I have a bartender who thinks that I worry over every single dollar and that’s just not my style. Call me a bad business men or poor negotiator but money is only money, your personality and peoples perception of you holds much more then a dollar value.

4 Apr, 2011

Irritable

By |2011-04-04T08:45:23-04:00April 4th, 2011|My Life, Sports|0 Comments

Irritable – 1. Having or showing a tendency to be easily annoyed or made angry.

If you couldn’t tell by the previous post or two I’ve been a little out of whack recently. I think I feel like females feel when people joke “must be that time of the month again.” As a guy I really have no idea what that experience is like but I assure you I have no physical reason why I’m using this word to describe myself. Just to give you an idea though of things that are particularly bothering me and the depth of these issues.

I almost freaked today when there was this biker riding his bike in between 4 lanes of traffic merging into two. I had this urge to just open my door and teach the guy a lesson. I’m pretty sure there is a law that says biker’s can’t ride on the sidewalk but bikers are a breed of their own and think they have way more rights then they should. I’m driving a 3 ton vehicle and you are on a 2 wheeled 40 pound bike, these two are completely different modes of transportation and to think that we “share” the road will generally always end up worse for the biker. So after that initial feeling of wanting to off a biker, I then started getting perturbed that people weren’t driving with their lights on. Yes, 100% this started to bother me to the point that I wanted to steer off road and give them a header and then exclaim that I couldn’t see them because they didn’t have their lights on. Today is a cloudy day, not a bright sunny one, and I just believe in lights on all the time except under perfect conditions. Don’t ask me why but I just feel that vehicles moving at lethal speeds should be as identifiable as possible in almost all circumstances.

So after already feeling riled up I was flipping through the radio and heard the new Panic song Ready to Go and I was catching it at the very end for maybe 5 seconds tops. So then this bothered me because I wanted to hear the song and knew that I wouldn’t get my chance til the next visit to my car. Of course I could listen to it at any time I wanted but for some reason the radio not allowing me to listen to the song I wanted to annoyed me. Ck4 actually presented this idea to me years ago but radio dvr seems logical to me.

After that I was listening to Howard and Chris Rock made some reference to Celebrity Apprentice and was saying how he knew his career would be near finished if he felt it was necessary to try to impress Donald Trump on national TV. I mention this because I was going to make an entry on this subject because I was watching the show last night for a little while. First off, I find the show mildly amusing because the celebs are given reasonably difficult tasks, in my opinion, and see what they come up with as normal human beings (not celebs) piques my interest. The characters are hilarious too because what is Lil John doing on the show? He seems so out of place and is his career that over that he resorted to this? Half the guys aren’t even celebs anymore like Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray and Meatloaf but the girls are even worse with Star Jones and LaToya Jackson. Donald looks absolutely absurd with his hair, strange tan, and wild make up. It’s like he’s really tan but has all this pink spots around his face, just a really weird looking dude.

Plus a final thing, during a round of Scattergories, Amber was telling me she reads my blog and that my spelling is awful. I would completely understand if she said my grammar was wrong because I haven’t had a writing course in years and I know I’m guessing half the time with commas, but WordPress automatically spell checks my words and my spelling just can’t be that terrible. Sure I probably have a no instead of a know which is pretty bad but my only defense is that I’ve made near 600 posts and if I don’t type at a 98% accuracy rate, I’d be surprised. Also, I won’t find it funny if people start pointing out my mistakes because I’m sure they could be found under close scrutinization.

One more thing, playoff bball at the Ambler Y tonight with what could be the greatest upset in sports history. After losing by 40 in the regular season we will see what happens tonight at 9:30. For a quick look into what I might be expecting as a spectator, I found Little Giants on TV and watched how JR and the IceBox led their team to victory even though they were playing with a bunch of misfits. I’m putting the line at 19 1/2. Any wagers?

3 Apr, 2011

Random happenings

By |2011-04-04T17:26:41-04:00April 3rd, 2011|My Brain|1 Comment

I didn’t really want to create a brand new post for each one of these topics but I had some unusual ideas and situations pop up this weekend that I’m going to present in list fashion.

1. I borrowed American Psycho from Jeff and the book has some pretty interesting topics. I’m only 100 pages in but I marked a page that had this quote because it’s pretty, well you be the judge.

Craig McDermott: If they have a great personality and they’re not great looking… then who fucking cares?
Patrick Bateman: Well, let’s just say hypotetically ok? What if they have a great personality?
[pause, all laugh]
Patrick Bateman: I know, I know.
[all in unison]
Patrick Bateman, Craig McDermott, David Van Patten: There are no girls with good personalities.
David Van Patten: A good personality consists of a chick with a little hard body, who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things, and who essentially will keep her dumb fucking mouth shut.
Craig McDermott: The only girls with good personalities who are smart or maybe funny or halfway intelligent or talented, though god knows what the fuck that means, are ugly chicks.
David Van Patten: Absolutely.
Craig McDermott: And this is because they have to make up for how fucking unattractive they are.

2. I watched Black Swan too and that was a pretty bizarre movie. Interpretation aside I think I was entertained by a movie that featured Ballet which is something to note off the bat. I’m going to give my spoiler (well my thoughts at least) on what I take of it. Was Mila Kunis not a real character but just Natalie Portman’s black swan character? Meaning Portman and Kunis were the one in the same and she was just battling herself the whole time? The death at the end was or wasn’t real? I assume none of it was real but her mom had that brace on her hand which leads me to think everything was real. I don’t know.

3. I went to some party and a random guy asked me if the two people I came with were my friends. I gave him the sideways, cock eyed look like what kind of a question was that? I just started laughing and he admitted that probably wasn’t the best intro question. Nice for a change to not be the one making moronic comments.

4. Listening to advice from other people on sports bets usually isn’t a good approach because if they aren’t willing to bet their own money on it, their advice can’t be that good.

3 Apr, 2011

Where to begin…

By |2011-04-04T17:26:57-04:00April 3rd, 2011|My Life|1 Comment

I’m sort of stalled out here. I’m going to use a transportation, life analogy which hopefully will explain things clearly. When you’re a baby you first need to crawl before you can walk. As you get older, walking only gets you so far before you learn to run. After some more time you learn to ride a bike and now you can advance in life by getting to more places. After a bike, you drive a car and then different parts of the country become accessible and you are basically free to do whatever you want. You get to an age where you can travel the world simply by buying a ticket and doing it. With all this freedom available, I’ve completely stalled. I’m not doing anything but passing the time in meaningless fashion. I pass the time by playing poker, reading books, watching movies, and getting drunk but it’s not doing anything for me. I feel like I’ve hit a quarter life crisis. Well 1/3 life crises because that would put me at 81 and I can’t see making it much past that with my history.

I can’t* really explain why this occurred all of a sudden but the feeling has become evident. It’s sort of like I’ve gotten myself into a comfortable routine of making nothing happen. I just spent the last 3 weeks doing nothing with a busted ankle and now I feel like “I’m back on my feet, literally, and now what? I just have this feeling of complacency that you don’t really feel so much when you’re younger.

Up to this point of my life I’ve always felt like I was trying to achieve something. It starts with elementary through high school and athletics take up a good portion of your time. Then you try to earn a degree from college to qualify you for the business world. Then I spent the last few years learning how to run a business and getting a feel for how money gets tossed around. It’s depressing when I think that I’ve been out of school this long and still have my life as a pretty significant question mark. The idea of having a wife and starting a family has pretty much alluded me for various reasons, mainly the complications and responsibility. I think I’m starting to feel the realization that I’m not really a kid anymore and it’s time to grow up. It reminds me of Peter Pan except that this isn’t never-never land, this is the harsh reality of time.

When I try to put everything into some sort of relative context I just keep getting an output of blah. Like let me play poker for 6 hours and be doing good if I made 100 bucks. This is the best thing I can do with my time? Let me read some books because their world is more fascinating then my world. Even things like playing sports is like “Yippee, we are striving to be the champions of a local suburban league.” I’m not trying to be a downer either. Everything is perfectly fine with me. I feel as good as I can at this point and I just sort of have this reflection point that I think strikes people at different points of their lives, in completely different ways. I’ve got my own problems and ways of handling things the same way everyone else has theirs. I think it’s just attempting to understand getting older and reflecting on everything that’s happened in your life and then asking yourself what does your future hold. Here’s a send off that I think fits the message behind this post.

3 Apr, 2011

4 Awesome Albums

By |2011-04-04T17:26:21-04:00April 3rd, 2011|Music|2 Comments

I’m going to give a list of 4 of my favorite albums. I’m reviewing these albums as a whole and will go through a few of my personal favorite songs and why I like the album. I suggest you listen to the albums in its entirety before voicing any opinion. Also know that I take my suggestions seriously and wouldn’t steer you the wrong way. These albums all get my 100% thumbs up.

The 59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem

It’s only 12 songs and 41:32 but there isn’t a bad song on the album. The first 3 songs, Great Expectations, 59′ Sound, and Old White Lincoln have all had radio play. High Lonesome is a good song that references the Counting Crows song Round Here. The Patient Ferris Wheel is my personal favorite on the album but every song has it’s on allure. If you haven’t ever listened to this band, here is my blog giving a top notch recommendation.

Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen

I feel like Bruce is sort of an acquired taste and people among my generation sort of just overlook Bruce and his talents. Born in the USA came out in 84′ and was Bruce’s 7th album. The album contained messages relating to the pursuit of the American Dream (I read that off of Wikipedia, I just know the songs). Let’s just look at the songs that this album has. Born in the USA isn’t my favorite song but a classic nonetheless. I find Cover Me to be such a cool sounding song. I’m on Fire literally gives me goosebumps. Downbound Train and No Surrender are both quality songs and I’m Goin’ Down is sung in a way that only Bruce can sing. Then you close the album in Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark, and My Hometown. Seriously albums aren’t made this good anymore.

The Joshua Tree by U2

We can quote Gusto to intro this album “the best track 1 on any album ever”. After some thought I couldn’t think of too many better intro songs then Where the Streets Have No Name. The buildup for the first 2 minutes is really intense. Then you follow right with I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and With or Without you. Bullet the Blue Sky and Running to Stand Still follow in dramatic fashion. The rest of the songs aren’t as popular but just those few tracks make up for it. Another band that is missed by my generation but I would suggest listening to this album in it’s entirety.

A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out by Panic At the Disco

Released in 2005, Panic had a fresh sound and an incredible album for the time. The lead single was I Write Sins, Not Tragedies which is still one of my favorite songs to date. I like to call an album great when I can put it on and listen to every song all the way through and not skip over because of shitty songs. They title their songs as really long an unrecognizable so it’s better to just put on the CD and play it all the way through.4

1 Apr, 2011

White Man Accessories

By |2011-04-01T10:07:20-04:00April 1st, 2011|Sports|2 Comments

JKa$h and I were watching the Sixers game the other night and it struck us as odd that both Kyle Korver and Spencer Hawes were wearing mouth-guards. I’m sure plenty of non-white players wear mouth-guards too but I think it’s fair to say that white people aren’t going to have the coolest accessories. We don’t have those arm sleeves like AI used to wear or bizarre leg sleeves that Boozer was wearing. Headbands are usually not happening amongst whites. Aside from Birdman, I would suspect the white man isn’t leading in the tattoo department either. We also aren’t wearing high black socks introduced by the Fab Five. I feel like whites probably use a lot of tape on their fingers too which would count as a good accessory. Anything lame and necessary would fit the white man and anything cool looking and unnecessary would be the rest of the NBA.

I’m also not restricting this category strictly to the NBA. Here’s a picture of Laurence Maroney after getting busted for a concealed weapon while being high.

The white man will never have a bad ass hair style like this. If this isn’t the epitome of bad-ass, I don’t know what is. To give JKa$h some credit, 3 years ago the accessory of choice in the NFL was the visor. Then it became the super-visor which is a darker visor that makes it harder to see and only used by the NFL elite. Last year the long hair was the trend. Consider there are hardly any white players in the NFL, I don’t think we have too many accessories to point out. I do however know the biggest trend this year.

Wait for it…….. It’s Jamaal Charles finding that end-zone. I’m not sure where to begin on Jamaal but if he slips to the 2nd round, you snag him. I think ideal draft position this year is something like 7th where you can get a premier RB and hopefully a guy like Jamaal. Not to toot my own horn but in the 4 leagues I played in last year I won 2, got 3rd in one, and lost in the championship game in the other. My 3 RB’s in Evan’s league were A Pete, McFadden, and Jamaal and I’m pretty sure that will never happen again in my life. I’m not sure where Jamaal will go this year. I’m hoping he gets ranked about 10th. I would love to get the 12 pick and get Jamaal and then anyone coming back. You’ve heard it hear first, Jamaal for MVP and finding that endzone is this years biggest event.

1 Apr, 2011

There goes my hero

By |2011-04-01T00:11:34-04:00April 1st, 2011|My Brain|1 Comment

I’m just going to intro this post with a sentence saying that this isn’t going to be one of my finer entries. Personally, I’ve felt that I’ve had some quality posts recently. Even with a lack of ideas I’m still coming up with decent material. I thought that Hayden post was really good by the way and I was surprised no one had any input on Vitali’s realtionship with her. Anyway, I know this entry was going to be bad because I was watching the movie Hero starring Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, and Andy Garcia and started laughing at the words Chevy Chase was using to describe Bernard Leplant. He called him a maniac, lunatic, screwball, bozo, and a clown. In my mind I was going to base an entry on how funny these words were. At that point, I knew this wasn’t going to be my best work. I also want to note that CK4 gave this movie a half star after watching it for 40 minutes. With no ill intentions in the following sentence, CK4 wouldn’t know a good movie if James Cameron hand delivered himself and told him this is a good movie. Ck4, we’ve been friends for a long time, but you don’t know shit about what a good movie is. That being said, this movie wasn’t really that good but it wasn’t the worst I’ve seen either. And just one more hilarious point about CK4, the movie with Denzel and the runaway train was a great movie but Inception was “a half star.” If Chad and Jordan Cohen were together I have a feeling they’d have the same interest in movies. Lots of explosions, simple plots, the hero saves the day.

Creativity isn’t something that you can just turn on and off. It’s weird because sometimes I can bang out 3 posts in a row and still have ideas to write about. Others, like now, I can’t think of anything to write and that usually brings me to writing about reasons why I can’t think of anything to write. I can’t explain where my topics come from. Sometimes I’ll be sitting in the car, listening to the radio and I’ll hear a name and then just decide that I’m going to make a post on why I like or dislike that person. That’s why when I complain about not getting any comments, I have know idea what the people who read my blog actually like. For instance, the one day I put up those celebrity eyes, I had 15 people email me answers. The next time I do it I can’t even get a comment on the post. I thought that was going to bring me to fame and fortune but little do I know it’s a one and done thing. That’s why when things suck, tell me they suck. Laura wrote that I should comment on the comments and I’d be happy to do it but I don’t want to act as a dictator over my blog and try to steal the thunder in every situation.

Rnningfool.com started May 6th, 2009 (it was actually earlier but my analytics wasn’t set up till then). On it’s first day the blog traffic was 3. Then 3 consecutive days of 0. I’ve come a long way where I now average about 200 people daily with a high of 743. Someone found my site today by typing in “forced ball shaving.” If that isn’t progress I don’t know what is. The funny thing is that i know exactly what it takes to get this site to the next level and that is inbound links. I need to develop a reputation and have other sites link to my site. If you read this last sentence and can help me out in this regard, I’d appreciate it. Until then, I’m still the same old one man band running rnningfool.com. Thanks for reading.

31 Mar, 2011

March on

By |2011-03-31T15:29:34-04:00March 31st, 2011|My Brain|1 Comment

It’s good to see that the Youtube videos got about 40 views which means people really do come to this site and not just fake clicks. I thought my title of Bud hits a J was incredibly clever and its moments like that where I wonder if everyone gets the wording. Ck4 and I went to Kildare’s last night and I am so out of drinking form. I had 4 beers and was literally bombed. Sure the Founders ale is 8% but I was just completely out by 8:30. I slept for 12 hours and felt fine today but that was about as much alcohol as I could handle. These weeks seem to be flying by and I need to get back into shape physically before the summer. I’m pretty much out of ideas for blog topics and as you can see on the left sidebar, I hit 40+ posts for the 2nd consecutive months which I think proves that I’m putting in some decent effort. It’s funny too because I was just about to write why the Jersey Shore wasn’t very good this season and I saw on Yahoo that they had a similar article. I can still give better reasons for why it went downhill then Yahoo does so I still might write it. I’ve also been reading the Berkshire Hathaway annual report and will make a post on that as well. My traffic has been decreasing of late for some reason and I’m hoping that this is just a phase. No real interesting updates but I wanted to post something for the people who check my blog every hour and get excited when they see a new post. I know that this is a legitimate feeling because every once in a while when I’m really bored I’ll check Sam’s blog way more often than I should hoping for new material to entertain me for a full minute. Well, here you go, 316 words of nonsense.

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