Pee Wee wasn’t jerking off in adult theaters yet.
The snowboard really hasn’t changed much.
Who wants to blast this 50 lb beast from their shoulder?
Ahh, the $900 dollar CD player.
Thompson Twins were hot with their Swatches.
Microsoft Word? Ha.
Bruce reigned supreme in 85′. Nice to see Tears for Fears hit the charts.
Kindle Fire
I bought the Kindle Fire for $199 about 6 months ago. At first I was apprehensive about switching from a paperback book to a digital way of reading. How would I feel without turning physical pages that I’ve grown so accustomed to? As it turns out, it didn’t matter at all and the switch was seamless. I also signed up for an Amazon credit card that syncs directly into the Fire so I purchase books with one click without leaving my seat. Most of the time the Fire price is cheaper than the bookstore price so not only am I saving money but I’m never leaving the comfort of my house. It doesn’t have 3 or 4G which I would say is the only downside but it connects to any Wi-Fi so it really doesn’t come into play much for me. Plus you can watch redtube videos that come in decently but there is still some buffering which can get annoying. I see the price is down to $159 and I would recommend this particular device at that price level. I don’t watch anything movie or TV wise on it so I can’t comment but I don’t think it would be my preferred method. Very good for nighttime reading as no light is required.
Jos. A Bank Jacket
This isn’t the exact jacket I bought but very similar. Mine is 65% wool, 35% rayon and is a pretty good winter jacket. I wouldn’t wear it in the most frigid of conditions but in terms of an acceptable jacket to wear to bars and such, it works fantastic. I can even wear a collared polo t-shirt out and just wear the jacket as an exterior. It essentially eliminates the need for any type of sweatshirt unless I want to wear it. Best part is, it cost under a hundred bucks. I can honestly wear it every day and no one would say I’m over-wearing it because it’s so common place of an article of clothing. Without a doubt this was my #1 best investment of the year. I don’t need variety in winter month outerwear, this is it! Plus it doesn’t get dirty.
Taylor Burner Plus Irons &
Ping Stand Bag
I know there aren’t a ton of golf nuts out there but these two items were my best purchases of last year golf wise. I think I spent $400+ on the iron set I bought (I’m not sure this picture is the exact set I have) and they are a significant upgrade from the Tommy Armour 845 I had for 10+ years. My distance is 200+ with a 5 iron which basically can allow me to drive using an iron on most holes. Hitting the sweet spot leads to nice distance and I’ve been playing a nice draw as well. Forgiveness is noticeable. The bag is awesome as well. We’ll give Bill Schmidt credit for the recommendation as he said “the only bags worth buying are Titleist and Ping.” It has an abundance of pockets, a Gatorade holder, a nice stand, a handle to move the bag without holding the strap, and is lightweight to make a fantastically designed bag. I left out my Cleveland sand wedge but I’ll save that for another entry. A huge key to golf is having the right equipment.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This is a book I read about a year ago that has so many good tools that I probably don’t use most of them. It goes into prioritizing life, listening, speaking, empathizing, decision making and all the other good things that you usually don’t think about on your day to day. This book makes you think about them and I remember after finishing the book having a positive outlook on life. As months pass and you forget what you read, you will revert back to the real you but it’s still effective to have these principals instilled from time to time. Here was an interesting post I wrote back in the day after reading the book. Reading this book once a year would be an exercise that no price could be put on it.
Although it seems pretty insane, I pay 200+ dollars a year for Sirius and 5 bucks a month for Spotify. This equates to a roughly 300 dollar budget a year for music which is less than a dollar a day. For me this is completely worth it. I listen to music everyday of my life. As I’m sitting here right now I’m listening to OMD, If You Leave on Sirius First Wave. Listening to music makes me happy. If I have to choose between not listening or listening, I’d practically never choose not listening. Sirius in the car, Spotify at home. I like the randomness of Sirius and my ability to hear songs I never would hear and the variety of their stations. I like how I can customize playlists with Spotify and share music with friends. Both of these services hold high value in my mind. AM/FM what?!
Goddammit. This is what happens when you lay yourself out there with a prediction that falls so flat on its face that you just throw your hands up on the air and say “how can I be so wrong”? I would like to add that this isn’t the first time this has happened to me and it certainly won’t be the last. Life is about conviction and when you believe in something you have to stand by it. If you happen to be wrong, you swallow your pride, admit your wrong in a blog post and move on. If I cost anyone money, I’ll buy you a drink at the bar next time we hang out. I’ll need some proof. How can people that I envy so much fall so short? I’m supposed to have a good judge of character and that has led me to Brady and Belichick. They couldn’t even score a point in the whole 2nd half. It was an embarrassment. Nevertheless, I was wrong, I admit I was wrong, and I will continue on being wrong. One of these times with full conviction, I will be right and forget I was ever wrong.
Bill Belichick. Tom Brady. Success. It’s the preparation. The team unity. The proven track record of winning. What happened to Andy Reid the past two seasons won’t happen to the Patriots. The Birds tried to hire talent, but talent doesn’t win football games. This isn’t basketball where you can put 3/5 of a team of all stars together and win championships. This is a better game that involves 11 players acting collectively and no team does it better than the Patriots. They have not had a losing season in the last 10 years and have made the playoffs 8 times.
I had to make this post before the game kicks off and explain how some people can lay 10 points in what is most likely going to be a tight game. My response is that if the Pats score 40 points, 10 doesn’t seem like that much. I don’t care who the opposing team is, the Patriots can score that many points. Considering the -10 is going off at +140, you’d think you’d have to be a fool to accept those odds. This is what Vegas wants though. They want to offer a line that the public will jump on, +10, give you shitty money to take it, -160, and then when the bets come in on that side, they win because they are offering you less money if it happens, and they win when the Patriots cover. I don’t let that +140 number scare me. I’ve seen it far too many times not work out the way the books want you to think. I also think the +5 at home is too many to lay to the Falcons.
America cares about scandal and controversy more than it cares about its sports. With Manti T’eo’s imaginary girlfriend, Lance’s years of being a dope, and the fabulous timing of Crabtree’s sexual assault, we worry more about the 3 ring circus acts than the actual games and events. It’s not that I don’t think the stories are important because the truth needs to be told. We just get distracted with all the extra-curricular activities that it detracts from the sports. Plus people, the media, benefit so much from these outrageous stories that they start looking for them and creating them. It’s sick.
Let’s just look at each example briefly. The hoax created on Manti T’eo is what I’d call taking a prank too far. Unless of course he was in on it. “The sheer quantity of falsehoods about Manti’s relationship with Lennay makes that friend, and another relative of Ronaiah’s, believe Te’o had to know the truth. Mostly, though, the friend simply couldn’t believe that Te’o would be stupid enough—or Ronaiah Tuiasosopo clever enough—to sustain the relationship for nearly a year.” I can’t even follow all of the twisted aspects of this case but I’ll tell you the absolute truth, I couldn’t give a shit about it. Waste of time on all accounts. #teoisanidiot
Lance Armstrong is easily one of the biggest lies of the century. How he adamantly denied the use of performance enhancing drugs for all those years makes him perhaps the biggest asshole next to Barry Bonds. I think it’s fine that he came out and admitted to all the cheating because he probably couldn’t live with himself. It’s lifting a burden off that Barry is just strong enough to live with. My favorite part about Lance is that the United States doesn’t even care about cycling. 409,000 people tuned into the Tour De France last year. The Superbowl gets 100 million viewers. He tarnished the global reputation of the United States so that now the rest of the world looks at us (more) negatively than they already do for something the general public could care less about. #liestrong #lancedropestrong
Just to close with Crabtree. Pick a better time for this goddamn story. Jesus, the guy just spent the last 4+ months playing football to get to this point, he’s shining, and now you bring this shit on him. Couldn’t this wait? Some random sexual assault by some stupid, money hungry hoe? #pimptree
Today was the first day I put in time serving my community towards the 25 hours I must do before February 9th. I was only able to put in 3 hours but at least it was a start. I’m working at a guild house in the Fairmount area mostly doing landscaping work. I’m working with a girl fresh out of college who is looking to go to med school and serves at the guild house’s communication with any volunteers. Not surprisingly, I’m the only one for this winter portion. This actually works out fairly well considering I force her to take on projects that would most likely be put off to some other time. Today I spent my time shoveling grass out of a 3′ x 20′ bed that will be turned into an asparagus garden. The work was fairly straight forward even for a gardening dolt like myself. It was pretty much how I expected it to go.
I think the bigger picture of this exercise is giving back to the community, something that I rarely do. Sure I’ve run the big shoe game with Jkash at a Ronald McDonald facilty, or walked for a cure with my fraternity back in the day but for the most part, I don’t partake. I suppose there is something fulfilling about working for a better cause even if it’s only so a guild house can eat asparagus. I still have 22 hours to go in the next 3 weeks so I may grow tired of it by then but for the most part, it was a worthwhile exercise.
If you haven’t noticed, which I’m sure you haven’t, I’ve been trying to turn this into more of a barstool fashioned “blog”. Commenting on topical issues or random thoughts that come into my mind that I think would be neat to write about. It’s not surprising that these type of sites are more popular than when I mindlessly write about my daily life. That certainly doesn’t mean that I’m not going to comment on my day to day but it’s clear that unless it’s really interesting, it’s not what sells. All of these sites wouldn’t be moving towards that style if it didn’t read and sell better.
I prescribe to the principal that being yourself and doing what you think is always better than being a follower. What I’ve described above could be looked at as selling out. Attempting to be like something else. I disagree with this assessment because the key to success and improving is adapting. It’s viewing what others are doing and then implementing what they are doing right into what you do. This is called being smart. There is certainly a place for your own ideas but they can stem from a collection of everything that you encounter. Not everything has to be a completely unique idea to be yours.
One of the best questions to ask yourself is what do I want to be? What do I want my business to be? What kind of person do I want to be? What do I want this blog to be? A long term set of values are important to work towards in coming up with short term goals to achieve them. I don’t think most people think about this or they think too little about it. I think people want to got to school, find a job, make money, have a family, and grow old. The journey in between those steps is life and what becomes routine.
I want to be an educated, well rounded, generous, human being who turns a business into a money maker so as Forrest Gump says money becomes one less thing to worry about. When people talk to me I want them to walk away with a feeling that that guy listened to me, was honest, and seemed like a genuinely good person. I’ve already come to terms that I’m going to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. I don’t have the patience in any one activity to belong to the principal of 10,000 hours will make you a master of a subject. The list of things I can do well will just continue to grow as I get older because I’m determined to get better at everything. I want to die saying I’ve traveled the world, I’ve established close relationships, I’ve participated in what life has to offer, I died happy.
So just to conclude with where this post started about the blog. This blog just continues to grow. My grammar will continue to be bad because I never devote any time to getting better at it but the ideas within the blog will develop. The posts will become more interesting. I keep an eye on what people like to view and try to cater towards what people like to view. One day this site will get more than 100 people a day. It may not be today or tomorrow, but I promise this blog is one thing that won’t die because it’s my life no matter how many times I say I’m quitting. These are my ideas and thoughts. It’ll be my legacy, sad as that is but at least there will be something to show my existence for future generations. I probably won’t be looked upon as great mind or tremendous thinker, but to the people who know me and read this blog, you’ll know what I’m about and how I continue to improve in every sense of life.
This is a link to a story that is about a New York youth soccer club banning high fives and end of game hand shakes to prevent a flu outbreak. C’mon! Barstool finds stories like these and headlines them with “The Pussification of America Continues”. If we keep raising pussies, we are going to become pussies..
I normally don’t give a shit about stories like this but for some reason this one struck a nerve. I feel like this is keeping your kid sucking on your teet until their 10 and destined to be screwed up for life. Kids are supposed to get sick. It’s how your immune system grows stronger. Considering I didn’t miss a day of school my entire life, I feel no compassion for people who use illness to prevent them from doing things. Now that I have to read about over cautious groups and moronic parents stopping their children from one of the most common expressions of camaraderie for fear of the goddamn flu, it breaks me a little inside. I could see if they were catching the ebola virus, the bubonic plague or whatever was in that Michael Chrichton book about the Andromeda Strain, but the goddamn flu? Our country is raising wieners. You think the kids in China or the Middle East are worried about high fiving each other after scoring goals? WAKE UP AMERICA!
It’s funny because I didn’t enjoy Led Zeppelin growing up. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I truly discovered the power of getting the Led out. It started with Gusto giving me all their music on an external hard drive and then I read a biography and would listen to the music as their story progressed. Even after a good 3 or 4 years of solid enjoyment from Led Zeppelin, I’d still consider myself a novice. I’ll admit that I have hardly gotten into Physical Graffiti, Presence, or In Through the Out Door but I’m sure there are readers out there who have never even taken the time to listen any of the hardest rocking band on the planet. Without further ado, I’m going to bring to you my top 7 favorite Zeppelin songs in no order because that would be impossible.
Thank You
Ramble On
Rock and Roll
Over the Hills and Far Away
What Is and What Should Never Be
That’s The Way
The Song Remains The Same
Honorable Mention – Kashmir, Battle of Evermore, House of the Holy, Achilles Last Stand
