Facebook

About a month ago I was pressured by a co-worker to join Facebook. If you do not know of this, then allow me to enlighten you. It was started as a way college kids could keep in touch on line, now everyone has access and it has become a way to keep in touch with friends all over the map. I have found some people I had lost contact with so that is good, but I see a lot of downside to Facebook.

I get a lot of random request from people to be friends and I have split them into three categories: People that my other friends know, people I have never met and people I really don't want to be friends with. The last group is the one I am always troubled with. In all honesty Facebook isn't about friends so much, it's more about acquaintances. I've received a few request from people I work with or use to work with, sure I worked with them, but I would not call them friends. What do you do in that situation, I usually click the ignore button. If I don't really want to hang with you at work then why do I want you to know what I put on Facebook. I currently have 65 "friends," most are people I like to stay in contact with, old co workers, people from church and good friends. It almost feels like with some that if you even slightly know the person you need them to be a friend.

Maybe I'm old fashioned and have not fully assimilated to the concept. I do enjoy talking to people and knowing who they are without using email. Who knows, I'll continue to use it and I'll just continue to upset people.

What Are They Thinking

For some strange reason there are three people at the station that are former employees of WNWO in Toledo, Ohio (I am in this group). So when I was informed that WNWO might be pulled off of Buckeye Cable I laughed. From what I have read and was informed, WNWO wants to be paid to be on Buckeye Cable.


If you would run a cable station and had enough people wanting you, then you can ask the cable providers to pay you for their service. I believe ESPN generally garners around $3 per household. Then you have local stations, they are required by the FCC to be shown by the local cable companies... for free. You may be thinking that the locals are getting shafted, no not really. You see they get paid in ratings. When you fill out a ratings book or have one of those boxes that records what you watch, they get those numbers. Most people in Toledo have cable and do not go "off air" for their local stations.


So I find this situation hilarious, a station may refuse to allow the local cable system with 115,000 homes to show their programming. Never mind the news is dreadful, people will not be able to watch any NBC programming unless they unplug their cable and hook up some rabbit ears or their digital converter. I can see how they think they will get more money out of this, but if Buckeye Cable calls their bluff (and I think they will) then they will loose all those viewers and then loss all those ratings and lose money. WNWO is hoping people in Toledo will get mad enough that they will call Buckeye Cable and force them to relent and they will have to pay WNWO and they will actually be profitable for once.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, will the FCC force Buckeye Cable to pay and then we have a mad dash of other stations trying the samething or will Buckeye Cable just start showing the Detroit NBC station.

Greatest Season

With the unbearable heat of summer almost over we begin my favorite season... football season. I love me some football, and The Wife said something the other day that made me want to ravage her on the spot. "How much do you think it would cost of the football plan?" When we moved, we got a deal with Embarq to get Dish Network free for a year. The only problem is that we got a very basic plan that was OK, but did not have a lot of sports options. We found out we can upgrade to the Top 250 plan and holy crap is there a lot of sports and awesome channels! So for a little more money I now can watch every Bowling Green game that will be televised, The Wife and I also can watch all the Ohio State games. We do not have the ESPN plus, but I don't need it this year.

The one thing we do not have is the NFL package, and that's where Shawn and Melissa come in. You see they have Direct TV and Shawn recently will be moved off Sundays. So after they have baby Cash, The Wife can watch Cash and Shawn and I can watch football. All I have to say is my ass is going to hurt from all the football I will be watching. I might have to get a home nurse to roll me over so I don't get bed sores... FOOTBALL!!!!! WHOOOOOO!!

Lucy

Since we moved into the new house, we have neglected Lucy a little. It's little things like not taking her to the dog park or giving her walks. So last week Lucy started to act up. It started last week when she was left alone for 11 hours. She made a huge mess that included a bunch of those flavored packets you pour into water, so we now have a rug that ruined. The next day, she got a hold of a weight ball and poured all the sand out and it covered the bedroom. A few days later she destroyed a couple of books in the bed room. We could tell Lucy knew that she was in trouble, yet we couldn't punish her because it was our fault.

Friday we started to take Lucy out on walks, I walked her almost three miles and lets just say, she never moved from the couch till Mikki came home. This morning Lucy was wound up and Mikki had a headache so with a bad leg I had to take her on a walk. I had to take her, she was going crazy and this was they only way I could get it all out of her.

After the walk she is now laying on the living room floor. So the lesson of this story is, walk Lucy or she will destroy everything in the house.

Ouch Town, Population Me

Now that the Olympics are over, I should have more time and energy to write again, yet before I get to anything interesting I have to do a softball post. I know, my last post was a softball post, but I did something totally out of character for me... I injured myself.

OK, I know that is in character for me, but I wanted it to sound interesting. I was having a decent night at the plate. I went 2 for 3 with 1 RBI and 1 run. It didn't help much because we got crushed by a team that should not be playing in our D level. They were crushing the ball and everyone could field. Why are they playing us, they were too good. We are a bunch of crappy players that just want to play and hope that we don't get embarrassed. We were down to our last three outs and I got an up the middle single. The next batter hit a weak dribbler towards third and as I was about to hit second I felt my thigh/quad muscle pull and I screamed and went tumbling over second base.

You know it was bad when the other team asks "Dude, are you OK?" I try to walk it off and "rub dirt on it," but I pulled myself out of the game and I was near tears. I would rank this in the top ten most painful moments. It's right behind my knee popping which led to surgery, my tendon in my thumb and the X-ray tech popping the tendon back into place, slipping on an ice pack and falling down a flight of stairs ripping all the skin off my toe and breaking my foot playing basketball.

Why do I try and play sports, it always ends up the same way, me on the ground holding some body part. Yet I know I will try to play in our "playoff game" in two weeks and possible play in the fall. I better bump up my medical holdings next year.

Softball

We have completed eight games and we have only two games left (three more if we win the last one and continue into the playoffs). So far I have been improving, but I still... now do I say this... I suck. I'm batting 5 for 14 so my average is about .357. If I was in the majors I'd be an All-Star, but it's not, so in a low end softball league I'm sucking pretty bad.

Fielding is just as bad if not worse. In the beginning I could do nothing right at third base. Now, I only make maybe two or three mistakes a game. My biggest problem now is over throwing bases, or freaking out in my head and not throwing at all.

Luckily for the most part we are in a low competitive league and we for the most part have fun. Even with my bad play we are 3-5 and that's an improvement over the spring season when the team went 1-9.

Calling it!

It's over, I'm calling it and we have a winner. Shawn and Melissa will call their child Cash. Cash took an early lead and never looked back, the only question was would he get a majority. Within the last few weeks it would only take four votes to any other person to throw the race into chaos. Well, it got a little closer, but has has a 51% majority and the race is over. Nathan (13) almost lost second place to J Dog (11), it's pretty bad when the joke name almost beats you out. That's how bad the name Nathan is. Coming up in last was my favorite option Englebert (3), it took him nearly three weeks to get his first vote.

Behind The Spoof

About a month ago the minister came up to me and had an idea for a video. At the time it sounded great, until it was time to do the thing. As a lot of things, time and resources became major issues and it started to make me regret telling the church I knew how to shoot and edit video.

After all the arguing and gnashing of teeth, three videos emerged and I think they are pretty good. There are a lot of issues for a editing and shooting aspect, but considering some of the stuff I've seen our church and others use, this is near Academy Awards-esque for them.

The video concept is simple it's a spoof on Behind the Music and the Jonas Brothers that ties in the story of Jonah. I wrote out a rough script the night before we shot the video and luckily the three characters are really good at ad libing and taking my outline and going crazy with it.

So far the reactions I have heard have been positive, but most are from people I know or people who know the guys in the videos. I enjoy these videos and to be honest, I am glad this project is over.

On Line Games

I'm not a huge gamer, but at times when work is slow, I like to go on line and find an easy game to play to make the time go faster. Last week I found a new game called Now Boarding, you run an airline and you have to get people to and from their destinations. You may be thinking this is the stupidest game you have ever hear, but don't knock it till you tried it. All I know is that I can't stop playing the stupid game.

Then things got serious with the game, Shawn saw me playing it and thought it was stupid till he started playing. Now he is addicted and we have somehow turned it into a competition. I was in the lead through out the week with a score around 230,000. I was happy with the score, I played it a little bit over the weekend, nothing great, I thought that was a tough score to beat. I get a text message with a score in the 256,000 range. I go into attack mode and this morning I threw down a 275,000. Of course I sent that to Shawn and this is the response: I've now got my day off planned. He is going to try and beat me.

It's getting out of hand, yet I am not going to stop. I'm beating this will last the rest of this week and then we will move onto another game.

He's Back!

Thanks to the greatest co-workers EVER;

Gilbert is ALIVE!!!!!!!!

From what I have gathered Shawn read the post about how Gilbert met his maker and screamed, Gilbert is dead. A hoard of people came over and read the sad post and took action. A collection was made and these generous souls bought a new Gilbert. Hoozah co-workers, hoozah!

Now I have to work on the gnomadic gnome page with all the new updates.

Drive Home

OK, I wanted to do a wrap post on Monday, but because it took forever to get home, I'll wait till Tuesday. You see, when we left Tennessee it was around 5ish and we thought we'd get home around 10:30. Some how 10:30 ended up being midnight, I still can't figure it out. We made two longish stops, but nothing longer than a half hour. For some strange reason I felt like I was driving in place the entire trip. I never felt like I was getting any closer to Greensboro, once I got to Greensboro Durham could not get any closer. I'm probably the only person to get excited about getting to Durham.

I can't figure out what happened with the drive back. I have never had a drive that long take so much out of me. When I was in Toledo it was 5 hours from there to Ironton and I would do it after working overnights and it never felt like the drive on Sunday.

Way Above Par

On Thursday a bunch of us went golfing and to be honest the only thing that saved my game that day was the rain that forced us to stop during the 9th hole. The only word to describe my game was asstastic. I could not get the ball to go straight or more than 100 yards. I was so happy it rained.

Since we did not get to play all 18 we were given a rain check for Saturday, and I hoped things would be better. The only problem this time is the wound given to me by Gilbert in his death throws. My left ring finger is split open with a half inch gash. Any time I hit the ball wrong I felt it, and when I say felt it I mean near blinding pain. So at least I figured out what I was doing wrong and tried to correct it and not cause any more pain. By the 4th hole I started to get a little bit of a grove and could actually hit the ball. When playing with The Dad there is one rule... you don't out drive The Dad. I out drove him four times. He was not having a good day, he was playing with his younger brother and I think that sibling rivalry thing was getting to him and he was trying too hard. So you have his little brother sort of out playing him then you had me out driving him at times. Lets just say I think he was glad when we finished our 9 holes today.

Except for the pain, and the lose of about 18 balls over the two days (I did find 8 so I'm only down 10) it was a average day, but we were out and about and getting some exercise, that has to count for something.

Morning the Loss

I knew it might be a bad idea to take him tubing down a creek in the mountains, but I thought what could go wrong. Well, everything went wrong and he is lost in the river and will no longer see the light of day. Gilbert is no more!

Because of the rain yesterday the water was very rough and high and it was very hard for me to hold Gilbert, a camera and the tube, so when I flipped over, I could not get my balance with my hands full. I stumbled a few times before going head first into the water and Gilbert hit a rock and I felt his legs rip off then his head. I knew I only had a torso in my hand so I let go. It put a damper on any fun I could have, I lost a favorite item in my life. I know he's not a person, but he had meaning, and website. I'll probably buy a new one, but he will never be that Gilbert that drunken LSU fans loved to have pictures taken with or the one who almost fell into the riverwalk in San Antonio.

I will miss you, maybe someone will find your head and get freaked out. That would be a great end to a wonderful friend.

That's a lot of Pancakes

I love breakfast food, it's the one thing you can eat anytime of day. Can you eat pork chops at 8:00am? Well probably, but it does not sound right. Yet, pancakes at 8:00AM, noon or even 8:00pm sound awesome so I am all for pancakes. When we drove into Pigeon Forge I noticed a pancake place, then another, then another then another. I think within a mile of our hotel there are 12 pancake places! and according to google there are 590 in the area! Holy crap man, is there that much need for pancakes? after 500 did the next 90 go, you know I don't think the pancake market is fully tapped here and we need more house of pancakes!

I know there are a lot of tourist here, but to have 12 that close to our hotel is just insane, then you have to think about all the hotels that have breakfast, we get free breakfast at ours. I love the cakes of pan, but for goodness sakes, when you have more pancake restaurants than mountains, you have a problem.

Wow, pancakes sound really good right now.

Eating Out on Vacation

One of my biggest rules while traveling is that we do not eat somewhere we can eat back home. That means no chains, like Olive Garden, TGIFridays, or any other such place. I know those places are familiar, but you are in a different place and you have to get some local flavor and who knows, you might get a funny story out of it or find something new you like.

While The Wife and I were shopping we get a call that we are going to eat at 7:30 at Ryan's. For me this goes against everything I want for food while vacationing... It's a buffet and they are all over Ohio and North Carolina. There is so many places that we can go, I mean there are 21 pancake places within a mile of the hotel (Oh there WILL be a post about that). I start building up the snarky comments that will be flying during dinner. Then I start to wonder who was the culprit. We start heading that way and we call my sister Christi and ask if we are going to the right Ryan's and WHO PICKED IT! I get my answer and I immediately put away all my comments and remarks... it was The Mom. The one person I can not make comments too, any of the siblings sure, but not The Mom. I sucked one up for the team.