Google

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Browns Win, Oh Wait Nevermind

No they didn't win, in fact they actually came up with a new way to lose. They were actually down in the fourth quarter and came back to score a touchdown and get a two point conversion to go up by 6. Then they stopped the Lions with like 3 minutes left, but couldn't run out the clock so they had to punt back to the Lions. I'm not sure how much time was left at that point, but it didn't really matter. You see the Browns allowed the Lions to make it down to the 1 yard line before coming up with a stop as time ran out. Well it seemed like a stop, but apparently it was pass interference. So the Lions get one more untimed down. And they scored a touchdown to tie the game, then got the extra point to win 38-37. You see in the last few years I've gotten accustomed to Romeo ball, where you get really far behind then make a charge at the end, but still come up short. Apparently with Mangini ball you can actually take the lead, but if it looks like you might win - even though you couldn't run out the clock and I guess you thought throwing on 3rd and 5 was smart with a 6 point lead (it isn't you should run the ball, always run the ball, don't get cute) - you just commit penalties to keep giving the other team shots at the endzone so they can win. I didn't think it was possible, but way to disappoint me in a completely new way.

I also heard a story that some people went to a Browns game and the Dad got arrested and a kid got his noise maker taken off of him and broken right in front of his face, because "people aren't allowed to bring anything into the stadium". Now if this is true, this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, and if it happened to me I would quit rooting for the Browns right then. I mean if it wasn't painfully obvious that you have an organizational problem it should be after something like that. If you are going to put a team out there that is as bad as the Browns are now, you should let people bring in what ever they wanted to make the game more enjoyable. I mean let 'em bring in noise makers, or something that could give you some home field advantage. You need to be extra nice to the fans right now, because let's face it you aren't winning any new fans because of the awesome effort you are putting out there on the field. But you know I don't even blame the players, because the fact is that other than a few really good players here and there - Joe Thomas, Josh Cribbs and Shaun Rodgers - these guys just aren't capable of winning games. Right now Cleveland just has a severe lack of talent and that is the fault of the front office in my opinion and I don't think that Mangini is all he is cracked up to be. I would have rather had Mike Shanahan myself - a proven winner with a good zone blocking scheme that made any running back look good. Just ask the Browns about Reuben Droughns remember him, he rushed for like 1200 yards for the Broncos and the Browns traded their entire defensive line for him and he ended up doing squat for the Browns. I guess he did rush for 1,00 yards . . . once. Ok I'm done I need to think happy thoughts before going to bed.

Basketball '09

This is Sampson's first year of basketball and he is only 7, so I worry about pushing him too hard too fast and sucking the enjoyment out of the game, because right now I think he really likes it. You see, me and him play NBA 2K7, yeah I know it is old, but it serves its purpose, on the PS3 and he really likes that, and when we play outside I think he enjoys that too. Plus, of the sports he has played I think he most looked forward to playing basketball. I signed up to help coach too. What, I should be fine remember it isn't like they are 11 and 12 year-olds, only 1st and 2nd graders so I should be good, right? Well maybe I'll pick up a couple of new ankle braces just to be on the safe side. He had an open gym today, conveniently on Maw's 80th birthday (Happy Birthday Mom), but he did good. He just needs to work on his handle and getting stronger to push the ball up. Unfortunately they will always play on Sunday in this league, so no trips to Mom's on Sunday, but there are only about 4 teams so it shouldn't be too bad. I guess they play 16 minutes halves with continuous clock, on 8 foot rims. Should be good, hopefully he gets on a team were he can contribute. He said he didn't make as many baskets as he would have like too, well keep trying buddy you'll get there.

Parade Odessy '09

Well Peach is old enough to go on the float for the Dance Factory in local parades. Right now she only gets to ride on the trailer and the older girls dance behind. They did really well in the first two parades we went to this year, I mean as well as a four year old can do just kind of sitting there waving and being all cute and all. First we had the St. Clairsville parade on Thursday night and that was her first parade ever, so that was neat. Then on Friday we had the Wheeling parade, "the big time". I guess last year there were like 50,000 people that came out to watch the parade and judging from the traffic I would say it was pretty close to that again. While I was watching the parades, I realized that I'm really not a parade person. Not that they aren't nice, but I just wouldn't go out of my way to watch the old parade if I didn't have a personnel interest in it. I mean if they came up with a virtual parade that I could download or watch on YouTube then I might do that, but someone would probably have to send me a link. Just kidding, I probably wouldn't watch that either. One funny thing from the parades though, other that Moon Dog following Santa at the Wheeling parade which is tradition, was in the middle of the Wheeling parade there was like a color guard with a bag pipe player, and following them was a float for a hospital or something. But in between the two were two people dressed up as super heroes, wait it gets better. One was dressed up as Bat Girl and the other one was Spiderman, but it looked like a chick in the Spiderman outfit, plus one is Marvel and the other is DC comics, so there is like no continuity, but the funniest part was I couldn't figure out which float they went with or if they were just like their own float. I think that would be hilarious if they were just random people that kind of slide in between two floats dressed up as superheros. Kind of like parade crashers, but who is going to pull them out of the parade. I mean wouldn't that be great to kind of just randomly join a parade. That is a new goal of mine, to dress up as a super hero and just get in a parade, but I think I would need someone else to do it with me to kind of add legitimacy. I mean in these type of parades there are always random characters and I bet if someone asked you could just say you were with one of the floats, and if the people behind you asked you would just say you are with the people ahead of you and if the people in front of you asked you would just say you were with the people behind you. Genius.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

More from the Barn Painter

Well even though I'm not a huge Buckeye fan (understatement), I found this contribution from the barn painter to be very good and well worth the time to view. So head on over to youtube and check it out. Oh also if you are lucky you will even see a couple of vids of me in my youth. But you might have to look hard. Anyway here you go . . .



Also Go BLUE!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Just How Good is that Romo?

Did you know that Tony Romo ranks third in all-time passer efficiency rating. ALL-TIME. As Kanye would say "He is the Third best passer of all-time, ALL-TIME". This interesting fact was brought up today at work just to stir the pot a little. Apparently he is behind only Steve Young and Peyton Manning. I said he is also down on the list in a couple of other categories. Like did you know that the current active leader in rapes at the QB position is Ben Roethlisberger. Oh yeah everybody knows that. So I guess Romo is like tied for second in this category since he has none, along with the rest of the active quarterbacks in the league. Just another thing the Squealers are on top of in the NFL.

HESCAR boots Jimmie

In what can only be described as a desperate move by HESCAR to appeal to the old blog and all of the readership, Jimmie was forced out of the race Sunday. Well he was wrecked out on the third lap by a combination of two of my new favorite drivers Sam Hornish Jr. and David Reutimann. I had forgot the race started at 3:30 (dumb time to start a race, but HESCAR will rectify this next season when all the races will start at 1PM / 4PM / or 7PM) so Bo called and told that I needed to watch the race so I could catch Jimmie wrecking. Oh it was nice. I mean I never want to see anyone get hurt, but watching him wreck out brought a tear to my eye . . . tear of JOY. All I can figure is that HESCAR is trying to even out the Chase, so that it will look like Mark Martin has a chance to win before Jimmie pulls off a Miracle in the final race to get his fourth "championship" in a row. Yeah I put "championship" in quotes because had it not been for the chase Johnson would have 0 championships, and likely Tony would be winning his third this year. The two worst things to happen to HESCAR in the last 10 years were Jimmie and chase. Among other bad things was taking a second race off of Darlington for California, and taking Rockingham off the schedule completely in all series. You can't tell me that with the lucrative sponsorship agreements and television deals that actual gate revenue is driving these decisions. It is horrible for the drivers, horrible for the sport, and worst of all horrible for the fans. Hopefully HESCAR can pull their heads out of their exhaust pipes and get back to being a fan friendly sport like NASCAR used to be, instead of some bleed every dime out of every sucker by any means possible because it won't be long before people quit watching all together. Seriously I'm about done. No seriously this time, if Jimmie wins another what is the point. He will just win next year and the year after that too, because the chase is totally catered to him. Also Junior has a chance to win his first race of the year this week at Phoenix, same as he has had every other week this year. This is just a fun fact Sophie and I like to remind ourselves of at the beginning of EACH race. Also Bobby Labonte has a chance to win his first race of the season. Sorry Sophie.

Sampson the Ice-Man

Well Sampson is on such an ice kick right now that maw had to buy a new refrigerator just to keep up with ice production. Actually I think she just got it because her's was getting old but between Sampson and Peach when they go out there I think they eat a tray of ice. Just the ice, not like in a drink or anything just eating ice cubes. Sophie says she used to do that, so I guess they get that from her.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Bones

Sophie says she is sick of all the tension between Bones and Booth. It is driving her nuts!!! Just Hook up already.

Also on CSI she says she is ready to right a strongly worded letter. Not because it was too bloody or gory but because in the opening scene a Nikon camera got thrown. Better watch out CBS, Sophie didn't think too much of that. I told her I'm sure it was a stunt camera though and no high end photographic equipment was hurt during the filming of the episode. You might want to add that disclaimer though.

Tuesday Elections

Tuesday the Republicans won the Governorships of New Jersey and Virginia after taking a butt whooping last year in the general election. One other race of interest was the New York 23rd district for congress (not sure if that makes a lot of sense but essentially it was the 23rd congressional district of New York state). You see what happened was Pres Obama nominated John M. McHugh to the secretary of the Army, which vacated the position needing a special off year election to fill it. Now what seems funny to me is that there was no primary for this office rather the republican leaders of the district nominated Dede Scozzafava. And Dede happens to be a very liberal minded republican for this conservative leaning district. Plus the Democrats got to put their own liberal candidate. So now it was playing out that no matter who won was going to be more left leaning than the person they replaced. Well the conservative part of the republican party didn't want Dede to get elected so they got behind Doug Hoffman who ran as a conservative (in New York you can be a registered Conservative - with Hoffman and Sean Hannity they probably have like over a hundred registered). So within a month of the election a bunch of big name conservatives came out in support of Hoffman, only it was too little too late. You see the damage had already been done, because the republican party ran ads against Hoffman and in the last day of the race Dede dropped out, because I guess she didn't want to split the vote. The vote with her liberal counter part that is, because she ended up ENDORSING THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE. Let that sink in for a moment. The republican party spent over 900 grand trying to get her elected and then when the leaders of the party realize she wasn't what they wanted, she dumps them and goes with the democrat. Say what? That doesn't make any sense to me. I mean if I saw an election was lost and a group had spent a lot of money on me I don't think I would support someone completely out of the party. Unless you know I didn't really belong in that party anyway. So here is my theory - Obama nominates McHugh to the all powerful and coveted position of Secretary of the Army, and then works out a deal with the locals of the district to get someone elected who would be more inclined to vote his agenda forward. Now what the people of the district would have got in return I'm not sure, but I would bet (yes I said bet - you know what that means) that there will be some sweet kick backs coming to that district over the next year. I guess will just wait and see. My favorite quote from the whole deal was from former Gov. Mike Huckabee who said the Democrats didn't win it because they were smart, the Republicans lost the seat because they were stupid. Well Mike stupid yes, but just how sneaky the democrats were remains to be seen.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The 4th Worst Race in HESCAR History

Well this past Sunday's race was one of the worst I have personally witnessed. I would say it is probably fourth behind the New Hampshire restrictor plate race(3rd), the Kansas race of '07 (2nd) and Indy '08 (1st), but I never saw the New Hampshire race thus the "personally witnessed" disclaimer. Anyway I will fill this spot in later, if you get a chance to watch the two wrecks at the end of the race you should watch those as that was the only interesting thing that happened.

Ok it's later, lol. We were at my mom's house and because Talladega is such a boring race (except for the final 10 laps - normally) I decided we could leave with 48 laps left and make it home before the end of the race. My reasoning was because there is usually a couple of yellows from a wreck and sometimes a red flag, and boy was I right. I only made it home to catch the last lap, but still we made it home. This week HESCAR decided it wanted to make Talladega "safer" by putting a bigger restrictor plate in and telling the drivers not to bump each other in the corners like they normally do. Well all that worked for about the first 182 laps of the 188 lap race and then all heck broke loose. First Ryan Newman got flipped end over end, that is right end over end, then he landed upside down in the grass and couldn't get out. Well that was more than enough to draw out the usual red flag. Because there weren't that many laps left it set the race up for a green white checkered. Which normally would be interesting, except the rules that were set up shouldn't provide that kind of finish . . . or could they. Just ask Mark Martin what he thought of the end of the race as he was the second driver to end up spending a little time on his roof Sunday. Here is an idea HESCAR - take the plates off. That will spread the field out a little and the bump drafting won't be an issue. I would think you could make the engines smaller and that might accomplish the same thing, so as to put a cap on the top speed but leave the field separated, because some engines will be better that others. But what I really liked was when Jimmie said 'take a bulldozer to the corners to flatten them, because cars will have to slow down." To which HESCAR basically said that was the dumbest idea out there. ha ha. Nice try Jimmie. Anyway it was a dumb idea to tell the drivers to not do what they normally do anyway, because all it did was push the big wreck to the end of the race rather than somewhere in the middle, poor predictable HESCAR. You could have done that by just racing 50 laps and it still would have been as good of a race, plus I probably could have seen the whole thing at Mom's house. At one point the entire field was just riding single file, putting in laps - boring (unfortunately I couldn't take a nap during this as I was driving, but I bet if you were watching at home it would have put you right to sleep). Hey that gives me an idea, me and HESCAR can team up and make DVD's of the most boring races, this one, New Hampshire - any rain out race this year and sell them as sleep aids. Well be rich! Well I guess HESCAR is already rich, but it would help make me rich!

Ok new paragraph that one was getting a little long. So HESCAR has other problems too. It isn't surprising that Chad, er "Jimmie", is going to win his fourth championship since all the races are basically the same every year. What HESCAR has done is make some of the tracks completely invaluable and a driver can pick to just tank it certain weeks and not really matter. I mean let's face it, if a road course or Bristol or even Pocono were in the Chase instead of Martinsville, Dover and Lowe's that Jimmie wouldn't even finish in the top two. What HESCAR has allowed is that Chad can focus on just the last 10 tracks to build cars specifically for those tracks, and as long as they grab a couple of wins on the way there, no worries about not finishing in the top 12. Then when the final 10 races roll around there is Chad waiting to capitalize on all the suckers that spent time setting up cars for the road courses, pocono, Bristol, Darlington. I mean how awesome would it be to see the final race of the year at different tracks. What about a finale at Daytona a complete circle of a season with a wild card at the end of the year, man that would be awesome. Just move the Indy race to July 4th and problem solved. Or what about Darlington in the chase or Bristol just for a change of pace. I mean as long as the last 10 races stay the same there is a good chance that Jimmie is going to keep winning Championships*. You know that under the old points system Jimmie wouldn't even have one Championship. It is the equivalent to having the Superbowl at the exact same stadium every year, and every playoff game at the same place. Anyway one other thing HESCAR needs to do is change what happens after the first 26 races. They need to seed people based on where they finished the first part of the year. It is fine if they want to give an extra 10 for wins, but who ever is ahead should still get something for doing so well and putting on shows at tracks like Pocono, Bristol, and the road courses because lets face it, if it were up to Jimmie and Chad we wouldn't even watch those races. Well I have definitely cut back my watching this year, and if things don't change I probably really will be done watching because they have made the entire season pointless.

Betting @ Work

I had to teach my old buddy Chuck a little lesson last week at work. You see he though Cincinnati had been beat this year in college football. To which I said no they haven't. Well he was a little stubborn and didn't "believe" me, so I said "How 'bout we bet a piece of pizza on it?" Which he jumped on, because he thought he was right . . . but he wasn't, and I enjoyed a free piece of pizza for lunch. If he would have followed the Kirk Helfen Guide for Betting he wouldn't have been in that situation, see I only bet if I'm going to win. Makes it easier that way.

Back to Evony

Well the gang wanted to hook back up and play a little, so I decided to start playing again. This time though we went to server 91 and I'm now ChuckNoris. And Chuck Norris is pretty tough if you didn't know. Also blogging may take a little bit of a hit in the mean time. sry.