Shaving stuff.

July 14th, 2010

Just a few days ago, I decided to change my shaver back from electric to regular plain old disposable shaver/cream. I got a Sensor Excel, somehow, in 1998. I think Gillete might have sent it to me. They still make the blades so I was able to get a five pack at Wal-Mart. I really don’t bother with upgrading to the latest and greatest model that the shaving companies have come up with. Sure maybe a young man today who’s just reaching the age in which he needs to shave might want to get the latest and greatest in order to insure the longevity of the holder part that stays around forever.

So no sooner do I do that than this article appears. Just get something easy to use that you can replace the blades when they go dull. In other words, just use common sense.

I better get to bed. Got a long drive tomorrow. To Pittsburgh.

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Pirates stuff.

July 11th, 2010

First of all, Dejan over at the Post-Gazette just wrote that Jeff Karstens was the first half’s MVP. That activates the hilarity unit. He had a few lucky starts and that makes him a MVP? The guy certainly has the mental attitude to be a starter but not the stuff. He’s only a starter because someone has to start and it might as well be him. But I’m not really sure who would be a good first half MVP for this group. Maybe McCutchen. Also, Neil Walker ending up at 2B and doing a good enough job to get rid of Iwamura is a gaffe as well while the whole Dana Eveland mess was a good move by the Pirates. And his logic for it seems kind of convoluted. Also a guy who spent half the first half of the season out with an injury shouldn’t be a goat.

Then there’s Arthur Rhodes. He was part of the Jason Kendall trade mess. Kendall was traded to the Athletics after the 2004 season for Mark Redman and Arthur Rhodes. A few weeks later, Rhodes was flipped to Cleveland for Matt Lawton. Lawton was traded later that summer for Jody Gerut who played less than 10 games with the Pirates before getting injured and then leaving the team. Anyways, Rhodes is going to be playing in his first All-STar game this year at 40 years old. Pretty cool.

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Speeding ticket.

July 7th, 2010

So yeah, on Saturday night, I got one of those. It kind of sucked. At first I thought it was $148, but I looked at the wrong place. I finally looked at the damn thing last night and it’s $119, but if I take it to court it’ll cost me $148.50. Uh, that seems wrong.

Some funny things from it:

1. I admitted to the cop that I was going to Club Shakers, which is a local strip club. He told me he catches a lot of guys speeding there. To make matters worse, I got there and they were closed. Even though they’re supposed to be open from 7 until 2 Thur-Sat. Assholes closed on a holiday weekend. Also married guys are lucky, they can get sexed up whenever they want.

2. I lied to him about not knowing the speed limit. But it’s a joke, if you go south on Highway 61 right after it divides from Highway 151, it should be 65 MPH right away. Instead they wait a mile keeping it at 55 and then change it to 65 right past the airport driveway. I think they do that just to catch speeders there. Especially since when you head west on 151 it changes to 65 right away.

3. So I looked it up on the Iowa Court records website thing and it says my last speeding ticket was in October of 1999. The cost for it was $28. How does a ticket go up $91 in 10.5 years? I mean that’s insane. If adjusted for inflation, the $28 from 1999 would today be almost $37. $119 in 1999 would be almost $91. When I mentioned the police guy, I mentioned that’s a lot more than my last ticket and he said that they just raised the prices on July 1st. Ha!

4. At that point I said I hadn’t had a ticket in over 10 years. He said “Well, the state has to get it’s money somehow…” I see, the money isn’t mine, it’s their money and they’re just getting it from me, as much as they need. If you’re careful, the state won’t get too much of it’s money from you.

5. “…because the state of Iowa is broke, ya know?” Oh, so the guys I didn’t vote for who are running the state are doing a bad job and therefore the guys who are going a little fast have to pay for it? I mean, shouldn’t those dumb fucks who can’t figure out how to stay within a budget have to pay more? The other funny thing is that the guys who are going a little fast aren’t costing the state anything. I mean, shouldn’t the taxes for people with kids go up unless their kids are going to private schools?  Why should a single person have to pay more taxes for other people’s kids to go to school? It’s bullshit.

6. So the state is going broke and what kind of state vehicle is he driving? A giant, gas guzzling SUV. Are you fucking kidding me? An SUV? I mean SUVs are fucking expensive and they use up lots of gas, which cost money. I mean are you telling me the state is going broke and you’re driving that money wasting vehicle? Nice planning, dumb ass state government. They’re trying to make me feel bad about paying a speeding ticket.

Now for something completely different.

Another thought. I was watching the P&T Bullshit episode where they talked about teen sex and one of the girls they talked to said some guys sent a picture on his cell phone of his area and she thought it was funny because he was proud of it when he shouldn’t have been. I bet the camera cuts off a few inches there.

Ya know, like how camera adds a couple…hundred pounds when you have clothes on.

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1/2 over.

July 5th, 2010

I remember a few weeks ago thinking there was over 100 games left to the season. I couldn’t believe that there was so much left. Now that it’s past the half way point it seems like it’s time to get ready for 2011.

So how’s everything going? I’d have to say worse than I expected. Although the past week was pretty good, the Pirates were playing the Cubs and Phillies, two teams in huge declines. Then the rest of this month there are a lot of games against the Astros and Brewers, so the next few weeks shouldn’t be too terrible. After a very rough start for Pedro, he’s started to turn things around the last week. Milledge has picked things up, although he still lacks power. Tabata is doing as well as can be expected for a 21 year old and both McCutchen and Jones continue to do well. What’s really killed the team this year is the starting rotation. The team is getting killed by the 5th inning a lot and then they’re wearing down the bullpen. So clearly, pitching is a problem that needs to be addressed by the start of next season.

I think that JR actually made a good point last week. The Pirates are making a lot of mistakes due to youth and inexperience. If they can avoid that, then maybe they can have a decent second half.

Meanwhile, like I predicted before the season, the Reds and Cardinals are leading the division, although both the Brewers and Cubs aren’t doing as well as I thought they would and the Astros are doing better than I thought they would.

The big problem with the Cubs is that they’re old. Looking at their starting 8, only two are under 30 right now, Geovanny Soto and Starlin Castro. Besides Castro, they are an aging team that’s only going to get worse as they get older. And even worse, they aren’t going to be able to trade most of the guys on the team as a lot of them have huge contracts that last a long time. The Cubs went all in for 2007 and 2008 and now they’re reaping the consequences of not planning long term past 2008. Also Carlos Zambrano is being a bit of a jack ass, which doesn’t help anything. However they did get lucky with Carlos Silva, but that isn’t going to last forever either.

Overall, right now, I think the Pirates have a much brighter future than the Cubs do at this point.

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Epic fail?

July 1st, 2010

Check this out:

Ok, he says his destination is Bay 12 and where does he end up? Blue 10! A few theories here. Either the continuity person on this show could be legally arrested after that huge faux pas. Or, Babylon 5 is a government run installation and we all know the government’s stuff never works right. Is the transport tube ending up in the wrong place just an example of government incompetence?

Or is Bay 12 somewhere in Blue 10? You’d think it’d be in Blue 12, but what the fuck would I know? I don’t have a map of Babylon 5.

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The weekend.

June 29th, 2010

Big weekend. On Saturday we went to the Brewers-Mariners game in Milwaukee. We first went to the Miller Brewery and had some beer and went on the tour and stuff. Their tour wasn’t nearly as good as the Budweiser tour I took last year. They both handed out free beer. But I think the cool thing about the Budweiser tour was that they showed pretty much everything and there was just more stuff to show.

Miller had two different movies and they really didn’t show all that much. The only unique things about the Miller tour was that Miller had some really old caves they used to store the beer in because the caves were cold and they showed the warehouse where all the beer was before shipping. That place was gigantic. I mean it was huge. Really gave a great perspective on how much beer they make in a day.

We go to the stadium about 45 minutes before the start of the game and we grilled up some food and sat in some lawn chairs. I bought a grill last week and it ended up making some pretty tasty food. I was pretty happy that everything went well. After we ate, the grill cooled off pretty fast because it was a gas grill and by the time we cleaned up and got ready to go inside it had cooled off. The game itself really wasn’t all that interesting considering it had two teams I really didn’t care about. I was glad to see the Mariners win because the Brewers are in the same division as the Pirates. The seats were nice because they were in the shade the whole game and stuff.

When the game was over, we drove over to downtown and saw the lakefront. After that we drove pretty much straight back to Iowa.

On Sunday we went to a wedding. It was cousins wedding. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go or not. I really don’t know her that well and it was about 1.5 hours away, in Cedar Falls. My sister talked me in to going so that her boyfriend wouldn’t get bored. It was a pretty good wedding. The ceremony was at a theater and the reception was at a ball room outside of town.

On the ride home we watched Field of Dreams and then we played some Trivia Pursuit at home, which I won and then finally got to bed around 1:00 in the morning.

So yeah today was back to normal which is nice.

Oh, 11 days ago I reached level 80 in Warcraft with my very first character. It’s really different now. There’s no more experience points and so I spend most of my time doing dungeons and stuff. I’ve also done a lot of fishing in the game. And I’ve kind of just screwed around. Another nice thing is that it seems like quests are handing out more gold when ya do quests at level 80 since you’re not getting experience points anymore.

Also I finally got the delicious chocolate cake recipe this morning. But it’s a total lie.

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War, What is it Good For?

June 19th, 2010

So yeah, it would seem that the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are at total war with each other. The Post-Gazette started it with unsigned editorials insulting the Pirates for personnel moves and telling owner Bob Nutting to sell the team. The Pirates kept it going by resigning both Neal Huntington and John Russell this past October through the end of 2011 and not telling the P-G or anyone else until this past week. Really though, contracts in baseball are about as useful as contracts written by 5th graders. The team could fire anyone at any time for no good reason. The only difference between them and regular employees is that regular employees usually don’t have contracts saying that the company will pay them until the contract ends.

So after both Bob Smizik and Ron Cook threw a hissy fit about that, some mom called up and told a sad story about her son getting fired from the Pirates. He was working as a mascot. He was fired because he wrote disparaging remarks about the organization on his Facebook page. Of course that’s pretty silly and seems kinda thin-skinned of the Pirates to do that, I mean it’s not like he was selling to cocaine to the players. So not only does the Post-Gazette write a story about this, but someone in Pittsburgh told me that they have it on the very front page of the paper on the top half of the paper.

I know a guy who got fired from a job for comments on his blog. Ya know what? Not only did the local newspaper not put that story on the front page, but they didn’t even write a story about it. I guess they have better things to do than insult a local company for firing an employee over his blog. But it would seem the Post-Gazzette just has a huge ax to grind.

But it’s really frustrating to me because after years of them kissing Dave Littlefield’s dumb ass and not really questioning anything he did until Draft Day 2007, mostly because they were still part owners of the Pirates, they are now acting like the current management team which is trying to fix the organization after years of neglect are a bunch of criminals. It’s really a shame that Dejan keeps working there, he could probably do so much better. I honestly don’t care if you’re skeptical of the Pirates, but they are doing things the way Bobby Cox did in Atlanta in the late 80′s to fix the Braves or the way the Pirates of the 50′s did to fix the team back then. So to be clear here, skepticism: good. Bullshit: Bad.

(Seinfeld joke title FTW!)

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Government getting in the way of oil spill cleanup?

June 16th, 2010

Unbelieveable…

Foreign companies possessing some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships say they are being kept out of efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf because of a 1920’s law known as the Jones Act — a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers.

So much for doing everything they can to clean up the mess. Sure they are, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of arcane and stupid laws from a century ago that protects unions and corporations from competition.

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Alvarez is in the ‘burgh.

June 16th, 2010

Exciting day, Pedro Alvarez has made it to the majors. It’s unlikely that we’ll see any more big call ups this year. And Alvarez isn’t gonna tear it up right away, but like most players not named Andrew McCutchen he’s gonna have a period of adjustment. Also they released Akinori Iwamura so it would appear that Neil Walker is the 2B of the future, for now. Damn shame with Iwamura though, he probably just hasn’t gotten over that knee injury and I can relate to that.

But the game is being sort of ruined by the White Sox dumb ass announcers. Did you know that Alvarez was drafted second after Stephen Strasburg? I didn’t know that either. I guess Baseball-Reference.com is just wrong about that. And so is my own fucking memory. I mean, I remember the 2008 First Year player draft and Alvarez was selected 2nd after Tim Bekcham. The 2009 draft had Strasburg followed by the Mariners taking Dustin Ackley, the Padres taking Donovan Tate and the Pirates taking Tony Sanchez. Ok, they made a simple mistake, which a lot of fans could make. But these guys are announcers, they should know more than the average fan sitting at home.

Hawk is constantly losing count of how many outs there are or what the count is. “And that’s two outs. Oops, I mean 1 out.” and “That’s a 3-2 count, I mean 2-2 count.” It’s really funny when it’s the first batter of the inning. How the hell is he losing count already? Is he sitting in the booth reading the newspaper or something?

Also Duke fucking sucks tonight. I guess last year really was a fluke and they should have traded him when his value was high. He stated out well this year, but lately he’s been terrible. I mean he’s not Charlie Morton awful, but he’s just not good. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the 2006, 2007 and 2008 seasons.

I went to the Hay Expo today. I saw a robotic machine that can milk cows for the farmer. It can analyze for problems with the milk and dump it if it’s no good. It’s really an amazing piece of equipment. It made me think of this poster. Also, the mixer wagons they’re making these days are so much better than the ones they used to make. The cool thing is that you can dump all the feed out in one trip along the feed bunk instead of how we have to make about 10 or 11 trips back and forth these days.

But I hate the way some person kept telling me how to drive today. Don’t follow that car so closely. I’m about 60 yards behind him. I’m not following him closely. Or like complaining that I’m driving over the center line. Um, you’re sitting on the right side of the truck, it might look like I am, but I’m not.

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How to do a dungeon quest.

June 14th, 2010

Recently in Warcraft I’ve been spending a lot of time doing dungeon quests for my Tauren Druid. It’s like a whole other part of the game to explore. Most I just use the random dungeon finder, which is an easy way to from a group. I just do the healing. So far I only got wiped twice. One time it was Blackfathom Deeps which only happened because the tank pulled too many mobs and then when we all died, he left the group. The other was in Stormwind Stockade, which sucked because then you spend about 15 minutes running back from the SW edge of Elwynn Forest.

So anyways, if you’re going to do some dungeons through the random dungeon finder, be sure to watch this video to prepare yourself for the experience (which I think is the funniest Warcraft related video ever):

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