Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

Category: Thinking (Page 13 of 13)

How To Draw Flies Like A Pro

June 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I remember watching an episode of Cheers a long time ago, and one of the characters made the remark that, “you can get more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

Woody responded, “Yeah, but a dead squirrel gets the most.”

I think there’s actually some wisdom in that statement. A dead squirrel is much more useful to a fly than honey is. Honey just feeds the fly, but the dead squirrel provides it a place to lay eggs and reproduce–to allow its genes to continue. And you get used to the smell after a while I’m sure.

I think what I’m getting at here is that you don’t always have to be sweet, as long as you are useful. Or something like that.

Someone who’s articulate should take that idea, expand on it, and write a book.

I Feel Bad For You Son

June 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

A posted this a while back in a longer post over at that other place. Looking back, I think this graph which illustrates Jay Z’s problems is my favorite part of the whole post, and I can’t even take credit for it.

As you can see, “fools” and “foes” seem to be the two major stress points. We’d be wise to take note and do our best to avoid both whenever possible. The bonus is that doing so would leave us more time to deal with paparazzi, riffraff, and critics.

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Time Alone In The Car

June 17, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Just a few of the brilliant thoughts I had yesterday on my roundtrip journey to the ATL yesterday…

  • If HHH didn’t repeat himself so much, that 3 hour show would only last about 15 minutes.
  • Where did all these people in Atlanta come from?
  • Are they actually going anywhere, or are they just trying to impede me?
  • I’ve never seen so many deer eating on the side of the interstate. Do we need more either sex hunting opportunities to cull them?
  • Why am I not seeing many dead deer? With this many live ones it seems like a lot more of them would get hit.
  • How is it that I always end up stopping at this same gas station coming and going every time I come down here?
  • When you get right down to it, Hank Williams really is still the most wanted outlaw in the land.
  • Carlos Santana–I give him several chances, but he just doesn’t do it for me.
  • What happened to that Seventh Day Adventist billboard? You know the one. It always used to catch my attention.
  • Did we ever learn who it was that let the dogs out?

Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and More!

June 1, 2009 / / 2 Comments

From  No Silence Here.

Blogging is often cited in the obits of newspapers. Twittering is often cited in the obits of blogs. And now I’m hearing Facebook and MySpace cited as the killers of Twitter. Some soon-to-be freshmen in high school told me last week they’re not on blogs or Twitter. They’re strictly Facebook or MySpace.

And just wait for Wave to ramp up. I think it may eventually kill email, along with marginalizing all of these other communication tools. Ok, “kill” may be a strong word, but the future of communication definitely lies in a One-Stop-Shop, real time type of communication instead of these various distributed and semi-connected tools we’re using now.

In the future, every communication tool will be useful for 15 minutes.

Meeting Efficiency As Contact Sport

May 28, 2009 / / 1 Comment

I’ve linked to this Seth Godin post about meeting efficiently before, but it was probably on Twitter. Here’s more than 140 characters worth…

I’ve noticed a typical script most meetings follow:

  • Lots of time spent waiting on people to arrive
  • Meeting then starts with people absent anyway
  • Issues are identified and discussed relatively quickly by the folks who were on time
  • Someone shows up late, and they inevitably want to rehash the issues that have been identified and discussed while they weren’t there.
  • Issues beyond the scope of the meeting are raised, usually by one of the people who was late.
  • At least one person feels the need to continue the meeting for the entirety of its scheduled time with “filler” material.

It all pays the same to me–just some things I’ve noticed over the last 15 years or so. What is strange is that this seems to be a relatively predictable situation, yet there haven’t been many attempts to correct it or make it more efficient.

Maybe if a fist fight or sumo wrestling match were scheduled to begin on time at the beginning and end of every meeting people would be anxious to get their on time and get the meeting over with as soon as possible?

I don’t know what the answer is, I’m just throwing ideas out there.

Triathlon Training–How to Finish a Half Ironman MY Way

January 12, 2009 / / 4 Comments

NOTE (2.7.2014): I get lots of traffic on this post, but please remember it was written in 2009. I’ve learned a lot since this was written, and have gained some valuable race experience along the way. There’s much more sound advice in the articles listed here.

For example, I talk a lot about bricks in this article, but have since developed the opinion that traditional bricks aren’t that valuable for long distance triathlon training, at least for me.

Most of the text below is probably a lesson in what not to do, so read at your own risk. I leave it posted for two reasons–to give me a way to remember how much I’ve grown and improved, and because it’s probably good for a laugh here and there.

What’s “my” way? The fat and lazy way.

My buddy “Dirty Matt” is training for a half iron distance triathlon in May and was asking me for some advice. Why would he ask me instead of his other friend who does full iron distance races on a whim? Because I’m going to let him off easy. See, my training regimen relies heavily on rest and tapering. In fact, I like to start my taper a couple of months before the actual race. You definitely don’t want to show up tired on race day, right?

I did a half iron distance race in 2006, and I learned quite a bit about training for regular people who are short on time and long on injuries. It doesn’t hurt to be a little lazy and have a propensity for sleeping late either. I used this training guide as my base, but after a few weeks I tweaked it to fit my lifestyle body shape laziness schedule.

I’m making a couple of assumptions here about the person who wants to train my way:

1. You aren’t trying to win the race, but you want to finish with a respectable time
2. You can already run 8-10 miles at an easy pace without much trouble
3. You’re an ok swimmer. My method will NOT improve your swimming much. You don’t have to be fast, just comfortable with swimming 1000 yards.
4. You are fat or lazy by triathlete standards–it helps to be both

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Swimming

If you’re like me, when you first hear “1.2 mile swim”, it’s very intimidating. I promise you that when you finish training it will seem like nothing. In fact, my whole training philosophy is based on the premise that the swim is nothing.

Here’s the thing–if you didn’t grow up swimming, chances are you will probably never be great at it. In order to get fast you have to swim A LOT. I’m not really interested in that because (a) it’s boring and (b) planning for a 6 hour 1/2 ironman means you’ll be swimming from 30 to 40 minutes on race day. It’s just a warm up for the rest of the race. Losing or gaining 2 minutes or so in the swim is pretty negligible, and I want to get the maximum race time reduction for each minute spent training.

I went to a master swim class for a few weeks when I first started swimming, and the coach helped me work on stroke efficiency. The first day I swam one lap, and she counted 23 strokes for a length of the pool (25 yards). She stopped me, told me two things to change, and I was immediately down to 19 strokes per length. I kept going back until I was down to 15 strokes, then left with her tips and eventually got down to 12-13 on my own. All the while, my speed was improving. Makes sense, because I was not tiring out as fast.

I also started noticing that swimming “harder” didn’t gain me much time. It gained me a little, but not a lot. But swimming hard was jacking my heart rate up to ~160, while I could swim easy and keep it at ~120. All this work and training for, at best, a 5 minute gain on race day? No thanks. I worked my way up to 2,200 yard (1.2 mile) nonstop swims, and then did one swim a week of the full distance, making sure I kept my heart rate down. This was basically to keep myself mentally prepared to do it.

Cycling

The bike is where you can gain the most time. Again, I was aiming for a six hour race, and that was going to mean around three hours to cover the 56 mile bike ride. Ride your bike! Ride it some more! If I could change one thing about my training, I’d have spent more time on the bike. It’s not just that the bike is the longest leg of the race either. The bike doesn’t tear up your body like the run does, and it isn’t as boring as the swim, so the training is much more enjoyable, at least for me.

I also know that Dirty Matt is coming from the same place I was coming from as well, which is a pretty solid running base, and I think cycling is a great way to build on that. For me, the bike takes weight off too, which helps a lot with the injury issues I can have with training for the run.

I worked on controlling my heart rate on the bike too, due to the way I trained for the run.

Running

I love to run, but it tears me up, mostly because of my weight. And to be honest, these triathlon schedules take up a ton of time. Again, I’m just looking for a way to minimize my time on race day. Instead of doing separate run and bike workouts, I decided to just brick the mid-week bike rides with a 10% run immediately after. So a 30 mile bike ride would be followed by a 3 mile run, a 40 mile bike would be followed by a 4 mile run. It’s actually one thing I’m glad I changed from the training program, I’d done a few sprint tris and thought that those short runs would be no problem after a short bike ride.

I was wrong. Bricking the runs not only help your legs get used to the transition, but they give you a feel for how far into the run you will be before you legs feel normal again, which is a nice thing to have mentally.

Another change I made was to swap the weekend runs and bikes–doing the long bike on Saturday and the long run on Sunday. Sort of a “rested” brick. Maybe not a super smart move, but I was fighting off some injuries the whole time, and they didn’t get any worse, so maybe there’s something to it.

Other Considerations

I didn’t do ANY quality workouts. I think that’s something I would consider if I was going in to training fit enough to do the race, but I was building fitness for the entire duration of training and didn’t want to overdo it.

I don’t go back and pick up missed workouts unless they are the long ones. Missing a short bike ride or a short run isn’t that big of a deal to me, but the long ones have to be done. I probably would have been ok with even less swimming, but it helped mentally to do it at least once a week.

I did a few open water swims, just to practice spotting and going the right direction, which is tough for me. I still probably lost a couple of minutes in the race zigzagging. Dirty Matt lives on Maui, so open water swims are probably more convenient (and fun) for him than pool swims are.

Sorry this was so long. You could have probably already completed the whole damn race along with the training it the time it took you to read this.

Best Thanksgiving List Ever

November 26, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I’m not going to even begin to bore anyone with the old cliche’d things I’m thankful for. Family, health, friends, etc.–anyone can think of those. Besides, I wrote a nice Thanksgiving post last year. Nope, I’m going to get real. I’m thankful for a lot of things most people probably aren’t, so why not list those and make my Thanksgiving post a little different? Ok then, I will.

  • Nice ladies with coffee–I like nice ladies, and I like coffee, but when you put the two together you get magic! Nice ladies with coffee just give it away sometimes (I’m still talking about coffee). Other times, they will break the rule that says “you can’t get $.59 refills in Styrofoam cups” and let you do it anyway. This is especially helpful if you are driving to the ATL and are stopping for your 2nd or 3rd cup of the day.
  • Muscle memory–It’s frustrating to get older and not be able to the things you used to do as well or as fast as you could when you were younger. On the other hand, it’s nice to still be able to do them period.
  • La Gallina Turuleca and Zoboomafoo—La Gallina Turuleca has been viewed 11.5 million times. I think I’m responsible for about 9 million of those.  It stops the screaming. Zoboomafoo, while popular with the kid is actually a pretty decent show.  I was just saying last night while flipping through channels that Zoboomafoo is better than most of the other stuff on TV. Which brings me to…
  • Rock of Love Charm School–I’m thankful for this show because it makes me thankful for so many other things. First, it makes me thankful for Rock of Love, without which this show would not be possible. Secondly, it makes me thankful for every ex-girlfriend ever. Yeah, even “that one” wasn’t anything like these chicks. And all those ex-girlfiends make me thankful for my current girlfriend. Sure, technically we’re married, but since we still like each other so much it’s more like dating, which I’m very thankful for.
  • WordPress–Not just WordPress (which is free), but all the free WordPress plugins and WordPress themes as well. What a great, easily extendable platform! I’m thankful more people are catching on to how flexible and easy it is for people to get things done on the web with WordPress. The more people are empowered, the easier it is for them to get information out, and we all win.
  • Free speech–I’m really greatful that we’re able to sit behind our keyboards and cry “Socialism!” when we see it closing in on us. I’m really not sure why we’re still allowed to do so. It’s probably because big government isn’t efficient enough to stop us yet–they’ll have to spend a few years doing a study, creating a department, hiring a huge staff, and creating some regulation first. Oh, and taxing the shit out of us to pay for it all. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they really don’t know that all this stuff they’re doing is socialism. I never considered that possibility until this week.
  • Space…Fight!–This is quite possibly the greatest Facebook app ever produced. It’s a game that has no apparent purpose and cannot be won. What’s the point? I believe the point is to see how long you can stand to play this game. Can you stand to play it longer than your friends? Out of spite, I believe I can. However, I’m getting some stiff competition from one Space…Fight!er who just won’t give up.
  • “Change”–This word has given me so many opportunities to laugh this year, and the hits just keep on coming.  Only in America can more of the same be marketed as change and be bought by so many. It reminds me of Mick Foley rasslin as Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind. He wore different costumes as each character, but once the bell rung you just had a crazy sumbitch dishing out pain, no matter the getup. That’s change I can believe in.
  • People Who Subscribe to My Blog(s)–thank you, thank you, thank you!
Have a great, safe, and happy Thanksgiving!

Email, Blogging, and Twitter Explained

August 28, 2008 / / 0 Comments

SVD is documenting his forays into these mediums (where else) on his blog. All of these things mean so many different things to different people. Here’s how I like to describe them…

When I send you an email, it’s the equivalent of me inviting you over to the house for a cup of coffee. We’re sitting at the kitchen table having a conversation. This has a few implications. For instance, “thanks” is not acceptable for an email in its entirety. I wouldn’t invite you over to my house to say “Thanks” and then slam the door in your face would I? Don’t be surprised, however, if I come banging on your door to borrow an egg or some milk though. These are the emails where I ask stupid questions.

When I write something on my blog and people comment, it’s the equivalent of me standing out in my yard and talking to whatever neighbors happen to drop by to talk. I’m lazy, so I’m probably sitting in a chair instead of standing, but you get the idea. Anyone is free to drop by and discuss, even if they don’t live in my ‘hood. This has implications too. For instance, driving by and yelling “F You!” or walking up and trying to sell me Viagra means you’re going to be ignored. Also, my “yard” isn’t as nice or visited by as many passers by as some. See, my yard isn’t near an interstate–it’s more like a gravel road–so there usually aren’t as many people stopping by. On some days, I just sit out there whittling and taking naps all by myself. Other days I just stay inside and nap.  If you stop by, it helps to bring beer.

And Twitter? Twitter is like all of us are piled into a bunch of eighteen wheelers and talking on CBs with antennas so big that the whole world can tune in. Anytime something important happens, it will hit Twitter as fast as news of a Smoky seen setting up a speed trap. Anyone with their ears on will definitely know about it.

Wait, I have a better description for Twitter…

Twitter is like ham radio for people who can get a date.

Rules of CoWorking

July 16, 2008 / / 0 Comments

We’re putting together some structure and a website for our local coworking group, and were kicking the idea around about how to include people (or not). I’m a big fan of keeping rules as simple and minimal as possible. I figured eight rules were plenty…apologies to Chuck Palahniuk.

  1. The first rule of coworking is that you must talk about coworking
  2. The second rule of coworking is that you MUST TALK ABOUT COWORKING
  3. If someone brings in a box of donuts or pulls up a cool new website, work is over
  4. Any number of people can work at any time
  5. Any number of projects and businesses can be worked on at the same time
  6. No shirt, no shoes? Well, can you at least throw on a t-shirt and some flip flops?
  7. Work will go on as long as it has to
  8. If it’s your first day coworking, you have to work

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Passing a Cyclist

May 21, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Passing a cyclistPatrick Beeson has a nice article with some tips for drivers. It’s a good, quick list of pointers, but I’m assuming this will be of interest only to the drivers who don’t make a habit of yelling “Git off da roa-ohd!” or throwing stuff at cyclists.

I was riding a lot on the roads a couple of years ago when I was training for longer triathlons. I decided it just wasn’t worth the risk of getting hit by some a-hole after a guy was killed on one of the routes I rode often. I started riding on Cherokee Boulevard exclusively–plenty of space, and people are aware and considerate of cyclists there for the most part. That kind of sucks for longer rides, but the monotony built up my mental fitness and it paid off in races.

Sure, a cyclist has just as much right to be on the road as a motorist, but I’m still not comfortable putting my life in the hands of someone who doesn’t know or care about that fact. Drivers should actually be happy that more people will be on bikes. The decreased demand for gasoline will have prices falling in no time.

8 Shows That Would Be Better Than Rock of Love

April 11, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I’ll never be able to forgive myself for watching both seasons of Rock of Love in their entirety. The only thing I can do that would possibly atone for my actions is recommend a few shows to VH1 that may allow me to gain some of my self respect back. In no particular order, here are eight shows that would be more interesting and more entertaining than Rock of Love.

Nikki SixxThe Purity is Right With Nikki Sixx

Contestants shoot heroin with the Motley Crue bassist and try to guess it’s purity. The contestant closest to the actual purity level without going over gets to spin the big wheel, which contains various rehab packages. The grand prize includes detox and a spot on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. All contestants receive a complimentary double dose at the methadone clinic good for one visit only.

David Lee RothSurvivor DLR

Contestants are stranded on a deserted island with David Lee Roth. Instead of being voted off of the island, contestants remove themselves voluntarily. The contestant who can stand DLR the longest is the winner. The game gets harder as more contestants leave and survivors are forced to spend more and more time with Diamond Dave.

Kid RockThe Ultimate Fighter with Kid Rock

The concept is pretty simple–we follow Kid Rock as he tours the country’s Waffle House’s and nightly challenges drunks in pugilistic competition. A game show? Not really, although I guess you could consider anyone who doesn’t get Kid Rock’s bodily fluids on them a winner.

Ozzy OsbourneWhat’s My Line with Ozzy Osbourne

Unlike the original “What’s My Line”, contestants on this show simply listen to Ozzy and translate. Contestants accrue points based on the number of words in each sentence they are able to correctly identify. The winner gets to avoid ever having to know anything about Ozzy’s annoying offspring for the rest of their lives.

Lars UlrichName Buy That Tune with Lars Ulrich

Lars hosts this new version of the old classic, but with a catch. When a contestant successfully names a tune they are immediately swarmed by lawyers and retired concert security guys with RIAA t-shirts (sleeves rolled up of course). If the contestant is not able to produce proof that they actually purchased the song they’ve just heard, they must choose between being sued by Metallica’s attorneys or having the security guys bludgeon them with those big flashlights (after which you will be sued anyway).

Axl RoseThe Roadie with Axl Rose

This one is sort of like The Apprentice. Each night, Axl Rose will either cancel an appearance, no-show the event, or storm off stage pissed off. Axl will then decide which contestant was responsible for the mishap and fire one. The winner of The Roadie earns the right to be blamed at the next concert for Axl’s behavior, and subsequently fired.

Def LepppardCelebrity Arm Wrestling with The Drummer From Def Leppard

No commentary necessary. On second thought, why did I even post this?

The Biggest Loser

This one is special because it actually pits celebrities people who used to be in bands against one another to see who truly is the biggest loser, literally. It should probably feature the members of bands like Faster Pussycat, Enuff Znuff, Britny Fox, and Vixen

Why I Give Full Articles in My Feed

March 31, 2008 / / 0 Comments

With apologies to those who come here only for the ranting…

I have a plan to do a whole series of articles on search engine optimization (SEO) for bloggers. While the topic of full vs. partial feeds may not be directly related to SEO at first glance, I feel that it is in a round about way. After all, the goal of SEO and is to get more visitors to your site, and that is probably one of the goals you’d like to accomplish with your feed as well. I’m by no means saying that partial feeds are bad, and I think they definitely have their place. But for me (and probably most other bloggers) I believe full feeds are a more effective way to drive traffic. While much of what I’m about to say is based on experience, I believe I can back it up with logic and human blogger nature.

So first off, what’s the argument for partial feeds? It’s actually not a bad argument, and I used to subscribe to it myself. When I first set up my feed, I was sure that partial feeds were the way to go. I thought I had to do everything I could to force entice people to visit my site. There was no way I was going to give away all my content through the feed. Only after they loaded up the entire site, ads and all, would I give away my content.

But then it hit me–I’m giving it away no matter what. It didn’t take me long to realize that full posts in my feed were better than partial feeds, not only for my subscribers, but ultimately for me as well.

Good For My Subscribers

Anyone who uses an RSS reader is probably addicted to it. One of the first things we do after we read an article we like on a new site (especially a blog) is to look for the feed subscription button. And as a blogger, one of the first things I check every day is my FeedBurner stats, mostly out of vanity, because I’m truly flattered that people care enough about what I have to say to choose to subscribe to my feed. I feel like the least I can do for the folks who’ve paid me such a big compliment is to say “thanks” by making my site as easy as possible for them to read in the way they choose, and that means no ads in the feed as well.

But that means subscribers aren’t going to see any of the ads on my site in their reader, so they won’t ever click on these ads, right? Well…I don’t believe that’s necessarily true.

Good For Me

Think about it…the people who are subscribed to my feed are people who already may be interested in what I have to say. They are also likely to engage me in conversation by leaving comments on my blog. By giving them full posts in the feed, I increase the chances they will read everything I wrote. That increases the chances that they’ll want to comment on something I wrote, and that means they will visit my site. By contrast, a partial feed means that I have three or four sentences to entice them into visiting the site. Frankly, I don’t have enough faith in myself as a writer to accomplish that with every post.

An even more compelling reason–I think it’s pretty safe to assume that many of the people reading my feed are other bloggers. And while comments are great and encouraged, an even bigger compliment from another blogger is a link back from their blog. In fact, I’d much rather have a single link than ten comments. Again, providing the full feed increases the chances that someone will read something they’d like to write about on their own blog.

How do links back to my blog help me so much? Obviously, exposure to the the other blogger’s readers has a lot of value, but there’s another reason, and this is where the SEO part comes in. Search engines (especially Google) see a link as a “vote” for a site. So a link increases my “clout” with search engines, which means that I can greatly increase search engine rankings, which greatly increases my traffic. And I have to believe that the random visitor from a search engine is less familiar with my site layout and less likely to be wise to blog ad placement in general. This means that they are more likely to click on an ad than a regular subscriber who visits my site every day (because I don’t provide full posts in my feed) would be. More search engine traffic also increases the chances that I’ll get even more subscribers–rinse and repeat.

It’s win, win, win.

Full feeds reward loyal subscribers with the ability to read your site with ease. In my case, this includes keeping the feed ad free.

Full feeds reward you directly by increasing the chances your subscribers will visit your site and leave comments. One way conversations are fine, but I have those in my head all day, and sometimes I get tired of hearing only myself.

Full feeds increase your chances of getting back links, which increase your search engine rankings, and ultimately your traffic. Back links increase your exposure to other bloggers’ readers, and search engines are an excellent source of readers who would never find you otherwise.

I hope this helps those of you are trying to decide whether to use full or partial links, and I really hope I’ve convinced those of you who to whom I subscribe and are currently using partial feeds to give me the whole thing in my reader!

5 Reasons Bret Michaels is the Lamest “Rock Star” Ever

March 23, 2008 / / 2 Comments

I remember when Poison was really popular and I thought they were stupid. Mostly it was because I was a music snob back then, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that they just sucked.

Now we have Rock Of Love, and honestly, I can think of 5 people I know right now who are happily married with kids and regular ol’ jobs who act more like rock stars than Bret Michaels. I had Easter dinner with one of them (and our wives and kids) today, after he got out of church of course. I think we drank enough beer between the two of us–it had to have been 2/3 of a six pack–to put Bret Michaels under the table.

I wouldn’t let this guy be a roadie for a boy band–that’s how NOT Rock Star he is. I submit these five facts for your consideration.

1. He has no game. None.

You would think that after having girls throw themselves at him for a few years in the 80s, he would at least have a little bit of game. This guy couldn’t close the deal with a drunk hooker if he had crapped crack and pissed liquid gold. Want to see a rock star with game? Give me (of course) David Lee Roth.

2. No famous chicks want to date him

Bret Michaels is was actually attractive and famous. And he has to go on TV to get a date? Yeah he dated Pam Anderson (briefly) a long time ago. But my guess is she quickly figured out how lame he is (see reason #1). Even the girl he picked in the first season of Rock of Love didn’t want to date him, presumably because she was already too famous for him. Let me have Rick Ocasek, Billie Joel, Adam Clayton, Kid Rock or instead of this Z-list supporter.

3. He took the girls’ exes to Dave and Busters.

Not a trip into and out of Vegas for a weekend on a private jet. Not a run to Tijuana to get tats and piercings. Not even a strip club. Dave and Freaking Busters. Give me a break. Nothing says ROCK STAR like sipping on a Zima and playing a few rounds of skee-ball and wak-a-mole, huh? Instead, I’d like to see Lemmy from Motorhead. Yeah, he’s not going to go anywhere uber-cool either, but he’ll show up with a cooler full of beer and keep you up all night telling funny stories and burning you with cigarettes when he catches you nodding off. That’s cool.

4. He’s never fought a member of Motley Crue

As far as I know, he hasn’t fought anybody. Not that I’m surprised by that–I’m sure he’d get his ass kicked. But he’s never even shown that he has a temper. I’ve never heard stories of dressing rooms being trashed. I’ve never heard of him being thrown out of a club for breaking a beer bottle across someone’s face. Nothing. I’d so much rather watch this show with Tommy Lee, who I bet has fought EVERY member of Motley Crue at one time or another.

5. He’s never been to rehab

That’s actually admirable for people like me and you. But this is America. We like our rock stars either troubled, violent, or toxic–preferably all three. He’s never even been drunk on his own “party like a rock star” TV show. I have a feeling that “Bret’s Brew” is actually 30% lemonade, 30% fruit punch, 30% Sprite and 10% soda water. Give me Bret’s old guitar player, C.C. DeVille in his place. At least there’s a chance he’ll go on a coke binge and freak out right in front of our eyes.

This Thanksgiving Post Trumps Them All

November 20, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Earlier today I started on a post about Thanksgiving, how it is my favorite holiday, a truly American holiday, etc. Then my aunt forwarded this little excerpt about Thanksgiving that my grandfather wrote a few years before he died. Boy did my post look stupid.

I’ll stop writing now. His words are much better than mine.

In 1944 as a soldier in the U.S. Army, we left San Francisco, California in February headed for somewhere in the Pacific Islands to do our bit as Air Borne Engineers to rid the islands of invading Japanese.

It was a sad sight as we stood on deck looking back toward the U.S. to see the Golden Gate Bridge sink slowly out of sight as the Pacific Ocean water raised in the horizon. I think our thoughts were unanimous that we may never see The Golden Gate again.

After 22 months of service in New Guinea and the Philippine Island, we had finally liberated the islands and the Japanese had surrendered and the Army began demobilizing.

On November 5th, I boarded the USS General Collins in Manila Bay to start the long journey home. We took the Northern route which according to the curvature of the earth was the shortest route. Somewhere around the Aleutian Islands, we hit a typhoon. Reports were that waves of 50 foot engulfed the ship and we were hold bound for a long period of time. This was the longest period of scare that I went through. Most scares were short lived. Here I was headed home but can we make it? Thank God, we did. It took us 16 days to get back to the United States.

The last day of our 16 day journey we were in the chow line for our Thanksgiving Day dinner with turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, a regular Thanksgiving meal feast. It was Thanksgiving Day, Thursday November 22, 1945. A call came down from the watchman in the crows nest that the Golden Gate was coming into view. The chow line disappeared. Remembering the time involved watching it sink, I knew I had time to eat so I went straight to the serving counter and had my choice fill.

I went out on deck after I had lunch and the Golden Gate was slowly rising out of the water. The closer we got to it, the higher it rose from the water. As I watched and my heart beat became faster and I became happier. It dawned on me that the majestic portals under the canopy of heaven which we must pass through was the reward of peace that we had victoriously won as victors of the “War to End all Wars, WWII.”

Dinah Shore was on the deck of the tug boat which met us to help with the docking. She sang and welcomed us back to the state side. We debarked on to a ferry which carried us to Pittsburgh, Ca. There, we were picked up by trucks and carried to Camp Stoneman.

For the dinner that night, we had steak fried to order with all the trimmings and all the fresh milk we could drink and all the ice cream we could eat. Quit a treat after 22 months in the tropics.

Thanksgiving has a lot of special meanings to me. A lot to be thankful for. I love to be with friends and family. I love to eat, hunt, relax and be selfish when I boast that Thanksgiving means more to me than any one else in the world!

This time of year is a very sentimental time for me. November 5th leaving Manila headed home, November 11, Veterans Day, November 22nd, landing in the USA. Every Thanksgiving is November 22nd for me. December 5th, I was discharged from the Army, December 7th reached home. Remember Pearl Harbor.

I really should post more of what he wrote in the future. This one little piece says a lot about him.

Remembering the time involved watching it sink, I knew I had time to eat so I went straight to the serving counter and had my choice fill.

If I’m lucky I’ll one day develop the patience and common sense that he had.

More Evidence That Rickey Be The Greatest

August 22, 0207 / / 0 Comments

The WSJ Numbers Guy, Carl Bialik, talks about the impressive numbers that Jose Reyes is putting up this year in stolen bases and the growing success of stealing in general.

It’s no surprise that Jose Reyes has stolen 63 bases and been caught stealing just 15 times, for a success rate of 80.8% — Reyes is leading all of baseball in steals.

That is impressive, and I’m not taking anything away from Reyes. But think about this…Rickey Henderson had the same success rate as Reyes, 80.8%, over a 25 year career! Additionally, while Reyes is leading the majors this year with 63 SBs, Rickey stole 130 bases in 1982!

Rickey also holds the records for most career steals (1,406), most runs scored (2,295), most postseason stolen bases (33) and several other records.

Rickey would probably still hold the record for career walks if not for Barry’s help from “the cream” and “the clear“. Rickey earned his walks by working the pitch count, and still holds the record for unintentional walks (2129).

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again–Rickey is the greatest. If you don’t believe me, ask him.

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