For A Month...

So, I'm making an interesting decision today... one that should be tough to start... but good for me in the long run.

And that decision is:

To not watch any TV or listen to any music for the month of November.

Seems kind of intense doesn't it?!?! Well, at least if you know me, it should seem intense. The idea behind this is to free myself from distraction. TV and music can sometimes simply clutter the brain by not really allowing oneself the silence it takes to hear your own thoughts and heart.

However, the idea behind this is not one of extreme rigidness and absoluteness. I am allowing myself certain provisions... such as watching a movie when I'm with friends... or music at church on Sundays... or anything involved with work. It has more to do with times when I am alone... such as in my truck or simply relaxing around the house. Times where I'm used to shutting off my brain and letting TV or music simply occupy it for a time.

So, will you hold me accountable? Do you think it makes sense? Do you think you could do it?

Caught Cheating!!

Let me preface this post with this... I'm pulling for the Detroit Tigers in this years World Series. Now that is primarily because I'm a Chicago Cubs fan and the St. Louis Cardinals are the nemesis of my beloved Cubbies!

Now... with that said... I have two cents on tonight's controversial happenings. Let me explain.

In the first inning when Kenny Rogers came out to pitch for the Tigers the cameras caught a glimpse of Kenny's pitching hand (see below). There was an "unknown substance" on the base of his thumb... this substance very much resembled pine tar. (Pine tar is a very common resin in baseball, used for making grips more sticky on bats.) After what looked like some conversations in the dugout... Kenny Rogers disappeared into the back of the dugout and returned with a clean hand. Although in the second inning picture... you can still see a stain on his hand.

Now... I pitched from the time I was 8 years old until I graduated from college at 23. There are two things that I KNOW for sure about this whole situation.
1. If there is dirt on my PITCHING hand that can be picked up by a camera... I know about it. On my pitching hand... I know how long my nails are... how many hangnails I have... how strong the calouses are on the tips of my fingers... how sweaty my palms are. These are all things that every pitcher knows... especially a 41 year old pro!

2. Pine tar will stain your skin... dirt won't! If you've got a decent amount of pine tar on your skin... it won't wash off that easily with a little water. It's a sticky resin that would leave a stain. Dirt... washes off really easily... especially dirt around a baseball field.

My take on this... Kenny Rogers was trying to cheat. Pine tar will help on breaking pitches because you can create more spin with sticky fingers! This was definitely intentional! In the long run... he really didn't need it. He still pitched a great game without the "obvious" pine tar. The question now remains... did he have some somewhere else? Perhaps on the inside of his glove?

I still haven't figured out myself what I really think about the whole thing... but I do know what I saw and how Detroit is trying to spin it! Someone in their PR department should have come up with a better excuse for him. Check out the article and make your own call. The video makes it all a little more obvious.

Homepages

So what is your homepage? A news site? A sports page? A forum? Your own site? A search engine?

If your anything like me... it's probably the last one... a search engine. If you don't already know the address you want to go to... you want to type in two words (the most common search query length) and hit the first link that pops up. That's why I've always kept Google as my homepage. It loads quickly and it's simple. There's no bombardment of ads or pop-ups or anything else that just gets in the way.

So just recently I took more than one second to look at the Google homepage and tried out the Personalized Home link at the top right of the screen... and I'm glad that I did. Now I still get the quick load and zero ads that I loved so much... with other stuff that I want to see when I sit down to find stuff on the internet. I get a clock and calendar... weather and movies for my neck of the woods... random quotes... words of the day... and the news that I want to see. You can also just drag and drop it around the screen to arrange it the way you want!! Sweet!

Take a moment today and set up Google as your homepage and customize it to fit your needs.
I'm sure you'll be stoked on it like I am!

***CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO SEE MY HOMEPAGE UP CLOSE***

Happy Birthday Autie!

Well my beautiful sister Autumn has reached a milestone! Today marks her 30th birthday... and that means that I'm not too far behind! YIKES! I mean... 30 is OLD! It's just one of those moments when you know... I've done it... I've made it to the point where I'm OLD!!

























You know I'm just kidding... I love ya sis! Hope you have a great day... and make sure you stay home today because the Porsche I bought for you is going to be delivered sometime between 1:00-3:30 today. :o)

Unckee Brett

I just told her a secret about her mommy and she was shocked!! :o)

I think pictures of babies are very personal things... and by that I mean that unless the baby belongs to you or is closely related to you... it's probably not really that exciting. Almost like a sunset that you personally photographed. Wouldn't you agree? It's probably like Blaine said in a recent post of his about cliché pictures... I would add babies in with sunsets and flowers as all being highly/overly photographed.

But just like I said before... sometimes you just gotta do it anyway! :o) Hence I'm posting up some more pictures of why I've dubbed myself "Unckee Brett!" Sorry to bore those of you that haven't personally met her... but she's such a cutie!

Good job God!! And my sister and brother-in-law who had a tiny part in it!!

( PRODUCT ) RED

My friend Shelly just posted today about the US debut of (PRODUCT) RED. I had seen another ad for (RED) somewhere in some magazine that I had read, but not really caught the jist of it until today. Thanks to Shelly's post I took the time to look over the website and found out what the whole thing is about.

Simply put... Bono and Bobby Shriver came up with the idea to have major brand name companies produce a line of products branded (RED). A percentage of the purchase price goes to The Global Fund, which exists solely for the purpose of eliminating AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria from the African continent.
This is such a great idea because it will force businesses to pay attention. If we (the consumers) start backing these products by purchasing them... more and more products will become (RED). And the more and more products that become (RED)... the more and more money will pour into helping such a huge problem.

Please take some time to check out the website and make sure to buy some of these products through the holiday season that is soon approaching! And if you have a blog... take a moment and post about this yourself... spread the word!

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I love it when people use their fame to get great things done!
Bono is AWESOME!

What's A Petabyte?

Kilo... Mega... Giga... Tera... Peta... What?!?

Alright... so I kept geeking out as much as I could yesterday. I spent a lot of time reading all kinds of wonderfully nerdy things in all sorts of books and magazines. I ran across another article in WIRED about the craziness that is the internet and where it is headed. I'm pretty well informed when it comes to this whole thing and some of this stuff is still crazy to me! I won't get into all of the details but thought I'd throw out one of the interesting subjects discussed throughout the article and it has to do with where technology is running into its limits.

Google has recently started to develop a 30-acre campus up in Oregon. This campus will serve as a main backbone for the thousands of servers that make up all of the wonderful Google applications (mail, maps, video, calendar, etc.).

"The extended Googleplex comprises an estimated 200 petabytes of hard disk storage - enough to copy the Net's entire sprawling cornucopia dozens of times...

And do you want to know the most interesting twist in this whole thing!?!? They are building in Oregon because they can get right next to The Dalles Dam! Why is that key? Cheap electrical power!! That's right... power is becoming a limitation on the internet! With processors, computer fans, and (most importantly) air conditioning... the biggest internet search companies are HUGE power sinks. In this article an employee of Ask.com responds to the question of why their East Coast facility is 1/3 empty...

"We ran out of power before we ran out of space."

Yup, they outgrew their electrical grid! There are numbers that suggest the combined power consumption of the internet search engines equals that of the Las Vegas metropolitan area, with all its hotels and casinos, on the hottest day of the year!

And the jist of why they feel the need to use all of these servers and electrical power?!? So the impatient user (us) will have our search results within the blink of an eye!

The article is quite long with lots of interesting facts, figures and numbers. If your even remotely interested in this stuff... try giving it a read.

Caparo T1

I was just reading through the most recent issue of WIRED and I saw this one page article on the Caparo T1. It looks like a Formula-1 (F1) car for the roads... of course... only the roads of the UK. No US model in the works.

I'm such a big fan of open-wheeled cars like this... maybe one day I'll own one.