Holy Crap.. What just happened…

Not only did the Phillies make the playoffs, They won their division.

After what might go down as the craziest month in the history of the National League - After a 162 games, there was literally a Historical Team Meltdown (Mets) and a Three way tie (Phillies, Padres, Rockies) Which was concluded with one of the craziest and controversial tie-breaker games ever played.

So how did the Phillies do it? After a season of Injuries to all of it’s key players, and a pitching staff that has questionably been infected with the bubonic plague the Phillies showed two things:

1. They Have Depth and Options: Coaches would kill to have players like Dobbs, Werth, Victorino, Iguchi, and Bourn to switch in and out of the game at will (all batting above .270). Many of these players have been overlooked during the season — But each one has seen plenty of playing time (due to all the injuries), and have come up with HUGE hits when the Phils needed it the most.

2. They love the game: The Phillies really do love the game. Early on, they realized that in order to win games, they needed huge leads for their bullpen. Their bullpen let them down so many times, but the Phils players shrugged it off and went out the next night fighting. Regardless, the Phillies are a Team with nothing to loose. And those are the most dangerous teams. Teams like the Yankees and Red Sox win because they are expected to win. If they don’t, the media and fans rip them apart — Pretty much Playing out of fear.

Proof they love the game: This Video shows a game in Colorado earlier in the year where the whole Philly team runs out to help the ground crew as a horrible storm rolls into Colorado. Only 1 Rockies player comes out to help, while the Phillies have $84,000,000 worth of talent on the field — Just having a Good time.

And here is some Phillies Wall Paper that works on Blackberry 8300’s…

Every day I’m seeing more and more “… [IN HD] — Where Available … ” on the bottom of programs that I’m watching, but yet every day I’m not seeing more and more HD channels show up on my BrightHouse Cable…

According to Engadget HD (The 1080i Step Child of Engadget) there is a rumor that Time Warner and BrightHouse will start expanding it’s HD cable line up on October 15th, 2007.

Oct. 1:
TBS HD

Oct. 15:
A&E HD, MTV HD, History Channel HD, CNN HD, Lifetime Movies HD, Food Network HD, Golf Channel/Versus HD, and Universal HD.

This means Modern Marvels and Good Eats in HD! W00t!

Update 10/02/07:
Brighthouse Cable in Orlando fired up TBS HD, Food Network HD, History Channel HD, and HGTV HD last night. Unfortunately, they managed to knockout both my cable cards in the process forcing me to reboot my Tivo. So far they look pretty good, Still waiting for the Tivo to update it’s channel listing so I can see if they are broadcasting in 720p or 1080i.

I promised myself I’d wait two days before I wrote anything about my new cell phone… i wanted to use it and make sure that it was the ‘Real Deal’ before I went out and wrote my OMGHI2U! fanboy post — but now that time has come and all I can say is… OMGHI2U!

So, whats the big deal about it? Well, RIM is making smart moves. In the crazy market of Smart Phones you tend to find one of two extremes, Phones that are `too smart` or phones that are more `Gimmic and Glam`. It’s hard to find the perfect balance of business and pleasure features to sooth the sweet tooth of cell phone zealots. The iPhone I think might of been the first to almost get this mixture right — but still lacks a little in the business side of the market — however, that might change over time — I just don’t foresee Fortune 500 businesses issuing iPhones to it’s executives.

So, that being said, why am I screaming OMGHI2U? Well simply because after 5 years, I can finally make cell phone calls from my house. I have managed to live in cell tower hell for the last 5 years, and simply squeaking 1 bar of signal to send a txt message is damn near impossible. The Blackberry Curve offers T-Mobiles HotSpot @ Home service which is the fancy name for UMA support. This means, the phone Switches over to WiFi instead of the cell tower when in the presence of a wifi network, or any TMobile Hotspot (ie. Every Starbucks / Airport / etc ) — And still retains full SMS/MMS/Talk capabilities. And after about 30mins of UMA calls this weekend, I can say the differences in call quality is Minimal. Calls sound “Cellular” with only a slight ‘twang’ that comes with non loss less audio compression. In other words, 99.999% will never be able to tell.

So, why do I call the Curve the “Mullet” of cell phones? Simply put — It’s the perfect 50/50 mixture of Business and Party. Everything from awesome media capabilities and a camera, to the full array of the Blackberry business class applications at your disposal. With the addition of UMA any office monkey without a window view can now use their cell phone in the deepest bowels of cubicle hell — and a Seasoned CEO on the 99th floor no longer needs to wait on an in building cellular network. Not to mention lil’ ol me out in the cellular boonies finally has a single point of contact and will no longer piss off my friends and colleagues by forcing them to play phone bingo to find me.

Well played T-Mobile and RIM. I have a feeling you have set the bar pretty high for the other carriers.

Jaime and I don’t take as many vacations as we should. This past weekend marks only our third vacation we have taken in the 7.5 years we have been together. In fact, this bring our official total vacation days taken (combined) to 8 in almost 8 years. Or, half a day per person, per year. *yikes* no wonder we’re almost insane…

So, exactly 1 year to the day of our last vacation I surprised Jaime with a long weekend away in New York City. She had never been, and, in my opinion, now is really one of the nicest times of year to go to the city. Of, course I had a little hidden agenda — I really wanted to see a Phillies Game — and they just so happened to be sweeping playing the Mets at Shea this past weekend… So, simply, everyone wins..

I’ll try to get some pictures up later — In the meantime — here’s a quick overview:

1. Manhattan is unofficially sponsored by Nine West, Starbucks, Banana Republic, H&M and Bank of America.
2. In NYC the small talk of “How about this weather” — Has been officially replaced with — “Guess how much I pay for rent…”
3. 5 ft Tall canisters of Liquid Nitrogen on almost every street corner scares the Bejesus out of me. When asked — New Yorkers say “Never noticed that before… Huh… yea. That is sorta Odd. We’ll Google it Later…”
4. Jaime found out that if the primary color of your outfit is Black, people assume you’re a New Yorker, and start asking you for Directions. [This was the Highlight of the trip for her…]
5. Easiest way to empty Shea Stadium — Have Greg Dobbs hit a grand slam in the 6th inning..
6. Buddakan is one of the raddest restaurants I have been to in a long time. If you go, get like seven orders of the ‘Char Sui Pork Buns’ — You won’t be sorry.
7. Bloomingdale’s + Women’s Designer Denim Sale = Total chaos
8. NYC + Flip Flops = Worst Idea Ever…
9. Finally, New Yorkers are some of the nicest people on the face of the earth…. Until they get on the subway… There they are total savages…. I think it has something to do with not having cell signal… :shrug:

So, Thank you NYC. We had a great time.. And hopefully we’ll be back soon….

Football.

We have 2-3 news papers in East Orlando that are constantly being left our front lawns and driveways. I try to read one of them every week, The East Orlando Sun, because it is our true local news paper for Avalon Park. And honestly, I love small publications. In fact, when I was growing up, the Wellington Town Crier was one of my favorite things to read. And even to this day, when I go to a new city/state I always pick up the local paper because it’s the easiest way to get a feel for what is going on and what to do while you’re there. (Except for Vegas — be careful what you pick up and read in Vegas… ;) ) But just because I love them, doesn’t mean they don’t piss me off. (Whats new…)

So, today while getting the mail. I noticed that some of my neighbors have 3-4 Copies of this (weekly) newspaper sitting on their front lawn / sidewalk. Not only is it an eye sore, but you would figure that the paper person would of stopped after 1 or 2. Even worse some of these homes are places where I see the residents every day — Which means they are walking right by the papers and not picking them up even if it is just to throw them away. Is this paper so bad that some of my neighbors are even afraid to touch it? Possibly… But I really think the residents are just lazy, snow birds, have already moved out of their overpriced house which has been on the market for a year and will never sell, or their interest only reverse adjustable rate balloon mortgage has matured and they can no longer afford the payment and have skipped town before the foreclosure man comes a knocking.

So, this brings up the question, Who is responsible for cleaning up the papers? I would figure that it would be the East Orlando Suns responsibility to pick them up because it’s pretty much branded litter? right? Well, possibly not. After searching for what “Litter” is — it doesn’t mean quite what I thought it did.

Wikipedia puts it best: “Litter is a waste type consisting of any tangible personal property which has been unlawfully scattered and or abandoned in a public place (usually outdoors). Tangible property abandoned in a private space is not considered litter.”

So since they are leaving an unsolicited tangible item on PRIVATE property — What is the Crime (if any)? Solicitation? Dumping? And is it their responsibility to go out after the fact and clean up papers that have not been picked up? Or, once the paper is on private property does it become the sole responsibility of the property owner to clean up?

I pay for the Orlando Sentinel to be delivered. So, that is clearly my responsibility. But, I have never asked or paid for this paper to be delivered — So who’s responsibility is it? I’m just sick of picking up 20 papers each week so my street doesn’t look like a landfill. Any ideas for a resolution? Or insight into laws that govern this activity?

Personally, in the last week I have been a fly on a wall for 3-4 conversations about which format, HD-DVD or Blu-ray, will win the new media format war. Honestly, I don’t care who wins, because this is one thing I refuse to be an early adopter for. But if I had to chose today, HD-DVD will clearly win. Why?

Why HD-DVD will win the format war:

1. Of all the HD TV’s I have seen in use in people’s homes in the last year (ie. Not Showroom Models), exactly 2 have been properly set up and well calibrated. I think the jump from SD to HD is so great, most people think tuning HD is unnecessary. (Or don’t know how) So despite which format is “Higher Quality” in tech specs will be a moot point to the majority of consumers.
2. Someone this week said — “With Blu-Ray you can fit every Friends episode on 1 disc.” — Well, as neat as that may be … to some … Major Video manufactures/outlets don’t want that. Netflix and Blockbuster currently get 10 rents out of people who want to watch every Friends Episode. NBC got 10 individual DVD sales, one for each season. And personally, I don’t want to dish out 200$ for a single disc when I can get 10, for 10 easy payments of 20$ as I see fit. So I’m pretty sure media size will not be the defining factor.
3. Hybrid HD-DVD’s. These will play in new HD-DVD players and the Billion other DVD players already sold world wide. This means only a single media type needs to be sold/rented at retail outlets. Granted, There are talks about Hybrid DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disks / players. But that is more layers, more licensing, and more cost for the consumer.
4. HD-DVD will be the first to the two major consumer milestones. “Possibly” < 200$ Stand alone player before Christmas. (XBox Add on only 175$)
5. Porn Industry has chosen HD-DVD, because Sony won’t license Blu-Ray for XXX films.
6. Betamax and Minidisc. Nuff Said.

Ultimately, which ever media is the cheapest to market first will win. I don’t think the benefits of Blu-Ray are enough to out HD-DVD. And sadly, whichever of the formats manage to make it easy and cheap to “backup” (aka. pirate) first — That’ll put the icing on the cake.

Alex’s saga with Spirit Airlines continues. This is great. Now, the CEO of Spirit Airlines Ben Baldanza hits “Reply All” and copies his arrogant response to the original sender of a complaint.

Poor, Poor, Benny. I’m not a customer either, but to help your number crunchers with the next sales projection, Future Customers - 1.

Don’t worry though Ben. The way the Internet works these days, is no one takes any of this seriously until someone makes an lolcat about the situation…

Oh crap.

I have never had so many awesome responses to such a simple question..

Background of the question:
For the last week or so, ESPN has been playing a segment about week-by-week speculated ranking for college football. The set that they are using for the segment is surrounded by helmets of the teams that are traditionally top 20-25 teams. UF, Texas, Notre Dame, USC, etc. etc. However, front and center when the cameras focus in on the analysts is a UCF helmet. Granted I am a UCF fan, but seriously “One of the teams, is not like the other…”

With the exception of the fact that the helmet is the Old UCF Logo, I have a feeling one of the following is the reason for this.

- There is a UCF Alumni on the set design team for ESPN. wo0p! Drop us a comment!!

- They Mixed UCF up with USF.

- They know something about our season that … no one … absolutely no one … anywhere else on the planet knows…

- They ran out of Helmets, and a old logo UCF helmet was the cheapest one they could find on ebay.

So, back to the best question ever…. “Do you watch Sportscenter?” — My personal favorite Answers Below:

1. Ummmm, people don’t?
2. You mean like, more than once a day?
3. Yea, I’m a guy.
4. No, not every day. But that is only because I skip the day before and after the All star break..
5. No*, Never*, Why?*

God bless the American male.

UPDATE!:


Click for video.

Since I’m in a good mood today, I have decided to talk about one of my favorite topics… Stuff I hate! I’m not sure why I enjoy hating stuff so much… But, for some reason, it just gives me a nice warm fuzzy inside.

Top 5 things I hate This week

1. Macs. OSX is not worth the price it costs for the hardware that runs it.
2. Florida Summers when it doesn’t rain in the afternoon.
3. Bright House Cable / Internet. I need more HD channels, and I need Internet that stays up for more than 10 mins.
4. People who don’t appreciate the hate!
5. People who leave time on a microwave.

Damn! Now I feel better. Some people call me negative… But is that wrong it hating stuff makes me happy?