CharlieMagruder.com

This isn’t an original idea, but I couldn’t find the actual image I saw on the _undernet_ that was a simiiar “Separated at birth”…so I made my own.

Could be the “AFTER” of Frank the Tank?

I’m unusal I think. I like HORRIBLE TV and smart TV, but I’m more passionate about horrible.

There is a show on MTV called My Super Sweet 16. Oh my God ( or OMG) these kids are overly spoiled not only with these parties they throw, but with the obvious lifestyles that they lead anyway. If their 16th birthday celebration is to the tune of $200,000 and up, and the world is handed to them….what are they going to do when mommy and daddies money dries up? Or perhaps they don’t believe it will?

Lastly, why do people want to put their lives on (the internet ) television? It must truly be a world where everyone wants to be a celebrity or be famous.

As Linda says, “I wouldn’t wish celebrity on my worst enemy.”

So I’m all for the following review by Charlie Booker (With a name like Charlie, he must be smart!) It’s got a bit of language in it, so perhaps you should have your kids scrub the toilets, or mow the yard while you watch it.

It was announced that Julio Franco has retired from baseball.  Yes, Julio Franco was still playing professional baseball.  Though playing in the Mexican League this year, Juilo played his last MLB game last September will a member of the Atlanta Braves.

What’s so special about Julio retiring?  He’s 49 years old!

In his last at bat for the Braves, on September 17, 2007 for the Atlanta Braves. Facing the Florida Marlins, Franco was called on to pinch hit in the bottom of the 8th and made what would be his last at-bat count, lacing a single to right and driving in a run.

I saw Julio play many, many years ago in Cleveland.  He was a part of that famous 5 for 1 trade that the Phillies made for Von Hayes.

References:

Baseball-Reference.com

Yahoo Sports

MLBTradeRumors.com

I LOVE Baseball.

I LOVE the St. Louis Cardinals.

I HATE the Chicago Cubs. I don’t actually hate the Cubs, it’s just that they’re the arch rival of my beloved “Birds on the Bat.” I just think that the Cubs are pathetic. Virtually everyone knows that they haven’t won a World Series since 1909. That’s a 100 years of futility of being apathetic.

So in honor of a three game series this weekend between these two teams I offer the famous “Twenty things that have happened since the Cubs last won a World Series.”

1. Radio was invented; Cub fans got to hear their team lose.

2. TV was invented; Cub fans got to see their team lose.

3. Baseball has added 14 teams; Cub fans got to see AND hear their team lose to more teams.

4. George Burns celebrated his 10th, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays.

5. Haley’s Comet passed Earth… twice.

6. Harry Caray was born… employed by the Cardinals (saw Cardinals WS wins!) …employed by the Cubs…and died. Incredible, but true.

7. The NBA, NHL and NFL were formed, and Chicago teams won championships in each league.

8. Man landed on the moon, as have sveral home runs given up by Cubs pitchers.

9. Seventeen US presidents were elected. William H. Taft was President when the Cubs last won!

10. There were 11 amendments added to the Constitution.

11. Prohibition was created, and repealed.

12. The Titanic was built, set sail, sank, was discovered, and became the subject of  major motion pictures… the latter giving Cub fans hope that something that finishes on the bottom can come out on top.

13. Wrigley Field was built and becomes the oldest park in the NationalLeague.

14. Flag poles were erected on Wrigley Field roof to hold all of the team’s future World Series pennants. Those flag poles have since rusted and been taken down.

15. A combination of 41 summer & winter Olympics have been held.

16. Thirteen baseball players have won the Triple Crown; several thanked Cubs  Pitchers.

17. Bell bottoms came in style, went out of style, and came back in style.

18. The Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Arizona Diamondbacks, andFlorida Marlins (TWICE!) have ALL won the World Series.

19. The Cubs played 14,153 regular-season games; they lost the
majority of them.

20. Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and New Mexico were added to the Union.

 BONUS:  In the 100 years since the Chicago Cubs have won a World Series…The St. Louis Cardinals have won TEN World Series Championships!!

I heart Jessica Hagy.

I subscribe via RSS to her wonderful blog called Indexed, but I most excited about the fact that she has produced a book of her very funny and unerring “Indexes.” Ms. Hagy has a real sense of her surroundings and observations going on throughout the world.

She’s pretty darn funny don’t you think?

Resources:

Indexed

Indexed @ Amazon

It’s opening day, but not in a traditional sense that you and I are used to. What I would normally expect would be to hear about the big parade in Cincinnati, and them having the first pitch to start the season. At least that’s how it would have been until a few years ago. You see, Allan “Buuuuuuud” Selig is all about the money. Opening day has gone from a traditional day game in Cincinnati to a night game on ESPN between two teams that bring in the largest potential revenue to today with the opening in Japan.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against Japan, I just have a problem with tuning into ESPN at 5:00am CDT to watch the start of the season. Oh and I did turn on the game at 5:00am to watch it today, but that’s one 10 minutes earlier than normal so don’t think I’m too whacked out.

Baseball is the perfect sport to watch and play. The perfect activity to spend your precious entertainment time, and an excellent vehicle to learn strategy and business acumen. I’ll stop there and leave that discussion for another time.

So on this most lovely of annual days, on the opening of the 139th season of Major League Baseball, I say to you… P L A Y B A L L !

We Americans are lazy!

Look at these beautiful toys that children in Africa have made. They’re artwork! No child needs a XBOX, TV, Magnetix, or even Lincoln Logs! All you need is your imagination! These kids probably make these toys because they could never even dream of owning a real bicycle.

More information is available at Afrigadget.com

Afrigadget Flickr Page HERE

Oh, I know what you’re going to say….”February 14th is a day of celebration of your LOVE for your wife, girlfriend, sweetheart, family member, and even friends. And sure I participate in that celebration and I consider that as a reasonable reason, but with my thick head, neanderthal mentality February 14th means something else.

Can you smell it in the air?

Can you hear the sound?

Can you see the eternal youth of this annual ritual?

For February 14th means something more to me. For me, and many others it’s the symbol of the start of the baseball sean. Many teams, like the St. Louis Cardinals open their spring training sessions today. And believe me, that is LOVE for the baseball fan.

XOXOXOX

I am STILL amazed by the World Wide Web…everyday. I’m the first to say that the web could never replace Television as the medium of choice, but I’m starting to rethink that idea. No, the web still won’t consume 100% of my “down time”, since I still don’t like setting at a computer desk, or with a laptop on my lap to watch something, but over the last couple of years there have been a couple of tools or devices released that are starting to change my mind.

Slingbox: I would assume you have heard of this really cool application that allows you to placeshift your home television signal from your house to a computer. So…if you happen to live in St. Louis, love your Cardinals, travel a lot for work, and really, really, really hate to miss a game on FOX Sports Net called by Dan McLaughlin and Al Hrabosky….then Slingbox is for you. You simply have to hook up the Slingbox to your Cable Box/Satellite Dish/DVR and use a simple downloaded client (built upon Windows Media Player) and you can watch your local channels from anywhere in the world! It’s slick, it works well and it’s pretty darn afforable at less then $250.

You can find out more at Slingbox411.com.

Joost: Joost is a great little browser based application that is a coustomize version of the Mozilla Firefox footprint. Believe me, you’d never know that it’s a browser when you use it. The guys that built Joost are the same cats behind Kazaa (file sharing) and skype (internet voice communications) so their preview efforts have pretty much reformed the web as you and I know it. So Joost allows you to view channels of video content through their application. And just like Kaaza you work on a peer to peer experience, but without sharing personal information or private data from your hard drive. While you consume content from Joost, it uses what you viewed to help power the next user of that content. Pretty slick huh? It works fairly well too, but it can comsume some big resources and lag a bit on a slower network. To their credit though they are adding content all the time. So if your favorite stuff is to watch music vidoes, old Rocky & Bullwinkle or Pro Rodeo….you’ll find on Joost. They are also adding “commercial” content that you know like MTV as well.

Check out Joost.com

And now for the reason that I thought about this post.

LiveStation: I finally got my invite to try out the newest (to my knowledge) player in online video. I first saw information about this app last fall. They describe it as an application like Joost and Slingbox combined, the big difference is that the content is live there is no hardware to buy and set up.

Here’s a video of the technology.

So tonight I finally got to install and play with LiveStation. This one was developed with Microsoft technology, some dll’s and Silverlight. And I believe that this company might be owned wholly or partially owned by Microsoft as well. At one time Microsoft was a Slingbox investor as well, before it was sold to Echostar. As for the experience, it was very good. The throughput was quick, and the quality of the video imaging didn’t waver even though it was live. My only criticism was in the amount of content that was lacking. My personal preferences go beyond Al Jazeera TV (in English) , BBC News (in English:)) and French TV in English). I am sure though that greater volumes will follow.

LiveStation at www.livestation.com

I am excited to see how this application develops even though this will never be a replacement for a Home Theatre System.

Today, February 5, 2008 is the birthday of my favorite baseball player of all-time. Yes, all-time.

On this day in 1934, Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama. Most everyone knows who he is, the fact that he broke Babe Ruth’s Home Run record in 1974 and he finished with 755 career Home Runs.

In his fantastic biography “I Had a Hammer” Hank talks very honestly about growing up in a very poor family, how his baseball earnings helped to support his family, and the vast amount of racism that he had to endure from bigoted people who didn’t want a black man to break Babe Ruth’s record.

Hank suffered countless death threats, hate mail and the security of his family was always in jeopardy, but he kept his mouth shut. Not to be a coward, but to be above it all. He learned from Jackie Robinson that regardless of what people said, any lash out would set back their progress for all of those future black players as well.

To me, that is real courage.

So Happy Birthday Hank! You are the best!!

Baseball-Reference.com

Jigokudani Yaen Koen loosely translated to Jigokudani Monkey Park is the home of more than one hundred Japanese Macaques in Nagano Japan. You know the ones. You’ve seen them on National Geographic Channel and National Geographic magazine.

Well that was us last night. See, it snowed about 5 inches, it was cold and thus it was the perfect night for the spa. The kids had a blast, heck we had a blast. Nice and warn in the hot tub, yet a cold head with snow on our heads.

So here’s to monkeys and snow and hot tubs!

Yes, back on January 18, 1974 the World was exposed to one of the greatest advancements in medical, technological, and human spirit. We proved to the world that NO ONE had the intelligence that our Military had!

For it was on this day, again January 18, 1974 that world found out who the baddest dude on the planet was. Steve Austin, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN!

Oh, I know what you’re saying “That was a just a TV show”….NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND!!

Have you ever shook Lee Majors hand?

Remember the opening to the show? (see below) There is footage!

Lee is still around, but he doesn’t talk much about those “governement years”, but we know…oh we know..AND we respect his service to this country!!

The following is to honor Major Austin, a True American!

History Channel

Wikipedia