Colorado Rockies No Hitter (Ubaldo Jimenez)

I love baseball. Ubaldo Jimenez threw a no-hitter in 128 pitches last night for the Colorado Rockies. 72 pitches were strikes and his fastball was consistently in the upper 90s throughout the game. He also hit a single in the 4th which drove in a run. Then one of the batters after him drove him in so he scored a run. There should be a stat that praises the position players who support the pitcher. If there was just one dropped ball or one throwing error the no-hitter would have been ruined. Those guys (pitcher and in/outfield players) have so much pressure put on them its a wonder they can go out there every inning knowing that they are not only working towards a win, which is hard enough in and of itself, but also towards the prestigious no-hitter. The Rockies have only been a franchise for 18 years and this was the first time in their history that a no-hitter has been thrown. I could watch baseball all day long. What a great sport! I just wish the Red Sox could get on track and start winning some more games. They have a really tough beginning to their season and in some ways its better to get as many of those games out of the way earlier rather than later. I would much rather hear that we are having a "slow start" than to see that we're in a slump. I can't wait to see how the season pans out. Johnathan Papelbon just had his second baby so he is going to miss a couple games when we really need him. We lost 2 in a row to Tampa Bay and right now we're losing again.....like 6-0 last time I looked.

Disco Biscuits (Second Night)

Thanks to the Disco Biscuits and my friends I had one of the best weekends in a long time. The shows both nights were incredible. Here are the setlists from both nights:
4/16 (Friday, Night 1):

Set 1: Mirrors > Flash Mob, Kamaole Sands > Air Song > Humuhumunukunukuapua'a > Kamaole Sands > Magellan Reprise

Set 2: Big Wrecking Ball, M.E.M.P.H.I.S. > Basis For A Day > The Great Abyss > Basis For A Day

E: On Time, Feel Good Inc.
4/17 (Saturday, Night 2):

Set 1: In The Flesh > And the Ladies Were the Rest of the Night > Helicopters ¹, Fish Out of Water, Shelby Rose > The City > Shelby Rose

Set 2: 42 > Lunar Pursuit > And the Ladies Were the Rest of the Night, Portal To An Empty Head, Little Lai ² > I-Man > 42

E: Pimp Blue Rikki
I know that no one reads this but if there is someone reading this and you don't know what all of that means.....it equals two nights of some raw, awesome, sick-nasty music.
It definitely makes me happy that the Biscuits think enough of their fans in Richmond to do two nights at The National. They must really like the venue as well. I know I do. The National is a really, really nice place. The people who manage that place know exactly what they're doing and whoever planned/built the place is obviously extremely experienced because they make everything pretty comfortable. It also flows really well and the prices on booze aren't too high. Liquor drinks are $6. Beers are either $5 or $6. Its definitely worth it to go for the liquor drinks because not only are they the same price as the beers, but the bartenders poured a lot of bourbon in all of my bourbon and cokes. Phil, Kent, Zach, and I most assuredly went through at least 1 bottle of Jim Beam ourselves last night and I know I put a hurting on another bottle the first night. The highlights of both shows were in the first night during Basis>Great Abyss>Basis, the second night during Shelby>The City>Shelby, and also in the second night during Lai>I-Man>42. All of those times I could just feel how much the crowd was getting into it. You know its a good show when you can feel the energy of the whole venue about to explode out of the roof. Its those times when you just can't control how crazy you're dancing and don't care how you look or what other people think about you. You gotta just hope you don't have too much of your drink left because chances are its going to be spilled either by you or some crazy hippie.

Disco Biscuits Last Night

Wow, the Biscuits show last night was awesome. I have such good friends that they are willing to buy me a ticket for tonight's show because I'm so broke. I didn't know people liked me enough to pay to have me around! Haha. I'm super psyched for tonight.

Waste of Time

I just sat through a 50 minute class period in which the teacher talked about how he would curve the grades for our last test. He started asking people what they thought about it and what they would do. This went on for 50 minutes. I kept waiting for the professor, if you can call him that, to go into the subject that we're learning about which is Communist Russia...but he never did. I raised my hand at one point and said "Why are you curving the test? Didn't you make it? Didn't you come up with the format which was online with two attempts to get the best grade? Didn't you tell us we could use our notes on the test? Why don't you just give us the grades we earned and start teaching the next test's material so we might know it a little better?" Ok well I only said half of that....but I was thinking all of it.

Disco Biscuits @ The National Tonight (Richmond, VA)

It has been another year since I have seen my favorite band, The Disco Biscuits. Tonight they are playing at the National in my own hometown of Richmond, VA!!!!!! Actually they are playing tonight and tomorrow night but I only had enough money (a long time ago when I bought them...now I'm double broke) for tonight's ticket. It is going to be different because it will probably be one of the few times I have seen them where I will be partly or completely sober.
A few of my friends are coming up from Bristol, VA. I haven't seen Kent or Phil in a long, long time. Biscuits shows are always good times where good people and good friends come together that haven't seen each other in a while. We get psyched up for what makes us happy. Its also really fun to watch all of the super drugged out idiots doing some dumb crap and getting kicked out. I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!! I will post something about the show when I get home.....or tomorrow. CHEERS!!!!

"Wall Street" The Movie and Its Sequel

One of the greatest movies of the 1980's was made in 1987 and it was called "Wall Street". Written and directed by Oliver Stone, it stars a young Charlie Sheen as a burgeoning stock broker trying to make it rich by getting into the good graces of a slimy, ruthless power broker named Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas. Sheen's character is named Bud Fox and his father is named Carl Fox (played by Charlie Sheen's real-life father, Martin Sheen). Carl Fox works for an airline called Blue Star Airlines. In order for Bud to get in good with Gekko, he gets a tip from his father about the airline which ends up panning out, making Gekko a lot of money, and in turn makes Gekko take Bud under his wing. The tagline of the movie is "Every dream has its price".
Now Bud is living in the fast lane. He has nice cars, fancy ladies, and lots and lots of money. He gets corrupted and starts to get involved in questionable trading activities which end up being illegal and that is where I will stop in case there is actually someone reading this who hasn't seen the movie....or if there is anyone actually reading this.
Gekko has some great lines throughout the movie and they only work because Michael Douglas is such a great slimy, white collar, "King of All Capitalism" asshole. One of the best lines he has is: "Greed is good". Another is: "Its all about bucks kid. The rest is conversation". There are some other great lines in the movie that aren't yelled by Michael Douglas as Gekko. At one point when Bud Fox (Sheen) realizes that he has to face the facts, he says "Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them". Another character in the movie whose name is Lou says a line that I love: "Man looks into the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss".
This past year, they made a sequel to "Wall Street" 22 or 23 years after the first one was made. It is going to be released in September and I can't wait to see it. The original was made in '87 when we were in a pretty terrible recession. In October of '87 the Dow lost 22.6% on what they called "Black Monday". The crash of '29 wasn't even as bad as the one in '87. The Dow went from like 2500.00 down to close to 1500.00 in almost one day. But our big companies handled it better than they did in the 20s. Capitalism was in rough shape when the original "Wall Street" came out. Its interesting that they were making a movie about market projections in the middle of that. Now, in the midst of our economic crisis, hopefully "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" will be just as good if not better.

The Past

It always seems to come back and bite you in the ass doesn't it?
"They" say you're supposed to learn from your past and your past mistakes but even if you learn from them they still seem to come back and hurt you. I'm not saying that I should just be absolved of everything I have ever done in my past but damn! How am I supposed to get anywhere if my past mistakes are beating me in the head around every turn?

Getting a Job at a State University: Not All Its Cracked Up to Be

Recently I applied to VCU for a technology services position. I think I was just applying so that the Virginia Employment Commission would know that I was looking for a job so they could still legally send me my unemployment check each week. In the job description it said that I would be providing "tier 1 and tier 2 PC support to the University executive, managerial and administrative staff. Support responsibilities include PC staging for installations, PC and peripheral installations, client software installations, hardware/software troubleshooting and network/domain connection troubleshooting." It doesn't say one thing about having to drive a state-owned VCU van around to deliver/pick up PCs. It most certainly does not say that you are required to have a driver's license in order to have this job. After applying I received a call to come in for an interview. This went very well and I was extremely confident once I left.
Still no one had said anything about driving a van or needing a license. I would have volunteered this information to them had I known it was needed. So then I got hired for the position. Then the boss finally tells me I will be driving and need a license. He starts grilling me about why I don't have the license and could I get it soon. I was starting to understand that the supervisor had screwed up and had hired two people who did not have drivers licenses to fill a position in which they would need to drive all over campus. So then I'm told that I have two weeks to get my license and they'll hold the job for me until then. Long story short, I got my license and started working two weeks ago.
The job was boring to say the least. My immediate supervisor, Mark Cahen, mostly sat at his computer all day doing.....something. Sometimes it seemed like he was doing work and other times he would be messing around on his personal computer all the live long day. We only went out and fixed or installed computers when it seemed like the work was actually piling up around him. The rest of the time I sat in front of a computer and e-mailed, played on facebook, and found as many Chuck Norris Facts (Jokes) that I could.
One day last week, one of my many bosses e-mailed me and said she was concerned that I would not be suitable to be insured by the university because there had to be some reason why I had to pay so much money to get my license back. <-----Basically, pay to work for them. So they forgot to let me know I needed a license to work there, then talked down to me like I was a degenerate for not having a license, and then, once I got my license, they decide that I have to have a perfect driving record in order to employ me.
I jumped through some hoops to get that job. Today I lost it.

Hot Weather vs. Cold Weather: Seems To Have An Effect on Attractiveness of Women

Being a student at VCU has its ups and downs. The highs and the lows. The ebb and the flow. One of the positive aspects of attending VCU is the sheer number of attractive women (or girls....maturity isn't usually their strongest quality). My question that I don't expect to have answered (1. because no one reads this blog; and 2. because its more hypothetical....ish) is as follows: Do girls get cuter when the weather warms up? Is it just the clothes, or lack of clothes, that are worn as the temperature rises? I don't see a change in the less attractive girls though. What does it all mean? Are winter clothes just unflattering? Am I thinking too hard about this? Probably.

Obama

I voted for Barack Obama. My spell check still doesn't know who he is but that is beside the point. Was it just me or did everyone who voted for him think that he was going to do something spectacular as President? Or, if it wasn't going to be one thing that was spectacular, I at least thought there would be a build up of smaller positive things that would eventually be spectacular and give me (and the rest of the millions of people who voted for the man) some sort of validation for being integral parts in his election. The Commonwealth of Virginia (my home/current state) is traditionally a red (Republican) state and in 2008 we fell in line with all of the other blue states in hopes that this whole "Change Revolution" would take place. We all heard "Yes we can!" like 5 million times and, yes, they could. And they did...or I guess we did. But something else was supposed to happen. Wasn't another slogan "Change you can believe in"? Were my expectations just too high? Or is Obama just a dud? My spell check still doesn't know who he is.
Oh well. He still has a year and a half in office so I guess I can give him til 2012 to get his rear in gear. I really hope he picks a new Vice President to run with in 2012. Biden is a master douchebag (please excuse my language). I can't believe Joe Biden said "This is a big fucking deal" in range of the microphone after announcing that the new health care bill had passed. Someone needs to tell him that he holds an important position in American politics. He is basically the number 2 (or 3,4,or 5 depending on his role.....Cheney was Bush's 1.5) most powerful man in the entire world. He acts like he's a softball coach in a 40-something men's league.
I think we might only be in Iraq and Afghanistan still because Obama doesn't want to bring an extra 175,000 men and women who will have to go out looking for jobs.

World War 2/Civil War

What do you think would happen if everyone started to have a problem with the reasons that we fought in WWII? Views shift all the time and it was only 60 some years ago that WWII was fought. It would never happen! I can't believe that people just want to forget the memory of the hundreds of thousands of people who fought and died in the Civil War. Or if they aren't forgetting, many are certainly trying to mar the memory and slant it towards hatred, bigotry, and all out disrespect. I have too much pride to forget those brave men and boys....on both sides. For God sakes, we live in the former capital of the Confederacy.
I know I just started this blog last night and I've already made two Civil War posts....but some people just take anti-South/anti-Confederacy stances wayyyy too far.

The First of Many

So I guess this is my blog. I've never had one before. I'm sure there will be more bullshit on this blog than I, or anyone,can handle.
This week I've been quite angry with people trying to tarnish Confederate history by calling the Southern Rebels of the 1860s "terrorists" and "white supremacists". It also seems like you can't even defend yourself on this topic if you're on the pro-Confederacy side of the issue without being labeled a racist. It burns me up inside to think that my ancestors fought and died for a cause that was legal, and were subsequently denied these rights and slaughtered in a needless war. Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence that secession is a right that our country was founded on. "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
Virginia's state flag was adopted in 1861 and it exemplifies our struggle against the tyranny that was Great Britain. It shows Lady Virtue standing over Tyranny (whose crown has fallen off) with a big spear. At the bottom, the words "Sic Semper Tyrannus" are shown. This means "And thus always to tyrants".
When almost one half of a nation decides that it cannot live with an ever strengthening federal government that encroached on our rights more and more every single day, they have the right to shrug off the chains of tyranny. Our nation was founded on the power of small state governments. State's rights. After the War of Northern Aggression (The Civil War), state's rights were a thing of the past. "Hoorah, hoorah. For Southern rights, hoorah"