Right now I'm watching Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. Once again my Mets were leading the NL East in September but couldn't even hold on to a wild card. So who should I root for without the Mets in the post season?

In the NL I really don't care too much but I guess I have a slight preference for the Dodgers. I don't blame the Phillies for the Mets failures but I still don't like their pompous attitudes. As for the Dodgers, I'm still bitter about 1988, but it would be great to see Joe Torre return to the World Series the year after he left the Yankees, whom he took to the post season for 12 consecutive years and they couldn't make it this year without him. But an even better story line would be Manny Ramirez facing off against the Red Sox if they make it.

In the AL I'll be rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays. You can't really call them underdogs but the franchise has certainly paid their dues with year after year in the cellar. I have nothing against the Red Sox, but they've now won two of the past four Championships so it's time for somebody else. If the Rays make it to the World Series I'll probably root for them. If not, I'll default back to my normal allegiance to the National League.

Labels: baseball

Maegan joined the girl scouts. Today was her first meeting and she came home very excited about it.

I don't know much anything about the Girl Scouts. Do they actually go camping? Maegan and I planned to go camping this summer but time got away from us. I'd be up for camping with Maegan and her troop in theory, but I definitely wouldn't want to be the only father and I'm still not sure I could handle the 'group of girls together acting like a group of girls together' (you know what I'm talkin' about).

And what's the deal with the cookie mafia? I love thin mints but I don't want Maegan bugging all the neighbors.

Labels: Maegan

Big congratulations to Maegan. She was just informed today that she has been named to the North Carolina Elementary Honors Chorus. Maegan was the only student chosen from her school and only the top 150 musicians are chosen throughout the entire state. Their big concert will be held in Winston-Salem on the 8th and 9th of November.

Maegan auditioned a few weeks ago, but otherwise she's never even joined her regular school chorus before. This will be a totally new experience from top to bottom.

Labels: Maegan

Last week Maegan's school planted pinwheels for international "Pinwheels for Peace" day. Since this was Maegan's school I was assigned to cover it for the school system's tv news. And since I was there covering the event anyway, why not grab a quick sound bite from my own daughter...

Labels: Maegan, video

700 Billion dollars divided by 140 million taxpayers equals $5,000 per taxpayer.

Labels: rant

Earlier this year I blogged about a free photo stitching application called Hugin, that combines multiple photos in to cool panoramas. It did a pretty good job but was not at all easy to use. Today I tried a brand new free photo stitcher called ICE that was just released by Microsoft last week as part of a research project. All I did was take 8 photos from my final pilgrimage to Shea Stadium this past August, dragged them into this program, and a minute later I automatically got this awesome panoramic photo. How cool is that.

I'm going to take more multi-frame photos now that stitching them together is this easy and the results this good. I don't usually recommend Microsoft software but if you're interested in creating stitched panoramic photos you should check this out.

http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html

Labels: photos

Maegan woke us up at 4:10 a.m. this morning, telling us about a loud banging noise outside. Without looking we told Maegan that it must just be thunder. She said it didn't sound like Thunder, and then we started to hear it too. Bang, bang, bang. Over and over again, a short low rumble that you could feel through the floor, but it wasn't thunder. We rushed to the back window and opened it up to a beautifully clear, moonlit night... and then more bang, bang, bang, bang.

It was gunfire! Over and over again, repeated gunfire from what had to be a semi-automatic weapon in our normally safe suburban neighborhood. I don't know how many I missed beforehand but I had to have heard about 20 more rounds fired since after I opened up the window.

So what happened? I still have no idea. I waited about 15 minutes before going back to bed but no police ever showed up. There was nothing on the news so I assume nobody was shot. At this point my best guess is simply stupid redneck neighbors somewhere down the block.

It's been a busy week. On top of my normal work week, I put in an extra 4 hours working a Board meeting on Tuesday and I stayed late on Friday too, closing up the station. We take turns on Board meetings and it just happened to be my turn, and Friday was just one of those times when technical issues make things take longer than you expected - so just your typical 'working hard' so far. But then I worked a long 14-hour shift on Saturday at ESPNU, getting home in the A.M. only to get up early and work most of the day at the Panthers game today. (Then I mowed the lawn when I got home, but that doesn't count.) By my count this has been a 67 hour work week - and I've still got another 6 straight days of work ahead of me. I'm already looking forward to resting next Sunday! Meanwhile since I've been working non-stop, Patty hasn't had any help with the kids this whole time.

P.S. Looking ahead, I only have one day off in the entire month of October.

Labels: work

Today we were taping a school board meeting. That's not uncommon, but due to the length of the meeting I sat in and switched for an hour. The only reason I mention this is because it was the first time I switched a live or live-to-tape event since my PSTV days way back in college. It wasn't difficult but it was fun to do that again.

Labels: work

Today was full of Google tech news - exciting stuff for technophiles, but the rest of you can just stop reading now.

First, Google announced and released a new web browser to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. It's been rumored for years but today's news was basically a surprise. I've already downloaded and installed Google's new browser, known as "Chrome". It's only in beta right now but I was still majorly disappointed. Thumbs down for now.

Next from Google today was the release of Picasa 3, the latest version of their great desktop photo organizing and editing software. As a professional graphic artist, I've been a longtime satisfied user of Picasa for my home photos. It's quick, it's easy, and it's powerful (but not PhotoShop powerful). This new version 3 adds so many more great new features, including retouching (really impressive), automatic red-eye reduction, video editing, text overlays, and auto-syncing to Picasa Web Albums. Big thumbs up!

And speaking of Picasa Web Albums, Google just today introduced people tagging, just like on Facebook. That's cool, but the coolest part is Google's new face recognition software. Picasa went through all of my online photos and identified over 300 faces. Then Google grouped similar faces together so I could identify who the person was and tag them. It wasn't always perfect but it did a good job with recognizing similar faces (especially since Patty is a twin). It took me less than 10 minutes to tag over 300 faces.

Labels: internet, photos

I've now been living in Charlotte, North Carolina for ten years.

Labels: Charlotte, home

Last night ----------------- (redacted story) -----------------

Another interesting thing from last night was the new NFL logo. It was actually unveiled during the April draft but I missed the announcement and didn't know about it until last night when we had to apply new logos on the IR equipment. The changes are subtle but nice. The number of stars decreased from 25 down to 8. The eight stars represent each of the eight NFL divisions, but it also looks a lot better on small items. The typeface was modernized (check out that psychedelic "L" on the old logo). The blue was darkened and the football is now more consistent with the design of the Lombardi trophy. Subtle changes but all good ones.

The game itself was a total blowout. The Panthers scored an unreal 31 points in just the 2nd quarter alone. I swear it was like playing Madden on my X-Box.

Labels: football, work

I took 190 photos on our trip to New York (although a dozen or so were sequences meant for panoramic stitching later on). With the addition of photos I copied from my sister's camera, we came back with over 200. Here are 42 of them.

Labels: photos, vacation

On Saturday we visited Northport. First we briefly stopped by Northport High School where Patty and I first met. (No, we never dated back then.) Then we had lunch at Shipwreck Diner on Main Street and walked around the docks and Northport Village Park.

Our trip to Northport made us a bit late for our plans for the rest of the day. We met up with my fraternity brothers, Flintstone (Mike) and Steve in Port Jefferson. I pledged with Flintstone in 1991 and we have 1001 great stories. Steve pledged in 1992, we were roommates our senior year, and he was the best man at my wedding in 1997. The last time I saw either of them was when I traveled up for homecoming in 2003, so it's been five years - and we didn't skip a beat. It was immediately like old times like we had seen each other just last week. Aside from some gray hairs, the boys haven't really changed much.

All the wives and all the kids were all there. Patty's known Flintstone and Steve as long as I have but she didn't go to homecoming in 2003 so she hadn't seen them since Maegan was one year old in 1999 (aside from a few minutes at my dad's funeral). Maegan's now 10, and all the other kids were 4 or younger. Maegan spent hours playing with the kids and pulling them around in a wagon. It was great to see all of our kids playing together but who'd-a-thunk this scene 16 years ago.

Back in the day we wouldn't have even gone out before 9:30pm, but with wives and kids and just being older (out of shape, not wiser) 9:30pm was now staying out late, so we had to head back to Queens. It was great to hang out again, even while having to watch the kids. I hope we don't go another five years before doing it again.

Labels: Alpha_Sigma_Phi, friends, New_York, vacation

On Friday we went into the city and acted like tourists. We went to South Street Seaport with my sister Amy. We enjoyed walking around Pier 17 and got great photos of the Brooklyn Bridge but we were completely disappointed to discover that the historic Fulton Fish Market is now just one big Gap store. Apparently Fulton Fish Market moved to The Bronx in 2005 but it never crossed our mind that it could not be there after 188 years. That's like Quincy Market leaving Faneuil Hall in Boston.

Then we hopped on the Circle Line Liberty Zephyr for a boat tour around lower Manhattan. The one-hour tour brought us under the Brooklyn Bridge (which currently has a cool waterfall beneath it), around Battery Park, and past Ellis Island. Then we came up on what Maegan's been wanting to see her whole life: The Statue of Liberty. Phenomenal views of the statue from the harbor, even better than visiting the island (especially since you can't go inside anymore).

Labels: New_York, vacation

On September 6th, 1981 I attended my first Mets game at Shea Stadium. As you can see, I saved my tickets for 27 years. I don't actually remember the game but the Braves beat the Mets five to two that day. I went to Shea Stadium several times a year from 1981-1990, including Game 3 of the 1986 National League Championship Series in which Lenny Dykstra hit a game winning 2-run homer to beat the Astros with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th (rated the #17 best moment in Shea history and the #1 most dramatic homerun).

Today I went to my final game ever at Shea Stadium, and Maegan and Darah went to their first game ever at Shea Stadium. We planned this pilgramage last year, choosing a Thursday daytime game to avoid the crowds since CitiField eliminated most of the available parking. For me the trip was obviously a final goodbye. For Maegan this was her only opportunity to experience the stadium I've been telling her about her whole life. And for Darah, only 15 months old, this was her once in a lifetime opportunity to have photos taken in front of her namesake. Yes, you read that right. Her middle name is Shea! We went to the game with my mom, my sister, and my aunt.

What an amazing game to be both a final and first game at Shea! Johan Santana pitched well. There were two ejections. The Mets were winning most of the game but the Padres tied it up in the top of the 9th. Then with the score tied with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th inning, David Wright smacked a game-winning walk-off homerun to left field for the Mets win!!!

P.S. After the game we headed to The Lemon Ice King of Corona (the one seen in the opening to The King of Queens television show). Best italian ices on earth!

Labels: baseball

I'm back in New York, Queens to be precise. We flew in to LaGuardia this morning. We had nothing in particular planned for today, but the most exciting moment of our trip so far was when my mom picked us up from the airport. As I was about to put our luggage in the car, I looked up and saw the Google Street View car right next to us! I recognized it immediately and started waving at the car. Hopefully in a few months I'll be able to find myself waving at LaGuardia airport in the next Google Street View update.

Labels: cool, New_York, vacation

This won't interest most of you, but I just added a Letterboxing section to my website. You'll need to find it yourself. This coincides with my new listings today of 3 disc golf themed letterboxes (out of an eventual series of 5 boxes).

Labels: disc_golf, letterboxing

Maegan had her 10th birthday party today at the Pineville Ice House. We got there around 12:30 and the parking lot was nearly full. That seemed odd. When we walked inside it was literally packed! Hundred and hundreds of people. The mascot of the local professional hockey team was there too with several of the team's cheerleaders. What's going on here?

Apparently today was a huge open house event that we didn't know anything about. Ice skating was totally free to everybody and so was all the food too. My initial concern was the overwhelming crowds, but seconds later I realized something of paramount importance - I paid (quite a bit) for Maegan and her friends to go ice skating and eat food - but skating and food was totally free to everybody today. Why was I the only person in the building who had to pay for anything? If we had all just shown up unannounced we would've paid nothing. WTF?

More on that story later.

The kids didn't care about the crowds and had a great time. Here's a photo of Maegan skating, taken near the end of the party when the crowds had gone.








Here's a photo Patty skating with nephew Connor.










And here's a cute photo of Darah's first time on the ice, being "walked" by her Uncle Ian.

Now back to that story about us paying for a free day. I spoke with the manager and explained about both the excessive crowds and the fact that we were paying for things that everybody else was getting for free. Apparently there was a mistake and nobody was supposed to be able to book a birthday party today. The manager agreed with my points and was extremely nice and appologetic. We had put a deposit down but they didn't charge us the remaining balance.

Since the kids had fun I have to ignore the crowd inconvenience. It was nice of them to forget the remaining balance, but $50 still seems a bit high for the only items that wouldn't have been free from the open house - an ice cream cake and soda.

Labels: Maegan

Mike is beta testing Ping.fm from an iGoogle gadget.