I have several little things that are itching at me (the least of which isn’t this tick bite!) and want to get them off of my chest (that’s where the tick bit me… bloody parasites! (actually, that’s exactly what they are… but I digress)). This might get long. Skip ahead to points 4 & 5 if you have a short attention span.

Point 1: I’m sick. Not the kinda sick where you wish you were dead, but rather the kind where you want to sleep a lot and need to *ehem* sit down a lot. Also I have what I call “creeky bones”. This is one of my least favorite types of colds! I’m sure there’s a medical term for it, but when I get the creeky bones every joint feels swollen and my eyes feel sore when I swivel them hard in one direction. The worst part is I know for certain that this is the kind of illness that degenerates into the “Forever Flowing Nose”. *sigh*

Point 2: A strange thing happened to me the other day. I was just sitting at my computer desk at home when I thought I heard a noise coming from my PC. The normal cadence of the fans wasn’t just so. I put my hear onto the desk (as this is the best way to pick up the subtle vibrations that I was trying to hear). Nothing. I stooped and listened to Heather’s PC but didn’t hear anything strange.When I turned around I found my monitor had gone completely blank! It’s still blank and sitting on the floor in a mostly useless kinda way that only a broken monitor can accomplish. My big question and the reason for me babbling is this: What sound does a monitor make before it quits? I’m going to guess it was a high-pitch whine. Or maybe I’m psychic. Or maybe I’m Super IT Guy and I have spectacular powers beyond the understanding of mortal man.

Point 3: Speaking of psychic abilities and super powers… Once upon a time (ok, it was like a month ago), I was walking from the Bus Station to the office and I saw one of those bus-stop advert posters that had some rough looking character dressed like a biker chilling out and looking just generally hectored. The caption said “Take a Stand – May 26”. Obviously since May 26th is my birthday I was left with many questions. What’s with the leather man, what kind of stand should I take and why do I have to wait until then? A few days later I saw another poster. This one featured a woman with white hair and way-tight clothing. Aha. This time I recognized that these were teasers for the new X-Men movie due to open on my Birthday. The sad part is that I was too distracted by the date and phrase “Take a Stand” to notice that the “biker” had 8-inch metal claws sticking out of his hand. I’ll chalk it up this being just all too common in NYC what with all the fancy nail salons and all. Here are two of the posters:

Point 4: Snapple is good stuff, but they don’t necessarily know their stuff. For years now I’ve been reading the pithy little trivia nuggetitos they print on the underside of their caps. They call them “Real Facts”. Misleading, I decried! I set about to researching some of the more unbelievable “Facts” and, although I couldn’t prove or disprove most, I was astounded to find that the ones I could prove were correct! That is, until I came upon “Real Fact #163”. It read “The first penny had the motto “Mind your own business”. Myth! The first penny was the 1787 Ben Franklin Cent also known as the Fugio Cent(Latin for “Time Flies”). They clearly do NOT include the word “Own”. Of course I’m just being pendantic, but hey, that what “blogs” are for, no?

I think it’s funny that people don’t even NOTICE the missing word “Own”. It completly changes the meaning of the phrase from “Take care of yourself” to “Stay out of my way”. While staying out of other folks’ affairs would make the world a better place, actually minding yourself first would be a much better start. I hope you would agree.

That brings me to Point 5 and it’s related to Snapple, but first, a brief soliloquy on Hope. Many poets and writers and every wordslinger in between has expounded on Hope as the one of the greatest of all human emotions & virtues, as the greatest gift that one can give, as something to exploit, et cetera and so forth. I agree it’s many things, but it is also a Four Letter Word. Nowhere are the multiple levels of hope more evident than New York City. From the up-and-commers to the down-and-outs, so many suffer from either too much or not enough. Striking a balance of Hope and Rationality is fundamentally important to the ultimate goal of Serenity. Want an example? Sit in the very back of a New Jersey Transit bus one day and watch the bus fill up. There are two seats on each side of the bus – four to a row and of course nobody wants to have a partner in their little row so empty rows fill up first. The bus will basically fill front to back but once in a blue moon there will be a completely empty row way towards the back even after many of the sternward seats are doubled up. If you’re sitting back there already you can watch the faces of the people getting on. First they look at the seats immediately around them. Then they start walking straight back with a look of Raw Hope on their faces. It’s comical and sad and sometimes I want to help them by waving them off and saying, Nay sir! Stride not to the back where we are already crammed in sardinously! Stop where you be and take that seat next to the Up-and-Commer with the Crackberry glued to his head! Alas, they can’t hear me … they’re lost in Hope. I call them floaters and they float straight past all of the “Decent” seats looking for the Blue Moon Silver Bullet Magic Elixir empty row. Hope Floaters. I can spot them a mile away. Too bad it’s only a matter of time before that honest hope is crushed into the commuters reality that all of the seats suck on N.J.Transit.

Am I lacking hope? Nah. Do I have too much? Sometimes! I’ll end this diatribe with a bit of sorry humor. A year and a half ago Snapple ran a marketing campaign around their “Real Facts” caps. It was a contest of sorts and if you collected the right caps you won prizes. Well the office had a ready supply of Snapples at that time and I happened to have found a good bargain at the local food jobber so, naturally, I started collecting the caps and hoping I would win. When I didn’t win immediately, I did what any blue blooded American would do. I cheated! I picked up caps from bottles I didn’t even drink! Still, I needed more caps to give me a snowball’s chance so while I mentally remembered Mr. Franklin’s “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” I started snagging all of the caps I could find – including those on eBay. Yup! People were selling them on eBay. Just random bunches of unsorted caps. I had done the math. I had eliminated the ‘neutral’ caps. I knew the 10 or so that were the real “winning” caps. I hoped the guys selling the caps didn’t know as much as I did. Long story short. I won NOTHING, but I had fun sorting all of the caps and making Heather think I was nuts. I did take a picture of the mess I made when I was done and the contest was over and my hopes were crushed. Here it is for all of the world to see!

I was all excited about Football Season a few months ago and jinxed myself by posting an entry here about how well I was doing. Well, I’m here to humbly admit that I got slaughtered for over a month after posting said entry. Whatever god presides over fantasy sports, I had most certainly angered him. Sorry Mr. Ditka!

Final Results:
Pick’em (ESPN) – 2nd place in my league. 98% worldwide.
Pick’em (Beat Zeke) – See below!
Elimination League – Tied for 1st in my league – 97% worldwide. (2 wrong)
Gridiron Challenge – 1st place in my league (Just Barely!) – Again, 97% worldwide
Fanball (Money League) – Made the playoffs – Finished in 4th place. Grumble.
MSN/Fox Sports – Champion! I took first place!
ESPN – Won my division but only took 3rd place overall.
NFL.com – Won my division and eventually pulled off the upset for my 2nd Championship! (See Pic)
Yahoo (Random League) – 3rd seed going into the playoffs, but got bounced.
Yahoo (Winners League) – Only last year’s winners need apply! I came within 4 points of a repeat which was good for 2nd place. Drats.

So, that’s 2 championships out of 6 leagues. Not bad! My overall record was 69 wins, 25 losses & 2 ties.

Anyway, NONE OF THAT MATTERS!

Aside from my silly trophy, I won nothing tangible for my efforts… until this year. Here’s the story!

Four years ago, my Uncle Jim had won a trip to Hawaii to see the NFL Pro-Bowl. He won this trip by picking more winning teams than the local newspaper’s resident expert, Mr. Mike Zielinski, perhaps better known as Zeke the legendary pigskin prognosticator. When my Dad heard the news he said, “Hey, Eric knows football… we could pick winners too!” – and so we do. Making the weekly football picks has become a tradition and is a great reason to call my Pop every week. I relay the picks in a matter of minutes, but we usually end up shooting the shit for nearly an hour. We never really expected to win the trip, even when I started routinely beat Zeke. Back when Uncle Jim won, only a few hundred people a week were playing against Zeke and one grand prize trip was awarded by lottery at the end of the season. Well, the game has grown up a bit and now tens of thousands play and a trip is awarded weekly. They also give out lots of t-shirts & free “hoagies” every week. I expected we’d eventually win a shirt or 6 foot sandwich, but we never did.

This year I decided that we’d have our t-shirts even if I had to make them myself! I found the “Beat Zeke” website (linked above), swiped the graphic and photoshopped the “Can you beat Zeke?” logo to match the “I Beat Zeke!” shirt that they show the winners wearing. The results are displayed at the left. Using T-shirt Transfer Paper I made an iron-on patch and made my own shirt, since they weren’t planning on giving me one. Well, really I made a sweat-shirt for my Dad who is the one to submit the entries every week. Technically, it’s a three person tag-team as my Step-Mom gets into the action too. You see, they announce the weekly winner at 3:10 pm on a local radio station and Karen is the only person who’s usually around to listen. We make a good team!

The weekend of December 11th, I made my picks and made my shirt intending to give it as a Christmas gift. I also kicked butt picking a total of 14 correct games out of 16 possible (Harder than it sounds).

Me and Zeke picked ALL of same winners except for the Oakland Raiders/New York Jets game.

Zeke picked the Raiders.

I took the Jets.

14,000 people played Zeke that week.

Only 100 people beat him.

I was one of the 100.

I like those odds.

That Thursday, Karen tuned in AM 810 on the radio like she’s done many times before. At Exactly 3:10, the host declared that Karen Dalton had 8 minutes and 10 seconds to call in and win the grand prize of a trip to see the NFL Pro-Bowl in Hawaii all expenses paid! She didn’t pause to exhale, but quickly (mis)dialed the number and tried to convince the wrong number she had dialed that she was a winner. They didn’t disagree, but suggested she try dialing again. She nailed it the second time and was told she had nearly broken the speed record! A few formalities later, she and my Dad are leaving on a jet plane, on a trip to get leied! It’s not just a two day thing either. It’s a 8-day, 7-night trip for two with Zeke which includes round-trip airfare, hotel accommodations and two game tickets to the Feb. 12th Pro Bowl in a catered luxury box with a total retail value around 8 big ones. J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

I still gave him the shirt for Christmas.

The real one looks better.

Check out Karen’s ad as it appeared in the paper:
http://www.readingeagle.com/beatzeke/dalton.pdf (Cached copy here)
And if the Zeke website vanishes, I cached it here.

Spiewak has their US factory in Mississippi in a small town named Ruleville which is about 2 hours south of Memphis, TN. Last week I was sent down to the factory to perform some general IT duties: Install and setup their new fabric cutting plotter, fix a few broken computers, learn how inventory is done and plan a new data backup strategy. These goals were met! I also was able to meet folks I had only spoken with on the phone and finally able to see how giant rolls of fabric become (for example) a new postal employee jacket. The picture below shows the lining being sewn into one of said jackets and the reflective bands are become very obvious with flash photography.

The parts of the trip that would be of anything other than passing interest to the internet community at large would the be aspects of Mississippi that they might not otherwise have a chance to experience. Is it some backwoods redneck land filled with hillbillies and yokels? No! That’s Alabama. It can’t be backwoods because there are only patches of trees. The residents can’t be hillbillies because there are no hills! NONE. The part of the state we drove through was as flat as a 15th century view of the world. Now, did I see guys ride out of a strand of trees on monster quads with rifles strapped to their backs? Yup. Just try to get away with that in NJ. Did I see more Ford F350 pickup trucks than I’m used to? Sure. The difference is that their tow hitch will actually get used and they WILL actually see some use for their four wheel drive and off-road tires.

They have malls. They have fast-food. They have casinos. They have the birthplace of Kermit the Frog. They’re also in the Mississippi Delta, otherwise known as the birthplace of the blues. What more could you want?

I also saw the death of some old grain silos. I don’t know any back-story, but in the short, here’s a video of a local hero…
I call it: The Battle of Silo!

Click here to download the 2.1mb video of a back-hoe attacking a grain silo.

So… “Acting Governor” Richard Codey decided that “New Jersey & You, Perfect Together” was getting stale. We needed a new slogan and the best that a quarter of a million dollars paid to an marketing firm could belch up was “New Jersey, we’ll win you over”.

So Codey sent out a plea to the huddled masses (with long distance & an internet connection) for a new state slogan. They came up with some winners! Here’s a few of my favorites gleaned from the internet:

• New Jersey: You Gotta Problem Wit Dat?
• Welcome to New Jersey. Expect Delays.
• NJ: Sold to Corzine.
• New Jersey – It’s not as bad as it smells!
• New Jersey: Come Glow With Us.
• NJ: The Traffic Will Kill You. Have a Nice Day.
• NJ: Toxic Waste for all!
• Welcome to the Garden State. Become our fertilizer.

I was pretty sure I could do better, so I came up with not just some slogans, but a mascot & limerick as well.

• New Jersey – A Developers Dream!
• NJ: You could have it all. My empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.
• NJ: Fuckin’ Gulf Stream, Yo!
• New Jersey – The Rental State
• NJ Drivin’ – The Horns of Plenty
• New Joisey – where New Yorkas go ta die.
• NJ: What? You gunna drive all the way to Maryland?

There you have it folks. Don’t thank me now, wait until “horns of plenty” is on your licence plate!