Opening Night '08

To my surprise last week, the Braves are playing tonight versus the Washington Nationals, instead of with everyone else on Monday. Seems that the Nats are opening up a new stadium and decided to invite the Braves to the party, complete with President Bush, cherry blossoms, and everything else DC has to offer. Guess that's a little fitting since Ted Turner once tried to market the Braves as "America's Team", never mind they were in last place for a lot of that campaign.

Those were the days of Dale Murphy (my first favorite player), Dwight Evans, and Bert Blyleven. Those were the days when tradition went before marketing. Unfortunately, for the Braves players and staff, tonight is about marketing. See, the catch is, the next game in this series doesn't occur until April 11. Huh? Yeah, the Braves have their own home opener tomorrow night against Pittsburgh. So, the Braves are only playing tonight to open up a damn stadium. Any reason this couldn't wait until tomorrow? The new Busch Stadium didn't have it's opener until April 10 in 2006. I'm sure they could of waited in DC.

And don't get me going on the whole let's-play-two-in-Japan thing. I'm sure Oakland A's fans really appreciated opening their season overseas where the games came on at about 3 am local time.

Back to the Braves, I'm hearing a lot of good about them this year, which is good because I really gotten used to them being good. Their lineup is expected to have a lot of pop with Brian McCann (my new favorite player), Chipper Jones, Mark Teixeira, and Jeff Francoeur. On the pitching side, Tom Glavine is back after a stay with the dark side, aka the Mets. If the pitching holds up and stays healthy, because these guys are a bit old by athlete standards, this could be a team that could even win the division (and piss off the rest of the NL East for the 15 time in 18 years). It's going to be weird not seeing Andrew Jones (my old favorite player) not roaming centerfield as he's now with the Dodgers, but hey, life goes on.

But as for tonight, hopefully the Braves will be rude guests and crash this house warming. Go Braves!

Update: Ryan Zimmerman just hit a walk-off home run to end the game 3-2 for the Nats. That sucked! Home opener for the Braves tomorrow night.

Another note, the Braves were apparently surprised by some new alternate road jerseys tonight. These things are so new, they're not even available to buy yet. I'm kind of mixed on them, mainly with the numbers on the back being the same dark blue as the jerseys with only a white border to differentiate. See the new blues below.

One more note, it appears ESPN.com's Jayson Stark has picked the Braves to win the World Series this year. Here's a quote from the article that keeps in the spirit of tonight's Braves/Nats matchup:

"I don't think anybody should be looking forward to going into Atlanta this year and facing [Tim] Hudson, Smoltz and Glavine," said Nationals manager Manny Acta. "And [Mike] Hampton, too. That's a bunch of tough hombres to go up against. And as long as Bobby Cox is over there, I don't think anybody should overlook that team."

You can read the rest of the article here.

My Cat Needs a Workout

Aa you watch the final second or so of the above video, you should notice my cat Hershey's little pouch swing like a pendulum on a grandfather clock in overdrive as he scampers out of my room. Personally, I've never seen any reason that cats can't get an indoor workout. Even though he's eight, he does still have the playfulness of a 8 month old kitten. Still, I wonder if he needs something more. Something like this:

Sand Hill Cranes

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This is some video I shot this morning of the sand hill cranes just outside of Alda, Nebraska. These birds, along with a few other migratory birds, come through Nebraska during migration in the Spring and the Fall. It's one of the "hidden gems" we have up here. I apologize for the wind noise (it was only a 2 mph breeze, I swear). Wind noise is one of the reasons I'd like to move up to an actual video camera from my little point and shoot digital camera (which isn't meant for video). Nonetheless, enjoy.

I'll be posting photos soon.

Finally Jailbroken

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Last night, I learned that the best iPhone/iPod touch jailbreaking tool, ZiPhone, finally released a version that supported the newer releases of the iPod touch (which I have). So, I restored the 1.1.4 firmware so that my iPod touch was back to factory settings, then ran this software. 45 seconds later, I was jailbroken and off to the races with playing around. The above shot shows off the Summerboard theme I'm using.

For those that are totally confused, "jailbreaking" is how iPhone/iPod touch users can use third-party applications on their device, not to mention change the overall appearance.

Cameo Before Fame

OK, for the Hip-Hop and R&B connoisseurs out there, I want you to watch the following video, for Cool C's "Glamourous Life", closely. I actually had never seen this video until recently myself. But as I watched it, I noticed the girl of interest in this video is someone who has gained a bit of fame over the past few years.

I've discussed this with a few of you before, but if you want to leave guess, do so in the comments. What do you get for being right? Nothing. Except maybe looking like a genius to your friends as you show this off to them.

Enjoy.

Midwest weather is a cruel joke

This morning around 9 a.m., I head to the corner store to grab a blueberry muffin to join my coffee. I knew it was in the mid-50's, but to my surprise upon stepping out. Of course, I had to do the usual Lincoln to Pensacola comparison to illustrate this, so check the screen shot below.

Now it is 11:40 a.m.. I've had the window open most of the morning where about an hour ago I started to feel a chill come from outside. Currently, it's about 50 here in Lincoln. About 30 miles up the road in Seward, NE, it's 40. That's just insane!!!

So, what I'm going to do is live blog throughout the day. Right before I go to work in about two hours, I'll make an observation. Same when I go on break and come home from work. The point will be to illustrate how quickly things can change, particularly in the transition periods between Fall & Winter and Winter & Spring. Expect bickering.

12:00 p.m. - First batch of photos:





1:30 p.m. - There's a definite chill in in the air now. The wind is also picking up. What once was a windbreaker type of day has become a day for a winter jacket.

1:55 p.m. - The first hint of sprinkling is coming down as I come into work. The wind is really stiff in open areas. You can see the flags in the picture below to illustrate that. The second shot shows some of the low clouds that are beginning to roll in.





5 p.m. - The rain that has been falling for about the last two hours has switched over to snow. Being it's in the mid-30's, the flakes are extremely big. You can't really see this in the photo below, but you at least get a sense of how cold it looks.



8 p.m. - It's actually stopped raining for about the past hour. Right now it's just damp and cool. A look at the radar shows it'll be moving back in here shortly, but who knows it it'll be rain or snow as it actually went from rain to snow around 5 p.m. and back to rain around 5:45 p.m.. Of course, I have the comparison screenshot below.

Preview of gaming on the iPhone/iPod touch

When I bought my iPod Touch, I did so to fill the void I had when my iPhone was stolen last year. Part of that void was the brilliant technology embedded in the device.

Part of that technology is the accelerometer inside the device, that detects which way the phone is turned. This come into play when looking at pictures and webpages. With the SDK (software development kit) being released soon for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it is expected that games from third party developers will be available, making these devices even more breathtaking.

The video here is a game I'm really looking for, called Trism, that is reminiscent of games like Tetris or Bejeweled. I usually get hooked on games like this, so if I stop blogging or lose contact for a while, there's a chance I could be playing this a lot.