Behind again…

What a surprise…once again, a lot of time has passed since my last post. I’m starting to wonder if I should just give up on this page. Part of me is saying that I should because I never post, but another part really wants to have the forum to write about whatever I want when the inspiration strikes. Another nagging voice is telling me that writing is good for me since I will soon be writing a series of self-reflective essays that will help propel my career forward. Let’s see where this goes.

My last post was about a month and a half ago. Recapping every single relevant life and news event since then would take up a lot of space and require a lot of time, so I’ll try to cover the basics for all my major categories. In my general (uncategorized) category, I’m happy to announce to all 2 of you that read this that my bf landed a really great teaching job. He is very excited and I am proud of him for all the hard work he put in to get there. To celebrate his success, we went on a cruise to the Caribbean and had a wonderful time. Pictures are on facebook. What else? I just started my new externship. So far, it has been a slow start with most of the time being spent learning new neuropsychological tests. On a more somber note, a close family friend of ours passed away last week. He was a stand up guy. He always put others before himself. He was warm, caring, passionate, and friendly and he will truly be missed.

Onto the world of android. I don’t even know where to start. I’ll have to keep this brief. The Droid X came out a little over a month ago and it is a sweet phone. It is just a tad too big for my petite hands. The Droid 2 just came out last week and while many things were improved, there were some disappointing aspects of it too. I think the froyo OS still has a few bugs and flash needs some tweaking. Also, when speaking into the phone, you can hear yourself in the earpiece almost as if you’re speaking into a microphone in front of an audience. Plus, there’s a really strange bug where things are laggy/buggy when the phone is plugged in vs when it’s off the charger. Verizon just put out a patch, but it mainly addressed other issues. In addition to Motorola phones arriving on the scene, Samsung’s Galaxy S series hit the markets on AT&T and T-Mobile. Sprint and Verizon are up next. I’ve tried out both the Vibrant (T-Mobile) and the Captivate (AT&T) and was really impressed with what I saw. Samsung’s UI makes the phone very intuitive to use and the phones are both very responsive. Of course there are a lot of rumors going around too. My baby (the Incredible) was supposedly supposed to get froyo a few days ago and that didn’t happen. Then there are a bunch of rumors about android based tablets coming out later in the year to compete with the ipad. We’ll see how that goes. I may want to consider getting one of these for myself if the price is right and I feel like one of them would suit my needs.

I haven’t talked about Glee in a while on this blog. I’m still hoping to write a couple paragraphs after each episode of the upcoming season though. We’ll see. But for all you Gleeks out there, the season 2 premiere is on Tuesday, September 21st at 8 PM. There has likely been a lot of Glee news and spoilers this summer, but I honestly haven’t followed much of it. I’m sure I’ll get back into my obsession once the new eps air!

Websites. I haven’t done one of those in a while. Hmmm. That I’ll probably have to save when I have enough time to sit down and do the research. I want to make sure it’s worth the read.

Finally the yankees. They’ve been playing ok lately. The pitching rotation is treading on thin ice right now, which isn’t good. Pettitte is injured, and Burnett and Vazquez stink. I’m surprised they’re even winning as much as they are. A-Rod just went on the DL today. Luckily, other people are hitting and bailing out all our stinky pitchers right now. Nick Swisher is having a great season. I’m happy for him. Robinson Cano should be the AL MVP. I know I’m biased but the guy has had a monster season. Jorge Posada is declining in his ability to catch. Even as recently as a few years ago, he had solid numbers throwing out baserunners. Now, any old person can steal on him. Additionally, a lot more gets by him and he has made some really questionable decisions with the ball in play. Brett Gardner has really become a solid member of the team. With the exception of a couple of slumps, he has played well all year. Phil Hughes has emerged as a reliable starter and even when he gets beat up a little, he still manages to keep the team in the game. Joba Chamberlain stunk himself out of the setup man role. That’s disappointing because when he first came up, he was unhittable. The Yanks got some quality people at the trade deadline for basically nobody in return. One quick comment on Kerry Wood. I saw him dominate the yanks in 2003 in a 1-0 matchup (that the Cubs won) between him and Roger Clemens, who lied to Congress (idiot). Ever since that game 7 years ago, I wanted him on the Yankees. I didn’t even care that his ERA was 6 something when they traded for him. He’s Kerry Wood, a fierce guy that has a lot of talent and who can really help the bullpen if he pitches well.

Alright, I tried to address all of my major categories. Ideally, I won’t have to play catch up all the time but with my track record, who knows. I really do like writing and I thought doing a blog would be a fun way to put my thoughts out there, but it has just taken a back seat to other things. Maybe I can integrate it into my routine once the school year starts up again. My schedule will be varied by day, so any constant would be welcomed.

Have a good night!

WOW (x2)

I’ve been doing some bored searching. That means I’m bored and was looking for anything remotely entertaining on the internet to help pass time. I came up with 2 interesting websites. They are both websites of posts people submit about something that has happened in their lives. The first site is myveryworstdate.com. Again, let me just warn you that these sites aren’t composed of anything too useful…just funny or horror stories from people. Entertainment is the key word! On my very worst date, people post about…yes, you guessed it…their very worst dates. I’ve heard dating horror stories before and have experienced some too, but some of these on the site are just downright funny. Imagine if these stories happened to you. The stories that you could tell people would be priceless! Onto website #2: www.postcardsfromyomomma.com. This is a pretty cool site. Does anyone remember being younger and then having your mom (or both parents) say or do something that was completely embarrassing or ridiculous? If so, picture hearing (or reading) the same kind of stuff as an adult. Some of the posts on this site will just make you laugh out loud or shake your head.

The bottom line for these sites are that they are not earth shattering nor do they provide some cool functionality for you. They just exist for entertainment value, but in times like the one I’m experiencing now, there ain’t nothing wrong with that!

Yankees galore! (Plus WOW)

Welcome to Thursday! You guys are lucky today because I’m going to give you a double post in one. I’m going to make some comments on the Yankees victory last night and also provide the WOW, which is my favorite Yankees blog to follow. Remember how I said I’d be talking about the Yankees playoff run? Yes you do. And remember how I said I wanted to avoid negative emoticons? Well, so far so good even though they’ve only played one game. Let’s hope it stays that way. Anyways, let’s get to the game!

C.C. Sabathia pitched very well last night. Was it the best I’ve seen him? No, but he battled the Twins through 6.2 innings and held them to 2 runs, which should have only been 1 run (I’ll get to that…). I think there are 2 important things to consider with him. First of all, when he is on the mound, his teammates truly believe they will win. The hitters don’t have to worry about playing catch up all game. They can relax and do their thing. Secondly, C.C. is the first high profile pitcher in a long time who has come to NY and actually succeeded in his first year under the big lights. Think about guys like Kevin Brown, Javier Vasquez, and even Randy Johnson. These guys were brought to NY to lead the pitching staff and they all floundered. C.C. came in, completely dominated, and put himself in the running for a Cy Young. This guy is the real deal.

Derek Jeter: is there anything this guy can’t do? He just continues to be clutch. It’s expected every year and he fulfills expectations every year. After the Twins took the lead in the 3rd inning, Jeter came up in the bottom of the inning and smacked a homerun to left field (something unusual for him) to tie the game. That was the game changer. The Yanks were back in it, the crowd was excited, and C.C. buckled down.

Surprisingly, A-Rod had a good game last night as well. For the last however many years, he was just a complete disaster in the postseason. He was the complete opposite of Jeter. However, he drove in 2 important runs last night, and he got both RBI’s with 2 outs. The Yanks need to be able to count on him for production and at least for now, he has silenced the critics. Let’s see if this continues.

Something that may get a little overlooked is the bullpen situation, at least in the first series. Adding Joba to the mix automatically increases the quality of arms out there. Joba has always been very solid out of the pen because he can take on the mindset of just attacking hitters and not worrying about conserving energy to use over 6 or 7 innings. He’s just a different guy. With him, Hughes, Coke, and Rivera out there, it’s possible to shorten the game to 5-6 innings (assuming the starter pitches well). The only negative thing is that if the Yanks make it to the ALCS, they will likely need a 4th starter, which would be Joba. He can’t start and be in the bullpen, so by him starting, the bullpen takes a hit. We’ll see what happens. If only we had a healthy and effective Chien-Ming Wang right now…

Let me cover the website of the week now. I’d like to direct you all to The Lohud Yankees Blog (yankees.lhblogs.com). In my opinion, this is the best Yankees blog out there. It is updated several times per day with all sorts of news…and I mean anything that’s relevant. If someone is injured, it’s on there. If something happened to a player’s family member, it’s on there. If someone donated to charity, it’s on there. You get the gist. And of course, all the big stories are on there too. The guys who run it post pre-game news, do live blogging during the game, and have lots of post-game coverage as well. This site is very comprehensive. In order to see just how comprehensive it is, you really have to check it out. Any devoted Yankees fan will love this blog. My descriptions don’t do it justice. Just go take a look!

P.S. Carl Pavano is scheduled to pitch game 3 of the ALDS. I hope the Yankees destroy him!

WOW

Here is the second installment of Website of the Week, aka WOW for those who haven’t read previous posts. This week’s website is one that most of you have used at some point (possibly religiously), and all have heard of. This website has saved me from getting stuck in many traffic jams that would have made me want to pull my hair out. So featured this week is none other than www.mapquest.com. The feature I use the most is the traffic feature. What’s great about the traffic feature is that it’ll give you up to the minute traffic information for all major highways/roads. The site uses green to show the roads are moving well, yellow to indicate slowing, and red to indicate that the road you want to travel is a disastrous mess that isn’t moving at all. But besides the color-coding, you can also see which direction has the traffic. For instance, if I want to travel on interstate 95 from where I live and I see the road split by yellow and green, it means that one side of travel is moving well and the other is slow. All you have to know is that when you’re traveling, you’re always on the right side of the road, and the map is the exact same. So if the right side of 95 is yellow, then traffic from me toward NYC is slow. That’s it. Another important feature of Mapquest is its ability to give you accurate driving directions to somewhere. You would hope it would do this! Haha. Anyways, not only can you get door to door directions, but you can also opt to see how traffic will likely be along your driving route. This can help you avoid roads that may be crowded or slow. What do you do about this? Just scroll down to the text directions and click the “avoid” option next to any step in the directions to avoid that specific road. Within seconds, the site will re-calculate your route to the next quickest option to getting you where you want to be. Easy.

I’ve noticed that most people default to Google Maps to get their map fix or directions somewhere. This is a great site too, but Mapquest has the same features, and its traffic read-outs are much easier to read. Either site will give you what you need, but I encourage you guys to give Mapquest a chance. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that when you check traffic and you see a lot of red or yellow, if the site knows why there is a holdup, it will put up a triangle with a big exclamation point in it. You can click on that triangle and there is a brief description of why traffic is moving slow. For me, it’s usually “Throgs Neck Bridge has ramp restrictions going northbound.” This means that there is only one lane open getting onto the bridge, which therefore backs up the whole Cross Island Parkway (possibly all the way back to the LIE), which therefore makes Ari’s drive to CT very long…or anyone’s for that matter.

Website of the Week

I thought I’d officially start off with Website of the Week (aka WOW) because this week is almost over. So when you get a chance, head on over to my first featured website, www.hotwire.com. I’m sure most if not all of you have heard of Hotwire. It’s one of the more popular travel sites out there along with Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, etc. Let me tell you why Hotwire is a great site to use. I’m going to focus on booking hotels because there is so much to the site that to write a full review would take forever. Typing in your information is very easy when you’re on the homepage, and then the fun begins. The site gives you a list of areas within a certain city (or around the city), a price per night, a map of the area, and a hotel star level. The piece of information that you don’t get until you book is the name of the hotel. What they want you to do is commit to the room rate and then they reveal where you will be staying. So there is an element of surprise for those who either love surprises or those who are so indecisive that doing it this way is much less painful than comparing hotels for hours. It’s a win-win situation. Once you decide on a rate and press continue, the site will explain to you how it decided that whatever hotel you’re getting is rated at a certain star level. Most of the time, star levels are based on amenities the hotel provides, but unfortunately, sometimes it may be based on something as fundamental as cleanliness. Once you’re on this page with more details, you get a better idea of how much your entire stay will cost (with taxes) and also what area of town it’ll be located in. After that, you book it. It’s such a simple process and it saves so much time and headache because all you have to commit to is a star level and a budget. Is there a chance you get a hotel that’s missing something you really want? Sure, but there is also a chance that you get an amazing deal and a hotel with tons of different amenities. In June, Ian and I booked a hotel through Hotwire for when we went to Six Flags in NJ. This place was rated at 2 stars, but it was a dump. Just a mess. So he wrote Hotwire a review of the hotel and they ended up giving him a credit for what he spent for future use on hotels through Hotwire. This tells me that they care about their customers and listen to what people have to say. Quality is important to them. More recently, we stayed at a hotel in Toronto that we booked through Hotwire. This hotel was gorgeous and it was right in the middle of downtown Toronto where all the action was. We got a rate that was far less than half of what you’d normally pay by booking through the hotel’s website. It was shocking how good this deal was. So those are just 2 personal examples of how Hotwire is a great site to use. If any of you are considering traveling soon, give Hotwire a chance and let me know how it goes!