_I Want to be Michael Vick

Not really. That was supposed to be sarcastic. What I mean is, I still don’t understand what is happening with him. First let’s recap. Michael Vick explodes on the NFL scene as a premier player in the league. He has a world of talent and fame and fortune. He eventually get’s mixed up in a dog fighting ring that he is running and gets 2 years in jail and kicked out of the league during that time.

At the beginning of this summer his probation ends and the commissioner, Roger Goodell reinstates Vick. Vick gets picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles and now has a job again.

Here is where it gets tricky, I feel I am pretty talented and do great work. My co-workers like me and feel I am valuable. My company likes what I do and knows I can get it done. All of which can be said about Vick. Now, If I led a dog fighting ring, got arrested and put in jail for 2 years AND declared bankruptcy during that time, would my company or any company give me my job back? I am going to say no. I would think it would be pretty hard for me to climb back up the ladder again. But it was pretty easy for Vick.

Hey – I am all for second chances, especially when it is something stupid or preventable but it just makes me wonder how and why these guys get so much more treatment than us.

And now the NAACP is doing a ‘pro’ Vick rally? Why? What is unjust about Vick? Wrongfully convicted? No. He admitted it. Spent way too much time in jail? Not really, they let him out early. Wronged by the public? No again, he was able to get a job when he was on probation with a construction firm. Cannot get his old job back? No, again…he is on a team now. Why are they marching…in any case Vick got more than he deserved.

_A.J. Burnett Victim of Bad Hitting

A.J. Burnett started 25 games for the Yankees and he has a 10-7 record.  My big questions is 10 wins?  Really?  Carl Pavano has 11 wins.  Jamie Moyer who is 75 has 11 wins.

In Burnett’s 25 starts the team went 16-9.  So why does Burnett only have 10 wins..why not 16 or 15?  Let’s look at those no decisions with a result of a win.

In 3 of the 6 no decisions he left the game when it was tied and given up an average of 3 runs.  In the other 3 the team was down, at most, 2 runs and he still did not give up more than 3.  It is hard to tell what would of happened if he was left in with the ties, but there were 3 wins that were on the table.

Let’s look at the losses.  All of them.

First the no decisions losses.  There were only 2, one of which he gave up 8 runs the other 3.  The one he gave up 3 runs, the team was down by 3.

His straight up losses, he gave up 9, 3, 7, 1, 3, 5, 5.  Giving up 1 run and loosing…ouch.

In my estimation he had 3 ‘bad’ games.  The most recent against the BoSox giving up 8 runs.  The 9 run game against Boston early in the year, and a 7 run game against the Chicago White Sox in early August.

Not that bad.  I think pitchers are allowed a few ‘blow-outs’ it is just surprising that he only has 10 wins with a team that has so much offense.

_Fresh Oil Loose Stone

There are alot of dumb and annoying things in the world but one of the most every summer is the sign that says “Slow, Fresh Oil Loose Stone”.  Why on earth would any town do that?  It totally ruins your car.  Not even a little but alot.  Ruins it.  Not like some construction or paving where your car gets dirty, this RUINS it.

I once had a 1991 Ford Thunderbird Super Coupe 35th Anniversary Edition.
The car was sweet.  One day driving home the town of Fairfield decided to put down Fresh Oil and Loose Stone on MY ROAD.  There was nothing I could do.  I had to drive about 1-2 miles per hour.  My doors, side sills, front, back underneath was covered with it.  It took forever to get most of it off, but there was so much under the car it was ridiculous.

The same thing happened on my 2003 Ford Explorer about a year after we got it.  To this day I still cannot get that crap off the side steps.

I now turn around and go out of my way to get home if I see that sign.  Completely ridiculous.

_3 Days Later…

So I decided to upgrade my wordpress installation on my company intranet.  We were running an older version of WordPress MU (2.7..so I thought) and wanted to bump it up to the latest.

I read the instructions over and over and seemed pretty straightforward.  So I began.

Step 1. Tar up my site.  That took forever.

Step 2. Dump my db.  Did that.

Step 3. Script my db as well.  Glad I did that.

Step 4. Back up .htaccess and wp-config.php and copy over all files (not wp-content).

Everything was going well.  Checked permissions, files, db…all was in order.

Fire up my browser and nothing.  I looked at firebug and saw that i was getting a 500 error.  Checked the logs nothing out of the ordinary.

Did the following: login with the db user using phpmyadmin, mysql, changed password, created new user and nothing worked.  I then created a new db and copied tables over…nothing.  I then tried to start from scratch..kinda like a new install…nothing.  Still could not connect to DB.  CHMOD 777 everything.  Nothing.  Finally I downloaded another 2.8.4a version and uploaded the whole thing.  New installation with that went fine.

Argh.  Tried to change to old db, nothing.  So I manually copied over all the data into the new database.  Still doing it.  Also, my theme no longer works…that is Fridays job

_Email Bankruptcy

The past few years I have not been able to control my inbox at work.  Emails that I “might” need, ones I did not read yet, CYA and spam where littered throughout my inbox.  I tried folders, rules, etc..but the amount of emails coming in on a daily basis was too much.

About 2 years ago I started this thing called email bankruptcy.  I think I read about it or heard it somewhere but basically you delete everything in your inbox and don’t look back.

Well every summer I have been doing it, but it does not last long.  Emails fly in and you get behind real quick.  Well this year is different.  I have implemented the “unsubscribe” (read more) and deleting every email I read or reply within 5 minutes of reading it.  I used to have about 5,000 emails in my inbox and half of them where not read.  Now I currently have 5.

As far as the bankruptcy goes, I would delete them and if someone followed up on something I was supposed to do, well, I just asked them if they could resend it.

Very liberating knowing you have only a couple of emails to deal with.