Love and Manhood, NFL style

Ron Wolfley, a 4-time pro-bowl running back in the NFL, recently became a daddy for the first time and ushered his daughter, Savannah, into the world. The event left him overcome with emotion, leading to this blog post/account of events. While the entire post is really neat and worth a read, I found a new respect for the man when I read this...

"I have always believed the true measure of a man can found in his capacity to love. I now know this to be true. There is no greater strength, nothing more virtuous, no greater motivator and no emotion more fierce than love. People will die because of it and sacrifice for others in the name of it.

There are those that will think I’m soft, that tears aren’t for men and love is somehow not cool. My reply is simple: step outside, cave-dweller, and find out why the Spartans fought so fiercely."

I have long believed that real men feel, and the strongest men feel strongly. While I suspect anger/hate is probably the strongest emotion, love is the *GREATEST* emotion you can feel and the greatest choice you can make, for the man that can avoid succumbing to the strongest emotion and instead love some something to that same extent is great indeed.

Best of luck to you and yours, Ron, and thanks for your perspective!

Yup, they're for real

And they're here to stay for a while, too. This team is good, and scary good at that for a team this young because they *should* get better. I'm not saying they're going to win it all this year, but I am saying anything less than a .667 win percentage this year would be an underachievment.

The thing I'm scared about is the early success they're having. No pro baseball team can sustain this type of record over 162 games...just won't happen. While the Dbacks are in a position this year where they almost HAVE to do well right now (22 of their first 25 games are against division opponents, and 22 in a row at that - you don't get these games back), it's not how they start that I'm really concerned with but how the finish. And since they ARE doing so well right now, don't be surprised if they have something of a *slump* midseason. Teams will figure them out, slowly but surely. Their youth will show it's head on occasion. I just hope that come mid- to late-August and through September they return to this form and carry it all the way through the post season.

Regardless, this team is going to be exciting to watch for a few years to come. They're young, they're talented in many areas, and everyone in the lineup is willing to do the little things to win a baseball game.

I never thought it would happen, but WoW!

I swore I'd never play it. The communities were too juvenile. It was akin to rooting for the Yankees or the Lakers. My machine wasn't powerful enough to run it well (at the time, that was too true). Playing WoW would suck the life away from me.

And yet now I have a Palladin for me, a level 1 warrior as a dedicated auction house alt, and a Hunter to go leveling w/my wife, who elected to play a Mage.


*oops!*

The community isn't as bad as I thought and I have a nice new pretty beefy machine to run the program. I do feel a little dirty playing it, though...I've never been a big fan of being a part of an evil empire-ish organization or team, and I do feel a touch bad about leaving my old game. Ragnarok has had a fantastic run, though, and after 6-7 strong years it's really coming towards the end of its life. As for it sucking the life out of us?

My wife said she wanted to play but was hesitant because she didn't want to become addicted to the game (something, by her own admission, she can fall into with video games pretty easily). I said I wouldn't allow it to cut into her reading or her love of books. The result? She's actually been reading more than she has in a long time, and I'm actually reading at all. We've travelled enough in the past few months to have already earned a free night, which we'll be redeeming in May when we head south to TucSuck for a couple days. Sucked the life out of us? Not at all.

If you WoW it up, drop me a line sometime and let me know what server you're on!

Danica's win does not deserve an asterisk

I've heard some people commenting on Danica Patrick's recent IRL win, claiming it was, "only won on fuel mileage," so it basically doesn't count.

Uh...what?

Wasn't the Daytona 500 won on gas mileage/fuel strategy this year? I didn't hear anyone taking anything away from Ryan Newman after that one. In fact, he was applauded by many for making a gutsy call and then pulling it off. I realize that IRL isn't NASCAR, and NASCAR isn't Formula 1, etc. But really, it boils down to this - it's a race to X amount of miles, first to finish within the rules wins. She did that. To say that she "only won" on mileage is to say that knuckleball pitchers "only won" because they throw a pitch slower and weirder than others. But it's legal. And it works - IF the pitches are better than the batters they're facing. And Danica was better than the other racers/teams that day. I don't get why people are trying to take anything away from her and this win (actually, I do get it, and they're dumb). It's not like she took anything away from them...oh, except for the trophy that she earned by beating everyone else in the field that day.

Is she a better racer than the rest of the field? No, I don't think so. That's what the season points championships help to point out. Does driver weight have something to do with gas mileage and therefore puts her at an advantage, everything else being equal? Possibly...I'm not knowledgable enough of a race fan to know. But she and her team won that day and replaced the monkey with some hardware. For those that don't like it, they should go beat her in a race. That's why they play the game, folks!

Conversation at work

Me to Co-worker: "I don't like you very much right now."
Co-worker to me: "Huh?"
Third party to co-worker: "What he's saying is that he's not getting any pleasure from you right now."

*insert puzzled look here*

Ummm...Sprechen Sie WTH???? This is why techies many times aren't allowed to also provide direct support to the end user. Things just get lost in translation somewhere.

Tattoos

First it started with my wife thinking she wanted a tattoo for/around her birthday. Then I chimed in saying if she got one, I'd get another. Then we got her brother in law involved...he's in. Now her sister is in the fold...

That's how you know you're family, baby...bound by ink and blood!

Time

There never seems to be enough when you want it, and there's always an over-abundance when you want it to go faster.

Things have settled down at home to a semi-normal state at home now, and I find myself wanting about 4-8 more hours in the day. I'd really like more time to be lazy and enjoy more, but with work being slightly less than an hour away (and no chance of that changing is anywhere in sight) and the responibilities that come with marriage (enjoyable though they may be), I just don't have enough time in the day, it seems.

The reality, of course, is that if those extra 4-8 hours were actually available, they'd probably get filled by some entity demanding my time versus used for things I'd prefer. And so it goes...

Oh well!