Pandora, Paperbacks, and......sorry no 3rd "P"

Just a posting on a couple websites and links I really like and want to share with y'all.

I know this link made its way through some of our blogs a couple months ago, but none the less, I really, Really, REALLY like this site. Pandora radio - Music from the Radio Genome Project is a website I "hit" everyday while at work.

You start by entering a band or song you like and the website begins to play music that matches elements of that entry. You then rate the songs whether you like or do not like and the program continues to play music to match your liking. It takes awhile to get started as many of the songs in the beginning you may not like, but the more you rank the better it becomes. I registered for the "free" site and it is great. And I like the rating because it is I like it or I do not like it, no middle ground. And if you do not like it, the song quits playing!.

Another great element is that you can create multiple "radio stations" and then mix them together. A radio station is created by the song or artist you enter. So you can listen to just your "Miles Davis" station or just your "Pearl Jam" station or you can mix them together and hear multiple songs from both genres. The site is really worth you checking out if you haven't already or go back to it or keep at it. This site got better the more I ranked songs. One more great feature is that a song will repeat itself on your station once and awhile. If you get sick of it, you can tell the site so and it won't play that song for a month!

Another great website, especially for those of us with either huge libraries or really like to read is Paperbackswap.com. You can get books for free. You start by registering and providing 9 books you do not mind parting with. After doing so, you immediately get 3 "credits" Using those credits you can order books for free from other members! Everytime someone gets a book from you, you earn a credit. So you got to want to part with some of your good books. Or get lucky and hope some of your not so good books are wanted by others. You pay for nothing except the postage (when you are the sender) to send the book. When someone orders one of your books, the website even provides the printouts and address labels for you to printout and attach to the packaging.

The downside is that getting newer books isn't very likely. But it does happen sometimes. For instance, you can set up wishlists for books you'd like (which I think is one of the best features of the site). A waiting line is then established based upon who added the book first. What happens is that if you are first on the list, and someone posts it for you to order, you are made aware of the listing first through email. You then have 48 hours to respond, if you say yes, you get it, if you say no, it goes to the person next in line. So for insatnce, I just ordered my copy of Slip and Fall by Nick Santora (which was published in June 2007) this morning, but I have heard nothing about Sex God by Rob Bell (which was published in March of 2007). I was first in line for Slip and Fall, but I am currently 40th in line for Sex God. Some "lines" move fast and others move slow. I'll probably eventually have to buy Sex God if I want to read it. But having saved $25 on Slip and Fall (which I will read and then re-post on the site and earn another credit for another book) I could buy Sex God, and still save money. Most everything is done by the ISBN number for each book. That's what makes this legal. The book has already been paid for, the author got their royalties and you are just trading the book away. Everything is legal about the book switching hands.

If you sign up, let me know, please, if you reference me, I get a free credit!!

Sorry couldn't find a 3rd link that begins with the letter "P"

Do anyone of you?

Share them here.

It's Officially Time to Talk About.....

August 1st the last 5 or 6 years has taken on a new meaning with me lately. It makes it official to start talking about (drum roll please).................................








































Fantasy Football!!!!!

HEE-HAW!!!!

Draft is in T-Minus 23 days.

10 team this year and I hold the #5 pick. There has already been a lot of chatter throughout the office since we picked our draft order a couple weeks ago. And here is what people are saying:

Team 1 - LT
Team 2 - S-Jax
Team 3 - Shaun Alexander (because LJ is a hold out and Gore hurt his hand yesterday)
Team 4 - Peyton (we are a QB heavy league...more on that later)

What am I going to do, who will be there for me to take at 5. Take a chance on LJ? Joseph Addai? Brian Westbrook? Rudi Johnson? Carson Palmer even?

Now considering the assumptions above and I am not naive enough to think teams 3 and 4 are 100% sure this is who they will take. They may just be throwing rumors out there. If LJ actually does hold out, then he will be available at 5 I am sure. But I would assume the Big 3 will be gone. That being LT, LJ, and S-Jax. Gore with a broken hand will not go unless some kind of miracle happens. Gore will make it pass me as well. I am very sure that Peyton is going to go off the board at 4. As I said, we play in a QB heavy league where each TD is 6 points and you get bonus for length of TD pass. So a 27 yard TD pass is 9 points. 1 point for every 20 pass yards, 6 points for the TD and 2 point bonus for the TD being between 20 and 30.

I would have thought Alexander would be to me at 5 and I'd swoop him and get him, but this LJ thing could throw a monkey wrench in.

But I did say I am considering Palmer in the 1st. Sounds crazy I know. But consider this. LT, S-Jax, Alexander, and Peyton are all gone. LJ is holding out, Gore broke his hand. That leaves 3 guys in the next group of RBs. Westbrook, Addai, and Rudi. Which one do you take? Who is better than anyone else? That's why I think Palmer. But I do think Palmer could fall to me in the 2nd round on the come back. So I flip a coin and hope to grab the RB who will be better than all the rest.

Maybe I go crazy and take Palmer in the 1st round, a stud WR in the 2nd AND 3rd rounds (Holt, Harrison, Johnson, etc.) cornering the market on top notch QBs and WRs. Then in the 4th - 7th rounds I pick up all RBs and figure out which 3 to play every week. Guys like Julius Jones, Marion Barber, Duece McAllister, Jerious Norwood, Cadillac Williams, etc. would all be available. We start 2 rbs and 2wrs and 1 UTL player. I could plug in a top tier Qb and 2 Wrs every week and play musical chairs with my rbs. 2 of them are bound to break out from the pack in the middle of the season and if I strike gold with even one of them, I can ride them to the championship.

What team looks better.

QB - Carson Palmer
WR - Chad Johnson
WR - Roy Williams
RB - Julius Jones
RB - Cadillac Williams
UTL - Jerious Norwood

or

QB - Drew Brees
WR - Chad Johnson
WR - Plaxico Burress
RB - Rudi Johnson
RB - Edgerrin James
UTL - Jerious Norwood

I think I'd go for team 1.

I think this may be my strategy this year. But there is a lot of time to go and a lot of preseason football still to go. I can change my mind easily.

By the way, to find out how I decided which players for the above scenarios, there is a web-site that runs mock drafts 24 hours a day all day long. It is a pretty sweet site and you can get a pretty good idea on what guys will be available at what time.

Check it out at fantasyfootballcalculator.com

It isn't exact science as they have some guys rated pretty high and others pretty low. But it's still cool to have a live mock draft and see how things unfold. You can pick an 8, 10, 12, or 14 team size league and participate yourself.

Great way to blow a lunch hour!!!

Enjoy and good luck to all of you in fantasy football this year.

Play Something Country

It ain't always pretty

But it's real

It's the way we were made

Wouldn't have it any other way

-These Are My People (Rodney Atkins)

These days, it seems that country music has a stigma (no crap Brian!). It's hard to put a finger on one thing in particular, a specific point that gives it that stigma. And that point is proven by the fact that a hundred different reasons just raced through your head as to what that stigma is. Rednecks (I knew y'all wuld like em' that ther pithur), wife beaters, banjos, Nascar, dogs always dyin', cheatin' husbands, Deliverance, etc. But no matter, rest assured, if you ask enough people what type of music they enjoy listening to, at least half of them will say something to the effect of

"I like everything. Except for country, that is."

Why? Even people who enjoy, and like me, preach the qualities and pure artistry of country music, will put a disclaimer and qualifier when we speak up about country music. Almost solidifying the "stigma" or giving credence to it. Admitting the redneck factor, double wide, wife left me, got in a bar fight, truck broke down, and I kicked my dog (Vick style....eww, low blow) perception people have of country music.

"I'm not saying it's all good..."

"Hard to believe but..."

"It's not as twangy anymore..."

blah, blah, blah.

It's a large issue. The fact that people in our generation seem to automatically deny the quality or pleasurable benefit of country music and its offshoots. It is assumed this is largely in hopes of portraying the opposite element of hip-ness for the express purposes of impressing those around them. Granted, there are a number of artists who have been embraced as of late, especially by those in the Christian community -- by a "number of artists," it is meant "Johnny Cash."

Most of the people who are now claiming allegiance to the house of Cash never really listened to him before his death -- and even more telling, before his movie biopic. At least it means that there is some accounting for taste out there, not to mention that the less people we have listening to the latest fourth-generation Pearl Jam rip-off (and therefore, 3rd generation Nirvana rip-off...yes I said it...OVERRATED...said it again), the better; Cash's newly born hipster cred may be posthumous, but it's hipster cred nonetheless.

But if you really get down to it, country music is impossible to ignore. Truth be told, that particular industry sells records. A lot of them. If that is true (and it is), then for every person attempting to project instinctive coolness by denying country music, there is one who really doesn't mind appearing "countrified" (openly discussing their purchase of the latest Big & Rich album) and one who swears he "would never" but has and will. Hats off to the ones who are "keeping it real."

The great music journalist Chuck Klosterman, in his book: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs writes:

"While rock and hip-hop constantly try to break through to a future consciousness -- and while alt country tries to replicate a lost consciousness from the 1930s -- modern country artists validate the experience of living right here, right now."

Hmmm....I though Van Halen was all about Right Here, Right Now? It means everything! It's that magic moment!

Riiiiiight......anyway.........

I think he is on to something. He's actually expressing 2 elements to why country music has remained so popular for so many years, and why it will continue to do so. The first is expressly written by him, country music is primarily concerned with the here and now. Secondly, and I think more subversive in his writing, that it does not try to push its ideas on anyone, but merely reflects what its fans already believe.

No pretensioness (is that word), no fakes, no frills. It isn't always pretty, but it is what it is and that is is Life.

"...Country music doesn’t have to be politically correct. We sing about God, because we believe in Him. We’re not tryin’ to offend anybody, but the evidence we have seen of Him in our small, little lives trumps your opinion about whether or not He exists.

We love country music because it touches us where we live. It’s about mamas and when they were hot and when they are unappreciated and when they were dying. It’s about daddies and the difficulties they have sometimes in tellin’ the people that they work so hard to protect and provide for, how they feel about’em.

Country music is about new love and it’s about old love. It’s about gettin’ drunk and it’s about getting’ sober. It’s about leavin’ and it’s about comin’ home.

It’s real music sung by real people for real people—the people that make up the backbone of this country. You can call us rednecks if you want, we’re not offended ‘cause we know what we’re all about. We get up and go to work. We get up and go to church. And, we get up and go to war when necessary. All we ask for is a few songs to carry us along the way...” - Jeff Foxworthy, 2007 CMA's

Click here to see the whole speech.

Go Organic and Free Range!!

Ever Wonder what $200 million looks like....

Take a look.

WOW!

Big Mac

Well it finally seems that former Senator George Mitchell doesn't really have the cooties afterall. After a year of getting the cold shoulder from Major League Baseball (MLB) Players and their obstructionists union, MLB's top drug cop is finally getting a trickle of cooperation from the players. Jason Giambi talked to him a few days ago and Gary Sheffield, who can't stop talking to anybody about everybody and anything, has said that he will talk frankly with Mitchell as well. That's wonderful. That's great news that just might lend some smidgen of credibility to this glorified book report that Mitchell has been conducting. But as memory serves me, weren't we suppose to be hearing some rather frank, anti-steroid chatter from another famous, muscle-bound, swollen headed, steroid using home run leader?

No not him.

I'm talking about Mark McGwire. It's been just over 2 years and 4 months since he sat before Congress and told us, with alligator tears flowing from his eyes, that he would speak up, loud and clear, to the youth of America and tell them, with his own unusual conjugation how bad steroids were. And now here we are. We're still waiting Mark. And your silence is another reminder to everybody that Barry Bonds isn't the only villain in this story of baseball and steroids.

Amnesty SHAMnesty

On Vacation

3 posts in one day?! WOW!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I am done and out.

Vacation time

In Traverse City until sometime next week. Beaches, vineyards, lighthouses, sand dunes, and the whole family....get me there NOW!!!

The plan is to be back in Detroit on Thursday the 19th, but maybe not. We'll see, we may stay an extra day or two.

I hope to catch up here and on everyone else's blog with comments, etc when we get back.

Remember it is all the Republicans fault.

Gas prices....freakin a.

On the verge of leaving on vacation for the week, gas prices skyrocket again and Michigan leads the pack. What are the odds that in the middle of July prices would go up? It's never happen before. It has to be those greedy, money grubbing, deep pocket, lighting Cuban's with their Benji's Republicans.

Anyway, here's an article in today's Detroit News explaining a lot of it:

"Michigan's gasoline prices, the highest in the nation on Thursday, have motorists fuming and the tax man smiling."

Read the rest here

The Doctor will see you now

Luke, the beloved physician, was poised for the ultimate examination. Luke had done his research thoroughly, he had talked to other specialists, grasped the vital signs denoting health; he was prepped for his task. Years of medical experience had trained his eyes and intuitions to know the situation even before the results were in. The patient, the Lord Jesus, was thoroughly sifted in Luke's arduous investigation. No stone had gone unturned in the life of Christ, no pocket left unchecked. The doctor gazed deeply into the pupils, the ears and most importantly, listened to His heart. After a period of analysis, a crunching of the numbers and checking the charts, the Doctor stepped back and internalized the results. He rubbed his chin and checked the information on his clip-board one more time. Looking up, he pronounced his diagnosis, "You're normal." he said.

May we all be normal