Author: Joe

Categories
Sports

Honey Badgers 1/17/12

Last night the Honey Badgers got a much needed win over the Lightning Donkeys. The great overall team effort was what the team really needed after numerous close defeats. A mixture of old vetereans and new faces blended together for a strong night.

Last night was we got our new shirts and also had a team photo taken (haven’t seen it yet). The shirts are nearly identical to last season’s, being a slightly different shade of red.

We also welcomed aboard two new members of the Honey Badgers, Brian and Jonathan. Wow, what an addition these two seem to be. Excellent players and also great teammates. They found ways to contribute to the team all night, even when they weren’t playing. Can’t ask for more than that!

We found ourselves in an early hole losing the first two matches. I honestly wasn’t sure how things would turn out for us at that point. However the troops kept plugging away and settling in and before we knew it the teams were exchanging match for match.

Our girls played great and really kept us in the game. With the exception of one girl on the Donkeys who literally caught everything and anything thrown near her, our girls were pretty dominant. It’s great to watch how well they’ve come together as a team. A major turning point in the night for us was when Steph was our last girl remaining, and made back to back catches to win us a very important match. Great job!

As the night moved on our guys really began to settle in, it was great to watch. While some of our usual stars had off nights by their standards, new guys stepped it up and really carried us. Jared had a very solid night, with some key catches and good low throws all night. I really like the aggressiveness I saw in his play.

New guys Brian and Jonathan were amazing! Their infusion of athleticism and strong throws was exactly what we needed for the Honey Badgers. Actually one of my best memories of the game was when it as down to Brian, Jared and myself in one of the later games. The teamwork that we had with one another was great. We all seemed to know what each other intended to do, throwing at the same time/targets and making sure everyone had a ball in hand to throw. That was a solid match and playing together really got us through that match.

Shawn and John really showed a better understanding of the rules this week and greatly contributed to the team as well.

Overall I was very impressed with the Honey Badgers last night. I feel like we’re a greatly improved team with our new additions this season and our continued team play.

Categories
Books

The Conan Chronicles

The Conan ChroniclesDidn’t really have anything specific in mind as I visited the library last. Nothing in the new releases section caught my eye, so I just figured I’d wander into the fiction section.

I recalled NGM telling me that there was a really great fantasy series by Robert Jordan. So I figured I’d see if they had the first book in the series. I’m not sure if they did or not (pretty sure not), but did see The Conan Chronicles by Robert Jordan.

My brothers and I loved the Conan movies when we were little kids, and the comics were pretty cool too. So why not give some Conan a shot?

This book was a compilation of 3 separate stories. I read the first 2 and they were not too bad. It wasn’t great, and the formula seemed a bit predictable at times (Conan against an evil magician), but overall they were entertaining.

As usually I found my most enjoyable character a sidekick, the one eyed Hordo. Typically he’s “too old” for all this stuff, but goes along for the good fight.

A bit predictable at times, but still nice to get back to some old school violence of good against evil that I grew up with.

Categories
Sports

Honey Badgers 1/10/12

Season 2 of SJSL dodgeball started last night with a majority of returning Honey Badgers from last season joined with some new faces too. Despite losing in overtime, I was extremely pleased with our play in the first game of the season. I saw a lot of poise, grit, and determination by the Honey Badgers last night.

Our opponent was the expansion team Vicious and Delicious. Former Honey Badger standout Jen was amongst their members, so we knew that their girls would be a solid squad. However, our Honey Badger girls matched and at times exceeded them match for match. It was fantastic to observe.

Meghan played great, her throws were solid all game long. A very impressive display. Lauren was amazing too. She was hustling all game long, making some amazing and clutch catches and also getting off throws in a rapid fashion. Caitlin too was her usual a aggressive self. Getting many throws off and always being one of the first to run up to the line. Steph and Katie made some amazing catches too. It’s like they both went to a catching camp over the break.

Our guys played very solid as well too. With our new additions of John and Shawn, we seem to of gotten younger and quicker as a team. We had some early outs due to our new guys adjusting to rules, stepping over the lines, etc. but once they figure all that little stuff out I really like our new squad.

Dustin was very solid all night for us. John and Shawn are bringing a lot of offense to the table as well. I sat out all but one match to hopefully rest up my sore shoulder. Unfortunately my old man should has been in pretty bad shape the past few weeks.

All in all a very promising start to the season. I really like out updated roster and the effort that was on display last night.

Categories
Video Games

Super Mario 3D Land

Super Mario 3D LandI did pick up a Nintendo 3DS a few months back when they dropped the price. But I really hadn’t played any of the 3DS titles on it just yet. There really wasn’t anything that great that had been released in my opinion.

However, when Super Mario 3D Land was released I was sure to pick up a copy right away. I mean, it’s Super Mario in 3D after all. Something I’d of given many rupees years ago to of experienced.

The game was great, and really showcases just how amazing 3D gaming on the 3DS can be. Nothing felt forced or gimmicky, it just works. The production values are top notch, like you would expect from a top tier Nintendo title.

At first the whole 3D can be a bit daunting, but just a few minutes in you’re easily immersed  and can judge jumps like a pro.

The first bBowser fight was really impressive to me. The fire that he throws at you really jumps off the screen and adds an element of hurry to your actions. I felt like a little kid, it was great.

The only drawback is that the game isn’t very challenging to a Mario veteran. However, it’s not so simple as to bore.

An amazing game and a reason in itself to buy a 3DS. Very impressed and looking forward to more A-grade titles.

Categories
Development Projects website

Christ Episcopal Church of Somers Point

Christ Episcopal Church of Somers PointA few months ago one of my co-workers, the Admiral told me that her mom’s church was having issues updating their website: http://christchurchsomerspoint.org. Apparently the guy who developed and was assisting them with their site had gotten busy and was no longer able to support them in a timely manner. She asked if I’d be interested in working with them, and I said sure, why not.

My contact Mark came from a tech background. This really made explaining options a breeze and he had a very realistic expectation of what could be expected. He wanted to stick with the current site design and navigation with incorporating a modern CMS (content management system) so that they could manage the site’s content on their own.

After a short meeting and review, it became pretty apparent that Drupal would be a perfect fit for their CMS needs. I gave him a quick Drupal demo and he agreed as well. He was actually very much impressed and excited with what Drupal would offer them out of the box.

I also suggested that they try out Dreamhost for their hosting needs. Dreamhost offers free hosting for non-profits, and free is very hard to beat. I wasn’t sure if the free shared hosting plan would be good enough to support a Drupal site, but thus far it’s been great and looks to be a perfect fit for them.

The majority of their content needs were rather basic, but they did want the ability to upload and share mp3’s of their weekly sermons. Thankfully there were some great modules available that we were able to build upon.

Here’s a list of the modules used by their site:

  • audiofield
  • calendar
  • ctools
  • date
  • entity
  • file_entity
  • libraries
  • media
  • pathauto
  • token
  • views
  • views_slideshow
  • webform
  • wysiwyg

As you can see most are the standard site modules, but the audiofield was a new one to me and really solved the issue of uploading and playing mp3 files. It worked great.

I built the site on the Zen theme, which really made things easy to get started. Just chunked up their existing site into regions and blocks and styled things up from there.

After meeting with them to train them on using Drupal to manage their site, they were extremely pleased and enthusiastic to get started. It really felt great to know that I was able to deliver such and excellent solution for them at a very affordable price. I’m really glad I took on this project and can’t wait to see how well they do keeping content up to date.

Categories
Adventure

Mutter Museum

SkeletonsI asked the Shepherd to come up with some destinations for a recent adventure. Apparently he recently heard about a strange museum somewhere in Philadelphia. With a little bit of searching we came across the Mutter Museum. We were now determined to seek out this fine establishment.

The plan had us departing no later than 10:00 am. This meant I would have to call the Shepherd at 9:30 to wake him and possibly come over and manually wake him if necessary. Amazingly, when I called him that morning he was already awake and ready to go. If you know him then you may not believe the previos sentence, but honestly it is true.

The ride over wasn’t too bad, there really wasn’t much traffic to deal with. It took us a few extra turns to get there, but nothing too out of the way.

Paying for street parking was very difficult. It wouldn’t accept my debit card despite several swipes nor would it take our $5 dollar bills. Apparently there was a $4 limit on it. Luckily I did have some singles and began to feed them one at a time.

This took a very long time, for some reason it was a struggle for this wretched machine to take my money. Finally with my fingers numbing from the frigid cold it just shot out our parking receipt. And when I mean shot out, it went onto the street and the wind took it for a little ride as well. Eventually I was able to pin it down with my foot, but I’ve sure I gave some people a very entertaining show attempting to pay for parking.

We walked a block the the museum and used 2 interent coupons the Shepherd printed out to save $2 each on admission. I’ve never seen him so organized, and frankly it was rather strange. But I saved $2 and that was nice.

Inside it was very nice, but sadly no photography was allowed. We were both shocked at just how busy it was. We clearly expected to be the only fools to partake in such an adventure on this day, but apparently others shared our interest as well.

The various exhibits were for the most part extremely morbid. I can’t say that I was a fan. While I can see the medically value in documenting and sharing such things that were on display, I felt at times dirty for viewing many of the exhibits.

There was a wall of skulls, with some dating back hundreds of years. Samples of Einstein’s brain were featured as well.

The most disturbing exhibits to me were the numerous jars of fetuses and siamese one’s on display. That was very creepy. Also the assortment of old tools was strange as well. They had there tongs that were used to crush a babies skull, yuck.

Oh, and cast of a 70 pound cyst creeped me out as well. It was huge.

Afterwards we walked around Philly for a little bit. However it was freezing outside and extremely windy, so that didn’t last very long.

On the way home I realized that we were near The Pop Shop, which is a restaurant that I went to previously with NGM after a run a while back. I suggested that we go there to get a bite to eat. It was just as amazing as I had remembered. I got a humongous grilled cheese and ate more fries than a man should be able to.

All in all a very successful albeit bizarre adventure. And I’ve very glad for my health.