Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Season 3 – Playoffs

Historically the dodgeball playoffs haven’t been a moment when the Honey Badgers shine. Sadly, this season would be more of the same. We really pick the wrong time to have the worst game of our season.

It was hard to pinpoint what exactly the problem was, but we were just flat for the majority of the night. I myself, bad elbow or not was pretty horrible. I just didn’t play aggressive enough for some reason. Maybe because I slipped last week, I was being a bit too cautious to not fall and land on my arm again? I don’t know.

However, John B. was throwing like a man possessed last night. Perhaps some of the hardest throws we had seen in all of dodgeball by any player this season. He really brought it last night, but the rest of the crew unfortunately couldn’t provide enough last night to help him out.

It was pretty great to see that when we were down 8 games to 1 we didn’t simply give up. We did manage to finally pull off 3 wins at that point. But again, it was too little too late as we had dug ourselves much too deep of a hole by that point.

Despite our lackluster performance, it was a very fun night! We do have a pretty awesome team and I’m very glad I did get the chance to play with everyone. Can’t wait for next season!

Categories
Sports

Dodgeball Season 3 – Week 8

The Honey Badgers concluded the regular season with a 3-6 regular season record. While we did narrowly lose last night’s game to Dodgeasserole 9-7, our guys did have one of our finer moments all season.

Without our best guy, John B. out due to flu like symptoms we knew we’d all have to step up our game. And I was really proud to say we all did pick up our game and play one of our best games all season, without our best player and playing a man down 4 to 5 all night long.

Dustin was great all game. You could see he was letting loose, putting a little bit more on each throw. Same could be said of Kevin as well, who as always finds new ways of staying alive.

Even Jared vowed to play harder that night, and backed up his predictions with some big catches and some throws with bad intent.

And I in my second game back from elbow surgery managed to contribute as well. I made a good amount of catches, and even finished off a game with a big catch. I gotta admit, it felt pretty great to get my teammates excited and be the recipient of high fives! While I’m still not back yet, I am beginning to adjust to the speed of things more each week.

Unfortunately our girls on this night really had a hard time getting a win. It was weird, they weren’t outclassed at all, but our opponent always seemed to find and way to pull out a win against us. They played well, it’s just wasn’t our night I suppose.

Next week is the playoffs, can’t wait!

Categories
Development

Drupal 7 Only Display 1 Image in Teaser

ok, I was working with a content type with an image field that could hold multiple images (0-4 say). Using the Teaser view mode it would display all the images that were associated with that node, which was really cool in the Default view mode, but not so much the Teaser view mode. I only want it to display 1 image there.

So of course, there’s multiple ways to do this, but I found this approach to be the best for me.

I decided to create and edit an template file in this case since there was enough overall customization going on with this node to warrant such changes. So I created a template file name node–myContentType.tpl.php  based on node.tpl.php and stored in in my theme templates directory.

Easy enough. I then threw in there some crazy text just to make sure I was working with the right template file.

Then I just made the following edits to node–myContentType.tpl.php

if ($view_mode == 'teaser') {
  print render($content['myDemoImage'][0]);
} else {
  print render($content['myDemoImage']);
}

The if statement checks what view mode you are in, if it’s teaser which is the one I want to only display 1 image in then it just renders the first photo in myDemoImage field, else display them all.

That’s it, not too bad. Another reason why I do enjoy working with Drupal.

Categories
Books

Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman

Churchill: The Prophetic StatesmanI suppose I’m a bigger fan of history than I realize. I easily read through Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman in two days.

First off, I’ve always been a pretty big fan of Churchill. Especially his numerous famed quotes over the years. He’s always been a very interesting personality to me.

While the title of the book sounds like they’re going to make Churchill out to be some mystical psychic, it really is about numerous examples of his study of history and it’s patterns allowed him to make some interesting predictions of how history would play out.

It was a really great read, I kept plowing through chapter after chapter. He lived through such an interesting time to me, with so much major change going on in the world during his lifetime.

Though his essay he wrote as school kid about London being attacked and he would be the one to lead it’s defense was a bit eerily prophetic.

I really enjoyed this one a lot.

Categories
Books

Fearless

FearlessSince I’d really been into the military, especially the special forces as a little kid I thought I’d read Fearless.

It always amazes me how close to reality playing with G.I Joe toys as a kid played out. As special forces became so important with the enemy often times being small terrorist groups. Hasbro must be psychics.

This was a pretty interesting and at times amazing story about the life of a pretty interesting guy. It was really interesting and inspiring to hear about the many highs and lows he encountered and his determination to get through those lows, never giving up.

Even though I’ve been going pretty hard with my post elbow surgery rehab before reading. After hearing how he overcame especially numerous injures, it did give me a bit more inspiration that I can get back to where I was before surgery and maybe even better.

A very good story.

Categories
Sports

Return to Dodgeball

After over four months of being shut down due to a pretty nasty elbow injury and surgery, I finally was able to play, albeit a bit sparingly. It was a pretty awesome night.

Since I was wearing shorts in the middle of November, as my teammates arrived they all seemed a bit excited as I figured out that I would be attempting to play in last night’s game. I’ve got some really amazing and supportive teammates, and it was really great to see how excited they were for me, it made my usually calm self a bit excited too.

While my right elbow is probably still two months away from throwing shape, I did commit to using my left during the game. In warm ups, I can actually get some ok velocity and accuracy with my left after several weeks of practice. In a game however, where everything is sped up and I can’t mentally go over each step it was a much different story.

Throwing with my left was a disaster. One of my throws came our so early that it literally hung up in the air for what seemed an eternity. In fact, I could hear teammates complain about it before it was caught it was in the air so long. So, at that point I realized that my contributions couldn’t come from throwing that night.

So, I figured I could still contribute by gathering ammunition and giving it to the closest available teammate. This approach did work and I felt was a benefit to the team.

Another technique that I attempted was to server as a block for my teammates, aka “Human Shield”. This surprisingly was very effective and I think bought some of my guys some extra time and allowed them to get closer to the line knowing that I would jump the angles in case of retribution throws as they backed away from their throws.

All in all it was a pretty awesome night, and I was very glad to be back.

The Honey Badgers would go on to win a very dramatic overtime victory! Our team really played hard last night, and we really did a great job of supporting one another. It was pretty great to watch.

Even thought I’m still very limited, it’s pretty amazing to be back and able to contribute to the team!