Bnpositive's Blog

It’s good to see a sister-school of my alma mater, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, getting some interesting professional relationships with sports teams.

The NBA’s New Orleans Hornets have chosen Southern Nazarene University’s Sawyer Center as their training location for the 2005-2006 season they will play in Oklahoma City.

• NBA Hornets to practice next season at SNU
• Hornets Select Southern Nazarene University As Training Facility

The Chicago Bears have an existing relationship with Olivet Nazarene University for their training camps

Okay, I’ve decided I’m ready for an upgrade. I’m worn out and I haven’t even started working a full 2nd job yet. What’s the deal? What am I doing wrong. Things need to change.

I need that “new-and-improved-extra strength-fun size-with-flavor-crystals-and-power-capsules” version of me to hit the store shelves and get to work.

Reminds me of the little quote about having so many things on this earth to do before I die, at this point I’ll never die!

Arrrghh!

This would be really cool, as long as Peter Jackson takes the reigns again. His work with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was amazing!

If you look at the mural on the wall from Lost as a negative, it makes it easier to see another person on the mural. Looks like he’s wearing glasses, or a skull head and a menacing growl.

More Lost resources:

http://lost-media.com/
http://www.lost-tv.com

Donovan McNabb will play through the pain in order to stay on the field this season. Part of me wonders if he’s doing this to dispel any preconceived thoughts that he’s weak from the comments Terrell Owens made about him in last years Super Bowl performance.

Full story: McNabb plans to play in pain after forgoing operation

Meanwhile, you’ve got Champ Bailey making negative comments about his team while being mic’d for the Kansas City Chief’s Monday Night Football game agains the Denver Broncos.

Now, I’ve never had a problem with how much money professional athletes make to do their job. What I do have problems with is they get based on their projected performance and not proven performance through bonuses, and the fact that many of them seem to complain and whine about everything while cashing those large checks.

I agree that a player has the right to talk to his teammates about their efforts and ask them to step it up, but not when you’re mic’d for MNF.

Full story: Bailey unapologetic for dissing KC’s effort

Meanwhile, my Colts continue to impress me with their defense. The offense hasn’t begun firing on all cylinders yet, but it’s the defense that has kept us in these games. The Colts currently lead the NFL with only 16 points allowed in their first three games! Dwight Freeney, a whirling-dirvish of sack mayhem got AFC player of the month for September.

The Colts play the Tennessee Titans this Sunday in Nashville. I lived in Nashville before moving to Indianapolis, so I’m a big Titans fan as well. I don’t think the Colts will have any problems this week though.

I just added the Geeky Info blog to my Bloglines list and I’ve been catching up on past posts. This post has caused me to gasp with delight and concern. It seems the folks over at Firaxis games are releasing Civilization IV in the near future. Now, if you’re not aware of what this game is, it’s the greatest strategy game ever devised. Think the classic board game, RISK, on steroids and beautifully computer enhanced.

The challenge is also that it’s a great waster of hours of time. Could potentially unseat my addiction to Halo 2 Live habit.

You can pre-order it here from Amazon

GameSpot has their Firaxis Games, is here

I got in on the pre-launch beta version of this little tool. Pretty interesting little concept of an idea. You basically setup a pre-determined search engine string. You can define what sites specifically you want to search.

For example, got a question about a little bit of HTML code? Normally have 5-10 “favorites” of sites you go to for that information, but not sure which one might have the right answer? ROLLYO those 5-10 sites together and search, all the results will come from just those sites, not from everywhere in the webiverse.

Check it out for yourself.

ROLLYO

or, check-out my web design ROLLYO here.

Received an email from my brother letting me know my little niece broke her arm playing on the monkey bars at the park after school.

You can read the whole story on his blog here.

An interesting quote in his blog states:

Interesting…every nurse and doctor at the ER commented on how monkey bars are probably the number one source of injuries for children (next was bikes and trampolines).

He also tells about a story growing up where we were playing tag in our yard and he decided to jump out of a tree to avoid being tagged. He ended up breaking his wrist and knocking himself out. Now he says it was me trying to tag him, but I thought it was our older brother Bill.

Anyway, I can understand his comments about it not being that bad, but as a parent it just makes you sick to your stomach. I can relate as my 5 year old son is currently battling strep throat at home. Getting strep was an annual occurrence for me growing up, so I can definitely understand what my son is going through. But, I just listen to him cough all night and deal with fevers off and on, and just wish I could take it all away from him. (Hmmm… maybe that’s how God must see us as well when we’re His children.)

Had my “orientation” thingy to work at a UPS hub last night at 10:20pm. Was pursuing that opportunity because UPS pays part-time employees health benefits at 100%. With the recent increase in the health insurance costs available with my day job, that would have been a $550/mnth savings for me. I figured with the value of that and the $120 in wages I’d average per week, it would be a no-brainer.

Not so fast! I found out last night that the shift would be more like 10pm-3am, not 10pm-1am as I was originally informed. Just don’t think I can swing working two jobs on 3.5 hours sleep a night Monday-Friday. Plus, with the volume of picking up and relocating 2000+ packages a night, it’s not exactly like there’s be your normal fatigue at the end of your day. On top of that, it is about a 50 mile round-trip drive to work everynight. That’s more than I put on my car in a week at my day job!

So, back to square #1. I figured it out that the UPS job would have been worth about $15/hr (not figuring in gas consumption). Therefore, the search is on for another opportunity to make $15/hr and work at least 25/hrs/wk. What would be even better is making more per hour with less hours obviously.

If anyone has any knowledge of part time jobs that pay great benefits, please…..let me know!

The PVR Blog just had this post about a new website offering the service to connect individuals that have DVR’s or maybe don’t and want to get shows recorded for each other.

The gist of the idea is that you sign-up on their website and omb through the listings looking for someone that wants a show recorded during a time that you’re not using your DVR. You install a download client which looks to be something like a Bittorrent app to share the saved files once you’ve got them. I would think you could also save the show to VCR or DVD. The purchaser gets an item provided to him he could not have gotten elsewhere in the market place, and the provider makes a little money for the use of his time, effort and DVR.

From the links provided on the PVR Blog, it seems that even the Fox network seems to believe it’s okay. Stating it’s no different than asking a friend to record something for you, and one quote even states:

QUESTION 8: Can I get tapes of FOX Network Primetime Shows sent to me?
ANSWER: The FOX Network does not provide nor sell videos of any of shows, specials or movies that air on the Network.

Our recommendation is to ask co-workers, friends, family and neighbors for anyone who may have taped off-the-air the show you are looking for.

Seems to me like a great service but it also seems to tread on thin ice. Since the shows would not be provided in the marketplace in any other option, you’re not “stealing” profits from anyone. However, with my recent fascination with the ABC show “LOST” , which after Season 1 was over a DVD collection of the entire season was sold as a set, is this circumventing something?

It’s not quite the same as someone asking, “Hey, can you record this CD for me? I seemed to have forgotten to pick it up at the store when I had the chance earlier.” I’m very much opposed to sharing of MP3 files, however, my one caveat is if it’s a CD that can no longer be found available for purchase somewhere.

It will be interesting to see where this one goes.

Just played around with Gmail’s ability to access a separate POP3 email account. Through the settings available, you can add the POP3 account and set it as the default. All mail sent to the account will be received through the Gmail interface, giving you unlimited storage capacity and excellent search capabilities.

The kicker though, is that when you reply to a message, it appears to the receiver that it came from the POP3 address as well, and not the general Gmail account. This has been an irritant to me with people using forwarders and aliases for accounts.

So, I’ll be using up some more of my Gmail invites I think for some clients to have a really great and free webmail application.

Now, if they’ll just integrate a calendaring option as well.

Why is that professional sports players can still get paid when they no longer work for a team. Seems to me that would be the easiest way around salary caps. STOP PAYING PLAYERS THAT DON’T WORK FOR YOU ANYMORE!

Chad Pennington is out for the season. I was always impressed with him playing.

My Colts are looking good! Still room for improvement. Who’d have thought our defense would be the highlight of games this year!