Barcelona: Sagrada Familia, Part 2

We're back home now, but there's still lots more to discuss about Sagrada Familia. I left off the last post talking about the Passion facade, which was to be sculpted by Josep Subirachs. He has been quoted as saying that he departed from Gaudi's style out of his deep respect for Gaudi's work. He wanted his work to be compelling as well, but he didn't think it was respectful to copy his style. The Passion facade, like the Nativity facade, tells a story through carvings. I'll summarize a few with pictures in this post:

Here's a sculpture of Judas kissing Jesus. You'll notice to the left by their feet, there's a square with numbers carved into it. Subirachs put in this "magic square" to pay homage to Jesus. There are 310 ways to add the numbers in the square up to 33, the age of Jesus at his death.


Another image, this one of the soldiers rolling dice for Jesus' personal belongings:


This carving of Jesus on his way to his crucifixion is significant in that Subirachs pays homage to Gaudi here by carving his likeness on the figure to the far left of the picture:


A couple of pictures of Jesus tied to a column being whipped:


Subirachs carved in a channel of tears to the side of Jesus' face in this sculpture:


Subirachs was asked to craft the doors for Sagrada Familia. He chose to make them entirely from brass. Some pretty heavy doors:

Inside the main apse, the entire ceiling isn't even completed yet, but this gives you some idea of the size:


The ceiling has incredible detail, symbolizing a forest full of trees, with light filtering in between them:


Closing this post, here's a picture of our main hangout in Barcelona. This is Cafe Zurich, located at the top of La Rambla, at the Southeast corner of Placa Catalunya. I hate coffee, but their Cafe con Leche and Canya (pastry, like a bear claw, covered with powdered sugar and filled with fresh pastry cream) are awesome. Place is always packed:

Returning Early

Michelle's grandmother is expected to pass away shortly, so we are returning today. I will summarize the rest of Sagrada Familia and Ra Beach as time permits over the next few days.

Barcelona: Sagrada Familia

Day 2 started out oddly. Michelle nodded off at 2 am, but I couldn't get to sleep. I started trying to sleep at 3am, but didn't fall asleep until 5am. My alarm went off and woke both of us up at 1:30pm. Yikes!

Most of the things we wanted to see were closed on Sunday, and those that were open were closing shortly. So, essentially, we had lost the entire day. The only thing open was Sagrada Familia, a Guadi work that had yet to be completed. It wasn't even on my original, makeshift list of things to see. To be honest, there wasn't much on the list, we were pretty much just winging it.

So, we took the subway up to Sagrada Familia. As we came up out of the subway, we turned around to see this:

****IMPORTANT NOTE: YOU CAN CLICK ON THESE PICTURES TO ENLARGE THEM. THE DETAIL IS INCREDIBLE.


Now, I'm Catholic, but nowhere near deeply religious. I felt humbled when Michelle and I visited the Vatican a few years ago, not only by the size and architectural magnificence, but by the historical significance. I never in my life thought I would ever see something as stunning.

This was even more stunning. I turned around, uttered an expletive, and told Michelle to look. We were both speechless. For perspective, the crane in the foreground is easily 10 stories high. The towers stretch to an unbelievable 400 feet high.

Antoni Gaudi was commissioned to build this work a mere 125 years ago. As many others have said before me, the scope is so vast, it may not be completed before my death. We have so many pictures, I'll be mixing in some pics over the next few posts so people can get a better idea of what's being created. One of the many incredible details is the fact that Gaudi uses color in sculpture in such a vibrant way. It is truly like nothing I've ever seen. Here is a close-up of one of the towers:





















As you can see, there's a tremendous amount of detail, both in color and carving. There are 4 finished columns on the front, 4 in the back. Gaudi contemplated a total of 18 towers. There are still 4 towers left to represent the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a main tower dedicated to the Virgin Mary. I find it incredible that Gaudi could contemplate such a large work. What I find even more incredible is that he knew he couldn't finish the work prior to his death. So, he drew and sculpted in smaller form every detail that he wanted those who came after him to know. For example, in this image, we can see how he intended the final towers to look:


I'll close this post with two pictures of my beautiful wife at the base of the Passion facade, sculpted by Josep Subirachs. There are some great pictures of this facade that I'll blog on in my next post.





















Stay tuned for more Sagrada Familia, dinner pics, and our adventures to Ra Beach (we drive there tomorrow).

Barcelona, Day 1

We arrived in Barcelona this morning at 9am after taking the red-eye from JFK. We had an enjoyable dinner on the plane and nodded off about 10PM, with 4.5 hours left on the flight. It was a pretty bumpy ride after we nodded off, so sleep was at a premium.

We were pretty wiped out when we woke up. Disembarking was easy in BCN. The first time I've ever seen a glass jet bridge, which gave a pretty cool view of the airport.



We took the train from BCN to downtown Barcelona (Placa Catalunya). After getting momentarily lost, we found our way to Le Meridien and checked in. Good news! We had been upgraded to a suite with a delightful patio overlooking Las Ramblas. Unfortunately, it rained most of the day, so pictures of the patio will follow later. After finding some lunch, we went back to the hotel for a 30-minute nap that lasted 3 hours.

All of the dinner restaurants we wanted to try opened at 8pm, a trend in Barcelona. So, we killed a couple of hours lounging around the hotel room(Michelle took a leisurely bath) getting ready, then headed out as night fell. We walked up Las Ramblas to check out a tapas restaurant a few blocks away. Everywhere we went, the streets were crowded.


We went to an enjoyable tapas restaurant called Ciudad Condal. We had a bottle of Tempranillo wine priced so affordably, we thought it was priced by the glass. We dined on Praws Brochette, Grilled Gambata (Shrimp), fried artichokes, dry manchego cheese, jabugo ham, and washed it all down with a Coca-Cola.

A short walk down the street to Cafe Zurich, where we sat on the second floor and asked for menus. No menus, we were told. Walk downstairs and read the one on the wall. All this was communicated in Spanish, and my Spanish is sorely lacking. I read the menu and selected a few things I knew the name of, then went back upstairs to order for Michelle and I.

Palmier? The waiter leaned over the railing to look at the pastry rack. No. All Out. Chocolate Eclair? No. Chocolate croissant? No. So, instead, he ordered us two pastries. One was a calayna, the other a chocolate berlina. A calayna is like a bear claw filled with fresh pastry cream, a berlina a rich, chocolate-filled doughnut. Two cafe con leches topped it off. We had a bird's eye view of one of the most happening spots in Placa Catalunya.


When we finished, we stepped outside. Placa Catalunya, a large square about 2 New York City blocks long by the same distance wide, had to have been packed with at least 10,000 people. There were 100 people just standing outside Cafe Zurich on the sidewalk. We walked back to our hotel, bought a few groceries, and opened our patio window to take advantage of the Mediterranean breeze. More to follow.

Competitours: For Those Travelers as Crazy as Me

If you're looking for a new adventure, then Competitours might be right up your alley.

Someone I know has started company that conducts Amazing Race contests for regular people.

He's a pretty smart guy, and an avid traveler, so I have no doubt this will be an awesome experience. And an international trip for less than $3K is a pretty darn good deal.

Hey, Steve. Do we get frequent flier miles, too? :)

Take a minute and read about it.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was an enjoyable one spent with lots of family.

Michelle and I are off to Barcelona tomorrow afternoon. So, next blog post will be from a tapas restaurant while we're sipping intriguing Spanish wines.

Stay tuned for pictures!

Giants Lock up Home Field Advantage

This was supposed to be a meaningless game. Just beat Philly or Dallas (we already beat them both once), and we lock up home field advantage throughout the playoffs. But that didn't happen, so a game against Carolina in the freezing cold was to decide who had home field.

A quick 3-point lead is all we would see. We trailed by more than a touchdown for virtually the entire game. We tied it up late on a great touchdown drive followed by an awesome 2-point conversion where I was completely fooled on the fake handoff. We then faded a 50-yard field goal attempt at the end of regulation.

We won the coin flip in overtime, but couldn't move the ball. Neither could Carolina. When we got the ball back, Derrick Ward continued his utter domination, moving the ball almost single-handedly to the 1 yard line. On the next play, Brandon Jacobs makes it official with a touchdown.

Derrick Ward had over 200 yards on the day, and the Giants looked like the Giants of the first 10 weeks of the season. Justin Tuck was sick as a dog, and he'll need the week to recover.

But we know we've got a week off after next week. And we earned it.

FlightMemory

For those that read my blog regularly, this post shouldn't seem too abnormal. That's only because most of you know I'm a bit obsessed about frequent flier miles. A while back, I discovered a website called FlightMemory.com.

Most people will think I'm nuts, but you can view my work in progress. I know I'm missing some of my early flights, but all of my current flights are plugged in. The site tracks some fun stuff, like the fact that I've logged over 200,000 miles in the air, which is 85% of the way to the moon.

It also publishes some cool maps with dots for all the airports I've flown to. Stay tuned to Flight Memory for more updates. Here's hoping the maps have a lot more dots next year!

Another Way to Earn Miles

Shopping portals are a great way to earn airline miles.

Here's a good article in the NYT about them.

Look for another post on airline shopping portals in the near future. Or send me an e-mail with your airline of choice, and I'll help you get set up.

Giants to Play Dallas

The Giants have been flexed to the Sunday night game against Dallas. This is turning out to be a big game. No Brandon Jacobs, and potentially no Domenik Hixon. We're not good enough to steamroll teams without our strongest running back and two of our top 4 receivers.

So, this is going to be a good old-fashioned slugfest.

Governor of Illinois-One More Thing

I'm not trying to sling mud. But I'm sitting here watching coverage on Hardball about Blagojevich. Everyone is going out of their way to comment on the fact that Obama wouldn't let him anywhere near him. They quietly kept him off the stage in Grant Park. They kept him from doing any campaigning for Obama. Any.

He's the governor of Illinois. He's a Democrat. It's shocking that he wouldn't be called upon or included in some way.

Which means, in my opinion, Obama knew he was crooked. Haven't heard anyone say this. Everyone in the media says the opposite.

But how could you keep such a prominent figure from your home state out of the limelight, when everyone else was?

Was Obama smart to keep him away? Sure. But if Obama really is striving to change the ethical boundaries of politics, then he probably had enough information to sound the alarm.

I'm just saying.

Governor of Illinois Going To Jail

It's been widely reported that the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is heading to jail.

This had me laughing uncontrollably this morning. I was watching Hardball last night when it was discussed that he was demanding Bank of America to reinstate a line of credit to a company in Illinois that makes windows and doors. He said he would order the government of Illinois to stop using Bank of America for any services until they (BOA) reinstated the line of credit. He (and Obama) spent yesterday encouraging the employees to stage a sit-in so their grievances could be publicized.

Then, "Senate Rod" gets arrested this morning for offering Obama's Senate seat in exchange for cash, among other things. This from a man elected on a reform agenda.

Open the dictionary and look up "poetic justice", and there's our friend Rod.

Good to see Chicago politics hasn't changed this century.

David Gregory New Moderator of Meet The Press

A nod to David for sending me the official announcement.

This has been rumored for some time, with Andrea Mitchell, Gwen Ifill and Chuck Todd listed as top contenders. I would have been fine with Andrea, maybe even Chuck, although I think he isn't the type to ask tough questions. I think Gwen Ifill would have been a horrible choice.

Tim Russert's death was both tragic and sad. He left behind family and friends that loved him dearly. From a personal standpoint, I'll miss tuning in to him on Sundays. I think Tim would have been pretty happy with Gregory as a replacement. Even though MTP won't be the same after Tim, I think Gregory is the right choice.

Tim changed MTP into a completely different show. He got the best guests, and asked the toughest questions. In my opinion, some of his final shows were his best, in the most heated Presidential contest I've been alive for.

I'm not sure David can do the same thing Tim did. Don't get me wrong. I think David will attract quality guests, and conduct strong interviews. I only started watching MTP regularly over the past few years, and grew to look forward to seeing Tim go to work every Sunday.

I hope I feel the same way about David many years from now.

Obama's Pro-Union Stance Seems To Be a Bit Left of Center

Here's an article contending that Barack Obama wrote a letter to John Gage, the president of a major union for government workers.

Okay, I understand Obama is pro-union. I'm not condemning him for that fact, even though I vehemently disagree with unions. They served a purpose during the history of our country, but by and large, my belief is that they have run their course.

If Obama really did write a letter to a union chief saying he thinks that the TSA employees need collective bargaining to get more from their employer, I am severely disappointed.

Let’s step into a vacuum for a second and say that I actually agree that there are still groups of employees that need this type of protection because their employer may not be giving them all the benefits they deserve. Ummm, isn’t he President-elect? Doesn’t that mean he’s their boss? If he doesn’t agree with their benefits, he can fire their boss. It’s a politically appointed position. And don’t feed me some crap that Congress controls the purse strings, and we need unions to make sure Congress doesn’t screw them. Overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate nullify this point as well.

I know this description over-simplifies the process by which employee pay and benefits are determined. But he was elected on a platform of sweeping change. Do we really need to bring in special interests to renegotiate government employee salaries?

Deep Run at Venetian

After landing in Vegas midday on Wednesday, I went over to Bellagio to sweat Russell in a $5K event that he had made the final table of. He busted 7th after getting a bit unlucky. With no other work projects to handle, I decided to play the $120 buy-in 7 pm tournament at the Venetian. Since I'd gotten up at 5:30 am EST, this was going to be a long night if I did well.

We started with 7500 in chips. Before the first break, I had my stack up to 25,000, in great shape. I lost half my stack on a marginal decision, then lost another pot to essentially make myself a short stack with 60 players to go.

Fast forward 4 hours, and I'd grinded until we had 30 players left. They started dropping like flies, and I won a few pots to give me a big enough stack to open up my game. When we got down to 2 tables, I was chip leader at my table. The floorman (Mark) promptly moved me to the other table, where I was 7th in chips out of 8. Thanks, Mark. We can't be too pissed at Mark, since he's a Padres and Chargers fan. Mark gets a lot of practice saying, "This is a rebuilding year."

I still managed to pick up enough pots at the table to keep up with the chip leader. I was happy that I was calling with marginal hands, then either betting out or check-calling to win some nice pots from players too afraid to go broke. Very shortly after moving tables, we were in the money. There was no money until the top 3, so I played as such at the final table.

Early on, 9-handed, with about 110K in chips, I limped from early position with T9o for 4000. A bunch of players saw the flop. The SB was the chip leader, with about 130K in chips. It was checked to me on a Q92 flop, with 2 clubs. I bet out 5500. The chip leader called and we were heads up to the turn. He bet out 25,000 on the turn, a 5 of spades. This appeared to be a blank, and I was pretty sure it didn't improve his hand. I studied him for a while, and decided to call. I hadn't see him play even one pot at the other table, so I really didn't have a good read on him. The river was a red 3. The chip leader bet 35,000. I spent a long time thinking and studying him. I really felt like it was most likely he hadn't improved, and could potentially have missed a draw. But, he also could have a better 9 than me. The bet was big enough to leave him chips to play, which was the factor that almost lead me to calling. Well, I should have gone with my gut. My cards weren't even in the muck when he turned up JTo, for a busted straight.

Oh, well. I started stealing pots here and there, and worked my stack back up to 120k pretty quickly. We were down to 6 players, and I had 4 decent hands against short-stacks who reraised me all-in. Getting great odds on all, I called. I went 1 out of 4. Back down to 60k. We dropped two more players (1 of which I doubled up twice while I was holding AK). 4-handed, the blinds were 4K-8K, with a 1K ante. I had 89K. The clock had already expired, so I knew we were going to 6K-12K on the next hand, with a 2K ante. I had 7BBs left. On the button, before looking at my cards, I decided to steal the blinds. The SB was weak, trying to hang on to move up. The BB was erratic, but showed he could lay down big hands. I looked down at 27o. They were letting me open for small amounts and still folding, so I opened for 22K. The SBs cards hit the muck so fast, they caught on fire. BB thought for just a second, and called. He had about 12K less than me. I was pretty much done with the hand, but the flop was 234 with 2 hearts. I had the 7 of hearts as an emergency re-draw to a flush, but more importantly, it was virtually impossible that my opponent had a better hand at this point. He shoved in, and I was getting the right odds to call. He turned over K-T of diamonds (eep!). Turn was a T, river King.

Down to 14K, fold UTG. In BB, I get dealt KQo. Button and SB both call with worse hands, but the SB fills up with T8 off, and I'm out in 4th place for a whopping $600.

I don't feel like I've been playing good poker lately, so I was happy with the deep run. There were a couple of times where I felt like I may have made the wrong decision, but in the end I felt like I played solid poker. I don't think I'm 100% focused yet, but I do think I'm playing better.

The Significance of 60

Saxby Chambliss defeated Jim Martin this evening in the Georgia Senate run-off.

Read about it in the NY Times here.

Chambliss, a Republican, assured that Democrats would not reach a 60 member filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. I think it's interesting to note that Chambliss won by 20 points tonight (or, at least that's his lead at the time of this post). This race was razor thin going down the stretch before the run-off. Could the overwhelming victory be a statement by Georgia residents that they don't want to see one party have a super majority of White House, House of Representatives and Senate majorities?

I can't say I remember Walter Mondale saying too many intelligent things. I was fairly young when he was in politics, and most of what I read painted him to be a bit goofy. But, in a recent interview, he talked about the fact that during his political tenure, the Senate dealt with the reality of a 60 member majority.

He stated his position very well. 60 is more of a zone. 58 may be just as good as 60. 60 may be just as good as 62. It really depends on the issue.

My belief is that 60 Democrats is MUCH different than 60 Republicans. For better or worse, the Republicans circle the wagons much better than Democrats. So, even if the Dems got to 60, I doubt they would have that lock on a majority of issues.

Mondale's point is that regardless of the number, consensus building is still the stuff of smart governing. Here's hoping some of our current elected leaders were listening.

Giants Sweep Skins

The Giants went into FedEx Field on Sunday, and came out with the best record in the NFC still intact. It was a nasty weather day, but Eli Manning looked really good throwing the ball.

Other than a pretty dismal 2-minute drill at the end of the first half, the Giants moved the ball well throughout the game, even though the Redskins loaded up the box to stop the run. Eli had a career record number of passing yards in the first half on the way to a 23-7 win.

The Giants can clinch a bye in the first round of the playoffs with a win next week against Philadelphia at The Meadowlands.

Chris Matthews Running for Senate?

fivethirtyeight.com, which did an excellent job covering the 2008 Presidential campaign, is reporting Chris Matthews is gearing up for a Senate run.

Read about it here.

Not sure how I feel about this. Those who know me are aware of the fact that I really enjoy Chris' show. Not sure how I feel about him as a politician, though. Have to chew on that.

Anyway, kudos to fivethirtyeight for excellent coverage of all the 2008 races.

More Free Airline Miles

My friend, Randy Petersen, one of the most respected travel gurus in the free world, has started a site to earn free miles:

http://www.e-miles.com

The purpose of the site is to earn a small amount of miles reading advertisements, then transfer these to an airline where you might have some miles hanging out getting ready to expire. These small transfers count as a transaction, so should extend your miles for a couple of years. It's only good for a few thousand miles a year, but hey, free miles are free miles. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

I spent over 12 hours last night and this morning cooking for 10 people. Along with the standard fare, here are a couple of things I prepared that don't fit into the standard Thanksgiving mold:

Crab and Boursin in Phyllo Shells (appetizer)
Deep Fried Turkey(burned the crap out of it)
Key Lime Mousse in Dark Chocolate Shells
Berries and Cream in Dark Chocolate Shells
Peanut Butter Cups in Chocolate Shells

The Key Lime Mousse was the big hit, especially with my wife!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Giants Dispatch Arizona

We went on the road to the stadium where we won the Super Bowl last year. Kurt Warner has been playing like the Kurt of old, so this stood to be a good challenge. The first 3 quarters were a back and forth battle, with New York staying just ahead. Dominik Hixon had 200 kick/punt return yards in the first half, which made things a lot easier.

At the beginning of the 4th quarter, the Giants scored a TD to go ahead 31-19. From there, the clock was our friend, along with a timely turnover. That pushed us over the top, to 11-1. If my math is right, we can clinch a playoff berth with a win and a disgustingly large slew of losses by other teams. Regardless of whether that happens this week, a win against Washington goes a long way to locking up a bye in the first round of the playoffs.

There's a Blackberry Storm Brewing

I test drove the Storm myself yesterday, twice.

First impression was awesome. I was ready to buy. I left the store and started reading reviews online. Those reviews caused me to head back to the store for a second look.

What I found? For starters, while it was initially reported that this would be the first Blackberry that could send and receive e-mail while using the phone, I was unable to get this to work in the Verizon store. Doesn't necessarily mean it can't be done, just means the sales guys couldn't figure out how to do it. Second, I found the keyboard a bit cumbersome after banging on it for a while. There are some great features here, but this really moves the device out of the core Blackberry user's wheelhouse and more into the arena of the iPhone (trendy but not necessarily highly functional for power users).

I think I'm holding off for a while before considering, even though it would only cost $100.

Citigroup in Trouble

The past week has been a brutal one for the bank I've patronized since I was a child. An uncertain market beat up the stock price all week long. The NY Times wrote a very telling article about the things Citi did to help themselves get here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/business/23citi.html?_r=1&hp

Among other interesting tidbits, I did not know that Robert E. Rubin, a veteran of the Clinton administration, was such a valuable advisor to Citi. It's unclear how much he knew about their risk assessment practices, but the article makes it very clear that the cozy nature of the relationship between the traders and the risk assessment managers is in large part to blame for the current problem Citi faces.

For no other reason than nostalgia, and the fact that they have the best online bill pay software I've seen, I hope they make it.

Geithner for Treasury Secretary

Tim Geithner, president of the New York Fed, will be nominated as Obama's Treasury Secretary. Some have suggested this isn't a good idea because of his lack of experience. I actually really like this choice. I can live with the lack of experience (and may be proven wrong on this). I think he makes up for it with his ability to build consensus along with his personality. We'll see.

It's also rumored that Bill Richardson is being considered for Commerce. I'm not sure where he belongs, but I think this is an excellent cabinet choice. A great voice for Obama to have on his team.

Borgata

I had to be in Philly for a meeting yesterday. Once I got checked into the hotel, I went back out to my car. Inevitably, the rental car turned East and headed to Borgata.

Now, I really can't stand going to Atlantic City. The only thing worse than the drive is the city itself. However, you can get off the highway and go right into the Borgata parking lot and avoid most of the ugliness.

We got there 2 hours before the evening tournament started. A quick bite to eat, and a tour through The Water Club ensued. Awesome La Perla lingerie store and a pretty cool bar.

We still had an hour to kill, so I sat down in 2-5 NL to lose a rack of chips. Cash games have never been my forte. I always get bored to quickly and end up spraying chips. A funny thing happened on the way to the tournament, though. I ended up winning about $500. I also had another Borgata first. I saw my first yellow $20 chip, which the dealer gave me when I colored up before leaving the table.

In the tournament, I lost almost half my stack on the very first hand when I flopped top pair and rivered trip Queens with a jack kicker when my opponent turned over KQ. I spent the next 4 hours scraping by, picking up chips where I could. The table was mostly calling stations, and it was a "tell" buffet, with everyone giving a bit of a hint as to what they were playing.

I was in a talkative mood, so made some friends (and enemies) by talking non-stop for the first hour. At the end of the second hour, I tilted a guy at our table that was already in a bad mood. It was the last hand before the break. He limped along with one other player, and I saw a flop holding K7s in the BB. The flop was 752 rainbow, and I bet out. The middle player folded, and "tilt boy" called. The turn was another 7. I bet out roughly the pot, which was about 1/3 of his remaining stack. He hemmed and hawed for most of the ten minute break, then finally folded. As I was getting ready to discard my hand, he told me he folded the 7 of diamonds. I then turned over the 7 of diamonds, and an interesting conversation ensued where he insisted he had it, even though I was holding it.

He severely tilted later, and busted out. The story doesn't have much of a happier ending for me. I busted out a few spots out of the money when I misread a rock at the table. Oh, well. Hopefull, better news next time.

HIllary Clinton for Secretary of State?

Is this a good idea? Depends on who you are.

Barack Obama? Takes her out of the running for his office, but more importantly, quiets a potential voice of dissension within his party.

Harry Reid? Jumping with joy that he doesn't have to cede any power to her.

American people? Not sure. I think her existing relationships would help her in this position, which in turn helps Obama establish his agenda quicker. I think.

Trivia question. How many Secretaries of State have gone on to serve as President?

World Series of Poker Table

Obviously, the most disappointing thing was that I wasn't at the final table. Not far behind that would be how disappointing the coverage was.

First, the geniuses running the WSOP decide to delay the final table of this event until November, to match up with the ESPN TV schedule. Then, inexplicably, they don't show the event live. Instead, it's played a day or so before the broadcast, and the winner seeps out on the internet.

Now, I wasn't one of those who mistakenly found out who the winner was early. But that didn't make the broadcast any better. One brief illustration of the lack of suspense was the story of Kelly Kim. He was the short stack with 10 players left, doing everything he could to hold on this summer and make the final table. We see someone else bust out 9th, and ESPN does a great job showing us plenty of dramatic coverage with Kelly Kim holding on by his fingers. Fast forward to November. Kelly Kim doubles up early, and someone else busts out 9th. Kelly Kim is now a millionaire. We get to watch him celebrate. A real storyline. But wait, we come back from the next commercial break, and Kelly has busted out of the tournament. They don't even show us the hand. He just stands up and leaves.

Peter Eastgate, from Denmark, beat Ivan Demidov heads up in a fairly uninspiring match. This isnt' meant to take anything away from Peter. He played well, appeared to get the right amount of luck, and won a boatload of cash. But ESPN never really built a story around him. So, despite the fact that Jamie Gold was annoying, I felt more attachment to watching him win than Peter.

ESPN did a good job profiling Chino Rheem all along, so I'll give them a passing grade there. The rest of the coverage blew.

Congratulations to Peter. More importantly, congratulations to my friend Matt Matros, who made two final tables at the Series this year, along with top 100 finish in the main event. Matt missed a WPT final table in Canada a few weeks ago, and has had a hell of a year playing poker.

Catching Up

It's been a busy travel week, with the trip to Idaho, followed by stops in Orlando and New York. I missed one picture from my trip to Idaho. Here's a sunset picture of the Grand Tetons:


The Giants won a hard-fought game in Philly over the weekend, boosting us to 8-1, which is basically a 2-game lead in the division. We get Baltimore at home. Should be a tough game, but winnable.

Interesting blog facts:

The AeroTrain post was by far the most popular so far, with over 200 hits. My blog has been visited by 38 of the 50 states, which is odd due to the states that haven't visited:

North Carolina, Alaska, Arkansas, Maine, Vermont, New Mexico, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska.

Now, there are some low population states there, but North Carolina does surprise me. Heck, if we can get Idaho and Hawaii, what's up with all those Blue Devils? Guess I'll have to start posting about Duke Basketball.

Just a brief sampling of interesting countries to visit: UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, Russia, Taiwan, Lithuania

That's it for now. More later.

Idaho potatoes, anyone?

I just got back from a trip to Idaho to view the potato crops. This was definitely an interesting trip, probably more so than I thought it would. I'm going to try and embed a couple of videos here to help describe the process. First, a picture of a potato shed:

This shed holds 12 million pounds of potatoes. The stack is probably about 50 feet high, and you can get a good sense of how long from the size of Rick in the picture. The potatoes can stay in these sheds for as long as a year before being processed. They are moved out via special trucks, which you can see in the videos below:




The potatoes are moved to the processing facility, where things are much more automated than I would have imagined. The potatoes have their picture taken numerous times for sizing as they whisk by on belts. Pneumatic levers flip potatoes onto different belts based on size. They are hand-sorted after that for abnormalities, then bagged.







All this leads to the final product, signed, sealed and ready to be delivered!

Dulles AeroTrain

I had to fly United out of IAD today. I got to the airport a bit early, and decided to go check in at the Admirals Club so they would get credit for me stopping by. I was a victim of very good timing on my way there. For those that don't know, Dulles has been building an underground train system to move passengers between the various terminals. Now entering it's 77th year of construction, it's almost done.

Click on any of the pictures for a larger view. Cool stuff if you're an airline geek.


As I was walking to the new part of the B terminal today, workers were in the process of taking down the construction wall around the station at B. I was able to walk down a short hallway and take pictures of the virtually completed station. By the time I walked back, they already had cones and a barrier up, so I appear to have had great timing to sneak a couple of pics. Don't worry, the main terminal is nowhere near completed, so my daughter may be driving before this train leaves the station.

Blackberry Storm Update

Thanks to David for pointing out this thread:

http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/31/verizon-mulls-heavily-discounted-blackberry-storm/

Interesting theory, although looks like a race to bankruptcy for AT&T and Verizon. I'm not sure I'll switch to the Storm, as I hate typing on touchscreens, and love the raised keys on the BBerry.

The Science of Politics

The science of politics has always interested me more than the views of one party over another. This was never more evident to me than around 11:30pm EST last night. I didn't vote for Obama, even though I did give him serious consideration. And yet, it was fascinating to watch the crowd in Grant Park.

I thought the concession speech by McCain represented his long history of strong values. Obama is definitely the best orator I've seen in a long time. The speech itself was fine. Not much new, most likely the product of a long-tired campaign. And yet, the speech and the atmosphere were still enchanting.

On the Senatorial side, it doesn't appear the Dems got near 60, but I suspect, as Mondale said, 60 is more of a zone, especially with a group of Dems that can rarerly find harmony in their own ranks.

I eagerly await the next few months to see how the story unfolds.

It's McCain

There are some that will say I made my mind up a long time ago. I didn't. I did, however, make up my mind last night. I'm voting for McCain.

In the end, I never really listened to something Obama said and nodded my head in agreement. I have concerns about his ability to deliver on all of his campaign promises. I have concerns about how he handled the preacher debacle, and concerns about ACORN.

In the end, I believe John McCain's views are more closely aligned with mine, despite my disappointment in his selection for VP.

It would appear to be a moot point, as it looks like McCain is going to get slaughtered tomorrow in the electoral college.

Learned Something New About McCain Today

From FactCheck.com:

Obama: Celling McCain Short
Any ad that features the mom of a sick child is sure to pull a few heartstrings. But this radio spot is flat wrong when it says that "John McCain has stood in the way – he's opposed stem cell research." Technically, the carefully-worded phrase is correct: McCain has opposed embryonic stem cell research. But not since 2001, when he became convinced, he says, that the potential good it could do outweighed other considerations.

Obama's 30-Minute Infommercial

Well produced. Still have no idea how he plans to accomplish all of his goals, which constitute a lengthy list. Some of the ones I find hard to fathom:

• Cut taxes for all families who make less than $200K.

• Freeze foreclosures for 90 days.

• Create 5 million fuel efficiency jobs that can never be outsourced.

A good portion of the families who make less than $200K also make such a small amount of money that they don't pay any taxes. In my opinion, freezing foreclosures for 90 days probably doesn't do much harm, but really doesn't do any good. What are we going to fix in 90 days? And as far as creating a job that can never be outsourced, that sounds pretty narrow-minded to us. Innovation is everywhere. Other countries are making huge strides in any number of areas. Promising that you can create jobs that will never be outsourced is irresponsible, in my opinion.

He also doesn't detail spending cuts, other than spending cuts in Iraq. Since it's not a Democratic hallmark to lower taxes, I would really like him to detail the cuts that allow him to pay for all the programs he wants. For me personally, if he were to detail some of the areas where he'll be decreasing spending, I would feel a lot more comfortable voting for him.

I'm sorry to say that his speech tonight, while very well-delivered, does not make me want to vote for him more. It definitely makes him look presidential, and maybe that's what his campaign is counting on. I could definitely see this swaying some people. Just not me.

More debates!

Vegas

I've been in Vegas on business since Thursday, and haven't stopped moving since. Thursday started with an early morning flight from the East Coast, a 6:00pm dinner meeting followed by a 9:30pm dinner meeting.

I finally had some time to play poker on Saturday, heading over to The Venetian for their noon tournament. I made a deep run, and was positioned well for the money. I was laying down hands at the right time (folded a straight on the river when I was 100% certain my opponent had me beat). I then had the following two hands:

I limp from middle position with KQ of spades after two players limp in front of me. Both were calling stations, so a raise didn't seem appropriate here. We picked up 2 more players behind me, for a total of 5 seeing the flop. The flop was K92, with two diamonds. It was checked to me, and I bet 3/4 of the pot. The player next to me shoved all-in for roughly double my bet. Everyone folded back to me, and I called. He showed me JT, and rivered a Q.

The very next hand, I was dealt pocket 5s. 1 limper in front of me. I limp, a girl 3 to my left limps, and the blinds come along. The flop is 752 rainbow. I bet out a pot-sized bet when it gets to me. Girl calls, everyone else folds. Turn is a ten, suit doesn't matter. I bet 3/4 of the pot, she calls again. River is a 4. I bet 3/4 of the pot again, which doesn't leave me too much behind. She sets me all-in. I call and she shows me A3 offsuit.

And that, my friends, was the end of the ballgame.

Update

Been traveling the last few days. David was released from the hospital a few hours after my last post on Wednesday. Just antibiotics to clear up pneumonia, no blood clots. A welcome relief.

More to follow later....

David Update

Don't you love it when doctors agree?

David is feeling much better. The chest pain has resided, and he is noticeably more animated. But his doctors can't agree on what ails him.

The pulmonologist and infectious disease specialist both agree on a rare strain of pneumonia. The radiologist thinks there are blood clots. They're all in a room fighting it out right now. There's a chance of another CT scan, since the first one wasn't as clear as it could be.

All indications point towards a healthier David with no clots. Let's hope for that one.

Oh, and thanks to anyone that decided to throw a prayer David's way.

David's In The Hospital

For those of you that know me personally, you know David has been my best friend for my entire adult life, dating back to our days together at Osborn school in the 3rd grade.

Well, David returned from a business trip on Thursday and proceeded to come down with a bad cold. The cold developed into pneumonia, which landed him in the ER. Don't worry, we haven't gotten to the scary part yet.

The admitting doctor picked up on something during David's exam and ordered additional tests. The short end to the long story is that David has a pulmonary embolism, or, more commonly, a blood clot in/headed toward his lungs. They're treating him now, and he is not in any obvious pain, but it's a pretty scary situation.

Those that know me well won't accuse me of being religious. But it really does seem like an appropriate time to ask for a couple of prayers....

Will the New BlackBerry Create a Storm?

Okay, a bit punny, but BlackBerry is about to release it's first device to compete directly with the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm.

What does this mean for veteran BlackBerry users? Well, that depends on why you like your BlackBerry.

The Storm features a touchscreen that has the shortcut keyboard as well as a full QWERTY keyboard. I've never been wild about touchscreens on phones. Makes it a real bitch to try and dial/navigate while walking/driving. But for some, I assume this will be a great feature.

Where the Storm hooks me is with it's new ability to send and receive e-mails while on the phone. This is an annoying detraction to all current Blackberrys. For me, I end up on long phone calls where it would be great to be able to send and receive e-mail.

More functionality for editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The ability to sync your iTunes library, the first full function BlackBerry with a camera, streaming video, GPS. These are all great features.

However, I'm not sure I want my BlackBerry to have all these things. One of the things I love about my BlackBerry is that it pushes mail. Stop, period, end of sentence. It never crashes, freezes, or talks back. It just pushes mail. In 200 countries.

Now, it might not do some of those cool things other devices do, but it NEVER crashes. Would I take a significantly less stable device in exchange for these features? No.

So, the question of the day is, can RIM create a device with these pluses that isn't unstable like a Treo or SmartPhone? Guess we'll have to wait and see.

AA Buys Boeing Dreamliners

I've been a lifelong AA flier, accruing almost 2 million lifetime miles. So, when I got an e-mail from AA a couple of days ago saying they had secured a bunch of options on the Boeing 787-9, I was elated.

First, the Dreamliner has theoretically been "sold out" until 2014. But AA has had a long-standing, cozy relationship with Boeing. Seems like they'll start getting some in 2012, assuming things smooth out in the industry.

There's a good thread on FlyerTalk discussing it:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=876314

AA has a bunch of 737s on the way, which will hopefully reduce the number of Mad Dogs on the roster. So, here's hoping I'm flying all Boeing craft five years from now.

Let's Go Giants!

There were a couple of spots where we didn't play as good as we could have, but the G-Men played fairly impressive throughout. A safety at the end sealed a convincing win against the 49ers. While the Redskins narrowly avoided losing to the Browns, the Cowboys took another dive.

So, that leaves us with a one-game lead over just one team for now, with 3 tough games coming up (at Pitt, home for Dallas, at Philly). If we play well through this stretch, a playoff berth is all but assured.

Someday, Apple will rule the world!

SUBTITLE: Apple ProCare is the nuts!

So, my "D" key stopped working on my laptop this morning. This had potential disaster written all over it. I drove to the Apple store near my house, and used my ProCare card to get on the standby list for the Genius Bar. I know the manager, Joe, from previous experience. He looked at me from across a sea of people, and said, "It's gonna be a while. We're a bit crowded." That's an understatement.

I swam upstream to the Genius Bar and set down my laptop. Literally, within 3 minutes, Lauren came to help me. She confirmed my "D" key was still not working, did some diagnostics, then set up an on-the-spot repair for my laptop.

A quick aside. I told her I liked a lot of the features of the new MacBook Pro, but I was unhappy about two things. First, they had switched to the "chiclet" keyboard, of MacBook fame, which I really don't like. They also don't have a solid-state drive option for the MBP, even though they have it for the Air.

But, wait! Lauren to the rescue again. She points out that the new MBP can be configured with a solid-state drive. Could it be? Might I have to suffer through a chiclet keyboard to get a solid-state drive? For those that don't know, a standard hard drive is a bunch of disks that spin. These emit a bunch of heat in the MBP, and are prone to failure. A solid-state drive is like the pocket flash drive most people own nowadays. No moving parts, no heat.

Back to the repair. I got a call 90 minutes later, and headed back over to the Apple store. If it was possible for there to be more people in the store than earlier, there were. But a quick concierge stop later, and a runner brought me my machine. Joe jumped in to ring up a separate purchase I had, and I was on my way back to the real world with a fully functional machine.

Here's hoping Windows users figure out there is no reliable support like Apple support, and switch over from the dark side!

Free Airline Miles? Why Not.

BOSE is running a promo again for free airline miles:

https://www.aadvantagemilesforbose.com/index.jsp

150 miles for watching a video, 450 miles for visiting a BOSE store. Easy miles.

Poker Friends in The Money

I have two friends who had significant cashes yesterday in poker tournaments. Neither did as well as they wanted, but both achievements are very notable.

First, Matt Matros finished 7th at the WPT North American Championship in Niagara Falls. The tournament had 454 entries, each putting up $10,000. Matt walked away with just less than $100K. After having what I would consider to be a fantastic WSOP (Matt may have a different opinion), where he made two final tables and finished 78th out of 6844 entrants.

I was able to watch one of Matt's final tables on ESPN360.com, where he got sucked out on pretty badly to wipe out a nice chip stack. I was actually in Vegas during Matt's run to the money, standing in the room at 1 in the morning when they finally made the money. Definitely a lot of fun watching, here's hoping I can be sitting down for it one day!

You can check out Matt's redesigned blog at http://mattmatros.com. Matt had a great run a few years ago in the WPT Championship at Bellagio in 2004, finishing at the same final table his best friend, Russell, made. Matt finished 3rd, winning just over $700K.

Another friend, Russell Rosenblum, entered a $3K event at the Festa al Lago tourney currently going on at Bellagio. They got 56 entries, paid 5 spots. After being short-stacked for the entire final table, Russell got down to heads up, worked his way back even in chips, but ended up coming up just short. Coincidentally, he busted with the same two sets of hands (AQ vs JJ) that he did when he made the final table of the WPT Championship in 2004.

Congrats to both!

3rd (and final) Presidential debate

I really wish the candidates would agree to more debates. The standard 3 really doesn't cut it for me, and 1 VP debate isn't enough either.

Barack Obama and John McCain met at Hofstra University last night. I think Bob Schieffer did a pretty good job moderating. He allowed the candidates more responses than the format allowed when a contentious question arose. He also asked good follow-up questions, and pointed out when he wasn't getting good answers. I don't know whether it was the moderator or the format, but the candidates interacted with each other more in this debate than in the previous 2.

Best line of the night was from McCain, in response to an Obama comment about how McCain was a bad choice based on the last 8 years of President Bush: "Senator, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run 4 years ago."

Worst line of the night was from Obama: "100% of John McCain's ads are negative."

I mostly agree with the media here on the results of the debate. Obama played it safe, like a boxer way ahead on points in the last round. McCain was very active, delivering pointed jabs while he tried to score a knockout punch. There were a few times where McCain's facial expressions belied his frustration.

For better or worse, I don't think there was a game-changing play to make for McCain tonight. I don't believe there's any way for Obama to lose unless he screws up monumentally. Hence the reason his strategy for this debate was the right one.

Wow, what a Monday?

Biggest one-day gain in Dow history. Just when I think I have things figured out, tomorrow will be a completely different day with the bond markets re-opened.

On a separate note, here's a good article on Apple. I've been an Apple guy for about 2 years now, after a painful ten year hiatus with Windows. A sub-$1K laptop is definitely a great strategy for Apple. It doesn't do any real good for me directly, since I like my MacBook Pro. But attracting more users to the Mac platform as a whole has got to have good long-term consequences.

What I'd really like Mac to do is introduce a MacBook Pro with a solid state drive. My machine is about 2 years old now, getting time to replace. I'd hate to buy a machine in the next few months and find out they phase these in right after

New Question: What will Monday bring?

Thanks to someone reading the blog, I now know that *just* the bond market will be closed today. This means that Treasury bonds won't be bought or sold, so I have no idea how the market will react to that. For that matter, I have no idea how the market will react, period.

I had a discussion on Friday about the VIX, a volatility-measuring device. I had read an article that said once it got above 40, that usually meant we had seen the bottom. Well, it set a new record on Friday, closing above 70. The question was, can the VIX actually go above 100? My answer would have been no, but the friend I was discussing with pointed out that nobody could have conceived of a negative Treasury before the current crisis either.

What will Tuesday bring?

We saw the worst week of our lives on Wall Street this week. While this should have been scary for me, the sum total of my investments are some sizable IRAs, which I've had enough discipline not to check the balance of.

After the stock market got done throwing up on itself, I made my first foray into individual stocks, and bought a healthy position in a very stable company. I bought it because of the dividend, since I think the stock market is just as likely to go up or down next week.

Hank Paulson is trying to quickly work out a plan to invest money directly into banks, with the government taking an equity stake. This is something the administration has been vocally against for a long time, so it's surprising (and somewhat comforting) to see them do something they're not inclined to do.

So, what will Tuesday bring? Some of my friends thought it would have been good for the markets to have another day this week to sort things out. Some changed their minds, and decided a 3-day weekend was a good idea. I haven't changed my mind. I think the 3-day weekend may just be what the doctor ordered.

But we still could drop 500 pts at the opening bell.

A good election article

Thanks to David for sending me the link to this really good article.

Basically, the reporters contention is that Mccain's campaign "gets" what the media needs and wants as it covers the campaign. Will this get McCain any votes? Probably not, since I believe most of the media will vote on the left side of the ticket.

But, this article does reveal the surprising fact that the Obama campaign, at times, is not organized. I've read other articles that show the quality of his organization was the reason he won the primary, and I would have expected that to continue through the general election.

Financial Fallout

This has definitely been a scary few weeks. I have a friend who had to declare bankruptcy and shut down his restaurant. I have friends and family that have lost thousands of dollars a day over the past few weeks. And a month later, I still don't really know what's going to happen.

I was too young when the real estate market crashed in the 80s. So, I don't really remember the effect it had on society. I invest fairly conservatively, so we have plenty of money in the bank.

But, really, what's going to happen? And how long will this affect us?

Well, let's start with the first question. The market closed down 200 points today. This seems like a good day, based on the bloodshed of the last few weeks. Last night, Asia and Europe had huge problems. While I don't know this to be the case, it almost feels like we're getting over our cold, but we passed it to Europe and Asia. We're still in danger of them giving it back to us. So, back to the question.

The markets will go up. Eventually. I just don't know that anyone really knows when. In the meantime, I think two things are happening. Older people are seeing their nest eggs shrink, drastically changing their lives. The severity of the crash may affect how young people invest for years to come, dramatically changing their futures. While the markets are behaving irrationally now, they have to return to normal at some point.

And we need to return to normal, too.

2nd Presidential Debate

Obama and McCain faced off in the second debate last night. It was a town hall format, which I definitely think favored McCain. There's no question Obama is a better orator than McCain. Equally so, McCain is better at talking to an individual, connecting, as was the case last night.

Most people say Obama won the debate by any one of a number of metrics. I'm not so sure. I felt like McCain did a good job of framing his experience vs. Obama's inexperience, but I'm biased on this issue. In reality, I don't think either made substantive in-roads on any one issue.

Tom Brokaw did a better job than Gwen Iffil. I'm not sure whether I preferred Brokaw to Lehrer. I enjoyed watching both of them actively engage the candidates. I guess I'd have to chalk it up to Brokaw, since I thought a few of his follow-up discussions really did lead to a better dialogue between the candidates.

The more I think about it, the more I really appreciate the job Tom did. Even though he did try to spur them along at times, his follow-up questions led to the only real new information either candidate covered. It's in those points that I think McCain missed his chance.

It was said by someone in the media that everyone (including the Obama camp) expects McCain to attack Obama's inexperience. Their opinion on the "McCain Slam Dunk" was for him to tell his story, "inside out". If he told a story of his personal experiences, and why those personal expreiences fully prepared him to be President, Obama had no answer.

While Mccain did touch on his experience, I really felt like he missed the opportunity to stop telling people why Obama wasn't qualified and start telling people why he was. No question the unqualified line appeals to the right, but it's the moderates that he needs to win.

And, according to 538, he needs to win everyone over in the middle. While it appears statistically impossible for him to overcome Obama's lead, there's still a month (and 1 debate) left for both candidates to define themselves.

As I stand today, Obama still really hasn't proven to me that he's ready to run the country. Here's hoping for clarity in the next 25 days.

Giants Destroy Seattle

From the opening bell, this was a slaughter. Seattle kept us out of the end zone once in the first half. The best part of this was Hixon stepping up during Plaxico's absence. Amani Toomer will always be a consistent producer for us, but it was good to see Hixon step. Final stats for Hixon were 4 catches for 102 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 concussion. Here's hoping he's okay for next week.

Also, rookie Mario Manningham had his first catch of his professional career.

Stat of the day would have to be Hixon having three less yards than Hasselbeck. :)

On Miles and Points

For those of you that don't know (I can't figure out who that might be), I'm a bit of a frequent flyer mile geek. Over the past 5 years, I've amassed well over 2 million points/miles, and they've bought such things as:

2 upgrades to Business Class to Rome
2 free Business Class tickets to Rome
7 free coach tickets to Puerto Rico
4 free First Class tickets to Seattle
3 free coach tickets to Tallahassee
3 free Business Class tickets to Rome
Various free hotel rooms around the world

Most of this has come from the smart people at www.flyertalk.com. There's no question I have an addiction, and spend too much time there. But there are so many smart people here that know how to maximize earning miles. I've learned to do all the same things I normally do, finding ways to earn miles for pretty much everything I buy.

There's also a wealth of travel information about pretty much anywhere you want to go, and how to get there. If you haven't been there, I'd suggest you visit today.

And let me know if you decide you want a couple hundred thousand frequent flyer miles. I'll be happy to show you how.

Vice-Presidential Debate

I watched the Vice-Presidential debate with my wife and best friend last evening. My view is a bit different than David's.

First, I was specifically annoyed that, for the most part, Sarah Palin chose to answer a different set of questions than the moderator actually chose. While she did this deftly, scoring points against Joe Biden, I think the moderator did ask a few questions I would have liked to hear her answer.

Which leads to my next annoyance, one that David and I seemed to share, even though he told me I was wrong at the beginning of the debate. On POTUS 08, a great channel on XM Radio, Rudy Giuliani made the point that if the moderator of the debate were writing a book on John McCain (referring to the fact that Gwen Iffil authored a book on Barack Obama), there would be far more outcry from the liberal media than there was about Gwen. I watched with interest, and feel like she definitely asked some questions that really were slanted to the left.

I found myself listening to Joe Biden and being engaged in most of what he said, even when I disagreed with what he was saying. I keep coming back to the fact that I wish he was at the top of the ticket, and wrestling with the decision of how much weight I should give the VP selections, as I like Obama's much more than McCain's, even though I don't respect Obama's accomplishments.

The question still remains in my mind as to which one will do a better job leading our country. Though I suspect that the current economic crisis, coupled with the Republican subterfuge surrounding the bailout bill, has killed McCain's chances of being elected President.

Bailout Package Passes in Senate

The Senate approved a modified version of the bailout package that failed to pass the House of Representatives. While I'm generally happy that this has cleared one of the hurdles to inception, I'm a bit disappointed in the Senate (mostly Senate Republicans) who attached a number of pretty useless tax credits.

As it's been explained, these things were bound to pass later, so we shouldn't worry too much. Besides, everyone should feel very comfortable that we no longer need to worry about the businesses who had to pay excise tax on wooden arrows for children. That tax has been waived. I'm sure there will be a substantial decrease in the price of wooden arrows very soon.

On a separate note, the Giants play the Seahawks at the Meadowlands this weekend. Our star wide received, Plaxico Burress has been suspended for one week. Before his suspension, I felt we were going to crush Seattle. Now, I expect Steve Smith and Amani Toomer to shoulder the weight, with the Giants posting a 24-17 win to roll to 4-0.

Sleeping in Seattle

Stefan is my friend of 10 years. Scary to say it's been that long. Stefan has been a Seattle Seahawks fan for the entire time I've known him (according to him, a lot longer than that).

We planned a trip to Seattle to catch a Seahawks game. There were 5 of us (both wives, and my best friend, who is also a great friend of Stefan's).

Frequent flier miles paved the way to Seattle, while some help from my best friend's mother (mine as well, by proxy) on hotel rooms. Friday night saw us head to Ray's Boathouse for dinner (www.rays.com). If you've never been to Ray's, you have to go. It's consistently ranked as one of the top seafood restaurants in the country, year in and year out. Local fish sampler was 3 of the best pieces of fish I've had in my life. And my wife will be happy to tell you I'm not the biggest fan of fish. Sablefish in Sake marinade, Coho Salmon and local Halibut.

Saturday saw us exploring Pike Place market, the Aquarium, and of course, a trip to the Seahawks Team Store. Nothing like a thong with a Seahawks logo to get the blood flowing, if you know what I mean. ;) Saturday night, we had dinner at a restaurant called Oceanaire. Okay, but nothing to write home about.

To finish up Saturday, we went to see the movie, "My Best Friend's Girl." While it was billed as a romantic comedy, this was the funniest, perverse movie I've seen in a long time. Without giving anything away, when the star stands in front of his girlfriends mother, drops trou and says, "Cmon honey, this XXXX isn't going to suck itself", I spit soda on the back of the person in front of me.

Sunday morning, we headed to the stadium. There were a ton of people there early, and virtually everyone was wearing a jersey. What an awesome stadium! It's a partially covered, open-air arena that holds approximately 67,000 screaming fans. While that's 20,000 less than my beloved NYG, it was definitely louder there. Might be the partially covered roof, but I couldn't hear my own voice screaming during introductions. Nobody sat down until halfway through the first period, and they didn't stay seated for long.

Moral of the story was a rabid crowd, a bad St. Louis team, and an easy 20+ point win. It was a great time. Stefan had more beers than I have fingers. His alcohol consumption was only rivaled by his food consumption. By my count, 2 Italian Sausages, 1 Foot-Long, some nachos, some fries, a bowl of Clam Chowder. I'm sure I'm missing something.

All in all, an awesome stadium, a fun game, a bunch of good food. Oh, and rain. Lots of rain. The only time we saw sunshine was during the game.

We landed in St. Louis on the way home. Hard to believe how much that airport is completely abandoned with the down-sizing of AA.

New York Giants

I normally spend the bye week evaluating how my team is doing at the midpoint of the season. Unfortunately, we were hampered with a bye in week 4, so there's not much season to define yet. We've played three games:

1. vs. Washington: We came out gunning in the first half, but failed to perform in the second half.

2. at St. Louis: Utter domination of a horrible team.

3. vs. Cincinnati: I don't know what to say. I didn't see the game (more on that in my next blog post). The highlights showed a tremendously inconsistent team, our big problem most of last season.

So, where are we after week 4? Well, we "won" the first quarter of the season, but we were supposed to. 3 more relatively easy games against Seattle, Cleveland and San Fran make way for three games in a row against Pittsburgh, Dallas and Philly. We could be 8-1 at the end of that stretch, or 4-4. Who knows?

Blogging tomorrow on our recent trip to Seattle to watch the Seahawks vs. the Rams with a great friend who's a lifelong Seattle fan (poor guy).

1st Presidential Debate

So, my best friend chose to write about the presidential debate as well. I've decided to go ahead and voice my opinions without reading his, then will probably choose to write about why I disagree with him tomorrow. ;)

Halfway through the debate, he texted me to tell me that nothing he heard so far swayed him to either candidate. I agree. While the first half was not vanilla, it wasn't much more exciting. Talking about a bailout plan that hasn't even been voted on yet is much less interesting than if the debate organizers had decided to hold those questions until after the vote and grill the candidates on their decision.

As we neared the end of the debate, I feel like McCain did a really good job of reinforcing the vast "experience gap" as it relates to foreign policy. While I feel like Obama can find some good people to put around himself, McCain already knows who's full of **** and who's not, and I believe his knowledge advantage here also helps him select(attract) better people.

I believe Obama scored one good point near the end, although sitting here now, I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I'll have to update that tomorrow.

As it stands now, I definitely lean towards McCain at the top of the ticket. I'm still trying to figure out how much the VP candidates mean to me.

Daily Musings

A post of links:

Today's sign some government employees have too much time on their hands:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26877682/

I'd also like to draw attention to two blogs written by people I know and respect. First, my best friends blog:

http://extemporaneousexpressions.wordpress.com/

Then, a blog on frequent flier miles and points, from a gentleman I have a great deal of respect for:

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/

Both of these can be found on the left-hand side of my blog.

Barney Frank says Congress has agreed on the bailout, so we *must* be done.

And the Yankees are out of the playoffs for the first time in my adult life.

So, right now, the sports world is numbingly quiet for me, with the exception of the undefeated, Super Bowl champion, New York Giants.

I'll leave you with one more link. An easy way to earn frequent flier miles:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=833911

Bailout?

So, we're confronted with the question of whether a bailout by the government of Wall Street is a good thing? While I could quote from newspaper articles all day long, I like the approach that David took in his blog, trying to form his own thoughts without the help of a panic-obsessed media.

While I don't have blind trust in Paulson or Bernanke, I do think we have to proceed with some large-scale rescue effort by the government. I, like many others, am partially blinded by the disdain for companies that brought this upon themselves that should be allowed to wither and die.

But here's the thing. Having done my homework, living mostly within my means, I'm experiencing a lot of pain from the current crisis. Wildly fluctuating oil prices (an increase of $17 a barrel one day, followed by a $12 reduction the next) are just the start. Savings yields are down, my 401K is taking a beating, and it's costing me more and more to buy the items I need.

I read my mortgage completely, understood the terms, and can afford my mortgage. I'm perfectly comfortable with people losing their houses if they did not properly prepare themselves for home ownership. We knew we were taking a risk when we bought our house, so we socked aside some money in case I lost my job. If others took bigger risks, I don't want my tax dollars going to bail them out, and I'm extremely angry that Congress would hang this weight around the neck of a bailout proposal. Those people can go rent a house, and I don't have to suffer.

I believe this to be a great example of Congress doing their best to add their influence to something they are not informed about. Was a mortgage officer wrong to sell someone a mortgage they couldn't afford? Sure. Was the homeowner some poor, unsuspecting soul who needs protecting? NO. Every mortgage has standard disclosures the government requires, printed very clearly. Buyer beware.

The only positive I've seen Congress add so far is a desire to cap the salaries of the people who run these defunct companies if they come to the Treasury for a bailout. 2 points for getting that one right. -10 points for taking too long to agree to this bailout. We're already three days in, with no clear end in sight. I'm betting nothing gets done this week, and the market continues to thrash around trying to figure out the value of things nobody will buy.

To be clear, I'm not happy about a free pass for companies that were too aggressive during this crisis. However, I do think we need to step in quickly, decisively, and then proceed with tighter regulation in the future.

I'll end this post with a thought from a couple of intelligent financial guys last night. It's not like the things the government will buy on behalf of the taxpayers is worthless. Experts think 10% of the mortgages out there in these toxic bonds will fail, with another 10% in danger if they don't get some sort of payment relief.

Departing from the financial gurus, back to my own thoughts. So, being conservative, let's say that 30% of all the mortgages fail. That means we, as taxpayers, will get back at least 70 cents on the dollar, and we'll still have the underlying assets to cash in on. And, as discussed with my best friend, the AIG deal isn't a total waste. Rather, it may turn out to be a good deal for the taxpayer, helping offset some losses from toxic mortgages.

Do I want to see those "profit" dollars used to bail out someone who can't afford their mortgage? Absolutely not. Give it back to me in the form of reduced taxes further down the road. I earned it.

Pizza In Motion

This is my first entry in a blog....ever. I contemplated giving a brief synopsis of what I thought my blog would be. Then I realized I didn't have any idea where it would end up. For the time being, I chose the name "Pizza in Motion", as I'm involved in a number of business activities which lend themselves to a lot of travel.

Right now, I just returned from a trip to Seattle with my wife, best friend, and two other close friends. It was an opportunity to bring a close friend to see his beloved Seattle Seahawks play for the first time in person. I'm had a quiet goal of visiting every major sports stadium, and here's where I stand:

MLB:
Yankee Stadium(still can't believe they're knocking it down)
Fenway Park(Boston Red Sox)
Camden Yards(Baltimore Orioles)
PacBell Park(San Francisco Giants)
Safeco Field(Seattle Mariners)
Chase Field(Arizona Diamondbacks)
Shea Stadium(New York Mets)
Wrigley Field(Chicago Cubs)
Comerica Park(Detroit Tigers)
Coors Field(Colorado Rockies)
Nationals Park(Washington Nationals

NFL:
Giants Stadium(Giants, and that other team)
FedEx Field(Washington Redskins)
Qwest Field(Seattle Seahawks)
M&T Bank Stadium(Baltimore Ravens)
Soldier Field(Chicago Bears)
Candlestick Park(San Francisco 49ers)

NBA:
Madison Square Garden(New York Knicks)
Brendan Byrne/Continental Airlines(New Jersey Nets)
Verizon/MCI(Washington Wizards)
United Center(Chicago Bulls)

NHL:
Madison Square Garden(New York Rangers)
Verizon/MCI(Washington Capitals)

I think I'll probably write about the status of the congressional bailout tomorrow. I decided to wait a day, since my best friend chose to write about it on his blog today.