Good Morning Internet

I did it! After months of (barely) train­ing and wor­ry­ing too much, I made it across the fin­ish line and com­pleted my first met­ric Seag­ull Cen­tury on Sat­ur­day. That’s 100 kilo­me­ters, or 62 miles. It’s been six or seven years since I’ve done it and, shock­ingly, I think I logged my best time yet, com­ing in just a few min­utes over five hours.

Con­grats to my par­ents, who both also fin­ished the met­ric cen­tury, and beat my time, too!

The weather couldn’t have been bet­ter this past Sat­ur­day. It was a clear, warm day, with no seri­ous head­winds until the last 20 kilometers.

Along the way, I used Cycleme­ter on my iPhone to track my progress and post updates to Twit­ter. It’s an ridicu­lously cool app. It tracked my posi­tion via GPS and gave me reg­u­lar updates about my speed, time, and dis­tance through my head­phones. Plus, any time some­one replied to me on Twit­ter or Face­book, it read the mes­sage to me via friendly robotic voice. I was sure my bat­tery wouldn’t make it the whole way through the cen­tury, but I was hap­pily sur­prised to dis­cover I still had a few per­cent of bat­tery life after I crossed the fin­ish line. I’m not sure if that’s a tes­ta­ment to the improved bat­tery in the iPhone 4, some code magic in Cycleme­ter, or a com­bi­na­tion of the two, but I was really impressed.

More than once, I got hilar­i­ous tweet fed to my head­phones from peo­ple that cracked me up on my bike, undoubt­edly mak­ing me seem like some kind of nut to any­one cycling around me at the time.

At the risk of sound­ing com­pletely sappy, the real-time notes of encour­age­ment really helped moti­vate me. I was sur­prised so many of you were awake that early on a Sat­ur­day, and com­pletely hum­bled by your sweetness.

Cross­ing that fin­ish line felt great. I had a nice cool-down walk around Sal­is­bury Uni­ver­sity, my alma mater, and barely rec­og­nized some parts of cam­pus. That place has grown a lot in the past eight years.

After clean­ing up and sleep­ing hard after din­ner, I was sur­prised at how refreshed and ener­getic I felt Sun­day morning.

I’m feel­ing really moti­vated today. Who knows, if i can keep up this kind of men­tal momen­tum, maybe I can get myself into shape for the full 100-mile cen­tury next year.

In the mean­time, here are some pho­tos and videos from Seag­ull Cen­tury 2010!

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues
• Tom Green at the DC Improv

This is prob­a­bly fool­ish of me, but I’m giv­ing the Ori­oles another chance.

First, the tough facts. As of last night’s loss to the White Sox, the Ori­oles’ record is 36–74, which puts them at a win per­cent­age of .327. That’s still the worst record in all of Major League Base­ball. The team is 32.5 games back, so even if they won every sin­gle game for the rest of the sea­son, they still wouldn’t stand a chance at get­ting into the play­offs. So, the sea­son is basi­cally over with a lit­tle under two months’ worth of games to go.

It’s been a depress­ing sea­son for Ori­oles fans. Not only had I writ­ten off the team, but I was so dis­gusted with their on-field dis­play and their poor man­age­ment I stopped fol­low­ing base­ball alto­gether. If it hadn’t been for the World Cup, I would have stopped fol­low­ing all sports. (I haven’t ruled that out. I’m still not sure the con­stant heart­break is worth it.)

But there is a glim­mer of light for the future of the Ori­oles, but it’s brief, faint, and ten­u­ous. Last week, under the new man­age­ment of Buck Showal­ter, they swept the Angels and, for the first time in a long while, were able to cel­e­brate a series of wins. They had some great momen­tum, and we saw some­thing we hadn’t seen the Ori­oles do for a long time: They worked as a team, not just as a group of indi­vid­u­als look­ing to up their per­sonal stats.

But, like all good things that hap­pen to the team, the cel­e­bra­tion was short-lived. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was the excite­ment of hav­ing a new man­ager that kick-started them into a string of wins. Maybe it was because the Angels are a middle-of-the-pack team.

Last night, the Birds lost 4–2 in the first game of a series with the White Sox. Despite the fact that the team seems to per­form ter­ri­bly on Sun­days, I’m head­ing to the game this after­noon, pos­si­bly fueled by that fool­ish opti­mism that’s kept me a fan my entire life. Some call it “Ori­oles magic”. But it’s start­ing to feel a lot like an abu­sive rela­tion­ship. I’m going back to the team because this time they’ll be dif­fer­ent! They’ve shown me how much they’ve changed! They won’t let me down any­more. They won’t break my heart.

I don’t know if I’ve com­pletely given up on the team or not. Can I be accused of being a fair-weather fan even though I’ve suf­fered through 15 years of dis­ap­point­ment? Will it be worth it to come back next year for another sea­son? One thing’s for sure: I’m not buy­ing a Sun­day ticket plan again.

I guess I’ll see how things go this after­noon. Lets go O’s. Sigh.

Related Posts:

• The year of adven­ture continues

I started two exper­i­ments last week, which I talked about on my last pod­cast episode. The goals are to go a month with­out eat­ing out or watch­ing tele­vi­sion. The ideas seemed sim­ple and I hoped they would save me money and open up hours of time for cre­ativ­ity and productivity.

Over the course of one week­end, I’ve already bro­ken all my rules. This is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

I think I picked the absolute worst pos­si­ble set of 30 days to try these exper­i­ments. Almost imme­di­ately, I added an excep­tion to the “no TV” rule for World Cup games. I still think that’s a valid excep­tion, see­ing how the World Cup comes around once every four years. But that some­how acted as a gate­way to me watch­ing five episodes of Mad Men this week­end, too.

Simul­ta­ne­ously, I failed on the “don’t eat out” front. Like the World Cup, I was lured away from my goal (Ha!) of avoid­ing restau­rants and sav­ing money by Dukem, an amaz­ing Ethiopian restau­rant in Mt. Ver­non. I jus­ti­fied the expense and vio­la­tion of my newly-formed rule with two excuses. First, I was out with friends. Sec­ond, it was Fri­day and the first day of the World Cup. If those weren’t rea­sons to cel­e­brate, I rea­soned, noth­ing was.

The flood­gates opened. It was Hon­fest in my neigh­bor­hood all week­end, and my willpower suc­cumbed to the food ven­dors. Guilty and slightly depressed about fail­ing, but also angry at myself for choos­ing the most incon­ve­nient month for these exper­i­ments, I went home and sunk a few more hours into World Cup view­ing, men­tally re-writing the rules to add an “except on week­ends” clause to my rules.

But this morn­ing, with renewed resolve, I’m tack­ling my goals again. I will bring my lunch with me to work every day. Episodes of Mad Men and the queue of TV shows I have lined up on Net­flix will have to wait. I’m going to cook for myself every night. The take-out menus have been placed out of sight to pre­vent fur­ther lapses.

Sure, I stum­bled hard this first week­end. But for the rest of the 30 days, I’m going to buckle down, focus, and see if I can spend more time cre­at­ing things while wast­ing less money and time.

Except for World Cup games. I’d hate myself for skip­ping those.

Oh, and new episodes of Futu­rama, of course.

I’m screwed.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

If the games were only six innings long, the Ori­oles would be killing it this sea­son. But, for some rea­son, they just can’t hold on to a lead at the end of a game.

Hey, at least we’re bet­ter than… the Hous­ton Astros. Houston’s the only team with a worse record, hav­ing yet to win a game. Even the Nation­als are 3 for 4. The Nation­als! 

As if this dis­mal start isn’t bad enough, only 9,129 peo­ple showed up for Mon­day night’s game. That’s a record low at Cam­den Yards. Ouch.

Hey Peter Ange­los, maybe now’s a really hor­ri­ble time to charge that extra $1 to $5 for peo­ple who walk up and buy tick­ets on the day of a game.

So, yeah, it’s going to be a long sea­son. And it’s only April.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Since he pur­chased the Bal­ti­more Ori­oles in 1993, Peter Ange­los has become the city’s most-loathed octo­ge­nar­ian. Through nearly 20 sea­sons of con­sis­tent los­ing records, low game atten­dance, and man­age­r­ial mis­steps, he refuses to release his tyran­ni­cal stran­gle­hold and sell the team to some­one who, oh I don’t know, could run it well.

Basi­cally, Peter Ange­los is Baltimore’s Mr. Burns.

Luck­ily, Un-Peter Ange­los is on Twit­ter to give us glimpses into what might be going on inside the owner’s head.

Today, much to my delight, Evan from The City That Breeds has an “Open­ing Day Exclu­sive” inter­view with Un-Peter Ange­los. We learn so much.

If you could be any ani­mal, what would it be and what other ani­mal would you eat?

A uni­corn that eats other uni­corns. And I’d have wings too, as to sweep in and cap­ture unsus­pect­ing wing­less uni­corns from the skies. I think I’d also eat unicorn-flavored Doritos.

Go read the full interview.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

“Oh, Ori­oles.”

That’s been my exas­per­ated sigh for every base­ball sea­son I can remem­ber. Still, every April, I dress in orange and black and expect things to be dif­fer­ent. There’s opti­mism in those first few games of the sea­son, an opti­mism I can’t explain. Will this be our year? No, prob­a­bly not. But it could be.

Today is Open­ing Day at Cam­den Yards. Sports blog­gers, jour­nal­ists, and com­men­ta­tors don’t expect much from our Ori­oles. Fans don’t expect much from our Ori­oles. But even though we’re mostly pes­simistic (real­is­tic?) about their chances for a win­ning record, let alone a play­off spot, many of us ignore the stats and get caught up in spec­u­la­tive opti­mism on Open­ing Day. Maybe, just maybe, things will click, the team will come together as a cohe­sive unit, and we’ll see the birds embody great­ness. Maybe.

You know the feel­ing you get when you buy a lot­tery ticket for a huge jack­pot? You know how you make imag­i­nary plans to buy a man­sion, quit your job, and throw back­yard BBQs for friends on your own pri­vate island? When you’re an Ori­oles fan, there’s some­thing about the clean slate of a new sea­son that awak­ens sim­i­lar irra­tional optimism.

The lot­tery fan­tasy col­lapses when some­one else wins the jack­pot, and a few weeks’ worth of losses break the spell cast by Ori­oles magic.

But let’s not get ahead of our­selves. Today, at 3:05 p.m., the Toronto Blue Jays step up to bat to Cam­den Yards. The Ori­oles’ record from last year will been for­given. They played hard and ral­lied for a win over the Rays last night. We saw flashes of bril­liance. They looked refreshed, ener­getic, and hun­gry to win.

Will this be our year? No, if you’re real­is­tic, prob­a­bly not.

But it could be.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

This morning’s sun­rise was rudely obscured by the rem­nants of last night’s storm. Addi­tion­ally, it’s 44 degrees, which is 40 degrees cooler than yes­ter­day. Mary­land weather is psychotic.

We’re look­ing at a gor­geous, sunny day in the mid-50s for Open­ing Day at Cam­den Yards. And by “we” I mean “the peo­ple who are going to the game” because I’m not going to Open­ing Day this year. I’m going to the game on Sun­day which will be even nicer at 72 and sunny. So, in your faces.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

It’s that time again! As if SXSW wasn’t enough excite­ment for one week, the NCAA men’s bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment kicks off, too. Last year, we had the first Tour­na­ment Tweetup. Just a few min­utes ago, @sara21210 and @trainofbutter reminded me that it was time for round two.

So, ladies and gen­tle­men, I proudly present Tour­na­ment Tweetup 2. If you are read­ing this, you are offi­cially invited to join and bring friends! Use the pass­word “tweet­hearts” and fill out your bracket.

Good luck!

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

It was almost exactly one year ago when I wrote a long post about the absurd black­out restric­tions that crip­ple the oth­er­wise excel­lent MLB.TV ser­vice from Major League Base­ball. Here’s a quick summary:

MLB.TV streams all Major League Base­ball games online for a flat fee for the sea­son. It’s $100 for the stan­dard ser­vice and $120 for MLB.TV Pre­mium, which includes DVR-like con­trols and other extra fea­tures. It ties into the MLB At Bat iPhone app and its upcom­ing iPad coun­ter­part. As a big base­ball fan, I’d hap­pily pay the $120 and give up my cable box. Unfor­tu­nately, because of agree­ments and con­tracts with cable and satel­lite providers, Inter­net access to local games is blacked out. That means, as a res­i­dent of Bal­ti­more, I can’t have live access to Ori­oles or Nation­als games. They are only avail­able on MASN, a cable-only chan­nel. Fans like me, are forced to sub­scribe to Com­cast in order to watch the games.

Each year, MLB.TV takes huge strides for­ward. The games are in HD, fan­tasy base­ball alerts help keep track of play­ers in real time, and mul­ti­ple games can be tiled on the screen at once.

At Apple’s event in Jan­u­ary, MLB demoed a new ver­sion of MLB At Bat for the iPad, for­mat­ted for the tablet screen. If you’re an MLB.TV Pre­mium sub­scriber, you can get access to all the game video streams right on your iPad, along with stat over­lays, league news, and a boat­load of other cool fea­tures. Except for your home team. You still need to sub­scribe to old-fashioned cable to do that.

Oh, and MLB.TV still only lets you watch reg­u­lar sea­son games. The play­offs and World Series are sub­ject to black­out restrictions.

Sadly, I don’t see these anti­quated agree­ments between MLB and tele­vi­sion providers expir­ing or being bro­ken any time soon. A year after my long rant, none of the poli­cies have changed. This is a huge mon­ey­maker wait­ing to hap­pen for every­one involved, but the net­works and cable providers have strong-armed the MLB into restrict­ing the way games are seen online. Do they not under­stand that ser­vices like MLB.TV are the future? Or are they still afraid of the not-so-new-anymore stream­ing video tech­nol­ogy? Why are they so reluc­tant to embrace it?

In this decade, more and more peo­ple will turn to the Inter­net for movies and tele­vi­sion. Sports, with the excep­tion of the won­der­ful and free NCAA March Mad­ness online stream from CBS, have some seri­ous catching-up to do.

Yes, MLB.TV is an excel­lent option for fans who don’t live in their favorite teams’ mar­kets, but all us home­town fans are out of luck. For another sea­son, the $120 I was ready to spend will remain in my wal­let. And I know I’m not alone.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The Olympics

We’re still in the mid­dle of the Win­ter Games in Van­cou­ver. I admit, I was pretty cyn­i­cal about the games when they first started. I thought I didn’t see the appeal any­more. I skipped the open­ing cer­e­mony. Then, while work­ing on other things around the apart­ment, I the TV on in the back­ground and caught some of the Nordic com­bined events. About an hour later I real­ized I was still watch­ing. Not only that, but I was into it.

By the time the puck dropped for the U.S./Canada hockey game last Sun­day, I was an Olympic fan. I might not be obsess­ing over medal counts (yet), but I know there are still great events to watch before the clos­ing cer­e­monies on Sunday.

Apple’s iPad

Part of why I love my grad school pro­gram so much is its explo­ration of lit­er­ary pub­lish­ing, includ­ing elec­tronic pub­lish­ing. The iPad, aside from being Apple’s next cool thing, has a tremen­dous amount of poten­tial for unknown or inde­pen­dent writ­ers (like me) to get their writ­ing into the hands of read­ers, poten­tial fans, and pos­si­ble pub­lish­ers. The rules in lit­er­ary pub­lish­ing world are being re-written, and I think Apple’s new prod­uct is going to help jump-start the indus­try, or at least give it a healthy push into the dig­i­tal age. Ten years from now this will all seem so prim­i­tive and rudi­men­tary, but for those of us here on the fron­tier, it’s a really, really excit­ing time.

Plus, it’s really cool-looking.

The World Cup

Two major sports events in one year? Oh yeah.

It’s pretty hard to not get excited about the World Cup. I have friends who usu­ally couldn’t care less about sports, but when it’s time for the World Cup, they’re glued to the TV right there with me. It’s much more than just a series of soc­cer matches, it’s a major global event.

All over the world, busi­nesses close down. Peo­ple put aside dif­fer­ences and drop argu­ments, even if only tem­porar­ily. Peo­ple across the socioe­co­nomic spec­trum are all con­nected to this one event. It tran­scends race, bor­ders, and class. It set­tles grudges and awak­ens new ones. It’s some­thing tan­gi­ble that brings peo­ple together in ways that war, reli­gion, or ide­ol­ogy never could. Even if only for a short time, some­thing amaz­ing hap­pens dur­ing the World Cup.

If you’ve never fol­lowed a World Cup before, (and in the U.S., that might be likely), you owe it to your­self to watch this summer.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts