The past several months of work have been particularly frustrating.  From server issues, to programmer problems, to hackers, and more.  I'm thankful I have baseball cards and writing as an outlet to relieve the stress.  My wife, on the other hand, had other ideas this week. She decided that she wanted to go to the gun range.  With as much as I don't want to admit it, I've never fired a gun before, so we opted to take an hour lesson to get a handle on shooting and gun safety before buying one.  Our instructor looked and sounded like a

While I was hunting Canseco cards at the Tri-Star card show over a year ago, I started shuffling through several boxes of el-cheap-o game used cards. They were sectioned off by team, so my first stop was the Athletics, of course. Sadly, they didn't have any Canseco cards at all, but they did have several recognizable names. Zito...Zito...Mulder...Zito....Hudson...Mulder... Hmmm, wait a second. "Excuse me, sir. How much are these each?" The dealer responded with "They are $1 a pop." The wheels in my head started to turn.  I had my hand in a bunch of cheap cards from Oakland's former

For every baseball fan, the ultimate best feeling you can have is when your team makes it to the World Series - and wins.  For me, that point was in 1989 when the Powerhouse Oakland Athletics took their cast of super stars & veterans to beat the Giants. I remember being glued to the television and begging for my parents to put the game on the radio if we had to drive somewhere during game time.  I also remember the earthquake - and feeling it, too. I remember Dave Stewart being virtually un-hittable.  I remember the swagger that Canseco and

Due to the positive feedback online, I figured I'd throw up a few more! ARod Does the Unthinkable, and wins fans back Perhaps the greatest "nice" villain baseball has ever seen, ARod had his team and fans hating his guts after being caught for a second time cheating, then was banned for a year.  The 2015 stat-line in everyone's heads coming into April for him would likely be 50 games played while hitting 2 homers, batting .182 resulting in him being benched.  Instead, the bronx bomber surprised everyone and smashed 33 round trippers.  Strangely enough, a large portion of baseball's

As a whole, baseball has been painful for me to watch since the 2014 all-star break.  The A's traded away .... well ... everybody.  I don't think I'm alone when I say it hurts to see highlight reels being filled up by Cespedes of the Red Sox ... or is it the Tigers ... or wait ... Mets?  and Donaldson of the Blue Jays. Yeah, I know there are better players out there, but why oh why couldn't they have stayed put? Still, baseball is baseball.  It has its ups and its down.  You roll with the punches.  First, and

Work-wise, this past week has really eaten my lunch.  I've had all sorts of fires to put out, and am running on very little sleep since Wednesday morning.  For a while, it seemed like one solved issue ushered in 5 more emergency issues.  Not fun! Fortunately, I have some very good programmers and they are tying things up for me.  It has been a long time since I've been neck deep in code, but this week I've been fully immersed in php and mysql.  Fortunately, I do see the light at the end of the tunnel!  I just hope it