House of Boxes

Well the latest on the move situation is that we, the wife mostly, have started to get extra stuff boxed up or in some cases things I’m gonna want in the next few months but will have to live without! We’ve got the majority of our DVD’s and CD’s packed away. The wife has packed up the extra towels, bedding, clothes and such. Her and the MIL have gone through our garage sale items, that will be going into a friends garage sale, and Goodwill items. So now we have boxes stacked in the garage and closets. It seems really weird to see all that stuff in boxes and then stacked up.

On my front I started with my closet and got that emptied and most of it put into a box or at least in an grouped area for figuring out how I’ll pack it. I have board games that are big to fit in most moving boxes as they are too long. My biggest concern there is damaging them or them coming open during the move. I have a few miniatures that I’m not sure how best to pack. I have a bunch of them that are a plastic of some type I think so those should be ok. However, the metal figures I’m gonna probably have to individually wrap or it might work by taping two pieces of foam together between two boards or something. Oh well the fun of discovery. After those items I need to get my bookshelves mostly emptied so I need to pack all my books. I have both paperback and hardcover books not to mention my collection of Role Playing Games (RPG) material. I really want to pack the hardback books well so as to not ruin the covers or the books themselves. I also want to make sure I pack my paperbacks in such a way I don’t get bent up covers or pages. But probably the biggest thing to deal with is all my collectable card game (CCG) cards I have. I have a ton of Magic: The Gathering, Wheel of Time, Star Trek, Star Wars, Netrunner etc.. I’m not sure if I should pack all of them for the move or look at unloading some of them via Ebay or a local store. Big question is do I keep them in the cardboard card boxes they are in or do I find something else that will keep them dry in case the box they go in gets wet? I also have a collection of comics and graphic novels that I need to get some covers and backings for. Next time I head over to the comic shop I’ll look for something. I think outside of that I just will have some statuettes and other knickknacks around the room to pack.

Well once that’s finished then we’ll be real close to getting the house on the market for sale. We’ll need to get the house cleaned like never before and to get the outside painted. We’ve got some quotes for painting the house so hopefully we get that all setup to go in the next few weeks.

Keep tuned as there will be more updates to come I’m sure.

Welcome Home Fred Jones!!

Well one of my all-time favorite UO Duck men’s basketball players is coming home to Portland to play for the home town team of the Trailblazers. I’m very happy for him that he’ll get to play for his hometown team after an illustrious High School and College campaigns inside the state of Oregon! Now after his years at Indy and the last year up in Toronto he comes home. All the Portland locals and Duck fans will hopefully be rejoicing this new outcome. I don’t necessarily like they traded Dixon to get him but overall they got a better defender and athletic talent. Dixon was the better pure shooter but if Freddie, I just can’t not call him that sometimes, can get that confidence he had his Senior year at UO or during the suspension season for Indy that might not be an issue. Fred can play point if need be or the shooting/post up guard. Get him in space and he can beat just about anyone off the dribble to the hoop. He’s explosive still just known for getting down on himself and doubting his ability. Luke and Luke were able to get him to play to his fullest and when pressed to shine in the absence of the Indy stars he shined as well. Maybe being home and playing in front of a friendly, supportive hometown crowd will get him back up there.

Earlier I said Freddie was one of my all-time favorite. For a little insight into myself my favorite Duck basketball player ever was OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOrlando Williams!!! He had one of the sweetest rainbow, and I mean rainbow, shots I’ve ever seen. The guy just drained shots. I remember he was shooting from outside the three one game and he hit the scoreboard that’s how high of an arc he had. Plus standing in the student section we would always shout out “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” when he had the ball. In no particular order here are some of my all time favorite UO ball players (note: to be considered they had to be someone I saw during my UO timeframe Fall 1991+ sorry to the players from before):

Orlando Williams
Freddie Jones
Clyde “The Glyde Air” Jordan
Luke Jackson
Luke Ridinour
Alex Scales
Kenya Wilkens
Jordan Kent
AD Smith
Bryan Bracey

For the Women’s Basketball team:

Jenny Mowe
Arianne Boyer
Debbie Sporcich (probably the greatest to play at Oregon in my time)
Shaquala Williams
Cathrine Kraayeveld
Jamie Craighead

If you have a favorite that is on or not on these lists let me hear from you. If I’ve misspelled a name of a player my apologies as I’m not the best speller ever and names are hard to spell check!

Comic Convention

Well this weekend I attended my first Comic Convention with my friends Bar, his wife and Mr. Green. It was a fun experience but a bit overwhelming when looking for a specific set of items in all that mess. I went to this convention looking for the comic series based on my favorite author's, Raymond E. Feist, book Magician: Apprentice. Most booths were very helpful in letting me know they did not have what I was looking for (Heh-heh *Nelson Muntz voice*). But only one booth was so kind as to say while they didn't have any there that they did have some back at their shop and might even have all the issues I was looking for. Thank you Karen's Comics for actually being helpful and having great employees. Luckily I checked this booth out right before we left the convention and actually found a couple of items to purchase there. So I'll be giving them a call this week to see if they have all the issues I'm looking for. Even if they don't have what they thought they did I will still visit them for the helpfulness they gave.

Also, at this convention the Dark Side Troopers were there and we got a group photo taken. Unfortunately they have not posted our picture on their website for us to download yet otherwise I'd show it to you (Update: 3/4/2007 we scanned the picture in via our printer see here). Bar and I got to stand next to the big guy himself, Chewbacca!!! Nice suit by the way man!! Many of the other suits were very sweet. I wish I was talented enough to even think of trying to make a Star Wars suit myself.

Ducks Free Falling!

Well my Oregon Ducks Men's basketball team seems to be free falling the second half of the Pac-10 season. After a miserable trip to the Bay Area, my future home, they are looking to right the sinking ship with 3 home games where they should go at least 2-1 to head into the Pac-10 Tournament on a better note. The Cal game seemed identical to the game in Eugene with the exception we couldn't hold onto the lead in the second half after coming back from being down in the first half. That knocked our wind out and then Stanford deflated us completely. Not sure what the issue is other then the big scoring droughts but then again they seem to have happened all year long. It was just that in the first half we did enough to pull out the wins. Maybe it's just the law of averages playing out. But there is still hope and I'll keep holding to it but if we don't get that 2-1 at least over the last 3 games of the Pac-10 regular season I may lose that hope. For Aaron Brooks' sake I hope they get the ship righted in time to make a push in the NCAAs. He deserves some time to shine in the prime time spotlight of the Big Dance!!

The Move

Well my wife and I are reloacting to San Francisco later in the year. My wife was given an opportunity to relocate at work and this opportunity is a fantastic one for her career. I'm very excited about the move because I'm ready for something new in my life and a new city is just the thing to get a fresh start on many levels. It also doesn't hurt that the 49ers happen to be in San Francisco. I've been a 9er fan since I was born. My Grandmother instilled that in me but that's a story for another time. Anyway while I'm greatly excited about this there are some things that worry me.

First off is of course the cost of living down there is much greater then it is in Oregon here. Then of course there is where will we live? This will depend upon how much commuting my wife wants to do. But with her job, auditor, she'll be traveling to clients as much as she's in the office so not sure what area will be best in terms of location, cost and traffic. Well we still have a while to figure this out but I know it will probably go by faster then it should.

What will I do for a job? Now this question is the big one. I've been given an opportunity to figure out if I would like to change my occupation or not. Currenlty I'm a Computer Programmer by trade, although in my current job I don't really get to do any programming just system analysis and other support junk. So I could stick with programming and will probably have tons of options in the Bay Area as there are lots of tech companies down there. But also I have been thinking about teaching High School math and computers for about the last 10 years or so. Most people tell me I'd make a great teacher and my time in my current job has reinforced that notion with the many times I've sat down and walked people through how to do SQL, report writing and other stuff. So I may look into that.

Will we be able to sell our current house? This shouldn't be so bad as my wife's Sister-In-Law, she's a realator, will be helping us.

Well as more stuff comes up I'll be writing more on this subject.

Ducks Basketball

Well for a season that started out with such promise on the Men's side it is now starting to show the signs of weakness. After going 6-1 in Pac-10 play the ducks are now 8-5 and just can't seem to put games together again. I'm hoping this is just a slump and not a sign of things to come. Aaron Brooks just scored less then 15 points this last weekend when coming into the weekend he was the Pac-10 leading scorer. Ugh hopefully the team will sweep in the Bay Area, a tough thing to do, and then run the table at home against UW, WSU and OSU. The biggest problem I see is sometimes they just get into a rut offensivly where they don't move well without the ball or put up unwarrented shots. Sometimes those shots go in and it makes me even madder!! I don't care if you make a bad shot it was still a bad shot and making it will only encourage. The team moves the ball well when they want and we have the team speed to move well without the ball to get good wide open looks at the basket from about 10+ feet out or a quick dash to the hoop to take the feed. However for some reason we don't do this on a consistent basis. From a coaching standpoint I'm still not sure why we aren't pressing the whole game. The team worked hard on the offseason to make sure they got in great condition. Our bigs run the floor well and I think if we full court press the whole game we'd probably be winning all these close games by 15 or more. On defense our biggest problem is not blocking people out and not getting any over the back calls. But if the refs aren't calling that you have to make sure you block everyone out and go up strong to get the ball as it's coming down. Against many of the Pac-10 teams we should not be getting out rebounded with Marty, Malik and everyone else in the post position. Teams like Stanford will because of the amount of size they have on the team. But teams like Arizona give me a break we are bigger then they are. Oh well just have a few more weeks before the Pac-10 tournament. We need to go at max of 1 loss until then to get the team confidence back. I think the Pac-10 tournament if we can get to the final game that will bode well for the NCAAs. In the NCAAs we'll at our current rate bow out by the second round. If we can get the swagger back we could push into the elite eight again. Well only time will telll.

As for the Duck women I'm not sure what is going on but I'm thinking many people are wishing that the admin didn't bow to the players wishes and would have done everything in their power to make Jody Runge stay. Bev Smith is a good coach but for whatever reason she just doesn't get as much out of her players as Runge did. Now Bev is definitely more popular with her players then Runge ever was but then again you don't need to like someone to play for them especially when you are a Pac-10 powerhouse. I still have hope that Bev can pull in a great group of talent and get them to play ball as she wants. But I don't think fans nor admin will wait much longer before moving on.

First Post

Well this shall be damn boring as it's 1am and I'm tired and this is my first post to my Blog. I'm hoping I'll keep up with this Blog as a way to meet new people with similar interests as well as letting my friends and family participate in my thought random or straightforward as they might be. I decided to get into this because of a friend who Blogs about all things in her life and my nephew has a site devoted to his growing up.

As a young man I always enjoyed writing but as I've gotten older I got away from it. I'm hoping in keeping a Blog that I might revitalize my imagination and writing skills again. This Blog will be a place where I can reincarnate old ideas. Back in college I used to publish via e-mail to friends a magazine type letter called B!SPN. It mostly dealt with sports but it also dealt with just day to day stuff to keep friends up to date on things. It was a very wacky thing I even had a Classified section and staff writers. So hopefully I can get something similar up and running here. If anyone has any ideas on how to accomplish that please let me know. I think I'll have to make a second Blog site that I can allow others to contribute to in order to get that old feel back.

Other things I hope to write about are my online gaming in The World of Warcraft, Movies Reviews, Book Review/Discussions, Board Game reviews/Discussions, Role Playing posts and just random crap. One thing that will probably be an issue is trying to keep the swear words out of my posts. I'm one of those people who swears almost every other word. Hell just thinking what I'll type I'm self editing out all the fun words to say!!

Well guess I have ranted on long enough. Goodnight dear World Wide Web!!