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Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a cross country flight?  Dock Ellis pitched while high on LSD?  Follow the link below to get the details.

ath1337 » Blog Archive » Baseball Players and HGH: You’re Doing it Wrong . . . Try LSD

Tags: wadeboggs, baseball

There are an estimated 100 tribes in the world that have never had contact with the outside world. Can you believe the power of those words, “never had contact with the outside world?” I’ve attached a picture of one tribe that was recently documented, in Brazil, with a camera on a helicopter. I have a couple of observations:

1) They must be wondering what in the sam hill that big shiny bird thing is in the sky. If you’d never seen a helicopter or any other flying object, that would be quite a sight.

2) Why is one guy/girl Manute Bol-black and the other two look like they o.d.’ed on self-tan spray?

Any theories?

I was reading from a fantastic book this morning called “The Essential John Wooden.”.

You may not have heard of him but he is considered the greatest college basketball coach in history, if not just coach in any sport. Aside from winning, Coach Wooden is known for having been a shaper of young men. His teams almost always won, but they often lacked superstars. Coach Wooden taught his players to be better men than players and that the team was more important than any one man. He considered them a success if they played as a team and had character. His players said, he would often get more mad at them when they won than when they lost, because maybe they won in a selfish or non-Wooden like way.

So to what does Coach Wooden attribute his success? The basis for his beliefs on what a person should be is a 7 Point Creed that his father taught him:

1. Be true to yourself.
2. Make each day your masterpiece.
3. Help others.
4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.
7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

Do these things above and you’ll be successful in life, career, relationships, and finance. This is wisdom that anyone can relate to. I might add to the list, some things that I TRY to live by:

• Pursue a career that you enjoy.
• God first, wife second, kids third, job fourth, everyone else next.
• Live below your means; always tithe, always save.
• Practice generosity, daily
• Give people benefit of the doubt
• Be dependable/trustworthy
• Don’t lie, cheat, or steal
• Never present problems without solutions (i.e. gripe)
• Be just and fair, and protect those that are being unjustly accused or attacked.

There are so many more things that I could write down that I try to live my life by. When I drift on any of these, I’m always aware back deep in my subconscious that something “ain’t right”, as my Business Law professor used to say. What kind of creed do you live your life by? Are there any points on these lists that you disagree with or things that I’ve left off? Let me know!

Tags: leadership, integrity

Last night I was watching the great, “Iron Eagle”, a classic 80’s movie, when I came across a familiar face. I noticed that Doug’s highs school sweetheart girlfriend was none other than Melora Hardin, Michael Scott’s girlfriend in the hit t.v. show, “The Office.” Take a look at this clip of Doug racing “The Snake” route in his Cessna. She’s at the end of the runway in a letter jacket. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nrq31J6RbgU

Funny how you think that a movie is just awesome when you’re a kid and then you watch it 15 years later and it’s not so awesome anymore. I think a lot of the movies today will stand up to the scrutiny better than some of the stuff they put out 20 years ago. At one point, Doug and Chappy were flying into Iran and they obviously had Chappy in an F16 cockpit with a green screen. While he’s talking, they literally switched reels and started showing a different B-Roll of the sky. It was so stunningly bad that it got my attention and I rewound it. Sure enough he went from, middle of the clouds to a few hundred feet off the ground in 1 second.

In my opinion, that’s just sloppy. How could the editor and director see that and go, ‘aww, no one will notice”. But honestly I didn’t see that thing the first 25 times I watched that movie as a kid. I think we just sort of glossed over that thing because we hadn’t seen movies like Jurrasic Park or The Matrix, yet. We were still living under the glow of “The Last Starfighter”, which coincidentally was one of the greatest movies ever. But, I bet you that if I saw it again now, I’d turn my back in shame at what it had become through the passage of time. So, I think I’m just going to have to keep a list of my all time favorite movies from the 70’s and 80’s and not watch them. I’m sure that I’ll be nostalgic one day and see a glimpse of one of them and think, “man, I’d really love to see “Mannequin” or “Space Camp” right now”, but I want to have fond memories of them, so I’ll just turn the channel to “Bones” or “Men in Trees” for my wife, I’ll shut my eyes and I’ll think back to the time when I was 8 years old and I wondered what it would be like to be chosen to save the universe by piloting a starjet. Greetana!

Tags: ironeagle, the office

Did you hear about this guy who stole $50,000, a few pennies at a time from several banking institutions?  Does this remind you of the plot from TWO movies?  If so, can you name them.  Hint:  Check out the clip below, and the article below that….

YouTube - Office Space: Cake

Man Allegedly Bilks E-trade, Schwab of $50,000 by Collecting Lots of Free ‘Micro-Deposits’ | Threat Level from Wired.com

Tags: officespace

Give me your best caption:

Pictured: Jumbo jet splits in two as it tries to take-off | Mail Online

Tags: jumbojet

You should check these new features out.  If you want to look at pictures of a specific location, this is available at times on the new google maps

Google Maps Rolls Out Spanking New Features | MakeUseOf.com

Tags: maps, google

Branding in this day and age is quite difficult. You can see the evolution of media dating back to the days when families would gather around the family radio and listen to their shows. Often there were only one or more stations to choose from. Then came tv, still you had only a handful of stations, but now you had tv and radio. The original sponsors of tv and radio got the deluxe commercial pitch. They unabashedly promoted the sponsor and people bought into it. As the choices increased and the show sponsorship was fractioned, it became an issue of buying massive amounts of air time and print for a couple to successfully launch an d sustain a brand.

Then, the internet enters the picture. By this point in society, we are so bombarded with messages and choices, we are not allowed the luxury of having a brand emblazoned into our subconscious unless it is in every form of media and cleverly done. We have to be handed units of software for free and treated like we’re greek gods or we won’t acknowledge a company’s existence. The age of the consumer has arrived.

It’s two different worlds: simplified, but monopolized corporations or chaotic, overwhelming array of small/medium size businesses and large companies split into smaller brands. Both have their pros and cons, but like everything in life, I’m sure a balance is probably the best. Here’s a blog entry from Seth Godin talking about this subject…

From Seth Grodin’s Blog:

Magically delicious

What is the worst sit-down restaurant chain in America? This is completely subjective and personalized to each reader, but I am more than happy to put forth my own list. I was inspired to create this list based on the fact I visited one of them tonight:

5) Olive Garden - I’m so beat down by the tagline, “When you’re here, you’re family.” Really? Why do I have to pay the bill then? And my brother is not usually as openly hostile as the waiter when I ask for more breadsticks at the table. The food is quickly turning into the “Golden Corral” of the italian cuisine world.

4) Any national bbq chain - Dickey’s, Spring Creek BBQ, etc. They are all the same. Step right up to your dry meat, processed mac n’ cheese, pickle bar, and then wash it all down with the ubiquitous soft-serve ice cream machine. It seems like you just have to go to a hole in the wall to get good bbq. It must not lend itself well to franchising. I want an old, weathered guy with a huge knife barking orders at me, whose name is something like Slappy or Sonny, and he’s eying me suspiciously cause he thinks I’m there to steal his secret sauce recipe. Put on the bib, cause you know it’s gonna be good.

3) Luby’s - Why are cafeterias in existence past 12th grade? This has to have something to do with the circle of life, because the prime demographic is 70+. The food is intentionally bland. Yes, intentionally. That’s what someone told me once. “Older people can’t handle flavor,” they said. Not spice, flavor. Rule of thumb: if they serve liver and onions, go next door. And you can’t believe how expensive this place is. I have to admit, I get a little greedy when I see all these self-serve bins with various sides and meats. It’s like asking a hyena to use discretion and work on just the calf muscle of the antelope. So by the time you get to the end of the line, your bill is north of $18. And by the time you sit down to eat your instant mashed potatoes, they gravy has crystallized into a hard exoskeleton, impenetrable with a hacksaw.

2) T.G.I.Friday’s - Pound for pound this is the most expensive place on the list. They win the award for “Most Promising Menu - worst payoff”. You overlook the $12.95 price tag for buffalo wings appetizer and $19.95 for Captain Jack glazed honey bourbon chicken poppers, because you’re thinking, “man, this sounds great”. It ALWAYS underdelivers. And this is one of those places that you go to 20 or 30 times and hate every experience before you realize you’ve been duped for the last time. It’s because of the afore-mentioned menu and the clever logo and happy-go-lucky atmosphere.

1) Red Lobster - Hands-down the winner. If I had any kind of actual way of quantifying this, it would probably double everything else on this list on the stink-meter. Where to begin…This was the first job I had out of high-school. It was so emotionally traumatizing, I still haven’t recovered. It all starts with the corporate mothership. Behind the scenes, this place takes every conceivable shortcut to save money. I saw a guy nearly get fired because he used tongs instead of a 2 oz. spoon to put cabbage on a salad, thus violating the corporate mandate. The reason? They figured out that they could save x number of dollars a year because the servers would use more caution when putting it on the salad, consequently not having wasted cabbage on the counter. I am not kidding about this. The fish is the sea-equivalent of horsemeat. And the clientele? Holy cow! My friend that worked there for a season said that her personal horror was the annual all-you-can-eat shrimp fest. Morbidly obese people would come in and put away a couple hundred shrimp and then drink the drawn butter for dessert at the end. Again, I’m not kidding.

So that’s my personal list. Have I left any off?

Tags: redlobster, luby’s, restaurant

Beautiful And Original Product Designs | Monday Inspiration | Smashing Magazine

In case you haven’t been following this, NASA has sent a spacecraft to Mars, named Phoenix. Their intention is to explore the ice-rich soil (exciting) of Mars. This was the first successful “soft” landing on Mars since 1976. The picture below is actually from the surface. I have two thoughts about this:

1) It looks a heck of a lot like Lubbock, TX.

2) I hope they find Barbara Streisand’s ancestors.

APOD: 2008 May 26 - A New Horizon for Phoenix

Tags: NASA, phoenix

You may have seen the viral video a couple months ago where Kobe Bryant jumped over a speeding Aston Martin as it was heading towards him. It’s up to you to believe, or not believe, it’s validity. Kenny Smith of TNT did a parody of the jump that is absolutely hilarious. This is most assuredly what would happen to me if I tried to jump a car coming at me. If you’ve seen the original Kobe clip, skip ahead to the Kenny clip about 2 minutes into the video.

I came across this great quote the other day:

Most presentations aren’t better for being longer, most conference calls aren’t better for being extended, most meetings aren’t more productive because you spent more time in the room. It’s just that in this age of super-sizing everything from hamburgers to automobiles, we’ve become addicted to the idea that more is better. I am here to ask you to join my revolution, to tattoo on your brain, if not your backside, that “More isn’t better. Better is better.”

It’s true, isn’t it? Our whole tendency as a society is to grow, conquer, be bigger and better. I find that I’m always approaching any system or ideal with the thought, “how can I improve this?” That’s not a bad thing if you are trying to make it better, but I think that I fall into the trap of throwing bodies at it. Can we learn to separate better from bigger? And at the heart of it all, can I learn to be content. That is a powerful word. It has gained such a negative connotation in our competitive, business world but the bible says that it is a virtue of a person at peace. Changing for the sake of changing is, at it’s core, a sign of restlessness. So I challenge us all to learn to practice contentment, parallel to our quest for betterment.

Tags: leadership