Well, at least @twitter is useful for one thing: I can win stuff for free! #hashtag #awesome

LOL. Fail Whale.

For the past couple weeks, the Oakland A’s have been running a contest. Essentially, at any time during the day, they’ll tweet a message and the first person to respond wins a prize.

I have been staring at the A’s Twitter accounts for the longest time. And what’s interesting was that they had two accounts that were running the contest. One was their official account (@OaklandAs) and their Ticket Services account (@ticketservices).

So basically, I had two chances to win every day. For the first week, I had totally missed the tweets by a minute or so. It sucked because I really want to win a prize.

Then finally yesterday, I opened up my Twhirl and waited. I noticed that each tweet came at the top of the hour.

So as 9AM rolled along, I saw this:

Christmas in perspective: Santa Claus doesn’t exist because my house didn’t have a chimney

I never trusted this guy.

Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

I accepted that fact when I first heard about this jolly old man that shows up every Christmas and gives gifts to the good kids.

As a kid, I was told that Santa Claus would come to my house, go down my chimney, drop off gifts and leave. That was his duty as we slept on Christmas.

OK, where I’m from, that wouldn’t work. First of all, Santa would get shot for wearing the wrong colors in my neighborhood. Second, he’d still get shot because he was trespassing into private property.

About two months to figure out the rest of my life

In about two months, my internship will end and I have no idea what’s next. I have a chance to stick around but I want to do something more of a writing sense. I want to be out on the scene or at least be somewhere where I believe I can be a huge contributor to a professional product.

In two months, I have to figure out if I will be here and find something else or go elsewhere to do it. I don’t want to move because of the crap going on at home. But at the same time, I need to get out and do my stuff. Relocating scares me but I can’t wait any longer. I have to take the next big step.

Pray for me as I job hunt and see where I can get with my career in sports journalism. I don’t know where I want to go or how I want to go about it. I just want to find something that allows me to do something amazing.

Is it here? Is it somewhere else? I’ll have to find out.

LOL Jin. You made a Christmas music video?

I had myself an LOL.

Words That Make Your Résumé Suck (via Crone and Bear It)

Oh snap! I better fix my resume… if I can find it. I think I lost it when my hard drive crashed. Uh oh…

I remember some time ago reading an article intended to help those seeking jobs by alerting them to certain words or phrases they should not use on their resumes.  The concern was applicants may be using generic language; language that doesn’t specifically demonstrate capabilities.   Over-used, trite, unsupportable phrases make Human Resource Managers cringe.  Six examples were provided: 1.  “Responsible for” — So what?  We’re all responsible fo … Read More

via Crone and Bear It

Christmas in perspective: Please don’t say ‘Happy Holidays’ to me

Be bold in what you believe in. Don't give me that "Happy Holidays" nonsense.

A couple years ago I saw this commercial on TV during Christmas and it really pissed me off.

I don’t remember the product but it started off with a husband outside of the house. The wife had just woken up and meets her husband outside the house in the cold snow. She’s still in her robe as the husband pulls out the gifts from behind his back and says, “Happy Holidays!”

That was a “shake my head” moment right there. Let me tell you why that really bothered me.

Defending good grammar, sort of (via Down the Road)

An interesting read. But I will disagree that if a person writes at a level lower than their education level, it’s OK. It’s not OK. It reflects poorly on your intelligence.

College people should know how to spell simple words like “calendar” and “ice cream” and must know the difference between “their” and “there”.

I don’t care about them getting the point across with bad grammar because the message they are sending to me is a major turn-off. Don’t be a fool!

I am thrilled to have been Freshly Pressed today. I hope you’ll poke around the blog and, if you like what you see, subscribe!  Use the handy links at right. Blogger Penelope Trunk wrote last year in defense of poor grammar. And then recently she did it again. She claims that it’s better to judge people by their ideas, creativity, and enthusiasm than by how well they write. The implication is that as long as they can get their ideas across, the g … Read More

via Down the Road

Why is it that I end up buying more reading material in December?

Two new things to keep me occupied this winter.

I picked up two pieces of reading material for my reading pleasures on Monday. It seems to me that I’ve been picking up new reading stuff this entire month. First I grabbed this. Then I picked up this.

On Monday, I picked up a copy of “A Love Letter to Baseball” by Batting Stance Guy and a copy of Rolling Stone magazine.

The baseball book details this YouTube sensation’s imitation of MLB players’ batting stances. It’s a great book to read and it’s just like reading a baseball fan’s diary.

The copy of Rolling Stone is from this past week in which John Lennon’s final interview (of 9 hours) is finally released. He would die three years after the interview. As a Beatles fan, I had to. And it’s just beautiful. No real reason to explain why I got it. Reading some it so far and it’s beautiful. Yoko’s piece about their last weekend together almost got me teared up.

I love reading!

Hideki Matsui signs with the A’s, Rich Harden might return to Oakland, and I go hella dummy!

About 110 people from the media came to his press conference. What a stud!

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited in recent memory for a signing by the Oakland A’s. Even the Jason Giambi deal two years ago was OK. But the official signing of Hideki Matsui (a one-year deal, of course) to the Oakland A’s got me super happy. I was going dumb inside my office because I love the guy.

When Matsui first came to the States a while back, I thought that the expectations for him was too high. The whole baseball world wanted an Ichiro-type of player. Matsui was billed as a slugger and even though he didn’t WOW the crowds with great monster shots, he was a solid player.

Brett Favre’s consecutive start streak is over and nobody cares

This may be the final image we'll ever see of Brett Favre on a football field.

It’s official: Brett Favre’s consecutive starts streak is over at 297 consecutive games.

Favre’s shoulder injury from last week has placed him on the inactive list for today’s game against the New York Giants. Even Mother Nature’s destruction of the Metrodome couldn’t give Favre enough time to heal for the game.

And for me, I just don’t care.

Three seasons ago, when Brett Favre played his final season with the Green Bay Packers, the entire country fell in love with him. He played his heart out. He played the game with a true passion. It was perfect.