Diaz for MVP

Half of the people out in baseball land probably haven't even heard of Matt Diaz. I'm going to go as far as saying that the 10% of people that actually know him, can't even pronounce his name right.

That's no matter to me. I'm here to start the petition for Diaz (pronounced DIE-az, not DEE-az) to win the MVP. I would campaign hard for the batting title, but according to official rules, he'll need about 7.5+ at bats for the remaining 28 games to qualify. There is no game or at bat minimum, to my knowledge, to win the MVP award, however.

Sure, he's on a third place team and absolutely nobody knows about him, but he is an absolute force in the Brave's lineup. He's hitting a ridiculous .354 out of the 2^nd and 7^th spots in the order this season. He played a major role coming off of the bench earlier this year and was used to only face left handed starters (why the AB total is only around 300).

All of this doesn't matter though. Diaz can flat out swing the bat. If you get a chance to catch a Braves game on TV this weekend (I know, everyone needs to slate in 4 hrs. for the Huskers), sit down and watch this guy take some hacks. He's a Vladi-type bad ball hitter that hits absolutely everything on a line.

I'm not holding my breath for Matt to receive any hardware at the end of the year, but maybe next year he can get the starting job in left, which he's finally deserved, and start adding to that trophy case. I mention that he must do it, because I'm not really sure if the Brave's can add anything to the case for him ...

Bring on the Wolf Pack

It's that time of the year again. Just four more days until football season kicks off. As the baseball races begin to tighten and the excitement of college football sweeps through the air, I always remind myself why I love the fall so much.

Christi and I are very happy that ABC has decided to pick up the early games this year. I went ahead and checked which regional games we'd get out here, and I'm proud to say that Husker red will be prominent on our TV for the Nevada and Wake Forest games.

Robots and SEO

Lately at Big Stone, I've been doing a lot of work to try and boost our SEO for the two sites. I've been doing good lately as our news posts usually end up on the first page of Google within the first day that they are written.

Looking around at this, I've found a bunch of clever ways that are quick and easy to boost you to the top of Google. Within searching for different techniques to use, I found out how to find stuff that web sites try to hide from you, and the spiders, that give Google all of your information.

Almost every major site will have a robots.txt file that tells the spiders what not to allow when they browse through all of your information. So, if you want to find out what ESPN or Google is trying to hide from you when you google something that appears on their site, you can just check the robots.txt file and check out their directories.

Obviously, these sites will have their precious in-house data protected with CHMOD, but you can still have fun trying to see what they are trying to block from you.

Why you can't google your facebook profile, and why eBay hides a Disney folder.

A Jedi and The Bachelor

Since I'll be gone this weekend, and haven't really posted much lately, I'll give everyone out there a double dose of blogging on this Friday.

First, I get to work and find out that I have an email from Skye Walker. First assumption was that it was normal spam, but upon further review, it's an actual person named Skye Walker. Skye sent me an email to update Prana's ads with us, and I was really tempted to see if Skye was named before or after Lucas' series debuted in the 70s, but I just couldn't pull myself to do it.

Then later on in the day, I pick up a phone call, and it's from one of the executive producers of The Bachelor. My initial reaction was that I'm married, and if this call came about 3 months ago, we'd be talking, but ... my ego was completely deflated when I found out they weren't looking for me. In fact, they were looking to promote an "extreme rock climber" for the next installment of their show.

After I told them the only person I know of that would be good, Chris Sharma (who has a badass video coming out), I passed them along to someone who actually knows names of rock climbers in the industry. I'll be on the lookout to see who the next bachelor is, and if it was someone we recommended, I can say I had a part in helping out ABC.

Wedding Gifts

Clint's wedding last year during the A&M game was the first wedding that I've ever had to go buy my own gift for. Sadly to say for Clint, I rushed down to Target, obviously, before the kickoff and just got something mindlessly off of his and Cassie's registry. Which is good and all, because I know we appreciated stuff that we got from ours, but something struck me that day and I was bummed that I just went out and got a run of the mill gift.

Ever since then, I've really tried to do something different for people. Opening gifts after your wedding is pretty much like opening Christmas gifts after you've already dug through your parent's closet to see what you're going to get. Mom, that's what I've heard that other people have done. Anyways, it's just checking off stuff from your list and getting things that you had a feeling you might be getting.

With that lead up, and after Clint's wedding, I set out to get people more unique gifts that pertained more to a remembrance of something in the past instead of just shopping the day before and getting some rubber maid storage containers (which I think I bought for the Ruether's).

With Urban being my main man all the way through high school, I had to set him and Tina up with brick at Wrigley Field, Christi and I set up Zach and Kate with some wine glasses and wine (inspired from our honeymoon) waiting in their hotel room at their honeymoon upon arrival, and I personally gave Jake an inside-joke gift from college.

This brings us to tomorrow when we'll be flying to Indiana and attending Jared and Tesa's wedding. The gift idea was sparked by mom and arrived less than 24 hours from the time that they left yesterday.

I just write this as a reminder for those with upcoming weddings. If you have some time to think of a nice and unique gift (that hopefully the couple will use and appreciate), by all means step outside of the box and take a risk.

We have two weddings around the same time about a year from now, so Christi and I will definitely be on the move trying to think up stuff in advance.

A Healthy "Obsession"?

I have this thing for Atlanta Braves baseball. I've really noticed it lately in the past few years, but I finally realized that it is absolutely crazy how much time I dedicate to this team every summer.

For the past four years (and maybe even before my days at UNL), I've seen the outcome of each game every season. Even if I was on vacation, I would go to ESPN's MLB scoreboard, and scroll backwards through time to see how the games turned out. And whenever Ted Turner feels like putting Blue Streak and Sex in the City reruns on during game times, I'll watch the Gamecast online or be sure to check out the recap the very next day.

I don't want to call this an obsession (as the Wife™ refers to it), but more of a love for a team playing in the greatest past time to ever sweep across our country.

Good thing the Huskers only play 12-14 games a year, or I'd have to somehow find a way to turn this "obsession" of sports, into a paycheck. I wonder how much more productive I am from January - March than the other 9 months of the year ...

How good is Joba?

According to Peter Gammons, the greatest living baseball encyclopedia of all time, "[Joba Chamberlain] may have the best stuff in baseball. Period."

Wow. Go Rob Childress! And, go UNK, to some lesser extent ...

Why Big Stone Rocks

A few days before everyone headed out to the big Outdoor Retailer trade show, Jefe got out the power drill and was making some noise in between our two offices. As soon as we all turned around, he was done ... installing a bottle opener in the open doorway.

This is truly one of the greatest things that I've ever seen in an office.

En Route to Berlin

Erica and Tucker got in this morning around midnight. We chatted for a little while, went to sleep and then had lunch at the Brewpub. After a stop at Target so the wife could see her sister-in-law, the two were off, no more than 13 hours from when they got into town.

It was great seeing both of them again, even if it was for a short period of time. Moving to where we did in the mountains proved to be a great half-way stop for them on their two-day journey from San Diego to Nebraska.

I guess this gives Christi and I another chance to travel abroad in the upcoming years.

Anyone interested in going on a tour of Europe in the summer of '09 or '10?

The Clique

Ben VanKat
Troy Bell
Chris VanKat

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