A big congrats to Sam as he got drafted after only two years of punting at Nebraska. Koch received no respect entering the draft as he wasn't invited to the combine, and how everyone was hiping up Colorado's John Torp. Headlining these people was Mel Kiper who snubbed Koch by not putting him on his list for top 5 punters in the draft.

Sure he's just a punter, but he was the first punter selected, and the second Husker selected in the draft. It's not every day that there is someone from Seward that gets drafted or plays at the professional level. It's also not every day that I can say that I've played a couple of sports with a professional athlete.

Maybe I should be paying more attention to Ben's blog, but apparently he thinks that Todd Helton is overrated, which in turn makes him over paid.



A lot of people that have been around me and that I've talked baseball with know that I absolutely love Todd Helton. If there could be an award every year for the most underrated player in the league, last year Helton would've taken home his 8^th straight trophy.



Excluding his 35 game short stint in his rookie year (where he still hit .280), Helton has never dropped below a .315 batting average for the last 8 years, he's hit 20+ home runs every year, picked up a couple of gold gloves, flirted with .400 and has a hefty .608 slugging percentage.

To put that into perspective, Bonds currently has a career .610 slugging percentage. With that, I'm not sure that there is another player in the league that has hit at least .300+ every year since their rookie season. I'll go as far to say that no current player has ever had 8 straight years of a .300+ average. Although I don't know this for a fact, but it's still quite an amazing stretch. I'm not saying he'll come close to breaking Cobb's 23 straight seasons of .300+, but Tony Gwynn's 14 seasons is well in sight.

If someone could find another player (or players) that have had a stretch anywhere close to this (besides that Pujols character), I would really like to know. Maybe I'm just overlooking the league, or maybe I'm just very biased towards how good of a hitter Todd Helton is.

I tried not to use my blog as a post during my month and a half long job search, but now that I've secured a location, I guess it's ok to put on here now.



After three great interviews at Sandhills Publishing, they decided to give me an internship spot for this summer, and if things go well, I'll continue working next fall during the school year.

It's going to be basically a programming internship that seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Things just kind of worked out. They were #1 on the job search the whole time, so it was nice that it worked out. Plus, they are only about a 3 minute drive (with heavy traffic) from the 436.

Today's the day: April 21^st. It'll be exactly one year from today when Christi and I get hitched. I'm guessing it will be a fun and exciting year, and it will surely fly by faster than we are eagerly awaiting it to.

On a different note. After my theatre play last night, I went down to Beta to meet up with Zach to put some payment down for a softball team that he roped me into for this summer. After hearing many obscenities from Breck while he was playing Mario Kart, we went outside for some fresh air.

As we're standing out there, we look across the street and notice that the Wick is sponsoring the Senior Sendoff. Remembering that this is the only time that we can go drink on the campus legally (and for free), we headed over to claim our two ticket beer vouchers.

After talking with people we knew that worked there, and finding more stubs laying around, we all had our fill and thanked the University for some free beer. My dad always told me to take advantage of the Senior Sendoff, and I'm glad that I was able to go.

Now tonight we are going to be dining at the Green Gatau with Jake & Al at the IEEE banquet, then tomorrow night again at the Embassy for AOII's senior sendoff. All in all, it should be some good times.

Side Note: While waiting for Zach and talking to Breck at Beta, he told John Wood that he has a nickname for me: Brian Helge-H Hospital .... I mean wow. I can't believe 1) no one has come up with that before and 2) Breck has never mentioned that until now.

Not sure how many people out there are aware of this, but on Sunday I slid head first into home during our baseball game and jammed my hand/fingers up pretty bad on the play. After waiting a couple of days to see if the swelling/pain would disappear, I found out that it didn't and went in to the health center (my first visit in 4 years) to get some x-rays taken.

After about 5 minutes of hand modeling with a huge iron blanket on my lap, they brought me into the little storage closet where they look at your results on the old 286 computer that they have in there. Good news as all of the x-rays turned out to be negative.

They did say that I tore some ligaments on the top knuckle on my middle finger though. So that's not good as this is a key finger when trying to throw a baseball. Although with my unorthodox throwing motion some guys on my team would wonder if it really matters or not .... but that's beside the point.

Now it's just time to rest up. I only have 1 LABL game and no club games for the next 12 days or so. That means that I need to find a fast and true method to be able to grip a bat at 100% before Sunday at noon.

I'm open for any and all suggestions/home remedies ....

Baseball is great. Especially when you get to play 5 games in two days. This concluded yesterday with a triple-header (two with club, one with the 'hurst) that lasted a combined 26 innings. It's always great to get out and play this much ball (especially when you got 5-0), but the down side is the repercussions when you get home.

I found out this weekend that the sun is not an ally of mine, and decided that my natural skin color wasn't good enough, and decided to make it a bright red .... this will go great with that interview that I have on Wednesday ....

And if that wasn't enough, when I got done with the games, I couldn't come home and just crash. I had to feed the giz dog and then jump in the shower to spend the night programming at tim and jake's. Once the dog was satisfied with what I put on the menu for him, and once I got done washing the combination of the dirt from Hartog and Densmore off of my body, I jumped in my car and was ready to go.

At this point, my car was not ready to go. I felt like I was up real high (and no, I haven't been doing those weight-watcher-whatevers and getting myself into shape), so I figured it wasn't because I was suddenly lighter. I pulled my car out of the garage to investigate, and sure enough, my front right tire was flat as can be.


Boo. Darn. Shucks. __________ (fill in the blank)

So this kinda deflated my night (oh man, I know ....) and I wasn't able to go over and do some much needed programming. Hopefully the good people at T.O. Haas can get it all patched up today, so I can be back on my way.

It's begun. Every team has played a game, and now the races will begin. This is the best time of year. It's a time where you think your team will win 162 games and just sweep through the postseason. Well, at least everyone can have that hope at the beginning of the year.

It's a time when Jimmy Rollins will chase Joe's infamous hit streak.
Where Bonds will eventually break Ruth's record (and hopefully stay behind Hank).
Where the Braves will tease me once again that they are the best team in the NL East, but then shatter my dreams when October rolls around .... again.

Today was amazing. We got to see that Albert Pujols is on pace to hit 324 home runs, Rollins extend his hitting streak, and someone threw a syringe at Barry Bonds!

With stuff like that going on, it's going to be a fun year once again.
Oh yeah, i thought there was some basketball game goin' on tonight as well ....