Not Necessarily Interesting News

The picture below says it all. One of the good things about getting a California assignment.

With nothing to do last night I decided to go to a local AAA baseball game. The River Cats are a farm team for the Oakland As. It’s a decent stadium. A bit bigger than Round Rock’s. The view of Sacramento over the right field wall is very nice. The sunset lit up the Tower Bridge quite nicely. I didn’t stay til the end and I’m glad I didn’t. The game went 14 innings. One of the old Express players, Brooks Conrad, plays for them now so it was cool hearing a familiar name over the P.A.

I also had to test posting blog entries from my iPhone. 🙂

and how!

…and how!

Yes, I did it. I bought an iPhone 3G. Bit of a hassle with AT&T to get it done but I did. Once I heard from guys at work that they had it connecting to the VPN to check internal mail I was sold. Now, I just need Tom-Tom software for it to be perfect.

I got it jailbroken without much issue which was needed to get around a VPN bug in the phone. I’m not totally in love with it. My old iPod is far better for straight music listening so I’ll probably keep it around for now.

I’ve found a couple of cool apps that’ll make my life on the road so much better.

• One is ‘Wikime‘. It’s a app that uses your location and finds articles in Wikipedia that are tagged with a location near you. Great for finding those little known things while in a strange city. And only $.99.
• UrbanSpoon – Find nearby restaurants easily
• Now Playing – find movies at nearby theaters with rating, trailers, etc
• Simplify Media – Lets me listen to any song in my entire library at home while on the go. Makes up for the tiny, by my standards, 16GB of storage.

It’s a fun toy. Not perfect. The battery life leaves a bit to be desired but it’s a fun toy.

Ok, so I’m on the road a alot. A whole lot in fact. After I get done teaching at 5:30 I have nothing to do in all these strange cities. What I started to do way back on Day 2 of Baseball season was visit the local MLB park and catch a game. Here we are more than 1/2 way through the season and I’ve managed to catch a game at, I believe, 8 parks. Not a huge number but pretty decent considering I didn’t pay for any of the travel associated.

I’ll try to list the parks in order of visit.

• Safeco Field (Seattle)
• AT&T Park (San Francisco)
• Chase Field (Phoenix)
• Nationals Park (Washington D.C.)
• Camden Yards (Baltimore)
• Coors Filed (Denver)
• Yankee Stadium (New York City)
• Rangers Ballpark (Arlington, TX)
• Fenway Park (Boston) Can’t really count as no game was played that day though I do have a pic of me atop the Green Monster

I’ve missed seeing games in about 5 other towns as no games were played the week I was there. Very sad. I was hoping to hit 1/2 of the fields this season. It’s looking like I won’t make that goal. I should get close though.

Ok, now my favorite fields:

My overall favorite was Chase Filed in Phoenix. I liked the design of the roof and the rotating outfield walls. It also had the best value as far as ticket prices. I paid $6 at the window for a decent seat near right field.

Safeco was also really nice though I couldn’t enjoy it. It was about 35degrees at game time and they decided to leave the roof open. The wind off the water chilled me to the bone.

Yankee Stadium was a lot smaller than I pictured. I dont understand what was so wrong with it that they need to replace it though. I got a great seat off a scalper just before game time. I was right behind home plate, about 15 rows up. For $35. Amazing.

I absolutely hated Rangers Ballpark. Traffic into that place sucks. And public transportation? In D/FW? Hah! It took me an hour and 45 minutes to get to the park. I spent 45 minutes driving the last 1.5 miles. It would have been easier to walk in from there. We missed the first 1 1/2 innings because of it. I’ll never go back there. The upside? The Yankees kicked the Rangers’ asses.

I’d post pics of myself outside each of these parks but I had my backup drive go bad without my knowledge and when I reinstalled my laptop I couldn’t get them back. Let’s say I’m not happy about that little development.