UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

I’m going to try and post two blog entries tonight.

On with it!

- Believe it or not, I am actually going to get my outstanding rebates in the mailbox two days before the 30 day postmark deadline!  The rebate processors won’t know what hit them!

So…anyone wanna bet on the over/under on how many of the ten rebates I just mailed out will be rejected?

Over 2.5  -110

Under 2.5  -110

Current rebate-o-meter:  $1,110.  Got a few hundred over the past few days, and added a few hundred.

- Shot-Online update:  I’m at level 40, and halfway to level 41.  Mageias really help, even at a hefty cost of ten million NG for 250 charges.

(How can I afford such extravagances?  More on that later…)

As far as my Semi-Pro quest is concerned, I just found out what the requirements really are to achieve Semi-Pro status.  Copied and pasted from the Shot-Online site:

Cut Off Standard
- The top 50% of the X number of players who score 68 or under (stroke play)
(The qualifiers must score under 68 in order to be in the selection process. We then qualify the top 50% of the players who scored 68 or under. For instance, if 100 players got 68 or under, we’d pass 50. If there was a tie for the 50th spot, the player with the lower handicap will get the spot. Getting under 68 does not guarantee a pass.)

Damn.  I knew that one needed a handicap of -4 on Gladsheim in order to take the test, but I was always under the impression that all I needed was a -4 during the test itself to pass.  I gotta shoot better than -4 AND finish in the top 50% of all qualifiers?  Considering that I can’t even shoot -4 now—and I’m playing from the amateur tees!—I don’t see myself passing this test any time soon.

That little tidbit about how one’s handicap is the tiebreaker is a bit comforting, though.  I guess I better lower my HC as well.

By the way, I mentioned in the past that I spend way too much time at the Auction House.  I’m beginning to think that that’s an understatement; I’m probably spending more than half of my Shot-Online time at the AH!

Why, you ask?  Well, it probably has something to do with being able to flip stuff purchased really cheap at a huge profit!  You might recall that I was flipping items like Zodiac Leos a while back…

Case in point:  Zodiac Leo 100s (Pwr +6) generally sell for anywhere from 500,000 to nearly 1,000,000 NG.  In the past few days, I’ve been able to score several Zodiac Leos for less than 600,000, and I’ve been able to flip most of them for a “Buy now” price of 850,000.  After the auction fees, that’s an easy 200,000 NG profit!

Well, since then, I’ve been able to flip million dollar items for pretty nice profits.  Here’s just a sampling of my for-profit sales:

• Werdandis purchased for ~ 2 million NG being sold for anywhere between 2.5-4.5 million NG.
• Sagittarius 500s for ~ 1 million NG in profit each
• Capricornus (yes, that’s how the game spells it) 500s for ~ 2 million NG in profit

Last night alone, I flipped a few seven-figure items for a grand total of about 6 million NG in profit.  I used the money to buy yet another 11 million NG Mageia :P.

Yes, I’m a total Shot-Online dork.  In fact, I’m such a dork, that I actually take notes on the sale prices of certain items, in order to figure out what a good deal really is.

(If only I did that back in my high school, trading-card-dealing days.)

I am having WAY too much fun with this game.

- Those of you that love your food might want to turn away from this story…

On Friday night, I decided to fry up some ribeyes and prepare a potato salad.  Unfortunately, I was a bit short on mayo, and the salad wasn’t thoroughly coated.  On top of that, I completely forgot to add chopped eggs to the salad!

(Oh well…it was still damn tasty :P).

Now, if a bad potato salad is a sin, what would you call an extra-fatty, extra-gristly, extra-chewy piece of ribeye steak?  I’m still crying over the horrible piece of steak I had; there was a huge chunk of fat right in the middle of the cut, as well as several chunks of fat in other locations in the steak!  After trimming away all the fat (never mind the gristle that lined one edge of the steak), the 12oz piece of ribeye I had was cut down to maybe four ounces.

I had to compensate by eating even more under-coated potato salad :P.

My Week Two (Fantasy) Football recap is coming…

Tags: auction house, capricornus, gladsheim, mageia, potato salad, rebate-o-meter, rebates, ribeye, sagittarius, semi-pro, shot-online, werdandi, zodiac leo by Peter
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Sorry for not blogging in so long!

Quick-hitters:

- What is it about potato salad that makes it so ridiculously addictive?

(For the record, my potato salad is simple: diced potatoes, sliced olives, chopped hard boiled eggs, finely chopped celery, mayo, vinegar, and pepper to taste.)

If preparing the salad wasn’t such a PITA, I wouldn’t have a problem eating this stuff often.

- Somebody please remind me never again to wait until near the end of the (typical) 30-day postmark deadline to file my rebates!

I was filing four rebates on purchases that, so I thought, were made on 6/11, meaning the claims must be filed by 7/11. Eventually, I realized that 6/11 was the shipping date, not the order date. The actual order date was 6/9!

Whew.

- Speaking of rebates, my current rebate-o-meter reads $1550, and that’s not counting the several orders I made recently.

My toothpaste-o-meter dropped by one, because cousin David was only willing to take one box off of my hands.

- So I missed most of the Nadal v. Federer classic (and I don’t get ESPN Classic, so I couldn’t watch the replay), but if the last few games were any indication of how great the matchup was, I will have to petition NBC to sell the match on iTunes. His streak of five straight Wimbledon titles was gone in a flash, and after dismal showings (dismal by Federer’s standards, that is) in the Aussie and French Opens, Pete Sampras’ Grand Slam titles record of 14 (Federer’s two back) is starting to look somewhat out of reach.

(By the way, I thought it was really compelling to see Federer’s reaction to his loss, when he was interviewed by John McEnroe. His delcaration that the loss “[hurt],” followed by his near breakdown, was almost humanizing, because we’ve never seen Federer in this position: losing a Grand Slam final not on clay.)

More importantly, have we witnessed a changing of the guard? Nadal suddenly has five Grand Slams, and he has proven that he can win on a surface other than clay. Would it be out of the question for him, currently 22, to have ten Grand Slams by 25? Nadal is a ridiculous athlete; did you see how many shots he made that he had no business getting to? There’s no reason why his game can’t translate on to the hard courts? He might be the man to win the season Grand Slam, if anybody.

I can’t wait for the US Open.

- Friday the Fourth was spent at two locales: an annual Fourth of July BBQ (thanks Aaron!), followed by the fireworks show at the Valley Cultural Center in Woodland Hills.

As we headed out to the BBQ, the weather was awful: it was warm and sticky. Fortunately, the sun was shining brightly when we got there, and thank goodness it was a dry heat. It was hot enough, though, for me to go through three sodas, and (by my count) seven bottles of water.

We brought that addictive potato salad, and for lunch, I had a Hebrew National hot dog, a hamburger, half of a giant Hot Link, an Omaha steak hot dog, guac and salsa with tortilla chips, various fruit, and some awesome spinach dip.

Naturally, I regretted eating all that. That didn’t stop me from chasing all that with a hamburger at 2:30, when Aaron fired up the grill a second time.

My sister and I spent most of the day taking up two seats at a table, and people constantly shuffled in and out of the other two seats. Without going in to too much detail about the individuals sitting in other seats, let me just say that older people are awesome to hang around with :P.

We were about to leave at six, when Aaron fired up the grill for a seventh (?) time. I managed to choke down another two burgers, an Omaha Steak hot dog, and about two servings of insanely awesome baked beans.

I had to be carted out of the party.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 3.5 hot dogs/sausages, four hamburgers, five or six sides, three sodas, seven bottles of water, and a stomach ache when all was said and done.

(And if you think what I ate was ridiculous, apparently all I downed was par for the course!)

After food, we swung by the Valley Cultural Center to watch the fireworks show. Barnes Park’s fireworks show, that was not. The fireworks show ran along with music played by the Los Angeles Pierce Symphonic Winds, which was pretty awesome. It would have been cooler if we heard much of the music, though; we were too far back to hear more than the booms from the fireworks.

All in all, a good start to the weekend.

Part 2 next time, and maybe a serious rant on my part.

Tags: barbeque, bbq, deadline, fireworks, Food, fourth of july, grand slam, los angeles pierce symphonic winds, postmark, potato salad, rafael nadal, rebate, roger federer, valley cultural center, wimbledon by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- I just realized that my blog could be abbreviated as USB!

(Yes, that probably amused only me.)

I should hire someone to spoof a USB icon for my blog

- You know you order too much stuff on Amazon.com when, browsing your recently placed orders, you have to think about why you ordered a particular item…or five.

That being said, I think this Delta Seven-Spray Hand Shower is a huge necessity, don’t you agree?

- So you might recall that, not long ago, I bought a bunch of “marginally healthy” snacks from Amazon.com.

Save the dark chocolate pretzels, we haven’t come close to polishing off everything. The yogurt snacks are just way too freaking sweet. Well, I think I’ve finally found a way to use up my yogurt raisins: healthy cereal topping!

Yogurt raisins + Total = pretty darn good. I wonder what adding crushed yogurt pretzels might do to a bowl of otherwise bland cereal…

- We had to celebrate Father’s Day on Saturday, because my dad had to attend a wedding the next day.

(Who the hell schedules a wedding on Father’s Day???)

He wanted steak, and I wanted to BBQ, so naturally we came to a good compromise:  grilled steak!  My sister then decided that it would be a good idea to go shopping at 168 Supermarket.

THIS 168 Supermarket.

Two highlights of the trip to 168 Supermarket:

1) While going through the still-narrow-as-hell produce aisles, some stupid woman decided to situate herself right in the middle of the aisle down which I was traveling.  I pushed my cart right in front of her—she was facing the West of the store, while my cart pointed North—and waited for her to move ever so slightly.

She did move, if by “move” I mean she bent forward a nano-millimeter.  I decided that there was enough room between her back and the display of whatever produce was there, so I eased my way through the gap.

(Could I have said “excuse me?”  Sure, but I didn’t want the death stare :P)

A couple minutes later, I noticed her loudly talking to another customer (no longer where she initially blocked my path), and for some reason, they were pointing and staring in my direction!  Seconds later, they both walked over to the produce display that the woman was looking through earlier.

Of course, for all I know, they might have actually been cursing me off.

2) Five minutes later (yes, that quickly), we had already finished our shopping, so we headed down one aisle towards the checkout.  That’s when some woman blitzed right past us on our right, but not before leaning her shoulder to nudge my sister out of the way.

If not for the bright pink sweater she was wearing…or the fact that she was 5′1″, or the fact that she was not exactly in tip-top shape, I would have thought that LaDainian Tomlinson ran right past us.

- Steaks were tasty, as well as the grilled veggies—three different bell peppers, tomatoes, and Italian squash—and the potato salad was quite good too.  Well, two of the steaks were quite good.  The rest of the steaks were dry as hell, which is what happens when you attempt to cook steaks to well done on a BBQ grill.

After 25 minutes, I pulled the other steaks off the grill, and they were still slightly—and I mean slightly pink.  Apparently, they were still too pink for the rest of my family to eat, and my dad and oldest sister MICROWAVED their pieces.

(Note to self:  it takes at least 20-25 minutes to get a well done 1″ New York strip, or twice as long as a medium rare steak would take.)

Seriously, how could anyone eat a well done steak?  You’d have to pour on copious amounts of A-1 sauce just to be allowed to call your steak “dry.”  A well done steak on a BBQ?  That’s Death Valley in terms of dryness.  Beef jerky has more juice in it than a well done steak.

- Raise your hand if you saw the epic sporting event of this past weekend?

No, I’m not talking about the Lakers’ near-second monumental collapse, of which I only saw a small fraction.  I’m talking about the US Open of golf!

(Yes, I watch golf too!  And for the scope of this discussion, let’s not debate over whether or not golf is a sport.)

Who didn’t think that Tiger was going to nail that final putt on 18?  Sure, the ball might have rolled around the cup slightly before dropping in, but the ball certainly knew better!  And what a setup we have for tomorrow’s 18-hole tiebreaker:  Tiger and his balky, surgically repaired knee, versus Rocco Mediate.

(Who?  The 158th player in the world, with five CAREER wins—Tiger has 13 MAJOR wins, by comparison—and by the way, a great guy, based on the post-round interviews he gave.)

Tiger has to be the overwhelming favorite, despite the wounded knee, but don’t tell me that Mediate doesn’t deserve to get into the playoffs.  He played a hell of a round, and had at least two shots at putting some distance between himself and Woods.  Do you think Mediate is kicking himself over that missed short putt on (I believe it was) 13?

I think Tiger will win, but I doubt he’ll crush Rocco.

Until next time!

Tags: 168 supermarket, amazon.com, bbq, cereal, new york strip, potato salad, rocco mediate, shower head, snacks, tiger woods, us open, well done, yogurt raisins by Peter
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