Definitely a good game had by all tonight – oh, and the Cardinals winning and going 3-1 in the pre-season ain’t bad either.

Derek Anderson was out for about 1 series – clearly he’s going to be the starter come next week in St. Louis. Matt Leinart took a few snaps, and looked like he normally does – not very commanding and out there going through the motions (can you tell I’m a little sour with him already?).

Beanie Wells looked ok – but it’s pre-season, and I really hope he gets more carries this year than he did last year. I’ve got nothing against Tim Hightower, but Beanie has better foot-work, and Tim is a far better blocker and can catch better…much better for those dump out routes for 5 yards.

The receivers looked great, except when Onrea Jones grabbed a punt that landed on the 5 yard line just about 1 yard INSIDE the goal line! Ugh…but he redeemed himself a few plays later catching some balls across the middle from Max Hall – damn that kid looked good tonight – future #2 for sure…for right now. Did you know that Max Hall is also Danny White’s (Dallas Cowboys) nephew – learned that little factoid tonight.

Also check out Darren Urban’s Redskins Aftermath post on the Word From the Birds Blog – it’s a good blog – if you love the Cardinals, you should read this regularly.

All in all, it was a great game to end the pre-season – off to the regular season – we’re all back at 0 – time to turn that shit up!

Ok – so maybe not so – but I’m not in a league on NFL.com, so I think I’m missing out on this whole “video integration” thing they’ve been marketing so heavily.

My first league (ESPN league), with the good peeps from Gangplank, is broken down like this:

- QB – Brett Favre
- RB – Maurice Jones-Drew
- RB – Beanie Wells
- WR – Johnny Knox
- WR – Randy Moss
- WR – Pierre Garcon
- TE – Jeremy Shockey
- D – Saints
- K – Jay Feely
- BE – Steve Slaton
- BE – Chad Henne
- BE – Willis McGahee
- BE – Sam Bradford
- BE – Early Doucet
- BE – Colts
- BE – Brandon Pettigrew

I think I’m a little heavy on both the Cards and the Saints… :-/

Second league (Yahoo):

- QB – Brett Favre
- QB – Matt Ryan
- WR – Roddy White
- WR – Donald Driver
- WR – Santonio Holmes
- RB – Chris Johnson
- RB – Jonathan Stewart
- TE – Brent Celek
- WR/RB – Cadillac Williams
- BE – Matt Leinart
- BE – Mohammed Massoquoi
- BE – Zach Miller
- K – Mason Crosby
- BE – Rian Lindell
- D – Green Bay
- BE – Arizona

Awesome – I forgot that I burned a pick selecting Matt Leinart…WTF…

How did you stack up this season? At least I got Chris Johnson in my Yahoo league (and I’m praying he gets those 2500 yards he is claiming)…that makes me feel better about my Matt Leinart pick…hahaha

Not like this wasn’t coming after Leinart opened his mouth on Monday spitting off comments about how “this goes further than football” about coach Ken Whizenhunt.  Come on Matt – really?  The Arizona Cardinals have dished out a ton of cash for you and have said “he’s the franchise” on more than one occasion – so like I yelled all season long at Clinton Portis, I now turn to you, play like you’re paid, and stop being a bitch.

Now the Cardinals are shopping him around – ESPN is reporting that they are in talks with the Giants, Bills, and the Raiders.  What spots are they going to fill?  We definitely don’t need to fill up a QB spot – Andersen, Skelton, and Hall have all played up to par this pre-season, and even though Skelton and Hall are super young and relatively untested, I think they’ll perform way better than Leinart will this season.  Leinart is not a “leader” – Fitz is a leader, Kurt was a leader, Dansby was a leader – Leinart doesn’t possess the quality that those players have.

I’ve now had 2 separate conversations about “how much do you think Fitz is involved in this decision?”.  Honestly, the leagues best receiver has to have a pretty big part in this conversation.  Matt strung him out, threw high, and bam, Larry busted up his knee (not to mention came down upside down on his head).  Leinart has a history of interceptions, and over the past few years, he looks like he’s scared on his release and he throws high so hopefully his staff of tall receivers will just jump up over the backs and grab the ball.  This is a dangerous situation though – no receiver in his right mind would want to (even though they’ll likely make Sportscenter) go up and catch balls like that for 16+ games a season – that’s a recipe for disaster when one over-zealous linebacker goes in for the kill.

We should have (and it pains me to say this) snagged up McNabb when we had the chance, however, we’ve done pretty well with picking up QB’s for a “second shot” at their career – look how well Kurt played after backing up Manning in NY, and then backing up the now defunct Leinart.

Posted via email from Gangplank Fat Off

Today, I get an email titled “Opportunity Knocks” from a local company in town, giving the same old canned message that was spruced up a little to be marginally personalized.  I was told he searched for “php developer phoenix” and he found me (I rank #1 for that search term).  Ok – I read on – and it was basically a soft recruitment letter – pretty standard.

I responded back that I wasn’t looking for full time work, but I’d be open to any contract/freelance work, as I had recently left a company to go back out on my own. He responded shortly after and said, “How about sending me a resume and I’ll set up a few face-to-face meetings with the peeps here?”.

Hmmm…

Well, I don’t have a resume, I haven’t updated my resume in years. Hell, the resume I used to desperately get a job with 944 Magazine was the same resume I had that I made in high school – clearly it worked, but it was old, outdated, and is a constant reminder of “old business”.  If you know me…Craig…this is directed at you haha…you know that I loathe “old business” methodologies – not all, but most.  I still prefer the good old “hand shake and a promise” – something about that just screams “business” to me, but everything else, meh, I can do without.

Apparently I said something to ruffle the feathers, because after my response of “Look at the links in my sig – that’s my resume – I’m pretty confident in the wealth of information you’ll find about me as a person/developer/etc on google”, I was told that I was “being arrogant, cocky and feeling entitled” and that those “are not a qualities we are interested in”.

Whoa…what?

Whoa what? Being arrogant and cocky? I think you completely misunderstood my last email, and now you’re telling me that I’m an “apprentice” because I told you I don’t have a formal “resume” anymore? I’m not an old dude with a pony tail – nor a web developer that wasted years in college and have 9 million microsoft/google/etc certifications – it’s all worthless – real world experience is where it’s at.

Wow – this went downhill pretty quick…and FYI, in the “real world”, a piece of paper listing accomplishments is still just a piece of paper – the proof is in the pudding, and you’ve yet to see any of my work (you’ve seen my blog and probably DateDesigner.com) – neither of which I care to “defend” to you.

The only arrogant person in this conversation is you right now…you probably need to chillax a little. An apology for flying off the handle is appreciated.

It gets better – I just got this response:

Fair enough: I apologize for “flying off the handle”. Let me get back on my broomstick (apparently, I’m a witch?).

We do require a resume. Sorry, I can’t ask other managers and the co-founders of this company to “Look at the links in my sig – that’s my resume”. Seriously, that doesn’t cut it. To dignify and respect their time, they should only have to review a single-source document of your accomplishments (aka a “resume”). Everything they read online *could* be 100% BS (just as a resume could be), but it starts the process down the right road. No one has time to look at countless websites that have some reference to who you might be. Down the road, if we were truly interested, we would dig deeper (verify work history, check references, etc.).

You’re right, never saw any pudding. Also, I wasn’t being arrogant, I was being condescending (which was wrong and I apologize for that, too). Guess I was expecting to somehow be “wowed!” by your claim of being a “jQuery Expert”.

I reached out to you because you appeared to have an acceptable amount of experience in web development. I failed to conclude that you were a master of your craft. Being that you are, you are clearly out of our league as we are really just looking for someone who is pretty darn good at what they do.

Sorry to have bothered you.

And my response:

Again with the “crafty” email response – and a dodge at just apologizing, tucking your tail, and moving on.

I never claimed to be a jQuery expert, I mentioned that my budd had said that. That was meant to be a joke, but clearly that wasn’t conveyed – or understood. I don’t claim to be an expert at anything – I do however know that I’m pretty f***in good at the skills I do possess.

My flip flops, t-shirts, and bedazzled jeans don’t do well in corporate culture – neither do resumes and obviously me – this is why I’m a full time freelancer. I loathe “old school” business methodologies, and can’t stand to be a part of them.

A bit of advice – especially in an ever competitive tech industry, hire people, not resumes. You could have easily brought me in to “meet the peeps” with a bit of information about me – you know, doing your job with recruiting, you gather information and report it back to those that control your strings. But now, you’ll just be on the hunt for another drone – another resume submitter…someone whom which I’ll never be again.

Thank you again for yet another captivating response XXXXX, I’m really looking forward to the next one!

Yes – now I’m just being an ass, but hey, it’s the amusement that I needed today. Back to the grind – see ya on the flip side!

Posted via email from Gangplank Fat Off

Download now or watch on posterous

IMG_0700.MOV (385 KB)

Posted via email from Gangplank Fat Off

So – I figured I’d share my shake recipe with everyone in the FatOff competition – and in determining the calories this morning, I found out it’s a little on the heavy side, so I’m going to adjust it later this afternoon.

1.5 cups of frozen fruit (6lb Dole bag from Sams Club)
16oz of orange juice (Simply Orange pulp free w/calcium)
1 scoop of EAS Whey Protein (Vanilla)
1 packet of NuPlus nutritional supplement

Put NuPlus in bottom of blender, fruit on top, then orange juice and blend. Mix in the scoop of protein (seriously – mix it in by hand, or it will fly all over the place) and blend again.

Totals out to 540 calories – which – eh – is too much for me. Also, there are is a lot of sugar from all the fruit, so that’s no bueno either. I’m going to cut it down to the following:

3/4 cup fruit
8oz of orange juice
1 scoop of EAS Whey Protein
1 packet of NuPlus nutritional supplements
Water as needed to thin it out

That will bring the calorie count down to around 360 and it will still be a good fulfilling snack.

Posted via email from Gangplank Fat Off

Picture proof that I was in the gym since Katie thinks I’m a loser
that lies and cheats…can’t cheat how good I look…

Posted via email from Gangplank Fat Off

RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|sitemap\.xml|robots\.txt|user_guide|blog|public|favicon\.ico|LiveSearchSiteAuth\.xml)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

If you notice, I have some other stuff in there to not exclude from passing to index.php like a sitemap.xml, the user_guide directory, the blog directory, a “public” directory (that I use for css/images/js), etc.

You set that in your .htaccess file first, then go into your config.php file and set this:

$config['index_page'] = "";

Basically, what that does, is that removes the whole site from processing through index.php in the URL bar (it still goes through there as far as I know, but doesn’t show it), specifically when using Codeigniter built-in functions like redirect().

Figured I’d share that little nugget of knowledge…happy coding!