Month: September 2008


Townhouse 12 Spotlight + Postseason Picks


Welcome to the first annual house-wide MLB postseason bracket tournament. This year, me, Tom, Keith, Eric and Jon will be guiding us through the 2008 postseason. Here is the blatant Mirror 3×5 ripoff, Portfolioso style (5×6 and not a grid):

Joe

  • Nickname(s): Dr. Joe, Sivvvvv, Portfolioso, etc.
  • Hometown Area Code: 914
  • MLB Team of choice: NY Yankees
  • Campus Job(s): Best Buddies CBD, Manor Sports Editor, CNS’s Worst Enemy
  • Highlight of your week: Let’s just say it involved a coat hanger (no, not like that you sicko)
  • Best TH 12 Moment (so far): Pres Ball before and after festivities (Probably would have been E’s birthday but the Mets made me miss 95% of it.)
  • On your mind now: Shit’s weak. WIIIIZEEEEEEAK.
  • Bracket:

Keith

  • Nickname(s): Azamat (it’s really not, but that’s what he said when I asked him what he wanted here)
  • Hometown Area Code: 201
  • MLB Team of choice: NY Yankees
  • Campus Job: Mirror Sports Editor
  • Highlight of your week: Handing in my finance test (the rest of the week is a jokefest)
  • Best TH 12 Moment (so far): Come on Eileen
  • On your mind now: And boom there goes the dynamite!
  • Bracket:

Tom

  • Nickname(s): T.C, Clear Dogg
  • Hometown Area Code: 860
  • MLB Team of choice: Boston Red Sox
  • Campus Job: Mirror Managing Editor
  • Highlight of your week: Finishing the Mirror at 12:30
  • Best TH 12 Moment (so far): Eric’s 21st
  • On your mind now: Chris Simmons
  • Bracket:

Eric

  • Nickname(s): E, Big Red, Shoota
  • Hometown Area Code: 781
  • MLB Team of choice: Boston Red Sox
  • Campus Job: Basketball Manager
  • Highlight of your week: My birthday
  • Best TH 12 Moment (so far): Thirsty Thursdays, TH 12
  • On your mind now: Cheeseburgers
  • Bracket:

Jon

  • Nickname(s): J Money
  • Hometown Area Code: 908
  • MLB Team of choice: All I do is sail
  • Campus Job(s): Mirror Photo Editor
  • Highlight of your week: ???
  • Best TH 12 Moment (so far): ???
  • On your mind now: “Have a good one Joe, I’m taking off. See you tomorrow night.”
  • Bracket: Jon doesn’t do brackets, or football suicide pools, or any of that

So there you have it. Here’s my opinion of postseason 2008. It would be wonderful to see Joe Torre beat the Red Sox (see Keith’s picks) but I highly doubt that will happen. Keith’s picks are really ballsy – but anything can happen. I’m also a Lou Pinella fan, and the Cubs have a decent team, but the whole 100 years thing makes everyone laugh. Time will tell.

Update 1 10/5 8:45AM: Thanks for making me look like an idiot, Lou. I swear I’m not this dumb, I did the whole 2004 bracket correctly (minus the Red Sox – which is kind of the important part.) Way to ruin my whole bracket. Once the entire media jumped on the Cubs bandwagon, I knew I’d be done. I’ll be going for Joe Torre all the way I guess.


Database Query Upgrade


Coming soon. TH12’s postseason picks!

So you didn’t realize it, but there has been an error in a SQL query I have been using since I launched the website redesign two years ago. To be frank, it is all fixed – you didn’t notice anything wrong (it was a backend issue that affected me badly when I was posting). This fix makes my life a lot easier. If you’re interested in the geek behind it, read on. Not so technical? You better quit while you’re still with me.

Ok, ubergeek interested in the inner-workings of this site, here goes: Back in the day, the portfolioso.com homepage was a WordPress theme, that was customized to match my site template. When I decided to make my site XHTML strict, so the theme hacks would never work. As a result, I moved the blog to a subdomain and threw in a new layout for the main site. To get my news to the front page, I used a SQL query to the WordPress Database. Here is where the problem arose. It would query the last story in the database, whether it was marked as draft or published. I was working on an epic new post that is not ready for the public yet, and it really annoyed me that the draft of it was being fed onto my main page! How insecure to ignore the fact that it hasn’t been published yet. Well, at 2:23AM when there is homework due for a 9:30AM class, people like me start programming to fix these things. I dove right into the SQL queries until I found one that works, sorted it out for the site and “boom, there goes the dynamite.”


Remembering Yankee Stadium


There is way too much history to go over everything that happened here. It’s not my job to write about it. There is a sweet article in Sports Illustrated that everyone needs to read. It goes over the history and secrets of the stadium. Anyway, as a kid, you will never forget your first time out to the stadium: May 16, 1999. 15-20 rows back between home and third. Andy Pettite was on the mound and pitched a gem, closed out by Mo. The Yankees won 2-1 on a Chili Davis home run. This summer, I got out to the stadium a lot and had a package of 8 games in the bleachers. My final game at the stadium was July 30, 2008. Section 39, bleachers. Joba Chamberlain started and the Yankees ended a 3 game skid by winning 13-3 against the Orioles. It did not hit me at the time that it would be my last time there. It actually wasn’t until today (the second to last game at the stadium) where the reality sunk in. I will be watching the final coverage on ESPN and YES that goes over the history of it all. I’m sure tomorrow will be a day that I’ll be remembering the rest of my life.

The original:

Today: