Hiring Yourself

My fall semester of Senior year at Clark was supposed to be spent entirely on courses for a minor in Entreprenuership and business courses. I've always wanted to be my own boss to some extent and I figured if it were to ever happen I should probably know how to write a business plan and navigate a startup. Unfortunately, that summer I took an internship on the campaign in NH and got sucked in for the entire semester and took the Fall off from school. I learned a lot but not about starting a business. 

Lately, this job hunting business has me looking at all my options, including going into business for myself. One thing that I've been reading about is passive income. Basically, work you do once that grows as an investment. One of these is writing a book. Costs nothing to write, and I have a lot of free time, so why not? They say that you should write what you know so I've begun doing some mind mapping for a book about volunteer recruiting, refining techniques, and building a self sustaining organization of volunteers for non-profits, small campaigns, and local committees. 

My opposition research has shown that there is a bit of a gap in this area of literature. There hasn't been a book written on volunteer recruiting since 2004. What this means is that there's a big opening for someone like myself to write about the techniques used on the various campaigns in 2007-2008. 

The various incarnations of this idea that I've been toying with for the past couple days has brought me to the conclusion that a website on this topic is both viable, but with back up tools such as a book/ebook, and seminars/workshops I could turn this into a real business or consulting firm. I'll probably be using this as a sounding board as I flesh out my ideas and move forward on this project. At the very least it is giving me a chance to expand my portfolio and develop some skills that I can bring to a job once I get hired if this doesn't fully pan out. 

Everything you need to know about March Madness

Duke will always suck.

Anvil and Robot Child

The Anvil Experience (Movie + Concert) comes to The Worcester Palladium on April 16th, GO!




This kid is the fucking devil. Prepare for anger Blumpking.

Goal Of the Week

I though as a new feature I might post a video of an amazing soccer goal each week. I think it would be cool because, while we all have seen all the great historic plays from the usual American sports, there are totally amazing (non-headbutt) soccer moments that few Americans have seen.

This week's goal, one of my personal favorites, comes via the one and only wizard, Zinedine Zidane. With the score 1-1 in the Champions League final between Zizou's Real Madrid and Bayern Leverkusen, Roberto Carlos tried a cross from the left side that got tipped high into the air. As it came down, Zidane volleyed it left-footed (he is naturally right footed) from the edge of the box into the top corner of the goal. The goal in itself is absolutely first-class, but the fact that it won the biggest competition in club football puts it among the top 5 goals ever, in my opinion.

Hope you enjoy.

Why the WBC is nothing more than a dog and pony show

The World Baseball Classic's second round is underway and, for the most part, I have enjoyed it. Since baseball has no Olympic-level competition, it's great to see national teams with all sorts of crazy players I've never heard of going at it and amped-up fans singing songs. It's much more interesting than regular Spring Training for sure.

But as far as the level of competition goes, the WBC is kind of a joke.

By now, everyone knows the story of the start-up Netherlands knocking out the star-studded Dominicans. And yeah, it was a cool story (but please spare me with "the biggest upset in sports ever!!!" talk), but highlighted the problem with the WBC -- the insanity of a double elimination, March Madness-esque tournament for baseball.

In any other Olympic or national-level competition, there are qualifying rounds. This eliminates (or cuts down on) the chance that some random, shitty team will make it to the big stage and upend a team that, let's be honest, is better.

The truth is, there really aren't that many quality baseball players on about half the WBC teams. They are little more (sometimes, less) than AAA or even AA teams. Take a look at the Netherlands team stats through five games:

25 hits/29 total bases/55 strikeouts/.202 OBP/.182 SLG/.157 BA/.385 OPS/7 RS:13 RA

In a word: barrrrrrrrrf.

"Now wait," you say, "Their pitching must be dirty." And you'd be right:

2.66 ERA/36 hits/33 walks: 27 strikeouts/1.57 WHIP

Just kidding, they're not very good.

If there were qualifying rounds, there is no way the Netherlands would have made it in. And we could still be watching the MLB-studly D.R. team, instead of the no-name, bound to lose N.D. team.

The beauty of March Madness is, that for all the upsets, the best teams usually last. With the WBC's three-round, double-elimination clusterfuck, there is a very good chance the best teams won't even make it beyond the first round, especially considering the time of year.

So I will keep watching and rooting for Cuba (team 1.296 OPS), Puerto Rico (4-0, 32 K:8 BB for the staff) and all the other talented teams to win. Because seriously, name one (other than Ponson) player on the Netherlands.