In addition, I finished up an article I've been working on all day today. It's a review of the MLB Trade Deadline, and what deals went down in the few days before Major League Baseball's July 31st non-waiver trading deadline. I'm proud of this one, and put a good amount of work into it, so I hope you enjoy it.

I'm off to bed. More "research" tomorrow.

Inspiration is hitting again, which is a good thing, but unfortunately, with the size of the 10 Job Challenge, my future projects are on the back burner. I've got one article idea at least, along with two reviews. The 10 Job Challenge articles will be split up, with one introducing it and the other giving the results (such as interviews, etc). It might go to three parts, depending on the amount of content, but as I write the first part, I realize that's pretty massive in itself, so breaking it into three parts might be the best idea right now. It's just a matter of whether or not part #2 will have enough content to warrant it's own article.

By the way, Mark Warren's website is up and running again, after a hard drive crash wiped out everything. I've referenced it before, but it's www.the16thparallel.com for reference.

I've got other injuries too. Pulled muscles, bruises, everything like that, but I'm having a lot of fun out there playing softball. We played four games this week in three days. What does that mean to you, the loyal Buhner.com reader? A lack of updates, with the exception of statistics, damned statistics.

Trust me though, the 10 Job Challenge is going to be an interesting look into the job search. It's going to be a huge article, and I hope it gets some nice hits.

Anyway, we played two games Tuesday night and one more Wednesday night. I caught all the games, so that's why I'm bitching about the injuries. But, I hit well, which is a positive. I keep moving up in the order, so that means that someone's watching. Five hits in those three games, including one that almost tied up the game in the bottom of the 7th (the runner was thrown out at home, otherwise we would have tied and I would have been the winning run at second, which would have been a major upset.)

 G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG
10   24    9   13    1  0   0   5    2  0   5   0 .542  .621  .583

The article itself regarding the 10 Job Challenge is going to be pretty huge. I'm putting a LOT of content into it, so that you readers can see exactly where I'm coming from and have the exact same knowledge I had before I sent out these applications.

Softball reared its ugly head again tonight, but this time, I wasn't so lucky. The team lost again (as does happen), but despite me hitting the ball solid twice, I went hitless. The stats:

G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG
7   16    5    8    0  0   0    4   2  0   4   0 .500  .600  .500

Enter the 10 Job Challenge.

This Friday, I will attempt to send off 10 resumes to ten different companies offering positions to which I should be able to perform reasonably well. They may not be interesting jobs, or jobs I would normally send a resume to, but they (obviously) have to be jobs that I would accept if given the opportunity and do my damnest to be the best I can be at the particular position.

The Press didn't look too bad this week, so more info will come later. However, softball once again entered the picture tonight as we lost a tough game, 21-14. We gave up eight runs in the bottom of the sixth, to make a reasonable 3 run defecit into a 11 run hole, and despite getting four more runs in the top of the 7th, we took the loss.

I, however, had a damn good game at the plate, and not a horrible one in the field. I started at first tonight, my first action at first this season (making starts at 1B, 2B, and C this season). I got on base four times in four times to the plate, driving in two, scoring twice, and even stealing a base (whether it can really be determined a steal is questionable considering there was no effort made to throw me out, but I'll take it anyway). That puts the current stats at:

G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG
6   14    5    8    0  0   0    4   2  0   4   0 .571  .667  .571

I did receive some depressing news driving around looking for NCAA Football 2004 Sunday. I went to Game Express in Garden City, a place I frequented quite often when I was in college, and still made an effort to go see when I was around, even if I had no money. Unfortunately, I found Game Express to be completely closed and emptied out. The signs were still on the building and on the sign at the roadway, but they were definitely gone for good.

Game Express was the easiest way for me to get import video games when I was at school. As for regular video games, they had excellent prices that almost always beat any other store, and had a collection of older games for systems usually not carried by "major" stores. Game Express is where I got my old Sega Saturn, and got Fire Pro Wrestling 6 Man Scramble, possibly the greatest wrestling video game of all time.

Goodbye old friend. You could have told me you were leaving.

Oh, and we got killed in softball tonight. I started at catcher, got pulled from the field when we changed pitchers, and ended up going to second in the 7th because our second baseman really didn't know what the hell he was doing. The ump was really bad tonight (and with a more serious team following us in the second game, I'm sure that would have been interesting to see their reactions to some of those calls), but I managed to keep the strikeout-free streak alive. Granted, I couldn't hit a ball out of the infield in two at-bats, but considering the strikes I was getting called against me (two below the knees), I consider it a moral victory.

G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG
5   12    3    6    0  0   0    2   1  0   2   0 .500  .571  .500

I'm eventually working on a review of one of the things that takes a lot of my time right now, the OOTP5 baseball sim. Outside of that, I've got a few more things that may be showing up within the next few days, but until then, they'll have to wait.

There was a decent flurry of baseball trades going on recently, in actual baseball, and in my fantasy league. While the major league deals may have some people questioning motives, you can almost always guarantee someone pointing a finger and bitching about favortism or lopsidedness in fantasy league trades, especially when the deadline starts drawing near and teams declare themselves out of the race and start building for next year (like I had to).

Our league is in a massive (forgive the term) jumblefuck right now. We've run into situations before where certain owners didn't necessarily get along and weren't always civil towards each other (ok, maybe I was involved in most of those), but this past day or two, things have been getting really vicious and nasty, and for once, I've got nothing to do with it, and lord knows I'm staying out of it (at least directly, who knows who reads this site).

Anyway, while all the bitching was going on with the league, I was stealing some HTML and doing a little something creative with my fantasy league baseball team. Check out a bunch of stolen HTML and a little creativity. See? I knew I could be a sportswriter.

In less than three hours, I'm going to be beginning the process to enter the Bridgehampton Fire Department. With my impending move and the length of time it takes to actually go through the process of becoming a fireman to actually being one, the thought was that it'd be best to start now, while the time was right.

If you wonder why this should have any significance, check out the first article I wrote for Buhner.com, called "Where's The Fire?". In it, I describe my frustration with the local fire districts and the seemingly bizarre practice of the districts complaining about a lack of membership, yet making it overly difficult for someone to join. The Improper Hamptonian newspaper/magazine that I reference in that article doesn't have the story that they wrote about the subject archives, but then again, the whole Hamptonian has down downhill recently, going from witty satire about the surroundings to just being another Dan's Papers knockoff making jokes at the most extreme of stereotypes while making sure not to really offend anyone of value (especially potential advertisers).

In other news, I came across a good article that was written a few months ago about Jay Buhner and his life now in retirement. The article, "Buhner Still Creating A Whole Lot Of Buzz", was written by Jim Moore of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (horrible name for a news paper; is "intelligencer" even a word?), and doesn't exactly probe deeply into Buhner's life, but it's a nice story on his continued relationship with the fans in Seattle and some of the things he's doing now.

I took some screenshots for another review that I'll be doing in the near future, so that's something to look forward too. Outside of that, we'll see what happens.

It was a banner day today as I managed to hit well AND do so with the media there. So, it looks like I'll actually pick up the local Sag Harbor paper whenever it comes out (I'm assuming Thursday) and if I'm in there (picture or not) maybe I'll scan something in there.

Anyway, four hits (and a walk) in six times to the plate for me, along with a walk and a hit in two times to bat in the second game of a doubleheader. The walks are good, because I've been lacking the confidence at the plate, and I had a few decent hits, including a nice shot into right field which would have been at least a double had the ball been an inch lower. So the statistics look like this:

G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG
4   10    3    6    0  0   0    2   1  0   2   0 .600  .666  .600

I'll also admit that I have been doing a little work on another webpage on the Buhner.com domain. What's funny about it is that it's a decently large website; 36 HTML pages in it, last count. Yet, there always has to be one that complains about it. I do it for free, for the benefit of others, and yet some people take the stand of complaining that it wasn't updated frequently enough. Granted, I didn't update it for an extended period of time, but said complainer was pretty much the reason. My point? Gift horses, man. If someone is giving you something that normally costs money for free, do you complain that it's the wrong color or isn't perfect? Eh, maybe it's just me.

Really extended news thing today, as I haven't had time to say anything in over a week. The FAQ has been rewritten (in the About Us section), so that those who have questions have a little bit more to reference. It explains our submission policy, how the site got started, the whole "Buhner" thing, and a few more things. As you know, any questions that you might have will still get answered if you drop an email to tom@buhner.com.

Also contributing to the lack of updates has been the fact that I've had two interviews this week regarding a job in Southampton. The first interview went great, and I thin kthe second interview went well too, so hopefully... yeah. I should know something by Monday.

I also switched my insurance coverage. Yeah, not overly important, but you see the commercials for Geico all the time, and they swear they can save you money. For once, advertising didn't lie. Geico lowered my premiums 36%, which saved me a ton of money. It's worth a look just to go over to their website. You can get a quote online and see if you can save anything.

Last thing is that softball season has finally started again. Thanks to rainouts, forfeits, and me being sick, last night was my first start of the season. Oddly enough, I made the start at second (instead of my usual position of catcher) and made it work. I made some really good plays at second (including a diving catch) and felt really comfortable there. Plus, my knees really thanked me. I went 1-3 with a run scored, but it could have easily been 0-3. Have to work on the hitting.

 G   AB    R    H   2B 3B  HR  RBI  SB CS  BB  SO   BA   OBP   SLG1    3    1    1    0  0   0    0   0  0   0   0 .333  .333  .333