Shyzer.com

I’m heading with my mom to “work” today since United just picked up a new route into Europe from D.C. I’ll be back Wednesday with photos and hopefully a few good stories. Ciao!

Apparently iPods are like little siblings. All you have to do is smack them around in order to keep them in line.

I’ve been fairly lucky with my iPods over the years. The ugly rumor at the time was that most of the iPods back then died of faulty batteries right around their first birthday, but mine only succumbed never had a problem and only meet minor resistance to life when it was in the hands of my brother for a few hours one day. After sending it in to Apple to get looked at, I had it back within a week and haven’t had a problem with it since.

Until today, that is. As I was working on Hey, It’s Free! and jamming away this morning, my poor iPod suddenly started making a clicking noise that sounded pretty much like the Kiss of Death smooching away at my tiny hard drive. A few seconds later, the sad icon face showed up and it didn’t take long to realize that the help documents on Apple.com were about as helpful as my dog’s suggestion, which was to try and get it off my desk for a nice afternoon snack.

Thus enter Google and my expert searching skills and within minutes, I was jamming away again. That’s right, with just a few clicks, I found a cheap, easy, and totally useful method to fixing the iPod. What was it?

Spanking it. I shit you not, all I had to do was hold the iPod upside down in my hand, smack it’s ass a few times, and suddenly it worked again. The problem I was having was that iPod actually has a tiny hard drive in it that spins when you are using it (which boggles my mind when I see people exercising and running with one…if there ever was a recipe for breaking your iPod, it’s moving it around and shaking it constantly while the disk drive is spinning. It’s the same as if you hired a monkey just to sit by your home computer and shake it all day long as if he was trying to force as many bananas out of it as possible. It wouldn’t take too long for your computer to go kaput…) The hard drive is like a record player, as it has a tiny needle that reads the information and sometimes, the needle can get out of place and freeze up the entire hard drive.

So, you can either send it off to Apple or some third party and pay almost what it’d cost you to buy a new iPod…or, you can just smack it around a little for free.

Isn’t technology grand?

After watching that clip I posted earlier today, I ended up not only watching Major League II today, but cutting out this clip for your personal viewing pleasure.

HE TOLD HIM HE WASN’T GONNA SLIDE!

He told him he wasn’t gonna slide!

I didn’t realize Willie Mays Hays actually existed in real life. I also didn’t realize that high school baseball was so pathetic that they’d call this kid out over breaking some asinine rule about momentarily breaking free of the Earth’s gravitational pull or something.

And with that, today is King Felix day. If you own mlb.tv or Extra Innings on Direct TV, tune in to Seattle’s game tonight and prepare to be impressed.

It’s a good thing for everybody that I have a shred of dignity in my body that keeps me from doing and saying things I might later one day regret. Because the Devil’s Advocate in me is just screaming to comment on certain things in the news right now and….damn it, that voice in my head is piquing the little common sense I have left.

Shit, my teeth hurt from gritting them too hard. Moving on.

Should I mention how I just now filed my taxes? Na, too common. Let’s see, oh, there’s the fact that I listed things on e-bay practically all day yesterday. Dear God, that’s mind-numbingly boring even to me. Umm…oh, screw this, I’m just gonna go finish watching season 3 of The Sopranos.

Let me just get this straight. Don Imus is no longer on TV or the radio for making an insensitive comment.

Glen Beck and Nancy Grace, however, are still going strong despite the former’s repeated attack on Islam and calling a newly elected Islamic Congressman a terrorist and the latter having spent a year screaming that the three recently acquitted Duke lacrosse players should be castrated, hung, and never thought of again.

Just making sure I had my facts right here.

If you asked a large group of well educated, attentive baseball fans what teams have sucked the most over the past few years and a few obvious choices come to mind. The Royals have sucked ever since the fall of the Soviets, the Pirates haven’t had a winning team since the hottest band was the New Kids On The Block. And I think the highest moment in Devil Rays history was when they played a local high school team and squeaked out a 5-4 victory.

But if you take it one step further and ask which team has spent the most money and still managed to suck? “Oh, well that’s a no brainer,” they’ll tell you. It would take them all of five seconds to introduce you to the Seattle Mariners.

The past five years have been absolutely gut wrenching. The previous three are obvious, as they’ve floundered in last place no matter what the calendar shows. But even the two years prior, when they won 93 games each year and still didn’t make the playoffs. Since the introduction of the Wild Card over a decade ago, no team has won more games and still not made the post season. Yet the Mariners did it two years in a row.

Those 2002 and 2003 teams just ripped your heart out. Nobody actually expected the Mariners to contend these past few ears, myself included (go look at the old posts I made here on Shyzer to see for yourself). But after the 2001 season, anything seemed possible. They had just won 116 games, made it to the ALCS, and had a great core of talent.

And then things just fell apart. Players started to show their age. New talent didn’t perform to expectations. And ownership was petrified at making any changes that would “upset” the fanbase. So what did that get us? Two teams that absolutely crumbled down the stretch to the point that in August of each year, they went from first place to a distance second and a far away third. And then they just tanked for another three seasons.

Every April, fans like to feel optimistic about a team’s chances at winning. And yet Seattle fans know not to bother this time around. Our team is still horrible. We have the worst manager in baseball, our best player will either get traded away this summer or leave (please, Ichiro, prove me wrong….I handled Griffey getting traded away. I swallowed watching Cameron walk to another team. I even stomached Buhner retiring. But I don’t know if I can actually watch you play in another team’s uniform…), we have some of the worst contracts in baseball (Yeah, I’m talking about you Sexson, Weaver, and Washburn!), and we have the absolute worst front office management. Don’t believe me? Just goggle “Rafael Soriano trade” or “Chris Snelling trade” and read what most baseball people had to say about the Mariners when they traded away two of their best young and talented players this past winter.

And yet that line up above has given me a reason to love baseball all over again. The King, Felix Hernandez, at the ripe old age of 21 years and a few days old, is showing the world that he’s for real. No more prospect. No more potential. We’re talking about real life, Johan Santana-esqu pitching. Last night’s game on ESPN2 was billed as being a huge Dice-K vs. Ichiro matchup, but the fine folks over at USSMariner had this to say before the game started:

haven’t been this excited for a game in years. As my friends will attest, I get a bit giddy on Felix day anyways, and well, this is no ordinary Felix day. This is the leading contender for 2007 Game of the Year.

The media is going to run with Matsuzaka-Ichiro as the big story, which should be expected. The matchup will open the game, and Ichiro is the most famous player on the roster. Oh, and he happens to be from Japan, or so I’ve heard. Since it’s Boston, the focus of the story will be on Matsuzaka’s first start at Fenway. The $102 million right arm takes the hill in front of Red Sox Nation for the first time. And the leadoff hitter happens to be his countrymate. It writes itself.

But in four hours, there’s a good chance that Ichiro and Matsuzaka won’t be the story to come out of this game. This is King Felix’s first start in Fenway, too. Red Sox Nation has never seen him pitch, either, and it’s his first major league start as a 21 year old. It’s a nationally televised game – only the second one of his career.

On opening day, Felix told the city of Seattle that the hype was real, and that he wasn’t the baby faced overweight kid anymore, but now he was coming after Johan Santana’s crown. Tonight, Felix has a chance to tell the rest of America.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is the second best pitcher taking the hill tonight. Go get em, Felix.

Chances are, you know how that prediction turned out. But in case you haven’t turned on a TV or tuned in to your favorite talk radio show or even can’t read the box line above, let me break it down for you. Felix decimated the mighty Red Sox, to the tune of one hit. One God Damn hit, thank you very much Harry Doyle. Hell, head on over to Google News and type in Felix’s name. People are STILL talking about it. You’ll be lucky to find an article older than a day old by page 24. But don’t just take my word or some random sports journalist’s opinion for it. How about hearing from some of the players who he’s dominated so far this season.

“Felix Hernandez is twice as good as I had heard. The only guy I think I’ve ever seen dominate that much that young in a game was Dwight Gooden. He looks healthy and if he stays healthy Santana’s going to get a run for his money this year.” – Curt Schilling

“That kid can have a career like Roger Clemens, Nolan Ryan or Pedro Martinez…If he behaves and takes care of himself, he can be somebody really big in this game. He’s very powerful as a pitcher. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that in a long time.” – David Ortiz

“When you face a guy like that, you tip your cap and you go into the next day really trying to forget about what happened” – J.D. Drew

Mark my words, if King Felix stays healthy this year, he wins the Cy Young. And that, my friends, is what makes following the Mariners and, for that matter baseball, simply awesome. Your team might suck. They might show few signs of getting better. They might even have the worst #2, #3, #4, and #5 pitchers in baseball.

But then when they have a pitcher like King Felix, every five days you can forget all about that. Ever fifth day, you can sit back, crack open a beer, and stare in awe as he reminds you all over again why you love baseball.

Every fifth day, King Felix makes baseball fun again. And for that, I’ll never be able to thank him enough.

Some might wonder where I’ve vanished off to this past week. What with the first ten days of baseball at hand and tons of teachers taking off early before the start of Spring Break, it’d be easy to write it off as working and watching the Mariners get snowed out three day straight in Cleveland (seriously, who in the hell made the baseball schedule this year? It’s absolutely wretched league wide…)

But no, none of the reasons you can come up with can accurately account for my absence from the known universe. That, my friends, can be blamed on none other than Clayster. A few days ago, he went out and purchased Guitar Hero II for the Xbox360 and saying I’m hooked would be putting it politely.

I’ve missed at least ten consecutive meals because of this game. I see the “chords” to Sweet Child O’ Mine in my sleep. I think I’ve developed arthritis in my fingers in mere days. And yet it’s taking everything in me not to stop typing this post and run over to play Free Bird.

It’s been a good experience for me beyond a pure video gaming nerd aspect though. I’ve discovered some new songs that I otherwise would have never listened to since I’m not that into any hardcore metal or rock. Hell, they’ve got Trogdor on there! Ok, fine, I admit I’m just looking for any angle that’ll give me another excuse to go rock out to some more Foo Fighters.

Like I said earlier, Spring Break starts tomorrow. And now that I think about it, that means I have no work for the next seven days. You know, the prospects on my skin absorbing any direct sunlight soon doesn’t look too great.

April 1st. Opening Day.

What more needs be said? Baseball is back and suddenly the world is right again. Sometimes I amaze even myself by thinking about how I survive such a cold and barren winter every year.