Ever heard of beantowbanter.com?

It's a Boston sports blog, take a look.  The other day I tweeted my Tommy John surgery link at them, and they started following me.  So then I sent them some more stuff, and now they've asked me to be a contributing writer.  The site has 7,430 twitter followers and 2,713 facebook "likes," so there are clearly a lot of people that read it.  It's definitely more serious and less sarcastic than Cosby Sweaters, but it's also local and specifically about the teams I care about.  Obviously I want to write for both sites, but it's probably not cool to post the same things on each.  I'm not sure what the protocol is for blogging though.  Are there any rules/journalistic integrity?  I get the feeling it's kind of like the Wild West out there in the internet universe.  I've definitely found my blog in other places where people just stole it and reposted it somewhere else.  Regardless, this is becoming a lot of work for a hobby.  I think I may need to cut back the hours at my actual job.

I was not prepared for yesterday. Also I may be psychic.

I spent all day Wednesday trying to figure out was wrong with my site.  It was crashing repeatedly and showing way more than a believable number of hits.  I actually wrote this:

"I wonder if there's some weird virus thing going on and the numbers aren't real.  I got a ton of hits between 1 and 3 am this morning, which is weird.  I did send out a lot of links on twitter during that time, but that doesn't usually work anywhere near as well as my stats are telling me it did.  Who knows, maybe I just tweeted at the right people."

Well, by 2 am I had fixed the problem and figured out that the numbers in fact weren't real.  I sent out a bunch more links on twitter and went to bed.  When I checked my site the next day it again showed a ridiculous number of hits, about the same as the day before, and more than double the previous best day ever.  Except this time it was real.  I had tweeted at the right person.  The night before I sent my Lebron Finals Debacle blog to the editor-in-chief of Slam Magazine, a pretty legit basketball mag that's been in print since 1994.  And by absolute coincidence at that very moment he was finishing up an article about why Lebron is the best player in the NBA.  He decided to use some of my blog as counterarguments in his article (the stuff in italics toward the end is mine), which posted online yesterday.  And just like that this blog had far and away the best traffic day ever.


And when I searched google images for "psychic" this pic from Big came up, so how could I not use it?  Zoltar.  Awesome.

I'm thinking about getting Tommy John Surgery

The past few months I've been a little bit off my game.  I'm not the same up and coming young southpaw bartending prospect that I used to be.  At this point in my career I'm more of a crafty veteran.  And lately sometimes I feel a slight pain or twinge in my left elbow.  I mean, here's the thing: I can work through it.  I can still go out there everyday and get the job done.  But I've lost a little speed on my ice scooping.  My bottle pouring doesn't have quite the same rotation.  And I am definitely missing some velocity on my cocktail shake and follow through.  I'm just not the same out there.  I think if I had the surgery I could come back in a year, better than ever.

Ok, so that was about 92% sarcastic (although the elbow pain is real and I do have a dream of getting injured on the job and taking time off while getting workers comp, but that's another blog for another day).  Seriously though, when did Tommy John surgery become no big deal?  First Dice K, and now John Lackey?  I remember not that long ago it was a last case resort used to try to fix a guy who's career was probably over because a tendon in his elbow had snapped.  But right now it feels like a regular thing guys do just because they aren't pitching well.  At least for overpaid Red Sox starters.

Strange things are happening with my webpage today

I'm not sure what's going on.  When I try to view the blog page it takes forever to load, and I've had to restart my computer several times.  Finally I got it to work just now, but I'm afraid to write anything with links or pictures, I just want to make sure I can get something published.  I'm not sure if it's the website, my old crappy netbook, or a combination of both.  Anyway, if it's happening to you as well please comment somewhere; here, facebook, twitter, whatever is easiest.  Or if it's working just fine let me know that too.

The page is also on pace for a record number of hits today, and I am curious if that's related.  Not that it might be enough to mess up the site or anything, but I wonder if there's some weird virus thing going on and the numbers aren't real.  I got a ton of hits between 1 and 3 am this morning, which is weird.  I did send out a lot of links on twitter during that time, but that doesn't usually work anywhere near as well as my stats are telling me it did.  Who knows, maybe I just tweeted at the right people.  I'm skeptical though.  If you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know.

11:22 PM UPDATE: Ok, so I have figured out that sometimes the page isn't loading because the Shockwave Flash Player plug-in from the imbedded youtube clips is crashing.  But I don't know why.  Or how to fix it.  I really hope it's just a temporary issue with the blogger website, and maybe it will be gone in the morning.

1:16 AM UPDATE:  Well, after a LOT of research it seems that the inflated page hit counts and Shockwave flash player crashes have been happening to people on blogger all day.  Allegedly taking out the "share" buttons below each post is supposed to help, so that's what I did.  For now.  We'll see.

I love the beach. Even this time of year.

Ok, I think this finally is going to be my last "pictures from the Vineyard" blog for the year.  Yeah, I know there have been a lot of them, and summer is long gone.  I never expected to be coming down to the island this late in the season, but it's still pretty great here.  I took all of these yesterday:

Ever heard of "Chowder Fries?"

There's a pub in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard that I've been going to regularly for about ten years. Anybody who's ever spent much time on the island knows exactly which one.  There aren't really a lot of choices, especially this time of year.  And even though I go to this place all the time, I very rarely eat there.  But the other night I found myself sitting at the bar and looking at a menu.  And that was when I noticed they serve something called "chowder fries."  It's french fries in a bowl, with some clam chowder on top.  And just in case that's not quite enough to stop your heart from working, it's also covered with cheddar cheese.

A short while later a guy sitting two seats over from me ordered them.  And then after that another guy did too.  I guess they are pretty popular.  But my friend and just I couldn't figure out the appeal.  Even if your craving something totally unhealthy, that still doesn't seem like the answer.  The fries are obviously soggy.  If that flavor combination is really what your looking for, wouldn't it make way more sense to have the fries on the side and dip them in the chowder?

Rihanna is just killing it lately

Ok, I'm not sure what it is with Rihanna right now, but she manages to keep getting her songs stuck in my head.  And this one even has lots of elements to it I usually hate; it's got a lot of that Euro-techno-clubby-DUGE-DUGE-DUGE thing going on.  But somehow I still love it.  Well played Rihanna.