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Status: I'm really gonna need to get my shit together if I wanna make 'it' happpen...

World Cup Draw

Friday, December 4, 2009
Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France
Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece
Group C: England, United States, Algeria, Slovenia
Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana
Group E: Holland, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon
Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia
Group G: Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal
Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile

First game is June 11th. England versus United States on June 12th.

USA lucked out with this draw. All we have to do is take out Algeria (ranked 28th) and Slovenia (ranked 33rd) and we make the Round of 16. A win against those tea-sucking British nancies would be nice too, but not necessary.

Who's in for heavy gambling and watching soccer games at really inconvenient times?

Why I Love Jersey

Monday, November 30, 2009
From Gawker.com's 'Thanksgiving Horror Stories', submitted by readers. It just combines the absurdity of the holidays (stress, tryptophan, awkward family interactions) with all the awesomeness / insanity of Jerseyians.

"Ok. I have two stories for you. Roughly 13 years ago my family got together at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. My step mom and her brother have always had a "tumultuous" relationship. After dinner they got into an argument over who loved their long dead mother more. Shit was thrown around, plates broken, the usual. My dad tried to calm them down to no avail. So, he decided he had to distract them. He'd just gotten a Dodge conversion van, so he went out and fired it up and started ramming it at the cars of all our relatives - totaling roughly 10 cars until my step mom and uncle noticed and stopped fighting with each other in order to yell at him.

Now, second story. The next year, my dad decided that having people over to the house for Thanksgiving was a bad idea. So he booked us all into this super fancy restaurant and paid to put all the relatives in a swank hotel next door - on the assumption that people would be more well behaved in public.

Everything went well during the meal, until the check arrived. The waiter then put the check near my uncle rather than my step mom (who insists on handling all the financial shit for her and my dad.)

Her brother then said "See, you can talk about liberation all you want, but classy people know a man is supposed to pay."

My step mom then upended the table and grabbed the carving knife and tried to stab her brother to death. He took me, my dad and my brother to literally hurl her off of him.

In a matter of minutes the cops arrived (small New Jersey town.)

While my step mom and my uncle were trying to tell the cops they didn't want to press charges against each other, my dad walked up to one of the cop cars, unzipped and pissed on the cop car's tires.

Flash forward two hours later to me, my then-wife and various cousins pooling our money to bail all three of them out of jail."

(Source: Thanksgiving Horror Stories)

PS Though I hate Jersey, it is my second favorite state.

Lots of Metaphors Come to Mind

Sunday, November 22, 2009
... but well, none of them really are sticking.

I open up Blogger with such good intentions of writing, exposing on relevant topics or just informing the general public that still knows I exist on events in my life. Then, I get going and after three different topic starts, everything seems to fizzle out. Maybe I'm not much for fleshing out full concrete ideas beyond the 140 character limits of Twitter (shameless plug: @aFerdC). There are two reasons (that I can think of), of why this is:

1. I'm too dumb to write a full paragraph.
2. I'm too deep to convey my insanities in blog form.

If I had to guess, it would be a nice little combination of both those ideas. (pause). See what I mean? I don't know where to go with this yet there are so many possibilities. Anyway, let's just go to the talking points of the past 90 days.

- Julia heads back east. That was... a pretty exhausting day, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Dropped her off at the airport at 10am, go back to work, pack and then am back at the airport 12 hours later for a red eye to NP. Oh right and this was also the week after...

- UC-Berkeley Extension classes (specifically two finals). For all those scoring at home, here are the classes completed to date:
* Essentials of Business
* Accounting for Managers
* Intro to Microeconomics
* Fundamentals of Finance
* Statistics (Tuesday)
I know these could be a lot harder (and I am thankfully that they are not right now). Regardless, it's taking up two nights a week along with some Saturdays and Sunday afternoons for studying. However, I guess this will be the plan for the foreseeable future and maybe even the next couple years.

- Turned 26. Wrong side of the 20's. Time to start getting shit done. However...

- I'm still in my 20's which means life needs to be a lot more reckless than it is now. Any and all suggestions will be considered on how to make this happen (within reason, and legal is preferred). I have to admit, I look through Facebook and am pretty jealous on a lot of things I see. Most of my GW alumni brethren are holding it down and still causing havoc on the East coast...

- But yet is it really just the coast that makes the difference? Or is it a personality thing? This is a topic I've found myself dwelling on and pondering quite often. I remember hearing a quote saying "Live in San Francisco once, but leave before it makes you too soft; Live in New York City, but leave before it makes you too hard." The first time I heard that, I had the momentary inclination to book a ticket back East. How is being too hard a problem? (Maybe that's the way only a New Yorker can see it). Maybe this city is making me soft. Maybe I am just psyching myself out. Maybe I just need to find 'hard' people out here. It's an ongoing battle.

- Ultimate. I found a pick-up game near me and while it's mostly 30 and 40 somethings, it's a perfect wading pool to get my feet wet before heading back into the deep end of competitive play. I realized that Ultimate was more than just the workouts or the tournaments or even the people; it was a lifestyle that you can pick parts of to hold on to and those parts have been missing the last 3 years. It kept me in shape, it kept my body (and thus, my mind) active and it also continuously expanded my social circle. All of those things have been shrinking so I am trying to reverse that trend. I temporarily attempted to re-enter the soccer spectrum but quickly realized that door in my life has been closed, boarded and dead-bolted and I did that for a reason.

- Personal development. Beyond the business classes, I've been exploring all the things I can be doing with my extensive free-time due to my lack of a social scene. OneBrick is a pretty great volunteer organization that is designed around local communities rather than one specific cause. The couple times I've gone have been mostly park beautification but they also work beer festivals so it's not all weeding and ditch diggin'. In addition, I just completed a speed reading course (thanks to Groupon). And on tap is trying to go into wood working. I remember Julia mentioning that her grandfather is still around and kicking at 90+ (sorry if I'm misremembering) and it's because he just stays active and is working his farm. This struck a cord; I think it's important for me to find a hobby that I can enjoy and participate in for years. I've heard (not sure where) that a common theme of people who live well into their 80's and 90's is something to keep them active, be it knitting, whittling or volunteering. While I am no where close to being an octogenarian, the few things I have built were pretty fulfilling projects, even being grossly unprepared and lacking the right tools or know-how.

There's probably more but instead, here's what's on tap.

- Statistics final
- Maybe a Xmas Party at 1302 (but a silly theme, like Bad Sweater or 80's Xmas)
- New Paltz for the holidays
- More business classes and nonsense
- Alumni Weekend (you guys don't know how to loot)
- Cousins wedding in Cancun in June, bumping up my total countries visited from 2 to 3 (sad, I know)

I always say I'll write more. Maybe this time, it'll stick... (breath, don't hold it).

Boston (In a nutshell)

Monday, August 24, 2009
For those who do not know, I am from New York, root for the Yankees and thus hate everything about Boston.

Deadspin.com, a sports related blog that is partners with Gizmodo (tech stuff), Lifehacker (MacGyver stuff) and Consumerist (not spending money stuff) does a regular feature called 'Why Your Stadium Sucks.' This week it's Fenway Stadium, the cesspool breeding ground of Red Sox nation and the perfect target for taking down a fair amount of Bostonians. I just wanted to share with you one comment someone made about a personal experience they had at Fenway. Enjoy...

"Me and a friend of mine were at a Red Sox game in Boston in the spring (I think) of 2005, about 10 rows back in the center field bleachers. Two drunk Tawmmys from Quinzee were sitting directly behind us, and spend the entire game yelling at Johnny Damon for having a little girl arm (while true, he's on your team, no?). One says to the other "I BET I COULD THROW A BALL FACKIN FAHHTHER THAN JANNY DAMON." Tawmmy Numbah 2 isn't convinced, neither am I, nor is my friend. Tawmmy 1 then bets my friend ten whole dollars that he can reach the infield on a throw. My friend laughs and takes the bet, as there's no way in hell this moron is actually going to try this during a game, right?

Wrong. Tawmmy #1 disappears for a while, and returns with a fresh beer and a souvenir baseball. My friend and I exchange a quick "No fucking way" look, and Tawmmy lets fly the ball. Sure enough, it hits the infield. Missing the back of Edgar Rentaria's head by about 6 inches . A man of his word, my friend pays up while Tawmmy gets dragged off by the cops, screaming "FACKIN' TOLDYA!"

Why Your Stadium Sucks: Fenway Park

Hungry ANGRY Hippo

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Curb your hippo!

Social Media

Thursday, August 13, 2009
So, seeing the initial post from NoPinkJerseys.com, it got me to thinking about the influx of social media sites and tools that allows our generation to put either parts or our whole personality online. Find a job through Twitter, find an old classmate through Facebook, find a new band through Pandora.

All of this personally identifiable information is willingly thrown online by us for one reason: To look cool. All of these social media sites promote as much info from it's users as possible for another reason: Advertising. If you know who your target is, you can cater ads specifically to them quite easily. The phrase used to be "Throw a bunch of shit on the wall and see what sticks." Now though... marketing has found that it's not about throwing shit, it's about laser-guided bullets of excrement that is pin-point to what you like and enjoy.

Just as an example, here are all the ways that someone can find out who I am:
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Twitter
- Pandora
- StumbleUpon
- Google tools and Profile
- YouTube
- Fark

I know I am forgetting some but there's at least a start. Though some are easier to find my profile than others, I've still make the conscious decision to put myself out there. Funny that just yesterday, I was alarmed to notice that my Facebook profile was indexed in a Google search result and immediately altered my privacy settings to prevent any future Googling.

As usual, I don't know where I am going with this. I only noticed that it's been about 4 months since I posted anything here so I figured I'd do something. Eventually, I am gonna try and build out AdamCroce.com (thanks to Julia for the domain) and hopefully more posts will come of that. Or not. We shall see...

What Would Happen if Kids Weren't Idiots

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Memorable movies would change drastically if the kids in them weren't friggin idiots. Here are some examples:

Sandlot (1993): In the movie... they build elaborate mechanisms and concoct hairbrained schemes to get the ball back. If there weren't idiots... they'd knock on the front door and get the ball back. MOVIE OVER.

Goonies (1992): In the movie... they try and find buried treasure to save their town. If they weren't idiots... they wold have accepted their fates and glided nicely into a maladjusted adolescence. MOVIE OVER.

E.T. (1982): In the movie... the kid meets a friggin alien. If they weren't idiots... they would've realized that no matter how nice he was, ET was getting down to business, and his business was anal-probing. Lead him into the wood chipper. MOVIE OVER.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (2001): In the movie... they are wizards. If they weren't idiots... they'd grow the eff up and realize the only wizards that exist are the 43 year old Dungeons & Dragons wizards/virgins living in their mother's basement eating KFC sadness bowls. MOVIE OVER.

HOWEVER... there is one exception to all of this.

Big (1988): In the movie... the kid becomes an adult overnight. If he wasn't an idiot... he wasn't. Gets a job at a toy company, buys ridiculous shit, gets laid. Well played. MOVIE SUCCESS.