I’m writing this post here so I can use it as a reference point to communicate and get the word out about a league that we are trying to start for Sony’s MLB 09 The Show.

First, let me thank Zac from ps3evolved for getting the ball rolling on this.

So what we are trying to do is setup a league that will be full of press, podcasters, bloggers, or people in the industry for a fun, not so serious, league.

Names so far in the league:

Steve519 via PlatformNation.com – Seattle Mariners
InfectedPB503 via PS3Evolved.net – New York Yankees
Matt Banks via loot-ninja.com – New York Mets
Vicious696 via unclegamer.com

Here’s our league settings that we are looking at, nothing is set though so feel free to leave input.
Live online draft, 60-second limit
Round-robin play
Veteran or All-star (haven’t decided yet, we will do what the majority want) difficulty
Guess Pitch: Off
Fast Play: On
Strike Zone: Off
Hot/Cold Zones: Off
# of games: we are trying to have each player play each team 3 times
8 team playoffs

Extra rules:
4 man pitching rotation
no exploiting player positions (putting a 3B in LF)
and no junk balls, this league is for fun, no reason to pitch garbage

If you are interested, shoot me an email at Steve @ PlatformNation.com

So Wednesday, while I was work, I get a call from that Washington State National Guard telling me that we have been activated and I need to drop what I was doing (again, I was at my real job doing real work) and I need to get there right now with all my gear. I was told it was something to have to combat the flooding that was happening state wide. I talk to my boss, tell them that I need to go ASAP and get down there, well they didn’t really want to let me go but they kind of had to. Now I rush home real quick and grab all my gear and from there I head down to Tacoma, WA for what would be a god awful way to finish my week and a crappy way to start my weekend.

So I get down there within 2 hours with almost everything I need and they have me fill out some paper work (med stuff), I get that done and then it starts, I, and everyone else, now just sit around waiting for our orders. And I sit. And sit. And 6 hours later, I’m still siting. By this time we get told that we are not able to leave base for the night because we have to ready to go in the early morning to help out.

Son of a bitch. I brought none of my personal stuff, no soap, shampoo, towel, non of that shit and we have just been put on lockdown. Now I’m annoyed.

Off to my car I go to get some ZZZ’s in there because it is more comfortable then anything else. We all get woken up around 5:30 in the morning on to, can you guess? Sit around for many many more hours. We sat around till about 2-2ish now. This is really getting annoying. But now we are finally doing something. We finally get loaded up in the trucks and head on out, our first stop? Costco! Seriously? I can not believe this, we have been there for almost 24 hours and we stop at Costco for free pizza (thanks to Costco for looking out though, they didn’t know how disorganized we were. That was really awesome of them for hooking us up with something like 9 boxes of their delicious pizza), I can’t believe this, we are getting rewarded now for doing nothing, just sitting around. After an hour goes by in the coldest and windiest parking lot that I’ve ever been in, we take off (we are thinking that we might actually help out now, so not true)

Our next stop, Pierce County Emergency Management, a big warehouse area where we sat around for a few more hours while the big wigs decided what would happen next. Well, it was about 6:30ish when they actually decide something and we board up again (remember we have been sitting around for more then 13 hours now, not doing a lick of work or help) Next stop, Red Lion, yes Red Lion for some rest and relaxation. No, I’m not joking, they now have booked all of us in a hotel for the night. I was 15 miles from my car and I can’t get to it to go home, again I have to stay here the night. Son of a bitch. My MacBook is even in my car, I have nothing with me once again, at least this time though I get a nice bed to sleep in and a shower.

Next morning we all report down in the lobby at 6:30am to board the trucks and head back to the PCEM building where we would sit around till 11:30ish, another 5 hours of sitting around. But after this, we actually do something, finally!! We head on out to Sumner to look at some of the damage.

Wow, there were some very lucky people to escape with no issues because many of the houses and trailers (most of the places they took us too were actually trailer parks, someone had the bright idea when they made these to make sure they are next to the river and below everything else). A lot of these homes were hit pretty hard, I’m talking about being below 4 feet of water hard. Everything stinks, it’s nasty, muddy, awful. So we are giving a bunch of flyers that we are to hand out to all those that were affected, it just has a phone number to call where they can help with relief, that’s it. After about 3 hours of that we call it a day (not our decision to only work 3 hours). Now we go back to the PCEM and sit around for another 3-4 hours.

Back in the trucks we go (BTW, if you never rode in a 5 ton, or a deuce and a half, consider yourself lucky as it is not fun, not at all)! Turns out we are going back to back finally, well after the driver got lost (it’s a 10 min drive normally) we finally get there to turn out gear in and call it a night, or so we thought. We can’t leave yet without more sitting around time, joy! We sit around for another hour to get briefed and crap and then finally, we actually get to go home!!

We were activated for well over 72 hours, slept for about 10 hours, rode in trucks for around 3 hours, actually did some good for about 3 hours, and sat around for the rest of the time. I felt so bad that we were all activated but not doing anything, we stayed in hotels, we given free food twice by businesses, and worked for a measly 3 hours. I actually felt ashamed to be associated with this because of all the mismanagement.

Well that’s what I did, I wasn’t happy with it as it was totally fucked up. It actually felt like we were there for PR reasons more then anything else, this way the government would be able to show the news that they cared and they wanted to help (even though we didn’t really do anything). I can only imagine how much all the cost too, talk about waste.

Here are some pics though about what we did see:

I’m talking about FriendSync for the iPhone/iPod Touch. What FriendSync does is it syncs your iPhone contacts pictures to what your friends have on Facebook. It also syncs their birth dates to help keep you in the know and it does all this with just a couple clicks with the finger. It costs $0.99 and I have to say that even though it really just adds pictures and birthdays to all your contacts it is well worth the low price. No more blank screens when people call, now you can actually see them.

Today they app that I want to point out is call Dial 0. You can get it for the low price of zero dollars and zero cents (noticing a trend here?). What this app does for you is it gives you 1-800 numbers for almost every big business out there. But it doesn’t stop there, Dial 0 also tells you the quickest and easiest way to talk to a real person. No more hitting all these buttons and wasting time, with Dial 0 you can speak to a real person in no time.

It’s a pretty cool and simple app that really does help help and I urge you all to check it out, and besides, it’s free!

We have CES, MacWorld, and the AVN Awards!

I can not wait to see some of the new things that we will see this week as far as toys, gadgets and new Mac products. I’m looking forward to the new Slingbox software for the Mac AND iPhone (if anyone wants to buy me a Slingbox I will seriously allow it), I’m hoping to hear about some new features coming to the iPhone (push??? Did Apple forget that?). Possibly a new and larger iPod Touch (half way there to being a Mac tablet).

And then with CES we will see all the new and upcoming tech gadgets and ideas for the upcoming years, it’s just like Christmas time all over again.

I love this time of year.

Well the iPhone/iPod Touch app that I want to showcase today is called i.TV. It is a free tv guide app and not only shows you want is on tv, but it allows you to hide channels, watch video streams, see show and movie descriptions, record to your TiVo DVR’s, check local movie theater show times and see the previews to the movies being shown and just so much more. I mean, it even allows you to manage your Netflix queue, now how awesome is that?

So do yourself a favor and go download this from the Apple store for the low low price of free!

I was looking at my google reader stats and I found that I read, on average, 321 posts a day.

I really didn’t know that I read that many articles.

Speaking of google reader though, you know you can subscribe to my favorite site, Platform Nation with it right? You can even check out all your feeds from your iPhone from a very clean looking interface. I have converted over to this because since it keeps all my feeds at one place, it is then sync’d over the internet so I’m never having to go through it all the sync it myself or reread the same feeds. It really helps save my time.

This has got to be the worst year in Seattle sports history. To start off the year we lost our basketball team, now I’m not a bball fan any more but still, it sucks to lose a team. Then our baseball team built up an over $100 million payroll and finished with 101 losses, and being a baseball fan this really hurt. Our football team which was suppose to be one of the best in the NFL this year has 2 whole wins, the only thing we seem to be fighting for this year is a draft pick. And to top it all off our college football teams, the Huskies and the Cougars had a total of 1 win combined until they finished up the season playing each other in what almost turned out to be a tie (that was what I was actually hoping for because I didn’t feel either of them deserved a win).

I can not wait for this year to be over as far as sports go, really, it can not get any worse. I take that back, it can, if the Seahawks manage to win a couple some how and screw up their draft pick choice, then it can be worse.

On the bright side we are getting a new team next year, a MLS team, the Seattle Sounders FC. I really can’t wait for them to start and I’m pumped to have a real soccer team up here in Seattle.

And speaking of the Sounders, if anyone is looking for something to get me for Christmas, I really really really want one of these jerseys:

Now that would be pimp.

I’ll write down the topics in the future to keep you all and my posts in the loop.

The next podcast will record LIVE next Sunday Dec 17, 2008. All deets will be here along with the call in number if you choose to use it.

Thanks everyone

Sunday Morning Power Hour, Dec 7, 2008

This is the name of what I think I will call my new show. Speaking of which, I think I’m starting a new podcast. The show WILL NOT be a Platform Nation podcast but really one that will be mine and mine alone. I plan on talking about whatever I wanna talk about for an hour and just not caring about the rest. I’m also planning on doing it on blogtalkradio.com so I can get live call-ins when I do it.

Anyways the whole premise of this will be talk about what I feel like hitting up, wither it be gaming news, tv, community stuff, just whatever I feel like. But it’s just a way for me to get out whatever I feel like talking about and releasing some of the crap that keeps building up inside.

So if your interested, hit me up, leave a comment and I’ll post more info about it later. Thanks guys.