I had a blast last night watching American Idol with my friends Dan and Mandy. We created a drinking game to the pop-culture icon that is American Idol. Since we had so much fun, I figure I’d pass along the rules to you guys, so that you can partake in this beautiful adventure. The rules are simple and can equate to a good drunken time on a school night. Here are the rules for the first part of American Idol (for the rest of the show, new rules will follow):

Rule 1: Anytime Randy says “dog” you have to put your thumb on your head. The last person to do so has to take a drink.

Rule 2: Everytime Simon says “Horrible” or any variation of the word (i.e. horrific, horrendous, etc) it is a social and everyone has to drink.

Rule 3: Everytime someone takes a sip out of a cup, the first person to yell “cup” gets to make whoever they want drink.

Rule 4: When you see a person featured (someone that is about to go before the judges), you pause the show. At this point (starting with one player and working around the room), you choose weather or not the person will make it to Hollywood. If you are correct, you are safe and don’t have to drink. If you are wrong, you have to drink with the other losers who also guessed wrong!

Rule 5: When a person is featured and after you decide whether or not they make it to Hollywood, you get to pick an artist you think they will sing. If they sing that artist, then everyone else in the room has to finish their beer (no matter how much is left) and you get to gloat in all your fantastic glory.

Thats it! So far in the three times we have played, we have only guessed the artist twice (both times happened to be Whitney Houston). It is a lot of fun and by using only these five rules, it keeps the playing simple and runing smoothly. Try it out!

Also, we will be playing the game tonight @ Dan and Mandy’s house! If you are interested, feel free to swing by. Email me (nealmoorhouse@gmail.com) if you need directions.

~Neal

Man, there are certain things in life that are immortal. Things that wherever you are, the mere sight of them wisk you away to a wonderful place only experienced as a child. I was surfing the web today and I came across something that I immediatly wanted… no… needed!

Someone please buy it for me!
~Tertle

NASCAR has had a bad stigma over the years.  Like most NASCAR “haters” I just assumed it was for the redneck, Budweiser drinking, wife beating, trailer park living, non-athletic portion of American society.  This just isn’t the case!  I recently have found myself stumbling around the television stations looking for something to watch on Sundays and stopping the chanel at NASCAR.  I said to myself, “Neal, turn the channel, what are you doing?”  I just can’t stop watching!  It is actually quite exciting.  There is drama, speed, assholes, neat technology, and more drama.  The drivers are intelligent and so are the fans!  I cannot get enough.  My only problem is that I cannot decide who to like.  Right now I am leaning towards Tony Stewart and Kyle Bush.  Don’t ask me who they drive for and if it is ok to like BOTH drivers, because frankly, I don’t know.  They seem like jerks and I love it!  Maybe someone who knows something about the sports could help me out.  I am so new at this!

~Tertle

I was stumbling around the internet (as I often do) and I came across this little gem:

Just thought I would pass it along. Hilarious!

I was going through Google’s Webmaster Tools today. I was checking out how my site was doing on Google (apparently not well, because they can’t seem to index my page… even though it IS indexed… but I digress). After perusing all their features, I noticed a little “Tools” tab. Inside that, there was a number of things that I could change to make indexing more efficient and blah, blah, blah. The I noticed a sub-tab of “Gadgets”. Ohhhhh nice! I like gadgets! I checked it out and there was an option to add Webmaster Tools to iGoogle. I wanted to get more information so I clicked the little button they had and it sent me here:

I listen to KMS on WHFS every morning while driving to work. I also listen to the Junkies as Well on WJFK. These morning shows are both awesome and if you find yourself in either markets, feel free to check them out. KMS has a new blog. It can be found here: http://cbsradiobaltimore.com/main_bn/kirkandmark/

I was stumbling through the Baltimore Sun’s website today and came across a nice article on the top 5 meathead hangouts in Baltimore City. It is no surprise that there were two listed in the five from the Federal Hill area. Even less surprising is the fact that they are number one and two on the lists! Here is the list from the Baltimore Sun’s website:

“1. Magerk’s Pub and Grill, 1061 S. Charles St.
Yo, bartender, lemme get a round of Miller Lites and some shots of Cuervo for the ladies.
2. Mad River Bar and Grille, 1110 S. Charles St. (pictured)
As the bartender told Casper’s friend, “This is Mad River, bro.” …
3. The Bay Cafe, 2809 Boston St. #439
Because who needs Ocean City when the beaches and babes are right here in Bmore?
4. The Greene Turtle, 722 S. Broadway
Meathead 1: “Dude, you totally just spilled Miller Lite all over my pink button-down Geoffrey Beane shirt.”
Meathead 2: “Sorry, bra.”
5. Angels Rock Bar, 34 Market Place, Power Plant Live
Where meatheads go to pretend they’re tough.

Honorable Mention goes to the late, great Baja Beach Club.”I love Federal Hill! I spend a lot of time there. You can most certainly catch me at a bar in Federal Hill on a Friday or Saturday night (90% of the time it is Drifters). Federal Hill is itself an oxymoron, boasting the fact that it is the most and least pretentious place in all of Baltimore City. With the right advice, you can completely avoid all those fight-starting meatheads.

First, stay away from these three bars on any night: Magerks, Ropewalk and Mad River. Magerks is a Philly bar (Monte… err.. Pangwin is going to hate me for this, being a Philly fan and all), but in addition to that they have the highest duche-bag to non duche-bag ratio in the City (I capitalized City on purpose when referring to the great Baltimore City). Mad River, with the exception of its bar staff, ranks right up there! Ropewalkhas the unfortunate curse of being excessivly crowded on the weekends. That and their wait staff/bartenders are often rude and pretentious! Visiting either of those places will most likely net you into a fight.

There are GREAT places in Federal Hill, however! Drifters (my personal favorite), Nevins, Reighley’s, the Stalking Horse, Grumpies, The Dog Pub (Thirsty Dog) and many more. I have never had any issues with the above establisments. Although they can get crowded, they are usually full of the more laid back crowd. Drifters has dancing; Nevins has karaoke (and cheap car bombs and Viticus which in itself is worth the trip); The Dog Pub has mini-beers that go down so easily yet are so fantastic; Reighley’s, Grumpies, and the Stalking Horse are all fun in their own right.

In the spirit of the Baltimore Sun’s list of the 5 worst meathead places in Baltimore, I offer my own list:

The Top Five Places in Federal Hill to Get Wasted and Make Poor Life Decisions

1. Drifters Raw Bar and Grill – 1024 S. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21230
   During the week they have awesome drink and food specials. They host the greatest happy hour in the city on Fridays ($10 all you can drink from 6-9), dancing to live DJ’s Thursday-Saturdays and the hottest patrons around! Highly recommended!
2. Reighley’s – 36 East Cross St. Baltimore, MD 21230
   Reighley’s is good for several reasons. First, they have great food. I love oysters (no surprise that raw bars are the top two choices for me) and Reighley’s has the best… from all over the world. They have DJ’s on the weekends and a nice selection of alcohol.
3. Nevins – West Cross St. Baltimore, MD 21230
   Look up Nevins on the internet and you will find very little pointing you in their direction. This place can be easily considered a dive bar. I plead the opposite: Nevins is the most underrated bar on Cross Street. It features karaoke and Viticus. Let me be the first to tell you that Viticus may be the best tasting liquor I have ever had! I have no idea what is in it, but I know it is fantastic!
4. The Dog Pub - 20 East Cross St. Baltimore, MD 21230
   The only “chain” on my list is Thirsty Dog Pub. This place has the best pizza in Federal Hill and their two-for-one locally brewed beers are awesome.
5. Taps – The corner of Fort and Charles Streets Baltimore, MD 21230
   Taps is a brand new establishment that is a great place to get away from the usual hussle and bustle of Federal Hill. Taking over the former Fort Charles Pub, Taps is a great place to kick back and have a few beers

Honorable mentions: No Idea, Don’t Know, Grumpies, and Crazy Lils

I am an avid PC user.  I have always worked on PC’s (with the exception of when I was 10 and I learned Lotus @ a science camp @ the Maryland Science Center… but I digress).  I am used to PC’s.  I can do anything on a PC that a Mac user can with their machine.  As far as I am concerned, their technology is equal.

I am a graphic designer.  Most graphic designers use Macs.  Most graphic designers that use Macs scoff at the idea of using PC’s.  They proclaim, “Illustrator/Photoshop was built on a Mac and therefore better suited for Macs”.  Although this statement was true 10 years ago, this is hardly the case now.  I have yet to come across anything that a Mac user can do that I cannot (certain shortcuts being the obvious exception… although PC’s have their own).

Another argument that Mac users throw out there is the ease of use.  Well in my personal opinion, I haven’t found either one to be more difficult than the other.  I was able to pickup Vista and start rolling as well as any Mac I have used.  I guess I don’t have enough information about either one to form an accurate decision about this argument.  I guess the only reason a Mac would be easier, would be the total lack of options and peripherals available (sorry that was a slight stab @ Mac users… but I digress).

Finally, I always hear Mac users praise the stability and security of their OSes.  Well, I recently stumbled on an article that completely debunks this myth.  At the CanSecWest conference, last week, the three major operating systems were put on trial.  The goal: try to hack each operating system.  Contrary to the Mac users’ argument, the Mac book Air was hacked in less than two minutes.  The PC was cracked in two days via a hole in the Java platform.  Granted Linux was shown to be the most stable, there was an interesting quote from the article on CIO.com: “Some of the show’s 400 attendees had found bugs in the Linux operating system, she said, but many of them didn’t want to put the work into developing the exploit code that would be required to win the contest.”

Moral of the story.  1) Lets stop basing our arguments on old myths and 2) No matter how pretentious I think Mac users are (and vice versa for that matter), Linux users trump us both

To view the article I am refering to on CIO.com, click here.

As I am writing this, I am extremely excited in the anticipation for tonights games.  Our kickball team, Go Balls Deep has made the playoffs for KLOB (Kickball League of Baltimore).  Here’s the story and why you should care:

During the regular season, we made some mental errors on our part.  We ended up losing 3 games out of the 7 that we played.  This put us somewhere right in the middle of the pack of 32 teams.  The playoffs were supposed to be reserved for the top 16 teams.  We were ranked 17th.  Fortunately for us, there were several other teams with our record, so the league did something it has never done before: had a play-in game to make the playoffs!  Being ranked 17th, we had to play the 16th ranked team in a play-in game to be even considered for the playoffs.  We beat them.  A come from behind victory was ours!  We were riding high.

We were then pitted against the number 1 seated team in the whole playoffs.  A team that, until that day, remained undefeated.  They destroyed opponents all year!  Cries could be heard from their bench, “Why do we even have to play this team?  We should just move on to the next opponent.”  We scored the first runs.  They responded with runs of their own, taking the lead.  Fighting with all our might, we ended up beating them… beating them soundly!  Their only loss was to us!

Taking over the number 1 seat, we now control our own destiny!  We are 3 wins away from our first championship!  GO BALLS DEEP!

Registration is open for the inaugural season of the Baltimore County Co-Ed Softball Leage in Arbutus Maryland.  All games will be played Sunday afternoons @ Relay Elementary.  If you are interested in starting a team, head on over to the website: http://www.pangwinandtertle.com/bcsl/ now to get started and to get more information!  Individuals are also welcome to sign up!  Thanks!
Neal Moorhouse