Everyday I drive through our neighbor hood about 4 or 5 times day. I’m constantly reminded that people don’t rent their entire lives and do grow up and actually buy a house. Right now Reena and I are renting a Villa/Townhome place from my boss. It’s a perfect place cause I have about a 10 minute drive to work and it’s centrally located to everything we need. Close to Reena’s school, Target, and Publix. The problem is, trying to find a home in this neighborhood would cost at least 300k and I don’t really care to triple our monthly payment.

So I have started researching mortgages, homes in the Odessa and Land O Lakes area. They are about 30 minutes away from work and are actually pretty conveniently located from Tampa, malls, the airport. The market right now is quite favorable for buyers and in the area we are looking we can get a pretty decent sized house for the price. I’m currently reviewing some agents to help us out and will be touring some houses I’m sure in the next few weeks. It’s a pretty exciting feeling, so I’ll be sure to keep you all updated. Hopefully I can get some pictures of some of the houses we tour.

I wonder sometimes, when building a new site, does design even matter that much? Sure there are things like making sure the navigation and certain elements are easy to find.. I get that. But do the actual designed elements of the site even matter? Take a look at www.paparazzi-boutique.com and tell me if you find that at all visually appealing? At first glance to me, I was repulsed. There are so many bad things going on with the site, but the navigation is relatively easy to find, the basic functions of the site work, and it loads alright.

Reena took a look at this site and couldn’t see anything wrong with it. She thought it was fine and couldn’t understand why I had such a problem with it. Granted she does spend 10 hours on Myspace everyday, so her idea of “design” is a little skewed. Now what really gets my blood boiling with a site like this is how someone can pay a company to design and develop something like this, and then on top of that, go back to this company and have them develop a shopping cart system as well.

Does the average user, the main visitor of a site, really care if the site is visually appealing, or do they just care about getting the information they need? Does it matter how that information is delivered? Has Myspace ruined any progress that the design world has tried to make in the last 10 years?

So I found out on Friday that I will be a father to a baby boy in July. Probably the most exciting day of my life. I never thought anything would pass up the day I got the call from the Rangers, but last Friday beat it by a landslide. So take that Texas Rangers, you are nothing to me, oh wait I was nothing to you so techinically you won. Anyways, seeing the developing spine for some reason took my breath away. It has totally passed up the heart beat in the nascar race that is amazing sonogram things. Shake and bake. Shake and bake.

One day my child is flicker on the screen, now he has a spine. Simply the most amazing experience of my life. I did find myself wondering if it was appropriate to play beer pong and have a child. Not sure how that got in there during the sonogram, but my mind is wonderland. I think he would be cool with it. Daddy is really bad at beer pong so he would get drunk and make a fool out of himself and what child does not enjoy seeing their parents act like idiots. Plus he would could hear Brett say “Drano” and then we could both make fun of him and Brett would be outnumbered and have no comeback. mmmmm, I am sure children services would look down on it, but it might work. Might want to ask the wife before hand though so I will get back to you on that one.

On a sad note, this is the final year for Dodger Town. This truly saddens me. Baseball needs Dodger towns and its other historic icons. With Roger, Barry and their kind ruining the game, this place is baseball in its purist form. If you have not been, please make sure you go, well worth the trip. I will always remember Tommy Lasorda giving a speech to a bunch of minor leaguers and just hammerin away on them. You just don’t get that close to icons.

Also, Al Lang field in St. Petersburg is its final year. St. Petersburg has been the home of the Cardinals, Yankees, Mets and D-Rays. All time greats have called this place home. The Devil Rays are moving to Port Toilet next year and no team is set to take their place. Another iconic place looses out. Hopefully something will happen.

On the Devil Rays front I am excited for this season. Wathcing Kazmir, Shields and Garza should make more games interesting. My little league bullpen was probably deeper, but at least they made an effort. Plus no more Dukes and Young. They give cancer a bad name. Seriously, the D-Rays need to go meet with the Twins front office on how to build talent. Have you ever seen a bonus baby from the Twins act like an idiot? I think not. They play the game right. Hopefully Upton will continue with his positive transformation, if not, get rid of him.

All I got, going to Just Surrender on Tuesday with Brett, so we can let you know how sweet the show is. I am going to rate it a 8 out of 10 prior to going in. Might be a 10 out of 10 depending on the number of PBRs i have.

I like taking a trip every now and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up the most recent Practical Web Design magazine. I then find myself browsing through all of the other techie books that I should really read. I get about 3 or 4 in my hand then add up the prices on those bad boys. It’s usually always over 100 dollars. I mean 100 dollars is a small price to pay to help better your computer hacking skills.. but it’s still 100 dollars. What I have been doing lately is checking out the books I want real quick then once I get home just jump on Amazon. I can find ALL the books I want for half price easily.

Last night I had magazines/books that would have totaled about 130 bucks. I was about 2 minutes from just getting them because I’m extremely impatient like that. Instead I put them back and hopped on Amazon when I got home. Got everything for 50 bucks. The other awesome thing about Amazon, is their shipping. For some reason even if you just get the standard shipping rate, you’ll have your order in about 2 days. It’s pretty sweet buying something on Saturday and it showing up on your doorstep on Monday.. without having to fork over 30 bucks for overnight delivery. Amazon is definitely the way to go.

There are a couple of songs in my iTunes that when come on, just instantly motivate me and get me all jazzed up. Some are from the baseball days, when I’d listen to Death Metal to get myself geared up. I got me thinking of what other types of songs people listen to to get themselves pumped up and excited. For getting ready for a baseball game or beating the snot out of 12 year olds in Call of Duty 4 I listen to either/or:

Three Days Grace - “Animal I have Become”
Slipknot - “Wait and Bleed”
Emarosa - “Utah”
A Day to Remember - “Speak of the Devil”
Tears Don’t Fall - “Bullet for My Valentine”

Slipknot would probably be the best for getting me insanely worked up. I used to listen to that song before every game I pitched in college. I would make sure to be the last one off the bus while I waited back and pulled a mini Dwight Shrute by rocking out to that song. Really any song that has heavy guitar riffs, loud drums, and good intense screaming will get the blood flowing. Later I’ll follow up with a list of songs that calms me down and makes me more productive.

Wow more Xbox hell. This time it’s with my Xbox Live membership and how Xbox has apparently taken me to collections over a Monthly recurring fee of 25 bucks. I had my debit card associated with the account lost/stolen back in May and because I hardly used Xbox Live much anyways, I didn’t even think about changing the billing information once I got my new card.

Fast forward to now, and I go to try and re-instate my account.. they say I owe an outstanding balance of 25 bucks. I’m like sure no problem.. they give me the run around for a good 2 hours. People in India having me call “Billing Accounts” which gets me routed to MSN Broadband support.. then back to Xbox Support to be told again to call “Billing Accounts” at the same number they gave me the first time.. wait for a good 20 minutes before someone picks up AGAIN, to find out it’s MSN Broadband Support ONCE AGAIN! They tell me they can’t help me but would be able to transfer me BACK to XBOX LIVE SUPPORT! I go back to Xbox live.. tell the guy what hell I have been through assures me he can fix the problem then pulls up my info, sees I’ve been all over the place and then says “Yeah looks like your account has been written off..” You’ll need to call.. THE SAME NUMBER! Wow shocker. Says the telephone system must be mixed up and THEN tells me that even if I do pay it, I won’t be able to recover my account back into good standing. What kind of BS is that? Over 25 bucks!? Because I lost my card and didn’t know and you sent one email that I found 8 months after.. without any warning of this being the end all be all of it.. Thanks a lot Xbox Live India Support for your worthless help and Xbox Live for re-affirming your horrible customer service.

Well as any Twins fan would know, as soon as a player reaches all-star status, the team tries to dump them before they actually have to pay them what they are really worth. Once again, they dump a player like Johan Santana and get no established big leaguer in the trade. They had chances to get other players that have already stepped foot on a big league field but they were greedy and thought they could get more. As it turns out, both the Red Sox and Yankees stopped talking with the tools that are the Twins and let the Mets get a steal on Johan. The Twins got 4 minor leagues in return, none that project out to be anything near a Santana.

I’m happy for Santana though. He finally will be on a team that will do something if they are in a race and need another player. The Twins, when they are in need of a player go and grab the best play from the St. Paul Saints or some other washed up big leaguer.. or else trade for more minor leaguers. I’m also happy for Terry Ryan who left the circus that is the Minnesota Twins. I can only imagine what it’s like working for the cheapest billionaire in the game, Carl Pollad. That guy pulls in so much money but for some reason doesn’t want to put anything back into the team and bring another World Series to Minnesota.

Leeks, I think it’s time I start cheering for the D-Rays.. I mean Rays.

So the idiots that are Florida residents passed on Tuesday an amendment that will save the average home owner about $240 on their property taxes and allow them to bring their save the homes cap with them when they move. Talk about unfair systems. If I buy a house right now, I will see not of these benefits. I could end up paying 10,000 in property taxes and my neighbor with the same house could only be paying 2,000 What a world of haves and have nots. This is the biggest load of crap I have ever seen. How out of touch is our government. More correctly, how selfish and out of touch are Florida residents that they think this is a fix. Why not vote the amendment down and make your government actually do something. Oh wait, then you wouldn’t save $240 dollars. My question is, why am I being punished for 1) not buying a home when I was 5, 2) why are people punishing the schools and other social programs for $240 and 3) why do old people get to vote. Seriously, the elderly is this state are so out of touch. They do not have kids so they argue they should not have to pay high property taxes, well you did not put anything into social security when were young compared to what i am putting in, so why am I footing the bill for a system that will no longer exist when I need it. Call me an ageist, but that is a common theme in Florida with the retires. So bravo Florida you really are ahead of the times. I will go rent my apartment now.