1,000

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically, there’s nothing special at all about particular numbers, especially when it comes to recreational hobby blogging.  But I’m a fan of baseball, where numbers make the world go round, and where nice round ones are championed and celebrated at every opportunity, and I’m also a pretty sentimental guy who often times puts more stock into something than really should be deemed necessary, like nice round numbers.

But anyway, this is a very special post to me, because it happens to be the 1,000th post I’ve made to my beloved brog.  Now I’ve been brogging a lot longer, since there were about nine years prior to moving it to a WordPress format where I was doing it prehistorically, but since WP is nice enough to do all the number crunching for me, and display it in a prominent area in its dashboard, I’ve always been cognizant to the ever-increasing numbers throughout the past three years and change as I’ve made my best efforts to try to post something on a workday basis.

I genuinely do take a good deal of pride in this superficial number, because frankly, I’m hard pressed to find anyone like me who blogs as a side hobby, remotely close to dedicated as I do.  Obviously, I’m not saying that these people don’t exist, but I sure as hell don’t know any.  I hate to say that I have no faith in others, but the truth of the matter is that I shrug and mentally make bets in my head whenever people start a blog, to how soon it will be before they ultimately abandon it; I really hate to sound so pessimistic about it, but frankly nobody’s proven to me the ability to go half a year, much less over three years, before their posting weans off, the novelty is gone, and then the desire goes outright kaput.  I’m not criticizing people, and I’m not blaming people, because recreational blogging isn’t necessarily hard, but it’s pretty unfulfilling if it feels like nobody is reading, you’re not getting paid for it, or you simply run into writers’ blocks.

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Isn’t this a crazy story?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: student multi-sport athlete has one too many concussions, is hospitalized and told to give up contact sports. After recovering, it’s revealed that he’s now a musical savant and can pretty much play any instrument.

You know something, in a way, this is almost not fair. Injury and concussions are sort of supposed to ruin lives, not keep them on the same track, or possibly make them better. I speak partially in jest, because obviously I don’t want to necessarily hear of people I don’t know lives getting ruined by injury, but the other part of me would be lying if I didn’t say that I was jealous of this kid’s fortuitous “brain re-wiring.”

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College football chaos ensues!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I don’t post on weekends, because I think that there’s an even lesser chance that my six readers will actually read what I post, since it’s the weekend, and we all undoubtedly have something better to be doing than reading someone else’s brog. But something(s) have occurred that have piqued my interest and inspired me to do some writing about it.

This past Saturday marked the end of regulation for college football that actually matters. Frankly, I don’t think it’s possible for one single day to have had so many sports things happen that impacted so many other sports things I’ve seen in my entire life.

First, there was the unprecedented culmination of the success of the Duke football program, where they squeaked out a win against North Carolina to end the season as winners of the ACC Coastal division, and punched their ticket to Charlotte, where they’ll play Florida State for the conference championship.

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The Blue Friday haul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I said to a friend of mine that one of the grueling challenges that I would have to endure this holiday weekend was trying to get out of it without making one major electronic purchase.  Because I am a compulsive consumer, somewhat easily swayed by the pressure and the hype of Black Friday electronic sales and advertising.

Furthermore, my primary television has an entire line of dead pixels on it.  Granted, it’s maybe ten pixels from the top of the screen, and it’s just one pixel on a 51” screen, so it’s really not that offensive and hardly affects any viewing, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a permanent blemish, and the first sign that the television is going, and that I should consider a new one, immediately, on Black Friday.  Even if it meant dropping anywhere from $500-1,000.

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Photos: Thanksgiving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I can’t really say that I’m thankful for a whole lot outside of the typical generic ones, like the people around me, but one thing that I am genuinely thankful for is that my life is, although often times erring on the side of boring, but somewhat stable.

My family drives me nuts from time to time, but that’s what family does.  My job might be kind of mundane and boring, but it affords me the ability to pay the bills and sustain my fairly simple life.

The benefit to stability is the fact that when things aren’t going so well for others, I can be at my peak condition of being able to offer help and support, because things aren’t necessarily that complicated in my own life.  And it’s cyclical; it goes without saying that stability isn’t achieved without a decent support system in place for me, if and when I ever need it.

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Maybe a Blue Friday this year

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Blue Steel Friday, that is.

I know it’s pretty much the Armageddon of capitalism every year, but I don’t really mind Black Fridays.  Sure, they’re stressful, exhausting and I’ve had my massive share of failures in the past, but I’ve also experienced triumphs and successes in acquiring big ticket items for substantial discounts and/or rewards.  Whereas there are lots of people who see Black Fridays as miserable commercial holidays of chaos, greed and materialism, I often see them as opportunities to make some smart purchasing.

Especially now that most merchants have actually moved into the twenty-first century and actually do as much peddling online as they do in-stores, it makes things a hundred times more efficient and less stressful, since I don’t have to wake up at 3 AM in order to wait in a line to get something I really want.

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Purex can eat a bag of dicks

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t remember what exactly Tide did, but whatever it was, it was enough for Jen to decide to not support using Tide detergent moving forward. Personally, I don’t really care, because, it’s detergent, so I had no qualms with switching things up. It’s soapy liquid that helps get my clothes clean, nothing more than that, so I don’t really care what brand it is, so long as is does its job.

Apparently, it’s naïve of me to have that kind of mindset, because it clearly does matter what brand of detergent you’re using. Without getting too detailed, I’ll just say that for the last week or so, I’ve been having some instances of rashes and skin abnormalities of the itching variety that have been puzzling me to why this is the case. Some spots look like straight up poison ivy rashes, and itch like them too. I haven’t really been out in nature any time recently, and if it were truly poison ivy, then it probably would be in way more places and in far worse severity.

And then it dawned on me that one of the very few things that had recently changed, was the fact that we started washing our clothing with Purex detergent, which was our first attempt at using something other than Tide. The stuff claims to be all-natural, or at least boasts a lack of impurities and chemicals that their competitors use. I’m guessing part of their “all-natural” ingredients must include some derivative of poison ivy or sumac, because I’m 99% positive that it’s the detergent that’s causing me these abnormal itchy skin irregularities.

Googling “purex detergent rash” results in all varieties and types of forums, ask.yahoo inquiries and mommy blogs talking about numerous people who apparently are having the same afflictions that I’m having right now. I’m actually relieved to know that I’m nothing unique, and that there are many many other people out there having the same issues with Purex-washed clothing that I am.

That being said, Purex can go eat a back of dicks. Fuck Purex, and their shitty product that causes people like me, and others to break out in rashes. This is public damnation of a commercially available product, and I hope all of my six readers will think twice about buying Purex the next time they’re looking for detergent.