From my friend vampiredawn: Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done. See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." Ask your friends do this in their journals to see what unique things they've done.

In response, I listed three things on her site, which are:
1. I got top level security clearance to work at a Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Vancouver in 1987.
2. I've been to two Major League Baseball All-Star Games (1979 in Seattle & 1980 in Los Angeles).
3. I've met multiple Baseball Hall of Famers (Don Drysdale, Lefty Gomez and Bob Feller come to mind).

I left the best one off, which is what led to #2 and #3.

I have always loved stats, details and numbers, so my spreadsheet programming job is perfect for me. Back in 1978, when I was in Grade 10, my homeroom teacher, who was also the Varsity basketball coach, suggested I go visit the new Triple A franchise in town and see if they might need help with stats. He even wrote me a letter of reference.

Now, I led a very sheltered life. I am an only child, didn't have many friends, none in the neighborhood my age, and generally stayed home, did my homework and watched TV. I pretty much never missed a hockey, football (NFL, CFL, NCAA) or baseball game on TV. Needless to say, I had never had a job.

So, with the Stadium being only nine blocks from my house, I got on my bike, and went to the ballpark on Opening Night. I boldly walked into the Office and presented myself, along with my letter of reference. It was hectic, what with the launching of a new franchise and all, and the PR Director asked me to go to the Press Box (which is on the roof of the stadium) and talk to the home broadcaster. So, for the first five innings, I sat quietly next to Ed Randall. As you can see, Ed has done very well for himself over the years. He's even worked for the New York Yankees.

After the game and after Ed had told me that he keeps his own stats, I went down to the office and the PR man literally begged me to be the Official Scorer. I was 16 at the time, which didn't seem to bother him. He told me that he would help me and would I please take the job, because he was basically desperate. So, starting with Game 2, I became the Official Scorer for the Vancouver Canadians of the Pacific Cost League. I held the job for six years, until 1983, when I graduated from college and had to choose between the Scorer's job and the one that would pay the bills. I think the cycle had run its course by then.

So, here I was, shy as you wouldn't believe, terrified, and thrown into this job. Part of the job was filling in a legal size sheet with all the statistics of the game. I still remember showing up for Game 3 and being told that the catcher (a fellow named Bruce Robinson) wished to see me to discuss a call from the night before. I had ruled a pitch a Passed Ball and he didn't agree. So, I asked a colleague which player he was, and the response was "he's the guy down there swinging the three bats." Oh great So, I went down to see him and we talked about it. We became friends in a way after that. And, no, I didn't change the call.

I learned so much from this job, beginning with social skills (of which I had none) and ending with the most important, to stand up for what I believed in and not be intimidated. You can just picture a 6' 1" kid who weighed about 140 pounds next to a professional catcher! At least, I was as tall as most of them!

To really appreciate this, imagine being a teenager and being paid to watch a baseball game from the best seat in the house, be fed dinner nightly, and, when I was older, get to have free beer in the Press Room and spend time with all the major media members in the city. Just being out of the house and in a professional environment was a huge deal. And, although I don't drink anymore, free beer at 19 was a pretty big deal too.

In 1978, I got my name in The Sporting News as the youngest Official Scorer in organized baseball. In 1980, I made the News again because my 200+ consecutive game streak was broken so that I could attend my high school graduation. Neat, huh? I was also interviewed on numerous local radio stations (an even one in Tacoma) as well as on the local cable TV station. I have definitely had my 15 minutes of fame, in spades.

And, that's how I got to meet a few Hall of Famers and get to two All-Star Games. I've also met the original San Diego Chicken.

Well, this has turned out to be much longer than I though it would, but here it is. I don't talk about this much anymore, mostly because it's been 25 years (yikes - I'm getting old). I mentioned it in passing to a friend and she said she would like to hear the story and seeing vampiredawn's post today made me decide to dig it out of the mothballs. Anyway, all of you are so nice to me here and I thought you might enjoy it. I always enjoy a good story from friends and I hope all of you like this one.

Here is a picture of Nat Bailey Staium, which even has it own Wikipeida page.

In the middle of the shot, on the roof, is the Press Box. In the middle of it (the narrow window) is where I sat for six summers. And yes, it is a gorgeous setting. The 2010 Winter Oympic Curling venue is being built pretty much across the street from it.

Hi everyone,

A little while ago, I was telling one of my friends that I was in the midst of an upgrade to my home offce, and she said she would like to see a picture. So, here are a couple.

This is a very nice looking filing cabinet from Staples which replaces a much smaller and not anywhere as nice looking one from Wal-Mart. The extra space has allowed me to rearrange some stuff and just plain looks nicer.

The second, and the nicest (although oddly not much more expensive that the filing cabinet), is the two monitior setup shown below.

My wife has had two monitors for awhile now and I had been making do with one. These two are from Future Shop (Canadian version of Best Buy and, in fact, owned by Best Buy) and were on a really good sale. They are 20" widescreens and allow me to now work such that I can have my spreadsheet on one screen and my programming code on the other. it's great to be able to test code and watch what's happening without having to flip back and forth.

However, since this is TV.com and I don't want to bore you all with work stuff, I took a picture of my new submission setup. On the left side is the site along with my contribution spreadsheet, where I gather all the cast and crew info from the shows. On the right is the DVD (The Rookies in this case). What I used to do, and still have to with video cassettes, is watch them on the main TV downstairs and write everything down longhand and then type them into the computer. Now, I can just watch the show, make a note of the time when the quotes I want are and take everything straight form the DVD to TV.com. And, since I know my way around a spreadsheet, I've come up with a neat way to easily reorder the cast and crew once I get them in there. I can only do that for three shows as it's an editors only feature.

The last piece of the upgrade is a standalone copy of Excel 2007. I didn't want to pay for the whole Office suite and one of clients has slowly begun moving to 2007, so I thought it would be a good time to buy a full version of Excel so that I can use them both. Excel was more expensive than the filing cabinet!

By the way, that's Froggy in front there checking things out. He's my wife's frog, and, since we don't have children or pets, our main buddy .

I hope all of you have a great week ahead. Happy Summer (well, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere anyway)!!

P.S. The bear on the filing cabinet is mine and I thought I would be a bit creative and use a different font this time.

I got this from my good friend IndianaMom, although this will be less eventful than hers.

My TV.com birthday is also June 15, 2005 and I'm pretty sure that's the day it became TV.com. I started out at TVtome looking up episodes of Monk. The editor at the time (CarolT) was doing a spectacular job with the guide. She is one of those people that, it appears, left when the changeover occurred. Anyway, since my wife and I mostly watch old shows in syndication, I began building a spreadsheet with a tab for each show we watch. I copy/pasted the episode guides into the spreadsheet and that's how I tracked what we had seen. The spreadsheet itself is something that Monk would be proud of .

Then I added current shows and found myself coming back over and over to check things out. In fact, it became a regular ritual to look up a new episode guide right after watching the show, and I found myself hanging out here a lot.

Early last year, I came across Night Heat in syndication on DejaView (a Canadian version of Nickelodeon) and began watching it. I was shocked at what poor shape the guide was in (missing summaries, no quotes, no guest stars, etc.), so on May 3, 2007, I made my first submission. I continued quite regularly until about the end of July when all the changes were made. After the third time of submitting the crew list and having it vanish, I gave up.

In November, I began watching Twice in a Lifetime and started contributing quotes to the guide, all of which the editor graciously accepted. Around the same time, I purchased Seasons 1 & 2 of Ironside and began contributing a few quotes and allusions there. The editor always responded with something so we began a back and forth via submissions. Shortly thereafter, I sent my first PM and AprilFox became my first friend. Well, my second really, but my wife (froggysfriend) was the first and she doesn't hang out here much.

In mid-December, I decided to try Night Heat again and continued submitting there and, sometime in February, I became its editor. At this time, on February 10 to be exact, I wrote my first blog entry. I had reached Level 15 and 500 submissions. The first blog got two comments: my wife and April.

I'm not sure I got from there to here in four months, but here I am. I now edit three shows, have five Trusted Contributorships, sit at Level 41 (96%), have over 3800 submissions and 21 friends. I got my nice butterfly just yesterday . The 21 friends are by far the best part.

The only other thing I can think of is that I have found myself discovering a seemingly endless supply of duplicate person guides. So, I do my best to move the credits and mark them as duplicates. Without any desire to do so, I have now contributed to over 200 person guides and 80 shows.

Being a part of this community has become a very important and special part of my life and rarely does a day go by without spending some time here. I always look forward to hearing from my friends. I tend to be a loner (only child and all) and this is the first time I've ever been a part of an online community. It has been a wonderful experience beyond anything I imagined it would be. I always appreciate and look forward to hearing from all of you and I hope that in some way I am able to be an uplift to all my friends in the same way all of you are to me.

Happy Thursday