Final Night at the Vet

Sizes and Pricing

11" x 14" (print) $49.00 USD 12" x 18" (print) $59.00 USD 12" x 18" (print, matted, signed) $99.00 USD

Prefer to pay cash or check? That’ll work just fine Have additional questions? Leave me a note below or simply click here (note that you’ll be redirected to my contact form on the Philadelphia Day Trip site).

Thanks!
Don

        

Google Music Beta Invite

        

I tried to get everyone in the field and at the plate at least once. Please feel free to download and print your kids’ photos. If you need an online print service and/or want to do some photo mugs/ posters etc … I use Kodak – they’re having a pretty big sale on stuff actually:

Save Up to 50% at Kodak Gallery

Here are the photos (note after you select a photo simply click ‘next’ at the bottom of the image to go through 1-by-1):

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Final night game at the Vet with the Spectrum in the foreground

This photo of Veteran’s Stadium and the Spectrum was taken from the Girard Point Bridge on I-95 immediately following the final night game at the Vet. Still have my ticket though it’s not for sale

Matted prints are available up to 12 x 18. Please leave me a note below or use the contact form to let me know you’re interested.

Don

        

It looks like that there will be some unique opportunities and challenges for marketers. In particular, it will likely strengthen WOM campaigns and will continue to throttle SPAM and second-hand SPAM (un-friends) … much like Gmail’s priority inbox.

Is it a Gmail killer – perhaps, especially if they get the mobility piece right.

As soon as I get an invite I will share. In the meantime, if you get one sooner please let me know via a comment below so I can dig in further and report. Below is a recap of the FB page from the link above.

Here’s a quick overview of the service:

Get all your messages together

• Get Facebook messages, chats and texts all in the same place.
• Include email by activating your optional Facebook email address
• Control who can send you messages through your privacy settings

See a full conversation history

• See everything you’ve ever discussed with each friend as a single conversation.
• No need for subject lines or other formalities
• Easily leave large conversations that no longer interest you

Just the messages you want

• Focus on messages from your friends.
• Messages from unknown senders and bulk email go into the Other folder
• Spam is hidden from view automatically

        

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Silversun Pickups closed out the night …

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Against Me opened up with a hard-rocking set …

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Halloween parades and parties done Wallingford style

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Beautiful fall day for soccer with the ‘Blue Sharks’. Full gallery is below.

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The crowd, flush with drink and gorged on food, roared approval and reveled at the glory of the impact, the magnitude of the violence and the chaos of the day.

The wounded man staggered to his feet, fell once again, before finally escaping out a stone tunnel. He would return all too soon to bathe again in the glory, money and fame passed on to him by the masses

An official blew his whistle, the gladiators returned to their huddle and the ignorance that has become Sunday afternoon played on.

The NFL has replaced our thirst for the carnage of the Coliseum with slick marketing and Kevlar costumes; gladiators that start beating each other at age 6, begin forgetting each other at 35 and for some, end their days crippled in constant pain in their 50’s.

For what?

An average career that lasts 3.5 years and where less than half the players make over $1 million/ season?

Let me be upfront. For years I was a huge football fan. Eagles training camp … check. Tailgating … check. Dual TV’s to watch both games so I could keep track of my office pool … check.

That all changed a few years back after I saw an HBO Real Sports report on how the NFL treated its retired players and what the impact of years of hits was on their bodies. Stunned, mortified, I’m not sure what to call it, once I realized the magnitude of the damage, football slowly started losing its appeal.

Recent reports of brain damage due to concussions have further solidified my feelings:

• According to an NFL report, players are 19x more likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia between the ages of 30-49
• According to a UNC study NFL players that received 3 concussions from High School through the pros have a 20% chance of serious depression. The kind that drove Andre Waters (ex-Philadelphia Eagle and Owen Thomas (U of Penn player) to commit suicide.

This rant however is for the parents of the gladiators in training. The ones with kids playing for ‘fun’ or, more likely, to fulfill some Dad’s lost dream. The ones that move too quickly from flags on hips to bloody lips. The ones with just a single concussion to date. The ones that are told they are too light to play at 245lbs. The ones that are trying for a coveted spot in the elite 1800+ player NFL.

Is it really worthwhile for your kid to suffer head injuries for fun? Is it worth a lifetime of pain for a possible scholarship? Have you ever been to the ER on a Saturday morning during football season? I have, and the string of kids walking through in uniform is unbelievable.

The arguments for having young kids play football usually start and end with: its good exercise and they love it. My answer … they probably think motorcycle racing would be fun too and basketball and soccer are better exercise.

For those parents that rationalize the scholarship route … there are 23,000 or so NCAA football scholarships made available. Not bad … if the kids actually did some serious learning while they were in school. I’ve been around lots of collegiate athletes and I can tell you that for many, their focus is not on education.

IMO to make athletic scholarships really worthwhile colleges should open up their doors to athletes for an additional 4-5 years after their playing years so they can actually study and obtain real-world skills.

For those parents that are buying/ selling the NFL dream … wake up. There are only 225 draft positions open every year and great bunches of those players end up being nothing more than unemployable body bags on a practice squad.

So while I’m ranting about all things bad with the NFL lets call a spade a spade.

NFL games are actually quite boring and painfully slow. They play for 3 – 7 seconds and then everyone rests for 2-3 minutes. The networks have done an incredible job of making the events very entertaining due to human interest stories, drama and technology but there’s a reason you can go to the bathroom, get nachos and a beer and not miss a bloody thing.

Every Sunday millions of American’s waste 3+ hours (and that’s being kind) of daylight watching fat men hit each other, thin women dance and Coors light try to convince us that the reason you should drink their beer cold is that it makes it taste better. Hint – ice cold beer disables your taste buds.

Imagine if you could get the 28 million Americans that wasted an afternoon watching just one game (Eagles – Packers) to spend 3 hours each doing community service or, God forbid, playing with the kids they dump on the Pee Wee football coach.

Back to the games. In person, they are brutally dull – the aforementioned cheerleaders get more of a workout than the players and to say fans at the games are boorish, particularly in Philadelphia, is kind. During the last game I went to, about 4 years ago, I witnessed a women get sexually harassed, saw fans from another team get assaulted for existing and watched kids get exposed to some of the most profane language I could imagine.

I also saw a man staggering toward the stadium. He had slurred speech, looked confused and vomited into a trashcan. He then turned his next projectile on a car.

At first I assumed he had just a few too many Coors Lights while tailgating but in retrospect he may have been a gladiator – after all, the symptoms of getting wasted are virtually the same as a concussion.

Interested in learning more? Here’s some additional reading.

• UNC study overview of concussions and head injuries in football players
• NFL commissioned study overview on concussions and head injuries in football players
• High School football injury overview from a study by the American Journal of Sports Medicine

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Crocuses! HDR photo from the front yard.

5 exposures, auto bracketing.

ISO 200/ F12/ 1/40

Here’s the device I use to transfer from the D700 to the Asus CPU