Pirate City arrival

Well, I finally made it down to Pirate City. I am not sure what kind of good fortune I have found my way into here, but I am in the Bill Mazeroski room this year. No disrespect to the Mike LaValliere room that I stayed in last year, but the Maz room appears to be a bit more spacious and forgiving. I will try to post a picture later. The weather here is very nice compared to Ohio, we shall see how well I can do tomorrow at the evaluation game and in the first league game. EDIT: As promised, here is one picture of the room.

One week to go...

Only one more week before I ship out to go to Bradenton. It should be a fun time. I can't wait for that first taste of Mixon's orange ice cream. It is flat out awesome.

Another season

Well, I am all signed up for the 2012 Pittsburgh Pirates Fantasy Camp. And I am darn excited about it. I am going to try to work on my outfield skills. I can move around not too badly, but when it comes time to squeeze the ball in my glove, that's where it is a bit of an adventure for me. To that end, I have enlisted the help of a my friend and former co-worker John, who is using the FlyBall 500 (here is a link to the product web site) to throw me fly balls. It is way easier than trying to hit fly balls consistently, even with a fungo. I heartily recommend the product. Next up is the Fantasy Camp meeting at PNC Park in early December. I will see you fellow campers there.

Fantasy Camp DVD case insert

I liked the DVDs that the Pirates created for us for the Fantasy Camp, but I was not real impressed with the packaging. The two DVDs came in a double CD case, which is kind of utilitarian if you ask me.

So I went ahead and created a DVD case insert for standard DVD cases. Here are a couple of files that you can download depending on what word processing software you have. (Right click on one of the links and select Save.)

Microsoft Word

OpenOffice.org 3.x

To print these out, you will most likely need to use legal paper, as the width of the insert is almost the size of a standard piece of letter paper, and most printers cannot print that close to the edge of the paper. Also, I would recommend using a paper cutter instead of scissors to trim it down, it makes much nicer edges. The printed page is designed for you to trim away some of the printed part, so do not trim right along the printed edge, go a little bit inside for starters.

Experiment, remix, but most of all, have fun. I hope to see all of you fellow campers at the 2012 Fantasy Camp. Raise the Jolly Roger!