It's been a long time since we rock'n'rolled...

Friends, romans, blog readers extraordinare. It is time for me to get reacquainted with the site that was my blogging home near the end of my tenure at WMFD in Wilmington.

The end, you say? Yes...the end. For those who don't know me, or know what's going on, I've been in Winston-Salem since July of 06...pretty much ever since Aimee and I got back from the wedding.

Winston has been pretty cool so far...although not a lot to do in the way of night life. They do have a neat little downtown area, with a few bars worth visiting. But other than that, we hear Greensboro is the place to go.

Speaking of the 'boro (that's what they call it here), we'll be visiting their downtown area on Saturday night, as my mom pops into town to celebrate my 29th birthday (which is actually today). We're going to go to some fondu restaurant. Aimee and I fell in love with fondu after several trips to the "Little Dipper" in downtown Wilmington. I know we'll have a great time.

So, job wise, I've been busy. I have a full-time job and a part-time job. The full time gig is as an assistant program director at WSJS. There, I'm pretty much a behind the scenes kind of guy, although I do fill in occasionally as the host of the 3-6pm show, and I'm doing play by play for our High School football broadcasts.

My part time job is a heck of a lot more fun and challenging. It's the job I told everybody in Wilmington about before I left, at a company called ISP. I am the network studio host for the California Golden Bears Radio Network. Maybe sometime soon, I'll post a clip of me in action here on the blog...just have to figure out how.

At any rate, I couldn't be happier. Life is good. Marriage is better. The jobs are cool. Things seem to be going along rather nicely. Oh, and I ordered myself an iPod today off of eBay. It's my first venture into the iPod world. I'm looking to get into downloading podcasts and what not. Hey...maybe I'll even start my own some day.

We shall see...

They drafted who?!?

As I sit in my mother's computer room at her house in Charlotte, I've just finished reading up on this Donte Whitner, a 5'10 safety out of Ohio State that, for some reason, my Buffalo Bills chose with the 8th overall pick of the 2006 NFL Draft.

Now, I have to admit. When Matt Leinart was sitting there for the taking, there was a part of me that was thinking, "End the Losman experiment. Draft Leinart! Draft him!!"

But then, common sense prevailed. Why draft Leinart? You have nobody to protect him. How can he be any more effective than J.P. when he'd only get a fraction of a second to make a decision before getting knocked on his butt?

Next, the thought of trading out of the pick entered my mind. I thought to myself, "Surely, there's a team out there who wants Leinart. Why not trade out of it and get some more picks?" Afterall, the Bills need help in a lot of areas. The more picks, the more chances to fill those needs, right?

But when the commissioner stepped to the podium and announced that the Bills had taken Whitner, I stood there confused. Mad. Disappointed. "Who the hell is Donte Whitner?", I thought.

I knew who he was, but I was not expecting him to be drafted by my team...especially at the #8 spot. Most mock drafts I saw had him going anywhere from 15th all the way to the end of the first round. So why at 8?

Enter twobillsdrive.com.

I went to the site this morning, just hoping to make sense of all the confusing tactics my Bills employed in Day One of the draft. What I found is that the Bills were concerned that the Lions may take Whitner with the #9 pick. If this is truly the case, more power to Marv for pulling the trigger.

Too many times, a team in the draft will pick the "best available" instead of a player they actually need. The Bills need a safety. They liked Whitner. Sure, they probably could've gotten some extra picks to move down and still take him, but they didn't want to take that chance.

Now, maybe I'm drinking the Marv Levy Kool-Aid here. But I'm really kind of on-board with this way of thinking. Of course, I'll reserve complete judgment until I've had a chance to see Whitner play a few games, maybe even years in the NFL.

But the last two times the Bills drafted an Ohio State DB in the draft, Nate Clements and Antoine Winfield turned out to be pretty good players. As I said...I'm giving Marv & company the benefit of the doubt.

Various Wednesday Thoughts

Okay...so maybe it was a bad idea for me to drive my Land Rover into the water. But come on! Look at the picture! No WAY I could've known it was that deep...or that the sand in there was basically quick sand.

Okay, I admit it, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to the outdoors, but there was no way I saw this coming. Maybe that makes me seem even more dumb, I don't know. Whatever the case, the situation sucks.

Talked to the insurance folks yesterday about it. They did officially total the car. No shock there. As you can see in this photo, there was water inside in the passenger side, basically drowning the car's electrical system. I might as well have smashed the damn thing. It's a shame, though. If you look at the car from the outside, you could never tell that the damn thing is dead.

Onto other issues, it looks like UNCW has found their man. Reports are that Charlotte 49er's assistant Benny Moss will be offered the job. As I said on the show yesterday, I like this hire. I like the way Charlotte plays, and that style will also sit well with Seahawk Nation.

I have to stick up for my fellow media members here in town. The Star-News has been catching a lot of flock from the message board community for not fully investigating the events leading to Brad Brownell's resignation. I think that the people here couldn't be more off base.

What people fail to realize is that in this business, before you can report something, you have to have a certain amount of sources, all telling you the same thing. You can't just run with a story because your uncle's gardener nephew told your barber's plumber's daughter that something happened a certain way. That sort of irresponsible reporting may exist on the internet, but in real news publications (like the Star-News), it's frowned upon BIG TIME!

So, basically what I'm saying is this. The reason the Star-News hasn't run a story explaining exactly why Brownell left is probably a pretty good one. But that reason does NOT include that they are lazy, that they aren't working hard on it, or my personal favorite, "Rountree is paying them off as well". Gotta love those message board geeks.

You know, there's a certain amount of Hatorade that you have to drink, in order to be accepted into the community of message board geeks. If you go on there, trying to be overly positive about anything, you usually get pummelled. Warning...message boards are not for the weak at heart.

That's all I got for now. I'm going to get back to updating this thing multiple times throughout the week. I just needed a little break after the trip to Greensboro and all of that. Thanks for reading!