Jared W. Smith

After a few false starts, I’m going to be finally taking a breather and heading up to Atlanta tomorrow with some friends. We’re going to catch the bloodied and bruised Braves (who just can’t catch a break) as they host the Milwaukee Brewers. The Braves found Chuck James to make the start against Jeff Suppan. (No, I will not live-tweet the game. :)) It’ll be my first trip to The Ted, so I’m really excited about that. Our seats are reasonably decent and I’m anticipating several fly balls in my direction. I think I’m going to buy a new Atlanta cap while I’m there; likely one of the super-comfortable 39-30 models used in spring training and batting practice. We’re also slated to head to Six Flags. It’s been, what, 10 years since I went to an amusement park? Crazy. Should be fun, though I have issues with rollercoasters that I’m not going to get into right now. I’m hoping to run into some friends who will also be in Atlanta along the way.

The trip’s going to be a good way to ring in August after a really wild July. I’m probably crazy to say this, but I’m ready to get summer over with so I can attack this last semester with as much as I can give.

I’m on the fence about Serious Business on Sunday. I’ll probably be back early in the day (provided we don’t lollygag in Atlanta, which is always possible and easy to do), but who knows after six hours of driving whether I’ll be in any shape to do Serious Business. That will probably be a game-time decision, so stay tuned. :)

Lots of tangents on tonight’s Serious Business; just the way I like it. We talked more Apple Store, bashed Windows a little bit, and got into a decent baseball discussion with lots of little tangents to connect it all together, including my odd Saturday night!

In case you missed it, here’s the show:

Serious Business is tentatively on for next Sunday at 8:30. I’m headed to Atlanta for the weekend, but I should be back by Sunday evening. I’m still working up the agenda for next week’s show and expect to have it up sometime this week. Thanks to everyone who fought through the technical troubles and stopped in!

Tonight’s Serious Business was a resounding success. Thanks to everybody who stopped in and really made it something great. Here’s hoping next week is just as good.

Here’s the recorded show, in case you missed it — and it was a good one. We went in-depth on PR practices with bloggers, new vs. old media, and you’ll even find out what my baseball bandwagon is this year…

Remember that, for now at least, we’re doing this every Sunday at 8:30 over on Ustream.tv. Check out the show’s website for links to the show as well as a link to the Facebook page. Fan the show if you deem it worthy. :) I’ll have more at the show website soon; it needs a WordPress install, I just need time.

This was a gorgeous weekend, save for the severe thunderstorms that roared through Charleston at about midnight Saturday. We’re now in that window where it will be absolutely gorgeous for about three weeks before things take a turn for the humid and miserable, so folks, go outside while you can. To take advantage of it, Duke, Ale, Chris, and I went out to a random park near Colonial Lake Saturday to play some wiffleball. The winds were prohibitive to this, though, and we needed more outfielders. Then, we lost the ball…and that was that.

Luckily, there was a tennis ball hanging around. Ignoring where that tennis ball may have been, we continued to play. We quickly realized that my dazzling assortment of changeups, fastballs, sliders, and sinkers was virtually unhittable, so we decided to change things up a bit…and we eventually came up with Relay. read more »

I’m dusting off the cobwebs here in my WordPress administration panel…been a few days. These are busy times — and they’ve been largely chronicled on Twitter.

Last night was our regularly scheduled blogger/tweeter meetup at Gene’s Haufbrau just west of the Ashley. Great times as always. Eugene and I kicked some butt in pool, and he did all the work at shuffleboard last night. Was great seeing the lot of the gang out once again. I’m hoping to make that next floating meetup. I think it’s pretty rockin’ that we have TWO monthly meetups now.

The weekend is, as usual, packed — I’m going to a baseball game Sunday for my sportswriting class. Going to watch baseball for class is pretty friggin’ cool. It’ll get me into the swing of things this spring; I’ve caught maybe an inning and a half of baseball so far this year, and need to improve upon that.

Again this year, I will be a Bad Young South Carolinian and will miss Carolina Cup. A friend photoshopped me into last year’s Cup festivities (and set it to Tarzan Boy by Baltimora) but locating that photograph and associated song will be left as an exercise to the reader. I was somewhat hoping to bring a decent video camera of some type and do some sort of video production, but not this time — I’m not sure when I’d get to it, and quite frankly, I could see myself being brutally assaulted by armies of pastel and plaid for some of the inevitable comedic twists that I would capture on tape.

On a closing, musical note — Angels & Devils, Fuel’s fourth album and first without Brett Scallions, has really started to grow on me. I’ve listened to it non-stop all week. Clearly, I’ve lost it.