• just got shot down by ESPN for a summer internship… the search continues #
• watching State of Play #
• RT @kimberlyjc: RT: @merryfaith: I keep hoping to hear somebody sneeze so I can say #swineflu instead of bless you and see if they notice. #
• RT @sahyder1: WASH POST: Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, according to sources #
• @evman182 you a Specter fan? #
• RT @SportsCenter: Keep an eye on Patrick Schuster. The Florida high schooler goes for his 5th consecutive no-hitter this afternoon. #
• RT @summaiyahhyder: RT @msnbc_breaking NYC official: Suspected swine flu hits 'hundreds' of kids http://tinyurl.com/csco87 #
• Yanks just lowered $2,600 tickets to $1,200 and season ticket holders get either refunds or credit. – ESPN radio #
• RT @LeftTheBox: Lets Get Twitter to Add a Retweet Button, Join the Petition Here: http://retweet.com – Spread the Word #retweetsite #
• probably one of my best blog entries: "Specter Swap: A Gimmick or Wake Up Call?" http://tinyurl.com/dd8uj8 #
• 2 baseball games, 2 hockey game 7's, 2 basketball game 5's… so many games, so little time. #
• Beat-N-J! Beat-N-J! Beat-N-J! Let's go Hurricanes! #
• @SportsCenter this is the reason hockey playoffs are better than any other sport in the post-season in reply to SportsCenter #
• AP: Jets release Favre, free to sign with any team – http://tinyurl.com/d8ftus #
• Jose Molina had a sac bunt and a grand slam in the same inning. Hasn’t happened since Sal Bando on 5/7/75 [via @peteabe] #
• RT @cnnbrk: 23-month-old Texas child confirmed as first U.S. swine flu death, according to Richard Besser, acting director, CDC. #
• SwineFlu case count at 91 cases, 10 states, and 1 death. (via @CDCemergency) http://tinyurl.com/d7gxov #

I definitely put off recommending blogs in the segment “ABG Recommends” much longer than I would have liked but as this week’s snowpocalypse allowed me to get some work done, I’ll recommend one now. This one is called “The Two-Headed Think Tank” and its co-written by Niko Gkionis and Matt Friesen who were both teammates in Belgium for a little while.

Niko Gkionis is a professional soccer player who currently plies his trade in the Belgium 3rd division for Excelsior Veldwezelt. Born and raised in New Jersey, Niko probably likes MTV reality television shows just as much as I despise them but we can both agree to like sports of all kinds. He graduated with a degree in Chemical Biology from Stevens Institute of Technology. I saw Niko play for two years when I first came to Stevens and he’s still probably one of the best players I have seen play in D-III all these years later.

Matt Friesen spends his days in the rain of the NW playing soccer for the Kitsap Pumas, members of the NW division of the USL’s PDL. He’s pretty much been a West Coast boy his entire life as he was born in California, raised in Oregon and attended Whitworth University (in Spokane, Washington) graduating with a degree in Computer Science.

At first I wasn’t sure how this blog was going to work out since one of the two guys takes a relative topic in the sports or entertainment world and puts up their view and the other is left to reply in the following post. It is quite a novel idea and I haven’t seen too many other blogs like it that post a reply to one of their own posts.

Apologizes for the broken links around the blog currently but I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.9 and everything but the individual posts have transferred over. Trying to figure out what went wrong and have it fixed as soon as possible.

Hopefully, it doesn’t take too long.

[EDIT] Well that didn’t take very long and a lot of thanks to Brian Feraudo, Evan Raffel and Don Campbell.

Anyone else seeming to have trouble upgrading from WordPress 2.8.6 to 2.9 should certainly follow this link. It is quite useful: What I Learned Upgrading to WordPress 2.9.

Popularity: 7%

So I have been thinking about doing such a feature on my blog for a little while now and I have finally figured out a schedule for it. There will be more features added on as I develop a more scheduled routine but the first one is going to be a monthly blog recommendation. On the second Friday of every month, I plan to recommend one new blog that I will endorse not because someone told me to but because it is one I follow regularly and it is something you guys should read too.

The first recommendation is going to be of a blog called “Predator Fitness” started by a couple of kids who went to high school with me once upon a time. It is relatively new, started a couple of months back, and I just added it to my blogroll but it has some quality information for pretty much any lifestyle and how to go about it in a little bit more healthier and hopefully fitter fashion. Pulled straight from their About Us page, it states “Predator Fitness was created to provide our readers with an interactive site to share the latest workouts, health news, nutrition tips and exercises in order to become as functionally fit as possible!”

At first I wasn’t exactly sure how this blog would turn out but it has had pretty decent posts since its startup varying from different types of exercises to recipes to even one of the author’s personal recommendation on how to get over a cold/sickness in a matter of days.

Edit: Thanks to “Shot Shanker” for giving the update on the goals on either side of halftime. If anyone wants to fill me in on that or any other detail I might have left out… feel free to leave a comment or contact me any other way.

On the warmest 40 degree morning you will ever experience, the Alumni and Academy soccer teams faced off for the eighth time in four years. It was not as easy as one might have expected giving the Alumni owned a 6-1 record against the current Academy team. Keeping true to Academy form, the 11:00 scheduled game time promptly started at 11:30 after some roster and starting position difficulties.

The game was only a matter of minutes old, when the Academy would get the first strike. Following an Alumni turnover on the opening possession, Academy calmly moved the ball down the field into attacking territory when Sami Abdisubhan fed the ball to Maksim Goryunov who brought it up on the near-side flank loosely marked. Max would eventually cross the ball into the box bypassing most defenders towards the far corner of the 6-yard box where it was essentially a one-on-on between alum Frank Levering and current Junior Daniel Hillman. The younger one would have his moment as a well timed leap and connecting on a header over Frank’s head inside the near-side post would put the current Academy squad up 1-0.

The lead would not last very long as only a few moments later, Kevin Scala and Chuck Andrejcisk would get the Alumni moving in the right direction. It would be a well timed pass from the former that beat two defenders and allowed to Chuck to take a couple of uncontested touches before drilling the ball in the back of the net to even up the score at 1.