matt weighs in

We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and now it’s reality. Matt Weighs In is officially its own blog page for CatNamedPig.

(sound of a great church choir singing loudly in the background)

If I put one-tenth of the amount of time into what I write as I did in getting this to work properly, well, I’d spend quite a bit of time thinking about what to write and looking at a blank screen. As of right now, I still have to do the same thing for the SienaDictates page on catnamedpig, so we’ll see how soon I get to regular posting here.

And, I need to figure out if I can have all the stuff I wrote at the old Matt Weighs In page transferred here. That’s for another night.

Thanks for reading and supporting our family chez CatNamedPig!

Okay, I’m back at it. You can stop holding your breath in anticipation now. I hope you have noticed some additions in the sidebar of the main page – Twitter (or tweets), which we love and force ourselves not to update every hour and our Flickr pictures, which we have to do better to update more often. We can even send our tweets by text message, which we did Friday night from Chino Latino in Uptown. You’ve been warned. I’m working on a few other things that may or may not screw up the sight if I mess them up, but I’ll try to keep that to a minimum, or at least contact my friend Dave, who’s recently been experiencing some updating pains. That’s the joy of the interweb.

A few thoughts on a Sunday night to catch up:

1. We could get some closure to the Democratic race on Tuesday. Most polls show Hillary with only a slight edge in Pennsylvania (down from earlier in the month), but nowhere near significant enough to make up much ground in delegates. I didn’t see the most recent debate last week, but most accounts were fairly disgusted with ABC’s lines of questioning. Two different recaps are here and here. I have thoughts on what Obama said at the private fundraiser in San Francisco a couple weeks ago, but he looks to have weathered the ridiculous reactions to it (hint as to how I feel about those reactions).

2. The NCAA basketball tournament was exciting as advertised. I have to admit that I fully jumped on the Davidson bandwagon after they disposed of Georgetown, who, most unfortunately, was my pick to win the whole damn thing. I had G’town in my pool with Laura’s family, who mostly live on the West Coast and had a predictably strong UCLA bias. Congrats to those in Missouri who were biased to Kansas, and, therefore, came out on top in the pool.

3. The NBA playoffs have started, and they are living up to their billing, as expected. I watched about 52 of the 58 minutes in Game 1 between San Antonio and Phoenix. The Suns were ahead most of the game and should have won, but were in foul trouble when it mattered – I’m not a big fan of refs and usually tell whoever will listen that I know I could do better in stripes.

The game was almost unwatchable for two reasons: every ref call was followed by players whining about it (this grows tiresome) and THE PA ANNOUNCER AND THE MUSIC WERE SO LOUD THROUGHOUT THE GAME THAT I ALMOST TURNED DOWN THE SOUND ON THE TV (bet you want to stop reading after I just screamed at you for five seconds). They do this at MN Timberwolves games, too. Music plays while the game is going on, and the game announcer thinks it’s his job to get the crowd going. The game should be exciting enough to keep the fans in it. This was evident during last year’s playoff games between Golden State and Dallas. GS’s crowd was so amped that they drowned out the music. I can’t imagine the next time that might happen at Target Center.

4. Elliot is walking. I can’t tell you the non-stop joy this is to watch him keep his balance on grass, dirt and sand. It’s great comedy, and I may start taking bets with people as to whether or not he can stay on his feet for more than five seconds on different terrain. I would take the over every time.

5. I miss Johan.

6. I watched three of the six MN Wild games and listened to two others on the radio. They only led for about four minutes in the six games played (about 380 minutes total), but with my limited hockey knowledge, they controlled play for most of the series. They ran into a Colorado Avalanche team whose goalie won the series for them (you can’t overlook their overall defense, though). I think the Wild were done in by a team that played their game better than they did in the series. The Wild are coached to be defensive minded first and take advantage of opportunities to score when the opponents give it to them. This series they lost, they were the aggressive team the majority of the time, and Colorado scored when they had the chance. Only one goalie was MVP in this series.

I mentioned on the main page that changing the look of catnamedpig.com actually wasn’t as bad an experience as I thought it would be, nor did it take as long. However, there was about an hour where I just stared at the screen, trying to figure out what to do. During this hour, there were 3 lines of error messages on a white screen where our website should have been. This is what prompted the swearing to Laura.

I had deleted a bunch of old files that were going to be replaced (which is what my Support Forums suggested to do, as not all files would overwrite correctly). What I didn’t realize was how much harder it would be to upload the new files to our new theme template. I thought I could just upload the files in their folders, but this was not the case.

I had to remember which folders and files I had deleted and then upload the new folders or files to their correct locations in the new theme template, which was my problem. My handwritten notes should have been sufficient for me to recall where files went, but if you’ve seen my handwriting before, you’d understand the flaw in me trying to follow what I had written. I’m a typer, not a writer.

Thanks to those of you who commented or e-mailed us with fixes that needed to be made. Upcoming additions God-willing to the site are a widget in the sidebar linking to our Flickr account (catnamedpig), an expansion in the number of categories we have, so posts can actually be sorted together (is that an oxymoron?) and, possibly, getting me my own URL on this site, instead of a Page, which is an absolute b*tch in which to write. I won’t get into that here.

Finally, sports talk – I love all the activity in the NBA before the trade deadline. The West is now even more loaded, and I’m not so sure the Celtics will be the team to come from the East. My prediction now would be Lakers-Cavs. More to come on this.

How can I even compete with the content on the main page? My guess is that I won’t, so therefore shouldn’t even try. I think I’ll leave the family storytelling up to Laura, for I had typed only 4 words in my 1st post attempt, and I hear over my shoulder, “That should be on Siena’s page; plus, I was going to write about that. So be it.

Since I’m into sports, I’m sure I’ll comment (hopefully) briefly on different topics regarding the Minnesota and national sports scenes. Here goes: I really can’t believe the Twins are reportedly close to shipping Johan Santana to one of our coasts to play for a team in their own league – could be New York, Boston or Anaheim (to join the already departed Torii Hunter and I refuse to call them the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California in the country of the United States, or whatever it is now).

I was for upping the tax $.03 for every $20 I spend on certain things, so the Twins could build a stadium, but if they don’t offer Santana 5-7 years at $20-$25 million per year, I’ll wonder what is going on over there at Kirby Puckett Place and why they didn’t bother to open the new stadium with the best pitcher and/or the best center fielder in baseball when their fans paid almost $400 million for them to have a place to play.

They’ll sell tickets, because of the newness of it all, and who wouldn’t want to watch a game outdoors rather than in the dome, but this is not looking good, and I am quite upset.

I’d rather not read or see on tv reports of any more deals for Santana that may or may not be happening this week. And I won’t even get started on how I feel about Hank Steinbrenner trying through the media to make the trade happen over the weekend. I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well, and we won’t even have a roof.