So, what’s up for grabs?

• 2008 Harley Davidson Roadster XLR1200r – $6,000 (old Craigslist Posting)
• Canon 7D DLSR Camera w/ 18-200 lens ($600 lens) – I bought this setup for $2000 last year with plans to use more than I have. I don’t use it at all right now. I will throw in an 8GB professional CF card too. Make offer.
• Jugs Jr. Baseball/Softball Pitching Machine – $1000 (link) – Less than a year old and has spent 80% of the time in the shed. Cage was destroyed in tornado and this is the 2nd time it was damaged, this time too much to put back together. I have decided not to replace the cage and the machine is now useless to me.
• COMbat Rusty Bumgardner Anti Virus Reloaded Fully Loaded: VIRSP5-RB Slow Pitch Bat - 34″/26 oz – Never used, still in plastic shrinkwrap. Planned to use this season, but decided not to play. Paid $299 from Justbats.com (link to bat) last month. Will take $250 for it.

I’ve been trying to get around to sell these items for a few weeks and now I have a reason to go forward. I can use a portion to help Tuscaloosa’s Tornado victims. I have some other items to add later, but for now, just these 3.

Please contact me via contact form, email, or if you have my number… the phone. Thanks.

So, I live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I grew up here and moved away for 9 years while I was in the US Navy. Shortly after returning to Tuscaloosa, I was working for Bellsouth as an outside tech when one of the worst Tornadoes that ever came through Tuscaloosa hit. It happened down in the area I currently live in, the 69 south area. Luckily, I didn’t live there at the time. Working for Bellsouth, we worked long hours for quite some time getting things fixed up out there. It was the 7th most deadly tornado in Alabama history until yesterday. The one that hit Tuscaloosa yesterday, along with tornadoes in Cordova and Phil Campbell, knocked that Dec 2000 tornado down to 10th on the list. Yesterday’s tornado in Tuscaloosa is no tied for #1 as the most deadly tornado in Alabama history according to ABC 33/40′s Weather blog. This is likely to change to a standalone #1 spot after the death toll is final. This is scary and sad and has my wife ready to move away from Tuscaloosa.

Almost 2 weeks ago, our neigborhood was hit with another tornado that destroyed my kids batting cage and swing set. It damaged several other things including my roof. I still have a large tarp covering most of my roof while I wait on State Farm to come out to look at it.

My son's swing set all crumpled up!

Mother Nature doesn't want us to have this…

This is part of my roof damage

2 weeks ago, I was not home and when power went out and I was an hour away (in Greensboro, Al) without any contact with my wife and kids, I was terrified. I heard on the radio that a tornado hit down near Shelton State and my heart dropped. I was able to get home and luckily nobody was injured and we only had damage to our home.

Yesterday, I happened to be off work taking care of some plumbing issues. Luckily we didn’t have any damage or scare really. I was outside watching the sky when the devastating twister dropped into the middle of town. I think I have the tornado on video from afar, but was unable to check it out yet since we were out power until 5am today.

Thanks to all my friends and family that reached out via Twitter, Facebook, and text messages to see that we were ok. It really feels good to know that so many care. Thanks!

Sad times for many in Tuscaloosa today. I urge anyone that wants to donate to the Red Cross to do so. Thanks to Greg McElroy for tweeting info on how to help today too!

Here are some scary videos of yesterday’s twisters:

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For some ABC 33/40 Viewer photos, check out this slide show.

The Crimson White has a list of confirmed buildings that are damaged or destroyed. Milo’s, one of my favorites is destroyed. Click the link to see what buildings they have confirmed as damaged, here’s their list of destroyed buildings:

• Forest Lake houses
• Smoothie King
• Honey Baked Ham
• Express Oil Change
• Steakout
• Milo’s
• Krispy Kreme
• Replays

I wanted to cruise by that area last night to check it out myself, but I just couldn’t bring myself into being “that guy”. I didn’t want to get in the way of rescue workers and other crews. I probably won’t get over there for a few days in fact. I did visit the Regions in the University Mall parking lot a few hours before it was hit. I sure hope the check I deposited was entered into the computer before.

Thanks again to everyone that checked in on us and please pray for those affected by this terrible tornado.

Hello. If you have read this blog for quite some time, you would know that I used to have an awesome pond with some huge Koi in my courtyard. That is no longer the case. Last winter, all 4 of our largest Koi, the pretty ones with the beautiful fins, died to what we believe was a predator attack.  A couple of them had signs of damage as if something tried to take them out of the water with teeth or something. The looked very sick and eventually died. At this point, my wife decided to give the rest of the fish to a friend of the family. She now wants to just fill the pond in, but I think there is something more we can do with this. I just don’t know what we can do.

Well, I’ve finally finished with this project and wanted to share what I have done with the courtyard!

Here is what it looked like back before the pond:

After we got it all done, here’s what it looked like right after it was finished:

After we lost our fish, this is how it looked like for almost a year:

And here it is this evening:

UPDATE: 2 More Photos of the finished product:

Maybe I will grab some better shots once the grass is greener and the plants have all bloomed. Actually, the photo doesn’t do it justice at all. I’ll update this post with more photos tomorrow.

Here is a gallery from back when we installed the pond.

This is just after about 1 hour of snow. I didn’t really think it would stick since it was almost 50 degrees here today.

Here is a perfect line shuffling around Facebook today…

A Veteran is someone, who at one point in their life,wrote a blank check payable to the United States of America for an amount up to, and including, their life. Regardless of personal political views, that is an honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer remember that fact…

This is so true. I have always said that military members are too underpaid too!

Here are a couple photos, one of me in the Navy and one of my dad in the Army.

Me on the USS Cardinal fantail.

Me and my dad

The only reason I am posting this is to let anyone that values my opinions on products based on my status as an MVP can know that I have walked away. I don’t want anyone to take anything I say on here, Twitter, or GottaBeMobile as the words of an MVP. I am just a normal, everyday Joe with my own opinions.

I waited this long to announce it because I was unsure what I can or can’t say. From what I understand, I am still bound by the NDA I have been under for 6 years for another year. I am not 100% sure if it’s a year from the day I quit or a year from my last award date. (April 1st, 2010) It doesn’t really matter since most of what I have ever learned early makes it public well before I can say anything anyhow. I am waiting for the official word from the program manager to make it official and to find out what sort of legal stuff is involved.

Anyhow, no biggie guys… I am still Chris with or without some Microsoft title.

I want to thank all the MVPs I have had some great times with in the past! The Summit days were always fun. Mauricio, remember that night we went to Dennys at like 3 in the morning and didn’t get back until sunrise? Who was with us? I can’t remember her name. Special thanks to Don S and Steven Hughes for getting me involved in the program. Jack Cook! I could make a post to the fun times we’ve had, not just as MVPs. I will have to get someone awarded to take you to that place we liked to head to. Eric Hicks and I will have to do our thing at a Karaoke  bar at CES or something now. Jason Dunn, the original MVP! Hang in there Jason. Even though I don’t fully agree with you on the direction of the program, I have faith that you might get them to listen one day. You guys are great and without the MVP program, I would have never met cool folks like Darius and Jon. Stay in touch dudes! I will definitely miss hanging with the overseas MVPs like my smoker friend Arne! Mark Briggeman… check into the UPS truck for me in March bro. Hawaii isn’t overseas, but Todd Ogasawara is the coolest dude. Will miss the candy. Mike Temporale – dude, we are too much alike. I hope you keep in touch despite my leaving sir. Twitter makes all this so easy, I feel like I am moving away and all with this super long, crazy paragraph.

Oh, thanks Tyler, Andrew, and Mike F.

I am going to miss some things about being an MVP, but this choice wasn’t a hard choice to make really. I think it’s for the best.

Friday and Saturday, my son and I spent the weekend playing/learning baseball, connecting, sleeping in a tent in 30 degree weather, and having a blast together. I didn’t check email, didn’t tweet, didn’t even call to check in with my wife. Everything just seemed to have stopped, including time for the time we spent at “Baseball Country“. Yes, it was in the Country and it was Baseball. The name of the camp is “Baseball Country”. It’s a very nice and still growing Baseball Camp in Jena, Alabama, just 30 minutes from where we live. This camp was the Father/Son camp and is designed to spend time learning with each other as well as getting instruction on how to help your son with drills. What makes “Baseball County” so much different from other baseball camps around is that they use baseball to share the word of God with the campers.

Lee Evans and Bret Taft underneath their photos on the wall.

The staff has several coaches with Major League baseball experience and most have ties to the University of Alabama. Kenny Burns is the director of “Baseball Country” and is the one that started it. The staff included the following former players:

• Lee Evans was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates and played 9 years in the minor leagues with the Pirates, Chicago White Sox, Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres.
• Bret Taft was drafted by the Royals and played a couple years in the minors.
• Andy Philips was drafted by the New York Yankees and got some playing time and valuable learning experience from what he calls the best hitting coach he’s ever met while there in New York.
• Jayson Cox played with Andy Philips at Alabama where they had lots of College world series experience. In 1999, Miami put them out just before the CWS finals.

We started the day on Friday putting up tents for the night to come. It turned out that rushing the construction of our tent wasn’t a good idea. After the tent was put up we headed to dinner, then a wiffle ball game, and finally an outdoor movie on a huge outdoors screen (The Rookie). We got 3 outs in a wiffle ball home run derby. The dads winner hit 4, but luckily for my son, I hit at least 1 homerun. Yes, I took former NY Yankee, Andy Philips over the Green Monster at Henway Park. The other two fields at their complex are “”Wiggly Field,” which allows players ages 7-10 a chance to hit one deep in the corn, while “Corniskey Park” serves as a more suitable field of dreams for players ages 11 and up. The kids played a wiffle ball game against each other while Kenny Burns took us dads out to talk.

Back to the tent though, we watched the movie (The Rookie) and headed to bed afterward. Turns out I jacked the tent all up and it was now too dark to fix. We ended up having to set everything up and pass our gear though a window since I covered the opening zipper. Not good. We did ok though. It got down to 30 degrees, but Brett and I did really well with our sleeping bags. I didn’t get a good night’s sleep due to the hard ground and not being able to start comfortable. My snoring apparently woke Brett up 2-3 times too.

We got up at 6:30am and started a day full of drills. The day ended with an actual baseball game for the kids. I was proud of Brett. He made some errors in the field, but he did well at bat. His 1st at bat was a strikeout where he got pretty mad (which was the only real showing of bad attitude all weekend). The next at bat, he hit a rope right to 1st and the 1st baseman ran over and tagged the bag with Brett 1 step from reaching. Next at bat he shot a hard hit liner to right field and ended up wit an inside the park homerun (courtesy of a bad throw to 3rd). He hit another grounder to 1st on his last at bat too.

Brett fielding some grounders

The day was fun, the great stories of the guys that put on the camp and the excellent instruction made for a great balance this weekend. When I asked Brett what he enjoyed learning the most, he told me it was the pitching instruction. He’s a lefty and now he wants to pitch. I will be working on this for the next year with him. He has one more season before kid pitch anyhow.

Baseball Country is a non-profit and they are always looking for donations to help add to the complex. They have several projects planned and they are always looking for help if anyone is interested in donating.

Disclaimer: I did take my cell out of the car to snap some photos late Friday night.

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Some people on YouTube asked to see my office, so here goes. My son’s computer used to be in his room, unconnected. Now he’s getting older, we need to get him online some for certain things he wants to check out, so I brought it into my office so I can monitor his internet activity. He’s only 7, can’t give him the net in his room, ya know.

Since Brett was born, I lost my office, so I made due with what we had. I used our formal living room and split it into two with a huge desk. This is kind of a reception area if you will. 

It’s not much, but it’s mine.

My question for anyone reading me is this, when should we buckle down on trying to get her a scholarship or whatever. Did we wait too late or is now the right time? I pushed her to talk to a counselor at school last year but she is shy and didn’t listen. Do I need to go down to her school and talk to them for her?

Help me!!! I don’t want to risk losing out on an opportunity for her. I went to the US Navy out of school, so I am out of the loop on these type things.

Thanks!