Optimum Online blocking YouTube uploads?

So why is it that lately I can't upload anything to YouTube or other video sharing services when using my OOL connection but when using my Verizon Broadband Access connection it works just fine?

Life of ketchup

Here's Heinz commercial #2: the Life of Ketchup

Ketchup commercial #2 in the can

So on Tuesday we shot our second entry into the Heinz Top This TV challenge. It is now edited and we are working on music.

I'm excited about this one, I think it's even better than the first one. I will post it as soon as we're done.

Weekly Podcast

I participated in the recording of the OBFBL Weekly Podcast last night. It's awesome that Kurt has put together the league's satellite website and takes the time to do these podcasts. It was great fun to work on this one with Mike and Kurt and hopefully I can do another in the future.

In this episode, the Droids assisted with a little analysis of the playoff picture, we talk about recent trades, upcoming matches and OBFBL: The Next Generation. The volume of my voice is a little low, but that's just the way it goes.

You can listen to the episode here.

Threes are wild

I can't believe I just went 3-0 in the out-of-division-triple-header against 3 other contending teams and ended up only 3rd in line for the wild card spot.

Will It Blend... that is the question

Will It Blend is a great example of a simple concept being successfully executed and resulting in a perfect viral video. This one is my personal favorite:

The all-quality-human-being-team

So this year in fantasy baseball I've had the following people on my team:

• Brett Myers (assaulted wife on a Boston street)
  
• Elijah Dukes (admitted to smoking pot, accused of steroid use, has fathered five children by four different women, recently impregnated a 17-year-old foster child, threatened to murder his wife and children)

And now we have Scott Olsen:

AVENTURA, Fla.—Troubled pitcher Scott Olsen of the Florida Marlins was arrested early Saturday after refusing to pull over and getting into a fight with police officers.

Just horrible. I really need to start drafting a better class of people.

On the other hand, I know it's the wrong sport, but is Michael Vick still available?

New site up and running

So the new website is up, running and populated with some content. Creating it turned out to be a more time and effort consuming thing than I expected, but I feel like I've got a solid foundation in ASP.NET AJAX as a result.

Nifty things to check out:

• Photos: The photo page implements an ASP.NET AJAX control (from the toolkit) to display photos in a slideshow format. Right now, there's one for the improv group and a "greatest hits" one of Honey.
• Videos: This page implements a couple of neat AJAX features. It uses an Accordion Panel to showcase the videos in groups and there's a neat little trick if you click on any of the "About This Video" buttons.

All of the pages implement a control to give the top banner a rounded appearance (through the use of a Master Page), as well as some embedded items for fun.

I plan on adding more content and features (particularly AJAX-based ones) in the future, but for now it's time to do something else with my life.

In other news, the Yankees are on the verge of winning two today... nice!

Heinz Contest Entry #1

The Mental Pause improv and sketch comedy team (of which I am a part) has decided to produce some entries for the Heinz Top This TV Challenge, a contest sponsored by the ketchup people for user-created commercials.

Here's our first entry, entitled "Ketchup Dating":

Welcome

Welcome to the very first post of the Alspach.org blog. I am developing this website to test (and learn about) ASP.NET 2.0 with AJAX. Please browse the site and check out the content. I'll post some more information about myself, what I do and what you can find here a little later on.