The Celtics land the Big Ticket

garnettingreenKevin Garnett had originally shot down a deal that would have sent him to the Boston Celtics during the NBA draft day on June 28th.

But with the addition of Ray Allen from the Sonics to the Celtics, alot has changed in Garnett’s mind over the past month.

“I am excited to become a Celtic,” Garnett said. “It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to play with players the quality of Paul and Ray. The Celtics have had a proud tradition and now I hope that we can add to the legacy.”

With the Trio of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and now Kevin Garnett, the Celtics have risen from the depths of mediocracy and have become the instant favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the finals.

This has become the NBA’s biggest trade for a single player. In the deal for Garnett, the Celtics gave up forwards Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes and Gerald Green, guard Sebastian Telfair and center Theo Ratliff, two first-round draft picks and cash considerations. They basically sold their future to win now.

I think this dynamic trio who seem to be willing to put ego’s aside to win will have a small window of opportunity to win a couple championships. They remind me of the Miami Heat who brought in aging talent for a shot at a title. Ray Allen is 32, Paul Pierce is 29, and the Big Ticket is 31. All currently in or just passing their prime years.

In order for the Celtics to have a shot at the title, this group of three need to gel quickly and more importantly, remain injury free. Both Pierce and Allen have a history of injuries and it remains to be seen whether or not Allen’s ankle will hold up.

Garnett is my one of my favorite players coming second only to Kobe Bryant. I’m very happy for him and that he has welcome the opportunity to put himself in a better situation. I had really hoped that he would have opted out and joined my Laker team or been traded to the Lakers for Lamar, Bynum, and Brown. I guess we can’t win them all.

Let the Boston bandwagon begin!

Farewell Bill Walsh

tx.walsh1As a die hard fan of the 49ers franchise for over two decades, today was a very melancholic morning for me when I woke up and read that Bill Walsh had passed away just hours earlier.

The 49er legend revolutionized the sport of football with his west coast offense, and led the way for three of the franchise’s four Superbowl titles in the 1980′s.

You will be missed Mr. Walsh. My condolences go out to the Walsh family and everyone close to him. Rest in Peace.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Bill Walsh, the groundbreaking football coach who won three Super Bowls and perfected the ingenious schemes that became known as the West Coast offense during a Hall of Fame career with the San Francisco 49ers, has died. He was 75.

Walsh died early today following a long battle with leukemia, according to Stanford University, where he served as coach and athletic director.

Walsh didn’t become an NFL head coach until 47, and he spent just 10 seasons on the San Francisco sideline. But he left an indelible mark on the United States’ most popular sport, building the once-woebegone 49ers into the most successful team of the 1980s with his innovative offensive strategies and teaching techniques.

Optimizing my WordPress Blog

iheartwordpresssignI visited Jaypee today and he posted a very interesting utility called Xinu. Basically, it gives you all types of information about your blog such as pagerank, backlinks and website syndication just to name a few.

While I had a very decent Google Pagerank and positive diagnosis for 7milesdown’s description, title and URL (using the All in One SEO pack plugin for wordpress), I noticed that it lacked in many important areas to get the proper exposure on the web. With this in mind, over the next few hours I spent my time searching the internet and looking for ways to help optimize my site.

The very first problem I discovered was that my blog was in a subdirectory. I really dislike the clutter of setting up wordpress in the root of my server so I placed it in a folder called “/wp“. This was a bad move. I wish I had known more about SEO or Search Engine Optimization before I started this blog. You can read this article for more details on this.

As for my solution to the problem it wasn’t very simple. Originally, I had a redirect from my root to my subdirectory using a simple redirect script in HTML. I finally decided it was in my best interests to allow access to my blog using the root instead of “7milesdown/wp”. I didn’t however want to lose all the traffic I’ve generated from almost three years online, so what I did was kept the install in the subdirectory while allowing access from the root by following these instructions. It seems to have worked out pretty well. I had to adjust my permalinks to mirror the changes made, but it was pretty simple to do and things seem to be working fine. While doing this, I found out my two sentence post on the postal service exam is ranked sixth when you type in Postal Service Exam. Who knew?

There is still quite a bit of work to be done but I’m happy with what I accomplished so far. My next step is to try to monetize this site like John Chow did with Jonchow.com less than a year ago. Its hard to believe he is making over $10,000 a month off one blog alone! Simply amazing. If I could make just $1000.00 extra per month I’d be ecstatic, wouldn’t you??