Freestylin'

As you have probably realized, soccer is probably my favorite sport to watch and play. I have played soccer since I was about six, and have grown to love it since then. I have played rec, travel, varsity, and now intramural and club at Clemson.
My freshman year in high school I tried out for the varsity soccer team. The year before they had won the state title, so I thought it would be a great deal of work just to make the team. Unfortunately, I did not make the final cut, and I was destined to play on the junior varsity team. But, some players had gotten hurt before the season had truly started, and I was lucky enough to be pulled up to the varsity team. I had to prove to everyone that I was deserving of this spot, and worked very hard. In a tournament that my high school hosted, we played for the title against a 4A team (Northwestern), and we were only a 2A team. We should not have been able to beat them, but we were able to pull it out in penalty kicks (which, I had a part in by making one). Northwestern turned out to be the 4A state champions that year, so that win at the beginning of the season was huge. Throughout the season, I started to play a bigger and bigger role, and soon we were on our way to compete for the 2A state championship against Bishop England, a private school down in Charleston. They were a pretty good team, and we led them at half 2-0, but that lead was soon gone after they scored two quick goals in the second half. Then, they scored a third to go up 3-2. I had just finally come in to the game about the time they scored the third goal, but luckily, we were able to score a game-tying goal and force overtime. After another thirty minutes of playing, we had to go to penalty kicks to decide the game. After our first two guys made theirs, and their first guy made his, but the second guy's was saved, it was my turn. As a freshman, in a huge game, I made my PK to put us up 3-1. They made their third kick, and our guy made our fourth. So it was 4-2, and if our goalie saved their fourth kick, we would win. The team got ready to charge our keeper, and as we were all holding each other, we watched the goalie save the fourth kick, so we won the state title!! That was one of the best experiences I have ever had.
Now, I am playing on the club soccer team here at Clemson for my second year, and have been a part of a lot of successes already. The first tournament I played in we won, which was really awesome. Then, we won a tournament down at the University of Florida. The trip back was long, but it was oh so gratifying. I have also been playing intramural soccer since I got to Clemson in the fall of 2006. My freshman year, we had a really good team, and when the playoffs started, we were ranked #1 out of all the teams playing soccer. The really neat thing was that most of our team were made up of free agents, and people I had never met until our first game. We really came together well and were a pretty good team. Unfortunately, we lost in the quarterfinals to a pretty good team that had a lot of foreign players who were very skilled, so it was not too bad of a loss. Last year, we had a lot of the same players back, and after losing our first game, we won the rest of them by 1 goal, every game. We made it to the final game, which, fittingly, we won 1-0. It was such an awesome experience and win, and hopefully we can repeat that performance this year.
Well, I think that's about it for all the exciting soccer in my life...so far.

The Future is Near

The future is very hard to predict, and is becoming harder and harder to predict day after day. Technology is constantly changing. How we view objects and events changes almost daily. Although the future is changing a lot, I still have an idea of what I would like my life to be like. In about ten years, I would like to have a well-paying job, a house, a family, and a nice car. Most likely, this will be many of my peers' hopes about the future, so that kind of makes this boring. Since I am a marketing major, I hope to have a marketing related job in either the sports or video games industry. Video games might seem silly to most people, but I love to play, and during these tough economic times, the video games industry is one of the few that is still doing fairly well. The sports industry also seems to be doing alright amid all of the economic challenges that are facing many people all over the country.
I believe in ten years, I will be working for a fairly large company. I will have been there about eight or so years, so I will not be a newbie, but not a marketing manager either. I would hope to be living in the southeast, but I would be up for living in the southwest or even southern California. I just want to be somewhere that has warm weather most of the year. Hopefully in ten years I will have a family, but might not have any kids yet. I'm hoping to have my career established, and have my wife establish her career as well. Then, we would consider kids and go from there. It seems so far off now that I'm not entirely sure what I will do. I would love to have a decent sized home (4 bedrooms) and a nice car, but that just depends on where I am in the company's hierarchy and where I am living.
Although the future is a good ways away, I still have hopes and dreams of what I want my future to be like. Hopefully I will have a better estimate of what my future holds once I graduate from Clemson and get out into the workforce. Who knows, by the time I graduate, I could be wanting to work for a totally different company, live in an entirely different area, and have a completely different idea of what I want my personal life to be like. That's what makes the future so unique: it is always changing and keeps you on your toes.

2.0nd Blog Post

After watching this video, I learned a lot about how computers work and how information is transmitted through the Internet. I believe the title is sort of saying that we are the machine, especially how he has it as "The Machine is Us/ing Us". The use of the backslash makes the title appear to be "The Machine is Us", saying that we are what makes up the Internet now. We are what makes the Internet thrive, and without all of our new content that we add daily, Web 2.0 probably would not exist.
People that are trying to enter the workforce nowadays have a lot more information about themselves on the web. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have allowed people to share a lot of information that they might have kept to themselves. Posting pictures, favorite things, and the such help employers get a better idea of potential employees, and could be detrimental to the employee's chances. But, Web 2.0 can also be beneficial to people who are looking for a job. Through the use of YouTube, potential musicians, comedians, and film students can "strut their stuff" and showcase their skills.
Now for people that are already in the workforce, Web 2.0 can also be detrimental and beneficial. It can be detrimental in some of the same ways as listed above with Facebook and MySpace. If their employer finds lewd, obscene, or drunk pictures, or negative statements about their company, the employer might then talk with the employee, and could possibly lead to actions being taken. Web 2.0 can also be beneficial to current employees by providing tons and tons of information that could help an employee solve a problem. By using Google, Wikipedia, or similar sites, employees can search for almost anything and find a good amount of information about almost any subject.
I think when it says we need to "rethink everything", the video is trying to prove how far we have come in a limited amount of time. The way we communicate has been completely reinvented, starting with cell phones, to email, to instant messaging, and now social networking sites and blogs. All of these forms of communication have led to less and less face-to-face communication, which can become very detrimental to human relationships. More and more we are relying on the computer to communicate for us and thus taking out the human connection we have with each other. I think if we continue to use more and more technology to communicate, we will soon be out of touch with each other and we will no longer interact the way we do now. Human interaction has greatly declined, and although I believe it will not completely disappear, interaction will be very minimal.
Web 2.0 is great for giving ordinary people an opportunity to express themselves in numerous ways. Through sharing views in blogs, sharing pictures and information through social networking sites, to showing skills on YouTube, Web 2.0 has become a cornucopia of information and has given many opportunities to common people like you and me.

Everybody Loves Tyler

What up guys...my name is Tyler. I am from a small town outside of Columbia, SC called Chapin. I am a junior studying marketing, and I'm leaning towards a focus in sports marketing. I mean, who doesn't love sports?? Some of my favorite sports to watch are football, soccer, some baseball, college basketball, and NASCAR. Yea, I know, I'm a redneck for liking NASCAR, but I don't care...I really enjoy it. My favorite teams are: NFL - Denver Broncos; Soccer- DC United; Baseball - Atlanta Braves; NASCAR - Jeff Gordon; and of course, all Tiger Athletics. Soccer is my favorite sport to play, and I am currently on the club soccer team here at Clemson. I have been playing for a year and a half now, and have won a few tournaments since joining the team. I like to play video games, watch movies, listen to music, watch TV, and occasionally read books that I WANT to read (mostly sci-fi/Tom Clancy). Most of my favorite movies are comedy movies; my favorite music is rock and I like to listen to rap every now and then; my favorite TV shows are South Park, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Family Guy.

I hope this gives you a general idea of what I'm like, and hopefully in class we can get to know each other better...