CheckOutMyCards.com Blog

Tonight you may have seen some clips of Blake Hoffarber on ESPN’s SportsCenter. Blake is the guy that hit the insane shot while lying on his back to force double OT in the Minnesota state high school championship three years ago. He was a sophomore at Hopkins High School at the time and won an ESPY for play of the year. I was fortunate enough to be in town for that state championship game and witnessed the shot first hand. I even got a chance to congratulate Blake and Coach Novak, his uncle, after the game.

Watch a video of the Most Amazing Basketball Shot Ever

Now he is a freshman at the University of Minnesota. Both of these schools are my alma maters. I was a sophomore at Hopkins back in 1993 when Blake was only five years old and one of our ball boys. I remember watching him run around and help get rebounds during warm-ups. I don’t recall for sure when he started to hit three pointers, but and I can remember watching him heave the ball from behind the three point line. He could barely make it to the rim, but he would put his whole body into it.

Now Blake leads the Big Ten in three-point field goal percentage and has a shot at setting a Gopher’s record for most threes in a season. In tonight’s nationally televised game against #9 ranked Indiana he went 2-3 behind the arc including a 4-point play to make his percentage for the season an even 50%.

Great article on ESPN.com published earlier today:
There’s more to Minnesota’s Blake Hoffarber than just trick shot

Blake is a great kid that has put in a lot of hard work. It is nice to see him get rewarded for it. Blake won the 2007 Mr. Basketball award in Minnesota, and he helped Hopkins win two state championships. There were even points in the season last year where Hopkins was ranked in the top 5 teams in the nation according to MaxPreps.com. I see that Hopkins is currently ranked #1 in the state again.

Go Royals and Go Gophers!

Third photo courtesy of Tom Dahlin

I like to collect cards of players who I have played basketball with or against.

Jeff Hagen was a freshman at Hopkins High School in MN when I was a senior.

Kris Humphries also went to Hopkins High School, and I played against him many times at open gyms.

Hiram Fuller played a few games at South Sound Athletics with the Club Seattle pro-am team that I played with for several years.

Doug Christie also played a few games with my Club Seattle team when we played in a league at his al-ammeter Rainier Beach last summer.

Martell Webster played on another team in that same league at Rainier Beach.

Jamal Crawford asked me to play with his team in a tournament at Green Lake after playing against him at the Redmond Athletic Club several times a few summers ago. My Club Seattle team also faced off against Jamal in several other Seattle area tournaments and leagues. Jamal is one of the nicest guys I have ever met!

Will Conroy was also on our team at Green Lake. He had just graduated from the University of Washington at the time.

Brandon Roy was our coach for the tournament. He couldn’t play because he was going to be a senior at the University of Washington.

Nate Robinson dunked on me during that tournament.

Shawn Kemp took my spot in the championship game at Green Lake, and Nate Robinson’s team crushed us. We only lost by 2 points on a last second shot by Nate when we faced them earlier in the tournament.

Kevin Garnett… well almost. He often played noon ball at Northwest Athletic Club in MN during the lock-out of 1998-99. My brother had played against him several times, so he got me into the club during one of my lunch breaks. After a long wait I only had time for one more game, and it would be against Kevin’s team. Unfortunately, there was only one spot left, and it was between my brother and me to shoot for it. I and still annoyed that he didn’t just let me play. The dork out shot me for the last spot, and I never got my chance to play against Kevin. He used to live about 3 miles from where I grew up in Minnesota, but now he is off to Boston where he and Ray Allen are going to win a championship for the Celtics.

Note: All of the images for this post were added by simply copying the HTML code generated by the “grab this card” feature I just added to all the card details pages on CheckOutMyCards.com. You are welcome to do this with any of your blogs or eBay listings.

John is Julia’s little brother. A month ago he got to come with us to the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland. While at the convention he got a bunch of cards that we added to his account on CheckOutMyCards.com so that he could play with the site.

Over the last week many of his cards have sold, and this got John excited to find more cards to put on our site. So he started searching eBay, and this is what he found.
My Ex-Husbands Cards for sale…

This was his response.

“According to eBay, guys with cards shouldn’t cheat on their wives.”
- John Neumann

At the National Sports Collectors Convention we picked up some cards that are sure to be collector’s items.

Thanks to Upper Deck, we were able to obtain the following:

It’s the CHECKOUTMYCARDS.com team!

In case you’re wondering, John Neumann is my little brother who joined our team for the week. I flew from Seattle to Minneapolis where Johnny lives, picked him up, and together we made the drive to Cleveland! His help was invaluable. If he lived closer we would recruit him!

In fact, while at the convention, he was recruited for and quoted in a Beckett article!

“I just want to collect cards,” said John Neumann. “I don’t care what sport or who the player is. I just want to add relevant cards to my collection, even if the cards are of Barry Bonds.”

As a buyer/seller on our site, you’ll be seeing more of Johnny!

Check out Johnny’s cards for sale

Julia

Wow, the folks over at SportsCollectorsDaily.com really stay on top of the industry. Within 48 hours of our article in the seattlest.com, they had pinged us and posted a nice summary of the article.

Start-Up Sports Card Site Op Knows Tech Side

This week the Seattlest posted an interview Seth Kolloen did with me about checkoutmycards.com. It is a nice article that gives some of the background regarding the site.

Interview with Tim Getsch, Founder of CheckOutMyCards.com and Nate Robinson Dunk Victim

Today at 5:30, the Everett Explosion (16-4) face Santa Barbra (15-5) in the semi-finals of the IBL West playoffs at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon.

I played with the Everett Explosion until I broke my face two months ago. Now they are one game away from the IBL West championship, and the team that stands in their way has 8 players from the NBA or the D-League.

I am trying to talk my wife into making the drive down to watch the game and spend the night in Portland, but today is our 7th wedding anniversary, and she already made plans. If they win today, hopefully I can at least talk Julia into driving down for the IBL West All Star game and Championship on Sunday.

Santa Barbara Players
Bryon Russell 6′7” NBA - Utah Jazz, Denver Nuggets

Samaki Walker 6′9” NBA - Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, LA Lakers, Miami Heat

Toby Bailey 6′5” NBA - Phoenix Suns
Fred Vinson 6′4” NBA - Seattle Sonics, Atlanta Hawks, LA Clippers
Jelani McCoy 6′10” NBA - Seattle Sonics, Toronto Raptors, Cleveland Cavaliers
Justin Johnson 6′0” NBA D-League
Jerry Dupree 6′7” NBA D-League
Mike Efevberha 6′5” NBA D-League

You may have gleaned from my first blog post that my day job is at Microsoft. Well, today two of my babies finally shipped. I am the program manager for the Access Developer Extensions and the Access Runtime. This project surprised us with several unexpected challenges, but we are happy to finally be able to point people at the official downloads.

In order to build the CheckOutMyCards.com website, we use many different technologies, but the heart of the site is driven by a Microsoft Access application on top of a couple SQL Server 2005 databases. Andy (or web developer) and I use the Visual Studio Team System to manage all of our source code for the web site, SQL Servers, the Access application, and some managed code DLLs used by the Access application.

For the last 4 months, we have been “dogfooding” the Access Developer Extensions’ source code control integration with Access 2007. This allows us to check out, undo check out, and check out individual queries, forms, reports, macros, or modules. My favorite feature is the “Show Differences” right-click command. A lot of times you forget the changes you made to a file, and it is extremely handy to be able to see exactly what changed in a module before checking it in.

If you clicked on the screenshot, you may have noticed that we are actually using Team Foundation for our source code control provider. Access actually allows you to use any source code control provider that implements the MSSCCI interface. Typically, small development shops use Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, but if your enterprise has standardized on the Visual Studio Team System, you can install the Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider so that your Access databases can be under source code control.

If you want to stay tuned to what the Microsoft Access team is up to, you should subscribe to the following blogs.
The Access Team blog
Clint Covington’s blog

Two summers ago I got to play with Jamal Crawford in an outdoor basketball tournament at Green Lake. Our honorary coach happened to be Brandon Roy. He was going to be a senior at the University of Washington and could not play in summer leagues. One of our first games was against Nate Robinson. At the time he had just graduated from the University of Washington. Unfortunately, this was the first time I had seen him play. Near the end of the game, the score was really close and Nate had a fast break. Of course I couldn’t give him an easy layup, so I went up to challenge the shot. I am 6′ 6″ and Nate is listed at 5′ 9″, but in real life he is shorter than my wife, who is only 5′ 5″. Before I could realize what had happened, HE DUNKED ON ME! He didn’t jump over me like it did Spud, but he managed to avoid my outstretched arms and get the dunk to go in.

It has been nearly 4 weeks since my trip to the ER. My right cheek is still partially numb, but fortunately I am starting to get feeling back. The doctor says there is a good chance I could have feeling completely back within 6 months.

Not bad considering this…

Cross section of my head with my nose facing up.
Left Side=Right Cheek, White=Bone, Black=Sinus Cavities, Bulge=Swelling

The black eye and swelling only lasted a little more than a week. I was still able to fly down to Anaheim and speak at the Access Advisor conference with only mild discomfort. The most difficult part was keeping myself from smiling too much, which causes the muscles in my cheek to cramp. Other than that my only challenge is avoiding foods that require a lot of chewing. The right side of my mouth can’t really bite hard on anything yet.

I am hoping to start running and playing non-competitive basketball in 2-4 weeks, but after watching Steve Nash get beat up in the playoffs, I am not in a hurry to get back into competitive basketball. Fortunately the Everett Explosion is doing just fine without me. They are currently 10-2 and in 1st place in the Western Division of the IBL.