Thanks to my fellow blogger from my hometown (Greensboro, NC), TheShu, for a couple of things.

a) Putting up with me when I get going on one of my many rants on his Greensboro is Talking blog or on the Greensboro Sports Message Boards. I know I shoot off (hockey pun not purposely intended) my mouth occasionally, but my heart is always in the right place.

b) Putting a link to this site on his site. We may disagree about a lot of things, but I know his heart is in the right place too.

Hi there everyone! I am now officially in the world of the bloggers! God help the Internet now!! Seriously, this is completely a work in progress, so any suggestions as to what direction I should go are more than appreciated.

First, a little about me. I live in Knoxville, TN and I work and go to school at the University of Tennessee (therefore, "Big Orange"). I grew up in North Carolina where I played hockey as a kid. I played right wing mostly, therefore the "right winger" part, although as you can see from my links, my political leaning is also to the right, so I figured I would use the double entendre here.

I did play hockey with somebody who made it to the NHL and became one of the better defensemen to ever play the game. His name is Teppo Numminen, and last season he played for the Dallas Stars after spending many years with the Winnipeg/Phoenix franchise. I also played hockey with Jeff Varner of "Survivor: Africa" fame. He played some pretty decent defense too, although his brother Kevin was "the man" on our team with no doubt. I still to this day have never seen anybody with his pure speed and agility on the ice at his young age at the time. I first met him when we were both 5 or 6.

As for what I want to accomplish with this site, I have no idea. It just sounded interesting and something I've wanted to do for a while, but never got started.

Any constructive suggestions or comments are welcome, but no name calling or being mean. That isn't cool.

Happy blogging!

Mike