B-Day

Top 10 properties in baseball, as determined by Baseball Prospectus. Interesting.
The past three days I've been neck-deep in baseball statistics, prognostications, and commentary, preparing for two rotisserie baseball drafts. Tuesday was round two of three of bidding in my sabermetric league, and soon as all the fast and furious bidding ended at 6pm I had to completely change my thought process for my rotisserie 5x5 league which was operating using a snaking straight draft. The players are valued differently in each instance, and the draft strategy is radically different because of the formats. Both are fun in their own ways--they're all just games which appeal to gamblers, stat-heads, numbers guys, and not least of all baseball fans. It's similar in appeal to playing the stock market, but more enjoyable because your financial future isn't in play. For those who think they know more about baseball than the next guy, it's a way to put a minor wad of money where your mouth is.
Preparing for all these drafts is mentally straining. The amount of information available is overwhelming, and absorbing it all can be maddening and also strangely enjoyable. Every next tidbit of information catches your eye, and you hoard it all away in the hopes of having that one insight which none of your fellow owners have caught onto. Today was the last round of the sabermetric league, and I'm glad it's over. I'm too competitive to take things like this lightly and it's mentally taxing.
Of course, it helps when you think you'll win.

Decision markets

It's interesting to follow the decision markets in general, but especially in turbulent times like these. The financial page of the Mar. 24 issue of The New Yorker highlights sites like Newsfutures, Iowa Electronic Markets, Hollywood Stock Exchange, and Tradesports, sites which allow you to buy and sell derivatives on just about any outcome imaginable, from how much a movie will make in theaters (traders give Head of State the edge over Basic this weekend, despite the fact that Head of State is opening in hundreds fewer theaters) to whether or not the U.S. will catch Osama Bin Laden in 2003 (currently trades at 35% probability).
Interesting, and accurate. The Iowa Electronic Markets routinely beats national polls in predicting presidential elections. The principles is the same as that governing the efficient markets theory: decision markets channel the collective energy and resources of a group of people with intense knowledge of and interest in a particular area of interest. That's why it's so difficult to beat the stock market.
Of course, when everyone is so wrong about something, that's also worth examining. Look at IMDb's poll or Entertainment Weekly's issue on who would win Oscars and you realize how big an upset Adrien Brody and Roman Polanski pulled off.

How we came to war

Someday soon, a whole series of politicians and journalists will rush books to the market analyzing the leadup to this war with Iraq. Until then, here's one interesting account in this week's New Yorker. Among the intriguing points noted is the now self-evident realization that the United Nations is really only empowered when the great powers of the world are in agreement (by the way, how did France get a spot on the Security Council? is it the same reason old golfers still get to play in The Masters?).
And the somewhat sobering thought that the current administration could care less what protestors are saying in the streets. They've filtered it out like so much low-decibel noise.

Strange

I can access every website from my Macintosh except for anything related to my own website, eugenewei.com. I can't grab my e-mail, can't ftp anything to my directories, can't even find the website through a browser. I have no such problems on my Windows desktop, and my Mac can surf to every other website. Anyone have any idea why that might be and, better yet, how to fix it? Winner definitely gets a nice dinner on me.

South America

Have just about put the finishing touches on a trip to South America to depart late next week. Planning multi-week travels can be hard work, especially given the wealth of information available on the Internet and the overwhelming number of permutations of airplane flights and itineraries one can assemble in a country as vast as South America. Having a budget to enforce helped to narrow things down, and I left one just completely open week in Cuzco in the middle of the schedule to give myself the freedom to just follow my whims while there in person. Should be fun. Will hike through frigid Patagonia, tour the Galapagos Islands, and trace the steps of the Incas to Machu Picchu, among other things.
Still, before I've even left a black cloud has appeared in the distance. Two days after I return from South America my leave of absence will come to an end. Three months hardly feels like enough time for a leave.

Still an assassin

Thanks to Sang, I got to see Jordan in his last game in Seattle the other night. Jordan's 40 years old but still a dangerous, effective player. He played tough, physical defense on Rashard Lewis, and despite not having the stamina to sustain an effort for the full 44 minutes he was on the floor, he paced himself as best as he could, and when the game was on the line he came through with an alley-oop layup and two fade-away jumpers that hit nothing but net to ice the game for the Wizards. Here's hoping he gets one last chance to work some magic in the playoffs.
Not the prettiest of games--the Sonics, who basically conceded they were going into rebuilding mode when they traded Payton and Mason, shot something like 37%. The basketball was bruised and battered from encountering so much rim, so little net.

Notes on attending Carnaval in Rio

Some notes for folks who may attend Carnaval in Rio in the future. Most are observations based on Phil, Elijah, and my experience in Rio. We were given some misinformation by various people during our trip (lots of good information, too). In no particular order:

• If you attend the Samba Parade in the Sambadrome (and you should for at least one night), try heading out the first night and scalping tickets near the entrance of whichever section you'd like to be seated in. We were told it was very difficult to scalp tickets, that it couldn't be done. Well, if you buy tickets from the hotel, expect to pay a huge markup. If you scalp tickets near the entrance, just first make sure you've seen a legitimate ticket before scalping so you know what you're looking for. Tickets have a magnetic strip that needs to be scanned by machines like those you find in your typical urban subway. Most scalpers with tickets from a certain section hover just outside the entrance to that section, and you can only enter a section through a specific gate. We scalped a ticket for Elijah at half the price we paid the hotel (Elijah's tickets was pickpocketed), and that was with minimal negotiation. Anyhow, if you can't scalp a ticket the first night, go ahead and buy one from the hotel the next night if you want to guarantee yourself a spot.


• Order only 1 entree per two people while at restaurants. The portions are humongous in Brazil, and the three of us refused to believe and continually ended up with copious leftovers that went to waste. In fact, if you wanted a real live case study for the Atkins Diet, few subjects would be more suitable than the citizens of Rio.
• If you're traveling to Rio on short notice, don't try and pick up Portuguese if you already know some Spanish. Brush up on the Spanish. Portuguese is difficult to learn, and it is most similar to Spanish which should help to get you around. We all found Portuguese extremely obtuse.


• Check with your bank to ensure your ATM card will work down there. Mine, from Bank of America, didn't. To make matters worse, almost none of the ATMs down there accept American debit cards. We had to hike some two miles to a Citibank ATM and the line was long with everyone else in the same boat. It was the only sure thing.
• At that time of year, if you want to see the sights and get good photographs, go in the morning for front-lit shots. In the afternoon the sun is at the wrong angle for popular sights like Corcovado.


• Find the Banda de Ipanema and march with them in the late afternoon on Fat Tuesday. They'll be somewhere near the street running along Ipanema beach. Once you're in the jetstream, other bodies will propel you along. You'll sweat, be sweated on, sing and dance, get covered in foam which people will spray on you from all directions, kiss and be kissed by strangers ranging from beautiful Brazilian men and women to drag queens, and have an incredible time.


• Carnaval goes from the Friday to the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday so the dates vary each year. Use this rule of thumb to get your tickets ahead of time. Plan on arriving in time for festivities on Friday, perhaps after a night of rest, and stay through at least Wednesday morning. If you can come earlier or stay later, do so and take a side trip to Buzios.
• If you're coming from anywhere in the U.S., you never have to change time zones. U.S. time zones will put you slightly behind Brazilian time, and that's okay, because your schedule during Carnaval will consist of waking up at around noon or just after, rolling out to the beach, and having your first meal around 2pm. And, if all goes well, you won't get to bed until just after sunrise, around 7am or so. Thus the U.S. time zones actually put you on Rio Carnaval party standard time right from the time you set foot on Brazilian soil.


• If you have to choose between staying just off of Ipanema beach or just off of Copacabana beach, I recommend the former. It's a slightly nicer beach and has better views of the sunrise.
• No need for lots of dress clothes unless you plan on attending hte Copacabana Palace Ball or some other fancy affair. A pair of light fabric long pants of some sort and a collared shirt is all you need to look and stay cool and look cool in most clubs in Rio, and we all got into all the clubs in our sandals, though I recommend close-toed shoes for busting your best dance moves.
• Street food is really safe in Brazil. We all had plenty, and we weren't sprinting for the toilet in our hotel room. If anything, our problem was getting enough fiber in the meat-rich Brazilian diet.


• Stay hydrated. It's hot, it's humid, you're sweating like beer can banished from the fridge into the direct glare of the summer sun. You're always in a state of becoming dehydrated. Remember, cervejas contain water, too.


• To avoid spending your evening in the company of prostitutes, frequent clubs where the local young crowds congregate. A taxi driver will be happy to help.
• Think twice before setting foot in any bar where they give you a paper bar tab when you enter. Waitresses are bartenders mark your drinks on that piece of paper, and before you can leave the bar you'll have to wait in a long line to pay the cashier. Inevitably, the line will move glacially, and you'll be hot, sweaty, and anxious to move on to the next place. We spent about half an hour, on average, waiting in these ridiculous lines, and at the end you'll be greeted by some snippy, stone-faced cashier who barks at you in incomprehensible Portuguese instead of simply writing the total on the paper for you to read.
• This note may not be relevant in a few years, but it bears stating. This is a great time to travel to Rio from the U.S. The U.S. dollar is incredibly strong, and the exchange rate from Brazilian Real$ (pronounced "hey-Al") to U.S. dollars was 3.8 to 1. Without inflation. We were eating and drinking like kings at very low prices.

Show us the money

Hey, it looks like that lawsuit against the studios will pay out $12.60 to each claimant. I hope you went here to sign up back when I posted about this, sometime in January, because the deadline for submitting a claim has passed.
The sad thing is that $12.60 still falls just shy of the price, tax and/or shipping included, of a new CD. Also, I want to know who will compensate me for that Ace of Base album I bought in college.

Michael Lewis on the A's

According to Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus, Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker and The New New Thing, spent much of 2002 with the Oakland A's, trying to understand how Billy Beane and company manage to stay competitive despite their meager budget of $45 million. The book is tentatively titled Money Ball.
Statheads have been worshipping Beane for years. His secrets aren't so secret, but other teams just are too conservative or close-minded to accept his ideas. They make the tough decisions, like realizing they can't resign last year's MVP Miguel Tejada to a long-term contract because it would blow their budget. They made the same decision with Jason Giambi and they were fine. A small but merry band of like-Beane-minded general managers is taking control of teams around the League. Epstein in Boston, Ricciardi in Toronto. The Yankees are going to be in trouble in a few years, or maybe even this year, because the Red Sox and Blue Jays are moving in the right direction.
This new breed of GMs subscribes to unconventional ideas which will give them several years of advantage, at a minimum, while the rest of the league sleeps. Sports Illustrated dedicated an entire article to the odd idea that the Red Sox would go with a closer by committee, an idea which statheads have been pushing for years. You have Cubs manager Dusty Baker saying things like this: "[Mark Bellhorn] was programmed by the (Oakland) A's before we got him (in 2001)," Baker said. "Their philosophy is to take a lot of pitches and to get deep in the count. We're trying to get him to be more aggressive. But it's going to take time to change your mindset. We also have to let him be himself."
Hmm, Dusty. Here's a guy who hit 27 home runs as a utility infielder last year, at a position where the Cubs haven't had a decent player since Ron Santo. If he's got some Oakland discipline in him, leave it alone.
Still, Dusty Baker has been a huge improvement over Don Baylor. Baker proves to be a good modern manager. Handles the press well, doesn't abuse his players through the press like Baylor loved to do. Hey, if Baker gets the Cubs to the World Series, he'll be the second most powerful man in Chicago, behind Mayor Daley.

Lost in time

I got on Seattle time this morning. Now it's about 5:15 in the morning and I'm back off of Seattle time. It just takes one long phone call to Australia to kill your schedule.
For the life of me I couldn't remember how to dial an international number from the states (you need to first dial the international direct dial code, which is 011). Hmm. Since the country code for Australia is 61, that meant I woke up a lot of people in what I presume was the Boston area. Yikes. To all of those people who cursed me out, and those I hung up on, my deepest apologies. I deserved every four-letter word. With the thick Boston accents I wasn't quite sure what was being said, but the tone of voice left little to the imagination.

Sliding down memory lane

Got all my slides and negatives back today. Most of them came out, too, save a few stray shots taken when my shutter was closed or that brief period when my batteries crapped out and every other picture came out black.
I need a smaller, lighter camera to take with me into places where I couldn't or wouldn't bring my F100. I see gaps in my pictures, events and people and places, and I wish I had some photos to keep them fresh in my mind. And when you're out at a club or a bar and just want a picture of you and your inebriated companions, who cares about picture quality? Especially when posting to the web. I need a really thin, small, digital camera.
Well, next time. And nothing beats looking at slides on a light table with a loupe. That's about as close to seeing it with my own eyes again as I can get. Tomorrow I need to write down as much of the specifics of my trip as possible before it fades into history. My photos will help refresh my memory. Given my past ratios of success, I'd say I did okay this time around. About a little more than half of the photos are decent and usable which is pretty good. Throw out the five hundred photos I wasted on obscure dolphin fins and sperm whales off in the distance and I'd say about 3 out of 4 of my pics were ones I'll keep. Since I shot 17 rolls of 36, that's a lot of friggin slides to scan into my computer.
New Zealand's scenery helped. It's what you call postcard country. Everywhere you point your camera and click the shutter? Instant postcard. If my PC doesn't drive me crazy tomorrow, you may catch your first glimpse of some of my NZ and Oz shots.

New Zealand and Australian soundtrack

Clubbing in NZ and Australia, you get a feel for what's going down in the music world. Wouldn't you know it, the cool kids overseas listen to pretty much the same stuff you hear on the radio over here.
Let's see, I have to start with Eminem. Lots of Eminem. It wasn't a night out if I didn't hear Lose Yourself at some club. Good tune, but it always inspires thug dancing and mugging. Not attractive.
Creed?! Sure, you can label someone a snob if they raise their noses at popular music, but when I have to put up with garbage like Creed out clubbing I can understand where they're coming from. Not only is it destined for tomorrow's trash heap, it's also impossible to dance to.
Red Hot Chili Peppers. Haven't heard their new album, but By the Way is a good tune. Not really a dance tune but you can jump around and karaoke.
Kylie. Grrrrrrrr. We'd be out clubbing, drinking, yapping our heads off, and then suddenly a tune from Fever would come on, and Kylie would appear on the video screen, 15 feet tall, and everyone in the club would stop and stare, transfixed. Australia's sex kitten, purring "Come....come....come into my world." Every guy was ready to follow. What a great dance album.
If Michael Jackson is the monstrosity plastic surgery wishes to lock in the cellar, Kylie Minogue is the its poster child. Good lord. Speaking of which, if you don't have a copy of Kylie singing Can't Get You Out of My Head over New Order's Blue Monday, get thee to a file sharer straight away to download it. She's performed that mash in concert, and it's awesome.
Nelly. Hot in Here. I thought it had peaked at clubs here in the US but apparently, as with movies, everything lags by about half a year there in the Southern Hemisphere. Can't stand ten seconds of it on the radio, but in a dance club context it's groovable.
Back to the negatives. NZ and Oz are not immune to dreck like YMCA by the Village People and the Ketchup Song. Stuff like that, most of which I've erased from memory. It's like the wave at a sporting event. Exercise your freedom as a human being and resist. They'll tell you you're having fun, but you really aren't.
Down Under by Men at Work. Hearing it in Australia put it in a whole new light for me because I finally had a taste of . Packets of it could be found at breakfast each morning, next to the butter and jam. I tried it and will do it a favor by labeling it the Spam of the Southern Hemisphere.
The highlight for me was the first bar we visited in the Bay of Islands. One stretch of classic techno--Alice Deejay, ATB, New Order...good stuff.

Sniff

Sharon sent me this pic today of Alan and my new nephew Ryan. How beautiful is that?

@#$*&ing Windows

Okay, Macs are slower, but I'm really about ready to kick my Windows desktop over the edge of the deck here. Since Windows XP crapped out my CD-RW drive I installed a new one today, one that's supposed to be compatible with Windows XP and Roxio Easy CD Creator 5. I updated all the drivers for Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 off of their website. All of this took hours since my PC now takes about 30 minutes to boot after the Windows XP upgrade and I had to restart it several times.
Go to burn a CD. No luck. Easy CD Creator 5 engine failed to initialize. Go to the Roxio website and they claim they've had a rash of these because of antivirus software. So I disable that and try again. Same error. I update some more drivers and reboot. Half hour later? No dice.
I also get these annoying "Your paging file is too small" errors everytime I boot. It tells me to set a larger paging file. So I do. Then I have to reboot. Then the same error comes up again. I'm flipping my computer the middle digit the whole time, with both hands.
Fortunately I finally found some random program that Sony included with its CD-RW drive. I think I've got it working. I'll need it to burn all the photos from New Zealand and Australia to CDRs b/c my hard drive is getting really full.
Yes, Macs are slower, but damn if my laptop didn't work beautifully the whole trip. I could take digital photos from my travel buddies and load them into iPhoto and have a slideshow going in minutes. I could import digital video from my camcorder and burn movies onto CDs for other folks in about half an hour. Yeah, sure, you can do all these things on a Windows PC but you'd be sweating driver compatibility the whole way. I'm not quite ready to sign up for a Switch commercial, but outside the business environment I dread having to go to my Windows desktop for anything.
Alas, that's the only platform my slide and negative scanner is compatible with. I have hours of fun ahead of me, what with Photoshop crashing after every four photos I open and edit because my virtual memory is too low.

The only book I buy every year

I should stop writing about baseball because I don't think any of you give a damn, but I can't help it. Little League and years of watching the Cubs on WGN have distilled baseball into my blood.
There's one book I pre-order every year and await with the eagerness of a groom on his wedding night, or a young child on Christmas Eve. That book would be the annual Baseball Prospectus. This year's version is the best yet, with a whole new set of statistics and expanded player coverage.
I'm not sure how many times I've plugged Baseball Prospectus, but if they'd start putting out crap I'd stop. Move up to the next level of baseball understanding and buy yourself a copy.

Blog as vanity plate

Katie ranted about the blog as self-congratulatory exercise in vanity tonight, and I must admit that much of what she said is true. There's a certain presumptiousness in boring the world with the mundane details of your everyday life, and who really cares what I think about this or that anyway? In that respect, I almost crave to keep the visitors to my site at a minimum. And maybe I should reduce the frequency of my posts--perhaps I'm guilty of using this as a writing outlet at times. Maybe 2003 is the year I cut back my posts.
You can twist yourself into a pretzel trying to please your audience, too. Just who is my audience anyway? Random people from all over the place, who know me in all different contexts. Perhaps a large audience is a good thing. They keep you honest, because most will disappear if you sling too much BS. If no one was reading, would I still be writing? I had about one visitor a week for the first two months, and I never really publicized my site, but somehow one day suddenly all these random people were reading it. I have no idea how they found my site, and I still don't know who half of them are, but I read the traffic reports and they're there.
Of course, most my readers are too embarrassed to admit they visit my site, or if they do visit, it's a dirty secret. Boy, let me tell you, that's a great feeling. This must be what it feels like to be People magazine.
And what about blogging about blogs, like I'm doing now? That must be the ultimate in intellectual masturbation (I can't remember where I read that term, but it makes you cringe, and that's exactly the punishment you want to mete out to those guilty of perpetrating it).
I'm overthinking this. Why am I thinking about this right now anyway? Self-conscience is a terrible thing.

Jameson's

Johnny, my tour guide in New Zealand, was fond of Bushmill's Irish Whiskey, but tonight out at Mr. Lucky's I discovered the joys of Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Peter, clearly a scotch and whiskey aficionado, has set me on the path of goodness and there's no turning back.
American bourbon? As Johnny put it, f***ing swill.

Use it or lose it

Speaking of Mr. Lucky's, I met a few friends out for drinks tonight. Just as Tour de France bike racers have to get out even on their two days off during the Tour just so their body doesn't go into shock from not being pushed to the limit, I need to keep my liver primed and active in anticipation of Carnival in Rio. I'm not doing my gut any favors, but I suppose another week won't hurt.
I'm less worried about drinking myself to death in Rio than of getting shot. At least four people sent me e-mail links to articles about the recent violence in Rio, suspected to be caused by gangs. City of God may hit a little too close to home this weekend. I'll have to keep my head down and steer clear of danger.

Speaking of drinking...

Must send out props to Laura, who was one of the folks who showed up for drinks tonight. She thinks she doesn't get enough airtime here, and yet she definitely rallies for fun nights out more than just about anyone else here in Seattle (and after 4 weeks of living large in NZ and Oz I'm acutely aware of how slow my social life here is).
So Laura, your very own post. BTW, Laura also organized a birthday dinner for me this year, and since it was my last day in the office it was a doubly special event. It's also the last birthday I'll ever celebrate since next year that first digit is supposed to change (and after 4 weeks of living large with mostly younger kids in NZ and Oz, many of whom like to remind me of my age, I'm really hyper-tuned to my life clock...TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK, what have you done with your life old man?).

Libeskind

The Libeskind design for a memorial at Ground Zero has won. The slide show outlining the ideas behind the design are really intriguing.
I don't profess to know much about architecture, but the various Frank Lloyd Wright houses and buildings I've walked through are so inspirational. There aren't many things in life I have to have personalized for me, but it would be amazing to design your own home with an architect. How sad, that we must always live in someone else's conception of an ideal shelter, especially when our physical reaction to space is so personal.
Someday, perhaps, a place of my own.

Pot roast

I received a slo-cooker (aka crock pot) recently and put it to use yesterday. I made a pot roast.
Turned out okay though the flavor needs more salt and is too tomato-ey. Also, I was impatient so I cooked it on high and the meat is on the tough side for a roast. I'll adjust the recipe next time, but the thing with a slo-cooker is you have to spend about ten days finishing each dish.

You gotta pay to play

Bummer. Baseball Prospectus is going to start charging for most of its content. $39.95 for a year's worth.
Web subscriptions are pricey (Salon charges $30 per year for an ad-free subscription). Compare that with $24.95 for a year's subscription to a print magazine like The New Yorker and it seems expensive. Compare it to the cost of 2 or 3 CDs in which only 33% of the songs are memorable and it doesn't seem so bad.

Groovy

Groove Armada has a new CD out--Lovebox. Releases on my birthday. As if I needed an excuse to buy it for myself. Right.

Can I get any more real?

Thank goodness I'm leaving this country for a month. Otherwise I'd be overdosing on reality. Joe Millionaire on Monday. American Idol and The Real World on Tuesday. The Bachelorette on Wednesday. Without reality TV, how often would be able to feel superior to our petty, conniving, fellow men and women?

Carnival: the dream that was

My dream of visiting Rio for Carnival is disintegrating. All my wing men are dropping like flies, to marriage, kids, the types of things I don't really think about. I'm starting to realize what it means to only get to see the guys on the occasional guys night out because that's about how often I see them now. Well, it is what it is. No use raging against this machine. There's always next year.

The chase dream

This is my last week of work before I begin my personal leave (I've been told not to use the word sabbatical, though I'm not certain why). I feel calmer than about this than I did a few weeks ago, yet last night I had another pseudo-nightmare. I think it's related to my impending leave, but who knows? All I know is I've had lots of anxious dreams in recent weeks.
Last night's was a scene out of some bad movie, or maybe it was peeled off of an impression of Some Like It Hot, left over from Xmas break. I was standing on the ledge of some building (no idea why, as is typical in dreams) and looked down to witness a violent gunfight in the street. A whole bunch of men, standing around cars, shooting each other with machine guns. One group seemed to win out, led by a guy who looked like Peter Stormare (the guy who offs Steve Buscemi in Fargo). Then the Stormare character spots me on the roof and starts shooting bazookas at me. Debris is flying everywhere. I jump onto the roof of the building and head to the back of the building where I run down a fire escape into the courtyard and take off for cover. I spot two other guys, doing the same thing. Apparently they witnessed the gangland execution as well, and now we're all marked men.
I hope a few fences, run between a few buildings, and suddenly I'm out on the sidewalk by a beach. A few folks rollerblade or walk by. The ocean glimmers at the edge of the beach, reflecting the light of a high noontime sun. I start walking as casually as possible, trying not to draw attention to myself.
Suddenly I spot a suspicious looking character. He looks like a Tibetan monk. He's staring at me intently. I get this feeling that he's probably working for the Stormare character, and he's got his suspicions. He asks me what I'm doing out here. I say I'm just catching some afternoon sun. I ask him what business it is of his. He just smiles and turns to walk away. Then he turns to look over his shoulder and sees the look on my face. All at once we both realize we've got the goods on each other. We take off sprinting in opposite directions. I'm not sure who he's going to alert, but I'm not sticking around to find out.
I feel the heat coming over my shoulder. Then I'm awake.

Fresh-thinking baseball GMs

There's a small but influential contingent of so called sabermetric general managers in baseball now. Theo Epstein, 28 year old whiz kid and new GM of the Boston Red Sox. J. J. Ricciardi, GM of the Blue Jays, and one-time disciple of the most renowned of the group, Oakland GM Billy Beane. You have to be psyched if you're a Red Sox fan because of the brains in the front office, from owner John Henry to president Larry Lucchino to Epstein to Bill James, and the deep pockets which someone like Billy Beane will never have access to in Oakland. Let's hope these guys are successful, because they may just overturn some conventional thinking and herd behavior in baseball.
For example, sabermetricians have long wondered why all teams insist on finding one pitcher to serve as a closer when so few pitchers have the skills to justify that kind of responsibility. The Red Sox will take that heart this year as they plan to go with closer by committee. Hopefully the Cubs will have the sense to do the same, though I doubt Dusty Baker, spoiled by years of signaling for Rob Nenn, will have such wisdom.

The Big Anti-Aristotle

John Hollinger writes in his weekly CNNSI column:
"Tell Yao Ming, 'ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.'" That's what Shaquille O'Neal said six months ago, but this week it ignited a firestorm after a columnist for AsianWeek complained about it. Shaq insisted the comments weren't racist, saying, "At times I try to be a comedian." At times Shaq tries to be a rapper too, and it works out about as well.
Shaq: great player, lousy interview, lousy actor, lousy rapper, terrible dresser, and let's add ignorant to that list now. It's unlikely to happen, but let's hope Yao takes him to school (and teaches Shaq some Chinese) this Friday.

Kids, don't feed the fat man

One thing about heading off for a leave of absence: it's tough to manage your diet, because everyone takes you out to eat to all your favorite restaurants. Dinner Friday was at Malay Satay Hut (a fascinating blend of Asian cuisines), Sunday was Le Pichet courtesy of Eric and Christina (the roast chicken entree and chicken terrine appetizer are to die for, and the wine menu is first class), and tonight my team took me to Tango (a rotating menu of tapas, always tasty, and half price bottles of wine on Monday nights). I'm supposed to do attend another dinner Tuesday night but I think I'll have to beg off one night to get an angioplasty.

My Christmas gift to all of you: $5 to $20

CD price fixing has been alleged for many years now, and I remember reading about a class action lawsuit against the RIAA long ago. Well, it looks like that case is finally bearing fruit. You are a member of the settlement group if you bought a CD, cassette tape, or vinyl record from January 1, 1995, through December 22, 2000. I figure that means pretty much all of you.
Go here to read about your rights and to fill out a claim form, then sit back and wait for a check. It's said that the amount sent to you will depend on how many people fill out the claim form and is estimated to be between $5 and $20.
$5 to $20 is a disappointing sum, to be sure, but times are tough and the RIAA deserves to bleed, so do file your claim. If you're concerened about providing that information required, you can check out the thread here. Sounds legit to me so I went ahead and filled out the form.

Elvis in the house!

A footnote to yesterday's exciting addition to the family: Ryan was born on Elvis' birthday. Given how much Alan loves Elvis, this has his fingerprints all over. Then I remember Sharon's the one who gave birth and realize that he had nothing to do with it.
It certainly makes it easy to remember his birthday.

Ryno robbed

Not that Hall of Fame voting (like Oscar voting) is anywhere near an objective and fair evaluation of skill and worth, but Ryne Sandberg was robbed, and the bleeding-heart Cubs fan in me grieves. I buy into the theory that players who were the best at their position in the 80's will suffer in Hall-of-Fame voting because their stats will suffer in comparison to the jacked-up offensive #'s in the late 90's and early 21st century.
Rob Neyer posted his picks for the top 10 players not in the Hall of Fame:
1. Ryne Sandberg
2. Ron Santo
3. Bert Blyleven
4. Goose Gossage
5. Minnie Minoso
6. Ted Simmons
7. Alan Trammell
8. Dale Murphy
9. Darrell Evans
10. Bobby Grich
Ron Santo's omission is even more surprising, in a way. The man's lost both of his legs to diabetes, and of course he's more than deserving. He's a terrible announcer, but can someone give the man a break?

Emotionally susceptible

Speaking of baseball, the overwhelming public sentiment for electing Pete Rose to the Hall of Fame speaks to how emotionally susceptible and logically suspect public opinion can be. We're a very forgiving nation when it comes to our prominent fallen angels.
There's a great FAQ about the Pete Rose case by Sean Lahman. Rose always had one thing going for him. He was scrappy and he hustled, and fans love that. They love to see millionaires working as hard as they do, and it upholds the integrity of the game which is why we watch, even when our home team is clearly outmatched by the opponent. Ironically, Rose's gambling on baseball undermined that very competitive integrity.
Among other problems I have with Rose (outside of the gamlbing): personally I think he's somewhat of an ass, his skills are overrated due to longevity, and he hurt his own team by writing himself into the lineup to pursue the hit record when the Reds clearly had better options for their lineup. Back in the early 80's, the heyday of my Cubs fandom, I remember watching Rose writing himself into the lineup when he should have sat on the bench, moved Nick Esasky to 1b, and called up Eric Davis and Kal Daniels from the minors to play LF. Eric Davis was among the top players in baseball from 86-90, and you could argue those should have come earlier.
Of course, lawyers and business people and Satanic figures like Martha Stewart seem to be exempt from American's sentimentality. Or perhaps they just have lousy PR reps.

Palm D'or

Spotted this letter to Charley Rosen in an ESPN column and thought it was worth reprinting here:
Though Kobe's physical talents are enormous and the comparisons to MJ warranted, I've never heard anybody mention the one physical trait in which Kobe will always fall short -- hand size. Kobe's hands are much smaller than MJ's and prevent him from easily palming the ball the way Jordan can. This is most noticeable when Kobe tries to finish a drive to the hoop. Because he can't match MJ's gripping power, he often has to release the ball too early. The result is more missed shots in the lane and less creative range. Are you aware of anyone calling this disparity in hand size to attention? -- Carl Peay, Chapel Hill, NC
Yep, the writer is from Chapel Hill, but still, his observation is accurate.
Footnote: in NBA Live 2003 every player can palm the ball behind himself with ease. It was James' Xmas present, and we got some good play time in during break. The freestyle joystick control? Good stuff.

CES/Apple watch

One of these years I really should attend CES. It's the Victoria's Secret fashion show for gadget freaks. I've heard bits and pieces of news on the web about product announcements.
Motorola looks to have some cool wireless phones on the way this year. Motorola has made a valiant comeback in cell phone market share. Nokia had a huge lead, but their cell phone design has remained stale and dull. Nokia phones just aren't that sexy even though their interfaces are great. In fact, cell phones in general haven't made much progress these past several years which is why I'm using the same phone I've had for two years.
If I were to design the ideal cell phone, it would have a small form factor but large color screen, global coverage (some sort of GSM multi-band capability), a WAP browser with GPRS, an integrated digital camcorder/camera, and it would be Bluetooth compatible so I could sync its address book wirelessly with my computers and so that I could use a wireless headset. Some of these Motorola phones may just hit the spot.
As I noted recently, Microsoft is not an innovative company. Bill Gates is no technology visionary. Their CES announcements did nothing to change my mind on that topic. Gates talked about smart devices including some Dick Tracy like watch. It was all terribly dull.
Apple stole lots of thunder from CES by making their usual slew of announcements at Macworld SF. Personally, I'm most excited by the upcoming free update for iMovie 2. iMovie 3 looks awesome, as does Final Cut Express, a cheaper version of Final Cut Pro.
iMovie is the most impressive Mac i-application as it does for free what you once had to do with thousands of dollars of hardware and software, and it does so with as intuitive and simple an interface as can be applied to something as complex as video editing. I've been using it over the past several days to edit some DV footage I shot over Xmas break, and even without a manual I figured out how to use it in a matter of minutes. I'll post my handiwork soon.
iTunes 3 is solid, and while I haven't used iPhoto it looks to be a very competent photo manager. Safari looks sleek and runs fast but is the least exciting of Apple's announcements as it doesn't offer a huge upgrade over other browsers on the market, and why doesn't it import bookmarks? I'm glad to see integrated Google search since Google's toolbar only worked for IE for Windows, but the world really doesn't need more browsers. Keynote, on the other hand, is intriguing simply because any alternative to Powerpoint is a good thing. Given that I'm going on a personal leave, I'm not sure I'll cough up $90 for presentation software, but I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for reviews and comparisons to Powerpoint. If any of you get a copy to play with, let me know what you think.
Speaking of i-applications, I recently realized that iPod software doesn't allow you to move songs from the iPod to the Apple if you select manual synchronization. It's probably because of piracy concerns, but it's annoying. For someone who just wants to save hard-disk space for editing movies, it's a real hassle when you suddenly realize there's a tune on your iPod you'd love to use in a movie and you have to go find the CD again because the song is stranded on your iPod. Plus, if you decide to go back to auto synchronization, all the songs on your iPod are deleted and replaced with what's left on your computer. Just a heads up for all you future iPod owners.
The new Powerbooks, small (12") and ridiculously huge (17") extend the lineup of the world's sexiest laptop, though these new ones are aluminum instead of titanium. I would have liked to seen a bigger keyboard on the 17" Powerbook--typing on laptops is really hard on my wrists and I think they wasted the extra space they created there. The 17" Powerbook with Superdrive is an incredibly tempting tool for video editing because you need all the screen space to accomodate all the windows non-linear editing applications require. Or to accomodate all the windows you might spawn with the new X11, another welcome addition to the Mac OS X universe.
Having been a Mac user for over a year now, I can say that for creative professionals, especially those working with video, the Mac platform is the most user-friendly out there. With a Mac, a DV camcorder, and iMovie, you can make a short movie in a day without a manual. Try to build a DV editing platform on a Windows PC is fraught with compatibility issues and instability. Now, with Final Cut Express bringing the cost of heavy-duty DV editing down to the $300 price point, it's a no brainer to use the Mac as a DV editing platform. Furthermore, design-wise, Macs still beat the pants off of PCs. Finally, the fact that Apple creates many of its own applications means compatibility issues are minimal, whereas on the Windows platform you're always at the mercy of Microsoft or the third-party vendor to create Windows-compatible drivers.
The biggest flaw of the Mac platform is processing speed. For the money, I can get an awesomely fast dual-processor P4 Windows PC with a top-line graphics editing card whereas Macs are still stuck with G4 processors. I get faster Photoshop and video rendering speed with my Windows PC by a large margin.
Still, I enjoy fiddling on my Mac much more than working on my PC. It's true, what they say. Mac users have more fun.

What will I do with my life?

Po Bronson writes an interesting article on the age old question, "What Should I Do With My Life?" Given that I am asking myself the question a lot these days, it was particularly timely, but everyone can benefit from some of the wisdom he gained while interviewing 100's of people for his latest book. The article is much less cliched than you'd expect from an article on this topic, published in a magazine like Fast Company and written by Po Bronson. A couple points from his article jumped out at me.
His concept of the Phi Beta Slacker rings true to me. It's a person who has the talent to do many things in life but always optimizes for perception, always seeks the next thing that will look good on a resume. They lack the courage to fall on their faces. Part of me falls into this camp, and I hate that side of me. It reminds me of the accursed conservative oldest child syndrome which I first read about in the fascinating book Born to Rebel.
He also notes that if you don't like being asked inevitable cocktail question "What do you do?" it's probably because you don't like the answer. Fortunately I haven't had this problem in a long time and hope I never do.
Bronson points out that most of us will never get epiphanies that suddenly indicate exactly what our calling is. Sitting around waiting for destiny to call, for that perfect job, is folly. You have to go out there and try lots of things, fail a lot, before you stumble upon your passion. It's important advice for me to keep in my mind as I move into a "blank spot" in my resume. If I'm not careful, a few months could turn into a year of nothing, a year of fruitless waiting and questioning, and being on the recruiting side of the table I know that people have shelf lives. The question is particularly difficult to answer in this more secular age because one's calling doesn't come from a voice on high. Infinite degrees of freedom leads to paralysis--it's why I think some of the most successful and famous people in the world didn't see a hundred paths open to them. They acted out of desperation or necessity.
The funny thing about trying to figure out what to do with one's life is that I think everyone knows the right approach. In the end, all the cliches ring true--you have to be brave and just step into the void and begin exploring while following your instincts. I have one more week at work before my own such quest begins.

Bill James hired by the Red Sox

Red Sox fans, like Cubs fans, suffer long and hard. But at least Red Sox fans have some fairly progressive management to look forward to. John Henry has shown some uncommon baseball smarts and willingness to embrace new ideas which statheads and sabermetricians have been touting for years, and now they've gone and hired the most famous of all the baseball geeks, Bill James.
Meanwhile the Cubs look like they can get Dusty Baker if they want him. I have no idea how much effect a manager has on a baseball team, having never been part of a MLB roster. At least his teams have been successful, I guess.

Oops Part I

Sleep deprivation began catching up with me today at the office, so I downed two cans of Red Bull. I'd never really tried it before except for once at a rave, and it didn't seem to affect me then. I'd seen lots of engineers around the office sipping it in meetings, and given the cloudy, addled state of my mind and my general drowsiness I decided I needed the chemical boost.
Oops.
I don't take a lot of caffeine, and those two cans of Red Bull gave me heart palpitations. I nearly had a panic attack during a meeting. I'm not joking. My arms were shaking, my mind was racing, my heart was pounding, and I almost snapped my pen in two. Right now it's about 2 in the morning and my body is still at Defcon 1.
No more Red Bull, no coffee, no soda, no caffeine. As Yoda would say, "Bad things, it does." Keeps you awake, sure, but it's hard to be productive when you're vibrating like a helium molecule in heat.

Oops Part II

I just realized I haven't been archiving my old movie reviews. I overwrote most of them and they're lost forever. Humph.
Someday, when I'm not working, perhaps I can go back and recall what I thought about all of them. Pauline Kael claimed she never had to watch a movie a second time--her first impressions were chiseled into her memory. I dare not claim to be a fraction the critic nor to possess a sliver of the memory of a Pauline Kael, but my opinions of movies tend to be fairly constant after setting in.

ESPN Commercials

Some of ESPN's Sportscenter commercials are back online for a while thanks to T-Mobile. They never really get old, do they? I mean seriously, I've tested this. I've watched the same commercial over and over again for about 57 times, and I still laugh my ass off every time. Every time! When Kenny Mayne slides down on the office carpet and strikes a pose at the end of the commercial where he scores a goal on Alexei Lalas in foosball, I start convulsing and snorting things out my nose. It's got to be something hard-wired in the male brain, like a reflex.
"So Karl started drinking a little bit, and then he was going on and on about he and Mrs. Met. Nasty stuff, I tell you. Nasty stuff."

Doonesbury

Last week's Doonesbury was all about blogging. I liked this one best.

Hostage

The new BMW Film Hostage, directed by John Woo, is available for download. Clive Owen returns to play the poker-faced Driver for hire with a heart of gold and a stable of BMWs at his beck and call. As with all Woo movies, you get some closeups of bullets and guns which come through nicely if you download the 104Mb version of the short movie.
My primary complaint: men should not drive roadsters.

The Marshall Doctrine

Baseball Prospectus recently ran a fascinating two part interview (Part 1 Part 2) with pitching coach and former major league pitching star Mike Marshall. He has a website where he lays out some of his unconventional theories. Chapter 28, on pitch selection, is fascinating if you're a baseball fan. An excerpt:
1. Pitchers should throw all pitches for 66.7% strikes.
2. Pitchers should end 75% of at bats within three pitches.
3. Pitchers should end 100% of at bats within five pitches.
4. Pitchers should pitch equally well to both sides of home plates.
5. Pitchers should use the best six pitch sequences with which to achieve the lowest batting averages and on base percentages for the four types of hitters.
"To hitters who hold their bats vertically, pitchers should throw four seam fastballs. To hitters who hold their bats horizontally, pitchers should throw two seam fastballs. To hitters whose rear foot is close to home plate, pitchers should throw them fastballs away. To hitters whose rear foot is away from home plate, pitchers should throw fastballs inside. However, because all hitters want to hit fastballs, pitchers have to convince them that they do not need to throw fastballs."
I'm very curious to see how you throw what Marshall calls a pronation curve. Pronation of the arm during a throwing motion has applications in lots of sports. When a tennis coach finally taught me how to pronate on my serve, I went from having tennis elbow and a terrible serve to being able to hit the occasional ace with either pace or spin, or both.
For folks more interested in hitting (perhaps for your local softball league), Batspeed.com offers some interesting theories on hitting. Their basic premise is that most swing mechanics incorrectly cite linear mechanics when they should be preaching rotational mechanics. I'm going to try and apply some of these ideas next summer in my softball league.

TiVo has me against the ropes

My TIVO is ganging up on me. I didn't realize the side effect of hacking my TIVO and adding hard drives. It starts to save up so many shows that you feel compelled to sit around watching TV all the time. I have about 70 hours of television saved up and no time to watch any of it. I thought a TIVO was supposed to reduce the amount of television you watch.
Since the earliest days of theater, mass entertainment has obeyed some basic laws. First, as with Greek drama, the two genres that work are comedy and tragedy. In TV today that means sitcoms (situational comedies) and life or death dramas (legal shows, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, medical emergency rooms).
Shows that deviate from that have a tough road to hoe. Take Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night. It was about people producing a sports news show (SportsCenter, it was fairly obvious). Not quite a comedy (Sorkin has a sense of humor, but doesn't play for yucks the whole way through) and no life or death on the line, just corporate intrigue. So he took his formula and transplanted it into the White House, which added plenty of life or death drama. Result? A shelf-full of Emmys.
Why do you think all the ads for American Dreams show people about to die. Six Feet Under takes this formula to the extreme, beginning every episode with a death.
There's something perverse at work here. These dramas leave you feeling empty as soon as they're done. So you have to come back for more. It's addictive, like a drug, which makes for great commerce. But don't confuse it for art. Art that stays with you doesn't need to be watched over and over again. It stays with you, in your head, for a long time, perhaps all your life.
The vogue these days in television show ads is to have characters of the show standing there, staring at the camera, smiling, or not smiling, for about 5 to 10 seconds. They usually stand in front of the strangest backgrounds, like a dark industrial factory, or computer generated graphic. I can't imagine how uncomfortable it would be to pose in such a manner. The look on the faces of the actors say, "I'm very uncomfortable, please watch my show so I don't have to stand here anymore." Or "watch my show or there will be problems." Or "come watch my show where you can actually see me talk." Or "you, behind that camera, turn it off if you like your job."
Speaking of television, is anyone else having as much difficulty as I am finding the playoff baseball games on television? I got home yesterday night from work and decided I'd try to catch the Yankees-Angels game. It would be the first of the playoff games I'd seen this year, and trsut me, I'm not happy about that. I checked all the major networks. Nope, nothing on Fox. I checked the regional Fox channels. Nope. Checked ESPN's family of channels. Nope. I could have stood up, logged onto the Internet, checked a newspaper. Nope. Remember, I'm a guy. Using a remote control is in the blood.
I started flipping up from channel 200 on DirecTV, proceding up. Playoff baseball has to be on TV, so it had to be there somewhere. Sure enough, I found it on channel 311, the ABC Family Channel. Did you hear me? ABC Family Channel?!? Baseball's in serious trouble. Who negotiated that deal? Sheesh.

Stanford vs. Texas

This week's Sports Illustrated has a ranking of all the nation's collegiate athletic programs. The writer ranked Stanford #2, behind Texas. What the hell? Texas? Basically, the writer gave the edge to Texas because they offer more intramural and club sports and because of a slight edge in the "major" sports like football and basketball. Very arbitrary. SI's own stats offer a ton of other reasons why you could have arbitrarily picked Stanford. Stanford has 3 times as many NCAA individual titles (18 to 6), twice as many team national championships (4 to 2), a ridiculous edge in athlete graduation rate (90% versus 56%), nearly twice as many varsity teams (34 to 19), and all this with a school population about a fifth the size (Stanford at 6637, Texas at 35,206). Let's not even get into a count of Olympic medals.

Ryder Cup

The best event in golf, but I was in NYC and spent my time exploring rather than watching TV. Did read about the final score, though. Yes, of course everyone in hindsight can say that Curtis Strange made a tactical error by saving his best golfers for last, but not everyone has pointed out exactly why. In a relay race, his strategy would have worked out fine, because every runner is guaranteed their lap, and there's something to be said for having your strongest horse going in the last lap if things are close. However, in events like Ryder Cup, achieving a certain score can end the event prematurely, rendering later matches irrelevant. It's like baseball, which is in mathematical terms a race until 27 outs. In a case like that, you want to maximize the number of touches by your best guys because it's no guarantee they'll be up when they still have a chance to make a difference. True, in Ryder Cup, every player gets their match, but having Tiger Woods match rendered irrelevant was a tactical error. The U.S. needs to pick a new captain.
Similarly, it's silly for Dusty Baker to bat Barry Bonds fourth instead of third. It's one reason you put your best batters at the top of the lineup, and one reason why Tiger Woods should have been one of the first few golfers playing on the last day of singles. Plus, in an event where pressure has such a huge effect on performance, like golf, I believe it's easier to play from ahead, when you can play loose.
By the way, is Sergio Garcia the most irritating golfer alive? From his ridiculous pre-shot routine to his theatrics on the course, he's the golfer I love to see lose. Sergio and his girlfriend, the pouty Martina Hingis, form perhaps the most annoying couple going today.

Blog as confession

The soliloquy derived from the act of prayer, of speaking to God. My blog is like some degenerate soliloquy.

Prior out for season, and that's a good thing

Mark Prior has been put on the DL for the rest of the year, and that's a good thing. It means his arm can get a rest early in his career, and Bruce Kimm won't do any more damage by leaving Prior out there for 120+ pitch outings.

French concede: Lance is the man

The French finally ended their nearly two year long investigation of Lance Armstrong and the USPS cycling team. Early tests indicated Armstrong and his teammates were clean, but the investigation was kept open because, well, the French are jealous of the American champ. Some fans shouted Do-pay at Armstrong this year, though I didn't hear any of this while I was there. They should be shouting at Richard Virenque, one of their hometown heroes, who actually was convicted of using banned substances a few years back. Sheesh.

Boy!

Sharon's having a boy! Alan saw his "boy part" on the ultrasound.

The audience is listening

Cool Slashdot thread about burning AC-3 CD-R's.

What I'll miss watching in baseball

If players go on strike, here are a few things I'll miss watching:

• Kevin Brown torquing his body to throw some of the filthiest pitches around, sinkers that drop down and sideways like lead buzzsaws.
• Andruw Jones, the human web gem, chasing, or really gliding, down flyballs in center field
• Roy Oswalt pitching. His stuff and his attitude are filthy. All sharp, hard, severe, from his pitching motion to his pitches. Contrast that to...
• Greg Maddux pitching. Smooth, subtle, watercolor painting both sides of the plate with pitches that are fluid and always in motion. Contrast that to...
• Curt Schilling pitching. Once he got control of his power pitches, he became that rarest of breeds, the power-control pitcher, like Roger Clemens. Or Pedro Martinez. All 3 have so many weapons that when they're on it's really unfair for hitters. A 96 mph fastball with location is mean enough, but if you follow that up with a splitter just above knees that drops into the dirt or a slider on the outside lower corner of the plate that looks like a fastball until it takes a hard turn down and left, that's cruel and unusual.
• Barry Zito's overhand curve, especially when there's a pair of knees buckling on the other end.
• Barry Bonds at bat. I've never seen anyone so locked in at the plate for such an extended period of time. If you throw a bad pitch anywhere near the strike zone Barry will hit a home run. He has, late in his career, adopted more of an upper cut type of swing to produce more fly balls, but it's not a long, loopy uppercut. It's a compact, uppercut swing with massive torque generated by keeping his weight back and opening up his hips hard and rotating his upper body off an axis from his head down his front leg. Kerry Wood versus Barry Bonds was the most exciting at bat of the year. Wood went after him with several 99mph fastballs, and then punched him out with an unhittable 12 to 6 overhand curve. Second most exciting at bat was Randy Johnson striking out Todd Helton to end a game. He blew him away with three straight fastballs of 100mph, 101mph, and 102mph.
• Vladimir Guerrero firing a cannon out of deep right field to nail a runner at the plate. The most exciting player in baseball.

Maybe the owners and players don't enjoy those things as much as I do, because apparently billions of dollars aren't enough to keep all that going.
Oh well, thank goodness for football. I just participated in my first ever rotisserie football draft, so I'm all ready for Sunday pigskin action.

Z4

The new BMW Z4 roadster.
Roadsters scream mid-life crisis, or pampered wife. They're glorified go-carts.

Precious daylight

Tuesdays and Thursdays are always a mad dash home from work to salvage enough daylight from the remains of the day to complete my bike training rides. Today it was a frantic rush around the south end of Lake Washington. I got home and it was pitch black out so I finished my training ride on the indoor trainer. It doesn't get light in the morning until past 6am now, so morning rides of any length are out when early meetings are on the docket. Did the summer ever start here in Seattle? I must have been napping.
My allergies are going crazy as well. As I've gotten older, the frailties pile on. Arthritis in the knee, grey hairs, allergies. I was never allergic to anything as a kid. I like to think that the counterbalance is a monumental surge in intelligence and worldly charm.

New novel by Dave

David Eggers, who rocketed to literary fame with the catchingly titled (as post-modern a title as can be) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story is publishing a new novel to be released Sept. 20. To get one of the first 10,000 copies, you have to pre-order from McSweeney's. This week's New Yorker short story is an excerpt from this upcoming novel, and Eggers discusses it in an interview currently posted at the New Yorker site.

Yoshimi

Nope, not a Japanese product like Asian drink Pocari Sweat (is this a bad translation?!?) being pandered by Jean Reno. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is the amazing new album by The Flaming Lips.

Japanderers

4The 15 minutes of fame for Japander.com has arrived with its feature in EW and Yahoo. Features lots of clips of Western actors padding their bank accounts by sneaking over to Japan to hawk all sorts of wares in TV commercials. I've only watched a few, but by far my favorite so far is the Simpsons pushing some drink called C.C. Lemon. Authentic because they speak Japanese and are way too enthusiastic, as all actors are in Asian commercials. Because damn it, C.C. Lemon is NUMBER ONE!!! C.C. LEMOOOOOOOOOONNN!
Menthos!

That's two they'll lose

Hey, I'm not the only guy who'll give up on baseball if they go on strike. So will Sports Guy.

Baseball strike

This morning, when my alarm went off, I couldn't move. Physically, and not because I was tired, but because of pains from a Saturday afternoon full of broomball at the Amazon company picnic. My brain sent the order to my left arm to rise up and turn the alarm off, but my arm was locked up at the shoulder joint. So I laid there and listened to the talk show hosts of some radio station (for all the years I've been in Seattle, my alarm clock has been set to the same radio station, but I have no idea which station it is). For some reason, these radio talk show hosts were discussing the impending baseball strike. After listening for a short while, it was clear they knew nothing about baseball or the strike, and they chewed out some poor caller who tried to argue against them. I'm not sure why people bother calling in to radio talk show hosts. Most of these morning hosts are ignoramuses who simply know to package vapid arguments in rabble-rousing rhetoric.
What is true about the baseball strike: You don't have to sympathize with baseball players or owners. I've never really sympathized with baseball owners. Most are greedy businessmen with no knowledge of baseball. And while I love watching some of these baseball players play, I can't say I sympathize with them (I definitely can't empathize with them). In this economy, with plenty of people just looking to get work, if a professional player has his salary capped it's no great tragedy. Yes, it's true, the median salary in baseball is much lower than the average salary, which everyone seems to quote liberally (the average salary is elevated by a small number of huge contracts; most pro players actually make about $400K per year, which is far far from poverty but a far cry from the $2M average salary so popular in the press). Still, for those who make the pros, it's a charmed life by any reasonable standard. I don't know too many people who are concerned about the plight of players and owners, and that's completely understandable.
However, lots of points being bandied about are ridiculous. First of all, baseball players are not expendable, as the radio hosts insisted. Baseball as an entertainment may be expendable, but today's MLB players are, for the most part, not. There is only one Alex Rodriguez, and there's no one in the minor leagues who can replace him. There are 750 players in the major leagues today, and you won't find 750 players with the same skills anywhere in the world. Sure, you could get a bunch of semi-pros or minor leaguers to cross the lines and replace them, but let's be real. No one would fill pro stadiums to watch them.
Secondly, salary caps are not inherently good. They do not, by necessity, increase competitiveness. Basketball has a salary cap, and that sport has more back to back champions in the past several decades than any other sport. Football has a salary cap, but the competitiveness there results more from the number of players required to field a competitive team (and the high number of injuries in that sport to key positions) than to the salary cap. A sensible revenue sharing plan, like the one Derek Zumsteg of Baseball Prospectus suggests, is a far superior solution to guarantee competitive baseball. Frankly, even without a salary cap, it's no given that the team with the highest payroll this year, the Yankees, will win the World Series. In fact, in many ways, the Oakland A's, with a payroll a third of the Yankees, are a better team (their rotation of Zito, Mulder, and Hudson is certainly stronger this year than the Yankees front line of an aging Clemens, a tired Mussina, an old and overweight Wells, a rehabbing Pettite, and an inconsistent El Duque). Most of the lack of competitiveness in baseball is the result of lousy personnel management.
And frankly, on principle, a salary cap is counter to the American way. I wouldn't want my salary capped except by the amount of economic benefit I could bring to my employer, and the same should go for baseball players. The fact is, millions of people every year pay lots of money to go watch baseball, and that wouldn't happen if those 700 players didn't come out and play. So economically, they've earned that money. The salaries that are offensive are the fat contracts teams pay for players who are clearly not worth it on the field, like the huge contracts given to Greg Vaughn, or Mo Vaughn, or Bobby Higginson, or Mike Hampton. Of course, the easy conclusion to draw is that if you don't like MLB player salaries, don't go to the games! Don't buy jerseys and caps, don't watch baseball on TV, and the owners really won't be able to afford to pay the salaries that they do. They won't be able to charge the prices they do for season tickets and individual seats.
So feel free to complain about player salaries, and the looming strike. I agree, the owners and players should be able to compromise on the luxury tax and avoid a strike, or I will give up on baseball for a long time. Cold turkey. But don't argue for salary caps or that the pro players do not possess unique skills which keep the fans rolling through the turnstiles unless you're willing to admit that a great portion of your antipathy is rooted in jealousy.

No time in the day

It never feels like there are enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do. Read, catch up on news, ride my bike, work, learn how to [insert some new hobby], plan my next big trip, catch an episode of whatever my Tivo has recorded. One can only choose to do so much.
Do I feel sorry for myself? I do not.

Gold...finguh!

Nope, not a post about Austin Powers: Goldmember (saw it Saturday--after the fun fun opening sequence, I was surprised to discover I was bored when all the familiar characters showed up again, doing their thang...could it be, Austin is old news?).
At Eric's birthday BBQ and bocce affair, heard clips from the new Shirley Bassey Remix Album, Diamonds Are Forever. Hot stuff. The Propellerheads, John Barry, and Groove Armada? I'm in!
On a tangent, the best track to listen to while driving really fast? The Chemical Brothers Out of Control, featuring vocals by New Order's Bernard Sumner. The bassline is evil, it always inspires me to downshift and blow by the next ten cars on the highway.

6 days

Two of my favorites, DJ Shadow and Wong Kar Wai, were surprised to discover they were big fans of each other. So they decided to collaborate. Cool.
WKW directed the video for DJ Shadow's 6 Days. The video stars Chang Chen from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (he played Zhang Ziyi's lover, lucky SOB) and features Christopher Doyle's trademark velvet crush cinematography. It's not as visible streamed over the Internet, but check it out for yourself. It's at DJ Shadow's website--I found the link buried in current news.
WKW, like Soderbergh, doesn't really storyboard. Just figures it out as he goes. Shows up, then decides how he wants to shoot different scenes. That takes a lot of guts in one's abilities, especially when shooting scenes out of sequence, as Soderbergh did while filming Ocean's Eleven.

Happy birthday

To Eric and Laura! It was a birthday weekend.
Also, welcome back Kate. Just in time, a cycling buddy out of the blue.

Down with Bruce Kimm

New Cubs manager Bruce Kimm left Mark Prior out on the mound for 136 pitches today. Kimm should be shot for doing that to Prior's golden arm. Teams invest millions of dollars in these players, then mismanage them so badly. That was a travesty. I wanted to jump through the TV and b-slap some sense into Kimm. Even Kerry Wood's arm wasn't abused this badly his rookie season. Let's hope Kimm is fired at the end of this season and that Prior's arm isn't fraying at the seams before he has a chance to build it up.
Many of you will skip this baseball post, but I'm hopping mad. Being a Cubs fan provides a lifetime's worth of, as Tony Soprano would say, agita. If I ever become wealthy enough to purchase a sports team, I'm buying the Cubs and taking them to the World Series. I could be mayor of Chicago at that point.

Life in the minors

Jason Giambi won the home run derby in the MLB All-Star game. I'm not sure what the prize was, but the trophy looked pretty nice, and some couple won $250,000 from Century 21 towards the purchase of a new house.
Brandon Larson won the Triple A home run derby over Joe Crede. For his victory, Larson won $1000 and a $500 Old Navy gift certificate.

Random fears

Does anyone else find Lyme's disease to be incredibly frightening? I don't even think my chances of getting it are that great, but the idea that you could die from a tick bite is scary. Perhaps it explains my fear of hiking through grassy areas.
The word fetus scares me.

Frivolous this All-Star game was

This All-Star game was jinxed from the start. Anastacia screwed up the words to the national anthem (rockets gave glare? gave truth through the night...?). Then the game ended in a tie. I agree with Jim Caple and all the other writers who wished the game still counted for something. No one really tries that hard to win, from the managers to the players, so it's hard for the fans to care.
Back in an age long ago, Pete Rose ran over Ray Fosse to score the winning run in the All-Star game, effectively ending Fosse's career. Ted Williams named his game-winning home run in the 1946 All-Star game after playing the entire game because he was the best player at his position, and you play your best players if you're trying to win. Back then the players and managers played the All-Star game to win.
Who really cares if everyone gets to play or not? This isn't some charity game. Sosa hit a 524 foot homer in the home run contest. Barry Bonds has an on base percentage of .562. Let them play the whole game.

Silly

The MLB rule that the All-Star team include a player from every team is ridiculous.

Not the newest VW...

I was driving behind a Passat station wagon today, and another Passat passed in the right lane. Except someone had removed some of the letters from the name of the car in back, so all that remained was ASS.

The latest BMW...

A preview shot of the upcoming BMW Z4 Roadster:

With their latest 7 series and this latest Z4, BMW has modified the styling of its cars fairly radically. A little too old school and frumpy for my taste, though the Z4 is an improvement over the Z3 which looks like a toy.

Spirited Away on DVD!

Spirited Away (by Hayao Miyazaki of Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro fame) will be out on DVD in late July or early August, even before it's out in theaters in the U.S. Yeeee-haa!
I'm hoping it will include the original Japanese soundtrack in addition to the English dub. Voices for the English dub:
Chihiro: Daveigh Chase (A.I, Lilo & Stitch)
Haku: Jason Marsden (How to Make a Monster, Baldur's Gate)
Boiler Room Man: David Ogden
Twin Witches: Suzanne Pleshette (Lion King 2, Along Came a Spider)
Chihiro's mother, Yugo: Lauren Holly (Don't Cry For Me, Any Given Sunday)
Chihiro's father, Akio: Michael Chiklis (Heavy Gear: The Animated Series, The Commish)
Lin: Susan Egab
Bathhouse Manager: John Ratzenberger (Monsters Inc, Cheers)

Rick vs. Sammy

Everyone's probably heard about Rick Reilly asking Sammy Sosa to take a steroid test during a post-game interview. Reilly even went so far as to get the address of a local clinic. Well, Sammy went off on Reilly, so Reilly wrote a column in SI raising doubts about whether Sammy was clean. Reilly concludes the article: "True, it would take some large cojones [to get tested right away, without waiting for mandatory testing]. Of course, if these players are on steroids, they lost those a long time ago."
Rick Reilly is an a$$ for confronting Sammy like that, and a bigger one for then trying to come off as if he was the one wronged. Innocent until proven guilty, Rick. You should've learned that in grade school. That was a cheap publicity stunt which you're milking for all it's worth. Want to prove your cojones? Go ask the same question of Barry Bonds, or Mark McGwire if he were still playing. Then we'll see if you and your cojones fit in a locker room urinal.

Asian Invasion

First you have Japanese players like Ichiro coming over and leading all All-Star voting, then Yao Ming from China is the first overall NBA draft pick this year, and now 113 pound Takeru Kobayashi has won Nathan's Famous Annual hot dog eating contest for the second year straight. And not just by a little. He ate 50.5 hot dogs AND buns in 12 minutesm while second place contestant Eric Booker (400 pounds) only managed 26. There was controvery, though, as apparently Kobayashi heaved and coughed some of the hot dog back up (one of those acts that induces in observers the same reaction) into his mouth. Judges let him keep the title, though, and, amusingly, his margin of victory covered the spread of 20 hot dogs established by Internet gamblers.
Read the article--it's hilarious. Reads like an Onion article, except it's real. Among the more humorous excerpts:

• Booker, spouting Zen-like strategy, reminding me of contestants in the annual Hands on a Hard Body contest: "I didn't want to suffer the mistakes I had last year, where I was looking around to see what everyone was doing. It was just me and the dogs."


• Contestants are disqualified only if food is actually visibly regurgitated. "Footage captured by ESPN confirms that some hot dog slush did spill through Kobayashi's fingers and pieces of liquid bun spouted out of his nose, but footage shows time had already expired."


• Now he knows how Lance and Sammy feel: "These (American) guys last year were yelling and screaming drugs, drugs, drugs," said Rich Shea, who noted that contestants accused Kobayashi of using muscle relaxers. "I was with him all morning, and I've seen no evidence of it. As the international federation, it would be our duty to bring drug testing into this sport, but there's just no evidence."

Kobayashi weighed 113 pounds before he began, 120 pounds afterwards. I would find this particularly disgusting if not for the fact that a bunch of friends recently held a wing-eating contest (part of the regular Tatonka Night wing-eating gathering established by Andy). That night, Dave ate 72 wings, Jason gained some 9 pounds in fat, chicken, and beer, and Jenny put away 45. I ate 30 wings once at the event. Eating a massive amount of food is less about the actual volume consumed than the extreme self-disgust and self-hatred (pity?) which results from harming your body like that. Short way of saying the mental fortitude required to do something like that is more impressive than the physical act of doing so.

Free smoothies for a year

Joannie ran the Chicago Jamba Juice All-American 8K today (she's training for the Chicago Marathon), and at the end of the race she won the grand prize in the raffle. Free Jamba Juice smoothies for a year. The mental picture that persists is Joannie posing for pictures with two people dressed as strawberries.

Mariners-A's

Bill was kind enough to take me to the Mariners game against the A's. Bill has sweet seats, a few rows behind the Mariners' dugout. I've been spoiled this year, getting used to seats near home plate on the main level.
Some notes from the game:

• Edgar Martinez was back off of the DL. His second at bat he hit an opposite field homer off Zito, to deep right center. A couple A's, including Jermaine Dye, hit rockets out to the same part of the park and saw those die on the warning track. That's a tough place to hit it out in Safeco, which shows how much power Edgar has to opposite field. He waits back and inside the ball, keeping his weight back, and drives down and through the ball to right. Back about 15 years ago in baseball, no one really swung that way. Now, hitters are strong enough to hit it out the opposite way. Over 50% of Sosa's home runs have gone to right field this year.


• Zito got hit pretty hard, but he's still a stud. He's so solid. A fastball that hits 88 to 90mph, an 11 to 5 curve that drops off the table at 74 to 75mph, and a changeup that comes in at 78 to 79mph. All delivered with the same exact motion, which is the key to his deception. And he's not afraid to throw any of those pitches on any count. You could see when he fooled right handers with the curve because their front leg would buckle. One of the prettiest things in baseball is watching a pitcher fool a batter on a changeup. Watching it on TV you think, "why doesn't he just wait back on that ball and kill it," but anyone who has ever been in the box when a pitcher delivers a changeup with the exact same motion as a fastball but takes 8mph off the ball knows how difficult it is to make contact. The difference in the time it takes the pitch is hundredths of a second, and it's just enough that your bat is ahead of the pitch. Hoffman and Moyer have made careers out of that pitch. Pedro has a nasty nasty change. Maddux has a doozy of a change. Schilling and Clemens use the split fingered fastball as a change. Oh, back to Zito. If he stays healthy, he'll be an All-Star for years.


• John Olerud is underrated. Just a solid, solid hitter who didn't get fooled by Zito at all. Keeps his weight back, waits for pitches he can drive, and rock solid on defense at 1B. He helps every one of his teams win.


• Rafael Soriano has a live arm, but he doesn't quite have the command he needs or a strong enough offspeed pitch to be a dominant starter. Granted, the M's had to call him up earlier than they wanted. He should be learning his trade in triple-A right now.


• Imagine how tough Hudson, Zito, and Mulder would be if the A's had good outfield defense. Long and Mabry played CF and LF, and they're terrible. Two flies that should have been caught dropped for doubles. Defense is generally overrated, and the A's have a different but effective formula for winning baseball, but the A's pitchers must get sick of seeing some of those balls dropping in.


• I suck at those Oldies trivia games they play on the scoreboard, except when it's baseball trivia. In a way, I'm glad. Someday, when I'm the only one who can name some of those songs....oh, let's not go there.


• Either my vision is improving, or they've slowed down the hat trick game. I'd always been good at that game, but last year for some reason I started losing it. It scared me to death. I thought my vision was going. I stopped playing to avoid the pain of losing. This year it's easy again. I think they slowed it down.


• Bret Boone is the steroid poster child. His bulging body is frightening.


• One of the reasons Kazuhiro Sasaki is so hard to hit is that he has a hitch in his delivery right before he releases the ball that completely throws off the batter's timing. The ball seems to appear out of nowhere, and timing his forkball is nearly impossible. You can't tell on TV, but from behind home plate it's as plain as day. Pitchers are taught to deliver the ball in a way that feels natural and is mechanically sound, but for pitchers who don't have great stuff, it might be worth investing time in a deceptive delivery.


• Ichiro will always bat over .300. If he continues to bunt more, he'll get some 50 to 60 infield hits a year. He hit a routine grounder to the first basemen Hatteberg and just flat out beat Zito to the bag. He has some 30 infield hits already.

I missed our softball doubleheader yesterday. Sadness.

Random epiphanies

Today, in an early morning meeting, I was staring out the window of a conference room. It was a gray day, and a light fog was rolling in over the Puget Sound. And at that moment, suddenly I felt this brief but enormous wave of optimism and happiness.
I have these fleeting epiphanies from time to time. I have no idea what causes them. Nothing in particular seems to bring them on, but when they occur, it feels like "everything's gonna be alright."
Odd. I wonder if it's a chemical mixup, may be a seratonin bubble bursting, or emotional wires crossing in the brain. If I could bottle that feeling I'd always be on cloud nine.

Little pink coffin

Yet another company has announced a tool for fighting spam (unsolicited e-mail, not the mysterious canned meat). Cloudmark's tool is called SpamNet.
The idea is that this add-on software places an extra folder in your e-mail program. When you receive spam, you can click on it and add it to your spam folder, where it gets reported back to a central server somewhere. If you report spam properly, your future reports are taken more seriously. The idea is that there are just as many, probably a lot more, people reading e-mail and receiving spam as there are sending spam. Of course, each spam mailer sends out a ton more e-mail than the average recipient. However, if the entire e-mail community begins to report spam, you have an entire army fighting the problem instead of relying on a small central group to track it.
Clever idea, and one of the more promising approaches I've heard.
SpamNet only works for Windows computers running Outlook. If you qualify, I encourage you to download it. Since it derives its power from the size and participation of its community (like Napster, or SETI@Home), it will only be effective if a critical mass of users adopt it. You'll feel like you're contributing to better the world of e-mail for everyone--think of it as volunteer work.
What they really need is to have support for Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, whose accounts tend to be spammed mercilessly because spammers can just guess at usernames to attach to @hotmail.com or @yahoo.com. My home e-mail account is actually fairly immune to spam so far. Or someone like Microsoft or some standards board should encourage its integration directly into Outlook and other popular e-mail programs as a standard.

Electronica

Odd convergences. Cleaning out my e-mail at work today and found an old link from James to the video for Dirty Vegas' Days Go By. You know this song, even though the title may not be familiar. It's the one in the Mitsubishi Eclipse commercial, where three young'uns are driving at night, seemingly to a rave, and this song comes on, and the girl in the passenger seat starts grooving.
Cool commercial. Cool tune. Same day, I read an article in Salon about the influence of electronic music on the American music scene, and it mentions this song and the commercial a couple times.
Oh yeah, cool video. Go check it out. I couldn't get the Quicktime link to work, but the Windows Media link came up just fine. I may use a few of those moves next time out on the dance floor.

What the $#@*&!

The fifth leading votegetter for an NL outfield spot in the 2002 MLB All-star game is Tsuyoshi Shinjo, ahead of Andruw Jones, Larry Walker, Jim Edmonds. What, can people not tell the difference between Japanese outfielders and think he's Ichiro? Actually, Armando Rios of Pittsburgh has more votes than Andruw Jones or Larry Walker. I have no idea how that happened.

Creative Comments, er, Commons

Another interesting interview with Lawrence Lessig, law professor at Stanford and the public figure most known for trying to get the folks in D.C. to understand the world of technology and how law might best apply in that world. I agree with him on the principles which he titles end-to-end, which says that you should keep the network simple, placing intelligence at the edges. The Internet is a good example. TCP/IP is fairly simple--it moves data. Computers at the edges of the network are smart and can do all sorts of fancy things like play movies or music, create web pages, process spreadsheets, etc. The principle allows networks to evolve quickly, without requiring the coordination of multiple parties.

Open Source Software

Joel has a theory on why various companies are pursuing open source software.

Quicktime

Quicktime rules.

Will it cause tumors in your ear

Now this would be a cool, a phone that is planted in your tooth and which you hear through your earbone. Someone could be whispering in my ear. All they'd need is a video feed to see what I'd be seeing and a panel of experts could be informing me of people's names, jokes, and random facts which would make me the toast of every cocktail party.
Of course, it would exacerbate the problem now where people talk into earpieces connected to their phones and I mistakenly think they're talking to me.
"Hello?" they'll say.
"Uh, hi," I respond.
(ignoring me) "Hey honey! How are you? Hey listen..." they chatter.
(small black cloud over an embarrassed yours truly)

Prior

Friday, I saw Mark Prior's fourth start in the majors as my beloved Cubbies visited town to play the Mariners for the first time in their history. Prior was matched up against another good young pitcher, Joel Pineiro. Usually, I root for the Mariners, but not when they're playing the Cubs.
Prior started off well, striking out Ichiro on a 95 mph fastball which Ichiro swung through. From there on out he was in control, pitching out of one jam with runners on first and third and no outs. All night he was spotting 93 to 97 mph gas, snappy 80-81 mph curves, and the occasional 84-85 mph changeup. The Mariners were overmatched in many cases; many of the strikeouts were full or check swings. Prior looks calm on the mound and has a smooth delivery. It's easy cheese--as he continues to mature it wouldn't be surprising to see him tossing in the high 90's consistently.
Baylor let Prior go back out for the 7th inning after he had already thrown 110 pitches or so. That made me nervous. He ended up tossing 124 pitches, striking out the side in his last inning. If Baylor had let him stay out there much longer I would've run out on the field and yanked him myself. Baylor let Clement out there the next night for 116 pitches. Let's hope Baylor, with his job in jeopardy, doesn't abuse his starters until their arms fall off. I won't exactly shed many tears if he's let go this year.
Later Kyle Farnsworth came in and blew Ichiro away on a 98 mph high fastball. Sammy also connected and hit a rocket of a line drive out to the second level of the left field bleachers. The other memorable moment came when Pineiro got Sosa to ground into a double play, pumped his fist, and started walking off the field. Problem? There were only two outs. The home plate ump told a sheepish Pineiro to get back out there, but perhaps his mind didn't follow. The next batter, Crime Dog McGriff, homered to right.
Prior ended up with 11Ks in 7 innings. Someday I'll look back and tell folks about seeing him pitch his first year in the majors. He has the potential to be a control power pitcher, much like Roger Clemens or Curt Schilling of the past few years. It's a rare combination--Kerry Wood is still trying to gain command of his stuff. If he stays healthy, Prior will be the Cubs ace within two years.