Archive for December, 2008

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New Year’s resolutions.

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

I can’t think of a better way to sum up the best way to live life in the coming year. Despite the financial troubles of our world today I can’t think of a better way to describe the best way to live other than how he puts it:

Do be willing to part with money, especially for goods that will last and experiences you’ll always fondly remember. Don’t forget to enjoy life. Time is a commodity even more precious than money, and it can’t be won back. Either way there is a little bit of a gamble, but you can often hedge your bets, living for the day, saving for the ages, and feeling good about the journey.

I think I’m doing that. My resolution is still do what I’m doing right, try to fix the things I’m doing wrong and trying to figure out how to make everything better. Also make millions of dollars and stuff and move in to a small one bed room apartment with two bisexual women.

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Peter Schiff is right again…

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

I wonder how many times he nails it before they actually listen to him? In a Ron Paul presidency, I wouldn’t worry too much about the economy with a guy like Peter Schiff in the administration. But with Obama and nobody like Peter Schiff to be found in his new administration, I worry that things will proceed to get worse and worse with no hope in sight for the next four or eight years…

Posted in Political Mind Dump | Comments Off

Christmas summary and a few other things.

Monday, December 29th, 2008

So Christmas Eve was pretty boring this year. Basically we stayed home and two uncles and an aunt showed up. By that point I was a little tired. For some reason, chores just took it out of me that day. I don’t know why. I fell asleep on dad’s recliner around 9:45 and woke up later on to see them leave and open presents. Christmas Day was way better. Grandma and Grandpa’s place is pretty much the highlight of Christmas. It’s amazing to me how many of us are still going there for Christmas Day. We just don’t get that on the other side of the family.

Overall, it was a nice set of gifts. I got $55 worth of iTunes gift cards, two of the new Futurama DVDs and some Steeler stuff and a big thick pair of socks. The one thing I was expecting but didn’t get was a new printer, but more on that later. Even better, everyone seemed to like my gifts, nobody has asked for a receipt yet.

So last night, since I didn’t get one for Christmas, I went out and got a new HP. The reason was that the old one quit working on me. The printer head wouldn’t move very often. And there were lots of paper jams and several times where the paper was in the printer but the stupid thing couldn’t find the paper, etc. But I guess five years is the maximum life span for cheap Lexmark printers. So instead of a Lexmark I got an HP this time since I don’t have to worry about it not working with the Airport Extreme base station and the HP printer looks better than the other kind.

Oh yeah, the transfer from the old blog to the new one has hit a snag. Mostly it’s that I’m too busy sometimes and other times too lazy to actually keep going. I mean, there’s a hell of a lot to transfer here and I had no idea how long it was going to take. I wanted it to be all done in time for New Year’s but that’s not gonna happen. I now want to set a completion date of January 31st. Mostly based on the idea that if I do two months every day, it’ll probably take about that long to finish. The sucky part is that each month takes a long time. It’s very tedious work and I’m not sure of any other way to do it. I’ll eventually get all caught up. There are lots of things I like about Word Press so far and it’s the reason I’ve done almost three years of archive transfers. I haven’t used any other kind of blogging software for a long time, but if the others were any indication, I couldn’t imagine being this far along with them.

That’s about all for now. I think.

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It could be worse.

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Today, history was made in the NFL as the Detroit Lions lost their 16th game of the season, making them the first team in NFL history to lose all 16 games in a single season. William Clay Ford bought the team out in 1964. Since then the Detroit Lions have won exactly 1 playoff game and have only been to the playoffs 9 times. In that time, the Pirates have won two World Series. Since that one playoff win in 1991, the Pirates have won three playoff games (ok, not fair since they lost that series 4 games to 3).

As bad as it gets at time for the Pirates, there are teams that have it worse. I’m not sure what is worse 0-16 with little hope for the future or 17 straight losing seasons. It might not be so bad if the Lions had won a Super Bowl five or six years ago or had at least won a playoff game or two since their last championship in 1957. The long term future is starting to look better for the Pirates, they have a revitalized farm system and the scouting department’s budget has been expanded. Sure they aren’t gonna win in 2009 (unless there’s a miracle), but at least the Pirates are making a real effort to change things for the better.

Reading Lions blogs, there doesn’t seem to be any hope that it’s gonna happen with the Lions. Matt Millen is gone, but the new GM is one of his guys. Sure they swindled the Cowboys earlier this season after Millen had left, but there’s something to be said for changing the culture of losing in a franchise as bad as this. The Pirates are making that effort, the same can’t be said for the Lions right now.

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Now that’s just stupid.

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

I found this article and thought it was somewhat interesting. I especially found this quote to be really funny: 

People conceive of burning wood as being natural. Tobacco is natural, too — until it burns

Ha, you have got to be kidding. I’m sure she means cigarettes are dangerous. Then there’s one:

When many people are burning wood, the effect is all the more hazardous.

No it isn’t. Wood is pretty much carbon neutral. Besides, most homes are burning fossil fuels to keep them warm. Is that safer than burning a renewable resource like wood? And when people burn wood, they don’t add anything to the wood to make it more dangerous. Cigarette companies have been accused for years of making cigarettes more addictive and dangerous by adding thousands of chemicals to them…

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Posted in Political Mind Dump | Comments Off

Slow rider.

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Wow, this transferring thing is moving very slowly today. This morning, I got three more months done. I also created some categories and the blogroll. Looking at the old archive, September-December of 2003, I wrote 100 entries. So that’s why it’s slowed down so much. After that most months have about 15 or 20 entries, although some do have more than that.

I’m hoping to get done with 03, 04 and 05 today, although there’s no guarantees there. Then I will have to put this blog up in the same spot as the old one and direct readers (if any) here instead of the old one.

Other than that, it’s breakfast time and stuff.

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Posted in Technical Blog Stuff | Comments Off

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

But I don’t want to spend a lot of money…

So welcome to the new and improved and better version of Carnival of Madness. This a project that was in my mind for several years now. Actually, since the beginning back in November of 2002, I thought about making the blog better and easier to use, for me that is.

The first thing that I really wanted was an editor that let made it easy to write up stuff. The old one was adequate as six years of use has shown, but this one is so much easier to use and better to use. I really like it so far.

Also I wanted Tags and Categories and Blogroll. I’ve spent the night putting it up and going through the archives and putting stuff from as long ago as 2001 when all it was was me putting html pages up and calling it a blog.

And finally, there are comments. Yep. Not sure how that’s gonna go here. I tried comments before but this time it wont’ take any work at all to add them.

So go ahead and look around and see what the new blog is like and keep your eyes out for other new stuff the next few weeks.

I got up to August 2003, I hope it’ll be all done soon enough.

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Ryan Doumit, Fuck Yeah!

Monday, December 22nd, 2008

The Pirate most likely to do two chicks at the same time gets a three year extension until the end of the 2011 season, unless they decide to have him stay through his option years, in which case he’ll be with the Pirates until 2013. I have to say I’m ok with all this. The two option years are huge in terms of dollar amounts and he’ll have to stay healthy and productive in order to get them activated. My favorite quote from his press conference:

If I had my way, spring training would start tomorrow.

Yeah, man. I hear ya! Me too. Winter sucks!

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Yah, there is some news!

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

As the temperature dropped well below 0 last night, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has finally got some news out there about the current players and the minor league prospects of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It seems like for several weeks now, all the stories coming out of the there has been about the Jason Bay and Xavier Nady trades, which is ancient history at this point. Bay was traded on July 31st, that’s almost half a year ago. Get the hell over it already. He was a good player and maybe the trade will end up a bad deal for the Pirates. There’s an equal chance it could be a good trade. Just need to wait and see what happens this season. See if Brandon Moss and Bryan Morris recover well from their surgeries.Of note is that 1st round hold out Pedro Alvarez might be able to start at AAA Indianapolis if management thinks he’s ready, it sounds like this kid is ready to be fast tracked like Barry Bonds was, of course Bonds wasn’t a great player in 1986. He didn’t hit for high average and he struck out a lot that first year, but he still had an OPS+ of 103 and had 16 home runs. But by 1988, you could see that he was gonna be a great player. So I think Alvarez could use a complete season in the minors, but if they think he’s ready, bring him to AAA and if he’s beating the crap out of everyone there, bring him to the Pirates.

In other news, the LaRoche brothers are supposedly getting ready for the season. I wonder if this means that Adam is working on his long looping swing that’ll lead to lots of stirke outs and balls hit right at the 2B the first half of the season. And Andy is probably just watching TV and eating about five Primanti sandwiches a day.

Unless they’re listening to Doug “Mint Cabbage” and actually working out. Now this is the definition of “manager in the making” Dougie is calling guys up and making sure they’re working out and keeping in shape during the off season and the best part is that he’s not currently a member of the Pirates. They haven’t even offered him a contract for the 2009 season yet. I wonder if last season he was calling A-Rod and Jeter telling them to work out some more…

I say if he’s doing that, resign him. He might not be good, but at least he cares.

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Fast Learners.

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

So every once in a while, I’ll check up on the blog of those two Indian guys who the Pirates signed to a minor league contract. I thought I’d check up on it today and see what they have to say. This entry was great:

i not watching girls. i only pitching, training, eat, watch baseball/Movies and sleep. American women very dangerous and very crazy.

That’s good. It took me about 26 years to figure out what took him only a few months of living in the United States to figure out.

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