Archive for June, 2010

The weekend.

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Big weekend. On Saturday we went to the Brewers-Mariners game in Milwaukee. We first went to the Miller Brewery and had some beer and went on the tour and stuff. Their tour wasn’t nearly as good as the Budweiser tour I took last year. They both handed out free beer. But I think the cool thing about the Budweiser tour was that they showed pretty much everything and there was just more stuff to show.

Miller had two different movies and they really didn’t show all that much. The only unique things about the Miller tour was that Miller had some really old caves they used to store the beer in because the caves were cold and they showed the warehouse where all the beer was before shipping. That place was gigantic. I mean it was huge. Really gave a great perspective on how much beer they make in a day.

We go to the stadium about 45 minutes before the start of the game and we grilled up some food and sat in some lawn chairs. I bought a grill last week and it ended up making some pretty tasty food. I was pretty happy that everything went well. After we ate, the grill cooled off pretty fast because it was a gas grill and by the time we cleaned up and got ready to go inside it had cooled off. The game itself really wasn’t all that interesting considering it had two teams I really didn’t care about. I was glad to see the Mariners win because the Brewers are in the same division as the Pirates. The seats were nice because they were in the shade the whole game and stuff.

When the game was over, we drove over to downtown and saw the lakefront. After that we drove pretty much straight back to Iowa.

On Sunday we went to a wedding. It was cousins wedding. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go or not. I really don’t know her that well and it was about 1.5 hours away, in Cedar Falls. My sister talked me in to going so that her boyfriend wouldn’t get bored. It was a pretty good wedding. The ceremony was at a theater and the reception was at a ball room outside of town.

On the ride home we watched Field of Dreams and then we played some Trivia Pursuit at home, which I won and then finally got to bed around 1:00 in the morning.

So yeah today was back to normal which is nice.

Oh, 11 days ago I reached level 80 in Warcraft with my very first character. It’s really different now. There’s no more experience points and so I spend most of my time doing dungeons and stuff. I’ve also done a lot of fishing in the game. And I’ve kind of just screwed around. Another nice thing is that it seems like quests are handing out more gold when ya do quests at level 80 since you’re not getting experience points anymore.

Also I finally got the delicious chocolate cake recipe this morning. But it’s a total lie.

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War, What is it Good For?

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

So yeah, it would seem that the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are at total war with each other. The Post-Gazette started it with unsigned editorials insulting the Pirates for personnel moves and telling owner Bob Nutting to sell the team. The Pirates kept it going by resigning both Neal Huntington and John Russell this past October through the end of 2011 and not telling the P-G or anyone else until this past week. Really though, contracts in baseball are about as useful as contracts written by 5th graders. The team could fire anyone at any time for no good reason. The only difference between them and regular employees is that regular employees usually don’t have contracts saying that the company will pay them until the contract ends.

So after both Bob Smizik and Ron Cook threw a hissy fit about that, some mom called up and told a sad story about her son getting fired from the Pirates. He was working as a mascot. He was fired because he wrote disparaging remarks about the organization on his Facebook page. Of course that’s pretty silly and seems kinda thin-skinned of the Pirates to do that, I mean it’s not like he was selling to cocaine to the players. So not only does the Post-Gazette write a story about this, but someone in Pittsburgh told me that they have it on the very front page of the paper on the top half of the paper.

I know a guy who got fired from a job for comments on his blog. Ya know what? Not only did the local newspaper not put that story on the front page, but they didn’t even write a story about it. I guess they have better things to do than insult a local company for firing an employee over his blog. But it would seem the Post-Gazzette just has a huge ax to grind.

But it’s really frustrating to me because after years of them kissing Dave Littlefield’s dumb ass and not really questioning anything he did until Draft Day 2007, mostly because they were still part owners of the Pirates, they are now acting like the current management team which is trying to fix the organization after years of neglect are a bunch of criminals. It’s really a shame that Dejan keeps working there, he could probably do so much better. I honestly don’t care if you’re skeptical of the Pirates, but they are doing things the way Bobby Cox did in Atlanta in the late 80′s to fix the Braves or the way the Pirates of the 50′s did to fix the team back then. So to be clear here, skepticism: good. Bullshit: Bad.

(Seinfeld joke title FTW!)

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Government getting in the way of oil spill cleanup?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Unbelieveable…

Foreign companies possessing some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships say they are being kept out of efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf because of a 1920’s law known as the Jones Act — a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US workers.

So much for doing everything they can to clean up the mess. Sure they are, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of arcane and stupid laws from a century ago that protects unions and corporations from competition.

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Alvarez is in the ‘burgh.

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Exciting day, Pedro Alvarez has made it to the majors. It’s unlikely that we’ll see any more big call ups this year. And Alvarez isn’t gonna tear it up right away, but like most players not named Andrew McCutchen he’s gonna have a period of adjustment. Also they released Akinori Iwamura so it would appear that Neil Walker is the 2B of the future, for now. Damn shame with Iwamura though, he probably just hasn’t gotten over that knee injury and I can relate to that.

But the game is being sort of ruined by the White Sox dumb ass announcers. Did you know that Alvarez was drafted second after Stephen Strasburg? I didn’t know that either. I guess Baseball-Reference.com is just wrong about that. And so is my own fucking memory. I mean, I remember the 2008 First Year player draft and Alvarez was selected 2nd after Tim Bekcham. The 2009 draft had Strasburg followed by the Mariners taking Dustin Ackley, the Padres taking Donovan Tate and the Pirates taking Tony Sanchez. Ok, they made a simple mistake, which a lot of fans could make. But these guys are announcers, they should know more than the average fan sitting at home.

Hawk is constantly losing count of how many outs there are or what the count is. “And that’s two outs. Oops, I mean 1 out.” and “That’s a 3-2 count, I mean 2-2 count.” It’s really funny when it’s the first batter of the inning. How the hell is he losing count already? Is he sitting in the booth reading the newspaper or something?

Also Duke fucking sucks tonight. I guess last year really was a fluke and they should have traded him when his value was high. He stated out well this year, but lately he’s been terrible. I mean he’s not Charlie Morton awful, but he’s just not good. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the 2006, 2007 and 2008 seasons.

I went to the Hay Expo today. I saw a robotic machine that can milk cows for the farmer. It can analyze for problems with the milk and dump it if it’s no good. It’s really an amazing piece of equipment. It made me think of this poster. Also, the mixer wagons they’re making these days are so much better than the ones they used to make. The cool thing is that you can dump all the feed out in one trip along the feed bunk instead of how we have to make about 10 or 11 trips back and forth these days.

But I hate the way some person kept telling me how to drive today. Don’t follow that car so closely. I’m about 60 yards behind him. I’m not following him closely. Or like complaining that I’m driving over the center line. Um, you’re sitting on the right side of the truck, it might look like I am, but I’m not.

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How to do a dungeon quest.

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Recently in Warcraft I’ve been spending a lot of time doing dungeon quests for my Tauren Druid. It’s like a whole other part of the game to explore. Most I just use the random dungeon finder, which is an easy way to from a group. I just do the healing. So far I only got wiped twice. One time it was Blackfathom Deeps which only happened because the tank pulled too many mobs and then when we all died, he left the group. The other was in Stormwind Stockade, which sucked because then you spend about 15 minutes running back from the SW edge of Elwynn Forest.

So anyways, if you’re going to do some dungeons through the random dungeon finder, be sure to watch this video to prepare yourself for the experience (which I think is the funniest Warcraft related video ever):

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Bring up Pedro?

Friday, June 11th, 2010

With the Pirates quickly falling towards last place in the NL Central, there has already been cries to the front office to bring up Pedro Alvarez. I don’t think it really matters when he comes up, he’s gonna be here soon enough and the team will still be bad. He will probably provide that middle of the lineup bat that the Pirates desperately needs.

The thing that sucks the most is that Andy LaRoche has been terrible this year and it seems like he had a pretty good April and hasn’t done anything since early May. After almost two seasons with the team, he just hasn’t lived up to the hype that he once had as one of the Dodgers top prospects. I don’t know if the Dodgers just didn’t develop him right or if the Pirates just aren’t the right fit or whatever, but he has probably been the biggest disappointment the last three seasons.

And I also wonder why the Pirates didn’t trade Duke last summer. He was having a fairly decent summer last year and they probably could have got something for him. This year, he’ll switch between brilliant and terrible. He’ll be brilliant for a game and then stink things up for four or five games in a row. Maholm is the only decent starter left and I wonder if he’s gone in late July through a trade. Ohlendorf has declined a bit, but we all knew he wasn’t as good as he was last summer.

Overall, the season has sucked. McCutchen, Meek, Hanrahan, Maholm and Walker are the only guys who are really living up to their ability. So really, the only thing that matters is getting those draft picks signed and getting guys in the minors to show improvements. Those will continue to be what really matters for the Pirates. Until they are ready to compete, they’ll have to develop the players in the minors and add more talent through the draft. It’s the only thing that truly matters at this point in time.

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Bryce Harper.

Monday, June 7th, 2010

With all the talk on the Pirates blogs and twitterz about the drafting of Jameson Taillon, I haven’t given much thought to the #1 overall pick of Bryce Harper. Last year, the big hype of the draft was Stephen Strasburg, who will make his Major League debut against the Pirates tomorrow night. This year the hype went to Bryce Harper, a 17 year old catcher who dropped out of school, got his GED and went to a Junior College in order to get drafted this year.

The most shocking thing was that the Nationals drafted him as an OF. That makes perfect sense. In 1970, the Pirates drafted Dave Parker in the 14th round as a catcher. At the time, he was seen as a catcher because he had a cannon for an arm (he pitched in high school as well), but the Pirates eventually moved him to RF because he was just having too much knee problems. I think it really prolonged his career by not crouching behind the plate 9 innings every day. He had a lot of speed and could throw guys out. And so, if the Nationals are going to move him to OF, I think it’s a good plan. They really avoid injuries with their most valuable offensive commodity. So today was a great day for the Nationals, Pirates and Orioles. Let’s see where it goes from here…

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Taillon it is!

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Well the Pirates did something they didn’t do last year, they took a very good pick with Jameson Taillon. Not everyone is happy with this pick, but it’s clearly a good pick for the Pirates. They got a pitcher who has the potential to be a staff ace, which is something the Pirates really need in their minor league system.

Overall though, a lot of teams are going cheap this year. The Cubs with the 16th pick took a player that Baseball America rated 191st in the country. Delino DeShields Jr. was taken 8th overall when Baseball Prospectus didn’t have him going in the first round. Meanwhile, it gave the bigger money clubs like the Cardinals a chance to take on Zach Cox and his big money demands.

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Draftalicious.

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Well today’s the big freaking day and I don’t mean the WWDC, although it’s pretty cool. I mean I’m not there or anything and I’m not buying any new Apple products for the foreseeable future (unless my MacBook explodes in to a million pieces), so yeah, it’s not such a big deal, to me.

However, the real big deal today is the 1st round of the Major League Baseball First Year Player Rule IV Draft! I know, time to get out your a bunch of beer and nachos and stuff and go watch the TV as the excitement unfolds at 6:00 tonight, you know, when I’m working.

This year pretty much everyone has been saying for the last month that Manny Machado was the pick for the Pirates since there’s a 100% chance that the Natinals are taking Bryce Harper. However, there’s this pitcher down in Texas named Jameson Taillon who as a high schooler already has an arsenal of four pitches, a fastball that tops out at 99 and a nasty curve ball and a freaking change up. Nobody in high school even needs a freaking change up. Yet he has one anyways. So in the last three or four days, the chatter among the quasi-industry insiders is that the Pirates are gonna take Taillon instead of Machado.

Of course, the big debate is about whether it’s better to use your draft pick for a pitcher, which is risky or a hitter which is less risky. Of course a lot of the risk with a pitcher in the past was due to organizations not being careful with them while they were in the minors. Sean Burnett was overworked so much that in 2004 during his rookie season, his arm became very injured and he didn’t get back to the majors until 2008. And with Bobby Bradley, they got a top notch prospect only to see him get injured a lot and not make it, mostly through bad luck. But still half of the first round high school pitching prospects making it isn’t too terrible, right?

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Jim Joyce should get an eye exam.

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

It’s really unbelievable that Major League Baseball gives umpires so much power to fuck up games. Tonight, I tuned in during the 7th inning of the Tigers-Indians game. During it Armando Galarraga was throwing a perfect game. In the top of the 9th, he went out and got one big out from Antoine Jackson in CF. The next out was a simple 2B to 1B throw. So with 26 outs, Jason Donald hit a little roller up near 1B, Galarraga ran over to cover the base and he caught the ball a few steps to spare. But 1B umpire Jim Joyce called him safe and the game continued. The next guy hit a ball to SS and he got thrown out at 1B and the game was over.

I mean this was worse than Don Denkinger. I even thought of Denkinger when Johnny Damon got on base in the bottom of the 8th when he was clearly out. So yeah, Jim Joyce is a terrible 1B umpire.

Solution: Overturn the call. Institute instant replay for exactly this kind of situation. Give Galarraga the Perfect Game. Stop letting the umpires do this kind of shit.

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