Nathan's Occasional Blog

I must confess that I was at the Mariners game with the Angels last night.  Some of the folks I’ll be working with at my new company offered me a ticket for the “offsite strategy planning meeting”.  We had a good time talking tech … and commenting on the game.  Oh, the M’s lost (figures).

Contrary to Kristin’s comments that we should be 100% behind our players at all times with fervent exhilaration, no matter how bad they’re playing, I’m still not happy with them … yes – the players.  Oh, and the management isn’t winning me back either.

Here’s the deal, Kristin: we’re paying Joel Pinero $4.8 MILLION this year (see here and here) to give opponents the chance to play tee-ball.  Joel was a great pitcher for his first few years in the majors.  This year, and last, he sucks.  The numbers don’t lie (see below).  For 2006 JP has the highest ERA of any pitcher on the team (for players appearing in more than 3 games).  He’s got less than half the K’s he had in his best year … and we’re only 4 seasons out from that.

So what’s to root for here for a player?  I just can’t get behind that and root with all my might.  Neither could any of the other people sitting near us near first base.

I disagree with Jill’s assertion that Mike and I have “fair-weather fan feelings.”  A true fair-weather fan wouldn’t take the time to write the comments up and have a discussion about the team’s inadequacies because they simply don’t care when the team is floundering.  We’re different: we care but we’re disillusioned to the point that it hurts to watch.  It’s the same reason I can’t watch replays of knee injuries – too many bad memories of my own personal suffering.

I was pleasantly surprise to see the M’s take 5 of 6 from the Yankees and Red Sox, and very happy to see them win a series against a division opponent in the Angels.  Heck I was happy to see them win a single game against a division opponent!  🙂

I really do hope the M’s can salvage the season and go out on a good note.  I’d love to see them move Ichiro to 3rd or 4th in the lineup and just tell him to be a slugger.  If he wanted to Ichi could easily hit 25 homers a year.

I’d also like to see Ichiro get traded to a good team so he could win a World Series, because I don’t the the M’s owners and management are serious about contending.  Just don’t trade him in the middle of August out of the blue like you did to Moyer.  I don’t think Seattle will ever forgive the M’s for that.

I don’t have a lot of words for this link to a blog about the birth of a new coworker’s child.  Read it if you can (I will tonight from the beginning).

I’ve got email working for my new job early and got a message about the daughter of one of the staffers who’s had a lot of trouble with a heart defect.  I haven’t read a ton, but it looks like their daughter was born on July 2nd and needed a heart transplant.

I’ve got teary eyes just thinking about how blessed and lucky we were with Kaitlyn and Alicea’s ordeal (KC 9 weeks early @ 2.5 pounds with a mom who was “touch and go” for at least 36 hours).

While Kaitlyn was in NICU for 5 weeks, we were lucky enough to not lose any of our neighbors (yay!).  I don’t know what I would do if things turned out differently.

Link to this heart broken

The video’s pretty lame, but the musical arrangement is pretty sweet!  Watch this one in a different browser window … then continue your merry way on the Internet and cover up the video.  Much more enjoyable that way.  🙂

Link to YouTube – The Simpsons vs Star Trek

 Alicea and I drove home today and noticed there’s soccer practice going on in the big park at the top of our street.  We could see all the kids on the field from the main road.

When we turned into our neighborhood (the park is on the corner) Alicea and I absolutely died laughing.  It was so funny I went back up the street and took some pictures.

EVERY VEHICLE IN THE PARKING LOT WAS A SUV OR MINIVAN!

Link to Containership Power Strip – Gizmodo

Unlike Omar, I’ve never been a big fan of Costco.  Ask I always say to Alicea, where the heck are we supposed to put 270 rolls of toilet paper?  🙂

It seems that Omar discovered that Costco sells contact lenses, for DIRT CHEAP!  We’ve been getting lenses from 1-800-CONTACTS too, but no more.  Thanks Omar!

If you’re using a news aggregator like FeedDemon to subscribe to the Daily Grind then you should unsubscribe from the old feed and re-subscribe to the new one.  I’ve updated the “subscribe” link on the left to the new link – my RSS feed.

I discovered today that the Atom feed generated by Blogger is only generating partial content – and I can’t figure out what part it’s actually getting!  PISSER!

One more reason to change to WordPress once my new server gets built out in the next week or two.

Check out the CNet video interviewing Smugmug.com CEO Don MacAskill in one of their datacenter cages.  Pretty cool stuff!

BTW – this is the closest any of my data has come to Apple hardware since I had a piece of crap PowerPC in college.  🙂 

Link to How a photo-sharing site keeps its data | CNET News.com

You know you want to look at Hot Library Smut.  Don’t deny it!

Pretty awesome pictures if you ask me.  Of course I’m biased with a librarian mom and an ex-librarian wife.  If you’re into more modern stuff I highly recommend the Seattle Public Library’s Central Library.

oooooh yeah!  🙂

It seems that our solar system only has 8 planets after all.  As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now there’s been quite a controversy over the last week or two as 2500 astronomers gather at a conference to debate what is, and isn’t, a planet.

Pluto didn’t make the cut and is now a “dwarf planet”.  Link to Wired News: Pluto Stripped of Planet Status

Pretty interesting stuff, but what I love is how the public has really shown interest in this.  I’m glad to see the mass media covering real scientific debate, taking time out of the busy schedule discussing what some murderer ate on his plane trip back to the US.

Science isn’t cut and dried, yes and no.  It’s a consensus of opinions of the scientific community.  If most people think the Earth is flat, it is until enough opinions change because of some new discovery.  I love that.  I think Einstein did too.

Anyway, this should make life easier for middle school students everywhere!  🙂

UPDATE: Scott Adams has a great analysis of this whole Pluto thing on his blog today.  It’s a must read!  (FYI – Scott is the creator of Dilbert)

“Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think Pluto should be the funniest planet – or even the funniest non-planet. That distinction belongs to another. Uranus, 8th celestial body from the sun, is part miracle of gravity and part bung hole. It has earned its status as the funny man of the cosmos.”