One of Cathy's friends lives here, and an aunt and uncle of mine live here. bS made a crack about Fresno being gang central, but if my aunt and uncle are part of a gang, I'm no longer scared of gangs.
Eight hundred miles of driving yesterday. Gross.
87 thoughts on “July 5, 2011: Fresno”
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As the July guest DJ, I have WGOM Video questions:
1. What are the exact dj dates?
2. Is there instructions on how to embed videos in a post or is it similar to embedding them into a letter?
3. Should I have a 3rd question here?
1. you're up the 11th-17th.
2. to embed, just do the youtube URL with the "v" in it. be sure to use the "WGOM Videos" category to make sure everything gets formatted correctly.
3. profit.
O.k. I tried to queue up Monday's but it's not taking the video. Can you go in a see what i am doing wrong?
You need to turn the full url:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLAHBLAH
into this:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLAHBLAH
Then it should automatically be converted. The shortlink (click "Share") will also work now, if you follow the same procedure.
I've been tempted to start queuing up my August week in advance, just so I don't forget.
Eight hundred miles of driving yesterday. Gross.
That is gross. I'm going to have a 20 hour drive at the end of the month, and I have to do it entirely on my own. I'm not sure if I want to do it in two or three days, but I'm thinking three is probably better.
spooky, you realize that you drove right past my house yesterday??? Shoulda stopped for a potty break at least. 🙁
sorry that I didn't think of this in a timely fashion....
Yeah, I emailed you...I actually ended up sleeping in Sacramento. I hadn't realized I'd be driving right through.
Looks like Punto is rubbing off on the other Redbirds:
Keep an eye on your car, spooks.
He already does: Yakima is #10.
Indeed. That didn't surprise me. I'd also like to see where Yakima ranks for obesity.
We're at our first stop in Fresno right now, and our car couldn't be safer. Not sure what part of town our second stop is in. As my aunt and uncle are pretty well off, I'm hoping my stuff - which is, literally, all my stuff - is safe.
Hey, I have family there too! At least the ones that haven't figured out Fresno sucks.
glad to see car theft is a west coast kind of thing.
I'd have to think that's partially related to the kinds of cars people drive in California, right? If I moved to California with my rusty old car with almost 100K miles on it that's been through many Iowa winters, I'm guessing it wouldn't be particularly likely to be stolen.
If you moved close enough to the Mexican border, you can bet it's fair game. If you take a look at the top list of stolen car models sometime, you'd be surprised.
But they never say how rusty those top car models are.
They don't really care in Tijuana, that's the point.
I still have no takers for two tickets for tonight's Twins game. Section 331. I believe that is the second deck in left field. Originally $21 each, but I'm sure I'll take any reasonable offer at this point. I'll be there with my family. Each ticket includes a hot dog and a soda.
If only I was in the area, I'd be all over at least one of those tickets.
I'm still trying to decide whether I'll be up for the Royals series, probably the Sunday game, if anyone else feels like meeting up before hand.
And I'd have been there for the other one, even if Magoo showed up.
I'll see what I can do. My daughter has swimming lessons at 7:00, so I think my wife and I are unlikely, but I have family in the area who are fans.
Okay, I talked with my sister and my wife, and we'll take 'em. Shoot me an email at rpz3.14 (at) the goog mail and we can work through the details
Done
Apologies for not getting the wrap up sooner. It's there now.
One little bit of View from the Ballpark news, which I've cross-posted there, is that in honor of the doubleheader two weeks from now there will be a different kind of view from the ballpark challenge - replicating the view via your mapping tool of choice. About two months ago I stumbled across the perfect test photo, so we'll see if anyone enjoys that added wrinkle.
Looks like The Captain is not a big fan of 36 U.S.C. § 176(d).
Now that he's wrapped himself in the flag, maybe he can sing "God Bless America" at New New Yankme.
Just don't try to go to the bathroom when he's singing it. (glances at the forbidden zone, steps back)
I just went to baseball-reference.com to check out Valencia's career numbers against Price, and found out Danny isn't listed on b-ref! I thought maybe it was a time of service issue or somewhat, but Revere's on there, so I guess I'm confused. Any of our more b-ref savvy folks on here know why Juicy wouldn't be listed?
That's strange because I was just there the other day looking at his page.
From BR's Twitter:
They've got a fix coming live soon.
Thanks, Mag. I guess I'll have to wait a couple more hours to see exactly how much Danny pwns Price.
BR is back to full strength. Here's Valencia's career numbers v. Price.
Generated 7/5/2011.
He's 6-for-6 on balls in play. I'm guessing there's a little bit of good fortune in some of this.
It's a great nine plate appearances, but it's hard to draw any kind of conclusions about nine plate appearances (which is why it's always amusingly annoying to see Gardenhire make lineup decisions and cite sample sizes in the single digits or teens).
So my beer can chicken was almost a total disaster last night. Turns out the chicken standing on end wouldn't fit under the grill lid. Fortunately, I was able to grill-roast it so that it still turned out decent, although probably not as moist as it could have been.
I introduced beer can chicken to my roommate's family in Tipperary. The problem with doing it in Ireland was that all beer cans there are 500mL (tallboys), so there was some need to get creative to make the can fit.
oy. I take it that you do NOT have a full-sized Weber kettle?
I even did a turkey once on mine (with a Fosters can as the support), although I think (memory fades) I may have had to jury-rig something with the lid
Apparently not. Its a Jack Daniels branded grill my dad gave me that he won at a casino. Its getting pretty old and may be time for a new one anyway. I'll probably pay attention to the size of the next one I buy. If I had checked to see if it would have fit before yesterday, I could have thought ahead and threw it in the smoker instead. I really need to do that one of these days.
Looks like I missed the halfway mark with my move over the weekend. 35-46 in the first half, 11 games under .500. I think that just getting to .500 is probably a good goal for this team. They are 2-0 so far in the second half, so they need to go 9 games over .500 for the remaining 79 games.
It seems like the Twins have been a lot streakier than one might expect since the beginning of May or so. There was a 9-game losing streak, a 3-game win streak, 10 losses over 12 games, that 15 wins over 17 games streak of hope, a 6-game losing streak, and now wins in 5 of the last 6. Although glancing at recent seasons, there were more streaks than I remember.
Since 2001, this team has performed like a moody teenager.
I wonder what a good way to evaluate a team's streakiness would be. Median streak length?
It doesn't answer your question, but there was an interesting Beyond the Boxscore post on this just a few weeks ago.
The first and simplest thing that pops to mind is just counting the number of times a team follows a win with a loss or a loss with a win. You might want to add some adjustment for being above or below .500 (since that would tend to automatically add to your streakiness), but it would be a first approximation.
IIRC, Oakland last year was freakishly non-streaky, being within three wins of .500 for most of the season. But that graph is lost to the WGOM 1.0 ether.
Had a good holiday weekend. The family celebrated mine and Trey's birthdays (both were in June). We both scored Twins shirts. I got one that said "Minnesota Twins Best Dad" and the other has the old Minny and Paul shaking hands logo on it. I also got a gift card to Target and got my first Twins jacket with it. Yesterday, we went to the Mall of America during the day and up to Coon Rapids to watch fireworks. Also, my right leg seems to be the focus of every mosquito in the state.
How long from a blood meal to the hatching of mosquito eggs? 'cuz I'm arriving on July 22, and I'm kinda hoping that socal will have cleared the territory of hungry 'skeeters by then.
You guys have been away from Minnesota for too long. Its never cleared of hungry 'skeeters.
(that said, I'll be up there the weekend of the 22nd myself and would appreciate if they were gone as well.)
I was at the CR fireworks last night, too. Parked a block off Xeon on 118th. This is my second year taking my oldest two and it worked rather well.
I finished book 3 of the Song of Ice and Fire series last night. Hoo-boy. I'd spookied SOME of the stuff, but others caught me unawares.
btw, it appears that the spoiler tags are rather sensitive to whether they have any text whatsoever adjacent to the square brackets....
I learned that the hard way yesterday. I apologize if I spoiled anything in the side bar before I figured it out.
Could you give an example? Don't know if the plugin is still updated, but I would fix it locally and notify the author about it. The sidebar uses the same regex (I think) as what the plugin uses, so it should affect both equally.
And naturally, it works just fine this time.
my 2:47 message above had an ellipse at the end of the sentence, followed by the open square bracket for the tag closer. It displayed fine in the main window, but the text showed up in the sidebar.
Ohhh, I bet I know why. We'll find out tonight if I actually do know.
Fixed!
I do believe that Nancy Grace's head exploded today.
Hopefully she screams so much today she loses her voice forever.
I've only encountered her tv program while at the gym where one would have to tune in to hear her rant. I'm pretty sure that's a good thing /martha
You would be correct. If her head exploded, then my next air travel experience will be much more pleasant since all airports everywhere are apparently required to always be tuned to HLN.
Which is because when HLN showed 30-minute national news broadcasts 24-7, that made a lot of sense, and no one's figured out how to change the channel since.
It is quite possibly, in its current format, the worst television channel in history.
Remember: ESPN still exists.
And TLC.
*sigh* i remember when TLC used to be halfway decent...
For some reason, Eppley in Omaha prefers whatever channel where Judge [fill in the name] presides.
In that case, I would like to modify my statement to: "All airports everywhere, except Eppley in Omaha, are required to always be tuned to HLN."
I would have challenged your statement anyway, but backed off when I remembered that Oprah is no longer on the air.
Science is cool, even when it is navel gazing. (h/t to Andrew Sullivan's blog)
Now I wonder where my belly button has been while I've been sleeping.
This guy on the Woodsmith Shop show on Iowa Public TV looks reminds me an awful lot of Rickety Cricket from It's Always Sunny. I'll see if I can find pictures.
I love Rickety Cricket.
sitting here at Target Field next to Rob and his sis along with Mrs. SoCal, my boys and my parents.
So, I had to drive through some ugly areas in Fresno, but my aunt and uncle live in a pretty posh spot. I was in a pool for the first time in about two years, even.
Six hundred more miles to drive tomorrow...
six hundred?? are you driving round trip to San Diego like, three times???
We're heading to Phoenix, where the Milkmaid and my girls will live while I'm there trying to sell the screenplay. It's a long story, but not now (I've been emotional enough about it in the past few days). It's a financial decision, that's all, but a tough one to make.
Yes, it will suck. It's a five hour trip, though. When things are rough, I can get up and go.
I remember the days when America West had LA-Phoenix-LA flights for $19 each way.
In my humble opinion, Arby's is not good mood food.