77 thoughts on “July 17, 2012: Nineteen”

  1. Had a great time up in NW MN. Four of my five siblings w/family were there as well as my parents and our foreign exchange student from Germany with his son. The county fair was a nice backdrop, and school reunion and parade were entertaining, in a small town sort of way. A couple dozen of the 55 in my graduating class were there (all of us are still alive 32 years later?!) and we sure enjoyed catching up.

    Runner daughter and Mrs. Runner sampled all of the exotic Minnesotan fare, and I got my fill of rhubarb pie. And apparently I didn't miss any Twins "highlights" as well. The dog behaved almost flawlessly, and while the weather was hot, uh...I can't think of anything positive about the weather aside from trace rain overnight on Saturday that settled the dust a bit.

    Still, fourteen hours on the road each way is tiring. Glad(?) to be back to work.

    Oh, and on the way home, I received this photo on my phone from one of my nephews:

    1. Fighting Sue!

      I will be in StL the first week of August. I may have availability to have some fried ravioli during the week if you are interested/available.

      1. I would love that. Unfortunately, I bail out on a business trip that week to head for Rowsdowerland Wednesday through Friday, so matching up schedules might be a challenge.

        1. I will let you know our schedule once I am there. I just go where I am told to go until I have some free time.

            1. Yeah, toasted rav!

              That place did work for me, but I will say that it had an odd layout. The 14 bars in there was not something I've seen before.

        1. Yeah, I know what those are. I like 'em smothered in red chili, but that's just me.

          1. I like lots of things smothered in red chile.

            speaking of which, there may or may not be an Appetite post coming in the next day or so. It turns out that the Vitamix makes a really smoov red chile sauce.

            1. You also know that those have nothing to do with pigs fat, pigs skin, or pigs anything right, doc?

    1. I wasn't planning on reading the book before the scandal came out. I still don't. Joe Paterno is not a subject I've ever had any interest in.

      That said, I simply hope that JoePos manages to be honest in it. I've never figured the book was going to be very popular (it was always going to be sympathetic to a certain degree, to make it something else would take a complete rewrite). I just sort of hope it's not an embarrassment.

    2. This sentence scares me a little:

      In the video, Posnanski acknowledges the scandal and says, “I hope to get somewhere closer to the truth.”

      (emphasis mine.)

      What does "closer" mean? Close than what? Closer to what was reported in the media? Closer, meaning what the family and his close personal friends want us to know about Paterno. JoePos is is a sticky situation here. I honestly don't think he has it in him to acknowledge Joe Paterno turning a blind eye to the plight of abused boys. The fact that Posnanski's good friend Bill James came out last week in defense of Paterno also causes me to worry about the direction of the book.

      1. You may be right, but remember that the video was done before the Freeh report came out. We knew some things before that, but we obviously know a lot more now.

    3. If it's actually a biography, then his job will be to put the scandal in the context of Paterno's entire life. I'm not at all suggesting he should ignore or whitewash the scandal, nor am I trying to excuse it in any way, but there is obviously more to Paterno's life than just that. It's going to be a really tricky thing to do.

  2. The Bill James quote was weird. Now that I know they are friends, it makes a little more sense. I just never got how a smart guy can say the media (outsiders) were more responsible than Paterno (the ultimate insider).

    1. Bill James has made his whole life shooting down conventional wisdom and being contrary. He also has been shooting down the Dowd Report against Pete Rose for years. The qualities that made him Bill James, the Great Baseball Mind, also appear to occasionally make him Bill James, the Completely Wrong Buffoon on certain topics.

      1. James himself once wrote that you could put together an interesting series of books on the theme of really stupid things said by really smart people when they left their field of expertise.

      1. This pitch-to-no-contact strategy

        The anti-Twin! Just as effective as the pitch-to-contact strategy.

        1. the Red Sox employ the most Twins like pitcher in Aaron Cook. 29.2 inning pitched, 2 strikeouts (thats a 0.6 k/9 rate!). He pitches with a 'heavy' sinker.

  3. also, on a slightly different baseball topic, aren't you glad the A's left town?

    Platoon first baseman Chris Carter's slash line so far: a Bondsian 346/452/962 (in 31 PA).

    This is the same guy who went 136/174/136 in 46 PA last season and 186/256/329 in 78 PA in 2010. Don't you just love SSST?

    1. I wish I had seen this yesterday. I streamed it a couple days ago on his tumblr and can verify that it is, in fact, really good.

      1. It looks like it's still at $2.99, not sure if the promo code still works or not, but it's worth the $3 even if it's not!

    2. Speaking of Amazon, this is an idea I've intermittently had for awhile now. I'll say upfront I haven't done any real background work or hard thinking, so this might quickly be revealed to be a terrible idea.

      What if we set up a Amazon affiliate account for the WGOM, then made sure to link to and buy Amazon items through it? We have the movie, music, book, video game posts, as well as CoC. I know I've personally made a few purchases through links here. We could funnel some of that money back here to help defray operating costs. I know we had one for Rhu_Ru's library posts back at WGOM That Was, but it fell out of use.

      Anyway, it was just a thought.

    1. Congrats. Just don't let all that money go to your waist (which is exactly what I would do if I lived in NOLA).

      1. Heh, time will tell. Dr.chop and I went down to the avenue pub to celebrate, so it's already started.

    2. Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat!

      Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat!

      [I really thought others would join in there.]

        1. if you send me some of that schells I'll do it.*

          *Yeah, I'll forget to do it even if you do.

    1. I will buy the first sixer I see of that.
      Finished off my half-case of Schell's Stout last night.

  4. Well, I don't quite have the news meat offered earlier, but I've now been married for 10 hours.

    Your wives are safe.

    1. Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

      Er, Beaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaau!

      Beau! Beau! Beau! Beau!

  5. Ok, I'm going nuts now. I still can't get Gameday to load on FF or Chrome, but it works just f-ing fine on IE. What's up with that?

    I've updated plugins (new versions of Java 32-bit and 64-bit, and of f-ing Silverfishlight). Still no soap. I checked to make sure that popups were permitted for mlb.com and mlb.mlb.com. Still nothing. It shows me logged in, but just unbearable blackness on screen. Nothing. Nada. Not any.

    1. I can confirm it works for me on Windows 7 with Firefox 14.0.1 and Chrome 20.something, so I think the issue is external to the browser.

      1. I was able to get the alternate audio to work last night on FF (didn't attempt on Chrome), but nothing for the regular Gameday. I'm guessing that maybe something in the last round of Windoze Updates, perhaps?? It worked fine on sunday (and last week at my office).

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