Cup of Coffee

May 17, 2013: Long Days Ahead

96 Comments

My Friday is a long opening shift followed by the end-of-the-year school program, and my Saturday is a three-hour morning meeting, a short break and a long closing shift. Weekends are dumb.

96 thoughts on “May 17, 2013: Long Days Ahead”

  1. Today on Ellen:
    Rob Lowe
    Alex O'Loughlin (I have no idea who this is)
    DPWY's parents

    Set your DVR's accordingly.

    1. Alex O’Loughlin (I have no idea who this is)

      To me he'll always be Hiatt from "The Shield", but most people would probably recognize him now from currently being on "Hawaii 5-0"

      1. Ooh, I haven't reached that far on The Shield yet. I have one episode left of Season 3.

      1. The Manny play is actually kind of interesting. Stopping short is probably the right play if he can't beat the 2nd baseman back to the bag, because if he can stall the tag he prevents a double play. Not that I am asserting that's what Manny was thinking.

        I didn't know Manny was in Taiwan. From what I've read in Gotta Have Wa, it seems like he would have been a terrible fit in Japan. Maybe the baseball culture in Taiwan is more relaxed.

  3. Forbidden Zoney (Kind of)

    Spoiler SelectShow

    1. That...is not surprising in the least. I would be willing to bet at least several thousand people voted no thinking they were voting something else.

      In other news, a funny story. I have a client, 58 years old, who comically repeats to me everything he hears on Fox News, and he asked me yesterday what I thought of the amendment. I deflected as usual when he tries to goad me, and he said "Well, I talked to the homos in my building, and they say don't care! They're all playin' the field."

      1. Well, yes, but even after the fact do people not realize what happened? I mean, wasn't this particular result in the news? It's not like my aunt is 85 years old. She was only 65 at the time of the vote. I suppose that issue voting results (as opposed to say candidate voting results) are less well known, but my recollection was that this result was fairly well-publicized. I mean, my parents, living in ND know what happened.

        It was kind of an awkward pause, but my Dad picked up on that outrage of the Legislature not following the people's wishes by launching into one of his favorite tirades: namely, how the ND Legislature ignored election results and kept fighting for the UND nickname. Normally, my dad would be for something like keeping a nickname, but his borderline irrational hatred of UND trumps that.

        Luckily, my younger aunt showed up about then and I took her into the kitchen to watch "Swamp People" (because she'd never seen it and I wanted to see her reaction to a bunch of good ol' boys in LA killing gators). Good. Times.

        Aunts all over the place. Today is one of my mother's other sister's 62nd birthday and she's retiring, so party time. I'm missing out, but I did get to talk gay marriage and gator killing with them last night.

        1. I don't know if I'm lucky or not, but for the most part the politics of my family are more or less even across the board, with only some differences on some tax stuff. Makes family gatherings very pleasant. Granted, I don't see 75% of my family.

          1. Heh. My extended families are also pretty much even across the board - liberal on my mom's side, conservative on my dad's side. My immediate family tends to be fairly centrist, making us the black sheep on both sides.

            1. I've decided that one of the requirements of my job is to deflect political conversations to a different topic. If someone asks me a direct question, I'll answer it, under the theory of "if you don't like my answer, you shouldn't have asked me the question", but I won't get into an argument about it.

              1. I would find that very difficult, but I also appreciate that skill when I see it. Good on you.

            2. My two family sides are on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, and if you saw everyone at a glance you'd almost certainly guess incorrectly about which was which. Unfortunately, a "glance" is almost impossible with one side, that's composed largely of everything-phobes who lazily claim that politics "make them that way." That's more the lunatic fringe of my dad's side, and many of them, though on the same side of the political coin, keep their distance. Family gatherings with my dad's side have been painful and irritating ever since my grandmother - who loved everyone and everything - died in 2004.

    2. Spoiler SelectShow

      2. On the substantive point at stake here, I'd partially blame the ballot wording process. In California, the Secretary of State's office prepares an Official Voter Information Guide, which includes a Quick Reference Guide that, among other things, provides quicky, one-paragraph statements of what "Yes" and "No" votes mean, respectively, on a measure.

        There is no excuse for a voter not to be "reasonably" well-informed prior to voting in California. Just skim the damned Quick Reference Guide, fill out your sample ballot at home, and take that bad boy into the voting booth with you.

        Here is an example.

          1. Second this. I was mildly concerned that it would be worded ambiguously, but did not find it difficult at all. I did read it twice to make sure it was indeed that simple. I recall it saying by voting yes, you are voting to amend the state constitution at the end. If you already knew what the amendment was for (perhaps a dubious assumption), that one sentence is all you needed.

        2. The substantive point at stake here is whether you support Mauer for President or whether you are a communist.

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  4. My iPad just told me (*BREAKING*) that Phil Jackson has a new book out that compares Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Jackson "appears to prefer many of MJ's qualities."

      1. Here a little teaser:

        Jackson also revealed that the sexual assault charges levied against Bryant in 2003 temporarily clouded his outlook of the Lakers star. The situation "cracked open an old wound" because Jackson's daughter Brooke had been sexually assaulted by an athlete in college.

        "The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. ... It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season," Jackson writes. "No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background."

        That's very interesting. I wonder if his daughter's assault was public knowledge before now. Beyond that, though, imagine what Jackson was thinking. He had three other HOFers on that team and Kobe's problems both on and off the court had to be driving Jackson crazy, especially since his own daughter was a victim of an incident similar to the one Kobe was alleged to be involved in.

          1. Did he assault that girl? I don't know if he did. She alleges it and she might be telling the truth, but it has since come out that she'd made other sexual assault claims that weren't credible. So, who knows. That is the nature of these things. Sometimes it's a bad guy. Sometimes, it's a guy who's falsely accused.

            Did he cheat on his wife? Yes. Did he habitually cheat on his wife? Almost certainly. So, that makes him somewhat of a bad guy, even if he's innocent of the assault. But, that also makes him like a lot of guys in the NBA and a lot of guys.

            One thing about the whole sordid affair was that about a month before it happened, Rick Reilly wrote a column asserting that Kobe > MJ. One of the things he wrote in that column was that Kobe had "never been in the back of a squad car." Probably still hasn't, since he turned himself in.

              1. I use Rick Reilly as my personal moron compass.

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    1. I was sad to see that, too. My grandfather used to race stock cars in southern Minnesota (real small time stuff), but reading Poz's post yesterday on Trickle and Larry Phillips getting their start in small towns reminded me of that. It makes me feel like I generally waste my free time and need to find a more ambitious pastime.

      1. The Gameday play-by-play lists it as a ball (Luke Scott to lead off the bottom of the 3rd)

        Speed Pitch Result
        1 71 Curveball Ball
        2     Ball
        3 90 Fastball (Four-seam) Ball
        4 89 Fastball (Four-seam) Called Strike
        5 90 Fastball (Four-seam) Ball

          2. And he threw it from the rubber. That'd be my biggest tip, but I haven't read that part of the rules.
            If there had been a runner on base, could that have been a balk?

            1. Rule 8.01(d)

              (d) If the pitcher makes an illegal pitch with the bases unoccupied, it shall be called a ball unless the batter reaches first base on a hit, an error, a base on balls, a hit batter or otherwise.
              Rule 8.01(d) Comment: A ball which slips out of a pitcher’s hand and crosses the foul line shall be called a ball; otherwise it will be called no pitch. This would be a balk with men on base.

              1. Announcers did mention it crossing the foul line, so they were on top of it but didn't really explain why crossing the foul line was important.

            2. If you drop the ball while on the rubber, you will be called for a balk. Not sure about this case. Either way, the guy will move up a base because otherwise it would be a wild pitch.

  9. For those of you who loved Jon Bois's Memoirs of Tim Tebow in the CFL, part 2 is now available.

    I hope he puts enough material together to publish this as a book. I want a hardcover copy with dustcover, and with the illustrations distributed throughout in color plates. None of this "Plates all in the middle" BS.

    1. I thought it was the train near my home. But then I realized I didn't hear the train. I felt it for sure.

    1. Didn't take you long to link to the BP article. I approve. Nice to attack the overpaid part as well.

      1. Could have mentioned he's got the highest season batting average for a catcher, the highest all-time career batting average for catchers, and currently has the highest active career batting average, but that would just be piling on.

    1. Ugh, I hate hate hate pictures of tables.

      With the doubling of TV revenue, the Twins can use all the extra money to pay for just Mauer!

      Using just the shared TV money, every team can afford a minimum of of a $27 million dollar roster (assuming 50-50 split of the revenue). Adding in RSN and MLBAM money, that minimum rises to $35 million.

      1. Ugh, I hate hate hate pictures of tables.

        Oh, yea.

        I have a wee bit of sympathy, however. My shop uses Scribus to produce some of our pubs (to PDF). Tables are a major pain in the redacted, so we have moved to exporting pictures from Excel or Word instead. Inelegant solution, to say the least.

        1. That is inelegant, but not as egregious since PDF doesn't include table primitives like HTML. LaTeX does well enough with its tables, so sounds like Scribus needs better support!

      3. I use pictures of tables in a lot of my intra-office emails.
        Too many times have I seen things copied out of context, or forwarding making them unreadable, etc.
        People could still copy and crop the image to take the numbers out of context, but the people who would do that are the people that would need to ask me how.

  13. Felt great to throw off a mound for the first time after surgery on August 2nd! Can't wait to be fully healthy and back to pitching again!— Alex Wimmers (@AlexWimmers21) May 17, 2013

      1. They often like to give him 2 days off in a row, and he played on Wednesday, which kind of surprised me... ? Hopefully?

      1. He should be day-to-day for the next three weeks, play a game, go on the DL, and then surgery sometime in August.

      2. Off day. Wife in the honeymoon phase of pregnancy and/or one of his few chances to shop for/put up cribs, etc.

    1. This has historically been a tough day for the Twins. The walk-off grand slam by the Yankees happened on May 17th too.

      2. So, in other words, the Twins need to make sure they don't play the Yankees on May 17.

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