Cup of Coffee

April 23, 2014: Poor Bastard

97 Comments

The scorpion in my kitchen ceiling light is still kicking, though there's no food up there and I can't imagine he'll hang on for long. Even then, he's just going to sit up there and I'll get to look at his dead carcass for a while.

97 thoughts on “April 23, 2014: Poor Bastard”

  2. With 3 K in 3 IP, Gibson increased his k/9 last night.
    Maybe not K/BF, but I like the less-useful stat for the wierdness it produces.

  3. Today my office is shooting two videos that will be sent to students. Everyone in the office was asked in an email to wear our university's main color (as a tie, sweater, whatever) for coordination and as a display of spirit. I got to work and noticed that I'm one of three people who wore that color to work today. For some reason I feel like a tool, and I'm the one who did what was asked.

    1. My firm sponsored an outing to a Gophers football game and the softball team was asked to wear our shirts. Now, I was the manager of the team, but these shirts are hideous, lime-green monstrosities* that I was outvoted on. I hated them, but wanted to be a team player, so come tailgating party, I dutifully wear the damn shirt. One other person wore their shirt. The associate attorney who crammed their selection down my throat promoted their purchase and then their use at the tailgating event, was not that other person. I also felt like a tool.

      *I knew they were ghastly, and I'm colorblind!

    2. I very much hope these videos aren't some brutally awful college rap video like the "teach me how to Bucky" stuff from a couple years ago.

      2. Thankfully, no. My participation is contingent upon that point.

        Since you're familiar with the genre, did you ever see the Coastie rap video?

        1. I have seen that one, which is about the only rap video I've ever seen from college kids that was well done. Now that you brought it up, it'll probably get stuck in my head.

            1. I'm stuck between knowing I should not ever click on that, but at the same time wanting to know how bad it is.

              2. This video is not bad and actually quite hilarious.

                This video, on the other hand, is the previously noted terrible, terrible one:

                httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9ZEb-n3-Mw

                1. I love that the video features the ex-Chancellor who got out before the door could hit her, plus a cameo for the ex-football coach.

                  1. Ugh, all I remember from when that came out was that the local news kept showing people who were all like "OMG! Look at Biddy, she's dancing! OMG! She's just like us I love her forever!"*

  4. The post UncleWalt linked to yesterday got me thinking about first lines.

    Last year in the playoffs, Koivu/Parise/whoever got run right over by Kane and Toews, this series it has seemed they are better off dominating a second or third line than going toe-to-toe with MacKinnon/Statsny/Landeskog. This isn't meant to run down Koivu/Parise, those opponent lines are some of the best in the NHL. Additionally, the Wild do have good depth and at least a little bit of secondary scoring with Pominville/Moulson/Granlund, so they don't need their first line to dominate (like the Avs do).

    But, to me, that's the question that has to be answered for the Wild to get anywhere in the playoffs. How do they win when their first line isn't as good as the opponent's first line? At home, they can match lines to some extent and play that advantage up like they did in Game 3, but that's a tough plan to take on the road. Plus they're putting all their chips on winning every home game and stealing a game somewhere on the road. Lose a home game and they're up against it pretty quick.

    I really don't have a good answer to that question other than "find a hot goaltender", but the Wild have to win 3 of the next 4, and that means at least one road win.

    1. I guess I have hope that the first line will have at least one game where they're superior to the Av's first line. Parise/Koivu put up 110 combined points this season and had a few games where they (plus the other winger) really clicked - they need to do that at least once to get 3 of 4 - and will need their "A" game in every other contest. Flat-footed in the neutral zone won't cut it.

      Unfortunately, that point total barely comes close to any combination of Landeskog (65), O'Reilly (63), MacKinnon (63) and Stastny (60), and although the Wild are healthier and play pretty solid defense (most of the time), I don't know that they can beat Varlamov 3 of 4. Other than for about 8 minutes during the second period in Game 1, he's been putting on a clinic.

      1. I guess I have hope that the first line will have at least one game where they're superior to the Av's first line.

        Oh yeah, this would be a great outcome.

      1. They "had" it won, but didn't win ... that's sports, isn't it? The "if only" reflections after a thing has been decided? You are spot on that the outcome of Game 1 completely changed the tenor of the series, both in the locker rooms (no matter what they say) and in how the fans and media perceive it. 13 seconds - GAH!

      2. I think they are playing well. My question is that if they play well, but the first line can't win a match up with Colorado's first line on the road, how do they win?

        1. Why does the home/road thing affect line match ups? Or is it just the usual sports' home/road thing?

          1. I'm pretty sure the home team gets to send out its line "second" so they get to choose the matchup before all faceoffs.

    3. For the Wild, I think it's got to be depth. And lines are such a fluid thing anyway, most of the time. I don't think Kane and Toews play together all the time, though that's just anecdotal. Looking at the Wild's last three games, it doesn't look like Roy settled on MacKinnon/Stastny/Landeskog until sometime during game one. And Yeo scrambled his lines late in game two.

      SSS plays a part too, right? The Hawks series was five games. The media was ready to fit MacKinnon with a Super Man cape after two games. Those were some highlight real goals, for sure, but he scored fewer goals than Pommer and Parise during the regular season. I'm not comparing players at all, I'm just saying perspective.

      The Wild hasn't been bad enough to draft any superstars, so they're constructed the roster with players a step below those going in the top five. The team needs to make up for a lack of stars with a lot of really goods, I guess.

      1. I agree with this. And my stuff above is mostly musing, no real analysis went into it, so SSS caveats and anecdotal justifications abound.

        My biggest concern is that depth works really well when you can dictate the matchups (at home), and choose who is a shut-down line and who can take the game to the opposition. When the opposition can force those 1st line-1st line matchups and even worse, when they can consistently win them, then a depth team can be stretched beyond its capabilities because their scorers are playing defense and their offense has to come from elsewhere.

        1. No doubt MacKinnon turnstyled Koivu through the neutral zone at least a couple of times in that second game. Still, I'm not that worried about Roy lining up Stastny against Koivu or Granny. I guess we'll see. At least we're guaranteed a game five.

          1. I think the Wild can take Game 4 doing what they've done so far. Then it's down to a three game series and they just need one or two big games from somebody (Pominville? Granlund? Kuemper?) and we're off to the second round.

            1. Game 3 was the best I have seen the Wild play since very early this season, which I thought at the time, was the best I had seen them play period.

              Just listened to Dater's most-recent podcast with Russo. He was contrite toward the Wild and Wild fans. He wants to kiss and make up. I think he may have been speaking directly to you, DG.

  5. I came across an interesting excerpt from a book called Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning that applies to both "book learning" (for lack of a better term) and athletics.

    Practice that’s spaced out, interleaved with other learning, and varied produces better mastery, longer retention, and more versatility. But these benefits come at a price: when practice is spaced, interleaved, and varied, it requires more effort. You feel the increased effort, but not the benefits the effort produces. Learning feels slower from this kind of practice, and you don’t get the rapid improvements and affirmations you’re accustomed to seeing from massed practice. Even in studies where the participants have shown superior results from spaced learning, they don’t perceive the improvement; they believe they learned better on the material where practice was massed.

    caveat: The headline of the article suggests this is all somehow counter to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule. Now, I haven't read Outliers, but I'm not sure this is actually counter to anything in that book. Seems more like a case of someone trying to come up with with a sensational title.

    1. When I learn languages, I use this website* for flashcards. After you answer, it separates them into 3 piles - Right-Easy, Right-Had to Think, Wrong. You do the Wrong ones again the next day, the Right-Had to Think the day after, and right-easy two days later. It spaces out the repetition of the easy ones so that you don't waste valuable learning time going over what you know, while at the same time refreshing you every few days. Of course, the easy pile gets bigger and bigger and eventually things go into the "Don't need to check" pile which is the ultimate goal.

      I've found it to be very useful-when I keep up with it, which is the other half of that excerpt. You have to remember to do it regularly or it doesn't help.

      *I'll try and find it later.

  6. AMR -- got two Great Horned Owls parked in a tree just outside my home office here. One appears to be a young-un; although quite large, it's a mass of down. I'll have to post pictures.

    1. Cool. I'm still surprised the GHOWs breed in the winter. I guess that makes more sense than sending young ones out to fend for themselves in winter, but still...

    2. We had a pair of barred owls living in a tree on our street last year. I haven't seen them yet (nor the hawk who lives nearby), but hope they come back. We need all the help we can get keeping the squirrel tree rat population under control.

      1. When were the Barred Owls around?
        IIRC, they tend to keep to the same areas (but disperse more in Winter). Now should be their nesting time, but I think they're quiet then, too.

        Hawks migrate (I assume you mean a Sharp-shinned or Coopers), and peak migration in southern MN is through April, so that one may still be returning.
        If the hawk was a first year that you saw in late summer into fall: who knows?

    4. Out biking this weekend, saw several pairs of Mute Swans in the Connecticut River, also Peregrine Falcons, Golden-Eyes, and buzzards.

  7. RE Buxton's status, from his online chat:

    He's got to get back on the field first. Then he has to produce. With his season starting in May, hopefully, he could put up numbers and earn a callup (sic) by the end of the year. And I believe we will see him playing for the Twins before this season is over.
    -LENIII

    2. If my wife's at home, you name the forum.
      If she's not, then I'll be absent the quorum.

    3. As the one weekend between Easter and HPR's first communion and after two weeks of Thursday concerts, and trying to finish up my last actuarial education thing before May 12, my answer has to be a regretful no.
      Unless you come up to the northwest burbs. Then I might be able to swing it for an hour or so.

  9. Speaking of Thursday concerts, how should I pick up my Loveless ticket from you CanOfCorn?
    Feel free to text or email me, but I see you're here.

    1. I can hand it to you as we sit down to our pre-festivities pint.
      Or
      I can be waiting just inside the door, ready to hand it to you as you arrive.
      Or
      ...something else. I figured either of those (preferably the first) would work.

      1. I doubt I'll be able to make something pre-festivities.
        Maybe I could walk to your building around lunch.

    3. I couldn't even hazard a guess from the AU (it vaguely looks like B O), but I got it easily with the hint.

  11. Last week a body was found in Buckeye (one suburb west) and police have been looking for the suspect since. This morning they tried to pull him over here in Goodyear, and he got out of his car at a Circle K and drew his gun on police, who put him down. The area's been shut down and the suspect later died from his injuries.

    Did I mention this Circle K is spitting distance from where I work? A couple of guys were outside smoking and heard the shots. It's an absolute zoo here right now.

      2. You'd think that one would get sick of making that reference while living a couple blocks from a Circle K, but one does not get sick of making that reference.

  12. My current programming assignment is to make a "Hotter or Colder" game for the #'s 0-100. I have it set up for Higher/Lower and it's working great. Just have to reconfigure to take into account if the guesses are getting closer to the target or not.

        1. Yeah, I would like that too, but the CSS is a template given to us. I'm more worried about the jQuery portion here.

      2. My first guess was 48, then 86 was said to be warmer. The answer was 22 which seems to be counter to that first direction. Everything after that seemed in order, although I second sean's suggestion that minimizing scrolling to see new results would be nice.

        I like the warmer/colder banner at the top, instant feedback helps a lot.

        2. same issue the second time. 25 first guess, 75 was said to be colder. Answer was 63.

          Just like last time, the first hotter/colder feedback was the only one not consistent with the answer.

          1. I am not experiencing that. 25 first guess and second guess of 75 was warmer; answer is 73.

                2. Yeah, I'm editing on the fly, so hopefully things get better not worse.

                  Thank you all for beta testing for me.

    2. I played it twice three times with no issues.

      Where are you guys having to scroll? Don't have to scroll on my laptop running Chrome.

    3. Right now it's really easy to cheat. I think with your current structure it would be easy to do.

            1. Yep. The targetNumber, currentGuess, and lastGuessDifference variables are in the window scope. That's also the default scope, so targetNumber and window.targetNumber point to the same thing.

              1. So I need something like
                function startGame(){
                var targetNumber = Math.ceil(Math.random()*100);
                return targetNumber;
                }

                that I can call in order to make targetNumber new and then pass it along to the other functions for running operations on it?

                1. Even easier I think. You already have an anonymous function running once the DOM is ready. Put the variables and external functions in that, and it becomes a closure. Your global state becomes zilch and everything is self-contained.

                  1. Oh, dang, that was easy. I thought anything inside $(document).ready() would be accessible, but I guess not.

    4. HA! If your target number is "0" there's no way to input that. I need to fix the Math.random() so 0 can't be an option. We're only suppose to do 1-100. Probably shouldn't use Math.floor().

        1. Negative numbers now give an alert to "Please enter a positive integer" and does not add to the list of guess or guess count.

  15. Replacements, Hold Steady, Lucero 9/13 at Midway Stadium. $55. Will be announced Thursday. On sale Saturday May 3.

    1. If I scrape together bus money, can I crash at someone's house? It's only 27 hours from here via Greyhound

      1. I've got a guest bed. I won't be going to the show, but I could probably put you up for a night or two.

  16. I am here to Proclaimer that I walked 500 miles, then 500 more today. I am gonna be sore tomorrow. But Yosemite was cool.

    Even if we had only 2/3rds of a day and there was no parking to be had at the Mariposa Grove, so I did not really get to see the giant Sequoiahs, which was my main goal. (Booooo!)

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