50 thoughts on “December 5, 2014: Let’s see who the Twins pick up today…”

  1. Many of you know that I've been in a historical OOTP league for awhile. Burgess joined a few seasons ago (and has pretty much laid waste to our league in the process with his absurd offense) and TDO from werewolf runs another team. Anyway we're now at Spring Training 1986 with the plan to expand by four teams after this season (2 to 3 months in real time). If anyone is interested in joining, let me know and I'll get you in touch with the Commissioner. (We're currently using OOTP 15. )

    1. Burgess

      Heh.

      I can vouch for OOTP being a blast. My first two seasons took a much larger time commitment than The Dread Pirate prepared me for, but that's probably because of my obsessive personality. My third season went much more smoothly and now I feel like it's at a very good place. I enjoy the game and the league quite a bit. I suppose someday I won't make the playoffs and I'll become disappointed. Let's hope that day never comes.

    2. Could you give me a sense of the regular time commitment? I'm still interested, but have become much more conscious of my time resources. Are most games simmed, leaving most of the human interaction for roster construction and the like? I understand there will be a learning curve for new players in the league, but I'd like to have some idea of what I should expect of myself if I were to join.

      Also: are specific "markets" targeted for expansion? What kind of control would new owners have over team location and ballpark type? Is the expansion draft a dispersal draft? What kind of payroll do the new teams have?

      1. All games are simmed by the Commissioner. It's generally a week per day during the season and a couple of weeks per day in the off-season. The season grinds to a halt for the draft each July for about a week (although we only manually draft for three rounds).

        You can update your profile every day if you want. Otherwise you can as infrequently as you like. I probably spend about ten minutes on mine most days with a random day of about thirty minutes once a week.

        1. Will's time commitment is probably similar to mine. At first it was more like 30-60 minutes daily. I, of course, developed a spreadsheet with my own custom calculations using the ratings provided in OOTP. Over time that matured and became less work. Then I replaced the work with analyzing free agents and trade options. Since I won the championship the first year, you could argue I should have kept doing all that work. However this past season I kind of dropped the spreadsheet work and started eye-balling things more. I suppose a lot of what I learned previously allows me to do that somewhat confidently.

          So, yes, eventually you'll get to 60-90 minutes per week or so. 🙂

  2. Four hours until the deadline to vote for the Half-Baked Hall. We're about seven to nine votes shorter than average. Pepper, want to vote?

    1. I kept putting this off, thinking I'd get to it, but then had an opportunity to go to a concert last night and didn't get to it. Choices, choices...sorry bud.

            2. I hadn't realized it had been extended. I'll try to get in under the wire, too.
              (I know, you sent emails. I saw them and didn't read.)

    3. Oh, and I'm sure I could vote--it's just that my criteria might be a bit . . . off. Most soporific names, perhaps?

      1. Yes, your vote was cast on December 1 at 9:52 am (and 56 seconds). If you don't get a reminder e-mail to vote before the deadline, it means you already voted

          1. If you don't get a reminder e-mail to vote before the deadline, it means you already voted, or I don't trust you to vote for the right people

    6. Gah, was going to fill it out of Thanksgiving weekend, but the email got buried.

      Just sent mine in.

      1. it seems as though there should be more of these dangerously idiomatic terms and phrases than appear in the Lexicon.

  6. I've been with Dr. Chop for fifteen years, and I've always known about her depression. Hell, I know that I have personality traits that tend towards the depressive. Lately though she's been suffering through some extreme and unusual stress that has brought on a sever case of acute depression with a whole pile of anxiety.

    She would be up for tenure this year if we'd stayed in Tejas, and would have had the opportunity to come up early here if the school would have honored its agreement to take time for time. The department head position changed hands and the new boss man is a man of tradition, and early tenure is not a tradition at this institution even though the faculty handbook clearly states that progress at another institution will be considered as time towards tenure. Needless to say, the move from bum-fuck-texas cost the good doc 3 years in the quest for security and academic freedom. Her dad then calls to tell her that she needs to come to Mn to help care for him this month because he has to have his knee replaced. Her relationship with her family is fraught to say the least. She was the caretaker for her grandmother as she died, cared for her mother who refused to take care of herself, and now she'll need to care for her dad. She took care of her brother when they were young, and while she knows that her parents loved her and wanted the best for her she feels that she's been giving too much for too long for a family that doesn't understand her or support her. Complicating both these issues is the fact that she was the first person in her extended family to graduate from college let alone ataining a phd.

    All this has me at a loss. The depression she's in is real, and really scary. I don't know why I'm even writing this, but I needed some place to let it out.

    2. Ditto to what bS said. Depression is a really tough thing to deal with. Any time you need someone to talk to, we're here for you. Whatever you do, I hope you and Dr. Chop don't try to go through this alone. Best wishes to you.

      1. In the last year or so I came to realize (be told, really) that I suffer from anxiety. It sucks. It was largely job-related I think and I've managed to change that situation. And I also started taking an SSRI and boy howdy. Going on it sucked worse than the anxiety, but once it started working... it was just the biggest relief. Brains can be pretty stupid. I don't know if this by Alisha Perkins made the rounds over here (not unrelatedly, I've been pretty absentee), but I thought it was pretty accurate and affirming.

        Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is drugs are good?

        2. We're both big fans of anti anxiety and anti depressant medications, but this time the drugs aren't really covering the depth.

    4. You sought me out when my mother was dealing with separate things.
      My sister and I have both had similar but less intense things, though I've been fine for probably five years, and never had anything really deep.
      Getting treatment for ADD seems to have improved things for me, although I've had some lows since then.

      Mom's only recently gotten out of her depths (and without it seeming manic).

      Wishing the best for Dr. Chop and you. I wish I had more advice.

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