55 thoughts on “March 3, 2015: Load”

  1. R. I. P. Alex Johnson, 1970 A. L. batting average champion, at age 72 due to complications from cancer. It sure seems like a lot of the heroes of my youth (or later) have been dying lately.

      1. Yaz had a good consonant-blitz going, but pro-ball Kingsport had Raymond Skrzypczak ('y' can be both consonant and vowel). 8 clicks, baby.

  2. The Basket and Ball Guys NCAA Pick'em league is back up and running. Last year's folks have been auto-invited.

    It's at Yahoo.

    League ID: 20234
    Password: 12346

  3. Also, the second annual Cribbage Tournamenf.

    Here's who I have so far:

    spookymilk
    brianS
    rpz
    Rhubarb_Runner
    Philosofer
    Beau
    Daneeka's Ghost
    cheaptoy
    nibbish
    Zee German
    The Dread Pirate
    New Britian Bo
    meat
    AMR (14)

    I'll pop a cap in this at 16 people. Let me know. Once we get there, I'll set up the tournament and we'll go at a leisurely pace with soft deadlines like last year.

  4. Glad that wasn't hashtagged #Delmon #he'sstill[age]

    Update: "I'll just leave this here so I'm not stating all over the place. 'Big boy' Miguel Sano making an impression in Twins camp"

    Obviously nicknames are on an upswing.

  5. I thought escaping the east coast meant I could bypass Comcast, the super villain in the graphic novel of my life. But it seems my choices are Comcast or Charter. Is that right? Does anyone use charter?

    1. I seem to be one of the few people that has had virtually zero problems with the C-cast. A few apartments ago, when setting up the internet, the guy was about 4 hours late (we weren't really doing anything anyway), but that was due to the bitch of a job (and homeowner) before us. I offered basic human understanding and decency, and on his way out, he told me he had hooked up basic cable for funsies.

      1. In the pre-digital days, giving you "free basic" was actually the tech skipping a step.
        They had to insert "filters" into the connection at the pole to prevent you from seeing those channels. (If they did it below the pole, it would be so easy for the customer to remove it and say it was never there.)
        At the pole at my old house, there was a pile of filters laying on the ground. I guess the techs didn't even bother to pick up ones they dropped.

        I've wondered if those filters ever degraded cable-borne internet service.

    2. I use Charter (internets only, though) down here and I haven't had any complaints. My cat did chew through a cable once, so it was a surprise when a couple technicians showed up, but they were friendly and replaced the cable for free.

      They also are not throttling my streaming usage, so that's a plus!

    3. I should say that we only use internet and both of our jobs depend on consistent performance.

        1. Oh man. I should have pushed for moving to south Minneapolis more. I would not mind 10 Gbit internet. Not that I could actually afford it.

        2. I would absolutely recommend US Internet if you're in one of their areas. They're fantastic.

          1. We have USI wireless. The speed isn't great, but we pay a bit less than $250 a year (or $20 per month) for something like 15 mbps, which is awesome . It's good enough for Netflix and saves a bunch over anyone else. The only contacts with service people have been fantastic.

      2. If your jobs depend on it, business class cable from Comcast might be a better choice. Or business class anything from someone. You get actual SLAs.

    4. I used to use Charter because it was cheaper than Verizon Fios, but the service was terrible for Internet. I couldn't count on my Internet being available, which I have to have for my work, so I switched back to Fios.

      1. Interesting. We have the Uverse triple play, but will be dropping the land line component when the Girl graduates, or soon thereafter.

    5. I sell cable all day, but neither of those are available here. My only addition would be that there's a lot of BS to sift through out there, as unsatisfied customers are typically the ones making all the noise. But you knew that already.

    6. I have Qwest or CenturyLink (I can't remember which merged into the other) in S Mpls bundled with DirecTV. Never had a complaint in seven years and they've let us upgrade our package for no cost several times during that period.

      1. We have CenturyLink (in Fargo). They finally upgraded our neighborhood to 40 Mbps service last year? And we switched back from CableOne to them. Don't get throttled, have pretty good service. And I believe they're doing fiber up to 1 Gbps in the future in MSP.

        1. In certain, specific areas. A coworker that lives downtown St. Paul has the option for 1 Gbit. For us in a suburb, we're limited to 12 Mbps down and 892 Kbps up. It's terrible. Eventually we are going to switch to Comcast, but the house needs some wiring updates that are waaay down the list.

    7. Charter has been our only option for the past 5 years. They are Comcast Jr. I can't tell a difference between them and the Comcast we had in D.C.

      1. I could fill a book with Comcast in DC stories.

        I'll probably go with them though.

    8. Thanks for all the advice. I'll have to check out US.

      I thought about business class but I'm hoping I won't have to do that.

      1. Okay, 11-0 isn't very interesting even in spring training. Switching to Pittsburgh at Toronto.

  7. This got posted on the YouTubes today. I figured there'd be some interest in it beyond me.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L05DH-MvPeA

    1. It's sort of irritating that they portray Doc Rivers as some sort of beleaguered saint in this scenario when he stood out on the floor for practically all of a crucial timeout when the game was still close in the closing minutes yelling at the officials instead of talking to his team.

      1. I edited out the reference to Rivers' technical since I wasn't sure if I'd dreamed it or mentally assigned it to the wrong Rivers (Austin), but it looks like both Rivers got technicals. Is that true?

            1. The Clippers are incredibly unlikable. The refs were bad both ways, full stop, but watching Wolves get whistled for being bearhugged by DeAndre Jordan every time he went up for a rebound was infuriating.

              1. That was absolutely ridiculous. At that point, why not just admit that it's football and call defensive pass interference?

  9. Holy crap, dat power play. Three shots, three posts for Ottawa, then the Wild roared back with some crazy, crazy sprawling hockey.

    All for no goals for either team. Madness.

  10. Gibson came to camp with the goal of improving his changeup and throwing it more to righthanded hitters. He admitted that his curveball isn’t where he wants it to be, and he has to come up with something to get hitters off his sinker and slider.

    “I don’t want to lose the fact that I give up a lot of ground balls,” Gibson said, “but I also need to find ways to get more strikeouts at certain times.”

    Ryan agrees with Gibson’s assessment, saying that averaging 5.9 strikeouts per nine innings is not enough.

    “With his stuff, he ought to do more damage than that,” Ryan said.

    This is encouraging. (the realization of the importance of strikeouts)

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