51 thoughts on “August 27, 2015: I Remembered!”

  1. Carrying over MLB.TV discussion..."out-of-market" regular season cuts 75% of my interest. How much playoff baseball would I be able to watch, if any?
    (Note: If the answer is somewere along the lines of "plenty, minus Twins games," I'll pay the $9.99 just to provoke the universe's sense of irony and thereby all but ensure a playoff run.)

    1. But if it included ALL Twins playoff games and you paid, it would provoke the universe's sense of irony and thereby all but ensure NO playoff run. That's some catch, that Catch-22.

      1. I thought about adding this important caveat. This is why I have to make well-informed decisions.

    2. Playoff packages are seperate. MLB.tv is regular season only.

      Even without Twins games, I find myself watching a lot of baseball. Find a few other teams you like to watch (Reds, Pirates, Orioles), or announcers you like listening to (Scully), and there's plenty of options.

      The previous two years, I did the end of the season deal. This year, I bit the bullet and paid full price for the whole year. Even then, I'm 100% sure I've watched enough games I'm down to under $1/game at this point.

      1. Plenty of games to watch just if you're interested in Twins because of several teams in wildcard hunt. Also, anytime there's a no-hitter alert, you can turn on the game.

        1. I do that too. Hanging out here in the game logs and someone says "XXX has a no-hitter going in the 6th" then a few taps later and I'm watching it in progress.

    1. If you've got an unsorted table to look up into, you need VLOOKUP(value,table,column,FALSE)
      If you've looking up values, you may need to add rounding to your value and/or table.
      If you're looking up range values, it's often easier to do INDEX(outputs,COUNTIF(lookups,"<="&value) If you're looking up text, you may need to apply TRIM(text) to the value and/or table.

      1. Unless you need a quick turnaround, email me the file, and maybe I can help.
        I've got a meeting in 10 minutes though.

        1. Thanks dude. No rush. Just something I thought up on my way in this morning to try to organize my work a little.

    2. Without vlookup, and sumif I'm not sure if I'd be able to leave the office between Monday and Wednesday.

    3. Honestly, when I can't get a vlookup to work properly, I copy my entire (sorted) column of data and paste it into Notepad to strip out any formatting. I delete the cells and then paste back the data from Notepad. I just had to do this for a document I've been working on, and nothing else worked. I don't understand why, but it's been helpful.

      1. Magoo's problem (and perhaps yours) was numbers formatted as text.
        Magoo had phone numbers, and he used =LEFT(___,3) to get area code out of it.
        Then he tried to VLOOKUP the state from the area code, using a table that had the area codes as numbers.
        Changing the formula above to =VALUE(LEFT(___,3)) fixed it.

        For VLOOKUP, the functions ROUND, TRIM, VALUE, and TEXT can be very helpful.

        1. In the specific one I just worked on I was using SKUs with both text and numbers. If the SKU number on my SKU list, matched the SKU number on my array matching the SKU to the product, I wanted to put the product name in a field. I assume I needed them formatted as text, then? So using TEXT probably would've helped? How would that work?

          1. Probably. =TEXT(___,"#") will turn each number into a text string of all of the numerals. If it's pointed at a blank cell, it treat it as zero. If it's pointed at a text cell, it just returns the text value.
            If you need to have a fixed number of characters (including leading zeroes), replace "#" with "000000" for the number of places you need.
            It may get caught up if you have decimals that make it round up, if so use =ROUNDDOWN(___,0)

            Many data sets I get have trailing spaces (which you can't see) so that each value in a field has the same length, used when they store data in fixed-width rather than delimited tables.
            You can't find these spaces unless you look for them by trying to edit the text in them. If that's the case, =TRIM(___) takes them all out.

            Without seeing more of your problem, I can't really diagnose any further.
            Also, pasting more than one column into notepad still preserves "tab" delimitations.

    4. I was just saying to someone that I've been avoiding learning how to use VLOOKUP for years now, regardless of how helpful it would probably be to me. No particular reason.

        1. I agree. It's very useful - the entire EPL Prediction spreadsheet runs on it. I just use it so infrequently I have to relearn it everytime.

          1. It's testier in GDocs because values get slightly off integers a bit more easily. Or at least they did, maybe Google's improved it?

    5. AMR got me sorted out. I had the wrong type of input - text instead of numerical - so the thing wouldn't work.

      This is for you, AMR.

      1. It's the format the export function in QuickBooks uses. To get it into some sort of DB would be more work than it's worth. It's just a list of quotes and phone numbers for me to follow up on.

      2. Access makes complicated calculations more complicated.
        I like have to make intermediate crosstables and stuff.

    1. Just last night I saw a preview for "The Martian" and told my wife I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie.

      I don't have a Kindle.

      1. You don't necessarily need a physical Kindle, just some sort of electronics. There's an app for tablets and phones, as well as an in-browser option.

        I'm reading the samples before I buy right now in Chrome.

        1. I can confirm that the kindle app for Android phones works pretty good. Haven't really tried it on an iPhone, though. (or a Windows phone)

            1. I actually stayed up way too late one night reading Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner's book on my phone. I don't know why but it felt right.

            2. I actually preferred it to reading on an iPad. Not sure why, though. My eyes felt less like they wanted to jump out of my head.

    3. I went ahead and got both. "The Martian" sample makes me think someone read "Packing for Mars" and decided to construct a narrative around it. As I enjoyed "Packing for Mars" I'm sold.

  4. Not that any of us were waiting with bated breath for his return, but apparently Ricky Nolasco has been transferred to the 60-day disabled list and is not expected to pitch again this season.
    -also-
    Ryan Pressly (on the 60-day DL with a strained right lat) suffered a set back during his rehab and will miss the remainder of the season.

    2. My understanding of the 60-day DL is a player cannot be moved to that list unless there is a need for a spot on the 40-man roster. So if Nolasco was moved to it there should be a corresponding move to add a player to the 40-man soon.

      1. Do you think it's true that you can't move someone there unless you need a spot, or is it true that moving a guy to the 60-day DL frees up a spot on the 40 man and as a practical matter, you would only do it if you need a spot?

        2. According to the Repository,

          however, a team's 40-man roster must be full in order for the option of a placement on the 60-day disabled list to be available.

          So, can't move someone unless the 40-man is full but a player does not have to be added to replace them. Therefore, I agree with Jeff that I think a player will be added to the 40-man perhaps sometime around Tuesday because now there is room and can use them on the active roster.

    1. Just read that as well from Stick's link. What's great is they were already Twins fans because of family and it sounded like they would sell to the Twins too, just directly instead of through MLBAM.

  7. RIP Darryl Dawkins

    As the top comment on Deadspin says:

    He didn’t die; he was just called back to Lovetron.

    That’s what I choose to believe.

    I never saw him play, but I do love those highlights of him.

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