70 thoughts on “October 12, 2020: Was It Ever In Doubt?”

  1. I watched the game - first one I’ve watched all year. I felt oddly OK about it. Vikings made a numbers call and failed (though I think I might have passed on that attempt). Then Seattle had a great drive to win it. It almost felt like a really fun game that someone had to lose.

    But, yeah, I can’t help but feel the Vikings gonna Viking thing as well. 🙂

    1. But were the numbers in their favor? WPA if they make the first down is 6% but not getting it decreases WP by 15%. You have to have about 75% confidence you make the first down.

      1. agreed, i’m not arguing about that play. could have been executed better, sure. however, as soon as i saw wilson under center going the other way, i already knew we were finished.

    2. This game was quintessential Vikings to me. They were going up against a good team and expected to fail. So, of course, the first half went their way. Then, when things were going good and people thought "maybe they could win" of course, they failed miserably and got behind. Then, again, people lost all faith, so they surprised and pulled ahead. Then, with a chance to win - regardless of good or bad decisions - and the faithful holding out hope, they lost in painful fashion in the closing seconds.

      They always do precisely the opposite of what one expects/hopes. If you expect the disappointment, they surprise. If you hope for the victory, they disappoint. Always. Collective belief in the Vikings is the surest guarantee of their failing.

    3. The Vikings are a bad team and losing a competitive game for a chance at Trevor Lawerence is totally ok with me .

      I am generally anti-tank but this is a covid year pile up as many losses before the season get shut down.

    1. 🙁

      He was such a fun, great player to watch. The elbow flick was mesmerizing.

      I was a YUGE fan of the Big Red Machine back in the day.

      and, while he was not exactly an exemplary baseball analyst, he was at least responsible for Fire Joe Morgan.

    2. I’m sure I said it at the time, but Joe came in to Best Buy when I was in Arizona and I ended up helping him out. In front of him in line was some mildly known aging soap opera actress and she complained she had to wait in line. She said “Do you know who I am?” I asked her if she was the best second baseman in baseball history and Morgan busted up. She realized she wasn’t even the most famous person in line and that was that.

  2. For the more tech savvy folks in the room, we set up movie night in the back yard for Dr. Chop's birthday. Smashing success except for the sound. The cheap projector has a 3mm headphone jack that we hooked up to a set of bose computer speakers. With the volume on full tilt and the speakers all the way up the sound was .... not loud. What are my options for increasing sound volume (and done in the most inexpensive way possible.....)? We're not angling after quality here as everyone is talking over the movie anyway.

    1. I bought the Yamaha soundbar Costco offers, the current model they carry is ATS-1080, and run 3mm to RCA cord to it from the computer. It's currently $150 but goes on sale for $20-30 off fairly regularly.

      1. I’d probably do something like this. You aren’t getting quality sound in the open air anyway, so a cheap soundbar will do the trick. Whichever model you choose, make sure it has either RCA or a 3.5 jack, as many don’t (though the cheaper ones have them more often).

    2. Somewhere along the way we acquired a little portable guitar amplifier. Battery or AC power. I use it with my iPod when I'm working in the garage and it gets plenty loud. You could pick one up at a music store or pawn shop pretty cheap, I'd bet. And it might be a better outdoor option than a sound bar, just make sure you have the right jack adapter.

      1. I'd second finding a guitar amp. You can find them online second had for almost nothing a lot of times.

        I have one of these for when I want to annoy my neighbors It gets loud on battery power but its tiny I'm sure you could find a decent sized one pretty easily and they are more protable and weather resistant.

        1. I use my UE Wonderbooms all the time for outdoor stuff for lake/movie/sports audio but they're bluetooth and I use a chromecast audio for older devices.

    3. Thanks for the suggestions. I just reached out to a friend who has a bunch of amps lying around (now that he can't gig anywhere....). I'm going to give his little frontman 15 a shot before I buy anything.

      1. Bob Nightengale reports that the White Sox plan to talk to Tony LaRussa about managing the team. He's 76. Whatever that would be, it would certainly not remind us of the Twins hiring Rocco.

  3. Our family is isolating right now due to possible contact with a confirmed positive COVID-19 case (a neighbor kid who walks to and from school with the jalapeno), which means the boys are boy at home doing distance learning right now. The upside of seeing all their assignments is being able to notice there's NOTHING about Indigenous Peoples Day. At least there are no assignments celebrating Columbus, but I'm so angry.

    Parents of elementary age kids, I'd love to hear if your kids' teachers incorporated Indigenous Peoples Day in some way today.

      1. I'm not hearing everything, but she's talking about indigenous people find Columbus Day hurtful. So far, so good.

          1. Beau's in our district, so I'm going to assume we're the same. "Assuming" because we're having a hell of a time keeping up with what any of our kids are supposed to be doing.

    1. I'll be curious to find out later today, particularly since Aquinas' Social Studies this year has been all about Indigenous Peoples. He's been really enjoying it.

      1. My 5th grader hasn't had a single social studies this year. So far they've only done reading, writing, and math. 😫

        edit: plus a little art and PE.

    2. We have today off because we're in New England. The school district observes it as Indigenous Peoples Day but the State still uses Columbus.

    3. Its a similar situation here. The trinket said nothing about Indigenous Day but also said no one has mentioned Columbus Day.

    4. When I was filling out the kitchen whiteboard calendar for the month I got to today and wasn't sure what to write. So I just put America Day hoping that would cover most of the bases.

  4. Is there a "Sean Signal?" He might not be the only one that can make suggestions here... A plea for aid from the citizenry, then...
    My wifi seems to be cutting out almost hourly. We have Xfinity, with a wireless router that I purchased ~3 years ago. The cutting out seems to happen on multiple devices. It's particularly annoying with all the Teams and Zoom and Meets calls happening these days. Now that I think about it, it doesn't seem to be happening with streaming TV (unless it is quickly reconnecting).
    I can't tell if it is happening every hour, or if I'm just not noticing sometimes.
    I thought it was at the top of the hour, but the time seems to be migrating forward (now at 5 minutes past the hour), so let's call it some weird 60:01 interval.
    I would be willing to pay money (or beer) or donate generously to the cause here if it prevented me from having to work with Xfinity support. (Unless someone says that's really the best way to go because they see this all the time, etc...)
    Exasperatedly yours, ZG

    1. The specificity of the problem is bizarre. Do you have a model number on the router? Three years is getting fairly old for a router, unfortunately, particularly if it wasn’t high-end at the time.

      1. The specificity is only what I've observed...hard to know what I'm missing.
        I have an ARRIS TG862G/CT, purchase was 3.5 years ago, and I can't say for certain it was new at the time. Firmware or some such update due?

          1. Or as they call it now, WiFi 6. I overall support this statement but I prefer my modems and (WiFI) routers to be separate devices. It's easier to switch out the misbehaving component.

  5. This may be useful to know for anyone with a Switch. Both my left controllers started seeing pretty bad drift and trying to clean or calibrate them didn't work. I ordered this kit and just finished replacing them both and they work great now. I did manage to break the cable for the minus/L button, though. Fortunately Amazon sells those too.

  6. A story about former umpire John Hirschbeck's son (with some incredibly touching stories including a few about Gardy) who passed after a long battle with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) in 2014 and the memorabilia collected by Hirschbeck's son that they're going to auction off. For those behind the Athletic's paywall, here's one snippet:

    One seizure occurred on a Sunday morning in a hotel room in Minnesota, on a day John was scheduled to work the plate. John settled Michael down, then brought him to the park and laid him on a bed of towels in the umpires’ room; often after a seizure Michael would go to sleep. That day, the Twins were hosting the Mariners. Jamie Moyer was not pitching for Seattle, so he would check on Michael intermittently. At one point during the game, Ken Griffey Jr. walked up to home plate and told John, “Jamie was just up there. Michael is still sleeping. Everything is good.”

  7. I captured some sort of orbiting body on Saturday night. I'm not well-versed enough to know how to check it to see if it's a new discovery. The bright object is Mars.

      1. Those are all taken inside 60 seconds of each other around 8:24PM

        If I recall (and I can always check teh EXIF data), that's an 8", 10" and 13" exposure one right after the other.

        Another friend pointed me to the same database, but I too couldn't not figure it out.

            1. I can't pin it down, but I'm almost certain it's one of those $#*%#& Starlink satellites. Surprised you could see anything near Mars at that time -- it's within Earth's shadow by that point.

    1. Jack Narz's brother and Bill Cullen was an in law. I wonder if Buzzr will have a Tom Kennedy themed marathon

  8. Halfway through this game and Dodgers haven’t scored a run. Man, Barves pitching has been something else this playoffs.

    Also, least interest in LCS than I can ever remember. I saw nothing about today’s Rays -Astro’s game.

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