Cup of Coffee

April 18, 2011: The Twins are 1-0

125 Comments

The coffee's a little bitter, but we seem to be adjusting.


My first-ever WGOM comment:

spookymilk
September 24, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I've been lurking here for like two months and today seems like a good day to break that. However, I have no avatar because I can't get the avatar page to cooperate with me. And I'll be late with the comments because I'm in Washington watching the MLB.com Gameday page. So I debut with a bang!

OH, but I'll add this to yesterday's discussion about non-Safe-Search googling of Shannon Stewart and such: my name is Kelly Wells. Google THAT and see what you get.

125 thoughts on “April 18, 2011: The Twins are 1-0”

  1. woke up this morning to the news that a Winter Storm Watch is up and 3" of snow is on its way

    This winter will never end

    1. We were supposed to get about an inch overnight, so I was a little surprised to not see any when I looked out my window. Maybe the meteorologists are just putting one over on us, dw.

      1. I talked to my parents on sunday. They woke up to about 6 inches of new, wet, heavy snow (up near Grand Rapids).

  2. I went and looked up my first comment: 26 June 2005, on a post having something to do with a controversy over at Batgirl's blog. Others commenting on the same post: bubblemint, Karno (a White Sox fan), anonymous, twink, Shoeless Joe (another White Sox fan), 8791, Cheesehead Craig, Batgirl, and Daniel. frightwig was referenced in a comment, too.

    What I found interesting was 8791, trolling SBG, posting the following:

    When you have some experience running a popular website, wading through hundreds of comments per day on your own time and dime, and having to delegate duty when you go on vacation, I'll listen to what you have to say on this topic. As Shoeless Joe alluded to, this has nothing to do with "sass," it was a matter of some overeager puffed-up rent-a-cops taking too much power into their own hands these past two weeks, people who have as much general understanding of BG-style "sass" as you do. Now take your blog oblivion like a good Stick and Ball Guy, and STFU.

    I think we all know how that one turned out. Eat it, 8791.

    2. I think I can speak to all that now.

      With more than 330,000 comments and over 4,000 of my own posts, I think I did a pretty good job of handling the occasional flare up. Some times I responded in ways that were out of line, I'll admit it. But, I never once went in and edited someone's comments to redact content. I pulled two posts because things were out of hand, and in both cases, I started the flame war, so the posts were pulled mainly because I made a mistake and I wanted to stop my own mistake. So yeah, I'm good with how I handled things, which is not to say that my way is the only way.

      1. wait. Are you telling me that I had ~10 percent of ALL comments on the old site??

        [diarrhea jpg]

          1. By that, I mean that brianS and I were, together, responsible for almost 20% of all the LTEs.

  4. I noticed last night when I tried this on the Kindle that there was a dropdown menu next to the sponsorship page where you could select "Week", "Two Weeks", or "Month" that I hadn't seen in Chrome. Turns out there are three vertical dots just to the left of the checkout button that allow you to very carefully click on them and change your sponsorship level.

      1. It's there (barely) in Firefox but is essentially invisible in Chrome. I was sent some different code to include but haven't had time yet.

        1. regarding that, i'd play around with it first. you're much more savvy than i, i'm sure, but that was a widget that google has a template to set up. i wasn't able to find a way to test it, so i'm not sure if it works.

          i do know that the checkout button works. with the drop down menu, maybe it would work if it had more room to breathe?

          1. I think the problem with the drop down is there's nothing in it by default. I think I could tweak that right now in fact... Give me a few minutes.

            1. Nope, wasn't the problem. I think I fixed it though. How does it look to everyone else?

              2. Works fine for me in Chrome. I have the dropdown menu directly above the Checkout button. I clicked through to the Google checkout page and that worked to. (Don't worry, hj, I didn't finish the transaction)

                1. Yep, that's what I had to do to fix it. Both were set to 1% width (a bit of a hack really) and there simply wasn't enough horizontal room to fit the image and text.

              4. It's bigger in Firefox 3.6.x. Where it was a small drop-down menu before, I now can see more of the text. Not all, but more. For some reason it shows up with the $5 option by default instead of "Select a level," which is what I see on Safari.

      2. Not seeing it in FF 4.0

        I see a small vertical bar (which is not a link) next to the "Buy Now" Google Checkout button. I can't open that page in a new tab or window (or at least no such option is available when I right-click).

    2. Turns out there are three vertical dots just to the left of the checkout button that allow you to very carefully click on them and change your sponsorship level.

      there it is. i was really wondering why the hell that wasn't showing up. i think it's going to need to be reformatted regardless, but glad to know it hasn't been a complete failure.

      regarding that, i'm going to put together a post regarding donations in a day or two. i'm in the process of setting up a bank account for this because i want to keep WGOM funds completely separate from my own finances, for obvious reasons. also, with setting that up, we have the potential of others to have access to it, thereby ensuring further transparency (something i wouldn't do with my own accounts, again for obvious reasons).

      tl;dr: wait a couple more days before donating.

      1. What we really need here is a non-profit that owns the site. If only there were lawyers around here that would want to work on something to set this up.

        1. i was curious how much of a pain that is to set up. google checkout has options for collecting donations if you can provide NFP certifications.

        2. I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two thirds majority in the case of...

  5. I came across this video on another blog I follow and thought I would share it for the folks from Iowa. It's a trip across Iowa on old US 30, from Marshalltown to Ogden, in 1960, before any bypasses were put in. The discussion of road improvements is actually pretty interesting, and it's a great little Iowa time capsule. Hopefully the formatting works:

    HwyRelocation from Iowa DOT on Vimeo.

    1. The DOT should get on that upgrade. HWY 30 still sucks to drive on. I take HWY 20 for my East-West needs whenever possible (or I-80 if I'm farther South in the state)

      1. Quick test to see if someone is from 'round here is ask them to pronounce "Nevada" and "Madrid" (about 30 mi SW of Nevada). In Iowa, Nevada has a long first A - "Nuh-VAY-duh", not "Nuh-VAH-duh". Madrid is pronounced like a compound word "Mad-rid", rather than "MAH-drid"

        1. Most Sconnies know how to pronounce "Berlin" and "Waukesha," but it takes some living here for a long time to get "Chequamegon" right.

  7. sean, last night I had a dream where you sold the trade trees code to BR.com and made a boatload and didn't share any with me. "Well, I did all the coding" "Yeah, well I made it popular!" And it was about Indy 500 drivers, not baseball players (Yeah, I don't know how that works). It was a very odd dream.

    1. I can imagine a Mario Andretti trade tree (however it would work) would look interesting considering his career and number of teams and teammates..

    2. Hah! Most of it is in JavaScript, so there's not much to sell. That does remind me I should slap a license on the code.

  8. my first-ever was a moment to be proud of:

    SBG: Michael Lewis. He and Billy are different people. I think.

    Mmm. Sure. Go on to some guy's blog to comment ignorantly about an internet meme you've never heard of. Doofus.

        1. All that conversation and Saturday I phoned brianS and talked to him for the first time. That was pretty cool.

          1. Heh. Actually it was the second conversation we'd ever had. I know we conversed once previously, probably in the run-up to my travel-to-Minnesota-for-nephew's-wedding debacle in the summer of 2008 (wow! that long ago???).

            But thanks for the call. I very much appreciated and enjoyed it.

                1. Heh. I had the alarm clock set for 4:00 AM today, but it never went off, because I was awake at 3:30 and on the road by 4:15.

  9. I think this is my first LTE, back in June 2006, fwiw (not much)

    Super article! My guess for top spot was Carew's 1977 year; close but no cigar. (btw, 1977, not 1997 in your article comments)

    btw, Knoblauch became a pariah because it commited a Twins no-no; he demanded a trade. If he'd quietly gone to management about it, they could have even done better in trade, but as it was, hands became tied when public deadlines were set.

    That was back when I was wanted by the grammar police, and went under an alternate pseudonym.

  10. I don't think I ever expressed my appreciation to all the people who worked so hard over the weekend to get this place up and running. I'd never have thought so much could be done so quickly. Thank you, everyone. You did a tremendous job.

  11. My first post was Sept. 2nd, 2004. It's comment #134. My last was #358,652.

    Good point about it being Jeter's team or not. I followed SethSpeaks.net to here. I have a psudo-Twins blog at my place. Keep up the good work.

    The line about Jeter was: Note that when the Yankees are winning, it's Jeter's team. When it's losing, it's somebody else's team.

  12. I have no idea when my first post was. I searched "rob" on the old site and was unsurprised to find pages of results, many of which were unrelated to me. I'll just assume that it was fairly forgettable and get on with it.

        1. I have the same problem with Citizens always saying "pspookymilkably."

          I nominate this for the first new term at the wgom.org as soon as we can get a good definition.

  14. as far as i can tell, my first post was for joe crede's six word evalutaion:

    twins tradition: another washed up veteran
    relax, it's not astroturf, it's fieldturf
    would you rather have wiggy? kouz?
    should be worth 1.2 harris/buscher's

    that doesn't seem right to me, but i can't find any record of an earlier post. oh well.

  15. What I didn't mention above is that I started posting at the WGOM less than two weeks (or maybe one?) after moving away from Minnesota. The community has been my Minnesota ever since.

  17. I'm pretty certain this was my first-ever comment at the WGOM:

    74 outs? Where on earth is that number coming from?

    1-OBP gives you how many outs/PA a player makes (either you make an out, or you get on base). With a .332 OBP against a .270 OBP, that means Batista is going to make 365 outs compared to Cuddyer's 334, for a difference of 31 outs.

    Also, with regards to GIDP, Batista's last year in the league, he had a close to league average rate of GIDP 15% of the time there was a DP opportunity. Last year, Cuddyer had a GIDP rate of 25%, one of the very worst in all of MLB. Working backwards from Cuddyer's 17 GIDP number, that works out to about 68 DP opportunities. Over 68 opportunities, Batista would be hitting into about 6.8 (say 7) fewer DPs. (Also, outs with runners on base are worse than outs with no runners on base, check out the closest expected runs matrix.)

    Now, we're down to a 24 out difference, and I think the extra power and better defense make Batista at least comparable to Cuddyer as a 3B at that point. At the worst, this is a lateral move, allowing Cuddyer to pursue employment at a position he's more comfortable at.

    1. I'm wondering if Batista's defense was better than Cuddy at 3B. I mean, Batista wasn't good. But neither was Cuddy.
      I'm guessing that Cuddy would have had better defense at 3B.

      1. It's safe to say that at that point in time, I was massively overestimating how good Batista would be defensively.

        1. if I recall, Batista was a darn good thrower. Getting to the ball was the biggest problem

          1. I think his arm strength was overstated. I had pretty good seats to see him in '06 and the difference between Batista and Beltre was night and day.

  18. I don't know if it was my first comment ever, but this was my first gamelog LTE:

    3 does not equal 46. Don't worry about it.

    1. Series of events in the first gamelog I participated in: attempt to temper the Milkman's negative hyperbole, jinx the opposing starting pitcher after 3 perfect innings, crack wise about the opposing starting pitcher throwing to first with Redmond on base, ask for clarification about an odd play described by Gameday, complain about Cuddy being in a hitting slump and perpetually staying in the lineup, get noticed by The Boss Stick as a newbie, and promptly clam up for the remainder of the game.

        1. Ha, I just looked at the link. Seems I had some surliness left over from the game the night before. Calm yourself, Milkman. Calm yourself.

          1. I'm often wishing I had Surliness left over from the night before, but I check the recycling bin and yep, I drank all four.

            2. I know that feeling...and guess, what, you're officially the "first" to drop a Surly reference on the org.

  19. Here is my first comment (as far as I can tell). I could have sworn I'd been around here longer than that, but maybe I was just lurking for a long time before I signed up.

    Do you really think that's the best we could do? I know he's coming off and injury and was an overrated QB, but he's still largely covetted by many teams. I'm convinced McHale is running the show over there now.

    That post only got 3 LTEs. Apparently, nobody cared that Culpepper got traded.

    On a related note, I guess we just recently missed my 5-year WGOM anniversary (March 14th) and my 5,000th LTE:

    Tater?

    If I'd realized that was #5,000, I might have put a little more effort into it.

    1. I think it's appropriately half-baked.

      ...how are you searching your own comments? How do you know your comment count? I used to be able to see that in the Dashboard - I was over 11K - but I can't see it anymore.

      2. I just searched for myself in the comments. I was at 5006, so I just counted backwards to 5000.

  20. My first LTE got a +10 from SBG! It was basically downhill from there.

    The thread regarded a Dickenbert discussion of the endless stream of headfirst slides into first base that Nick Punto unleashed during the 2007 season. Moss added that they had given viewers a "don't try this at home" disclaimer regarding sliding headfirst. Queue the hilarious new guy:

    Better to try it at home than to try it at first.

  21. For those of you who don't read James Fallows' blog on The Atlantic, you might want to check out his recent series of articles on Gmail security. His wife's Gmail was recently hacked, and in light of that experience he has some pretty sound recommendations. I've followed some of them already. Presented in order, from first mention of the hacking:

    1. I Guess I Should Never Taunt Spammers
    2. Hacking Update: Please Do These Things if You Use Gmail
    3. Hacking Epidemic: No Joke, Lock Down Your Gmail Now
    4. On the Gmail Hack: You Do Not Want This to Happen to You

    1. As someone who uses an android phone, this is even more important (and scary). After reading the first article, I have signed up for the 2 step security. Thanks for the heads up!

    1. It seems I have to approve most anything with a link in it. I thought it might be one of those things where once I'd done it once, I wouldn't have to approve that person again...

    2. You were posting "too many" links so it flagged your comments. Now you have to include over 9000 links to be flagged.

  24. I've decided to give up on finding my first post. It was sometime in 2005, but it's just too cumbersome to search through every single post of the year. However, I did find this goody from early 2006

    I believe Favre when he says he won't play for another team.

  25. I found out about this via the Ballpark Magic blog, but in case I only get one link per comment, I'll use it on the actual thing I came to share. Former Twins DJ (okay, "Musical Director") Kevin Dutcher hosted a show on The Current based on his 11 seasons with the club. You can listen to it here if you scroll down to "A Decade of Twins Musical Memories."

  26. The WGOM Achievements page is up. Let me know if the centering looks good or terrible. I can't decide.

    I did almost a straight copy as far as the content is concerned, but if there's anything else that strikes you as something that should be up there, let me know.

    1. I think two columns, centered would be good. Unless there's a markup for the number of columns on a page, you could easily throw it in a table with 0 line thickness.

  27. cc to CH: I am willing to work with you on the offer I just sent. I am just thinking these are the key parts.

    1. I assumed the key parts would remain the same. The problem becomes getting things close enough while making sure that neither of us have to drop other players we'd like to keep.

  28. After a bit of searching, I couldn't find my first post. I'm pretty sure it was relatively recently, i.e., last summer. As with a fair number of the other citizens, I lurked for quite a few months after first finding the site. Credit to H. Sinker for listing WGOM among his "recommended Twins blogs".

    If I recall, my first post was either an inquiry about how Friday Music Days work or some limited comment during a game log. It was actually my original avatar that prompted a response from the community...I first used the Minnesota Fighting Saints mascot for no particular reason (and without any sense of irony). When questioned about it, I didn't have an answer so I lamely suggested that I couldn't find anything better. I was thereafter given plenty of suggestions for something better - lots of pictures of canned corn.

      1. Thanks for finding that. Apparently - as with most things sports related in this town - it began with my close personal friend.

        1. A decent joke for Playboy magazine. Not for a journal of surgeons. Making that joke in an office with women present would get you in some seriously hot water, as it should.

          1. Agreed. As the late Sammy Davis Jr said, "Know the room, babe." (He'd then shake his head from from side to side and slap his jewel-encrusted hand against his knee.)

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