ted baker

/ 2008-05-07 / 1210177755 / @home (home home) /

There are six ways a batter can reach first safely without getting a hit. Admittedly I could only come up with five "on the spot". If you would care to play along, don't look at the list below... Listed in order of "duh":

Base on balls
Hit by pitch
Reaching on an error
Dropped third strike / steal
Fielder's choice
Catcher's interference

Jeremy, Kara and I saw The Visitor (92% on Rotten Tomatoes). It's slow paced with some very linear story developments; good acting and nice scenery. Certainly not something if you're looking for action and a three Vafrous V's of five film overall.

doing 85 with the windows down listening to Biggie

/ 2008-05-05 / 1210034807 / @home (home home) /

Even with Matsuzaka's career high 6 pitches (and 70 thrown through 3 innings), the Tigers have a big 0 runs to show for it. And a big 0 hits so far, to be sure. More fun facts: Pudge hasn't batted 9th in the order since 1992 (rookie year 1991). It's 4-0 in the fourth.

As we didn't have the strength to make it out Saturday night, Tina, Doug and I ventured around Lincoln Park and found a live jazz spot. No other bar had a good crowd. We learned Mike Dangeroux likes to play his guitar with teeth and tongue. We trekked back to Michigan this afternoon.

Open every day and always free

/ 2008-05-04 / 1209911551 / @c_g_p /

Various notes from Chicago:

We learned the hard way that a "garage" style door on a Uhaul is prone to getting stuck on items shifting within. After a two hour quagmire of trying various tricks to open the trailer, we finally succeeded.
The first evening we painted Tina's room - lots of grey with a purple accent wall. The second we completed mine - lots of blue. Doug brought his "former professional painter" skills.
Duffy's had some flat rate all you can drink for three hours deal on Friday night. After we cleaned up there we met Joel, Jake and Adam at a bar in Lakeview.
We've taken advantage of parental subsidies. Ma/Pa Grossi/Sklut came to town to swap vehicles with us and took us to Aladdin's Eatery (where they do a nice job) and breakfast at The Grove. Tina's mother et al. will be in town today - we'll probably have another Grove experience.
Hulu works well - we had a showing of Planet of the Apes last night (we have no TV yet) and some episodes of the office on the Thinkpad.
Today we'll check out the park, zoo, and beach.

An extra base machine (Granderson)

/ 2008-04-30 / 1209606192 / @home (home home) /

An excellent Detroit Trifecta last night. People seem to have regained faith in the Stones, the Wings have historical-odds wise finished their series, and the Tigers are looking to defeat the Yanks in the Bronx again tonight. Great.

Every pundit on CNBC yesterday and today believed it would happen - the Fed cut by a 1/4 point this afternoon. GDP grew in the first quarter by 0.6%. I like Visa and double-short gold (still). Visa's had a very impressive move in the last few days on increasing volume (blah blah blah) - maybe there's some ultra-bullish news coming up.

Tina and I trek to Chicago with a Uhaul tomorrow afternoon. Doug will land at O'Hare (from California) at 2.30p and shortly after we'll all work on the fun tasks of: moving stuff from trailer to our apartment, painting, and setting up. It looks like we're getting rained on all weekend, but we'll make the most of it.

the system that failed us

/ 2008-04-28 / 1209402620 / @home (home home) /

Many a photo were taken on Saturday. Dave captured how he was feeling a bit before the morning festivities began. See below.

Verlander pitched mostly well but still fell to Weaver and the Angels. I'm not one to complain about umpiring, but I think it made a small difference in the game (not that it was a very close game). Namely - Jones was safe at second; and whoeverthehell grabbing Guillen and kicking the ball away (albet unintentional) with no call was incorrect.

The Wings are taking a long break for their travels to Colorado. And the Pistons came back to beat Philly in their usual style.

Congraduations

/ 2008-04-27 / 1209342171 / @home (home home) /

I hadn't read into the details but Harry reports that the Diag setup cost $1.something million - and maybe too expensive to keep doing. During the cermonies yesterday (which I was peer-pressured into) there were murmurs that they would continue graduations on the Diag. Whatever the case may be for future grads, it went smoothly yesterday.

Jeff Weaver's little brother Jered is pitching against the Tigers tonight. Him and Verlander have both pitched nice first innings - and I likes me a pitcher's duel.

this is it

/ 2008-04-24 / 1209048382 / @Raptor House /

As it has been the case in a few years of recent memory, the AL Central is the weakest division in baseball right now. That's great news for us - we're just 2 losses behind the Chi Sox (3 games back) with these last three wins of ours.

A large crew of us are going to the game this afternoon. The Tri Lambs included.

The Wings start their series with Colorado tonight.

m i a

/ 2008-04-20 / 1208750983 / @home (home home) /

I was present and awake for most of all four hours His Holiness lectured this morning and afternoon. Kara joined me along with Dave and Christina for the first at 10a and Tina and Therese for the 2pm. Cool: he's a down to earth, no BS kind of fellow with positive messages. Difficult: his English.

The Wings move on - TG for Osgood. The Pistons just threw away all the gimmes they were handed in game 1. And the Tigers dug a little deeper this afternoon, edging forward in the battle for last place (those damn Nationals have one extra at 14 losses).

Very few people (namely, the DJ) knew what song this was at a house party last night. The crowd really enjoyed it (the formula is British-accented women and to-the-beat gunshots)...

big dumb idiot

/ 2008-04-19 / 1208672856 / @Raptor House /

An unbelievable string of events left Jim and I late for the garage sale this morning. We skipped out on Jeremy's MSU-birthday-night for a collection of things (mine included Tina's BBQ, UM v MSU baseball, and this damn sale). Anyway - I was in bed by around 2.30a (the Greenwood block party was a success) and we both had 5a alarms set... we got there around 7.30a.

Speaking of the UM v MSU game - we defeated them 8-3. Kara and I stood behind the dugout for a lot of the game and a 40s something mother next to use asked if I would protect her from foul balls (answer: yes). For the first time in my life two things happened: someone who asked me to protect them with a glove I had got hit by a ball (not hard) and it pretty much came right to me afterwards.

This year's sale was held in the arena area (ice removed), rather than on the concourse. They sort of just let everyone in without hitting capacity - so we did better than we should have. Jim got used shin guards, a stick, and tape ($60). I tied him in price with new shin guards, used gloves, and tape.

We drove to E L for hockey with some Blouses and friends. It was a good time.

Adam's bachelor party is today. Naturally I get an email about it the day beforehand and have to miss out on the coolest activity. At 1p the group went to a shooting range - Adam reports having fired fully automatics and really have a blast. Hah.

Tomorrow: The Lama (10a and 2pm).

+/- 3 min eh?

/ 2008-04-18 / 1208538549 / @Raptor House /

From the inbox today: "As you are wrapping up your collegiate experience, celebrate by purchasing a College of Engineering 'toothpick holder' and 'cold beverage' mug! What better way to celebrate after graduation than with a glass with your class logo on it!"

Nothing too exciting going on right now. There's been a couple Dominick's experiences. And some UM baseball - we left in the 6th two days ago with the score 18-2 (Blue) and some loot (t-shirt and foul ball). Today, Tina's casa is hosting a BBQ ahead of the MSU game (6.35pm).

range

/ 2008-04-15 / 1208286698 / @Raptor House /

The last question on a Jeapordy! rerun today was something like: "In 1898, Webster's introduced 'telephone' and this related five letter word." The two that would end up losing answered "phone," and the winner just blanked. The answer is "hello." I didn't know. What's more, Alexander Bell wanted people to say "ahoy" (rather than hello) when answering. Very interesting. Wikipedia says there were some print uses of Hello by Twain in the 80s and a few other notables in the 19th century.

Un urgent!

/ 2008-04-15 / 1208277346 / @Raptor House /

And the dollar gives it all back before the open yesterday. With oil hitting new highs once again, gold is up a bit for the day. But the gold/oil spread continues to fall. Still waiting for the setup...

A whole swarm of engineering nerds are travelling to Comerica Park for the game tonight. Therese will be joining us.

One of the Guenther goons stopped by our bench last night as we were playing General Dynamics (the second worse team in the league). He says his team won't be showing up for our last regular season game tomorrow night. Unless he was lying (as goons sometimes do), last night was it - likely the final EHS game for Jim and I. And we won - our ninth non-loss on the season. We finished 8-21-1. It's been a fun three years and approximately 80 total games.

TRH kept pretty good hockey stats back in the Blouses era. I think I got pretty good stuff from this season... Jim: 11g, 9a in 25 games played (.8 ppg). Myself: 16g, 16a in 25 games played (1.28 ppg). Notably, Jim plays defense. The following chart shows the team's win% over the season - we've been a .350 team for all three years I've played for them.

Relatively speaking, Jim's best play came from the early-mid to late-mid season. And relatively speaking my best came at the beginning and end of the season (see chart).

Imagine a world in which there are no hypothetical situations

/ 2008-04-14 / 1208187041 / @3rd_d00d /

And on the last day it snowed. Around 11:something last night I completed my last academic to-do. In about 59 minutes an online drop-box for our last paper to turn in opens up. So... that's all folks.

Now comes that fear that something has gone terribly awry with some assignment or something. But that's like the fear that you'll find yourself in a car accident on your next trip (not likely). This may or may not related to the title of this post - a quote from Nick Q's review of Farenheit 451.

Hokay - there's a few things to do:

Back things up. Being the packrat I am, I'll want to hold on to the collection of files from the past four years that will probably collect dust until I die.
Some work on Lunchtime's website
Inventory taking. There will be three piles: long term storage, moving with me, and the throw outs.
Read. Steve has lent me Vonnegut's Timequake - so far so good. Which means my relatively slow reading speed isn't hindering me from enjoying it.
Continue to mix interesting posts with oddly off-topic drivel, silly but cool-looking charts, and pictures that are too often blurred.
Cook. That caviche recipe needs another go-around.
Maybe extend Mortimer a little bit. I like Ugly's ATS, and I want a product that can trade the best of a bunch of opportunities found in an array of products. And I'd like some decision tree AI from a set or neural networks.

Random sports

I heard another despicable stat - the Tigers haven't scored, at all, in any of the three games that Kenny Rogers has started. They take on MIN today and tomorrow.
EHS plays its last two hockey games this week - 8.10p tonight and 10.50p Wednesday. It is highly likely this is the last time I play organized ice hockey with James Stevenson. Ever.

Hokay so

/ 2008-04-13 / 1208129662 / @Pierpont basement /

Joel recently revamped his website and begun his blogging career. In his first post: "I plan on writing mainly about my life with regards to sports, friends, Chicago, programming, technology and any other random sh!t that comes to mind." He kindly linked to Vafrous - so here's the return favor.

Bloomberg is reporting today that the dollar jumped against he Euro this weekend - just .067%, or about 10,000 pips. Or is it just 1,000? Whatever it is: "The dollar rose to $1.5702 per euro at 6.51 a.m. in Tokyo, from $1.5808 late in New York on April 11, after dropping 0.6 percent last week."

The last two times the Euro slumped gold got crushed (see mid-March, late-March). The Euro continues a very strong trend upward against the dollar, and naturally that's most likely to continue. But if that is to break, even in the short term, gold is probably going to fall (relatively) a much greater amount.

Reading the above again... I'm not really saying much: The trend is probably going to continue, if it doesn't then it doesn't. But really I'm looking for some short GLD opportunities around the $87-88 range.

WTF

/ 2008-04-13 / 1208124604 / @Pierpont basement /

If my memory of the yesterday's radio post-game is correct, the Tigers were shutout three times in their magical Couldn't-Make-The-Postseason '07. They're really making strides this year, matching that feat yesterday and breaking it today (two weeks in!). Right now we're on pace for twenty-seven wins about 7 1/2 % through the season.

Let's talk about expecations. The Tigers are 2nd on 2008 team payrolls at $138.7m. 1: NYY ($209m), 3: NYM ($138.3m), 4: BoSox ($133.4m), 5: CWS ($121.1m). The bottom three teams combined payrolls are about $25m less than ours. The average Tiger is making a bit over 20% of the entire Marlins payroll (there's 30 Tigers). Someone recently mentioned pre-season that they didn't mine becoming the Yankees (payroll) - unfortunately our record is looking like the classic Tigers.

And let's look at the positives. The Tigers have forced season ticket holders, in general, to purchase larger ticket packages. There's also been talk of expanding this program next year (lower box holders will need to buy a whole season). Unless a miracle happens (that would be nice), this probably won't be happening anytime soon.

The Tiger's WS chances on SportsTrade have fallen, but there's still something (FV is about 6.5%). People seem to still believe we're in for a turn around. I like to believe had we just eeked out that home opener in March things would be very different now (lots of psychology in baseball). And I like to believe that the seasonal move to warmer weather is going to help out a bit.

Besides expecting a great year, it's also frustrating in that there's no one to lay the blame on. The front office purchased big players - exactly what the fans wanted. It's still early - and as usual there's always next year.

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