Found this brief story from the AP fairly interesting:
Study Finds One-Third in D.C. Illiterate
To quote from the article:
Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out job applications.
I looked at that and said to myself, “Hell– I know people in college like that…”
I think it speaks volumes about his largely unsuccessful forays into the big leagues that Ben Hendrickson cleared waivers this weekend. From what I understand about the wavier process for a player out of minor league options (if you make a claim, you have to keep that player on your big league roster for the full season, or else return him to his previous team), this amounts to the rest of the league saying, “Well, I don’t think we’ve got space for him on our big league club.”
Quite a drop in stock for a pitcher who was once mentioned in the same breath as Ben Sheets, as a long-term solution in the rotation. Understandable that Hendrickson *reeeeeally* wants to get traded, and with only 2 weeks left until opening day, there are more than a few questions for Doug Melvin & the gang to address.
Hey– are you going to Opening Day?
I can’t believe I didn’t blog ANYTHING on Friday, given that I had a very slow work day and a lot cooking for the weekend. Ah, what the hell, tho– here’s a little recap…
Friday night, Michelle, Jen, Christy and I took Grandma out for dinner at The Packing House. They have a fine southside fish fry over there, and we all enjoyed it. After dinner, we hung out with at Grandma’s house a while playing 31. Jen won once, and Grandma won the other. I had some of the worst 31 hands of my life and got knocked out very quickly both times.
On Saturday, I got up (relatively) early and after breakfast and coffee, met Jen, Joe, Raul and Katie at Mo’s Irish Pub on Wisconsin & Plankington. They had been out since 7:30 at Murph’s, where they were alleged to have Lucky Charms for those early-morning St. Patty’s patrons. I enjoyed my first Guinness of the day at around 11, as can be seen in this photo. There is also a short video on Joe’s phone of my 2nd Guinness of the day, which I finished in 15 seconds (sometimes I amaze even myself).
I couldn’t stay out too long with the revelers, because I had to meet Michelle at Miller Park around 3 for a Guardian Credit Union meet-n-greet with Gorman Thomas. That was pretty cool, but I didn’t have much of a chance to talk with him– there was still a long line of people with stuff to get signed behind me. I did get my bobblehead autographed. I milled around the store downstairs for a bit waiting for Michelle to be done “working” at the event. I think we were out of there around 10 to 4. I wonder how much Gorman gets paid for an event like that?
After we were done at the ballpark, we shuttled Jen and Joe back to Mo’s and had a drink with them. I was a little perturbed that we had to pay a $5 cover to get in there. It was EXTREMELY crowded, and there were a lot of old people looking a little annoyed about the service and the breathing room, but what do you expect when 3/17 falls on a Saturday?
We made it to Erika and Patrick’s house by 6 and had a really good time with an authentic Irish dinner and a good game of Sheepshead. We thought we would need to leave earlier to meet some of Michelle’s peeps out for the ‘holiday,’ but never got the call we were expecting…
Michelle had her car parked over at Jen & Joe’s house Saturday night, so we just crashed there and eventually made it back to Oshkosh on Sunday afternoon, following a late brunch at the Original Pancake House. Michael Redd was nowhere to be seen on this visit…
I was a little bummed as I listened to the Badgers game on the trip home– enough so that I had to switch over to the Brewers when Bucky was down by 7 with about 3 minutes to go. It was a nice season, but too bad to see it end so quickly.
Speaking of basketball, my team has its first “playoff game” this evening at 6:15. My understanding is that we, being the #5 team in the league, play the #4 team for a chance to meet #1 next week. For the first time this morning, that didn’t make a lot of sense to me– seems more like we should be playing the #2 team, and the #4 should play #3. But I guess that would mean you’d have to ‘re-seed’ after the first round, and… well, who gives a crap, really?
How was your weekend?
My boss mentioned this to me today:
MIT OpenCourseWare.
Apparently, you can access the course materials for any class at MIT for free. It’s certainly interesting (and useful) if your goal is just to amass knowledge, although I’m not sure how much the average person could glean from reading lists and syllabi without any guidance from an instructor.
Put it on your summer reading list..!
I opened up this window because I thought I had something witty to say about my programming choices from last evening– when it turned out the Knitts wouldn’t be making it over for LOST, I stuck with National Geo instead and watched some thing about how the first humans in the Americas might not have come from Siberia across the Bering “land bridge.”
…At least there were some “new revelations” there.
But I ran out of gas and wound up reading about the Milwaukee Bucks sudden and random coaching transition instead. What a f-show.
Times like these, I sincerely wish that the Senator would just sell the team to the highest bidder, and let ’em move the Bucks to Vegas. The NBA (and this franchise in particular) is almost too stupid to even be in Milwaukee. That one year when the Big Three made a run at the East, it was a lot of fun, but you look at the past 20 years or so, it was an aberration. It kind of gets to be laughable that people like Larry Harris and Terry Stotts are even working at the jobs that they have (or recently had, in the case of the latter).
I dunno, maybe if I started telling people that I was the illegitimate son of Phil Jackson or something I could be a general manager in the NBA.
OK, back to it…
Dear Mr. Cube,
You may consider turning the title question of your latest film (Are We Done Yet?) in on the “editorial we” of yourself, and possibly your agent, in relation to some of your recent choices for work.
We would all like to see you cease and desist as soon as possible.
We (i.e., the Western World) just want what’s best for you, Mr. Cube.
Thanks.
The following things are awesome today:
1. Terry Stotts finally got fired.
2. Here is the picture of Terry Stotts used on ESPN.com in reference to the story:
Delicious.
Interesting story via the AP about the benefits and drawbacks of ethanol.
If you’ve only heard/watched the most popular media sound bites, you may be inclined to think that corn-based ethanol is some sort of silver bullet for American oil dependence. That’s simply not the case, and this brief article goes in to some of that…
My basketball team had its regular-season-doubleheader-finale last night– we were supposed to have this 2-fer evening early in February, but a snow day @ Fond du Lac pushed it back to the “make-up week.”
Last week Monday, we got killed by the best team in our division, by something like 25 points. I mean, we were annihilated. We turned the ball over a LOT, and they must’ve scored 15-18 points on transition turnovers. It was pretty sad. By the last 5 minutes we were just chucking up 3s to try to get back in the game.
With that performance in mind, I fully expected to have a rough go of it playing two games in one night. But it was actually probably our best week of the season. We beat the “kids” in our first game (this team of all 19- and 20-yr-olds, a lot of them former students of my teacher peeps on the team), putting our season record against them at 1-2.
In our second game, we played that best team again, and it was a really close, hard-fought match all the way through. The difference, once again, was a couple stupid turnovers down the stretch in the first half that let them turn a 3-point deficit into a 3-point lead. They ended up winning by 3. We had a chance to take a 1-point lead with about 20 seconds to go, but the shot rimmed out. We missed a 3 at the buzzer that would’ve sent us to OT.
So it was a pretty good last night of hoops– come to find out it wasn’t actually the last night. Apparently, all 5 teams qualify for the “playoffs,” so we have play the kids again next week, and if we win that, we play the #1 team again the following week. There is at least one, and at most three weeks to go.
In my review of how that season went, I guess I wish our team would’ve had more time to sort of “get to know each other,” and play together more often. I think we could’ve been more successful if that were the case. I also feel I could’ve shook some more rust off my game personally if we practiced, or something.
I don’t really anticipate playing in an organized league for any sport again, but it was definitely interesting to try it as an adult and just see what that’s like (it’s like high school, but just hurts more).
Got a link to a story from the BBC yesterday via Dave Schrubbe:
“The ethical dilemmas of robotics”.
Interesting stuff.
Have a good weekend.