Haiku Wednesday

Cold

Stillness in the air
Trees bare, frost covers the grass
Toasty warm parka

or

Stars pierce the dark sky
Our breaths like instant comets
Warm cozy blanket

Magazine Wrap Up

Rolling Stone

REM has a new "live" album coming out next year some time.

The "Boss" is 58!

Would Godzilla and Mothra kick Megatron's ass?

The New Yorker

Good article on Scott Boras or as this article claims, "The Extortionist." Is he evil or just playing the system? We hate his methods but honestly teams are willing to pay his clients, so who is the fool? I mean the Rangers did drop 252 million on A-Rod. The statistics show that less than one percent of players will have a 6 year major league career and maybe only 3 - 4% will have a three year career. So if you are that special player who transcends the sport do you not try to get the biggest buck? Should we be critical of A-Rod for getting all that he can? There always seems to be a sucker out there willing to spend $30 million a year for a 32 year MVP. Boras just exploits the owners...eventually they will get smart. For years the Rockies ownership probably took a good chunk of the revenue and didn't add to the field. I mean if baseball is such a losing proposition then why do people buy these teams? There is always ebb and flow in anything...I think as a viewer of baseball I just have difficulty in spending $8 for a beer to watch someone take his god given talents and exploit us all. I thought his World Series ideal about moving it to 9 games and making it a spectacle. was good. The game and sport could use some shaking up. Presently he represents 65 players and takes a 5% commission on the salary of his clients.

Another issue with multiple good articles and the second article was about another odd ball entrepreneur from Boulder. In 2001 a company called Dagoba started to sell chocolate..it was a fancy chocolate not your massed produced stuff. Chocolate is known for its content with 70% being the benchmark. The beans when grinded produce a liquid which is mainly unsaturated fat (more than half the bean!). First chocolate shop opened in London in 1657. A dark chocolate has the equivalent of one cup of coffee and theobromine (which by the way makes you pee and can cause cardiac arrest in dogs) Cacao also has serotonin, a cannabinoid component similar to found in marijuana, and phenylethylamine an amphetamine like antidepressant. Wow...anyway back to the crazy entrepreneur he finally ended up selling his company to Hershey and he claimed,

"How could I make a difference at Dagoba, working on such a small scale?" I find this interesting because I knew someone who worked for a similar type outfit in Boulder selling Soy Milk and he also sold his company so that he can make a difference...well they fired him 2 years later. People shouldn't sell out...they do make a difference they just need to stick with it.

Wired

Your ears are filled with tiny calcium carbonate crystals called otoconia and help you maintain balance and sense gravity and linear acceleration. Also cause vertigo if they fall into the wrong canal in the inner ear.

Susan Kare? Anyone? Yup see designed some of the all time classic icons







Since the issue was on manga it has an interesting note that has manga sales increased comic book sales plummeted. The ideal being that manga would have hundreds of pages for $10 while most 32-page comics cost $3. The magazine Shonen Jump (500 pages) for $5 with a circulation of 250,000 while Amazing Spider-Man sells only 100,000.

Air & Space

Good article on the X-15, my personal favorite X-plane of them all. Flown from 1959 to1968 and 199 flights with a maximum altitude of 67 miles and a speed of 4,519 mph. Great plane, who knows what we would have done if NASA hadn't come along.

Colorado Rockies - World Series Conclusions

Well that was that! Too bad the Roxs couldn't get at least one victory at home. They certainly had their chances but for as much luck they had getting to the world series, that same luck sided with the Red Sox for this series. I don't think the Roxs were as bad as they appeared nor do I think the Red Sox were that dominant but for 4 games the Soxs made the pitches and got the timely hits whereas the Roxs just couldn't manufacture that break. So the ugly truth:

ROX		SOX
.218	AVG	.333
.283	OBP	.411
29	HITS	47
10	RUNS	29
1	SB	2
3	HR	3
36	K	20
10	WALKS	19
7.68	ERA	2.50

Tad bit ugly for the Roxs. The big thing that stands out is the 36 strikeouts by the Roxs and the 19 walks allowed by the Roxs. We had 41 (2 HBP) base runners (plated .244) and they had 67 (1 HBP) base runners (plated .433). We turned 3 double plays and they only turned 2. We left 28 men in on base, they left 34. Finally the Roxs batted .167 with runners in scoring position and Soxs were .419! Yikes! A complete offensive thumping by the Sox or alot of timely hits (or bad pitches). The best evaluation I read was from the USA Today which basically gave the Red Sox scouting department in A+ for giving a fantastic script for the pitchers to use. Granted you have to have pitchers who can make the pitches and that rotation they sent out did that very thing and well our pitchers never seemed to get that dominant strike out or the much needed double play. In the end I think the Roxs were just a bit in over their head. A big stage to be on for the first time and a mammoth historical team to have to face the first time around. Hopefully this will make the next time not so scary!

Colorado Rockies - World Series Impressions Game 3

First World Series game in Denver! Went into town and checked the scene out. Kind of apropos that I took a picture with a big Boston shirt right in front...doh! Didn't have tickets, didn't try too hard as I figured if I was meant to get them I would have gotten them online (probably a bad assumption as I knew no one who actually got tickets on the ticket day!). Anyway a great festive atmosphere. Lots of Rockies fans, lots of purple, silver, and black! Lots of Boston colors too. Bit chilly but overall a beautiful day for baseball in the Mile High City. Was amazed to see all the people wanting tickets. One Boston fan was waving a $1,000 (10 $100 bills) trying to find a single ticket. WOW! The place was hoping...to be frank...I was a bit sad that I couldn't go in. It would have been fun. The game, well not so fun for the Roxs. I really thought they'd get home and get the bats swinging again. Unfortunately once again our bats were quiet. We did briefly flirt with our previous ways closing a 6 - 0 deficit to 6 - 5 but then promptly gave it back and ended up losing 10 - 5. Down 3 - 0 I think the Roxs days our numbered.

Colorado Rockies - World Series Impressions Game 2

A good, respectable game although we lost 2 - 1. Frankly I don't think the Rockies are that bad offensively and neither do I think the Red Sox pitching is that dominant but in these first 2 games pitching has certainly out done hitting. Only getting 5 hits is pretty pathetic especially considering Holliday got 4 of them! Where do we go from here? Well some home cooking will certainly help. Coors has always favored the Roxs hitters so hopefully getting home will help in the offensive department. Need to have the Fogger come through with a huge performance. It would be nice to see Helton get some meaningful hits. Tale of the tape hasn't been pretty up to date. 61 at bats, 2 runs, 11 hits, 3 walks, and 22 K's! (yikes). It has got to get better hasn't it? Let's get one tomorrow and go from there!

Colorado Rockies - World Series Impressions Game 1

Yikes! That wasn't much fun. How many Rox fans wished there was the Little League mercy rule in effect? Not much really to report. The defensive looked good. The bats weren't too awful considering Beckett was unhittable. The real issue was the lack of any good pitching. That looked October scary. As Peter Gammons said earlier today, at least the Roxs weren't winning 3 - 2 in the 9th and lost to a Manny walk off home run. Overall nothing really to build on other than it is over and we move on to Game 2. Let's hope the arms are back. Way I looked at it was the 91 series Atlanta lost the first two games, went home won 3 and then couldn't win won more. We just need to steal one...and free tacos!

Haiku Wednesday

Hannah Montana (don't ask...yuck!)

What a lovely name
Tickets to visit a town?
A concert? I'm old!

National Mole Day

A chemist friend of mine wished me a Happy Mole Day and I was stunned that it never occurred to me! A mole is a big number 6.02214179 X 10^23!

For perspective (and taken from Wikipedia):

A human body contains very roughly one hundred trillion cells; there are roughly six billion people on Earth; so the total number of human cells on the planet is approximately 100×1012*6×109=6×1023, which is very close to one mole.

Since the Earth has a radius of about 6400 km, its volume is approximately 1021 m3. Since about 500 large grapefruit will fit in one cubic meter, it therefore follows that a mole of grapefruit would have approximately the same volume as the Earth.

If you had a mole of pennies, you could give out enough money to everyone in the world so that they could spend a million dollars every hour, day and night, for the rest of their lives.

This Week in Comics

Umbrella Academy 2
The dreaded issue #2 where series grow or collapse. I think this should grow but what sort of audience will grow with it? Sort of fits the superhero x-men thingee but the characters are all out of an X-files episode. This book to me seems to have had alot of hype, alot of "noise" but isn't really getting much mainstream look see. Now my guess is that with a writer who is also in a band, kind of helps with the chatter but will this book live to see anything come of it? Dark Horse is pretty good about letting a series run its course. Another thing I find interesting with this book is that it seems to have this huge back story that everyone should know about but for me I struggle with the apparent randomness of it all. I mean the free comic book day offering was set as the "team" was together, the first two books seem to be laying the framework of how the team comes together but then there are these random time lines with stories (that fall into a sort of printing but web offering). Ughhh sometimes time is a good plot line!

Captain America 31
Another great issue. Books like this restore my faith with comics. Good compelling story with good art and a reason to return each month. Where will the Winter Soldier fall? Is he under the spell or his he trying to discover the real truth? Wow great book

Colorado Rockies - World Series Preview

Well FOX was able to expand their ALCS playoff coverage to a total of 7 games and the Roxs finally have an opponent. I for one am glad the Roxs had some time off as I needed to reenergize after those tense 3 weeks. So bring on the Red Sox. The proverbial tale of the tape is below:

For those viewers who think the Roxs just waltzed into the playoffs they are a bit wrong. Granted we had some lucky bounces but the numbers suggest we were at the top statistically in the National League. Our pitching took some time to catch up but it settled in. Really the only glaring statistics we don't match up well with the Red Sox is pitching. We don't strike out a lot of batters and we do give up a fair amount of hits. Hopefully our defense will make up for that. So everyone is plugging the Beckett angle. I admit it will be difficult to get two wins from such a post season monster. Beckett has faced the Roxs in one form or another 6 times over his career and four times in Coors Field. He is 3 - 1 at Coors over the years having pitched about 6 innings, giving up about 6 hits, 3 runs, 4 K, and less than one homer. Schilling has also pitched a fair amount in Colorado having pitched for the D-backs. The two pitchers I think give us the most difficulty would be Dice-K and Wakefield although I am not for sure if Wakefield will pitch in this series? Over the years we are 5 - 4 against the mighty Sox. We were 2 -1 against them this year at Fenway. So who knows...can our luck hold out? Roxs WPA for the two playoff series is below:

The big thing the chart tells me is that Holliday, Helton, and Tulo really haven't done a whole lot in the playoffs. If we can get some offensive from these three I think it would be huge for the Roxs chance. Most of the "experts" give the Sox the edge mostly giving them a 4 - 1 to 4 - 2 series victory. I mean the 2nd highest payroll against the 25th. The "wow" factor of the Red Sox history versus 15 years of nothing but a lone playoff appearance and the Blake Street Bombers. Ultimately on Wednesday, Game 1 starts the 2007 playoffs. If we just played statistics we wouldn't bother playing these games so let's pitch, hit, run, and catch and see where things fall. Let's hope for a well played 6 to 7 more games and at the end of it let the best team win. Go Roxs!

College Football

Another good solid win against CSU 45 - 21. Now comes the tough part of the schedule. This is the stretch that in past years AF has gone 0'fer and missed out on a bowl game. This weekend Wyoming, then a quick week and Thursday game against New Mexico, then Army, then at Notre Dame, and finishing with San Diego. I see at least 3 wins which would put us at 8-4 and a decent chance to go bowling. Not for sure which Wyoming team will show up this weekend. They have had some good wins and then some not so good wins. Good coach but just haven't been getting it done. Vegas started the line at 3.5 and it moved to 2.5 by this weekend. Obviously Vegas isn't giving AF any love at home. I will be attending the game so I will bring some luck...ha! Air Force leads the series 23-20-2. We first played the Wyoming Freshman back in 1955. And who could forget the 1977 0-0 tie. I predict a close one at home tomorrow with an AF victory - 21 - 14.

2000 51 - 34 W
2001 24 - 13 W
2002 26 - 34 L
2003 35 - 29 W
2004 26 - 43 L
2005 28 - 29 L
2006 31 - 24 W
2007 ???

The Carolina battle ended with a South victory last weekend and the LSU and Kentucky did turn out to be an interesting (and exciting) game.

Games of interest this weekend...Which USC shows up in South Bend this weekend? Michigan St continue to make No. 1s miserable this weekend in Columbus? Boy how far have Miami and Florida St fallen...this game isn't getting any pub! Northwest battle of Oregon and Washington.

Artist Feature - Darwyn Cooke

Who is Darwyn Cooke...well obviously an artist. I like to lump him into the "Art Retro" style. He has a particular all his own type art which when looking at his work fits in very well. Best known for his "DC: The New Frontier" and his re-introduction of Catwoman and somewhat his Batman Ego series he is a no nonsense artist. I had seen his work, was drawn (pun intended) to his New Frontier series but other than that didn't know alot about him. While at the store I noticed "The Comics Journal" No 285, October 2007 and picked it up. It has a wonderful interview of Darwyn and my respect for his work both has an artist and writer grew immensely. First off is the fact that he is the total package. Seeing an artist write to his work his unbelievable. Standard package of a separate writer and artist sometimes clicks but often can lead to disastrous books when obviously they don't see eye to eye. Obviously Lee and Ditko had it and Claremont and Lee (and Bryne) and to be frank most artist just can't write (McFarlane). What also nice about him is his outspokenness...he doesn't hold back...he ripped Miller's DK2 and thinks the main stream companies are doing a horrible job promoting the industry (I agree). Comments included, "...don't see any long-term plan..." and "...abandoning print for the monthly product and using the Web for deliver system." Some interesting quotes and observations from someone who is kind of an outsider (having started in animation and hence the writing capability). Anyway like the look and the feel that this guy brings.

His most notable work as been his New Frontier series. To be honest I don't remember it coming out in single issues. When it got the absolute treatment it entered my sights. Had to dig deep to find the collected TPB. When I got them they did not disappoint. Some great writing and art. A lot of the characters were unknown to me and their interactions were strange but the overall book was intense . I really like the Hal Jordan angle (a great hero and history but I really have no ideal where to start on that one...I've tried, tough character to try and get to know). I like the Wonder Woman characterization and like how the JLA come in at the end. There are some terrific one page spreads with big art and ideals. Overall a great read and something for my permanent collection.

Haiku Wednesday

Anticipation

On the starting line
Last chance field goal, ninth inning
Will I cheer or cry?

Colorado Rockies - NLCS Champions

The Rockies Win the Pennant , the Rockies Win the Pennant. One of the all time great calls in MLB history...of course it was the Giants but I have always inserted "Rockies" for the heck of it.

To be honest, I never thought I'd see the Rockies in the World Series. I mean I'm positive but I've been tracking the Roxs stats over their history and although their offensive could always get them there it was the pitching part I thought we'd never be able to manage. Of course if we could get to the playoffs with Kevin Ritz perhaps I should have been more confident. Okay so getting to the playoffs would have been possible but then getting through two rounds to me was the difficult part. Throughout our short history we have finished last or next to last in ERA. Pitching wins in the playoffs so how would we survive two rounds of playoffs without a decent starting pitching corps. Look at this year's pitching staff...only two regular starters made it to the post season. Cook, Lopez, and Hirsch all got hurt and we had to fill in with Jimenez, Morales, Dessens, and Redman (last two yikes!). So basically even if we had the Blake Street Bombers we would still need some pitching.

With the "humidor", baseball began to be played right but what pitcher in their right mind would ever come to Colorado to have a career. The Roxs certainly weren't going to pay them so it boiled down to homegrown success. The last 3 years has shown incredible growth in this area with a solid corps of talent. But as they succeeded would they stay (i.e. bet Jennings is hating life right about now....ha). Then look at the NL West. Three Mid-Level salary teams with two big dogs in LA and SF. Even if we could compete the other teams could always land that one needed arm down the stretch. Finally look at the Diamondbacks. This is a team that was succeeding and yet they were rebuilding as well and as I see it were about a year behind the Roxs this year and yet they won the division. So here is the Roxs, slowly building (3rd year after the Gen R beginnings) and yet the D-backs were racing ahead with their rookie crop. 2004 D-backs won 51, 2005 won 77, 2006 won 67, and this year 90. 2004 Roxs won 68, 2005 won 67, 2006 won 76, and this year 90. This is of course (the Roxs) was preceded by 9 years of finishing last or next to last with one winning season. In that span Arizona won the world series.

In rebuilding, Arizona did go out and get pitching and some veterans to fill in the line up. The average age of the team is 28.1 while the Roxs is 27.9. The big fear then for the Roxs is so what if we have young home grown talent, what happens if teams in our own division have better home grown talent and are willing (and have a lot better opportunity of attracting pitching) to spend money on free agent pitching to make up any deficiencies? So anyway that was my concern...and what did this one playoff series show? Our talent was better this time around. Hopefully the rest of the division took notice...and hopefully the D-backs and Roxs are the Red Sox and Yankees of the AL East...year to year dominance with a good rivalry. So how did the series play out:

ARI		COL
.254	AVG	.222
.312	OBP	.316
36	HITS	30
8	RUNS	18
0	SB	2
2	HR	3
28	K	39
8	WALKS	18
3.00	ERA	1.89

So there is the tale of the tape. The big thing that stand is out is both teams had close OBP but obviously we were able to plate the runners while Arizona could not. 18 versus 8 walks is huge. We had 52 (3 from errors and 1 HBP) base runners (plated .346) and they had 50 (2 from errors and 4 HBP) ((plated .160). We turned 6 double plays and they only turned 2. We left 32 men in scoring position, they left 31. Finally the Roxs batted .235 with runners in scoring position and D-backs were .222. The telling statistic is that of the 18 walks given to the Roxs 6 of them scored and of the 8 walks we gave none scored. Also can Helton and Tulo please show up in the next round? See WPA for the NLCS.

Play of the series was Taveras catch in Game 2. I really think this was the defining moment, the momentum swing, the ultimate reason for the series finishing in 4 games. Got to hand it to Hurdle...he messed with the mojo bringing Taveras in but it ultimately paid dividends.

This Week in Comics

New Avengers #35
Unusual issue. Issue #34 ended with out heroes jumping into a fight, so with this issue I expected some conclusion to that cliffhanger and what does Bendis throw at us? Yup an issue with none of our heroes and a bunch of bad guys banding together to take up against our heroes. Of course this is always something I can never figure out in the comic world...why bad guys don't do this more often but hey it is....the comic world. Anyway Bendis is throwing a whole lot of dangling plots into the mix. Difficult to see where it is all going...not for sure why he his dragging the whole "a skrull or not a skrull" plotline along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #7
Another good issue by Brian K. Again I watched Buffy on and off for a couple of years but never a real follower. A good issue on Faith. Little more background on the scooby gang but mostly just Faith. Interesting to see how this plays out. I am sure it won't conclude with Brian's run but probably follow through the books. To me with Faith siding up with a potential enemy this could play out to an endgame of some sort. Was reading a comment in the back of the book and it was interesting to note that in fact we really don't know much about this post Sunnyvale (dale) world? Hmmmm

Uncanny X-men #491
Ughhh what to do about this book? Brubaker writes Captain America...awesome book. Uncanny, fantastic history and great characters, and I can't get into it. I really thought something was going good but nothing. Then I read about this Messiah Complex coming...it it another tease? I really think the X-universe just needs to start over. Everything is just too convoluted...I really thought the 198 mutants left would be something but no (dangling plotline...). I am really trying here...

College Football

A good solid win against UNLV 31 - 14. Nothing flashy just a good win against a team we should win against. Next up a tough O - fer Colorado State team that always seems to play AF tough. Vegas seems to realize this by only making AF a 3.0 favorite. I gave CSU a benefit of the doubt during preseason but I think this should be an AF win. I give it a close 27 - 24 back and forth game. Air Force leads the series 26-19-1. We first played the CSU Freshman back in 1955. Obviously they owned us the last couple of years. There was an interesting lost back in 1993 when AF loss 5 - 8...interesting baseball score! Tough game next week against Wyoming.

2000 44 - 40 W
2001 21 - 28 L
2002 12 - 31 L
2003 20 - 20 L
2004 47 - 17 W
2005 23 - 41 L
2006 24 - 21 W
2007 ???

Ohio St continues to win despite a rebuilding year and with everyone else losing who knows. Big surprise in LA last week with Notre Dame coming in and beating the Bruins.

Games of interest this weekend.. Carolina battle this weekend with the South facing the North and LSU and Kentucky could be an interesting one (or not).

Lemony Snicket - The Reptile Room

Book 2 in a Series of Unfortunate Events leads off with our orphans being shuttled off to another distant relative. Our least favorite Count is back tyring to obtain the orphans inheritance. The Reptile Room being about a relative who keeps snakes. A good little yearn, nothing fancy just a fun little read.

Haiku Wednesday

Horsehide vs Pigskin

Brute force versus grace
Fast forward versus slow mo
One word...October

Magazine Wrap Up

Maureen O'Dowd

"Al Gore's true claims didn't matter in that standoff any more than Anita Hill's true claims did during my confirmation. That's the beautiful thing about being a conservative. We don't push for truth. We push to win, praise the Lord.

It's a relief to finally admit it: I'm proud to have hastened Al's premature political death, hanging chads. It was, you might say, a low-tech lynching."

Wow this was in 10/7/07 Sunday Times Op Ed page. Guess Clarence Thomas came out with a autobiography (?) and O'dowd rips him a new one...makes you wonder when a judge was brought on by Bush I and he ends up putting Bush II in the White House...yikes

Good Magazine had an interesting graph on total store acreage and the fact that Wal Mart has more acreage than the island of Manhattan by approximately 3,000 acres (18,810 vs. 15,000)!

Starbucks has about 152,000 stores with only 400 acres

MIT D-Lab, Amy Smith, as an interesting quote, "Designs are more likely to be successful if they're not complicated and requiring all sorts of support and infrastructure. But simple doesn't mean easy. It's a challenge to get to those 'simple' solutions."

Colorado Rockies - NLDS Champions

Taken from Dan Fox's website, "...when the Rockies stood at 77-72 their odds of reaching the playoffs using BP's (Baseball Prospectus) post season odds report was in fact 1.82% or 54:1. That marked the third most unlikely comeback with 20 or fewer games to play in history behind only the 1964 Cardinals (1.26% with 13 games to play) and the 1934 Cardinals (1.16% with 15 to play). He also points out that their odds were at 1.46% when their record stood at 18-27 on May 21st and was only 4.4% after their loss to the Diamondbacks on September 28th. In fact, Silver notes that what's so impressive about the Rockies season is that "they were never, not for one day, greater than even-money to make the playoffs until they actually did."

In accord with that simulation, from a historical perspective, through 2006 there were 988 teams that found themselves with an 18-27 record or worse at some point in the season and only 13 of those (1.3%) had reached postseason play."

So basically the Roxs had a low probability of even making the playoffs and so then you would have to say their chances to advance were nil...and that is why we play the games. The Roxs swept the NDLS in 3 games and looked good doing it. See game by game synopsis.

Overall WPA leaders for the Roxs during the NLDS:

Big surprise was the lack of offensive and the importance of pitching. Holliday, Helton, and Tulo really didn't do much. The bullpen worked overtime and did some major work. Matsui and Torrealba were the offensive. Hopefully our bats wake up for the next series. Interesting statistic of note...not only did the Roxs have the 2nd best record next to the Yankees since late May they also had the best ERA since the All Star break. Pretty impressive!

Finally I have decided that if I could try one thing it would be hitting a walk off game winning home run in the playoffs....see below

College Football

Early season wins showed a new AF but the last two losses shows that Calhoun hasn't improved AF like I thought. A disappointing 31-20 loss to Navy (5th in a row!) shows that once again we aren't winning the battle for the academy athletes. I really thought an Academy Grad Coach would empower AF to go out and win his first service academy game. Alas not much to show for it (AF was a 2.5 point underdog). Now we have UNLV. We first played UNLV why back in 1981. We hold a 8-4 record against them over the years. AF is actually favored by 5.5 (6 mid-week). I see a comeback 24 - 10 win.

2000 13 - 34 L
2001 10 - 34 L
2002 49 - 32 W
2003 24 - 7 W
2004 27 - 10 W
2005 42 - 7 W
2006 39 - 42 L
2007 ???

California at Oregon (Oregon should have won), Alabama at Florida St (FSU won a squaker), and TCU at Wyoming.

Games of interest this weekend..Ohio St at Purdue, Notre Dame at UCLA (can you say blow out), div>

Transformers

Well the movie had wonderful special effects but I think Megan Fox stole the show (see left). Overall I impressed with the movie. Total Michael Bay and a total summer movie. It is good to see worthwhile movie once in a while. I wasn't all that impressed with Shia, but there was Fox. Anyway a plotless silly set up but for what is was worth it was better than Spider-Man's twisted silly plot. Overall 5 cykes! Also highly looking forward to a sequel.

Haiku Wednesday

Purple Craze

Stomach churns, palms sweat
The crowd simmers, last at bat
Head first slide, Roxs win!

Douglas Coupland - JPod

Trying to catch up on my Coupland...almost there. Anyway this was an obvious ploy to re-connect to some of his old readers who liked Microserfs. But it for those of us who have kept up with him you'll see that this is really just a response to the ever changing computer landscape. Where 10 years ago it was Microsoft today it is Google, tomorrow...someone else. A crafty little story about a design team with Coupland hilarious dry humor and far fetched plot devices (I mean wouldn't we all like to send our bosses to China to become addicted to heroin while they make imitation tennis shoes?). Anyway a great read and some choice quotes below:

"You feel chilled because you have no character. You're a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism. You spend your life feeling as if you're perpetually on the brink of being obsolete - whether it's labour market obsolescence or cultural unhipness. And it's all catching up with you. You live and die by the development cycle. You're glamorized drosophilia flies, with the company regulating your life cycles at whim. If it isn't a budget-driven eighteen-month game production schedule, it's a five-year hardware obsolescence schedule. Every five years you have to throw away everything you know and learn a whole new set of hardware and software specs, relegating what was once critical to our lives to the cosmic slag heap.

"Don't talk to me about IKEA furniture. Your fater tried assembling an IKEA shelf last year, and it nearly nearly ended our marriage..."

"...I hoped that God would shake my Etch-a-Sketch clean overnight..."

"Comics day came and went. And another comics day followed that - the typical production and consumption cycles that help us survive our dismal, meaningless little lives."

"I was wondering what electrons are actually doing when they sit in your hand drive in an old laptop at the back of your closet. I mean, how does an electron sit still - is it like a cartoon M&M leaning back in a folding beach chair? Is it like an angry little steel ball bearing hovering there, just waiting to go nuts on protons? What's the mechanism that starts and stops the electron? Who's dungeon master? And if an electron has only a negative electrical charge, how can it possibly even exist?"

Colorado Rockies - Game 163!

Wow playoff baseball two days earlier (okay so it was actually a regular season game) but come on a one game winner take all game. Just look below:

A nailbiter till the bitter end. A perfect Game 163 for your inner baseball fan...for a Roxs fan well let's just say it was nerve racking. It is funny the sporting events I remember most. Most of them are baseball. The first world series I remember is the 1978 when the Yankees beat the Dodgers, then in 1982 during school our teachers let us watch the Braves and Cardinals NL playoff game, then a big break and the 1991 Braves/Twins series (greatest world series ever!), and then the 2004 Red Sox world championship. Of course the Roxs first and only playoff visit in 1995 against the Braves. New memories for 2007!

Odds for this year's world series winner for the Roxs is 8:1 along with the Angels with the D-backs at 10:1! Not much love for the Roxs. Even the baseball "experts" seem to say the Roxs had no chance at the start of the season (10%!). Basically winning the last 13 of 14 games (see above, yikes 12 more wins then expected). Of course we live in the no man land that is the Mountain Time Zone...but no national ESPN games and basically a no name line up. Hopefully that will end with this little playoff appearance.

Colorado Rockies - Week 26

A 6-1 (OMG! Part 2) week against the Dodgers and D-backs. A 13-1 final 14 games to tie for the wild card spot with the Padres (lots of thanks to the Brewers!). And after 162 games we still have one more to play today to decide the wild card winner. By virtue of season wins against the Padres the Roxs finish in 2nd place (1.0 behind the D-backs). The Roxs currently stand at 89- 73 (!, wow Vegas had them pegged at 74.5, I had them at 83). Currently 50-31 at home and 39-42 on the road, the Roxs have outscored its opponents 851-750 (expected wins is 90 versus historical wins at 77). Hell of a finish. Roxs graphical wins (home in Purple, away in grey).

WPA leaders for the week...