Everything You Wanted To Know About Hungary (But Were Afraid To Ask)

It seems like school projects are nicer and more detailed these days than what I remember them to be. Maybe that's because, with computers, printers, and the internet, standards are higher. Or maybe that's because that model of a sheep I made out of cardboard and cotton for my Grade 6 New Zealand report was miserable. Anyway, here's everything you wanted to know about Hungary*.




* - But were afraid to ask

My 2006 Baseball Awards Ballot

It looks like I'm too late to vote in this year's Internet Baseball Awards, like I did last year. With the same caveats as last year, and without further ado, here are my picks:


American League Most Valuable Player

1. BOS David Ortiz
2. CLE Travis Hafner
3. BOS Manny Ramirez
4. MIN Joe Mauer
5. NYA Derek Jeter
6. MIN Johan Santana
7. CHA Jermaine Dye
8. CHA Jim Thome
9. CLE Grady Sizemore
10. NYA Alex Rodriguez

Hafner probably would have been the MVP had he not missed the last month or so of the season and put up numbers at the same rate for 10 or 20 more than the 129 games that he played. Manny had another season of "Just Being Manny." That is, he is still one of the top hitters in baseball, and is approaching "All-Time Great" status. He played in 130 games. Like Hafner, had he played in maybe 10 more at the same rate, he would have been my MVP. This leaves us with Big Papi to win the award by default. Not that there's anything wrong with that! The Red Sox have had some good hitters in the past, including one that some consider the best hitter ever (before Bonds at least) and none have hit more homers in a season than Ortiz this year. Mauer and Jeter get definite "bonus points" for the positions they play on the field, but not quite enough to be my MVP. If Jeter had hit about 25 homers, he probably would have been my choice for MVP. If (when) Mauer hits 20, he'll be MVP. Also, how'd you like your third baseman to smack 35 homers and have 121 RBI in an off year? Yep, ARod sure stinks. I wish he were stinking on my team!


Americal League Cy Young Award

1. MIN Johan Santana
2. BOS Jonathan Papelbon
3. TOR Roy Halladay
4. NYA Chien-Ming Wang
5. CAL John Lackey

Question: How much do you penalize Papelbon for missing the stretch run? My answer: None for Cy Voting, but maybe some for MVP if you'd like. I came close to voting Papelbon #1 here, but Johan Santana gets my vote.


National League Most Valuable Player

1. STL Albert Pujols
2. PHI Ryan Howard
3. HOU Lance Berkman
4. FLA Miguel Cabrera
5. NYN Carlos Beltran
6. COL Garrett Atkins
7. PIT Jason Bay
8. PHI Chase Utley
9. ATL Chipper Jones
10. NYN David Wright

My numbers show that Pujols and Howard are in a virtual tie for the top spot in the Senior Circuit. Albert was a little better when he played, but Ryan played more. In this case, I'm going with quality over quantity. Pujols gets my vote. Miguel Cabrera is the top of a number of very good third basemen in the NL. Barry Bonds was close to getting a vote. I have his offensive season as the twelvth best in the league this year. That this year was so far below his standards shows how high those standards are. (Of course, his defence would also knock him down a bit in the MVP voting.)


National League Cy Young Award

1. ARI Brandon Webb
2. HOU Roy Oswalt
3. CIN Bronson Arroyo
4. STL Chris Carpenter
5. ATL John Smoltz

In my opinion, none of the top 4 really stand out here. I could see an argument for Webb, Oswalt, Arroyo, or Carpenter. Had Roger Clemens pitched as many innings as these guys at the same rate he pitched when he did, he'd be #1. For like the thirty-seventh time. It's harder to compare pitchers across eras than it is hitters. But if you're not already, you may need to give consideration to Rocket as the Best. Pitcher. Ever.

Creative Zen Vision:M

For my birthday, my wife got me a Creative Zen Vision:M. One thing I have in mind with it is to have an easier way to listen to audio books on my soon-to-be longer commute. I can't say that I'll be using the video features of it, but then again, it might be neat to have a portable storage for my photos and video clips. Kind of like the stereotypical person in the seat next to you on a plane showing pictures of her grandchildren that she keeps in her wallet, I can do the same with this device.

But the reason why I am blogging about it now is that there was something in the instruction manual that was downright scary. The following appears only in English version; it does not appear in the French, Spanish, or Portuguese versions:

WARNING: The cord[s] included with this product may contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.

Huh? What's up with that?
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Corporate Shrinkage

Gina, who worked* at the Network where I help out part time, recently left for a marketing position with one of the fastest-growing privately held corporations, according to their website. While my employer doesn't advertise it on the web, I was struck with the realisation that I have been working for one of the fastest-shrinking companies.

Working for a growing (or non-shrinking) company --- what an interesting concept**!

* - I was never quite sure what she did there, but the same could be said for a lot of people in a lot of jobs.
** - Watch this space for updates.

My Wild Hat is a Tilley

I've had a few things I've wanted to blog about in the past week that I haven't actually gotten around to writing. One is a response to the recent comment by DFV regarding my "wild hat":


I've appeared before on this blog wearing the same hat:


Here's the story:
Last year, a friend was showing me her "Tilley Hat", which I learned is a hat made Tilley Endurables. I had never heard of them before, but her enthusiasm for the product was so contagious that I asked her to pick up one for me the next time she was in the shop (in Leamington). Since I've been young, I've often worn hats outside; in recent years a growing reason for this is to keep the sun off of my head, but it's also good for cold and rain. Unless the weather was cold and called for a toque, I've usually worn a baseball-style cap, but I thought it would be neat to try a hat designed to be worn, and not one designed more so to advertise my favourite team. As an aside, ever since DFV mentioned that Mrs DFV once spoke disparagingly about wearing shirts with letters on them, I've been more conscious of what I'm overtly advertising, and trying to reduce the quantity. So, the Tilley seemed idea.

Basically, I like it a lot! I've gotten a few funny looks every once in a while, and maybe people think of me as the guy who wears the odd hat, but it does seem to do its job! It keeps my head dry, shaded, and warm. It's expensive and not a cure for a deadly disease or anything like that, but I do recommend Tilley hats.

The hat I model is a Navy T3: "Our most sought-after Tilley Hat has a medium-sized brim that snaps up in the Aussie manner."

Raising Education Money With Slot Machines

There's an issue here that we'll be voting on soon that will be receiving lots of advertising money. If I understand it right, the plan is to install lots of slot machines, and use the billions in profits from those to provide a university education to anyone that wants it or something. When I say "billions", I'm not really exaggerating. I think the "Pro-" side is claiming that this will bring in close to a billion a year. It's also not clear to me how the money would be distributed. (Gee, you'd think I should do more research before stating an opinion.) Anyway, what do you think about this idea?

I'm against it, of course. Also, I have not seen any polls, but I expect the issue to fail miserably.

First of all, let me say that I don't see why the government has to be involved in gambling. I mean, if I want to install a slot machine somewhere and people want to put money in for a chance to get money out, I don't think the government has any business in prohibiting (or seriously restricting) this sort of commerce. So then, why am I against the issue? After all, the state isn't forcing anyone to play the slots, is it?

Here are a few thoughts in no particular order:

• Where there is money, there is corruption. Recent history has certainly shown this. I'm convinced that reducing the amount of money in government is a way to reduce high-level corruption.
• While I won't go as far as to say that gambling is "wrong", it does seem to be morally neutral at best. On the macro level, when there is profit in getting people hooked, and gambling away money that is really needed for other responsibilities, I'd say that this behaviour is below neutral. I don't see why the government needs to be involved in this kind of thing.
• I've heard government-sponsored gambling described as an additional tax on stupid people, and I think it is. So what's wrong with that? I mean, I'm not stupid; I'm not going to pay a dollar when the odds say that I'll win 98 cents or 95 cents or whatever, so shouldn't I be happy if my relative tax goes down? I'll respond by asking, don't stupid people have it tough enough? I won't name any specific difficulties that stupid people face today, for fear that some of my non-stupid readers may have faced the same difficulties. But I don't see any reason for additional taxes on stupidity.

An Afternoon With Flat Logan

Last year, my son's class in school participated in "The Flat Stanley Project", where they make a paper "doll" (for want of a better term) named Stanley and mail it to a friend in some exotic locale. Stanley spends some time with the recipient, where he learns about life in his location (as much as the recipient cares to record) before being returned to his home. It sounds like a neat way for youngsters to learn about other locations.

This year, a friend in Georgia is participating in Flat Stanley, and we are (or really, my son is) hosting him. Except it's not Flat Stanley, it's Flat Logan. This afternoon, we thought we'd take a trip downtown and show Logan around. Here's Logan hitching a ride in my pocket:


And no afternoon excursion would be complete without a snack now, would it?

Safe and Sound

32 year old kitties shouldn't be spending 22 straight hours outside during a rain storm and tornado warnings.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

Launchcast: Driven by Rush.

I don't think I've ever mentioned the name of the company for which I work in this blog, and I don't intend to here. However, I don't think it's an exaggeration when I say that its name was once synonymous with leading-edge technological innovation. Hopefully, that is still the case. It's just the desktop computing environment for peons like me leaves a little to be desired.

A few weeks ago, the hard drive of my antiquated PC would no longer boot. Rather than replace the entire PC, instead, I got a new hard drive, which was imaged with the operating system and a bunch of other anti-virus and policy enforcement software that all good corporate PC users are supposed to be running on their system. (Gee, I wonder why this wasn't all on my hard drive before.) Anyway, this was a tad more than my 256 MB of memory could handle. For example, I could click on my Thunderbird window, go to the restroom, return, and the mail window would still be in the process of loading.

Not being able to take much of this, and having no internal way to improve the situation, I took action. To make a long story short, I went and bought a 128 MB memory card (with my own money, of course) installed it, and things are running much better. I'm not sure how many other major corporations have their employees secretly upgrading their own work computers at their own expense. But I figure that after two weeks, I'll more than make up for the investment in reduced frustration.

As a few other examples, I know I'm not the only one to perform a do-it-yourself memory upgrade. Another employee discovered that if he wanted a mouse with a center wheel, he had to buy one himself. And, I know of someone who has been bringing his own laptop to work and connecting it to the network, which may or may not be a violation of corporate policy (as if my other examples aren't).

I'm on a roll now, so there's one other thing I wanted to mention. Our external NNTP feed had been down for many months now. It was just restored, but the restoration may have been short-lived; time will tell. Of course, thanks to web-based USENET feeds such a Google Groups, NNTP may not really be needed. But I think its lack of availability says something. I mean, even though we didn't, we should be inventing things like NNTP, not wondering why we can't get a feed.

(If only we had the desktop computing environment of my part-time position at the Network!)

Launchcast: Tear-Stained Letter by Johnny Cash.

Hail, Yes!

We had a bit of hail this evening around sunset. Actually, It was hailier than I ever remember. This is one of those situations where photos may be worth more than words.




We had a bit of damage to our siding. I don't know if it will be worth it to check with our home insurance or not, but I suppose this should be fixed.


In addition to tearing up our screens and chipping off some paint, it broke our doorbell!


We had a bit of rain, too.


Perhaps we'll discover even more damage when the sun comes up.

It's Difficult To Take Good Football Action Shots

I guess you need to take lots and lots, and maybe one will be good.

WORLDS CHAMPIONS Are World Champions!

I'm of the persuasion that there is nothing wrong with changing the name of your fantasy baseball team each season, if you can come up with a good name. There is also nothing wrong with keeping the same name, if you already have a good name. Since my fantasy baseball team (then called Just a Little Glass) won the Dave Spiwack League pennant last year, I decided I needed a suitable new name for the 2006 campaign. I looked to the past for inspiration, and humbly took an idea from the 1921 Cleveland Indians, naming my 2006 team WORLDS CHAMPIONS. Here's the great Tris Speaker in 1921, along with some Judge guy:


So, how did I fare this season? It was a tighter race this year than last, as the Preston Tramriders were in first place as late as 21 September. However, as you may have guessed by the title of this post, my team prevailed again:

WORLDS CHAMPIONS

2006 Dave Spiwack League Champions

How did I do so well? That's tough for me to say. I didn't think that I had great players. At the start of the season, I felt that my team was rather weak. I drafted a pitcher (Johan Santana) with the 3rd pick of the draft, which was a questionable move, but seemed to work out. If you'll look at the standings, you'll see that I got 11 points or better (out of a possible 12) in 3 of 5 offensive, and 3 of 5 pitching categories. Also, who really needs batting average?!?

One surprise source of power was Bill Hall, who started the year at short, but when Troy Glaus qualified to play SS, Hall moved over to second, while Glaus mostly played short. Thus, the middle infield combination I had for much of the season cranked out 73 homers in real life (though only 68 for me).

Here's a complete breakdown of the hitters and the pitchers. I was going to present an HTML table sorted by playing time, but unsorted images will have to do. I used more players this year, as I would sign players to play an odd Monday or Thursday game, when my starter had the day off. I'm not sure if that worked out or not.