October 2005 Archives

We gave you everything you asked for, Roger.

You wanted to be respected. We respected you.
You wanted to be paid well. We gave you millions.
Most of all, you wanted a World Series ring. And we supplied.

You retired. We were happy for you, proud even. Where every other team you'd been on had given up on you, called you a washed-up has-been, we had once again proven that they didn't know shit, and that you were able to "go out on top" because of us, made us both proud of you and of ourselves for helping you get there.

Your "retirement" was short-lived, though, as you joined the Astros a few short months later, without even a call to Darth George asking -- as might be honorable -- if he'd like to make an offer to bring you out of retirement first.

Well, here's to you, big guy. You coulda gone out and retired "on top of the world". Instead, you're going to be just another guy who wore the 'stripes for a while.

Bug Selig told the Houston Astros tonight, "They must have their roof open."

Maybe I missed the memo where whether an individual stadium chooses to have a roof "open" or "closed" was of importance enough to become a matter for the friggin' commissioner of baseball to get involved in.

Two of Houston's historical "home field advantages" are the fact that the roof makes some fly balls harder to see (unless of course you play 81 games a season there and know what you're doing) and the fact that it makes a huge difference in how loud the stadium gets when the fans get loud.

"This is part of our home-field advantage and for major league baseball to try and change that is either a) ridiculous or b) they're American League fans," Astros catcher Brad Ausmus said.

Of course Selig wants the White Sox to win. They haven't had a winning World Series since before the Black Sox scandal! If he can rig it so that -- with Boston having won last year -- yet another "hasn't won in forever" team can win a Series, he'll do whatever it takes. Selig has consistently shown that "the integrity of the sport" is never his primary interest, but "what makes money" is.

I'd have loved to have seen Houston tell Selig to shove it up his ass. Too bad Selig probably would have ruled that "if you don't open the roof it's a forfeit" or something.

*sigh* I hate that man with all of my soul.

[UPDATE 6/24/2006 : It's really important to note here, before you read this, that this -- for Krause's -- is an extremely isolated event, heck, pretty much the only time in my entire 35 years of partaking of Krause's candies. The only reason I keep it here, is because it tells a "segment" of a story in which we couldn't, for the life of us, get good customer service and damned near anywhere over the course of a single weekend. I love Krause's, they're good people, with a good product, and 99.99% of the time, great customer service. I just bought a couple pounds of chocolate there the other day. Don't read this and think that this is a "pattern" for them, it's not.]

Hot off the heels of my crappy experience at Boston Market, D and I decided to stop at Krause's Chocolates on our way back from Saugerties on Sunday afternoon.

Now, I stop at Krause's all the time. I feel it's only fair to point out that in my 34 years of life, this is the first and only time I can remember being so pissed off at Krause's that I walked out without buying anything. It's also a good background reference point that the way Krause's "works" is that you wait in line over by the showcase, where they pick your candies for you, and then walk over to the register area and pay. The only time you don't stand in line over at the showcase is if you're just buying stuff from the "store" area, in which case you stand there, and they'll ring you up after they finish dealing with one of the boxed-candy customers. Because you're a quick transaction with no real effort, nobody in the candy line complains, and life is good. That's how it's worked for as long as I can ever remember there being a Krause's Candys shop.

So I'm keeping track of the whole "who was here before me" thing, in the candy line. There's one woman in front of us, and one guy with a stack of stuff at the cashier's counter to pay for.

The two girls who are behind the counter are moving really slow today, but ordinarily, I can accept that. I overhear them wondering aloud about what happened to their third co-worker, who was apparently on break.

Ah, the woman ahead of us is being cashed out. Excellent. So we'll be handled shortly, and this insufferable wait (about 10 minutes at this point) will be finally over.

The girl turns her attention to the guy with the pre-packaged stuff. She rings that up. He then says, "and I'd also like a pound box of chocolate."

Now, there are a number of proper responses to this:

• "I'm sorry, sir, if you want boxed chocolate, you'll have to go wait in that line over there."
• "Right behind you are an assortment of pre-chosen boxes of chocolate, pick up one of the one-pound boxes, and we'll be good to go."

... or variations on that theme.

The proper response is not to walk over to the empty boxes saying, "What would you like in that?"

D explodes (rightfully so, I'm about 3 seconds from exploding), saying "Uhhh, excuse me, we've been waiting in line over here??!!" in an incredulous voice, completely amazed that the girl has this low of a level of customer service.

Hot off the heels of the Boston Market episode -- as well as having an hour earlier dealt with fresh-off-the-boat-and-not-speaking-english waitpersons in two different restaurants in a rather frustrating situation where one of our friends needed a bathroom and the wait-staff didn't speak enough english to direct them to the bathroom -- my pain-threshold for "shitty service" is at an all time low. This will be the fourth place in thirty-six hours that D and I have walked out of.

I throw my hands up in the air, and I'm like "Screw it, forget it, I'm outta here." D is still railing on the cashier, but I seriously can't hear her because my blood is boiling. Fifteen minutes in Krause's smelling the chocolate and I wanted nothing more in life at that point than to down a couple chocolate creams, but my inner hatred of crappy customer service has trumped that and told me I can't have any. About thirty seconds later, D follows me out. Clearly she had more to say to the girl that I never heard. Too bad. D's a really funny person, I bet she got a lot better quips in than "Screw it, I'm outta here."

Saturday evening I decided, "Hey, I'd like some Boston Market". I should have learned my lesson a long time ago.

First, we go to the drive-through, because there's a long-ass line inside. Turns out the drive-thru is closed. Grrr. OK, I go in.

As I am walking in, one woman says to me, "Better hurry, they're selling out of things."

So I stand in line. And wait. And wait. And wait. I see someone walk out with Roast Sirloin. Cool. That's what I want. So I know they've not yet run out of sirloin.

Along the way a school bus shows up and gets in line behind us. The manager(?) sees the line triple in length, runs and does an inventory and says to the crowd, "I've got no meat loaf, and I've got no turkey."

"Cool," I think. There's only one person in line ahead of me. It becomes my turn to order, and manager-dude asks me what I'd like

"I'd like the a la carte sirloin, some mac and cheese and..."

... and I drift off because he's just walked away from the register and can't hear a word I say now. No "Let me check something." No "One second please, sir." Just walk away and ignore the customer you're taking an order for.

He wanders back about three minutes later and says, "I don't have enough for that. I only have a single five ounce serving left. Sirloin will be ready in 15-20 minutes."

"So that leaves you with just Ham and Chicken in your inventory?" I ask incredulously.

"Actually, she just got the last of the Ham."

At this point, I explode. I can't fathom the depths of incompetence that this must require.

"Did FEMA come in here in the last half hour and suddenly requisition your entire inventory for use in New Orleans? How the hell do you manage to be so completely incompetent at planning that you have like next-to-no food available to sell at 6:30 on a Saturday night?"

"I can have them for you 15 minutes."

"Forget it, it's just not worth it."

At which point I stormed out, got in the car, and went to Wendy's.

Seriously... how the fuck can you underestimate your sales by that much?

Normally I don't fall into these "blog meme" things, but I found this one too interesting to pass up. The American Library Association released its list of the most "challenged" books for 1990-2000. The question seems to be "which ones have you read?" My list is as follows:

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell

So yesterday, Apple made two announcements, the total impact of which I don't think will really be seen for a while yet.

• A "video iPod" capable of viewing MPEG4 video on a compact screen.
• iTunes 6, which includes support for downloading MPEG4 videos from the iTunes Music Store, including but not limited to music videos and -- much more importantly -- first-run television programming 24 hours after it airs.

For years, the defense of the "TV episode bittorrent downloaders" was "They broadcast it for free over the air, and if I miss it, I have to wait til they randomly re-run it, or until it comes out on DVD." This was usually followed by some plaintive cry about "If only they'd offer a download service, where I could download the shows I want."

If ABC sticks to this, and expands their lineup, this could be a huge shift in the way people deal with television programming.

Let's go to this hypothetical future, where television programs available as for-pay downloads are ubiquitous. Let's assume you spend about $100 a month on the "get every cable channel" package, because there's some network stuff you want to watch, some extended cable stuff, and you want to get your episodes of Rome. Who knows.

What if you didn't have to pay $1200 a year for cable? What if you could subscribe to the TV show itself as a video podcast? Every Wednesday, your computer happily downloads (legitimately) that week's episode of Lost. Every Sunday, it's grabbing Rome. Every Thursday, it's getting you your fix of The Donald.

The "full-season" price that iTMS is charging for Season 1 of Lost right now is $34.99. Let's double that. Let's say that they decide to be greedy in exchange for offering you this automated television download service. Let's call it $75.00. And maybe HBO, with its superior programming, charges $100.

At that rate, you can get your favorite programming for ($100 + $75 + $75) = $250 a year.

Now, take it one step further. What if the BBC is part of this venture? Now you can add "new episodes of Dr. Who to the list, or Spooks, or Eastenders, or whatever particular BritShow sparks your fancy.

The mating of legitimate television downloads, combined with automated tools for getting that data onto the living room television, make for a huge win for both consumers and content providers, and could mean a huge warning for cable television providers, if done properly.

What are the obstacles?

One obstacle is HDTV. The versions you can presently download from iTMS are SDTV-grade videos, if that. Right now, if you're an HDTV nut, you'd still much prefer to see "what's inside the hatch" on your big-screen in HiDef than you would to download the lo-def video. But the ability to download HiDef content is only a matter of time. Services like Verizon's FIOS service, bringing up to 30Mbps downloads to consumers, are only going to make it easier to distribute HD content going forward.

Another is the cable companies... right now, I'd be very surprised if they started rolling out FIOS-like bandwidth to their users. It's far too easy for consumers at that point to be like "uhhh, no, just give me bandwidth, I'll get my content from somewhere else." A program like this could completely marginalize cable providers, turning them into "just another broadband bandwidth provider".

Where's the win, though?

Consumers have wanted "a la carte" cable programming for a while. Instead of being forced to buy bundles of 120 channels to get the 6 they want, they've wanted the ability to buy just those channels and (more importantly) pay for just those channels.

This has the potential for changing this dynamic even further, allowing people to buy their shows a la carte, and to eliminate many middlemen in the process.

Let's assume I'm paying $100 a year for Rome and let's assume that Apple keeps 25% of that. So the rest goes to HBO, who now sees $75 a year from me. That's probably more than they're seeing now, right up front. But if I also decide (and, please shoot me if this happens) that I want to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, they'll see an additional $75 a year from me.

There's a direct relationship between "programs people want" and "profits content-owners make". There's no worries about "sponsors", because when you multiply those numbers onto the larger scale, they don't need commercials any more. People are paying directly for the content they wish to see.

Take it one step further. Who needs an "HBO"? What does "HBO" become in that new future except a television studio that creates content?

What if this model had been around while JMS had been fighting for editorial control on Crusade or Jeremiah? Instead of fighting with a network to pitch an idea and get them to air it, to get them to choose when to air it so it does well, etc., etc., you could simply get investors who believe in the value of your content, produce it yourself, and push it out to iTMS and let people view it whenever they want. The small-studio television producer sees huge return here, because it makes them a lot more money than they probably would have gotten from a TV Network that was buying a show they didn't really believe in, and get a lot less hassle in the process.

All this potential from a 5 oz hunk of metal, plastic and silicon, and some software to drive it.

Seriously, I think there's a non-trivial chance that we will look back on this point in time right now and say "this is where television changed completely."

UPDATED: Apparently, Mark Cuban, former broadcast.com CEO, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, seems to have reached much the same conclusions and has the numbers to back them up.

The blogs have been abuzz about the latest not-yet-announced interoperability agreement between Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger.

But, interestingly enough, this announcement comes at a point in time when I've been seriously considering shitcanning Yahoo Messenger entirely. Granted, I've talked about this before but something always drew me back... former Yahoo co-workers I wanted to chat with that didn't have AIM, you name it.

But, over the last 60 days, something has changed. I have been getting a metric fuckload of instant-messenger spam, all of it from Yahoo. I'm signed in with Adium (not the three year old, neglected, steaming pile of rancid filth that Yahoo passes off as a Mac client), and while I have yet to get a single AIM spam, I must deal -- at least ten to fifteen times a day -- with Yahoo Messenger spam, including but not limited to:

• Twelve lines of what is either gibberish or something not at all resembling a western language, with a link buried in the middle of it all.
• Some person in some backwater third-world country who "wants to be friends".
• Occasionally, some backwater third-world resident who is convinced I already am their friend.
• This posse of Nike/Adidas sneaker salesman who appear to be skimming sneakers off the top of their production run in their sweatshop and are trying to hawk them to me... consistently, every couple days.

Why is it Yahoo Messenger has these problems and AOL Instant Messenger doesn't? What is AOL doing right that Yahoo absolutely cannot seem to manage to make happen?

What I do know is that this time, it's going to take more than "wanting to talk to some person" to bring me back to the Yahoo Messenger fold, and this Yahoo/MSN thing isn't it... from my perspective this can only make it worse, as there are now even more people who could start spamming me.

I've long maintained, even when I worked at Yahoo, that Yahoo did not even pretend to have a handle on their spam issues. Clearly, not much has changed in four years.

If you want to reach me via instant message, and you're on that Yahoo Messenger service, you can try dballing13 on AIM, or dballing@gmail.com on Google's Jabber server.

We deserved to get eliminated last night. Our "power hitters" were woefully lacking in anything resembling "power", and our defense was -- well, horrible.

Amusingly, the only thing we actually seemed to have done fairly well in during the post-season was our much-maligned pitching. Sure there were some hiccups with it, but certainly not at all on a par with the level of pain brought on by our defensive errors, and lost bats.

Although, last night's game was rough. It's hard enough to beat a team of nine when you're doing so badly, but a team of thirteen is even tougher. Especially when you hide those extra four players in the uniforms of MLB Umpires.

Last night's game had some of the most brain-dead calls I've seen in a while. There was an (admittedly) close play at first where the runner was clearly safe but was called out, and even stranger was Cano being called out on interference when he clearly didn't interfere at all, and if he had run where the umpire wanted him to run, he would have been interfering with the play.

Then you go back a few nights to the umpires calling a runner "safe" at second because a foot came off the bag a millisecond too early. Yes, technically, he's safe, but that's a play that happens -- in exactly that fashion -- all the time in baseball. The umpires have always shown leniency to fielders who -- having gotten the ball in plenty of time to score the out -- move their foot away quickly to avoid injury. That the only time that play was called in that fashion was against the Yankees is highly annoying.

But, I have to look at the bright spots... my upcoming weekend schedule was looking majorly hectic if they made it into the ALCS, between people coming to visit, having to run down to Newark and pick up my parents, and (if we'd made the ALCS) meeting up with White Sox fan, Brian, to go see an ALCS game. Now, my weekend schedule has only half the things it potentially had, which is sort of a relief.

Now I am cheering for "whomever plays Houston," because I don't want that traitorous pig Clemens to get another ring. Go St. Louis!

So for those who've asked, here's a quick update on the cat situation:

• The upstairs floor has, apparently, been ceded to the newcomers, Bill and G'Kar. D's cats rarely go up there now, except when they want to use the litter box that is up there (it was their original litter box).
• The ground floor appears to be disputed territory, but only mildly so. Each cat is willing to defend the immediate vicinity around them against cats of the opposite faction, but won't go out of their way to go across a room and chase a cat out of it, except...
• G'Kar appears to have a bit of a thing for Clementine. She'll hiss at him and make it clear she wants him to go away, but he's just all nice and polite, like the mack daddy virgin that he is. He'll follow her around the house (pissing her off more and more, obviously) until eventually she takes a swat at him and he retreats to the upstairs.
• The basement is definitely the domain of D's cats, although G'Kar and Bill have each at least once ventured down there.
• Certain spots on the ground floor are undisputedly D's cats turf -- D's office, the spot by the screen door in the kitchen, and the vicinity of their food dishes.

Overall, the hissing is usually just growling at each other as they pass, with no significant conflicts to speak of (although, that's not to say the fighting is 100% over... just two days ago, G'Kar and Gracie formed a cartoon-like ball of screaming fur for all of three seconds). But, at the 10,000' level, a state of détente appears to have formed.

Tonight on the way home, I stopped at the local Hannaford grocery store to pick up some supplies. Now, the Hannaford I used to go to, on Ulster Avenue, was -- while not "gorgeous" -- it was at least passable. Clean, etc.

The Hannaford in the Kingston Plaza is, well, a fucking hole. The first thing that greets you on entry is not the smell of fresh produce (as most groceries stores are designed to do, as an enticement to entry). The first smell you catch on walking into the Kingston Plaza Hannaford is the overwhelming stench of festering empty beer-cans from the bottle return area, placed in the lobby. There's homeless people bringing in their empties so they can have crack money or whatever it is they do with the change they get from the proceeds.

So I go about my shopping, and am ready to check out. While I'm standing in line this guy walks up to me, postively stinking of alcohol, telling me a sob story. "I'll buy your food for you for half price... all I've got are these food stamps, and I need gas money to get to Woodstock, so you pay me half what I pay, and I get to go home."

Now, let's face it... the guy cannot smell this bad of alcohol without being either (a) drunk, or (b) a homeless wino. I tell him, "Uh, sorry dude, can't do that," to which he replies, "Ah, well, can't hurt to try."

At which point I sigh heavily and say, "Well, actually it can hurt to try."

"Huh?" says he.

"Well, speculate for a moment that I might be a Social Services employee, here to do my evening's shopping. Speculate further that you've now put that employee in an awkward position by revealing to him that you're trying to commit the felonious sale of food stamps, and asking that employee to be a part of that felony. Now ponder if you're now depending on whether that employee would rather go home to his wife and family, or spend time dealing with your sorry ass and a police report. Because, after all, what are the odds that you just happen to be broke and away from home on the first business day of the new month, which is when your food stamps became valid?"

At this point, the wino homeless guy gets this panicked look in his eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights. "Uhhhhh, you mean you -- ah... "

"No," I said, "But I could have. So it can hurt to ask. So why don't you just use them to buy yourself some fucking food like you're supposed to instead of trying to get beer money out of them or something?"

At which point homeless wino dude wanders away.

A couple minutes later, the cashier looks around conspiratorily, leans over and says, "That was seriously the funniest shit I've seen in a long time, guy."

Well, on Friday, D accidentally got G'Kar and Clementine into the same room. Now, G'Kar, not really used to "hiding" so much in his reign over the apartment, decided to hide under the end-table next to the bed, where he had no escape route, at which point Clementine beat the crap out of him for a few minutes, until D chased Clementine away.

Back to lock-up the cats went.

Today, after I emptied the apartment (with George and Mark's help) of the last of its stuff, we opened the door to the bedroom and let the cats out to mingle with D's cats. It's been...interesting.

The first hour was my cats hanging out in the bedroom where they've been staying, defending it from anyone who would come in (and by defending it, I mean simply growling a lot and scaring off any incoming cats).

Realizing my cats were entrenched, and this wouldn't accomplish anything, we lured them out of the bedroom and shut the door behind them, trapping them in "the rest of the house."

So far, a few hours later, there's been no major engagements, but a lot of posturing. My cats haven't "run" or "hid", and hers haven't beat the snot out of mine, so it would seem at face value that progress has been made on this front. They seem to be sorting out the pecking order amongst themselves. (Predictably, Bill comes out poorly in the new pecking order, seemingly beneath both Clementine and Gracie, but where G'Kar will wind up is anyone's guess at the moment).

I think this all might be sorted out by the end of the weekend. Sure, it seems there'll be some growling for a while, but I think we might be past the worst of it, knock on wood....