Jake

I'd say Harden is the one who retains most of his value as a non-ball-in-hands guy. He was really efficient with that team as a guy who didn't have to create his shot every time down the floor.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Jan 31, 2014 -> 06:13 PM) Scott Feldman signing all over again. It's a strategy I wish this organization would employ. They turned Feldman in to Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop, and international bonus $$$. We signed Felipe Paulino -- and for $1.75 million plus a $4 million team option, both reducing our risk if he's no good and drastically increasing our reward if he is. Anyway, we don't fill our pitching staff with has-beens every year because our system actually produces pitchers worth giving MLB innings.

I just don't see Denver being held under 28 points and I don't see Seattle scoring that many.

While I normally balk at people that are inexplicably super well-liked, I can't help but root for Peyton. I like to see greatness in action and he's very easy to root for.

I kind of like the Samsung Smart PC Pro 700T. 11.6 1080P display, much better battery life than original Surface Pro at nearly 7 hours, same 3rd gen i5 processor plus 4GB RAM plus 128GB SSD. Real dock solution, Wacom digitizer with onboard S Pen storage. I can get factory refurb for about $650.

Hmm...Microsoft Surface Pro is $500 today at Best Buy. That could possibly take the place of both laptop and tablet? Active digitizer is a must for me and it has that. Battery life is huge concern though.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 31, 2014 -> 08:32 AM) For the most part you don't actually need a docking station. While they make things a bit more convenient for an additional cost, they're not necessary. All you really need to do is take your laptop and plug it into your monitor/keyboard/mouse. The only thing the docking station does is allow you to plug those things into it, and then put your laptop into the dock, so you don't have to repeat the steps of plugging those devices in over and over...but other than that it doesn't do anything. If you are interested in anything highly graphically intensive, such as video, I'd recommend a desktop for serious work, and a combination of your tablet/phone to synch any necessary items on the go. Laptops always use mobile versions of their desktop counterparts, such as a mobile-gfxcard, a mobile-processor, which are always slower, and tend to run a LOT hotter. A laptop is fine for photo work, however, so long as it's color calibrated properly, and out of the box, almost no LCD is. I can't decide what I want to do. FWIW, my work is academic research, which means that screen real estate and multi-tasking/RAM capability is more important than much else. My laptop has 4GB RAM and I believe that tends to be the bottleneck as I work. My desktop has 8GB and works great, other than the slow-ass HDD that makes it start up slowly. If I keep it, I plan to install an SSD in its mSATA port and keep the HDD in place for file storage. The heat issue is one of the things that prevents me from feeling like the docking/plug-n-play-as-if-it-were-a-desktop solution is something I can just go and do. I can imagine many consumer laptops getting really hot with heavy usage while outputting to a big monitor/multi-monitor setup.

Trolls - meh People who have outrageously non-normal opinions - this can be good, especially when there aren't organically interesting things to talk about In times where there are things to talk about that will already be divisive/interesting to talk about, I'm not nearly as fond of the non sequitur.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 30, 2014 -> 10:07 PM) His choke signal was his horrendously poor decision to throw that ball. Except, of course, that was him playing bad rather than taunting his opponent on the field after winning. I don't think Sherman's a bad guy or anything, but he definitely didn't endear himself to me with the way he acted. Not a fan. But that's okay.

Probably had something to do with Kaep not making choke signals at people and shouting in his on field interview

Totally different subject now and I'm looking for some insight into whether this is a brilliant idea or a terrible one. Right now, I have a new AIO desktop. I love it. I also dropped about $1400 on it. I have a mid-range ultrabook that I also love, I dropped about $500 on it. I also have a Galaxy Note 8.0 Android tablet, and (guess what) I love it. I paid $280 for it, which is quite a steal given its original $399 MSRP. However, I'm not getting enough mileage out of this stuff. I feel like I can eliminate at least one of these devices. Right now, I hardly use the laptop. It gets used when I go on vacation or the rare occasion that I need to do work and I am staying at my girlfriend's place. I use the desktop a lot - it has a 27" QHD monitor that is awesome for the multi-tasking I do. I can put up several documents to read, an open document to write in, and something else like a browser window or an early draft as well. I spend a lot of time on this, though I get sick of sitting at my desk here and there. Now I'm wondering if it would make more sense to sell both the desktop and the laptop, assuming I can get something like the value I paid for them (bear in mind I got good deals on both and therefore selling at these prices is potentially doable). I could then buy a better laptop that can handle a heavy graphics load and dock it at my desk along w/ external monitor when I need it while also having a great laptop I can use when I am away or just don't want to be at my desk. Is this docking-a-laptop solution something legitimate, that people do, seems possible without losing a bunch of money? Am I overlooking something? I would have to buy a good monitor and possibly a USB docking station. Would having my laptop sitting there and plugged in for extended periods toast its battery in short order?

Thanks to Pete Carroll, I found myself siding with Duke

KD's .617 TS% over the last 5 seasons is pretty remarkable, too. Compare to Kobe's .556 TS% after his first two seasons (same subtraction I gave KD), minus this one MJ checks in at .579 from 3rd season through Bulls era, FWIW. eFG% over same time spans - MJ .519, Kobe .488, KD .536 ORtg - MJ 121, Kobe 112, KD 118 I don't think scoring titles are irrelevant, though they are certainly context-dependent. On the other hand, I think it is a good way to see how a player scores relative to his league. KD - 5 consecutive if these season holds (4 per game titles, Carmelo had more ppg last year) Kobe - 4 in a 6 season span (2 per game titles) MJ - 11, including 7 in a row, and won in each season that he played more than 67 games (only non-winning close-to-full seasons were with Washington). 10 ppg titles

In terms of teammates stealing one's scoring potential, I wouldn't so easily discount the Westbrook effect. Shaq in LA - 18.5 FGA/G Westbrook, last 3 seasons - 18.2 FGA/G Then again, Shaq has a big advantage in FTA/G at 10.8 to 7, which shows that he often had the ball, tried to shoot, but was hacked. Of course, Shaq was no point guard. Kobe had the ability to keep the ball from Shaq but the inverse wasn't all that true. Throughout Westbrook's career, his propensity (or perhaps lack thereof) to steal shots from KD has been hotly debated. Seems like only these types of conversations evoke the "Shaq holding back Kobe's scoring" debate when the opposite debate was going on when they played together.

My experience at games was that they didn't hate Dunn too much. He's your best chance at seeing a homer, which is the best thing that can happen as a fan

A less contentious and perhaps more easily measured question -- what caliber of scorer are we talking about w/ KD? Is he the best since Jordan (that would mean better than Kobe)?

http://www.androidcentral.com/motorola-may...-badly-it-seems Google buys Motorola for $12.5 billion Google values Moto patents at $5.5 billion, which are retained and licensed to Lenovo Google transfers $2.9 billion in cash from Motorola to Google Google sells set-top division to Arris Group for $2.35 billion Moto racks up nearly $2 billion in operating losses during Google ownership At this point, things don't look so bad, though they clearly seem to have taken a loss. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/go..._with_mobility/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/20...le-1-5-billion/ They've made a buttload of money on tax losses, which many speculate is the only reason they really wanted Moto in the first place. I haven't seen anyone speak authoritatively on this, but some seem to think that keeping those patents will give them the right to continue benefiting from those losses until 2019

Just remember that as "meh" of a hitter as Andrus is, Leury pretty much hasn't even matched Andrus's MLB production in the minors

A guy that isn't afraid of standing up to Frank Thomas and Nolan Ryan shouldn't need a whole lot of help in getting respect from players

I like accepting that he's getting our money no matter what. So let's quit sweating about how his play measures up to his salary. As a player in a vacuum, he's a real nice to have. If he was a FA coming from the Mets, we'd be excited to pick him up and see what happens. I'm glad we have perhaps the most powerful LH hitter in baseball in our lineup to stick in the middle of a bunch of very young right handed sluggers. That he's a good guy only makes it easier to be a fan.

Good. Our ballpark deserves some love as it is really excellent. I love it there. It has come a long way in the past 10 years too

Buy a VPN-enabled router, buy MLB.tv, profit???

I'm really surprised about them selling it like that. On one hand, I'm not surprised that Google didn't really want to have a fully-fledged hardware company. That's not really their deal. Margins are not high enough. But why take what looks like a loss, even with them keeping some patents and selling the set-top box separately? Most analysts saw Motorola as a company that was really on the rise and I agree. Moto X is a good phone that had a really right-headed development philosophy, focusing on end user-oriented software improvements over benchmarking. The Moto G has to be a contender to completely dominate the low end market. Why sell now?

that's the dumbest thing I've ever read. Yoga may have been an uninviting environment for that woman, but I have a feeling it had more to do with the "fat" than the "black." Might have had something to do with the gawking assholes too

I think we are reading into the "I won't recruit" stuff more than we should