Jake

My leagues: 1/12, 1st in points 7/12, 2nd in points

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 09:05 PM) Guess we're the tough luck message board this year, everyone seems real high in points and low in the standings. On a side note, I have to bench Jordy this week, right? I saw nothing to make me think Seneca can get him the ball and I can play Chris Johnson against the Jags. I HATE to bench Jordy but this seems like a fairly simple decision. I can't believe Jordy would be so bad as to be the 5th best option for you

QUOTE (chw42 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 07:51 PM) Yeah, that U310 has WiFi issues. My friend has one of those, he said the WiFi issues were pretty awful. We'll see. In the worst case, I'll just get a USB adapter methinks There are a few suggested fixes out there: driver update, turning off the card's power saver settings, reinstallation of Windows (this actually works for some reason), and it seems there is one that has worked for everyone who has claimed to have tried it...something with adjusting some foil within the laptop. I haven't looked into that one too much.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 07:37 PM) A lot of those runs dont even require guys to keep logs, they can drive as much as they want within 100 air miles of their starting spot. No having to keep logs = no hours of service regs. So yea, theyre more than loose... they barely even exist, But thats the point, DOT has pretty much established that they want to kill off nearly all long haul trucking and at the very least put an end to independent operators. They basically want trucks going from intermodal yard to distribution center then from distribution center to store and/or customer. The market still likes trucking, its flexible, its fast, it minimizes warehousing needs and its generally just as reliable as rail. Hence, HOS. Seems like they need different regs for long haul guys

Also, I replaced my Macbook Pro about 18 months ago. My MBP's charger fried its battery and the very expensive AppleCare I bought didn't cover it...they said it was my fault. To some extent, the fact that my laptop had cosmetic issues (it was dirty and had a noticeable dent on one corner) probably biased the technician against me. On the other, it has dissuaded me from buying Apple products. I still love that OS, but I can't really afford even the low-end stuff and I can no longer justify making a reach like that by telling myself that they'll take care of me if something goes wrong. So, with some advice from folks on here, I bought a barely used laptop via eBay. It's an HP Pavilion dv6 and it has been mostly good to me. Buying used (the unit had no signs of wear, I spoke to seller on the phone and he said that he decided he needed a lighter, smaller laptop for travel after his return period ended) saved me a lot of money, paying about $600 for a laptop that would have cost about $850 from HP. It still had factory warranty, as is now standard with many PCs; the warranty is tied to the unit, not the buyer. It has 6GB DDR3 RAM, i5 2520 @ 2.5 GHz (Sandy Bridge), Radeon HD 7690M XT GPU, a 625GB HDD, Blu-Ray player, and the 15" 1920x1080 HD display. Over time, I've started to fall out of love with it. First of all, one of the first things I loved about it was how cool it ran. It had this HP CoolSense app that seemed to do a great job of regulating the fans and processor to keep it running really coolly. It now gets very warm and the fans run constantly. I think the fans are probably dirty, but I can't dismantle it to get to them. I actually think the CoolSense is still throttling the processor to try to reduce the heat, but is now just dragging down performance. The battery has also gone completely to s***. It was never rated to perform very well by current standards, I think their optimistic guess was going to be 3 hours. I was happy with the battery at first, but it now needs to be constantly plugged in. The battery from HP costs 130 bucks and I have personally experienced aftermarket batteries f***ing up a laptop. So...I had to think about whether I'd rather put that 130 towards another device. This means whenever I go somewhere other than my place to study or work for any amount of time I also have to lug around its charger. It is generally getting a big sluggish and I'm needing to do the trusty 'ol "restart it because it works and I don't know why" every day or so. Beyond that, I'm not sure if this is really the size I want. It's big and relatively heavy compared to the 13" MBP I moved from. With that said, it's been a good machine and I'm going to use it for some other things - mainly, to stream sports, movies, and things like that to my TV. The monitor quality is something I'll miss. It has a matte finish, looks beautiful, and has excellent viewing angles. So I didn't want to spend much money on this replacement at all since I have a very small budget and this is, to some extent, a convenience buy. I could certainly make it with this HP. I actually thought very hard about getting the HP Chromebook 14. It is cheap (300), portable, works fast, great battery life, etc. I think I can do almost every single thing I normally do on a Chromebook except for one. I do academic writing and use Zotero as a citation manager. While I can record citations on a Chromebook via the Zotero webapp, the greatest use of Zotero for me is its Microsoft Word/LibreOffice plug-in. I can just hit a keyboard shortcut which pulls up a dialogue where I can search for my source, find it, press enter, and it renders my citations. Beyond creating a bibliography and saving me some typing and thinking, this also allows me to reformat my documents to a different citation style with just a click. That's something I must have on my primary computer. Beyond that, I basically only use Chrome and Chrome Apps at this point. I use Outlook, but I could easily use Outlook Web App for emailing. Anyway, no Chromebook for me. I focused on 13" Ultrabooks and hoped to find another used deal. I was about to pull the trigger on a 14" Asus Vivobook Touch that had great reviews, but I realized at the last minute that this wonderful $399 price was getting me a version with a Pentium processor. No thanks. Not sure why they thought it would be a good idea to release a legit series of budget-oriented Ultrabooks and release one with a sub-standard processor under the same name. Anyway, I settled on a Lenovo Ideapad U310 Touch. I bought it on eBay for 300 bucks from a seller who seems to have hardly used it. I got the feeling from talking to him/her that they just didn't like Windows 8, lol. I'll deal. I'll be reverting to the screen quality of my old MBP, which is the main drawback of this thing. It has a 3rd gen i5, 4GB RAM, 10-point touchscreen, their typically excellent keyboard and trackpad. No dedicated GPU and a little less RAM along with the screen are the sacrifices I make here. It weighs less than half of this HP, has a metal body, and has 4-5 hours of battery life with regular use according to reviews. Some folks have had issues with WiFi, for some reason, but Lenovo has released a driver update which seems to have fixed it for the vast majority of people. That's my main fear at this point. Here's hoping it arrives in one piece and gets WiFi reception because I'm really fond of the working version of this thing!

First gen Nexus 7 was going for 139.99 at Staples yesterday. If she doesn't need the latest and greatest, you should be able to find that on the cheap and it'll be just fine for almost all uses.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 06:41 PM) I think the more interesting thought is how many pro baseball players are actually playing their favorite sport or if they were just really good at baseball? Yeah. Thinking about the article I posted in the sports section...I wonder if one of the advantages enjoyed by the guys who stuck it out is that they loved baseball less?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 01:58 PM) Except a competing private conpany, in a perfect world without state endorsed oligopolies, will keep them honest by offering identical services at lower prices. Government just tells us how much something costs then forces us at gunpoint to buy it. You actually have something to do with government. You can vote, you can call your representatives, you can lobby, you can donate to candidates, you can run for office, you can become a political pundit, etc.... It isn't "the government" pointing a gun at you to make you do the things "it" wants. It is actual people, freely choosing other people they think are more capable of governance than they are who go on to make up our government. If you don't like the people, try to do something about it. If your vote isn't working, try to tell people what's wrong with their votes. Don't pretend the government is some singular entity, operating independently of all of us. It is anything but that, as you can see right now as our legilsative arms interact with one another and the other branches. QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 02:02 PM) This isn't really true anymore...because the second you get dubbed a monopoly, you are shattered into tiny pieces now. Laws changed this view pretty drastically. Yes, we have changed them into oligopolies. Not much has changed.

My dad owns a trucking company, so I think his insight might be helpful for this discussion. He has no problems with the regulations and says from his end, they appear pretty loose and most of his drivers agree. He also said that a pretty significant chunk of the industry disregards them, by and large, especially at the small business level like he is. The key difference here is that my dad's company operates in a small area compared to what Duke is doing. He pretty much runs things between our area in Central IL and Chicago, Gary, Peoria, Bloomington, St. Louis, and an odd place here and there. I think the restrictions were made with his kind of business in mind, where guys drive all day and go home. How many 11 hour days should they work in a row? If I understand Duke's situation right, his issue is different. A single load may entail several days. Sometimes, my dad's drivers will do multiple deliveries back and forth in a day. The nature of what Duke is doing would make him feel inclined to cluster more work in a shorter time followed by (I assume) more time at home. He will work through the weekend on a regular basis, I would think, whereas my dad's drivers do not normally do so because their clients usually aren't taking delivers (and it doesn't take multiple days to reach them).

It's interesting how many of you guys love baseball so much despite never having played it. Just shows how great the game is. My girlfriend has really started to get into baseball, and I always wondered if playing it was a requisite for really getting it. Clearly not so. Perhaps another interesting question would be, especially to the folks that didn't gravitate to MLB because they were playing youth baseball, what got you into following pro baseball?

FWIW, I think we probably burned a bridge with AJ. Signing him to a one or two year deal at $3 million per would be just fine with me. Maybe kick it up to $4 for just one season.

I used to be a very good catcher. I still wonder what would have happened if I had stuck with it. I was also my town's best pitcher (take note of big fish, small pond). When I was younger, middle school and early high school, I got freaking abused. I would catch one end and pitch the other end of all doubleheaders. If I pitched on Thursday, I'd catch both ends of Saturday's doubleheaders. Screw that. I tore my groin playing basketball and I hung it up, as far as catching goes. I still struggle getting into a decent looking squat position. But yes, catchers should be exempt from running. My asshole middle school coach used to make me run with my gear on.

I think this coming year is a transitional year or whatever you may want to call it, but I also think that Hahn isn't willing to go into the year with a position like catcher unaddressed. If, as we think, they don't see much room for improvement from what was literally league worst from those two...I think he'll pursue short term options. That is, he'll pursue short-term options if he doesn't like any of the long-term ones. No reason to be horrible for s***s and giggles. You're not going to give a guy like AJ an amount of money that will make you think twice and at his age, you'll want to give him more rest anyway. I don't necessarily believe that having him or someone similar around precludes seeking a young, long-term replacement

Four stars? Bleh. We only roll with five stars now, suckas!

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 08:08 PM) Again, why? How does it make sense for the white sox to sign a 1-2 year stopgap if they don't obviously have a guy in the minors coming up in 1-2 years at that spot? AJ makes sense for this team if they're looking to compete next year. If they are going to sign Ellsbury or something like that fine. To rebuild, the sox would be better off long term giving Phegley that playing time. If he has a 5% chance of becoming a solid player in 2 years...Pierzynski would have a 0% chance of being this teams long term catcher in 2 years. If Phegley has a 1% chance of becoming a long term option that still is a better chance than AJ. The main thing is because: 1. Whether Phegley/Flowers deserve any developmental time is highly debatable. 2. There is nobody else that deserves that developmental time in our organization. 3. AJ or similar player would provide a substantial marginal gain over the other options and has a decent chance to outproduce Saltalamacchia. 4. AJ would be cheap. 5. You get 2 years to find the team's next catcher. If someone appealing reaches FA a year from now, you can make a move on that player. 6. Saltalamacchia has spent about 4-6 months of his life as a player that looks like he deserves a 4 year contract approaching $10/year value 7. Salty is a low OBP, extremely high K player that seems contrary to organizational goals. So, I find myself asking the question: would I rather have 2 years and $20 million remaining on a contract for Saltalamacchia, who will be a .240/.290/.450 bat on the wrong side of 30 in 2 years if he still at all serviceable....or would I rather say goodbye to a vet like AJ who will probably provide similar value at far less price and have the expectation of sharing time with any hotshot young guys throughout his stay? Hahn wants long-term guys, for sure. He keeps saying that. Do you even want the good version of Salty long term at top market dollar? I'm not sure if I do. I'd like to have a non-horrible, league-worst catcher over the next couple years, but there are limits to the amount I will invest to do that.

I've been critical of the pass blocking, as have the analytics services, but they definitely came to play last night. It's great to see a scheme and quarterback that can account for the breakdowns and blitzes as well.

I write left-handed as well as do some other stuff with my left. When I was little, I would pick up baseballs and throw them with both left and right arms. My dad, after 3 other sons, decided I should throw with my right hand since we already had gloves for right-handed throwers. I'll never forgive him!

Shea McClellin!!!!!

Wooton!!!

Gotta love the trumped up penalty call

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 10:29 PM) My favorite Jon Gruden story tonite "I was a coach with Trestman...I don't know where or when" There was a hotel room in Nashville...

An asterisk on this win because Rodgers went down. WTF?

When Jay went down, I said some good things about McCown. I said he was a really solid, fearless, and smart veteran who wouldn't lose us any games. I was wrong. He's winning us this game.

Also, Jon Gruden: http://www.alshonjefferies.com

Shades of not Marion Barber