Sob story

I try not to get too worked up about sports. At the end of the day, stripped of all the money and glamour and marketing, it’s all just a game. Games are, in the words of one guy, supposed to be fun. Tom Boswell once said there was something missing in the six months outside the baseball season, and I think he’s right — the repetition, the regularity, the consistancy.. ah, you either know what I mean, or you don’t. I’m not going to go all George Will here.

“Fun” was the key. It was fun to go to games. We went to a pair of games last spring in Seattle and watched the Mariners get thumped both times by the Tigers. (I boldly predicted to K. that the Tigers were probably going to win the World Series, based on Chris Shelton and some crazy-assed pitching, and for the first time in my life predicting sports I was only half wrong.) It was fraking cold, the beer was expensive, the tickets were insanely expensive, and they’d hiked the price on the garlic fries since the last time I’d been there, but it was still fun. I didn’t mind. I was twelve feet away from Ichiro taking practice swings in the on-deck circle. What’s not to like? K., a non-baseball fan, had fun. We were talking about going to Opening Day 2007.

Things are different now. They started to change when the Mariners traded Rafael Soriano to Atlanta for Horacio Ramirez. This wasn’t an inexcusable deal, just a stupid one — Ramirez is a back-of-the-rotation guy, not someone who’s going to change the outcome of your season. You need to have guys like him in your rotation, but you don’t trade good bullpen guys for him (and then complain you have holes in your bullpen). Soriano has a bit of an injury problem and took a hellacious line drive off his head on 29 August this year, though he has been pitching well in winter ball. So I can understand why holding on to the flame-throwing kid may not necessarily have been the Mariners’ highest priority.

Then this happened.

This is inexcusable. We’ll set my man-crush on Chris Snelling aside and ignore Fruto, though I do love Chris and Emiliano Fruto has an awesome name. The Mariners got older and more expensive and worse. That’s never the right side of a trade to be on. Jose Vidro solves exactly 0 problems for the Mariners. The Mariners had many issues going into this off-season, none of which cried out for an aging, out-of-shape 2B from the National League, and certainly not at $16M over two years with an option for 2009. About the only nice thing I can say about this trade is that Jim Bowden isn’t the dumbest GM in baseball anymore.

I heard this and wanted to cry. It was the first time in years that baseball has moved me to such an emotion. Being a Mariners fan the past few years has been an exercise in futility — you know the team is never going to return to the giddy heights of 2001, and deep down you know they’re going to find some horrible way to screw it up. But there’s always been hope — that next year, they might figure it out, put it together, and win. Snelling was part of that hope. Fruto was part of that hope. At least, if they were going to suck, they weren’t going to suck and cost the team a lot of money.

Now, though, I’m left with this empty, hollow feeling. I don’t honestly believe this move makes the team better. There’s no way this trade makes any kind of sense for the Mariners. My team has committed to a player with declining skills who costs way too much money for far too much time at the expense of a pair of cheap players that could be effective — all in the name of solving a problem that isn’t that hard to fix in the first place (namely, finding a DH). I know Bill Bavasi’s job is in danger if he doesn’t Win Now!, but this is the kind of thing that (a) ensures you don’t Win Now!, and (b) ensures you don’t win Next Season, or the One After That Either.

I guess all I’m saying is that if my bloated body washes up in the Inner Harbor (or, given the way the wind is blowing now, somewhere around Port Angeles) with a note that says “Take that, Howard Lincoln!” stapled to it.. it’s a guy thing.

Looks great; sucks ass

Ouch:

Kahney’s review [of the Zune] is positive for pretty much one reason: he’s a Mac dweeb, and the Zune actually beats the iPod on the sole criterion–design–that is relevant to Mac dweebs. He hates most everything about the performance characteristics of the device but loves its fashionable brown colour, its interface, and the “rubbery” feel of its scratch-resistant case. What’s ironic is that this tells us, more clearly than any negative review could, that the Zune is for yuppies who want their technology to come in the form of slick fashion totems.

Oh, snap.

Linux, free, time, worthless

So in the process of trying to make my desktop box marginally more useful while I await the arrival of a replacement power supply for my notebook (moral: I should not be allowed to play with electricity lest I make things go sparky-spark), I decided to try installing some software. Naturally, this involved upgrading stuff. Naturally, this involved looking for six packages to install one, and ensuring I had the dependencies for the dependencies. Naturally, me being me, I gave up and said “screw it” within about an hour. It wasn’t worth it.

Especially after I discovered that, oh, by the way, at some point in the last three years we changed glibc versions.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a machine with an obsolete shared library, but it’s a lot like being in hospice care. You know you’re going to have to face the horrible truth at some point in the future, but you can put it off by patching stuff up or taking high-test analgesics. Eventually you’ll reach a point where you decide it just isn’t worth it anymore, and give in. Basically, nothing new will compile. Which means you’re SOL if you want anything fun or interesting.

I am told that Slackware’s upgrade path is marginally less painful than it used to be, inasmuch as it is theoretically possible to get away with updating everything to the latest versions without actually rebooting. (I’ll believe that when I see it, thanks.) And I guess I’m going to have to plunge in and do the upgrade, which is a dangerous thing for a guy who can’t update his kernel without hosing LILO and spending half an afternoon trying to remember which magic incantation makes LILO happy again. (I’ve forgotten again — really worrying.)

And yes, I fully understand that whatever hacker cred I used to have is fully gone by this point, and I am totally fine with that. This was driven painfully home the other day when I realized a Microsoft product was the most reasonable solution to a problem I was trying to solve, and it didn’t make me want to cry.. and that the “open source software” alternative made me want to think about buying a shotgun.

NOT. FUNNY.

I guess this is our annual taste of winter:

Greater Victoria
3:19 PM PST Saturday 25 November 2006
Snowfall warning for
Greater Victoria continued

10 cm of snow expected for the Queen Charlottes and 20 to 30 cm of snow expected for the other regions by Sunday evening.

A strengthening Arctic ridge over the British Columbia interior is pushing cold Arctic air up against the east slopes of the north and central coast mountains. Strong outflow winds have developed through the valleys and inlets as the Arctic air rushes through the gaps towards the coast. As the high continues to strengthen winds will increase and temperatures will continue to fall resulting in windchills in the minus 20 to minus 30 range. These conditions are expected to persist for several days.

The Arctic air is making its way through the valleys of the south coast and will arrive in the Lower Mainland by Sunday morning. An intensifying low over the pacific will approach Washington state Sunday morning. The moisture associated with the low will interact with the Arctic air giving significant snowfall for much of the south coast beginning tonight. 10 cm of snow is expected for the Queen Charlottes and 20 to 30 cm of snow is expected for the other regions by Sunday evening.

The snow has changed to rain in the West Vancouver Island region and as a result the warning has been ended.

Awesome. Thank god tomorrow is Sunday and therefore it will be OK for everyone to stay home. Which people actually do in this town without any actual advice from the Authoritahs — unlike back in Alberta, where the RCMP would say “travel not recommended,” and people would immediately pile into their cars solely to show that they didn’t listen to the RCMP advisories. They were, for the most part, right — except when they weren’t, and one ended up in the middle of a farmer’s field on the other side of an unbroken fence. I’m just saying, is all.

On an equally not funny note: Nooooooooooooooo!

Frick on a stick

Following up on my post below– it turns out that indeed my warranty has lapsed, and I am therefore SOL. (Duuh-oy! I bet you didn’t see that one coming!) Dell doesn’t seem to think the existence of parallel problems in 5150 models with exactly the same power adapter is grounds to look after me and my problem, and they’re not convinced that the problem is in the power adapter anyway, so that’ll be $249 to ship the out-of-warranty machine back, and, if it turns out the power connector is shot, it’s another $499 for a new mainboard as well. I know I said this last post, but, YAY. So I guess now the trick is finding someone who has a multimeter I can borrow and test the adapter to see if it’s putting out the requisite power, since (a) I’m not willing to spend $90 on spec on the off-chance it’s the adapter and (b) I’m really not willing to spend $249 on spec if it’s not the adapter.

On the other hand: a Hmm Moment. If it’s not the adapter, the math starts to look a lot like $249+$499+$PITAT*=new machine. It’s not that I don’t like what the results of this math imply — I always like the idea of a new machine — it’s that I don’t want to spend the money on a new machine. Nor do I think I should have to — it’s not like there’s anything wrong with the existing one, save for the fact that the power adapter doesn’t want to work, it’s kinda heavy, and it might not be ready for Vista (oh no; I’m only half-kidding since I really want to play Halo 2 and suck hard at FPS on the Xbox or any other console).

Aggh. If it’s not one damn thing, it’s something else.

* PITAT: “Pain In The Ass Tax.” This is the amount, sometimes trivial and sometimes not, that you could, in theory, save if you were willing to put in the effort in a given situation. Sometimes it requires a lot of effort to save not-a-lot of money, and so this rhetorical device allows you to quantify the premium you’re willing to place on your time and effort. The PITAT in this case consists of the efford I have to put in to get the box to the shipping company and ensure I’m around to receive it, as well as the time I will be laptopless, as well as the inevitable frustration that will come with dealing with a technical support operation on this issue. To be sure, the PITAT in this case is a non-trivial amount of money, but we’re already into non-trivial amounts here anyway. One could easily argue the PITAT value of replacing is less than the PITAT value of fixing (though one could easily argue the reverse, too).

Put another way — the brutally honest way, I mean — it is in some cases a way of measuring how lazy you are, and how much more you’re willing to pay in order to support your laziness. I don’t think of it in those terms, of course; I think of it in terms of “how much of a premium am I willing to pay in order to not put up with whatever is likely to piss me off if I pay less.” Hence the Pain In The Ass Tax, not the Lazy Tax. (We already have one of those.)

This is my new favorite shopping argument “tool.” It effectively kills any discussion with your significant other over whether you’re a chump for paying more for something. “$8 for cheesecloth? We’ve got to be able to find that more cheaply.” “Lookit, I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I need to make the frakking coulis tonight, so I’m buying the damn cheesecloth and we’re going home. PITAT.” Bah-dum-dum.

Note to self: Stop posting after your nights and go to bed instead, idiot.

Something dark is coming

Allors, there is a problem with hallie the notebook. It complains that it does not recognize the AC power adapter type and petulantly refuses to acknowledge that it is plugged in — thus leaving me running on battery power. Needless to say, I didn’t recognize this until I went to plug the machine in because, of course, the battery was getting low. So now I have a machine with no power and no easy way to get my files off it so I can at least work on them on elissa or some other machine.

Naturally, this happened on a long weekend.
Naturally, this happened after EST-based tech support reps have gone home anyway.
Naturally, I own an obscure type of laptop that cannot be powered by the usual Kensington or Belkin universal notebook power adapters.
Naturally, the power adapter I need isn’t easily acquired locally; I have to order it over the net. (See previous “naturally” clauses for emotions that flow logically from this last position.)

The worst part is that I don’t even know if it’s the power adapter. I’d love to be able to find something that could provide at least some power to the machine so I could figure out whether I need a new power adapter or whether I need a new power jack on the back of the machine. I want to believe it’s the power adapter, since (a) that’s easy enough to replace and doesn’t involve sending the machine away and (b) the cord is awfully twisted and the plastic reinforcing against the brick is torn and ripped.

Now. Studies of Google suggest that this is a Known Problem with the Inspiron 5150/5160 line, and that the fault may lie in either the adapter or the mainboard, so YAY, that’s great, and it really narrows things down a lot. On the (bright? other? flip?) side, someone apparently launched a class action lawsuit against Dell for this precise problem and Dell settled, though only in the United States. Not, mind you, that this should make a difference from a corporate perspective — Dell is Dell, the problem is the problem, and one would hope that they’d have the good sense to replace my power adapter for free if they’re doing it across the border, too. But what do I know? I’m just a guy with no access to his files.

Note to self: This might be a good time to look into finding some kind of temporary enclosure for notebook hard drives, so I can at least do a rescue and get the useful stuff off the damn disk before I have to send it back and/or spend multiple days with a dark laptop. Grr.

You guys are in big trouble

is going through a discovery of the absolute total brilliance of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I’m having the same experience. It’s awesome. Part of me wishes I could forget I know about the show so I can experience it again from scratch, it’s so good. Battlestar Galactica is like.. dramatic crack. Better than Babylon 5. Way better than Star Trek. Vastly better than the original Battlestar Galactica which, let’s face it, was kinda cheesy like all TV from that era. It’s a modern parable in ways that B5 never could be, mostly because — while I love jms — it isn’t being written by J. Michael Straczynski.

All of you who knew about its brilliance but failed to tell me about it are in a big, big trouble, assuming I can figure out who you are.

Coming up next: Massive BT traffic spike on the dochazmat home network as I aggressively download all of Season 3 to get caught up. Woo!

(PS: Does anyone know of a decent command-line BT client that doesn’t require 8,518 packages? Or maybe just a god BT client for *nix in general that won’t require me to install 8.518 other packages? PPS: I hate python.)

This must be some new concept of manliness

From a list of nerdy gift ideas:

Garmin Street Pilot C340
(Real men use real he-man navigational systems)
$440
Available from Amazon

To hell with that. Real men use sextants.

I used to get into this argument a lot with people — sailors and pilots, mostly — who seemed to think that traditional navigation methods, like maps and compasses and dead reckoning, were obsolete in the world of the Global Positioning System. My argument was always that while GPS might be nice, in theory, it is still a technology that may fail, and, the way most human luck runs, it probably will fail at precisely the moment when you need it to work.

The news that the United States Naval Academy stopped teaching celestial navigation a few years back nearly brought tears to my eyes. There’s something elemental about celestial fixes that is good for the soul — yeah, ok, the DGPS was more accurate than I ever was with a sextant, but in the middle of the Pacific, what difference does a nautical mile make? I always felt like I was communing with the intellectual spirits of generations of mariners. Granted, I have a romantic streak in me about a mile wide, but still, there are practical reasons why these skills are important. It worked for Columbus; it can work for you, too.

(Also, I have absolutely no patience for people who use in-car GPS navigation. Jesus, get a frakking map! Learn how to read it! The damn GPS doesn’t know anything about local road conditions anyway, which is why your brain is an infinitely more useful tool than a $440 GPS unit.)