Baseball strategy 101

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

Bottom of the ninth inning. Two out. The lightning-fast Rafael Furcal on third base. The aged Julio Franco on first. Down by two runs. Two men left on the bench: Wes Helms, who’ll be pinch-hitting if pitcher John Smoltz comes up later in the inning, and Steve Torrealba, your .059(!)-hitting third-string catcher.
You’ve got to stay out of the double play because you want to get to Chipper Jones, who hits Robb Nen as well as anybody. You have no choice but to save Helms. And Julio Franco isn’t fast anymore, but he’s always faster than your third-string catcher.

What do you do?

You call down to the bullpen, where Greg Maddux is warming up, and have him run for Franco, that’s what you do.

Insanity? Probably. But here’s how I see it.

Maddux can still run the bases. He can almost certainly run the bases better than Franco. You have to get Chipper Jones to the plate at any cost. If Jones hits a homer, the game’s through, so the rest is a non-issue. If Jones doesn’t hit a homer and Wes Helms has to hit for Smoltz and the Braves end up only tying the game, no problem. Helms is a first baseman. Helms stays in to play first. Maddux stays in the game to pitch. The result is just an unconventional double switch.

And Maddux is exactly who you want pitching in extra innings in a do-or-die game. Normally a starter, Maddux can give you innings. And Maddux could potentially contribute with his bat.

But it’s all a non-issue now. The Giants closed down the Braves with Jones in the on-deck circle. The Giants are coming to St. Louis.

So it’s Angels-Twins in the AL, Giants-Cardinals in the NL. The usual suspects of October are going to be watching from their living rooms.

It’s a very different October.

Milestone!

Dave Farquhar Personal ,

I’m writing this from my new house, connected via DSL to my Web server, running off my DSL connection at my apartment. Let me say this: DSL was much easier in the early days when you just got a DHCP connection. Configuring PPPoE is a royal pain.
But I’ve got an old Pentium with a pair of NICs in it running Coyote Linux, with an old Celeron PC running Windows 98 connected via a crossover cable, since the Linksys router is still at the apartment keeping the magic alive there.

DSL works most reliably from my front room, which isn’t what I want to use as a computer room, so I guess I’ll be running some Ethernet cables.

But most importantly, I can now respond to late-night pages and pcAnywhere into the network at work and fix things. So I guess that means I can start sleeping here. That’ll be nice. This neighborhood is a lot quieter than my apartment complex.

Interestingly enough, as I cobbled together some PCs from parts to get this stuff up and going, I found some Pentium motherboards that wouldn’t even boot Windows 98 properly (the DSL setup has to run from Windows). Linux installs effortlessly on them.

Good things come to those who drag their feet

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , ,

A month ago, I was looking to buy a fridge and a washer and a dryer. My family came in to help me.

Mostly I got frustrated. I went into Sears and liked their prices, and the salesperson offered six months’ free financing. But you never buy the first place you look. We went to a Maytag dealer. The salesperson was extremely nice and helpful and offered me a year of free financing, but the prices were high. I had checked Best Buy a few days before. Pricing was comparable to Sears, and they offered their standard six-month free financing, but I could save a little at Sears by buying Kenmore, which was being made by Whirlpool last month.

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Linkfest since I’m busy

Dave Farquhar General ,

I wasted way too much time with this, so I’m passing it along.
Parliament of Whores. Ed Felten, the star of the Microsoft Antitrust trial, and infamous anti-DMCA activist, has a blog. I like his stuff. I especially like this: a list of devices that would have to have copy-protection hardware under the insane Fritz Hollings I-Sold-Out-to-Hollywood bill. Bookmark it and visit it weekly. Get a good laugh. Print out copies and send them to your congressman. Send one to mine too, while you’re at it. Dick Gephardt needs something constructive to do.

Benke for First Vice President. If you’re LCMS, you can make nominations for the 2004 Convention. Here’s the form. Unfortunately there’s no box for me to nominate Dr. David Benke, the man who dared go to Yankee Stadium on Sept. 22, 2001 and pray with heathens lepers infidels non-LCMS Lutherans present, for the office of First Vice President.

If anyone knows where I can find that form, I’d appreciate a link.

Meanwhile, yeah, I think Dr. Benke belongs on the LCMS Board of Directors and the CPH Board of Directors. Getting him on the Commission for Theology and Church Relations would make it much easier for the rest of the Body of Christ to deal with LCMS. And since he actually (shock, horror!) talks about his faith, he’d be good on Mission Services, too. And we’d do really well to have hundreds–no, thousands–more pastors just like him, so putting him on the Board of Regents for both the Fort Wayne and St. Louis seminaries would be an excellent move.

Boy, I’ve got plenty of work for him, don’t I?

But I’d really like to see him at 1VP.

As for Dr. Benke’s crimes against Lutheranism and humanity and God, evidently, the Apostle Paul was guilty of the same crimes. St. Paul was awfully abrasive sometimes, but I wouldn’t mind having him in one of our top leadership spots. Since we can’t get St. Paul, I’ll settle for Dr. Benke.

Too busy for Aimee Mann

Dave Farquhar General

One of my friends e-mailed me and asked if I’d be breaking my usual policy of not watching TV except during the World Series to catch Aimee Mann on some TV show called West Wing tonight. Or maybe it was tomorrow. Whenever it was, my response was terse.
“Dang it! I don’t have time for that!”

I’d mention our ensuing dialogue, but I’m afraid some of it might be taken out of context and haunt me later. Oddly enough, it was my second conversation of the day where illegal mind-altering substances came up.

Most of my attention is going towards moving. If Aimee Mann were single, I’d probably take time out to watch her and swoon, just because I’ve heard far too many comments lately from single girls about Bebo Norman. But Aimee Mann’s not single so I shouldn’t be oogling her, and I don’t have to have an inferiority complex about Bebo Norman.

No, that money on the dresser isn’t my savings fund for an acoustic guitar. No, those aren’t lyrics in that notebook. No, I don’t have an inferiority complex about Bebo Norman! I don’t know what I’ve got but I know it’s not that!

I’m looking for an easy cure, easy cure
An easy cure for my ills

AAAAAGH!

I could never find my way
You said you were the way, the truth, and life
They said it was impossible
You said anything is possible
With you
And that’s why I celebrate faith

Ha! Did Bebo Norman ever write any lines as good as those? He did? Rats.

OK, fine. I’ve got an inferiority complex about Bebo Norman. So sue me.

I’m gonna go move big, heavy stuff and assert my manliness. (I bet Bebo Norman couldn’t LIFT THIS COUCH all by himself!) You go read a comic strip or something so you’re laughing at it and not at me.

How to reinvigorate the Royals

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Please indulge me one last time this season to write about my beloved, who have currently lost 99 games and are going to make one last valiant attempt to avoid losing 100 this year.
The Royals are a small market. Small-market teams have a rough go of it, yes. But the Minnesota Twins have been doing OK. The Twins have some vision and a plan and they stick with their plan, and that’s part of it. So here’s what we need to do to duplicate that success.

1. Build a superstar. Back in George Brett’s heyday, the Royals had no payroll problems. The fans came out to see Brett, the Royals spent that money to get more players, and since the Royals had winning records, the fans kept coming. In the late 1980s, a bad season meant the Royals didn’t win any championships. But they had winning records. The Royals nearly have that superstar. His name is Mike Sweeney. He’s got a sweet swing like Brett. He’s got plate discipline like Brett. And he’s even more likeable than Brett. When Brett was Sween’s age, he partied as hard as he played. Sween takes care of himself and he takes care of his fiancee and he takes care of his community. The only people who don’t like Mike Sweeney are opposing pitchers.

But Mike Sweeney’s protection in the order is The Mighty Raul Ibanez. Now, The Mighty Ibanez has turned into a good hitter, but he’s not an All-Star. He’s a better hitter than a 50-year-old George Brett. That’s saying something. But to build a superstar, what the Royals really need to do it

And Mike Sweeney needs to get together with Dave Dravecky to put together a project talking about the Christian symbolism in baseball. (Pitchers can’t hit but it’s part of their job. Designated hitters come in and do that part of their job for them. Sound kinda like Christianity? I think so. I think God’s in favor of the DH.)

2. Sign Jim Thome. Jim Thome doesn’t fit into Cleveland’s plans anymore. Blame it on mass insanity. Blame it on tightfistedness. Blame it on whatever. But the Indians don’t want Jim Thome. And guess what? Jim Thome likes Kansas City. I don’t blame him. In Kansas City, if you’re on the highway and you want to change lanes, you use your turn signal and someone lets you. In Kansas City, strangers smile at you for no reason. When the now-departed Miguel Batista arrived in Kansas City at the airport after a trade, some little old lady walked up to him and said, “You’re our new pitcher. Let me get one of your bags.” People are just nice.

Yes, Jim Thome’s going to cost buckets of money. But guess what? He won’t cost more than Roberto Hernandez and Neifi Perez cost combined. So here’s what you do. Rotate Jim Thome and Mike Sweeney between first base and designated hitter. Then try out this lineup:

Michael Tucker, 2b
Carlos Beltran, cf
Mike Sweeney, 1b
Jim Thome, dh
Raul Ibanez, rf
Joe Randa, 3b
Mark Quinn/Dee Brown lf
Angel Berroa, ss
Brent Mayne, c

We’ll talk about the Michael Tucker insanity in a second. Jim Thome’s .300 average and 52 home runs will make Mike Sweeney look a whole lot better to pitch to. It virtually guarantees he’ll hit .340 again, because pitchers will look forward to the half of the time he makes an out. Jim Thome will see good pitches because Mike Sweeney’s on base. Or someone else is. The Royals will score lots more runs. Meanwhile, Mark Quinn and Dee Brown have Jim Thome to learn from. The Royals’ lineup suddenly starts to look like the great Cardinals teams of the 1980s that had lots of jackrabbits who could hit doubles and one really big bat in the middle. Except Mike Sweeney and Raul Ibanez offer better protection than Jack Clark ever had in a Cardinal uniform.

3. Try Michael Tucker at second base. The Royals need a second baseman who can hit. Tucker’s not a great hitter for an outfielder, but he’s a really good hitter for a second baseman. He won’t be a great fielder. But the 1984 Padres solved two problems by moving Alan Wiggins from left field to second base. They got a good hitter at the position, and they freed left field for another bat. The Padres kept Jerry Royster around to play second in the late innings. The Royals can keep Carlos Febles for defense late in the game.

4. If the Tucker experiment fails, move Carlos Beltran to leadoff and Joe Randa to the #2 spot in the batting order. The Royals don’t score any runs because Mike Sweeney doesn’t have enough people on base in front of him. The Royals often give away their first out by having people like Chuck Knoblauch and Neifi Perez and Carlos Febles hitting leadoff. Joe Randa’s no speed demon anymore, but he gets on base. And he’s got enough power that a lot of times, when he gets on base, he gets on second base. Carlos Beltran gets on base. Mike Sweeney needs to hit with people on base. If the Royals were to sign Jim Thome, he’d be worthless without people on base. So disregard the traditional idea that your first two hitters should be your fastest runners, and just get some people on base. Carlos Beltran is your leadoff hitter anyway with him hitting second. Might as well accept reality and work with it.

5. Develop young pitchers. In 1985, the Royals brought in Jim Sundberg, a veteran catcher who couldn’t hit to handle their young pitchers. The formula of young pitchers with lots of good stuff and a catcher who knew how to guide them brought them to the World Series, and, ultimately, to a World Championship. Time will tell if any of today’s young pitchers will turn into Bret Saberhagen or even Mark Gubicza. Since the Royals can’t afford to go sign Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux (and since they wouldn’t score any runs for them anyway), they don’t have much choice but to take the chance. But since the Royals have been throwing their young pitchers’ arms out (witness Jose Rosado, Chad Durbin, and Dan Reichert) they need to re-think the way they develop their young pitchers. Throw fewer innings and watch more videotape.

And be patient. Greg Maddux spent two years as a so-so relief pitcher and sometime starter before he blossomed into the greatest pitcher of his generation.

Hmm. I’m already looking forward to April 2003.

Reviving a laptop

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

The drive in my work laptop gave a S.M.A.R.T. error over the weekend. I never have had much luck with Hitachi laptop drives. Micron sent a replacement drive–an IBM, thankfully–and, doubly thankfully, the Hitachi hung on until today. So I whipped out Bart’s magic network boot disk–to which I’d added the 3c556 module necessary to get this Micron Transport LT on the network–and ran my copy of Ghost from a network drive. (It won’t fit on that disk, no way, no how. Not with all the other stuff crammed onto it.)
Depending on how far gone the drive is, Ghost can cope with failing hard drives, because you can use the -FRO switch to make it work around bad clusters to the best of its ability. So I initiated Ghost with ghost -z9 -fro (the -z9 tells it to use maximum compression, since the network is the bottleneck here) and made a copy of my disk to a network drive. An hour and a half later (ugh–do I ever miss Token Ring) I had a backup. So I swapped in the IBM drive and repeated the process in reverse. An hour and a half up, an hour and a half down. The data compression wasn’t the bottleneck.

And in the end, I had a healthy laptop again. The IBM drive is quieter and seems faster. I noticed it wasn’t the nice new 5400 RPM model (it’s a 4200 rpm drive) but it’s not a slouch. And it definitely doesn’t clunk as much as the Hitachi always did. I love Hitachi’s video equipment, but their hard drives have always given me trouble. IBM’s laptop drives have always been fine for me. And I know IBM took a lot of black eyes over the GXP desktop series, but think about the things that are known to cause problems with IDE drives:

Rounded cables
PCI bus overclocked beyond 33 MHz
Heat
Cables longer than 18 inches (the length of the wire–not the cable itself)
Certain VIA chipsets in conjunction with Sound Blaster Live! sound cards

IBM 75GXP and 60GXP drives were typically bought by people seeking performance. People seeking performance often do at least one of the above, intentionally or unintentionally. During the 75GXP’s heyday, the hottest chipsets on the block were made by VIA (Intel was still embroiled in the whole Rambus fiasco), and the sound card everyone had to have was the SB Live. I suspect the GXPs were more sensitive to these factors than some other drives and they really weren’t as bad as their reputation.

While rounded cables are good for airflow, they’re bad for signal integrity. Rounded SCSI cables are common, especially in servers, and have been for years, but SCSI takes precautions with its signals–most notably, termination–that IDE doesn’t. That’s part of the reason why IDE is cheaper. So yes, though ribbon cables do look really retro, replacing them with fancy rounded cables isn’t a good idea unless you like replacing hard drives. Get Serial ATA adapters and run your drives serial if you don’t think retro is cool. I’ve been conspiring for the last couple of years to get something semi-modern into my vintage IBM AT case, so I happen to like retro.

But I digress. I hope when the merger between Hitachi’s and IBM’s storage divisions happens, we get the best aspects of both rather than the worst.