GAME05

ugh. i'm so much against adding playoff teams that once they do, i won't really care much what they do with the divisions after that. and adding more DHs makes it all the worse. i really like the divisions as they are, and i even like the Wild Card (ironic considering my hatred of adding playoff teams). maybe the Brewers have an extra team to compete against, but more opponents in such an unbalanced sport just means more games against marginal opponents. if anything, contract and let one of the NL Central teams go to the AL. granted, i'm already bitter and think that any move Selig would make to "better" baseball beyond fixing the money problem has more to do with getting fans to ignore the money problem.

my own speculation says that any money remaining after this season is spent on extending the contract of Greinke and/or Marcum. nobody in AAA right now compares, and it seems like that would be top priority. if only one, we'd be left with about $10M to spend, which says stopgap additions. i'd enjoy seeing Adam Everett as a defensive replacement at SS behind Betancourt, and then you'd have to figure a bullpen guy will be added (one always is). i just don't see much happening with this team in the coming offseason beyond trying to keep/extend the players we have. the only surprise i could see coming is if we somehow traded for a big bat/pitcher for a playoff push, and then if we went deep into those playoffs, making an effort to resign the guy we traded for. but the bench, especially, will be a way bigger hole to fill than replacing Morgan and Gomez at CF, and i definitely don't see that happening. i don't have any dreams of Reyes coming our way, though it does make me smile. our whole lineup would be lightening fast, and i've always wanted to see how Weeks would do out of the leadoff spot and into the 5 or 6 spot in the order.

i remember Milwaukee had the option of getting an NHL team before Anaheim and Florida got theirs, but we turned it down. it would have meant disbanding the Admirals. first the NHL had their strike and how the Recession, and maybe Milwaukee made the right decision on that. plus it doesn't seem to me that having an NHL team is a great pull to draw convention-goers and big businesses into the city. an NBA team, though, that has a lot more cache. but for the limited amount of games that the MLS plays and the modest ticket prices, i could see that being a benefit to helping Milwaukee end any beer-drinking/blue-collar reputations the city has and add a more cultured touch. is Milwaukee necessarily a tapped-out city, though? we've shown we'll support winning teams, so if our MLS team did well, i think people will start showing up. i doubt a bandwagon necessarily has to hitch to a popular sport.

yeah, i thought Hart had a limited no-trade for the first two years of the contract. who knows if that would hinder us at all, but i'm sure he listed any trade-likely teams to help himself. a corner outfielder is never untradable, but the problem i'd have with replacing him with one of our OF prospects is that we'd then have a prospect sitting at 1B and one in RF. it's not that Gindl/Gamel couldn't eventually fill the void, but we'd really take a hit in terms of production with just Braun being the only reliable slugger in the lineup. as awesome as Fielder is, we still should be a legitimate Division contender next year, but i don't see that we would be if we suddenly replaced two of our three best hitters in the lineup.

my father had prostate surgery a month ago and he didn't tell me he was having any real problems sitting. that was about all he was really doing post-surgery. i'd think a ride would be fine, but i'll have to ask my father again. he didn't feel that well for about three days after the surgery but gained strength back pretty quickly. he's actually going to Phoenix in a week, too. granted, everyone has different reactions to the same surgery. hope it goes well, PITCH.

i use streaming Netflix a lot, and i've also been stuck at home for the past three days, so it's movie time. anyone have some comedies they could recommend? i tend to like good-hearted type comedies and nothing too heavy on the boy-meets-girl stuff. i've been watching a lot of documentaries, too.

"If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"

i took creatine when i lifted and noticed it gave me a lot more strength during the workout than without it. i felt like i had a little more energy, too. if you're cut already, it will help you look a little bigger, even though the size is actually just water weight in your muscle. however, when you go off of creatine, you just pee all that size gain back out.

apparently the show Traffic Light is being canceled. it wasn't my favourite, but i enjoyed it. i liked the season finale of How I Met Your Mother, too. a great show when it pushes the character's stories forward, though it didn't do much of that last season. we know the married couple will have a kid, Barney will get married, and so it's just the Newscaster Girl and Ted, so i'm thinking there is only a season or two left in that show. but that's probably enough.

well, not the best day today. the Hyundai dealership service center calls me, tells me they can't quite figure out the problem, and that "maybe" it's the brake lines. this after i told them the problem, said i figured it was my calipers, and so they went ahead and replaced those for a hefty fee. also, since they can't identify which one, that "we'd like to just go ahead and replace all four." what??? i'm not exactly a rich man and can't quite afford to be throwing probably $600 to "maybe" fix a problem. i think i'm going to pull it out of that shop tomorrow morning and will have an honest (so raves a coworker) mechanic try and diagnose the problem. he already thinks it's NOT the brake lines but the ABS, although his shop doesn't fix foreign cars. maybe i can get a diagnosis and then take it back to the Hyundai service place and just tell them what to fix. compounding the issue is that i work on Saturday and it's going to be a $75 (with tip) taxi ride one-way to work. i'll have to bring my tent and stay there overnight because i work again on Sunday. also, i have hemorrhoids. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

bringing in Danks just seems like a trade for trade's sake. i don't see what he could bring that Narveson doesn't already, and we're not desperate for bullpen relief.

he's in whatever degree of decline, but certainly in some decline. and then we'd be asking him to play even more than he does now--no doubt fielding a position every inning is a lot more strenuous than batting four times a game. i'd only think this would exacerbate his decline and he'd end up with mediocre/poor numbers. like davego said, if he'd play here part-time then sure, but he'll get the same offer with Boston next year.

$500 at one shop and my brakes and AC still weren't fixed. $600 at the next place and my brakes and AC still aren't fixed. oh, but i have new calipers and shiny new rotors, though. yay for me. i told the first place it was my front brakes, but they did the back ones. of course they have guarantees and warranties on their work, but nobody does work for free, and they'd only point out some secondary cause, so i don't trust to take it in to them again. but my brakes are locking up. feels like the calipers are sticking, but now that i have new ones, i can't figure it. new rotors are nice, but it's almost to the point that i can't drive that stupid car anymore. brake pedal gets to be absolutely frozen. odd enough it's fine on the way to work, but locks up for about 10 miles of my drive back home. about 20 miles to work, so a taxi would cost a small fortune. have i ever mentioned i hate Hyundai the way Absolute Zero is 'a little chilly'? $0.08 in repair costs per mile driven is not cool, Hyundai. not cool.

it bugs me that i have to be to work by 6 am tomorrow. last time i had that shift i was so out of it driving to work that i missed the road to my work by 50 yards and took a right turn directly into the grass. energy drinks only help so much. i'm nervous enough that there are so many deer and wild hogs on the road at that time of day that i typically drive slow to let someone pass me, and then just follow them down the highway. much easier to follow taillights than watch for animals in the road with a bad front left headlight. don't buy a Hyundai, by the way--that's another thing that bugs me.

for me, the MLB average 3rd basemen hasn't played much into it because it hasn't been a matter of having alternatives at the position. that Gamel is at AAA and not on the bench says his destiny is at the other side of the diamond. beyond him, there isn't much in terms of Minor League players of FAs. i'm not expecting McGehee to be a world-beater or anything, and i'm happy enough to have a competent player at that position instead of it being a black hole in our lineup. although with Lucroy's recent rise up the batting order, i wonder if he and McGehee might end up switching batting orders in the near future. although i guess i don't see that happening because of their power abilities.

definitely appreciate the tip. i tried that and then it struck me that the Internet being the Internet, there's really no reason i should be having to tinker with a program (especially with my basic computer knowledge) when i could just pick up something else. Opera is immediately faster and Firefox has now been uninstalled.

i missed having a fish tank and just bought one even though i shouldn't be spending the money. the 50 gal. one was the same price as the 20 gal. one, so i got that. man it's massive. it's also amazing what a very pretty girl can get a man to spend and she wasn't even trying to upsell me anything.

i have whatever the latest Firefox version is and have been using Firefox primarily because that's what i'm used to using. but it's been so incredibly slow that i think i'll soon be switching to Opera or Chrome because i'm tired of waiting forever for pages to load. a page on another tab still hasn't loaded and i've already typed this and read the previous comments. frustrating.

yeah, House has a hard time keeping my attention through an hour because every episode follows that exact same formula. must be easy to write for that show since you only have to look up whatever disease and work your way backward. insert harmful diagnosis here and there and have House do something crazy. and now the storylines to the assistant doctors are getting pretty out there that i'm losing interest in their lives. although i like the addition of that Intern doctor not just because she's fun to look at, but because the show needed a voice for morality and sanity. "Your leg pain is a symbol for the pain in your life, House!" ugh. it's like we've circled back to Season 2 already. House doing surgery on his own leg might have been the Jump the Shark moment for me. one tv show i've seen a few times and absolutely love is "The Wild Within" on the Travel Channel. it's a hunting show, but the guy talks a lot about respect for the animal and the joys of being outdoors with friends. i'm not even much of a hunter, but really like the way he narrates the show and it's a pleasure to watch. of course my absolute favourite show is The Woodwright's Shop on PBS. i have zero skill for woodworking and don't even care for it that much, but he'll spend entire episodes telling stories. he spent one episode on the philosophical importance of sharpening your tools, which was brilliant. the guy is also the Master Woodworker at Colonial Williamsburg, and it's fun to watch how me makes beautiful furniture without the $400,000 or so of tools that someone like Norm Abrams has.

yeah, the cartoon jokes have gotten a bit recycled. is the Cleveland Show even still on? Seth McFarlane must have a ton of pull at Fox because that show is downright miserable. South Park i'll watch mostly out of boredom, but it's been terrible for a long time. i read an interview from one of the writers who basically said he was sick and tired of the show and hated doing it, but they're contractually obligated to keep it going to 2013. i think he called it an "anchor around his neck." i think the only drama i watch on tv is House, but i've found i can watch the first five minutes and then the last five and not miss anything but the "she's getting sicker" part of the show.

awesome, thanks. i've been using my weight higher up on the line, and one of my bigger questions was just where to tie it. i was actually thinking of rigging it above the jig so that the bait would have a little more play and seem more lifelike. the weight lower on the jig and either i'll be obscuring one of the hooks, or maybe i'll just use one hook. one of the poles i have i bought from a pawn shop and it had line on it already. i've seen 20# line before, and this looks to be about 10#, so i'll stick with that. i've read a lot that heavier line can diminish the play of the bait in the water, so i'll keep using lighter line. anything bigger and i guess i'll just spend more time tiring it out, which is fine. i'm not really sure what spoons are, though. any particular reason for circle hooks instead of any other? i was told from a fisherman out there that it doesn't really matter whether you just leave the bait in one spot in the water or slowly reel it back in along the bottom. is that right? the artificial lure i have (a shrimp) got absolutely no play, and i have some artificial minnows i just haven't used yet. nothing has worked as well as dead shrimp. and those are very cheap around here, so that's easy to get. i've debated trying out live minnow bait, but that's expensive bait considering how quickly i go through it, plus i'd then have to go out and buy one of those live-bait buckets and that seems a little much for my skillset.

the opening Family Guy joke about "the interns wrote this" and basically "we want the money but we didn't try on this one" wasn't that funny in itself, but why should i keep bothering to make an effort and watch when they aren't trying, either? i think the last season and a half of that show has been utterly miserable. i remember when they did the episode about Stewie finally killing Lois, and they finished the episode with the whole thing being a dream. they knew it was a copout, so they made a joke about it. i was mostly annoyed. i guess meta humour doesn't work for me. i know the Simpsons finale phoned it in, too, but at least that's expected of them. Logan, the first few episodes of Bob's Burgers i thought were somewhat shaky, but it's been better. it started to hit its stride with "Art Crawl," so if you've seen that one and still don't like the show, then you're probably not ever going to. me, i love the lines from the rabbit-eared daughter and the boy.

record companies thought music sales were going to die with the advent of radio--sales increased. then they thought it was going to die when the cassette recorder came out--sales increased. now, pirating music is common, and we're supposed to believe that we're hurting music sales?? pirating is something that's not going to go away. ban channelsurfing or napster or whatever, and another site will show up just as quickly. but instead of just living with it and strategizing for it, record companies are insisting that people basically don't use the internet anymore. it wasn't all that long ago that an album was $10/12. often i would buy one from a band i'd never heard of--the price was cheap enough to fail on a few purchases. there's no way i'm spending $20+ for a band's album when i don't already know that i'll like it. i've discovered a ton of new bands through pirating that i otherwise wouldn't know existed. the best strategy i can think of for dealing with the horrible horrible internet is to accept that sales are going to fall, but use free downloads as a way to advertise. maybe fewer people will buy albums (through the company's own sharing site), but a heck of a lot more people will discover a new band and then will pay to go to a show. plus, the record companies controlling their own sharing site will make a ton through advertising and email advertising to members. i wouldn't drive two hours to go to a show of an unknown band, but i probably would if i could hear their music and could be emailed when they're coming to town. pirating is the 500-lb gorilla that record companies are still just yelling at to make it go away. the morality of illegal downloading is irrelevant because it's going to keep happening. companies should find a way to work with it instead of just whining.

without Hart and Greinke to start the year, maybe the Brewers have won a few games more than they otherwise would have under a different manager, and that's what counts the most. playing Koskie so much is really the only negative thing i have against him. generally i like the job he's been doing.

i hope this isn't getting too off-topic, but maybe this is a good place to post an "I live here, come visit me" comment. i live in Victoria, Texas. of course summer is a rough time here to have a vacation, but i'd definitely enjoy talking to some Brewers fans if they happened to be down here.