zurch1818

Former Brewer farmhand Bowden Francis @CHC goes 7.0 IP/7 K/0 BB/3 H/0 ER. If you don't remember, he was traded along with RP Trevor Richards for 1B/(turned RP in his playoff clinching last Brewer appearance) Rowdy Tellez. Least importantly to everyone but me, his 33 point waiver wire pickup performance against the Cubs dropped my fantasy magic number from 3 to 1 with 2 matchups to go.

Didn't the Rays in 2023 lose Shane McClanahan, Jeffrey Springs, Drew Rasmussen, and Shane Baz last year? They at least had oft injured Tyler Glasnow for a career high 120 innings last year though.

It's not really related to the contract, but I'm curious if anyone has any insight on why his statcast framing last year was in the 93rd percentile and now it is in the 2nd percentile? It's like when I golf and I birdie and then my round goes to hell when I three-putt double the next hole. After that fine display, it seems like it takes a few holes for me to get a par again. I guess that's why I can't routinely break 80.

Yea...when I was tinkering with the test, it seems the score doesn't differentiate between strongly and slightly and only looked at the agree/disagree part. It seems it would have been better to have a neutral category that counted as a half point. Still, for me, it wasn't every question that was borderline. So the odds of it changing the result by 10 isn't that likely. Regardless, having traits doesn't really necessarily mean you are necessarily autistic. The severity also needs to be looked at (which seems a lot more intense to get an actual diagnosis). My wife also took the test and she scored 23. I was hoping she scored the same as me (or higher) just for the irony. It will be interesting though as we are going to just accept the results and we are going to modify how we communicate with each other.

After watching a Dave Plummer YouTube video (former Microsoft employee and the creator of the task manager) where he talks about his recent diagnosis with autism in his early 50's, I wondered if I also have autism as I strongly related to his story. I took the same test as he did (LINK). I scored 40 out of 50...the exact same score as him. Then I took the test with my wife checking over to make sure I was being truthful and my score went up...41. In pure twilight zone fashion, he did the exact same thing and his score also went up...42. From what I found online "A total score of 29 or more is indicative of clinically significant autism traits (Broadbent, et al., 2013). Using the cut-off score of 29 has a false positive rate of 1%." I'm 37 and have never even thought it to be possible. I'm nothing like Sheldon Cooper. It anecdotally explains so much about me if I do indeed have it. Professionally speaking, it hasn't held me back one bit. In fact, it may be why I'm good at my what I do and why I'm the leader of our team of 6. It's so much for me to process at this time. Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

According to Zillow, our house has gone up in value by $230k since we purchased it in 2018. However, accessing this equity is not as easy as going to the bank and making a withdrawal. I'd have to either go back into debt and get another mortgage (HELOC) or sell it. Either of these options are not great. One comes with a hefty house payment (which it's really nice not having one now) and the other is something we have no interest in doing as we have a 3 yr old and twins that just turned 1. For us, it's a much better decision to save money and cash flow major expenses (essential net profit) from our income. I'm guessing that's where the Brewers make their decisions too. The other thing to consider is that valuation assumes someone is willing to pay that. Given that price, there aren't that many buyers. I'd love to purchase them, but our net worth is 0.15% of 800 million. Plus I'm in a partnership with my wife and I routinely get outvoted 1 to 1. Speaking of partnerships, the Brewers are also one. Attanasio is just the majority shareholder. I don't know what percent of the team is actually owned by him.

As everyone is pretty much aware, the android and roku app is complete garbage. If you don't need to cast and want to watch on your phone, I've found watching the game on the Brave browser in desktop mode to be actually pretty decent (It actually won't let you stream on the mobile website). The text on my phone when I make it full screen is cut off a little bit (just can't see the score), but is is very manageable. I've found you can go into settings in the lower right hand corner and even put it in "picture in picture" mode too. Just make sure if you want to browse in picture in picture mode to not close the Bally Sports app.

Those watermelons are bullpen pieces.

Thanks for the suggestion, Homer. After hearing your advice, I messaged the hospital the following day and they got back to me a few hours later. I had a good conversation with their representative. I didn't get an explanation of why it exactly happened but he did say he was going to bring my complaint up in their next staff meeting and he was deeply sorry about it. It would have been nice to have the doctor personally message me instead of the rep who always has to wear that hat. I just hope my complaint helped save someone from getting addicted. Opioids are not something to mess around with (unless they are absolutely necessary).

Didn't the S&P go up by 24% in 2023? I know a lot of my growth mutual funds are up by more than this percentage but I don't really care enough right now to look at the exact numbers. Maybe you started investing later in the year? Or maybe you beat the market by 10.55%? I'm just trying to understand.

Hospitals pushing opioids on me today. On the 23rd, I burned myself pretty badly. The story is right up there with Matt Wise's salad tongs and Lucroy's suitcase (not important unless someone is dying to know the story...I can even post some pictures in a spoiler if you really want to see it). Anyway, I did some telehealth visits given the holiday timing and I got a doctor's recommendation and prescription ointment to put on the burns. That 24/7 urgent care anywhere system I'm actually very happy with. Anyway, it's now about 5 days since it happened and I figured I would get it looked at by the UW just to make sure everything is healing as it should and to check one spot I wasn't sure if it was second degree or third degree. I went into urgent care and they referred me to the burn team with the ER (which I was fine with). At the ER, the general ER doc and also the burn doc just kept pushing opioids at me for pain...even after I said my pain was a 0 when stationary and 1 to 3 when I bent the wrong way or had to reach to tie my shoe. It even got to the point where I finally agreed to take ibuprofen and Tylenol (first meds I've taken for pain) since they were going to clean the wounds with soap and water. After my consult with the burn doc, a nurse stopped by with medication. She scanned my bracelet, it showed up as being rejected, and she was very confused. She then came back with ibuprofen and Tylenol. It was oxycodone in the first order...not what I was expecting or agreed to. She said they cancelled the order after she picked it up. Why was that order even put in when I said I didn't want it? Is that just standard protocol for burns? When getting discharged, the ER doc gave me a prescription for oxycodone and the overdose spray that I will not pick up. I'm happy with the care I got but I don't know what I would have done to get home and left our only vehicle at the ER given today's weather.

Yes. In all seriousness, I had to look back at the '05-'06 team (my freshman year of college at UW). I completely forgot that the Bradley Center hosted the championship. I also went down the line of players...Elliott, Pavelski, Earl, Skille (very hyped for what his career was), Street, Dowell, Gilbert, among others. I also saw Ryan Jeffrey, whose wallet I found on the street. My roommate went to HS with him, so it was easy to return. I believe he called him with his brand new RAZR phone. Wow, am I starting to sound like my dad reminiscing about an old sports team.

YouTube's algorithm wanted me to watch this on the history of the first NHL season, so I did...and there weren't 6 teams, which got me very confused. Additionally, there were teams I've never heard of in the original league. Then I found this Kieth Olberman video to drive the point home. He's pretty entertaining. Disclaimer...the one thing it seems he didn't get quite right is the original team in Toronto was technically the Arenas, but the media dubbed them the Torontos.

I agree with this. There's always the jump shot free throw to help the mental aspect.

It's a male first name...just like Bill, Michael, etc. That's why it's so odd that there is a concentration of them on our cul de sac...because Randy isn't really that common of a name. My son might just think it is a male neighbor because they are all around us.

Very interesting reading on starter houses. Thanks for posting. One other anecdote to add (at least in the Madison area), a lot of the new houses are not starter-sized...but are built on starter-sized lots. You can basically jump into your neighbor's house from your house without touching the ground. Or better yet, as my dad says, you can see when your neighbor needs another beer. Don't get me started on current housing trend (putting white trim around everything to make it stand out). However when every house in a new neighborhood is a spec house stacked on top of each other, it overwhelms my brain with busyness. There isn't even room for trees. I bet the spec home market is not doing great right now with interest rates as high as they are. We struggled to find a house in our price range that was at least a half acre in size until we started looking for slightly older homes (ours was built in '94). It was remodeled to feel newer than it really is. However, it is nice having mature trees around us and neighbors not stacked on top of one another. We also live on a cul-de-sac without really any neighbors in our back yard, so my neighbor can't see my beer level. The only problem is we are the only house in our cul-de-sac that hasn't taken a tree out in our front yard. It's like we missed a memo. Complete side note, 3 of the 6 houses on the cul-de-sac are Randys (including both of my next door neighbors). I believe my son thinks a Randy is a male neighbor.

Good point. Here are the average 30 year mortgage rates over the last 50+ years. Interest rates are still historically pretty low...just way higher than what we are used to. I know there is a housing shortage...but I wish I understood why. Boomers should already have their houses and I don't believe the US population is exponentially growing at this time. Is it just families want bigger houses?

We actually just had the same thing happen to us. It wasn't the previous owners...but the one's before them, so 2005 at the latest. I ended up Googling them to see if I could find them, which it seems they were nearby. Then I used public property tax records to nearly confirm it, only 15 minutes away. I wrote the address on the envelope and put it back in the mailbox, as I didn't want to drive a half hour. Though it would have been interesting to just personally deliver the letter. The one thing I noticed in our public record is our house sold for twice within a year? And the second time was for about $30k. Can anyone with a real estate background provide a possible explanation? See below:

Amen. It sucks being up when you should be sleeping. I've been a zombie at work for longer than I can remember. Twin report: They have been sleeping 2 to 4 hours at a time for the last month in a half. It's crazy that when one of them is just crying uncontrollably, the other will just sleep right through it. It's also interesting that for them being identical, one of them is the one that gets up 75% of the time. The icing, I think their crying partially wakes our 2.5 year old to a point where he gets up 45 minutes after they are fed and get back asleep. My son will come into the twin's room (the room I'm sleeping in) and just starts talking because he "needs something" (but he doesn't know what when I ask him what) or is crying because he's terrified of thunder. Sometimes he will wake the babies and start the whole cycle over. We are working on whispering and staying in bed, but it's a long game. Having twins is difficult but barely doable. I don't know how people survive with 3+ babies.

None taken. You guys are simply more willing to be risky than me. I will say, if you get enough proceeds to pay off your primary residence in this sale, I'd recommend it. It's so nice from a cash flow perspective that a significant portion of my income isn't already spent. However, I'm guessing you will have a hefty tax bill doing so. LINK

Well it was only 400k in 2018 when we bought it. The Waunakee housing market is going bananas right now. Covid was the one time in recent history that it grew like the stock market. There is also a supply problem...especially when the interest rates were so low. I also saved money like crazy person from age 24 to 31. I lived super cheaply and when I got raises, I just saved more towards a house. I wasn't as aggressive with investing for retirement at that time. I bet it doesn't surprise you that I struggle to spend money and I get paralyzed doing it. Looking back, 2/22/22 was the payoff date and I'd do it all over again.

That sounds like a NPV question from my college days. The numbers don't seem that different from each other. Knowing the property will go up in value in 3 years...and not knowing what the rental cash flow is like makes it hard to answer. My guy says take the cash and run. Now if it were 50% more at year 3, that might change my opinion.

There's a risk factor that I just don't have to deal with. That's why I paid it off early. Now if I don't have a tenant or I lose my job, I don't have to worry about losing my house. Now my $1500 mortgage payment gave me an $18000 (since I was already paying taxes on it). I also don't have be a landlord to get this extra income and I don't have to pay interest (which I'm still not really seeing in your math). I'm not denying that I couldn't have made more money, but to take 3 steps forward and take 2 steps backwards on payments just wasn't worth the risk to me. It's not life changing money. Let me do the math. My roughly average 100k mortgage balance (round numbers average over the years) lost out on net 6% of gain over the time period (market rate - interest rate). That's 6k for 3.5 years...so about 20k. That's not life changing money. I just don't believe that borrowing huge amounts amounts of money is required to be wealthy...it's your income from your job that has a much larger ROI. I had money invested in a brokerage account until it was time to buy. I lived super cheaply and saved just about every bonus I got. Sure I was paying property taxes baked in, but I didn't pay a mortgage on top of it, so may rent payment was half of my mortgage + taxes. Renting long-term is not smart because the cost goes. A mortgage will lock in your price until you pay it off. I put 70% down which made paying it off quickly easier. Also, every year since buying my house, I've maxed out my Roth IRA, my wife's Roth IRA, and my Roth 401k before making extra payments...so I didn't completely lose out on investing. I'm 36 with a paid for house. Sure the house is half my net worth, but my investments should significantly outpace it in 10 years.

I had Phil Niekro for the Braves gold glove combo yesterday. Had to get a Milwaukee Braves reference in there. I'm waiting for the Cardinals Braves combo to put in Uecker. I wonder if he would count as a HOFer in immaculate grid?

Pixel phones have a built-in phone screening assistant for this. It detects if it is possible spam and if the assistant is not sure, Google will answer and give a transcript of what they are saying and also give you options of things to ask. I think Google's engineers did a fantastic job at creating this feature. It's also not a new feature as I've had it since 2018 (when I got my first Pixel phone).