Samurai Bucky

A bunch of errors and timely base hits. I know a bunch of the kids that play for Pewaukee who didn't necessarily play on the football team nor the basketball team. I felt bad for them. I don't know if it would make sense to "write a letter" to the Milwaukee stations (I'm turning into my parents). At least, put some of the highlights on line. Eau Claire does a nice job with a daily online sports segment where they show different sports. Very, very disappointing.

I will preface this rant with the following statement: my son played in the state baseball tournament this week. His school is within the broadcast area of the Milwaukee market and is not Pewaukee. He is a senior. I thought I would record the 10:00PM news on YouTube TV for all four stations. I got to Fox 6 too late, I guess, because I am told that they were the only ones that had any coverage of the baseball tournament apart from a story about Pewaukee. Mind you, the Pewaukee story was a good one and should have gotten coverage. The other news stations had nothing. No scores or stories about Menomonee Falls, Kenosha St. Joseph's, Westosha Central, or Greendale. Both Menomonee Falls and Greendale won their first round games on Tuesday and the latter won in a dramatic comeback. There were reporters from Eau Claire, Madison area, and Green Bay, but nothing from Milwaukee. The was one crew, it appeared, to cover Pewaukee's semi-final game which makes sense. So, is it me, or does spring coverage of high school sports generally stink unless your school is named Whitefish Bay or Franklin? How did things go with the Track and Field state tournament. I certainly saw a lot of coverage on the State Golf Tournament at Blackwolf run. But no baseball? Let's go... Are the Milwaukee stations cutting their budget that much? Lance Allen hasn't been seen in studio at 10:00 for quite a while. I also noticed last night that some stations had little or no coverage about the State Soccer tournament that is happening in their own back yard. Sad.

Funny... nor not so funny coincidence. I was prompted yesterday to update my Dell Precision Mobile Workstation to an "urgent" BIOS update. I applied it (along with five other urgent updates), and then my computer started dogging. I thought it was my port replicator (docking station) drivers, video drivers, etc. I ended up downgrading to the previous version of my BIOS and it worked like a champ again. I could tell that something was causing the processor to hiccup on multiprocessing just based on the behavior. Of course, the OS told me everything was fine. I had seen in the Dell forums and others that the BIOS could be directly responsible for power management issues. Most said replacing the battery on older laptops did the trick. The OS will only report / control what the hardware tells it through the drivers. If the hardware is misconfigured, then that is a rabbit hole I don't wish on anybody.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I also thought that his performance this year is exceptional and have been curious why, for the past few years, there was a desire to trade him. Today, I understand the merit of the argument -- is he really worth a big chunk of change? If the Brewers are in the hunt for a World Series, I don't see how they can trade him because he is too valuable. To bring this back to the main topic (a rabbit hole I, admittingly, went down), I think Attanasio goes as Stearns goes.

I think the long-term signing of Yelich embraced a bit of the Milwaukee culture. We yearn to have a player stick around because "Milwaukee is home." Yount, Braun, Yelich, Antetokounmpo, Rogers, Favre are examples of this. Another thing that is interesting is how their marketing department comes up with so many different deals to get people to come to the games. I don't mean the special giveaways, but I'm thinking of the $9.99 field level ticket promotion as an example. I saw a story that in Oakland, they are averaging under 8,000 per game Link here. The Brewers are averaging over 28K. Yes, the Brewers have a good team, but there are affordable options to come out to a game. People have been calling for Hader to be traded for years. I'm not sure how having a 0.00 ERA produces a WAR of only 1.4, but I guess that means that any arm can step in and be just as effective. The .600 WHIP is suspect too... let's go Hader... be better! All I know is the Brewers have been competitive for a while now -- something I don't want to take for granted. In Stearns I trust.

My business partner uses GoogleFi and swears by it. I don't have any practical knowledge about it. He did say that some business-level applications (i.e. Teams or WebEx) doesn't perform well on the mobile device. That's about it.

This probably goes without saying... People doing stupid things in downtown Milwaukee that screwed up something that made downtown Milwaukee fun. Yup... that bugs me.

Here is a Tweet that gets into some more depth. Offensive rebounds were huge...

I didn't get a chance to watch the entire game, but it seemed like, for the first time in three games, the Bucks weren't as tired in the fourth quarter. Shout out to @rickh150 for pointing out that Bobby P should be in for the fourth quarter. ? His hustle and effort helped will the Bucks to a victory. Of course, his inadvertent pick of Wesley Matthews on the last play of the game really didn't matter. In the small amount I saw, it seemed like they had focused on not allowing Al Horford to be wide open. It seems like they were switching differently... I'm not sure. Horford's FG stats for the last couple of games: Game 5 -- Wednesday: 4/7 FG, 0/2 3PT Game 4 -- Monday: 11/14 FG, 5/7 3PT Game 3 -- Saturday: 9/17 FG, 4/7 3PT It also seemed like they weren't chasing quite as much on defense. That might be why they were a little fresher in the 4th.

We moved some of our cash into I-Bonds recently. I think it is a good option, too.

Well, last night was the first ever playoff game I attended. I'll fall on the sword and say the reason they lost was because I was there. ? There are a lot of things you see when you are there live as opposed to watching it on TV. Hopefully I can share what I saw from section 221. The experience was fun. It is loud during the game and also during timeouts. It isn't annoyingly loud like it is a US Bank Stadium watching a Vikings game. The bass on the music is awesome. They do a good job of showing people in the stands. It was very cool. The synonym for the Boston Celtics is the word "thugs". I heard last night on some recorded Celtic postgame shows that Giannis is getting what he deserves: "Bullies will get bullied." I didn't see him bowling ball multiple people like some of the Celtics did. #7, when going around a screen without the ball frequently would run into a Bucks defender with the shoulder down, but not down enough to draw a call. It wasn't just once, and it wasn't just him. At every timeout or free throw until the fourth quarter, there was a Celtics player or coach in the ear of a ref. Every.... single... time. That was often preceded by the obligatory "hands in the air out of disgust" move which the Celtics have perfected. The Celtics plan was very simple -- beat the crap out of Giannis and anybody else that got in their way. Like I mentioned above -- if Giannis is the bully, then the Celtics are thugs. Plain and simple. It was a very, very physical game. IMHO, Horford smacking Giannis in the face after the slam was worth more than a simple technical. Connauton and Lopez were also recipients of the thuggery. That leads into why the Bucks, for the second game in a row, folded in the fourth quarter. They are tired. Not only were they in the octagon, but they worked hard on defense. Why was Horford open so much in the corner? Because the Bucks kept rotating and after the third or fourth pass, somebody was open -- usually Horford. However, their game plan seemed to be to have Giannis and Jrue score all of the points. There were some times where Giannis would be at the top of the key or close to the free throw line and somebody like Connauton would be WIDE OPEN on the block. No pass. Also, the Bucks seemed to go into prevent mode again. This happened frequently throughout the game. In the fourth, I think they were just gassed so much that they, I hate to say it, quit. Ref #68 didn't help out either. The Bucks need to get more people involved. They need to limit the minutes of Giannis if possible because if they don't, the beating he takes during the game will affect him in the fourth quarter again. The Celtics will continue to be the bullies with no consequence. Perhaps some Senzu Beans will help the Bucks.

I cannot remember which ESPN talking head said it, but the Celtics' plan is to basically "Get in front of Giannis and flop." It seemed like in game two, they were standing their ground more than flopping. That kept him out of the paint a lot more and had a "subpar Giannis game" in game 2.

If you hit the little "eye" icon in the editor... I want to get out and see it ASAP!!!!!

The Bucks were slow getting back on defense in the fourth quarter. Also, Brook Lopez was in foul trouble basically from the opening tipoff. He is a big defensive presence and his absence allowed the Celtics to drive and either get easy layups or fouls. Every time Tatum has the ball, he pushes off with his off hand almost every time. That was clearly evident when he pushed over Matthews at the end of the first half and Allen in game 2. Giannis willed this team to a win. I think he played 39 or 40 minutes. He looked completely gassed at the end. It will be interesting to see how the game is called tonight.

Field hockey and Gymnastics might be possibilities.

Might a baseball team be in the future for the Badgers?

Ok... it was too negative. You got me. ☹️ I hope he does turn it around. I'm sure he will.

I don't know if that is the case. Squaring up the ball helps increase Exit Velocity (EV), but the core of EV is fast bat speed. I would almost argue that trying to swing the bat hard is causing the decrease in contact percentage. How would Tony Gwynn do Today? Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, and others would probably not be as good if they swung harder to try and increase EV.

That fits with the rest of the offense.

That might be the first time I have ever seen a Physical Demands section for a Developer position.

I finally saw The Batman. Certainly different from other Batman movies. Some thoughts: Bruce Wayne looked like a Japanese Anime version A lot of the same chord progressions and music as John Williams in Star Wars movies When I heard Jim Gordon, I could not stop from seeing "The Watcher"

Wait, what? An emoji of a pregnant man? I thought "Junior" was not supposed to be prophetic.

Do you think they are focusing too much on the more exotic menu items at the expense of the quality of basic items?

Instead of the last 10 games, let's take a look at the last few seasons. I'll go simple and use AVG, OPS and strikeouts and compare the ranks in MLB: 2016: OPS .729(Ranked 18); AVG .244 (Ranked 27); Strikeouts 1543 (Ranked Last) (No playoffs) 2017: OPS .751 (Ranked 15); AVG .249 (Ranked 21) Strikeouts 1571 (Ranked Last) (No playoffs) 2018: OPS .747(9); AVG .252 (12); Strikeouts: 1458 (24th) (Lost NLCS) 2019: OPS .767(12); AVG .246 (20); Strikeouts: 1563 (26th) (Lost NLWC) 2020: OPS .702(24); AVG .223(26); Strikeouts: 582 (29th) -- only 60 games (Lost NLWC) 2021: OPS .713(20); AVG .233(27); Strikeouts: 1465 (23rd) (Lost NLDS) 2022 through 11 games: OPS .633(23); AVG .213(24); strikeouts: 92 (20th -- but it is apples and oranges due to the number of games) -- for reference, the Diamondbacks are at .548 and .152 as a team My point of bringing this up? Offense has not been the focal point of the organization. Pitching is where the bread gets buttered. However, that coupled with good hitting produced the best run the team has had in a long time. Is it a lack of talent? Is it an approach to hitting? I remember reading an article about Kolten Wong where he said he enjoyed "swinging hard" on two strikes instead of working towards making contact. I have always been an advocate for trying to get the ball in play with two strikes. From history, that is not the philosophy of the Brewers. I believe that if they cut down on the K's, and I think things will be better. Again, either they don't make contact with two strikes a focal point, or we don't have good talent.