MJLiverock

Rain fade and signal strength are a function of how well the dish is aimed, secured, and free from obstacles. This is why some people say they lose the signal all the time vs. others who rarely ever have issues. My dad had a problem during windy rainstorms, figured out a tree branch occasionally blew in front of his dish when the wind was strong enough and coming from the right direction, explaining why his raid fade seemed to easily occur at times and not at all in some major deluges. Most of my friends and family that have ever had signal problems have been pretty easy to fix once they realized the dish was loose, aimed slightly off or cleared some obstruction. I've had DirecTV for over 10 years including HD almost since day 1 when there were only 5 HD channels, and have rarely experienced any sort of rain fade and on the rare occurrence it has usually only last for a minute or two. Overall I'd say maybe once or twice a year my signal is completely out for a few moments and I watch a lot of TV and record probably 40 hours of programming a week. My dish is mounted very securely with zero obstructions to the sky on the backside of my roof. My signals read 99% most of the time so even in severe wind and storms they only drop into the mid to upper 60's which doesn't induce rain fade. Very heavy sticky snow has been needed to clean off a few times. I haven't had Charter for since about 2000 but I remember losing cable during a few storms then but then also for days when someone dug in the wrong spot, another time for days when a car accident took out some equipment in near my old apartment. The biggest draws for me and DirecTV have been their channel selection (quickly passed all the others in HD and they target sports fans so they have always been a leader in adding things like MLB Network, B10, etc. on top of the added channels for Golf and Tennis events and season pass subscriptions.) They have also had much less channel dropping over rates than DishNetwork. Versus was gone for awhile but I had to agree with DTV that NHL Hockey wasn't going to get paid like ESPN. They resolved FX before dropping the channel and I think WGN might have been off for a while as well but I never watched WGN so I didn't notice. Dish has had many spats and channel fights not to mention just have a lower overall channel selection unless you get their top package. Their equipment has been better by far than anything Charter has ever offered and better than Dish Networks as well (although I haven't looked at Hopper). I was able to add on external Hard Drive's years ago with a simple cable to expand my recording capacity well beyond the typical 30 hrs. of HD space that was the standard years ago. (I bought 2 1TB hard drives so I never had to worry about running out of space and could just let whole seasons build up to watch over the summer or in marathons) They also moved to MPEG-4 encoding rather quicky. The whole home DVR is loved by my wife, who likes to watch TV in bed and can now watch content from any of the 4 DVR's in our house. I had very good experience with their customer service, much better than anything I ever had with Charter. They've replaced a couple of DVR's that had hard drive failures for free, my bill is always correct, they've given me some freebies now and then. I also don't have unrealistic expectations like getting free channels whenever I ask, complain to them when something like my remote doesn't work or a cable is loose, etc. I'll iterate again the key is making sure the dish is aimed to get the strongest possible signal, is secured tightly so it doesn't move and lose it, and is free from obstacles. If you do all this it doesn't matter much if at all about the type of receiver or dish and you shouldn't have much issue with signal loss. Don't let the installer leave if you think the signal is not as good as you can get, i.e. the installer dials it in to 65% on a nice clear day and calls it good enough, or the dish isn't secured as tight as it should be. The installers are usually independent contractors hired by DirecTV and paid by the type and number of jobs they do so they can get in a hurry but DirecTV started taking complaints pretty seriously after a lot of complaints surfaced during the boom of subscriber growth when HD really took off in 05 or so.

I doubt the lending agency and by extension the credit collection agency will care what she believes or that she doesn't want to take the hit or the blame for the non payment if her name is on the loan and she signed it. The collection agency most likely can't get her name off of the loan as only the lending agency or owner of the note could do that. Most times the collection agency does not take ownership of the note, they just work on getting a percentage of a recovered amount and can't change the note by dropping a person from it. The lending agency may be convinced to remove her name from the note in exchange for payment, they will likely ask for all the money owed, as that is their legal amount owed if she signed on as a borrower and the note doesn't specifically state a limit to her obligation. (Sometimes people will sign on what is called a limited personal guarantee stating their max obligation in multiple borrower scenarios) Typically though most joint consumer credit is the amount is owed by all or just one, whomever the lender can get to pay. The lender would expect any dispute between co borrowers to be settled between them, i.e. she can take her ex boyfriend to court over the amount and make her case there but as far as the lender is concerned she is liable for the full amount just as much as he is. Anytime you sign on as a joint borrower you are responsible for the full amount of the loan. The lender doesn't care if and the co borrower have an arrangement of 75/25, or 50/50 or 100/0 or who is supposed to set up insurance, in their eyes it is each persons responsibility. This is why you never, never, jointly borrow money or sign a lease unless you can be sure the other borrower is good for the money, or you don't mind paying the whole thing yourself or you have written limits on how much of the total you are responsible for. I worked as a business credit officer and risk manager for bank for a few years right out of college and lost track of how many times I heard stories like this. Parents co signing for kids loans and then being shocked when the bank told them they were just as responsible for the whole amount as their kid. Boyfriends/girlfriends were always the same, one just thought they would only be called for half the money rather the whole thing for cars, boats, motorcycles, homes, furniture, etc. The key will be working with the note holder and not the collection agency to get her name off the debt. I know that when I was reviewing stuff like this for the bank I wouldn't let her name off the note unless she paid a substantial amount of the money or got the ex to also agree to kick in enough to just retire the whole thing rather than just drop one off the note. Also remember any amount of debt that is forgiven for her may also need to be claimed on her income taxes as a forgiven debt and may increase her tax bill a bit. Check with an accountant or research it further at tax time next year.

How is it a strawman? There have been plenty of complaints about Weeks and how RR needed to get him out of the top spot, move him down, even bench him.

So the small sample of Cody Ransom's career is significant? A whopping .313 vs. .293 OBP really isn't going to make me think someone is an idiot for batting a guy leadoff in a game. Based on just using the career stats Weeks should never have been moved out of the lead off spot since he has the best OBP of anyone not named Braun. But then then RR would be an idiot for batting Weeks lead off according to the people who hate RR because he has been awful this year. Guys like Green, Aoki, haven't had any results that make one pencil them in at the top automatically. Yet RR is an idiot for not putting Taylor Green and his career .296 OBP in at the top of the order. When the lineup choices are all bad I'm not going to get too worked up about batting player X with a poor OBP or AVG in spot A over player Z with a equally bad statistical line. .310, 293, .320 are all bad at getting on base. But no matter what RR does a certain contingent complain and insinuate that the worst mistake in managing has been made. I seen RR called an idiot playing Ransom (RH) rather than Green (LH) vs. a LH pitcher, not playing Morgan over Gomez vs. RH, not playing Gomez over Morgan vs. a RH, etc. Rants and what I think of as stupid nicknames over trivial and quite meaningless moves in the batting order get tiresome to read. I believe in the large samples and that over a course of a season things even out to abilities but you could roll Connie Mack, LaRussa, Weaver, Herzog, and Harvey Kuehn into one manager and not cause better results with this team. The pitching and hitting have been atrocious and putting one weak hitter in a spot over another really isn't the problem.

Morgan has been terrible this year and has been bad against Dempster. I'm not going to get to worked up or come up with silly nicknames over starting a guy who is an elite defender in what one would think would be a low scoring pitcher's duel.

Look at that lineup and who is supposed to bat lead off or 2nd? Most of the team can't hit their way out of of a wet paper bag, everyone can't bat 8th.

And Aoki disappoints again. At least Gomez got on, given the guys on this team finding a lead off hitter isn't easy because then the complaints will focus on the 4 th spot or 2nd spot or wherever since the OBP's for anyone outside of Braun really aren't impressive.

Berkman in 2nd shows how many Cardinal fans are voting. Does Berkman even have 50 plate appearances? I imagine many of them are withholding the vote for Pujols in the AL side of the ledger but can they actually be voting for Prince?

Were these comments in the ESPN draft conversation thread or live blog whatever the called it? They had virtually these exact comments if not, which seemed a bit worrisome 'til I read the whole blog. They ragged on just about every guy as being nothing special, questionable or back of the rotation stuff at best. I don't follow the scouting of HS and NCAA players very close and really have no informed opinion on anyone other than snippets I catch on here and a few blogs around draft day. It seems to me that outside of just a few of the elite cream of the crop you can find a scouting report or write up that paints a guy as terrible, overrated, or next coming of Pujols. The ESPN live chat seemed pretty negative on almost everyone, including a lot of the guys I saw mentioned for the Brewers to take but didn't or even guys taken ahead of them. I know they called both STL picks as back of the rotation at best. I saw one report that had Gallo as being too big to stick at third and may end up a 1B or Dunnesque OF.

It is good to have a few games against the Reds mixed in there. If the team has any hope of contending they need to translate a good streak beyond just beating the mediocre teams and make up ground on the head to head match ups with the Reds. If they struggle in this stretch and get swept by the Reds they will seriously have to consider becoming sellers.

Haven't teams like the Mariners and A's tried that in recent years and battled for the cellar? You can't win a 0-0 game, you have to score a run to win, you don't have to pitch a shut out to win.

I think the "seeing a lot of pitches" gets a lot more credit than it matters. That was used as the redeeming factor for Jason Kendall's terrible bat. I'd rather a guy hits a good pitch rather than sit and watch them go by just to see more pitches, fall behind in the count and end up whiffing/grounding out on a pitcher's pitch. Out of qualified batters Weeks is 7th in the NL at 4.26 pitches per PA, Hart is 15 at 4.10 Braun 24th at 4.02 and Ramirez 70th at 3.55. Aoki is 4.16, Green is 4.11, Lucroy is 3.7 Gamel is 3.53, Gonzo is 3.53, Gomez is 3.34, Ransom is 4.1. Guys like Lucroy and Aoki seem to get this rap of working the count but Lucroy is actually below the band where most guys are (3.9-4.1 is pretty common). Aoki popped up on a first pitch last night but didn't get the scorn that others face because he is perceived as some great count worker. Looking at the top ten Batting Averages in the NL and only 2 guys had pitches per PA above 4.0, Prado at 4.01 and Votto at 4.27. Five were below 3.5. Most guys in the entire league are in a band of about 0.5 pitches per PA, there just doesn't seem to be any big outlier of guys who work a bunch more pitches than others.

^^^^ this I hate the contact play, especially when the infield is in. The 3rd base coach can clearly see the infield playing in, why can't they take the play off when they see the defense in like that? Unless CarGo is on third and gets a perfect jump and a high hop or something it ends in an out at the plate. If the ball gets through anyone scores easily, if not you still have the runner on third with 1 or 2 outs. If the infield is back and there is already an out and the pitcher is on deck fine go with it, otherwise just call it off when the other team is obviously playing for it.

I'll play Devil's Advocate to your scenario. Kinda hard to blame it on a previous game injury if he never mentioned hurting his hand in any way previously, no one saw anything at all happen to his hand in a game and it would be pretty easy for someone to go back and look at the game and seek out the play the injury happened on. Being on the road he may well have not ridden in a car during the previous night. The team may have ridden in a bus making it hard to have any scenario where a car door was involved. He was in a hotel room and looked around and thought of a possible explanation of what happened, maybe even saw his wife drop a suitcase and it triggered the idea. Finally what public abuse? I doubt the Dodger fans were giving him any grief. No one is calling his house and leaving nasty messages. People just find his story hard to believe, no one thinks he is the worst person in the world for it or is even that concerned from what I can tell other than people being offended on his behalf that most people don't buy his explanation. I liked the guys calling in the radio station saying that based on everything they have seen watching the Brewers they don't believe he would make it up or get that angry. Really? Watching a guy take 4 AB's and catch 120 pitches along with an occasional dug out shot makes people think they really know a guy? None of us really know pro athletes from watching them play or what their temper is or what could make them mad or happy or whatever. How many people knew Tiger Woods was hooking up with anything with a pulse for years? How many people knew all the dark stuff about Walter Payton? Edit: My cousin played a dozen years or more in MLB, I've seen him play many times on TV, a few in person, and I have no idea what would make him mad, if he would make up a story to cover an injury, etc. He is a blood relative and there is entire ocean of things I don't know about his personality because we rarely see each other so I harbor no belief that I really know what goes on in any pro athlete's mind /personality because I watch them play or see some interviews. Next time you are in a hotel bend down and try and retrieve a sock from under the bed. It won't be very far under because the sock isn't going to slide anywhere and hotel beds go all the way to the floor limiting the under space. Notice your face will be right next to the bed where any sliding suitcase would be easily seen or pretty easily seen if your wife is standing right next to you to drop it from maybe a couple inches above your hand (which makes any damage pretty minor) unless for some reason she is carrying it above her head and brings it down like a chair in WWF. And figure out how to position your hand to push in your pinky knuckle from being hit from above. Not to mention getting enough force to break the bone from those positions. I'm not saying it is impossible but I am saying it is improbable.

pebader that is a bit of over exaggeration there. I could take the opposite of your post and say that anyone who believes him is a naive sucker who falls for anything their favorite athlete says. That's about the tone and context of your accusation. Players hide the nature of stupid off the field injuries, it really isn't unusual. Nobody is saying he ran around and trashed his hotel room in a fit of rage.

If you are reaching under a bed for a sock how does the suitcase land on your hand? Wouldn't your hand be under the bed? If you are on your knees and the suitcase is falling toward your plant hand wouldn't you easily either move the hand or "catch" the suitcase with your shoulder? A sock isn't going to slide too far under a bed in a carpeted room that you need to lay flat on the ground to reach it, not to mention nearly every hotel I have been in has a bed frame that goes all the way to the ground so you can't even get anything under it. This story seems pretty fishy, not completely impossible by the laws of physics, but pretty darn unlikely.

I just have a sinking feeling they will use Parra for the start. The way the front office runs the team and seems to almost enjoy hamstringing the team in short runs makes it seam plausible they will hold Parra out of games until Tuesday making already depleted pen worse and overworked, then act surprised that he could only go 3 innings in his start and absolutely crush the pen. Quotes from Melvin will be about how Parra deserved the chance to start and how they didn't want to rush a young guy or so and so isn't ready and Parra has experience starting at the big league level.

Thanks for starting this topic, I was about to start one myself because my wife and I are going to have a night away from the kids in Milwaukee in a few weeks before taking in a Sunday afternoon Brewer game. We can definitely use a night out and it has been awhile since I was out in Milwaukee. I sent the links for Meritage, Jackson Grille, Coquette and Crazy Water off to see which she picks.

But I thought RR was an idiot for keeping Ishikawa and not Conrad when they broke camp?

I have never enjoyed the "listen to me shout" shows on ESPN so I just flat out don't watch any of them. I rarely watch anything on ESPN anymore except a live sporting event and even then it usually has to be one of my teams or a marquee big time match up. Once MLB network started I stopped watching Baseball tonight completely. I watch the NFL Network for draft coverage and breakdown shows, as mentioned ESPN put the great shows like NFL Match Up so late I had to remember to DVR it. College basketball is avoided when Dickie V does the games, he completely ruins the game for me. I don't mind the college football games, the in game announcers are usually decent enough. I never liked Craig James but you don't see him much anymore. College GameDay is fun, sure they have SEC love affair but they at least cover the other big conferences and Mark May keeps the ND love affair from Lou Holtz in check in the after game shows. Really ESPN has become just as topper and dlk9 have said, more E than S in their title, trying to create controversy or spending way to much on opinions and arguing in circles. Think of how much they could do if they just devoted an hour a day to hardcore fans or educating fans on things like in depth stats in baseball, breaking down NFL offenses defenses schemes etc. It might alienate some fans as being too in depth but a lot would find it interesting, some people do like to learn new things, and really can it be any more expensive or hurt ratings when they repeat SportCenter 20x or have multiple "listen to me shout" shows?

4 or 5 games was enough for me. I don't see that he threw the helmet at the ump at all, he turns around and spikes it pretty much straight down or as straight down as you can when spiking something and not hitting your own feet. It hit the ump on a bounce, I doubt he had some sort of thought in that instance of intentionally bouncing it into the ump, I doubt he even really had a rational thought at all in that instance. Both calls were horrible, that third strike was high and outside, probably as much outside as the 2nd called strike. Lawrie over reacted but the ump clearly knew he was calling that pitch a strike no matter where it was. Saying the ump should be excused for calling him a expletive kid because he was caught up in the moment of being hit by a bouncing helmet is no better than excusing Lawrie for jumping and screaming at a terrible call. The umps are supposed to be composed and handle a tantrum, not to mention not letting their personal feeling influence their calling of the game which I think he clearly did when he called that third strike just because he didn't like Lawrie heading to 1st on the bad call on strike 2. I don't think they should reduce Lawrie's suspension either. The should just make him watch his antics on a loop for about 5 minutes without saying a word to him and then just say, appeal denied, and walk out.

Both strike calls were terrible, Lawrie running to first on the first bad call didn't seem bad to me, players toss the bat or start running to first on calls like that all the time. The umps are supposed to be making the calls, not getting in the he showed me up petulance calls so there is no excuse for the even worse called third strike. This goes back to the bad umping thread and umps making themselves part of the game rather than just calling it. That said Lawrie's reaction was way over the top. Guys get called out on bad calls all the time, they may drop their shoulders, mutter something, even disdainfully toss the bat or helmet back toward the on deck circle but not go crazy like that screaming, jumping, over reaction he did, especially in an early season non playoff, non World Series moment. Not to pick on you reillymcshane but I hate it when people compare pro sports with their workplace rules. Nothing is the same in those situations. Elite talent be it athletes, musicians, actors, all have different workplace norms and tolerances than working in an office. I can't throw a stapler at a co worker as hard as I want while spitting tobacco juice or seeds on my office floor, or even put a shaving cream pie in the face of a coworker after an interview either. Nor can order only green M&Ms or demand a fifth of Vodka be placed in my car from the airport so I can get my drink on before performing but these are not unusual requests for elite talented artists either, nor is anyone about to start drug testing actors or musicians, (but then again my office doesn't either but many do). Superstar company founders have different rules as well, I've been in plenty of offices with a bar in them, or dealt with brilliant engineers who blast Metallica in their office much to the annoyance of reception but if you are the rain maker accommodations will be made. In pro sports they are all the rain makers and playing a game does allow for unchecked emotions, fights, swearing, yelling, etc. that aren't going to get a guy fired.

I think attendance is down for the Cubs this season by quite a bit. The reported numbers may still be up there due to brokers buying them but they sell pretty cheap on Stub Hub from what my Chicago friends have said. I seem to remember the "Lets Go Brewers" chant being pretty audible on one of the televised games from there as well this year. Last year actual attendance was down as well according to this article. http://www.bleachernation.com/2011/07/18/no-surprise-attendance-at-wrigley-field-is-down-considerably-this-year/

I just want to add seeing the names Todd Van Poppel and Brien Taylor brought back memories of rookie baseball card busts for me.

fine, but Green's numbers in the minors don't look all that different than Ishikawa's and the projection for Green to hit around .260-.265 with a .325 OBP is right at what Ishikawa has actually put up in the Majors while being an actual first baseman. I just don't see that some horrible decision is made if Green doesn't automatically start every game. I want to see him play but I don't think RR is an idiot for playing Ishikawa at first over him at times.