DuWayne Steurer

Given no choice but to attempt to get to work this morning, the worst, of course, happened. I was fine, going about 45 mph, when a semi doing easily 65 tried to pass me. Being that the snowfall is wet, heavy, slushy crap, my car was thrown sideways from the force of the slush and snow. I was pushed out of the track, lost control, spun, and went into a ditch. $152.00 to get pulled out. I called my supervisor, told her the roads were ridiculous. She said "you have to assess your situation and decide if it's safe to come in". ASSESS THE SITUATION!?!? I'M BACKWARDS IN A DITCH ON THE HIGHWAY!!!' It's fine and well to say 'it's at your discretion' but when you say 'if you don't come in, it's an unexcused absence', you're really forcing people to make poor decisions, which I did. So now I'm out 150 bucks for a tow, and I'm out a days wages. Winter sucks. If property value hadn't plummeted here after GM closed, I'd put my house on the market tomorrow and get the hell out of here.

THUNDERSNOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1~~1!! Ok, I'm seriously not happy about this storm, as I'm being forced to drive to mad town from Janesville in the morning, but no once deny how awesomely cool it is that it is majorly thundering and lightning outside right now. At least here it is.

I'm ok with this. I'd be ecstatic about this deal if it was 2 years though.

This sucks. I live in Janesville, and work in Madison. About 30 or so people where I work, have allowences to work from home. It's mostly done to work voluntary overtime, and holidays. Today they released an e-mail stating that those of us who have work from home capability WILL be expected to work from the office in Madison wednesday. However, the work at home folks who are not scheduled to work on Wednesday, may be called on to work overtime (from home) to make up for those folks who can't make it in, due to weather. This makes absolutely no sense. none.

I'm not sure I understand this statement. I would insert the word "not" betweeen "would" and "play". Also "only" 33? Player's generally peak between 27 and 33. They usually don't improve after this age period without artificial help. Not a big fan of Rivera or keeping 3 catchers. I'm guessing he was being sarcastic.

There's nothing Rivera does that couldn't be done by someone who makes minimum wage. This seems like keeping him just to keep him. As far as backing up first base goes, if Prince is out for any significant amount of time, we're screwed anyways. And I don't think Rivera's going to be any better at first base than say Casey McGehee, Mat Gamel, or Corey Hart, if it came right down to it.

I've been saying this since the Tony Bennett days, but this team can, on any given night, play with anyone because of their style of play. Some might find it boring, but it pretty obviously works. It's pretty rare that the Badgers aren't able to impose their will and force teams to play a grind it out style game and keep it competitive. Storming the court.......meh, it doesn't bother me, in most cases, I find it pretty cool. On the other hand, this team is something like 142-10 at home under Bo Ryan, is routinely ranked, has a couple of 30 win seasons recently, as well as holding the #1 ranking in the country late in the season a few years back. It should never 'shock' anyone when a team of Wisconsin's caliber beats a top 10 team at home.

Three recent releases here..... UP - 7/10. I was excited to see this movie, and I really, really wanted to be blown away, but the Russel kid was just not a character I liked. I get that he was supposed to be the annoying kid that kinda grows on you, but he never grew on me. I did like the movie, but it felt rushed, it felt like the story just jumped ahead in a few spots, rather than having a steady progression. Not one of Disney/Pixars worst efforts, but not one of their best, at least from my viewpoint. Star Trek - 9/10 This might rank up there with Serenity as far as being one of my favorite sci-fi flicks. Keep in mind, I've maybe seen a dozen episodes ever of all the star trek series, and like 3 or 4 of the movies. This never felt like I was watching Star Trek, and the setup for future films/tv shows not having to follow the original canon is fantastic, without getting away from the characters identities. Land of the Lost - 4/10 This movie was awful. The only reason I was able to give it 4 points is that in the first half of the movie, there was a fair amount of laugh out loud moments. Yes, I find Will Ferrell's brand of humor funny. But it wasn't near enough to carry this craptastic mess that really wasn't anything like the original (campy/crappy) tv series.

I'd be in.

Guys with the big bodies tend to start to decline badly in their early thirties. Obviously not a hard and fast rule, and obviously it's not a surprise. That being said, a 5-6 year deal (I'm assuming Fielder/Boras would settle for nothing less) would take him to age 31-32, and frankly, I would not want to see him extended beyond that, as he could potentially be unfit to play the field at all by that point. Besides, if we trade him or let him walk at that time, by the time he's 31-32 he'll have compiled enough personal stats that when he goes into the hall, it'll be as a Brewer. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

Wow. Really?

Those who have contacted me, thanks! Those who mentioned interest and want a copy, please message me here on BF, or email me at rocobrewguy@yahoo.com. I just got an email from the folks printing up our stuff, and we expect to have them in hand within 3 weeks.

Awesome, you're in! We're working on tuning up a few last things, and I'll have some rough betas back from our printer in a few weeks. At that point, I'll let you know and I'll get a copy sent out to you.

First couple go around were around 45 minutes per game. After a few games, and becoming familiar with the mechanics, it can be gotten through in about 30 minutes. I don't know how much a casual fan would be interested. Right now (obviously due to licensing issues) we are only using players who are no longer active. Plus it's pretty involved. Maybe I'm wrong here, and the truth is, we do need to know how much a 'casual' fan would enjoy this as well.

Bear with me folks, this is a long-ish post. SO here's the deal. A friend of mine who's involved in his own small board game company (we're talking games that fit in business envelopes, you provide your own dice and markers) approached me about something that had been on his back burner for quite a long time. Knowing that I'm a huge Brewer/baseball fan, and also a bit of a sabremetric junky, he brought his idea to me. What he wanted to do, being a fan of the old Strat-O-Matic (and knowing I was as well) was create a baseball board game that served 2 purposes. The first, was to give the player who's team is on the field at any given time, something to do. If you've ever played S-O-M, you know that the batting player rolls all the dice, the other guy does nothing. The 2nd thing was that he wanted to pit the all time greats against each other. Now, this has been done before, in various board games, that idea is not novel, but this idea came to him when he was watching the Rickie Henderson induction into the HOF. He asked me, "is Ricky the greatest leadoff hitter of all time?" and that's when the idea hit him. He came up with some ideas for play mechanics, and how he wanted the game to flow, but he came to me for 2 things. One, first and foremost, was the numbers. My friend (believe it or not) does not have internet, and the wealth of data found at places like fangraphs, baseball reference, etc, etc just can't be matched in a store bought book. Secondly, he just wanted someone with a more analytical, stat driven look at the game. What we've got is, what I think, a pretty fun card and dice game, that's all but about ready to start rolling out. He's got a few local game stores that are willing to put it on the shelves for him, I've got the ties to get his material printed up for a cost that's not back breaking, and he's in the process of contacting some smaller game companies to see if anyone's interested in picking it up. I'm putting together a small website for the game as well. NOW, what I'm looking for, is some honest play testers. We've passed out about a half dozen or so hand printed copies of the game, with about 100 players and rules, to friends, casual gamers, and the like. So far, feedback has been positive, but I don't find it to be all that helpful. Friends and family aren't willing to say 'this is wrong' or 'this part isn't any fun', so on and so forth. As I feel we'll be ready to put out some halfway decent beta copies of what he hopes to be only the initial box set within about 4-6 weeks, I'm looking for some true, hardcore baseball fans/stat geeks who would be willing to take a set, with the rules, without someone standing over their shoulders and saying "this is how this works". I feel this needs some brutally honest, but well thought out critiques. We need to know what works, what doesn't. What makes sense, and what needs clarification. It's not a pick up and play game. It's pretty deep. Because we're using historical players, at this time, there's no Lefty/Righty splits, but we've been pretty thorough. Some of the fielding information from before the 50's, we had to base on first hand accounts and some less than stellar stat types (range factor) but all in all, I think it should be pretty accurate. If you're interested, we need some people who will be willing to let me send you a copy, and honestly try to burrow through 10-12 games or so, and give an honest, well thought out review. If you have more questions, great, I'll be happy to answer what I can. If interested, just post here, or email me at rocobrewguy@yahoo.com.

Every couple of months might be extreme however it hasn't been uncommon for me to find it necessary to reformat and reinstall my computer every 2 years or so because I ran into multiple registry problems that I just could not fix. I also do computer support for a rather large corporation and I see on a daily basis how flakey Windows is. 2 users with the exact same hardware and exact same software will get different performance out of their machines. Windows just isn't the most stable and reliable platform but unfortunately Microsoft dominates the market and industry as a whole.Every 2 years is a heck of a lot different than 'every few months', which is simply a gross exaggeration. And I'm not discounting your story, but even every 2 years is more often than should really be necessary. I have a 6 year old Dell that I finally had to reformat about a month ago due to declining performance, but that was also due in part to the fact that it had only 256Mb RAM.

Garland better be WAY cheap. He's a slightly better version of Looper. Low k's, high WHIP. He was good 4 years ago. If he costs anything CLOSE to Cameron, then what was the point? Replace a well above average CFer's salary with a decidedly average starter?

Sick. As. A. Dog. This is like getting a call from home telling me my dog died. Way to sell as low as you possibly could Doug. 2010 = punt.

That's first rounders. The bulk of the guys coming up and playing for $400K aren't guys making Strasburg money.

Competitive balance? Mark A says 'no'. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_world_series_big_markets

Jumping in late here, but I do have a few points...... I love fangraphs, I'm on the site all the time. I understand the methodology, I don't have an issue with that. I think most people's problems with fangraphs is due to baseball's brutally archaic salary structure. You don't get to 'get paid' for the first 6 years you're in the league, and then most guy that reach that point are overpaid from then on out. I think the issue with fangraphs dollar value is that most teams are aware that they're overpaying for any free agents they sign, but it's justifiable by being able to pay a 3rd year starting shortstop peanuts. There's no way to come to a true value for a player (or his production) when the system is fatally broken to begin with. Let me preface my next statement by saying that I don't want baseball to be like football or basketball, but if baseball's salary structure was more like either of those leagues, the dollar values might make a little more sense.

I'm indirectly affiliated with DISH, and their customer service is something awful. As long as you don't have any technical troubles, you'll be happy. I honestly hope you don't ever have to deal with them other than to send them a monthly check for their service.

This is why I would never choose to be a police officer. This guy broke the law (threatening assault with a weapon). The cops were called. Before the video starts, it's reasonable to believe he either resisted arrest, or generally made things more difficult than they needed to be. This is where things start to break down. These officers of the law MUST use restraint. They MUST use sound and proper judgement. The guy obviously pushed one or more of the officers to the point of seemingly violent anger. He was handcuffed. Regardless of what he did before that point, he was defenseless after being cuffed, and was still being physically assaulted. I know myself, if a person had pissed me off to that point, I likely would take a shot at them, or hit them with a taser if they continued to struggle, despite the fact that the person is no longer a viable or credible threat to someone's safety. I don't possess the clarity of mind when I'm angry to hold myself in restraint, so therefore, I know I could never choose to be a law officer. I would react out of anger, rather than using sound judgement, and that, seemingly, is what at least a few of these officers are doing. I don't blame them. But I do hold them to a higher standard. I understand these guys are put in ugly situations, sometimes day after day. That's why they must use absolute sound judgement when dealing with people like this man. They also have to be aware that cameras are EVERYWHERE now. Someone's always watching you.

This is based on one person's stink-eye evaluation of one play? This thread title needs to be changed, it makes it sounds like there's at the very least, a shady source of information here, and there isn't. It's one guy who doesn't believe a pitcher can't throw a ball away in a tight spot.

I work on the west side of Madtown. When I walked to lunch around 11 a.m. there was a few light flurries coming down.