DuWayne Steurer

I'm curious how an announcer saying "no hits through 6" could possibly have a physical effect on the game. Baseball is the greatest sport, with some of the stupidest superstitions.

So......the kind of tirade any reasonable, grown adult should be embarrassed of, if he were to watch a replay of it? Lou Pinella's behavior when he goes off is nothing short of pathetic, plain and simple I don't understand the sentiment that yelling and screaming at adults makes them perform better, regardless of the job type. Based on a lot of posts I'm seeing, I'm starting to suspect that the Brewers just don't care about winning and aren't trying that hard.

In other words, a match of 2008 AL MVP Dustin Pedroia (.376/.493/.869)

The LHC can (currently) only collide a few atoms at a time. There simply isn't enough material to do much of anything. The reason this thing gets as much pub as it does is because it's in Dan Brown's book.

When I blew my elbow, I was going to be down for a year (turned out to be 2 years, I had TJ surgery), but I needed SOMETHING to do. I ordered the 1930 season of strat cards, and yes, I played (with some help), the entire season for all 16 teams. At times it was tedious, especially near the end when I had say, the Red Sox playing the Browns, and the A's ran away with the AL. NL was better, with the Giants, "Robins", Cards and Cubs in it right to the last week.

I'm not exactly thrilled to see Braun's name come up in the same sentence (or article for that matter) with J.D. Drew when concerning injury. To echo TLB, I don't want to be an alarmist, and he's probably fine, but this certainly imposes a little twinge of dread.

How about this, if Joey wins, Straw has to change his user name to Suppansucks (or something to that effect). If straw wins, Joey has to change his username to IheartSuppan or Suppan4CyYoung (or something to that effect). I would also say for fun, until Suppan is no longer a Brewer, FTJ would not be able to post a negative comment about Suppan, only posts expounding on his virtues. In Straws' case, the opposite of course. On a 5.25 ERA? My money's on FTJ's horse here.

SO......is there anyone out there that still (or at least in the past) plays/played any decent baseball boardgames? Strat-o-matic, Pursue the Pennant, etc, etc. C'mon, you can admit it, it's not that bad! Way back in the day, after his unreal season in El Paso in '85, I mocked up a BJ Robideaux on a blank in anticipation of the awesomeness to come. My brother and I played a full season with the Brew Crew, and BJR had one monster season. Too bad it was nothing but fiction.

If Duffy's getting significant PT, it means we're at least 15 games out of the wild card spot. Even if Cam hits .235 and strikes out 150 times, he's still superior to Duffy. Mostly because those 2 stats mean just about nothing.

More or less, it bugs me when people keep the same data in two different databases. Unless you're constantly syncing the two, you're going to run into problems. If you don't absolutely need it in two separate places, it should be avoided Again, if I didn't keep a register, I never would have noticed when a waiter put his own little "bonus" on my debit card payment at a restaurant. I get my statement by mail at the end of every month, and I noticed a 5 dollar discrepancy. I know I keep track of every nickel and dime, so I investigated, and found the issue. I also found an issue with an item my wife purchased online, which she was double charged for. 7 dollars. If all I did was let my bank keep track, and keep a running tab in my head of what I "should" have, I probably never notice those 2 items. Are 5 dollars and 7 dollars a big deal? On their own, not really. But the first one was blatant credit card fraud, and the second one I was just lucky that it was a 7 dollar item and not a 700 dollar one. I also made a mistake in my register. Due to unfortunate circumstances at work some months ago, I was late receiving, not one, but 2 checks. (I was being paid by paper check at that time). By the time work found the error and corrected it, a third pay day had come around, so I waited to take all 3 checks to the bank. I didn't enter them in my register right away, and only put 2 of them in when I did get around to it. So I thought I was short a substantial amount, until I investigated. And lastly, last year a person's direct deposit state return was accidentally deposited into my account. I was delighted when I checked my balance at an ATM one day, but realized there had to be a mistake, and rather than spend money I knew someone would be looking for and want back, I investigated with the bank, and found the error. We make mistakes. Banks make mistakes. It's nothing but good policy to cross the T's, dot the I's, and double check all the numbers. My financial security means enough to me that I'm willing to take the 45 seconds to enter an item in my register and balance it. I'm going to say again, I think it's irresponsible money handling to just let the bank do it. They do make mistakes. Double checking all the numbers is never a bad thing.

Interesting that the cop resigned. I wonder how much pressure he was given from above.

That I do not disagree with. You don't have to balance it while standing in the line. That's just like the people that buy scratch off lottery tickets at the gas station and stand at the counter and scratch them off. First off, you're holding up traffic (needlessly, in this case) and secondly, you're getting those sticky silver flakes all over the place. My take for people who use checks is this. That's cool, and I understand some of the reasons presented for why people still prefer that method. After having a few issues with paying bills electronically, I no longer do it. I send checks, but that's about all I use paper checks for. The one thing that I think a person writing a check can and should do if they're waiting in a line is have the check filled out, minus the total and signature when all is said and done.

I use a debit card, but I also balance my checkbook whenever I use it. If I didn't balance my checkbook and keep exact track of where every dollar went, I would never have caught it when a restaurant waiter put his own "extra" tip on my credit card. .I guess I just really don't understand why people have to have a balanced checkbook then. I check my balance probably once a week online. The rest of the week, you could ask me at any moment what my balance is and I could tell you within $50 easily. Are people that close to overwithdrawing that they need to be more accurate than that? I was unemployed for 5 months this winter, but it never got that bad. And I'm sorry, it's totally irresponsible to suggest that people shouldn't balance their checkbook. For some people, it very well may be an issue of 5 dollars that could bounce their check. To counter your statement, I don't understand how someone could be comfortable "knowing within 50 dollars" what's in their checking account, and it's callous to suggest that other people are out of line if they don't take that same approach.

Yeah, I don't mind if someone is using a check, but you can certainly have the check (minus the total) written out if you're just standing there. I'm not a guy who gets in the fast lane and counts items. I don't care if you have 23 items in the 20 item lane. With that being said, I was in Wal-Mart one night when a customer who was clearly friends with the cashier easily had 60 items in her cart, which she rang up in three separate receipts. I did on that occasion ask to speak with a manager/assistant. I also don't like cashiers who attempt to suggestive sell more than one item. Ask me if I want cookies or a donut or whatever, but if I say no thanks, please stop there. I was in radio shack today to buy an audio cable adaptor. The first issue was the guy didn't want to just sell me the one I selected, he had to ask what it was for. I told him, at which point he stated that "for that use, you need this one" which was of course, the most expensive model. I declined, said "I just want this one here", and went to the register. At the register, he asked if I needed any addtional cables, cords, or adaptors. I said no thanks. He then said "we have a great deal on AA batteries today. Do you need any batteries?" I again said, no thanks. He then barged ahead with "Well, we also have a great deal on Sprint and AT n T phones today. Who is your current carrier?" I tried really hard to not be rude, and I was trying to make it obvious that I just wanted my 3.79 adaptor, which he simply wasn't going to allow, so after the suggested cell phone up-sale, I finally had to say "Look, I just want the adaptor, I'm not looking to change cell service or get batteries, can I just get the adaptor please?" I shouldn't have to turn into a jerk to extricate myself from Radio Shak, but the guy simply wasn't going to let me go until I either (A) bought something more, or (B), told him to pound sand.

When my son was 6 months old, my wife called me at work, screaming hysterically. Through the screaming, I as able to pick out "he's not breathing". I threw my store keys to a co-worker, ran to my car, and blazed home, hitting 85 mph on a 30 mph surface street. I didn't get pulled over (or see a cop for that matter), and I'm not going to say what I would have done had a cop seen mye or tried to pull me over. I can't say because it didn't happen. To finish the story, my wife had called 911 before she called me, and the ambulance "got lost" trying to find our place. I beat the ambulance to my house, and it took me 4 minutes to get there. Luckily, my wife had pounded on his back and dislodged the item. I wasn't exactly happy that the ambulance driver got lost on a call for a non-breathing infant.

Chief of Police had some very strong comments in the few articles I've read. He stopped short of using terms like "reprehensible", but the tone was definitely there. Won't be surprised at all in a few days when we see this guy was canned. Absolutely pathetic behavior.

Not looking for anything too fancy. Just something easy to use with a notebook computer for recording rough tracks and maybe enable a little bit of editing.

Rickie had 26 PA's with man on 3rd, less than 2 outs last year. In those 26 instances, he had a .353 batting average, with a 1.364 OPS, and 16 RBI. 3 walks and 4 k's. He had 80 PA's in instances where there were men on 2nd, 3rd, or 2nd and 3rd (no force abailable) and he struck out a total of 14 times in those PA's. Rickie hit .286 with a .919 OPS in situations that meet the "late and close" criteria. All this hand wringing about his strikeouts and lack of productive outs is reality being colored by perception.

I think given the current economic climate, it'd be tough to say no to this question. (Unless you're an exec for AIG). While nobody wants to take a paycut, if it's 5% or lose your job, to me, that's a no brainer.

I golf often. Just not well.

It's interesting, because a while ago I got shredded for saying that watching the Dark Knight, I didn'tfeel like I was watching a "comic book movie". Unfortunately, I didn't explain myself fully, and I never intended it to mean that "comics" can't be intellectual, thought provoking, profound, and every bit as memorable as a book without pictures. What my intention was, was that even a "smart" comic like Batman was horribly dumbed down for movie audiences, up until the last few installments. The X-Men movies, for all the fights and explosions, DID fully encompass the main theme of the comic, that of people being treated fairly and humanely, despite having differences. That being said, it's impossible to make a movie without dumbing down the material for movie audiences. Now it's tough to say that without subtly insulting the intelligence of the average movie goer, but again......there it is. In general, I think a movie goer wants a different kind of payoff. That's not to say there's anything inherently wrong with the medium, but that with different kinds of medium come different kinds of story telling, and the translation, especially book to movie, always leaves something out. 99% of the time, the something that gets left out is simply depth, color, emotion, whatever you want to call it. It's no mistake that all movie commercials show almost exclusively action scenes, as that's what sells tickets. Call it what you will, but at the end of the day, no matter how pure to his source material a director/writer/producer wants to stay, he still has to put as many butts in the seats as he can, and that's almost universally accomplished with guns, swords, and explosions. GI joe wil probably prove me right with a 200 million dollar take. Robert, I also want to touch on your point that Snyder didn't exaggerate the violence/action, just expanded on it. I guess to me, the very short 1-2 frame action sequences were so inconsequential to the story (Fight in the alley, I'm looking at you) that I almost didn't notice them.

I'll pitch a tent in this campsite as well. Defense is an important aspect of the game, but it tends to be overrated. The difference between an average defender and a great defender isn't nearly as great as the difference between an average hitter and a great one.I have to disagree here. I shortstop with a solid glove and average range is going to save fewer runs than a shortstop with great range and a sloppy glove. If (and these are hypothetical thrown out numbers) Hardy gets to 70 balls of 100, and makes 2 errors, but Escobar gets to 90 balls out of 100 and makes 5 errors, Escobar has been far more valuable. The difference between a great shortstop and an average can be as much as one ball every 3 games. That's 50 or more per season. Even if each of those is a single (.44 runs), that's roughly 25 runs saved, or 2.5 wins. Even if a guy gets to only 20 more balls than his counterpart, that's still 9 runs, assuming all those are singles. Shortstop is one position where defense is most certainly not overrated, and is the most important position on the diamond, simply because of the sheer amount of plays that defender has the chance to affect.

After reading the article, I can only reiterate that I think the major multiplication of the action scenes was for the sake of movie going audiences who think they're going to an action movie. I'm not saying it's necessarily "wrong", but there it is.

Yeah, as you say, in retrospect, it should have been obvious, and there were clues, albeit subtle. The clue you mention on the very first page is tough, because you're not into the story yet. I briefly though it might have been Blake, but then after a while you get the sense he would never plan something so grand. And that was the other puzzling thing, is there were "no" suspects really, and a bombshell is only a bombshell if there's some sense to it after the fact. A totally new character introduced at the end doesn't give you that "Ahhhhhhh! I should have seen that coming" moment. I'd have to say Rorshach was my favorite character, profound and also unintentionally funny. I guess this stuff is for another thread in all reality, but I was on the fence about the movie before, now I'll definately have a go at it.

Any help here would be much appreciated. I got myself a new laptop, and I had no problems connecting to the web, but I can't login here. I have no problems logging in from my wife's netbook. I'm using RoCoBrewfan as the username, and it's telling me to use the "@community" as well. Never had to do this any other time, and I log out of brewerfan somewhat frequently. Any advice?