bjkrautk

J.J. should have been able to get to the throw on Kendall's error, IMO.

The 2006 Brewers (ZacJac, CV, Eveland, Hendrickson, Helling, Gonzales all started games when Sheets & Ohka went down) would like to get a word in edgewise.

After one start, one strikeout in 4 IP bothers me most. 6 ER on 6 hits (9 baserunners total, with a double-play negating one of them) at looks like bad luck in isolation. That every other Brewers pitcher got tagged for an earned run (2 of the 3 relievers also gave up a HR) supports the bad luck idea. While he's not a power pitcher, and his K/9 IP rate was never particularly great, it has generally trended down over the last 3-4 seasons. If missing fewer bats is an indicator of his 'stuff' / deception, then it turns into a question of how long he will remain an effective starting pitcher. I say he gets at least 5-6 more starts before Macha has to give the "vote of confidence," and no move will be made with the rotation until after 10 starts.

In for one Retro Therma Base jacket; $48 on Clearance + 20% off = :D

The Bigs 2 just got Bigger. There's a video on the site of Digi-Prince hitting digi-dingers all over Digi-Miller Park (complete with new Pepsi signage). I've heard people say good things about the prior version of the game, so I may well pick this up.

So...do the Brewers have new jackets for '09, or is Kohls just marking down old stock because it's old?

I was all over this game at $60; it is easily the best game that I have played on any of the current generation of consoles (PS3, 360, Wii, DS).For $30, you really owe it to yourself to pick up the game.

http://www3.pictures.gi.zimbio.com/San+Diego+Padres+v+Texas+Rangers+acss_FBZFmWl.jpg If his last name was any longer, it would be a circle.

I say we draft nothing but switch-hitters....leave the platoon types to the other teams. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif While I'm only semi-kidding about switch-hitters, the problem with trying to draft for high OBP is that it's often offset by a lack of SLG. Ideally, I'd like to see a mix of guys who hit for a high average with marginal power (A Jeff Cirillo-type, or what we expected out of J.J. Hardy; good Avg / OBP with 15-20 HRs in a full season) with the sluggers (who have been far more successful in the organization). It's hard to find a guy who can do both outside the first round(s) of the draft.

Which "three spots" are you referring to? Catalanatto has never logged so much as one inning in CF. Since the Brewers do need a backup OF for Cameron, Cat is really only an option for the 4th OF spot, and I'd rather have Brad Nelson at this point.

I think it depends on what you need your 5th OF to do. Defensive replacement: Gwynn. Neither one has a great arm, but Gwynn is more comfortable playing CF, as well as the corner spots. Pinch hitter: Podsednik. Again, not that either one has been spectacular over the past 2 years, but their OBP has been roughly the same -- Pods was in the majors, Gwynn was in AAA). Pinch runner: Push. Pods has far more experience and history in stealing bases (236/310 = 76% steal rate) than Gwynn (14/17 = 82%), but he did much of that base stealing in earlier years (12/16 in 2008; 12/17 in 2007) and is more likely to have lost a step at age 33 than Gwynn. I guess I'd rather hope for improvement from the 26-year old than expect a decline out of the 33 year old (Pods) or the 35 year old (Cat).

Ty Lawson's foot is going to single-handedly cost me an opportunity to win any pools this year. (Go Villanova!)

As someone who has used the phrase "Steak Ni-i-ite" in conversation with another Scrubs fan, I'm curious to see the new show. My fear with the show is that it will feature too much Amy Poehler. She can be really funny in small doses (Upright Citizens Brigade on Comedy Central, early SNL), but the more prominent her role, the less I end up liking it (see, mid-late SNL). The show is being pitched as a Poehler vehicle, when I'm hoping it turns out to be more of an ensemble comedy....like The Office.

I still question the logic that J.J. Hardy playing 2b and Escobar playing ss would become more valuable than Escobar at 2b and Hardy at ss. Fundamentally, I get it, as it maximizes Escobar's value as an elite defensive player....but doesn't it diminish Hardy's value to play him at a position other than ss? (Isn't that why Hardy doesn't want to move?) If both of their bats are in the lineup, and if you assume that Escobar has an absolute advantage as a defensive player (better at 2b, better at ss), then there is certainly an argument that Escobar is the better option at 2b (since we don't know how difficult the transition would be for Hardy, who plays average-to-above-average defense at ss). That being said, I think the argument is premature. While I like that Escobar is willing to do whatever it takes to reach the majors, part of taking that step means showing he can turn last year's offensive performance into a positive trend. Until Escobar shows that he can hit at (or at least, around) Weeks' level, he should be in AAA.

Pitt-Villanova may have been one of the best basketball games that I can remember seeing in a long time. (Granted, it helps that I picked Villanova to make it to Detroit....it helps quite a bit. :D)

Probably around the same time games stop coming out on disc. Digital distribution is very much the future of games distribution.

U Rah Rah Wisconsin.

I also went 1 for 3 in the morning games....but I didn't have either BYU or Butler advancing, so it's not that big a deal to me. For whatever reason, I've got the video streaming from the N. Iowa - Purdue game, but the audio from what sounds like StL v. TB baseball.

For Rock Band, once you've finished downloading the song, go to your games list and select it (to install). Then start Rock Band as usual, and the game should be available. (On Rock Band 1, there's a specific venue where you can find all the downloadable songs (Tokyo?), but in RB2 they show up in with all the other songs.

I've only read the graphic novel once, but both (maybe all three) of the scenes that you're mentioning here did have meaning from the source material. It goes into the question of just what would possess a person with no special powers to dress up and fight crime...and what it means to them to have that life taken away. To me, it was less about "getting off" on beating people up, so much as an excitement for the job. The only real-world analog that I can think of is a pro athlete's retirement: to go out and put your body on the line time and again....not just a visceral thrill, but the sense of camaraderie which comes with the challenge. Compared to that, everyday life would feel....limp. Most of the surviving characters in the story never really came to terms with that. (I'd say Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl, is the exception: he gave up the job on his own terms....but I could leave it to others to disagree.) And it wasn't just the Keene Act; Sally Jupiter's character was forced into retirement by motherhood, and look how that turned out. Point being, Dan Dreiberg didn't feel like himself until a mix of circumstance and desperation put him back into the suit. Laurie needed the connection, but Dan needed to feel important, useful, for the first time in 8 years. Did they let those scenes run long? Sure. But they needed to be there to really tell the story. I also think that Snyder tried to tie the material into the theme of man's animal nature a bit more, which is probably the reason for the complaint. Finally saw the movie a week late. My biggest gripe is one that's already been noted in this thread: the violence made the main characters look like they were superhuman, snapping bones and the like. I also could have gone with fewer shots of the Doctor's 'stethoscope'. I can understand the need for the new ending, and it actually stayed much closer to the original version than I was anticipating. A lot of the side-characterization was trimmed down for the sake of time, no one moreso than Silk Spectre. I also thought that the first half of the movie was far more sympathetic to Veidt's motivations than I had remembered....but I wasn't sure if that was the movie or just my knowing what would be coming next. I think the most difficult role in the source material to connect with was Sally Jupiter....and Carla Gugino played her perfectly. I hope that the final element of her story exists as a deleted scene. While I am certainly biased towards the actress (I think she's jaw-droppingly beautiful), I think the glow that she has as the young Sally, and the regretless nostalgia of the older version....deserves a Best Supporting Actress nomination (which she probably won't get). I loved the placement of the music, from the opening credits right down to the 80s nuclear protest tune. That I didn't even hear the Tears for Fears song (which I have on my iPod, so I know the song) gives me a level of appreciation for the density of the movie as well as the source material. The book is still better, but the movie tells the story much better than it should have been able to.

At this point, it's probably best for my health that the 2008-09 Badgers have, at most, one more 'come from ahead' loss left in the season. Either they need to get better at shooting the 3, or stop forcing up so many of them.

(This is a generic reply to a variety of the formatting questions, not a specific reply to any one post.) HDTVs all have a "native resolution," which is what you see when the TV is being advertised. If the content you're experiencing (watching / playing) is not in that resolution, the TV has to scale the content up (or down) to its native resolution. For example, if you're watching 720p video on a 1080p LCD, the 'guts' of your TV has to decide which pixels turn which color, since there are about 1.5x as many pixels in your TV then are being used in your content. If your HDTV has pixelation issues, it's going to be a result of either a poor quality signal (my over-the-air HD stations sometimes have issues that their QAM equivalents don't) or the image processing in your HDTV. Gaming consoles make this even more confusing. An XBox 360 has its own internal scaling hardware; it takes whatever image you are looking at (including DVDs at 480p) and scale it to whatever you've set the box to display. Forcing the 360 to display something other than the HDTV's native resolution will force the HDTV to rescale the images a second time (thus creating additional lag). PS3 does not have an internal scaler, so it sends whatever image the HDTV accepts naturally. Since most PS3 games output in 720p, the lack of an internal scaler is a real problem to people with old 1080i HDTVs that do not accept 720p content. Not every native-1080i HDTV has this issue (My Sony CRT handles 720p just fine). Those 1080i sets that do not support 720p will end up down-scaling the content to 480i/p if the game does not support 1080i. (I believe that the original Resistance is one such title.)

The most incredible part of the 08-09 off-season to me is that both Pedro and Pudge are both on the market. I'd certainly advocate taking a flier on either player for $5 mil, but I'm guessing the reason they're still in FA is because they want more than that.

My 1080i set is a 200# CRT, so I also have zero gaming lag. (That, plus the QAM tuner and exceptional black-levels, are the reasons why I bought the thing.)CRTs are the last of the 'interlaced' - only formats....or at least I've never heard of a CRT that displayed an image in progressive scan. I know some old plasmas used to display in 1080i native resolution, but I haven't seen one of those in the stores in quite some time.

The laptop I bought back in November was a Dell Studio 15, and I still really like it. (As I said earlier, I'd recommend the graphics card upgrade; I haven't been terribly impressed with Intel's on-board graphics chip performance. I also sprung for the High-res WLED screen; Dell and Apple are the only places that sell these - or at least they used to be - but they give you a nice, bright screen with less power consumption than most LCDs.) If it's something you're going to haul around to class everyday (or to libraries, etc.), the netbook + desktop solution sounds like a good one.