Patrick425

Throws pretty hard? That's the qualification? There are lots of guys who "throw pretty hard" that don't make $1.2 million. I can't think of another profession outside of professional sports where you can under perform for 3 or 4 years. Take a leave of absence with an injury for a year and then come back and get a raise on an already overly generous paycheck. Brettac, I know that this "sounds about right". That's what completely bugs me. This has become the norm. People are numb to it....$1 million means nothing. When does the madness stop? I would have had no problem with the Brewers dropping this guy and giving some minor leaguer a shot. I predict another underwhelming season from Parra if he can manage to stay healthy.

Doesn't say how much in this article, but MLB traderumors are saying it's worth about $1.3 million. Really? So basically, to be a millionaire in baseball you just have to have a pulse. This is the same Manny with a career 5.13 ERA and 1.65 whip, and who didn't pitch one inning last year....right? I would imagine that there are many minor league pitchers in MLB that make a small fraction of this amount that could pitch just as good or better than Manny. http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/brewers.html

Wow Jim, you sound very much like me. I got the same phone back in May. My first smart phone as well...and yes, it does use up battery power pretty quickly. One thing you should make sure you do is turn off the use GPS satellites in "location and security" in the settings (unless of course you are using it for some reason). You should also dim the display a little. If you want more insight into what's eating up the battery..go to settings, about phone, battery use. This stuff will help a little, but even so, it still sucks up battery life. I only know these things because of searching for forums for the Nexus online and reading about other people with this phone with similar issues. It does tick me off that the phone just came out a year ago and it has battery life issues. Really? In 2011? That's like a car without AC or automatic windows. I pretty much always have my cell phone plugged in when I'm at home or in the car just so I can keep the battery charged. Like you, I'm sure I'm not getting as much out of my phone as I could. I basically got it so I could browse the Internet and receive and send emails when not at my PC. But some of the other stuff is not very self explanatory. I shouldn't have to root and/or tweek. I have know IT experienced. Can't they just sell electronics that are fully functional and dumbed down for mid-40's aged men like me? If I had to disconnect my TV/VCR/Cable Box/Sound System for some reason, I would have no idea how to put it all back together again. There are about 30 different places to plug in things in the back of the receiver and I don't know what any of them mean.

This is kind of a 60% what's bugging me 40% random thought. I tend to keep emails for work and otherwise going back for many years. I'm somewhat of a "hoarder" of emails, but I do file them in different folders so that I can easily search for them if needed. One reason I do this is so that if someone says something happens that is contrary to what was stated in an earlier email, I can recall it and say "No, that's not what we agreed upon per this email dated xx/xx/xx" or if someone states that they were not copied on an email, I can produce the email and show that they were. I can already sense that people will read the above paragraph and think "what a jerk!". This is what bugs me. People get so upset and offended when you show them something that they said (and they are now saying something completely different). Why are you getting mad at me? I'm just showing you the facts? If I say that I'm going to do one thing and then do something completely different, I would expect someone to call me out on it. If you don't want this to happen then just do what you say you are going to do or don't lie and say "well, I never saw that email". I think 9 out of 10 times that means..I saw the email, but I decided not to do my job and ignored it.

The feeling I get from that is that the Brewers will not make him an offer.

I use to be glued to MTV when I was in HS (early 80's). Before that, other than actually going to a concert or possibly seeing the artist on Don' Kirshner's rock concert or SNL, it was rare to see them perform. When I try to explain this concept to my 13 year old son, he doesn't get it. Anticipating a new artists album to come out and then, when it does, rushing to the store to get it and listening to it over and over again until you knew every song (not just the ones played on the radio) is also a strange concept to him. I anticipated and purchased albums similar to how my son now anticipates and purchases video games. Once in a while I show my son an old video from the early MTV days and he gets a kick out of it. When ever the Talking Head's "Once in a Lifetime" comes on now in the car, he does the hand chopping the forearm movement. I do think there is less of a "generation gap" between parents and children now in regards to music than there was when I was a kid. My son and his friends have songs from The Police, Nirvana, Jethro Tull, The Who, The Beatles, Rush, etc on their Ipod Touches. I never listened to my parents music growing up. My Dad was into big bands and Sinatra and my Mom was into music like Ray Coniff or Musicals like West Side Story and Sound of Music. My Music was pretty foreign to them. Music seemed to be much more of a rebellious outlet when I was younger than it is today.

Like JimH I'm ancient in that I'm a 7 day a week subscriber. I grew up in a household where my dad read the paper religiously every day and when I got older I did the same thing and I can't imagine not having the paper in my mailbox every morning. I may be ancient, but I'm still wired. I have a laptop, smart phone, and I just purchased a tablet. However, when I sit down at the breakfast table in the morning I don't want to read from a computer screen, I want to have the physical paper in front of me. Same goes for when I'm eating lunch and reading what I was not able to get to at breakfast. I guess it's just a comfort thing. WTMJ is not "horrible" for local coverage, but the local stations web sites are. While Sports is a large part of what I'm looking for, I'm also looking at information about other local stories and events. My only issue with the Journal/Sentinel is how they sometimes put their own political slant on different stories, but I know this is not the correct forum to get into that discussion.

2009 would make more sense since my 3 year subscription just ran out on 12/31 and maybe I was still included in the "free option". The person on the chat support kept stating that they started charging in 2004. Didn't make any sense.

3rd choice? Yeah...they call it XM/Sirius, but if you are an XM subscriber you get XM content and if you are a Sirius subscriber you get Sirius content. When they merged, I was hoping that I would get some extra stations/content but you have to pay extra to get "cross-over" content. I basically get the same stations I got when it was just XM.

Yeah but don't you usually visit JSonline for local news? I don't know that there are "plenty" of other sites for that. There are the local news stations I guess, but I never really liked any of their sites.

I've been an XM subscriber for I believe 6 or 7 years now. My belief was always that subscribers got XM on the internet for free. I have been listening to it on and off at work online ever since I first became a subscriber and don't ever remember paying anything extra for that feature. My subscription ran out on December 31st and was autmatically renewed for another 3 years. I tried loggin in online today and my password didn't work. When I contacted support they told me it's an extra $3 a month to get the online service and that it's been that way since 2004. Obviously, I was bit surprised at this. I don't want XM internet access enough to pay an extra $3 a month and I'm a bit angry that they charge for this when there are so many other free options for listening to music on the internet. Does anyone else have XM or Sirius. Do you listen online at all, and if so, have you been paying extra for it?

I didn't watch the entire game. I was doing some flipping. Saw that it was close at half time. Saw the end of regulation and most of the OT. I'm not sure I would categorize it as heartbreaking. They were down by what?...7 or 8 with less than a minute to go (am I remembering that correctly?). The fact that they came within a tenth of a second from tying it and going into another overtime was somewhat of a minor miracle. If Michigan State would have lost that game, I think it would have been much more of a heart breaker for them.

Ok, now I realize that I can find out a lot of information comparing the two products by just typing in Kindle Fire vs. Samsung Tablet...so never mind explaining the differences between the two. I guess my question now to anyone who may have knowledge...is it wort the extra money to get a Samsung tablet over a Kindle? Is the internet access much more robust, faster on the Samsung?

I'm looking to purchase a tablet or Kindle Fire or Nook. What exactly is the difference between the Kindle Fire and say the Samung Galaxy Tablet? Speed? Memory? Functionality? Other than price obviously.

Well you're certainly doing all you can to make it better.I said I was sorry for taking it off on a tangent. Sometime conversations go off on tangents. I didn't know that was such a big crime. From now on, no one should post anything unless is contains the word "Braun" or "PED" otherwise.."No posts for you!"

Is this really worse than discussions and speculations about Herpes and Grave's disease?

Well, that's what the do all the time..."tonight at 10, really important stuff that you want to know about". We could just tell you all about it in these 30 seconds, but we won't... Why would anyone bother watching TV news these days? I mean I can understand if you are 85 years old or something or if it is on as sort of background noise in the morning, but does anyone actually still sit down and watch these shows for 30 minutes at 9 or 10 pm? I think it is channel 58 that advertises that you will get to see the weather right away, if you watch their 10 o'clock (or maybe it's on at 9) news show. Uh, yeah, or I can turn on channel 4-2 or one of the PBS channels or look on line and get the weather right now. Well, I understand what you are saying, but I do turn on the local news the first thing when I get up (around 6am) and watch it while I'm eating breakfast. Mostly because turning on the TV is often just easier than opening my laptop and logging on to my PC and opening a browser and then searching around different sites for the news I'm looking for....traffic, weather, some global tragedy that happened while I was sleeping, etc. Also, what news web site is not already linked to a TV news station (other than maybe a sight that might be slightly slanted like "The Drudge Report")? So, what's the difference. Sometimes I want to know who's been booked to play at Summerfest or about the 8 car pile up that just happened on 94 eastbound. I think it's a bit "snobbish" to just categorize all local TV news as useless. It's just easier to turn on the TV. I know I'm not getting some in depth analysis of from Channel 4 about the budget debate in Washington, but I'm not really looking for or expecting that. If I want to find more, I'll do more research on the issue online. Also, I'm a slight weather nerd. I hate it when I hear people say "I thought it was supposed to rain today...those weather guys don't know anything". Usually they either A) Looked at a picture of a cloud with rain coming from it on the 5 day forecast on the Internet or B) Didn't really watch the forecast that closely. If they did they could have seen the movement of the system and perhaps heard the weatherman say "There will be some isolated hit and miss showers in the afternoon". That doesn't mean that it's going to rain all day or at all. I know several people (some I work with) that don't follow any news at all. They are completely clueless about things outside of their own immediate world. Anyways, sorry for getting this thread off on a complete tangent. Didn't mean to turn this into a debate about the merits of the local TV newscast. I feel like we are all sitting in a court room waiting for the Jury to return with a verdict and we have moved on to other topics to talk about to bide our time.

I say TMJ4, because I don't want to confuse it with WTMJ the radio station and also Channel 4 just sound too generic. There are Channel 4's all over the country.

I understand that..that's more of a consumer information thing. But they seriously teased the Counsell comments as "Breaking news" or they may have said "New news". Whatever they said it made it sound like there were some new important "revelations" kind of thing. It kind of reminded me of the old SNL weekend update with Chevy Chase where he would say "This just in, Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead".

Didn't know that they had mini golf in N. Korea. Chuck Norris had nothing on this guy he also shot a 300 his first and only time bowling: http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/daily-take/201112/memory-kim-jong-il-dear-leader-and-goat Geez...if you are going to embellish your scores...at least make it something that's actually humanly possible.

Getting a little tired of TMJ4 (Channel in Milwaukee for those of you not living in the area) and how they tease about Braun stories. Last night before the 10pm news they come on with a teaser and one of the things they say is something like "Breaking news on Ryan Braun. Former teammates standing up for him." So, about 10 minutes into the news they have about a 30 second clip of Craig Counsell just saying things like, "can't judge until you know all the facts" and "I support him". This is "breaking news"?? They did this earlier this week when the TMZ report came out that basically stated the "medicinal" report that had already been kind of circulating.

Ahhh..the Ray Conniff singers. That was my Mom's absolute favorite Christmas album. Everytime I hear one of their Christmas songs, it reminds me of my childhood.

I still think MLB would look at this as being negligent for consuming something that you were not really sure about without informing MLB. Now, perhaps, if he can prove that he specifically asked the doctor about this drug and the doctor told him it was clean, then I'm not sure how MLB would look at that.

Believe me, I completely understand that. However, Hart is a "bargain" at his current contract and the type of player a small/mid-market team like the Brewers should value. Depending on what they would get for Hart (and I also realize that this is a big part of the puzzle), I'm not sure replacing a "underpaid" proven player with an unproven player from Japan would be the wisest of decisions.

If that's true, that would be putting a lot of faith in "unproven" talent. We can debate about what "unproven" means, but to me it means if you have not done anything to prove yourself at the MLB level, then you are "unproven". I really don't care what you have done in the minors or in the Japanese league.