Monthly Archives: April 2013

April 27, 2013

Baseball before Baseball

Sisyphus practicing as a child.

Speaking of catching up and baseball, here’s an article I started last March. I got about halfway through it before I bogged down and filed it in drafts to resume later. Unfortunately, March was very busy at work, plus my focus has been pulled away from here for several months. I never did resume the article.

Starting this coming week, some of the work drain should start to decrease. As we near completion, the giant boulder I’m been pushing uphill gets smaller. I’m reaching a point where work isn’t sucking up every inch of life I’ve got. That leaves a little left over for fun. And old posts.

The start of the new season has me thinking baseball, and this post from March turns out to fit nicely with the recent one.

4 Comments | tags: Hall of Fame, HOF, Minnesota Twins, PED, steroid use, WBC, World Baseball Classic | posted in Baseball

April 26, 2013

BB #22: Ass-U-Me

By Wyrd Smythe

My work project is entering the final stretch, so long days and no blogging to speak of. But this morning, eating toast induced a Brain Bubble I thought worth recording, so here I am for a drive-by quickie, a blogging booty call.

You know how people like to say (usually in that annoying sing-song voice), “When you ‘assume’ you make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’.” This is often in retaliation for someone having assumed something someone else found unwarranted.

To those people I’d just like to say, “Huh?”

38 Comments | tags: assume, F.U., Felix Ungar, Neil Simon, Oscar Madison, The Odd Couple | posted in Brain Bubble, Rant

April 20, 2013

Baseball Old School

By Wyrd Smythe

baseball old school Baseball is here! It has been for weeks. Due to the blog bogs, it’s been a while since my last baseball post. It’s high time to rectify that!

One problem is that the Twins don’t give you a whole lot to talk about. They rarely earn many headlines on the hardball pages. (This is at least partially due to not earning many runs on the baseball fields.) We’re not dead last in any key stat, and we’re even doing pretty good in some areas. That’s relatively good news for Twins fans!

Today I want to talk about baseball, old school versus new school. It’s a choice you make—or one that’s thrust upon you—and which you adopt often informs many of your other views on the sport.

8 Comments | tags: Brian Kenny, designated hitter, Harold Reynolds, instant replay, Jim Thome, MLB, MLB channel, MLB Network, MLB Now, new school, old school, umpires | posted in Baseball, Life

April 14, 2013

Catching Up

By Wyrd Smythe

“Whose woods these are…”

I’m still working my way back to blogging. I likely won’t be fully back until my work life is behind me, but I am getting past the shock of finding out just how right I was about management’s view of me. It’s been a week-and-a-half since I announced my intention to divorce them, and there has been nothing since the initial, “Oh, okay.”

It’s not unexpected. It’s not really even a surprise. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. I’ve realized that I am going through my second divorce. And both times it’s been due to the perception that my cons swamp my pros (and my prose). What really stings is the sense of unfairness caused by so many others saying, “I don’t understand their thinking.”

Yeah, me either, but so it goes. Set it aside; I have some catching up to do.

11 Comments | tags: bisy backson, honey, Minnesota Twins, Robert Frost, snow, Tao of Pooh, Winnie the Pooh | posted in Books, Life

April 13, 2013

Givers, Talkers & Lurkers

By Wyrd Smythe

The dung beetle, a far more noble form of life than a spammer!

Going to try something a little different. Rather than write a longish comment in response to someone’s blog article or comment, I’m going to write a shortish article on my own blog. (Well, short for me, anyway.)

Sometimes when writing a long comment, I find myself thinking that what I’d like to say would be better served as an article rather than a typically long-winded comment. There is also that comment sections can be a bit confined space-wise, plus it’s a bit harder to include pictures or do formatting.

Today’s “comment” is actually a long-standing observation about the interweb, but was triggered by the sudden rise in spam Follows and then Michelle’s latest article over on The Green Study.

42 Comments | tags: die die die spammers, die horribly spammers, die painfully spammers, die spammers, TWIOWASBE, vanish from the earth spammers | posted in Life, Rant, The Interweb

April 7, 2013

T-8 And Counting

By Wyrd Smythe

off ramp A bit over a month ago I wrote that, after six months of effort and three weeks of idly waiting for others to complete work, maybe things would finally start moving on my data integration project. And I haven’t posted since (other than the Rick O’Shay post later that same day).

As it turned out, things did finally take off, and the month got very busy. Things got even busier when they dumped an urgent “can you help with this” project in my lap. (I’ve also spent the month struggling with whether I wanted to continue blogging, and if so, whether to change my approach.)

Today I thought I’d post an article about all that (and the Minnesota Twins).

11 Comments | tags: Minnesota Twins, retirement, work | posted in Life, Rant