Tag Archives: Minnesota Twins

June 15, 2013

10… 9…

Thursday and Friday of this past week were days 10 and 9 in [big booming voice] The Countdown to Retirement. I’m taking Mondays off in June (no more Monday mornings!), so I have two four-day weeks remaining in my 33-year career at The Company.

And it’s a good thing I decided to stay through June. The project I’ve been working on since last September still hasn’t hit production (through, I stress, absolutely no fault of mine).

This week we finally got to the point of end-to-end testing in the QA environment, and I’m anticipating we’ll start testing in production next week. Talk about taking it down to the wire!

As you might imagine, rather than lazily basking in the last remaining weeks of my career, I’m instead working my ass off!

18 Comments | tags: Bruce Willis, Looper, Mariano Rivera, Minnesota Twins, retirement, work | posted in Baseball, From My Collection, Life, Movies

April 27, 2013

Baseball before Baseball

By Wyrd Smythe

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 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.

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

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

February 28, 2013

Baseball is coming!

By Wyrd Smythe

baseballs I will confess that, by the end of a 162-game season, baseball starts to wear just a little bit. If your team, or even another team you like, makes the playoffs, that can make it exciting again. And even if not, the playoffs usually feature some pretty good baseball; last year’s were really fun to watch, for example.

But at that point it’s been six months of baseball. I have the Fox Sports North cable channel, and between them and Fox Sports, it is possible to watch almost every single Minnesota Twins game. And I do try. (Some weekday day games I can’t watch, of course, but MLB has a Flash app that provides a way to monitor a game in near real-time.)

The flip side is that, come spring I’m cravin’ me some baseball!

28 Comments | tags: Alexi Casilla, Ben Revere, Billy Beane, Jeremy Brown, Minnesota Twins, Moneyball | posted in Baseball, Movies

October 27, 2012

Target Field: First Time!

By Wyrd Smythe

(Click on pics for full-size.)

The new job has continued to really suck up my creative juices, which has made it very hard to write blog posts. It’s not for lack of ideas, I have months’ worth of those in the pipeline. The problem is that my job now consists of writing lots of formal documents and endless emails to try to get others to implement designs.

That makes other writing seem like more of the same; just another day banging out thoughts and ideas. Not fun. I miss the fun. Unless this job stabilizes somehow, I may have to all but give up blogging until I retire. (Fortunately, that could be as soon as this June… I’m very tempted!)

Anyway, for now, a post from last year from my all-but-defunct baseball blog:

9 Comments | tags: Alexi Casilla, Minnesota Twins, Target Field, Toronto Blue Jays | posted in Baseball

October 16, 2012

Baseball vs Other Sports

By Wyrd Smythe

After another long day at work, I’m watching the Detroit Tigers take on the New York Yankees in game 3 of the ALCS. The Tigers won both earlier games, and I understand no team has come back from an 0-2 start. With Justin Verlander on the mound, the Tigers have a very good shot at winning, which would put the Yankees in an even deeper hole.

Putting a little icing on my oatmeal cookie, the San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals last night, so those two are tied 1-1 in the NLCS. Dare I dream that the World Series will be Giants vs Tigers? (I do, I do!) The Championship series is best of seven, so — assuming the Tigers win tonight — they just need to win one more game.

Tonight I’m republishing an article I wrote earlier this year on my baseball blog. This is about some of the reasons I’ve come to love this sport so much.

24 Comments | tags: ALCS, baseball is boring, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins, MLB, New York Yankees, NLCS, World Series | posted in Baseball

October 9, 2012

Twins: Another Bad Season

By Wyrd Smythe

It’s been another very disappointing season for the Minnesota Twins and their fans.

They managed to do better than last year, but that’s not saying much. Depending on how you look at it, 2011 was the third (or second or fifth) worst season in franchise history (which began in 1961). The equivocation comes from whether you look at the win percentage, games lost or games won.

This season is the sixth (or fourth or seventh) worst season in the 52-year history of the Minnesota Twins. It’s also only the second time they’ve such a bad win percentage two years running (and many don’t expect next year to be stellar, either).

I’ll explain about this and more, but regardless of how you look at it, it was an awful year!

62 Comments | tags: ALDS, American League, Central Division, meteor strike, Minnesota Twins, MLB, NLDS, Texas Rangers, World Series | posted in Baseball

September 23, 2012

Lovely Sunday

By Wyrd Smythe

It’s a crisp, cool, sunny Sunday, and the Twins just beat the Tigers 10-4 in the first game of what will be a double-header today. (The second game is to make up from being rained out Friday evening.) I’m not pinning high hopes of their winning both games, but they have won both games of the two double-headers played so far this year. It would be lovely if they did win tonight.

On the other hand, that would put the Tigers one more game away from taking the White Sox, and — as do all Twins fans — I hate those pale hose. On the other other hand, even if the Sox do take the pennant, they’ll likely get creamed by the Rangers or Yankees.

(I’m still holding hope the Orioles will take the Yankees. Anyone who’s not an actual Yankee fan hates those pin-stripe guys. “Best baseball team money can buy,” is not a compliment!)

But on this lovely Sunday, it’s awards, not baseball, that I want to write about.

13 Comments | tags: blog, blogging, candy corn, fall, Immanuel Kant, Minnesota Twins, Newhart, One Lovely Blog Award, rattlesnake tastes like chicken, Wonderful Team Member Readership Award | posted in Life

August 12, 2012

BB #5: Tiny Bubbles

By Wyrd Smythe

As I watch my Minnesota Twins do their best to lose three games in a row to Tampa Bay, I find myself pondering the difference between “winning,” “losing,” “not winning” and “not losing.”