The [Devil] Rays played the Angels last night. The Rays came into the game 75-48, tied with the Cubs for the second best record in the Majors. They were behind only the Angels at 76-46. This is a 1.5 game differential. So why on earth is the headline on the front page of ESPN.com for this article Rays top MLB-best Angels? If the Rays were their normal selves, sitting 25 games out, then sure, this is significant. But do you know what they call it when the second best team in the league beats the best team in the league? They call that baseball. Or normal. I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, but I’m already annoyed with ESPN for their full page splash screen ads that have been popping up recently. Of course, now I’m possibly sending a little bit of traffic their way, so this is probably a pretty stupid response to my annoyance. But never mind.
Author: Jon
Once again, I’m reminded why I hate Microsoft
I just spent about three hours this morning trying to debug something at work. It turns out the issue shows up in Excel 2003, which our customer is using, but not Excel 2007, which I have on my laptop. This just goes to show you how important it is to mimic the customer’s environment as closely as possible. Anyway, I figured that part out, so now I had to decipher the error message when I tried to open the file in Excel. XML Spreadsheet warning in Table Reason: Bad Value Okay, sounds simple enough. I just have to find the bad value, and fix it. Excel didn’t offer me any advice, so I figured I’d try MSDN, Microsoft’s developer reference. You’d think that, since I was using a Microsoft product on a Microsoft operating system, maybe Microsoft might have some idea what the error message meant. As an aside, can I tell you how frustrating it is to have Excel tell me that the error has been printed to a log file hidden deep inside some Windows hidden temporary directory? Not only does it fail to provide me with a link to the file, but because it’s hidden, I can’t navigate through Windows Explorer, and I have to actually type the file address in manually. I can’t even copy the text from the error window! It’s like someone intentionally made it as hard as possible to look at the log. Anyway, there were ZERO results on MSDN. Zero. I’m forced to conclude that I am the only person who has ever had this problem. There isn’t any other explanation. It’s inconceivable that Microsoft could possibly have just ignored this error message, never once mentioning it anywhere that their vaunted search engine was able to look. It turns out the error was reasonably simple – Excel 2003 only allows 30 values in a sum. It will handle more if you use the range (A1:A40), but you can’t list the cells individually (A1, A2, A3 . . .). Excel 2007 doesn’t have a problem. Interestingly, if you use plus signs instead of the sum function, the limit of 30 goes away. Which is probably how I’m going to work around this. But couldn’t that have been in the error message? “We’re sorry, you can only have 30 cells in a formula”. Look, that was really easy. So, I hope the next person who has trouble deciphering an Excel error message find this post and saves some time. And I hope the people responsible for the idiocy on which I wasted the last three hours are all hit by a bus. Well, not really. Not a real bus. A three hour bus of mental anguish. That sound perfect.
Infinite goods want to be DRM-free!
I’ve gotten into a little discussion on DRM and ebooks over at Feedbooks. If you’re interested in potential business models for authors in a world of infinite goods, hop on over there and join the discussion. Especially if you can contribute more than me (That is, if you can do more than parrot what you read on Techdirt).
Would you like to know more?
It’s not often you can bring up Starship Troopers (The movie more than the book in this case) while talking about television and the internet and how they interact (or don’t). I was reading Ethan Kaplan talking about the tv in his house goes beyond just displaying channels coming through his cable box or movies from his DVD player.
Like it or not, television has become an interactive experience, but not because the broadcasters did anything to curate that. If anything, broadcasters have been sitting on their hands in terms of the possibilities of the bandwidth and platforms they helped put in our homes!
He grabbed my intention by bashing Internet Explorer 6, a plague on web developers that refuses to die, but then he talks about how he watches tv with one eye on the internet. And that’s where Starship Troopers comes in. The movie handles background information by showing little news clips, as if you’re watching tv in the movie’s universe. At the end, the narrator asks, “Would you like to know more?”. I always took that to mean that viewers could somehow interact with the tv and direct it to provide more on whatever they were just watching. And that was 1997. The tv stations still haven’t figured this out. For example, when I watch sports, I usually have my laptop out. Not that I ever put my laptop away, but whatever. If I’m watching the Orioles, I usually have the box score open at ESPN.com on the autorefresh. That way I have instant access to the starter’s pitch count, what this batter did in his last at bat, and all sorts of other relevant stuff. I probably have a browser tab on Baseball Reference to look up more unusual stats, or maybe check something the announcer just mentioned. There’s no reason this has to be separate from my tv-watching. We have a big tv in the living room. It might annoy the wife, but there’s no reason I couldn’t have extra stat feeds running along with the baseball game, or or maybe something else of interest. The issue is probably one of money – the cable providers are afraid of new revenue streams.
Display advertising, temporal advertising (commercials), usage based charges and other economic systems aren’t in tune with nascent usage and thus we have not only an uncapitalized usage system, but also a rather anarchic one.
Not that they’re afraid of new ways of making money, but that they’re afraid of losing control. The old ways of making money with tv are broken. That’s why there have been so many efforts to keep DVRs from skipping commercials and things like that. You don’t have a captive audience anymore. If you bore people, they’re going to do something else. So you have to embrace what people want.
Finally made it to Commonwealth
Originally uploaded by thetejon
A friend and I met our wives at Commonwealth last night. It had been girls night – they met up in Arlington and had dinner. So the guys went to the Nationals game to watch the Rockies pummel the Nationals, I still haven’t seen a Nationals win in the new stadium. Anyway, since the wife is 37 weeks pregnant now, she got to choose the location, and she chose one near us. It was a beautiful night, so we sat outside. This means I didn’t really get a feel for the inside, but maybe we can do that next time. They were serving from their pub menu since it was late. We got an order of fries, which I didn’t actually try, but the table consensus was positive. They are large chunks of potato, so if that’s the way you like your fries, you’re in luck. And we tried the Scotch eggs, which were very good. And the service was good. I think my only complaint was the lack of any sort of description on the menu. We thought at first it was just the pub menu that didn’t have descriptions, but they brought us what I assumed was the regular menu, as well, because it had the drinks, and it didn’t have descriptions, either. Since there is a ton of stuff on the menu that’s a bit out of the ordinary, at least for this side of the pond, it seems that maybe descriptions on the menu would be nice. But if that’s the biggest complaint from a self-proclaimed complainer, I think the trip was a resounding success. I’m sure we’ll be back – my father-in-law has already been informed that there is a bar with outdoor seating and bubble and squeak on the menu, so it would take the intervention of the health department or some equally powerful entity to keep us from revisiting Commonwealth next time he comes down to visit.
The little brother is off to law school
My baby brother is leaving today for law school on the other side of the country. It’s a pretty mixed feeling for me. On one hand, I’m obviously happy and excited for him. Law school is a great opportunity, and it should be a great experience, and I’m glad he’s figuring out what he wants to do with his life. On the other hand, I’d kind of gotten used to him being close by, playing on the flag football team, and all that. Plus, he’ll be in Arizona when his first niece or nephew is born next month. Luckily, I’ll be at happy hour when his plane leaves today, so I can have a drink for him. I think he’ll appreciate that.
Where’s the media love for this guy?
I was just reminded of Brad Ziegler by a post at It Is About the Money, which is a Yankees blog but not obnoxiously so. Anyway, Ziegler still hasn’t ever given up a run in the major leagues. 29 games, 38 innings, zero runs. He broke a 100 year old record for scoreless innings to start a career 13 innings ago. But you barely hear anything about him. I haven’t seen him on the front page of ESPN at all. I know Oakland isn’t New York or Boston, but if this guy played for the Yankees or Red Sox, he would be on SportsCenter every 34 seconds. I wonder how many innings he has to pitch without giving up a run to get some attention? Maybe after the Olympics are over. Edit to add: It was less than three hours from the time this post went up until his streak ended. I feel like I jinxed it. That sucks.
Your government at work – 16th and U to get a makeover
You may recall that I was nearly killed in a crosswalk not too long ago. No, not that time, this was another time when I was nearly killed in a crosswalk. Before my foot surgery (And again as soon as it’s healed enough, which should be soon), I walked to work with the wife every day. We had a few “incidents” at 16th and U, where cars like to turn onto New Hampshire without yielding to pedestrians. I understand that the traffic pattern is a little confusing, but it’s still a problem. So I emailed my councilmember, the often-helpful Jim Graham, and asked him to do something about it. I didn’t hear much for a while, until yesterday when I got an email from a member of his staff.
I apologize for the delay. I misfiled your email. I am forwarding this to the pedestrian safety coordinator so that he can evaluate options for increased enforcement here. Councilmember Graham reported a new law out of his committee that will increase fines to $250 for drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians. The bill also requires that signs be posted to warn motorists. This law will come before the Council for final vote on September 16. Obviously, increased enforcement is also necessary as part of this effort. Councilmember Graham has been working to get the Department of Transportation involved in issuing moving violations to improve pedestrian safety. Finally, in a few years, DDOT plans to redesign this intersection to make it much safer. I’ve attached an image of the proposed changes. Jonathon Kass Committee on Public Works and the Environment Office of Councilmember Jim Graham
So that’s pretty awesome. Below is the picture he sent me. I’ve never used Photobucket before, and it has a very “We built this site for AOLers in 1997 and just slapped a Web 2.0 facelift on it” feel to it, but theoretically if you click the picture you can see a bigger version.
And that’s your DC government at work. They may be slow sometimes, but they do listen when you voice your concerns. The plans look pretty decent to my untrained eye. It looks like they’re widening the sidewalk on the northwest corner, which is good. And the goofy traffic pattern on the northeast corner will be gone. Of course, it will be a few years before this happens. And I imagine that intersection will be a bit of a disaster during construction. But in the end, it’ll be safer and better. I hope.
Can the Sarfate-as-starter experiment please end?
I know the Orioles are looking for another starter after sending Brian Burres to wherever they sent him (Is he on the ML roster? I don’t even care). But it seems pretty clear that the starter they are looking for is not Dennis Sarfate. He has now started three games. I honestly can’t decide which is his worst performance. He hasn’t gotten through the fifth inning. His ERA is 11.45. His WHIP is 2.18. That’s 13 hits and 11 walks in 11 innings. And the 13 hits I can even forgive. You can give up a hit even when you make a perfect pitch. It happens. But walking a batter per inning is just inexcusable. As Satchel Paige (supposedly) said, “Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move”. I have no idea if he actually said that – it’s often attributed to him, but it’s never been entirely clear if he really said the things they say he said. But it’s good advice nonetheless. At least if you throw the ball over the plate, you have a chance to succeed. I’m not interested in seeing him pitch any more. He wasn’t a great reliever, and he’s a miserable starter. It’s really too bad Jeremy Guthrie can’t pitch every night.
We need more science
So I’ve been watching the Olympics, as I gather most people are doing. I’m not a huge fan, although it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement. I mean, the swimmers are breaking a world record every few hours, and there’s apparently a ton of drama in the women’s gymnastics (because, I think, all the athletes are 12 years old, and you know how girls are at that age). But I was reading this article and thinking that, not only does the media ignore some pretty easy science in the relative radioactivity of granite countertops, as mentioned there, but also that a few numbers could really make the Olympics more interesting to me. First, swimming. We keep breaking records. It would be nice to know how long a record stood, how much it was broken by, and things like that. We even had a swimmer break the split record and they not only didn’t mention his time, but they didn’t mention the time he had beaten. How hard is it to flash a number on the screen? Maybe instead of 37 shots of Michael Phelps screaming, we could have gotten some background on the numbers. And then the gymnastics. They’ve changed the scoring system so that you get a score based on difficulty, which they seem to know before anything happens, and then a score based on performance/accuracy/whatever. Why in the world can’t I know what the difficulty score is going to be while it’s happening? If it’s going to be a really tough routine, that would make it more interesting. Or I could at least compare something that’s rated 6.5 with something that’s 5.5 and see how much harder one appears to be than the other. They don’t even tell you what the score range is. I assume the accuracy score is out of 10, because most people were between 8.5 and 9.5. But I don’t really know. Is there some reason they can’t show these numbers? The commentators frequently ramble on about absolutely nothing. Maybe instead they could talk about the science behind why the swimmers break records every race this year. Apparently wider, deeper pools, combined with better suit technology and new stroke rules are all combining to make the swimmers faster. But I haven’t heard anyone on tv talk about that. The American public is not afraid of science and numbers. And some of us actually find that they enhance the experience. So can we maybe get some? It’s not that hard. On a sort-of-related note, congratulations to the blogger linked above – his wife just had their first baby last week.