I got to meet Charles Stross! And drink good beer! I dragged the wife down to The Brickskeller last night to meet the author and his wife, and an eclectic group of local fans. It was a little tough for the wife, since they now have a bunch of Bell’s Beer on hand. But it was less tough than it could have been, because they were out of most of it, including the Hopslam they claimed to have on tap. But it was fun. He signed my copy of Halting State. I wasn’t sure which book to bring. I could have done what one person did, and brought everything Charlie had ever published. But really, the marginal utility of each subsequent signature is pretty insignificant. I thought about bringing Singularity Sky, which I really enjoyed. Or Accelerando, the first of his that I read. But I have both of those in paperback. And my favorite of his, Iron Sunrise, I apparently don’t own at all. I guess I must have gotten it from the library. Anyway, I finally settled on a nice hardcover, and I’m happy with my decision. Plus I got this great picture of him. Didn’t get to talk to him much, but that’s okay. Not sure what I would have said. The conversation mostly centered around Charlie, talking about writing and politics. He says he’s not writing any more in the Iron Sunrise post-Singularity universe, which is too bad because I really like those stories. He related some stats on the death penalty that suggest we shouldn’t be killing people. The wife and I talked to his wife about beer – she was looking for weird American stuff they can’t get back home in Scotland, which is exactly my attitude when traveling. I will never understand those who travel abroad and want hamburgers and Budweiser. It was a good night. We got a little wet walking home, but since this was the warmest day we’ve had since last summer, and it didn’t rain too hard, it wasn’t too unpleasant.
Small site problems
When I switched from WordPress to Drupal for this site, I went to great lengths to try and keep all the old links working. I clearly didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked. Every day, people follow internal links that Drupal doesn’t recognize. If you click a link here at Complaint Hub (other than the Home link at the top) that takes you to the front page of the site, it’s probably a broken link. Feel free to leave a comment on the page that had the link and let me know, and I’ll fix it.
Trying to write about something other than baseball
So, I’m trying to think of something I want to write about rather than rehash yesterday’s Orioles game. No one wants to hear about it – O’s fans will just get depressed, and the Rays don’t have any fans. Maybe the players’ mothers. Anyway. So I thought I might write about Quacker of the House Nancy Pelosi advising the President to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies to protest China’s all-around unpleasantness, but then I was reading the article and my eyes started to glaze over. No one cares what advice Nancy Pelosi has for President Bush. She’d be more likely to get a reaction out of a large rock. Then I thought I should say something about IBM’s temporary suspension from getting federal contracts for some horrendous thing they did to EPA that no one will explain. This is huge news, but until we get some more details, it isn’t all that interesting. Or maybe it’s not interesting because my mind is refusing to grasp the massive incompetence or malice necessary to actually be disciplined by the government at all. But really, the most exciting thing about today is that I plan to go meet Charles Stross at the Brickskeller tonight. He’s one of my favorite authors, and he’s in town for something or other. He claims he’s trying to fend off jet-lag, but anyone going to a place with a beer list like this is merely fending off sobriety.
Orioles in HD!
I know that many of you are sick of hearing about baseball, but you’re going to have to deal with a bit more. We have the Orioles in HD! Last year, the Comcast feed from MASN was not in HD, and it was absolutely terrible. It was poor even for a non-HD channel. But today, I came home from work a bit early to watch the Orioles opening day, and we have MASN HD. Now all we need is an Orioles win.
Ok, back to baseball. And politics.
Nats 3, Braves 2 What a heck of a way to break in the new stadium. I don’t think anyone could have scripted a better first game at Nationals Park. Cristian Guzman singled on the first pitch a Nationals player saw in the new park. The Nats scored two runs in their first inning. And then Nats golden boy Ryan Zimmerman hit a walk-off home run to win it in the bottom of the ninth. Never mind that the home run was just about the only ball any National hit hard all night, it was still a great win. And, perhaps more surprising, George W. Bush hung out in the announcer’s booth for a few innings after throwing out the first pitch, and actually sounded like a human being. He didn’t talk about terrorism, even when they brought up 9/11. He joked with the announcers, and just generally talked like a baseball fan. I wonder what would have happened (Bear with me here, I know this is a stretch) if he had become MLB Commissioner instead of the President of the US. First, it would save us from Bud Selig, who, despite his recent minor victories in the steroid battle, is still a schmuck and not good for the game. Second, I think many of Bush’s qualities that I hate in a President, I would love in a commissioner. I’d be fine with a preemptive strike into Florida (Or Baltimore) to bring about regime change before another Marlins fire sale. I’d be fine with tax cuts for the richest teams – I think these revenue sharing deals are dumb. if the Yankees and the Red Sox want to have payrolls that are twenty times that of anyone else, let them. The A’s and sometimes the Marlins have proven you don’t need to spend that much to compete, so poor teams shouldn’t be getting handouts. I’d be fine with the commissioner acting as if he were endowed by god with infallibility. The commissioner is supposed to be the final word, and while there are issues on which I disagree with god on how to run a country, I’m pretty sure I’m cool with the way god would run baseball (I’ll bet he’d raise the mound a little bit and abolish Coors Field, for example). As baseball commissioner, Bush wouldn’t be in control of the military, so there would be no waterboarding of Jose Canseco, as much as many people might like to see it. We would still have to deal with the pro-Texas bias, but I think that’s a small price to pay. Too bad no one thought of this about ten years ago.
Homemade Seitan
Homemade Seitan recipe If you’re in the same boat as I am, where you don’t really eat a lot of meat at home, but when you cook something like a stir-fry, you like to have meat-like lumps of protein. But you also don’t like to buy heavily processed meat substitutes. Well, you’ll like this recipe. It’s really easy to make. The vital wheat gluten flour and nutritional yeast flakes can be tough to find. I got mine from iHerb.com, and you can get them from Amazon, too. And you must bear in mind that this stuff looks kind of disgusting as it’s cooking – you’re basically putting a doughy blob into water and simmering it for an hour. It looks like something you’d put out at an elementary school Halloween party, telling kids it’s brains. The recipe makes a lot. It instructs you to cut the dough into three pieces before you simmer it, and each one ends up being a pretty good-sized hunk of meat substitute. I made stir-fry with one chunk, and we ate it last night, and both have lunch for today. The other two thirds are still in the fridge. And it’s quite good. I’d heard that some vegetarians/vegans won’t eat seitan because it’s too much like meat. I did not have that reaction to it. It’s probably a little more meat-like than typical store-bought extra-firm tofu (I think I have more hyphenated compound words in this post than anything I’ve ever written), but you aren’t going to sneak this in to a dish and fool meat-eaters into thinking it’s steak. According to the comments on the recipe, it sounds like you can do a lot of tweaking the recipe for different dishes. Since the seitan soaks up a lot of the broth in which it simmers, I imagine that you could play around with the flavor a lot. And I’m sure we’ll try.
More Orioles crap
Marred with a possible drug suspension, Orioles release Gibbons
Gibbons is owed $5.7 million this year from the Orioles and $6.2 million for 2009.
That must be kind of depressing for Jay Gibbons. The Orioles have told him they’d rather just throw away $11 million than have him on their team. I’m not terribly sad to see him go. Even though his picture in MLB 2005 for the Gamecube looks just like my brother’s friend Jay, he’s only managed 500 at bats in a season once. His OPS+ last year was 62. Since 100 is average, it follows that 62 is bad. He’s 30, so his durability is unlikely to improve. Still, he was a career Oriole – all his major league at bats are for Baltimore. And you hate to see the guy just dumped so unceremoniously. Oh, well. I’ll write about something non-baseball related tomorrow.
Please, just get this over with
The Official Site of The Baltimore Orioles: News: Roberts seeks closure on trade front
“I don’t know what the resolution is — I haven’t heard anything except what somebody told me,” Roberts said Thursday. “[Andy and I] talked for two minutes here yesterday. ‘Highly unlikely’ doesn’t seem like a resolution to me.”
I still think this trade is going to happen. And quotes from Roberts, obviously unhappy that it’s not resolved, reinforce my point that he’s not going to be on top of his game. No one wants to be strung along, not knowing what city he’s going to be in next week. At this point, it’s ridiculous not to trade him. Just make the deal already. I think it sucks if he leaves this way, but I don’t see how you can salvage much of anything at this point. The whole situation is soured.
Now that they’ve said that . . .
The Official Site of Major League Baseball: News: Roberts deal appears unlikely
Baltimore manager Dave Trembley has consistently said that he can’t imagine his batting order without Roberts, a switch-hitting fixture at the top of the lineup. However, he’s also said that he’ll do whatever he needs to do.
Now that they’ve said that Baltimore is unlikely to trade Brian Roberts, I expect a trade to come through in the next day or two. I mean, why wouldn’t the Orioles get rid of a switch-hitting second baseman who stole 50 bases last year with a 112 OPS+ and happens to be one of the biggest fan favorites on the team? I mean, everyone in the league gets 42 doubles out of their second baseman, right? I know, it makes sense to deal him if you’re rebuilding. And if the Orioles aren’t rebuilding, then they’re completely insane. I just don’t see his value going up as the season progresses. The team is a mess, so I don’t expect a career year out of him. The Orioles should probably take whatever the best offer is right now and call it a day.
You want to see something scary?
Go to Google and type in “mccain nude” without the quotes. You’ll see that, as of today, this is the very first hit. You may ask how I know this. No, I was not searching for nude pictures of John McCain, or of anyone else. But someone else may have been, because someone found my site with that Google search. I’m only sixth when you search for “mccain hates bears” without the quotes, but first if you include them. I’m first for “nude mccain hates bears”. Anyway, none of this is really that important, but it’s amusing.