Beautiful day for Preakness yesterday. We had a huge group this year. It’s a family tradition for my wife, ever since her dad started going years ago. This is my fourth year going. We sit in the stands with the civilized people, rather than in the infield with the drunken idiots. We arrived yesterday just before the 6th race of the day. I like to do a little betting, probably two $2 bets per race, more or less. Usually a little more on the actual Preakness race. This year, we brought a friend, Heather, whose father is a pretty serious horse race enthusiast. He sent her some tips on the races. On his advice, I bet a $2 exacta on the sixth race, on #3 Roshani and #4 Lady Digby. Imagine my surprise as they came around to finish in just that order, just ahead of #1 Valbenny, the pre-race favorite. I won $21.40 on that bet, which was a pretty nice way to start the day. We didn’t have any tips for race 7, so I had to make my own decisions. I liked #1, Roman Emperor, one of the favorites, and the wife liked #5, Da’ Tara. I was even more surprised to win that exacta, too, paying off $12. The word on the 8th race was #8, True to Tradition. I put down a $2 bet for a friend on him to place, and one for myself. I made my (so far) only mistake on the betting machine and accidentally bet him to show, but figured I’d keep the ticket anyway. When he finished second, both tickets paid, $5.20 and $4.20. I didn’t win anything else on the night, but I did get to see an impressive win in the Preakness by Big Brown. It sure looks like he has a good shot at the Triple Crown. Last time we had one of those was the year I was born. I didn’t see the race. And I ended the day up $10 (Well, not including what I spent on things other than betting). Any day of betting where you end up with more than you came with is a good day of betting. After the race, we went to Chiapparelli’s in Little Italy in Baltimore for dinner. It was good. They did a nice job serving our huge party, although they were a little late seating us. When you arrive 15 minutes early for a reservation, and get seated 10 minutes late, that’s kind of annoying. But it didn’t spoil our evening.
Tag: Anti complaint
I have powers you can’t even imagine
It’s been about three and a half hours since I complained about the lack of 64 bit Flash for Linux. Just a minute ago, I was checking out the latest on my RSS feed, and there was a Flash video on BoingBoing. Firefox popped up the little message, asking if I wanted to install the plugin. I figured it wouldn’t work, but I did it anyway. The package manager installed flashplugin-nonfree, and it worked! I can watch YouTube videos! I can use Google Analytics! Even MLB GameDay works! It’s amazing! So, I apologize, Ubuntu. You’ve been so good to me, and I nearly kicked you to the curb just because Fedora put out a new distro. But I’m back now. I’m right back on the Ubuntu bandwagon. On a side note, I’m available for freelance complaining. This is not the first time I’ve complained about something that was magically fixed soon afterwards. For a very reasonable hourly rate, I’ll complain about something that you’d like fixed. Results not guaranteed. Nor even expected.
Oh, Ubuntu, you make me laugh
I tried out Fedora for a few minutes. The Gnome desktop looks just like Ubuntu. I’m going to do some research and see what the real differences are. When I rebooted into Ubuntu, I had some upgrades to install, which I did. One of them popped up this message:
A security certificate which was automatically created for your local system needs to be replaced due to a flaw which renders it insecure. This will be done automatically. If you don’t know anything about this, you can safely ignore this message.
That’s pretty awesome.
Awful website, great restaurant
The wife and I had dinner at Rumba Cafe in Adams Morgan last night. It was a 1000 point reservation at Open Table, which puts us almost to a $50 gift certificate to any restaurant that deals with Open Table, which is awesome. The Rumba Cafe website seems to be under maintenance this morning (I think it should be euthanized, personally (And did you know that “euthanized” isn’t in the default Firefox dictionary? Weird)), but no matter. We sat outside, since it was so nice last night. The service was very good, the beer mediocre, and the food was excellent. I had the steak with a fried egg on top, served with rice and black beans and a fried plantain. Reminded me of Costa Rican “casados”, which I love. The wife had some kind of fish, I forget what, but it was good, too. I highly recommend Adams Morgan when it’s not overrun with kids (By kids I mean 23-year-olds). 8PM on a Tuesday it’s alive with people (Plenty of kickballers and others just out for dinner or a drink) but doesn’t have that “everyone around you is wasted” vibe that it gets on the weekend. It was just a nice spring evening.
Orioles beat Beckett and the Sox
The Orioles came back from an early 3-0 deficit last night to beat Josh Beckett and the Red Sox. I’m sorry I missed the game, but I was having dinner with the wife (Post to come) and then watching basketball. The game puts the Sox a half game back from first place Tampa Bay (Never thought I’d write those four words) and keeps the O’s in third, 3 back. Not a bad place to be for a team expected to win 65 games this year. Now, I’ve complained about the hold before. It’s a stupid stat that rarely measures anything of real value to a baseball team. But there was an interesting hold credited last night to an Orioles pitcher. So, top of the seventh, Boston leads off with two singles, so we have guys on first and second with no outs. It’s 5-3, Baltimore. Jamie Walker relieves Jeremy Guthrie and promptly throws a wild pitch and walks Ortiz to load the bases for Manny. Pretty much anyone who has ever heard of baseball knows that no outs, bases loaded, and Manny Ramirez at the plate is bad times for the defense. This could be very ugly, very soon. Jim Johnson relieves Walker and Manny grounds into a double play, then Mike Lowell pops out to end the inning. THIS IS A HOLD. Bases loaded, no outs in the seventh, two run lead, and the 4-5-6 hitters coming up – allowing no runs here is a really nice pitching performance. I have no problem giving the guy credit for a hold here. But I do have a problem with the next inning, where with one out, Johnson walks two and gives up an RBI single before getting lifted for the closer. So, we have to try and get to the root of the hold. Is it given for getting out of a jam, regardless of the next inning? That is, let’s say he had given up a two-run home run before getting lifted, making the score 6-5 Sox. Does he still get the hold for the previous inning? Maybe my real problem here is my reaction to pitchers issuing walks. I think it’s because I feel like, if the pitcher allows a hit, then the batter beat him. It sucks, but it happens. But if the pitcher allows a walk, then he beat himself. I mean, sure, some guys are better at drawing walks than others, but in the end, the pitcher still has to throw four pitches that don’t go through the strike zone and don’t provoke a swing. Maybe my initial reaction to Johnson’s night would have been better if he’d just given up two hits and the run instead of the two walks. Anyway, I still hate the hold stat. But at least Johnson earned it this time.
This is what happens when you throw strikes, Cabrera
I didn’t see the game, but it’s quite clear from the box score that Daniel Cabrera is a tremendously effective pitcher when he’s throwing strikes. He threw 76 of them versus only 40 balls. The result? A 4-1 complete game victory over the (hapless, I know) Kansas City Royals. He struck out seven, allowing only three hits and a walk. Lucky for the Orioles that Nick Markakis had a good game, hitting three run homer and scoring on a wild pitch to account for all four of the Orioles runs. Losing a complete game shutout 1-0 is kind of a kick in the teeth. The game also pulled the Orioles a half-game ahead of Toronto into fourth place in the AL East.
Man, Trent’s going crazy
It’s only been two months since Trent Reznor released his last album, and now he’s got another one. This one, The Slip is a totally free download. I was listening to it for the first time this morning, and I was wondering if there was a mainstream single on it. He’s releasing one track as a single so far, Discipline, and I have no idea if it will be a hit. I like it, but I like just about every Nine Inch Nails song ever, so I’m hardly a good judge of what others might like. I was talking to a friend and fellow NIN fan about the lack of a single, and he said, “That’s what Trent said about The Downward Spiral, and then ‘I want to **** you like an animal’ became our high school anthem'”. So I guess we’ll just wait and see.
Watching a little basketball, playing with some computers
So how’s this for a great Friday evening: I’m sitting on the couch. To my left, the windows are open because it’s a gorgeous spring evening. Right next to me on the couch, the wife is napping, waiting for the Celtics game. I have a kitchen full of beer and wine left over from my birthday party last week. We have the ingredients ready for dinner, pasta with tomatoes and asparagus, plus some cauliflower poppers. In front of me is my brand new work computer, on which I’ve just installed Launchy, which everyone should install on their Windows machine. It’s similar to Gnome-Do for Linux and Quicksilver for Mac – I’ve been using Gnome-Do for a while and I love it, and wanted something like it for my Windows work machine. And speaking of Linux, my personal laptop is currently downloading and upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron. So, I have sports, food and drink, computer geekishness, and my fabulous wife. I have no idea what more I could possibly want.
Hey, all you Catholics
So the Pope is in town. Since I work almost right next door to the White House, which is where he was hanging out this morning, some coworkers and I went up to the roof of the building to watch as he hopped into the PopeMobile and drove off down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the adoring throngs. Anyway, there are more pictures here. The view from the roof is pretty good. And there are electrical outlets and benches up there. With the weather getting nice, I might just have to take a laptop up there now and then.
Another race, my personal best
The fifth annual Race to Stop the Silence took place yesterday. I ran it last year, too, finishing in 55:04. This year, I reached my personal goal of a sub-50-minute finish, coming in at 49:38. There are more pictures here, thanks to the wife. She and the mother-in-law and Phil came to watch on a brisk early morning, and I was glad to put on a good show. The course was moved from West Potomac Park to Anacostia this year, and I wasn’t expecting much. But the course wasn’t bad. It was a 5K course, two laps, which wasn’t ideal. And I was afraid it would get crowded. But with only 428 runners (I finished 166th overall), it didn’t get too bad. I don’t have any more races scheduled for this year. I’d like to get a pace time under eight minutes (This one was 8:01) as my next goal. Maybe I’ll find another one before it gets too hot.