Statrix Redux

President’s Day has come and gone and I’m sad to say there were no presents under my copy of the Constitution this year. Of course I didn’t buy any PD presents for anyone else either, so I guess it’s a wash. The weekend wasn’t an entire loss though. I spent some time looking at motorcyles and my fantasy draft took place. I’m using the MLB fantasy site as it only required updating once a week and seems relatively straightforward.
My theory on all of this was, and it may be totally wrong, to use the Baseball Prospectus PECOTA rankings to assist me in choosing a team. Since I signed up for BP, I can was able to get their spreadsheet and sort it. Then I used those rankings to prerank the players at MLB. Theoretically the better players should have filtered to the top, and though I didn’t get the highest ranked players (drafting in postion 8 as I did), I should have come out okay.
I ended up with this as my initial team…

1. Carlos Beltran (OF, NYM)
2. Vladimir Guerrero (OF, LAA)
3. Prince Fielder (1B, MIL)
4. Carlos Guillen (SS, DET)
5. Bill Hall (3B, SS, MIL)
6. Matt Kemp (OF, LAD)
7. New York Yankees (P, NYY)
8. Eric Patterson (2B, CHC)
9. Michael Barrett (C, CHC)
10. Stephen Drew (SS, ARI)
11. Joey Votto (1B, CIN)
12. Florida Marlins (P, FLA)
13. Barry Bonds (OF, SF)
14. Lastings Milledge (OF, NYM)
15. Howie Kendrick (1B, 2B, LAA)

I appear to be a bit weak in catchers and at 3rd so Mr. Bonds may have to go, or perhaps a rookie. It’s so hard to know. The problem is that there really isn’t anyone better left out there, at least according to what BP has on the players left eligible. Still, opening day is a long way off so I’ve got a bit of time before changing any of this becomes necessary. That’s it for baseball today.
As for motorcycles, I’ve now looked at both Suzuki and Harley-Davidsons. Being completely honest, the HDs are nice, but the Suzuki bikes are too. The latter being much less expensive than the former in general. My buddy Robert says I can get a great used HD through a friend of his, but he’s had nothing but trouble with the two he bought from him. Hmmm…
I’m no longer thinking of buying the cheapest bike I can find, I may go for something a wee bit bigger and more comfortable, though after riding a moped for 3 years anything would be an improvement. 🙂
That’s it for now.
Aloha!

The Statrix Blobs are my MLB Fantasy League Team. It was just too cute to pass up…
Statrix Bob is the owner of the Statrix Blobs and will discuss them on the Statrix Blog. 🙂
Still a site named after “statistical tricks” ought to be okay for something, especially if it relates to baseball 🙂
In any case I’ve signed up for the MLB 2007 Open and have joined a list draft league. It’s my first time out at this, so I decided not to go with a live draft league because it’s a sure bet that I have no idea what I’m doing. This way I get to tweak whom I want and have it all done by the computer.
Sadly it appears my draft pick is 8 out of 12, so I may not get anyone that I’m hoping for this season. Since I doubt I’ll actually win my league, it’s not a big deal, but I would have liked the number one slot. Wouldn’t we all?

Happy Valentine’s Day to anyone reading this. Please do not send chocolates.
The reason, of course, is that I’m still trying to do the right thing in my eating habits. So far so good, I’ve managed to avoid sugar save for the rare times I don’t have a bit of fake sugar with me. Like this morning it turns out, though I told myself to bring some from home for my morning coffee at work. Oh well. In all though, it’s been going well.
It’s been over three weeks since I quite smoking. So far so good there too. I just realized I haven’t had the urge for a while now. It’s probably time to start thinking about weaning myself off of the patch.
I’ve started looking into buying another motorcycle. Another, you ask? Yep. Though unlike my assortment of cameras, another doesn’t mean an additional motorcycle. I haven’t owned one for quite a few years (and I’ve never owned a car – go figure).
When I was a youth, probably 35 years ago, I owned a Kawasaki 175 Enduro (an F7 I think). It looked a lot like this one which I saw on eBay.

I beat the heck out of that bike over a succession of summers in Montana where we kept it. I did learn to ride though and it was a lot of fun. As I recall it was pretty easy to repair and at one point I think I had the clutch held together with paper clips. After high school we stopped going to Montana and that was it for that bike.
It wasn’t till I moved back to Hawaii that I got another bike. That was another Kawasaki, this time a 305 CSR which I used here in Honolulu for transportation.

I rode that one till it would cost me more to repair than it was worth. I sold it and the fellow I sold it to repaired it himself, something I’m not good at, and made a bit more than his money back.
That was some time ago though. It’s been at least 12 years since I’ve owned a motorcycle proper. I have been riding a moped for the last 3 years, but it’s time to step up again I think. As much as I’d like to drop $15,000-$20,000 on a bike, I’m not in that league. I wouldn’t even want to be responsible for that much bike.
No, I’m thinking low end again. This time I might purchase a Suzuki S40. It’s about as low tech as you can get these days and is in my price range.

If I survive this one, I may end up with an expensive bike, but I need to be realistic. I’m not particularly mechanical. I can usually screw in a light bulb, but I’ve done that wrong more than once. I’m not into constant chrome polishing. And, while this may sound self-serving, I don’t need my ego fed by something big enough and loud enough to set off car alarms as I go by. It’s just not me.
Here’s a link to a review of the S40 that makes it sound rather pleasant.
The big challenge, getting another license. I had a motorcycle license, but through a series of rather bad choices in my life, I let it expire. Now I have to go through the whole process one more time, only this time I guess I’ll have to take the safety classes which, while not mandatory, are pretty much de rigeur these days. Besides, I can save a few bucks off the insurance.
I haven’t bought the bike yet, I have to see about financing and such (credit union), but I expect I’ll probably end up with something before the year is out.
That’s it for Valentine’s Day. There’s no baseball this weekend, so I’m at odds about what to do with myself. I’m sure I’ll find something. 🙂
Aloha!

It was baseball again today and we completed a sweep of the UoP Tigers. In this game Kris Sanchez hit another home run. That’s one in every game this series. This one was only good for one run, not a grand slam like Friday or the pair of runs yesterday, but it was a sweet hit into the scoreboard in right field.


On top of that the Tigers missed a run when the runner, coming from first, missed the bag and was out 8-6-2. The ‘Bows also got a 3-6-1 double play. In all it was a fun game.
They go on the road now, so it’ll be a while before I get to do this again, maybe I can get in some photography time. 🙂
Aloha!

I went to the Rainbow’s romp over the University of the Pacific Tigers. We won 13-1 in a game in which we hit up a storm and our pitchers didn’t look half bad.


The images are the scores I kept during the game. It was my first time keeping score and it’s a lot of fun. I kind of lost it towards the end when a lot of substitutions were made. I don’t know if I got them all, but by then it hardly mattered.
Check out the bottom of the 3rd inning where we batted around and Kris Sanchez hit a grand slam home run!
The biggest problem I had was hunger. I attended the game by myself and, as it turns out, to score you really need someone to run for food and beverage. 🙂
Aloha!

I don’t know what got into me yesterday, but I had an urge to spend money and, as often happens at those times, I did. I’m now a TiVo customer.
I watch some TV and enjoy it. I watch some TV and hate it. Sometimes it’s just on. The problem I have always have is finding something to watch. Often the stuff I like is on at 11 A.M. on a Monday (some movie no doubt) and I can’t see it. The problem is that I never remember to see what’s on and then set a recording for it.
TiVo, as I’m sure most folks know, is supposed to make all of this easier by giving you a number of different ways of doing your recordings.

1. Keyword searches – I like this one. Put in “baseball” and get a list of things that may relate to baseball.
2. Actor/Director searches – not so much for me, but when the itch comes, I’ll scratch it. All the Sean Young movies you could ever want. 🙂
3. Suggestions – this works for Netflix, maybe it’ll work here.
4. I hate this one…what your favorite “star” is watching. Turns out Donald Trump watches Donald Trump. Who knew?

The thing I like about it is that I can record stuff at work over the net. If one of my co-workers asks if I’m going to watch “Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah” tonight, and I’ve no plan of even being home, I can find it and let my TiVo box know I’d like to have it recorded. I might even watch it.
Now I’ll admit this almost never happens at work. The first of the two guys I work with has little children so the only thing he claims is on at his house is “Barney.” The other guy has big screen television, but doesn’t have cable or DirectTV, or even an antenna. He just uses it to watch DVDS. Each to his own I guess.
The hardest part so far is figuring out how to get the TiVo box on my Airport Express network. The problem I had was the TiVo wireless adapter wasn’t accepting the password for my network. It seems that even with a text password (as opposed to Hex), you have to enter the Hex equivalent. Getting that proved to be a pain, or rather very easy, depending on your point of view.
Apple has cleverly (a bit too cleverly maybe) installed a little button (it looks like a lock) that spits out the Hex equivalent of your network password in their configuration software. The thing is, you have to know it’s there. I didn’t, hence a lot of wasted time. I could of been having a V8, but no…
In any case, it’s all up and running now and I hope to watch something tonight that I programmed from work. It turns out there’s this episode of the Avengers and….
Aloha!

I’m a baseball never was.
That’s neither here nor there and not the topic of this post though. 🙂
What I have been is a fan of the Hawai`i Rainbow baseball team for some twenty years. I missed their finest hour when they came in 2nd at the College World Series, but started following them shortly thereafter. Currently we are 4-2 on the season having taken 2 of 3 from both Santa Clara and Georgia Southern. The GS folks were nice, but they stole my seat. 😉 I don’t blame them, it’s a nice seat.
But that isn’t the topic of this post either.
The topic is, more or less, the scoring of baseball. I recently got the bug to try my hand at scoring. In all the years I’ve gone to games I’ve never done it and always been a bit mystified by the process. I gave it a try at the last game I attended (last weekend against GS) and it really improved my enjoyment of the game.
I get a bit obsessed at times and this was no different. In no time at all I’d started a search for sites on the subject. A few of the best I found are:

Christopher Swingley’s Guide to Scoring Baseball

The Baseball Scorecard

Dan’s guide to Baseball Scorekeeping

I’ve followed along on a tutorial and printed some score sheets for this weekend’s game between my Rainbows and the University of the Pacific. It should be fun to see if I can keep up (and figure out what I’ve done when it’s over). Even the bad job I did before learning what the heck I was doing improved my experience last week, so I expect good things.
To top it, off I went and installed MySQL on my home machine so that I could play with the stats from Baseball-Databank.org. I haven’t gotten the hang of that yet, but I did manage to pull up all the former Rainbow big leaguers in the DB. I need more practice with MySQL and my SQL. Considering I have to use it at work (a different flavor though), it’ll probably pay off in the long run.
This last bit was prompted by reading a bit of Baseball Hacks by Joseph Adler online. I’ve ordered the book as well as a book on scoring, Baseball Scorekeeping: A Practical Guide to the Rules by Andres Wirkmaa. Both are on the way!
That’s it for now…back to replaying old games in my head while waiting for a new one!
Aloha!

I’m sitting down at the rRed Elephant Cafe on Bethel Street in Honolulu while taking a break from a manic day of errands. It’s a place I visit a lot. They have good coffee and food, lots of good art, and a very nice atmosphere. They also do a lot of things I never actually attend, but others do from what I can tell. If you are downtown in Honolulu, give ’em a try.
The other reason I bring them up is that they often have displays of photography here and I’d like to accumulate enough good images to do the same and actually have a show here. It’ll be a while at the rate I’ve been able to pursue my hobby, but there you go!

I’ve been busy today adding the ability to use RSS feeds in this blog. I’ve added three, all related to Shorewood HS and our reunion. The first feed is on the Shorewood ’76 page and has the RSS feed from the In Lieu of Our Reunion blog.
The other two feeds are Cheese and Slackers, a recipe blog, and Our Actual Reunion, where more info about the reunion can be found!
I’ve also changed the color scheme to Red and Grey as you may have noticed if you’ve been here before. These are, of course, the colors of Shorewood High School. It seems odd to me that the color scheme on their web is blue, but there ya go!
Aloha!

I just thought I’d put it out there that while anyone can leave a comment here, if Akismet tags it as spam AND I don’t know you, it’s going to stay tagged. So far I’ve had 4 comments, 1 of those was mine and 2 were from SHS alums. The 4th was tagged and as I don’t know the person in question so it stays tagged. I’m sorry if that bugs anyone, it’s just easier this way.
Aloha!