According to the iPod Mechanic, my iPod only has 37 days of life left. It has been acting a little funny lately, but after 3 1/2 years, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. This is especially true since I seem to be dropping it at a multiple times per week rate. Anyway, I’ve added the iPod death date to my countdown on the right, and we’ll see how accurate the iPod Mechanic is.
I recently posted about the Secretary of Transportation and her opinion of bicycling as a form of transportation. I received the following response today:
Thank you for your e-mail about the importance of bicycling and walking as a form of transportation. I share your interest in a safe, efficient mullimodal transportation system. Your e-mail discussed comments I made during a recent interview regarding the importance of effectively prioritizing major transportation spending decisions. These comments were in no way intended as an indictment of bicycle and pedestrian investments broadly. Rather, they were part of a much larger critique of the processes by which investment decisions are increasingly being made at the Federal level. Too often, political influence and power arc guiding transportation spending priorities, instead of merit, competition, data, and analysis. The U.S. Department of Transportation believes that bicyclists and pedestrians are legitimate and welcome users of our Nation’s transportation system. They are a healthy part of the solution to congestion in our urban areas. We also believe that States, metropolitan planning organizations, and transit agencies are in the best position to understand the unique needs of their own communities, which is why we have continued to strongly support broad eligibility under the Federal-aid program for a diverse mix of transportation investments, including bicycle and pedestrian transportation facilities. Programs that improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians arc also eligible for Federal safety dollars. Although the number of bicyclist and pedestrian injuries and fatalities has dropped by 10 percent since 1994, fatalities have increased in the last 2 years, and this is not acceptable.
Thank you again for voicing your opinion. I hope to continue to work with bicycling and pedestrian advocates as we face the challenges of meeting our country’s changing
transportation needs.Sincerely yours,
Mary E. Peters
Here’s a first: the owner of an art car featured on this site found her car and left a comment about it! Emily is a potter in Chicago who writes a pottery blog. So if you need any pottery done in the Chicagoland area, she’s who I recommend.
Approximately. That’s about the amount of time it’s going to take for me to recover from this season. I will be paying only cursory attention to the playoffs, except to curse whenever the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Cubs, Phillies, or Indians win.
I’m going to anticipate some questions here.
“What happened [to the Mets]?”
Most of the Mets pitchers rely on good defense behind them. In the last couple weeks, that defense was not as crisp, which led to extra outs for the opposition. Furthermore, the pitching staff was patched together from the beginning of the season. The bullpen was heavily used throughout the season, and ultimately the overwork cost them runs at the worst time. On the offensive side, Jose Reyes stopped hitting, Paul Lo Duca couldn’t match last year’s performance, and the mix of players in right field was average at best. No matter how good David Wright and Carlos Beltran were, they couldn’t make up for all of the other outs in the lineup.
“So are you going to root for the Cubs now?!”
No. The Cubs are a trendy thing to do, and if there’s anything I revolt against, it’s the trendy. Let me add that they won 85 games in one of the worst divisions I can remember. Applying the St. Louis theory of prediction, they will win the World Series.
“Are you going to root for the Red Sox against the Yankees?”
I will root for Curt Schilling to break his arm throwing a pitch, which will miraculously send the ball into Derek Jeter’s face. The Red Sox are just as evil as the Yankees, and their fans deserve another 80+ years of disappointment.
“Is there anyone you don’t hate in the playoffs?”
San Diego is pretty innocuous. I would find it hilarious if Michael Barrett, formerly of the Cubs, does something good against his former team. Unfortunately, Milton Bradley got hurt, and he was probably my favorite player on a playoff bound team.
[UPDATE]
Since the Rockies beat the Padres in their one-game playoff on Monday, the Padres are out, and the Rockies are in. As such, they take the crown of “Least Offensive Team in the Playoffs.” Most of their players are home grown, and they exist far enough away from me that their fans can’t annoy me.
[/UPDATE]
“But won’t you watch the games just because you’re a baseball fan?”
These games will be broadcast on Fox, who finds it their mission to make baseball unwatchable. The only way they could make it worse would be to hire Joe Morgan as a special correspondent.
“Who should be the NL MVP this year?”
Thanks to the team’s late season collapse, he won’t get the award, but here’s David Wright’s line for the year:
.325 AVG / .417 OBP / .548 SLG / 153 OPS+ / 34 SB at 87% success
Remember that the Mets play half their games in Shea, which has a run environment 96% of the league average (compare to Citizens Bank Park at 109%). So that’s my biased pick. But I won’t feel much better if Wright wins it, and I doubt he’ll feel much better about the season either.
Jere’s YouTube Pick of the Day: One Semester of Spanish Love Song
I recently won myself a $25 gift card for iTunes by winning an MLB weekly challenge on ProTrade.com. Here’s the proof:
![[I won an iTunes gift card!]](https://realmofthewombat.com/images/misc/winner.jpg)
My last win in a contest was the 1993 Electronic Gaming Monthly Super Tour Wing Commander: Secret Missions competition. I had played Wing Commander on PC and SNES quite a bit, so when I took my turn at the new Wing Commander: Secret Missions game, I was a natural. I think I shot down 16 enemies, and the most they had seen anyone shoot was like 10 at another stop on their mall tour. For my efforts, I won a copy of the new Wing Commander and this other game for SNES, Outlander. Outlander was a terrible game, but since it was a new release, I was able to sell it at Funcoland for enough money to buy a used GameBoy.
I am predicting that my next win will come in 2015 when I answer a trivia question about Kirby Puckett’s 1989 batting average title, which will earn me two tickets to a high school performance of Cats.
People have been telling me I need cable. When I ask why, I get two responses:
1) The Daily Show and Colbert Report
2) ESPN
With regards to point 1, Comedy Central puts the entire episodes of Stewart and Colbert online in clip format, so you don’t even have to watch commercials.
With regards to point 2, what exactly am I missing without ESPN? Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight are unwatchable. ESPN shows very few actual sporting events these days, and people employed to describe the action are unbearable. Joe Morgan, the network’s top baseball analyst, has inspired an entire website devoted to pointing out how little he knows about baseball. ESPN does show a good number of college football games, but you might hear something like this in a game in overtime. Is that really worth the $50 per month?
You’re a cowboy, and get involved in a three way pistol duel with two other cowboys. You are a poor shot, with an accuracy of only 33%. The other two cowboys shoot with accuracies of 50% and 100%, respectively. The rules of the duel are one shot per cowboy per round. The shooting order is from worst shooter to best shooter, so you get to shoot first, the 50% guy goes second, and the 100% guy goes third, then repeat. If a cowboy is shot he’s out for good, and his turn is skipped. Where or who should you shoot first?
I miss watching Conan, but he’s on way past my bedtime.