Etcetera

Back from parade

Well, I did finally go to the parade, and it was terrific. I took a bunch of pics and have some stories. I'll post them soon.

Here's one tidbit: Manny, riding in his duckboat, was waving a sign that said,

Jeter's playing golf today. This is better!

To Be or Not To Be

I'm sitting here trying to make a decision.

I was planning to head into Boston to see the Parade, I was gonna head out around 9am. But I'm watching the TV, and they are showing that already, an hour before the start time, the crowds are huge. And it's raining!

Can I really miss this? Even if I can't get into a position to see the team. Shouldn't I just go in soak up whatever I can from the experience? Or just enjoy it on TV, and plan to see them when they visit NH?

Decision time.

Best Tuna

Odd Todd has finally selected his choice for best tuna of all.

Well I've eaten up alot of tuna over the past couple months. Some were good. Some just ok. Some were gross and fishy. Some had a weird texture. Some came in a pouch. Some a can. One in a glass jar. Some in water. Some in oil. Some with flavoring. Garlic or herbs. Some chunk. Some white. Some tasted like gross catfood. Some was too hard and crumbly. Some too mushy and goopy. One had a hard thing in it. An immediate disqualification. I boycotted BumbleBee. Anyway, I'm done with tuna for a while I think. Totally burnt out on the stuff.

It's starting to sink in.

I know it happened two days ago, but it was kinda unreal.

I mean it's not something that is easy to accept.

I've been thinking about it a lot, but it just didn't make any sense to me.

But it's finally becoming real for me, I can't deny it any longer...

There's no more baseball 'til Spring. That's a really big drag!

One if by land, Two if by sea

They've extended the route of tomorrow's Redsox parade.

[Someone did the math and concluded that, using the current predictions of the crowd size, every foot, of both sides of the street, for the entire 2.8 mile route, would need to be crowded 200 people deep.]

So now they will continue on from City Hall, down Charles Street to the river, where -- are you ready for this!? -- the Duck Tour vehicles will go INTO the Charles River and cruise along the Boston shoreline to the Mass Ave bridge, cross over, and cruise down the Cambridge shore.

Love that dirty water!

Long day

I had planned to upgrade my Mom's Mac to OS X Panther this morning. I thought it would take a couple of hours, including doing a backup of the important data.

I was wrong.

Due to a really lame backup strategy -- which I came up with all on my own, I'm proud to say -- it took 7 hours to copy a-little-over-2-gig of stuff, mostly pics and music, to a safe place. Here's a hint: copying large hunks of data across an ethernet cable is not the way to go.

Anyway, I finally got the backup done, and although the OS upgrade, and iLife upgrades, took almost 3 hours, that was pretty much what it should have been.

Anyway it's done. And it seems to have made a difference.

All the apps that they use a lot -- IE, Mail, iPhoto, and iTunes -- all seem to be performing much better.

Oct 28 Survivor

Feel free to post comments about last night's ep under this post. There will probably be spoilers here.

Just for a little while...

A caller on talk radio just said,

"Just for today, it's OK, there IS crying in baseball."

Parade, but no rally for Sox

This is too bad, but it's the right decision.

On Saturday there will be a parade for the Sox, but, unlike for the Patriots' two recent Superbowl wins, there will be no mass rally.

I went to the Pats' rally last winter on City Hall Plaza, and it was a frightening mob scene. The Plaza was not big enough for that crowd. And, with all due respect to the Pats, the Redsox would draw a bigger crowd, much bigger. There is no public space in Boston that could safely accommodate all the people that would want to attend.

New message from the Hancock Building lights

They've created a new colored lights pattern for the lights on top of Boston's Hancock Building.

The traditional meaning of the colored lights has been:

Steady blue, clear view Flashing blue, clouds due

Steady read red, rain ahead
Flashing red, snow instead
... except when it's baseball season when it means the game is rained out.

But for the next few days they will be sending this message:

"Flashing blue & red, when the curse is dead."

Bambino's Curse is dead

The website, I mean.

Ed Cossette, author of one of the sites I read every day, has announced that, now that the sox won the series, his work is done.

After thanking and congratulating the team in this morning's post he wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, everyone who has stopped by this blog once, twice, or a couple hundred times in the past four seasons, thank you!

My work here is done.

This will be the final, regular post to the Bambino's Curse weblog. The site, however, and all the archives will remain online forever, as a small testament and recollection of what it was like to be a fan before the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918. (Like anyone wants to relive that!)

the redsox win. the Red Sox win! The Red Sox Win!!!

An Idiot's Guide to Winning the World Series.

Authors of popular blog endorse John Kerry

Mark Frauenfelder, Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, John Battelle, and Xeni Jardin are the authors of the very popular Boing Boing blog. They have announced that they are supporting Senator Kerry for President.

For us, the choice for Kerry involves simple things. Justice, liberty, privacy, transparency. Freedom of speech, thought, and technological expression. A woman's right to choose. Equal access to health care, education, and economic opportunity for all. The rule of law, at home and abroad. Peace. The enduring value of the American Constitution.

These are wonderful things. The Bush administration has proven both inability and unwillingness to protect them. In 2004, Kerry is the one.

Over the top

Perhaps this metaphysical, age of aquarius, alignment of the planets, stonehengian, druidian, event is what we've been missing all these years to finally win one.

A unique date in the annals of baseball history will be recorded Wednesday, Oct. 27 when for the first time a total lunar eclipse will occur during a World Series game.

...

This notable Fall Classic owes partly to the fact that from 1903 through 1970, the World Series was only played during the daytime (The World Series was not played in 1904.)

In 1971, night Series games were introduced. But no total lunar eclipse since that time has occurred at just the right time.

We win it during a lunar eclipse, and then after the game comes the Apocalypse.

Take your pick

The Nation has compiled a list of facts about the failure of the Bush Administration.

The Unstableness of Preference

One of my favorite books about human nature, and the way things work, is Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". He has a new book coming out, after the first of the year, called, "Blink". It's about "social intuition, how we know what we know in social situations". He gave a preview of these new discoveries at the Pop!Tech conference that was just held in Camden, Maine.

The story of the Aeron chair suggests that somewhere in that transaction there is a problem, and the problem is that there is something that is being lost between the expression of a preference and the feeling of a preference. ... So this is my question, why would people say they didn't like an idea, that they really liked? ... [One lesson from this is that] preference, our feelings about something, are extraordinarily unstable.

This is a 30 minute, 13meg, mp3. Download it and listen in your spare time. Fascinating stuff from an interesting speaker.

The more the merrier

MGA pointed this out to me:

Brazil has successfully launched its first rocket into space.

...

Brazil hopes the successful launch will push forward its plans to sell 15 of its VSV-30 rockets to the European Space Agency.

Dim Bulbs

William Gibson quotes John Cleese:

How many Bush administration officials does it take to change a light bulb?

None. There’s nothing wrong with that light bulb. There is no need to change anything. We made the right decision and nothing has happened to change our minds. People who criticize this light bulb now, just because it doesn’t work anymore, supported us when we first screwed it in, and when these flip-floppers insist on saying that it is burned out, they are merely giving aid and encouragement to the Forces of Darkness.

World Series Chat

Once again I've created an IRC channel to chat during tonite's game.

network: irc.freenode.net
channel: #redsox

The best owner in baseball

In the Boston Globe, Gordon Edes writes about Redsox principal owner John Henry's roots as a true baseball fan.

So Henry retreated into the world created on KMOX, with its 50,000-watt signal that carried the voices of Harry Caray and Joe Garagiola and Jack Buck, the great broadcasters who brought the Cardinals into Henry's life. He would keep score while listening to the games, and faithfully kept baseball cards, cards he still has in his Florida home.

Not Pretty, But...

It took 10 runs to win the first game of the Series. The Sox committed 4 errors, and gave up the lead repeatedly throughout the game.

But we've now won the all-important first game. We've won 5 in a row, and 8 out of 11 playoff games.

Survivor Vanuata - Ep #5 "Mix and Match"

Posted after Ep #5, October 14, 2004. This post, and its comments, may contain spoilers....

Previous Survivor: Vanuatu reports:
1: An Age Imbalance.
2: C'mon, give me a little hug!
3: Just be one of the girls.
4: A visit from Dah.

I forgot to mention last week that it went without mention in the episode, but Twila's hair was in a French Braid. You'll recall that in the previous week's Tribal Council Ami made a big pitch for Twila to make friends and let someone braid her hair. Apparently she did. This may have contributed to Twila not complaining since then. Or maybe they're just editing it to look that way.

Back in the men's tribe they're fighting ove the sleeping arrangements. It's like a lover's quarrel about which side of the bed they each want.

A visitor arrives in a conoe:... he says, "one chief". Sarge lets himself become the chief. Scout for women. The oldest person on both tribes. Allowing yourself to be crowned chief can't be a good idea.

Then there's an earthquake! It seems pretty real since the camera crews seemed to be shaken by it too.

Some of the tribe members were freaked, others thought it was fun.

At the challenge beach, Jeff says, "drop your buffs".

Scout gets to divide everyone into two new tribes, then Sarge gets to choose which one he wants, Scout gets the other.

The new Lopevi: sarge chad julie chris twila johnk

The new Yasur: scout rory eliza bubba leann ami lisa

Lisa (last remaining woman) gets to choose her own new tribe. She chooses Scout's tribe, which seems to be the weaker. Why did she choose that way?

Sarge is no longer oldest, Twila is one year older. and Johnk is no longer the only young'un, he now has 23 year-old Julie as a tribemate.

Scout really screwed herself. She's created a real pain-in-the-butt tribe. And Sarge got all the good people. I wonder if Scout misunderstood the rules and picked wrong.

Deep Diving Reward Challenge. Playing for pringles and beer. Hardly worth the effort, I think. It's very close... Chris dropped his marker... Sarge complains about his ears... Chris makes them sweat, but he got it... Ami fails to bring one up at the end to tie the game... The new Lopevi wins.

Twila is really happy her new tribemates.

Julie is touching Chris... Julie says she wants to, "weasle our way in there tight"...

Some of the women want to show Rory and Bubba the things Dah taught them. Ami wants to protect the knowledge. Doesn't want to show the new guys how to open the cocoanuts.

Who is the other lesbian? Early on I heard that there were two lesbians. I know Scout is one, and I assumed Twila is the other. But is that right? Is Ami the other?

Build a Boat Immunity Challenge.

Bubba heard saying something about "merge"?

Rory was slow to untie the knots... Lopevi assembled first... Yasur runs into the flag... "bad pushoff"... some pretty sloppy paddling... but Lopevi wins immunity...

Ami is livid that Travis (Bubba) was communicating with Chris before the challenge.

The women want to keep the two guys... is Ami's attitude gonna bite her in the ass... is Ami the new target?

We see Rory and Bubba praying together, which is really odd.

At TC:

Bubba admits that he was trying to communicate with Lopevi. He tries to put a "helping the tribe" spin on it.

Scout seems to want to keep the men... is Ami toast?

We see Rory voting for Bubba!!! and Bubba voted for Rory!!! That is a huge surprise to me.

The vote: Bubba 5, Rory 1. Unanimous.

# Latest tribe list

# Order Out:
1 -- Brook, 27 (Lopevi)
2 -- Dolly, 25 (Yasur)
3 -- John P., 31 (Lopevi)
4 -- Mia, 30 (Yasur)
5 -- Brady, 33 (Lopevi)
6 -- Travis ("Bubba"), 33 (Yasur, was Lopevi)

Who's next?

As you can imagine, talk radio is full of ideas on who we'd prefer to play in the Series. (Don't you love the sound of that? "who we're playing in the Series"!!!)

One caller made a really good point. If it's Houston, it will become a Kerry vs. Bush thing. So I guess I'm renewing my thinking that it should be St. Louis.

View from New York

Mike Lupica is one of New York's top sports columnists:

At the end last night, Red Sox fans began to appear from everywhere near the Red Sox dugout, coming from all corners of the Stadium, as if they were coming around from Kenmore Square onto Yawkey Way. They chanted for the Red Sox and sang one of Boston's crazy baseball anthems, "Sweet Caroline." They held up Johnny Damon T-shirts and Red Sox home uniforms and even chanted, real loud, "Who's Your Daddy?" while their team celebrated and sprayed champagne on the field at Yankee Stadium the way the Marlins did last October.

All this money spent, three times more than most teams. And at the end, Torre couldn't buy the one hit he needed. Couldn't get the outs he needed. Did not trust Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill, who both had pitched a million innings during the regular season. He had to throw a $15 million shot case like Kevin Brown in the biggest game of the year. Brown had nothing. Javier Vazquez, whom the Yankees wanted more than Schilling, had nothing, and the Yankees were never in the game, not for a New York minute. Now Steinbrenner has spent - what? - about three-quarters of a billion since 2000 on teams that couldn't deliver a World Series.

Somehow the Red Sox end up in the World Series, end up better off with Manny Ramirez on their team instead of Alex Rodriguez. Somehow the Red Sox came from 0-3 down and finally beat the Yankees at Yankee Stadium, which sounded like downtown Boston at the end. Sounded like Fenway Park.

There's things other than baseball going on?

Heading down to Boston today for some errands and to attend tonight's Berkman Blogger's session on RSS and Calendaring.

Feels Good

Ed Cossette says, "So this is what it feels like to be on the other side. Me like it."

[Permalink to Ed's post, but his permanent site seems to be getting hammered this morning.]

2004 American League Champs!

Who would have thunk it!

Redsox Chat

If you know how to use irc, you can join me live in the chatroom:

network: irc.freenode.net
channel: #redsox

Thrilling

So what happens tonight? Game 7.

I don't know. But it's likely to be thrilling.

It's pretty much 50-50. The Redsox have momentum from winning 3 in a row, and the Yankees have home-field, so I think those two mostly balance out.

Statistically, in the long-run, the two teams are very equal. The Redsox' pitching staff may be somewhat less tattered, but that's well within the margin of "anything can happen". So I don't know.

The biggest intangible is this:

There'd be no shame in the Redsox losing. They've already come back further than any team in baseball history. If we lose, we will be disappointed, but we wouldn't need to hang out head.

But the Yankees, they have to win. If they lose there will be mass insanity in NY. It will be history-making in a way that makes the 0-3 comeback look like no big deal. Heads would roll.

So the Yankees have to win. The question is, will this energize them? or make them choke?

It's likely to be thrilling.

Inconceivable!

Everyone knows, that with the Yankees ahead 3 games to 0, that the Redsox can't win 3 -- or more -- in a row. It's never been done, for a team down 3-0 to force a Game Seven. Inconceivable!

Boston-New York, Game 7, Wednesday.

A lie? or forgetfulness?

During one of the debates, Senator Kerry quoted the President as saying that he wasn't very concerned about Osama Bin Laden. President Bush tried the brush it off by ridiculing Kerry's statement as an "exageration". MoveOn has the original video of the President saying just that. Video.

Red Sox Win World Series, Again!

You have to admit, those Redsox are scrappy.

Watching this game reminded me of one of those bare-knuckle boxing matches where they beat each other to a pulp until one can no longer stand.

Back to Yankee Stadium.

It will be cool to see Schilling take the mound at the start of tomorrow's game.

If they can win tomorrow, just think about it!

Burt Rutan on what's next.

MGA points us to this nice interview with Burt Rutan over on Space.com:

“Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It’s more expensive…not less…a horrible mistake,” Rutan said. “They knew it right away. And they’ve spent billions…arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake…trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is…it’s the government trying to do it.”

Trapped!

They've begun work on permanently replacing the Mountain Brook culvert that washed out last spring. As a result, all of us down this road are trapped here for the day.

More pics on my Flickr site.

Red Sox Win World Series

Well, it seemed that way, from the crowd reaction last night, from the players at home plate, and from the talk on sports radio this morning.

Even Erik ("They keep sucking me in!") S. is having some sort of mystical moment.

4-4 after nine

When the Redsox tied the game in the bottom of the 9th, from the crowd reaction you'd think that we had just won the World Series.

That would be OK too

A couple days back I said that I was rooting for St Louis to win in the National League. Well the Astros are giving them a run for their money, and that had been troubling me, until I realized what it would mean if Houston wins.

It would mean that Roger Clemens would pitch against the Yankees in the World Series.

Now, I'm on the record as being no fan of Clemens. But I did say that anyone, who would screw the Yankees the way Roger did -- with his non-retirement thing -- can't be all bad. Well it's paying dividends, as Clemens now has a chance to contribute to the Yankees again losing in the Series.

That's a big one...

Today is the 15th anniversary of the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake. ESPN is running a program remembering the quake in the context of the 1989 World Series, which was between the SF Giants and the Oakland As. The quake famously happened early in a game. The Series was postponed for 10 days, and when it resumed it was won by Oakland.

We had a seismic event here in Boston last night. I'm not sure whether the Redsox lost, or the Yankees won. But the final score was 19-8.

Of course, miracles can happen. But I don't think we're gonna get one of those. Now it just becomes a march to elimination.

The Hodgson Boys

Just back from a three hour mountain bike ride with my two brothers. They're a couple years younger than me, so they like to see how close to death they can get me, on these outdoor jaunts we take every few months.

A couple years ago we went snowshoe hiking. From time to time during the hike the three of us would stop to rest. When the time came to resume, they would look each other in the eye, then run off ahead of me, laughing.

But I'm gonna have the last laugh. One of them likes extreme sports, and the other has kids. So I'm gonna outlive them both.

Rainy

It sure is looking like rain will postpone tonight's Game 3. It's been wet all day, and it's forecast to get worse as the afternoon and evening progress.

I wish we could play today, cause, assuming we're gonna win #3, we want to do it sooner rather than later, to take a little off of the Yankees' momentum.

Weather for tomorrow is supposed to be good.

One positive side-effect of a delay, is it means Pedro could pitch Game 5 on Monday. As it is, DLowe is scheduled to pitch #5 on Sunday. I have a good feeling about Lowe, but I have a better one about Petey, and we need every edge we can find.

I know you're wondering

Just for the record.

Win or lose over here in the AL... in the National League I rooting for St. Louis. I like Tony La Russa, and they have that cool arch thing.

Ideology, cupidity, stupidity, and a certain tragically crass cunning...

William Gibson was persuaded, by a knowledgeable friend, that the US military and intelligence community understood the problem, but...

In the days after 9-11 I often took comfort in thinking of this man and the ideas he represented. When asked what I thought the United States would or could do in response to the attacks, I surprised friends by saying that I believed the US military's intelligentsia already understood the true nature of the conflict better than the enemy did.

And I still imagine that I was right in that. But the creative intelligence of my friend from the DoD, and so many others like him, prevailed not at all -- in the face of ideology, cupidity, stupidity, and a certain tragically crass cunning with regard to the mass pyschology of the American people.

One actually has to be something of a specialist, today, to even begin to grasp quite how fantastically, how baroquely and at once brutally fucked the situation of the United States has since been made to be.

What happened?

Much of Redsox Nation is walking around this morning shaking its head wondering how we got into this predicament.

I attribute it to two things: bad luck, and, we don't know what we're doing.

Bad luck, is simply that a handful of unfavorable things are all piling-on at the same time.

After the excellence of the Division Series we now find ourselves in a little slump, we can't hit the ball. That is complicated by the fact that the #1 and #2 pitchers for the Yankees happened at this moment to pitch two of the best games of the season. And finally, one of the key components of our plan, Schilling, got injured. That's just REALLY bad luck.

The Schilling injury thing is just something we're gonna have to accept, but the other things I'm hoping we can put behind us and get it going again.

As for "not knowing what we're doing". Last year at this point, we were in the midst of the whole "cowboy up", shaved heads, thing. We had a strong sense that, if we just had enough heart, we could play up to our potential. And we were right.

But this year, this year, I don't think we know how to excel. We played awesome in April, and August, and in the Division series. But in May, and the first two games against the Yankess we pretty much sucked.

And here's the problem: We don't know why.

We don't know what triggers the good play. It seems out of our control. We don't know what the incantation is that will allow us to perform. It's a puzzle.

So tomorrow we return to Fenway, hoping that whatever the juju is, it will appear in time for us to do what we we're certain we're capable of: beating the Yankees and getting into the World Series.

Drawdown

The 2004 Pawtuckaway drawdown has begun. They pulled the first of the boards in the past two days. Already the lake level is the lowest it's been all summer.

[Click the pic for larger.]

Survivor Vanuata - Ep #4 "A visit from Dah"

Posted after Ep #4, October 7, 2004. This post, and its comments, may contain spoilers....

Previous Survivor: Vanuatu reports:
1: An Age Imbalance.
2: C'mon, give me a little hug!
3: Just be one of the girls.

Once again, here're my "just-in-time" Survivor Notes.

Both Jeff P. and the Survivor website, are referring to the older men's alliance as the "alliance of the elders".

Eliza feels betrayed that Lisa voted with the older women. Last week we saw that Eliza, Lisa, Mia and Julie were trying to form an alliance. Mia getting voted out last week, then Liza voting with the older women, pretty much puts the kabosh on that alliance.

Last week I thought that Rory would go ballistic about getting some votes at TC. But he was pretty calm about it. Is this a new strategy on his part? Or have they been editing him to seem more explosive in the early eps?

At one point Rory says, "I have an agreement with Chad Travis Sarge and Chris."

The Concentration Puzzle Reward Challenge. The men get kinda screwed as they repeatedly uncover a matchable item as their second choice, then the women swoop in and scoop up the pair. The guys should have broken the chain by intentionally picking two non-matching things.

The women win Reward, and get 24 hrs with a native guy, "Dah", who knows all about getting food and making shelter. This week's previews hinted that there would be something weird about the person who comes into the winner's camp, but Dah seems OK to me. I did wonder how he would relate to the women considering the way they were treated in the opening ep's "welcome" ceremony. But he seemed perfectly comfortable with them. It was really odd the way the women tried to "bond" with him. Hugging and singing as he leaves. Weird.

Back with the men, Rory and Sarge are still at each other. And separately, Rory counsels Travis to not show his emotions so openly, it makes him look weak. I wonder if this is foreshadowing to Rory showing emotion and looking weak in the future?

Rory takes the spear to try fishing. I was worried that he was gonna break it, or lose it. But no.

Brady is trying to turn Sarge against Rory. Break up the elders.

Tribal Symbols Puzzle Immunity Challenge. Eliza is the 'eyes' for the women, Rory for the men. It almost seems that they ignore Rory during the challenge. What happened to all that good cooperation they had in past challenges? The women roll-over the men this time. The men were in chaos. Did Dah's "bonding" experience make that much difference for the women?

Sarge says he'd like to keep Brady and jettison Rory.

Tribal Council

Rory says he thinks he's the one who will go... Brady makes a good argument to not vote out the young guy... Sarge just sits there and thinks.

Brady 6, Rory 1.

John K. is now the only 20-something (22) left in the men's tribe. Next youngest guy is 33.

Next week: A possible merge or shuffle, and an earthquake!

# Latest tribe list

# Order Out:
1 -- Brook, 27
2 -- Dolly, 25
3 -- John P., 31
4 -- Mia, 30
5 -- Brady, 33

Oct BMac Meeting

I attended the Boston Mac Users Group meeting tonight. This is the first time I've been there since spring.

The featured presentation was a comparison of web browsers for the Mac. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped. But it did include an impressive -- although kinda rushed -- demo of OmniWeb. I need to check if OW will run on OS 10.2. From the impressive features, I won't be surprise to see that it needs .3

Next month: Games.

UPDATE: According to the OW website, OmniWeb does run on OS X 10.2

MGA pics

MGA is posting some nice fall foliage pics of the area around his NH family home.

That's A LOT of disappointed people!

The local Boston TV ratings for last night's Redsox game were: 37 rating, 54 share. That means 37% of all TV households in the Boston area were tuned into the game, 54% of all TV that were turned on, were on the game.

That's a huge audience.

[Source: heard on WEEI 850 sports radio.]

It's an honor just to be nominated.

The Robot Hall of Fame:

Five robots from science and science fiction, representing the highest accomplishments in robotic achievement and creativity were inducted into Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame: ASIMO, ASTRO BOY, C-3PO, Shakey, and Robby, the Robot.

Representatives of each robot accepted the honors on behalf of the inductees...

[Crossposted to TECHPopuli]

Gawker outage explained

Following up on yesterday's post. It seems that Network Solutions is screwing around with their registrations. This is the kind of thing that led me to move all my registrations away from Network Solutions a couple years ago.

Positive thinking

Edward Cossette, Bambino's Curse:

If you were a Hollywood screenwriter, could you script this any better? The pitcher who carried the team on Herculean shoulders all season, the guy who was "the difference," the deciding factor in what would finally put the Red Sox over the Yankees falls pray to fate, to injury, and may not pitch again. You've seen enough movies to know what happens next: The others come to bear the burden. So we are set up for a return of Pedro Martinez as the Ace; a reawakening of Derek Lowe, the Guy Fawkes we've burned in effigy all season, rising from the ashes to become a dominant starter for the Red Sox one ultimate time; and Wakefield finally falls into the good graces of the muses who make the flutterball flutter.

Why can't it go like that? Until scripted otherwise, that is the story I'll tell myself today.

Hard Working George

Video remix of President Bush statements from the debates.

Gawker family probs?

The Gawker family sites appear to all be offline. Gawker, Wonkette, and Defamer. What's up with that?

It's the hair.

Redsox Ed and Yankees Alex have a high-minded exchange about the ALCS.

The new improved USA

Voice of America's voanews.com website:

A U.S.-based human rights group says at least 11 al-Qaida suspects have "disappeared" in U.S. custody, and that some may have been tortured.

In a new report, Human Rights Watch says the prisoners are being held at secret locations with no access to their families or the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Reverse Noah's Ark.

Today is the day that "drawdown" begins on Pawtuckaway Lake.

Drawdown is the annual lowering of the lake, by 7-8 feet, for the winter. The conventional wisdom is that drawdown is good for several reasons. It facilitates shoreline maintenance, it keeps the ice-pack away from shoreline structures, and it minimizes the effects of all the water that pours into the lake during the spring snow-melt.

Now scientists are questioning whether it may have unreasonable side-effects. Fosters':

In recent years the Department of Environmental Services began studying long-term effects of draw down at Ashuelot Pond. Mussels, frogs and plants can be killed by sudden drawdown, causing a domino effect of environmental problems.

Molecule of the Week: Zinger One

The website of the American Chemical Society picks a weekly fave:

Zingerone gives ginger a "hot" taste. It's also an antioxidant, although it only weakly inhibits peroxidation of phospholipid liposomes in the presence of iron(III) and ascorbate. Zingerone's vanillin foundation and hydrocarbon tail make it a chemical relative of eugenol and capsaicin.

Donald Knuth

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

-- Donald Knuth, Computer Scientist

[BTW, I just updated the online quotes database. There are now 251 quotes there.]

Brush with greatness

Screenshot for Stevegarfield's flickr contacts page:

The Tasty

They tore down the legendary Harvard Square eatery, The Tasty, and replaced it with an Abercrombie & Fitch. The A&B failed, and now the space is a bank of ATM machines. Such a shame.

Max Faget dies.

Space flight pioneer, Max Faget, dies. Story.

[thanks MGA]

my Flickr photo gallery

I've always been suspicious about online photo galleries. They've always seemed to be about maneuvering you into buying prints, the ownership of the pics has been murky, and they were difficult to use.

Flickr.com is a very promising new entry in this field.

I like that it's not about selling prints, and they say clearly up front that they claim no ownership of the pics. They have a decent capacity free account level, and make money (at least as far as I can see) by encouraging people to upgrade to larger capacity accounts, possibly with more features. But the free account looks plenty good to me.

One aspect of flickr that is very different, is that it's not only an online gallery, it's also a social site in sheep's clothing. Not only can you view my pics, you can search for other people's pics with similar themes, pics taken on the same day, or just a random pic. You can add comments to pics, link to them easily, and even post them on your website.

And the online tools they provide are astoundingly easy to use, and powerful.

I've created a flickr.com account where I'll be posting pics. If you have a digital camera, I suggest you create your own account. Send me your flickr URL and I'll post it here so others can find you.

Mojave blog

Alan Redick has been doing a blog (more a photo blog actually) about life at Mojave Airport. Some great SpaceShipOne pics as well as lots of just cool Mojave Airport pics.

I can't do it.

The Yankees and Twins are 5-5 in the middle of the ninth. If the Yankees win they move on to the the next level.

There's lots of talk here in Boston about how we want the Yanks to win so we can beat them on the way to the World Series, and I have to admit that beating them would be sweet. I also know that the Twins could be a problem for us. Santana and Nathan are dangerous. And Damon has a bad history playing on that artificial field.

So all-in-all, I suppose we want New York to win.

But I just can't bring myself to root for the Yankees.

Red Sox Win!!!

So we move on to the ALCS. At this moment the Twins are winning 1-0 in the top of the second.

One bittersweet aspect of the Redsox win is that Derek Lowe, who had been one of the starters all season, had a terrible end of the regular season, so he was moved into the bullpen for the division playoff. He was very unhappy with that move.

[The Yankees just scored 2 runs and are now leading 2-1.]

Another aspect of the DLowe thing is that there had been a lot of talk on talk radio about when was the right time to bring Lowe into a game in the post-season. Should they wait until we were way ahead so he couldn't do a lot of damage?

Well tonite he came in in the 10th, pitched well, getting himself out of a little jam. And then, because he is the pitcher of record, he gets the Win. Sweet irony. Lowe closed out the ALDS last year against Oakland too.

[Yank winning 3-1, bottom of 2nd.]

Maturity

Andy Ihnatko has a sobering moment on the golf course:

And the fatality — the realization that caused me to drop to the fairway and weep — was the fact that I, Andy Ihnatko, a man who implicitly trusts any restaurant that has Formica counters and an ample selection of $6 entrees, who has always regarded the night before trash day as the neighborhood's largest and most bargain-filled garage sale, a man who owns a Jeff Foxworthy CD, for God's sake...the man whom I'd grudgingly grown to love and respect over the past three decades was out on a golf course talking with his agent.

It's gonna be hot!

The Redsox return this afternoon for Game Three of the Division Playoffs. We have a chance to wrap it up today and sweep the Angels.

The forecast is for sunny and in the mid-70s. It's not your typical fall in the fenway.

Denial

I just saw a commercial for KMart, where they were touting the Martha Stewart collection. They must have the same PR agency as the White House.

Back at Berkman's, sort of

Last night I attended my first Berkman's Bloggers session (the discussion group formerly known as Berkman Thursdays) since spring. It was actually a dinner gathering at the Bombay Club near Harvard Square.

It was good to meetup with some of the people I met at these sessions last winter. I've been following their interests via the mailing list, but nothing compares to getting face to face and talking about how this stuff all works.

In two weeks they will hold a session on RSS and Calendaring. I'm looking forward to that.

BTW, I've never been a big fan of Indian food. But like the last time I joined this group at this restaurant, J, who usually does the group ordering, selected some tasty items. And relatively lo-carb too, I think.

Rapid Growth in the Pawtuckaway area

Manchester Union Leader article about the impact of growth and conservation activities.

...rapid growth in towns along the I-93 corridor could adversely affect nearby state parks, including Bear Brook and Pawtuckaway, as well as flora and fauna along the Lamprey River. As a result, he said, preserving greenways — undeveloped land abutting the parks — needs to be a major focus in towns such as Deerfield, Candia, Raymond and Nottingham.

Pawtuckaway Art Festival

Fosters: "The Pawtuckaway Arts Festival’s 20th Anniversary will be held Oct. 14-17 at Town Hall on Old Center Road. ... The exhibit will showcase a variety of local artists."

On the road again

More from MGA at the Concrete Frog:

Why do I blog about my driving? Do I need to justify it? Driving and cars are still things I find a passion for. Sometimes the passion is in the destination (vacations) sometimes the passion is in the process (getting there and seeing sights along the way) but for me it’s mostly the passion of the process, the dynamic of control, the combination of the machinery and the person and the pure pleasure of the combination of it all. Heck, unless I’m on a deadline, I can even (mostly) enjoy being stuck in traffic giving myself up to the lack of control I have over the particulars (some professional driver once again tried to coax a slightly too-tall container under a slightly too-short abutment and re-discovers the laws of physics apply even to him). I’ve been fortunate to drive a wide variety of vehicles over the years although perhaps none as exotic as I’d like and while I have found my share of obstacles throughout the years, give me a full tank of gas and I’m gone.

Survivor Vanuata - Ep #3 "Just be one of the girls."

Posted after Ep #3, September 30, 2004. This post, and its comments, may contain spoilers....

Previous Survivor: Vanuatu reports:
1: An Age Imbalance.
2: C'mon, give me a little hug!

I guess I better post some Survivor notes before tonight's new episode.

I think this was a turning point episode. In past weeks I've complained about no one standing out, that I was having a hard time seeing who's who. Well this week some characters really started to stand out.

Early in the episode, Mia and Twila got into a pretty good fight. Later Twila said "I ain't here to make no friends." Did this woman not watch the past seasons? Making friends is the whole idea.

It seems that Eliza, Lisa, Mia and Julie are trying to form an alliance.

In the other tribe, Sarge and Rory are really at each other's throats. That could get interesting.

Walls Obstacle Reward Challenge. Interestingly, and we also saw this in the first two weeks, the men are better at cooperative activity. They do a good job at working throught the locks and win Reward.

In a new twist, the tribe that wins Reward also gets to compete for individual Immunity.

In the Ladder Puzzle Immunity Challenge, young John K wins. Another twist is that there will be TWO Tribal Councils, John K is immune in the first, then he gets to give his immunity to one member of the other tribe.

In order to decide who to give immunity to, JK gets to visit with the women and interview them.

In what, to me, seemed to be an odd way to proceed, JK focusses on who did and didn't vote for Dolly at the previous TC.

He also seems pretty annoyed at how Eliza talks too much.

Over at the men, JP thinks he's gone, and the young guys are trying to recruit Sarge.

Sarge seems to think he's in control. "Building a team, then tearing them down."

At the men's Tribal Council. They really like JK's tactic of getting the women to reveal their alliances by finding out the Dolly vote. I didn't realize how clever this was at first, but it really is.

The vote: Rory 3, JP 5. JP is voted out. But Rory is gonna go nuts back at camp.

At the woman's TC, JK gives immunity to Ami cause "she wasn't gonna be voted out anyway. You're gonna learn something about yourselves."

This kid may be smarter than he looks. Survivor is good at giving players a chance to earn the ill-will of the other players. For example, when Rupert had to portion out the desserts, and pissed-off people in the process.

I think that JK has almost completely managed to avoid this with his choice and explanation.

Maybe the most remarkable thing in the episode was at the women's TC when Ami seemed to break through to the tough Twila. "You need to become part of the group. Let someone french braid your hair." Twila actually smiled at the notion of being one of the girls. It will be intrigueing to see if this goes anywhere.

Women's vote: Twila 3, Mia 5. Twila survives to get her makover. The camera shows Eliza being very surprised at the vote result.

# Latest tribe list

# Order Out:
1 -- Brook, 27
2 -- Dolly, 25
3 -- John P., 31
4 -- Mia, 30

19 rules

Years ago Doc Searls wrote 19 rules for marketing communications in the new world. He still likes them, and so do I.

Separated at birth

Did you know that "Bed Bath and Beyond" and "Linens and Things" are the same store? Same floor layout, same products. Identical. At least between the BB&B in Everett Mass, and the L&T in Newington NH.

Berkman Wednesday

Tonight I attended the first of David Weinberger's Berkman sessions called The Web of Ideas. Tonight's topic was "Truth, Objectivity, and Blogs." It was a pretty fascinating discussion.

The basic themes were: What is "fact"? How does it compare with "truth"? How do you know which sources will give you good facts? Are we headed toward the commoditization of fact?

Some good discussion from some interesting people. I'm trying to boil down my notes to recap some of the discussion. If I succeed I'll post them here, along with URLs to the websites of some of the contributors.

It's a Walmart America

"Our stores are a reflection of America's tastes."

-- Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, Wall Street Journal, Oct 6, 2004

The expectations game

I'm starting to feel a little (really, just a little) nervous about Pedro's appearence tonight. Sports talk radio and the newspaper pundits are saying that they think Pedro will come out tonight and "deliver one of the signature games of his career."

I'm not sure who they are trying to convince: the fans, or Pedro.

Here we go again..

My biggest complaint about winters here in New England is that they happen every year.

And it looks like another one is starting. The temp at the Lake went down to 32 degrees this morning. First Frost.

Some of my airplane friends are also "snow birds". They head off, sometime in the fall, to spend the winter in Florida. They return north in April or May. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Gordon Cooper too. This stinks.

Jo Ann pointed out that Gordon Cooper, one of the original U.S. Mercury Astronauts, died today too.

My middle name is Gordon. When I was little I hated the name.

It was sufficiently unusual that the other kids would use it to tease me.

But when the Mercury Astronauts became National Heros, they were role models to me in more ways than one. There was an astronaut named "Gordon", and for the first time, and ever since, I was proud to be named Gordon.

Excellent beginning

Redsox beat Anaheim 9-3 in Game 1.

I was a little nervous about playing the Angels. I wanted to face Oakland, cause we had our way with them back in September, and the Angels seemed to be on a roll. But frankly, they didn't look too good today. Poor fielding, and no real spark.

So all in all, I'm feeling pretty good about things right now.

I'm liking the Cardinals, and they beat up on the Dodgers earlier today.

And right now it's bottom of the 4th with the Twins beating the Yankees 1-0. Wouldn't that make for a great day?!

UPDATE: Yankees lose Game 1, 2-0

No respect

Comic Legend Rodney Dangerfield has died. I remember him in the legendary comedy, Caddyshack, but my most vivid memory of him is doing his stand-up on the old Tonight Show.

Straightening his tie, wiping the sweat from his forehead, and making me laugh.

MSNBC story.

Driving and blogging

MGA continues to make great posts over on the Concrete Frog. I need to get in the habit of looking there more often. He blogged this almost a week ago.

The drive from York is uneventful. I use a couple of back roads I “discovered” through the Berwicks and Somersworth, NH. It has stopped raining but the sun has set and the temperature inversion has created a fog thick enough in places to scoop into bowls. Driving on the back roads in the dark is made even more exciting as the twists and hills and fog conspire against the driver.

And he's even out there evangelizing blogs to newcomers.

I do a little chatting with my friend about how to use blogs. I had been explaining a couple of months back how (imho) blogs can help create a sense of community on the electronic frontier and how (again imho) he could/should be using them as a means of communicating with his business group.

Pop Quiz

How many former U.S. Vice-Presidents are still living?

SS1 Notes on my Tech site

I'll be reporting on the SS1 flight over on TECHPopuli.

X-Prize coverage on the Cable

The coverage that is being webcast on the X-Prize website is also being shown live on the Science Channel. That's channel 227 on my Comcast system.

New SpaceShipOne Pilot

CNN is announcing that Brian Binney (sp?), who flew some of the earlier SS1 test flights, will be at the controls of this morning's attempt.

Also, note that the X-Prize website is offering a live webcast of the event. I don't know what the performance of this site will be when we all connect. I'll have CNN on as well.

Programming Notes

Just a reminder that SpaceShipOne is scheduled to make the second X-Prize flight this morning. I think it's planned to go around 10am eastern time.

Also, the Redsox begin the playoffs tomorrow (Tuesday) against the Angels in Anaheim. In a scheduling decision that I think they will later regret, the game will begin at 4pm eastern time.

No More

The Chicago Cubs also got eliminated yesterday.

Bad day for Bay Area baseball

Yesterday morning both Northern Calif. baseball teams, the SF Giants and the Oakland As, had a shot at post season play. By the end of the day both were eliminated.

UPDATE: My bad. As the two Eriks have pointed out in the forum, the Giants were only eliminated from winning their Division. They still have a long-shot chance at the wild-card.

Prescott Park Chili Fest tomorrow

Fosters:

Prescott Park Arts Festival is pleased to present the 16th Annual WHEB Chili Cook-Off, sponsored by Coughlin, Rainboth, Murphy & Lown, P.A., on Saturday, Oct. 2 with sixteen of the Seacoast’s best chili makers preparing their best batches ever.

The Chili Cook-Off begins at 11:30 a.m. and continues until the chili is all gone and you’ve voted for the Best. This famous festival takes place on the grounds of Prescott Park, located on the Piscataqua River at 105 Marcy Street in Portsmouth. Join your friends, neighbors and visitors for this year-end delicious fundraiser for Prescott Park Arts Festival as it closes out its 30th anniversary season.

See, it's not just me.

New York Times:

A federal judge struck down an important surveillance provision of the antiterrorism legislation known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, ruling that it broadly violated the Constitution by giving the federal authorities unchecked powers to obtain private information.

...

The ruling came in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against a kind of subpoena created under the act, known as a national security letter. Such letters could be used in terrorism investigations to require Internet service companies to provide personal information about subscribers and would bar them from disclosing to anyone that they had received a subpoena.

Such a subpoena could be issued without court review, under provisions that seemed to bar the recipient from discussing it with a lawyer.

Judge Marrero vehemently rejected that provision, saying that it was unique in American law in its "all-inclusive sweep" and had "no place in our open society."

Here's a question: Should President Bush and his Administration lose some brownie points for creating, and aggressively supporting, a law that has been judged to have "no place in our open society."

Kerry "Wins"

AP, vis Yahoo!:

Three post-debate polls suggested voters who watched the policy-driven confrontation Thursday night were impressed by Kerry. Most of those surveyed said he did better than Bush.