I realize this is a strange message to get since this is just a normal blog post and there’s a very good chance you’re reading this in an RSS reader, but I’m trying something new here by having a comment form on my 404 error page.

If by some chance you’re actually on this page because you’re genuinely looking for a something that isn’t found, I applaud you for browsing my blog and apologize for the broken link

Possible solutions

• Start back at the home page
• Try searching (the search box, not aimlessly wandering, that’s how we got in this situation)
• Accept that you’ll never find what you’re looking for and move on

Feedback

I’d love to know what you think of having a comment form on a 404 page like this so please, by all means, leave a comment.

Sincerely,
Tim, OkayTim Tour Guide

Roll over comments for most of the AL teams for my2Cents.

This off season, the Red Sox made a lot pretty big moves including: Adrian Beltre, Mike Cameron, and John Lackey.

So, I want to take a look at some of the bigger moves they made.

Mike Cameron & Jacoby Ellsbury

Mike Cameron is a 37 year old center fielder who has a history of solid defense. He must be pretty great since they decided to move Jacoby to left in order to make room in the outfield.

There’s been a lot of talk about how great an outfielder he is but little talk of the actual numbers. It’s true, he’s a very good center fielder, only making 4 errors in 147 games last year and averaging about 5 per year. Very good stats. But Jacoby’s no shlub making only 2 errors in 153 games last year.

I’m not sure where the Jacoby-hating is coming from, but the guy’s a really good center fielder, and he’s only 26, they don’t need to “save his legs”, the guy stole 70 bases last year. How ’bout saving the legs of the 37 year old? Maybe he could focus on raising that .250 AVG / .340 OBP.

I’d like to see Jacoby patrolling center field at some point in 2010, chances are he’ll be moving back there in a couple years anyway unless Ryan Westmoreland rockets up through the minors and takes over CF. Remember, they still have Josh Reddick who can play both right and left field and looks like a really good prospect. With a little more development I can easily see him starting in 2012 after Cameron’s contract is up.

Final word on this: OK with the Cameron pick up, against moving Ellsbury

Adrian Beltre / Mike Lowell

I don’t like this move at all. I get what they were planning to do: trade Lowell to Texas for Max Ramirez and sign Beltre to fill the hole at third or move Youkils to third and sign Adrian Gonzalez. Disagreement with that move aside, when it doesn’t work out, why would you still go get Beltre? You have a good 3B in Mike Lowell.

Some are syaing that Lowell’s range is worse now because of his hip but how much range do you need at third anyway? It’s more about reaction time. If they hung onto Lowell as the starting third basement for a few month in the season they could have tried to pick up someone like Prince Fielder or Adrian Gonzalez (if Lowell / Ortiz were struggling), move Youklis to third and platoon Lowell / Ortiz at DH. I dunno, I think Mike Lowell has earn the benefit of the doubt. They weren’t hard up for a 3B and now they just created an awkward situation.

Final word on this: Could not be more against it. Mike Lowell has been an all around solid ball player in Boston he never causes any trouble and it’s a shame to see the front office push him out like this. I’ve never liked Beltre, and no one ever seems to bring up that year before he signed his huge contract and hit 48HRs, an obvious steroid season (yea, I said it).

Marco Scutaro / Jed Lowrie

I get this move. I’d rather see Jed out there, but he gets hurt too much and just doesn’t look like he’s working out. It’s a shame, because he has a lot of potential. I hope he gets healthy, strong and another shot to start, even if it’s not in Boston.

On to Marco. Solid SS, about 10 errors last year in 145 games (played 2 games at 2B). He had a good offensive year, but it’s more the exception than the rule. He hasn’t been a strong hitter in the past with a .262 AVG and around 7HRs a year. This is another 2 year deal, so even if it doesn’t work out it’ll give the guys in the minors (Jose Iglesias) some time to develop and hopefully close that revolving door that is SS in Boston come 2012.

Final word on this: I’m OK with this one, it’s a pretty small contract and we’ll hopefully get a full season out of a SS this year. But this is obviously a temporary fix; there are a few SS coming up through the system that look promising.

John Lackey

This was awful. Now they have a 6 man rotation and someone is going to get left out. It looks like they’re hoping to have 1 pitcher injured at all times so this problem “takes care of itself”. Why do I hate this move?

Young starting pitchers in the Red Sox system:

• Clay Buchhloz
• Michael Bowden
• Junichi Tazawa
• Casey Kelly
• Charlie Zink
• Stomly Pimentel

Maybe all those guys won’t make it up, but 3 have already pitched in Boston and have torn through AAA. Are we just going to trade them all away? I don’t know. I like the homegrown talent in Boston and I hope we stick with it and don’t just buy players to keep them away from the Yankees.

Final thoughts on this: It looks more and more like they signed Lackey so they don’t have to re-sign Beckett next year or in anticipation for a Tim Wakefield retirement (not sure why they signed him to a 2 year deal if that was the case). I’m not a big Lackey fan, he does eat innings (and pie) but what good is an innings-eater when he’s not winning games, and you have a killer bullpen?

Overall reaction

Overall I’m not completely thrilled with the moves that the Red Sox made this off season, I understand them, but don’t totally agree. I like Cameron and Scutaro and I strongly dislike Lackey and Beltre (not as people, I just don’t think they add much more than a higher payroll to the team). I like the Hermida pick up as well. I’d actually be fine with him and Reddick platooning in LF all year if the Sox never picked up Cameron.

I would have much rather see the 5 man rotation we had last year with Bowden / Tazawa filling where applicable and developing more as starters so if Beckett leaves, one of them could slide in as a #5 starter, then the other when Wakefield’s contract is up in 2012.

One last thing since this is getting long and I want to see what everyone else thinks. Why would anyone want Kevin Youkilis at any other position than first base? He’s a gold glove caliber player, leave him alone. He’s a great ballplayer and I look forward to many years of him in a Boston uniform.

Posted on OkayTim.

Here’s a short list of things that I think are worse than a punch in the face. In no particular order:

• Ice chips in milk because the fridge is too cold
• Lettuce on a day old sandwich
• Red light cameras
• Inaccurate DVR stopping during a fast forward
• People who stop in the middle of a busy sidewalk to look up
• Insurance of any kind

If someone told me I could get punched in the face and never have to deal with anything on the list again, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

I’m sure I’ll think of some more…

I have a lot of traveling in the coming months, lots of flying around and I just wanted to stop by and list out me stuff I’ll be doing so when I don’t reply to e-mail no one gets mad.

1. Nov. 26-Nov. 30 – Mrytle Beach, SC
2. Dec. 8 – Dec. 12 – New Orleans , LA
3. Dec. 24 – Dec. 30 – Myrtle Beach, SC
4. Dec. 30 – Jan. 4 – Boston, MA

I’ll leave you with a quote:

To me, it’s a good idea to always carry two sacks of something when you walk around. That way, if anybody says, Hey, can you give me a hand? You can say, Sorry, got these sacks. — Jack Handy

I was reading this article on Yahoo! today. I don’t know about everyone else but when I see an article title like “10 Most blah blah blah” I’m really just interested in seeing a list of 10 things, not a paragraph with the 10 things buried in there somewhere for me to search out. It seems to make sense to me…

It creates a much better using experience to be able to glance at an article and get the gist of it. Then having the ability to read further.

With all that said, Yahoo! failed on this one, so here’s the top 10 list of states in trouble:

1. California
2. Arizona
3. Rhode Island
4. Michigan
5. Nevada
6. Oregon
7. Florida
8. New Jersey
9. Illinois
10. Wisconsin

Easy to scan right? If you want to read more, you can check it out on Yahoo!.

view on youtube

6am – Wake up

6:30am – Watch Married with Children on TBS

6:45am – Leave for work

7:15am – Arrive at work

12:00pm – Lunch

4:15pm – Leave work

4:45pm – Arrive back my my apartment

5:00pm – Watch PTI recorded

[ The rest of the day is mixed with freelance work, writing, TV, eating or walking around ]

11:00pm – Bed

And this fella too:

Being in LA for a little over a year now I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the area and the roads, not all the highways but I can usually get from point A to point B.

I’m generally pretty vocal about the traffic in this area and last weekend’s trip to Vegas put me right over the top. With no traffic it takes about 4.5hrs to drive from LA to Las Vegas (and vice versa). Tay and I left LA around 3:15pm on Friday to meet up with some friends from Raleigh. We left early to help with traffic because last time I went we left at 5:30pm and it took 6.5hrs.

How long did it take to drive to Vegas you ask? 6.5hrs… again. We hit brutal traffic at 3 spots in the trip. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The drive back took 10hrs.

Here’s what happened on the way back

We left Vegas at 2:15pm after lunch at the MGM. Traffic was immediately bumper to bumper so we stopped at the outlet stores in Primm (it’s the first town with casinos on the way to Vegas ) to see if it would lighten up. We walked around for a while, gambled a little more, and 2hrs later we left.

Traffic hadn’t lightened up at all… not a happy camper, but what are ya gonna do right? There’s really only 1 way to get from Vegas to LA. So we sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic until we hit Barstow (the halfway point) which is a little over 120 miles from Vegas.

There are very few exits on this road, there was no accident, no reason at all for there to be traffic; I couldn’t make sense of it… until we got to the source of the traffic. The California Agriculture Checkpoint (they check cars for dangerous Nevada carrots) – which looks like a giant toll booth and they never stop anyone at it. So essentially it’s there to create a 120 mile traffic jam every Sunday. I don’t think I’ve ever been more angry at California than I was when I realized that the stupid checkpoint was the reason I had been sitting in traffic for 8hrs.

We stopped once more in Victorville to get some caffeine and  pulled back into Santa Monica just past midnight, completely exhausted.

The Vegas trip was great, but traffic was the worst; we could have flown in from Boston faster.

So the official list of places I’m not driving to anymore stands at:

• Hollywood (an hour to go 10miles? Come on…)
• Las Vegas

The blacklist is of course voided if family is visiting. I think I might just fly to Vegas next time.

Posted on okaytim.com

A school bus in Japan

The outside

The inside

A school bus in India

• Blood Sport
• Kickboxer
• Lionheart
• Ghost Rider
• Snakes on a Plane
• Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift
• Crank: High Voltage
• Death Warrant

Obviously I’m not a fan of Jean Claude Van Damme, a brilliant terrible actor.

Posted on OkayTim.com

It’s hard to just stuff like that without really digging in and doing some heavy customization (since that’s what they’re really all about).

For each site I created and account, at least 1 station, and customize from there.

Judging on 3 categories:

• Ease of use (interface)
• Unique songs played (minimal repeats)
• Discovering new music
• Freedom

Ease of Use

Pandora easily wins this, they have a great interface to manage your station. LastFM and Slacker aren’t confusing, but Pandora is just tops. Plus it works in my car and they haven’t figured out how to hook up the song limit to the Pre App yet so I can listen pretty much all the time.

Unique songs

LastFM takes this one, I rarely hear duplicate tracks unless I bookmark a song, and even then, it’s a nice balance.

Discovering new music

I’ve found more new music on Pandora, but when I “like” a song there, it plays until I hate it, and I find Slacker to be too predictable. So LastFM takes this one too.

Freedom

No contest, unlimited skips, no inline ads, customization could be more fine-grained, but LastFM takes this category by a landslide.

Winner: LastFM — it takes a little getting used to, but I’m lovin’ it!

posted on okaytim.com

Anyway, when you get a Pre they fill out your $100 mail–in rebate form for you and you just have to mail it out. 2 months after that I get this e-mail from sprint

Dear TIMOTHY WRIGHT:

Thank you again for your purchase of a wireless device from Sprint.

Your rebate of $100.00 is in the final stages of processing and should be mailed to you within the next three weeks.

To check your rebate status, just click on [link omitted]

Thanks for choosing Sprint.

Sincerely,
Sprint

So it looks like I’ll be having to wait yet another month for my rebate.

My experience from sprint so far

1. Overcharging me by 23% for month #2 in my billing cycle and saying they can’t fix it until month #5 – and they can’t refund the overcharge.
2. Taking over 3 months to send a rebate check

If I was someone who swore more, this is where I’d do that, but I think this post speaks for itself.

Sincerely,
Tim

Posted on OkayTim.com