The Seahawks are now 4-5 and are looking like they have a pretty good chance of hitting my 8-8 prediction. That might even be a stretch. If they can beat the Packers after this short week then that will be a big help because you hope they can beat the 49ers twice and the Cardinals. They kept this last game interesting but the magic isn’t there. I loved seeing Russell running more. I wonder where that’s been all season?
Our league was kuh-razy. It was the most total points for our league this season and there were two huge upsets as Luke took down Tyler and Nick squeezed out a high-scoring win over Andy. Those games were crazy too as Luke’s Monday night player scored just enough to beat Tyler before leaving the game early and Nick was one fumble away from losing his game on Monday night too.
Everyone has over 1000 points for the season now but there’s a pretty big separation between positions 1-4 and 5-8. The playoffs are far from a lock though. Andy and Logan should be feeling pretty good about their chances but there are still 4 games left before we start our playoffs and crazier things have happened. Next week’s key matchup is Andy vs Tyler in a battle of #2 and #3.
After putting up 350 points in two weeks, Logan is obviously on top of the power rankings:
1. Logan (Goat Roapers) +2
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
3. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) +1
4. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) -3
On to the weekly records:
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Logan had 177.67
Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Tim had 72.47
Was: Luke had 81.52 (Week 9)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Dad beat Tim by 57.92
Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Nick beat Andy by 2.21.
Tyler beat Ben by 1.55 (Week 6)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Ben Roethlisberger had 45.82 on Ben’s bench
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Nick has a 3 game winning streak
Andy, Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks.
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
The Seahawks game sure ended dramatically but they were lucky it was even that close. Dropped touchdown passes, multiple missed throws by Wilson, numerous penalties, and a pick six interception put them in a big hole that they couldn’t dig out of. Next week isn’t going to be any easier as they face the seemingly unstoppable Rams who usually give the Seahawks trouble even when the roles were reversed.
In our league, Logan finally put a decisive end to Tyler’s winning streak. But menwhile, Andy has quietly been getting his own five game winning streak going and he’s alone out front. Nick is the next one to get a crack at taking him down. Tim and Nick both had 0’s in their roster but it looks like most of them were late scratches. Nick ended up winning that one with a great last minute defense signing.
The power rankings are relatively stable this week.
1. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck)
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
3. Logan (Goat Roapers) +1
4. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) -1
On to the weekly records:
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Logan had 173.11
Tyler had 191.89 (Week 8)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Luke had 81.52
Nick had 86.99 (Week 6)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Ben beat Dad by 50.59
Tyler beat Dad by 90.22 (Week 8)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Nick beat Tim by 4.58
Tyler beat Ben by 1.55 (Week 6)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Drew Brees had 39.44 for Logan.
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Andy has a 5 game winning streak
Was: Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks.
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks
The Seahawks looked like a reasonably good team on Sunday. The wide receivers were pulling down everything in sight (and then some). The Rams seem like a lock to win the division, but right now the Seahawks are only half a game out of the final wild card spot. They have a long way to go, but if they keep playing like they did yesterday, there’s a chance that my early prediction of them not making the playoffs will be wrong. I’ll stick with my prediction though. One game does not a season make. (Here is a good website for playoff odds if you’re interested.)
Our league witnessed another dominating performance by Tyler. He broken the season high score (which he set previously) and flirted with the all-time record. And that game between 7th and 8th place (Luke and Nick)? They put up a lot of points, but Nick came out victorious. Every week I think about saying that you need to be making lots of roster moves to win in this league, but then I see Andy up there tied for first place with the fewest moves in the league!
Tyler has shot up to the top of the power rankings chart. He had some lower scores the previous weeks which held him down but the 191 point performance is hard to deny.
1. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) +4
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
3. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) -2
4. Logan (Goat Roapers) -1
On to the weekly records:
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Tyler had 191.89
Was: Tyler had 183.70 (Week 2)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Tim had 99.95
Nick had 86.99 (Week 6)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Tyler beat Dad by 90.22
Was: Logan beat Nick by 75.81 (Week 6)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Andy beat Logan by 8.9
Tyler beat Ben by 1.55 (Week 6)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Deshaun Watson had 40.96 for Nick
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Andy has a 4 game winning streak.
Logan and Tyler had 5 game winning streaks.
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
There wasn’t a Seahawks game this week. Next week they play the Lions and it looks like they’re underdogs at that game which is probably fair. We’ll see what they can do on the road in Detroit.
In our league, Tim ended Tyler’s five game winning streak. Tyler now falls back into the clutches of Logan and Andy in a three way tie for first place. Tim has 4th place to himself, I’m in 5th and everyone else is tied for 6th. This marks the halfway point to the playoffs for our league since weeks 15 and 16 of the NFL regular season are our playoffs. The top four teams will make it into the playoffs so it’s still anybody’s game. Here are what the power rankings think will happen…
1. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) +2
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid) +2
3. Logan (Goat Roapers) -2
4. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) -2
Lots of new records this week…
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Ben had 157.94
Tyler had 183.70 (Week 2)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Nick had 93.55
Nick had 86.99 (Week 6)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Ben beat Nick by 64.39
Logan beat Nick by 75.81 (Week 6)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Tim beat Tyler by 6.33
Was: Nick beat Andy by 1.89 (Week 6)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Patrick Mahomes had 40.82 for Ben.
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Logan has a 5 game winning streak
Was: Tyler has a 5 game winning streak.(Week 6)
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Both the Seattle offense and defense had their act together on Sunday, despite some painful penalties, but then again, the Radiers can make a lot of teams look good. I had fun watching Marshawn Lynch’s ineffectiveness. Sports radio around here was gushing over how great he is and maybe that’s true, but I thought his last year here was a mess. It appeared to me that he just didn’t want to play and I have no respect for that even though I liked him a lot before that. I ended up throwing away my Lynch shirt (ok, actually I donated it.) I have similar feelings about Earl Thomas. Thanks for all you did. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out and don’t expect me to cheer for you when you play against the Seahawks.
Tyler continued his dominating streak with a close win over me. To add insult to injury, he did that with one player scoring negative points. Logan is nipping right on his heels. Andy and Tim round out the top four while the rest of us are tied with 2-4 records. Looking at points for/against gets interesting around this point of the season. Logan and Tyler have the most points by a pretty wide margin. Nick and I have the most points scored against us but Nick also has the least points scored which is a tough combination.
On to the weekly power rankings:
1. Logan (Goat Roapers) +1
2. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) -1
3. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!) +1
4. Ben (Kool Aid Kid) -1
Lots of new records this week…
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Andy had 162.87
Tyler had 183.70 (Week 2)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Nick had 86.99
Was: Nick had 93.70 (Week 1)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Logan beat Nick by 75.81
Was: Ben beat Luke by 50.20 (Week 4)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Tyler beat Ben by 1.55
Was: Nick beat Andy by 1.89 (Week 3)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Jameis Winston had 38.90 for Logan.
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Tyler has a 5 game winning streak.
Was: Tyler has a 4 game winning streak (Week 5)
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
The odds were heavily against the Seahawks but they almost pulled out a win. Their offense was able to cover their defensive failures and they even had a final drive to put themselves in position for a game winning field goal… and then they took themselves out of position with penalties. I’m sticking with my 7-9 prediction.
Our leave is finally spreading out a bit. Tyler continued his winning streak and is sitting pretty at 4-1. Logan, Andy and Tim are tied for second and the rest of us are chasing them. Make sure that you’re checking those free agent boards. There are still some great players out there that are free agents. This league is generally won by the person who makes the best use of those free agents. Tyler is in first place in our power rankings and it’s hard to argue with that.
1. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck) +2
2. Logan (Goat Roapers) -1
3. Ben (Kool Aid Kid) -1
4. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!)
Now on to the weekly awards…
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Logan had 144.53
Tyler had 183.70 (Week 2)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Nick had 102.01
Nick had 93.70 (Week 1)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Tyler beat Nick by 41.45
Ben beat Luke by 50.20 (Week 4)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Tim beat Luke by 2.58
Nick beat Andy by 1.89 (Week 3)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Aaron Rodgers had 34.68 for Luke
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent (Week 4)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Tyler has a 4 game winning streak
Was: Tyler has a 3 game winning streak (Week 4)
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
The Seahawks made rookie QB Rosen look good, but they pulled out a win. That stadium continues to haunt them though. Remember last year when Sherman and Chancellor got hurt there and ended their Seahawks careers? Add Earl Thomas to that list. He left with a broken leg and though it’s something that will heal by the time the playoffs roll around, he didn’t appear to want to return in a Seahawks uniform. I have a hard time siding with a guy who is getting paid $10 million to play football. See ya Earl.
Our league’s goofy season continues. We now have a 6 way tie for second place and Luke down in 8th place is only 2 games out of first place. Tyler is alone out front at 3-1 and he’s looking strong. Nick will be the next one to try and knock him back down into the mass of teams nipping at his heels.
When you look at the records below, look at the highest scoring player. This is the fourth consecutive week where the highest scoring player has a been a free agent!
Even though the league is close in terms of records, with four games behind us, my incredibly accurate and totally future-predicting power ranking algorithm is ready to rock. Here’s what it says now:
1. Logan (Goat Roapers)
2. Ben (Kool Aid Kid)
3. Tyler (Krazy Kanuck)
4. Andy (RAAAWWWRRRRR!!!)
Now on to the weekly awards…
This Week
This Season
All Time
Highest Team Score
Ben had 152.63
Tyler had 183.70 (Week 2)
Tim 200.51 (2015)
Lowest Team Score
Luke had 102.43
Nick had 93.70 (Week 1)
Andy had 41.29 (2015)
Biggest Blowout
Ben beat Luke by 50.20
Was: Luke beat Nick by 35.63 (Week 1)
Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010)
Closest Win
Dad beat Nick by 18.24
Nick beat Andy by 1.89 (Week 3)
Jim beat Ben by 0.12 (2012)
Highest Scoring Player
Mitchell Trubisky had 55.46 as a free agent
Was: Patrick Mahomes had 50.84 as a free agent (Week 2)
Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015)
Longest Active Winning Streak
Tyler has a 3 game winning streak
Was: Tyler, Nick and Andy had a 2 game winning streaks
Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had an 8 game winning streak
Longest Active Losing Streak
Luke has a 3 game losing streak
Was: Luke, Dad and Logan has a 2 game losing streaks
This spring will be the 20th anniversary of my senior year of high school baseball. Baseball memories occupy a large portion of the “good times I had growing up” part of my brain. So at the risk of sounding like a pathetic version of Glory Days, I’m going to use this post to archive a bunch of baseball stories in one spot. This is going to be a crazy long one, but I’ll just get it all out of my system. I don’t really expect many people to read this post now, but maybe it will be fun in 40 years if I’ve forgotten some of these stories.
Tee Ball My first time on the diamond was tee ball in 1987 (which means I was 6 during the season.) Dad was the coach and I was very excited to be on the “Cubs”. Our uniforms were powder blue shirts with simple white lettering on the front that said CUBS. I was #12 because I was born on the 12th and because my older cousin Tim was #12. The next year I played on the Yankees and Dad coached again.
One of those years, we had a girl on the team who was very new to the game. I don’t know all the details but I remember her having really thick glasses so I think there were some eyesight problems too. During one game, she was on second base and I had a good hit. As she ran from second to third, my Dad, who was coaching third base at the time, yelled “Run home! Run home!” I had almost caught up to her by then and I watched in horror as she ran “home”… straight on past third base and into the dugout.
Minor League When I was 8, I moved up to the “minor leagues” and I played for The Dugout (a local sports store.) There was no “coach pitch” stage in our little league so we went straight from tee ball to kids pitching.
At some point we figured out that i had a pretty good throwing arm and I spent countless hours in the backyard with Mom and Dad catching for me as I learned how to pitch. Dad even built a pitching mound, and one year he set up a series of tarps and blankets hanging from the ceiling of the basement so I could get an earlier start on the season inside without anybody having to catch for me.
My pitching debut in a real game was a disaster. As I remember it, I had been itching to pitch and finally got a chance late in a game. I can’t remember all the details, but I remember I did terrible. I was in tears leaving the game and either Mom or Dad said, “You know, if you cry every time you pitch, they aren’t going to want you to pitch anymore.” As a parent reading that now, I imagine they probably said it more lovingly than I typed it, but I got the point!
Major League I moved up from The Dugout to play on Van Overberghe Builders the next year. I remember that it was a bit of a family decision about whether or not it was ok for me to move up after just one year. I played for that team for 5 years (from ages 9-13). Looking back, it does seem kind of crazy to have a 4th grader playing against 8th graders, but I guess it worked out. I have so many stories from this phase of my baseball time.
It was during this period that I met my arch nemesis: Walt. I still remember his last name but I’ll leave that out. Walt was an umpire for our league and he was impossibly bad. Not only could I see him actually closing his eyes when the ball came in, but he even tried to explain away his ineptitude. For example, he came up to me after one game and said, “Ben, I know a lot of those balls looked really close but they were over the black part of the plate so I couldn’t call them strikes.” Polite young Ben probably mumbled something appropriate, but in my head I was screaming, “You’re telling me that a ~3 inch baseball passed over a ~1 inch PART OF THE PLATE and you saw this WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED so you couldn’t call it a strike?!” When he was umping, my catcher would sometimes put down a fist. That meant “Throw it at the umpire’s head and I will accidentally not catch it.” Years later at Purdue, I ended up talking to a girl in one of my classes. Yada yada yada at some point she said her last name was [redacted]. I said, “Wait… is your dad’s name Walt?” “Yes. How did you know that?” “I gotta go. Bye.”
I got pretty good at pitching during this time and I even had a 6 inning game with 18 strikeouts (meaning every single out in the game was a strikeout.) But was it a no-hitter? No. My friend Chucky got a triple with two outs in the last inning. We played on All-Stars together so I knew him well but I’m pretty sure I used his nickname at that point: Up Chuck.
That ball field played host to one of the two most gruesome injuries I’ve witnessed in sports. It was either John or Jay who was pitching (they were twins) and a line drive went right back at him. It caught him directly in the pelvis and shattered it. That scream still haunts my nightmares.
Being that it was the early 90s, there isn’t a lot of photographic or video evidence of my playing, but in my first year of the major leagues on Memorial Day weekend, Uncle Dean and Aunt Sandy brought their giant VHS camcorder to one of my games. Here are a couple brief clips of my unimpressive batting abilities. (I wore jersey the #1 that year.)
One summer I remember getting to pitch a little more often than the rules allowed. (There were limits on how many pitches you could throw in a certain number of days.) I don’t know if that was the cause or if it was something else, but I royally screwed up my elbow. The end result was that I couldn’t open up my arm much past a 90 degree angle. Mom spent a lot of evenings massaging that tendon, and that, coupled with months of not playing baseball finally got me back on track. That injury continues to plague me to this day, but I was able to keep it at bay enough to avoid any kind of surgery.
I really enjoyed playing in that league and I made the All Star team many of the years. The summer between freshman and sophomore years, I played on an older kids team with some of the same guys who were on the All Star team with me but I don’t remember too much about that league.
High School
My high school was pretty small (~140 people) so it wasn’t too difficult to make the baseball team. We didn’t have enough guys to have separate varsity and JV teams. My freshman year was a dud. I distinctly remember playing a grand total of 6 innings and all of those were in right field. Two of those innings were in snow so thick I could barely see home plate. Nobody wanted to bat because our hands were frozen.
Going into my sophomore year, the old head coach left and the assistant coach took over. He finally gave me the shot at pitching that I had been requesting my whole freshman year. I took full advantage of that opportunity. I really excelled during my junior and senior seasons though. We went 20-6 my junior year (we were ranked 10th in the state!) and we made it to the district championship game my senior year. (Michigan baseball levels were conference, district, region, state.) I pitched as much as the rules would allow me those years and played a little outfield as well. Batting was never my thing and I was regularly DH’d for unless they needed a bunt. I could bunt anything. It was far from a flashy skill. I only hit a baseball over the outfield fence twice in my entire life and both of those were in practice. I still remember the shocked look on Coach Cox’s face.
My main pitches were the two seam fastball, four seam fastball, cutter and splitter. The four seam fastball was probably 80% of the my pitches though. I could target it pretty well and there weren’t many kids in our area who could catch up to it so it worked well for me. I only got to throw with a radar gun a couple times but I remember topping 80mph. In a game scenario, I’d guess I was throwing in the high 70s. Every once in a blue moon I’d throw a knuckleball, although that was more in little league than high school. I also tried a changeup and curveball. When the curveball worked it was gloriously wonderful, but it had about a fifty fifty chance of just floating across the plate. I didn’t have many home runs hit off me, but most of those home runs were failed curve balls.
In addition to the fastball, my other weapon was a pretty good pick off move. I held the school record for picking runners off. I know I still held it as of 2007. I wonder if I still do? I think the record I set was 16? We played about 25 games a season so most games and I only pitched in probably a third of them so my average was over 2 pickoffs per game. I also held (hold?) the record for most strikeouts in a game: 19.
Remember In little league how I had missed a no-hitter by that one hit from my friend Up Chuck? In high school, I had a perfect game going (no hits AND no walks) until the batter arrived at the plate with two outs in the last inning. I totally choked and walked him. Then I struck out the next guy. So I got a no hitter but missed a perfect game because I choked. That still bugs me.
I hit plenty of people with pitches over the years, but I only did it on purpose one time and I felt terrible about it. But remember how I said the broken pelvis was one of the two most gruesome injuries I saw? Well, the second one was me hitting someone with a pitch. And not just anyone… it was the very first inning of a game against a very good team and the batter was their star player. I almost started a fight when I nailed the kid directly in the elbow and broke it. THAT was a disgusting sound. We had to stop the game for the ambulance. I felt sick about it.
Looking back at my time pitching, I’m amazed that it never scared me to be in such a vulnerable position as people crushed balls at me with metal bats. There’s so little time between completing the pitching and getting the glove back up to protect yourself. I got hit a few times including one right in the middle of my back that left a huge bruise. I also made some great plays. There was one line drive that came rocketing back up the middle and I was relieved to somehow have squeezed out of the way. I turned around to see where the ball went and everyone was cheering. I couldn’t figure out who had the ball until I looked in my glove. As I jumped out of the way, I had caught the ball behind my back! I mean, um, I totally planned that.
A less amazing play came towards the end of a game. The softball team had already finished their game so a bunch of the girls from my school were sitting in the stands watching us. There was a sky high pop up along the third baseline. It was either a play for me or the catcher and I knew I had priority so I called him off. But he was standing right next to me like he was going to make the play too. I didn’t want to look away from the ball so I kept screaming louder and louder to get him to move. “I GOT IT!!!!” After I made the catch, I looked down and my catcher was standing calmly behind home plate laughing at me. “Ok dude, I get it. You got it.” My face was beet red.
When I wasn’t pitching, I was usually in the out field. I had a decent glove and my arm was of great use from the outfield too. I remember throwing a lazy runner out at first base all the way from left field, but the ultimate came when I was playing right field. It was a long fly ball and I knew the runner on third was going to tag. I backed up, caught the ball while moving forward, crow hopped and threw a laser beam right to the catcher. The throw was placed perfectly to nail the guy at the plate. Forget pitching. Throwing a guy out at home plate from the outfield is my favorite play in all of baseball. It’s something that you don’t get to do very often, and when it happens, everything has to be perfect to make it work.
I had some less than stellar moments in the outfield too. Sometimes for practice, Coach Cox would split the team in half and we’d scrimmage. We took it a little too seriously. I was playing left field when there was a shot that was going over my head. I sprinted back and realized that I was going to get there to make the catch. Just as I watched the ball go into my glove, the lights went out. I came to slumped over the half-height outfield fence. I had knocked myself out by running into the fence! And worst of all, the ball had trickled out of my glove and was laying on the ground. I heard my teammates laughing. My coach was sprinting out to check me out and he yelled “IT’S NOT FUNNY! HE HAS TO PITCH TOMORROW!” I gave that fence a pretty good whack. It bent one of the metal poles that was cemented into the ground. That pole was still bent when I went back many years later to see the field again.
I made the All District team a couple times and I made Academic All Region and Academic All-State which only included people with at least a certain GPA so it’s as prestigious as the regular All-Region/State teams. My career ERA was 1.67.
Post High School
My senior year of high school was the end of my baseball playing days. I went back once or twice for practice and quickly learned how much skill I had lost. I had a hard time just throwing good pitches for batting practice.
I did have scholarship offers from two smaller schools. Tri State University (now called Trine?) and Valparaiso University both wanted me to play baseball and offered me full scholarships, but their computer science programs were far behind Purdue so I opted for academics (and a tuition bill) over sports. Part of me wishes that I had tried out for the team at Purdue just so I could get cut. I highly doubt I would have been good enough to play Division 1 baseball, but it would have been nice to know that for sure. While I was there, I kept reading about how they needed pitchers. But on the flip side, it’s highly unlikely that I would have had time to play baseball while getting a double major and a minor. I don’t even know if I’d do it differently given the choice. It’s just one of those “Hmm, what if?” questions that I think about from time to time.
I’ve played slow pitch softball off and on throughout the years. That turns out to be a lot of fun. Batting is about a million times easier and my arm still comes in useful in the outfield (although I still have to baby my elbow a bit.) The first time I ever tried softball was for a church in Illinois while I was a summer intern at John Deere. I explained how terrible I was at batting, but they encouraged me to play anyway. My first at bat was from a story book. With no practice, I walked up to the plate with the bases loaded and proceeded to hit a home run over the fence. Grand slam! Nobody believed me when I said that was the first time I’d ever done that in any kind of a game. I think that’s the last time I ever did that too since we usually play on pretty big fields. I’ve had plenty of the inside-the-park variety though. Yay for short base paths!
Summary
Baseball was such a huge part of my life growing up. As Elijah gets older, I think a lot about how we’ll figure out what he loves and help him spend time doing that. Thank you Dad and Mom for all the sacrifices you made so that I could play baseball! And thanks to all the great coaches that I had including Dad, Coach Hanyzewski, Coach Cox and Coach McNair.
The other day at work we were talking about our biggest mistakes in a work environment. It reminded me of an epic failure at my first computer job…
My Dad was a contracter and his boss (the owner) got me a job during high school at a company that processes payroll for thousands of companies across the United States. I worked in the computer room processing the jobs. We had big laser printers that would print 150 checks per minute and it kept you pretty busy just feeding it paper, not to mention pulling 12 sheets out of it whenever it jammed or pouring a gallon of toner into it. it took a while to get the hang of it, but after a while it was fairly mechanical. I enjoyed the job though because the people were fun and sometimes I’d flip through the checks and hold one worth a million dollars. If I had changed my name to “Illinois Department of Revenue”, do you think I could have cashed it?
When I started learning the old mainframe system that ran the whole operation, I specifically remember hearing them say “Don’t worry, you can’t really screw anything up.” Challenge accepted.
The computer system had a bunch of “partitions” and each one could run an individual payroll job. One of our main tasks was to look at all the incoming requests and figure out how to organize them to get maximum throughput through the system. If I remember correctly, there was a background partition and then eight job partitions. The background partition was how you interacted with the system and submitted jobs to the either other partitions. When things went wrong with a job, you’d pause a partition by typing “P F3” where 3 is the number of the partition running the job.
On some very busy days, we’d squeeze a little more juice out of the system by running jobs in the background partition. It was a little risky because it would block user interactions while it was running, but if you had a really quick, high priority job to get through, it wasn’t a huge deal.
It was one of those busy days and I had submitted a job to the background partition. There was a mistake so to stop it from getting worse, I quickly typed “P BG”. Those characters will always be burned into my brain because basically it felt like when I hit Enter, the entire building ground to a halt. I had just paused the partition that the computer was using to listen to input from the users. So effectively the computer was happily chugging along with it’s ears plugged and there was no way to tell it to start listening again because it wasn’t listening to us.
Oops.
We all just kind of stared at each other with this “uh oh” look on our faces. People around the building started coming to the window of the computer room with quizzical looks on their faces. The president and the mainframe guru came storming in. I made myself tiny in the corner. It was a doozy of a problem. They were on the phone with IBM for THREE HOURS trying to figure out how to fix it. I still don’t know what they did but eventually it came back online and somehow I got a pass because I was the stupid intern.
So please, don’t tell me that I can’t do anything bad that you haven’t done before. I have a knack for it. Maybe that’s why I ended up geting a job as a tester for 8 years.
When I bought the condo in 2006 as a bachelor, I decided I needed something for the walls that didn’t look like it was a college dorm. But I didn’t want to pay tons of money for actual artwork. Instead, I bought a couple posters from the internet and then took them in to get them custom framed. It seemed like a good compromise.
My mistake was going to a place that does SUPER nice frames instead of a craft store that does frames for normal people. I had no idea there was a difference and ended up paying probably three times more than I needed to. Oops.
One of them has a sunset skyline shot of Seattle and it looks pretty nice, but the other is just a generic abstract art piece. I thought it looked fine until I saw the same thing hanging in a cafeteria at work. Hmm…
This past weekend, I decided that I was going to take the frame apart and see if I could put one of my own pictures in there. Overpaying for a frame with a cheapo poster in it seemed silly, but having a beautiful frame for a photo I took myself? That feels more logical/
It turns out that a fancy professional framing job is still the same basic idea as other frames. I peeled off the construction paper covering the back of the frame. Then I opened up the insides and saw that the poster was attached to a piece of foam board and fit into an opening in the matte.
I needed a 24×24″ print to fit in there and that was a little more tricky than I though. Most places only go up to 20×30″. FedEx does bigger prints but they wanted ~$60. Walgreens also does bigger prints and they had a half price sale going on that brought the price of my 24×36″ print down to $15!
I used a straight edge and an exacto knife to trim the photo. I didn’t do anything too fancy to mount it in the frame. I just used a combination of scotch tape and packing tape to fix the print to the foam board. Then I put the frame back together and voila!
The hardest part was probably trying to find a picture that matched the matte well and also looked good with a square crop. The picture would have matched the room slightly better if it had a little red in it, but this still looks pretty good. The photo was taken on a camping trip in 2012 near Bay View State Park.
You Can’t Screw It Up
My Dad was a contracter and his boss (the owner) got me a job during high school at a company that processes payroll for thousands of companies across the United States. I worked in the computer room processing the jobs. We had big laser printers that would print 150 checks per minute and it kept you pretty busy just feeding it paper, not to mention pulling 12 sheets out of it whenever it jammed or pouring a gallon of toner into it. it took a while to get the hang of it, but after a while it was fairly mechanical. I enjoyed the job though because the people were fun and sometimes I’d flip through the checks and hold one worth a million dollars. If I had changed my name to “Illinois Department of Revenue”, do you think I could have cashed it?
When I started learning the old mainframe system that ran the whole operation, I specifically remember hearing them say “Don’t worry, you can’t really screw anything up.” Challenge accepted.
The computer system had a bunch of “partitions” and each one could run an individual payroll job. One of our main tasks was to look at all the incoming requests and figure out how to organize them to get maximum throughput through the system. If I remember correctly, there was a background partition and then eight job partitions. The background partition was how you interacted with the system and submitted jobs to the either other partitions. When things went wrong with a job, you’d pause a partition by typing “P F3” where 3 is the number of the partition running the job.
On some very busy days, we’d squeeze a little more juice out of the system by running jobs in the background partition. It was a little risky because it would block user interactions while it was running, but if you had a really quick, high priority job to get through, it wasn’t a huge deal.
It was one of those busy days and I had submitted a job to the background partition. There was a mistake so to stop it from getting worse, I quickly typed “P BG”. Those characters will always be burned into my brain because basically it felt like when I hit Enter, the entire building ground to a halt. I had just paused the partition that the computer was using to listen to input from the users. So effectively the computer was happily chugging along with it’s ears plugged and there was no way to tell it to start listening again because it wasn’t listening to us.
Oops.
We all just kind of stared at each other with this “uh oh” look on our faces. People around the building started coming to the window of the computer room with quizzical looks on their faces. The president and the mainframe guru came storming in. I made myself tiny in the corner. It was a doozy of a problem. They were on the phone with IBM for THREE HOURS trying to figure out how to fix it. I still don’t know what they did but eventually it came back online and somehow I got a pass because I was the stupid intern.
So please, don’t tell me that I can’t do anything bad that you haven’t done before. I have a knack for it. Maybe that’s why I ended up geting a job as a tester for 8 years.