Chisoxfn

QUOTE (Tony @ Apr 2, 2018 -> 12:55 PM) Social Media is able to create a snowball effect that is unlike anything we've ever seen in our culture, in terms of how quick it can happen and take on a life of its own. Ultimately social media is not good or healthy. It will be interesting to see what happens with it over time, especially as more studies are done and as more linkage comes out related to increased suicide rates (especially in youths), etc. There are pluses to social media, but my personal opinion is there are a heck of a lot of negatives. Of course that comes from someone who largely stays away from social media (so I might be a bit biased / jaded).

As a heads up, I am tentatively planning for the new phase of the upgrade to occur on the next day off for the Sox.

QUOTE (Knuckles @ Mar 28, 2018 -> 02:05 PM) Gage, When do you anticipate the upgrade to take place? Is talkbears alrso run by you? Yep (talkbears is ran by me plus the other admins) - Final talkbears upgrade will happen tomorrow. Than reskinning talkbears (and at the same time designing a Soxtalk skin) and based upon how painful that whole process is...will than develop a roadmap for Soxtalk.

QUOTE (mac9001 @ Mar 28, 2018 -> 12:45 PM) People put way too much stock into spring training. He's got a long way to go. But I expect he'll be in AA at some point this year. With pitchers you can at least get an idea about how good the "stuff" is. Obviously a lot more to succeeding at the big league level, but I look more at young pitchers "stuff" during spring training than anything else. Whether they have good results or bad results, less important...the kid is young and obviously has a lot of things to work on, but nice to see when they show that the stuff plays at least.

I am pretty excited to have a mobile supported platform. Will be quite nice. I will say though, the new forum software is so weird and talkbears isn't even a good example (yet) cause it is still one full cycle behind the state of the art platform. By EOD tomorrow, talkbears.com will be there and than I have to asses the path to getting Soxtalk fully there (mainly in terms of when to plan outages, etc). I can take a similar approach to talkbears where I will try to do work late at night in between the upgrades to minimize downtime ("if all goes well") and I'll ensure ample back-ups, but Soxtalk's database is so large that some of the queries I'll have to run will likely take significant time. Before anything happens, I'll make sure to have posts up and can ensure people (outside of the server blowing up, which I DO NOT EXPECT related to this work) that even if the main forum is down, there will be a redirect link taking them to a temporary forum. Will try to target the upgrades during off-days.

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 28, 2018 -> 11:54 AM) I've always had a fear that at some point things would change with our browsers, the web, the underlying software, etc. and it would lead ST to not really work...and perhaps it would be too hard by then to upgrade. Glad to see we're going to be brought up to date. One day there will probably be a time where invision doesn't exist or some other tool is ultimately necessary to move...but damn it, as long as I'm standing (or breathing), I'll do my very best to ensure the Soxtalk legacy stays around and my wife knows that it is important so if something were to happen to me, it wouldn't just "dissapear".

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Mar 28, 2018 -> 09:26 AM) I know that the upcoming upgrade to the new Invision forum is more than just layout, but man, the current layout of this site is much better looking than the new ones such as talkbears I agree with you. That is why we are working to see how we can customize / tailor it to look prettier.

I suspect it will be Kopech. Jimenez has crushed, but he still has extremely limited experience above A ball.

If people want to see some of the functionality, feel free to check out www.talkbears.com which was upgraded one version up (still one version away from where Soxtalk will ultimately be). You just have to ignore the fact that none of the "skins" are customized.

One other major enhancement of the new forum will be a mobile interface so that everyone can post from their phones with far more ease.

All - I want to first off apologize for the extended outage and temporarily welcome everyone back to the forum. For those who didn't find the temporary site, when upgrading our back-end functionality (php / mysql) we ended up crashing our legacy server (which we had leveraged for a very long time). When the server crashed, we could have quickly restored via backup, however, opted to migrate our site to a new server with the latest bells and whistles. The upgrade was much needed, however, there were significant delays during the server migration (with our server company), which resulted in a far longer delay than expected. We will also be launching (in conjunction with the new server) and upgrading our forum software to the latest invision forums and are in the process of executing such upgrade. However, given how close we are to the season, I have opted to re-open these forums while we continue to fine tune (on a seperate test set) our overall upgrade to the latest Invision. This is partly because of the level of effort, but also because the new invision forum is significantly different and with our current forum customized (and relatively pretty), we want to make sure that we can make the user experience more seamless (or at least more seamless than the past 3 weeks outage). All of us at Soxtalk very much appreciate everyone's patience as we continue to move forward on enhancing Soxtalk and bringing all of you the latest and greatest forum technology. This new technology shall better integrate with social media while the server should enhance our bandwith capabilities to ensure Soxtalk is humming during the multiple playoff runs and world series this next generation Sox team is about to embark on! Now lets go Sox!!!

But we can't sign him for quite a while, right? When does free agency begin? When can teams talk with agents?

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 1, 2018 -> 09:30 AM) Kaplan was at the Waddle Super Bowl party John Fox attended. A couple of nuggets from John Fox. Says Leonard Floyd is the next coming of Jason Taylor. Also says Adam Shaheen is going to be awesome. I'm okay with those things. Absolutely okay with that!

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 28, 2018 -> 02:47 PM) My understanding from talking to CPA/IRS relatives back around the holidays is that far from being a good "reform," the pass-through loopholes created a whole new exciting industry of tax arbitrage that big accounting firms are really, really eager to dig into for their well-heeled clients. I'm not educated enough on the personal side of the reform to get into a big battle, but no one should be surprised that when something happens...good businesses are going to find out ways to as effectively manage their books based upon those rules/regulations. A key point you all missed somewhere is...we live in a very competitive world with very few monopolies (or even light monopolies) so the reality is, if a business or industry has all gotten a major benefit...it will be competed away pretty quickly. There might be few exceptions to those rules but that will absolutely happen.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 3, 2017 -> 12:07 PM) Do you think any modern sports owner says "May I really want to buy the Marlins, seems like a great return on investment!" I could see an angle where the Marlins would be a great investment. Revenue sharing, national TV money, etc. I could easily have seen a scenario where the Marlins, if you literally just ran them into the ground, would be incredibly cash flow positive. To be honest, I think that is exactly why the group bought them this past time (and they are operating it under that belief). Run as lean as you can on your individual payrolls / books and than make pure profits on the revenue sharing / TV money out there.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 28, 2018 -> 02:31 PM) LOL, was there some stipulation that all the money was going into wages? A good company has what 15-40% (I am guessing) of their expenses going to payroll depending the industry. It's ridiculous to think all of their savings would go to wages. Also, plenty of companies are buying back their own shares and paying out dividends. Which improves the value of shares and the value of peoples 401Ks. People just hate that it's Trump's plan. There is definitely some issues with the personal tax plan plan but this is needed no the corporate said. If they're going to raise interest rates and pull the essentially free money off the table it's good that corporations have a boost on the bottom line with the debt situation getting scarier. Corporate tax reform was needed, because the whole system is convoluted and we shouldn't have all this off-shoring that happens, but there are issues (like there are with any tax plan). The bigger question (and in many ways it is a philosphical one with multiple answers which depend somewhat on your own individual views) is where do you maximize the benefit on our economy (giving more back to Corporations or giving directly to people and who). My gut tells me the Corporate tax rate will be 2-3% higher in 5 years and the personal taxes will have shifted slightly as well (with more deductions at lower income brackets and increased rates at higher brackets).

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 28, 2018 -> 02:34 PM) It disproportionately affects people who plan and save. Those people are disproportionately rich. You don't have to have billions of dollars to save. You need to replace "save" with "invest".

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 28, 2018 -> 02:25 PM) Right, which is pretty much what was expected here. The corporate tax cut was a giant windfall to shareholders which disproportionately benefits the wealthy and won't really do too much for everyone else (maybe we'll see lower prices in some areas down the road, but if your goal was "help people who aren't wealthy," there's a heck of a lot more efficient ways to do that that don't exacerbate wealth inequality). Companies weren't cash-starved with investment and expansion opportunities, so the idea that we needed a big tax cut stimulus to spur the economy never made much sense. e: You weren't making those arguments, but that's how it was being sold to the public. I think you are missing out on one of my points. The day 1 impacts were basically remeasuring historical deferred tax liabilities (positive if a company had big DTL's) or deferred tax assets (negative impact if a company had big DTA's) and of course repatriation taxes. The real meat of tax reform was the forward revised Corporate tax rate/structure and various incentives built into that program (very sector specific). The only major day 1 event was repatriation taxes (so giving an incentive for gigantic companies with big off-shore earnings to actually allow those earnings to flow back in). The repatriation aspect of the bill is very positive to me and that was a cost as companies are going to make this payment to enable them to onshore assets and be (which had to be off-shored to stay away from our bloated Corporate taxes).

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 28, 2018 -> 02:31 PM) LOL, was there some stipulation that all the money was going into wages? A good company has what 15-40% (I am guessing) of their expenses going to payroll depending the industry. It's ridiculous to think all of their savings would go to wages. Also, plenty of companies are buying back their own shares and paying out dividends. Which improves the value of shares and the value of peoples 401Ks. People just hate that it's Trump's plan. There is definitely some issues with the personal tax plan plan but this is needed no the corporate said. If they're going to raise interest rates and pull the essentially free money off the table it's good that corporations have a boost on the bottom line with the debt situation getting scarier. Depends on the industry...in financial services you are probably talking about 60-75% of the costs being "people" costs.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 27, 2018 -> 11:03 AM) Trump’s Tax Cuts in Hand, Companies Spend More on Themselves Than on Wages It is what I said earlier...the way a company has to manage its book value and equity is you essentially invest in the growth of your business or you return to shareholders via buybacks / dividends. You clearly prioritize growth first, but when you can't grow, you need to leverage the other avenues. Additionally, if you can't grow and hit your target bogies, you than leverage buyback / dividends for the rest. One of the primary goals of a public Company CEO/CFO is to be as capital efficient as possible which is what this means. So for companies who had a day one impact resulting from tax reform (i.e., positive net income and thus book value growth as they remeasured their balance sheet), you really have one of two options...buyback or find additional growth. Finding additional growth isn't something you can just "magically" do. I will also point out...all of those numbers are day 1 impacts and are not actually forwarding looking impacts. For companies who had a big windfall or component, no one could possibly put that all back in the business and generate returns commensurate with shareholders expectations (so no one should be surprised this is happening). The real question is will future growth increase and thus the benefits of tax reform will mean less buybacks and more investments in future growth (meaning you than are ramping up employees, etc). Data isn't available on that because the trends are going to come out over time. In general, I anticipate that outside of those manufacturing specific areas that were very incentivized, you'll see a lot of the benefits competed away (which indirectly flow back to consumers via lower pricing).

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Feb 22, 2018 -> 09:15 AM) I think these politicians always discount the younger voters since they typically don't show up to the polls. It's different now though. These kids are energized now and it's because their actual lives are now in danger. They will definitely be voting so hopefully they vote out all of these useless turds. I think it is more that from Columbine to now, the voting base that has been effected by stuff like this is much larger than ever before. I truly believe a wave of change is coming as it relates to a lot of these matters. Not sure how drastic the change (if any) will be, but I think we are getting closer to seeing bigger change.

Forte is the man. Great back and great guy.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Feb 27, 2018 -> 02:16 PM) That's not totally true. They've handed out some awful contracts in an attempt to win over the years. Things haven't panned out, but it's not because they purposefully tanked and drafted poorly. Teams like Sacramento and Orlando have "tanked" year after year and still aren't any good. But it's tough to argue that the strategy doesn't work when other s*** franchises, like Seattle/Oklahoma and Golden State, sucked for a few years and came away with multiple hall of fame caliber players and are now at the top of the league. The Warriors did not tank. Klay, Durant (FA), and Draymond had nothing to do with tanking. Even Steph wasn't that high of a pick. OKC was rebuilt...not sure if they tanked, they happened to just be bad and capitalized on their picks during a window of bad. Tanking and being bad/rebuilding are two very different things to me.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 27, 2018 -> 01:07 PM) It's pretty close to the only way. That's the problem, and more teams are doing it. People pay a lot of money to watch the NBA . Tanking not only ruins the games for the fans of the teams trying to lose, it makes the games these teams are involved in vs. teams actually trying way less interesting and entertaining. They actually went to the lottery because teams weren't trying. Now it is getting worse. I wouldn't mind making all non playoff teams given equal odds on the draft. Make it all ping pong balls, no guarantees one way or the other. You can tank or you can win 40 games, you might pick 1st, you might pick in the teens. I am sick of rewarding losing. I legit think the proposal you outline is what will happen (maybe not exactly even weighting, but pretty close to even weighting). The one spot you have to be careful is you don't want to have teams in the playoff picture bottoming out and not wanting to make the playoffs (because a 9 seed is way better than an 8 seed). Either way Tanking has gotten so bad. And whomever commented on Lakers fans embracing the tank..the was true for a year or two, right now most Laker fans are begging to get back to the 8th spot. They have only one way of getting to the top right now and that is winning big in free agency or getting lucky in the draft (since they don't have their pick in this years draft...just the Cavs). Their core they drafted (with lots of high picks) is flat out not good enough nor does it project to be very good. Pretty much every Laker fan I know is depressed about their future and resigned to the fact that their only way forward is selling the LA shtick and hoping James just wants to come to Hollywood. Otherwise they are basically resigned to the fact that they'll overpay some good players who will make them a mediocre playoff team (and provide minimal upside). Knicks fans are not excited about a "tank". They have tanked for the last 20 years (or so it feels). They have flat out sucked every which way. Bulls fans are excited now...but if they are in the spot the Lakers are in 3 years from now, they too will be begging for a Hinrich / Ben Gordon / Luol Deng Bulls team that is at least respectable.

I thought these winter olympics were really well done and enjoyable. Very much was entertained and NBC had our households nightly coverage pretty much the entire two weeks (when we had the TV on).