southsideirish71

QUOTE (Gregory Pratt @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 03:50 PM) Here is my second Week in Review column, although it is shorter than the first: http://baseballevolution.com/gregory/weekreview2.html I love when people make comments about how they could hit X major league pitcher. How many times in reality have you faced someone throwing a 90mph fastball, and have swung the bat and have made solid contact. I am not talking about the batting machine, which repeatedly throws the same pitch over and over at the same velocity. I am talking about, a live pitcher 60 feet, 6 inches away throwing a pitch to you in competition. Fast pitch with friends doesnt count.

QUOTE (Mplssoxfan @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 04:41 PM) I remember seeing hurling on "Wide World of Sports" when I was a kid. What a crazy game. Its a great game. My son will probably join a league out of Gaelic Park when he is old enough. I will see if he likes hurling or Gaelic football first.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 03:31 PM) plus i'll take it to another level... when your party nominates you for the 2nd highest office in the land, is it ok to be a turncoat and ditch the party when its not conveinent for you anymore? The last time I checked, the Senator is chosen by a bipartisan election in the fall. Your guy won the democratic nomination, however he could not win the general. He lost, move on.

Its the most ancient game in Ireland. I was privileged to play this until my 23rd birthday, and survived it for whatever reason. I learned how to Hurl ( not the vomiting ) before I learned how to play baseball. After watching the video, you might see why I was drawn to baseball here. And why my family is converted baseball fans.

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 09:12 AM) anyone else getting tired of this? - You were the VP nominee of the party in 2000 and declare yourself a life long Democrat. - In 2006, you lose the Democratic primary fair and square by the people in your home state. - In 2006, you decide that you really are a "sore loserman" and pull out of the Democratic party to become an Independent allowing you to still run for your Senate seat. - You win the Senate contest by pulling Republican votes away from the Republican nominee. - In 2007, the Democratic party still convinces you to caucus with you and give you some prominent positions. (they need you at a 51-49 split) - In 2008, you decide to support your life-long friend John McCain for President. - In 2008, you decide to start campaigning with McCain for his party's nomination. - In 2008, after winning his parties nomination, you begin campaigning with McCain against the Democratic nominee, whomever that may be. - In 2008, you are stripped of your superdelegate vote for the Democratic Party. - Now there are talks that you may appear at the Republican Convention and may even give the keynote speech, 8 years after standing on the Democratic Convention stage accepting the nomination for VP. I am sure that Mr. Lieberman feels all sorts of warm and fuzzies when the anti-war fringe radical wing of the party decided to trump him and run another candidate because he wasn't anti-war.

Lets take a ride on the crazy train. Hi I am Joan Dahlberg, Humane Society President. And I have no concept of reality. While getting killed by a mountain lion is not a worry for most. To categorize these animals as anything but predators is a bit myopic and silly. This lady is a wack job. In fact Lions have been known to take a chomp out of a person or two.

Football: Celtic CF, US National Team and the Irish National Team American Football: Bears Hockey: blackhawks Basketball: Bulls GAA ( Gaelic Football, what the Aussie Rules football is based off of ) County Kerry Hurling : Kerry of course

QUOTE (DBAH0 @ Apr 16, 2008 -> 08:23 AM) Saw this in the Sun - Times; I think Jerry needs to get his priorities in order a little in terms of what offensive stat is going to offer the most value to the Sox in the leadoff spot. It's not stolen bases, it's OBP. Corey Patterson stole 45 bases with a .314 OBP in 06. Another reason that stolen bases are not a good stat for a leadoff guy. I would rather have the OBP machine known as Swisher get on.

As sad as it is for the death of such a beautiful and majestic animal, its amazing the number of people that have decided to pick on the police for this one. A 150 pound predator, who is strong enough to chase a deer, knock it down, then to grab it by its neck and suffocate it thats the animal I may not want running through my backyard with my 3 year old. I wonder how upset the animal rights people would be when Mr. Cougar realizes that the deer population in Roscoe village isnt happening and decides to snack on the local dogs/cats/ and children. And as for the lady from the humane society who stated the police should of waited for animal control maybe she should realize that the cougar at Lincoln park zoo doesnt show off its speed like the trapped once in an alley. Cougars are in fact fast animals. Now maybe the South Dakota version of the big cat might respond to police commands, and may freeze with its paws up. But I think it might just decide to take off and leave the cops in the dust. The cops protected the public.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 04:28 PM) I don't want to sound too ridiculous here, but I could honestly see these guys having the best pitching staff in the AL. Their rotation and bullpen are both really, really underrated. So far their top 3 is pretty damn good. The bullpen is still suspect. As long as Soria throws strikes they should be fine.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 05:23 PM) Your freaking nerdisms are hilarious. But you are right, i've been through 4 boxes in 3 years, the platform is awful. The funny thing, is that the geek-english translation is on my professional development track for my bonus. Watching some of the exec's eyes cross when I am explaining about a cyber threat is funny.

The fat man is in.

Cougars are coming In July of 2000, a cougar was killed by a train in western Randolph County, IL near the Mississippi River and the Shawnee National Forest. A necropsy by Alan Woolf of the Cooperative Wildlife Research Laboratory at Southern Illinois University found a normal, healthy male aged 4 to 6 years belonging to the North American genotype, with normal claws, stomach contents of 100% fawn, and no tattoos. Most captive cougars are declawed and/or have tattoos. Cougar comeback Cougar notes Irony from the IDNR “While it is not completely impossible for a cougar to be found in Illinois, sighting of a wild one is highly unlikely,” said Acting IDNR Director Sam Flood. “Wild cougars have been found in neighboring states but again, very, very rarely.”

QUOTE (daa84 @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 01:59 PM) its clear to me that oakland scouts very well and places great emphasis on pitching to our weakness, because they have thrown nothing but changeups...i wish we would do more of that...maybe then we would start throwing guys like inge offspeed stuff Its the same formula as its always been. Low and away, and on 2 strikes breaking pitches out of the zone, or changeups in the dirt. Check out the times we get 3-2 and they throw a changeup.

Our top 2 guys are getting on base, and getting into scoring postion. Our meat of the order needs to start f***ing hitting. Oh and for the Speed coalition that calls the radio station asking for owens to start, Dye needs to hit the ball out of the infield for even the mighty speed of owens to score. Our meat of the order needs to man the f*** up.

QUOTE (fathom @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 01:47 PM) The Sox are doing him and the team such a disservice by having him on the major league roster. He should be getting constant ABs in the minors right now. Bring up Bourgeois if we need 2 backup infielders.

QUOTE (striker62704 @ Apr 15, 2008 -> 09:49 AM) They have two starters that are 3-0 and have sub 1 ERAs. That is impressive. As much as I want the Whitesox to win, I wouldn't mind at all if they finished second to the Royals. It's always nice to see a team that struggles for so long finally get their time at the top. I would check your fan card if you don't care if a division rival would win it over our team, just because they sucked for years. Who cares. Do you wish the Tigers well because they sucked for years as well. I am a sox fan, the rest of the teams in our division can go to hell. If we are finishing in 4th or 5th place, sure the Royals over the Indians and the Tigers. But I want the sox to win over any of the other teams. I could care less if the other teams sucked for 100 years. I can like the players on the team as a fan of baseball. But the team itself can go to hell.

Maybe Konerko needs to reassess his offseason workout and preparation program. Every single year he is a wash for April.

The Jim Beam section is awesome. I can echo Rock's statements from last year. This is what VIP treatment is about. Hell I am not even remotely upset about the game.

Reinsdorf already spoke on this issue, and stated that he will get a statue and his number will be retired as it should be. He was the best Whitesox hitter of our lifetime. This is why 94 upsets me so. That was the time for that group of talent to get to the WS. They were a juggernaut of that year. It would of been them and the Expos of all things most likely in the WS.

QUOTE (joeynach @ Apr 14, 2008 -> 12:53 PM) Well at least so far that has been a huge problem. You can tell when its a problem when you watch an HD live feed, usually sports and your video stutters. The images get all choppy, like they drop frames and the motion becomes all sketchy. The problem is the MPEG2 encoder in those motorola boxes sucks and doesn't contain enough memory buffer. When the memory and buffer gets cloged with junk over time the encoder cant catch up with live feed, and thus it drops frames and you see the image get all choppy and slow mo like. From what I understand this is a problem at least on 50% of comcast HD users. There is an easy fix, though comcast has no clue when you call them and just like to schedule a technician to come out. They did this to me when all my live HD feeds had image stutter, which I knew from not being a retard was an encoding/frame dropping problem within the box. Moesha, at comcast tech support had no clue what I was talking about and tried to send a technician out. If you are wondering the fix is to turn the cable box off (keep the tv on) and hit the menu button, if it doesn't work the first time turn it on off a second time. You get to a blk/white user setting screen, then you use the arrows on the box to toggle to the setting for HDMI/YpbPr output. Just flip through the choices for that setting, leaving it actually set on what it was orignally (usually 1080I for HD users). The action of flipping through the options is a method to clear the memory and buffers from the box, this will cause the stuttering to go away, temporarily. Its something you will have to repeat as the problem re-occurs over time. I would figure that eventually they will encode the signal in MPEG4 and use a much better codec. The current Comcast software and hardware DVR platform is going away because of the quality issues you speak of. They are going to get away from running the windows runtime evironment under the Motorolla platform, and run a Tivo probably over Linux on the Panasonic platform. They have had numerous problems with the Motorolla chipset, and their video codec. Hopefully this gets fixed with some better set top hardware and software.

QUOTE (knightni @ Apr 13, 2008 -> 03:12 PM) You guys have to watch the video attached to that. Hilarious. The guy who did this is a moron. He went to work there, for one day, just to do this. Its cub-fan like.

QUOTE (joeynach @ Apr 14, 2008 -> 02:00 AM) I understand that compression is something that happens by default, my gripe is more with comcast's public claims. Of course they have no problem tauting their increasing offerings of HD channels, as to compete with the dish, but would never make an acknowledgment for at what cost. The article makes its very clear that 2 HD Channels per QAM created the acceptable true HD images, and the new 3 Channels per QAM thus reduces selected HD channel quality. I can very easily notice the difference of watching HD on say un extra compressed ESPN-HD than watching the extra compressed AE-HD. The bitrates of the stations show the reduction from the normal 19Mbps per channel. Anything below that is a reduction is quality. The point is every channel could get 19Mbps with the 2:1 ratio comcast was using prior to this year, but the new 3:1 ratio has probably started a never ending cascade of bitrate reduction. If its 3:1 now what is it a few years, 4:1, 5:1, where does it end. Where does comcast stop cramming more reduced quality content onto coxial and build a new fiber network, or adopt streaming technology? So far all these seems to be about is the fact that comcast can market "more HD programming" than anyone else, but knowingly leave out the notion that their "programming" is not going to be the pure crisp true HD images they had previously been exposed to. In that sense it sounds seedy, like a used car salesman. Streaming technology wont work in a realtime TV environment. Multicast will work on saving packetting on the backbone pipe, but will do nothing for the end node. Comcast is fiber to your block, but the last run to your house is over a coaxial run. I could care less about the compression ratio, as long as they built in a device at the set top level that can handle the buffering, and decompression of the signal. As far as the 19mbs per channel just take a look at the DOCIS 3.0 standard and what they are getting on a new protocol/compression standard. Video compression is okay as long as you have something on the other end that can reassemble the signal, buffer it, clean it up, and present it in the format requested. The only problem is when you dont have the technology at the end node to perform that type of quality clean up, thats when you get carrier issues.

I will be cheering them on tonight from the posh Jim Beam section. First game of the year, and I am going to be spoiled.

The 1908 might be getting to them. Check out the kid with the cubs hat who is under 9 years old with the automatic gun. Yikes