\jeff{krimmel}

Rockets and Spurs Are on a Collision Course

Last night was the opening night of the 2007-2008 NBA season. My Houston Rockets defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 95-93, and the San Antonio Spurs beat the Portland Trailblazers 106-97. You know what this means, don’t you? Both the Rockets and the Spurs are on pace to go 82-0 and eventually meet in the Western Conference Finals. It’s only a matter of time, now.

I’m waiting to see which team is going to be the biggest disappointment this season. Maybe I’m a pessimistic person in this regard, but I get a bigger kick out of seeing who flops than what surprise teams comes form nowhere to make the playoffs. Who’s poised for a flop? The Mavericks, I think. Maybe flop is too strong a word in this case, but I think the Mavs will under-perform in the sense that the won’t be a top three seed in the playoffs. I see the Spurs, Suns, and Jazz being one, two, three in some order come playoff time.

And what about the East? Who knows? Who cares, really? I’m pretty confident the Cavaliers won’t be back in the NBA Finals this year, but I have no idea who will be. I’ll go with the chic pick and say New Jersey. But it won’t matter, because whoever makes it out of the 82-0 Rockets versus 82-0 Spurs Western Conference Finals will waltz to the championship.

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Transitioned to the new server

It looks like I have transitioned more or less successfully to the new server, which is a brand new iMac. I am surprised how relatively painless the transition was. The old server just died a horrible death, one that would not allow the machine to boot. Fortunately I had made backups of almost all my posts, so I didn’t end up losing too much.

I lost my 2007 World Series prediction post, where I predicted Red Sox in five. They won in four, but it was the first time I correctly predicted the winner in three years, so I was happy about that. I also lost a Chuck Norris post, which is a shame, but I have almost everything, if not everything, left. So, onward and upward, as they save.

Posted in Meta | 4 Comments »

Why Fire Joe Torre?

I’m content that I’ll never get to the bottom of the morass of issues surrounding Joe Torre’s situation with the Yankees. But I can’t help thinking, why fire Joe Torre?

What’s the one, primary job a manager has? To put his players in the best possible position to succeed. Don’t get me wrong, the manager has other responsibilities, but the primary one is to help his players succeed. How has Joe Torre not put his players in optimal positions? Has he misused his pitching staff? Was his batting order imperfect? What game management miscues did he make?

I don’t get it. He makes all the right moves. He’s a calming influence on the team with the most chaotic off-field situation in baseball year in and year out. The biggest free agents available say his departure makes them less likely to play for the Yankees.

I certainly understand it’s frustrating to lose in the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive years. I also appreciate it’s frustrating to have gone seven years without a World Series. But is in-game management the culprit here? What about a flawed roster? What about players who are repeatedly put in game-changing situations and repeatedly fail to produce? How is that Joe Torre’s fault?

I have a strong dislike for the Yankees, so I don’t really care what they do. But Joe Torre seems like a very decent and respectful man, and it’s a shame that a flawed Yankees organization is making him out to be the scapegoat when I just don’t think it’s his doing.

Posted in Pro Baseball | 1 Comment »

The Indians Destroyed The Yankees

The Cleveland Indians destroyed the New York Yankees Thursday night 12-3 in game one of their playoff series. I watched most of the game, and it still surprises me the Indians could generate as much offense as they did. If someone told me before the game that the score would be 12-3, I would have been very confident the Yankees won.

I have a very strong dislike for the Yankees. But I’m conflicted about what I should expect from them. The age old baseball wisdom is that good pitching beats good hitting in the playoffs, and the Indians simply have the better pitching in this series. But the Yankees’ recent results, basically from the All Star game onward, has me fairly confident they can just outscore teams on their way to the World Series.

For whatever reason, I don’t think the all offense strategy can win a World Series, but I really think they can get there playing that way. But game one makes me think a little differently about that. I sincerely hope the Indians just put a solid three game whopping on the Yanks, maybe outscoring them 22-7 or something over the course of the series. That would be sweet.

Posted in Pro Baseball | 2 Comments »

Creating Smart Keywords in Elinks

I have recently ramped up my usage of the ELinks text browser. I have been working on our servers a bit, and I often do not have X windows enabled at the time. ELinks is a great way to check my Gmail account and goof off on the web when I’m waiting for something to finish. My favorite part about using ELinks is how quickly pages load. That’s the obvious beauty of text web browsing.

One of the biggest annoyances I had with ELinks was my inability to maneuver around with just a few keystrokes. It seemed like I often had to pound on the arrow keys a dozen times to get where I wanted, or I had to type out whole URLs in some cases. The bookmarks eased that burden a bit, especially given that the URL for the plain HTML version of GMail is a bit cumbersome. But navigating through bookmarks can get old. I really wanted something like the Smart Keyword system in Firefox.

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Yankees Own The Red Sox

The Yankees and Red Sox have played six games in the past few weeks, and the Yankees are 5-1 in those games. Late last season, a similar routine unfolded as the Yankees beat up on the Red Sox in late September to effectively end Boston’s season.

What is it about the Yankees that just eats the Red Sox up? It doesn’t just seem like a statistical anomaly. I think Boston has to be praying that the Yankees lose in the first round of the playoffs. Because from where I’m sitting, it’s looking to me like the Yankees will be playing the Angels, and the Red Sox will be playing the Indians. I’m confident Boston can make it past the Indians, but if the Yankees beat the Angels, I don’t think the Red Sox can duplicate their 2004 effort and beat the Yankees in the ALCS.

I’m interested to see how it all unfolds.

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