Somewhat Manly Nerd

I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t pull myself away from the computer, lest I miss a huge hit from one of my players or an implosion by one of my pitchers. And I have a lot of players and pitchers to keep track of. Yahoo! StatTracker is always open, and I can’t help look at it every minute. This is obsession at its most time-destroying.

Right now I’m flipping out at A.J. Burnett having a 3.00 WHIP today. AND NOW HE JUST GAVE UP ANOTHER HIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME. This is in my regular draft head-to-head league with internet fellow internet forum denizens. I am currently losing 2-8 for the week and I HATE A.J. BURNETT. Tim Lincecum could have thrown a perfect game and he wouldn’t have counterbalanced this ineptitude.

This is just a small example of my thought process over the course of each night, sometimes day. This weekend I will be checking all day and night while I’m in my house. If I had an iPhone, I’d be in big trouble. I’d end up setting an alarm to remind me to check every 5 minutes.

“Wait a second, hot chick talking to me, I need to see if Cole Hamels melted down.”

Just kidding, I’d never have that douche on one of my fantasy teams.

My roto team is the worst, because it’s so stupid to keep track day-by-day, nevermind minute-by-minute. Just an hour ago I was +6.0 points on the day due to some great pitching performances, but now I’m at -0.5 points because my lineup has been THAT bad. Roto is about the ridiculously long haul of the entire season, so getting worked up about a 3/30 performance from my offense is pointless. Maybe I should apply this philosophy when I watch Jason Bay strike out for the third time in the Mets game tomorrow. He’s going to come around, and the players on my roto team might go 15/35 with 4 HR tomorrow.

So why the fuck am I glued to my screen following the Giants-Cardinals matchup since the two starters represent my opponent and myself in the aforementioned H2H league ? I’m going to walk away right now, I swear.

But not before saying I am coasting in my auction draft H2H league. Roy Halladay for $35. Bargain of the year.

You might be saying, “Then why are you writing about it?” — because the NFL Draft, or at least the 1st round, was today and my Twitter feed was filled with Tim Tebow jokes. And because if anyone is searching “NFL Draft”, maybe they’ll click on my blog. So stop judging, asshole.

I’m sure I don’t care because I’m not that big a football fan. I already forgot who the Jets picked with whatever pick they even had, and I’m supposedly a Jets fan. How am I supposed to care about college football players when the baseball season isn’t even a month old? Why would I even watch the NFL Draft over the Stanley Cup Playoffs? One is fifteen minutes of waiting broken up with half-minute spurts of cheering; the other is high-speed, high-contact sport at its highest level. Maybe I shouldn’t say highest, considering the Winter Olympics were only a few months ago and those U.S. – Canada contests were fucking awesome.

Arguments about level of play aside, the NFL Draft would be very low on my list of things to watch. I understand following it to know who was drafted, but holy shit, listening to hours of commentary by blowhards about 22-year-olds who are good at football? I rather subject myself to hours of insane babbling from Lost fanatics. But that’s possibly because I built up an immunity at my former job. It’s nice not to have to watch Lost the day it airs anymore; it reveals just how little I care about the show at this point and how I’m going through the motions of watching until it mercifully ends in a month. Of course, due to my love-hate relationship, I’ll stupidly allow myself to get excited for the finale, only to be massively disappointed. Fortunately, I’ve also already built up an immunity to horrible finales due to Battlestar Galactica.

How did I get talking about ensemble science-fiction television shows? Oh yeah, they’re more interesting than the NFL Draft. The NFL Draft fits very nicely in the reality show mold, and I’ve never watched any of those either — even Jersey Shore. Or maybe it’s more like a primetime game show, in the sense that it takes forever for someone to answer a question or decide with suitcase to open, and that once they answer it, the host teases the next question before the show cuts to a commercial. Fuck, I hate that shit. I can’t believe I watched Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader? that one time. But that was only a half-hour, not multiple hours like the NFL Draft. And not just multiple hours, but multiple DAYS. How could anyone stand watching that much idle television? Is it truly suspenseful waiting for the next pick to be made?

Perhaps people really do get into the drama, as I saw at least one person get pissed at the NFL Network for “spoiling” picks. One of the more bizarre tweets I have ever seen. And this guy is usually cool! The NFL Draft clearly makes sane people lose their minds. I guess I’d argue they lost their minds once they decided to watch, but everyone makes mistakes. I would like someone to explain to me the reason for getting pissed at that, though. Is it equivalent to saying Brett Favre is going to get picked two seconds before it happens? Is that what the NFL Draft is now, the same as a real athletic competition? Perhaps I should have asked this tweeter, but I was too busy watching Johan Santana pitch the Mets to victory. He’s still no Roy Halladay, though.

I just don’t see what watching the draft adds over, say, having a massive pop-up on your computer each time someone is drafted. Sure, watching Jets fans boo their pick is entertaining, but is it worth the time sink? Maybe I should ask myself the same question about watching this hopeless Mets season, but actual baseball > football transactions. Watching the NFL Draft is worse than watching C-SPAN.

The PS3 was already the go-to console for the best baseball video game on the market – MLB: The Show – but now Sony has just cemented my apparent need to switch allegiances.

New York Times

The Sony Corporation will announce Thursday that it has signed a deal to bring Major League Baseball’s live streaming service to PlayStation3 video game consoles.

By the end of the week, PlayStation owners will be able to sign up with MLB.TV to watch out-of-market baseball games transmitted over the Internet. It is the latest in a series of digital distribution deals recently announced by sports franchises.

The PlayStation deal is MLB’s first with a video game maker, giving Sony a leg up for the time being. Users of the PlayStation Network online service will be able to gain access to the existing MLB.TV package, which includes hundreds of baseball games — excluding local team games and others that are broadcast on TV — for an annual fee. There is a revenue split associated with the deal, but Sony would not specify the terms.

People in the NeoGAF MLB thread have already tested out the MLB app on their PS3s and the responses seem to be a bit mixed. The big problem is the MLB.TV blackouts. Since I actually live in the same area as my favorite (shitty) team, I can’t watch them on MLB.TV. So I couldn’t cut ties from cable if I wanted to, since I want to watch Oliver Perez suck and Jason Bay strike out twice a game.

Nonetheless, it’s really cool to see MLB allowing its fans to watch games in as many ways as possible: internet browsers, iPhone, iPad, now PS3. They should just have an option to be able to pay to watch local games — JUST local games if that’s what the person wants. I guess that would be too utopian, though.

I just thought you’d like a reminder, considering there is basically no other interesting movie coming out anytime soon. But who knows, maybe you’re excited for Iron Man 2, or Robin Hood, or The A-Team, or Sex and the City 2. I really enjoyed Iron Man solely due to Robert Downey Jr.’s performance, but I’m just not excited at all for its sequel. Robin Hood looks like Gladiator 2: The Middle Ages, which would have appealed to the teenaged me, but I can’t see it rising above mediocre now. I’m not even going to acknowledge the other two.

There’s also Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Karate Kid, and MacGruber – all destined to be instant classics, I’m sure. Ok, I concede that Toy Story 3 will undoubtedly be in line with the quality of Pixar’s previous work, but I’m not a rabid fan and I’m certainly not going to see that in theaters unless there is a female next to me.

So yeah, the three months leading up to Inception look pretty goddamn bleak. I just want my Christopher Nolan fix. I should probably get it by watching Following, huh?

Just so there’s something new in the post, hit the jump for a viral video for Inception.
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Only a month ago, I said that I had probably made a permanent move to Google Chrome as my primary internet browser, but its bugs and quirks are starting to wear on me. This has happened at least a couple of times before.

- The slow animated GIF problem will always be there. And in addition to that, I had heard some Mac users complain about how GIFs need to load completely before they animated at all, but I hadn’t come across it until a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully, it only lasted for a day or two. I have no idea what happened.

- When I was recently looking for info on golf handicaps, I was directed to About.com and when I got there, the correct formatting flashed for about 0.3 seconds before reverting back to a 1995-style webpage with no formatting whatsoever. I try reloading numerous times and the same thing happened everytime. And it happened with a bunch of About.com pages. But hey, it seems to be working now!

- Highlighting text can be extremely wonky sometimes. I have no way to expand on this — it’s just very annoying.

- Almost every time I click on the “Publish” button after finishing up a blog post, it ends up loading forever and I need to highlight my entire post and copy it and then refresh the page and paste it back in the editing box and hit “Publish” again. I even tried hitting “Save Draft” before attempting to publish, and while it worked the first time around, that was not indicative of future attempts.

- As someone commented in my last Chrome-related post, the search bar (apparently called the OmniBox?) is not nearly as quick as the Firefox AwesomeBar. It is also much less reliable.

- In preparation for my Song of the Week post yesterday, I attempted to listen to the direct link of “Sorrow” only to greeted with a second of painful corruption noise before the song actually started. I thought the song got corrupted during its upload to my webspace, but when I tested it in Firefox, it was totally fine. And when I tested it within its Flash player in the actual blog post, it was also fine. Bizarre.

These complaints aren’t enough to push me back to Firefox because it’s much easier to stick with the status quo, and that is now Chrome for me, minor frustrating issues aside. It just sheds some light on why Chrome hasn’t eaten much into Firefox’s marketshare; IE has been the browser hurt most by Chrome since the latter’s release.

The National – Sorrow

Lots of albums have leaked recently, but High Violet is really the only one I’ve listened to. And I’ve kinda been listening to this one song from it over and over. I’d go on and review the album or all the songs that comprise it, but I’ve stated numerous times how unqualified I feel to talk about music. It’s definitely a great album and I highly recommend checking it out — when it comes out legally, of course. The National’s previous album Boxer put me to sleep at times, and I guess that’s a weird criticism if I’m posting this song from High Violet, but I just find the latter much more varied and less minimalistic.

Note: If the very beginning of the song is corrupted for you, let me know. I had a weird issue listening to the MP3 directly in Chrome — which, combined with other bugs, has me close to writing a negative post about the Google browser. It worked fine in Firefox.

Note 2: I was emailed by Web Sheriff to take down the song, which I almost thought was a joke at first, and then I found the Wikipedia entry. Damn.

Note 3: The New York Times has the album streaming until April 27th. Go and listen now.

This edition of REAL TALK is presented by the realest talk of the past week.

- I haven’t played the Starcraft II beta in weeks. And I’ve procrastinated from writing a blog post about it for over a month. I’m just reminded of why I didn’t play the original as much I convince myself sometimes — because the game is totally unforgiving and makes me want to smash my mouse into my desk over and over. I don’t feel like watching replays to be competitive.

- Ike Davis is the New York Mets savior of the moment. With two hits, he’s at least off to a better start than Fernando Martinez last year. They still won’t finish above .500.

- The Twitter consensus is in: The Bourne Identity is the best Bourne movie. Paul Greengrass must be devastated by this news.

- Chuck probably should have just ended with its episode two weeks ago, unless somehow the last batch of episodes are extremely awesome. But I guess it’s NBC’s fault. Like always.

- I am a scrub-burning machine. While friends drink way too much around me, my grittiness and determination when it comes to sending smoke into the atmosphere is unparalleled. So scrappy.

- Someone I follow on Google Reader keeps sharing articles about Inception. I scroll by all of them because I might as well stay as spoiler-free as possible if I’m already set on seeing it opening weekend.

- Albums from The Black Keys, The National, The Gaslight Anthem, and some other bands I never really listened to leaked today or yesterday or something. I will listen to them and post the best shit in resurrected Song of the Week posts.

- I still haven’t watched last week’s Lost episode. And I thought I enjoyed the previous episode. I guess not?

- The leaked iPhone prototype — combined with iPhone OS 4.0 — seems pretty freaking sweet. Come to Verizon, please.

- LeBron James is really good at basketball. I need to work on my vertical leap just in case he comes to the Knicks. Don’t want to miss the bandwagon.

- I can’t remember ever seriously using index cards in my entire academic career. Yet I recently made a set just to learn some world capitals for pub trivia. What am I doing with my life.

Sure, most times when a celebrity loses his or her mind on the internet, it’s a publicity stunt. This fact doesn’t make such occurrences any less entertaining.

Just now Jose Canseco, of 40-40 and steroid fame, totally lost his shit on Twitter. I have little doubt the story will be on Deadspin within the hour.

http://twitter.com/josecanseco

U fucking scum bags don’t have the balls to get in the ring mean while u talk shit about me say it to my face low life humans

I wish I could bring this anger into the ring btween what baseball has done to me and u fucking haters I could kill somèone rite now

Remember the movie 300 that’s tbhe way it should be get rid of the shit at birth would be a better world today

Look in the mirror and ask urself have u told the truth lately or lied and kissed someones ass to benifit urself

@MARIALOUISE46 y do we have so many religions and only one god

If I where president respect and honesty would be established again just like in japan learn from that culture

If I had a “Quotes of the Day” section like I used to have on my LiveJournal 5 years ago, Canseco would win all the slots. He’s probably upset about his taxes.

This weekend’s links are presented to you by Dave Chappelle.

The All 35-And-Older Team – A collection of the best old men of baseball, lead by — who else — Derek Jeter.

Cutting the Currency Gordian Knot – This doesn’t even require a link, since it’s such a simple idea, but I’m totally low on links this week — especially since an awesomely bad YouTube video involving Scott Stapp was taken down.

Top 10 Ways to Access Blocked Stuff on the Web – Download YouTube videos, utilize proxies to watch other countries’ streaming TV, read news behind a paywall — do all this and more!

Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research – A pretty good rundown of Climategate and all the political and societal forces that surround it.

Baseball Tweets: A Series? – I am constantly amazed by how much Joe Posnanski is able to write. And he’s able to do it with referencing Beverly Hills 90210 or some other shitty 90s show, like some other sportswriter that can’t fit a column into less than 5,000 words.

I don’t even know what I want to talk about in this post, but holy shit, it has to be something other than that disaster of a baseball team. I could mention how I’m waiting for High Violet to leak; or how I want to see Kick-Ass; or that I really, really need to watch the Blu-ray copy of 8 1/2 from Netflix that I’ve had for months. I also need to watch The Prisoner and Sons of Anarchy Blu-ray sets I bought; it’s pretty incredible how amazing the former looks, considering it’s over 40 years old. The latter I completely forgot I even bought until I saw it on my shelf recently.

The problem is that The X-Files was added to Netflix Watch Instantly this month, and I’ve watched the first two episodes. I kinda just want to watch that now, as I feel it’s my duty as a self-proclaimed science-fiction lover, but at the same time that type of commitment scares me. 202 episodes. That’s a lot of television. I watched it occasionally while it aired, but never enough to have a grasp on the overarching conspiracy plot points. I remember looking forward to the first X-Files movie, and I remember watching a bunch of the latter season episodes where Mulder is abducted or something, I think? I just can’t get over how much time watching all the episodes will take up. It’s time that could be used to watch approximately 75 movies or watching The Sopranos or Deadwood or whatever else you think I should watch. Or you know, getting back to learning the guitar or brushing up on my Spanish. But fuck being productive.

Speaking of sci-fi television shows, I keep hearing good things about Fringe‘s second season. I thought the first season was immensely entertaining television that got progressively better, ending with a ballsy finale. But I watched it on Blu-ray and it looked so phenomenal that I can’t imagine watching Fringe any other way. So there will be no catching up through torrents — I already added the Season 2 Blu-ray to my Amazon wishlist.

Ok, I think I’ve flushed my brain out. Now I will continue trying to catch up on my subscription to The Economist and tell myself I’m attempting to learn about stuff that actually matters.