Mobilizers baseball

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Our baseball season ended today. (We all call it “baseball”, but it’s really softball, or even more accurately, 3-pitch.) This past year, I was the captain of the iAnywhere Mobilizers, one of our company’s two teams. We play in the “B” division of the league, whereas the other team (the “Sybase Sluggers”) play in the “A” division. We usually refer to the Sluggers as “The A Team”, and after playing in this league for two years, it’s only recently that I don’t giggle every time I say that, thinking of Mr. T in a baseball cap and glove, yelling “C’mon, guys, force play at second, let’s get this one”.

The “B” division is for those teams that aren’t good enough to play in the “A” division, but don’t completely suck — those guys are in the “C” division. Well, for most of this season, I suspected that they’d move us down to “C” next year because we more or less completely sucked. We started the season 0-10, including scores like 24-3, 19-4, 33-11, 11-2, and 24-1. The week after the 24-1 loss, I went away on vacation and someone else made the lineups, and we won 13-12. Then I came back and we lost the next 6. I like to think that was coincidence.

In late July, we lost a game 20-15, but the 15 runs was our highest run total to date, and we played pretty well, and I started to realize that we were actually playing better as a team. In August, we won another game, this time in convincing fashion, 26-20. I was actually at the helm for that game, so that broke my personal losing streak at about 18 (including the 0-3 showing at last year’s September tournament). We ended the season in last place at 3-18, two games worse than the second-last place team. Doesn’t sound like there was much reason for confidence going into The Tournament, but we actually had some guarded optimism, since we played much better in the last month, and two of our three wins came in the last four games.

The tournament was played yesterday and today, and rather than one or two games per week, we suddenly had to play four in one day, and up to three more the next day. Our first game was 8am, and we played pretty well. We lost by one run, but because the score differential matters in the tie-breakers, we played the bottom of the ninth even though the home team was winning. They scored one more, so it goes in the books as a two-run loss. 0-1 and -2 in the run differential column after one game. Not great, but considering we were 0-3 and -30 in last year’s tournament (the max run differential in any one game is -10), this was an improvement. The second game was pretty good too, and we were losing by 1 when the umpires called the game because of time constraints. I went and argued that the time limit had not yet been reached (we were two minutes shy), and we wanted to keep playing. They agreed that the game should continue, and we proceeded to not score any runs and allow 5, so we ended up down by 6. After two games, we were 0-2 and -8. Still better’n last year, but not great.

The third game never happened. Someone on our team had heard from someone else (who heard from someone else who… ) that the team we were playing in the third game did not have enough eligible girls — the rules say that you must have at least three girls who have each played at least nine games during the regular season, or you forfeit the game. I asked the umpires and the other team’s captain, and he confirmed that they had three girls available, but one had not played the requisite number of games. The umps called the game a forfeit, and we were considered the winners (by a 10-0 score), but said we could play anyway if we wanted. We declined, saying that we didn’t want anyone getting hurt in a meaningless game, but in reality, I think we were just hot and tired and wanted a break. So we were now 1-2 with a +2 differential.

The fourth game was great, except for the part of the game that really sucked, but I’ll get to that in a second. We hit well, played defence well, and won the game by 8 runs. I don’t think I made any errors on the field during that game, and I missed turning a 5-3 double play by this much. Runners on first and second, I’m playing third base, and the ball is grounded in my direction, just to my right. I run forward, grab the ball, step on third, and heave a throw to the first baseman, who catches it just after the runner hit the base. Normally, that’s the kind of play where I’d (a) miss the ball completely, forcing the left fielder to come in and get it (probably allowing a run to score), (b) boot the ball, loading the bases, or (c) make the play at third and then blow the throw to first, so I was very pleased with the fact that I made both ends of the play.

The part of the game that really sucked was during the bottom of the third inning. I was playing left field, and the batter grounded the ball to the second baseman. I didn’t see what happened, but some of our players were yelling “Throw it to first!”, and I didn’t understand why it was taking so long to do so. Eventually, the ball made it to first, the first baseman stepped on the bag, and then everyone walked towards the plate. I had no idea what was going on, until I saw that the batter had never left the batter’s box. He swung, hit the ball, and then must have dislocated his knee when taking off towards first base. Someone called 911, and an ambulance showed up 10 minutes later and took him to the hospital. The whole thing caused a delay of about a half hour, and since the games were a max of an hour and fifteen minutes long, that was almost half the game right there. Eventually, we got back onto the field, but I think the whole game lasted five innings. I haven’t heard since about how the guy is doing, but I can’t imagine he’ll be walking much in the next couple of weeks.

So at the end of the day, we were 2-2 and +10, a tournament record with which I was completely thrilled. As I said, the only experience I’d had in the tournament was the previous year, in which we got smoked three games in a row. Both teams that we beat won against (since we didn’t actually beat anyone in the third game) ended up going 0-3 on the day, with one game left to play this morning, while the other two teams in our grouping were 3-0 yesterday with one game this morning. So regardless of the outcomes from today’s games, we ended up third in the grouping, which meant that we played a quarter-final game today at 11:30 against the team that finished third in the other B-division grouping.

Yesterday, the weather was great for baseball. Sunny and hot. Today, the exact opposite — rainy and cold. It just flat-out rained for the first three innings or so, though after that it was just drizzly. We had one guy show up to play that I didn’t expect, since he said the day before that he couldn’t make it. I don’t want to put any blame on him at all, since the team is certainly better with him in the lineup than without, but the defensive lineup I had was done assuming he wasn’t going to be there, so I spent most of the first inning tinkering with it to make sure that he was included, but that nobody was sitting too often or in consecutive innings, that we didn’t have people playing in positions they weren’t comfortable with, and we didn’t our best defensive players all sitting at the same time. I didn’t do that great a job, though, since we ended up with too many or too few fielders in at least half the innings, and I had to make last-minute “You sit! You play right! You play third!” decisions on the fly. I think I ended up sitting out about four times just because I didn’t have time to figure it out properly. And to cap it all off, the hitting that came along so well in the last month of the season and all day Saturday completely vanished, and we ended up scoring all of two runs. We lost by about 12, and so ended the Mobilizers’ dream “worst-to-first” playoff run. The A Team (heh) got spanked in their game today as well, so both Sybase teams were eliminated.

Despite the win-loss record, I really enjoyed playing ball this year. It was much more work than in previous years because being the captain, I couldn’t just show up to games and play wherever someone else told me; I had to be the one to tell others where to play. One thing that I told everyone at the beginning of the season was that being the team captain does not mean that I’m the best player on the team, and it does not mean that I’m a good coach. I know the game itself as well as anyone, but I’m generally a crappy teacher, and I tend to forget that not everyone knows the intricacies of the game as well as I do. We had plays during the season where a fielder caught the ball while stepping on the base, but the runner was called safe because it wasn’t a force play. I knew it wasn’t a force play, but it didn’t occur to me to yell “Tag him!” because everyone knows that, right? Well, no, as it turns out. Anyway, due to complicated reasons that I’m not going to bother posting here, the league may not even exist next year, which means I may be looking for a new league. I remember looking into a league in Waterdown a while ago, but it was only for men 35 and older, and I didn’t qualify at the time. Now I do. Sigh.

It occurred to me earlier this year that if I played golf once a week during the summer instead of baseball, I’d become a much better golfer than I am now, and that concept certainly has some appeal. But can you imagine life without baseball? I can’t. I’ve played in a baseball league of some kind every summer since university, and I played pick-up baseball with friends every summer before that since I learned to walk, so until I get to the point where I am physically unable to play, I’m playin’.

Bob Layfield

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I’ve posted before about my old company, Comnetix. The head salescritter was a retired RCMP officer named Bob Layfield, who passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. Here are some of my memories of Bob, as a sort of online memorial.

First of all, let me say that I always used the term “salescritter” in a sort of endearing way with Bob, as a number of us did. We even used that term when talking to him, as well as about him, and he always took it in the joking manner in which it was always intended.

Bob was very proud of his RCMP career (and justifiably so). He retired as a Staff Sergeant, and was a part of the Musical Ride for a while. He was posted in numerous places all over Canada in his years as a Mountie. He had two daughters and when I knew him, one grandson, all of whom he talked about frequently. His family was always the most important thing in Bob’s life.

Bob was the consummate salesman. He knew the products inside and out, and could spin just about anything to his advantage. Occasionally, he sold our customers on features that hadn’t been written yet. Sometimes he gave them a specific date by which the feature would be ready, and then came and told us what he had promised. This, of course, annoyed us to no end. He even sold customers on features that we had no intention of implementing — he told people our application was ODBC-compliant, and that we could use any database product that supported ODBC, when in reality, none of us knew what ODBC was, and our back-end stuff was completely Oracle-specific. He had no CS education and often told us that he didn’t understand the technical stuff that well but could fake it well enough, but occasionally he would surprise us with how much he did understand.

Bob grew up in, I believe, northern Alberta, and one story he used to tell was about when he lived in a log cabin as a boy. In the middle of winter, the walls of the cabin would be covered with ice a couple of inches thick — on the inside. They’d light a fire in the middle of the cabin first thing in the morning and keep it going all day, and by the time they went to bed at night, the ice was gone and the cabin was warm and cozy. Overnight, the fire would go out, and by the time they woke up in the morning, the walls were covered in ice again.

When we first delivered the Boston Police system, all the developers spent a lot of time in Boston, and Bob was there as well. I’m sure he was down there for the better part of several months. He had a suite at the hotel, and his room eventually became the storeroom for spare parts. He had a stash of keyboards, mice, workstations or fingerprint scanners yet to be installed, platens for the fingerprint scanners, and cables galore. In addition to the hardware, Bob always had a large bottle of rum in his room as well (he was a rum-and-coke man), a couple cartons of smokes, and sometimes a few bottles of Sam Adams chilling in the snow on his balcony.

I took the GO Train into work every day, since I lived within walking distance of the Burlington station, and the office was within walking distance of the Port Credit station. One day while I was on my way into work, Gail called the office to say that she had gone home but had locked herself out, and asked Denise the receptionist (who is still working at Comnetix and is a freakin’ director now – way to go Denise!) to ask me to return home to let her in. Bob was there when Denise gave me the message, and without a moment’s hesitation, tossed me his car keys.

Bob was doing a demo for some company at some very expensive hotel in Naples, Florida, and I was going to go with him to set up the hardware and such. Since I was going to be in Florida for a couple of days, Gail took some vacation and came with me. The company that was bringing us down would only pay for one room, so Bob insisted that Gail and I take the room, and he would get a room at a nearby Howard Johnson’s or something, rent a car, and drive into the hotel every day. We offered to take the room for half the trip and then switch hotels with him (seeing as it was him the company was paying to see, not me), but he refused.

Bob could be a PITA sometimes, and we had many disagreements in the three years I worked with him, but he was a stand-up guy, a loyal friend, and I truly liked and respected him. I regret not having kept in touch with him since I left Comnetix. My condolences go out to his family.

The iTunes Store and new Linkin Park

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My first purchase from the iTunes store was Linkin Park’s new album, Minutes to Midnight. First of all, more kudos to Apple — buying the album was brain-dead easy. Since my credit card number was already saved from my iPod purchase, I selected the album, clicked “Buy now”, it confirmed my password, and began downloading the songs, which were automatically saved in the right place and added to my iTunes library. The next time I sync’ed, the album was on my iPod. Couldn’t have been easier.

Anyway, the album is a little weird. Not Primus-weird, but just quite different from the first two Linkin Park albums. I’m not a big fan of rap or hip-hop music in general (though there are a few songs that I don’t mind; Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is flat-out a great song), nor the whole “electronica” genre. However, I do like the way Linkin Park “fused” their hard rock music with both rap and electronic music on their first two albums. The weird thing about this album is that the band couldn’t seem to decide what kind of music to make. There are a couple of Linkin Park-esque songs, but there are a couple of rock songs with no rap at all, a pop song or two (“Shadow of the Day” could be on any Matchbox Twenty album), a couple of much more mellow songs, and “Given Up” is arguably thrash metal, complete with “Cookie Monster vocals“. There was a lot more guitar and less keyboards on this album, which I’m certainly OK with, but it is quite a departure for Linkin Park. I’ll have to listen to it a few more times to be sure, but so far, I like the new sound.

The one thing I don’t like about buying online music is this: no liner notes! I love reading the liner notes of any album I buy, mainly for the band information, guest musicians, and stuff like that. There is almost no rapping on this album, and there were a couple of songs where the vocals sounded so drastically different from other Linkin Park songs, that I wondered if they had gotten a new “rapper”/vocalist, but because of the lack of liner notes, I had no idea. According to the band’s Wikipedia page, they simply went in a new direction, and the guy who does the rapping also sings on this album (for the first time), which is why I didn’t recognize the singing voice. If there is one thing I’d change about the iTunes store, it would be the ability to get liner notes for downloaded albums. Lyrics I’m not so concerned about because (a) I don’t often read them anymore, and (b) there are lyrics web sites all over the internet; I’m sure all the lyrics to this album are available online somewhere.

Even newer toys

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Apple just introduced the new 160 GB iPod, and dropped the price for the 80 GB ones by $120. I think 80GB is just fine for my needs, so I just called Apple to tell them I wanted a refund of the price difference. After 40 minutes on hold (thank you speakerphone), a very friendly guy answered and told me he would refund the $120 on my credit card! Thanks to cahwyguy for giving me the idea to call, and kudos to Apple for top-notch customer service!

IvanAnywhere

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And I thought I had a tough commute… A guy (Ivan) on the query processing team lives just outside of Halifax, Nova Scotia. He’s been living out there for a few years now, and has been telecommuting. His ability to interact with the rest of us was greatly improved a couple of months ago when IvanAnywhere was introduced. IvanAnywhere is a “telepresence” robot, built by another guy in our department, Ian. One of Ian’s hobbies for many years has been flying RC airplanes, and after Glenn (Ivan’s boss) semi-jokingly asked him to build a flying RC blimp with a webcam that Ivan could control, Ian thought about it and decided it was possible, though with a robot, not a blimp. He took an RC truck and mounted a tablet PC and webcam on it as a proof of concept, and once that worked, he built a robot that Ivan can control. It has a webcam as well as a digital camera, microphone, speakers, proximity sensors so it won’t run into walls and such, and works over our internal wireless network. Now when Ivan wants to talk to someone, he can just go on down to their office, and he can attend meetings and even give presentations. The robot has a monstrous battery, but can run all day without being recharged.

Ivan can’t do everything himself, though. The robot can’t turn and move forward at the same time, so to go around a corner, it had to go forward, then spin 90°, then go forward again. Update: Yes it can! For tight manoeuvring, Ivan has to point the webcam down so he can see what he’s doing, so it’s easier to stop first. He can’t open doors, and manoeuvring around chairs and stuff in meeting rooms can be challenging. In one meeting, Ivan misjudged how far away a chair was, and the robot crashed into it (ironically, it was Ian’s chair). Also, someone here has to plug the thing in at night to recharge the battery.

Regardless of how cool this technology is, it’s almost no big deal anymore. We’re all so used to seeing Ivan (well, the robot, who we generally refer to simply as Ivan) roaming around, we don’t think much about it. One big difference is that our area is now pretty much mandatory on all building tours, so when customers or other partners visit, they are always brought through this area to see Ivan. Thankfully they haven’t changed our dress code (i.e. given us one) because of this.

As someone who telecommutes on a regular basis, I can certainly see the appeal of this for Ivan. For me, talking to co-workers via email, IM, or telephone is almost always sufficient, but I’m only at home one day a week (though it’s more if the weather is bad or I’m not feeling well or whatever). If I was at home every day and it was pretty much impossible to get into the office, I’m sure I’d miss the face-to-face interaction, and I find attending meetings over speakerphone (when everyone else is in the same room) difficult. Unfortunately, I think I live too close for the company to consider creating GraemeAnywhere.

Cool — just found out that we’ve been slashdotted!

Update: Ian informs me that IvanAnywhere can move forward and turn at the same time, so I updated the paragraph above. Also in the comments I say that it’s running a 9.0.2 server, but it’s actually running 10.0.1, and it stores status and monitoring information, which is used for diagnosing problems.

Can I see your receipt, please?

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Here is a story about a guy who bought something at Circuit City, refused to show the receipt when leaving, and was physically detained by the security thug at the door and the store manager. He called the police, who showed up, and arrested him for not showing his driver’s license. Obviously the cop was wrong for arresting him, and personally, I would have complied with the cop, but I applaud the guy for having the stones to assert his rights and not show his receipt. I don’t like the store’s policy of assuming all of their customers are thieves and forcing them to prove otherwise in order to leave. If the store wants to inspect your receipt before you leave, fine, but this cannot be a condition of purchase unless they tell you this up front. None of this even addresses the fact that showing your receipt doesn’t prove you didn’t steal anything unless they strip search you at the same time.

The only store I shop at that requires this is Costco, but it’s possible that the agreement that you have to sign when you become a member includes the right to examine your receipt when you leave. I’ve never questioned this — when asked, I simply hand over the receipt and wait to be allowed out. I don’t like this practice, but I simply don’t have the aforementioned stones. If we had Circuit City in Canada, I’d boycott them, but we don’t. We do have “The Source by Circuit City”, but according to their web site, they’re owned by a company called “InterTAN”, and not by Circuit City. Perhaps they’ve just licensed the name, or Circuit City owns InterTAN, or something. Anyway, I won’t be shopping there, nor do I shop at Best Buy, because of the numerous stories I’ve heard about how badly they treat their customers, including one I blogged about last March. I’m not generally one for boycotts, as they rarely accomplish the change they are supposedly trying to bring about, but even if the store never changes their policies, I feel a little better not shopping there.

Then again, in Canada, Future Shop and Best Buy are owned by the same company, and I have no problem shopping at Future Shop. I’m not sure if that makes me a hypocrite or just naïve.

Word to the Wise

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When ripping your entire CD collection, sync up your iPod every now and again. Don’t wait until you’ve ripped 100 CDs and then try to sync. Who knew that syncing 1000 songs would take over two hours?

I’ve ripped a bunch of my latest CD purchases (which were sitting on top of the CD cabinet), and a few other odds and ends (some Christmas CDs and such), and then I started on the alphabetized collection. The scary thing is that I’m only in the B’s right now (Blue Rodeo), and I’ve got 115 CDs (1609 songs, 4.7 days, 8.67 GB) already ripped.

Toy review

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I did eventually get my iPod the other day. Actually, within about 20 minutes of posting this entry, I noticed a car in my neighbour’s driveway, and wandered over to get my package, which was no longer hypothetical. I ran home and opened the box like a kid on Christmas morning. Is niiiiiiice. But holy crap, is that thing ever small. My wife has a little 512MB MP3 player that she uses for early morning walks, and it holds lots of songs, but she still has to refill it occasionally because she’s bored of the music on it. The iPod, which is not much bigger (and when it’s strapped to your arm is probably insignificantly bigger), holds 160 times as much stuff.

I’d ripped a bunch of my CDs to MP3 because of the MP3 player in my car, but they used various ripping programs (some of which are better quality than others), and use different (probably fairly low) bitrates and such, so I decided to start from scratch and just rip everything with iTunes. I’ve only done maybe 10 albums so far, so there’s not much on there yet. I found a cable that I can use to attach to my car stereo, and this morning on my way to work, I listened to a podcast of yesterday’s Prime Time Sports, “the nation’s most listened-to sports talk presentation”. I generally like listening to this show (live) on my way home, but because it’s over AM radio (ugh), the reception isn’t always the clearest, and I can’t listen to AM radio and charge my cell phone in the car at the same time because of all the interference from the charger. Now I’ll be listening a day behind, but the sound is crystal clear, there’s no interference, I can skip bits if they start talking about football or something else I’m not interested in, I don’t miss anything if I stop to get gas or if I get home right in the middle of an interesting topic, it’s awesome. This is not even mentioning the fact that now I’ll be able to listen to programs from radio stations that I can’t even get, or (gasp) actual podcasts that are not simply recordings of radio programs. And soon (well, probably several weeks from now once I get everything ripped), I’ll have my entire music collection with me as well.

I haven’t even had the thing a week and already I’m wondering how I lived without it.

The Thinking Man’s Spam

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While checking my spam filter today looking for false positives (which are becoming more and more rare), I happened across one with a very intriguing subject line. The message itself was a stock tip, but the subject line was “It’s possible of course that only similar processes to that which arise in a human brain can give rise to conscious thoughts.”

It’s probably rare that a spam message makes you think philosophically.

Vick is sorry he did it. And I’m the King of Siam.

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Michael Vick pled guilty to federal dogfighting charges the other day, and I think there were gambling charges as well. He also apologized to a bunch of people, and said that his actions were “immature”. I heard a reporter comment that a cynic might think that his comments were scripted and didn’t come from the heart. Call me a cynic.

First off, what he did was not immature. He put two dogs in a ring and watched them attempt to kill each other. If the loser of the fight survived, he’d kill it himself by drowning or strangling. This is not immature, it’s simply evil.

I think the only thing that Vick is sorry for is that he got caught and that his NFL career is probably over. If you go to a dogfight once and get caught, you can say you made a mistake and that you now realize that it’s a bad thing. But you don’t finance a dogfighting ring for years and kill at least eight dogs yourself and suddenly decide when you get caught that it’s a bad thing. The weird thing is that I think the apology could have been scripted better. The first people he apologized to were the NFL commissioner and the owners of the Atlanta Falcons, who basically hold Vick’s NFL career in their hands. He didn’t get to the fans and kids out there who look at Vick as a role model until later.

Having said all that, I’m a little surprised at the extent of the public outrage over this issue. While what Vick did is reprehensible, and I hope he gets serious jail time for it, there have been NFL players and other sports figures that have been convicted of rape and murder with less public outcry. My guess is that it will eventually blow over. Vick will serve 3 years in prison, the NFL will quietly end his indefinite suspension, and then some NFL GM will sign him, saying that he’s all better now, he’s done his time, paid his debt to society, and is ready to resume being a productive member of society. Celebrity justice at its finest.