Went to the Dodger game again yesterday, a 7-5 loss to the Pirates. Fun game. Took some more pictures.
Gallery | flickr. I’m finally starting to actually learn to use Photoshop to process images and make them look better. I’m sure I’ll have more images added to this set later this week.

Juan Pierre makes an error every time I point my camera at him in center.

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I went to the Dodgers/Padres game with Ryan and Wil last night. It was the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game in Major League Baseball. The pregame ceremonies were very well done, and it was overall a great tribute. Mike Cameron of the Padres, and the whole Dodger team wore Robinson’s retired number 42.

The Dodgers won 9-3. I have pictures up in my gallery or a flickr set.

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Last night:

The lanes broke down the last game, and I just couldn’t string strikes together. Still a nice series. The one non-strike in the second game was a 7-pin a little light in the pocket. The first two shots had been high, and the 4-7 fell late, so I moved in a board. Moved back half a board for the rest of the game. Dammit. So close.

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There’s no good reason for this. I have MLBEI (free preview), MLB.TV, and the game is on Fox. And I can’t watch it.

Mets/Braves is only on Fox for the eastern half of the country. The west coast gets Dodgers/Giants. That makes sense, but there’s no good reason the other game shouldn’t be accessible to the other part of the country somehow. Fox fucking sucks. They have national games today, so EVERY game that might be on at the same time is on national blackout on MLB.TV, and not on MLBEI.

I just want to watch my damn Mets games, I don’t care what channel it’s on or about protecting local markets. I want to watch my team.

They need to fix this shit already.

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The Mets started the season off right: with a three game sweep of the Cardinals. They outscored them 20-2 over the three games. Last night, John Maine allowed 1 hit through 7, the bullpen 1 hit through 2, Reyes homered, and Beltran homered twice for a 10-0 win. 159 games to go. Their next game is tomorrow at Atlanta, Oliver Perez against Mark Redman.

As far as fantasy baseball goes, my two teams are already in the cellar, as expected. 🙂

MLB.TV is working out nicely, and I upgraded to the premium service for a higher quality stream, and the MLB Mosaic application which I can’t get to work in Linux. I’ll have to figure out what to do with that. Also, it seems I will be able to get MLBEI on cable after all, but don’t know if I will:

NEW YORK — After negotiations that went into extra innings, baseball struck a deal to keep its “Extra Innings” package of out-of-market games on cable television.

Under pressure from Sen. John Kerry, baseball and iN Demand reached an agreement in principle Wednesday on a seven-year contract, a deal that likely will allow the sport’s new TV network to be available in at least 40 million homes when it launches in 2009.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2826280

Go Mets!

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I’m in Tucson, and we were out at dinner with the family, so I didn’t get to watch all of opening day. The restaurant had a bar with a TV, and the game was on, so I watched parts of it, and followed the game from the dinner table on my Pearl otherwise. Glavine and the Mets took the opener from Carpenter and the Cardinals, 6-1. They have the best record in the majors, 1-0, but will be tied with a lot of teams for that record tomorrow. Glavine needs 9 more wins for 300.

Here’s me and Evan watching the game. The situation: Bases loaded, 1 out, Rolen up for the Cards. Heilman relieves Joe Smith.

He induced a 4-6-3 doubleplay groundball.

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Just got finished packing for the trip to Tucson for Passover. I should be asleep already, I have to be up in under 6 hours. Driving (or, riding in the car) with Brad, Staci, and Evan to LAX, and then a short flight to TUS.

The past few days, I’ve been playing a lot of online settlers at JSettlers, on the ladder at MyLeague. It’s been a long time since I’ve played the game seriously, and I really suck at it right now. My record at the moment is 16-48 (the 16 should be a multiple of 3, so some people didn’t report losses, and it should be 18-48). That means I’ve won 6 games, and lost 48. That’s … bad. A lot of the games I’ve been close, and needed a common number to get rolled to win, and we go for 12 rolls without it, and I lose. The RNG at JSettlers is more rigged than online poker. I won a game around a half hour ago, and stopped for the night. That win came after a 21 game losing streak. It was painful.

My company softball team started up again last night, and we won our first game of the season! I went 4-5, and the one out was made on a nice sliding catch at the foul line. My first hit, though, was a little silly. With two strikes on me, if I hit a foul ball, it’s an out. I hit a stupid little popup between the catcher and the pitcher that neither could get to in the air, and when it hit the ground it looked like it was rolling foul, so they didn’t touch it. It stayed fair, and I was safe at first. My other three hits were solid. The games go for 70 minutes or 7 innings, whichever is shorter. This game ended after three innings, with a final score of 24-16. We were the away team, and batted first. In the first two innings, we scored 5 and 6, and they scored 8 in both innings. In the top of the third, we batted around after we already had two outs, and ended up scoring 13 tuns. The other team got out 1-2-3 on 4 pitches. Two flyballs to left-center, and a popup to the pitcher. It’s good to win. 🙂

Evan likes pinball:

I think there was something else I wanted to write about here too, but I can’t remember and I need to go to sleep.

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Tonight, it was all Evan. He (and his parents) were at the bowling alley watching most of the first two games.

It’s my new high series, and dammit it shoulda been better. 🙂 In the first two games I threw one bad ball each (the 8 counts), and the rest of the non-strikes were all ten pins in the pocket. Still, I’m absolutely thrilled with it, of course. I only won the sidepot for the last game. Someone beat me by 5 pins the second, and the first wasn’t close. My team swept all four points. The third game I finished with ten strikes in a row, and we won by 3 pins.

Going into the night, I knew I needed a 715 series to get my average for the season up to 200 in this league. It’s now 200.4. I can bring both Monday and Tuesday up to 200 with an 864 (4) and 617 series next time out.

Goodnight.

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Post ripped from: http://bradpenner.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-need-your-vote.html

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=MULTIMEDIA09

As promised, The Asbury Park Press Battle of the Pet Photographers has begun! I need your help! I, like each of the other staff photographers, have two entries in the contest. Here’s how it works: Over 2400 pet owners sent in photos of their beloved pets. Each photographer chose two to go out and make “professional” photographs of. Then, the public votes on which pet is their favorite. This is where you come in. For whatever reason, this is not an anonymous contest. Because of that, I can campaign for votes for my two pets. The two dogs that I photographed are named “Brodi,” and “Brooklyn.”

This is Brodi:

And this is Brooklyn:

They’re both extremely friendly, and they need your help to take home the grand (and only) prize. That’s right, there’s just one winner, and 23 losers! Help us not be losers! 🙂

Go here: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=MULTIMEDIA09 and cast your vote for either Brodi or Brooklyn! There are bragging rights (and cash!) at stake here!!

One more time, it’s: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=MULTIMEDIA09. We appreciate your support!

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So, I signed up for mlb.tv because Cox is giving it to me for free. I have in the past tried to get it (and MLB gameday audio) to work in linux, without good results. I decided I’d try again now, and… success!

I deleted any trace of mplayer-plugin from my computer, and installed MediaPlayerConnectivity instead. Combined with mplayer (or totem, xine, vlc…), I can actually watch the games! It doesn’t work exactly right, as the video doesn’t get embedded in my browser window, but this actually works out better for me.

I’m now watching the Mets/Cardinals in spring training… nine days until opening day!

Also, wfan.com has changed their streaming setup, and it’s now just a flash streaming application, so I can listen to WFAN in Linux, too!

Now if I could just get all of this to stream to my Pearl…

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