Brewers are in trouble

Ryan Braun, who was the rookie of the year last year, has been asked to move to left field because he was bad defensively at 3B:

If this is how he's gonna play LF, we're in trouble.

Cars and pulling out too quick

So this past weekend, I had a fun incident with the Camry. I was at a grocery store in West Chester. When I opened the door to leave the car, it started beeping. Oops, guess I forgot to take the keys out of the ignition. But wait, I was holding the keys in my hand. So I put the key back in and turned it all the way over to "OFF" and it stopped the beeping. When I got back, the key wouldn't turn and the car wouldn't start. I was stuck! Had no idea where to start... I wasn't a AAA member, and I wasn't sure if I should call a locksmith or a tow truck. I tried locksmiths, and none of them had the right parts to help me since it was a Sunday.

I ended up calling Jon, who lives near me to come get me. Jon not only came out, but brought his wife and 1 year old daughter out too. "We made it a family event!" he said. We stopped for ice cream at the Nathan's Hot Dog/Bruesters (SP?) Ice Cream place on the way home. Man that was some good ice cream!

The next day I had it towed to Stewart Tire off of Rt 42 (I NEVER go to the dealer anymore, and these guys have treated me well). Ironically I had scheduled some service there anyway to have them look over my car since I was looking to sell it. They were able to fix it before closing, installing a new ignition switch. I guess after seven years of pulling the key out too quick, the thing finally broke!

The frustrating thing is the new Acura TSX HAS ARRIVED!!! Only thing is it's sitting at the dealer in Indianapolis, and I can't make the time to get it until 3/1!

Knight Rider review

So last night, after 25 years, Knight Rider came back. It was one my favorite shows as a kid, and all I need is for this new Knight Rider to be halfway decent and I'd be a fan! Well my verdict is, it's definitely halfway decent! Of course there's a lot of cheesy whiz bang technology stuff in the car, but that's part of the fun. I was concerned about the voice of KITT, but they did enough effects to the voice to make it work. They did a little home invasion scene before the show started, and after KITT made his appearance and sped off, the first few measures of the original theme music kicked in… and I felt chills go down my spine!

I enjoyed the show enough to be a regular viewer. I still wish they would've picked a more sporty car vs. the Mustang, but it works as is. They even had a dialogue about it…

What, another KITT?

Yup

Is it a Trans Am?

Nope, it's a Mustang this time.

I had heard they had gotten rid of the "woo woo" red lights, which would've been absolutely TRAGIC, but the Mustang had the red lights so all was good. They did a great job capturing the car's personality… about it technically not having feelings because it's a "car" and some pretty good comic relief:

KITT: I did not expect that response

Mike: You don't know anything about women

KITT: On the contrary, I have an extensive database…

Mike rolls his eyes

It also was awesome they had David Hasselhoff return for a cameo as Michael Knight. Will he appear in subsequent episodes?

Overall, if you're looking for a good, well acted, great plot… forget it. This has all the cheesy storylines and quirks of the car that make it fun. I for one will be watching!

Player traded for hot dog eater

Pretty good prank here...

It was pretty mean, but yet very funny!

The racing sausages contribute to Brewers roster

A couple of years ago I blogged about the racing sausages. Well this year they're helping in recruiting players to join the team:

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Chorizo made the call: Upon learning he had been traded from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee over the winter, reliever Salomon Torres at first considered retirement. For advice, he consulted his two daughters, Ashley, 6, and Allison, 4.

When he asked if they wanted to move, the girls said, "Where?"

"Milwaukee," he said.

"Where is that?" they replied.

"You know, the place where the sausages run," Torres answered.

"Yeah!" the girls screamed. They were sold.

"That's what they know," Torres said. "It was the chorizo that did it for them, I think."

Should better teachers get paid more?

Duh. I came across this article, which does a nice job of reporting the facts and providing balance to the story (which I really appreciate, because many times the stories are sensationalized beyond belief).

So why can't teachers get paid according to how good they are? Because it's hard to measure how good they are? Because it's not fair to all the ones who suck? I'm an engineer... I get paid according to how good I am (more or less, of course there's all kinds of politics and stuff that go with it, but it's much better than how teachers are rewarded right now). And the ones who suck at it probably have talents in other areas, which hopefully they go and develop.

I love the fact (sarcasm) that people immediate start jumping to using test scores to measure how good a teacher is. The problem with that is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle kicks in (recall from science class that this says that you can't directly measure anything because the process of measuring it changes it) and the law of unintended consequences kick in. One of my biggest pet peeves is being so focused on your measures you lose sight of your goals. People are rewarded by test scores, so now all efforts go towards improving tests scores (measures) instead of preparing kids to thrive in the real world (goal). I don't fault the teachers; I fault the system.

The real measure, albeit a little fuzzy, is how well a student grows up and makes it in the real world. I'd love to start a school in which we at least make an attempt to measure teachers in that way. The school would require a totally different business model, but why not give it a shot. One of my ideas in the past was to somehow make it like a church collection... you pass the basket and people pay what they feel like it was worth. Of course this probably doesn't work until MBA school, but maybe you take this concept further and you run the school off donations from alumni. It's a bit idealistic, but why can't we at least start working towards it?

Sunday Night Badinage

So here we are, the beginning of the perfect storm of stuff that makes this time of year suck (btw, "perfect storm" I believe was on the list of banned phrases for 2008). I'm talking about the time period between when the Superbowl is played and March Madness starts. First, football is over. Second, it's so freakin' cold out you don't wanna do anything. Third, I hafta deal with Valentine's Day... or lack thereof. Although I can't complain this year.

I've decided I need to schedule a vacation to somewhere warm in the month of February every year. Maybe a cruise to somewhere warm, or a trip to Brewers spring training in Arizona. I think southern California is also a good option. Man I'd love to go see the Brewers in Arizona this year...

Two years ago I got to go see them as part of Stupidfest (we went to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, and Phoenix) and I really enjoyed it. We sat in the right field bleachers and soaked up the sun. We were heckling the Brewers right fielder to throw us a ball, but he wouldn't do it. That right fielder turned out to be Corey Hart, who now is the starting right fielder for the Brewers. And he's awesome too!

Chinese New Year was this week... I took Kelly to a local Chinese restaurant to celebrate it. In a perfect example of East meets West, I gave her a red envelope (which is traditionally given during Chinese New Year and it usually has money in it) with a Starbucks gift card inside. What a country! We tried to figure out why Chinese New Year fell on different days every year, and why it didn't coincide with the Western calendar. I tried out many hypotheses, Google, and wikipedia... and it was a lot more complicated than I thought. Apparently in the Chinese lunar calendar they have leap months!

For what it's worth, I read today that Mars is also experiencing global warming. We should be ashamed of ourselves for driving so many SUVs that we've screwed up Mars too!

Reminds me of another quote from a CEO of a company that one of my friends works at... "We will take this company global... and beyond!" So what's next, we selling cheese on Mars?

I'm also desperately finding ways to burn off the nervous energy I have for my car... I've read the brochure cover to cover, I check acurazine.com even though I have very little interest on the topics they talk about. On Friday I emailed the dealer to ask if they had any financing deals, but really I wanted to just ask where my car was. At least he humored me and sent me the VIN number for it!

Economic Stimulus - another view

I've seen a couple of blogs where people were questioning the proposed economic stimulus package, and would it be better for the money to be spent on stuff in the US instead of given to people where they might spend it on foreign stuff. The point I want to make is buying stuff that isn't made in the US isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not gonna say whether or not it's the best way to stimulate this economy, but here's a point that many people don't take into consideration.

The best example came out of one of the books I was reading, I think it was Armchair Economics or Naked Economics. It talked about why trade is good, no matter who gets more or less of something. His example is he has a really bad trade deficit with his auto mechanic. He's given him thousands of dollars for servicing his car, but his mechanic has never bought any of his books. So he decides that he's not going to allow trade with his mechanic anymore and service his car himself. If he were to do that, it'd take forever and he wouldn't be as good at it as his mechanic. Not only that, he wouldn't have time to write his books, and therefore wouldn't make any money. The mechanic then also doesn't make any money. So this is a lose lose situation.

Let's say you take your $600 tax rebate and buy something made in China. The product is probably made in China because it's cheaper to be made there vs. a product made in the US (or it wouldn't be made there). Kinda like going to the mechanic instead of fixing your own car. So the Chinese company makes a bigger profit on it than a US company would (let's say $300 profit vs $200 profit). The owner of the Chinese company now has an extra $100 in his pocket vs. what the US company would have.

So what does the Chinese company owner do with the extra $100? Well, the dollar is pretty weak right now. What's to say he doesn't buy his son Yao and Yi jerseys for Chinese New Year? Now the Rockets and the Bucks benefit by this $100, which then goes to their owners or employees. Herb Kohl (the Bucks owner) then decides to toast his extra profit with a Miller beer... and my dad benefits from that with higher profit sharing, which increases my inheritance. None of that would've happened if people were forced to buy American products.

Basically the point is the economies are all connected... the money should go to the company that provides the most value for you, that way it'll propagate and everyone will be better off. Now is this the best way to stimulate a lagging economy? Who knows, I'm not an economist. But just because money is spent on foreign products doesn't mean it doesn't come back and help us all as a whole.

Sour Grapes

Sour grapes? You bet! I've become a Patriots fan this weekend just to see the stupid Giants lose. Thanks to Tom for sending me this!