The descent continues. Down to 5 points in BA now. I expect Iwill lose first place in HR, Runs, and RBI in the next few days.
Javy Lopez broke his hand. Ken Harvey is out on DL. Gary Sheffield has tendonitis. Derek Jeter has a bruised elbow. The dings of spring are starting to gather.
Lohse only gave up two runs in 7 1/3 innings and he gets the loss, since his teammates could only get one run in support. Fah!
Magic User’s Club OVA: this is a silly little series. Standard high school romantic [comedy ?] for the most part. The twist is that an alien artifact has settled in off shore. It is basically benign, leaving everyone alone unless acted upon. And, of course, the Earth’s military forces lost a lot of equipment while not harming the artifact or any of its little droids that seem to be sent out to investigate Earth. Since the inhabitants of the artifact, if any, have made no known attempt to communicate with the Earthlings, everyone assumes that the artifact is a BAD thing.
Our plucky band of high school students have been studying magic, and they have decided to go after the artifact (known as the Bell). Flying their broomsticks out to the Bell, they actually manage to destroy some of the little droids that come out to investigate. They also manage to almost destroy themselves since they haven’t mastered their magic. Once they make it back to school, where the magic club has an ongoing battle with the manga club, the Bell starts sending out more droids, looking for these powerful creatures.
Primary protagonist is Sae, a klutzy twit who has a crush on the Magic Club President. She is probably the most powerful Magic user in the group but she doesn’t know it and she can’t control it.
The only reason to stay with this series is to find out what is in the Bell. The production values are shoddy, the storyline and writing are mediocre and the characters haven’t a clue as to what is going on (which is true of most high school animes). Oh yea, there are only two episodes per disk. I don’t know if this a saving grace or a detriment.
I will give this a 5/10 for now. I expect it will be a while before I see the rest of the series.
Has we can see from a casual view of the numbers, the POWER has gone south. HR, R, RBIs below par; what was once a commanding lead in these categories has evaporated in a mere week. The batting average for the week is pathetic. SBs are OK.
Pitching-wise, the Wins and Saves and ERA are to be expected, there were 8 starts for the week. The striKeouts are a bit low, and the WHIP is a bit high.
I lost a total of 4.5 points for the week, primarily in the averages.
HR- 5; LAA 7.7: PTS 10
R- 27; LAA 36.3: PTS 10
RBI- 25; LAA 35.3: PTS 10
AVG- 0.221; LAA 0.284: PTS 7
SB- 7; LAA 4.1: PTS 9
W- 4; LAA 2.9: PTS 9
S- 2; LAA 2.0: PTS 3
K- 31; LAA 34.6: PTS 8
ERA- 3.22; LAA 3.79: PTS 8
WHIP- 1.45; LAA 1.29: PTS 7
As we see from the Asterisk before Ken Harvey’s name, he went on DL. I have submitted a choice of several players to replace him. We’ll see whom I get.
Team report for Rocky Coloradans
Owned by Jack Heneghan
Hitters Team HR R RBI AVG SB
————————–
Javy Lopez Bal C1 FS-AS: 7 25 22 .273 0
WK: 0 3 1 .231 0
————————–
Josh Bard Cle C2 FS-AS: 1 2 6 .200 0
WK: 0 0 3 .222 0
————————–
Tino Martinez NYY 1B FS-AS: 12 27 30 .261 1
WK: 0 2 1 .071 0
————————–
Joe Crede CWS 3B FS-AS: 4 17 16 .243 0
WK: 1 2 1 .056 0
————————–
*Ken Harvey KC CI AS: 0 2 1 .148 0
WK: 0 1 0 .250 0
FS: 1 4 5 .222 0
————————–
Juan Uribe CWS 2B FS-AS: 4 16 20 .246 1
WK: 0 0 2 .095 0
————————–
Derek Jeter NYY SS FS-AS: 4 32 18 .306 7
WK: 0 2 0 .174 2
————————–
Julio Lugo TB MI FS-AS: 2 21 20 .274 12
WK: 1 5 3 .346 3
————————–
Manny Ramirez Bos OF1 FS-AS: 11 25 38 .242 1
WK: 1 1 4 .208 0
————————–
Gary Sheffield NYY OF2 FS-AS: 6 26 29 .315 6
WK: 0 1 0 .286 0
————————–
Aaron Rowand CWS OF3 FS-AS: 3 23 15 .269 6
WK: 0 4 2 .333 1
————————–
Torii Hunter Min OF4 FS-AS: 5 21 23 .231 12
WK: 1 2 3 .100 1
————————–
Shannon Stewart Min OF5 FS-AS: 5 28 20 .298 3
WK: 1 4 3 .400 0
————————–
Frank Catalanotto Tor DH FS-AS: 1 14 12 .281 0
WK: 0 0 2 .214 0
TOTALS 65 289 279 .2695 50
OFF PTS 10.0 10.0 10.0 7.0 9.0
————————–
Travis Lee TB CI AS: 0 10 9 .299 1
Pitchers Team W SV SO ERA WHIP
—————————-
Randy Johnson NYY P1 FS-AS: 4 0 55 3.94 1.125
WK: 0 0 5 5.40 1.800
—————————-
Bartolo Colon LAA P2 FS-AS: 5 0 42 2.67 1.154
WK: 1 0 3 1.12 1.000
—————————-
Kevin Millwood Cle P3 FS-AS: 1 0 45 3.31 1.307
WK: 0 0 5 1.50 1.333
—————————-
Kenny Rogers Tex P4 FS-AS: 5 0 23 1.73 1.235
WK: 1 0 1 3.38 1.500
—————————-
Kyle Lohse Min P5 FS-AS: 3 0 18 5.19 1.385
WK: 1 0 1 3.00 1.500
—————————-
Gil Meche Sea P6 FS-AS: 4 0 30 5.00 1.370
WK: 1 0 4 3.00 1.333
—————————-
Dustin Hermanson CWS P7 AS: 0 8 8 0.00 0.868
WK: 0 2 3 0.00 2.000
FS: 0 10 15 0.00 0.885
—————————-
Damaso Marte CWS P8 FS-AS: 2 2 21 2.16 1.620
WK: 0 0 5 3.37 1.125
—————————-
Gustavo Chacin Tor P9 FS-AS: 4 0 30 3.71 1.331
WK: 0 0 4 7.20 1.800
TOTALS 28 10 276 3.43 1.266
OFF PTS 9.0 3.0 8.0 8.0 7.0
—————————-
Justin Speier Tor P7 AS: 0 0 4 7.04 1.435
Seems to be a freefall, but it’s only the hitters batting .213 for the week. We’ll see how things stack up in tomorrow’s recap.
Now we start the silly season. The AL teams play a couple of series against NL teams, and vice-versa. I think it is stupid. Each league plays with different rules. And the games count in the standings.
I can see that the fans might appreciate local teams playing against each other for local or regional bragging rights, but the games shouldn’t count. Consider them exhibition games or something like that. But they do count, so I don’t have to worry about any pitchers starting against each other.
So they have:
NY Yankees vs.NY Mets
Philadelphia vs.Baltimore
Atlanta vs.Boston
Tampa Bay vs.Florida
Washington vs.Toronto
Chi White Sox vs.Chi Cubs
Cleveland vs.Cincinnati
Arizona vs.Detroit
St. Louis vs.Kansas City
Milwaukee vs.Minnesota
LA Angels vs.LA Dodgers
Oakland vs.San Francisco
San Diego vs.Seattle
Houston vs. Texas
Colorado vs.Pittsburgh
I guess Atlanta and Boston face off because the Braves started out in Boston before wandering west and then south. I notice that they have the Washington Nationals (ex-Montreal Expos) lining up against the Blue Jays. And Colorado and Pittsburgh get to avoid the travesty and play against each other. Maybe next year they will try Washington and Baltimore against each other?
So the pairings are: NYC, Mason-Dixon, Boston, Florida, Canada, Chicago, Ohio, AZvsMI???,I-70, North Woods, LA, Bay, S Pacific vs N Pacific, and Texas. Not sure about that Arizona/Detroit pairing, Sunbelt/Rustbelt maybe?
This one I consider scary. Being able to spoof Caller ID completely negates one of the primary security mechanisms that someone is where they say they are, and, to a lesser extent, that they are who they say they are.
If someone steals a new credit card out of my mailbox, they can activate it and go on a spending spree without me knowing anything about it until the first bill arrives. Even the credit card company may not realize there is a problem with the spending pattern.
Another reason to keep the credit limits on your cards low.
I wonder if the credit card company will treat the spending spree as theft? The confirmation came from you home phone number? Presumably the signature on the back of the card matched how whoever stole the card signed it.
How are they spoofing the caller ID? Caller ID (ANI) is generated by the local switch and is passed on through the phone network when a call is made. Presumably the spoofers are acting as a local switch and passing whatever ANI on to one of the main carriers, like the baby Bells or MCI. These carriers just pass the ANI field on without looking at it. I think the main carriers are going to have to start monitoring the ANI coming from outside their systems and drop it if it doesn’t conform to standards. An MCI switch in Colorado Springs wouldn’t pass an ANI from a local switch that didn’t have a 719 or cell-phone area code. And they shouldn’t accept ANI from known Spoofers.
The FCC may need to set up stricter rules on area code conformity. I thinkthat all area codes starting with “9” should be caller pays. All Area Codes starting with “8” should be callee pays. And since they got rid of the ‘”0″ and “1” restriction for second digit, all the residential/landline area codes should be moved to the lower range of numbers and the cell phone, IP and non-land-line area codes should start at 799 and work down. This would give some assurance to the network switches that the ANI they are routing is reasonably accurate. And more importantly that the recieving phone can trust the information provided by the network.
Bad things happen when trust is lost, or is it more appropriate to say that good things don’t happen when trust is lost?
Miami Guns, this is a fairly recent anime police story. The background, which didn’t seem to have any influence on the first few shows, is that humanity on earth was wiped out in some sort of catastrophe; some escaped into space and when they returned they found a few survivors on the surface. Humanity then restablished themselves on earth and rebuilt. Miami is the name of the primary city but it doesn’t seem to have any relationship to any Miami you may have heard of. As I said, none of this background seems relevant to the series.
The primary characters are Yao and Lu. Yao is the spoiled rich girl that thinks the world revolves around her and that police work is exciting work because you get to blow up buildings. (There aren’t many complaints about this because Yao has her father buy the building before it gets blown up.) Yao is one wild and crazy girl who never plans ahead. Lu is the calm, level-headed one. She is also the Police Chief’s daughter, which is probably why she naturally went into police work.
As a buddy show, Lu doesn’t react against Yao enough. Lu goes with the flow and in the end, after Yao creates a catastrophe, Lu gets them out safely. The only time this went the other way was when Yao and Lu first met (flashback) and Yao saved the day, and Lu. What makes the “Lethal Weapon” movies work is that Glover’s character has emotional responses to Gibson’s character’s antics. Glover’s character is just restrained by his background from totally clocking Gibson’s character.
The Police force is a private contracting outfit? but everyone seems to treat it as a public service organization. All the male officers seem to be trigger-happy lechers. The only non trigger-happy officer on the whole force seems to be Lu, and maybe her father.
So this show is basicly a shoot’em-up with a jiggle factor. The story lines seems to be old and retreaded. The characters are standard and predictable. The artwork, for the most part, is pretty good. They are using a certain effect where the angry character is drawn in a juvenile style (I’m sure there is a name for it. I have seen it in other shows occasionally) and they use it a lot. I don’t care for that effect.
The one redeeming feature on this disk is that in the extras is an explanation for some of the cultural background of the dialogue and situations. They even try to explain the puns. Each episode seems to be a pastiche of previous anime series, and you might not realize the signficance of a Tofu delivery boy named Takumi in episode 4 unless you are familiar with “Initial D“. Personally, driving animes never really thrilled me.
Recap/Synopsis:
Episode 3: Yao and Lu go under cover in a Girl’s School. Strange things are happpening.
Episode 4: A deranged driver is running street racers off the road and leaving blocks of tofu at the scene. Yao retrofits a car with the latest car gear, then, Yao and Lu go after the culprit.
I give this a 6 out of 10, so far. I think there are 3 more disks in the series but I won’t push them to the top of my queue for a while.
I heard Frist rhetorically ask, about the statewide support for the judge up for confirmation, “Are 84% of Texans out of the mainstream?”
Well, duh.