Conner's Blog

This week has been a disappointment.  First I was sick on Monday and Tuesday and missed the two warmest days of the week, second I didn’t win Blitzen Trapper tickets from Vita.mn on Twitter.  Not that I was expecting to, but honestly would it have killed Lady Luck to throw me a bone.  I mean winning something is a stated goal of mine this year and Blitzen Trapper tickets would have kept me content for  10 years.  Wednesday, I spent the day running reports and creating Excel spreadsheets for my boss.  It was nice to have something productive to do, but data entry and me are kind of like sodium chloride and water, I just get the urge to jump out and cause havoc after about 3 minutes.

That evening my friend Jason, whose wife is out of town this weekend, calls me and says “Let’s do something this weekend”  Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be married, but since 93.88% of my friends are either married or on the verge of marriage, it’s nice when I can just hang out with one of the guys without their better half.  Of course I said “hell yes” and then promptly realized I have no f’ing clue what is going on this weekend.

I’ll admit I’m not one of those people who can tell you that Steve Filek is playing at the Pale Grey Jazz club on Thursday evening starting at 8:33, but I usually have a vague idea o fthings to do on the weekend.  I don’t always attent them but at least I know about them.  It was a little disheartening to realize that just two days of not blogging or Twittering had left me out of the loop.  I keep hoping to stumble across something in the blogs this week, but so far nothing has come about.  Honestly, how did people function before the whole information revolution?  Don’t tell me they looked at dead trees to plan their weekends?

I generally try to follow anyone who follows me, and I’m consistently looking for interesting people to follow, but I do have a few rules which I tend to use when deciding who to follow.

1. If you are following twice as many people as are following you, I will not follow you.  I am guessing you are just trying to get new followers by following random people.  The exception to this rule is if you are new and have only a few followers.
2. I won’t follow you if your time line consists of only links.  I love the content I find through Twitter, but the real conversations that occur are worth much more.
3. If you are local, and you don’t completely violate my other rules I will always follow back.  I have found out more interesting things about the Twin Cities in the six months I’ve been on Twitter, than I did in the year and a half before.
4. If you do not have a bio, a link, or your real name in your profile, why are you here?  You do not need to do all three, but you should at least go for two out of the three.
5. If you follow more than 1000 people, I will assume you don’t care what I say and will do the same.  The exception is if you are truly famous and have close to a 1:1 follower to follow ratio.
6. If you do have a link in your profile and it goes to a page that is 80% ads.  Well you do the math.
7. If you tweet in all caps more than once a decade, you can guarantee I will not follow you.
8. Swearing, though funny occasionally, is no substitute for actual content and humor.  If you swear because it’s easy I will not follow you.
9. If your tweets consistently cross the 140-character line into a new tweet, I will find you annoying and I will not follow you.
10. Do you constantly pick fights on Twitter? I left trolls behind with vBulletin. Healthy debate is acceptable and encouraged though.

Well after writing down these rules, I realize I need to quit following myself.  Does Twitter allow me to do that?

I went out today and purchased NBA 2k9 for the PC.  I hadn’t played a basketball game in years and was really looking forward to a night of being unproductive.  Well those plans have failed.  It seems 2Ksports , the publisher of the game shipped the games without a product key.  So I sit here with a game I spent $20 on and no way to install it.  According to this page at 2KSports they will have a solution by the end of the day.  Along with that page there is a 7 page thread on the 2Ksports forum with people stating they have the same issue.

First this is not just a mistake this is a total and complete screw up at every level.  The company just created a pretty massive PR nightmare.  I haven’t tried calling, but from what I read in the thread they are not answering the phones and even when someone does no solution is presented.  Second, not one representative of 2Ksports replied to the thread.  They have the tool right there to help answer questions and instead they just give a vague response on their homepage stating they are working on the problem.

I’m giving them until 7 o’clock and if a solution has not presented itself I’m going to return the game and will never purchase a 2Ksports game again.  Sadly if I would have pirated the game I would be playing it right now and would not have this problem.  When will companies realize that copy protection rarely creates sales it just hinders those it makes.

Update 6:54:  It appears a solution is in place and should be working within the next 24 hours.  Still not great and of course no apology has really been issued.  2K Sports could turn this into a good thing by possibly releasing some sort of special content for the PC version as an apology.  Instead I’m sure they will just release the fix and move on.

Update 7:12 The fix is in, after uninstalling Steam and then restarting the installation of NBA 2k9 things seem to be working.  Good that they got the fix out the door within 24 hours.  This is still another in a long line of things that show copy protection doesn’t work.  It is either broken within 24 hours or just doesn’t work.

The Twins season ended last night in a 1-0 game against our biggest rival, the Chicago White Sox.  It was a game that the Twins couldn’t win.  Neither team could get a hit, Chicago had 5, Twins 2, as both pitchers were phenomenal last night.  The game came down to two plays, a play at the plate where A.J. tagged out Cuddyer to end the inning, and a one run blast from Jim Thome.  It is games like this that highlight the Twins inability to hit home runs.  We can generate 5-6 runs hitting singles and doubles, but when you can’t get the bat on the ball, you have to be able to bring everyone home on one mistake, even if everyone is just you.  It was a great game though, and I have to give credit to the Sox, they didn’t let the sweep by us ruin their season, instead they went out and won three huge games in a row to make it to the playoffs.

I wanted to write a post about the season but the more I think about it the more I don’t know what to write.  It was a great season, the team exceeded expectation to such a high level it was incredible.  Our new guys, Gomez, Span, and Casilla, are so much fun to watch, and our stars are some of the best in the game both on and off the field.

Instead, today I’m left feeling cheated by the organization.  We were not expected to do anything this year.  Instead we overachieved, played insanly good baseball, and did it in the perfect year.  With the Tigers and the Indians down and the Sox injury riddled the majority of the year, this was the perfect opportunity to make the playoffs and make some noise.  You saw this coming at the All-Star break and you could also tell that they could really use just one more piece.

Offensively, bringing in a bat at third base would have been nice, but where we really needed help was our bullpen.  It wasn’t deep enough to hold up once Neshek went down.  It cost us the division. With a solid bullpen we would have most likely won at least 6 more games in the regular season, and Sox wouldn’t have had a chance to win it all in a play in game.   Instead the organization sat on their hands, did nothing at the deadline, and brought in aging everyday Eddy Guardaudo 2/3 of the way through.  It wasn’t enough and they cheated the fans and their players out of an opportunity to see what this team could do in the playoffs.

I’m not going to rant anymore this post, like I said this was a great season and this team is possibly my favorite team in any sport ever.  I hope they re-sign Punto in the offseason, and hope they can bringing in a nice 20-25 homerun guy for third base.  Shoring up the bullpen has to be the priority though, as offensivly we did have the 3rd highest scoring team in the league this year.  I’ll be cheering for them next year and hope we can have a season as magical as this one.

Steve Steeple: Welcome to the traffic report. Todays report is brought to you by Straight Ahead! “Tires that only turn when you want them to”

Tina Greggs: Hi Steve, well where are we broadcasting from today.

SS: Well Tina, well we have some great gridlock just past the I92 and highway 36 interchange. We have traffic backed up for about 6 miles and boy do we have a good game going today.

TG: Great, anything happening right now.

SS: Of course, we actually currently have a cute little blond in a Camry that is seconds from causing a wreck.

TG: Is she on her cell phone?

SS: Yeah, but she seems to be handling talking and driving in this five mile per hour traffic, but the guys that are passing her just are not paying attention. Oh! Wow, we just had a civic full of teenage boys that was inches from rear ending the car in front of them. Too busy gawking and no one was paying attention, lucky for them they didn’t hit that car, that definitely would not have helped them from being caught staring.

TG: Oh, did you see that, that Cavalier is leaving a three car length gap in front of it.

SS: Yeah, that driver is trying the no brakes strategy today, we’ll have to watch and see how it pans out. Surprisingly though, neither of the cars in front of it have taken advantage of that 16 feet of empty space, that might get them home 2 second faster.

TG: Very odd, especially this time of day. Oh wait there one goes.

SS: Wow that Porsche just moved in there and actually hit 10 miles per hour before having to slam on his brakes. Really impressive driving there, saved himself about a quarter second on the drive home.

TG:What is that red Bonneville doing, his blinker has been going for about forty seconds.

SS: I think he is planning on pulling the three lane cross in record distance. Yep, he is going to cut it close. Oh he did it, look at that skill, three lanes in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic in about 20 feet. Good patience by the driver not working his way over a mile down the road. Really impressive

TG: Honestly, I’m surprised that any of the vehicle let him in.

SS: Kind of shocking I know, but I think they were using his play to their advantage. See they let him in and then they have about 3 car lengths to accelerate before slamming on their brakes. It’s all about the illusion of movement here.

TG: What is that, oh, we have some honking drivers.

SS: Looks like someone was on their phone and didn’t see the cars move ahead of them.

TG: That won’t make the drivers behind him happy.

SS: No we hate to see that, just wasted precious stop and go time, now they have to drive almost 50 yards before stopping, sure to throw off their rhythm.

TG: Well it looks like things are starting to speed up.

SS: Oh don’t kid yourself, someone will bring things to a screeching halt shortly. Ah, see there you go, that Red Caravan just decided to slow down for no apparent reason, which caused everyone around it to slow way down.

TG: Ah, yes the overly cautious driver ploy, Oh wait there was someone pulled over by the highway patrol on the other side of the highway. Turns out it was the Gawker Slowdown, a much more popular play over the last few weeks.

SS: Yes, it seem that has really gained popularity in the last two weeks. I’m sure we’ll start to see the Worried Corners start to make some progress in the next weeks though.

TG: Worried Corners?

SS: Oh that is my favorite. Just love it when people drop their speed by 20 miles when taking your basic turn. Just makes my day! Well we need to throw it to commercials, but join us next time on KTQT’s Traffic report. Thanks for listening!