Our OtR tickets are here. The show is at Canal Street Tavern, which, as you might guess, serves alcohol. On the tickets: “There is a one-drink minimum per set.”

They’re going to force us to have beer, Rick.

They obviously don’t know me very well.

When we get back, I’ve got this nice, long rant saved up for GFMorris.com about legalism and expectations for para-Church organizations—like “Christian” bands—that don’t meet what the Bible really tells us.

In the meantime, I’ll be going to see a band of Christians play spirit-infused music in a bar in my old hometown.

This is frickin’ awesome.

ESPN has concocted a new stat, which Buster Olney defends with a bunch of anecdotal evidence on ESPN.com.

The problem with Productive Out Percentage is pretty easy to spot right away, but let’s state the obvious:

What is a productive out?

A productive out occurs when …

• A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.
• A pitcher sacrifices with one out.
• A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.

What is the formula for productive out percentage (POP)?

Productive outs divided by the total number of outs. For instance, if three of Player A’s 10 outs are productive, his POP is .300.

POP is pretty easy to dismiss, because here’s what it doesn’t measure: rate of success versus opportunity to have that success. Go back and look at the italics above, and then read on.

Look again at the three conditions that produce a Productive Out [PO]:

• A baserunner advances with the first out of an inning.
• A pitcher sacrifices with one out.
• A baserunner is driven home with the second out of an inning.

All three conditions require a baserunner.

PO’s are as team-dependent as Runs Batted In [RBI] are. RBI’s are a function of two things: runners on base and the batter’s ability to drive them in with a hit. The two factors driving it are, then, OBP(team) and SLG(player), since extra-base hits are more likely to drive in runners than singles. Remember: more bases are better, because more bases get you closer to home plate, no matter how many runners are on base.

If you are a great slugger—say, Barry Bonds—and don’t have a ton of runners on base, you can’t get a lot RBI. Barry Bonds was unquestionably baseball’s best hitter in 2003 [and 2002, and 2001, but I digress], but as you can see, Bonds wasn’t in the top 40 players in terms of RBI in 2003. Why does this happen? It’s entirely due to Bonds’s teammates not being very good at getting on base in front of him.

I am not going to say that there is nothing to the PO concept itself; I do want to lambast the POP concept totally, because it divdes PO’s by total outs, regardless of whether or not there were runners on base at the time. If they reformulated POP to be POmade/POpotential, you might be able to make a case for an ability being present.

Of course, you would have to see that said ability was a “true” ability–that is, one that is demonstrated from year to year. If there is a strong year-to-year statistical correlation between a player’s ability to make Productive Outs in Year N and Year N+1, then ESPN may be on to something.

Instead, they have formulated a “stat” that’s as useless as RBI. All that serves to do is muddy the water.

Thanks a lot, fellas. All that money, and all that ability to have great resources at hand, and what do you do with it? Bupkis.

Alex pointed out that I didn’t discuss home runs or sacrifice flies when discussing RBI. I should have, given that I brought up Bonds. You do get credit for an RBI when you make both, but only one is easy to track in rate stats–the homer.

This reminds me of a study I started back when I was in college, but never finished: Actual Runs Created Percentage. The goal was simple: for each plate appearance a batter had, note how many runners were on base at the time. The maximum number of runs that a batter may cause his team to score in any plate appearance is four–the team has the bases full, and the batter drives in all runners as well as himself. The minimum number of runs that a batter may cause his team to score is, of course, zero—he can make a “non-productive out” that doesn’t cause his team to score, or he can reach base in a way that doesn’t create a run.

I think my idea was to count up Actual Runs Created—that is, the number of runs produced by each batter’s at-bat—and try to find some mean, median, and mode for it. One way to do it would be to create a percentage: divide ACR by the number of plate appearances. [One uses PA here rather than AB's because you do not get an AB for a walk, sacrifice, or hit batsmen, even though all three can produce a run.]

That would be a true rate stat; whether it would matter a damn is worth investigating. Perhaps it has been done; I have never looked to see.

Subservient Chicken has to be one of the foofiest things I’ve seen in a while.

Burger King has taken the “have it your way” idea to all new heights.

[Hat tip to JP on the Rumor Forum.]

… my writing output this week, as is typical, is proportional to the amount of slack time at work.

Why I haven’t posted today is, really, beyond me. It’s been slow today, too.

Oh, I know why … I’ve been reading up on database normalization. That’ll put anyone straight into a coma.

It’s always fun to hear my local friends talk about my output when I really turn it on, though. The exasperation amuses me.

Back to pondering database design …

For reasons I can’t quite remember—oh, wait, I do; I was pointed there by an entry by Steven Garrity about interface improvements in open source projects—I found an essay by Eric S. Raymond: Homesteading the Noósphere.

Some of the thoughts that I read here speak directly to issues related to the growth of the [rocksmyfaceoff.net] world empire. They are issues that we’ll have to act on, and soon, before personal conflict causes problems.

It’s a long read, but if you’re interested in how volunteer, long-term, collaborative projects work behind-the-scenes, it’s a good read.

Considering my previous post, you might think that, given the subject title, that I’m trying to call the Church out for hypocrisy in how it handles divorce. That’s only half-right, really.

Relevant Magazine recently published an article by Kathryn Malczyk about the dichotomy between the Church’s position on gay marriage and divorce. An excerpt:

While tripping over themselves to passionately protest gay marriage, Christian conservatives are neglecting to fight a much larger threat to the sanctity of marriage and the institution of the family. Divorce has already completely altered the family as we know it, and its consequences continue to infect the nation. Christians turn out en masse to protest the legislative approval of gay marriage, but no one is saying much about the divorce rate. If Christians are truly concerned about preserving marriage and the family, they need to take care of the plank of heterosexual divorce before worrying about the speck of homosexual marriage.

[Emphasis mine.]

I’ve often [though perhaps not clearly] stated my position on gay marriage: fine in the secular world, wrong in the sacred world. You might not agree with me, and many in the Christian mainstream do not. That’s fine.

I may disagree with my Catholic brothers on many things, but their attitudes toward divorce are to my liking. I had a Catholic friend who married a once-divorced woman—she had been Protestant—and they spent a long time trying to get married inside Mother Church. I believe that they finally ended up getting married as Protestants just so they could be married; it seems to me that I did hear from a mutual friend that Mother Church did eventually end approving the annulment of her previous marriage.

Anyhow, I think the basic points of the Relevant article are very much worth reading and understanding, whether you’re Christian or not.

[Hat tip to Michaela.]

I just remarked to my buddy Mark, “You know, I don’t know what the big issues are for General Conference this year.”

If you’re not a Methodist, you probably don’t know about General Conference. The way the United Methodist Church is organized, as best I understand it as laity, is that local churches are governed by a charge conference, which contributes to the district and then onto the local conference. For example, my home church is governed by its own charge conference, which is part of the Huntsville district, which is part of the North Alabama conference. The North Alabama conference sends delegates to General Conference, which meats quadrennially. The North Alabama conference meets annually, and the charge conference meets at least annually, mainly as needed. [Some districts are big on district-wide events, and some are not. I think that has a lot to do with the preferences of the bishop---who leads the local conference---and the District Superintendent---who runs the district.]

So when I check out the Church’s Web site, I find out that General Conference starts … today.

Eeeeep.

Ever since 1996, when a significant piece of the Council of Bishops advocated sanctifying homosexual marriage, I’ve wanted to keep an eye on General Conference. Please note that I am not against homosexual marriage in a secular context; inside the Church, though, I view it as sanctifying a relationship that the Bible teaches is impure. I generally divorce my politics and my theology as much as possible. Some of you argue that this is impossible, but I will tell you that it works for me.

I have some reading to do.

Well, Austin Kearns has a broken forearm. Just wonderful!

As much as I love to watch Ryan Freel play, he doesn’t need to be playing every day. Of course, Wily No Curveball … errr, Wily Mo Pena … needs to be playing every day, but he needs everyday time in AAA, not the bigs.

:sigh: Unfortunately, we’re still paying for the Bowden Years. I figure it’ll be three years before the vestiges of Li’l Jimmy are gone.

Man, let me tell you … I sat down last night and saw that TiVo—yes, I have one now—had started recording the San Jose-Colorado game. I sat down, knowing I had an hour’s head-start, and plowed through the game. [Let me say that skipping an entire intermission in under a minute rocks my freakin' world.]

If you want to watch fun, tough, hard-nosed hockey, sit down and watch San Jose. Those guys give up the body and go all out on every single shift. They forecheck all game long. They block shots at the point and in the crease. They crash the net. They’re just fun.

Last night’s lone goal was scored when Vinny Damphouse picked up his own rebound and, having no other shot, put the puck right into the 1 on David Aebischer’s back. Beauty. I rewound that thing at least three times, and the last time, I watched it in slow motion. When you see it in slo-mo, you can see Damphouse’s eyes light up as he gets the devilish idea to put the puck in off the goalie, and as it hits him, Vinny breaks out into this crazy grin.

It’s making the playoffs worth watching after the Bruins choked against the Canadiens … again.

This being the third time I’ve mentioned this trip … I think I’m excited about it.

Friday, April 30: Drive from Huntsville to Jackson, TN. Caedmon’s Call show at 8:00 p.m. [Please don't ask me how I got tickets to a closed show. No, I can't get you tickets. Yes, I suck.] Crash at the parents’ house. [Unfortunately, folks, Jess is not coming, but y'all get to see Rick.]

Saturday, May 1: Drive from Jackson, TN to Dayton, OH. Site-seeing in Dayton and my old hometown of Beavercreek. Over the Rhine show at 9:30 p.m. [Please don't ask me how I got lucky to have tickets to this show; of course, I'm still waiting on my SASE with tickets, and I haven't seen a cleared check yet. I am angst-filled.] Crash somewhere: perhaps with old friends, perhaps at a hotel.

Sunday, May 2: Church at Aley United Methodist Church in Beavercreek, if Rick and I can pull ourselves out of bed in time to go. Drive home to Huntsvegas. Take Rick home as quickly as possible before Jess and the dogs miss him too much. Drive home. Sleeeeeeeeeeep.

Rick will be assimilated into the CC world, to be sure. How many people get to schmooze with the band at their first show? Okay, with CC, that’s common. Big deal.

Alex has released Version 1.1 of Tasks Pro.

If you have need for a Web-based hierarchical task manager, give Tasks Pro some strong consideration. I have found it to be very good for my needs in a small, collaborative environment.

I was, in fact, the first person to download 1.1. That, folks, is the fun of being online when your friends need someone to beat on the code they’re testing.

Indeed, sometimes, advocacy gets a problem solved.

Burning Edge reports that the really offensive bug is now fixed. Bugzilla confirms that 213963 is fixed.

Spiffy.

Yes, a second control moment gyroscope failing affects my job. How? We build the carrier that takes them to orbit.

We’ve already got one carrier built and most of a second one is in our clean room. I had my [gloved] hands on it this morning, showing it to a couple NASA badges. There’s a minor mechanism question, so they wanted to see the actual hardware.

That’s a fundamental truth of flight hardware–drawings are nice, but the actual piece part is soooooo much better.

As you can see, there are four CMG’s on orbit. When all four are working everything is keen. I think two is the minimum nominal number to have running and not need to use thrusters to stay aligned.

Why is alignment a concern? Power. ISS runs on solar power, and you want your solar panels facing the sun. This means that you turn the station to keep the solar arrays pointed at the sun. If you can’t turn the station, well, then you’re out of juice, and that sucks.

How do these work? Pretty simple. Ever played with a gyroscope? Know what it’s like to turn it while it’s spinning? Yeah, you get a torque feedbacking your hand. Now when you do it on the ground, no biggie–you’re not going to move much, since your feet are on the floor. In space, when you gimbal a gyroscope, there’s nothing holding the station in attitude, so it moves in response.

These things just break. It’s they way they go.

Oh well … more work for us. Yay. The work is always good, even when it means that I’m at work at 0615 and still here at 1630.

Well, I’ve moved on from a complete addiction to Ohio to a complete addiction to Good Dog, Bad Dog. I have Films for Radio—which has some things that I like—and Till We Have Faces left to conquer.

Anyhow, Paste Music–through overtherhine.com–is doing a $25 sale of the three OtR rarities CD’s. As Jeff says, “It’s like having Guild 1, 2, and 3 from CC without having to resort to eBay!”

The addiction is bad, folks. Reeeeeeeeeal bad. So bad, Rick and I are going to Dayton, Ohio next Saturday to see them … the day after seeing CC in my parents’ hometown.

Now for a camcorder …

Jason writes of a significant issue with Gecko-based browsers: they are limited to 300 stored cookies at a time.

This is bad user agent behavior.

I suggest that you go sign up for a Bugzilla account if you don’t have one and then go vote on this bug.

This bug staying around will confuse new users of Firefox and annoy power users alike. The spec reads “at least”, which should mean “unlimited” except in cases where a browser developer feels that keeping a limited amount of cookies is a Good Thing™. I can’t see where it’s ever a good thing, really, to drop old cookies. Some just don’t get used very often. That’s life. Cookies are being used like keys all over the Web, and Gecko is letting you only have the 300 most recent keys that you’ve used. If #301 was really important, well, it sucks to be you.

Please take a note, Canadians: you have a new national symbol for choking.

Personally, I want to come up with a similar page … but I’d have the face of Joe Thornton on there.

:grumble:

I have incorporated all of Sean’s old posts from integrrra.com and all of Kat’s portablekat.net posts into one site … Casa de Morrill.

I have also added gfmorris.com to the Wondergeeks syndication list. Enough of the WG readership reads that site that it makes sense.

I’ve also made use of the syndication files that Amy first wrote/found, Rick tweaked, and Jeff tweaked further. Huzzah.

After all, not everyone is yet cool enough to use an aggregator.

I just checked the spambox on one of my email accounts. It has … 1505 trapped spams, starting at the very, very end of December.

That’s a whackload of spam!

Can I do two shows in two days?

Can Rick keep up?

I think the answer to both is, “Yes!”

I just have to mail off a check for tickets to the OtR show.

I will have to take my camera along for this journey.

I taught Sunday school yesterday, and our focus was on finding encouragement in the faith of others. If you’re familiar with the epistles, we worked from Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica.

And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia–your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead–Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
–1 Th. 1:7-10

I have a rant to make here, but it has a purpose. Our society wholly screws up the term “role model”. When Charles Barkley famously said, “I am not a role model,” he was wanting to excuse his behavior off of the court [and maybe some of his on-court behavior, including his expectorative abilities]. But Sir Charles is a hell of a role model: the undersized power forward.

Being a role model means that you model a role. Bill Clinton was a great role model for being a successful politician–whether or not you agree with the man’s politics, you cannot doubt his political ability. As with Barkley, being a role model doesn’t make Clinton a model citizen–one would never make an admitted adulterer into such.

Because I believe in the Gospel, I know that there are no model citizens. However, I know that there are role models all around us. When I look at Christian music, I look at how Rich Mullins did his ministry. As you probably know by now, I’m friends with the Caedmon’s Call guys, and they’ve told me a couple Rich stories. They’ll tell you, as Rich would, that Rich wasn’t a perfect person. But was Rich a very good role model for showing everyone how not to let the fame and money that come with a solid musical career affect you? I would say that he was.

I extended this to our church. “I can tell you, as someone who’s been around a bunch of youth folks, that Darin”—our YD—”is a good role model for a youth director. Is he a model citizen? No, he is not. He’ll tell you that, and I’ll tell you that.” All I had to do was remember the prank he pulled on his old youth group when we were all at Sumatanga a couple years ago to know that. “But his inability to be a model citizen does not damage his utility as a role model for us.”

I also explained it in terms of work. “My boss is a great role model for how to manage people, especially engineers. Is my boss a perfect man? No, he is not. Is he a good role model for engineers? Yes.” He really is, and I would sooner quit this job than work for someone else.

Similarly, the Thessalonians were a role model only in the sense of how they took to and spread the Gospel. That doesn’t make the individual congregationalists perfect citizens; they’re still screwed-up sinners like the rest of us. But the sanctifying power of grace is enough to help you through and do as you should, and in those areas where we do have the gifts and the grace, we can be role models.

We just can’t be model citizens.

I think I’ve royally screwed my sleep schedule, but it’s worth it.

I’ll take that back: I know I’ve screwed my sleep schedule, and I know that it’s worth it, so I really don’t mind.

My maternal grandmother has had a rough month or so. She had to have colon surgery at the end of March. She was home for a couple days after being discharged, but she wasn’t eating well and was dehydrated, so she was readmitted to the hospital and then discharged to a local convalescent home to recuperate. All seemed to be going well, and I was pretty cool with everything.

Tuesday morning, she had a 40-minute seizure.

She was in ICU until noon or so on Saturday, when she was transferred to a regular room. Mom and I [and maybe Dad, although I can't remember him being in there] spoke with the neurologist, who basically said, “Who knows?” I understand that to be the case, but … when it’s family, that’s not an answer you want to know. We want definites, even if those definites are bad.

The lady who has been staying with my grandmother for the last few months had planned on taking some time to visit family in Maryland, which she sorely needed to do. Josie’s been a God-send, and it was easy to let her go. This did put us in need of having someone to stay with my grandmother, though. I thought about it for a few minutes, and then offered to stay from whenever the friend Josie had called to help Mom out needed to leave on Saturday until 5:00 or 6:00 Sunday morning, when I needed to hop in the truck and get back to Huntsville to teach Sunday school.

As it turned out, I was with her for 12 hours, and that was good, even though it was hard. That’s really all that I can say about it. No matter if she progresses from here or doesn’t, I’ll forever remember that entire time, even if part of that includes watching the Canucks and Flames go to 3OT.

Words aren’t remembered, but presence is, a good friend once told me. I don’t know whether she knew that it was me that was there, and I may never know in this world; but I can’t help but think that she will know in the long run.

I owed a buck to the state of Alabama, likely due to rounding errors influenced by using Form 40A, the short form. [Thanks again go to Kari for finding the form.]

I donated the dollar to one of the charitable causes on the tax form.

True to form, I didn’t do this until … just now. Soon, I get to go join the madding crowd in line at the post office. Thankfully, they’re open until 10:00 p.m. and will postmark anything you put in the drop boxes.

Okay, Alex, I won’t apologize for the following story …

This morning, one of my co-workers comes in and is regaling a couple of the other guys with tales of his weekend. I hadn’t known he was doing this, but apparently, he took a trip to Las Vegas.

It was all I could do to stop from shouting, “Vegas, baby! VEGAS!” I also wanted to ask him if he was up five hundy by midnight.

If you’ve never seen Swingers, you’re doing yourself a disservice, in my book. I didn’t see it until January, and I have had to stop myself from buying a copy a couple times. Those who know me that I’m not much for movies, so that says a lot.

Oh … and if you’ve ever wanted the text: Swingers screenplay.

[I really should wget that and have a safe copy locally.]

Our Noah’s all growns up and he’s all growns up!

[Sorry for a gratuitous, nonsensical Swingers reference. I just get happy about Noah's writing. :D]

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Okay … let’s see what Managing & Using MySQL has for us …

SQL is sort of a “natural language”.

That’s awful profound.

[Seen on Sippey, originated by Caterina.]

…

Now, it would have been far more interesting to pull the same data from the nearest NASA specification.

Of course, my luck, page 23 of that would be [THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK]. I have never, ever understood why that happens in aerospace specifications … but it does.