You Don't Have a Daughter

I picked it up today and this is what I think so far:

Ups
1. Multi-tasking. I thoroughly enjoy the interface and how I can not only have multiple applications open, but can get to any one of the open apps with a stroke here or there. This reminds me of alt+ tabbing in Windows or hitting F9 on the Mac. Furthermore, I can IM or SMS from a single application. The SMS are threaded too which makes it even better.

2. Physical keyboard. Okay, the keys might be small, but I like that they have a physical keyboard. I've tried the virtual keyboard on the iPhone and the Instinct and liked neither. I sent a few texts and IMs today and you get used to the keys.

3. Importing contacts. What's great about this is that you can import all your contacts from your gmail, aim, and facebook (probably more). Best of all, it automatically merges redundant contacts. So it will automatically link my buddy John Doe's Facebook and Gmail contact together.

Downs
1. Music player. Although the Pre syncs with iTunes it doesn't seem to play anything I downloaded from the iTunes store. I'm sure that's some DRM thing and I do know how to work around it, but It's still a bummer that I have to go through the trouble.

2. Crappy browser. Sometimes when I'm web browsing it will freeze. Not the whole phone, thankfully, but the browser that I'm using. Luckily it's easy enough to close down the app and reopen it. I may download opera this week and see if that solves my problems. Update: Opera is currently unavailable for the Pre.

3. IMPORTING CONTACTS! It really is love hate with this feature. The Pre doesn't automatically merge my already existing phone book with my facebook contacts unless they have their phone number in their profile (and seriously, not many people do that). Ultimately, manually linking contacts isn't all that bad. However, not being able to delete Facebook contacts is. I have over 400 people on FB and I probably talk to 30 of those people and only desire to talk to around 10 of those folks. Eventually, I'm sure Palm will fix this, but right now it's annoying scrolling through 400 co-workers, friends from elementary school, and other randoms in my address book.

I remember when I started to understand baseball. I believe it was 2003 and the Cubs were in the playoffs. They were playing in a game, at home, and it was a must win. Lose and they were out. Well the whole 9th inning they kept showing this old lady who was watching the game with her hands clenched together, almost prayer style. Well, once the Cubs lost the game they cut to this poor old lady and you saw her there crying. I just knew that she believed that this was the last chance she was going to get to see her Cubs win a World Series. I understood baseball at that point, because no matter how long I live I would never cry if the Redskins didn't win another Super Bowl. I like the Skins a lot, but I don't love them the way northsiders love their Cubbies. Some families have lived in the US for 5 or 6 generations. That's how long the love for the Cubs have been past down.

That's baseball. It is love. It is tradition. It is America's past time. And in its current form in the United States on the biggest stage it is Major League Baseball or the MLB. And under this MLB, this union of American and National Leagues, it sucks. It sucks sucks sucks. There are specific problems that lots of non-baseball fans typically mention when they criticize baseball which I will kindly list for the reader:

-boring
-games are too long
-too predictable
-not enough action

These really boil down to a matter of opinion so I won't argue against these points. However, I think that there is a more important reason why the MLB sucks which I hope they fix sometime. There is no equality in baseball. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, but that's not what I'm talking about. I am saying that there are inequities built within the constructs of the MLB which prevents ubiquity.

First of all, there are two leagues and two sets of rules. In the National League there are 9 players in the line up at a time. So the Mets have 9 guys "playing defense" at the top of every inning and then those same 9 guys on the batting order at the bottom of the inning. This arrangement makes a whole lot of sense. Well, then there's the American League where there are 10 players in the line up at a time. The Yankees have 9 guys "playing defense" at the top of an inning just like the Mets; however, they give whoever pitched that inning a break at the bottom of the inning and put in what is called a designated hitter (DH). That's right, in the American League a pitcher doesn't normally swing a bat. Instead they stick in either a more consistent hitter or a more powerful hitter. This sort of makes sense too since I've seen a lot of MLB pitchers swing a bat and they look ridiculous. So what happens when NL and AL teams play each other like in the World Series? The home team rules apply. The result of this is you see a lot of older position players migrate over from the NL to be a DH for an AL team. Another thing that I've heard mentioned quite a bit is that the overall hitting is better in the AL.

Second, there are thirty teams in the MLB and they each have their own unique stadium. That doesn't sound much different than any other sport, but imagine this. Would the NBA allow Orlando to move the 3 point lineback one more foot than normal? Would the NFL allow the Steelers to put an 11 meter "steel" wall ANYWHERE on or around the ball field? Well, the answer is no, duh. Then why does baseball allow it? The fields are constructed in such a way to allow or inhibit certain things. The reason Barry Bonds breaking the Home Run record was great (before the alleged steroid thing) was because he did it in spite of playing for the Giants who play in a stadium known to inhibit homers. The Mets and Yankees both christened brand new stadiums this season and here are the differences of the dimensions they had in common:

Citi Field (Mets) Yankee Stadium
Left field 335 ft (102 m) 318 ft (97 m)
Left center 364 (111) 399 (122)
Center field 408 (124) 408 (124)
Right center 378 (115) 385 (117)
Right field 330 (101) 314 (96)

The source is wiki, so take it with a grain of salt, but there is still another big discrepancy. They're in the same city so there shouldn't be much variance in environmental considerations, but Yankee Stadium had more than twice the Home Runs hit in it than Citi Field. The stat was calculated from the beginning of the season to about mid June. Albeit, we've already established that the hitting is much better in the AL, but not more than 2x as good. I think it is safe to say that bringing in those fields a few meters help the Yanks get more homers for their great hitters. Unfortunately, it helps screw over their pitchers, too.

Finally, the most atrocious offense against equity of the MLB. The thing that makes the whole mess unbearable to me. While I can forgive the other two I can never get over this last thing. The one thing that irks me so much about the MLB is... the National League having 16 teams and the American Leage having 14 teams. Surprised? Well, not only is my mild OCD offended by this, but equality is offended! Get this, they actually moved the Milwaukee Brewers to the National League to make the leagues unequal. You kidding me? Why would they do this? Allow me to enlighten you!

The MLB, in its infinite wisdom, moved the Brewers to the NL in 1998 since each league would have had 15 teams leaving one team an odd man out. So either one team would just be sitting around for a series of games every once in a while or they'd have to face each other in interleague play. Well, MLB officials wanted to maintain each league's internal competition so it made more sense to just keep both leagues with an even number of teams. I could forgive this. I could totally see this as sensible. They wanted to maintain the integrity of each league as its own traditional entity. The best team from the NL would then face off against the best team in the AL and the two leagues would dual it out to show the world which league was superior. Yeah that makes sense. But there's a problem with that. In 1997 the MLB authorized interleague play during the regular season. *sigh* So before 1997 NL players and AL players would only meet at most twice, the all-star game and the World Series. After 1997 all the mystique of an NL team playing an AL team vanished in the mist. SO WHY DID THEY HAVE TO MOVE THE BREWERS IF THEY HAVE INTERLEAGUE PLAY ANYWAY? Some kid on a message board tried to tell me that MLB doesn't want interleague play as much as would happen if the teams were split 50-50 between AL and NL. But is that really THAT important if you're going to have interleague play ANYWAY? If they totally cut it out then fine, have your unequal leagues, but seriously, MLB is just losing their integrity on two front. First, by having interleague play anyway they are taking away the tradition and mystique of the all-star game and World Series and second, they have a chance to have equal leagues, thus equal divisions.

The issue that comes around during playoff time is that one division in the AL has an unfair advantage into the playoffs while one team in the NL has a disadvantage. Each league has two divisions with five teams each. However, the AL west only has 4 teams and the NL central has 6 teams. So not counting a wild card spot in the playoffs 20 teams in baseball have a 20% chance at a playoff shot while the AL west teams have a 25% chance and the poor NL central teams only have a 17% chance. Short story is this: if you want to have a statistically greater chance of being in the playoffs go to the AL west. Bonus note: if you want the best shot at going to the playoffs play for the Angels since those other teams suck.

Bottom line, my beef against MLB has nothing to do with the game, the game is fine. I just really wished they got rid of the DH and made more uniform stadiums. Baseball purists claim that's what makes baseball so flavorful and majestic. Okay, fine, those I could let go if they just evened up the leagues. Either that or get rid of interleague play. Don't tell me that you made the leagues uneven to preserve predominant intraleague play when you just have teams from different leagues play each other anyway during the season. Don't double whammy yourself, MLB, by sacrificing both tradition AND equality. If you have to sacrifice one thing or the other just sacrifice one thing OR the other. YOUR CHOICE! Please, not both.

Today I was visiting The Best Page in the Universe and reading an oldy, but goody. Maddox mentions something surprising to me when he writes, "Another crappy movie getting rave reviews. Unbelievable." Yes that is unbelievable since I don't remember Signs being popular at all. So I went to wiki to read the reception and find out that it was generally liked by critics. Learn something new everyday.

From there I continued looking at other M. Night Shyamalan movie wikis and read something most disturbing. A small anecdote noted on the Lady in the Water wiki discusses how one critic panned the movie insisting that Shyamalan needs to stop wasting everyone's time and do films for Nickelodeon. Well, ironically enough he will be directing the Avatar live-action adaptation. I believe it goes without saying that this is the most upsetting entertainment news I've heard since finding out who was playing Goku in the live-action Dragon Ball movie.

Just an aside let's address this Dragonball live-action film for a second. Let's first forget that they've totally miscasted, um, every single main character. Let's also forget that they released a crappy trailer which isn't even worth watching or linking. I think that the most telling sign of this movie's failure is the fact that the big wigs at Fox are ordering some scenes to be redone due to their shoddiness. Someone needs to tell them that they're just wasting money since the entire film is probably shoddy. This movie is riding the FAILbus, on the FAILferry to FAILville and still managed to mess that up.



I know I don't have much to go on, but I feel that the live-action Avatar movie, The Last Airbender, will be on the same ride and it's due to the predictability of the director, M. Night Shyamalan. I have seen only three of Shyamalan's movies because that's how long it took me to identify his formula. In every Shyamalan film there is a "WTF moment" and there is a huge "twist." For example, in Unbreakable the "WTF moment" is Mr. Glass revealing his theory about how comic books actually hide a secret truth about our world long forgotten (that superheroes exist) and the "twist" is that Mr. Glass is a psychopathic Super Villain. In The Village the "WTF moment" is that the villagers actually live in the present day and are just descendants of hippies and the "twist" is that the crazy beast is actually some lamer in a crappy suit who happens to be a fellow villager. You can probably get away with just calling each plot device in a Shyamalan film a "twist," but there is a certain emotion that Shyamalan wants to evoke with the first device that sets the viewer up for the latter. The viewer is supposed to say "WTF" and then at the end say, "whoa," as if we didn't see it coming. The problem is that by now everyone sees it coming because he does the same thing in every movie he makes.

It's unlikely that he will do this with Avatar, but I'm not going to hold my breath. One may argue that he has several episodes of source material to work with so he can't mess it up, but seriously, tell that to the makers of the first Hulk movie, the aforementioned Fox executives, or Uwe Boll. It can be messed up and I'm afraid it will be.

So this is an interesting situation. I am criticizing the director for being too predictable in most of his films, yet saying that his best hope is staying true to the source material that I have already seen. To clarify for the inquisition, I want Mr. Shyamalan to stay true to the source; however, please leave that dreaded formula with his other work.

Will I watch it? Due to my faithfulness to the animated series I will watch the first movie. But just like Star Wars or American Pie I will not hesitate to abandon the sequels if I foresee a downward trend in quality. Unfortunately, I already know that if I'm in for one, then I'm in for at least two since the first movie will be a cliffhanger. How do I know that? If you're asking that question then you didn't comprehend a thing I wrote before this paragraph, did you?

It appears that I'm the only one posting for a while and my posts will be limited to little things like this. Ahh well... forward we go!

Quake On Me



Instant classic for those that get it.

I didn't see an embed feature, but I suggest you click this link to see the peculiar nature of cornstarch. I feel that this is one thing I really would like to try if I had 2000 boxes of corn starch and a giant tub.

Here is another link for people that understand online gaming and history. Whoever did it thought it out very well.

That's it for this time, hopefully someone has something thoughtful to say next time.

Did you know that you've been cooking bacon wrong your whole life?



Me neither.

Next, the current top featured Youtube video right now:



Notice how she wasn't really using the "B" button to run?

And now for a youtuber on the verge of breaking out into internet stardom:



The internets are much better for this video.

This link dump has been brought to you by chow.com, youtube, and kotaku.

I have expressed my views on presidential primaries in general on my personal blog. Since then a lot of has happened in the presidential primaries. McCain has been declared the winner of the Republican primary and the Democrats are finding every way possible to damn themselves in the presidential election in November. Don't believe me? Then you are a fool.

I rarely make such a bottom line, blanket statement like that, but this you cannot deny. I don't care what Speaker Nancy Pelosi says publicly, I'm sure she is dreading the fact that this primary has taken the tone it has.

Let's start off with Florida and Michigan. Florida is no stranger to voting controversies, but lets forget about chad-gate for now. The Democratic party in Florida and Michigan pushed up their primaries. What was the reason? Because their primaries were too late and at least in Michigan's case, the Governor claims that she wanted to push Michigan back into the spotlight since the job market and economy is so bad there right now. Well, I bet you guys feel like asses now! The Democratic primary has made states like Indiana, West Virginia, and Oregon relevant. As if they needed any more validation of their importance, but people are now talking about South Dakota and Montana! See that Michigan and Florida, you don't need to break the rules in order to get heard. Next time stop being such blubbering pussies and follow the damn rules set forth by your party. Don't friggin' complain about your voters being disenfranchised. Your state party made the decision to break rules and just like any other time you break the rules you accept the consequences with that.

Speaking of consequences, can't Senator Clinton see that her campaign is ruining the Democratic party? Senators Clinton and Obama are both fairly liberal Democrats and generally believe in the same types of policy. So what do they have to argue about? Not much, but they sure as heck find stuff to. Ultimately, it comes down to this media buzzword "electability," whatever that is. I feel that when all else is the same the people will vote on character. Yeah, and boy have they been attacking each other's character. Between Rev. Wright, Bosnia snipers, and whatever else they're talking about now why would Americans want to vote for either of these folks?

I cannot boohoo Senator's Clinton's vow to fight on, but seriously, is it the best thing for the Democratic party? All they are doing is giving more fuel to Senator McCain come the November election. He's saving plenty of money on muckraking research since both Democratic candidates are doing it for him. If Obama does win the nomination all McCain has to say is, "Remember what Hillary said about you? That's why you suck LoL." Well, all that is fine, because I plan on voting for McCain anyway, but what about the fence sitters? Regardless of how they feel about the current administration the discord in the Democratic party cannot look attractive to them. Is this kind of childishness and ineptitude that the Democrats have to offer the American people?

It seems like every Presidential election since Clinton the Democrats find some way to screw it up for themselves. We could have had a great, Democrat, President in Howard Dean, but then we had to go and have his voice crack and that was the end of that. What a dumb reason not to vote for someone... anyway. When the Democrats turned on him in 2004 that convinced me that it would be a while before I would ever vote for a Democrat for President. The only suitable choice in the election, kicked to the curb. Once again, the only suitable choice being kicked to the side for someone younger, sexier, and blacker. Senator Obama might be a great politician, but I don't know one thing he has ever done. Not ONE! and I challenge anyone to make a list of things that he has done as a politician and compare it to either Senator Clinton or Senator McCain's list.

Good job Democrats. Take some advice from the Republicans, Democrats. Shut up, kiss, and make up. The sooner you do it, the better it is for your party. Seriously, I mean this from the heart. And please, next time, try to choose the best candidate for the job. It will help you win the general election. You don't think you can? Neither do I. That's why I don't like presidential primary elections, but that can be a post in itself.