The high temps here in Florida are finally down in the mid-80s so it must be fall! Time for Linux and sports updates …
Baseball
The Rays missed out on the post-season for the second year in a row due to a slump in the second half of the season that left them finishing under .500 at 77-85. The team was also sold to a new group of owners so we’ll have to see what happens with that. Tropicana Field’s roof is under repair so the Rays can play there again for the 2026 season. I did get to one game this season outside at Steinbrenner Field and it rained … so while I love outdoor baseball I understand why a park with a roof is a necessity around here.
The Guardians staged a historic comeback in September: after being 15.5 games out of first place in the AL Central on July 18 after the All-Star break and still 10 games back on September 1, the team surged and ended up winning the AL Central Division outright after the Detroit Tigers had a similarly historic meltdown. Unfortunately, in a Wild Card re-match between those two teams, Detroit ended up winning to advance to the ALDS. So now I look forward once again to Spring Training.
Football
The Bucs have started the season 5-2 behind 2025 MVP-candidate quarterback Baker Mayfield. He’s been fantastic for Tampa since leaving my Browns and I’m glad I still get to root for him. Meanwhile the QB revolving door in Cleveland continues to spin: Watson is still out injured, Flacco was re-signed, started the season and then traded to Cincinnati, so now rookie from Oregon Dillon Gabriel is leading the team (and had a fantastic win against the struggling Dolphins last weekend) and Shedeur Sanders is the backup. Just crazy.
A new entry this time around just to mention that the Penn State Nittany Lions, who were ranked #2 at the start of the season, have lost four games in a row (3-4 on the season), lost their quarterback, fired their coach, and are nowhere on the Top 25 for the first time in three years. On the flip side, my USF Bulls are already bowl eligible (for the third year in a row) and at 6-1 are ranked #18 on the Top 25. Go Bulls!
Hockey
It’ll be an interesting season: the Lightning and the Panthers have established a new in-state rivalry and really don’t like each other. I went to a pre-season game earlier this month and there was a combined 186 penalty minutes. At one point the Bolts had six players in the penalty box and only four on the bench. Now that the season has started, things have settled down but the Lightning are off to a slow start at 1-3-2. It’s a long road the playoffs, though!
Basketball
The NBA season just kicked off tonight and the Cavs lost to the Knicks in Madison Square Garden 119-111. I guess there won’t be a repeat of their 15-game win streak like last year.
And Linux …
Ubuntu 25.10 (Questing Quokka) was also released earlier this month. I ran my pre-upgrade backup scripts and then sudo do-release-upgrade -d (once again needing the -d parameter otherwise no upgrade was found). It took the just under 25 minutes to download and apply all the updated packages and then another 20 minutes or so for me to re-configure my various settings and files affected by the upgrade.
I ran into two minor problems this cycle:
- “foreign packages installed” during the upgrade (Bug #2125602 “do-release-upgrade: Foreign Packages Installed”), and
- “unknown setting: ‘requiretty'” when using sudo (Sudo-rs is now default for Questing Quokka)
It’s been a few days, no issues to report!
Check back here again in April for the Resolute Raccoon, spring baseball, and (hopefully) playoff hockey!