Spring Training 2010: Day One

It’s finally time for my annual Spring Training trip! Three days of baseball, beer, and brats. 🙂

My tech arsenal this year consists simply of my EeePC and iPhone. Between the two of those devices I should be able to handle any work-related emergency that might arise and still stay “connected” while traveling. The iPhone apps I installed specifically for this trip include:

  • Geocaching: for our hiking trip on Camelback Mountain tomorrow.
  • MLB.com at Bat Lite: to keep tabs on the other Spring Training games.
  • NCAA March Madness On Demand Lite: ’cause there’s some basketball going on right now too!
  • TripIt: I decided to test out the service with this trip and see how it goes, pretty cool.

I’ll also try using the WordPress app on my iPhone to post updates to this blog.

5:52am (EDT): I’m at the gate at the Tampa airport waiting to board my flight to Houston. yawn

8:27am (CDT): waiting on my connection to Phoenix here in Houston. The flight here was uneventful and I made some good headway on “Anathem” (about 68 pages). My connection is slightly delayed since the plane just came in from Peru and needs to go through customs.

10:56am (MST): in Phoenix! A broken seat delayed my departure from Houston more than expected, but I’m finally here! Now to find my brother (who should be here by now) and get my luggage.

12:23pm: we’re at the Goodyear Ballpark. Our (padded!) seats are in the second row down the first base line. It’s beautiful out.

3:44pm: we’ve finally seen a win at Goodyear (every game we went to last year were losses)! The Tribe beat the Reds 6-2. The park was pretty empty, only about 4,300 people in attendance. That’s surprising considering it was the two “home” Ohio teams playing, but it was also a weekday game.

5:15pm: we’ve checking into our hotel in Avondale and are getting cleaned up and ready to head out for dinner.

6:30pm: waiting for a table at the Yardhouse at Westgate Center in Glendale. Quite a beer selection.

7:40pm: dinner was fantastic. I had the (Mac + Cheese)2 and tried a six-pack sampler:

7:46pm: there’s a huge bike show going on here, it’s loud and there are some impressive-looking motorcycles.

9:00pm: back at the hotel, exhausted. Considering it’s midnight back home, and we’ve been up since 4am, it’s time for bed.

WIJFR: The Wizardry Cursed

Once upon a time, Major Mick Gilligan, USAF, didn’t believe in Magic. Nor, had he been told of it, would he have believed in the elf Lisella, or cared that she had cursed master programmer Wiz Zumwalt, later of Cupertino and now of an alternate world where magic works like a computer program. But that was before he took his F-15 out over the Bering Sea on a top-priority intercept, came out on the losing end of a dogfight with a dragon, and found himself caught in a climactic battle that pitted Wiz and his fellow Silicon Valley hackers against a couple of computer criminals in alliance with the forces of primal chaos.

I just finished Rick Cook’s “The Wizardry Cursed” via Stanza on my iPhone. The third book in the series picks  up about a year after the events of “The Wizardry Compiled.” Wiz, Jerry, and Danny are splitting their time between continuing to refine their spell compiler and being stuck in treaty negotiations with the non-mortals with whom they had narrowly averted war.

Back in our world, Judith, one of the programmers from the project team in the previous book who worked on the spell compiler, still dreams of becoming a fantasy writer based on her experiences in the magical realm. While daydreaming about dragons and faraway lands, she steps off the curb and is hit by a car, ending up in a coma. One of her role-playing game group friends (and computer hacker), Craig, starts visiting her in the hospital and discovers that Judith sometimes talks of the strange land and the spell compiler.

With the help of another hacker named Mikey, and Judith’s coma-based mumblings (and stolen papers from her apartment), Craig starts to understand the workings of the spell compiler, which of course won’t work in the “normal” world. Suddenly, a dark, evil race (the Ur Elves) transport Craig and Mikey into a “bubble world” where both technology and magic work … a bridge between our world and Wiz’s. With the power of the Ur Elves behind them, Craig and Mikey start hacking out technological/magical combinations of war machines with the intent of taking over the world.

A stolen super computer (with real gremlins), a stranded Air Force pilot, the curse of an Elf named Lisella, and a group of dwarves intent on killing the alien wizard all play a role in the ultimate battle between the good people of the world and the Ur Elves and their pawns (Craig and Mikey). How will it play out?

Not exactly difficult reading (certainly not on a level with “Anathem“), Cook’s magical/technological world continues to serve as a nice thing to have around on my iPhone for some light reading on the go. Next up in the series: “The Wizardry Consulted.”

WIJFR: Blue Mars

Using the last 200 years of American history as his template for Martian history, Robinson projects his tale of Mars’s colonization from the 21st century, in which settlers successfully revolt against Earth, into the next century, when various interests on Mars work out their differences on issues ranging from government to the terraforming of the planet and immigration. Sax Russell, Maya Toitovna and others reprise their roles from the first two novels, but the dominant “personality” is the planet itself, which Robinson describes in exhaustive naturalistic detail. Characters look repeatedly for sermons in its stones and are nearly overwhelmed by textbook abstracts on the biological and geological minutiae of their environment. Not until the closing chapters, when they begin confronting their mortality, does the human dimension of the story balance out its awesome ecological extrapolations.

Last week I finally finished “Blue Mars,” the final book of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. It picks up immediately after the end of “Green Mars” and spans another 100 (Earth) years on the colonized (and now terraformed) planet.

The first portion of the novel covers the aftermath of the second revolution and the formation of the new Martian government, free of Earth/United Nations Transitional Authority control and complete with its own court system and political parties (the old revolutionary branches like the Reds, Greens, MarsFirsters, Free Mars, etc. etc.).

The terraforming effort continues throughout the book: the sea of shattered ice wrapping around the northern hemisphere of the planet has started to melt into the great Northern Sea. Eventually there are islands, boats, canals, sea life, even coastal towns.

In the middle portion, we are finally taken back to see the situation on Earth first-hand. Nirgal, the Martian native and son of Coyote, visits the “home” planet for the first time along with Maya, Sax, and Michel in an show-of-goodwill ambassadorial mission. They want to be able to help Earth with the overpopulation issue (made critical by the rising sea levels) without flooding Mars with immigrants and making the political, social, and environmental issues there any worse. It was cool to “see” Earth through Nirgal’s eyes (so much water, so much sun, so HOT!).

It’s evident to everyone that Mars is not the ultimate solution to Earth’s population problems. Continued advances in technology allow the human race to explore out even further in the solar system (which Robinson calls “the Accelerando”). One chapter takes place on Miranda, a moon of Uranus, where Ann tries to escape to the primal beauty of a landscape (as of yet) untouched by human endeavors.

Finally, the remaining First Hundred are now over 200 years old, thanks to the longevity treatments. But old age is finally starting to catch up with them and there are a few quick deaths in succession. Facing their own mortality, Sax is determined to find a cure for the “quick decline” which plays out across a few chapters on memory and brain research.

As with the prior two books, Robinson tells each part of the story from a single character’s point of view and uses the quick introductory text of each portion to move the story along (sometimes by a few weeks, sometimes by decades), which is necessary when telling a story that covers more than 100 years. I found it difficult sometimes to remember what (Earth) year it was in relation to the other books, trying to grapple with just how much time had passed. Having three or four generations’ worth of characters didn’t help either, but the breadth of detail Robinson has created was just amazing and fascinating . Overall, I really enjoyed this series start to finish, and will probably read “The Martians” just to be complete. When you consider the fact that I started “Red Mars” last August, I’ve been immersed in Robinson’s world and characters for the last 8 months!

Next, though, I’m about 30 pages into Neal Stephenson’s 1008-page “Anathem.” It’s going to be another long ride …

Ah, spring … baseball is back!

It was a beautiful day today at Brighthouse Field in Clearwater where we saw the Tampa Bay Rays beat the 2009 NL Champion Philadelphia Phillies in 10 innings in front of a sell-out crowd.


We had pretty good seats, right down the third base line.

We were in full sun the entire game, so it actually got pretty warm (mid-60s), which was a nice change from the chilly weather we’ve been having lately. It was great to be out at the ballpark eating some hot dogs, drinking a beer, and watching some good baseball. In just over a week and a half I’ll be in Arizona watching the Indians for three games … can’t wait!

Cleveland is finally #1!

My hometown of Cleveland, OH is finally a winner … a recent Forbes article named it the number one most miserable city, edging out last year’s reining champion, Stockton, CA.

Hoping to continue Cleveland’s championship year in 2010, the Cavaliers traded local favorite Zydrunas Ilgauskas (who’s spent his entire 12-year career with the Cavs) to Washington for Antawn Jamison. Let’s hope it was the right decision and the Cavs can finally bring home an NBA title this year! We’ll miss you Big Z!

On another Cleveland-related note, only one month left until my brother and I head back to Arizona for our annual Indians Spring Training trip!

It was time to upgrade

March 1 is quickly approaching and starting Monday, people who are still running the Release Candidate of Windows 7 will start seeing the expiration message. I’ve been running the RC at home since May of last year and knew this time would eventually come, so this past week I purchased the Home Premium upgrade media from Amazon along with some extra RAM for my Dell Inspiron 530 (it had two 512mb chips that I pulled and replaced with two new 1gb chips to bring it up to 4gb total).

Based on my previous experience with the Windows Easy Transfer utility, I used WET to backup my documents and settings to an external hard drive. To be doubly sure I didn’t lose anything, I also just copied my entire user profile folder (C:\Users\<my login>) to the same hard drive. I wanted to do a clean install with the upgrade media (and also go with the 64-bit version), so I made sure I had that external drive with my WET backup attached when I booted from the Win7 DVD. From within the Windows 7 Setup, I formatted my entire 640gb internal drive, completely wiping out the RC partition. Since Setup knew about the WET backup, the Win7 activation process was successful and the rest of the install was smooth.

After booting Windows 7 Home Professional 64-bit for the first time and then installing all the outstanding updates, the real fun began. I used WET to restore my files and settings and then began the long process of re-installing and re-configuring all of my applications (64-bit versions where applicable). I had made screenshots of the Programs and Features list before upgrading to facilitate this, so I knew exactly what I meeded to re-install. I had also taken screenshots of my Taskbar and Start Menu so I could put everything back the way I had it under the RC.

So I’m back up and running and have finally joined the world of 64-bit!

Who dat? An evening with Harry Connick, Jr.

This evening my wife and I went to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater to see Harry Connick, Jr. who’s touring in support of his new album, “Your Songs.” This was either the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen Harry in concert (we couldn’t remember exactly) and it was a great show as always.

The way the musicians were arranged on-stage helped showcase the three different styles of music we would be hearing. On the left were the strings for the orchestral numbers, in the center were the drums and bass, which combined with Harry on piano for the traditional jazz combo style, and then on the right were the trumpets, trombones, and saxophones for the big band numbers. For two hours he played a good mix of songs from the new CD and other recent releases plus a few of his trademark New Orleans jazz combo numbers. In addition to singing and playing the piano (of course) he also played trumpet and bass! “I suck” he joked, but of course he was pretty good.

During the breaks between sets he would talk and interact with the audience, which is always entertaining. He talked about how great it was for New Orleans to have the Saints as the Super Bowl champions (he apparently went to the game and got to meet a lot of the players afterwards). He jokingly talked about how 94% of the country doesn’t understand the “who dat?” chant and proposed (and briefly sang) a more understandable “who is that?” version. He told a funny story about his recent trip to the Grammys where he met Jennifer Hudson and had “her junk” on his arm during a photo shoot (“and she has a lot of junk!”). Another memorable  moment was when he said one of his daughter’s friends said he played “grandpa music” and the four women in his house would rather go see Kesha than him (which prompted  him to sing a few bars of “Tik Tok“). 🙂

Like my “Good Eats Live” experience last summer, however, there was a negative aspect to the show that will taint my memory of it … the super-annoying lady sitting directly behind us was a “woo girl.” Yes, at the beginning of every song she recognized, she had to shout “woooo!” at the top of her lungs in her ear-piercing, high-pitched voice. And not only that, she took advantage of silent moments to yell out song requests (“play ‘Come By Me!'”) or inappropriate comments (“Harry’s hot!”). By the end of the concert I was ready to turn around and strangle her. Arrrgh! There were a few other annoying hecklers in the crowd, but Harry dealt with them good naturedly (“it’s my name on the marquee, I’ll handle the comedy.”). Of course the theater had a strict policy on photographs and videotaping, but at the end of the show Harry posed for a picture with a lady in the front row and all of a sudden everyone had their cellphones and cameras out and were snapping photos. It must have been driving the ushers mad.

Overall, it was a great show and a good time. My favorite performance is still the one we saw in Cleveland during the “She”/”Star Turtle” tour when he was playing with the funk band in the mid-90s, but the jazz and big band shows are really good too and I’ll always go to see  him when I have the chance.

Fellow Ozians …

We went and saw “Wicked” this afternoon at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, using tickets we purchased about five months ago. It’s an incredible show and I highly recommend you see it if you have the chance!

This was the third time for me (once on Broadway with the original cast, here in Tampa during the first tour in 2007, and now again in 2010) but the first time my daughter had seen it, and she absolutely loved it. She’s actually falling asleep in her room right now listening to the soundtrack. 😉 She had read “The Wizard of Oz” (but actually hasn’t seen the movie) so it was fun to watch her put the pieces together as the story of Elphaba and Glinda unfolded on stage. I bought her the novel on which the musical is based (Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West“) a few months ago, but strangely she never got around to finishing it … I’ll be she does now, and I’d like to read it myself once I catch up on my current backlog.

This was the matinee show so a few of the understudies were performing the main parts. I guess I’m a little spoiled because after seeing Edina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth belt out “Defying Gravity” on Broadway, the traveling company just didn’t pack the same punch. Not that they weren’t good! Here’s a funny note: Richard Kline is playing the role of the Wizard. I wouldn’t have recognized him except the playbill specifically mentioned he “is best known as Jack Tripper’s best friend, Larry Dallas on the classic sitcom ‘Three’s Company.'” That’s right, this guy is currently the Wizard of Oz. 😀

Another hard drive crash

What is it with me and hard drive crashes lately? First the drive in my Linux server dies, then this past Sunday the stock 250gb drive in my TiVo Series3 went bad.

The crash first manifested when the TiVo froze with a pinkish tinted picture on the TV. This has happened occasionally in the past, and the pink hue is usually an indicator of an HDMI signal issue so I pulled the plug and let the box reboot. Unfortunately, the TiVo got stuck on the “Welcome” screen and never went to the “Almost there” screen which pointed to a hard drive problem. I figured it was most likely the attached 1TB Western Digital Expander, so I unplugged the expander and let the box reboot again. Same problem, which confirmed it was the internal drive that was bad.

Luckily I had a spare 320gb SATA drive sitting around, so I figured I would just make a backup of the failed drive and restore it onto the spare. I pulled the TiVo out of the home theater stack, opened it up, and connected the drive to my PC. I tried using WinMFS to back up the drive, but discovered that since the drive was “married” to the expander, the software couldn’t make a backup without the expander attached as well. I don’t have an eSATA port on my PC (I’ve since ordered a cable from Monoprice) so that wasn’t going to be an option … I decided to just clone the drive. I connected the old drive and new drive to my PC and then booted the Ultimate Boot CD. From there, I used the EASEUS Disk Copy utility to perform a sector-by-sector copy of the 250gb drive to the 320gb drive.

After about two hours, the copy completed. I put the new drive back into the TiVo, crossed my fingers, and plugged it in. It got to the “Almost there” screen, which meant it was now loading from the hard drive. Then, the Green Screen of Death, which was actually a good sign. The disk copy had indicated 94 read errors, so I knew there were some corrupted sectors on the new drive. Since the GSOD was a sign that the TiVo was attempting to fix these problems, I let it go. Another two hours or so later, the box rebooted (again) and this time loaded all the way to TiVo Central, with all of my recordings preserved. Yes!

Unfortunately I’m missing out on the extra 70gb from the larger internal drive. According to the Drive Expansion FAQ, you can’t expand an internal drive when it’s married to another (the expander in my case). I guess at some point when there’s not a lot of recorded content that I care about, I’ll divorce the expander, clear everything, and then re-do the expansion so I’m able to use all 320gb. For now, though, the Series3 is back up and running.

Calvin’s Cleveland connection

How, after all these years of being a “Calvin & Hobbes” fan, did I never realize Bill Watterson is from Cleveland!? 😮

The Plain Dealer posted a brief interview with the cartoonist, thought to be his first since 1989. A C&H stamp will be issued by the post office later this year.

I loved reading “Calvin & Hobbes” growing up, and have all of the books, including the complete hardcover collection. I still read the strip daily and find that it has a whole new enjoyable meaning for me now that I’m a parent.