Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Changes Afoot on the Mariners The Seattle Mariners have been making all sorts of good moves this week. Dumped a lot of stinky players, traded others, and picked up some good prospects and otherwise good day-to-day players. First, the people who badly needed to be gone: Aaron Sele. He was OK many years ago. Now he's just old. He's definitely lost his edge. Ron Villone. He was terrible many years ago. Now he's old and terrible. He benefitted mightily from Safeco Field, which heavily favors pitchers -- gave up as many hits as he ever has, but fewer home runs. Traded to Florida, and good riddance. Miguel Olivo. This one is a little painful. The guy had a great attitude and went out there to play hard every day, but he just couldn't hit. Randy Winn. Some good, some bad. Average hitter, but an absolutely terrible fielder. Thank God they let Jeremy Reed take over in center field and stuck Winn in left field. Traded to the Giants, who intend to play him in center... good luck with that. In return, the Mariners brought up a number of folks from AAA, and acquired some decent prospects. The real gem of a player that they could use now, however, is Yorvit Torrealba, a catcher they got from San Francisco. Torrealba's numbers in San Francisco look pretty bad, but there's a reason. He spent essentially all of his time on the Giants as their backup catcher. So he never got to play every day, and he never hit his groove. They totally wasted a very talented player. Torrealba tore up AAA. The smartest thing the Mariners could do would be to make him their everyday starting catcher. The last two months of this season are shaping up to be like last year: the Mariners are out of contention, and they're wasting no time in clearing out the deadwood and getting an early start on getting some time in the majors for the people they expect to depend on next season. It sure made watching their games fun at the end of last season; lots of fresh faces and energy, and on any given day anything could happen... Postscript: The Ryan Franklin steroid thing is just weird. there's nothing in his numbers that would suggest he's using steroids. Makes you wonder if something has gone wrong with MLB's testing procedures. Now if you had told me that Bret Boone had tested positive... actually I'd be a little surprised, because his numbers suggest he went off the juice last year. For those of you who don't follow these things, when Boone signed with the Mariners in 2001, at age 32, he suddenly overcame six years of consistently mediocre play and started magically hitting for power. And last year, when the steroids scandal heated up, it magically went away. Go figure. 10:15:08 PM    comment []

Can We Impeach Him... for just being an idiot? Even the Catholic Church has a more positive view of evolution that Bush -- and now he wants to make it public policy that "intelligent design" should be taught in science classes. We are so in trouble here in the U.S. Bush will never run for office ever again, so it's clear that he doesn't care what Congress, let alone the American people, think. Roberts on the Supreme Court. Bolton's recess appointment. And now a war on evolution. He's turning the United States into Saudi Arabia. Leaders accountable to no one, fundamental religious doctrine forced down people's throats, and a very profitable oil industry while the rest of the economic base twists in the wind. For those of you depressed by bush's anti-science stance, read this. It'll cheer you up. 9:05:51 PM    comment []

The Early Days, and My Feet Steven Sinofsky, senior VP of Office, has been blogging as of late. He wrote this piece on his experiences with being a new hire at Microsoft, a long, long time ago. Actually, it was right around the same time I started (1988). I got a big chuckle out of the reference to the Velvet Sweatshop article in the Seattle Times. Why? Because I was the lead picture, kicking back in my office with my shoes off, holding a wiffleball bat, with a 6-foot inflatable Godzilla in the background. The picture was taken with a fisheye lens, so my feet look huge. 8 by 10 color glossy, right under the headline. Yeah, I took a lot of abuse from friends and family for that. What's worse, the picture made it into the photo archives of the Seattle Times, and for a few years whenever they needed a picture to demonstrate the high tech corporate culture (or dress code), they'd trot it out. And of course, they'd never warn me first. Once, they even let the San Francisco Chronicle use it for an article on corporate culture. Front page of the busines section. And while I live in Seattle, my folks live in the Bay Area. My dad got a phone call from a colleague of his that morning that essentially went: "Do you have a son named Kevin?" "Yes." "Does he work at Microsoft?" "Yes." "Did you know that his feet are on the front page of the business section this morning?" Strangely, my dad had already read the paper that morning, had looked at the picture, and didn't notice that it was me. But back to Steven's blog: I don't know where he was hanging out, but I saw jugglers and unicyclists every day, hanging out by Lake Bill on their lunch hour. They were cool. But overall, my experience was very similar to his; I moved here to Seattle not knowing anyone, my family a long way away, and everything was a new experience. But there were hundreds of us all groping through it together, which made it a lot of fun. They make me wear shoes these days. I have to be respectable. But I will admit to one advantage of having an office over a cubicle: when I just can't take it anymore, I will close my door and the shoes come off. 5:46:22 PM    comment []

Mighty Mouse, and Innovation Apple has a new mouse out. Lots of people are commenting on Apple finally giving in to the multi-button mouse, but the touch-sensitive part is cool too. If not completely original. Now to be clear, I'm not saying that the Mighty Mouse isn't innovative. It absolutely is innovative. It absolutely improves on Ken Hinckley's work, and the work of many others who have worked on touch pads, track points, track balls, and other input devices. My point is: innovation doesn't require a completely original idea. 99% of all innovation is building and improving upon the work of others. 5:28:33 PM    comment []

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