Saturday, September 29, 2007

Cleveland 95 65 0.594 - - 07-Mar W1
Detroit 87 73 0.544 8 E 04-Jun L1
Minnesota 78 82 0.488 17 E 05-May L1
Chicago 71 89 0.444 24 E 06-Apr W3
Kansas City 68 92 0.425 27 E 03-Jul L3

So the season is coming to a close and the Beloved Tigers will not be making it to post-season play. Seems the slump they had in August did them in.

There has been a few articles on how last year's World Series participants aren't in the post season. It seems the St. Louis Cardinals had a worse season then the Tigers. But before you moan and groan, consider this:

The Tigers are only 9 games behind last years' pace. It's not so much they did poorly its just that the Cleveland Indians, from 78-84 to 95-69. That's as an impressive turn around as the Tigers had last year.

The good news, the Tigers are still strong and with the fact that Jim Leyland wants to return
to the team for the next couple of years means the Tigers will be contenders.

Friday, September 28, 2007

MLB - Florida Marlins/New York Mets Recap Friday September 28, 2007 - Yahoo! Sports

MLB - Florida Marlins/New York Mets Recap Friday September 28, 2007 - Yahoo! Sports


This is one of those Catch up on Baseball Blogs. So the Amazin' Mets are in the process of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. After having what some thought was an insurmoutable lead in the NL East have decided to go on a massive skid and have handed first place over to the Philadelphia Phillies.

What is even more interesting is the loss of first place puts them in a situation where they are unlikely even to make it into post-season play. That's what I call impressive. In fact the article quoted is using words such as "historic" to describe the melt-down. Seems that the Mets will be wearing the title of "Choke" unless they can turn it around in the next two games. Let's go Marlins.


Ubuntu 7.10 Beta Released


On the 27th of September, The people behind Ubuntu released to the general public the beta of Gutsy Gibbon. The final release is scheduled for October 18th. While there is warning on the page that this may not necessarily a stable release, it will give you a good idea what to expect with 7.10 when you download it on that, or perhaps a day or two later.

What is new? First of all, this is based upon Gnome 2.20, the latest manifestation of the desktop environment for Linux distributions. This release contains a number of features which enhance the experience for users. Second, there is a very nice desktop applet which can be used to search both the Internet and your computer for files and documents, plus websites.

It comes with the latest of both Firefox and Open Office to continue the productive nature of Ubuntu. Couple this with Thunderbird as both the calendar and Calendar you got quite a nice OS to do some serious work with.

With my computer, unfortunately I cannot used the enhanced desktop features which are based upon Compiz Fusion. I'm going to try it on the family computer to gain an appreciation of the working of it. From what I've seen of screenshots it is quite impressive and will give both Vista and Mac OSX a run. There is also a good screen configuration tool with the OS.

What has also impressed me is the fact that I can use my Canon IP3000 Printer as the network printer. Before I could never get the right drivers but now it is possible. It's great to send documents to be printed and watch them come out perfectly. The release notes also point out there is automatic configuration when a printer is plugged into the machine, I'll try that with my HP at a later time.


If you have already installed Ubuntu, you can go to Gutsy Upgrade Documentation for information on downloading and installing Gutsy on your computer. If you like to use betas this is a good way to begin an appreciation of this system. Otherwise you can wait another 3 weeks and download the finished product.

I plan to download it when it's available and until them I plan to do some exploring of the new release.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Tonight, TigerNation is RedSox Fan


Lawrence Peter Berra, the great baseball philospher and NY Yankee catcher, who is best known as "Yogi", was quoted as saying "the two words that best describe baseball is 'anything can happen'". This describes the Tiger Season to this point. What a ride, what an incredible ride. We all thought last year was amazing and it was by the way, the worst team in baseball American League Champions. The Detroit Tigers fooled everyone and surprised all the long suffering fans with one of those great seasons. Of course when this year started, expectations were high. One difference between this year and last is everyone was waiting for the Tigers, they weren't going to fool anyone.

Things were going well, it looked like the Tigers were going to repeat as Champions or at least make the play-offs. It was going too good, even after the injuries of the early season, the loss of Kenny Rogers for the first three months, Joel Zumaya missing most of the season, only coming back in August and a number of other little injuries. Couple this with a bullpen that was either incredible or incredulous but they stayed at the top.

However August came and the Tigers had a very bad month, going 11-18 and falling out of first place in the Central. The month was so bad they fell out of any hope even for the wild-card.

Then comes September and as of this day, the Tigers have won 11 games, the same as all of August. They are also winning series again, something that they were incapable of in August. Right now the Tigers are clawing their way to the top of both the Central and the Wild Card, 2.0 games out of the latter and 4.5 out behind Cleveland.

Tonight, the hated and despised Yankees are in Boston to finish a series with Boston Red Sox and guess which team I'm cheering for? Tonight, Tigers could be 1.5 games out of the Wild Card.

I close with another quote from Yogi It ain't over 'til its over.

This is why we love baseball.

Monday, September 10, 2007

The Canadian Press: CFL to allow fans to vote online for division and league all-star teams

The Canadian Press: CFL to allow fans to vote online for division and league all-star teams

This is a good idea. Anything that gets the fans interested in the league and the game.

Let's face it, the CFL is a good league, it competitive and entertaining, plus the players are not huge dorks, or wife beaters, or dog killers.

Support your local CFL franchise.