Dan Gould

Its provided in the PED testing/penalty agreement. A player who is suspended for 50 games is unlikely to be ready to play again if he doesn't go on a rehab assignment. If the penalty is 50 games, he should be ready to return to his team then, not 15 games later when he's faced live pitching for a while and regained his timing. Or do you think that the suspension should be 60 or 65 games, with an allowance for going on a rehab assignment?

I think its funny that Canseco is filing as a "class action" and is recruiting Palmiero and Sosa to join the claim, since I guess they were blackballed too. Of course the fact that he was 37 when no one would sign him, hadn't played a full season since he was 33 and the few skills he had as a ballplayer had markedly declined doesn't mean it was a rational decision by GMs, in fact it must have been a conspiracy to deny him the ability to make a living. Proof that lawyers will take on any client if they can be convinced there is a pot of gold at the end, since we know Canseco can't pay anyone their fee up front.

I'll definitely consider adding RAM and clearing space on the hard drive but that's related to performance/speed and I don't see how it would effect downloads that stop in the middle and never complete.

His OPS is also over 1.000, because as he's started to hit, pitchers are working him more carefully and more walks are the result. I'm ecstatic because they didn't pull the trigger too quickly, but the reality is that the team has started to fire on all cylinders - the starting pitching has really come around (with the exception of Dice-K), and Francona has had the golden touch on the lineup changes - drop Ellsbury and Ortiz, put Drew in the two-hole, and everyone has responded, with the result that the offense has been consistently good. At this point I don't even want him to bring the old lineup back if Ortiz comes all the way back and is hitting .300 by the end of July. Drew is perfect batting second, much better than in an RBI spot like 6 or 7. Youk and Bay are the perfect 3-4, Ortiz extends the lineup nicely and when Lowrie is back, Ellsbury should do even better in the 8 spot than he has been. It will be real interesting how they go with the six man rotation for however long they do. Ideally Smoltz does very well and so does Penny. Then there is more demand for Penny and they get something decent for him, while Smoltz shows that he can still do it. But don't make a move until you are sure - if Smoltz has a setback, keep everyone where they are (with the possible exception of switching out Dice for Buchholz.

I turned off the modem for five minutes but there's no change - about 1 minute of a download, then it freezes, no further progress on the file and that's that.

We bought it off the shelf at Sam's, as I recall it was labeled as specially configured for "media" or something like that so we figured between my VO recording and LP transfers and Dime downloads this was a good choice. Nothing has been changed so the hard drive space and the RAM are exactly as it was installed originally. We do have an external hard drive - my audio/video folder currently contains 77 GBs that I could certainly move off the hard drive.

Well its something I should be looking at because if I am not mistaken, its RAM that the processor accesses to do its job, so a high speed processor that gets bogged down easily probably means that a big boost in RAM would help change that.

So you don't think the game has suffered from it and the waiting for the 3 run homer? I never saw him play and he never hit 70 HRs but most people consider Willie Mays the best ever. You should read Juicing the Game by Howard Bryant. He mentions the demise of Sosa not caring about anything but focusing on home runs. Obviously Cancesco is Sosa to the extreme. If I could vote for the HOF I would never vote for McGuire. Not becuse he roided but because he only did one thing well. Earl Weaver played for the three-run homer in the sixties and seventies. Was the game suffering then? If you're implication is that Sosa might have been Mays if only .... well, thanks for the chuckle. Sosa vs McGuire in the Hall used to be an interesting question, as they were both one-dimensional players, very good at that one dimension. Up until this week, it looked like the difference was that one had a very good lawyer and one had a very bad lawyer. McGuire's legal advice was that he could not speak about the past without risks to himself, his friends and family, leaving the inevitable supposition that he did in fact use steroids and could not discuss it under oath without immunity. Sosa's lawyer was great, if you appreciate the crafting of a statement that sounded good but had more holes in it than swiss cheese. "I never injected myself or had anyone inject me" - yeah but there are such things as oral steroids, Sammy. "I never violated the laws of the U.S. or the Dominican" - yeah but Sammy, the Dominican Republic never outlawed steroids, they can be bought easily anywhere. So if you used oral steroids while in the Dominican, than you've managed to be truthful to Congress while denying that you cheated. Brilliant. Until now with this report. I could have seen Sammy getting into the Hall until this positive test came out. Now there's no way in hell for either one of them. And that's totally fine by me.

Sorry but that's about the limit of my understanding - I just right clicked on My Computer and chose properties. But thanks on the router suggestion, I'll try that. We have had a couple of occasions where that was necessary to get back online even though all the proper lights were lit up.

A neat site to bookmark but far from exhaustive - e.g., lots more Gene Harris and Horace Silver on youtube if you just do a search yourself.

This has never been an issue before - we actually pay for the second tier of DSL speed. And its not a restriction on speed, its the download freezing and never resuming, which doesn't strike me as ISP issue but then again I know little of which I speak.

Was waiting on a certain quid pro quo.

Was waiting on a certain quid pro quo.

Sammy Sosa wasn't on my radar when he was coming up (it wasn't easy then to have any real knowledge about prospects, pre-Internet) but there is nothing whatsoever in his stats to say that he was a five-tool player. One of those five tools is hitting for power, and he didn't do it. Neither did he hit for average in the minors - in no full season in his minor league career did he hit above .285. Its true he started in the minors at a young age, so he was always young for the leagues he played in but still ... there's nothing that made Sosa a "five tool" player. He could run a little, I assume his defense was considered decent. As for your statement about how the game values 50-60 jacks well guess what - that has been the case since Babe Ruth and has never changed. The only thing that has changed is the absolute size of the salaries. The value of hitting "taters" has always exceeded the value of stealing bases or hitting for average.

Its 504 MB of RAM. 114 GB of space on the hard drive (20 GB left). I referred to the latter to indicate that there is enough space available to download a large file successfully.

I have no idea if anyone would have any clue on what would be causing this, but for the last several days I have had a strange problem: When I download from Rapidshare (or megaupload) my download freezes in the middle after a few minutes. I'm using Firefox, and the download manager will show that the download is active but the number of bytes downloaded stops going up. I get the same thing on live streams, like youtube. I haven't been able to watch a youtube video to the end, it doesn't stream into cache all the way through, and eventually it stops because nothing else has downloaded. Memory is not a problem, I've got 20 GB available. One thing I haven't tried is to download something from Dime, just to see if it goes all the way through. It doesn't appear to be a Firefox thing, I just tried to download using IE and its also stopped halfway through.

If you like the shit he recorded for Blue Note in the mid-70s, then you'll love the crap Chewy is jizzing over. Otherwise the only listenable part of this record is the "very accoustic" side 2 - Hymn to Freedom in particular is very fine. The rest of it sucks donkey dicks.

Camden Yards has played since the beginning - its a new place supposedly built to the "same" dimensions as the old one playing differently that gets people's attention. Interesting news on Smoltz - one more rehab start for Pawtucket on Wednesday, and then he won't start until a week from Thursday, against the Nationals. So they aren't putting him in the rotation as early as it looked like they would, and they're doing it in a way that he avoids both Braves series. And Francona indicated that at least at the start, the Sox would go with a six man rotation, after essentially saying that they weren't really considering that. There have also been reports that in a six man rotation, Lester and Beckett would remain on a five day schedule. Where does that leave the other guys? I do like the fact that he says Smoltz will be slotted in between Beckett and Lester. If he pitches like he's capable, there's your top three you want to match up with anyone else. I sort of like the idea of not rushing into a Penny trade and not letting Smoltz return dictate a trade when something better might develop if they wait it out. On the other hand, keeping Penny would mean that Bard would have to be optioned to Pawtucket when they activate Smoltz, and that makes no sense. There are reports that Saito is getting interest but at this point I see no reason to weaken the bullpen. Buchholz is waiting and wondering at AAA, just move Penny while his value is high, so long as you are sure Smoltz is going to help!

Jazzshrink can confirm but I kinda doubt that a psychologist would say such a thing either.

And now I have evidence on the Hollywood Records 45: This page states it was recorded in 1952. Ball's in your court, Allen! Independent of sonic qualities, I'd want to use the Hollywood tune "Wake Up Get Out", followed by "Why" from Vee Jay.

This page indicates that the 45 I have, Vee Jay 176 - "Can't Keep From Loving You"/"Why - was recorded in 1956. This page confirms. The other 45 that I only have as a third generation recording - reel ->cassette->CDR was on Hollywood Records and while this page doesn't have dates, its believed that his recording for them pre-dated his Vee Jay recording. I don't think there's any doubt these fit your label's requirements.

I'm having a hard time finding a source but I am almost certain that I have been told that those 45s were recorded pre-1959. I'll keep looking - Blindman's Blues Forum search function isn't helping right now.

And to think that yesterday I was excited at the prospect of what I assumed were unissued concerts with Kenny Drew in the piano chair ... I don't know about the Ronnie Matthews edition of the band, seems to me there was a more recent version, captured on several recordings, that featured someone who posts here on piano.

So yay or nay on Baby Face?

Ty Webb Carl Spackler Kenny Loggins