Dan Gould

Is that "World F-ing Champions"? Even the most arrogant Sox bandwagoners didn't adopt that nickname.

and MIKEY LOWELL AGAIN!!!!

Can I hear it for MIKEY LOWELL???

Pedroia may turn out to be the goat in this one - though I still like our chances against the soft underbelly of the Yankee bullpen - but this game was fucked up by Beckett first and then Francona. Beckett SUCKED BALLS whether from the extra rest or whatever - and it was ridiculous to bring him out in the sixth inning after the miraculous comeback and over 100 pitches. There's no fucking way. You dodged a bullet by letting him pitch the fifth after they climbed back into the game; now he has the lead and could get a win, pat him on the ass and send him to the showers. That decision was Grady-esque. Now can Lowell avoid a double play? He was on pace for 89, which he might not accomplish but with his straight ahead speed so bad, I definitely think Rice's name could be erased from the record book.

Excellent!

Highly recommended. I brought this one up in a thread about "Young Lion" records that stand out from the over-hyped crowd.

and at 9:19 I am moderately less pissed off. Joba allowing 13 baserunners in less than six innings, and leaving tied at 2 is ridiculous.

Well at 9:15, this game is fucking pissing me off.

As I mentioned in another thread, after seeing this seemingly very unique LP in one of the album cover threads, I went searching and found a reasonably priced copy on Ebay. Most of us figured "Billy Wiggins" would of course be Smilin' Billy Higgins, perhaps with the name changed due to some contractual obligation. Well, the LP just arrived, and they spelled his name right on the back cover. They just didn't catch the mistake on the front.

I consider this weekend to have started - so yes, May 2 is the target. Might be Friday though since we don't have to work Friday nights at the Loan Mod company so my weekend now starts about 2 PM on Friday (with a three hour shift on the phone Saturday morning).

Well, I am one very, very happy camper, as my wife just got a job offer which she has accepted. The best thing is that the pay is more than sufficient for her expenses and at the same time, she will be able to keep her non-profit start-up open and work from that office. So she'll wear two hats and put in killer hours, but now while the start-up searches for funding, she'll have more than enough to cover her bills. And, if my sales continue in the Loan Mod office (and I have three this week), we should be in good shape to get a handle on our debts and rebuild our finances. This is probably the best news we've had in about three years. We're definitely feeling the best we have in a long while, and just as last Friday my wife took me out to dinner to celebrate my hiring, I am taking her out to dinner to celebrate hers.

UP for the stragglers! I'll post answers next weekend.

UP for the stragglers! I'll post answers next weekend.

Sweet!

Well there's some good news for me - I found a new Loan Mod gig, this time with a much better company: They've got the money for serious lead generation - all inbound calls They've got a heightened sense of business ethics and commitment to being in it for the long-term rather than trying to get as much money as possible while staying one step ahead of the Feds My commute is 12 minutes instead of 85 minutes, so I can leave and take care of the dogs in the middle of the day Catered lunches and for dinner, $2 empenadas that are to die for Also got good news from the old company - they'll finally be paying my old commissions - $1000 worth - early next week when they get the money from the lawyer's office. And things may be looking up for my wife as well - she's got an interview with a company she used to work for to be their new Director of Loan Processing. The problem is it would take her away from her day job of running her non-profit (which can't pay her a salary yet). She wouldn't shut down the non-profit so if she gets the offer and its sufficient for our needs, I've stepped up and said that I would cover the office hours while she brings home the bacon. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that they do want to hire her and don't lowball her on the salary. The worst thing would be a salary that covers only some of our expenses and leaves me with a substantial part to pick up. It would be tough to help keep the doors open at the non-profit - which is non-negotiable - and also have enough time on the phones to rake in enough commissions. But this is the best its looked for us in a while, because even if they don't hire her and I stick with the Loan Mod job, I should be able to spend enough time on the phones to earn a pretty substantial paycheck alone, and she can continue to build the non-profit and work on grant writing and fund raising and all that stuff.

Yes, you do.

and its on sale in the US at World's Records. Well, its not like BN and its corporate successors didn't make a boatload of money off of that catalog item already. And now that I check AMG, this became fair game a year ago anyway.

It showed us why Masterson might be the biggest difference-maker of all. So long as the bullpen doesn't miss a beat with Ramirez, Okajima and Saito getting the ball to Papelbon (I think the bullpen as a whole has given up 1 run in the past 25 innings), Masterson can replace anyone in the bullpen from Dice-K down to Penny, and that's before Smoltz becomes the official "#6". Yeah, pitching depth is a nice thing to have.

Almost certain my wife de-fragged the hard drive the first time this happened, but I'll check with her to be sure.

Yes, Conrad, XP. I think its about 4 years old now though it might be a little shorter than that. Thanks again for the advice, J.H. I will definitely check into those downloads.

Thanks for the comments, Bill - not sure but I think maybe your media player did mess up the order. I do think that #2, #3 and #4 will come as a surprise to a lot of people. I thought for sure everyone would know who the vocalist is on #5 though. And #6 is the Johnny Adams track, not #5. Hope you had a good time with Disc 2, too. And let me just add that I am personally happy that the last two commenters dug the tuba track. That one didn't get much love in the earlier comments.

So it sounds like Spy Bot didn't help matters, it was actually hurting things. It also sounds like I have an unstable operating system, if that makes sense - it hasn't been crashing but its sometimes has no resources to operate properly, and it may not boot up right every time. Thanks J.H.

Some weird things happening on the PC lately, I am hoping that the fine and knowledgeable people here can shed light. About a week ago, out of the blue, I got a message when I turned it on - Windows had a problem loading - it gave me an option of running in Safe Mode or a couple of other things or just running Windows. I let it run Windows, it ran, but extremely super slow. My wife thought it was a virus or malware of some sort. She downloaded Spy Bot, we ran Norton as well. Bottom line, after a re-start, things were normal again. Now, this morning, no warning about Windows problem, but super slow start up. Took absolutely forever in fact. I ended up running Spy Bot again, this time it only found a tracking cookie, nowhere near as much spyware etc as the first time, but now that I've shut down and restarted, everything is back to normal. I looked at the Task Manager when things were so slow, and it showed a CPU usage of 100% with something called TeaTimer.exe being the worst culprit. So aside from general advice on my problem, I am wondering if anyone knows what this program is and whether it is the source of my problem and what is best to remove it if it is. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the comments, James. You didn't make many guesses, but you were right at a pretty good clip. Looking forward to your Disc 2 comments.

The problem with the Jays is that most of the pitchers that helped them achieve that level of pitching last year are on the D.L. (McGowan, Litsch, there's someone else I think) or gone (Burnett). And most of them will be gone all year. I don't think its fair to expect the pitchers aside from Halladay to keep it up.