O'Dea Knights, my fantasy team... a few insights.

As most of you know I do fantasy baseball, and have done so for a long time.  My first team had (among others) Kevin Romine, Dennis Eckersley, Roy Hassey, and Rickey Henderson, which will tell you how long I've been doing this.  I've been in my current league for well over ten years, and the core of it (that is, teams in the league since the beginning) is a bunch of really good people... as are the newer teams.

I did some analysis on my team this week because injuries have put me in a bind:  I don't have enough outfielders to stay competitive.  While I'm not in the league for money or prestige (I do it because it's fun), naturally those two things are still enjoyable.  The things I do for fun are the statistical analysis pieces, such as what my yearly pace is, how I stand among the other teams, and so on.  This is the first time I've put anything about those analyses in a blog entry; it's much better for league harmony than posting it on the league's web site (some owners in the league are very competitive).

Anyway, here's a few tidbits for those people who enjoy baseball statistics.

• We've just finished Week 16 of the 26 weeks of the regular season.  There are 12 teams and we count the "standard 5x5" categories.  In hitting, those are BA, Runs, RBI, Home Runs, and Steals; for pitching, they are Wins, Saves, Strikeouts, ERA, and WHIP.  (Interestingly, this is a case of Major League Baseball taking a cue from the modern groups of baseball fans, such as SABR (Society of American Baseball Research), Total Baseball (Pete Palmer), and Bill James' work, among others).  WHIP is Walks + Hits divided by Innings Pitched and is a measure of the number of runners a pitcher puts on base by himself (errors are not the pitcher's fault).  Ten years ago WHIP was a fantasy baseball-only stat; today pitchers' WHIPs are listed in the newspaper.)
• My team usually has fair to poor first halves and good second halves.  I am hoping this year is no different as I'm in seventh place now.
• This year is the most competitive in recent memory.  The difference between 8th place and first is only 14 points, and the standings change quite a bit from week to week, even day to day.  I like this; people stay happier and are more likely to come back next year.
• Injuries usually play a big part of a team's standings.  This year, last year's winner is essentially eliminated from competition, as is last year's second-place team and another team which is usually strong, all because they had all-stars who ended up out for the season early on.  They will come back strong next year; all three owners know their baseball, this year they were unlucky.

Moving on....

• At this juncture my hitters lead the league in team at-bats but rank next-to-last in team strikeouts.  That shows my team puts the ball in play a lot.
• My team is also next-to-last in number of walks.  Most of my hitters are from countries such as the Dominican Republic, where the saying "You don't walk off the island" is common, so they have high contact rates and don't walk much.  Alberto Callaspo, for example, is hard to strike out (once every 12 AB) but swings at everything (a walk every 21 times up).  The net result is a high number of AB and a good BA but only a middling OBA (on base average).
• So why am I only in sixth place in runs scored?  I answered that partially in the previous bullet (low OBA), but there's more to it than that.  Most of my hitters hit low in their team's batting order, and hitters batting in slots seven through nine do not score as many runs as those hitting lead-off or #2.
• While I don't have top power hitters, almost all of my lineup is capable of hitting 15 or more HR in a season.  In this case my team is "making it up on volume" rather than having a few top HR hitters (the one exception is Paul Konerko), so I'm in the top three in the category (usually).  After the leader there are four teams within a handful of HR of each other, so the standings change almost daily; one hot week vaults a team from fifth to second.
• 60% of my team's SB come from one player, Carl Crawford.  The reason for that is, as I mentioned above, injury.  My other SB threat, Brian Roberts, has missed the entire season.  If Roberts hadn't gotten injured I'd probably be three points higher in the standings in SB.
• Streakiness both helps and hurts.  One team had Ty Wigginton until May 15, during which time he led the AL in HR with 12 and was hitting .312.  I traded for him, knowing full well he would not continue to hit that way, and he hasn't... in twice as many AB he's hit only 4 HR and batted .210.  Some teams in the league take advantage of that, and change their active rosters accordingly.  I usually don't, because 1) the only thing which matters is team totals at year-end, and 2) whether nor not a player will have a hot week is unpredictable; I've sat players who proceeded to hit enough to move me two or three places in the standings, and also sat players who hit oh-for-the-week.
• Our league's talent penetration is so deep we have lineups featuring players who are in the minors or who are just not playing because there just isn't anyone else available.  Even without injuries I'd still have Eric Patterson in my lineup.
• Part of my "pitching problem" is simple:  the rest of the league has caught up with me.  Normally I shoot for a balanced team, and then mid-year make a shift to an all-reliever squad.  The result is leading the league in saves, ERA, and WHIP, and finishing in the middle of the pack in strikeouts and wins.  This year I moved too early, and now have to be careful to meet the league's minimum IP requirement.  Also, there are two teams using the same strategy, and they are as good at it as I am.  When I was the only one using it the strategy had an advantage; now that advantage is gone.  The other two teams using the strategy have better numbers than I do, and so my pitching staff's league ranking is among the worst I've ever had.  Thus I have to discover a new strategy which would again set me apart from the other teams.  It's too late for this year, so I need some luck; next year is another animal.
• Along the same lines, as usual I lead the league in strikeout rate but am last in the league because I am also last in IP.  In other seasons I had enough IP to be in the middle of the pack; this year I traded my starters too early (because my offense was bad) and thus my IP is too low.  I will still make the minimum IP (700 IP), but it will be hard (my prediction with my current staff is 714-1/3, and that assumes a pitcher now in the minors is called up before September).  If I make no changes to my staff I'll finish around 680 IP, and none of my pitching points will count (thus I'll finish out of the money).  BTW, I consider putting myself in this situation as a major mistake running my team; I've never had this problem before, and I know why I have it now.  It was just a stupid mistake I'll have to learn from.

I suppose that's all I really have on this; I enjoy fooling around with numbers and this has been a welcome break from making politically-charged statements.  Until the next time, "Be excellent to each other" - Ted Logan.

Obama and the economy

It is so easy to blame our economic woes on Obama.  He is our president, and he is the most powerful single person in the US.  There are many things Obama and his cabinet have done (or haven't done) which annoy me; but I should point out our current economic woes are, for the most part, not his fault.  Yes, I know our budget deficit has skyrocketed over the last several years.  I remind you Obama's been in office only a year and a half.  Further, a great deal of the overspending we're seeing under his administration falls into three categories.

1. Paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Neither of these were his doing, they belong to the Bush years.  You cannot blame those staggering costs (nearly $1 billion a year) on Obama; he didn't start the wars, he's stuck with them.
2. Paying for the bailouts of banks and automobile companies.  Most of both of those policies were decided before Obama took office in January of 2009; besides, they would not be needed if the Republican congress under Bush had not repealed most of the banking regulations between 2000 and 2006.
3. Stimulus packages.  In this case Obama had little choice:  either let a failing economy continue to fail or inject some cash into it.  Also, the stimulus bills are not his; while he urged Congress to come up with something and he did sign them, he did not create them.

Again, let's be clear here.  I do not think Mr. Obama is completely blameless for our continuing economic woes.  However, one cannot expect him (or Congress, mostly) to fix in two years a mess the Bush administration (and his Congress) took six years to create and another two years of apathy from Democrats and resistance from Republicans and Mr. Bush himself.

What I'm hearing from people is disingenuous at best, hypocritical at worst.  If Obama and Congress let the Bush tax cuts expire, they'll be blamed for raising taxes; if they extend the tax cuts, they'll be blamed for worsening the economy.  The way I see it, the Bush tax cuts need to expire.  Further, regulations protecting consumers from the runaway profiteering from banks and corporations must be reinstated; those regulations brought tax income into the economy.

For those of you who think Bush did the right thing with his tax cuts, consider this:  he said it would make the economy better and help the middle class.  Well, did they?  We've had eight years to find out.  I think the answer is obvious:  we (the lower and middle classes) are not better off now, we're much worse off.  And before you blame Obama, consider this:  economists agree it takes at least two years for an economic policy to take effect, and Obama hasn't been in office that long.  Further, conservatives (mostly Republicans, and some Democrats) have been fighting Obama every step of the way; how can we know if Obama's policies would work if they aren't passed?

Final thought:  keep in mind our economy is not Obama's only worry.  Historians agree almost unanimously Bush was the second-worst President we've ever had, particularly concerning foreign policy.  Not only does Obama have to fix Bush's mess at home, he has to fix it across the entire world.  Our reputation among the world's governments suffered horribly during Bush's eight years, and the eighteen months since Obama took office is hardly enough to fix that.

The people really responsible for our continued economic problems are Congress, who cannot agree on anything, primarily because many Republicans seek to discredit Obama at every turn.

If you think I'm making this up, please see the memo sent by Republican leader Michael Steele and other strategists to Republican members of both Houses (CBS news at http://tinyurl.com/26mmnrc).  This is public information now; in the memo, Republicans are given various parliamentary and other strategies to stop any legislation proposed by Obama (primarily health care but also other proposed legislation), with no consideration whether the policy is any good or not.  Also see the Facebook group "Stop Obama" and the group StopObama,org, among others.  I cannot remember any worse vitriol directed at our presidents, ever.

In short, I don't see how we can blame Obama for our current mess because a) he hasn't been around long enough to fix pre-existing problems, and b) nor has he been around long enough to create any new ones.  What we can blame him for is not keeping some of his campaign promises, a big one being more transparency in government.  Where is that?

Letter writing: wither thou goest?

Lately I've read some articles and heard some talk on public radio about personal communication. More to the point, in summary nobody writes letters any more, and many lament the loss of handwriting. Writing as someone who usually got "D"s, with the rare “C”, in penmanship and who's been typing for almost forty years, in some ways that's a good thing. I can print clearly but it's tedious, slow, and the longer I write the harder it becomes to read. On the other hand I can type about forty words a minute with very few errors (thank you, backspace key!) and the print is clear.

And yet I think the discussions made a good point. With Twitter, blogging, Facebook and texting nobody writes any more. Even email seems to have run its course with some people. So I decided I need to write more letters. Many of them will, of course, be emails (I'd rather not waste the paper to send a letter to two dozen or so people), yet I do want to get more in touch with people.

Writing letters is not quite the same as speaking to people, whether face-to-face or over the telephone. Frankly I'd much rather sit down with people; that's so much more enjoyable. Unfortunately distance makes that impossible for some, and so they get letters instead.

Some will argue typing an email is less personal than writing a letter by hand, and I won't argue with that. I remember during and after college exchanging letters (sometimes quite long ones!) with friends from other states, sometimes as many as five or six a year. I still think, though, if I write in a stream-of-conscious style (as if speaking) that is just as personal as typing a letter, which I did sometimes do even if the typewriter was a clunky, old manual which needed a sledgehammer to use the "Q" and "P" keys.

And I have to admit I still have some of those old hand-written letters, some of them from a high-school pen pal from England named Titilope Omomo (if I remember the spelling correctly). I'm not sure where they're packed other than they are in a box with other memories such as knick-knacks, papers, yearbooks, and other things. There's something about holding a thirty-year-old piece of paper and reading words written in pen that's somewhat faded which you can't get from saving emails.

I've decided I'm going to write to my friends more often. Of course it'll be emails, mostly, but sometimes they will be hand-written letters. I'm not abandoning the old ways, just adding new ways to them.

Amazing "vomits"

Anyone who hasn't been in a box the last couple of days knows there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti. Hundreds of thousands of people are in dire straits in that already poor country. While the devastation, death, and injury toll are immense, even worse are the probable longer-term effects of a vast increase in infectious diseases.

Haiti is a tropical island. We've long known tropical habitats are hot spots for diseases seriously affecting the human condition: yellow fever, malaria, cholera, typhus, and so on. With much of her infrastructure gone, finding clean water will be difficult and many of the destroyed areas will become breeding grounds for insects (particularly mosquitoes) which spread these and other dread diseases. It's going to be a long, hard road back for the Haitians.

I truly feel bad for the people of Haiti... and yet there are still people who can take a true tragedy and turn it into a circus to spread their particular brand of hate. I'm talking about Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.

Robertson said, in effect, the earthquake in Haiti is the result of their "making a pact with Satan to remove the French." Limbaugh said the earthquake would let the Obama administration "use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made to order for them. ... We've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax." (quotes from Zennie Abraham, Zennie62.com.)

While hate speech like this ought to be embarrassing to any Christian, at least most people agree Pat Robertson is a certifiable lunatic and genuinely believes what he says. Because of that I can somewhat tolerate his deplorable comments, at least relative to Limbaugh's (after all, aren't the ravings of the truly insane just empty words?). Further, Robertson has since backed away from his comments; Rush stands by his. Limbaugh says the things he does simply to inflame people and further his political agenda, so he doesn't even have the "excuse" of being insane; he does it deliberately. It's so disgustingly, disturbingly low I don't think English has a suitable word to describe it.

Why does the broadcast media pay these people to spew their hatred? I'm all for free speech but this isn't free; Limbaugh has a $400 million contract with ClearChannel Broadcasting. Stop paying him, put that money toward helping the people of Haiti, and let him scream from a soapbox like all the rest of us.

Annual Credit Report

The only real place to get a truly free credit report is AnnualCreditReport.com. While the guys singing cool songs advertise "FreeCreditReport.com" (/~tell your friends, tell your boss, tell your mom~/) that site is not really free. The best advice: stagger getting credit reports from the three major bureaus (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) every four months. That way you have a frequently-updated list of credit reports and yet leave a gap of one year for each bureau.

If you want your FICO score along with your credit report, good luck; it's not free. However, on AnnualCreditReport.com both Equifax and TransUnion (Experian and FICO don't work together any more) offer a cheap FICO score, at $4.95 each. If you want a reasonably good estimate for free, the calculator at MSN's Money Central. Take the 10-question survey and get a fairly accurate (if broad) estimate of your FICO score.

Finally, don't forget to check for errors (cards not closed, mistaken late payments, theft not reported, etc.) and send each bureau a letter to be attached to your credit report. Those letters do get looked at, and they're leverage for you if a lender questions some aspect of your credit report or score.

If this is new to you, start doing it this month. Let keeping up with your credit situation be your New Year's Resolution for 2010. Good luck!

How many times... 42?

What I meant by the title was both a reference to the "Hitchhiker's" trilogy and the number of times I've claimed to be "back again." I know, you're tired of hearing that. This time I mean it, although I'm no longer daily.

I've decided, for 2010 and beyond, to take back my life from my job. In 2008 I had a good balance on my personal life and my job; all I needed was to bring my family into that circle. And really that wouldn't have been too hard; a large part of my personal life is my family anyway. What I was missing was longer, closer relations with my children (who are now teenagers). My son is looking at high schools; my daughter will be looking at (gasp!) colleges next year. At this point I can relate to them on an equal level, something I have had difficulty doing in the past... not their fault, mine. I had some issues to work out and, while they're still issues, I now know what they are, and that's (more than) half the battle.

2009 was, in many different ways, a lost year for me. Betty and I accomplished a few things we set out to do, the kids are growing into (relatively) responsible people, and things like that. Somehow, though, I lost my own way; the energy I used to spend on my personal things (learning, raising children, continually building my relationship with my wife etc.) by July was getting spent on work. I hit the dreaded burn-out and, what was worse, I knew it and let it happen anyway.

2010 is going to be different. I'm taking my life back... all of it. While I still want to do well in the office I am no longer going to get worried when people tell me they need something "now" and I don't get it to them until "five minutes from now". That was my problem: trying to please everyone only resulted in pissing everyone off. When I gave one pissed-off person more time so they wouldn't get mad that time came from another person who wasn't mad, but got mad when they found out I couldn't finish their project because I borrowed their time for the other projects. No more. Time is getting budgeted by priority and value, and those items come from my management, not someone to whom I do not report.

I have discussed this with both my management and the project managers I produce work for. My manager is all for it and, surprisingly, most of the people I work with are also for it; they realize most of me is better than none of me. Those who are not, well, I will do my best to meet their demands but there are new lines I won't cross (they're fuzzy lines, but better than no lines at all). You know PMs, though; most are reasonable, and there are a few who think they own you.

One last piece of news: you may notice I'll sometimes sign my blog "danodea" and tag each entry with that. I am starting to build a brand for myself, and that's it. Simple, to the point: my name. I did, briefly, consider DFO; I did use that in a brand-like sense for 20+ years. However, that personality is no longer dominant, if you will; I got that nickname in college, and I think I need to shed some of its, let's say less graceful connotations. Besides, how do I explain to upper-management types why my middle name is "James" but the middle letter in my brand of "initials" is "F"? No easy task for a professional, so that has to go. Those of you who knew me in college or early in my career will understand; the rest of you, go ahead and guess; it's not that difficult, and when you get it right it will be crystal-clear why I'm dropping it.

After that digression, I will close with saying I will try to blog here once a week. Since I have three blogs (two work blogs and this one) I can't manage a daily effort. If I have a really good entry I may duplicate it across blogs... well, at least this one and my primary work blog, which is career-oriented (my third blog is a grammar blog and will not be copied here). If I do use the same entry at work and here (DISCLAIMER FOLLOWS) there will never be any specific IBM information on it; it will either be redacted or not used at all. For an example, please read the third and fourth paragraphs; in a different (and enlarged) form it has already appeared on my IBM blog.

It's good to be back.