Voter Apathy?

There were some concerns about a couple of rules that were in effect for last year’s season of the End Zone Entourage Fantasy Football League. I’m the League manager, but not its dictator, so I let everyone know that there would be a poll on the League’s home page and that they should go there and make their opinions known.

Last year I instituted a tie breaker because the year before a few people didn’t like having ties. If a 2012 game ended in a tie the home team was awarded the victory. Needless to say in the two games that did end in a tie last year, the owner of the Home Team was happy, but the owner of the Visitor Team was displeased. League Manager’s Poll #1 read, “Should a tie-breaker by used to settle tie games?” There are 12 owners and 4 voted Yes and 4 voted No. Four didn’t bother to vote.

The first year of the league only 4 teams made the playoffs and the other 8 played in “consolation games.” When I took over as League Manager in year two the previous administration let me know he wanted all 12 teams to make the playoffs the year before, but didn’t know how to do it. I figured out how to do it, so last year all 12 teams got in the playoffs. Of course the top 4 teams in last year’s regular season were bounced out of the playoffs by week 2 and the final game pitted the #10 & #12 teams, with the regular season’s losing-est team taking home the trophy. League Manager’s Poll #2 read, “How many teams should make into the playoffs: 2, 4, 8 or 12?” Of the 12 owners a whopping 3 voted, one for 4 teams, one for 8 teams and 1 for all 12 teams. Seventy-five percent of the owners didn’t vote!

I sent out an email after the poll closed to lament the lack of participation and got a whopping 3 more votes before I closed the poll this morning. There was one more vote for 8 teams and 2 more for 12 teams, so once again everyone makes the playoffs…

I have posted one more League Manager’s Poll on the League’s front page:
League Managers Poll

The first selection is an actual answer from an actual owner.

Track 01 – These Are Days

Just love Natalie Merchant. I had almost every CD that 10,000 Maniacs put out and her first two solo albums. She has released a few more CDs since then, but I’ve stopped buying physical and downloadable music, so the only exposure to her music I get now is when I catch a tune on RadioParadise. The latest one is something called Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience which not only has Natalie singing, but the cello opening reminds me of the theme music for the TV show Firefly.

Breakfast at Betsy’s

We had 4 Miatas and a Bug-Eyed Kia Soul meet Donna and I at Greg’s Gas+ in North Augusta this morning. Dennis & Karol Mason were waiting with John Haff for us to arrive and then not too much later Rudy rolled in followed by a Kia Soul containing ex-members Jim & Judy Creer who were visiting Augusta from their current home in Florida. The lure of seeing Jim & Judy even brought founding member Anita Wylds out to join us at the start too.

It was kind of like old times as everyone stood around in the parking area chatting to well past the scheduled departure time. The only thing missing was Jim Creer’s hood up. When we finally got going, luck was on my side as we made the 20 mile drive with all six cars together in spite of having to navigate 10 traffic signals, arriving at Betsy’s on the Corner only about 10 minutes late.

The entire Aiken Wing of the Club (the Woomers, the Dyers, the Ormerods and Tom Varallo) were inside waiting on us at the traditional Master’s Miata Club long table consisting of several separate units all pulled together. Whoever did the joining, the Club members or the restaurant staff, they were very in tune psychically as there were exactly as many chairs needed to seat both groups.

We then spent the next 1-1/2 hours talking, drinking coffee, ordering breakfast, talking drinking coffee, talking waiting, redirecting mis-delivered meals, correcting the oversights of our ordered meals, eating, talking, drinking coffee, eating, waiting of the waitress to figure out all the separate checks, talking, waiting, talking and then paying our checks.

The above photo was taken by a random patron, who volunteered to take a shot of our whole group and promised that it would come out great, as she was the daughter of a professional photographer. I was a little worried at first as I had to show her which button was the shutter on my camera, but by golly she did pretty darn good.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1245

Track 05 – Don’t Speak

Back in the day I used to participate in CD swaps. You would mail CD mixes, usually with a theme, to an individual who would then mail you back one of theirs. It was a good way to get introduced to different music. I’ve kept some of mine that I mailed out and even a few I was given.

While looking for some empty CD disc cases to put another copy of Orphan Black DVDs* into I stumbled onto one of mine labeled “Quintessential Burn.” Unlike the rest of my burned CDs it had no label on the disc or the case it resided in. I could listen to every song and create a playlist for the disc, but I always used CD Text when doing these burns, so why couldn’t I read it right off the CD. Winamp doesn’t support CD Text, Windows Media Player doesn’t either natively, but at least there is a plugin for doing it.

Anyway, if I can find ’em, I’ll see about posting a video of each tune that I considered of or pertaining to the most perfect embodiment of a CD mix in December 2004. First up is track number 5, No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.”

Tuesday Update

Shiny

The team car of the Purple Whales from the End Zone Entourage Fantasy Football League got its annual preseason wash and wax on Sunday afternoon. The NFL season starts in 3 weeks and then there won’t be any time on Sunday afternoons for that sort of thing.

I haven’t read the Jack Reacher novel Killing Floor before because I would have definitely remembered it. It is set in the fictional town of Margrave, Georgia which is described as about an hour south of Atlanta, but at one point our hero travels to Augusta to search for a missing character that figures big in the plot. The author has obliviously never been to Augusta and did minimal research, because from his description I wouldn’t have recognized the town. This I would have remembered…

My suspicions were correct on the purpose of the clear lucite sign holders. This morning my bathroom appropriate magazine ads were gone and were replaced with those same First Responders recruitment posters. The plant nurse will be holding informational meeting on joining the few the proud towards the end of next week. If those flyers are still up at the beginning of next month I think I’ll replace them with some U.S. Armed Force posters.

Jack Reacher

KillingFloorWe were in the book store on Saturday looking for some summer reading and I was so desperate to find something I would enjoy that I picked up a Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor.

I have read all the Jack Reacher books and chew through them like I used to with Robert B Paker’s Spenser novels. Because I was sure I has already read this book I kept waiting for the moment when I would go go, “Oh yeah.” But I’m now more than half way through and that moment hasn’t come. Did I miss this book in the series or is it because it was written in 1997 that I’ve completely forgotten it? I’m thinking I just missed it, but the light of recognition may still go off in the next couple hundred pages.

This is a reprint of the very first Jack Reacher book and it has a new introduction by the author Lee Child that tells how he came to write and why he chose the genre, an anti-hero and how he came to name his protagonist. It also has a new round yellow circle on the front cover that reads “See Jack Reacher now in his first major motion picture.”

The introduction adds nothing new if you have visited the Lee Child’s web site, so what I really wanted was what he was thinking about with the much smaller Tom Cruise playing his 6’5″, 250 pound creation. I have heard that he publicly said he was happy with Cruise in the role. I recently had an opportunity to watch the movie and passed on it just because I knew I couldn’t be so charitable.