FRS

Happy 15th Birthday Windows 95!

Task bars & email & short cuts, OH MY!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWQgb015Lc&start=105

Funny, I don’t remember this video included in my copy of the operating system. Probably because I had the 13 floppy disk version of it. I have thoughtfully cued the video up to the 1:45 mark so you can get right to the worlds first Cyber Comedy starring Jennifer Anniston & Mathew Perry. Let me know how many seconds you can take of it. My buddy Mark was still using 95 to run the CNC program upload/download system in the back of the plant until just about 6 months ago.

Its raining in Beantown so the FRS’s game against Seattle was postponed, they’ll play two tomorrow. This means quite possibly they will lose ground in the standings without even playing a game.

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111,000 Ways To Be Disappointed

We did our grocery shopping this evening and on the way to Kroger the Emperor passed the 111,000 mile mark. By the time we got home and I checked on the Red Sox they were losing nine to nothing after three innings. Didn’t bother to waste my time listening to the game, so I went into the living room and Donna and I watched the eighth and last episode of Series 1 of Life on Mars.

After that, hoping for some sort of miracle comeback I checked in on the FRS and was excited to see that they had scored two whole runs, unfortunately the Blue Jays had scored 7 more runs making the final score 16-2.

Oh, and Dustin Pedroia’s return to the starting line up lasted all of three games, he went back on the disabled list today. I don’t know what they will have say over at Baseball Prospectus tomorrow, but I’m marking down the Sox’s chances at the playoffs at about 10%. (This morning they stood at 20%)

Go Rays!

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Like Lindsay Lohan Coming Out Of Rehab

Today’s strip of the Soxaholic centers around a couple FRS fans chatting on the phone about how now that the Sox are starting a nice home stand after a rocky road trip they should have an easier time catching Tampa and making the playoffs. In the second to the last panel one says to the other, “We’re kidding ourselves aren’t we?” The punchline in the last panel is this post’s title, “Like Lindsay Lohan coming out of rehab.”

The way they have been playing lately I haven’t been kidding myself. Often when you are watching a baseball game you can pick the winner, sometimes it is really obvious, like one team having an eight run lead, while in close games the winner can be foretold by the intangibles, line drives just squeaking by fielders or bloops landing just out of reach, etc. This can be extrapolated to whole seasons as well, and in this Red Sox season they just can’t catch a break (as long as you don’t count Jacoby Ellsbury’s ribs.) According to the math wizards over at the Baseball Prospectus, as of today, the FRS only have a 26.98664% of making the playoffs.

Today at work I verbally threatened to stop listening to them to a couple people, but I guess I’m too much of a fan to jump off the bandwagon because here I am in front of the PC listening to the WEEI broadcast. And right now I’m glad I did because they are beating the Angels 6-0 in the sixth.

Also I might have totally missed a rarity in the baseball world. If you have ever been to a minor league baseball game, invariably the PA guy will play the sound of breaking glass when a player fouls a ball out of the stadium towards the parking lot, so the crowd will think the ball broke a car window. Well tonight, Red Sox outfielder, Darnell McDonald hit a home run over the Green Monster in left field and actually did break a window in a car parked on Lansdowne Street. Quick thinking announcer Joe Castiglione, after making the home run call said, “I guess he is going to have to call 1-800-GIANT,” giving radio broadcast sponsor Giant Glass, who’s slogan is, “Who you gonna call when your windshields busted?” an extra, but very appropriate plug.

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Zombieland

This is the explanation for those of you with puzzled looks on your face over the post titles this past week.

Last Monday the FRS had a day game, so in the evening, while Donna surfed her usual cooking, home or reality shows on TV, I decided to watch a movie from my Netflix queue. This movie was there because several of my co workers had seen it and were talking it up as something I just had to see, so to appease them I added it. Now I don’t watch a lot of monster movies to begin with and zombie ones are even at the bottom of that pile, but once I got watching it though, I was hooked. And it turns out it is more of a road trip slash geeky guy wins heart of attractive female romance flick than a zombie movie. Plus nobody told me it was a comedy!

The narrator of the movie is a college student that credits his survival of the zombie apocalypse to the strict adherence of a set of rules, which is where the last 7 titles came from. Not all the rules are actually in the movie, some came from trailers and other promotional items, and the list is not complete. I guess that is why they are going to make a sequel. So we can know what Rule #5 is and #10 and so on.

01. "Cardio"
02. "Double tap"
03. "Beware of bathrooms"
04. "Wear seatbelts"
06. "Cast iron skillet"
07. "Travel light"
08. "Get a kickass partner"
12. "Bounty paper towels"
15. "Bowling Ball"
17. "(Don't) be a hero"
18. "Limber up"
21. "Avoid strip clubs"
22. "When in doubt, know your way out"
29. "The buddy system"
31. "Check the back seat"
32. "Enjoy the little things"
33. "Swiss army knife"

On a side note, I thought that the lead actor/narrator, AKA Columbus, looked familiar and it turns out I had just seen him in another movie a couple of weeks prior. The title of that movie was called Adventureland. I wonder if every movie he will be in will have somethingland in the title? And Little Miss Sunshine is growing up nicely.

As long as you don’t have a weak stomach, sorry Donna, I recommend you see Zombieland. At least once.

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TV Is Winning

I haven’t been posting or a couple reasons, but the main one is I can’t seem to find the time. I’m watching too much TV. On Monday their is House from 8-9. then at ten there is the original Law & Order and Castle which get watched via torrent on Tuesday. Tuesday evening we watch the L&O and Castle before watching TDTVS at 9. Tuesday at 10 is The Good Wife and L&O:CI on USA which get delayed until Wednesday. Wednesday at 10 is In Plain Sight which get watched on Thursday before Flashforward (which sometimes gets delayed until Friday.) And as always there is a Netflix disc with a movie and another disc with a TV show (currently Life) that need watching too.

It has gotten so bad that I haven’t even been listening to the FRS on the internet (which as it turns out is a good thing because they seem to be winning when I’m not listening.)*

I’ve got plenty of stuff to post about, but by the time I get around to it a lot of the details will have leaked out my ears and won’t be available to make the story more than a tweet length. The only reason you are getting this on today is I’m bored at work with a very repetitive job and needed a break before I nodded off in my chair.

*As if to prove my point, the FRS had an afternoon game today and I listened to it at work. They lost 3-2 to Toronto.

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Stolen Thunder

Because it is Patriot’s Day the FRS game started at 11:05 AM this morning. By 11:08 they were losing by one run. At the end of the third inning they were trailing by eight.

I had an idea for tonight’s post, but before I starting writing I did my usual check of select links from the sidebar and there it was in the second panel of today’s Soxaholic, I’m not the only one thinking it.

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The Dead & The Wounded

The the past week or so, maybe longer, the wheel on mouse of the desktop PC was acting up. When you scrolled down it would jump and jitter, sometimes huge chunks of pages. Scrolling up it was fine…so Saturday we went to Staples and bought a new mouse. We opted for a corded mouse for a couple of reasons, its eco-friendly (no dead batteries filling the landfills) and cheap at twenty bucks. As a bonus it had a PS2 adapter which I used so as to free up a USB port and now I don’t have to crawl under the desk and swap out the cables for the web cam or scanner depending on which one I need at the moment.

Today while sitting on the screened porch listening to the FRS getting their hats handed to them 7-1 by the Tampa Devil Rays the cordless mouse on the laptop quit working. 6 weeks and kaput. The cute little receiver which barely sticks out of the USB port was HOT to the touch. Just to be sure I swapped the AA battery out of the mouse with a different one, I tried the receiver part in another port on the laptop (I had to pull it out with a pair of pliers it was so hot) and tried it on the desktop PC and it still didn’t work. Guess I’m going back to Staples tomorrow.

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