Month: March 2006

I�ve been traveling, doing work, and (of course) playing World Of Warcraft almost non-stop these past few weeks. I see that Jonathan has been busy keeping the site updated with fresh content. Things must be settling down for him in the new house.

One of my internet buddies pointed me to the latest blog where Marc Duffy of SI Games mentions our humble little site. This means that we just might get more than 6 hits this month, so thanks Mr. Duffy! A couple of my OOTP buddies also asked if I was part of the beta team. The answer is no. A great big N-O. I will never beta test another product for anybody, not even for the crown prince of career baseball games, Markus Heinsohn.

I�ve done quite a bit of beta testing over the years and it really is a thankless job. But nothing upsets me more than beta testing processes. Very few developers care what you think during beta tests. They are more interested in making sure that the product works on different types of machines/configurations and/or testing various multiplayer components of the game. And for those of the testers who want a few minutes to actually take a detailed look at the beta product, new versions are released so quickly that keeping up becomes a full time job.

An unpaid full time job.

I think the Kohan 2 beta test ended any possible enjoyment I could get from beta testing. It was evident to me that the game wasn�t very good from the first minute I played it and nothing that happened during the beta made me feel that the developers were listening to folks who were saying, �You know, this game just isn�t fun.� Zero sales later (or close to it), I�m sure the developers were wondering why the game failed so badly. You really didn�t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

Now I don�t know what it�s like to beta test for SI Games and I don�t want to know. So don�t take these comments as an indictment against SI�s beta testing. All I do know is that Chris Johnson will not be beta testing for anyone. Ever. I don�t care who the developer is.

After a few more days with The Fielding Bible by John Dewan, I have to say it is a pretty darn interesting book. Certainly not a purchase for everyone, but I imagine that fans of statistical baseball analysis, fantasy baseball, and students of the game will really enjoy the book.

One of the most interesting sections of the book shows each team’s field (in glorious color) and indicates where hits landed in 2005. The layout clearly shows where a team is better than average, average, and worse than average. I always thought that the Braves were an excellent fielding team around the mound, but the book indicates that the Braves were worse than average compared to the rest of the league. This is certainly not light reading, but never the less interesting reading for most baseball fans.

Another section shows the author’s personal rankings and comments by position. In 2004 and 2005 Derek Jeter won the AL Gold Glove for shortstops, but according to the author’s plus/minus system, the awards should have been given to Miguel Tejada and Juan Uribe (respectively). It is all good stuff.

The book servers its purpose; it does a good job of putting its arms around fielding. With that said, I do not think the book is going to be relevant in a few years. Interesting, and historical (to review the three year fielding register), but this is not going to be a book that you will turn to year after year. Of course I have never read this sort of book, so I could be way off the mark. With all that said, the book is interesting enough (and priced cheap enough at $19.95) that I would certainly purchase the next edition, assuming Mr. Dewan decides to do a yearly annual.

My kids have been asking (no, begging is a better word) for a dog for a while now. Tonya and I promised them that we would get them a dog once we moved into the new house (since the yard was fenced in). No doubt you can see where this is going …

Today we picked up a six-weeks old male Shih Tzu; all black with some white markings around his chin, on his front feet (like socks), around his chest, and a few white hairs on his head. I lost the name battle. I wanted to call him Ming Fu (sounds like a good, solid, scrappy name to me), but alas his name is Remus. I told the kids that Remus was his name, but his secret Shih Tzu name was Ming Fu. He cost enough duckets that I can call him pretty much anything I darn well please!

More to come on the adventures of Ming Fu.

The Atlanta Falcons just did some shady bookkeeping with Vick’s contract:

The bookkeeping transaction has no impact on Vick, since he would have received the $7 million whether it was treated as a roster bonus or as a signing bonus. The five-year veteran and Pro Bowl performer is due to earn a 2006 base salary of $1.4 million.

Vick, 25, signed what amounted to a 10-year, $130 million contract, which runs through 2014, late in the 2004 season. But the final season of the contract has already been voided, making the contract a nine-year deal worth approximately $118 million. The contract, which included an initial signing bonus of $7.5 million, features $37 million in guarantees.

Included in those guarantees was the $7 million roster bonus Vick will collect this month.

Not sure what all this means other than you have to be a f’ing genius to understand NFL cap rules.

I am going to have to post this without the permission of Scott Carter, who happens to be my boss (cause that is what a good employee does).** He put this together to take a jab at my dad, who just so happens to be a huge Texas fan. I figure a cc is pretty much all the permission I need to post this; plus Scott likes being famous. As background material, Scott and my dad have a bit of a thing going back and forth about Texas (dear old dad) and Georgia (Scott), and this is just too good not to post somewhere …

I am excited for Texas … Any team that wins a national championship with a QB who scores a 6(out of 50) on a Wonderlic test, clearly has the best coaching staff in America. I read a blurb from a reputable scout as follows….”You have to question a player who went as far in college as Vince Young without flunking a course. I think I heard that a score of 6 equates to a 7th grade education.”

To help you out, I thought I would send you my top 10 positive spins on the Vince situation…feel free to use these as you are being barraged by mean people who do not appreciate what Vince brings to the table.

10) What’s wrong with a six? Oscar Davenport got a six and it didn’t seem to hurt his NFL career.(By the way, you may want to check into a follow-up for the question “Who the heck is Oscar Davenport?”)

9) Had Vince scored one lower, he would hold a world record in something.

8) If you multiply Vince’s score by 5, it is only 3 points lower than Tom Brady

7) 7th grade is an academically challenging grade

6) Vince is now qualified for a promising career as a bagboy

5) This score enables Vince to publicly practice his official “see what ha happened wuz” statement

4) Vince would have scored higher, but it was a timed exam and he couldn’t get the answers off of his shoe fast enough….damned cowboy boots!!

3) At least Vince enjoyed his college years, completely unencumbered by the distraction of textbooks….and pencils……….and thinking

2) Draft position is overrated. Anyway, Vince wants to live a more modest lifestyle.

And last but not least, the #1 positive spin you can use with your friends….you knew it was coming….

1) Finally, Quincy Carter looks intelligent!

Seriously, good stuff!

** Scott takes no responsibility for this post. Just in case …

There has been a lot written this week about Young’s alleged low Wonderlick test score – and more to be posted later on this site. I found the following quote on ESPN.com, from Young’s agent (Major Adams) fairly interesting:

“People are going to try to bring him down between the Rose Bowl and the draft day,” Adams said. “They will try to take shots at him, and he hasn’t done anything wrong, so we just take it with a grain of salt.”

Conspiracy? Why would anyone want to “take shots” at Young? From what I have read, it looks like Young’s agent is not doing him any favors.

I finally got brave and joined a second OOTP league: JOBL. I am taking over Orlando, which seems to be a decent team, with playoff aspirations this season. I have not hard time to study Orlando’s history, but I am sure it will be challenging to keep the team on the up and up. Will make for a fun weekend trying to learn my team, and setup some semblance of strategy.

In my other league, IOSBL I am having a hard time getting Columbus back to its winning ways. Seems like I was better at the initial draft and the early days of FA; lately my team has been a bit of a mess. Of course I am not an OOTP expert, which probably puts me at a disadvantage compared to many of the other GMs in the league, but I often dig my own ditch by trying non-traditional stuff with my team.

Hopefully I can keep up the pace, manage both teams to prosperity, and become a little more OOTP savvy in the process.

For those of you that care about this sort of thing, I just got the following from Amazon:

We are pleased to report that the following item will ship sooner than expected:

Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts “Baseball Prospectus 2006 :
Statistics, Analysis, and Insight for the Information Age (Baseball
Prospectus)” [Paperback]

This is the first time I have picked up this annual; hope it makes for a decent purchase.

I had a few minutes to get in a quick game, which is certainly not enough to judge the game as a whole. With that said, just one game was enough for me to determine that the pace of the game and spacing of players was better than the dozen of games I spent with the first PSP FIFA (I am taking a pass on FIFA 06).

Believe me, I have done plenty of FIFA justification over the years, but WE9 is a whole new type of soccer – fans of soccer and portable gaming should be pretty happy. I lost my first game (US vs. Poland) 0-1 pretty handedly. I hardly had any build-up, possession, or shots on goal. I blame that on not reading the game, and trying to figure out the controls on the fly.

On a non-gameplay note, the load times seem rather long. Getting into the game takes a while, and pausing the game to get to the various option screens took several seconds. I have not seen this in any other PSP games, but there is an option to save battery life – looks like it turns off music, crowd noise, and maybe other secondary sound items. I used to have time to figure out if we were talking about a few minutes of battery life, or gaining an extra hour; will be interesting to see what the die-hards find.

More to come as I have more time to play and post.

Welcome to a new month of bliss. Fun stuffs in store – college basketball tournaments galore � about the only time I pay attention to college basketball. Spring Training is in full swing, and that little something called the World Baseball Classic is actually going to make baseball intense in the otherwise calm, warm weather days of camp. The NFL is exploding on itself with serious labor issues – not sure what this means to the Falcons, but rumor has it that Dunn is done, which would serious suck.

USA beats Poland 1-0 today in a friendly; did not get to see it because I was doing the work thing, and no sort recorder for me.

My wife picked up the PSP version of Winning Eleven Soccer for me; what a nice wife. Hope to get a few mins with it after I get the kids to bed. Wonder if I can get her to do the same with MLB 06 tomorrow?

Currently reading “2006 Gamer’s Tome of Ultimate Wisdom” and “The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2006” – more on each later, but both are worth a purchase.

Happy March!

From the March 3, 2006 “The Sporting News”

Player to watch this fall: Ohio State LB Larry Grant. A junior college star at City College of San Francisco, Grant originally committed to Florida last fall but didn’t meet SEC academic requirements. He signed with Ohio State and likely will start spring practice at middle linebacker. Four years ago, Florida went through a similar situation with junior college LB Lance Mitchell, who eventually signed with Oklahoma and became an All-American.

Are the SEC’s standards really all that? Just another excuse to cheat, I suppose.