My Beloved Mets & 2009

NY MetsMathematically speaking, the NY Mets were eliminated around two weeks ago when even if they were to hypothetically win every game they had left in the year and the lead wild card team where to lose every game left there would still be no way the Mets would have more wins then that other team.

As a die hard Mets fan this did not persuade me to give up on watching my team. No, like the true fan I am I wore my orange and blue ball cap every day. Every day I tuned in for as long as possible to watch them play on TV. And every day I watched them at least try to win or even sometimes manage to win games. They lost no more than they did the rest of the year, but this week that all came to a grinding halt. Over the past three games including today‘s 7-4 embarrassment, the Mets lost to the most losing team in baseball– the Washington DC Nationals. This meant the worst team in the Major League Baseball system had swept the Mets without a blink or whimper. In all, this basically summed up the entire year in a nutshell.

Let’s put this in perspective for those of you who are not baseball fans or those of you who may not understand just how bad this is in terms of losses. The Nationals have lost 103 games this year. They have only won 55. There are only four games left in this season. That means the Nationals have a .348 win percentage. For those of you out there who are not statistics majors, that means that just below 35% of the time the Nationals will win a game. A decent team will post a win percentage of around .500 (50% chance of win) and a great team will be around .600 (60% chance of winning– the NY Yankees right now are at .646 and the winningest team in the MLB). The Mets pulled in at a mediocre .421. This is way below average and just above really bad. Any bad team’s main goal is not to get 100 losses and with 92 in the books the Mets are nearly there though they will not reach that horrible 100 loss plateau even if they lose the last four games (which they just might– they’re playing slightly better Houston Astros who are at .465).

Like I said in the beginning of this blog entry though, mathematically speaking the season ended some two weeks ago; but with some 20 games left I wanted to watch my team finish with honor, with dignity, and to see this season out. Today the season did end though not officially, but in my heart as a fan. I watched the bats come as alive as they ever have this year mustering a 4-2 lead. I then watched my team’s multi-million dollar closer (the finishing pitcher whose supposed to shut down the game) Francisco Rodriguez blow the game. He loaded the bases, proceeded to walk in a run, and then gave up a grand slam home run to a batter who was rated lackluster at best. Last year Francisco Rodriguez earned the nickname “K-rod” on the LA Angels where he had the most saves ever in a year. Rodriguez holds the MLB record for saves in a single season with 62; which he set in 2008. This year he mustered some 50% of that effort at 34 for the year. Before we get too down on Rodriguez I must point out he has six blown saves and five relief losses. Those numbers are no worse than 2008 when he saw seven blown saves and three loses. He simply had more opportunities to win with the Angels.

It seems though even he has gotten caught up in the injuries, management problems, and general malaise that has taken over the Mets this year. And with that the season ends for me– what happens in the next four games will not make these past three games any better; nor the 92 other losses disappear. With still many starting players on the injured list and Jose Reyes (the staring short stop) looking like his injury may last until Spring Training next year this one is done. And with it– goes the hopes and dreams of another year.

I think SNY‘s Bob Ojeda (himself a former Mets all star pitcher) said it best during the post game wrap up, “You can blame the coaches and the players somewhat. The real person you have to hold responsible is the team’s manager. You can think about firing the whole team, but realistically the manager is who needs to be held accountable.” I could not have echoed any better sentiments. How much longer can Jerry Manuel stay? I’m not sure, but I do sure as Hell miss Willy Randolph. The Mets may have swooned in the post-season with him; but at least they made it past October 4th and worse yet– I didn’t stop watching before October 1st.

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New Polls Feature

Development continues on df.com pretty steadily. The latest feature available can be found in the right menu bar, under “Latest Poll”. We’ve also added a Polls Archive section that will track older polls as they expire (permanently located in the top menu under the Contact link sub-menu). You can vote once per Internet connection on each poll to keep things fair as possible (I know… people will still abuse it, but whatever). I think this is a viable feature for those of you who simply do not have time to fill out the Contact form or comment on a given page/post. It also adds another nice layer of both feedback and interactivity. I’ve found during my tenure of a decade plus in the Internet industry if there is one thing people really like filling out– it is polls. Maybe because it’s a quick way to kill time. Maybe because people just like expressing their opinion. Either way, I hope you participate and voice your opinion so we know more about what you would like from df.com. As always, we welcome your feedback and encourage you to use the aforementioned Contact form to shoot us any suggestions for polls that you may have.

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Random Video Clips – “Undefeatable”

Every now and then I run across a video that goes beyond viral in nature and becomes something truly more. For these select few videos I have a title. I dub them “Random Video Clips”. My introduction makes as much sense as this fight scene from “Undefeatable“. The real title of the movie is “Cui Hua Kuang Mo”, which was made in 1993. It was later imported into the US and translated as “Undefeatable”. For you English majors out there that is not a real word, but hey– this is Kung Fu not rocket science. The point is this scene is called by many a movie buff the “most ridiculous and incredible fight scene ever”. You’ll see why in a bit as soon as you hit play and I’m sure you’ll agree. With that, I give you “Undefeatable”:

If you have a clip you’d like to see nominated as the “Random Video Clip” drop me a line via the Contact form and let me know where I can find it on the Net.

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Surgery Scheduled

shoulder-joint-ligamentsVisited my orthopedist today. Looks like 10/14/09 will be the day of my surgery. I have a rip in the area marked to the right as the articular capsule (#2), which creates instability in the head of my humerus (the bone that makes the top portion of your arm) and allows it to pass out of the shoulder socket. We discussed therapy, but honestly with this being an ongoing issue for some four plus years my orthopedist doubts there will be any success with that sort of treatment. If it was going to heal– it would have healed already.

The good news is the surgery is pretty non-evasive and is performed in a same day surgery manner. I literally will leave the hospital a few hours after post-operation. The whole operation should be rather quick and recovery time is six to twelve weeks including therapy. That puts me at 100% by Christmas, which is nice.

Until then I will have to wear a sling for the first few weeks and limit my motion though I was told I could use a mouse within 48 hours for brief sessions (yes– I asked how long until I can blog again because I’m that much of nerd).

The success rate is pretty high and my biggest enemy would be infection. With all the pain I’ve been through over the last few years I am glad that the worst of it will be over within two months or so. I also look forward to being able to do normal things such as pick up my youngest daughter or play catch with my oldest daughter. Those thoughts alone are both keeping me focused and driven to seeing this through.

I appreciate all your kind words and thank those of you who have been sending me get well wishes through Facebook. Your thoughts and wishes are appreciated.

If I can pull it off, I’d like to squeeze out one Pirate Radio before surgery and then follow up with another show as soon as I’m feeling well enough to do so in what will most likely be early November. I’ll let you know as those plans begin to gel and be sure to keep you in the loop.

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Oink, oink my good man…

I try to stay away from politics in this particular blog and focus on business instead, but one cannot help to take notice of the “swine flu” outbreak. The news is every where along with the warnings and the seemingly constant social reminders in the form of hand sanitizers or face masks. More  appropriately for this publication, is the scary ties to business that swine flu holds, but more on that in a bit.

First, a quick recap on swine flu. Swine flu (for those few of you who have not been bombarded by the hype of the situation) is a form of influenza called H1N1 by medical professionals and scientists. As the outbreak caps over 800 official cases today and slowly lunges towards a pandemic, there is some sense of panic. This is for good reason because this particular virus is a new hybrid virus formed by two variants of swine flu, one of avian flu, and one of human flu origins. In short, this is a virus we’ve never seen before. The result of virus breeding and Darwinism at its scariest. H1N1 refers to the underlying composition of proteins that somewhat uniquely identify both the manner in which the virus spreads and the core components of which it is formed.

While the rest of world’s population scatters themselves into self imposed quarantines resorting to social distancing and face masks to try to control something well beyond any one person’s own ability to control; I must pause the panic on a the note of a major component of the story that is being overlooked by many.

Wired early this week pointed out that doctors had scientifically isolated the genetic materials that directly link this swine flu to a previous outbreak that occured back in 1998 in the South US. This 1998 outbreak was limited in scope and quickly contained as it did not have the capability to spread pig to human (unlike H1N1). The root cause of the outbreak was at that time determined to be industrial agricultural pig compounds within the US and Mexico. Those corporate farming compounds used methods of animal production that are still in use today. Those methods center around high concentrations of stationary animals confined to stalls, forced fed, and in many instances poorly sanitized due to the scope and nature of the facilities’ capability to support such a large population of animals. In this instance, it was concluded the outbreak was caused by the pigs constant exposure to fecal matter and the overall sub-standard living conditions the pigs were confined within that literally became a Garden of Eden of sorts for the various viruses and bacteria that cause such outbreaks.

Now I’m not going down some liberal bleeding heart avenue here, but the parallel can be seen today where the first victim (aptly named “Patient Zero”) of H1N1 and every patient since then, have all had infections with trace genes that show this current virus is a direct descendant from the 1998 H3N2 swine influenza. That fact alone shows there is a real direct link between H3N2 and H1N1 that cannot be ignored. Notably, H3N2 also was capable of quick mutation and gene swapping with other strains of influenza in the host body’s blood stream. This remarkable capability stunned investigators at the time who expressed high concern that if left unattended this virus could reemerge within the decade even more mutated and less capable of isolation. Further H1N1 Patient Zero (a five year old boy) just happens to live down the road in a small Mexican village from several major pig farms owned by US corporations and operated in similar manners to the facilities described above.

The owners (Smithfield Foods Corporation) have denied any link and noted they have tested their flock, but regardless of whether the existing pigs have the flu or not one can only deduce how a mutated virus would make its way across an isolated region with no know previous H1N1 or H3N2 cases to the local populace via water, dirt, or just good old wind. Ultimately, that same local populace would spread it to the surrounding areas population who in turn would spread it to tourists and so forth.

Rolling Stone has an article on Smithfield Foods and how one they are one of the biggest polluters in the world. They describe how Smithfield runs their operations. Needless to say, you may not want to eat any ham or bacon before glancing over the article, but I do highly recommend it. The article is from December 2006 and again the warning signs are nothing short of shocking in retrospective.

Now I’m not saying every corporation is run like this or that we need to have some of wild witch hunt on industrial manufactures because I’ll also note that if we hadn’t driven these operations out of the US with excessive taxes that maybe we could have done a better job of regulating the  industry as whole.

What I am saying is that the world as a whole has to wake up and focus on how our daily activities impact those around us. While we may have not been able to prevent the flu (pigs will get the flu just like the rest of us) being more proactive on daily operations safety and awareness is nothing short of life saving. As an operations manager myself I’m at a loss to explain this, but I can only hope that going forward the meat production industry will try to address these concerns directly instead of pointing fingers and shrugging shoulders.

In a global nation there is no longer the ability to hide our garbage in somebody else’s backyard. Especially when that same backyard happens to also be one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world. That secret will quickly become one that is unable to be contained because after all– unlike Ops managers, viruses don’t take orders from CEOs and have a tendency to just do whatever the heck they want to.

Originally published at http://digitalflood.wordpress.com on 3/3/09
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