Ryan Morlok’s Blog

http://www.shotgunguide.com/

This should help resolve those conflicts that invariably come up when the shotgun rules are applied.  Shoe, Ben & Mike, I expect to see copies in your glove compartments by the time I get back.

When “yer mom” just won’t do…

http://reluctantnomad.blogspot.com/2006/09/insults-they-just-dont-make-them-as.html 

For those of you who have never eaten at Hot Wok, you probably don’t understand the magic.  I don’t know of any place on the planet where you can get Chinese food that cheap.  I can walk into that place, order the Hunan Beef on white rice and only pay $4.87.  And that food lasted me for two meals.  Can anyone else name a single serving that lasts me two meals? No.

Anyway, I drove over to the Hot Wok on Mattis and Bradley this afternoon to pick up some food, and much to my dispair, it was closed.  It’s turning into some sort of Sammy’s Pancake House.  I hate pancakes.  My only hope is that the Hot Wok on University over in Urbana will remain open, but even if it does, the days of quick cheap Chinese food near where I live are over.  I’ll miss you Hot Wok. :’-(

I’ve been working on moving my copy of Adobe Creative Suite 2 to my new Mac, and boy has it been a pain in the butt.  For most Mac software, you just drag the application from the mounted directory to the applications folder and your done with it.  Even Microsoft with their Office install wasn’t able to foul things up too bad.  With Adobe, it’s been a nightmare.

First, do not try to the copy the appications directly from one computer to another.  That works for most things, but it didn’t for Adobe.  I missed some Library files and that didn’t work so well, and then when I got those, I had to fight with the activation transfer.  That was running into all sorts of errors (probably from the direct app copy) so I gave up and decided to do a reinstall (I couldn’t find the install CDs initially, but by this point I had located them).

So I go to do the reinstall, but it won’t let me install more than the version cue software.  It thinks that the other applications are already installed, and there’s no option to reinstall them.  What’s worse, I can run the normal uninstall utilities (or the license deactivation) because it’s complaining about missing support folders and that the copy isn’t activated.  After one failed install, I manually deleted all of Adobe’s stuff, and tried again.

This time the install actually worked. Things went in, and everything was peachy-keen.  I then went to do an application update.  I wish I was exagerating when I say that the updater asked for my password 20 times.  Could they have just asked for sudo priveleges for the overall installer app and then launched their sub-installer apps from that?  Oh-no.  They have to ask for authorization for each individual installer application.  One of those managed to fail, so after the whole process was done, I went back in to try again, but strangely it was listing all of the updates as available for download - even the ones that I had successfully installed.  It was nice enough to give me a list side-by-side of the updates that were installed, but instead of taking the ones out that were already installed, it just left them there.  Regardless, the update failed a second time, and I just gave up on it.

Adobe’s problems go beyond just the install process for CS2, their applications take forever to launch.  In an informal test to launch Illustrator, it took ~45sec.  This is on my new Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a 7200 RPM harddrive and 2GB of RAM.  I understand that this is doing emulation, but please.  On my old Powerbook the load time was on the order of minutes.  What’s worse is when you install CS2, Adobe wants you to use their Acrobat Reader for opening PDF documents.  They change the file associations (without asking you) automatically on install.  Again, their product takes ~5 sec where the default (Preview) takes 1-2.  Even the people on Windows have to agree that Acrobat Reader is slow as all getout to load.  It’s also really annoying when it loads directly in your web browser, which in my opion is more distracting (and slower) than it’s worth.

No two ways about it.  This technology is sweet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNTgglPbUA

Twins lost again today, so things aren’t looking so great for moving on in the playoffs.  What’s been surprising is that the Twins have been making defensive mistakes, which is really not like them.  The could also use some more offense.  We’ll see if they can do anything in Oakland this coming Friday.

http://www.sysprog.net/quotes.html

Some of my favorites:

Physics is the universe’s operating system. (Steven R Garman)

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. (Mitch Radcliffe)

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork. (Sam Ewing)

Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window. (Steve Wozniak)

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside. (”Robert X. Cringely”, Computerworld)

I’ve advocated for a long time that Shanley should quit his job (ok, he did that part) and move to Vegas to make his living betting on sports events. In the past, he’s done in depth statistical analysis on such things as the significance of winning the first game of the series in the NHL postseasn. Today, Shanley brings us an analysis of the MLB postseason. I’m not a betting, man, but if you are, this might interest you.

The problem with picking baseball winners is that most results are determined by luck, especially since postseason teams are strong for the most part and only a few wins differentiate them. The only team with the best record to win the championship in the last 10 years was the ‘98 Yankees, and they won a then-AL record 114 games. The factors that do give a minor statistical boost to some teams are regular season record and what one analyst calls a “secret sauce” - several team stats that bear relevance in the postseason whereas most do not.

http://www.diamond-mind.com/articles/playoff2002.htm
This article describes a method for calculating world series probabilities based on won/lost records. Interesting to note that for most years, the best team has a 25% or less chance of winning it all. That article does the computation for 2002; in that year, Anaheim (10.4%) defeated SF (7.6%). Last year, Chicago (18.7%) defeated Houston (7.9%). I ran the numbers this year and got this:

• Mets: 20.71%
• Yankees: 17.43
• Twins: 15.96
• Tigers: 12.79
• A’s: 11.09
• Padres: 9.24
• Dodgers: 7.55
• Cardinals: 5.23

The Yankees would actually be slight favorites (51.3%) against the Mets due to identical records and home-field advantage, but they’ll have to face tougher competition to get to the World Series.
Now for other considerations.

• The secret sauce article is here: http://www.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3936878. In the relevant statistics, the Twins and Mets do very well, the Yankees above average, and the Cardinals really badly.
• For the first time, one league (the AL) was much, much better during interleague play, and most fans believe that whoever comes out of the AL will be a strong favorite in the World Series. So W/L comparisons for teams from different leagues might be off.
• Offense has been shown to have NO statistical correlation with postseason performance, but run prevention (pitching and defense) has a slight correlation. So the Yankees’ mammoth offense doesn’t appear to be statistically relevant. However, some people think that their offense is so good, it might be enough to matter.
• So I’m not sure how to build these factors into the model, but here’s what I did: Give a boost of 4 percentage points to all AL teams, 4 points to the Twins and Mets, 2 to the Yankees (for run prevention, not run scoring), and subtract 4 from the Cardinals. Here are the revised numbers. The second column is the expected payoff on $1 based on the most recent odds I found.

• Mets: 24.18% 0.45
• Twins: 24.00 0.44
• Yankees: 20.19 -0.56
• Tigers: 10.86 0.09
• A’s: 9.15 0.01
• Padres: 5.98 -0.46
• Dodgers: 4.39 -0.61
• Cardinals: 1.24 -0.84

So, bet on the Twins (5-1 odds) and Mets (5-1) to win, and against the Yankees (6-5).

Ran across this on digg this afternoon, thought it was entertaining (and relevant).

http://rondam.blogspot.com/2006/10/top-ten-geek-business-myths.html 

I stopped by Sam’s Club this evening to pick up some office paper on the way to Kim Labs.  It was closed.  No big deal, I’ve been bitten by the weird Sam’s Club hours bug before, but when I stopped at Staples next, things just got annoying.  It was also closed.  It was only 6:30.  Maybe I’m remembering things incorrectly, but I remember most stores staying open until 8 or 9 on Sundays.  Sam’s has always closed early, but I’m sure (at least in Minnesota) that things stay open later.  Oh well, tomorrow night is another day…