soapbox

This past week, a minor league baseball team (Calgary Vipers) traded pitcher John Odom to the Laredo Broncos for 10 maple bats with a value of $650 (Odom was unable to get into Canada due to a minor but unspecified infraction). Odom appeared to have a good attitude about the trade, saying “hopefully I can turn it into a good thing. I mean I might be able to turn it into a feel-good story. … It’s just one of those funny stories that will go down in history and that I’ll be able to tell my kids about.”

Actually, he’s in pretty good company - check out the trades listed below, courtesy Jim Caple and the internet.

Ernie Harwell: The Brooklyn Dodgers acquired the broadcaster from the Atlanta Crackers in exchange for catcher Cliff Dapper.

Lefty Grove: Traded by a minor league team for the repair costs of its outfield fence that was knocked down in a storm.

Dave Winfield: The Twins traded him to Cleveland during 1994 strike for a dinner between the GMs if the season did not resume.

Randy Winn: Tampa Bay traded him to the Mariners for right to sign Lou Piniella as manager.

Harry Chiti: The Mets traded the catcher to Cleveland in 1962 for a player to be named later. The player wound up being Chiti, who went back to the Mets.

Tim Fortugno: Minor league Reno traded him to Stockton for 12 dozen baseballs and $2,500 in 1989.

Johnny Johns: Traded for a 25-pound live turkey.

Joe Martina: Texas Leaguer traded for two barrels of oysters.

Al Michaels: To sign the announcer, NBC traded ABC/Disney the copyright to Disney’s old cartoon character, Oswald the Rabbit.

I was taking a little break from editing a paper and walked through a park right next to my office. There were some girls waving around a stick on the other side of the park so I walked over that way to find out that they were trying to defend a hurt bunny from a hawk. After a while, they realized it was kind of pointless and wandered off.

Anyway, I need to carry my real camera with me because the camera on the iPhone is shit by comparison.

A few notes: I saw this hawk a couple days ago on my way to lunch, so it apparently lives on the JHU campus. The campus is bordered by a pretty large wild park, so there are lots of birds here. Other than it being a juvenile something or other, I can’t identify it. I saw the bunny today on my way back from lunch too. It wasn’t doing a lot of moving around at noonish, so I’m guessing that the hawk chose the slow bunny to eat.

(1) What does the soapboxosphere know about the Roku? It’s kinda an iTV + Netflix thing, where for $99 you get a box that allows Netflix subscribers access to their entire ‘Watch Now’ movie database. No extra fees, no computer necessary. My take is that the aaplTV will provide new/hip/trendy things, while this Netflix things gives you good access to older/nonpremium films.

(2) A recent study concludes that even with HD-DVD defeated, BluRay hasn’t immediately taken off, in no small part due to the fact that Blu-Ray players still cost a billion dollars. Duh. (But I still want one).

(3) Two more uses for AirportExpress:

• play any kind of movie file on iTunes
• or play non-iTunes software over AirportExpress.

(4) Finally, if you’re traveling a lot, I don’t see how/why to not get one of these. Screw the Macbook Air, you can put your whole computer in your pocket, as long as you have a host computer to boot on. 160 Gig for $129, and measures in at 12.7 cm x 8.1 cm x 1.8 cm.

So I just this week had one of my credit cards (involuntarily) upgraded to a “smart” card - it has an RFID chip embedded, so you can use the card like speedpass or other proximity-scanned systems. Now it’s one thing to use this technology to be able to get into your dorm when both hands are full:

…but quite another to have your wallet broadcasting your credit card info. Especially given all the stuff I’ve read about how hackable RFID is (for example, here and here), I’m definitely considering resigning this card to at-home/only-only purchasing. Or maybe just line my wallet with aluminum foil?

Nathaniel, given your spouse’s experience with this sort of payment system (they say it speeds transaction times by 23 seconds and that average expenditures increase significantly with these things), any reassurance? Others? I know that Speedpass wands use encryption but I read an article recently saying that the encryption is pathetic and would take just a few seconds to break.

Well, test it in a way that really doesn’t seem to match up with reality at all.

Here’s how to do it: go to www.iqleague.com and just start answering questions.

The problem is that as you answer more and more questions, it appears that your calculated IQ always goes down. I started at 127 and monotonically went down to 113. (I’ve used up all the questions now.)

The cool thing is that it ties your IQ to statistics that they can get about you. Apparently I’m the 12th smartest Mozilla on unix user in the world!

Yesterday was the first hot day of the year here in Baltimore, and it wasn’t actually particularly hot or humid, just a quick taste of what summer will eventually be like.

There was one really nice thing though, the smell of the air as the sun was going down. On the East Coast, I notice sort of a characteristic smell, it’s a mix of humidity, old leaves, growing trees, assorted flowering plants and it all comes together to smell like goodness. It’s the same reaction that I have to baking cookies or fresh bread.

Very different from the smell in the woods out in Alaska which is more of just “pine.”

Inspired by:
this
Test:
raptor attack