Dear Yahoo!,

If you can’t stop filling my feed reader with duplicate entries, it’s going to become even harder to take you seriously. I don’t know what’s wrong with the backend of Yahoo! Sports, but I’m getting the same entries 3 and 4 times - and not even because they’ve been changed.

So knock it off. You’ve got enough on your plate, what with half the company fleeing. No need to drive off your remaining users.

Thanks,

Jemal

I know you don’t care about me or my problems. I know that they only put the word “care” into your job title so that a) we’d associate you with Care Bears and have a harder time strangling you (not gonna dissuade me though), and b) management can snicker behind your back. So let’s not pretend you’re fooling anybody.

Regardless, you don’t have to rub our noses in it by lying to us. Tacking this onto the bottom of your emails:

Please do not respond to this message as no one will receive it.

That’s just bullshit. You created an automated system for receiving and tracking the form that I filled out to complain about whatever it was your company screwed up in the first place. Why not give me an email that does the same thing?

Anyway, I know you’re not listening to this either, so I’ll go back to screaming into this hole in the ground. Maybe somebody in China will care.

Burn in Hell,

Jemal

Design By Humans, which is meant to be a more designery version of Threadless, has been doing some pretty amazing things with shirts. I bought Sierra Blackbird’s Attackin’ in the Dead ‘O’ Night, and we both love it (though I’m not fond of the grocers’ apostrophe). And I couldn’t be happier with Robot Attack and its metallic ink.

But the point of all of this is that if you’re a t-shirt nut the way I am, you can save 20% at DBH with the referral code “jemaleddin” (creative, no?) between now and July 6. There are all sorts of prizes for people that get lots of referrals - MacBooks, iPhones, iTunes gift cards - but I’m just happy that I can help get somebody 20% off on cool shirts - and I hope that’s enough to push them over the edge into buying something like Concentric Downpour. Enjoy!

Jared has his own way of talking sometimes and it’s important to model good speech patterns for him. So I often say things back to him with little corrections: “She bringed it.” “She brought it.” You get the point. But his other habit is that he has little routines for how he discusses things that disappoint him. And it’s an even worse idea to encourage that. But I was frustrated, and just couldn’t help myself. So as he’s interrupting to say, “When are we going to the movie?” I started quickly asking, “Can’t I talk about the plan? Is the plan cancelled? Is the plan over? Is the plan ruined? Do you want to ruin the plan? Are we done with the plan? Why can’t we have the plan?”

And he totally caved. “What’s the plan?”

That’s just going to make it more tempting next time. Bad, bad daddy.

Another reason to love feed readers: they catch stuff even when they shouldn’t. Still, I love Garfield Minus Garfield. Even with Garfield.

Driving like a madman through the city costs me 14% of my fuel efficiency: that’s a dip from my normal 22 miles per gallon down to 19. Ouch. When combined with the extra mileage of at least 40 miles every other day, it’s been quite a painful experience at the pump.

So lately I’ve been more conscious of my driving habits. No more jack-rabbit starts. No more flooring it to make a yellow light. No more flying up an on-ramp at a greater speed that the cars actually driving on the highway. And it’s done wonders for my pocketbook: where I was getting 19 mpg driving like a jerk, I’m getting 24 mpg nowadays.

And while you might think that saving some gas and money would make me happy, you’d be fooling yourself. I have to drive in Maryland: home of the oblivious driver. As far as I can tell, there are no suggestions made at Maryland driving schools that slower traffic should keep right. Getting into the turn lane before you slow down so that cars behind you don’t have to come to an almost complete stoo? Unheard of. It seems that it’s the goal of the Maryland driver to do everything possible to frustrate everyone else on the road.

But changing all of that just so I could eke out another 1 or 2 miles per gallon seems selfish, so I’m only going to request one tiny thing of the people of Maryland, and it only requires a change of attitude, not behavior: when you cut me off on the highway, don’t get mad when I tailgate you - if you’re going to make me slow down, you could at least let me draft off you.

The reason it was running low is that I need to replace the blower on the inside of the house which has a very slow leak. Evidently systems that operate under pressure always develop leaks over time and it takes long enough to find and fix them (at over $100/hour) that they usually get fixed by being replaced. Since it’s $2,000 for a new blower, I’m happy to keep paying to top off the tank until the leak gets bad enough.

The way we picked this company to put in our heat pump in the first place is that the founder used to play cards with Kellie’s grandfather, and the heat pump that should have cost us $3,000 to put in was under $1,500. And that $2,000 for the blower? That’s friend prices. Nice deal, but who knows how much her family lost at the poker table over the years to get that discount?

Regardless, the repair guy came out, and I guess he must be the same person who has been coming to our house all along, because he remembered Kellie. And didn’t charge us a thing. It seems that he thought she was a pretty awesome customer, and now that I think about it, he didn’t charge us for the last visit either.

I’m going to miss having somebody around that has that effect on people.

Usually posts like this are either followed by no entries for 6 months or 6 weeks of fevered postings. Either will be fine from my perspective.

I added in OpenID support for those that like it. This allows you to verify that you are who you say you are - sort of. What it really says is that you are the person affiliated with a given URL, which isnt’ the same thing at all. And to be perfectly honest, it actually allows somebody to say that they know the password necessary to make use of a certain URL or a way to exploit the system that nobody has figured out a way around, so it doesn’t really mean much of anything. Still, handy.

I also added an Open Search feature so if you’re using a supporting browser (Firefox and IE 7 at the moment, I think) you could add TangleBones to the list of search tools in your browsers search box. I don’t know why you would, since searching Google along with “tanglebones” or something is more likely to get what you want, but it’s mostly there so that I can use it. But since I also made the search results much more helpful, it’s better than nothing.

One very nice change for me is that the page itself should shrink and grow nicely with each user’s individual font settings. If you scale up the fonts, everything should continue to work pretty well. Since my eyes aren’twhat they used to be, I find myself bumping up the font sizes on many sites, and having my own site in order is important to me.

Besides all of that and a few behind-the-scenes changes, I also made the various kinds of pages (date-based archives, category pages, search results) more consistent and useful, while also cutting back on the amount of meaningless debris cluttering up the page.

If you see anything else that can be removed, let me know. And if you think something needs to come back, I’d like to hear that as well.

But there’s still one cluttery bit left on the site. WordPress lets you define a “tagline” or “description” of your site - right now mine says, “A Personal Website,” which isn’t terribly useful or descriptive. So here’s your task: tell me what to put in there. What short, possibly pithy phrase sums up this place? I’m at a loss, so anything you come up with is probably an improvement. Anything?

The rest of you? Get with the program. I’m tired of pants that almost fit.

I think it’s pretty clear that I love you. I mean, I did everything I could to get into the Gmail beta as soon as possible, I held contests to give away Gmail invites, I try to convince everyone I know to use Google products, and I only ever use Google for searching. Every product you guys come up with, I’m willing to try. And most of them I like!

So when the Google engineer who was fixing our search appliance at my old job tried to talk me into using Google Apps for Your Domain (GAfYD) to host my email, I was a willing convert. I mean, it’s Gmail but with my (not so) cool domain name! I dutifully updated my MX records, forwarded all of my old mail, and started enjoying the high life. Sort of.

You see, half of your apps don’t seem to know about GAfYD. My Google Reader account has to be tied to my Gmail account. Since I don’t ever get any email from the Reader team, this isn’t a big deal. But today I got an email from the AdSense team letting me know that I could no longer use my GAfYD Gmail address to access AdSense, and must instead use my plain old Gmail address. That I don’t use. That just forwards to my GAfYD Gmail. Which is kinda dumb. 

I know you’re a big company. And I know that coordination between teams is hard. But can we please straighten this out? I know that you guys employ some of the smartest people in the world (Hey Kev!) over there, so let’s put those big brains to use!

With love,

Jemal

Seriously: that’s awesome. Prior to the Segway, he was working an a powerchair.

There’s been a lot of talk about how “the fix was in” for some of the fights at EliteXC Primetime. But what if it made more sense for a fighter to lose than to win? I don’t have any evidence, there’s no reason to suspect that anyone threw a fight, and until the payouts are released this is just idle speculation, but it’s an interesting thought exercise.

Stated simply: what if the 12.5% that Young got from losing to Carano was more than her win bonus?

The information about the deal that was worked out has been very vague, but it sounds like Young was to receive her base pay, her win bonus if applicable, and 12.5% of whatever Carano made. What we don’t know is if that percentage was of her fight pay, her win pay, or her combined pay, and this makes a huge difference. The way it was reported certainly sounded like the primary factor was Carano’s combined pay. We can safely assume that Carano is making more than Young, but how much is up in the air. But there’s a good chance that it was significant. Let’s try some math: 

If Young was paid $10K to fight and $10K to lose, and Carano was paid $100K to fight and $100K to win, winning the fight would get Young $32.5K: $10K + $10K + $12.5. Losing would get her $35K: $10K + $25K. Now I obviously made those numbers up, but for a first time fighter and a headliner, that doesn’t sound too unreasonable. In fact, it might be a bit conservative.

But let’s play with the numbers: If Young were paid $4K/$4K - a reasonable amount - and Gina still made $100K/$100K, winning would get Kaitlin $20.5K, while losing would get her $33K. If Gina made $50K/$50K, the difference between winning and losing is $14.25K/$18.5K. 

Obviously, it’s all more complicated than this. Winning has other consequences than just a bonus: more and better sponsors, higher pay for the next fight, and even a long-term contract are all worth something. But that all depends on how risk averse Young is. Would it be better to make an additional few thousand and risk tanking her career? Who can say?

This is of course not an attempt to say that Young threw the fight: she was clearly fighting very hard, and she doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be motivated to risk her career for a few extra dollars. But there are fighters who have more bills and less scruples than her, and this kind of arrangement (large difference in fighter pay, penalties assessed as a percentage) is clearly a moral quagmire waiting to happen.

Organizations need to come up with a different way of arranging for these penalties, before this kind of problem becomes an issue. But again: this is all speculation. What do you think?

Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed here.

I’m guessing that the thinking went something like this: Carano could attempt the cut and end up weakened in mind and body which would mean risking her win bonus - and therefore a full half of her pay.  Or she could save herself a miserable cut and just get to where she could on the scale but come in as fresh and strong as possible, all for an eighth of her pay. That means making 75% more than if she lost the fight.

And I’d call that a pretty savvy deal.

Yes, you can argue that it would be better for her to have made weight. But was that a realistic option? Should she have spent the limited training time she had focusing on sharpening up her striking and jiu-jitsu, or going on a crash diet? Now that we know the pressure she was under in having to agree to take this fight in order to keep her job with NBC, and recognizing that we don’t know everything else going on in her personal life that might have been affecting her weight, it’s easy to see that while the choice she made wasn’t ideal, it may have been the smartest economic move available to her.

Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed here.

A lot of grumbling is going on in regards to Kimbo Slice’s crappy cardio and his complete lack of a ground game. And that’s fair: the man has work to do to live up to his hype. But who’s to blame for that hype? i’d lay that at the feet of Gary Shaw and CBS. Slice is doing his best to sell himself, but he’s never claimed to be anything other than what he is: a good street-fighter who is still learning MMA. Gary Shaw is the one saying that he’d beat Mike Tyson. 

But there’s been a lot of hype for Kaitlin Young as well. The odd thing is that almost none of it came from EliteXC: Shaw was too busy hyping Slice and Gina Carano to worry about doing any more than claiming that Young was a game opponent for Carano. Bloggers for several sites got interviews with the 22-year-old college student and published breathless reports of her prowess in striking and on the ground. It was reported that she’d knocked 3 opponents out in one night, owing to her extensive Muay Thai training, and that she’d be better on the ground than Carano because she’d participated in some grappling tournaments. 

The fact that the three girls she knocked out that night were all participating in their first event? Or that her 4 KOs were against women who now have a combined record of 4-5? Not important, even though Carano has beaten well-known fighters like Tonya Evinger and Julile Kedzie. What about the fact that her first MMA event was a short 7 months ago? Not an issue, even though Carano has been fighting and training MMA with one of the best camps in the world for 2 years. And what about that Muay Thai training? Young is 3-2 in amateur competition, while Carano was 12-1-1 as a professional and the first American woman to win a Muay Thai championship in Thailand. 

Much was made of a video, circulated by Young’s camp, of her flipping tires and puling a truck across a parking lot, even though she is clearly the smaller and weaker of the two. Not to mention that the last mixed martial artist to be featured doing so-called “caveman” training was Young’s teammate at the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy Sean Sherk, who was subsequently stripped of his title for testing positive for steroids. 

In hindsight, it’s no surprise that Carano dominated the fight from beginning to end. While her shooting schedule for American Gladiators clearly shortened her training camp and left her overweight and out of breath during the fight, she had more than enough strength and skill to take out Young. When fighting on the ground, Young attempted one strike and no submission attempts.  Working from her back, Carano on the other hand, quickly brought her leg up to attempt a gogoplata submission - a relatively advanced technique. By the fight’s end, the only damage done to Carano was a little smeared mascara, while Young looked as though she’d been hit by a truck. But this wasn’t exactly a surprise: Carano was up against a smaller opponent with less experience who was facing top competition for the first time in her first televised fight. Who can win in that situation?

The blogosphere likes to view itself as free of many of the sins of the mainstream media. But bloggers are just as likely to fall for a convincing story-line in the face of overwhelming evidence as anyone. When a likable fighter talks herself up, we listen without questioning what she says. We like to be skeptical of what we hear from the news outlets, but we must apply that skepticism to our own work as well.

Originally posted on Bloody Elbow. Comments closed for this version.

So here are some of the new things I’ve been trying lately:

• Korean food: I don’t know how I managed to make it this far in life without trying Korean cuisine, but I can’t believe how much I was missing out. I had some Dol-sot Bi-bim-bab at Nam Kang that was almost life-altering in its goodness, and the panchan was excellent. Somehow we managed to get through an entire meal without any kimchi, so I’ll have to go back and make a special request.
• Fish: As a child I ate fish-sticks, but since then, the old fish I’ve had has been raw in the form of sushi or sashimi, and occasionally smoked fish like lox. Cooked fish has been a mystery to me until I finally worked up the courage for fish tacos, which were okay, a few bites of somebody’s pintado, which was great, and some blackened tilapia that was excellent. Just today I had some flounder that was so-so, but no worse than your average bland chicken dish. Again: stupid, stupid, stupid me, for not trying this stuff sooner.
• Beer: Okay, I’ve obviously never had a problem with trying beer, but over the last few months I’ve certainly expanded my range. The bar where my office usually heads for happy hour has a bunch of great local brews on tap, and over a hundred varieties in bottles. Fordham’s Copperhead? Delightful. The Brewer’s Art’s Resurrection? Heavenly. I’m still fond of my old standy-bys, but it’s good to have some variety.
• Dating: Yeah, I’m seeing somebody. 

I’m having a wonderful time, in fact, and she’s an incredible young woman. Smart, accomplished, sweet, pretty, kind, and all sorts of amazing - quite an impressive lady. I’ve been nervous to talk about it, not because I’m uncomfortable with what’s going on - in fact, the defining quality of the relationship is its natural-feeling awesomeness - but because I know that some of my friends haven’t gotten to a point where they feel okay with the idea. No, it’s not their business, which is why I haven’t let them stop me, but I don’t want to make anyone else unduly uncomfortable. Trust me: I know how weird this is. But obviously the grieving process is different for somebody who occasionally thinks about Kellie’s death and a guy who has spent the last six months confronted with it every waking and most sleeping hours. Let’s say that I’m on the crash course.

Regardless: I was terrified as to what it would be like to re-enter the dating pool after all these years of married life, but somehow I lucked out. I met a girl on an online dating site, chatted her up innocently in email, met her for lunch, and immediately found myself deeply smitten. What’s funny is that it’s all this incredible coincidence: neither of us thought we were in the right frame of mind to be dating, I certainly never planned to be looking at this point in my life, and quite honestly, we wouldn’t have been right for one another if we’d met when we were younger. But she’s surprisingly similar to me in attitudes, opinions, interests and outlook, and more surprising still is that neither of us is annoyed by our similarities. I’m gob-smacked by how well it’s going.

So that’s how things are for me. Any questions?

Nice work. Now do this to the rest of them like the media should have been doing for years. Hint: none of these Republicans know their history or they wouldn’t be Republicans. Heck, anyone who has been paying attention for the last 7 years ought to have a hard time being a Republican.

Sincerely,

Everyone