Friday, January 17, 2025

What Happens in Athens (Georgia) Stays in Athens (Georgia)

I am heading off to Athens for my niece's bat mitzvah. Maybe I will see some homage to the Athens music scene at some point?

Thursday, January 16, 2025

RIP Bob Uecker (1934–2025)

Former player, Brewer broadcaster, and legendary baseball personality Bob Uecker has died.

One of the great things when Baseball started broadcasting games over the internet many years ago is that I got a chance to hear Uecker broadcast a bunch of games. He was damn funny, an amazing broadcaster and storyteller, and a lifetime .200 hitter (as he sometimes pointed out with his wonderful self-deprecating humor).

You can read more about Uecker at his Wikipedia page.

Friday, January 10, 2025

What Happens in San Juan Capistrano Stays in San Juan Capistrano (Wildfire Edition)

UCLA is officially still online on Monday, so I am heading over to visit friends in San Juan Capistrano for an unplanned visit. If we are teaching in person on Wednesday, I will return on Tuesday. Otherwise, I will return at some later time.

Additionally, as in games like Pandemic, the regions of 'evacuation warning' (in this case) are also getting closer to my home region, so it's good to get out of town when it's prudent.

Update (maybe 20 minutes after I wrote the text above, with a scheduled posting for tomorrow afternoon): Then again, it looks like the Pacific Palisades wildfire has taken a hard east (though somewhat north of me) with some regions going from nothing to warning to GTFO very quickly. My region doesn't yet have even a warning, but the prudect act is to GTFO tonight and go to my friends already.

Thursday, January 02, 2025

What Happens in Denver Stays in Denver (2025 Edition)

I am flying to Denver for the US Dynamics Days 2025 conference. I really love this conference series! This year, the conference hotel is actually about half a mile from the 2025 Snowbird-conference hotel.

I am really looking forward to this year's Dynamics Daze conference!

Saturday, December 21, 2024

RIP Rickey Henderson (1958–2024)

One of Baseball's all-time legends — both in terms of on-field performance (Wow!) and in terms of the many awesome stories — has left us. Inner-circle Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson has died.

You can read about his career, his personality, and a couple of his unreachable Major League records in this article. This article has a collection of 25 great stories (most of them true), and this article has a collect of 10 great instances of Rickey talking about Rickey in the third person. (There is some overlap in the stories in these two collections.)

As Tom Verducci wrote in 2003, "There are certain figures in American history who have passed into the realm of cultural mythology, as if reality could no longer contain their stories: Johnny Appleseed. Wild Bill Hickok. Davy Crockett. Rickey Henderson. They exist on the sometimes narrow margin between Fact and Fiction."

Rest in peace, Rickey.

Monday, December 16, 2024

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

What Happens in Cambridge (Massachusetts) Stays in Cambridge (Massachusetts)

I am flying out to Boston to give a System Dynamics seminar at MIT.