after Day 3 of the 2012 NFL Draft

One sports journalist made reference to the phrase 'getting a life' with those who spend all those hours watching the draft - hey, I resemble that remark. 

In way of explaining my fascination with the event, I thought of how I would describe it to someone: Did you ever play with those little plastic army men when you were a child? How about the board game Stratego? And as I mentioned in an earlier blog entry: jigsaw puzzles. Do you enjoy putting those together? I also liken the NFL Draft to not only playing chess, but 3-D chess. I could probably come up with other comparisons, but those are the ones that first come to mind. 

The Niners made four more picks after the three that had been made by the time I wrote yesterday's entry. One thing to keep in mind about the draft is some players have already reached a high enough level of play during their college careers that teams draft them sooner than others by the time the draft happens. It's entirely possible that others haven't yet maximized their potential at the college level and will bloom a little later. Of maybe are coming from smaller, less touted programs. There are a myriad of reasons. It's up to team evaluators to decide which players are worth taking when their team's turn to pick comes up (or make trades instead). And then further their abilities with the right coaching and the right system.

And now that the draft is over - it's time to sign undrafted free agents!!! There's more freedom for those players that weren't chosen during the draft, because they are the ones that get to choose now. And they have to decide which of the teams that have contacted them they want to go to. I would suspect that going to the better teams may well make it more difficult to make the roster, and conversely, the teams that have the furthest to go may well present the best opportunities to be a part of the opening day squad. But who wouldn't want to test themselves with a chance to play for a winning organization?

The signing of free agents starts up the minute the draft ends, I suppose, and I've already seen several lists of whom have signed with the Niners. The one name that pops out to me is Chris Owusu, a fleet footed wide receiver out of Stanford. Provided he is fully healthy, wouldn't it be nice if he could be the Doug Baldwin (an undrafted free agent from Stanford that the 49ers missed out on last year; he tore it up for the Seahawks in 2011) of this year? When I look at the 49ers roster now, I think of the line from the movie 'Top Gun': "I feel the need, the need for speed!" 

I'm enjoying the thought that the Niners are building a juggernaut built of both power and speed. Should be fun next season!

after Day 2 of the 2012 NFL Draft

With the strength of the 49ers roster, selecting RB LaMichael James out of Oregon in the 2nd-round seems like a luxury pick. Whether or not it's fair to characterize the choice that way, it's a great feeling nonetheless!

If he turns out to be the Niners' version of Darren Sproles, then that is an absolute coup for the team. With the deep threat they drafted Thursday, A.J. Jenkins, adding a dynamic and speedy threat in LaMichael James could really spread out opposing defenses. With so many weapons throughout the offense (both existing and new) to play with, it will be like so many plays, so little time...

At the end of yesterday's festivities, the 49ers traded away their late 3rd-round pick for an early 4th-round pick today - which they started turning into another flurry of trades, including the accumulation of additional picks in next year's draft. I don't know how they did it, but the Niners have procured a 3rd-round pick in 2013! 

It's not easy watching familiar names being picked by other teams, but each team can only choose so many. They all have to share with each other and split the choices. The Niners can't choose all the best players! Just some of them. 

The 49ers have chosen one player so far today, offensive lineman Joe Looney out of Wake Forest. Many of the players selected today may only have been picked later because of injuries incurred fairly recently; once they heal, they could well be among the very best players at their positions chosen overall. I am hoping that is the case with Looney.

For the rest of today, I will be glued in front of the television while sitting in front of my computer at the same time. I can only handle this much fun once a year! 

after Day 1 of the 2012 NFL Draft

This time I was prepared - I was almost expecting a surprise pick. And the 49ers made it: A.J. Jenkins, wide receiver out of Illinois. Excellent! 

Being practically trained after last year's success in the draft, I didn't flinch but rather proceeded to read up on Jenkins and found that he may well not have lasted much longer before being chosen by another team. And obviously, with wide receivers Stephen Hill, Reuben Randle, Alshon Jeffrey, et al still available, Jenkins absolutely was the one the Niners wanted. 

In response to people saying that the 49ers took him too soon and should have gone ahead and traded back, Trent Baalke said: "If you like a player, take him." I've observed before that Baalke doesn't like taking risks when he's got his eye on a player. He traded up two spots a couple of years ago to assure getting Anthony Davis, and last year didn't risk losing Aldon Smith by trading back, even just a couple of spots.

More fun later today as the draft continues!

it's the most wonderful time of the year

Today is the first day of the 2012 NFL Draft weekend, well okay, Thursday thru Saturday, but still!!! 

I woke this morning with thoughts of possible 49er draft picks dancing in my head: Coby Fleener, Amini Silatolu, Marvin Jones... 

Amidst all the projecting and strategizing is the jumble of complexity of competing against 31 other organizations at the same time. I consider it 'competitive jigsaw puzzling' mixed in with alchemy. Could anything be more fun?

That the 49ers are slated to pick towards the end of each and every round is actually good - it's a reflection of how well they did last season. As much fun as picking early is, it was always with a bit of embarrassment that they had such high draft picks year after year. They have fewer holes to fill now; and even picking so late is endlessly fascinating. I just have to wait longer. Barring a trade. What will they do? Who will they pick? We'll soon find out.

What we need every year is an Advent-like calendar leading up to the Draft!

naming PDFs

Sometimes I come across PDFs that I download and are therefore saved on my computer. Which is all fine and well - thank you for making them available. I'm sure a lot of time and effort was invested in making them. But just like any file, shouldn't there be as much care put into naming them?

For example, I might want to save a file from this month's issue of a local environmental newsletter and it's given the name: April 2012 newsletter.pdf  First of all, let's say I save each issue each month for as many years as it's being created. Even if I put all of them into their own folder, they're going to be saved alphabetized, so therefore all of the Aprils will be next to each other, then the Augusts, then the Decembers, etc.

Wouldn't it be more helpful to first of all put the name of the organization or subject first in the file name? Then if I didn't take the time to put them in their own separate folder, they'd be easier to identify. Next would be the year, in this case, '2012.' And then a '4' (for April), and finally the word 'April.'

This is just the top of my head, as I've never created PDFs and made them available to be downloaded. But I'm sure I would make better use of the ones I've saved over the years if I instantly recognized what they were based on their names and had a sense of order for the ones that are part of a series.

Based on the naming convention I've outlined above, these files would be listed as: 

CCC Native Plants 2012 1 January.pdf

CCC Native Plants 2012 2 February.pdf

CCC Native Plants 2012 3 March.pdf

CCC Native Plants 2012 4 April.pdf

CCC Native Plants 2012 5 May.pdf   and so on... 

If I'm missing some particulars about creating PDFs, please forgive me, but I think the general point I'm making is valid. Please, folks, make the extra effort while naming your PDFs!

world's smallest bird

The recent unfortunate and insensitive remarks made by baseball's Miami Marlins manager made me think of the first thing that comes to my mind whenever I think of Cuba: 

the bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae)- endemic to Cuba 

I hope that their habitat is being preserved; as evidenced by the above link, they are the smallest birds in the world! 

the difference between batting .250 and .300

I read the following in a book recently, and I'm still not sure I believe it.

If you watch baseball enough, you know that there is a world of difference between a batter with an average of .250 and one who bats .300. The former will probably have to justify being in the everyday lineup with qualities other than batting: his defense, or perhaps an otherwise high total of runs batted in. And the latter just might make the All-Star team with a .300 batting average! 

Now check the math here and see if it's correct: in 20 at-bats, getting five hits would yield an average of .250, and yet just one hit more out of 20 would produce an average of .300. 

Five hits in 20 at-bats vs. six hits in 20 at-bats. And that could be the difference between being a starter... or riding the bench. 

 

worse than texting and driving

and that's aside from drinking and driving. 

There have been recent articles in the newspaper about a new product that Google is developing: high-tech glasses that one wears just like regular corrective lens glasses that allows the wearer to be 'plugged-in' to advanced information. I've also seen segments on television about this product.

For example, let's say one is visiting a foreign country and is sitting on a bench in a public park and sees a gorgeous church in the distance. By simply looking at the building, the image will compare the structure to a vast store of images that people have added to a database, and voila!, identification of the building plus information about it will appear on the lenses of the glasses. The same could happen with face recognition software, so we can know about the strangers we meet. How cool (and intrusive) is that? 

When I first learned of these glasses, I was wondering how big and bulky they would be. Are the frames thick? How conspicuous are the lenses? Well, from the recent photos I've seen, they are very modern looking, much like a pair of fashionable contemporary glasses. 

Now, for the great and serious problem I have with this new invention: imagine people wearing these distracting things while driving. Isn't it bad enough for people to be texting behind the wheel? Or talking on their cell phones? People have been spotted eating, applying makeup, etc. while driving and now there are going to be glasses/slash computers right in front of drivers' eyeballs? Am I overreacting by saying that these have no place on people's faces while they are operating two-ton vehicles? 

There have been articles that imagine humorous scenarios where people are wearing these while walking and then proceeding directly into telephone poles because they are so consumed by what is being displayed on the lenses. Or walking then falling down subway steps (less funny); is this not a hazard to public safety? 

There have been actual fatalities in the streets of San Francisco whereby bicyclists have hit and killed pedestrians on crosswalks - so it doesn't just happen with cars hitting people. Sitting on a bench while wearing these glasses would be safe; wearing them while moving could potentially be dangerous. Of course, I would caution people to always be aware of their surroundings in any case.

********

A tragedy occurred just this morning in my hometown. A father and his children were riding their bikes when the driver of an SUV got distracted and drove up onto the sidewalk and killed the father and sent the children to the hospital in critical condition where at least one of them may have died too. The official report of what happened of course is not yet known, but apparently the driver of the SUV was a teenager and was occupied by texting on his cell phone, which is what caused him to lose sight of the road. 

9:30 on a Saturday morning taking one's children out for a family bike ride, and now the father is dead. A young teenage driver has to face the consequences of texting while driving, doing something that countless drivers do all the time. And soon in the future, there are going to be glasses with their 'screens' less than an inch away from drivers' eyes?

How is this making life better? 

Worst. President. Ever.

When someone says that Barrack Obama is the worst president ever, I want to ask them: "Okay... so who would you say are the worst 2 through 5?"

Because I'd want to find out just how much they've thought this through. There have been 44 administrations and 43 different presidents. Where would Andrew Johnson rate on this list of the worst? He succeeded Abraham Lincoln and was impeached. Would the entire list consist of the same party? 

The same would go for those who have cited George W. Bush as the worst president ever. Would the worst presidents ever to serve our country just happen to be all Republicans? 

I've read people being critical of Obama for coming up with his own bracket for March Madness in the men's college basketball tournament, saying that he shouldn't do things like that until the country is fixed. The same things were said whenever Bush took a vacation. 

I would want to ask a staunch Democrat to name five admirable things that the more recent Bush accomplished while in office. And could a conservative Republican come up with five good things accomplished during the Clinton Administration? Objectively speaking? Or is being objective even possible? 

I'd feel better about and have more respect for such strong statements if I knew they were well thought out, instead of sounding like the spouting of a party line. I might also ask: "Conversely, how would you rate the top 5 administrations?" I'd wonder if a member of the Whig Party made either of the best or worst lists. How about the Federalist John Adams? Where does he rank? 

I get particularly frustrated by (our two-party) partisan politics when there's no attempt at objectivity at all.